SCO Extorting Unixware Licenses to Linux Users?

An anonymous user noted that SCO will sell you Unixware if you want to "Legitimize" your usage of Linux at your company. If you buy the license, you will be held blameless for your transgressions against SCO! Pricing has yet to be determined for the special licenses, but I suspect that for any value greater than zero, there are going to be a fair number of angry users.

Comments

Hrm

[Overly Critical Guy]

This couldn't have been edited onto the previous SCO story this morning?

It's getting to be a bit much, especially since attention is what they're after in the first place, Slashdot...

Why greater than zero?

[iapetus]

Even if the price is zero, then I'm personally likely to be angry enough as it is. This is all about accepting that SCO is in the right, and until such time as they've taken this through court and proven that to be the case, I have no intention of doing anything to suggest that they have the right to impose restrictions on my use of Linux.

If they're truly that confident of their position, they should be rushing through the court case, and then asking people to license Unixware, with a suitable judgement behind them to back it up.

As it is, their case is built mostly on hot air, so I can see their motivation in pushing for payment in advance.

Re:Why greater than zero?

[jd]

#include "IANAL.h"

I believe the "formal" definition is "demands with menaces", where "demands" and "menaces" are roughly the definition you gave, though perhaps with a little more scope.

(eg: neither the demands nor the menaces have to be actually stated. They can be implied, provided it is reasonable to interpret the implication as an actual threat of some kind, unless the person coughs up.)

SCO certainly seems to qualify under the "menaces" part. Just because they've not named a sum, or directly stated that Linux users would be prosecuted, is irrelevent. Their action towards IBM, and their association of Linux with illegal activity, may well be sufficient.

The demands may also be inferred, from their repeated reference to SCO UnixWare licenses and license fees.

While I think it likely that SCO has enough money to blast any suit a /. reader is likely to bring, the fact nonetheless remains that SCO's practice is skirting the edge of illegality and may well have crossed that line.

Re:Why greater than zero?

[tomhudson]

What we need is a kernel contributer with sufficient testicular fortitude (and bankroll) to do the right thing.

I disagree. Sometimes, it takes more balls to bide your time and let your opponent keep shoving his size 11's into his mouth, and this looks lik one of those times.

Please consider:

1. SCO keeps making all sorts of public statements that are all over the map. They don't realize that, the more they say, the more ammunition they give to their detractors, who are legion (that's you, me, IBM, Novell, etc.)

2. In contract negociations, he who speaks first looses. By not dragging this into the courts, we're doing 2 things:
   • Showing that we're taking the moral high ground, (so we look better than they do, with their sue-everybody mentality) rather than alienating people who are confused, fed up, or intimidated by legal procedings

   • Giving them every opportunity to reveal the so-called "misappropriated code", which they continue to refuse to do.

   Both of these actions tend to reflect badly on SCO, and make our community look better (when you want to win in the court of public opinion, which is how we're going to increase Linux penetration, you don't want to come off as a bunch of smelly hippy geeks)

3. The longer this drags on, the more likely that "interesting stuff" will start oozing out of the woodwork. Look what's happened so far:
   • SCO had what they claimed was the offending code reviewed by a non-programmer, which ended up raising more questions than it answered.

   • There's now a claim extent that SCO violated IP rights (stole code) when they developed their Linux compatability code

   • As of yesterday, they were still distributing GPL'ed Linux on their FTP servers. Think about it ... they said that they were unaware that Linux was (allegedly) in violation of their IP rights, and that they would stop distributing it ... WTF, anybody?

The pros (IBM, etc.) are keeping their mouths shut, because that's the professional approach. They've adopted the Kennedy approach:

1. Never complain
2. Never explain
3. Get even

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be raising a stink here; I'm just saying that, since this will take years to resolve through the courts, let's concentrate instead on winning the minds and hearts of the people who make technology-related decisions (purchasing agents, CTOs, etc). Then, when SCO [ goes bell up || is investigated for investor fraud || has to recant || looses in court ] we'll be able to laugh. Don't forget, this may never get to the point where a judge has to make a decision.

It's for "business"

[eXtro]

whatever that means. Even if I ran a business and I believed that SCO had a strong enough case to cause me worry I wouldn't buy into this. Say my business runs RedHat, I purchase a license and I'm held blameless. Fine, but RedHat itself isn't, so SCO goes and sues RedHat at a later date.

A few things can happen. 1) SCO loses, my license purchase was pointless then but I'm only out some money. 2) SCO wins and RedHat pays the licensing fees. My license purchase was pointless again because RedHat's aquisition of a license covers me. Not only that but RedHat will past the cost on to the consumers. 3) SCO wins and RedHat can't afford the licensing fee. RedHat goes out of business and I'm left with an orphaned product.

Basically unless I roll my own internal variant of linux I don't see any positive benefit to purchasing the license unless they intend to go after each business individually in court.

Re:It's for "business"

[nightsweat]

3) SCO wins and RedHat can't afford the licensing fee. RedHat goes out of business and I'm left with an orphaned product.

But that's the beauty of Open Source. You can't be truly orphaned.

What if?

[C_Kode]

What if SCO loses in court? What happens to all the companies that buy these licenses to license linux via Unixware? Do they demand a refund? Will SCO just claim "Hey you licensed SCO, not Linux" and keep their moneies?

Secondly, What happens if SCO loses and now since they are *licensing* Linux technologies? I'm sure proper wording can eliminate this all, but several companies could get screwed out of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

Exactly.

[ins0m]

Why spend money on a primary injunction? While some predicted that this may have been a ruse to get bought out, others held to the premise that SCO is on a sinking ship and just wants money. Since the controversy started, their stock price has gone from $1.09 to upwards of $12 per share. Coincidence? Nope; controversy sells.

By spreading FUD and insisting everyone cease and desist without actually seeking an injunction, it seems that the dynamic duo of Sontag and McBride are hoping to make some money without doing any dirty work. However, as was noted before, we have seen the GPL stand up to the legal tests (remember Progress and MySQL fighting over Gemini?). I hope someone eventually nails these guys with a libel suit. They haven't proven anything and they talk about this magical "discovery" phase like the dirty laundry is about to be aired... but it hasn't. As of the time of this post, SCO still has GPL'd Linux up on their FTP: ftp://ftp.caldera.com/pub/scolinux/server/4.0/upda tes/SRPMS/. If that's not donation, I don't know what is.

Re:linux gets what it deserves

[Enry]

Because every time the community thinks they know what SCO is talking about, they change their tune. First it was changes only in IBM's distribution, then it was in Red Hat, then it was in the stock 2.4 kernel, now it's in every kernel since 2.4.

It's NUMA, it's RCU, it's JFS, it's low-level subroutines, but they won't tell you exactly what it is. How can you change something when you don't know what needs changing?

Why is this the end user's fault?

[PenguiN42]

Let's suppose that SCO's claim is valid and IBM put some code in Linux that shouldn't have been there.

Why are the end users responsible for licensing SCO's code? They got the product (the linux kernel), under a license from the linux developers, and they're following the license they recieved the product from. If there was a license violation, it's on the developer's head (in this case, IBM).

Think about it: If closed source software stole code and sold it, could the company that originally owned the code sue all the users of that code for violating their license? This doesn't make sense to me -- they'd sue the offending closed source company, and perhaps have them issue some sort of recall or licensing program for the code, but they wouldn't go oafter individuals who thought they bought the software legitimately...

How about another example: if a magazine puts some copyrighted content that they're not supposed to use in their magazine, is the copyright owner going to go after every single person who bought the magazine? No! They're going to go after the distributer, who did the illegal *copying* in the first place!

I really don't understand why companies are giving money to SCO under their legal pressure, when it seems like they have absolutely no legal leg to stand on.

anyone know the real legal implications here? IANAL, Obviously :P

Re:Uhm..

[bigjocker]

We have heard some of it, but mostly from user's comments. The article from this morning was focused on code and a way to track some contributions by Caldera employees to the kernel.

I for one welcome any news regarding this issue. Slashdot is known for it's huge Linux audience and is very handy to have a unified source of information and comments.

Why bother? A lot of us work on companies that use Linux (myself included), even some of us have helped our employers move from proprietary Unices to Linux (myself included), and in my case I also work as a independent consultant and have helped a lot of clients to make UN*X->Linux and WIN->Linux transitions (I make all the solutions using free software and license them under the GPL to my clients, if they want to redistribute the system or a modified version of it they must release the source, if not they are free to keep it secret) so this SCO issue is affecting (and has a lot of potential to affect really badly) my job and bussiness.

You never have too much information, and in any case, you can always not click on the link and let it pass. A lot of us even want to see more stories about this issue.

Re:Why care?

[Zeinfeld]

If Linus doesnt fear the SCO trolls, why should I? We're putting linux on our networks for free, and SCO wants a part of it.

Well Linus is only providing a part of the Linux O/S and one that is least likely to actually infringe. So Linus is perhaps not the best test.

A better test would be IBM who seems to be completely unphased by the situation and has racks of the best IP lawyers that money can buy.

SCO faces a big problem trying to make its case. This is not a normal copyright infringement case where the ownership of the copyright is beyond doubt. Proving SCO's case will take many years - if that is actually possible at all. In the process SCO will be forced to specify exactly the portions of the code that are alleged to infringe. It is beyond doubt that by the time any case came to court for a judgement that any infringing components would have been removed.

That is before any consideration of the GPL. SCO continued to distribute Linux under the GPL long after they acquired the rights to UnixWare. Even if their Linux claim were true they have licensed the relevant code under the GPL.

This is nothing but the death throes of a dying company that has gambled on one last chance to show a return. They could well keep the stock price high for some time while the management sell out their shares.

Yes but...

[sterno]

See the thing is, attorneys cost money. May as well use the licensing to get your money. Also it makes you look confident that you will win which doesn't hurt the stock price.

My thought, is that if SCO starts going to companies using Linux and threatening them saying they will sue if they don't license their code, the correct response is, "show me the code." If I'm not mistaken they have to proove you KNOWINGLY violated their copyright, and given the legally indeterminate nature of this case right now, that doesn't seem plausible.

Maybe I should go and claim that my IP is in Linux too. It's not, but as long as nobody else knows that for certain, maybe I can get a few litigously nervous companies to write me nice checks.

Re:Binary version of Linux?

[Oriumpor]

IANAL so, STFU
In the united states it is illegal to threaten litigation. However, it is not illegal to surruptitiously mention litigation, and then offer an "alternative" (a cash settlement for instance) or ... in this case, a license.

Re:Binary version of Linux?

[Troy Baer]

They are still claiming that the Linux kernel (or whatever part of SCO/Linux they are claiming today) contains their code, and that it is being used illegally, however if you give them money then they will ignore your violation. I'm not convinced that this is legal, since it sounds a lot like blackmail to me, but that doesn't seem to stop SCO.

I'm not sure if it's legal either, but it sure reeks of a protection racket to me. (It's especially galling given that they haven't even established in court that they do in fact own what they claim to.) I've complained to my state attourney general about it. I'd like to think they'll look into it, but my state AG is one of the ones who caved on the MS antitrust settlement...

--Troy

Re:The system works

[walterbyrd]

>>As for the legal system, there is no wonder it breaks when you have no faith in it.>Faith is required to get something to work, so obviously something more than just the system is broken.>Blaiming the system is childish and naive.

Why is it so completely impossible that the system *is* responsible? The system in Germany worked, why not the USA? Maybe there are problems in the USA legal system that need to be repaired. Why is this point of view "childish and naive" ??

So SCO wants me to enter into a contract?

[mj01nir]

From SCO's reply to Novell's copyright allegations:
"Copyrights and patents are protection against strangers. Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with. From a legal standpoint, contracts end up being far stronger than anything you could do with copyrights.... SCO intends to protect and enforce all of the contracts that the company has with more than 6,000 licensees."

So now SCO wants me to have a contract with them, by purchasing a UnixWare license? Why, so they can use it as a more effective weapon against me later? No thanks, Darl.

Re:Binary version of Linux?

[eric76]

You are quite correct.

The possession of a work that infringes on a copyright does not appear to be a violation of the copyright laws at all.

So, even in the unlikely chance that SCO was able to demonstrate a violation of their copyrights, their actions might be against distributors, and they would have no right of action against the rest of us.

If there was merit to their claims, then there would be some small possibility that downloading the distribution instead of buying it at the store might count as making a copy and would then be an infringement. And so would making multiple copies of the distribution. But since there is nothing I can find in Title 17 about limiting software to a single computer, I bet you could still install Linux on a large number of machines from a single distribution set and not infringe.

As Eben Moglen (a law professor at Columbia University and general counsel to FSF) is quoted as saying:

Users don't need a license to use copyrighted programs anymore than they need to pay a copyright fee before reading Gone with the Wind. If you copy, distribute, or modify copyrighted material, then you can be in copyright violation,

But even if SCO did prevail on copyright issues, they might still not be able to go after users who make copies, distribute, or modify the material since for all practical purposes, it appears that we have the authority to do so.

I think SCO is going to have to show serious evidence that there is a copyright violation to remove that apparent authority.