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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.
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...
"Sufferin' succotash."
Ok, maybe I don't understand, but isn't supplying a binary-only copy of Linux w/o source the exact opposite of every ideal GNU and the FSF stand for? Maybe I read the article wrong, if anyone can clue me in I'd appreciate. Is this a violation of the GPL?
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.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
is it possible that microsoft are paying sco to become 'most hated business ever' so that we stop beating up on the redmond boys? i'm running out of logical alternatives for this story. i mean... does sco really believe that anyone believes that linux belongs to them?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Sounds reasonable enough to me. How does 25% sound? :)
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
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.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Not really no. Even in America, you can't sue something that doesn't exist, and the chances of SCO existing after they've lost are very low indeed.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Pending the outcome of our patent application we are offering carbon-based lifeforms to protect themselves from possible litigation by lisencing out technology for a low upfront fee based on the cell count of the organism.
By chosing to forgo purchasing a lisence, you may be opening yourself to a potential injunctive action down the road.
Ñ'
If I buy this SCO license it means I own Unix right? Do I own Linux? Netware is thrown in there somewhere too isn't it? What about the Brooklyn bridge?
You can have my Linux when you pry it from my cold dead hand.
Rather than buying a license, why not just go to their ftp site and download the source code to the Linux kernel? SCO is still distributing the Linux kernel sources under the GPL.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
A sample of this, in perfect "Management-Speak":
* Do I need to buy a SCO license?
SCO has not demonstrated that any infringement exists, nor has it established that it owns derivative works in UNIX. Nothing has been proven to establish that such a license is needed.
Which, translated into English says:
* Do I need to buy a SCO license?
Not at all
You go, RedHat!
Peace!
Not quite as funny as the first few times this comment was posted.
At what point can SCO finally be charged with fraud, extortion, and stock manipulation? When can SCO at least be sued in a civil court?
This is the most blantant racket I have ever witnessed. And the USA legal system seems to be completely incapible of doing anything about it. Frankly it is beginning to look like another huge failure of the USA legal system.
Germany shut down SCO a long time ago. Germany said put up or shut up - show us some evidence or stop making claims. Predictably, SCO ran away with it's tail between it's legs.
I have always been a bit patriotic. Honorably discharged from the US Air Force and all. It pains me to see how patheticly inept the US legal system really is.
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.
a tes/SRPMS/. If that's not donation, I don't know what is.
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/upd
Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.
I see that you are new amongst us. Welcome. What you're referring to is what we slashdotters call a "dupe". Please report to the re-education center where you will learn many things including, but not limited to, "profit lists", and jokes about non longer in existance soviet nations.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
For desktops and servers, stay the course, but do your research now and be sure you're able to step back to 2.2 should SCO's claims prove valid. With 2.2, you give up some performance and compatibility with a few newer peripherals. But ducking down to 2.2 while the allegedly offending code is removed from 2.4 will cover your business. Be very surprised if it takes more than just a few weeks for an untainted 2.4 branch to be released.
The one thing you should not do is to purchase an SCO license without your legal department fully reviewing the terms of the license. By entering into a license agreement with SCO, your company could find itself vulnerable in all kinds of new ways. If SCO is turning into a pure litigation company, you don't want to be on their customer list!
-1 : Redundant
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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?
Check out this posting from yesterday. You can download a GPLed copy of the Linux kernel from SCO, if you feel you need a license from them.
Problem solved, let's go back to writing code.
SMP came from Alan Cox's work with Caldera-sponsored equipment. A portion of NUMA came from IBM, as did the RCU which allowed greater scalability of the SMP kernel, mostly from removing overhead and latency with talking to many procs. The RCU which was sponsored through IBM, actually came from an acquisition of IBM, who essentially wrote it from scratch. It is the licensing terms and 'derivative work' stipulations which cast doubt on much of the validity of the added code.
Unfortunately, we will have to wait until April 2005 before we know exactly how far the term 'derivative work' encompasses. Is merely seeing Unix code enough to make any additional coding a derivative work? I say no, SCO is saying yes.
And oh yeah, go back under the bridge, troll. That wasn't even creative. j00 ()w|\|z3r3d nobody.
Let's suppose that SCO's claim is valid and IBM put some code in Linux that shouldn't have been there.
:P
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
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
...things are not always as they appear.
I am confident (though possibly wrong of course) that SCO is doing ALL of this for one reason and one reason only. Stock price manipulation. Look at the following issues and contrast them with the timing on this whole fiasco.
52 week stock price of SCO (SCOX)
Price of stock after each insane press release (while SCO has yet to show anything of substance, press releases feed the hungry speculative buyers out there).
Issuance of stock options at very low ($.6x) prices.
Exercising of options.
Sale of stock from exercised options.
I mean come on, most of these guys got options when the stock was at $.66 just before all of this craziness started. Then they crank up the stock price (fueled by nothing more than baseless accusations in the form of press releases) to $10-$12/share, exercise and dump. Where the heck is the SEC on this!!!
I believe that basically the execs at SCO new the ship was going down. They are doing what they're doing to squeeze what blood they can out of the turnip that is SCO. Once they have gotten what they can from stock games, they'll pull an "Oops, I guess we were wrong about that whole Linux intellectual property thing.", turn out the lights and call it quits...money in the bank.
Anyone disagree?
ER
(1) These features were never present in your own UNIX offering. They were not even developed by SCO/Caldera; they were developed by Dynix, which is now a subsidiary of IBM. Because these features were developed for SVR5, you claim they are derivative works of SVR5 and therefore your own intellectual property. The legitimacy of this claim depends upon your contracts with IBM; it is not as black and white as you make it out to be. When asked whether the code supposedly copied from SVR5 originated in BSD, you respond that this is high end "enterprise" code which isn't present in BSD--but it's not present in SVR5 either. Your claims on this matter are misleading.
(2) To state that Linux stole your market is preposterous, since you yourself were a Linux value-added reseller. In fact, you actively contributed to the development of enterprise features for the Linux kernel. You even cooperated with IBM in the Trillian Project (SMP on Linux). Your previous CEO, Ransom Love, spoke of unifying UNIX and Linux into a single platform. Now you turn and say that an enterprise-ready Linux took you completely by surprise, even though you helped bring it where it is.
You portray yourself as a protector of intellectual property rights, but then you seek to wrest control of Linux from its creators on the basis of unproven allegations of copyright infringement. Your arrogance and hypocrisy know no bounds. Linux development has been very transparent, as Linus Torvalds has said. If you were really interested in protecting the intellectual property of all parties involved, you would work with the kernel developers to find out which parties contributed your intellectual property to the kernel and seek relief from them and/or allow the infringing code to be removed. Even if this would disable Linux SMP for a time, there are millions of Linux users running uniprocessor systems who were never infringing on your IP in the first place, and should not have to pay you a license fee. Furthermore, your move to collect license payments from Linux users without identifying specifically what they are licensing or even proving that you have a claim on Linux at all is fraudulent.
Your proposed Linux licensing program amounts to the wholesale theft of years of effort from thousands of Linux contributors. You have profited from their efforts for nearly a decade, and now you stab them in the back and bite the hand that fed you. Since you could not compete in the marketplace, you resort to barratry, racketeering, and extortion.
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.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
I include it verbatim, to save you using the link
SCO has made a big noise about registering SVR4
copyrights and announced their linux liscensing
plan, which they call a UNIX liscensing plan. Looks
like they're going for $1500 per LINUX seat for Unixware
liscense to emdemnify from lawsuit.
HOWEVER everything is not as the media is reporting...
The copyright they registered is a 20 page revision
to SVR4 (i.e SVR4.1ES) registration number TX-5-705-356.
You can verify this at:
http://www.copyright.gov/records/cohm.html
The original UNIX copyright was never registered to Novell,
and is currently registered to (SURPRISE!) AT&T.
I'm not sure about the legal ramnifications, I believe
that SCO has the right to copyright derivitive works
in their aggreement with Novell. However, a search at:
http://www.copyright.gov/records/
under the tab "Copyright ownership documents,
such as name changes and transfers" shows no
record of any copyright transfers to SCO Group.
In short, despite what is being widely reported,
SCO still has not acquired (and may not be able
to acquire) the copyright that they are
threatening to use to sue LINUX users.
(Copyrights MUST be registered before lawsuits
may be filed).
Face the facts. All SCO has done is blabber on and on about how they think that Linux contains UNIX code and not backing up their claims about it with any substantial information. Their claims about SMP and business related aspects are total BS, as even before IBM involvement, Linux was a very mature OS. Right now, their third rate OS Unixware is capable of 8 processor SMP, while Linux is capable of up to 64. Why would any intelligent person take parts for a Mustang from an Escort?
Their claims will not hold up in a court of law. If you think that any company can just make random claims and extort money off of the hard work of others, then you obviously are not familliar with the legal process. The very notion that SCO is selling licenses to UnixWare for Linux, BEFORE a trial even started, just proves that they are dishonest in making a licensing scheme for a product that they did not prove was theirs.
The only solid evidence that SCO may have is the fact that there are portions of similar code in Linux and in SVR4 UNIX, the latter of which they own. Recently, the code, all 80 lines of it, was shown to some people who signed a non-disclosure agreement. Apparently, not all the people who viewed it had to sign, a mistake on their part, and it seems that even these 80 lines are kind of a stretch. There were no line numbers, no filenames, no function names on the demosnstration packet. Sometimes, there were portions that made no sense at all, like identical comments next to completely different portions of code. SCO claims that there are tens of thousands more, and Sontag even made that claim that there were files that were directly taken from UNIX. If any of that crap is true, then why did they show only 80 lines of it, where most of it was kind of a stretch?
Linux was developed through the most transparent means possible, and it is possible to see where almost every feature of the kernel came from. The developers were even very careful about the small portions that IBM did contribute, and added it in after much verification.
In conclusion, if you're not trolling, then you're either misinformed, hate Linux, or are just ignorant. I don't care whether or not you hate Linux or free software, but telling lies about it makes you no better than SCO.
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.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
"Obviously Linux owes its heritage to UNIX, but not its code. We would not, nor will not, make such a claim."
Darl McBride, CEO, The SCO Group, August 2002 Linux Journal Article #6293
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Because SCO will only show someone the "offending code" if they sign an NDA. The NDA would then prevent them from removing the code if it exists.
This shouldn't be a surprise. SCO doesn't want any alleged code to be removed. As soon as it is removed they no longer have anything to threaten customers with and force a license purchase. After all, a threat of "upgrade your kernel or pay us $1000" won't make nearly as much money as a threat of "pay us $1000 or risk a lawsuit."
The worst thing that could happen to SCO right now would be if the case was mainlined and taken to court quickly. I think this would also be the best thing for Linux too.
Note to SCO lawyers... this posting is mearly my opinion and IANAL.
I work at a software vendor who produces software for numerous large commercial instituations such as banks, telco's, etc. We have recently had a number of these companies request that we sign an agreement stating that software we have provided them DOES NOT contain any "Free Software". This has been a headache as of late, especially for my team. We work in Java and have used numerous LGPL libraries from various locations in our product to save time during development. We now have to get rid of all of these and rewrite it ourselves. Not fun.
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
In other news, Lawrence Ellison of Oracle Corp announced that he intended to launch a hostile buyout offer for SCO... "we don't really want their products, we just want their lawyers."
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
>>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" ??
Amongst many gems there is this,
I would strongly recommend reading the whole of the article I have linked. Moglen's stuff starts with the heading "Legally Speaking". It is very informative and quite reassuring.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
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.
the no
My pending lawsuit against the toothfairy (illicit confiscation and commercial usage of my (copyrighted) DNA) speaks otherwise!
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
In SCO's case, the damages could be easily mitigated by releasing enough detailed information so that the offending modules can be rewritten. Now we have a good idea why SCO has chosen not to do this, it is not to their short term advantage. They are relying on FUD to boost their stock prices and provide a cash stream to pay Bois and friends.
So the real question is, how will the court interpret the fact that they have refused to mitigate damages? Any lawyers out there that can answer this question?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I would really hate any company to read this, and think that SCO has any legal ground vs. the linux community whatsoever, so I will repost my message, from yesterday, here to clarify SCO's idiocy:
. org/copyleft/gpl.html
...
Here, is where I think SCOs major flaw in their argument is, the GPL circa Jan 28, 1999 explicitly states in its preamble:
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
Refer to way back machine: http://web.archive.org/web/19990128195748/www.gnu
And seeing as how SCO has been distributing Linux which had their code in the kernel. They have thusly, knowingly or not, distributed their rights, to the GPLd code in question, to the public. Because, of the statement above. Or if you want to hear it straight from GNU's statement:
Moreover, there are straightforward legal reasons why SCO's assertions concerning claims against the kernel or other free software are likely to fail. As to its trade secret claims, which are the only claims actually made in the lawsuit against IBM, there remains the simple fact that SCO has for years distributed copies of the kernel, Linux, as part of GNU/Linux free software systems. Those systems were distributed by SCO in full compliance with GPL, and therefore included complete source code. So SCO itself has continuously published, as part of its regular business, the material which it claims includes its trade secrets. There is simply no legal basis on which SCO can claim trade secret liability in others for material it widely and commercially published itself under a license that specifically permitted unrestricted copying and distribution.
...
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
As I posted in another thread, after reading a fairly good article on the subject in eWeek this morning, I think the SCO suit is going to be completely irrelevant to most people for the following reasons (IANAL, this is my opinion based on articles I've read and etc):
1. The suit isn't due to come into court until 2005. Until the court makes some kind of judgement, SCO has absolutely zero legal power to demand anything from anyone. They can send all the letters they want; but until a court makes a decision, they're just letters.
2. By 2005, the BSDs and Linux will have become so similar in functionality, hardware support, and applications, that migrating from one to the other will be fairly painless. Since the BSDs are unencumbered, and SCO is specifically targeting the Linux 2.4 kernel, this means we have a great big safety net.
3. By 2005, who's going to be using the 2.4 kernel? Unabomber-like holdouts, crouching in a shed with a dilapidated old Pentium-II and a stockpile of candy bars and beer? Any code which even remotely looks like SCO code is going to be stripped out long before then. So, the code in use by the time the court convenes is going to be unencumbered anyway. What could SCO possibly charge people money for, even if they win?
4. 2005 gives the market a full two years to crush SCO. The court case will probably drag on for another two or three years, giving the market even more time. How is a company like SCO going to stay aloat that long? How is it going to avoid a hostile takeover for that long? Two to five years is an eternity when it comes to software.
5. By 2008 (when the case would probably get wrapped up and appealed, etc), do you think we're still going to be using X86 machines, anyway? It's 2003; how many of you are still using the 486's you had in '98? Who's still using a 16 bit O/S? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Add it all together, and you'll see that buying SCO right now is a sucker move. If you just continue with business as usual, keeping the option of switching to BSD down the road, or updating to a new, unencumbered kernel, or migrating from X86 to whatever new platform is the vogue in 2005, you can (I think) pretty much ignore SCO. If, and this is remote, they win, it won't matter anyway. You can still dodge their sad attempts at extortion as I've pointed out.
This whole thing is a total non-issue.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!