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Skeptical Reactions To SCO From Around The Globe
IpsissimusMarr writes "The Inquirer reports that 'The biggest computer manufacturers in Japan that build systems running Linux will hold out against blustering by SCO to extract license fees based upon unsubstantiated infringement claims, it has emerged.' Its nice to see more support from the business world denouncing SCO's tactics."
janda writes "ComputerWorld is reporting that several companies, including Coastal Transportation, Burlington Coat Factory, and Boscov's Department Store are taking a wait-and-see attitude towards SCO and their new 'Linux license' arrangement.
Best quote from the article:
'I don't remember signing anything with SCO saying I owe them any kind of licensing fees.' (Tom Pratt, Coastal Transportation)
I find it refreshing that companies are starting to stand up to SCO's blackmail attempts."
An anonymous reader points to this story at Mozillaquest according to which IBM says that SCO does not have a viable claim to JFS, NUMA, RCU, etc., writing "IBM says it owns the AIX code it contributed to the Linux kernel despite SCO claims that it has registered its Unix System V copyrights. A big problem for IBM and the GNU/Linux community might be the inclusion of JFS, NUMA software, RCU, etc into the Linux kernel. SCO claims it owns them. However, IBM, SuSE, and kernel.org's Richard Gooch reject SCO-Caldera and Darl McBride's claims that GNU/Linux contains SCO-owned or SCO-copyrighted code. ... The Linux kernel code is copyrighted under the GNU GPL. IBM owns its AIX additions and copyrights to Unix System V code and its development of JFS, RCU, and NUMA software code."
arilian writes "According to this article from ARNnet, SCO's new license may leave them open to litigation by other contributers to the Linux kernel." Bruce Perens and intellectual property lawyer Jim LaBarre are quoted in this one.
Finally, Joe Barr writes "I just filed a complaint against The SCO Group with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It was easy. I used their online complaint form at:
www.sec.gov/complaint/cf942sec9570.htm.
The basis for my complaint is that SCO is using false and unsubstantiated claims of IP rights to UNIX and Linux in order to manipulate its stock price and force consumers to purchase SCO licenses.
Maybe someone else would like to do the same."
You can find the online complaint form here.
To fill out the form, here is SCO's information:
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042 USA
801-765-4999 phone
801-765-1313 fax
Anyone who uses Linux is threatened by SCO and should file a complaint. I just filed mine, you should file yours too!
/.: why the hell am I here?
A recent posting on the Groklaw blog (see "SCO Can't Go After Statutory Damages or Atty's Fees" heading in the 7/22/03 section) states the US Copyright Office claims that SCO cannot go after statutory damages or attorney fees for any copyright infringement based on the most recent filing. They can only go after actual damages, which are very hard to prove in court.
What are SCO's actual damages from someone using Linux who would never have bought any SCO product in the first place? I mean, if I downloaded my ISO and burned it myself to install on 5 machines, it seems hard to argue that had Linux not included SCO IP, I would have purchased 5 copies of SCO UnixWare. No, if there had been no Linux, I'd have gone for one of the *BSD's. So even if SCO is correct, what are the actual damanges.
Doing some more copyright law searching.
Found these points at Bromberg and Sunstein LLP
Benefits of Federal Copyright Registration
Required for Infringement Suit. Generally speaking, unless the copyrighted work has been registered (or the Copyright Office has refused registration although the required deposit, application and fee were properly filed), a court action for infringement of the copyright will be dismissed.
Required for Statutory Damages. If registration is made within three months after the first publication of the work or prior to infringement, certain damages and attorneys' fees provided by law will be available, in addition to actual damages and lost profits.
Now, you can go to the Library of Congress Copyright site (www.copyright.gov) and search for the newly awarded SCO copyright: TX-5-705-356.
Notice that the SCO copyright lists publication date as 27Jun91, but registration date of 30Jun03. Combine that with "If registration is made within three months after the first publication of the work or prior to infringement, certain damages and attorneys' fees provided by law will be available, in addition to actual damages and lost profits." from above and it does seem like SCO will have a tough case to make in any litigation relating to copyright.
Presumption of Validity. In any judicial proceeding, a certificate of registration issued within five years of the first publication of the work confers a legal presumption that the copyright is valid and that all facts stated in the copyright registration certificate are true.
Also note that the 5 year presumption of validity time limit has expired.
Protection Against Importation of Infringing Copies. A copyright owner can record the registration with the U.S. Customs Service for protection against the importation of infringing works.
Wonder how much of the alleged infringing work was done overseas? Wasn't some of it supposed to have been done by a German Caldera employee? Wonder if SCO has taken this step yet?
Also worth adding.. Red Hat offered a response to this just a few days ago, and that can be found here - quite short, but an interesting read, and a good effort at making their customers feel a little more relaxed.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
You don't have to be directly affected. You could complain that you think they're just puming up the stock so they can sell out before the company crashes, similar to Enron. The fact that you don't own any SCO stock doesn't matter.
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
Although SCO has been shut down in Germany, their Benelux offices in Amsterdam still seem open for business,
which probably means one can file complaints against them under Dutch law as well.
Although I'm no expert on the dutch system, they presumably have the same level of consumer-protection as the rest of Europe, meaning that action against them here would probably be fruitful.
Its been stated over and over that the "code" is from the 2.4+ kernels. So if you are hesitant till the outcome, just switch to a 2.2.x kernel and move on with your life.
Granted, some hardware needs a 2.4+ kernel, but the vast majority of systems will run just great on a 2.2.x kernel.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
If a lot of people file complaints, perhaps that will cause the SEC, or the government in general, to take some serious notice of this serious problem.
If you do decide to file, don't forget to mention the recent Vultus purchase. Vultus is owned by The Canopy Group, the same people who own a large portion of SCO. Both SCO and Vultus are in the same Lindon, Utah building owned by The Canopy Group. Seems to me that an argument could be made for an Enron like shuffling of companies.
Make specious claims about SCO IP. Run up the stock price. Sell some of that and use the funds to purchase other companies in the portfolio. Book the profit.
This.
TIAOT (this is an obvious troll), but anyways..
Code compiled with gcc is not GPLed. Code DERIVED from gcc is (e.g. compiler optimizations or something).
You don't need to make the source to your GPL-derived applications available unless you want to distribute that application.
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
"we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system"
That is like saying I replaced my old car with a new one, and I can't find the engine crank. Linux Ext filesystems dont need to be defragmented my friend, and with ext3, no more scanDisk/fsck crap. Defreagging and scanDisk are outdated obsolete processes, replaced by superior technology.
As for token-ring support, its there, I've never used it, but I know Linux has it.
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
Link here
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Yes, but what about Netfilter? If you use kernel 2.2, you're limited to ipchains, which aren't stateful. Iptables are stateful (i.e. you can check whether an incoming packet is Established,Related). You won't be able to write quite as sophisticated a firewall. Seems like something of a sacrifice to me.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042 USA
801-765-4999 phone
801-765-1313 fax
Last time I checked, it wasn't "against the rules" for anyone to file an SEC complaint. They're a government agency, they're here to work for US! These things are taken seriously. If they notice that a lot of people are having issues, it will get more man-hours than some tool getting ripped off by a boiler room.
Look on the page, where does it tell you that only people with a REALLY GOOD REASON are allowed to fill out the form?
here.
God love the stinkin' gub'mint.
illegitimii non ingravare
Sorry, you did this yourself.
You want to use old tools, but a new distribution, why did you upgrade half your stuff?
You could still run apache 1.x if you wanted.
You can continue to use your old version of Redhat, or you could use another distribution.
Nobody is forcing you to do this, you are chosing to.
sPh
I used to go the the SCO Forums they held every year. The I heard customers saying it both ways, but "Sko" seemed to be more prevalent. However, the SCO people always pronounced their company "Ess See Oh." During a meeting with our account representative, she flinched every time we said "Sko."
The problem with this is that SCO's story keeps changing. First it was just a contract beef with IBM. Then SCO owned by proxy every modern operating system. Then it was a small amount of code in the Linux kernel: less than 80 lines. Then it was hundreds of thousands of lines and hundreds of files. Then SCO starting making noises that the BSD's weren't safe either.
The bottom line is that nothing SCO says can be trusted. They are a lawsuit company now and will use any pretext to harass developers and users and pump their stock price. I fully expect that if everyone did revert to 2.2 kernels that SCO would find something to extort with there as well.
Er...federal agencies only investigate when there are complaints. A large number of complaints gets more attention, to an extent. You are sure they are investigating SCO? Do you work for the SEC? And if you do, why did you just comment on a matter under investigation?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Darl McBride, President and Chief Executive Officer
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042 USA
801-765-4999 phone
801-765-1313 fax
This form allows you to send your comments to the SEC without having to fill in all the boring details:
http://www.vodkatea.com/sec.html
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
If someone can show me where I'm wrong in this line of thought, though, I'm all ears...
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
"Your can't-do attitude is probably also the reason you're a 35 year old virgin living in your parents' basement."
It's not a 'cant-do' attitude, it's a "Don't throw your energy into something futile" attitude. What he's really saying is "find a better solution."
"Derp de derp."
This is exactly what IBM is saying.
Please read the article for IBM's denial of SCO's claims. Near the top of page three for this link:
Trink Guarino, Director of IBM Media Relations told MozillaQuest Magazine yesterday:
"SCO has not shown us any code contributed to Linux by IBM that violates SCO copyrights. SCO needs to openly show the Linux community any copyrighted Unix Code, which they claim is in Linux. SCO seems to be asking customers to pay for a license based on allegations, not facts."
"IBM owns the copyrights for the work we've done in AIX, JFS, RCU and the code that takes advantage of NUMA hardware. AIX is the fastest growing UNIX operating system in the industry, and we intend to continue and accelerate that growth."
IBM stated their license is perpetual and irrevocable. SCO says they have already revoked IBM's UNIX license.
IBM is saying their License is "perpetual and irrevocable" as well as paid up. SCO is saying IBM has broken the terms of the contract, has not remedied the situation, and now has no legal standing to continue to license AIX to their customers.
In the parent post, "they" refers to IBM staying quiet, not SCO.
In your post, the first 'they' should be 'IBM', the second should be 'SCO'.
Gotta watch those pronouns, they can be slippery creatures...
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
- Misleading Advertising
- Improper Selling Practices
- Non-delivery of Goods or Services
- Misrepresentation
- Unhonored Guarantees or Waranty
- Unsatisfactory Service
- Credit/billing Problems
- Unfulfilled Contracts
I am not sure which of these apply, but I know Misleading Advertising, Improper Selling Practices, and Misrepresentation and what I would file under.And anyways, even if you don't own stock, if you use linux, contribute to linux, or are in IT in general, you are affected by SCO's illegal actions. They hurt your *stock in trade*; a black eye against linux lessens your chance of using it, or pursuing other business opportunities with it. If they are doing this in an illegal way they need to know.
Personally, I think that the SEC link should be posted weekly, so that pretty much everybody who has interest in seeing SCO getting what's coming to them should complain. Mention as many facts as you can get - I for one mentioned the german court and its reaction to SCO's 'claims'. They are so full of it, they desperately need to be taken down a notch or two.
I think this needs to be added and elaborated on see the SEC filings for SCO:
C IK=0001102542&filenum=&State=&SIC=&owner=include&a ction=getcompany
http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?company=&
The 'form 8-K' filing on 3/8/2003 is the IBM suit filing announcement.
On 3/12/2003 was the first 'form 4' filing showing an officer disposing of stock, no other listings prior to that of stock sales.
On 3/28/2003 a series of 'form 4' filings show granting of stock options to corporate officers in large blocks 50,000-200,000 each.
After that the stock sales begin ernest, 16 'form 4' filings in less than 4 months. Only 1-2 are for share acquistions at the bargin price of $0.001/share (yep 1/10th of a cent each), the rest are sales of 1 or more blocks of shares.
The blocks seem to be sized so as not to depress the share price by dumping to large a volume of shares at once.
This is why I think it bears strong resemblance to a pump and dump scheme -- you can probably coordinate various press announcements and stock price jumps to the subsequent sales by corporate insiders.
The unusual part is how long it has run -- these usually are very short in duration -- and that it appears like they expect to continue to 'stir the pot' in the media and continue to sell shares right up to the end when they can't persue the lawsuit(s) anymore.