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IBM Points Out SCO's GPL Software Distribution
An anonymous reader writes "Cnet is reporting that IBM has launched a counterstrike against SCO Group's attack on Linux users, arguing that SCO's demands for Unix license payments are undermined by its earlier shipment of an open-source Linux product." JayJay.br points out a similar but more colorful article on The Register "in which SCO says that 'SCO-Caldera does not own the copyrights to JFS (Journaling File System), RCU (Read, Copy, and Update), NUMA (Non-uniform Memory Access) software, and other IBM-developed AIX code that IBM contributed to the Linux kernel.' Gee, now that I was almost buying their license ..."
"On Friday, SCO spokesman Blake Stowell reiterated the company's earlier position that the GPL provisions don't apply because SCO is the Unix copyright holder and it never placed the copyrighted code under the GPL."
Bullshit. Go to their FTP site and READ THE GPL they have posted there. It states explicitly that SCO is distributing the code under the GPL.
Fscking LIARS....
Oh yeah, hey Darl, here's a little something special for you:
Behold, the truth..
This is their one hope I guess: that even though THEY (IBM) put it there, the judge will rule SCO did GPL it even though they didn't know it was there at the time. I doubt it will go down that way, seeing as how SCO didn't know it was there at all in the first place, and Torvalds admittedly makes no checks himself.
From the article:
It appears from Blake Stowell's answers to the copyright-related questions that SCO says it does not have copyrights to JFS, RCU, and NUMA software code or to items (a) through (k) of paragraph 108 of SCO's Amended Complaint in the SCO-Caldera v IBM lawsuit.
From the amended complaing:
108. IBM has breached 2.05 of the Software Agreement by, inter alia, actively promoting and allowing use of the Software Products and development methods related thereto in an open and hostile attempt to destroy the entire economic value of the Software Products and plaintiff's rights to protect the proprietary nature of the Software Products. By way of example and not limitation, IBM has used protected UNIX methods for others in accelerating development of the 2.4.x kernel and 2.5.x Linux kernel in, among others, the following areas: (a) scalability improvements, (b) performance measurement and improvements, (c) serviceability and error logging improvements, (d) NUMA scheduler and other scheduler improvements, (e) Linux PPC 32- and 64-bit support, (f) AIX Journaling File System, (g) enterprise volume management system to other Linux components, (h) clusters and cluster installation, including distributed lock manager and other lock management technologies, (i) threading, (j) general systems management functions, and (k) other areas. But for the use by IBM of these protected UNIX methods in Linux development, the Linux 2.4.x kernel and 2.5.x kernel capacity to perform high-end enterprise computing functions would be severely limited.
This is big. In essence, SCO has admitted that they don't really have *any* copyright case and that Linux intellectual property is all above board. They can still accuse IBM of breach of contract, but I really don't think any of us have the details on what the contracts stated.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The second link in the article is to the MozillaQuest site, known for its brain-dead articles about Mozilla...
According to that article a while back about the person visiting SCO, those that sign the NDA aren't given copies of the offending code. All he was able to do was look at a Powerpoint presentation that didn't even specify what version of Linux the code was from. Additionally, since anybody who signs the NDA can basically be barred from kernel development work, those who take SCO up probably aren't going to be familiar enough with the components SCO is talking about to be able to recall the exact sections of code from memory.
For a few weeks? SCO is still distributing the 2.4.x Linux kernel under the GPL. Now. Today.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Yet they MUST distribute it to satisfy other conditions in the licence. They basicly have thousands of copies of binary out there that they must give up the source code for on demand.
However it brings up a good point. They are doing something rather stupid. They only have to provide on demand that source code to people that have the binary. They chose the FTP way. Its probably a poor decision.
So basicly right now I, who has never entered into any agreement with SCO, could do so. Through the GPL. Then even IF they say I must give up money to them I could say 'hey I got in through your GPL on your ftp site.'
Vultus' address:
355 South 520 West
Suite 150
Lindon, UT 84042
SCO's address:
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Something smells, and it's not just my socks.
yeah, you're right. Look at the insider trading on yahoo: http://biz.yahoo.com/t/s/scox.html. Over 1.25 MILLION dollars since June 20th. I also like how someone some of them, like Jeff Hunsaker, and Reginald Broughton traded twice on the same day, but once it went down as "Vice President" or "Senior Vice President" but the second time it went down as "Employee." Sounds kinda weird...
"Men lie."
"Yeah, about sleeping with other women, but never about bioluminescent plankton."
-Dan Brown
The complaints that the GPL is "viral" would be fair if the consequences went beyond that: if, say, the result of this was that the whole of SCO Unix, not just that part in Linux, suddenly has to be GPL'd. This is not the case, as no part of SCO Unix has been copyrighted by an entity other than SCO or one that's licenced the code to SCO under the GPL.
Really, the whole "viral" thing is a FUD (to use the original definition) thing. Nothing's lost to SCO except stuff they were stupid enough to redistribute. Had they redistributed it under any other free licence, they'd face exactly the same issue. If the issue here was FreeBSD, not Linux; if someone had sneaked in SCO code into FreeBSD, and SCO had redistributed FreeBSD with the BSD licence, SCO would still have "lost" the code - it would now be open for anyone to use. Indeed, in that case, it would have been worse for SCO because a closed source competitor could have taken it too. Of course, SCO could argue that it would have been able to release the entire "FreeBSDWare" product under a different licence - this is true, but as SCO already had a Unix, the only reason for them to have adopted one of the free *ixes would have been in order to make use of an open licence. It's difficult to argue SCO would have bothered had the GPL not been a *selling point*.
There's no issue of viral licencing here. The issue is that SCO (re)released the allegedly infringing code under a licence that allows others to redistribute it, not that that licence insists others should also do the same. I only have two words for all those who protest that poor, innocent, SCO may have released its own stuff without knowing it under a liberal licence: Aw, Diddums.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'm surprised this article was not posted, it is very factual:
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/mai n/0,14179,2914364,00.html
If and when SCO loses, they are rapidly going to be out of business. Any small business that spends legal fees going after SCO at this point will just be wasting money.
2003-07-23 HUNSAKER, JEFF F.
Vice President 5,000 Automatic Sale at $13.30 - $13.44 per share.
(Proceeds of about $67,000)
2003-07-22 BROUGHTON, REGINALD C.
Senior Vice President 20,000 Automatic Sale at $12.91 - $13.2 per share.
(Proceeds of about $261,000)
2003-07-17 BROUGHTON, REGINALD C. 15,000 Planned Sale
(Estimated proceeds of $195,000)
2003-07-15 WILSON, MICHAEL SEAN
Senior Vice President 6,000 Option Exercise at $0.66 per share.
(Cost of $3,960)
2003-07-15 WILSON, MICHAEL SEAN
Senior Vice President 6,000 Sale at $10.66 - $10.8 per share.
(Proceeds of about $64,000)
2003-07-14 WILSON, MICHAEL
Senior Vice President 6,000 Option Exercise at $0.66 per share.
(Cost of $3,960)
2003-07-14 WILSON, MICHAEL
Senior Vice President 6,000 Sale at $10.77 - $10.87 per share.
(Proceeds of about $65,000)
2003-07-11 OLSON, MICHAEL P
Vice President 8,000 Automatic Sale at $10.40 - $10.99 per share.
(Proceeds of about $86,000)
2003-07-09 HUNSAKER, JEFF F.
Vice President 5,000 Sale at $11.76 - $11.814 per share.
(Proceeds of about $59,000)
2003-07-09 HUNSAKER, JEFF F.
Vice President 5,000 Automatic Sale at $11.76 - $11.814 per share.
(Proceeds of about $59,000)
2003-07-09 HUNSAKER, JEFF F.
Employee 5,000 Planned Sale
(Estimated proceeds of $55,000)
2003-07-08 BENCH, ROBERT K.
Chief Financial Officer 7,000 Automatic Sale at $10.91 - $11.12 per share.
(Proceeds of about $77,000)
2003-07-08 BROUGHTON, REGINALD C.
Senior Vice President 5,000 Automatic Sale at $10.90 - $10.95 per share.
(Proceeds of about $55,000)
2003-07-08 BROUGHTON, REGINALD C.
Employee 5,000 Planned Sale
(Estimated proceeds of $56,450)
2003-06-25 BROUGHTON, REGINALD C.
Sr Executive Vice President 5,000 Automatic Sale at $10 per share.
(Proceeds of $50,000)
2003-06-20 BROUGHTON, REGINALD C.
Senior Vice President 5,000 Sale at $11.08 - $11.1 per share.
(Proceeds of about $55,000)
2003-06-20 BROUGHTON, REGINALD C.
Employee 5,000 Planned Sale
(Estimated proceeds of $53,750)
I personally hope the FTC is watching them very closely.
I think you meant the SEC, which is the agency that would be interested in insider trading.
I suggest you try downloading it. I did. The 25.5MB RPM contains not only the entire 2.4.13 kernel (released Oct. 23, 2001), but also a collection of patches, scripts and other files.
I even checked the 22MB linux-2.4.13.tar.bz2 file against the signature at kernel.org. It checked out okay. In other words, SCO is distributing kernel 2.4.13, as it appears at kernel.org, unchanged.
But that's not all. SCO is also distributing kernel 2.4.19 (released Aug. 2, 2002) in compiled form only. If you want, you could download it and demand a copy of the source code (complete with a GPL license).
This article on Groklaw quotes the contract and a letter that covers derivative works.
l
http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/2003/06/21.htm
However, in the later letter, signed by both parties and dated February of 1985, Exhibit C, it modifies the language of the contract regarding that clause:
2. Regarding Section 2.01, we agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you are owned by you. However, ownership of any portion or portions of SOFTWARE PRODUCTS included in any such modification or derivative work remains with us.
What this says is that derivative works do not belong to SCO, insofar as they are free of any of their original code. In other words, if there was no System V code in the derivative work, the derivative work does not belong to SCO but to IBM.
They are distributing the linux source code. I downloaded it and therefore have a licence from them :).
e rv er/CSSA-2003-020.0/SRPMS/linux-2.4.13-21S.src.rpm
ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/S
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
Maybe they bought themselves some insurance:
[emphasis mine]LINDON, Utah, July 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX), the owner of the UNIX operating system, today announced the appointment of K. Fred Skousen, PhD., CPA, to its board of directors. Mr. Skousen is currently Advancement Vice President at Brigham Young University. He has previously served as the Dean of the Marriott School of Management and the Director of the School of Accountancy at Brigham Young University. Mr. Skousen has been a consultant to the Financial Executive Research Foundation, the Controller General of the United States, the Federal Trade Commission, and a number of large companies. Mr. Skousen has been a visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Missouri, as well as a faculty resident on the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a faculty fellow at Price Waterhouse & Company.
Which is it? It's both. There are two different, albeit related, things going on.
SCO claims that IBM violated their contract. This is the basis for the lawsuit.
SCO claims that Linux distributions infringe on SCO's Unix copyright. This is the basis for the letters sent to Linux users, and the offer to not sue Linux users who purchase a Unixware license.
The alleged IBM contract violation involves code which IBM contributed to Linux. SCO has said what this code is: it's JFS, NUMA, etc.
The alleged Linux infringement involves code allegedly copied directly from Unix to Linux. SCO is not admitting what this code is, except under NDA.
SCO is throwing a lot of mud in the air and they are refining their story as they go along. And most of the journalists aren't helping much. But you can almost make sense of things if you keep track.
After all, there are only so many ways to skin a cat, and coders will often use very predictable names to when coding the same task.
Based on what SCO showed me, it was quite plausible that the two pieces of code--in Unixware and in Linux--came from the same source. The similarities went well beyond predictable names and choice of algorithms. I say this as a practicing programmer with extensive experience.
Did you see any "rocket scientists" on the premises?
I saw only four people on the premises. None of them appeared to be rocket scientists. But I didn't go into the real office, just a conference room. It's not like they gave me a guided tour, much less answered all my questions.
And if they can convince a judge and jury that they have derivative rights to the AIX code base copyrighted by IBM, either by contract or by copyright, then the contribution of that code base to the Linux kernel is a violation of either the contract or the copyright on System V.
Well, excuse me, but there is a huge difference between "the contract" and "the copyright".
If IBM violated a contract with SCO, that's IBM's problem and IBM would have to pay the bill for that. If you have ever dealt with IBM's lawyers, you'd know that it is essentially an impossibility that IBM would have agreed to any contract that would open them up to such claims. But, whatever, IBM's contractual problems with SCO don't concern anybody other than IBM.
SCO only has copyright and patent laws to make claims against people it doesn't have contracts with. If those hypothetical "derivative rights" are based in copyright law, they don't cover "gaining experience from" or any other such vague constructions.
That is the strategy, it seems, and its not something that anyone should be scoffing at, becuase it just might be enough to win.
Well, bribing the judge might also be enough to win. However, as long as we discuss legal issues rationally, terminal stupidity, incompetence, or bribery are not things that it makes a lot of sense to spend a lot of time arguing about.
A german guy reported that they forgot to make him sign the NDA and did a pretty thorough report. If you search back aways you should be able to find it.
He said they showed very small clips, the linux code was from mailing list archives, they just showed a few lines from each that matched without the context. Not enough to do much with.
There are plenty of opportunities given what's known about the code to come up with small clips like that. There's some BSD code. There are POSIX implementations (with cut and pasted comments from POSIX specs, of course.) There are some implementations where it would be more shocking if there were differences than not.
SCOs making big claims but what little evidence they show, even under NDA, is hardly wourthy of mention.
If they stick with what was said in this article rather than changing their story yet again, it sounds like they don't have a case at all against anyone but IBM, and they'll almost certainly lose that one as well, because of the contract amendments that took effect in 2001.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I don't know if this is what you had in mind, but here's a link found on a site linked from someone else's comment, and it's live as we speak:
e s/ SRPMS/kernel-source-2.4.19.SuSE-106.nosrc.rpm
ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/scolinux/server/4.0/updat
(beware the slashdot space)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Obligatory reminder that SCO/Canopy own a significant chunk (disclosed, who knows what behind the scenes) of TrollTech, the makers of the Qt toolkit and the people who control access for closed-source developers to the KDE desktop.
Do not use KDE... you are supporting SCO if you do so.
80 lines of code, even in multiple places, is such an insignificant amount that it could be replaced in 15 minutes. That is like one short sentence in a 200-page book.
Since SCO has not come forward and showed what it is, they can't claim damages. Even if they had done that, they could only take action against the person who contributed it (which was most likely their own employee). Not to mention that they would have to prove that the code is not just a standard implementation from a textbook.
The users or other Linux developers are probably not liable because they could not possibly find out what similarities there are between the Linux source and the secret SCO UNIX source. There could not have been any willful infringement, so no damages would be awarded.
What exactly is the derivative work? This is not specified in the contract and relies on the usual statutory construction.
RCU is not a derivative work of Sys V.
AIX with RCU is.
IBM owns all the IP in RCU. IBM and SCO share the IP in AIX with RCU. IBM had better not make AIX Open Source because they don't own all of the rights to it. IBM is free to make RCU Open Source becuase they *do* own all of the IP in it.
SCO's claims are groundless *as a matter of law*.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i