Slashdot Mirror
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 ..."
I've decided I'm only using SCO Xenix to avoid all the licensing issues with Linux.
Hell I even bought a Compaq Deskpro 386/25M. Who knew the bios could only be accessed by boot disks!!! Took me a good hour or two to figure that out. Thank god HP/Compaq still has these on their site.
Xenix the choice of an old generation.
And what do I say to this all?
I say.. Finally.. IBM really took their time to get things done. Frankly, I am tired seeing SCO bashes Linux community and generally making life miserable..
In your face SCO!
Will sys-admin for food
So does this mean that as long as you use Caldera or SCO or whoever's distro of Linux, you have the Top-Secret Stolen Code under a Proper License and you're safe from the supposedly Harsh Penalties Of Law for using Top-Secret Stolen Code?
I swear, this is getting more and more like threatening to sue the readers of a newspaper because it contained an AP story that wasn't properly credited.
McBride was also quoted as saying "he he fellas, come on, you knew we were joking all along don't you? right?"
Darl was last seen in tattered pieces scattered around IBM.
Well from the chuff in the story it look like 'yet another sco v linus' slashdot artical.
The fact that IBM has evenetually responded to the allocations that SCO has made over the past few months if very important and more-or-less blows the worries of any users out of the window:(IBM will settle the issue)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
"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..
I registered my copy of Linux with SCO. It only costs $700, and I don't have to worry about getting sued or breaking the law.
It's what Slashdot pundits have been saying all along: SCO's shipment of a Linux distribution undermines its demands for Unix license payments. Nothing new here for the well-informed Slashdot reader.
SCO counters with the expected: they didn't contribute the code knowingly, and thus the code was never officially released under the GPL.
20 mil and I will! Learn Esperanto with 20M others.
Several weeks after people were able to view the supposedly offending code (under NDA), there's still no report of what it actually is.
This is in contrast to every known FUD convention, where it's normal practice to sign a NDA, look at something secret, wait a few days then quietly have a word in your buddy's ear and get him to post some still-speculative-but-extremely-specific detail of what it is you looked at.
Why the sudden maintenance of SCO's secrecy, when there's an industry-wide history of violating similar NDAs at the first opportunity? How can we not know even the tiniest specific detail of SCO's case, yet we know e.g. details of every close-kept Apple product release several days before Steve Jobs announces it?
A few weeks back, I honestly expected the following to happen:
- a few people sign the NDA and view the code in question
- (nothing happens for a few days)
- new code gets quietly released for functions A, F, H and Z in the kernel, gets exhaustively tested by several key Linux people and very quickly appears in the next kernel release
- confident pronouncements from Linus, RedHat, SuSE etc. that they are absolutely sure the SCO case has no merit, that they believe (but can't confirm) the code in question is "old code no longer in use" and so on
Actually, maybe this happening now and I should keep quiet about it. If so, could someone tell me which step we're up to? I promise not to tell
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
No, really, I do.
I don't think it will help anything if section six of the GPL can overrule section one. If the copyright holder did not Know they had code in Linux, they should not be obligated to have that code be considered GPLed because they distribute it.
It is a question of knowledge, and I suspect it would be hard to prove that SCO hadn't just missed a few snippets of code.
A ruling that SCO put its code under the GPL unknowingly would destroy corporate faith in the GPL, and that's a very bad thing.
Also, I don't think it is morally correct to punish for distributing code they did not know about.
Of course, I hope SCO dies painfully a few months later when its law-suit actually hits IBM.
Last week SCO announced acquiring the assets and technology of Vultus, a web services company, who offer web development tools called WebFace ("Runs on Internet Explorer 5 and up").
While SCO predicted that they would obtain 15%-20% of a $3.7bn Web Services market, I have to admit to being perplexed how this is supposed to happen, and also wondering how well an Internet Explorer-based product could fit into SCO's UNIX offerings.
ComputerWorld has an alternative explanation of the Vultus acquisition, they call it: "SCO's Shell Game".
One thing is for sure - it sure is lucky that Vultus was in the same (Canopy-owned) building as SCO (check the picture), even before the acquisition!
Update: More on this story at GROKLAW
Repost: Form-4 filings with the SEC reveal Executives profiting from SCO stock sales: they made $398,833.90 in June, and $781,964.70 in July (so far)!
SCO can not distribute their proprietary code linked with GPL code, because it would be illegal under the GPL. So if they claim they can, SCO, and by the SCOian logic, all SCOs customers are liable for a class action lawsuit from everybody that has ever contributed to those OSS projects. Sounds like cannon fodder for some counter-FUD, not to mention a countersuit to me.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Did SCO's counsel just miss the day everyone took a big swig at SCO, or has the company finally decided that this whole thing was getting out of hand (little late to the game, but hey, the stock is up)?
Or have we been in the grip of one hellacious Reality Distortion Field, and none of this "We Really Own Linux, We Don't Care About Some No-Name Finnish Geek" crap ever actually happened? What else has occured since then that might not have happened? Could Bush have been impeached and I just missed it somehow?
IBM actually has 9 different affirmative defenses against SCO in their response. The GPL issue is probably just part of 1 of these defenses (number 7th).
Even if none of these 9 were to work, the burden would still be on SCO to prove the 100+ assertions in their complaint.
One the one hand, we all know that SCO is full of crap, and this will help formalize it.
On the other hand, this will provide an enormous amount of ammunition to groups who think the GPL is viral by nature.
Im not saying its true... but spin factories will not have a hard time extolling the deviousness of the GPL in respect to SCO, the GPL just wandered up on poor unsuspecting SCO and stole SCO IP.
Of course, the argument is bull, but try and convince a CEO/CIO/COO of that. Unfortunately, a lot of CTOs may miss the boat too.
Sounds to me like SCO Group top managment disagreed with past actions of Caldera employees concerning the code they contributed to FS (Journaling File System), RCU (Read, Copy, and Update), NUMA (Non-uniform Memory Access) software
So McBride hatches this FUD plan to sue IBM for copyright infringement despite the fact that the actual code is from their own employees!
Hoping for buyout from IBM..unfortunately IBM has clear records of Caldera employee contributions and thus knows its own contributions to same subsystems and thus know its in the clear and ha snot violated copyrights..
So my question is..
When SCO goes bankrupt aroudn Christmas wil the top execs be charged with fraud for pumping up stock on false information and if so whne can we see MCbride behind bars?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
UNIX is as much a derivative of MULTICS as Linux is a derivative of UNIX. SCO's claim to hold the 'intellectual property rights' to all modern operating systems fails because of that fact - a point which needs to made against them.
Meanwhile, SCO says that the GPL is barely viral at all, not even worthy of a runny nose. That's because they linked their code to a bunch of GPL'd software, but they say that they can ignore the license because "hey, we didn't really mean it". In fact, the GPL must be so unviral that SCO can still distribute this code from their FTP site.
It will be interesting to see if any court buys both of these arguments at the same time.
If you have a business where you essentially own System V; where in fact, the only thing you have of value is System V, and you release Unix-like code under GPL, it seems to me you'd better understand what you're releasing!
What I mean is that the GPL in this case had the possibility of unique harm to SCO (a 1st year legal student could see that), and yet they (a) encouraged their own employees to work on a GPL project (b) released a version of the GPL OS themselves.
It seems a bit disingenuous to say "I am an operating system company, but I didn't know what I was releasing".
They're either stupid or lying. In either case, it appears to be that they lost their unique ability to distribute the moment they distributed Linux.
How can an Operating System company claim ignorance of the copyright within an operating system they sold? Its inexplicable. It goes beyond the boundary of veracity. Or, like I said earlier, they're a bunch of yahoo's that have no idea of what they're doing.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
1. This bozo spokesman essentially affirmed what Linus said, that the lawsuit is a contract case between IBM and Caldera. Caldera has no claim on the technologies that IBM contributed, other than to say, "Hey, you can't tell them that! That's a part of proprietary Unix, and can't be disclosed, even if you wrote it!" Doesn't bode well for some other companies who've contributed parts of their proprietary Unixes to Linux. *cough* Silicon Graphics *cough* But that covers NUMA, RCU, and JFS. If IBM loses here, they are also open to a lawsuit from Microsoft. Why? Because JFS didn't come initially from AIX. It came from OS/2.
2. All that said, there's no resolution of the "copied" code sections Caldera has brought up. From many, many, of their previous statements, it would seem that the technologies mentioned above are what they're trying to milk GNU/Linux users for. If it's *not* NUMA, RCU, and JFS, what, exactly, are the infringments GNU/Linux users are responsible for? I eagerly await a cogent answer, but I know the chances of getting such are slim to none. I will use GNU/Linux (when I'm not playing around with the Hurd) until an individual user loses a lawsuit to SCO over copyright or patent infringement.
Actually, this is the first SCO article in a while which has made me think of the case in a new light... refreshing for a rehashed story like this.
... are derived works under the Unix licenses is the critical and key issue to SCO proving that IBM breached the Unix license agreements. ...the Unix license prohibits IBM from disclosing Unix Software Product code, methods, secrets, and so forth to third parties.Simply put, if SCO-Caldera can prove that IBM-developed AIX code ... are derivate works and therefore part of the Unix Software Product and that IBM disclosed the code, methods, secrets and for them to the Linux developers, then SCO wins its IBM lawsuit.
It seems that SCO are saying that the issue is not actually about copyrighted code being in Linux at all. The issue is about IBM putting it there in contravention of their contract to "keep it secret, keep it safe".
However, I understand that IBM's linux teams and the AIX teams were pretty seperate for that specific reason - no cross pollination. So, SCO is saying that algorithms, solutions and ideas are the problem, not code.
<irony>Luckily this area of legal rights on ideas, concepts and algorithms is really clear in the US legal system.</irony>
clips from the article:
This lawsuit is about breach of contract and other tort claims. It is not about copyright infringement.
SCO-Caldera being able to prove that IBM-developed AIX code
/* affect != effect */ void affect(int *thing,int effect) { *thing += effect; }
Now, say SCO harassed this lady into getting her to pay for a SCO Unix license. She doesn't have a legal department, and all she sees is that she's somehow liable for stealing something, and buys a license right away.
Months later, they find out SCO was full of shit and in the wrong completely. Was old Mrs. Henderson duped and hornswoggled into buying a license? Well, obviously; but can she get a lawyer and countersue SCO for their aggressive, deceptive tactics? Or is she just up shit's creek, because she should have known better (or hired someone who did)?
This is a pretty big deal, because its the first article that confirms what i have been thinking all week - the Caldera-SCO strategy is to say that all of IBM's AIX development efforts, and all the experience gained from them, are derivative works of System V Unix.
This is a seriously different approach and it constitutes a valid approach to Caldera-SCO's grievance with IBM.
I don't know if they can win, but I know that winning a derivative works argument is substantially easier than winning a copyright violation argument. 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.
That is the strategy, it seems, and its not something that anyone should be scoffing at, becuase it just might be enough to win.
That said, what would have to happen to undermine that strategy?
An agent of Caldera actively circumventing an existing contract with IBM, if Caldera was the owner of the contract in question at the time of the action, would be a strike against Caldera. That seems to have been shown to be the case by the statements of the former Caldera CEO and a 'Unix-Linux Kernel Integration Engineer' working for Caldera.de making contributions of code and advice to the Linux kernel development team.
A ruling that the AIX code base is sufficiently independant from the System V code base would invalidate the whole issue, regardless of the contract, unless the contract specifically prohibits all copyright distribution rights of code developed on top of the System V code base - something I doubt IBM's legal team would have agreed to.
A ruling in the original BSD case settlement, which is still sealed, that would invalidate the subsequent System V contracts with IBM. I'm not holding my breath.
A body of evidence that proves some Enterprise capabilities in the Linux kernel evolved from non System V / AIX origins. This certainly could be the case with SMP.
It seems important that as the Caldera-SCO strategy becomes clearer, that the opposition is able to dissect the various parts of it into manageable parts with independant solutions.
Ranting about Caldera-SCO is no longer sufficient.
now what do I do with my 500 seat licence for RH linux that I just bought from SCO!!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
For a while, many people have been speculating that SCO-Caldera is looking to get bought out. The usual assumption is that the purchasing party would be IBM....
I present to you, gentle reader, another possibility. One that has the purchaser as not IBM, but Microsoft... think about it for a bit.. MS buys a SCO license at the first possible minute (more or less), then later starts openly postulating similar things as SCO...
Deep pockets vs. deep pockets... who will win?...
And you thought the DOJ vs MS was a long trial...
"Distributing a product is not the same as contributing to a product," Stowell said Friday. In other words, the mere act of distributing GPL-covered code isn't sufficient; the copyright holder also has to deliberately release the code as open-source, he said. "The copyright holder has to knowingly contribute this code." --from the first article linked above
So, to summarize, SCO didn't pay attention to the product they were distributing, and accidentally released source code under a license that they should not have. Isn't this exactly what they accuse IBM and Linus of doing, of not paying attention and violating someone's IP rights in the process?
The great thing about it is that IBM and Linus' "victim" is SCO, and SCO's victim is SCO!
If only every other Linux competitor were so self defeating...
IANAL ... whee ... so this is my own opinion, only.
SCO's defense with regard to GPL provisions applying to their distribution is the Linux community's defense. SCO is claiming that there is a distinction between merely distributing a copy of Linux versus actually incorporating their own code into it. In theory, I presume, this means they were unaware that code they claim is their intellectual property was already in the Linux kernel. So, by being unaware of it, they were not actually performing the act of contribution. If it can be shown that they were aware, that argument could vaporize. But left to stand, it could be valid (presuming it is also proven that code in Linux is in fact their property).
By basing their defense on being unaware of the existance of (supposedly their own) property in the Linux source, they are also handing the Linux community the same defense. If in fact there is SCO property in Linux, then everyone who was unaware of it can also claim like innocence on that same basis. Only those who knowingly or negligently placed any SCO property in Linux (if this did in fact happen) would be unable to use SCO's own defense.
To whatever extent SCO claims that anyone who was unaware of the existance of the property they claim is in Linux is liable, then SCO itself is liable for the GPL provisions despite their own lack of awareness. So watch the cards they play and follow suit.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
According to Section 7 of the GPL:
...
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.
------------------
Since SCO distributed their own flavor of Linux, they have relinquised all claims to patent and copyright to alleged SCO code in Linux.
What I'm really hanging out for is some serious action from IBM. For example, if IBM announced that they would indemnify all Linux users against SCO lawsuits brought about due to actions from IBM themselves, then all of this "if you buy a UnixWare license, we won't sue you for using Linux" crap would instantly go away.
If IBM doesn't have the balls to make such a move, then what are they worried about? Even with the very strong technical case they have, their inaction seems weird to me.
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.
Most posters seem to be missing the point. SCO still have a chance at getting away with something here. To quote from the article:
"SCO-Caldera being able to prove that IBM-developed AIX code, JFS, NUMA software, RCU, and so forth are derived works under the Unix licenses is the critical and key issue to SCO proving that IBM breached the Unix license agreements. So proving they are derived works brings the IBM developed AIX code, JFS, NUMA software, RCU, and so forth under the umbrella of Unix Software Product as set forth in the Unix Licenses.
"That's because the Unix license prohibits IBM from disclosing Unix Software Product code, methods, secrets, and so forth to third parties. Simply put, if SCO-Caldera can prove that IBM-developed AIX code, JFS, NUMA software, RCU, and so forth are derivate works and therefore part of the Unix Software Product and that IBM disclosed the code, methods, secrets and for them to the Linux developers, then SCO wins its IBM lawsuit."
SCO doesn't need copyright, and they can happily state that IBM *did* develop those bits. But if a judge rules, that those bits are "derived works" and are a part of "Unix Software Product", then they have won their contractual battle.
This is why SCO claim that its "hundreds of files" not "lines" of code. They are including everything IBM developed as derived works and therefore part of "Unix Software Product".
Let's say the judge agrees and they get damages from IBM (for contract violation). The big question is where this leaves linux. They *did* afterall knowingly (ie after the it was pointed out to them) continue to distribute SCO linux under the GPL.
I'm guessing the code will end up being replaced, however this won't be trivial. Developers that have been "tainted" by seeing the code will probably be hesitant to contribute to new versions of those bits. And you can bet SCO will be looking through any new code with a fine-toothed comb.
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
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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)
We must ask:
1. Did SCO "place a notice" on the program ?
2. Or did they just copy someone else's notice ?
3. Did SCO add ANY of their own code to SCO Linux, under GPL? If so, then they are copyright holder for at least SOME code in the distro.
4. Would that "copyright holder" status spread to the whole distro or stay only the code they willfully added ?
5. What responsibility do they have to check the code they just copy ?
6. Since they are COPYing someone else's code, doesn't that mean they should check to make sure they have PERMISSION ?
7. Did they "place a notice" ?
8. If so, did they do it "as the copyright holder" even if someone else put the code in ?
9. What if they didn't put it in, but they knew it was there ?
10. Once they knew it was there, how quickly did they react ?
simon
home page
Being that I have never consented to any SCO license in the past, I see no reason to start now.
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.
The lawsuit against IBM doesn't even start until April 2005. Lawsuit will take years. FUD money from sunw and msft will be gone by 2003. Sales at SCO are going from abysmal to worse. SCO has been *gushing* red ink since day one.
So what is scox going to do to pay the bills? I suppose scox can become a shell company, and exist only for the one-in-a-million chance that IBM will settle or something.
Makes me wonder how scox will get 15% of the market for web-tools, considering scox can't afford R&D. Even if scox could afford R&D, nobody would buy from scox.
Wow, what a bright future. No wonder SCO shares have gone from under $1 a share to over $13 a share.
IBM has been very careful in the contracts it signed, making careful distinction between ATT Unix and IBM's own contributions. Not all Unix licensees were as careful, possibly including Sequent. The question is, if Sequent's possibly incautious contract would have kept them from contributing their inventions to Linux, would that contract bind IBM, too? Would it prevent the inventions' new owner from releasing them unencumbered? Or, do IBM's own contracts with (the shell that is now) SCO subsume Sequent's?
I've been saying this for a while now, but there are two different kinds of code here.
First, I'll note that SCO has never claimed a direct copyright on JFS, etc. They've claimed in the past that that code was a derived work of Unix, implying a copyright interest. If they are in fact abandoning that claim, that is good. It's not clear to me from the article that they are abandoning that claim.
In any case, that code--JFS, etc--is the basis for SCO's suit against IBM. SCO claims that IBM's contribution of that code to Linux violates the terms of the contract which IBM signed with a predecessor of SCO. SCO has tried to claim that that code makes Linux a derivative of SCO's Unix, but they haven't been pushing that claim all that hard, probably because they are aware that it would be very hard to make it stand up in court.
That brings me to the second kind of code which SCO is talking about: code which they claim has been directly copied from Unix to Linux. They claim that this code causes Linux to directly infringe on their copyright on Unix. This is the 80 lines of code which gets discussed here and there--SCO claims there are much more than 80 lines, actually. This is not part of JFS or any of the other code which is part of the IBM lawsuit.
So, in other words, even if SCO abandons all copyright claims to JFS, etc.--and it's still not clear to me that they are abandoning that claim--it does not mean that they are abandoning the claim that Linux violates SCO's IP.
The way in which you are criss-crossing your laces and tying your shoes may infringe upon Intellectual Property rights owned by Nike Corporation. As of June 10th 2003, we have terminated Rebok's license to lace their shoes.
Please send us $700 for protection so you don't have to worry about breaking the law and getting sued.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,3668,a=45013, 00.asp
p yr ights_Story01.html
and i fscking quote....
"Until now the case started off as a contract dispute with IBM and did not involve intellectual property or copyright. As of today it's a different game, and Linux users now do have a copyright issue to deal with," SCO CEO and President Darl McBride told a media teleconference on Monday.
and now i read...
http://mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-24-Co
Blake Stowell: No we don't, but this is not a copyright case. This is a contracts case. We have taken IBM to court because they are in breach of contract.
so which the fsck is it? and where is the equal time in PHB websites like InformationWeek, etc.. about this new development??
aaaaarrrrghhh. i'm totally frustrated by this nonsense. And where is the SEC when you ened their sorry butts?
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
If IBM were to make AIX open source - that is, make the AIX kernel, which included and depended on SysV code to function, open source, then they would indeed be in breach of their UNIX license.
AIX, as an OS kernel which includes Sys V code, is indeed a derivative work.
However, to claim that any SysV-derived UNIX cannot and has not received IP contributions from existing projects, which themselves are not licensed under the terms of the AT&T/Novell license, and as such distributing these works independently is illegal, is ludicrous.
Like, stunningly, incredibly ludicrous. In fact, I would say such a licensing agreement violates anti-trust laws, and would be ruled illegal and unenforceable, possibly rendering the entire contract void.
Free/Open/NetBSD cannot legally exist with this interpretation of 'derivative work', because they include code that was once linked with SysV code.
According to SCO, it doesn't matter if the BSD people own the copyright to every line of code, because it was once linked with SysV code, and hence is a derivative work.As such, they may not disclose it
This is quite clearly not the situation.
To claim that any IP placed in any SysV-derived UNIX strips the copyright-holder of that work's right to redistribute the original work under any license they see fit is absurd.
Are they really trying to say that because the text of the BSD license is included in SysV that nobody may distribute the text of the BSD license because it is covered by AT&T licensing agreements, and must be kept secret?
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Which book? Read to the end.
"All this was inspired by the principle -- which is quite true in itself -- that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper stata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes." A. Hitler - Mein Kampf
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
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.
So how much is this piracy worth. Lets take the man hours involved in creating the product as it stands and multiply it by the average cost of a developer. This will give us a per unit cost X. Then we need to multiply it by the number of people who have sourced the product from SCO and then also the number of people that they passed the code onto. Then we will have our damages figure and then we (not me I'm not a US citizen) should report the blatent crime to the FBI and let them persue it as they said they would ( as long as the damages are sufficient enough )
Additionally we should report this blatent piracy to software industry watchdogs such as the BSA and FAST
As the whole industry knows Piracy is a Bad Thing TM they should be keen to act. :)
It's just like Star Wars! This is the part where IBM hits the comm switch and says:
"Fire at will, commander."
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
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?
Torvalds admittedly makes no checks himself.
Because it is impossible to check. When somebody come with a piece of code, and say they wrote it, how would you check?
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
The issue is that they are still offering it now, months later, knowing that the code is in place.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
lol, I could have modded you down but I'll comment instead..
You obviously haven't been keeping up with things. SCO/Caldera knew very well that IBM was putting these things in the kernel as early as 2000. They released OpenLinux 4 ranting and raving about the same features you now see them saying were illegally contributed. How can they claim they didn't know when one of the listed features of OpenLinux is JFS?
Now it appears that the Linux kernel does not contain their copyright material in any of the areas they themselves have listed. So those letters to Linux users are unrtue. Which either means that they constitute fraud, or that they constitute demanding money with menaces. Both of these are (here in Scotland, at any rate) criminal not civil offences. Has anyone got one of these letters? If not, can anyone suggest how I can provoke SCO to send me one? I would be most delighted to go down to my local police station and file a complaint.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Perhaps someone should be investigating the bigger picture of what's going on here:
l in ux/story/0,10801,83452,00.html
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/
Well, we are just a big bunch of babies, now aren't we.
You see, we got a bit too used to instant gratifaction. We want our lawsuits to resemble the "Springer" show. Well, too bad.
Real companies like IBM - (by real, I mean companies that actually produce goods - not just IP holding lawsuit kings) do things in a more thoughtout manner.
While this is the defense that the open source community collaborated on first, IBM still needed to seek evidence and build a case, and then - using its teams of lawyers and retired judges, try the case. This is alpha testing for lawsuits.
And, well, the defense we all knew was perfect is perfect. And the additional evidence coming forth about Caldera employees inserting lines of code in the kernal only strengthens their argument: it would show that SCO's release of IP into GPL was no accident.
Don't forgot to contact the SEC! Sign your complaint about SCO's use shaky evidence to bolster its sagging stock price! This is all it ever was about to begin with! A quick buck for a dying firm!
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
A "major distribution vendor" can be expected to know the source code, but keep in mind that the people involved in this type of work (Linux experts) are probably not the same employees who worked originally on the SCO UNIX pieces which are claimed to be in violation. Companies consist of sometimes hundreds or thousands of employees who have specialized roles and probably work in different geographical offices with little communication. Again, the burden of the crime, if any, is on the original violator. In SCO's case, they likely exercised due diligence as a Linux distributor by selling an adequate package of Linux (which isn't warranted anyway). The concept of due diligence implies a reasonable level of care in performing one's functions, but it is not the job of any entity to verify that they are not being cheated in extremely subtle ways.
Now, if SCO can be proved to have knowingly released their proprietary code under GPL, then certainly that would greatly weaken their case. But you and I don't know the details of the case, the internals of either company, nor the lines of code in question, so let's not jump to conclusions, eh?