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OSDL Position Paper on SCO and Linux
cshabazian writes "The OSDL has released a position paper raising serious questions about SCO Group's threatened litigation against end users of Linux. The position paper, which casts doubt on SCO's position, was authored by one of the world's leading legal experts on copyright law as applied to software, Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia University."
Quoted from the July 28th edition of Information Week magazine in an Article by Larry Greenmeier titled "Sco Group Threatens Users in Linux Fight" p.24 -- sorry, I couldn't find a link online.
Agree with it or not, at least one lawyer thinks users could be liable. -Derek
We all know they're lying, the question now is what are they getting out of it? Do they get a deal with MS? Do they hope IBM will buy them? Do they just hope to raise share prices for a while? All of the above? It's high time for things to clear up really.
SCO, HAS NOT yet got after any end customers...
Yes they have. They are calling Fortune 1500 companies telling them, buy a licence now and when we'll win this legal battle, you will be fine. If you don't buy this licence now, you'll have to pay much much more after we win the case.
1. where's the evidence of infringement?
this is the key argument: without evidence of infringement they clearly have no claim.
2. you can't charge a license fee to users
this has to be correct: if there has been a breach of SCO's copyright then SCO has a right to sue the Linux distributors. It has no right to charge or sue Linux users.
3. SCO distributed the allegedly-copyrighted work themselves, and have therefore licensed it under GPL
I'm not sure it's no simple. SCO will no doubt argue that, at the time, they didn't realise the source contained their copyrighted material. This raises the question of whether you can be legally bound by the GPL if you don't realise what you were licensing. This is a tricky question under English law; I've no idea what the US position is but doubt it is straightforward.
Interesting indeed. Insiders have sold ~125,000 shares since late June (with no purchases), when it poked through the $10 mark for the first time in over two years. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of SCO's future from their own leadership!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
No, they havent. They have gone to customers and warned them they could be in violation... nothing more. SCO is not in the business of licensing SCO itself, they license out the technology to other developers. It is people that use SCO technology in their derived products that require a license.
Think about it this way... when a big company ( say Ford) buys and rolls out Windows 2000 in the enterprise... do they license the use of Windows? Or do they license the use of the Windows technologies in order to create their own derived OS!? Beyond selling SCO, or Caldera Linux to these companies... or residual revenue from one of their licensees selling their product to Fortune 1500 companies... SCO HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM!
SCO's intentions in sending the letters to the Fortune 1500 wasnt to get money from each of these companies, but to cause FUD and damage to Linux distro's everywhere, in an attempt to make themselves as much of an attractive buy out target as possible. I think they figured a big company such as IBM, would rather just buy them to silence them... then to bother to fight. It was in everybodies best interest to stem amy damage that SCO's FUD might be causing the Linux industry.
You guys always complain about bias when the Gartner Group etc., releases a study about how Microsoft is better at this or that.
But I don't see anyone complaining that the OSDL certainly has a vested interested here and is hardly to be expected to provide an unbiased report.
Discuss.
Linux is the direct competitor to SCO & Microsoft for position in markets they lose ground to every day that passes.
Microsoft spends quiet a bit of money studying "things" and one thing they admitted was that their FUD attempts have backfired at every twist and turn and the only thing that seems to get businesses to listen to was legal liablity.
Microsoft & SCO are simply trying to stop Linux anyway they can. SCO is simply a "middle man" between the two major forces here: Linux & Microsoft. Microsoft does not worry itself (or share holders) about SCO; they can easily be gotten rid of, and it's no small bonus that this whole ordeal will do it for them. They can't stop Linux adoption so it's simple case of "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" - until such time as it's not needed...
Legal liability is the card they are playing because it's the only one they have left regardless of merit. We all know it but businesses play by the rule of corporate liablity; which is how much money can we make/lose.
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
Or, is it maybe some pension fund or something like that with corrupt management "investing" in the SCO stock, helping their PHB pals at SCO?
Conspiracy!
(Well, that would make more sense than most other explanations...)
Who modded this guy up? You, sir, are talking out of your ass. The person who developed the RCU code for Dynix is not the same who did the work on Linux. The RCU implementation you see on Linux was done by 3 engineers, none of them having anything to do with the original Sequent employee. I know, I was at Sequent at that time.
Brett Glass
Please do bear in mind that options and equities are a form of employee compensation, and that excersizing those options or selling off one's equities is a way for an employee to receive financial compensation for their work. Until the sale, those little pieces of paper are tangibly worth nothing. Think of it as cashing a paycheck. Just because you cashed your paycheck to get your money out of your employer does not mean that you have no faith in working for them in the future.
If you owned stock that hadn't been above $10 in 2 years, I imagine that you would sell too.
Remember, there is only 1 reason to buy or maintain equities, but there are BILLIONS of reasons to sell. So don't go blowing the conspiracy theory horn just yet.
1. Where's the beef?
His first point argues that he doesn't have all the facts. He sets up a strawman outlining what he thinks SCO's position is, and then proceeds to argue against it. Bad form.
2. Why do User's need licenses?
Except for Free software, it's accepted that users need valid licenses for their software. His argument hinges on the position that SCO is going after copyright issues, which SCO hasn't claimed (point 1). PHBs accept software needs licenses.
3. Do Users already have a license?
I thought his argument was that they don't need a license? His argument here is the same as IBM's position paper - they distributed under the GPL so tough luck. It may be as cut and dry as this, but I would like to hear a judgement from the courts.
If you take my work, break the license and then distribute it as GPL, if I distribute your product under the GPL without knowledge that it infringes on my work, should I suffer?
In short, I think SCO is going to lose, but this article does little to convince me that companies may not be vulnerable. In fairness to the author, he admits not knowing the facts of the case at the beginning - so everything after that is pretty pointless.
I stopped reading at that point. The lawyer is a moron. Every time you read a book, the light reflects off it, making a copy. I doubt THAT would cause a point of dispute.
And both types of copy are needed before use of the work under copy right becomes useful, so the analogy works.
I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey
Flaw 1: SCO gave up their rights by distributing GPLed Linux code. - This is false because there is a difference between intentionally introducing code into Linux under GPL and redistributing code that others claim has a valid GPL copyright. So unless SCO intentionally introduces IP by introducing the code themselves, this arguement is weak.
Flaw 2: An end user can't be sued over copyright since he's not the one copying. - This is flawed in that many Linux distributors have licensing agreements with end users where they waive all responsibility for copyright vioaltions. This shifts the burden from the copyright infringer to the end user.
This doesn't mean I think people should start paying licensing fee to SCO, but don't be surprised if a court orders it some day.
Vote for Pedro
> The standard contract said that AT&T has rights on any changes you make to your Unix code, IBM got a special amendment to the contract stating that they owned any changes they made to AIX. but Sequent did not, and Sequent, not IBM developed the tech that SCO is bitching about (NUMA, RCU, ETC).
Not quite.
What IBM got was a "letter of understanding" from AT&T. That is much, much, different from an admendment to IBM's contract.
The letter explained to IBM what AT&T belived the contract meant in terms of "real world" situations that IBM might face.
An "understanding" by AT&T to any holder of the contract would apply to ALL holders of that contract who where faced with issues similar to IBM's. AT&T cannot claim its words "meant" one thing when using them with IBM, and another when using them with somebody else.
Even if the "understanding" applied only to IBM, when it bought Sequent it came into possesion of a contract worded exactly the same as the one AT&T "explained" to them. In what worldview could IBM be expected to interpret multiple copies of the exact same contract, one that was carefully explained to them, in two very diffrent ways?
You can sign and posses as many copies of an agreement/contract as you like. They always, by definition, mean the same thing. So, IBM has two copies, how nice.
The most interesting fact about the stock sale is the percentage of shares that are being sold. I think someone on the yahoo finance group for SCOX pointed out that it was something like 10% of their personal shares while for RHAT most insiders where trading something 1%.
"SCO will no doubt argue that, at the time, they didn't realise the source contained their copyrighted material. This raises the question of whether you can be legally bound by the GPL if you don't realise what you were licensing."
IANAL, but I have studied enough law to know that laws are much more strict when a Merchant (someone who is distributing a good as a business) gets involved. There are specific warranties a Merchant grants which CANNOT be waved. If Walmart sells you a microwave, do you think they have a right to send you a letter later saying you need to send them $1,000 for IP fees they failed to include in the price? No dice, Walmart implied a warranty that what you were getting was legit and SCO implied what they were distributing was legit.
Let me put it this was, if merchants were not forced to assume the risk of distributing the wrong thing, for the wrong pice, the entire U.S. economy would collapse. No one would buy ANYTHING because such transactions would represent an infinite legal liability to the purchaser.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Surely people can't just go around telling lies which cause serious damage to people's business? I mean, if MacDonalds can sue some hippies for handing out fliers critical of them, then why can't the Linux community do the same to SCO?
Isn't it just as valid to say AT&T UNIX is a derived work of MULTICS?
Who owns the copyright to MULTICS, Honeywell.
So if Honeywell would just start send letters to all of SCO's customers (both of them) demanding they buy a license...
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
I think it is not unlikely that IBM will file counterclaims that SCO will have to defend. I'd expect them to pull out every patent that they've contributed to Linux under terms that require GPL distribution and to bitch-slap SCO with them. Oddly enough, one of them is the RCU patent. I would not be surprised to see them to retailiate with business libel, unfair competition, and deceptive trade practices claims.
Other posters seem to have raised some doubts about the accuracy of your facts, but assuming what you say is true, you're still mixing up patent and copyright.
Not having read the document myself, I can't say this with absolute certainty, but AT&T's license clause saying they get the rights to any changes you make to Unix sounds like it's talking about copyright rights. If that's the case, then SCO would own the copyright on the lines of code belonging to Sequent's Unix RCU implementation, not the patent rights to the RCU technology itself. Therefore, SCO cannot claim that the Sequent programmer doesn't have the right to re-implement the technology in Linux; what they can claim is that he doesn't have the right to take the implementation he wrote for Unix and copy that code into Linux.
So the question is, is the Linux RCU implementation an independent rewrite, or a copy of the original implementation? Unfortunately, we won't know unless SCO shows us their implementation. But in any case the fact that the technology was developed and patented before it was implemented in Unix is irrelevant.
i'm an employee of sco. been with them for awhile. some very interesting doings and sayings happening here. watch for scoblo.com. couple of us are going to put some very enlightening tidbits up. we're leaving here fairly soon (4 of us) so we have nothing to lose.
And where's the AT&T-Sequent contract?
SCO is suing IBM for breach of contract. However, courts don't read minds. The court does not know what a contract says unless somebody enters it into evidence.
In their lawsuit, SCO has filed exhibits showing the AT&T contract with IBM (which SCO is successor in interest), with an addendum between AT&T and IBM, and a later contract transferring the rights from Novell to SCO, with consent by IBM.
However -- SCO has not filed any exhibit showing a contract for Project Monterey, or any exhibit showing a contract between AT&T and Sequent for the code that SCO claims infringes.
Where are those contracts, SCO?