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Red Hat Sues SCO, Sets Up Legal Fund
An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat has released a PR Newswire article stating that it intends to sue SCO Group to prove that it doesn't infringe any of SCO's intellectual property regarding the Red Hat Linux platform, and to hold it accountable for its actions and smear campaign. They've also announced the creation of a legal fund, to which they've pledged $1M US dollars to fight complaints such as these, called the 'Open Source Now' fund."
I'm sorry, but IBM (the company that has made billions in revenue off GNU/Linux) should be floating the bill. Red Hat is too poor to be getting into a legal slug fest with a company that has literally transformed themselves into a litigation firm. IBM has the money to fight, while Red Hat might end up getting dragged through the proverbial legal-mud, and never really get anywhere.
What might serve Red Hat better is to send their customers information regarding how absurd SCOs claims are, complete with the opinions of legal experts on the matter, like the OSDLs terrific "position paper". The people, especially those in the corporate world, have to be clearly shown how absurd and evil SCOs actions have been. Litigation by a small company is going to be long, expensive, and perhaps in the end fruitless.
Regarding the OSDL's paper, I personally like the analogy made concerning publishing houses:
Imagine the literary equivalent of SCO's current bluster:
Publishing house A alleges that the bestselling novel by Author X topping the charts from Publisher B plagiarizes its own more obscure novel by Author Y. "But," the chairman of Publisher A announces at a news conference, "we're not suing Author X or Publisher B; we're only suing all the people who bought X's book. They have to pay us for a license to read the book immediately, or we'll come after them." That doesn't happen, because that's not the law.
I would wager RedHat could claim damages to their business reputation for all that SCO has claimed. SCO is trying to scare people away from Linux (and into their license-fee income stream), but if they lose the IBM suit, their statements could be considered libel/slander.
Also, I take this as a good sign that SCO has no chance to survive. The RedHat folk aren't stupid: they wouldn't enter this fray unless they were reasonably sure of success.
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Went out and bought anoter copy of Red Hat at lunch and mail Red Hat $10 for the legal fund. If only 5% of slashdot readers followed suit :)
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
If wonder whether the OSNF (Open Source Now Fund) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation? Should it be? If so, should Red Hat's contributions to it be tax deductible? While others will benefit from the fund, so of course will Red Hat.
Also, who will be administering the OSNF? Will they work for or be connected to Red Hat? Who will make the decisions regarding the disbursement of funds, etc.?
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As seen on Yahoo Finance. Time to buy? :)
I know you're joking but from a strictly speculator point of view, it might not be a bad idea. I've been watching the SCOX price for a few months and have noticed a tendency of SCO's PR. Whenever the price drops or plateau's, you can count on yet another outrageous PR release from SCO to pump it back up. Before the week is out, expect SCO to make some sort of apocalyptic statement in regard to RedHat.
"To further protect the integrity of Open Source software and the Open Source community, Red Hat has established the Open Source Now Fund. The purpose of the fund will be to cover legal expenses associated with infringement claims brought against companies developing software under the GPL license"
I think the SCO suit is great for Redhat, but even better for the community is this legal fund. I don't know if it's non-profit, or how it works exactly, but ideally it would (and should) be a fund to help take care of any OSS-movement threatening lawsuits or legal issues. This is something Open Source has never had before, and that large corporations have always had. This may give OSS the support it needs to grow without threats from any company out to stop it -- like SCO. The way they describe it, it seems like something meant to be a "legal department" for Open Source.
It may just be me, but I think that's the bigger picture here.
"!"
And to think people chide me for using Linux because I can't get support from a "real company."
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Hopefully they'll set up a PayPal address so individuals can donate to the fund. I could easily see that $1M doubling in no time.
The SCO case has already inspired the ire of the entire Linux community. It's even made Germany make SCO's claim completely null and void within its borders.
Considering that SCO is not doing well financially, is being countersued by IBM, and is still yet to provide concrete evidence, Red Hat might as well save its resources and stay out of this. Although it most certainly has a stake in the outcome of the argument, it's quite likely that their involvement will not bring about much change.
That said, I commend Red Hat for doing what they're doing and, at the very least, making explicit the sentiment in Linux community feels for SCO.
Even better news:
SCOX
compare the time on the PR notice with the start of the downward spiral...
plonk!
I have to say this. I hate Red Hat. Not the people. The distribution. RPM. Their whole idiotic file layout. Their stupid configuration tools. I used it for awhile, and I really do hate it.
But I don't hate the people working for them - there are a lot of really good people there. And I don't hate the company. As a corporation, it does some pretty dumb things occasionally, sure. And the buzzwordspeak is annoying ('...continue to realize the significant value that our Red Hat Linux platform provides' - wtf are they trying to say and why don't they just say it?) but all companies, for some unintelligible reason, seem to do that. I was a bit peeved when they C&D'd linuxiso, I must admit, but that turned out to have been a simple mistake by some simpleton in the legal office and was quickly rectified.
In the end, even though their system disgusts me and I will never willingly use it again, they pay some damn fine hackers to work on damn fine Free software, and despite all the buzzwordspeak they do seem to know what they're talking about when they use the word community.
So RedHat is alright by me. They're not bad folks.
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Interesting, these are the market cap's for the various comapnies involved:
SCOX: 146.2M link
Red Hat: 1.142B link
Novel: 1.337B link
IBM: 139.9B link
I find it kind of funny that those numbers are really close except RedHat/Novel have ten times the market cap SCO does and IBM has 100 times the market cap RedHat/Novel do. This isn't supposed to be important, just thought it odd that these numbers are almost exact multiples of each other.
SCO's argument in trying to collect license fees from Linux users and distributors is that a license will buy peace of mind and immunity from SCO lawsuits.
Anybody who gives SCO even $0.01 enters into a contract with said company, and invites being hauled off to Utah to defend against breach-of-contract suits.
It seems to me that the most effective way to fight the extortion (over and above what RedHat is doing) is to impress on potential extortees that paying off SCO is *not* a safe move for the risk-averse.
RedHat's fund appears to me a much better use of a
Linux user's spare change.
If you're going to get in a legal fight first determine the facts and don't forget the funds. If you have enough of each, proceed.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Consequently, FedEx has been talking to HP about buying the software through them rather than RedHat.
I'm sure that there are other instances of Redhat's getting hurt by all of the garbage SCO is spewing. I would guess that at least one reason they're doing this is they can't afford to wait any longer for someone else (IBM) to.
I think that the first two elements of the lawsuit, the request for "Declatory Judgement of Noninfringement of Copyrights" and for "Declatory Judgement of No Misappropriation of Trade Secrets" are going to go relatively fast.
...". I believe that this actual controversy, if the court agrees, means that the declatory judgement request will probably be decided long before any actual court case. I think that it is a means of getting relatively quick relief from the wrongful actions of another.
In both requests, Red Hat uses a phrase "An actual controversy exists between SCO and Red Hat as to
If the court finds that there is no actual controversy between the two sides, then I think that the relief will likely have to wait for the case to go to trial.
My guess is that if the court finds for Red Hat in the declatory judgements, SCO is going to fold and the only thing left will be for them to try to settle the rest out of court for as little money as they can spend.
I don't know how long such a declatory finding should take, but my completely uneducated guess is that we could see it before the end of the year or early next year.
The other five counts are for torts (I think) that Red Hat (and many of the rest of us) allege that SCO has committed. These are false advertising, deceptive trade practices, unfair competition, tortious interference, and trade libel and disparagement.
If the court grants Red Hat the two declatory judgements, I can't see how SCO could hope to prevail on the remaining five counts.