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SCO "Disappointed" by Red Hat Lawsuit
schmidt349 writes "SCO has issued a preliminary response to Red Hat's lawsuit, in which President and CEO Darl McBride advises that SCO will prepare a "legal response" to Red Hat's requests for injunctive relief. In addition, he promises that the countersuit that SCO will file may include "counterclaims for copyright infringement and conspiracy." His final statement-- that Red Hat's "decision to file legal action does not seem conducive to the long-term survivability of Linux--" is chilling in light of the business strategy that SCO has adopted in its sales of UnixWare licenses to actual and potential users of the Linux kernel."
- Darl McBride, CEO, SCO Group
Again, end users are not at risk, if anyone is, but rather the distributors of the Linux kernel in question. Secondly, the code was released by SCO under the GPL, negating the claim. Third, by not asking the "infringers" (who would be IBM primarily and companies like Red Hat secondly) to remove the suspect the code and instead attack the customers of the "infringers", SCO has made no attempt to keep their trade secret a secret at all, which renders it's claim to secrecy invalid in legal terms.
SCO has buried itself. I can't believe that anyone is still buying their stock, all they are doing is making McBride richer.
"In any such meeting, we will provide example after example of infringement of our intellectual property found in Linux. Of course, any such demonstration must be pursuant to an acceptable confidentiality agreement and must be intended to further good faith discussions about resolving the differences between us.........If you seek information for the purpose of informal discovery intended to benefit IBM in the pending litigation, or for the purpose of devising your own litigation plans against SCO related to Linux, we must respectfully decline your request."
- Robert Bench, CFO, SCO Group
In other words, they still refuse to take action in defending their trade secrets and rectifying the problem. No moral judge is going to cut them any slack with this kind of behaviour.
"Of course, we will prepare our legal response as required by your complaint. Be advised that our response will likely include counterclaims for copyright infringement and conspiracy."
- Darl McBride, CEO, SCO Group
It is amazing that this crook has the audacity to suppose that Red Hat is engaged in some kind of a conspiracy, considering the disgusting actions of his company. This is truly laughable.
So, they're disappointed that other people are choosing litigation, which is exactly what they did. No surprise to me, though; I'm surprised that SCO is surprised.
I'm not saying that Red Hat made the wrong decision - they were injured and are suing - but I think the more Linux players SCO can get involved with litigation, the happier they will be - if they can drag out the proceedings. Imagine the boost to the "Linux has IP problems" line if all the major Linux players are tied up in litigation over IP issues.
The best that can happen is that they lose quickly. But I bet they'll drag it out as long as they can.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
I still believe that Red Hat SHOUDLN'T have sued SCO. Red Hat is going to be drained of money for a loooong time in court. Or do you simply think that by suing, they would win in a few weeks.
Prepare for a long winded fight in which SCO will do ANYTHING in it's power to smear Red Hat.
In the long run, it's not who is right, it's who looks good in the end....
Who took my tinfoil hat?
Conspiracy is a word SCO should use lightly... Considering that the company that MOST benefits from anti-Linux FUD (and most definately from spreading doubts as to it's legality) propped them up to the tune of buying a "license" they didn't need...
I'm of course speaking of Microsoft...
How could Redhat conspire with ANYONE?! Did they conspire with IBM to SCO to sue?
Certainly Redhat and IBM will work together in their own defenses (and offenses). They are partners with common interests.
Just as SCO works with (and takes money from) Microsoft and Sun, the two companies with the MOST to lose from Linux...
Corporatism != Free Market
In this case, countersuing looks better to the consumer than simply allowing SCO's original claims to go largely uncontested in the court of public opinion. It might cost cash, but so does advertising. And in this case, both expenses accomplish largely the same purpose. It's not about winning or losing, it's about making sure SCO can't make Linux look bad.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I was thinking earlier today how cool it would be if SuSe were to sue SCO in Germany, Novell (through Ximian) in Mexico, Chinese government in China &c. Screw them as much as possible in as many different legal systems as possible. Where possible get some sort of judgement against the directors as individuals as well as corporately against SCO. Destroy their stock price and make sure they can't travel out side the US (preferably inside as well) without getting arrested for contempt of court or something like that.
Even better! does anyone have photos of McBride playing golf with Bin Laden and Saddam?
Vindicitve? Moi?
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
The enemies of freedom were at it again last night. On Kudlow and Kramer on CNBC some analyst hack mentioned Linux's "IP problems" in a Microsoft story. I am afraid that the SCO suit is having its intended affect by negatively influencing public opinion and support by business and analysts. By proxy with SCO, Microsoft is accomplishing what it could not do alone in creating Linux FUD.
By the way the /. crowd has ridiculed Stallman in the past about making contributors sign legal disclosure forms for FSF programs. What do you say now, fools? Had Linus and his open source buddies been half as vigilant about the source of code contibutions, this issue would not exist.
an ill wind that blows no good
An hopefully Linus, GNU, Mandrake, SuSE, Novell, and thousands of Linux contributors, users, etc start filing suit against SCO in every conceivable country, state, and locale...
That MS money won't last them forever...
Corporatism != Free Market
Until April 2005, as I recall. From my own limited experiences with the legal system, (My father involved in a complex dispute over the family farm, and a drawn out divorce) these things move at a speed akin to continental drift. The whole thing will unfold in slow motion, and like an aging wine cannot be hurried. No matter who wins the 2005 hearing, there are bound to be further rounds of settlement talks. (in the unlikely event SCO gains a partial victory) Legal action involving other Linux distributors and SCO will play out over an even longer timeframe, if there is anything left of the carcass, assuming IBM wins.
This will be both a cash drain and an unfortunate distraction for Red Hat, but it has the positive effect of casting a longer shadow over SCO, since they are now fighting a second front. If other Linux distributors follow suit, (or perhaps band together into a class action?) and sue SCO then it will put even greater pressure on them.
My rights don't need management.
SCO will also be drained of money addressing this lawsuit. In fact, if all the companies that are hurt by SCO's grandstanding barratry did this at once, it would really turn the tap on SCO's money pipe, and the nuisance would be over as soon as it was done. Sort of a DDOS, only with lawyers.
The requested URL
As a logical extension of what you wrote, why not have all Linux contributors file a class action suit against SCO? There are tens of thousands of people out there who own a piece of Linux in the sense that they contributed their code, beta testing efforts, documentation, etc. Split these people into groups of about 1000 and file dozens or hundreds of suits against SCO for theft, defamation of character, whatever. They will have to pay lawyers to respond to each query, motion, response, challenge, request for documents, deposition, etc. Now that's a way to drain their legal fund.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Some time ago, a few people claimed to have been shown the code without signing the NDA. They said that the only significant part of the kernel that was an issue was the scheduler, which looked like it had been copied "line by line" from Unix sources (one presumes the copying wasn't in the other direction).
I'd guess the scheduler will undergo a significant rewrite before kernel 2.6 goes gold... ;-)
The other claimed "infringing" areas are things like JFS and NUMA support that IBM initially developed for AIX and then ported to Linux.
I think it very unlikely that these various subsystems will be found to infringe on SCO's IP.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I really thing RedHat was suing for one purpose : to get through subpoena (and thus, free of the Non-Disclosure agreements) the specific code samples out of SCO that they refuse to release publically themselves.
RedHat's lawsuit can probably get that information far faster than the IBM case would be able to. And as soon as RedHat has it without the NDA, they'll publish it up front and give IBM, Linus & Alan, and the community the time to remove the code if its really infringing and replace it.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Actually it has already made Redhat at least a couple of bucks. My RHN demo account was expiring, and I could either renew it by spending a couple of bucks, or by filling out a long questionnaire. At the same time Redhat seemed to be disappearing from my radar having cancelled their desktop linux box set, leaving me in a bit of a quandary for what to do to find a replacement. Debian probably represents the best way of managing a distribution, but the end result is much too unpolished and BSD'ish for my tastes. SuSE might be an alternative although it doesn't have a huge presence in the USA.
Anyway, Redhat filing this lawsuit puts them enough in alignment with my own priorities that I've reconsidered, and signed up with RHN for a couple of Basic accounts. I don't really doubt that RH is primarily concerned about proving the legality of its Enterprise offering, so if the desktop distribution goes seriously out of whack then I'll be looking again, but I'm willing for a while to see what their new mode of operating will put out.
The sad part is that actually used to be a Caldera customer up until Caldera left customers who had purchased 1.0 without an upgrade path. SCO is suffering a terrible and sad loss of judgement.
--
BitTorrent in C -- LibBT
http://www.sf.net/projects/libbt
Let's see.
SCO is going to be spending money fighting IBM. IBM has plenty of money.
SCO is going to be spending money fighting Red Hat. Red Hat will have to spend money fighting SCO. (Red Hat is asking for attorney's fees in the lawsuit.) But if Red Hat wins the injunction early on, things are going to look awful bad for SCO before Red Hat has spent any really enormous amounts of money.
I wonder if SuSE is also going to file suit. Maybe they should. SCO's FUD applies to SuSE as well as Red Hat.
If SuSE were to file, than SCO would be spending money defending that action. Assuming that SuSE files in Germany, that would likely complicate things for SCO as well with a bunch more lawyers.
What I'm really curious about is Lindows. They apparently have the right to distribute Linux, but SCO's FUD is likely to be hurting them as well even though SCO seems to have indicated that Lindows is safe. If SCO were to win, I think Lindows would be driven out of existence in short order. I wonder if Lindows will file as well.
The other distributions as well could file suit.
The burn rate for SCO could go up quite a bit in spite of the fact that preparing for one lawsuit may help them against others.
There would still be lots of additional hours spent covering the different jurisdictions. Plus, you'd have to have more litigation teams in place to cover the different jurisdictions.
Lawywers don't like to take on cases that may leave them unpaid. I can't imagine that Boies lawfirm is doing this with the intention of being paid when it is over, especially considering the dubious claims of the case. From what I've seen of lawyers and major law firms, I would expect that Boies would have to be assured of being paid regularly throughout the lifetime of the case before they would accept the case.
One thing that some of the other distributions might want to consider is that when all is said and done, fighting SCO is likely to bring them much greater name recognition from everyone and much good will from current Linux users. Any major distributor of Linux who doesn't fight SCO may find it that much more difficult to survive.
The lawsuit seems more likely to affect the long term survival of SCO than Linux.
I have seen this type of situation before. For several years a company called ZixIt littigated a case against Visa. The case was announced on the last business day of the year, this was significant because earlier that year the CEO had said 'people should sell their shares if we have no partners for ZixCharge by the end of the year'. Well there were no partners, customers or revenues but the lawsuit was announced the day that folk had been told to sell their shares.
ZixIt shares went up and up in response to the lawsuit. The bulletin boards were full of people predicting 'huge damages' of hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. In the meantime ZixIt exited the payments business entirely after their payments gateway was hacked.
The lawsuit was over anonymous statements made on the Yahoo buletin board by a person who turned out to be Paul Guthrie, a security expert employed by Visa. Ironically in the light of later events one of Guthrie's allegedly defamatory statements about ZixCharge had been that it did not address the real security issue.
The true believers continued to claim that the lawsuit was a sure fire thing right up to the day that the judgement was entered. Posters gleefully wrote that Visa, a Californian company stood no chance of winning against a Texas company in a Texas court. Hmm, jury bias didn't seem to be a problem for Ophra, It seems rather odd to invest on the assumption that the Texas courts are corrupt.
The jury found for Visa. The stock crashed but still has an amazingly high valuation for the company given their revenues. Guthrie is no longer at Visa, I am told he charges $5,000 a day as an independent security consultant in the Bay area and has plenty of business at that rate.
I'm curious how much of Linux's first count, "For Declatory Judgement of Noninfringement of Copyrights", may depend on IBM's case.
Since a quick win on the injunctions for Red Hat could be a big help to IBM, I wonder if IBM will help Red Hat prepare.
According to a statement by McBride in May (wish I still had the lin), The canopy group owns %85 of the company (which as I understand it, can be turned into public stock, if they wanted to go that route). You're absolutely right. The only real way to buy SCO would be to convince them to sell.
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