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SCO May Countersue Red Hat, SuSE Joins The Fray
uninet writes "The SCO Group, Inc. today released a statement concerning the lawsuit filed against it yesterday by Red Hat, Inc. The release quotes Darl McBride, SCO's President and CEO, as being 'disappointed' with Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik for not being 'forthcoming' about Red Hat's intentions in a previous discussion."
Reader psykocrime adds "According to this SuSE press release, SuSE has publically announced their support for RedHat's actions against SCO. Quoting from the press release: 'SCO has already been halted in Germany and we applaud Red Hat's actions to help end their activities in the US -- and beyond. We applaud their efforts to restrict the rhetoric of the SCO group -- and the FUD they are trying to instill -- and will determine quickly what actions SuSE can take to support Red Hat in their efforts.'" Read on for a few more links.
Vladimir writes "What no one has really touched upon is that the SCO vs. IBM court date is in April 2005, which could mean that the resolution of this case could be somewhere in 2006-2007, by which time Linux or any other OS may be irrelevant. People please keep your wallets in your pocket. Also, this lawyer has a long analysis of SCO extortion attempts and debunks a lot of their FUD."
Besides which, Omega writes "VNUnet has a story on how the economic analysis firm The Butler Group predicts that even if SCO can demonstrate there is offending code in the Linux kernel, it could easily be replaced."
I assume Mandrake, Connectiva etc. will also announce support for Red Hats actions. But this could be a cool idea. Why dont all the vendors individually sue SCO? SCO will run out of money before it can address any of them. Of course then MS may buy it out and then we could have a REAL problem on our hands...
What i am interested in finding out is if any of the companies will put their money where their mouth is... donate to the Open Source Now! fund.
A crank is a little thing that makes revolutions
I'm hoping that Red Hat and those supporting them beat the utter legal tar out of SCO. It's not just a Linux thing, either.
If SCO comes out ahead, there will be imitators. If "Extortion Liscenses" work once, people will try it again. How many claims for "IP violations" will there be by hucksters offering to sell "insurance."
I don't think SCO's imitatable yet since all they've done so far is inflate their stock price and annoy people. There are plenty of ways to inflate your stock price.
I don't expect SCO to win. But it is something that struck me as important.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Has SCO been forthcoming about their ever-changing intentions? Is SCO the only one allowed to operate in stealth-mode?
Darl, there's enough "disappointment" to go around--most of it pointed in your direction.
It's becoming clear that SCO is a rather deliberate-placed fly in the soothing low cost ointment of growing Linux deployments.
It's also clear that certain companies stand to benefit from slowing the rate of Linux adoption. It's in their interest to keep the question raised by SCO open for as long as possible because it will retard the growth rate of Linux. (I doubt the number of Linux deployments will decrease, or even level off, but the growth rate will probably slow.)
So how long will it take for the SCO issue to be closed?
Most current Linux users have dismissed SCO's claims as frivolous, but potential new users are probably more easily dissuaded by these kinds of questions.
What kind of legal event and how long will it take before SCO claims are no longer a question?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
"The very last company you want to enter into a contract with is SCO. You can see now how they operate."
Definitely good ammo if someone gets cold feet towards Linux.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
But the binaries of the kernels in question are still out there on thousands of machines. Removing the code would of course cancel out any claim they had to licensing revenues for further kernel builds, which I guess is not a hand they would willingly give up...
Vacancy for signature. Apply within.
These are testing times for Linux and its myriad distributions. As ludicrous as SCO's allegations are, the cynic in me wouldn't be all that surprised if events turned in their favour. Even more so if Microsoft turns out to be the Master behind the SCO Puppet. But I digress...
This is the time to cast aside our petty squabbles about how distro A beats distro B, or how Distro C sucks balls. Forget the small things.
Band up, my fellow mates and face this challenge strong, and as one. Our very future depends on it.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Yes you do on the same grounds SCO are saying you may be breaking the law with a linux kernel that has their ip, you now have a binary only license that contains non SCO ip protected by the GPL so you effectively bought a license that knowingly infringes on other people's ip and they can sue SCO for distributing it. As if you are liable or not you shouldn't have been liable for SCO's ip in the linux distribution you used so you never needed the license. You did not violate SCO's ip if it is in the linux kernel the perosn or persons whom supposedly placed the code there did, hence the suit against IBM and not against any Linux distribution and certainly not against any Linux users. You just wasted some money for something that was not your liability.
But neither here nor there now you are proof that SCO has taken money to license a product that they do not own I believe all kernel contributors can sue them for distribution of their IP against the terms of the GPL which protected their IP.
I repeat SCO does not have a right to license a binary only linux kernel if their IP is in it or not because they do not own the IP of the whole kernel only by their own admission part of it. Without supplying you the full source code upon request.
At least that is my take on it.
Any GPL advocates or kernel contributors want to enlighten the debate further for this is a key issue I would like to see more clarification and discussion on.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
Go Turbolinux, Conectiva, Lindows, IBM, Oracle, SGI, HP, NEC, Fujitsu, members of OSDL, members of CELinuxForum!! Go!
Join to this RedHat action.
It is not THAT much money, and I don't have to worry about being sued or breaking the law. I'm not sure if this comment is tongue in cheek, but a large company (for whom Linux only represents a small percentage of their install base), might consider paying up to remove any potential or perceived liability. Dirty tactics by SCO, but i'd guess in most situations, it's easier to pay the $700 rather than taking on an unlimited liability in terms of future costs.
Vacancy for signature. Apply within.
Clearly SCO is not hopeful that it will win the lawsuit against IBM - if it were, it wouldn't care about how many "SCO Linux licensees" are out there, and it wouldn't be trying to collect hundreds or thousands of dollars from them.
Just think: If SCO thought it could win the IBM suit, SCO would be very successful financially. SCO could then take that financial success and license their technology in terms that are legally clear to their customers.
Instead, they're trying to force organizations to be their customers by threatening them with potential lawsuits. And unclear lawsuits at that.
SCO is merely looking for extremely high visibility in the short term - negative visibility which can damage it's ability to be a product OR IP property. Basically, they're pissing off potential customers of their technology (no matter WHO they license it to).
SCO is looking for some short term cash with this deal, likely because all other forms of cashflow have stopped or in the process of stopping. Again, they can only bite the hand that COULD feed it, as at this point they have no product of any value except the threat of lawsuits (which isn't really considered a product).
Noi matter how much nice companies like Red Hat and SuSe help the effort, the damage to Linux's (considered in some circles) bad reputation, has been done.
Joe "Unix? Wha?" Average already is wearing his microsoft distributed OSS protected sun glasses, and will only see the bad PR from SCO.
It just sucks that now for every bad vibe that SCO has sent out regarding linux, it means we have to send out ten good vibes. So grab your friendly joe Avergae and explain to them what SCO really repreasents, just try not be too fanatical, people get wierded out by that.
-- P'thk! http://radbrad.rucus.net/
I disagree, are you at fault for a crime you didn't commit? I mean, it wasn't a crime until now. You have to knowingly commit embezelment, as theres no possible way to do it without knowing. This is diffrent though, you can do this without knowing.
I think you're full of it. SCO's refusal to identify the alleged offending code is what is preventing any corrective action. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure this will prevent them from making any claims based on the duration of the infringement.
To improve (slightly) your piss-poor analogy, it would be like someone stealing a car from a taxi firm and giving lifts to people. When the thief is caught, those lucky enough to have got a lift wouldn't then get charged retrospective taxi fares - especially not at the extortionate rate this taxi firm feels like!
Any successful action by SCO would be against IBM. If that occurs, they will get damages from IBM, and anyone using Linux can then be required to stop using the offending code, or licence it, but not until.
J.
IANAL, natch, but clearly neither is the author of the parent.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
because they're still on kernel 2.2.22 :)
So why is SCO treatening to sue me? I didn't steal anything, I bought a product from a distributor and at the time I did not have a probable indication of parts of the product being stolen. How am I liable for this supposed theft?
> Redhat and SuSE should use some of SCO's tactics.
Absolutely not. The actions of the SCO executive are unethical, unconscionable, and at least in Germany, illegal.
Were RedHat or SuSE GMBH to comport themselves in this manner, I would be forced to take a similar dim view of them, and would no longer buy their distributions.
A very large message needs to be sent to companies everywhere: Act reasonable while providing quality products, and customers will stay with you and be loyal. Act like McBride, and go down, hard.
There should be no other outcome.
While you are correct, it is up to the courts to decide what damages to award, if any. SCO estimates the damages at 3 billion, but I'm sure a court would not agree. You see, a company must show that it tried to mitigate the damages as much as possible. Apparently, the alleged code in Linux is so damaging to SCO that they don't want it removed! Also, up until a few months ago SCO was selling Linux for money. Hard to say that Linux damaged SCO's business when they were making money off it. They also continue to distribute the code themselves to this day. Based on this utter lack of failure to mitigate any supposed damages, the damages could just be an order to remove the code. Besides, since when will Linux users have to pay damages? If anyone pays, it will be those who inserted the code, not those who used it in good faith.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Yes that was the original case. But SCO changes its story so often. If it's related to Linux, Unix, IBM, or any other company that might someday appear as a blip on SCO's radar, they have accused them of something. You don't send out 1500 letters to people who have done no dealings with IBM saying that they are infringing on SCOs IP due to a contract dispute.
The fact that RedHat has to wait for months to get a possible injunction, while SCO & Co keep pumping their stocks and FUD - well.. this is a direct indictment on the way the justice system works(?) in the US.
It took all of 7 days fot LinuxTAG to shut up SCO in Germany, likewise in Poland and Australia. If SCO is yet to prove it's case, why is it possible for it to keep yelling everyday? The US justice system is too free, maybe
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
> What I don't understand is why SCO is so unwilling to show the code this is all about.
:-)
> If it's in the kernel everyone can already see
> it so why the secrecy and complicated NDA stuff?
Maybe they're afraid. I bet that only days after they show us the source there will be a clean version of the Linux kernel, perhaps with a few features disabled. In any case, it'll only take a short time to get a clean kernel. And then they can't force anyone into paying them...
Isn't open source great ?
A few months from now, while people are cheering the Red Hat win, SCO executives will be quietly slipping out the backdoor with a pocket full of short sells.
A few years from now, they'll be studying this facade in the Pump-n-Dump section of Stocks 101.
A few decades from now, the executives will be on the beach sipping martinis.
Oh, wait, you are! Either directly if you buy Red Hat (or Suse now too) products, or indirectly if you just like to use OS software, since that "lawyer money" could have been better spent on software development.
Is there a legal basis for this? I do not doubt for a minute that any infringing code could be rewritten quickly, but why would an otherwise legitamite SCO case collapse? As an analogy, my neighbor breaks into my house and infringes upon (steals) my tv, I sue him and he says "ok I'll put it back". It seems to me that he is still guilty of a crime.
But as we all know, history, logic, and legal precident have no place in a court of law.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
A good lawyer, for that matter anyone with a brain would never use swear words (no matter how mild) in a document. Not even on the internet.
I wouldn't put to much trust in this "lawyer" words, if he speaks the same way in a courtroom he will be on charges of contempt before the charges have been read.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This thing is here to stay. We really do need a separate slashdot category for SCO stuff...
They don't have any legal claim for licensing revenues now. As has been repeatedly pointed out, a customer is not liable. If the NY Times prints a chapter from Harry Potter and gets sued for doing so, the people who have subscriptions to the NYT can't also be sued and forced to pay for the book. It doesn't work that way.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Its also common practice to counter*(see below)sue someone for libal and slander. Not to mention trying to extort your customer with vage threats of possible lawsuits and other reprocussions in the future.
Especially WITH NO PROOF WHAT-SO-EVER.
What if Ford motor company went to all the people who bought GM products and said to them, "Chevy, Pontiac and freinds stole technology from us, I am not going to tell you what they stole and how they stole it, but you should know that many of the people who designed for GM have also worked for other companies who make cars, including Ford. If you don't pay us 3000 dollars for every GM car you own within 3 months then I may have the government put you in jail, or mske you pay a big fine on top of what you owe us for using GM products."
I doubt that would go on long with out some serious reprocussions.
*And don't forget that SCO hasn't SUED REDHAT AT ALL. This is not a counter-suit. SCO has sued IBM, which sells Redhat products along with some of it's servers, but that doesn't have much bearing on the lawsuite at all. SCO allegesthat IBM put some code from AIX into Linux, during IBM's development of it's contribution to Linux's code base; thus "devalueing Unix".
The rest is a bunch a propaganda BS that SCO is using in a attempt to frighten unwitting people into giving them free money. SCO's version of UNIX is inferiorer in pretty much everyway, not only to Linux, but NetBSD, FreeBSD, and in some aspects to OpenBSD, PLUS ALL the commercial versions on Unix such as AIX or Solaras.
SCO is screwed even if they win the lawsuit. It's a company with no future and open source deployment and support was their best bet for survival, however limited, and they flushed that down the f*king drain.
This lawsuit is just a chance for them to get the company recognized as a unix provider so that their stock market "value" goes up and give the to p execs a chance to unload their stocks with as little as a loss as possible before their investors realise that they are banking on a loser and pull out, which I would think would be around... ahhh sometime between 2005 and 2006?
I am just happy to see a lawsuit that is not frivolus comming out of the american justice system.
In closed source, a competitor not developing software often helps you. In open source it usually hurts you too.
So, to re-iterate, any OS development money spent on lawsuits hurts OS movement. Of course there are cases where the results or just the publicity of the lawsuit can help more (or hurt less) than not going to court, but that's beside the point.
It reminds of an adult and a whiny child - the child is screaming and swinging wildly and missing, whilst the adult holds off the tantrum-throwing tot with a hand on the childs head and a puzzled expression - and the other hand reaching for the rolled up newspaper.
Or AD&D analogy:
SCO==kobold with a feather duster,
IBM==Ancient Gold Dragon with a puzzled expression thinking "Are you sure you want to do this?"
I think you missed the point. RedHat spends a lot of money on things like kernel development. If they are spending more money on lawyers, that money can't be spent on kernel development. That hurts debian and slackware too.
While I hate to see ANYONE having to spend money on lawyers to defend Linux, I think that it's money well spent in this case. Hopefully it results in a financial penalty in damages as well as just stops SCO's behavior. After all, RedHat loses money when people are scared off Linux.
This suit will hopefully force SCO to put up or shut up.
Linus replacing the code would not have any impact on TSG's damages claim, even if they had one.
Let's make a stupid presumption and say that TSG's code claims are all 100% straight-up correct. Because they have not showed the code, the people they are threatening to sue cannot determine whether they are using it or not. The law requires them to be able to. This has axed any and all damages claims that TSG may have had. TSG is able to claim zero dollars in damages right now because they've massively contributed to the damage by their own acts.
It would also take a very unreasonable judge to disallow you time to bring your systems into compliance, and as you said, Linus and his troops would replace it so fast that TSG wouldn't even have time to print out the legal documents requiring them to stop using UnixWare-derived code, let alone serve those papers. Some of the bits would head out over the wire only half-compressed.
A Pyrric victory indeed for TSG. So instead they try extortion - and I think the wheels are about to come off that caper as well.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Who has the most to gain from SCO winning this lawsuit? Certainly not SCO, because they arent going to get money from Linux development. Not microsoft, because linux will not die.
Sure, SCO will get the money from the lawsuit itself, but nothing beyond that.
Sun.
Think about it. If major corporations are forced to switch away from linux, Solaris is the next viable product. SCO is not only a bad product, but they've sucessfully put the last nail in their own coffin with this lawsuit. They pissed off the majority of the industry.
Microsoft wouldnt take the market, because all the applications and development are designed around linux/unix environments.
Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of what Sun is doing, but they're probably waiting with baited breath to see the outcome of this.
.
Well I've been thinking alot about this, and I think it's funny that they give a blanket statement about it being in the 2.4 - 2.5 (now 2.6). If its in every 2.4 kernel, then it would had to have shown up in the 2.3 development cycle. Parts of the kernel dont magically appear at the beginning of a new production/stable cycle.
But telling us the exact release number would infringe on their IP, and we couldnt have that.
Darl, you need to put up, and then shut up when we've removed it from the kernel.
That's an improper analogy. If the code can be replaced in 4 hours, then the court will see that the code was not valuable or important and was most likely included by accident. Then, SCO won't be eligible for punitive damages. Remember: intent is very important here.
Here's a closer analogy. You borrow a pen from a co-worker. You forget to return said pen. Co-worker accuses you of theft, but refuses to say what you have stolen. I don't think the case would get very far, given that a pen hardly costs anything, the theft wasn't intentional, and you would likely return the pen had he asked.
All of the infighting only weakens the players in the unix arena. Microsoft is already trying to the server market or haven't you noticed the "we saved a nickel" ad they play each night.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
Something that we need more of in the Free Software community is cohesion. We need to work together and support each other if we're going to improve technology for everyone and beat down predators like Microsoft. SCO is getting Red Hat and SuSE to work together, despite the fact that they are competitors. Everyone is rallying together against SCO. The common enemy makes us united. If that feeling of unity continues past the point where we have beaten SCO, the world will be better.
Well, you also have to realise, suing people has become second nature to Americans. If someone cuts you off in traffic, sue. If someone makes more money than you, sue. If someone looks at you cross-eyed, sue. If someone complains about you and the way you behave, sue. America would be a much nicer country to live in if the courts threw out all the frivolous suits (including SCO's) and made the petitioners pay all the bills incurred. People might think twice about filing a lawsuit after that. Alas, it's never going to happen.
Well, there are a couple possible reasons:
1) It doesn't exist (most likely).
2) By law you have to allow the offending party a chance to fixt the problem. A reasonable amount of time to rewrite parts of a kernel is 6 months (in my opinion). SCO knows that if they release the offenses, the linux community will act in good faith, and within a very short period of time (6 days?) their IP will be expunged from the main kernel tree. SCO's buisness model relys on the community NOT opperating in good faith. They are trying to make it look that way to the clueless justice system in this country.
3) This is all just a MS ploy to weeken linux. SCO is irrelivant and all that matters is the FUD they create. If the DOJ, or anyone else kills them, it doesn't matter. They hurt linux which is what the powers at be wanted.
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
It doesn't matter now whether SCO is right or wrong because Linux has been permanently harmed by the allegations SCO has made. I count at least 3 ways.
First, SCO has opened the flood gates for similar litigation. You think claims that UNIX is in Linux are bad? Wait until every trumped up failure of a company starts claiming IP ownership of everything open source. Not just Linux but all of userspace, applications, libraries, the lot. It's going to be a gold rush with Linux as the grand prize.
Second, the media attention over "indemnity". The closed source vendors are gleefully telling any journalist who will listen: "when you buy closed source we will indemnify you against litigation, when you use open source there is no indemnity". That's a significant blow against open source. I can already see every PHB in the whole damn world reconsidering their plans to deploy Linux because of the fear of lawsuits. If I was a conspiracy nut, I'd say that this was the real reason behind SCOs actions; somebody wanted a noisy and public demonstration that Linux is "risky".
Third, this is the beginning of the end for all corporate support. The growth of open source really exploded once companies took an interest. Not just the kernel but also userspace (OO.org, Mozilla) and infrastructure (GNOME, KDE) and harder concepts like marketting and packaging and sales. Linux went from "that hobbyist thing" to something much more because PHBs figured that if IBM/SGI/HP/Sun are treating it seriously then maybe there was something worth looking at. But can you imagine the CEOs approving Linux development now? Certainly not when Linux development leads to lawsuits from trumped up nothings like SCO. Large companies are slow to react but I predict within 18 months there will be a huge drop in corporate Linux support.
Linux is hurt by these actions. Right or wrong. True or false. None of that matters. I've seen the needle. The damage is done.
...this ups the ante a little bit. This means that they were KNOWINGLY distributing and selling a GPLed system with IP that they were unwilling to license under the GPL. The moment that this occurs, they're without a license, per the terms of the GPL, to distribute or make derivative works. This means they're guilty of some 18+ months of IP infringement on everyone else that has contributed substantive portions of the Kernel, Red Hat and SuSE included. There is no way in HELL that a court is going to give SCO any damages or even hear an IP infringement case from SCO if this is actually the case. Worse, if they realy ARE stupid enough to file suit against Red Hat over infringement and conspiracy to infringe, it opens up the floodgates- because it will be an open statement of that willful 18+ months of infringement and their unwillingness to work out the infringement they did- and since they SOLD the stuff, there WILL be actual infringement damages involved.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Sorry, but Sun having paid SCO money earlier, seriously taints Sun in my book.
This is a personal thing for me only, but I am sure others feel the same.
I like java (program in it a little bit), but would not use their OS or Linux from them either.
Dunno what else to say. I hope Sun realizes its mistake, once the dust settles, then tries to re-coup the license money they paid to SCO. That would rock, likely not to happen though.
Irrelevant. These contributions were released under the GPL.
also, the agreement provides another establishment that SCO had [or should have had] due dilegence in the knowladge of the contents of the linux kernel and other supporting code...They engaged actively and willingly in cross-licensing the technology from/to other Linux distros! McBride has already hinted that SCO will try to get out of that contract or that it's worthless to the lawsuits...Suse will beg to differ.
Red Hat, Suse and other Linux distributors need to understand that some businesses will require a form of indemnity insurance if they are to adopt Linux. The very nature of the OS model leaves it wide open to SCO style abuse. Distributors could easily set up a scheme whereby for an additional premium they indemnify their clients against IP claims. A large insurance company could take on the risk analysis and reinsurance companies would spread the risk. Companies who felt the need would pony up the insurance premium. What these distributors and most commentators have failed to understand is that this flaw in the OS model cannot be fixed by recoding, it needs a modification of the commercial package on offer to business.
Are you suggesting that Linux stands for
Linux Is Not UniX?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Exactly.
Once the actually proved in court that the code was distributed illegally, you would have to stop using it. If you didn't stop, you could be held liable (just like you couldn't keep the stolen wheels).
The cool thing about Linux in this situation, is that the day the offending code is revealed, it will probably be removed from the kernel. By the time a verdict is reached, it should be a simple matter of running apt-get, emerge, up2date, or whatever else your distro uses.
Here's a question though.....What about embedded Linux?
Life is too short to proofread.