Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
-- Cheers!
What, just like SCO were when they decided to distribute a Linux distro, including code that said "Please use me", and then get all of their revenue by suing people for doing so?
Remind me, what SEC filing that that plan appear on? Because it seems to me like "Abandon development and marketing of obselete product, make all of our money from barratry" would be the sort of thing that investors would like to know about beforehand.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Ha! I can just see Darl "Pirana" McBride's next bright idea, SCOO, the Santa Cruz Other Operation.
It needs to be something tasteful and non-libelous that can be placed, for example, as wallpaper on a corporate desktop.
Anybody got anything that they would like to contribute ? (The kind of thing that I am thinking of is the Penguin smashing the SCO Logo with a sledgehammer)
does the timing of all of this strike anyone else as intentional? that just when microsoft was starting to lose server interest share to linux at an ever-increasing rate a plague descends upon linux. does it further seem coincidental that microsoft has announced a number of open source/linux initiatives recently?
i think there are several things going on here, but they all originate from strategic, and not tactical, decisions by redmond. let me start with a comment i heard from a coworker (he's in technical sales), "if anyone can figure out how to make money out of linux, its microsoft."
one: microsoft has recently started to be perceived in the marketplace as stodgy. no, i don't have any business case studies to back it up; i feel it. so they're attempting to tell the world that they can change with the times like the best of them. how? by announcing open source initiatives, etc.
two: despite microsofts continued rants about TCO, business' experience probably show that linux TCO, especially in the area of server administration, and down-time associated with virii, patches and other security issues, is in fact lower. ergo microsoft's focus on security and providing 'enhanced' command-line tools for server administration.
three: they (redmond) know just how long it takes a suit to be completed. this whole series of events figures into some long-range plan. what, i don't know. remember though, this court date for the start of the suit is after the release of longhorn. my bet is that there will be a slew of patches and other enforced upgrades between now and then to change the balance. not in the home, where microsoft is feeling threatened, but in the corporate world, where they are quite seriously running scared.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
I beleive the SCO case is just like two bickering children. ("You stole my code! What code? That code! I did not! Yes you did! Wel prove it! I'm telling mommy! Well I'll tell daddy!") I think we are now in the running to mommy and daddy stage. It's the time that the stakes are risen and neighter party can emerge victorious. What is left is the question of who looses the least. Damned shame.
I as an interested outsider can do two things: laugh my ass off or argyly ignore all post concerning SCO. Since I am finding it more and more difficult to do the first I will shut up now and have me mod -1 now...
I feel soo bad, considering that I just ordered about 2K of licensing upgrades from a SCO distributor for a client yesterday. :(
If it wasn't for a proprietary set of apps, Linux + SCO bin emu was looking very good. I even had a chance to test this scenario, but encountered some serious issues.
This just proves that, like any other commercial OS, if a company adopts a commercial OS, and their production apps are taylored to that environment, the companies are just locked-in, wether they like it or not.
Once again I have to remind the slashdot crowd that replacing the offending code *now* is not sufficient to relieve you of all damages up until now. That would be like me embezelling money from my company every day, and when they catch me, I can just say "okay I will stop doing it now, so we are all square".
How exactly is this insightful?
His analogy is way off base. He compares knowingly comitting theft, to unknowingly using code that was distributed in breach of contract.
You are not all square... you have to pay for the IP you stole. End of story.
Doesn't this line along give away the post as a troll? There's no end of story. Even if SCO wins the case against IBM, there's nothing saying the will be able to collect damages from anyone else, especially since they have refused to disclose the infringing code. (They were knowingly adding to the damages through their own actions.) Heck, despite what SCO says, it seems the only suit they have filed is about their contract with IBM. Even if IBM did break this contract, it doesn't mean CO owns the copyright to the code.
Life is too short to proofread.
Except that SCO themselves claims that they knew back in 2001 that their IP was allegedly in the Linux source tree. Why did they wait 2 more years? So more people could use, buy, adopt, and adapt "their" code, which means more people to extort this bogus licensing from. Sorry, that sword cuts both ways.
No, that would be like the law letting a rapist rape 20 women, instead of 1, so they can nail him on 20 counts of rape, instead of 1.
End of your story, yes, however, reality goes on. The real story is that the GPL is not a EULA. If there was infringing code or IP in the code I was given, which was transferred with the GPL, and no other exclusions or contracts that CLEARLY state that there is IP in the code I've received, I am not guilty of copyright infringement. Got that? Repeat it slowly.
Also, if IBM writes code on their own, which works with the SysV source tree that they bought a license to from SCO, IBM owns the copyright to that code that IBM created, NOT SCO. You can't claim copyright on someone else's copyrighted code. That's not how the law works.
In any case, I do not owe SCO anything for my dozens of Linux boxes, nor does any other Linux user, company, or business using, deploying, distributing, modifying, or selling Linux. Period.
..or should I say, "End of story."
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.
Well, the Securities and Exchange Commission needs to get involved. An SEC investigation would cast a little FUD right back at SCO, though it would be much more truthful than the crap SCO's spreading around.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Not that any of my software is important, but to help alienate SCO I've changed all my licenses so that my software cannot be installed on SCO operating systems:
h ttp://nakenchat.naken.cc/license.phpp hp.naken.cc/license.php
/mike
http://ringtonetools.mikekohn.net/license.php
http://asp2
for example.
Maybe other free software developers will do the same?
1 2 1 2 The Naken Crew
Suse joining in is much more intersting to me...after all, SuSE and SCO were partners in {UnitedLinux} crime!
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
From what I could gather (the standard not a lawyer disclaimer goes here), they don't want to show the code because they think it's a trade secret. From the press release yesterday, SCO seems to be claiming that their trade secrets trump the rights of the supposed copyright violator to know the details of the accusation.
I've been drawing an analogy in my mind. Something akin to Coca-Cola's (SCO - nothing against Coke) having a secret (trade secret) ingredient that they claim Pepsi (Linux) is using. But the claim they can't tell what that ingredient is or the secret is out. So instead they ask Pepsi to pay royalties or stop producing the formula.
Pepsi says no, just tell us what it is and we'll remove it from our formula, but in Coke's mind, that could reveal the formula to all of the non-Pepsi world, a fate possibly worse in Coke's eyes since no longer does just one competitor know their trade secret but all of them know it.
Remember before you flame that I'm just trying to see things from SCO's point of view. And I don't believe for a second that they have a tenable position.
It seems to me if Coke had released their entire formula at one point (including the trade secret part), they forfeit claims to that trade secret.
Also if claims of trade secrecy can trump the right of a defendant to know the accusation, then "trade-secrecy" claims could be abused way to easily. (Again, the not-a-lawyer-disclaimer goes here.)
I'd love to get comments from well educated lawyers about what parts of the above are bad assumptions/incorrect and what is accurate, just to help my understanding if not others.