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."
It's standard business practice to countersue when someone sues your company. The merits of the case have very little to do with it.
Nothing to see here, move along...
Red Hat tags out and SuSE jumps into the fray, and then they both do a combo on SCO!
SCO is down to its last bit of health, it looks like the end!
Oh wait, SCO just tagged out! Here comes Microsoft!
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
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!
I contacted SCO Germany and tried to get an offer for a desktop licence. On the phone a SCO employee said I should stop "babbling" (yes, she used that word). I should sent an email instead. Others have tried that weeks ago and got no reaction up to now. The company doing the press releases for SCO Germany informed me that they are not allowed to comment on the licence in any way, too.
It looks like there is absolutly no chance to buy the SCO licence for Linux in Germany at the moment.
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.
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
Also, this lawyer has a long analysis of SCO extortion attempts and debunks a lot of their FUD.
;)
And from the page:
"The jerkheads at SCO refuse to disclose what their IP is choosing instead to only make general and ambiguous public and inflammatory claims about others. Without proof, of course. Even without substance."
I don't know when the last time I've heard a lawyer use "jerkheads" was, but it was probably a long time ago, if ever
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
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
according to this eweek story, sun believes it SCO can screw off:
In the early 1990's, Schwartz said, Sun chief executive Scott McNealy agreed to spend several million dollars to take a broad license with AT&T, essentially granting Sun legal rights equivalent to ownership of Unix code.
"As a result of that decision in 1993, we can do whatever we want (to the code)," Schwartz said. "We can drive forward and indemnify our customers too," a basic responsibility of any intellectual property provider, he said.
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
Ha! I can just see Darl "Pirana" McBride's next bright idea, SCOO, the Santa Cruz Other Operation.
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).
Looking back at recent history, I found this list compiled from various technology news reports...
January 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Hitachi
June 2000 Rambus settles lawsuit against Hitachi
August 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Infineon
August 2000 Micron files patent infringement lawsuit against Rambus
August 2000 Hyundai files patent infringement lawsuit against Rambus
Sept. 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Micron and Hyundai (Hynix)
May 2001 Rambus lawsuit against Infineon dismissed, fined US $3.5 million
August 2001 Rambus faces class-action lawsuit for fraud
Mike Tyson has announced he will sue all of his former opponents, as they were not 'forthcoming' about their intentions to hit back.
McBride ended his letter somewhat vaguely by suggesting that Red Hat's "decision to file legal action does not seem conducive to the long-term survivability of Linux."
Yeah, Defending your company's business practices is a horrible way to stay in business. You should attack other people's practices.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
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.
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.
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
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....
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."
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.
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.
.
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
why do companies release needless papers stating their position on stupid things such as this, for once i wanna see a company release a press statment to a company pulling crap like SCO that says "Get fucked." what more do you need to say? seriously i'm not trying to start a flame war here, think about it, whats the most simple way to deal with SCO right now? sometimes you need a simple message for simple minded people.
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
Hello dear friend and greetings from sunny Nigeria.
Please forgive me this intrusion, but your name was forwarded to me as a person I can trust. My name is Dr. Mombutu and I am the CEO of SCO for Nigeria. As you are probably aware SCO is now involved in a lawsuit which will undoubtedly result in a multi million dollar settlement as every user of devil spawn Linux will be ordered to pay money that is being owned to SCO as a result of copyright infringement. According to careful estimates this would result in a sum of $47.8 million US Dollars being deposited in SCO's accounts over the period of next 2 (two) years. I would like to offer you 10% (ten percent) of the entire $47.8 million if you help us in the legal fight against Linux. Your contribution will only have to amount to US$ 699 if you have a uniprocessor machine running Linux, US$1149 for a dual processor machine US$2499 for quad and US$4999 for a eight cCPU machine. Each additional single CPU will be $749, while a promotional licence fee for embedded devices is $32 per device. I personally guarantee that 10% of the entire $47.8 million will be deposited into the account of your choice as soon as the lawsuit is completed. Please send cash, certified cheque or money order to
Dr. Mombutu
Box. 2301
1 Aguiyi Ironsi Street
Maitama Abuja, Nigeria NG