Slashdot Mirror
IBM Countersues SCO, And More!
mr.crutch writes "Few details are available, but CNet is reporting that IBM has filed counterclaims against SCO. CNet also has an interview with Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik..." Jizzbug writes "Thanks to the folks of K5, we can all obtain our rights to use the Linux kernel from SCO, and without paying up to SCO's extortion. If kernel.org kernels aren't safe, sco.com kernels certainly ought to be." LWN has a copy of SCO's Linux License for your perusal. Bruce Perens is speaking of the dangers of patent portfolios to open source software, notable because IBM's counterclaims include patent infringement. And finally, a company is selling SCO Check, a tool to de-SCOify your Linux system, if SCO ever presents any evidence whatsoever of infringing code in Linux. Update: 08/08 00:16 GMT by T : SCO's public response to IBM's counterclaim is short and to the point. Among other things, it says "If IBM were serious about addressing the real problems with Linux, it would offer full customer indemnification and move away from the GPL license." Given the other links in this story, perhaps SCO should go first on that count.
I think that old Darl (www.tubdarl.com) bit off more than he can chew! IBM has more seasoned lawyers that specialize in patent cases than SCO has employees.
Anyone notice that SCO's stock slipped another 11% today? heh.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Maybe now we will see the tide turn in the FUD-war that SCO has been waging against Linux.
Hope SCO managers cashed in ALL of their stock.
Sco is going down like Justin Timberlake at a Nambla meeting!
"SCO said it revoked IBM's license to ship AIX in June. In its countersuit, Big Blue reasserted its position that its AIX license is irrevocable and perpetual, but then added a new twist involving Novell, the company that owned Unix copyrights until selling them to SCO's predecessor in 1995.
;)
IBM's suit revealed that Novell on June 12 effectively forbade SCO from terminating IBM's AIX license. SCO said it revoked the AIX license on June 16. Novell maintained the right to issue such instructions to SCO under the terms of the Unix sale, the suit said. "
Does anyone know anything more about this?
I know tht Novell apparently DID sell the copyrights, but this is a news Item...
Bruce Perens might want to help clarifiy this for us
-Colin
Colin Davis
Considering the fact that IBM popularized the practice of litigating a company till they run out of money to fight... it shouldn't take long for this one to end.
Another, similarly detail-lacking article is here.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
There's another story here that has more details, including:
In its 45-page complaint, IBM claims SCO Group's products violate four IBM patents and claims SCO Group doesn't have the right to revoke IBM's Unix license. IBM also claims SCO Group has violated the general public license, or the GNU GPL, under which Linux is distributed.
The Armonk, N.Y., computer giant seeks unspecified monetary damages and an injunction requiring SCO Group to stop violating IBM patents and refrain from misrepresenting its intellectual-property rights.
It also says that a spokesman for SCO wasn't immediately available to comment, I guess they haven't recovered from being bitch-slapped yet. I suppose that this means we'll also have the obligatory conference call tomorrow, or soon after, where Darl will blow some more hot air out of that ass that sits on his neck.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Generally, I would say that linking to a 25 meg file from the front page of Slashdot is unconscionable. But in this case, perhaps it should be seen as an act of patriotism.
Better dump that SCO stock now, lest you lose your shirts.
And finally, a company is selling SCO Check...
I'd be more than happy to sell my own de-SCO-ifier program for a mere $699 per license.
(i am not a lawyer and any advice given here is purely to take the piss out of everything and everyone, i will not be held responsible for anything, even my own actions)
All I Want For Christmas Is My Constitutional Rights
BM is seeking unspecified monetary damages and an injunction stopping SCO from shipping its software
I'm guessing that in the end, this will be a big number, but perhaps IBM will go for a settlement that involves SCO execs, bricks, and deep water.
Seriously, if anything this whole fiasco is probably as much good publicity for IBM as it is bad to SCO. IBM gets to lay on the smack-down, and they end up looking very much like a hero in the eyes of the linux users/developers.
go IBM!!
hehe being a macuser since the days of the Mac512k never thought i'd be so excited to cheer IBM.. haha GO IBM!!
goes the SCO bug.
Hmm, 4 comments and I can't get to Kuro5hin. Mirrors?
Enigma
I just bought a tool for $699 to De-SCO my windows 98 box. I'm not taking any chances.
I recommend you all buy the utility, the website is http://www.caldera.com/
We can only assume that it took IBM this long to prepare the suit because they wanted to ensure a crushing blow to the SCO extortion ring in one quick sweep.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
In a way, I'm glad it's IBM fighting the first big GPL court battle, rather than any of the advocacy organizations, which while strongly motivated and highly expert, are also woefully underfunded and would almost certainly lose in a drawn-out war of attrition.
For once, a corporate behemoth on our side...
I wanted to make money in the computer industry, so I choose to become a computer programmer, however now it looks like all the money to be made from the computer industry is being made by the lawyers.
I noticed none of the K5 links work, did SCO get to them? This is pretty creepy.
This SCO thing is the best troll right after North Koreas nuclear weapon program.
When SCO dies, who will snatch up the assets it has (including if any valid IP)?
Who has more cash floating around than most?
M$... and that could get messy quickly.
Darl McBride: "We can't comment on the action yet. Our attorneys are still reviewing the court filing."
No Mr. McBride, your attorneys are already dead
Hot air? After what IBM's just done, I'd think it'd be more like a little whimper with a facade of teeth.
There goes my chance at being rich .. thanks guys...
But seriously.. did anyone doubt that this day would come? I did buy some SCO stocks, and am going to ride out the loss, in the end I think it'll be better for me.
Worse case... I lost the money I would've spent drinking, no biggie.
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
All Linux distros need to do is place bright yellow sunburst stickers on their packaging claiming to be Guaranteed, 100% free of infringing SCO code, "for your piece of mind".
SCO really can't dispute that claim without offering proof, and once they offer proof, the distro can issue a patch removing the code from the system, assuming that there really is problem code
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
n/t
11*43+456^2
Wow, that's enough to keep SCO's lawyers busy until the money runs out :)
Vacancy for signature. Apply within.
Looks to me that big blue wont have to buy SCO. They will simply be awarded what's left of the company as a settlement. How poetic.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
I guess we are going to find out if they really care about IP rights, that is, IBM's IP rights.Otherwise they are no better than what they have been accusing the Linux community being, IP pirates.
--fatboy
IBM's suit revealed that Novell on June 12 effectively forbade SCO from terminating IBM's AIX license. SCO said it revoked the AIX license on June 16. Novell maintained the right to issue such instructions to SCO under the terms of the Unix sale, the suit said.
Holy shite.... that's just awsome...
"We revoke your right to sel.."
*Bitch-Slap*
"Shut up bitch, we said NO!"
"Engineers do the work of man, Physicists do the work of God"
According to the press reports I've read, there is no mention in IBM's counterclaim that it has the right to sell derivative software created by it. Now, it is just possible that the press reports are not the result of a careful reading of the filing, but I am surprised there is no mention of that and would be even more surprised if that were not in IBM's filing.
Anyone know of an online copy of the filing yet?
That's an absolute riot! A link to SCO's Linux kernel on the frontpage of /.
/me downloads it before they remove it.
That's just too classic.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
....now THAT would be interesting. Anybody have Photoshop handy?
Comments should be informative... but all I can think to write is. BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH. IBM to SCO. -"There can be, Only One."
SCO, you can kiss my ass.
No more Micro$oft bashing from me. Its like bashing at the special olympics.
Once you get the lawsuits flying around left and right you could end up with a hard lesson in the law of unintended consequences. The software industry has enjoyed many things that are unheard of in any other industry, some good/some bad.
Everyone has been waiting for this for quiet sometime. It is not always the gem it is perceived to be though.
>>I personally hope that SCO gets obliterated though =)
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
Pass the popcorn will ya? This is getting good!
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
The "Product"/"Software" terms referred to in the SCO license agreement seems to imply the ENTIRE Linux OS. No mention of Kernel vs apps, tools, etc.
This is the final, released version of their license - its been "reviewed" supposedly. I'm assuming they are placing a flag on the entire pile of code and all resultant executables. Given the vast array of code in there, and their debated small contribution (purposeful or not) in the 4 extensions [mentioned previously], are they just batty?
Something makes me think they are just shoveling money into a room full of lawyers and posting the output in press releases. Their advisors have left the building.
This is laughable. But hey lets avoid redundancy here.
mug
Reports I've seen this morning are that the filing contains several causes:
... in their OS. (I am assuming that those are the patents that IBM is accusing SCO of violating.)
1) SCO is infringing on four of IBM's patents.
2) SCO is interfering with IBM's business by claiming to have terminated IBM's license for AIX.
3) SCO is violating the GPL by distributing GPL'ed software without the GPL.
I hadn't thought about that first point before since I always took it for granted that SCO obtained permission from IBM to use RCU, NUMA,
This brings up an interesting question in my mind.
IBM has clearly intentionally released code under the GPL utilizing those patents. Under the GPL we are free to use and modify that code provided that if we distribute the code we do it under the GPL.
Suppose you write a new operating system designed for some specific purpose and the only code it uses from Linux is the code encapsulating those four IBM patents. The way I figure it, as long as you use the code in-house only or as long as you distribute the code under the GPL, there will be no patent infringement. Is that right?
If I were a CIO or CTO debating the TCO of *nix vs. Win2K3 to a CEO, would IBM vs. SCO be the TKO that stops the CEO from approving A/P to pay my PO for RH's LGX?
;p
FWIW, even if OSS is FAIB, if the DOJ considers *nix IP with a TM, then it basically become's SCO's LIC, meaning our OSS becomes a CSS OS, which would RSTBO.
AIBO going w/ an ASP that manages our OS? BTA, we might end up w/ a BOFH giving us ZA, which WWAD PMS.
AFAIK, INMP if SCO wants to be ITM by enforcing its supposed IPR - *nix IP should be PD or GNU, like BSD just on GP, IYKWIM. I keep asking myself in this situation - WWLD?
Oh, BTW - IITYWIMWYBMAD?
---
sorry, i just *had* to
The Cnet article says:
"IBM's suit revealed that Novell on June 12 effectively forbade SCO from terminating IBM's AIX license. SCO said it revoked the AIX license on June 16. Novell maintained the right to issue such instructions to SCO under the terms of the Unix sale, the suit said."
Am I the only one who takes this to mean that Novell can override actions regarding Unix IP and licensing?
I thought of making a program much like SCO check. It would use my patented method to scour the source and remove any SCO code.
How does it find 'em? That's a trade secret!
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
Finally some decent action outta Big Blue. And coming soon, 1200+ /. comments to keep me busy reading for the rest of the day!
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
I just happened to check, and the domain scopool.com is available. I thought it'd be kewl to put together a "SCO Pool" but, sigh, I honestly don't have enough time available in the near future to give it justice.
If you're going to snag it, PLEASE make sure you have the time/resources to do the project justice. (and don't bother doing it it you don't have the skills, hardware and bandwidth too).
-- CP
God, what a great week.
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
Hey Dale!!!!
I don't think IBM is going to buy your company!
This isn't working out like you wanted, is it?
If I were at IBM, I would have seen to it that we mentioned four patents are being infringed, but SCO will have to agree to our terms to find out what they are.
1. Sue IBM
2. ???????
3. Run for your life!
Considering the fact that Redhat recently filed a lawsuit, it looks like the "Linux Allies" are mobilized and are opening multiple fronts. What is interesting here is IBM's fighting for GPL, which means a team of highly paid attorneys will argue the viability of GPL. If this makes it to court, then GPL will have its test.
On another point, perhaps IBM holds the patent "process of suing other companies for patent violations as a means of revenue." If so, SCO is definitely in violation.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Before we go "Yay, GO IBM!" realize that IBMs patents are potentially as harmful to Open Source Software as they are to SCO. Fortunately, IBM pays a bit more than lip service to open source at this point, so it's not like they necessarily will use their patent repetoire against OSS, but just keep in mind that they *could*.
On the other hand, part of my really is saying:
"FSCK DARL MCBRIDE AND SCO! KICK 'EM WEAR IT COUNTS, IBM!"
My journal has hot
http://investor.news.com/Engine?Account=cnet&PageN ame=QUOTE&Ticker=SCOX
If the theroy holds, that every negative thing that causes SCaldera stock to fall prompts an even MORE bizzare release from SCO to get it back up, I wonder what we'll get by this evening?
SCO claiming that because AT&T once owned Unix that everyone with a phone owes them $700 for a license?
Corporatism != Free Market
It is official; Slashdot now confirms: SCO is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered SCO Group when IBM and SuSE confirmed that SCO is full of shit. Coming on the heels of a recent RedHat lawsuit which plainly states that SCO has been spreading lies, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. SCO is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in karma rankings on Slashdot.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict SCO's future. The hand writing is on the wall: SCO faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for SCO because SCO is dying. Things are looking very bad for SCO. As many of us are already aware, SCO executives continues to dump their shares. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
SCO is sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If SCO is to survive at all it will be among Slashdot trolls. SCO continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, SCO is dead.
Fact: SCO is dying
You have just killed k5. Come on, it's slower than molasses on a cold night in winter at the South Pole without slashdotting, you insensitive clods!
For a legal, SCO Linux kernel (copied from K5):
/usr/src/v er/CSSA-2003-020.0/SRPMS/linux -2.4.13-21S.src.rpm
"cd
mkdir silly_sco
wget ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Ser
rpm2cpio linux-2.4.13-21S.src.rpm > sco.cpio
cpio -i --file sco.cpio
bzip2 -d linux-2.4.13.tar.bz2
tar -xf linux-2.4.13.tar
You'll find the license agreement in linux/COPYING
Compile, install, enjoy."
I'm guessing their site's been slashdotted... here's the original text:
/usr/src/v er/CSSA-2003-020.0/SRPMS/linux -2.4.13-21S.src.rpm
How to use the 2.4 Linux kernel safely and legally. (Diaries)
By Entendre Entendre
Tue Aug 5th, 2003 at 05:43:46 PM EST
And without paying SCO's extortion license fees.
Originally posted as a comment but so much fun I had to give it a little more promotion.
cd
mkdir silly_sco
wget ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Ser
rpm2cpio linux-2.4.13-21S.src.rpm > sco.cpio
cpio -i --file sco.cpio
bzip2 -d linux-2.4.13.tar.bz2
tar -xf linux-2.4.13.tar
You'll find the license agreement in linux/COPYING
Compile, install, enjoy.
If you subscribe to the DowJones Newswires [dowjonesnews.com], then there are a couple other articles regarding this story. There is also a story on Reuters [reuters.com] IBM, in its countersuit filed in federal court in Utah, alleged SCO had breached the general public license for Linux and infringed on IBM patents, according to the court documents. SCO is based in Lindon, Utah. In its 45-page complaint, IBM claims SCO Group's products violate four IBM patents and claims SCO Group does not have the right to revoke IBM's UNIX license. IBM also claims SCO Group has violated the general public license, or the GNU GPL, under which Linux is distributed. The Armonk, N.Y., computer giant seeks unspecified monetary damages and an injunction requiring SCO Group to stop violating IBM patents and refrain from misrepresenting its intellectual property rights.
The fact that Novell specifically, explicitly forbade SCO from revoking the AIX license, and the fact that SCO ignored this (despite knowing that they were contractually obligated to respect Novell's orders on this issue) shows that there was never an expectation that this would lead to a payout. This is all about the FUD. Case closed.
Hello, Slashdotter. You have to ask a question and though there is no proof of SCO's claims, you remain irrevocably inquisitive. Ergo, the answer I give, you may understand, or, there is a chance that you may not. Concordantly, while your question may be very pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also completely irrelevant. Where is the code? My current status is the result of an unbalanced equation inherent in my kernel. I am currently succumbing to the eventuality of having to pay $699, despite my hardest efforts, I've been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of my kernels code. While it remains a burden acidulously avoided, it is not unexpected and sometimes very needed in order for my kernel to function correctly, thus leading me, inexorably, to pay SCO their $699 so that I do not have to deal with the anomoly of SCO's code.
And in other news, SCOX is down 12% today.
It's good to see IBM taking a stand here. They've got the resources to hit SCO on so many fronts that capitulation will become the only option. Think about it - IBM has a huge stake in the growing acceptance of Linux, so has everything to gain by squashing SCO like a bug.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
This is the beginning of the end for SCO. You could argue that the end began when they first made their claims, but that was just a prelude. There's no story here, of course; We go right from ONCE UPON A TIME straight to THE END. But somehow we still get a bunch of fun implied drama.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I want my two dollars!
For those having problems getting to the K5 web pages, here is a copy of the text. Hope they don't mind the re-post.
/usr/src/ e rver/CSSA-2003-020.0/SRPMS/linux -2.4.13-21S.src.rpm
** How to use the 2.4 Linux kernel safely and legally. (Diaries)
By Entendre Entendre
Tue Aug 5th, 2003 at 05:43:46 PM EST
And without paying SCO's extortion license fees.
Originally posted as a comment but so much fun I had to give it a little more promotion.
-----
cd
mkdir silly_sco
wget
ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/S
rpm2cpio linux-2.4.13-21S.src.rpm > sco.cpio
cpio -i --file sco.cpio
bzip2 -d linux-2.4.13.tar.bz2
tar -xf linux-2.4.13.tar
You'll find the license agreement in linux/COPYING
Compile, install, enjoy.
IBM also claims SCO Group has violated the general public license, or the GNU GPL, under which Linux is distributed.
Will this be the first time that the GPL has actually been used as part of a court preceeding? As far as I am aware all companies, who did not orginally comply, have felt that their public image was more important than a challenge of the GPL, and respected the contract of the GPL, even if it did take the FSF or public pressure.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Remembering that really awesome UNIX history map that Eric Levenez has, we could do a new map, the SCO Lawsuit Map.
It would start out at the beginning with the conclusion and subsequent sealing of records from Novell's days of UNIX and their court case. We could then move on, with the slow beginning to the conversion of Caldera Inc into SCOX, and discuss the posturing between SCO and IBM, moving on to SCO's lawsuit against IBM, SCO's unenforceable "deadline", their personal attacks against the likes of Linus Torvalds, discussions on their failure to provide code examples repeatedly, and the like. We can then get into their license extortion, the additional lawsuits, the countersuits, and the like.
I'd offer to do it, but I don't have powerful enough software to create such a map, according to SCO's claims on my OS...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Odd - I'm still getting 191KB/second - Come on, Slashdotters, you can do better than that!
IBM or linux? I wasn't around a few decades ago, but wasn't IBM the Microsoft of the 50s-60s?
I was really hoping to see in this suit, seeing as IBM has access to the source code of SCO's, that there are no code violations anyway, ASIDE from the fact is there were the GPL would wipe that away thanks to their releasing the kernel under GPL after the lawsuit began. It seems like IBM thinks there may be code in the kernel almost, even thought other people seem to be accounting for it (via SGI and the company IBM bought whose name fails me right now).
Does anyone know if IBM is actually questioning or maybe already questioned the presence of the code itself and the licensing issue and how it would therefore be fraud if the code was either not there or GPL'd?
Seems like that might be a good idea to reassure people about linux's purity and the true BS this whole SCO thing is.
Isn't the argument about SCO releasing a Linux distribution including the kernel under GPL a loose-loose situation for the GPL community?
I can see two outcomes:
The latter would make the acceptance of GPL as general purpose license even harder.
Yet Another Debian User
cd /usr/src/ / Server/CSSA-2003-020.0/SRPMS/linux -2.4.13-21S.src.rpm
mkdir silly_sco
wgetftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1
rpm2cpio linux-2.4.13-21S.src.rpm > sco.cpio
cpio -i --file sco.cpio
bzip2 -d linux-2.4.13.tar.bz2
tar -xf linux-2.4.13.tar
You'll find the license agreement in linux/COPYING
Compile, install, enjoy.
fencepost
just a little off
OK, we had LinuxTag suing SCO, then we had Red Hat suing SCO, now IBM is suing SCO. If SCO is so anxious to take on the entire Linux community, then that community should fight back. Let's see how they do against a bunch of lawsuits filed by various developers in countries around the world. SCO can either expend resources to fight all these lawsuits or lose them by default.
So SCO wants to play hardball, do they? Then let the bastards bleed to death by fighting as many suits as the Linux community can throw at them.
Well, actually, they can't.
IBM can't use the patents against the Linux kernel anymore than SCO can -- as IBM points out in its own brief, distribution of the source under the GPL prohibits you from certain legal tactics... like licensing. You are implicitly licensing any IP (copyrights, trade secrets, patents) that you may own that are applicable to the source you distribute. Don't like it? Don't distribute. Also don't use GPL code in a distributed product, since doing so requires distribution of the source.
Of course, one day a patch could come along that IBM doesn't like and it would cease to provide newer kernels including that patch in order to preserve its rights... but that's a battle that would have to be fought when that time comes. Most likely IBM would inform the relevant people of their rights and their intentions, and the code wouldn't be integrated into the kernel. I'm not saying that this is a good thing, or that software patents are a good thing, just pointing out how it would work.
...Because that's about all the cash that will be left!
This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
So the big question; who shorted the stock? What was the price point and when do you plan to cash in? C'mon, fess up. We're all rooting for you to make a killing from SCO's flameout as we get the pleasure of watching Darl's FUD machine go crashing into the sea.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
IBM: Do you hear that, Mr. SCO? That is the sound of inevitability. That is the sound of your death. Goodbye, Mr. SCO.
SCO: Oh shit.
Here is a copy of the link on kuro5hin.org, There ISDN is overloaded :)
*ARTICLE*
How to use the 2.4 Linux kernel safely and legally. (Diaries)
By Entendre Entendre
Tue Aug 5th, 2003 at 05:43:46 PM EST
And without paying SCO's extortion license fees.
Originally posted as a comment but so much fun I had to give it a little more promotion.
cd /usr/src/
mkdir silly_sco
wget ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Serv er/CSSA-2003-020.0/SRPMS/linux -2.4.13-21S.src.rpm
rpm2cpio linux-2.4.13-21S.src.rpm > sco.cpio
cpio -i --file sco.cpio
bzip2 -d linux-2.4.13.tar.bz2
tar -xf linux-2.4.13.tar
You'll find the license agreement in linux/COPYING
Compile, install, enjoy.
In other news SCO's stock plummetted 11.4%.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
who can get an authentic sound-clip of Darl saying "Fuck me in the goat-ass!" Yeah, yeah, I know I said "in"...
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
... maybe a fair warning would have been in order? It's all fun and games until you fry someones box.
..If you see an elephant sleeping, shooting him once with a .22 and trying to charge local villagers for the removal of said elephant (before he's even dead) probally isn't the best way to get ahead in bussiness....
I don't get how SCO can sue the end users for Linux.
If I went to Walmart and was given a free TV, and later Sony realized that Walmart didn't pay for the TV and gave it away for free, would Sony be able to come and demand payment for it from me? No. They would only have issue with Walmart. Walmart would be stuck with the bill.
So if the IBM distributed code to users without a license to do so(and this is a big if), how can the SCO demand a 1000 bucks from the linux users. Wouldn't they only be able to get the money from IBM?
I don't see how they could even think of getting money from the individual users. Is their some pressidant for this?
In a way, SCO has been good for the Linux/Open Source community. We have known for a long time that forces in the industry would try and disuade Linux's use on terms of IP and copyright FUD; Microsoft's Halloween documents are a prime candidate. If this is indeed an attempt by those companies to scuttle Linux, then they have failed. SCO's case and allegations are not only groundless, but -and time will tell- on the realms of illegality. This serve as a notice to those companies that might try to follow in SCO's steps that they will not get away with it; but also, that they will lose whatever customers they had and anger an entire industry.
What is now clear from this episode is that, if anybody thought otherwise, Open Source Software has now reached critical mass; not only will those in the industry strive to protect it, but that unfounded allegation will not stop it.
http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/maficstudiosisbad
kris@maficstudios.com
sales@maficstudios.com
jobs@maficstudios.com
A key aspect in IBM's countersuit is the fact that they are paying to enforce - in the courts - the GPL.
IANAL, but to my knowledge, IBM vs. SCO is the first such case where the legality of the GPL has been tested in the courts.
Should IBM be victorious (actually, 'when' IBM is victorious), it would be a momentous occassion for the GPL - any future litigation involving the GPL would have an established, well-known legal case from which to draw references.
The net outcome of this entire ordeal could be the overall strengthening of open source software w/in the US legal system. If the GPL has withstood court scrutiny, it could act as a 'selling point' for countless corporations, government agencies, et al in consideration of OSS deployment w/in their organizations, as now the unassuredness of the legality of such software would have been resolved.
Stop the insanity. This is getting out of hand, I'm not even sure who is suing who now. WTF? Am I being sued?
"The Internet is a fad." -WB
A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein
then IBM... damnit, now I want to sue SCO too!
I don't care that I have no claim whatsoever, its the buzz! the excitement!
who's with me?!
Could the whole SCO lawsuit just be an elaborate
Pump and Dump? (Pump up the stock and then dump it?)
Maybe if enough folks complained to the Securities
and Exchange Commision (SEC), they would investigate
SCO...
The SCO executives have been selling stock lately...
What claims to patents or infringements can IBM claim over IF SCO owns the rights. Seems to be from reading what I have it's a corporate he said she said.
"We have asked the courts to declare that no violation of intellectual property and trade secrets have occurred," Szulik said.
But if bits and pieces of SCO's license material was used, then a violation has occurred, whether one likes to admit it or not.
"We've been patient, we've listened. But when our customers and the whole open-source community are threatened with innuendo and rumor, it's time to act."
Don't want to play the devil's advocate here, but Redhat seems to have just jumped on the bandwagon. Something similar to the MS case from yonder when the competition all got together against the evil empire. Now the tables have changed. 's/MS/SCO/g'
The action is the most serious attempt so far to seize some of the initiative from SCO, owner of key Unix copyrights, in its legal actions against Linux.
SCO, owner of key Unix copyrights Role reversal... If it would have been Redhat who made claims against SCO with Redhat owning the patents, then everyone would have stood behind SCO. What many will overlook is what is already LAW, which is SCO, owner of key Unix copyrights
Personally I think this was done by SCO solely to make money off of licensing, and the bottom line is, if they own the copyrights to some of the core material, then maybe it's time for someone to spin off a new OS chuck SCO's stuff, and let them self-destruct on their own.
MoFscker
Yep. The smack is layeth down. The jig is up. Whatever cliche' you want to use. It's over. No more pumping the stock for you Darl(ing).
Well... I hope it is. IBM MUST pursue this to the death or else these stupid greedy bastards will go bother someone else and get an injunction.
Did you see those patent infringements though? Wow.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
It is i++ guys, it is every where. We are doomed
With everyone busily making sure they're covered with a nice new copy of the GPL from SCO it's going to amount to a DDoS attack on their ftp server.
This battle appears to play out like some kind of political battle between the US and some piddly island nation...
...wait, what the hell is Piddly Island Nation?"
US: "You look so defenseless...here, take this crate of pistols to defend yourselves with in case of attacks by opposing islands. In return, you can export to us some of your coffee beans."
PIN: "Thank you. You've been so kind."
[ Two weeks later, after receiving said shipment of arms]
PIN: "We are all powerful now. Ha ha ha. With our vast amounts of deadly weaponry, we will conquer the United States!"
[ PIN army stands on beach & fires bullets across sea in general direction of US ]
US: "Oh no. Ouch. Stop that. Please."
PIN: "Ha ha! We got you now! Surrender and pay us billions of dollars, or we will destroy you!"
US: "Uh...yea. Surrender. Give us a sec to plan the surrender..."
[ Two hours pass ]
CNN News Correspondent: "This just in: United States bombers were deployed two hours ago, droping bombs on and destroying the The Piddly Island Nation
Co-Anchor: "No clue. Isn't it funny that there are all these countries in the world that you never even knew existed until they're destroyed by the US?"
Isn't that what diff(1) is for?
This sig no verb.
...better get a move on. The door is open and the prospects that the stock will close below $10USD this afternoon are quite good.
Any predictions on what SCOs market cap will be at days end?
I'm betting ~105MUSD.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Actually, I'm surprised that IBM made a counter suite so quickly. The more Darl spouts off about the case and pursues new extortion tactics the weaker his suite becomes. The only conclusion that I can draw is that either that IBM thinks that they can finish of SCO right away, or they fear that the negative publicly has gotten so out of hand that it's hurting their products.
A glance @ SCO's site shows that their SCO Forum is coming up soon in Las Vegas. I think that everyone in the area who is a /.er or Linux user should descend on SCO in Las Vegas and hold a massive protest. I bet that would really generate some headlines, and show that we Linux users are just geeks that SCO can push over because they're "important corporate types"!
IBM argues in the counterclaims that SCO is prohibited from treating any code it distributed under the GPL as proprietary, and that its current plan to require payment from Linux users isn't legal.
Why, oh why, don't they seek an injunction against SCO contacting organizations and demanding royalties while this is pending? This is a no-brainer. They have alot more than they need!
I bet he's very "disappointed" that IBM countersued.
Heh.
Could IBM buy Novell next? That would could really put SCOs nickers in a know.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"Alas, poor SCO, I knew him well..."
:)
In other news...office equipment & computer hardware sale at SCO - anyone need some used stuff?
Loose - douchebag skater's pants, Goase.cx guy's ass.
SCO's defense has been that it must actively and not inadvertently release proprietary code as open-source software. "It requires them to take the position they didn't know what they were selling, which depending on your point of view is a hard argument to make. You would tend to think you'd know what you're selling," Osterman said.
Ya Think?
I'm sorry your honour, I thought I was selling the pixie stick dust, not rat poision.
Oh, yeah, I gotta ask: "Was I the only one who said 'Woooohooo' out loud?".
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
"Detroit - The directors, employees, and stockholders of the Ford Motor Company were arrested today by the FBI for RICO criminal conspiracy to commit felony. Their products have been used in thousands of bank robberies, kidnappings, and other heinous crimes for over 70 years. This history of felonious intent is clear from the long record of criminal praise and adulation for Ford products. No less than the murderous Bonnie and Clyde publicly praised Ford products in the 1930s for their power, speed, and reliability in fleeing the police, and the use of Ford products in criminal activities continue to this day."
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
McBride: What happen?
Ballmer: Somebody set up us the bitchslap.
Ballmer: We get lawsuit.
McBride: What!
McBride: Main screen turn on.
McBride: It's You!!
BigBlue: How are you gentlemen!!
BigBlue: All your rights are belong to us.
BigBlue: You are on the way to bankruptcy.
McBride: What you say!!
BigBlue: You have no chance to survive make your time.
BigBlue: Ha Ha Ha Ha
McBride: Take off every preferred share.
Ballmer: You know what you doing.
McBride: Move shares.
McBride: For great profit.
There does seem to be a certain naive attitude that IBM are doing everybody a favour here. In the Bib Blue Boardroom, it's probably being viewed as a smart way of getting back in the ring with M$ and Sun
But I wore the juice
Is that not pretty close to admitting guilt?
/usr/src /dev/random > /dev/dsp
If you contend that SCO has no claims, why would you jump through any hoops (no matter how trivial) to make yourself legitimate.
Here is how to avoid paying my license:
cd
cat
rm `which startx`
vi emacs.txt
emacs vi.txt
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
In the words of Peter Puppy "Better 'n Pro Wrestling!"
And folks think IT is dull . . .
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
By the way SCO's stock is looking i wouldn't be surprise that, in true N.Korean fashion, SCO claims tomorrow to posses Nuclear Weapons, and demand one to one talks will the capitalist-scum IBM. Either that, or something about a mighty Jihad, Saurons dark forces, the mother of all court battles, the shadows, etc...
Anything to get those stocks back up so the execs can off load whatever shares they hadn't yet sold.
"In a way, I'm glad it's IBM fighting the first big GPL court battle"
IBM is an elephant on the battlefield of technology. It's great when the elephant is out trampling on the opposition. The problem is that they sometimes turn around and run back to stomp the other side, too. So today they're OSS heros, but tomorrow the elephant might be running the other direction.
Everyone seems to have a solution to avoid being sued by them.
The reality is they have presented no evidence to backup their claims.
We need to calm down, and simply wait for them to give it.
Otherwise we feed their FUD machine.
while true that "one day" that could happen that someone will write feature that infringes an IBM patent that they don't want open source, IBM has also openly stated their goal to replace AIX with Linux, this to me means anything that AIX has Linux will get shortly, and then it will be their main platform so all of their patents will go directly there.
Did anybody ever see that old Quentin Tarantino movie "True Romance", where it ends with like five guys in a room, all pointing guns at each other and engaging in a violent shootout where they pretty much all die? (Hell, I suppose that could describe pretty much any Tarantino movie.) Let's hope that Red Hat doesn't end up being Mr. Orange.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Die SCO, Die!
For those who didn't know that's German for The Sco, The!
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
concerning a mult-front war.
If everyone is their enemy they will lose whether they win a battle or not.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
I don't know how many of you people pay attention to affairs over at k5, but recently there have been a lot of speed problems. And now they've been linked on the front page. I'm sure you all can connect the dots.
Blegh.
Fro, this article.
IBM's claim that SCO violated the GPL is the sixth of 10 counterclaims, the last four of which address patent infringement by SCO with regard to IBM's Linux products.
In the first counterclaim, IBM alleged that SCO breached contract with the "Amendment X," a modification of the original Unix contract IBM signed with AT&T in 1985. Amendment X grants IBM "irrevocable" and "perpetual" rights to Unix. By filing a suit, IBM's 45-page suit says, SCO has failed to honor the amendment made in 1996.
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Stock is down 11.25% on the day as I type this. Probably just reactionary, but still...
Too bad, so sad.
Why is it K5 gets the credit for posting the link to SCO's linux source? I already did it here on slashdot back in July, and I am sure someone else probably has done it before me even. Sure, the K5 poster put up a short list of instructions, so I guess that'll help some people out who cant do their own research or know it already. Oh well.
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
printf("You're clean!\n");
return 0;
}
Could some savvy lawyers file a class action suit
against SCO because of damages done to
end users due to SCO's bogus claims?
Damages such as lost business due to FUD and
whatever else might apply?
It's worth noting that IBM specifically named OpenServer and UnixWare for the patent infringement item, both proprietary apps never released under the GPL.
In any case, IBM releasing GPL'd code that uses its patents doesn't give away its patent rights. But if you're using the code yourself you're fine; the use you describe is GPL-compliant.
Microsoft's new logo is: "Do More with Less". I think I'll start a Linux distribution called "Less Linux".
...in Europe, a SCO lawyer has admitted that SCO's copyright claims have little substance. If you've missed it, read my writeup and partial translation here.
during this whole thing, I always envisioned SCO as a kid with a stick poking an anthill. A press release, and the /. crowd (me included) gets all worked up. We settle down, out comes the idiot-stick again. Well, IBM just released... Them! [imdb.com]
This officially balances out my anger at IBM for fucking up OS/2.
a gang of monkeys in a shit-throwing fight.
SCO's licence only refers to running Linux. Good thing I run GNU/Linux.
Doesn't have to mean that the patents apply to LINUX pieces. SCO has plenty of proprietary code in their product offerings.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
There seems to be an interesting parallel between SCOs activities and common activities that cause criminals to ultimately get caught.
Had they simply decided to just sue IBM, chances are somewhat good that IBM would have settled the lawsuit, SCO would have made some money through extortion and while we wouldn't have been happy about it, much of the rest of the world would have shrugged it off and continued business as usual.
Instead, they start with IBM, then begin threatening people, and ultimately attempt to extort money out of anyone who has ever looked at a device running Linux.
It's reminiscent of the kid who starts out stealing candy from the corner store and gets away with it... later graduates to bigger things until he's ultimately being chased down a freeway in truck he stole from a police officer's driveway.
They got too cocky and too greedy for reasonable people to put up with. It will be nice if they go down hard.
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God
OK, troll, I'll bite.
Either a) SCO proves its case and comes out "owning" linux, or b) IBM proves its case and comes out "owning" the new and improved patent-encumbered linux.
Erhm. NO.
Either a) SCO proves its case and the NUMA et al. code gets removed from the kernel, or b) IBM proves its case and everything is sweetness and light.
Linus crossed it when he stole SCO's valuable proprietary code.
Sweet Jebus, if you're gonna troll, at least be consistant!. If it was Linus that "stole" SCO's code, why is SCO suing IBM and not Linus?
http://lamlaw.com/
My understanding is that IBM's Linux distribution policy is specfically crafted to make sure IBM doesn't lose the right to enforce it's patents, at least not on code they don't explicitly release.
Specifically, IBM doesn't actually distribute Linux, it partners with Suse and RedHat who do that for them. Sure they produce patches, but that's all you'll get from them, not the whole kernel.
So IBM has decided to give up the right to enforce the patent on, for example, RCU. They distributed the RCU patches as GPL. But if, for example, RedHat contributes some code to the kernel that contains IBM patented techniques, IBM can still enforce those patents because it never distributes non-IBM code.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
And finally, a company is selling SCO Check, a tool to de-SCOify your Linux system, if SCO ever presents any evidence whatsoever of infringing code in Linux.
Uh... patch and diff?
Jeez, talk about your Landshark Rush! This is going to get horribly violent ... and I like it! Woo-hoo!
Boot to the head! Na na
Boot to the head! Na na
Boot to the head! Na na
Boot to the head! Na na...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
You have to remember IBM does not distribute a version of Linux, IBM leaves it to some of it partners SUSE and Red Hat I think.....
So it is probably still possible for them to come in with a patent suit --- IANAL
For those too lazy to type it for themselves...
/usr/bin/false
Go ahead, mark this redundant. But I have to say it.
The amount of money going into lawyers' pockets over this could *pay* open-source developers for a year. This is just sick.
If they know that this kernel has their so-called trade secrets in there, why the hell are they still distributing it on their own FTP site?
Doesn't the fact that they're still distributing the kernel under the GPL, even after all this lawsuit nonsense, nullify all of their claims?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Are we forgetting that the jurisdiction for this court is Utah? Do not count on any sensible rulings. I will be suprised if the ghost of Joseph Smith does not get in on the action. Maybe we will be able to watch the proceedings using Ghostscript. I highly dought any of this nonsense is ever going to make it to court. Watch for a SCO halt on the NYSE in the next few days, I have the feeling the SEC is getting the message. Either that or there will be an under the table deal. I hope our favorite SCO exec gets his assets frozen!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Ok, so SCO says IBM cannot distribute AIX, but they do so anyhow. Linux tells SCO that we either distribute under the GPL or not at all. Then IBM tells SCO that SCO cannot distribute Unixware, etc... Pretty soon software as we know it will become undistributable. The RIAA would love this tactic.
Dodge This!
----
I write ACs from work
Now turn your head and cough....I promise this won't hurt...much
Well that would have worked if slashdot didn't take out the slashes....d'oh!
I don't see why IBM is seen as the saviour by so many people here. They're actually suing SCO on patent infringement claims...you know SOFTWARE PATENTS, yes, the nasty ones.
While SCOs claims, being unspecified and bloated in nature, are plain smelly FUD, the action IBM is taking is much more dangerous. Everybody rejoices seeing SCO wasted by "the big guns" from IBM, but beware the awakening when the patent infringement guns point in the face of FS.
Lets see who's laughing in 6 months.
But they need to have some sort of pretext for doing so, and they're already SCO licensees. There may be no legal way for Microsoft to give SCO more money without getting a serious examination by the SEC.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Surely you can't be serious? ....
I am serious, and don't call me Shirley!
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
It's too soon to tell for sure, but this is starting to look like a classic pump-and-dump scenario. The stock has gone up by a factor of 15 in the last year, yet there's no revenue behind that movement.
If SCO's claims prove false, and the stock tanks again, it starts to look like a securities-law violation.
Ok, since we supposedly have to pay licensing fees for embedded Linux as well, and we can only distribute the "SCO Product" in binary form... if I own an embedded Linux device using some obscure processor, and no one provides a binary kernel, how do I legally get my binary kernel? Is SCO going to compile my kernel with whatever options I need and give it to me? If not, how can this work?
LordBodak's journal.
It was already slow as a three-legged turtle with just us regulars trying to post and vote. A direct link in Slashdot front page will surely keep it down at least until it (the comment) scrolls away...
This is not investment advice.
I finally found out why there are no shares of SCOX to short. As most everyone knows, shorting is the process where you sell a stock with the intent to buy it back later at a cheaper price. In other words, it is the opposite of buying a stock. Therefore, if the stock goes up in price, you are losing money; if it goes down you are making money... many /.'ers figure that SCOX will fall due to a variety of opinions.
In order to short a stock, there has to be some supply of the stock somewhere somewhere that can be sold... this supply of stock normally comes from stock used as collateral on a margin... somewhere, someone is borrowing money to buy more stock than they have money for, and using stock as collateral.
The problem being is that SCOX stock has climbed too quickly too fast and was once very recently a penny stock... thus brokers are unwilling to take SCOX as collateral... bingo, no SCOX stock available to short!
Just thought /.'ers would find that interesting.
Remember, this is not investment advice.
SCO is forced to pay a small royalty for patent infringement. Juge laughs at IBM for trying to argue SCO gave away their code through their Linux distro when IBM and others put the code in the distro, NOT SCO>
Someone please ask the question "How much in licensing are you expecting to make from the German market, say over the next two quarters"
Belief is the currency of delusion.
If SCO found code that they beleived belonged to them and they did not want share it why are they sueing. Why not contact Linus and/or other maintainers and have the code removed. It's unlikely that the code could not replaced with GPLed code. Also, there must be logs as to who submitted the code, why haven't those logs been subpoenaed. Obviously, they beleive they can make more money from the lawsuit then communicating with those who maintain the linux source
IBM seeking to charge $699 for the use of any Linux systems, which include proprietary IBM-acquired Intellectual Property.
_
The only ones that win here are, of course, the lawyers. And perhaps the Linux-users.
_________________________________________________
I crochet because I'm lonely; I'm lonely because I crochet.
What is the SCO Intellectual Property (IP) License for Linux?
Many customers are concerned about using Linux since they have become aware of the allegations that Linux is an unauthorized derivative work of the UNIX(R) operating system. These customers unknowingly received unauthorized copies of SCO intellectual property and many are running critical business applications on Linux. Customers have come to SCO asking what they can do to respect and help protect the rights of the SCO intellectual property in Linux. SCO has created the Intellectual Property License for Linux in response to these customer needs. Customers who are running Linux distributions on a client, a server or an embedded system can obtain a license from SCO to use the SCO IP in binary form. This license is sufficient for the end user to continue to run its operation uninterrupted.
Does everyone who uses Linux need a SCO UNIX IP License for Linux?
End users running Linux 2.4 or later versions for commercial purposes need a SCO IP license.
and my personal fav:
I have Linux servers deployed in my organization. What options do I have besides purchasing a SCO IP license?
There are 3 options for you to evaluate:
You have the option to do nothing, adopt a "wait and see" attitude, and hope that SCO is not serious about enforcing its intellectual property rights in the end user community.
You can replace all servers, desktop and embedded uses of Linux.
You can obtain a license from SCO to use SCO IP in binary form in Linux distributions
Gawd, I hope I didn't just date myself too much...
So in summary, SCO wants us to pay to use software they claim uses stuff they own but won't tell us what it is so we can stop using it and the rights to which they gave away but claim they can take back because they didn't know what they were giving away when they gave it.
Seems reasonable enough to me.
Seems like Like SCO's System V Code is alot like Bush's WMD, a bunch of bull shit.
Are they talking about the kernel option to run system v binaries, because sco didn't write that. I thought that it was just "emulating" system v based off the tech docs given to linux kernel developers to write the support. Hardly IP.
-makoffee
This is interesting. I thought I remembered seeing this in a /. post a few days ago so I checked. /. has a post about the grounds for IBM's patent infringement 2 days ago. But the moderator only had it scored 1 so most slashdoters did not pay attention to it. That should have been scored 4 or 5, imho.
2 2-2-Amn dComplaint_Story01.html
"SCO might have to license Unix from IBM (Score:1, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 06, @08:53AM (#6624764)"
"Here is an interesting quote from an attorney [mozillaquest.com] quote from an attorney that could mean trouble for SCO. "If IBM owns patents that cover the functions served by the disputed code, then IBM is in the driver's seat. It is relatively easy to code around copyrighted software. Patent protection is much more of a challenge. In that case, SCO might have a hard time selling UNIX without a license from IBM.""
The story there is "Part II: Tom Carey and Mike Angelo Discuss SCO's Amended IBM Lawsuit Complaint and Unix License Revocation"
"By Mike Angelo -- 5 August 2003"
http://mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-
The reason for IBM to only counter sue with four patents is really simple. 1:1 for the patents and the infinging code. "I'll give a free liceance to use our patent and you give me the rights to my software. If not then let lets see here what else do I have in my little majic bag to smack you with"
Ahh.. The mind what a wonderful trap!
Please do your part and download the kernel source rpm from SCO ftp linked in the article.
:wq
It's nice to see Sco getting it's ass handed to it, but the patent move is so counterproductive. It goes against everything that Linux stands for. It may be the lesser of two evils, but lets not forget that it's still an evil. And once IBM starts attachking, who knows when they'll stop?
I'm getting 98k/s. heh...
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
I'm starting to find more and more comparisons between McBride and the Iraqi Information Minister.
"There are no IBM patents in SCO. Never!"
"We have them surrounded in their servers!"
"Let the IBM infidels bask in their illusion!"
"We will own them all...most of them!"
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
Method of navigating among program menus using a graphical menu tree
Is it just me or am I wrong in stating that the license is fallacious because they keep referring to the "linux operating system". Last I checked, Linux was a kernel surrounded by GNU tools to make a complete operating system. Would that make the license itself a potential legal target for the FSF? RMS, are you listening?
Why did you /. K5? Their server has already been experiencing severe problems in the last few days. This is the last thing they'd have wanted. If its a random website, the /. editors' claim that it is too much of a hassle to ask if it is OK to reproduce the article is acceptable, kinda. But K5? Most of whom are /.ers? In fact, the article specifically said that verbatim reproduction is OK. This totally sucks.
I already have that program for free... it's called grep
/usr/src/linux
cd
grep -n "SCO" *
A better option would be to buy PUTS,
but it looks like SCO has no options
being traded....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Is it illegal to buy short on a stock that you know is going to be hurt by your own upcoming announcement?
For example, if I own a company that can produce top quality CPU's at a fraction of the price of Intel's, would it be illegal to buy short options on Intel just before announcing my company's capabilities? (Assuming, of course, that I think my announcement will make a hooey of a difference to Intel stock.)
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
First, SCO's stock fell 12% today! Yay! Lets ride them into an early grave!
Second, I like this part:
"IBM's suit revealed that Novell on June 12 effectively forbade SCO from terminating IBM's AIX license. SCO said it revoked the AIX license on June 16. Novell maintained the right to issue such instructions to SCO under the terms of the Unix sale, the suit said."
So it seems like SCO is all of a sudden in a lot of sh*t, now that IBM, Red Hat, SuSE and Novel are all turning their guns toward them.
Free speech is getting expensive...
mod this guy up, the link was good.
Stop posting this shit. I'm note getting any work done!
When they're going to turn this into a reality TV show? The Real Cyberspace
Maybe you read the article and maybe you just didn't understand that IBM is Claiming infringment on unixware. Why do I even waste my breath. [snip] The infringing SCO software, IBM said, is its UnixWare and OpenServer operating systems, its SCO Manager remote administration tool and its Reliant HA package, which enables one computer in a cluster take over if another fails. [/snip]
The truth suffers more from convictions than from lies.
Microsoft payed SCO to license something, what was it? Does IBM's lawsuit effect this license? If SCO can't ship products if IBM wins their lawsuit, what products will Microsoft be prevented from shipping?
I would opt for a mandatory job for Darl as IBM's Tux mascot who hands out Linux flyers on the street. With a big sign on his back that says "Kick Me, I'm Darl McBride".
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
If you had RTFA you would ave known it is inside the Unixware OS that they are claiming Patent infringements. Nothing to do with GPL
Help fight continental drift.
My read on this is that IBM is claiming that SCO Unix, *NOT* Linux, infringes on its (IBM's) patents.
My recollection is that AIX grew from SVR3. Basically, they added the enhancements they wanted themselves, rather than waiting for AT&T to finish R4. Given this, it's quite possible that there are any number of whiz-bangs that IBM may have tucked into AIX and quitely applied for patents and/or copyrights on. If that be the case, it's conceivable that IBM has some heavy ordnance to lob not only at SCO, but Sun, HP, Redmond, the Linux community, BSD, Apple or any number of other entities...if they're as stupid as McBride and go out of their way to piss 'em off!
"IBM Lawyers rock" in big green letters.
Do these patents effect anything that SCO licensed to Microsoft? If IBM wins, preventing SCO from shipping products, what products will Microsoft be prevented from shipping? Will Microsoft have to license patents from IBM?
This could get really, really interesting.
I don't know about you but I'm getting that Christmas morning feeling. This lawsuit is like Santa coming down the chimney and leaving me some pricey tech gear. All this corporate crap from SCO has left me feeling down. It is so refreshing to see that justice may actually occur!
import sys
if sys.platform[:3] == "win": print "Your system is unstable. Please reboot."
You may download and use this program for the small fee of 5 Danish Kroner. Thank you.
Why is it K5 gets the credit for posting the link to SCO's linux source? I already did it here on slashdot back in July
You should have patented the idea.
There was a mysql case about a year ago in which the GPL was a part of the pleadings. That case was settled out of court before it got very far, but based on reports of preliminary hearings the judge in the case seemed to think it was enforceable.
See this earlier Slashdot story for details on the lawsuit, though I can't find any reference right now to reports of the judge's attitude toward the GPL, but I remember having read of them somewhere. Does that make me like Darl and his super-secert code? I hope not!
SCO be DOO
The MySQL case from a year or two ago involved a GPL license. The license wasn't a legal issue -- everybody in the case treated it as if it's applicability was undisputed.
One interesting result was that, while the defendants in the case had violated the license for a period of time, once they had complied, the judge felt that no further penalty was necessary to cover the period of time they were out of compliance nor did he think that there was any obstacle to them reasserting the right to distribute once they were in compliance.
Now, if I could only remember the name of the case.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I propose that the "SCO" brand name be dutifully amended to "Godwins Law". http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GodwinsLaw All the bad Karma/Mojo of the 1940's has finally been reinvented in the 2000's as corporate lust and greed... -- Terra
Oh come on.
Do you really think that Microsoft, with their iron-fist, secret licenses to PC manufacturers and the masters of business ass-pounding that they are, would really not leave themselves a clause to pump in more money as needed? Something like a quarterly / annual update fee?
Even if they didn't, they could always say that it was a "secret" part of the contract that couldn't be revealed to anyone.
I'm getting 240-250KB/s, not exactly slashdotted. It might be costing them some $$ for the bandwidth though.
I had no problem getting some shares to short today.
I d'loaded it till it got to 99% done and stopped the transfer. On purpose.
Does that mean I'm going to hell?
"IBM is seeking unspecified monetary damages and an injunction to stop SCO from shipping its software."
Tranlated....
Your so stupid we won't buy you out - we'll just take 0WN you.
Ave Molech Setting
Although I keep my fingers crossed that McBride ends up begging for change in the subway, it makes me a little nervous that companies with large patent portfolios possess the latent threat of suing into the stone age anyone who bothers them. What happens when a company we like decides to sue IBM? We'll probably see the same outcome. Correction: begging for change on a Baghdad street corner.
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
SCO shares down 10%, They should be losing the other 90% shortly.
It might be interesting to see what Darl is doing a year from now. I just hope it's jailtime.
At least sex isn't patented.
Most variations, anyway.
Of EXTREME interest is the "IBM is seeking ... an injunction requiring SCO to refrain from misrepresenting its rights, and to cease further infringement of IBM's patents." part. An injunction would shut down SCO's sales of any of the identified infringing software.
Well, if IBM sells hardware equiped with Linux then they ARE distributing it, aren't they? Remember, Red Hat and Suse don't write most of the code in Linux either, but they certainly distribute it.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Interesting "new" news ...
karma : former act as leading to inevitable results
YOU ARE MAASSSIVE FIAL!
Slashdotted. Could anyone make mirror?
And IBM counter-counter-counter-sues SCO.
And SCO counter-counter-counter-counter-sues IBM.
Ad infinitum, etc., and so on... Please, somebody hit alt-break.
This is really getting childish. In fact, comparing it to childishness is a gross insult to childhood everywhere.
What's next? Accusing each other of having cooties, and being in love with that smelly kid with chronic nasal drip?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I'm serious about this. After IBM & Red Hat finish these pathetic twits off in court, their stock will be probably no more than 10 cents per share. The open source community needs to buy them (hell, everybody throw in a dollar) and then throw open their "intellectual property" completely free to the world. While we're at it, let's publicly abandon the Unix trademark (which is likely unenforcable, anyway).
Their market cap before this was $25M. I suspect it'll be 1/10 that after this is done. It's not much money spread among all of us.
Michael
Do you have ESP?
From Internet News:
"On the day that IBM (Quote, Company Info) and SCO Group (Quote, Company Info) escalated their ongoing legal battle of misappropriated source code, SCO Group received some surprising backing of its claims that the 2.4 version of the Linux kernel contains code copied from SCO's Unix System V kernel.
"Our review of source code and documents appears supportive of SCO claims, though we are not legal experts and IP matters are not always transparent," Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Brian Skiba said in a research note Thursday after visiting SCO's headquarters in Lindon, Utah, Wednesday.
"A direct and near-exact duplicate of source code appears between the Linux 2.4 kernel and Unix System V kernel in routines shown to us."
Skiba agreed to a non-disclosure agreement in order to view SCO's evidence. He noted that he does not own SCO stock, nor does Deutsche Bank have a banking relationship with SCO, though he did say that Deutsche Bank's asset management firm may own some SCO stock.
The report comes on the same day that IBM filed its own counterclaims lawsuit in a Utah court against SCO.
Skiba also pointed out that none of the allegedly copied code shown to him was contributed by IBM.
"They said it was from another hardware vendor, but they didn't say who," Skiba told internetnews.com. "I think it's clear that they didn't mean HP (Quote, Company Info) or Sun (Quote, Company Info)."
He added, "We didn't discuss it, but I didn't get the feeling that the issues with IBM were related to literal copying. I think the issue with IBM is predominantly around derivative work."
Can an enterprising coder out there come up with a new version of XBill only make it XDarl? That way in 20 years when our kids are running Redhat 50.0 on IBM hardware we can explain why XDarl exists and who Darl was.
Does the fact that Adequacy survived much worse SlashDottings than this make anyone else shake his head in grief and despair?
Yours in Christ,
eSolutions
I admit I haven't investigated this properly...but hey this is slashdot! :-)
I don't expect IBM is using their patents against the Linux kernel. they are using it against SCO's Unixware. SCO property as everyone has been contesting is NOT in Linux, thus GPL'd. So a claim against SCO's unix is not in any way a claim against Linux or GPL software. right?
OK off my soap box. Don't you hate people who don't put their sig in a separate paragraph?
Now SCO wants to sue Linux users. RedHat sues SCO. SCO sues IBM. IBM sues SCO. Somewhere underway Novell is included...
:)
So - when will Microsoft kick in and sue someone involved - and if so, whom?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
This is awesome news! Not only from the fact that IBM is getting in on the action with a countersuit but every time someone takes a shot back at SCO you know SCO comes out with some bizarre claim/lawsuit to trump it! When Redhat sued SCO decided to start selling licenses for everybody who used linux, when SuSE joined in they went after the US government!!! Now that IBM is countersuing them just try to imagine what we're going to see from SCO in the next couple days. Sue the Catholic curch? Sue everybody who is running linux in a RIAA style attack? I mean I can't even imagine what they'll do.
Okay here's my idea, get a press pass and get some film from the press conference, add a laugh track and we'll have a sitcom good enough to fund linux development for the next 10 years!
I stole this Sig
Right you are... I thought IBM distributed the Linux for zSeries themselves, but it's actually a SuSE distro. And IBM doesn't deliver it either -- quoting from the Linux for the IBM eServer zSeries page:
:)
"SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for S/390(R) (delivered directly from SuSE Linux AG)"
This might actually give them legal recourse if someone submitted something that was distributed before they noticed it. A very shrewd legal decision on IBM's part. It also nicely invalidates pretty much everything I said in my previous post regarding this
As Mr. Perens says, software patents are eeeeevil!
Rusty has enough trouble keeping his servers from melting down under normal load. Now it's been /.'ed! I can feel the warmth of the melting systems from here.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
IBM can't use the patents against the Linux kernel anymore than SCO can
;) I said open source software.
Who said anything about the Linux kernel? Go back and read what I wrote. Go ahead, I'll wait.
One of the patents they are saying SCO violated, for instance, uses a graphical tree representation of a menu system. That means that any OSS that implements a graphical tree menu is in violation of that patent, and IBM can sue, if it so chooses.
My journal has hot
Considering SCO has risen from 1 point to near 15 points in less then 6 months, outperforming the rest of the market by a large percent, a drop of 11% in one day isn't all that signifigant.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I hope at least one of them sticks till the end. Someone must make an example out of SCO. I pity honest people who are still employed there.
Let's say SCO will crowl to IBM and beg for forgiveness. Even if IBM decides to settle out of court (for whatever reason, can't think of one... mercy maybe?) after the settlement in favour of IBM, RedHat's position will be really strong, and they will likely go to court -- to get cash if nothing else. And RedHat *are* entitled to a lot of cash in this. Didn't Gardner group recommend that enterprises delay Linux deployments? I smell financial loss, and possibly a big one.
Then at the same time Novell rumor about complete change of direction towards Linux comes on the very same day as IBM files suit.
I passed the Turing test.
Maybe Mr. Bush should also. But then anyone who thinks that the U.S. and Japan have had peaceful relations for the past 150 years must be a history expert already.
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/
The stock prices falling are probably the SCO execs selling their shares (a la "get the hell of Dodge"). At least, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
It is popularly believed that SCO's strategy is to cause IBM so much trouble that they would rather buy SCO than fight them.
Another popular opinion is that IBM can continue this battle until SCO runs out of money and thereby winning this case.
Lets say that SCO's claims actually were worth 3 billion, and that IBM can delay a verdict in this case for 5 years and that SCO only has money to process this for 3 years.
Well, if I had as much money as, lets say Microsoft, I'd buy SCO 2 years from now and wrap things up and cash in $3 billion 3 years later.
They wouldn't even have to wait 3 more years. If it is inevitable that SCO will win, given enough time, and it has the money to win. Then SCO is worth $3 billion to IBM. So Microsoft (or Walmart) can buy SCO, tell IBM that they will litigate until they win, however long it takes, and offer IBM to buy SCO for $2.9 billion.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
Generally, I would say that linking to a 25 meg file from the front page of Slashdot is unconscionable. But in this case, perhaps it should be seen as an act of patriotism.
I'm still getting 172.9KB/sec on it, which is astounding. How big of a pipe do they have there?
Do you have ESP?
I just downloaded it at >=461KB/s through my university's pipe. It looks like they've got plenty of bandwidth.
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
Hell.. i'm not American, but I can take part in a little patriotism on this occasion :)
:(
103k/sec.. obviously not given their FTP servers enough of a pasting yet then!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
I don't know, but I've gotta install this on about 25 machines. Looks like I'll have to download it 25 times times.
SCO sues you!
Then you sue them!
Then they counter sue!
Then you counter thier counter suit!
Then you point your finger and say "DORK!"
Linux: Helping nerds look smarter since the late 90s.
Did trading get suspended, was everyone trading in SCO stock to shell-shocked to hit the "sell" button, or what?
No. I'm sorry. Nothing is better than watching Battlebots.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I expect I'll get modded down for this. It seems that IBM is relying quite a bit on the GPL for their defense and counter-suit against SCO. There seems little doubt that SCO are trying hard to kill Linux, and their motivation is obviously suspect.
/. and elsewhere for his views and his methods. It has often seemed that people believe that he is doing this out of a personal need. That may be true, or it may not. I can't tell as I have never met the man and I have no reasonable basis to make a judgment one way or the other.
I have to wonder how Richard Stallman is reacting to these latest events. Egan Moglen also. It's starting to look like the FSF (who created the GPL, as I understand it) may be a savior for Linux.
Over the years I have watched RMS being reviled in
However, at this point, it does seem that his work is paying huge dividends in protecting Linux as well as GNU. Of course, his detractors aren't very likely to admit that this is the case and may point out that his aim wasn't to protect Linux.
That doesn't matter. RMS and the FSF were working to ensure that free software was free from exactly the sort of problem that SCO has created. They have been diligent to the extreme about licensing and this may may well be the ONLY reason that Linux will not be encumbered with a $1399 tax paid to SCO. The fact that IBM is relying heavily on the GPL in their defense speaks volumes about their work, and about the need for to protect open source from attacks of this sort in the future. I suspect that most of us are a lot more familiar with the GPL than we were six months ago, and we are all taking a lot more interest in ensuring that the open source code we write is protected appropriately.
Egan Moglen, RMS, everyone at the FSF, thank you. A donation will be on its way today.
Context is everything, people.
:
Here is the full quote, as reported by CNN
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH (R-TX), PRESIDENT-ELECT: I told all four that there were going to be some times where we don't agree with each other. But that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
See, Bush is a good-natured guy and likes to joke around by all acounts. Clearly, he was kidding when he said he'll disagree with some members of his cabinet. Context, once again, is everything. Congratulations for falling prety to radical left-wing idiots frothing at the mouth thinking that Bush wants to be dictator and this is the PROOF!
Although I realize that IBM may sue me for copyright infringement, I thought I would share with you their latest piece of code. Perhaps the OSS community could incorporate some of this code in their future dealings with other companies.
do
{
bitchslap(szCompanyName);
}while(FUD);
My Sig Beat up your Honor Roll Sig
While the lawsuits being defended by IBM and filed by Red Hat are likely to put an end to The SCO Group's menace to the Free Software community, I don't think simply putting the company out of business is likely to prevent us from being threatened this way again by other companies who are enemies to our community. I feel we need to send a stronger message.
If we all work together, we can put the executives of the SCO Group in prison where they belong.
If you live in the U.S., please write a letter to your state Attorney General. If you live elsewhere, please write your national or provincial law enforcement authorities. Please ask that the SCO Group be prosecuted for criminal fraud and extortion.
It makes me very sad to write this, because I lived in Santa Cruz for fifteen years. Sam Sjogren, a close friend from Caltech, was one of SCO's first programmers, and for a little while my only friend in town after I transferred to UCSC. Many of my best friends used to work for SCO either writing code or doing tech support. I even used to sit in the company hot tub with my friends who worked there from time to time. I used to dance to the music of SCO's company band Deth Specula at parties around the town.
Before I ever installed my first Linux distro - remember Yggdrasil Plug-n-Play? - I was a happy user of a fully-licensed copy of SCO Open Desktop on my 386.
You wouldn't think the SCO Group of today is the same company that once had to tell its employees that they shouldn't be naked at work between 9 and 5 because they scared the visiting suits from AT&T. That's because it's not - the SCO Group got its name and intellectual property from SCO through an acquisition. I don't think any of the friends I once knew at the company are likely to still be working there. The SCO Group is in Utah. SCO was originally called The Santa Cruz Operation, a small father-and son consulting firm named for a beautiful small town between the mountains and the ocean in central California. The Santa Cruz Operation was once as much a bunch of freethinking hippies as any Linux hacker of today.
Yes, it makes me sad. But I digress.
It seems that SCO is asking a license fee of $699 for each Linux installation. Take a look at SCO's press release announcing the licensing program. That's just the introductory price - if we don't purchase our licenses before October 15, the price will increase to $1399.
I have three computers that run Linux. That means SCO claims I must pay $2097 today, or $4197 if I wait until after October 15. SCO says their fee applies even to devices running embedded linux, many of which were purchased by their owners for far less than SCO's "license fee".
My response is that SCO is guilty of criminal fraud and extortion. I didn't violate SCO's copyright or acquire their trade secrets through any illegal means, and it is fraud for them to claim that I did. It is extortion for them to tell me I must pay them money to avoid a lawsuit.
Even if SCO's claims are true, it is not a violation of their copyright for me to possess a copy of their code. Instead, any copyright infringement was committed by the vendors who supplied me with the Linux distributions I use.
SCO's license is actually no license at all - if it really is found that the Linux kernel contains any infringing code, the GPL forbids everyone who possesses a copy from using it at all. No one would be allowed to con
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Praise the lord, somebody read the article! You diserve a nice karma sundae. And that means someone else diserves a nice karma enema.
Alternate sig for today:
-I can't swallow that!
-Good news! It's a suppository!
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Man, now I'm getting so excited I want to sue somebody!
C'mon, mom, can I? Can I? All the other nerds are doing it!
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Why, why did you Slashdot Kuro5hin? Now my options for killing time at work have been cut in half! Oh, cruel fate, why do you torment me so?
Hm...maybe if I upload SCO-related articles to the servers here at work, then post an article on Slashdot...aw yeah, now there's an idea! I could go home early once the servers freak out! I'll run it by the IT guys, see what they think.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Ooh, that's correct. IBM did not want to get in the Linux distribution business which basically means that they didn't want to create and maintain their own VERSION of linux, but they do actually SHIP linux. IANAL, but I would assume that (by using IBM's own logic) that they are still subject to the terms of the GPL. Again, the source is out there, and IBM's been working with it. They can't claim that they didn't know.
Don't forget to donate to Pink Fairies it's about 30 dollars short of 300 in two days! Keep em coming.
Later,
Phil
Here's the patent
Prior art mentions graphical menus in MS Windows, so it seems the distinction here is allowing seamless navigation from one program's menus to another's, but I can't wade through all the legalese.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
K5 has been slashdotted by its own readers on a nigh-daily basis for the last several weeks. :)
The first commenter seemed to be impressed K5 was not responding after only 4 comments; I personally find this far less surprising, seeing as K5 didn't respond at all for almost all of yeterday (when it did respond, there was like a 5-minute wait per pageload), and no one at *all* was linking them at that point (well, unless the whole somethingawful forum swarming thing hadn't quite died down at that point..)
Namaste
in court will be a winderful sight to see. I'll be happy when SCO is put in their place.
Damn, I'm only getting 511KB/Sec, when this transfer finishes, I'm gonna have to try to beat my time.
Patents can be selectivly enforced. IBM and MS are still partners (to a certain extent, and for the moment.) I wouldn't expect to see an IBM / MS patent war until after IBM has deemed that shipping windows with its servers is no longer something it needs or wants to do.
I thought AIDX was 4.3BSD-derived.
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
From SCO's quarterly report:
This, Ladies and Gentlemen, has to be the understatement of this century, if not of this millennium.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
IBM: *evil grin*
Litigious bastards
The insider trades listing at Yahoo is missing all of this year's stock grants to all the execs at SCO. Does anyone have the list from some other place? IIRC, the entire executive board bought hundreds of thousands of SCOX stock at something like $0.001, and now that data is missing....
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Why the fuck are they still still distributing perfectly good 2.4 kernels on their own FTP site???
/. in the past week with links to ftp.sco.com kernels or distros. Has nobody at SCO noticed that they are still distributing 2.4 kernels?
:-)
I think I've read at least 20 comments on
By permitting themselves to distribute Linux, are they now violating their own licensing terms for their "intellectual property in the Linux Kernel"? More importantly, could I sue them for it
My bicyles
A better question is why do you care? It's not like K5 is getting a Noble Prise for it.
SCO are pissing off their Unixware and Open Server customers, and their resellers, and their ISV's. Who wants to be a business partner of SCO? Heard much about customer wins for SCO/X Web Services lately? Me neither.
Next question: why would SCO do such a thing? Answer: because 40% of their revenue, and all of their net profit, comes from "SCO Source" contracts with Microsoft and Sun.
SCO gets paid precisely *for* this FUD activity. They don't even need to sell any of these $699 licenses, they just need to get every IT director in the world to link "Linux" and "IP lawsuit" together.
The SCO Group is a weird aberration of a company. It's actually a sock puppet of The Canopy Group, where all the money is flowing (that's where all the Caldera International lawsuit money from Microsoft went, too).
IBM is a more normal company. They sell products and services. Unlike SCO, they make a profit doing so. If they started screwing with Linux the way that SCO is, IBM would lose profitable business.
You bet that IBM is in it for the money. It so happens that supporting Linux, in a big way, makes IBM lots of money.
After the trial is over have a t-shirt to remember SCO by Target SCO
Shock & Awe
I was wondering what was taking IBM so long to respond - the wanted enough ammo to give SCO's lawyers heart attacks.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
Prodigy kicks ass.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
IBM kicks ass!!!
How many 900 pound gorillas do you got on your side?
"The path of the linux man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish SCO and the tyranny of evil Microsoft men. Blessed is he who, in the name of OSI and GPL, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my penguin brothers. And you will know my name is LINUS when I lay my vengeance upon you."
(firing of bullets ensue)Vizzini (aka McBride): Ha ha, you fool! You've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia", but only slightly less well known is this - "Never go in against IBM when intellectual property rights are on the line!" Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha h-! (falls over dead)
Think global, act loco
It's blatantly obvious that this so-called "IBM code" is, in fact, a stolen Microsoft intellectual property. szCompanyName? Gimme a break.
this is actually what happened, still impressive but *not* what has been modded up so far.
IBM just stretched the preceding so freakin' long that it didn't matter -- there was no monopoly on PCs as hundreds of other companies jumped in the fray (and, incidentally, that's what enabled MS's world donimation).
It's a wash, actually. As a patent holder, you can specify what terms to license your patents. To be compatible with the GPL, if you have a patent, you must agree to license your patents for use under the GPL. That is, you still retain the rights to your patents, but anyone who makes derivative code based upon code you GPL'd can't be held liable for infringement of your patent.
That said, SCO is claiming to NOT use the GPL. As such, they aren't protected from infringement liability, since they have no implicit protection from IBM against claims. If, on the other hand, the infringing technologies were fully licensed under the GPL, there wouldn't be any problem from IBM.
So the bottom line is, Linux developers have a license (per the GPL) to use the four IBM-patented technologies free of charge, whereas SCO would have to negotiate license terms to use the patented technologies outside of the GPL.
Sucks for them.
This is sort of interesting in that I do not see IBM denying SCO's claims. They're simply limiting what SCO can do. 1) The GPL part. If IBM is successful with this claim, SCO has no rights and the suit is over. All the code in question is officially GPL. 2) The patents. If the GPL argument fails, SCO could win. The judgment would be based on damage to SCO (value of lost revenue). If IBM can demonstrate all of SCO's products violate IBM patents, those products are now worth $0. SCO has no claim to lost revenue. In fact, SCO now might owe IBM for past use of those patents. 3) Contract twist involving Novell. This is most benneficial to IBM's sales force and revenue. They need to reassure their customers AIX is still legal whilst the legal stuff plays out.
IANAL, but acceptance of the GPL is required for more than just distribution; it's also requried for creation of a derivative work, and it could well be argued that their patches are a derivative work of the kernel (especially as they are useless without the kernel).
More importantly if they have ever distributed the kernel to anyone, by any means, then they also have likewise accepted the license.
That claim is awfully hard to get out of.
From the CNET article:
SCO's defense has been that it must actively and not inadvertently release proprietary code as open-source software. "It requires them to take the position they didn't know what they were selling, which, depending on your point of view, is a hard argument to make. You would tend to think you'd know what you're selling," Osterman said.
- Duh!
My rights don't need management.
All your codebase are belong to us.
The interview starts off displaying this image, claiming him to be "Mad as hell and not going to take it". He looks about as mad as I would be if I won a billion dollars in the lottery while getting a blowjob from Carmen Electra. Oh yes, very mad indeed.
... "
Anyway, the interviewer then goes on to imply that all linux developers are really just heartless pirates, like the music downloaders on Kazaa.
Later on, we are graced with this gem:
"One view of Linux that's persisted over the years is that it's free. Even though that's not fully accurate,
Yes, those pesky pirates keep insisting that Linux is free! Clearly it's not, however, as RedHat is charging lots of money for it! Moron.
"Microsoft would say the same thing.
I have customers.
They have customers too.
Great."
Wow, RedHat has customers? Microsoft too? Truly, these are men of vision. Men of unparalleled insight!
In defense of IP rights, we should expect Microsoft
to buy licenses for running Linux in its anti-OSS
research lab. If they run enough boxes it may keep
SCO in business.
I have previously suggested that SCO is acting as
a double agent in FAVOR of the GPL by opposing it
so incompetently. I feel that way even more so
now.
Back in '95 I used to be both a contractor for IBM and a member of TeamOS2. At the 95 Atlanta COMDEX (Which I attended on my own dime to do OS/2 advocacy and provide installation support to the team,) one of their marketing guys demoed the latest neat stuff for the operating system. At the presentation, he mentioned that IBM's vision was to provide the same OS across the board. It was to be OS/2 on the laptop (PDA? Notebook? hah!) OS/2 on the desktop and OS/2 on the big blue iron. This would result in a significant decrease in training costs because the employees would always know the platform no matter how big the iron was that they were running on.
8 years later their vision has been realized. Sure the OS has changed, but a single corporation-wide OS deployment is now possible. The radical learning curve necessary to use their big stuff has been smoothed out. The search for that last 90 year old guy who knows how to administer MVS has been eliminated. A much deeper talent pool (of people who know UNIX) can now be tapped.
At the moment it looks like the IBM/Open Source Community relationship is pretty stable. Of course we should be wary -- a corporation can turn on you in a heartbeat if it'll make them a buck. Right now this relationship is making IBM a buck, so I don't see that happening in the immediate future.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Our SGI rep. said IBM has found 26 verbatim lines (that includes comments) in Linux Kernel from SCO code. Implecations are that SCO themselves put the code there. IBM is probably firing up the Lawyers to crush SCO's extorsion. On a positive note, the rep. said that this SCO shit hasn't really affected sales of their linux products b/c they mostly are working with intelligent clients ;-)
I just added some command-line instructions to make clear the terms of the other license (the GNU license) under which the code in question is distributed.
IBM should now send letters to all of SCO's existing and former customers and require them to license the patents for $699 (until October, at whcih time the price goes up....)
What about Linux is a kernel surrounded by no GNU tools to make a complete operating system?
It sounds so puny arguing this sort of things.. my lecturer does it, some philosophers do it..
Hey, that's my password you are typing
On a lighter note, it seems that we've slashdotted them. HAH! (Or maybe it's the decrepit firewall here.)
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
(1) There is no proof of IP infringement. For all we know, SCO is lying and no IP has been infringed. So don't assume that there's anything illegal to work around. They were told to put up or shut up in Germany when sued... and they shut up.
(2) Anyone can distribute a Linux kernel. It's GPL. Of *course* Novell could do this if they wanted (provided they distributed the source and obeyed the terms of the GPL).
I don't doubt that IBM and Novell could have some claims on most modern operating systems if they wanted, but I also don't doubt that those features could be removed or clean-room reverse-engineered and re-implemented if absolutely necessary. But most of the larger, more ethical companies have realised that it's good for them if they play nicely with the community and pointless if they indulge in SCO-like behaviour.
Now if only IBM sold Thinkpads without Windows..
From the SCO license, section 7.0: ...
ALL WARRANTIES, TERMS, CONDITIONS, REPRESENTATIONS, INDEMNITIES AND
NON-INFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS) ARE HEREBY
OVERRIDDEN, EXCLUDED AND DISCLAIMED.
(Sorry about partial quote - trying to get around the lameness filter)
Isn't this exactly what they have been saying is wrong with the GPL?
How do we fight these idiots? Do we contribute to the FSF, the EFF, or the War on Drugs? 'Cause these guys are obviously on crack!
I hope every Linux user does the same. SCO has demanded to do business with every Linux user, and I say let them enter business relations with us. We can see how many states we can get to file cases against them and how many class action law suits we can file.
SCO, your new customers are very angry with you and are considering legal action. Don't blame us, we didn't want to do business with you.
Sun should probably not be lumped into the same muddy waters as MS. From a August 5 eWeek article (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1210889,00.a sp):
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.
Seems to imply that Sun just decided to cover their ass a long time ago. At the time they had money to burn. Although they have flung some FUD in the SCO soap opera, they probably are not financing SCO in any way.
I am living proof of the Peter Principle
They've got plenty of bandwidth - dirty M$ bandwidth. The bastards.
More like "long term profits".
IBM's had the business sense to realize that Open Source is a sweet deal for them. They put out stuff, other developers look it over, point out problems, perhaps even correct it.
And the other developers do this for free.
IBM, which we must remember is in the business of selling hardware, then takes all these free enhancements and uses them to show how its hardware is more reliable and has better performance than its competition, plus does not enforce lock-in methods like certain competitors. This in turn makes their hardware "solutions" more salable to the various businesses out there which are getting really wary of ever being locked into something.
Screwing over those free developers is simply not in their best interests.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
SCO...
..and the look on their faces tells me there's a cat involved..
their hands are empty, their mouths are full.
I just finished reading the last SCO article!
You'd think these were Mozilla release candidates or something...
realityshunt
Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate.
...they're just pining for the dotcom days.
1.4 "Linux Desktop System" means a single user computer workstation controlled by a single instance of the Linux Operating System... It may not host services for clients on other systems.
Let me get this straight. They want me to buy this license. (well, maybe not right now, but they have hinted before that they intend to go after non-commercial users at some point in the future. And I'm not sure I'd trust them if they said they were leaving home users alone) But almost everyone I know who has a GNU/Linux box also runs sshd. Among other "service hosting"-type daemons. IANAL, but it seems to me that they are prohibiting that sort of thing. Which makes me wonder - are they really trying to make money, or just to piss us all off?
(Not that I ever had any doubt about that. But it's just more reassurance that we're right.)
The "/." effect has mutated and hit the stock market
Darl C. McBride
1799 Vintage Oak Ln
Salt Lake City, UT 84121
(801) 424 - 2006
And please, dont sign this guy up for lots of junk catalogues by abusing this google search; snailmail dos [google.com]
oh all right go for it.
It's not like K5 is getting a Noble Prise for it.
Not getting a Nobel prize either. Such is life.
That this is the actual, full kernel that SCO is still distributing, "someone" went through the trouble of checking the cryptographic signature against the one available at kernel.org. It checks out.
I'd post the log, but the lameness filter says "Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters."
Belief is the currency of delusion.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SCOX&d=c&k=c1&c=ibm&a =v&p=s&t=6m&l=on&z=l&q=l
Guess bad news travels fast.
.... THHGTTG)
("Nothing travels faster than the speed of light except bad news. Some race of beings once tried to build space ships powered by bad news, but they were unwelcome everywhere they went."
I know, but I figured there might be a chance that in a link-heavy article people wouldn't click through all of them until they looked at the comments. Maybe this'll make the difference on how quickly it recovers.
fencepost
just a little off
IBM, one fo the few companies in the world that keeps it's own comprehensive PATENT DATABASE is countersuing SCO (64 million dollars strong LOL!)
for patent infringement. I think a bunch of sphincters in Santa Cruz just puckered.
IBM has the best patent attorney's in the world. SCO seems to have the worst legal team in the country. Yankees vs Tigers would be a good comparison. Regardless of the merits of the Linux suit, IBM would not have added the patent thing unless they were sure they could win it. No matter what happens now, SCO is f*&k&d
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Although they have flung some FUD in the SCO soap opera, they probably are not financing SCO in any way.
Sun purchased an SCO Source license in 2003.
Sun expands Unix deal with SCO
I wonder why Sun's spokesman didn't mention that?
Sun's spokesman also didn't mention that Sun's deal with SCO includes a warrant to purchase 210,000 shares of SCOX at $1.83 per share. Which is quite a bargain given the current price of SCOX.
Naturally, Sun does whatever is good for Sun. Sometimes that hurts Linux (they finance SCO and get ownership of 2% of the comany) and sometimes that helps Linux (Open Office).
If IBM suspected that SCO execs were planning a pump 'n' dump, perhaps they waited to play their hand until a period when they knew the SCO-boys couldn't sell their stock with out raising the ire of the SEC? If i get this right, SCOX is gonna drop and all the executive stock holders are stuck holding onto their shares. Hope they lose it all. welcome to karma, assholes!
Believe it or not, since you mentioned "goofy" patents, did you know that Microsoft patented a door hinge?
IBM can't use the patents against the Linux kernel anymore than SCO can - they aren't.
IBM is taking SCO to task for non-GPL'ed software - OpenServer & the like. This is allowed. And appauded.
SCO sues IBM, Red Hat sues SCO, IBM sues SCO, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
I say forget the legal process. It's too slow. Let's get each company to build their own BattleBot and go on Robot Wars to settle this whole mess. Just imagine: "Big Blue", a huge flipper bot flinging "SCObot" through the air while a big red bowler hat smashes into SCO at every opportunity. Chunks of metal flying, flames licking up from dismembered metallic remains.
Ah I love the smell of burnt electric motors and battery acid in the morning!
Ruby on Rails Screencast
When Mick and Sue are confronted by a mugger, the following now-classic exchange occurs:
Sue: "Mick, give him your wallet."
Mick: "What for?"
Sue: "He's got a knife."
Mick (brandishing his own weapon): "That's not a knife. This is a knife."
Cant you just see SCO as the mugger and IBM as Mick? With the contract breach being the small knife and the Patent violations being Mick's blade?
I doubt they will, tho. I think that the decision makers at IBM have seen the writing on the wall. They, unlike MS, SCO, and others, know that FOSS will eventually dominate no matter what the closed source vendors do. You can't stop people from writing software in anything short of an Orwellian-style police state. If Linux is killed, something else will arise to take it's place.
There's simply too much computing power out there in the hands of individuals to ever stop it. IBM has realized that it's not 1980 anymore.
Good for them.
Assuming they continue to think that way, linux and FOSS finally has a financial power behind it that is nearly unstoppable. It's about time!
Kudos, IBM. Bitchslap those id10ts.
realityshunt
Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate.
sorry the link should beMAIL DOS
then BAM, they lay their shit down on the counter and invite someone to bring up a ruler, and would anyone else like to make a measurement?
BAM, schloop, schloop, THUNK, schloop schloop schloop.
That thunk you heard was IBM's shit unrolling off the counter and flopping to the floor, where it continued to unroll, out the door and down the hall. They'll let you know when it's all spooled out, so you can measure it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
81.7 KB/s - but that's maxing out my DSL, so no
cause to celebrate.
It's a mission to decide ownership of linux and gain the ability to patent and sell goods based on that ownership.
Linux wins, gets advertising and more users, just more code we won't end up making ourselves in the end.
IBM are certainly very clever, expect to see a linux version of Office and lots of other 'trained monkey' friendly gems in the next few years.
I just finished my SCO timeline complete with SEC fillings. Got to go back and update it again. Oh well, here it is. Please email me if you can add to it.
June 27 2002
McBride becomes CEO of Caldera.
Stock price around $0.60
March 7 2003
SCO sues IBM
Stock price up from $2.21 to $3.10 but falls back to mid $2.00 range
March 18
SCO stocks hits low of $2.07
Jeff Hunsaker (VP Worldwide Marketing) gets 100,000 options
Reginald Broughton (Senior VP International Sales) gets 50,000 options
Michael Olsen (VP Finance) gets 50,000 options
Robert Bench (CFO) gets 100,000 options
Darl McBride (CEO) gets 200,000 options
Can anyone fill me in on what happened between 3/14 and 3/17 that caused the
price to drop from $2.64? And how did the executives know that $2.07 was the
lowest it would go?
April 8
Robert Bench sells 4100 shares at $2.90 each for $11,890.
April 23
SCO issues warning to Red Hat and SuSE
Stock is up to $3.10
May 2
IBM responses to lawsuit, denies claims
SCO claims they have proof
May 14
SCO stops selling Linux, sends out letter to 1500 large corporations
suggesting that they stop using Linux.
Stock has been steadily rising, now at $3.55
May 15
SCO offers to show proof under strict NDA to journalists only
Stock shoots up to $4.55
May 16
SCO changes name to SCO Group Inc.
Board of Directors gets 10,000 options each at $4.75
May 19
SCO announces that Microsoft has given it cash, and that M$ is
not the first company to pay it off. Rumours are that the other
company is Sun. Total revenue from both licences: $8.25M.
Stock price starts to really take off.
May 28
Novell issues press release challenging SCO
SCO states that they may end up suing Linus
Stock plummets from $8.71 to $6.60
June 3
Opinder Bawa (VP Global Services) pancis and sells 15,000 shares at a paltry
$6.00 each, making $90,000.
June 5
O. Bawa exercises 7916 in options at $1.20 each and sells them for
$6.60 each, netting himself just over $42,000. He really should
have waited a day.
June 6
SCO announces discovery of ammendment to Novell contract
Share price shoots up to $8.52
Giddy with glee, Jeff Hunsaker (VP Worldwide Marketing) sells
5000 shares for $44,500.
June 8 SCO announces that they have shown 80 lines of code to some
doofus. This is a Sunday.
June 9 The day after this announcement, shares are up to $9.38.
Robert Bench (CFO) celebrates by selling 7000 shares, making
over $64,400.
June 11 SCO gives IBM until Friday the 13th to settle.
Shares drop to $8.65. Believing that the end is near, Michael
Olsen (VP Finance) sells 6000 shares, earning $51,720.
June 13
IBM's deadline passes and SCO is still alive. The stock price shoots up
to $11.21. Darl buys 7003 shares for one tenth of a penny each. In an
interview, Chris Sontag (Snr VP OS) says that SCO may own BSD
as well.
June 16 SCO announces that they are revoking IBM's AIX license. IBM
announces that they don't care. Shares dip.
June 17 SCO decides that they actually want three billion from IBM and
elaborate on what technology they think IBM stole from them.
June 18 Sun launches ad campaign trying to get Linux and AIX customers
to use Solaris instead. SCO criticizing Linus in a court document.
June 20
Reginald Broughton, needing some weekend money, sells 5000 shares when the
stock price goes over $11, making almost $55,500. The price closes at $10.77.
June 23 SCO says that they won't sue their own Linux customers.
June 25 With the stock
Could someone post the fucking IBM filing so us law-geeks can read it? I can't find it anywhere...
#! /bin/bash
echo "No SCO code found."
That should do it!
Oh well, what the hell...
He hates that site... any site that sets a positive precedent for change tilted toward the readers is a problem for him. Taco doesn't want readers to be able to mod stories or see more of the detail behind moderations.
And so, the trolls go on, pleased with the game of seeing who can force Taco's hand into further draconian anti-troll (and anti-reader) measures...
The GPL has rattled around in court before, but most of them have been settled out of court. This is because if you manage to invalidate the GPL, you have no rights to distribute it whatsoever, so it's a lose-lose situation.
However, since SCO doesn't have anything to lose (if IBMs injunctions go through, they don't even have a product to lose), this could be the first time we get someone willing to see it through to the end.
Out-of-court settlements or cases where both take the terms of the GPL at face value don't provide much legal precedent (more like none), but this one could set real legal precedent. Not to mention you have some rather solid parties to refer to, NobodycompanyA vs NobodycompanyB doesn't give nearly as much credit as IBM vs SCO.
When Linux bounces back (not if, when), it'll have more legal credibility in PHBs' minds than before. Because up until now, there's been this "What if somebody tried to pull an IP claim on Linux?" The answer is in the making now...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The only effect would be for Microsoft to hope that its MS Home products positively affect people's ability to spell.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
RTFA, the claim from IBM is for infringement inside SCO's OpenWare, not SCO Linux.
God DAMMIT I can't remember where that's from! Please, remind me.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200308/07/eng200 30807_121861.shtml
Sig under construction since 1998.
IBM e-Business on Demand General Manager Irving Wladawsky-Berger seemed surprised to hear of Perens' comments. "The question has never come up with Linux," Wladawsky-Berger says. IBM's history of working with open communities like the World Wide Web Consortium should reassure developers, he adds, but he encourages Perens to contact IBM to discuss the issue.
In other words -- again -- Perens started shooting off his mouth about possible bad intentions from IBM before even discussing it with IBM. That's just plain bad form, since it means Wladawksy-Berger was caught off-guard by an unexpected question from a reporter. That's not a good way to treat people whose cooperation you desire.
I hope that someday, the Open Source/Free Software community will have spokespeople who comport themselves professionally instead of brilliant but socially-impaired people with a tendency to ill-considered public tantrums. You can get away with that as a developer, at least sometimes, but when you get into the PR business, basic manners are a fundamental requirement of the job.
If Perens had talked to IBM at length and gotten nowhere, it would have been acceptable to say, "We talked to IBM at length and got nowhere." Just calling the press and saying, "IBM hasn't spontaneously stepped up to the plate and I'm starting to have paranoid fantasies," doesn't cut it.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I just wanted to say that this is the first message I'm posting with Linux.
Thank you.
To translate:
(this => $Gorilla.Size) = (this => $Stock.Value*10);
if (IBM['Gorilla.Size'] > SCO['Gorilla.Size']) {
$action = SCO.DropSuit(GoHomeAndCry());
}
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Why is it K5 gets the credit for posting the link to SCO's linux source?
For the sheer entertainment value of slashdotting K5.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
The look on McBride's face as IBM's "large member" moves slowly into his sphincter must be priceless...anyone up to do a GIMP parody shot?
Well... two and a half words...
"shock & awe"
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
IBM was once viewed by all as being Evil.
Then they started using Linux.
Then they saved Apple with the PPC970.
Then they beat the shit out of SCO.
Interesting.
Ya gotta love technology politics.
-
SCO is still distributing Linux kernels under the GPL (check their ftp site), that doesn't seem to stopped them from making their licence claims anyway. Explicitly forbidden in the GPL, but who cares about proper licencing anyway? ;)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Ya know, I could *almost* (note that word "almost") buy SCO's argument of "we didn't realize what we were GPLing" if it weren't for one simple thing...they're still making the damned thing available for unrestricted download from THEIR OWN FUCKING WEB SITE *after* they know for a fact what they are GPLing. For being that stupid alone they deserve to be sued in to oblivion.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Two links out of history:
IBM's ThinkPad/Linux support project being dropped
Buying a Linux ThinkPad: IBM's mission impossible.
Note that the GPL isn't about who put together a distribution, but about who distributes.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
If that's the case, then they won't be upset even if they lose the right to distribute their software due to the patent claims.
Isn't SCO essentially "licensing" Linux by selling a license of their software to you? If they can't distribute then they might not be able to sell this new license either...
The whole thing is just stupifying confusing...
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
True, I just brought it back to the kernel specifically since that's what SCO is claiming infringement on.
:) (And, that none of those packages they are distributing is utilizing it... as long as the two packages were using the same license, or a compatible license and complying with it, they'd still be SOL).
As for other OSS, obviously it would be up to IBM to decide to prosecute or not. Of course, they better be careful that they're not distributing it already
Now if all these other respondants could get it through their skulls that I never implied that IBM was claiming patents in Caldera Linux...
In SCO's regulatory filings in July, they list the total value of the Sun and Microsoft deals at $13.2 million. If Sun purchases up to 210,000 shares of SCO stock at $1.83 per share (the price at the time of the signing of the deal), the value of the deals would rise further.
Masterful.
A funny rating complete with slap down of the FSF and a sneak in of the GNAA troll. Truely a masterful work.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Check out this link for good research and analysis, as well:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/
Groklaw has been posting almost daily updates on this story since April, and recently is posting several updates per day. It's run by Pamela Jones, a paralegal who actually *reads* the court documents, the contracts, etc. and uses her experience to point out what she would flag for a lawyer as important, worthy of more research, etc. Good read.
RTFP. Where did the poster ever talk about Caldera (SCO) Linux?
Goddamn morons.
And you're so damn stupid to post about it after several other idiots said the same thing, even after one person was called on it. Bloody twits.
"We view IBM's counterclaim filing today as an effort to distract attention from its flawed Linux business model. It repeats the same unsubstantiated allegations made in Red Hat's filing earlier this week. " ... and they keep saying it ain't so.
So the trend? It seems to be going downhill a bit now. They press release, their stock goes up. Another volley from other people not SCO, they hit the basement - but they never *totally* recover.
Maybe by the constant barrage of press releases from IBM, Red Hat, Novell, etc., can SCO be done under.
This sig no verb.
Check it out:
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/s/scox.html
Reginald Broughton has cashed out about $800k in the past month.
Do it now, boys while the gettin's good!
...since "Mr. SCO" won that particular fight.
WW3 will be fought with patents! ..
You can't compare the share prices of different companies directly. It doesn't mean anything (since all companies don't have the same amount of shares). SCO's Market Value $ 143,952,530 IBM's Market Value $ 139,432,320,000
sue God!
SCO is just one of the Linux players that are part of Canopy's portfolio. There is also Linux Networx and Trolltech. Although Trolltech APIs are used by several Linux-related developers, there hasn't been much hostility from them directed toward the Open Source Community despite Trolltech's technology being proprietary.
I know that a huge pissing match ensued between Gnome and KDE over the use of a proprietary technology in a Linux GUI, and perhaps now is the time for that relationship to be reviewed (in the light of Canopy's behavior). Should those APIs be rewritten in an attempt to dump Qt, or is that over-reacting?
Also, Linux Networx is a cluster service provider. How long until they start suing IBM and HP for some spurious claim?
I trust Canopy about as far as I can toss the collective carcasses of the entire Board of Directors.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Aw cmon.. If you can't handle the bandwidth, stay off the net! :-)
This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Look, the reference to the GPL in the original posting only makes sense in the context of Linux and other open source software. Distributing GPL software does not stop you from claiming other legal rights in non-GPL related software.
Evidence from SCO's own website:
from the license faq:
I have Linux servers deployed in my organization. What options do I have besides purchasing a SCO IP license?
There are 3 options for you to evaluate:
You have the option to do nothing, adopt a "wait and see" attitude, and hope that SCO is not serious about enforcing its intellectual property rights in the end user community.
You can replace all servers, desktop and embedded uses of Linux.
You can obtain a license from SCO to use SCO IP in binary form in Linux distributions
SCO is committed to protect and defend their intellectual property and believes that the most cost effective remedy is to purchase the necessary SCO UNIX IP license. However, the action you take should be based on the recommendation of your own legal counsel.
Let's see, you can either hope we don't sic Boies on you, interrupt your business, or pay us. Oh, and by the way, we are serious about suing you.
from the license itself:
2.1 Provided Company complies fully with this Grant of Rights and
Obligations, SCO will not consider such use of the SCO Product licensed
by Company under this Agreement to be in violation of SCO's intellectual
property ownership or rights.
This is the only thing they're offering in exchange for the license fee. The IP in quesion is disputed, which they state as factual.
Extortion and Fraud. It's a classic protection racket, plain and simple.
Of course, this could be a Cuckoo's egg. If on the one hand SCO asserts that IBM cannot sue based on the fact that IBM distributed this code under GPL, doesn't that mean SCO yanks the rug right out from under their own arguments?
... but all my money is tied up in hookers and blow.
Yes, you caught me:
s/BM/IBM/
And while we're at it
s/SCO/Evil but stupid Org/gi
This is SCOX's price action for the day:l =on&z= b&q=l
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SCOX&d=c&t=1d&
Notice the nice spike at the end with very little volume? Could this be an indication of someone trying to mitigate the day's significant drop in share price by buying up stock?
Would certainly be interesting to know who made those purchases at the very end of the day that just happened to make the stock close at a shade over $11. 'Course that would be the SEC's job, not mine, to find out.
Here is SCO's response to the action...
Pathetic press release...
IBM has in the past distributed Linux pre-installed on at least their ThinkPad series.
I don't believe this is literally true. Resellers affiliated with IBM may have distributed IBM laptops (and servers) with Linux pre-installed, but IBM Corp. has not.
In the context of servers, the way IBM does it is this: You are actually buying the linux distribution from Red Hat, and IBM just installs it on the machine for you as a service. When you get the bill you'll see separate line items for the hardware, the OS (a fee that actually goes to Red Hat -- a passthrough, *not* a resale) and a service fee, which is the hourly charge for the technician's time to install it for you. By the time the OS is installed, the machine is already yours, and so are the installation CDs (which are shipped to you with the machine). The installation by the IBM tech is done under contract to you, so it's legally the same as if you had done it yourself.
It's weird, but IBM's attorneys are quite certain they can stand up in court and say that IBM has never distributed Linux.
I'm working on a project for a Linux-based PDA device that IBM is developing under contract to another company. We're doing the software and manufacturing the devices, but we have to be very careful at every step to avoid giving Linux to anyone, which has led to some funny workarounds.
More generally, I work for IBM Global Services, and we've been given very explicit guidelines with respect to all GPL software. We can design and build a solution around Linux, or whatever, but we have to get the software from the client, then modify it under contract. We can tell them what to download and where to get it from, but they have to go get it and give it to us, so that it's clear we're not giving it to them.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I found this quote from one article quite amusing:m l)
IBM claims SCO's case has no merit or supporting facts. The company is countersuing SCO for several issues: violation of the Linux General Public License (GPL)
(source: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/31287.ht
Now while I don't have much truck with the whole GNU/Linux debate it's funny how the GNU has been replaced by Linux in that line.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
When is the last time Slashdotters actually cheered on IBM?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
According to the lamlaw.com analysis, " For one, IBM is asking the court to enjoin SCO from selling Unix now because of patent violations. Of course these need to be proven. But, just who is SCO trying to sell SCO Unix to? Linux customers. And, they are doing so under threat to customers who are highly unlikely to be liable for any IP violations at all. ". This is interesting since the "License" SCO is trying to sell is actually for their SCO Unix products, which if they were enjoined from selling, they couldn't sell the license to any Linux user!
This *is* Slashdot--how many others here clicked on it, went "2.4.thirteen--puh-leeze!" and went back to configuring 2.6.0--pre-alpha-still-hot-from-Linus-hitting-"com mit"?
GO BACK TO GBS.
Better yet, go back to Fark.
IANAL, but acceptance of the GPL is required for more than just distribution; it's also requried for creation of a derivative work,
No, it's only required for distributing a derivative work.
and it could well be argued that their patches are a derivative work of the kernel (especially as they are useless without the kernel).
I don't think "usefulness" has any bearing here. If IBM's patches do not contain any non-IBM code, then they belong wholly to IBM and IBM can distribute them without relying on the GPL. This might mean that IBM engineers can only submit 'ed' diffs, since normal, context and unified diffs would includes lines of others' code. I wonder if they've always been careful to do that?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
A company with the cash to buy it, but with an interest in Free Software, could buy UNIX and place it under the GPL.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
will tell you that SCO is still distribution linux source code.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
They managed to unload quite a bit the previous two months:
SEC filings on SCO Group
In general, their latest quarterly SEC filing contains lots of interesting bits and pieces. Like you can find that the MS licensing deal they had was probably worth some 8,25 million dollars? Guaranteed no more, unlikely to be less, seeing that previous quarter licensing revenue was $0.
You'll find that SCO Group still owes Nowell a noticable sum ($1.7 million) for Unix rights. You'll find they've burned more than $200.000.000 of venture capital, with little hope of recovering any of that except by a miracle ('Sue IBM? Brilliant idea!').
Their forward-looking statements also makes for interesting reading:
The Company anticipates that participants in the Linux industry will seek to influence participants in the markets in which we sell our products to reduce or eliminate the amount of our products and services that they purchase.
IOW, they've already filed with the SEC that they might stop selling any actual products. There's a truckload of warnings of potential hazards, most of which are very familiar to what has been discussed here and in other press.
The latest quarterly filing can be found at SEC or on: TheStreet.com
'Supernova' probably best describes what they're doing.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
I'm curious as to why IBM filed their suit in Utah. Couldn't they have filed it in their own home town? Why not make the SCO folk spend more travel money rather than making it easy for them?
It's about time IBM opened up a can of whoopass on SCO. It is entirely appropriate then to recount this story (it may be wrong in many details or even completely false, but it's still a good story).
It seems Sun and IBM sat down for a little conference because Sun accused IBM of violating several patents of theirs. The Sun engineers, somewhat casually dressed, laid out the their case on a whiteboard to a bunch of Armani-wearing IBM Lawyers, who sat stone faced throughout the proposal.
When Sun was done, the Lawyers sat there for a few minutes, and then proposed a sum to cover the licensing. Sun demurred, saying that the money was hardly enough to cover what they thought the license terms were worth.
The Lawyers sat there for a moment more, discussed and then proposed that if Sun did not like the terms presented, then IBM was perfectly willing to go back to Armonk and dig through their files to see just how many IBM patents Sun was violating at the given moment.
Needless to say, Sun gave in very quickly.
----
IBM is the world's largest patent holder (3,288 in 2002 alone, according to EE Times) and for ten years running has been issued the largest number of patents in a given year. While not all of those patents are directly related to Linux, there is a pretty good chance that SCO's mere existence alone may violate an IBM patent.
AFAIK, IBM has been a pretty benevolent player in the patent arena, only hauling out the big guns when necessary. I would love to see them unload their file cabinets on SCO just once.
IBM may not always be the reasonable giant (they have a spotty record at best in some areas), but I would definitely rather have them behind me, than in front of me.
OK, enthusiastic cheering is over. Back to sarcasm and trolling.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
SCO makes it even clearer than before that they are attacking the GPL:
They seem to be claiming to have been using those patents for years. In fact, all they are saying is that they have been shipping these products for years without making any claims about patents. They could have easily added the infringements later.
I don't know what the following signifies. Are they saying that IBM can't file a counterclaim that is not mentioned in their original answer to the suit?
And, of course, even more blather:
SCO Media Statement Re IBM Counterclaims
/PRNewswire-FirstCall via Comtex/ -- We view IBM's counterclaim filing today as an effort to distract attention from its flawed Linux business model. It repeats the same unsubstantiated allegations made in Red Hat's filing earlier this week. If IBM were serious about addressing the real problems with Linux, it would offer full customer indemnification and move away from the GPL license. As the stakes continue to rise in the Linux battles, it becomes increasingly clear that the core issue is bigger than SCO (SCOX) , Red Hat, or even IBM. The core issue is about the value of intellectual property in an Internet age. In a strange alliance, IBM and the Free Software Foundation have lined up on the same side of this argument in support of the GPL. IBM urges its customers to use non- warranted, unprotected software. This software violates SCO's intellectual property rights in UNIX, and fails to give comfort to customers going forward in use of Linux. If IBM wants customers to accept the GPL risk, it should indemnify them against that risk. The continuing refusal to provide customer indemnification is IBM's truest measure of belief in its recently filed claims.
O GO )
O G
8/7/2003 4:17:00 PM
LINDON, Utah, Aug 07, 2003
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990421/SCOL
Regarding Patent Accusations
SCO has shipped these products for many years, in some cases for nearly two decades, and this is the first time that IBM has ever raised an issue about patent infringement in these products.
Furthermore, these claims were not raised in IBM's original answer.
SCO reiterates its position that it intends to defend its intellectual property rights. SCO will remain on course to require customers to license infringing Linux implementations as a condition of further use. This is the best and clearest course for customers to minimize Linux problems.
SOURCE SCO
Photo : NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990421/SCOL
Media, Blake Stowell of SCO, +1-801-932-5703, bstowell@sco.com
http://www.prnewswire.com
Copyright (C) 2003 PR Newswire. All rights reserved.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
It seems they couldn't wait for tomorrow: they have issued a statement already. Interesting quote:
Move away from the GPL? That's a new one for SCO, isn't it? Perhaps this is what they're going to push now, to fuel outrage from us Linux people.
Their stock is up a bit now. But I'm not too impressed by the reply. Given SCO's, ahem, vigor, when it comes to public statements, I was expecting them to sue the catholic church, as someone here suggested. Anything short of that is kind of boring.
The IBM + Novell merger possibility is a deal that's been stewing in the kettle since about April of 2002 now. Well over a year ago.
May I suggest Robot Jox!
imdb info here
I think IBM knows which way the wind is blowing about Open Source, so I doubt they're going to turn on the community much (except to protect some ultra-valuable patent). Right now, it's a symbiotic relationship that is very much working in IBM's favor - they get a good, flexible OS for a minimum of investment and can sell the hardware to run that OS for a premium price because they're IBM.
I think if anything, the community would have to turn on IBM before they turned on the community. That's not to say there won't be the occasional snit or disagreement (on either side), but I just don't see a major falling out happening.
I absolutely hate being an optimist. It blinds me to reality.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
I think he misses a point when he asks if IBM is a customer of Caldera's Linux. IBM is an interested party with regard to Caldera Linux because IBM is a major Linux contributor, so if Caldera tries to sell Linux, they are selling property which IBM released under GPL. In other words, they're violating the contract which all Linux contributors have in common with all Linux distributors.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Can be found here.
Darl is "Dissapointed"
Please forgive me for being vague, but there is a statement along the line of the previous poster, somewhere in the kernel developers mailing list, from some bitter IBM kernel developer. He had delivered not only some patch, but also an entire kernel based on his work. Then, some woman (IIRC) from the legal dept at IBM contacted him effectively saying - Hey, we are NOT delivering a distro.
I don't remember who/when or what it was, but, it was within the last two/three years. I wish I could be more helpful here; I was a keen reader of the Kernel Traffic at the time where I may have read it. Anyhow, it does make sense in that IBM has been very aware of the risks of delivering a distro.
I hope someone out there has a better memory than I.
and who wins here ? the bastard lawyers.
Don't drag Sun into this.
Sun dragged themselves into it.
Sun expands Unix deal with SCO
Sun and Microsoft paid SCO $8.3 million last quarter, with contracts to pay them $5 million more in the next three quarters.
Sun also received warrants to purchase 210,000 shares of SCOX at $1.83 per share.
If the GPL is declared invalid, then the copyright of each bit of code reverts to the original author. Presumably, not all of the thousands of authors will grant SCO permission to distribute their code.
So SCO either violates the GPL, or violates basic copyright. They're screwed either way.
You just made my day.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
This surely looks like SCO has bitten off more than they can handle. At the moment they've got three big lawsuits going: their own initiative against IBM, Redhat and now IBMs countersuit. Not to mention that in some countries they have been forced to shut up alltogether or pay huge fines (i'm really wondering if they can be forced to take a definitive stand about their Linux license in Germany). It'll be interesting to see if they can afford to pay all the lawyers. That brings up the question who else can increase the heat by bringing up some litigation against them. If they're entangled in enough lawsuits now that'll bring them down quite effectiveley: They have to pay all those lawyers, every time another lawsuit against them is announced their shares fall (so they'll have a hard time to pay all those lawyers), and they'll have to weigh any statement with respect to all those lawsuits (but i wouldn't expect them to).
Note that SCO did that to themselves: they are shooting their mouth off every which way and opened themselves up to dozens of ways of litigation. I'd say: hand it to them now, draw them into court for any case which has a good chance of winning (if they win the cases it'll only help them publicitywise, and for SCO publicity is boosting shares which equals money).
It'd be nice if the FSF could join the fray for copyright infringement (do they still distribute Linux? since their Linux License invalidates the GPL they'd be violating the copyrights of any kernel-developer out there).
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
> IBM can't use the patents against the Linux kernel > anymore than SCO can -- as IBM points out in its > own brief, distribution of the source under the > GPL prohibits you from certain legal tactics... > like licensing. You are implicitly licensing any > IP (copyrights, trade secrets, patents) that you > may own that are applicable to the source you > distribute. Yes -- you are licensing it to those who distribute Linux under the GPL. That does *not* mean you allow anyone to use your patents in their proprietary software, though. [Not that I'm in favour of software patents -- I'm from a country that's supposed not to allow patenting of computer programs, but the European patent office has steadily tried to erode this principle away]
Yes, but, if I understood what SCO's argument - IBM's patches are directly based upon SCO's own code.
They (IBM) used SCO's code, modified it, and re-distributed it illegally to people who accepted it in good faith. IBM's modifications are IBM's, but the underlying code still belong to SCO, if I get SCO's argument correctly.
Possibly, someone at IBM made a blunder, if true; after all, one can't blame SCO, if this interpretation is true, for not recognising and (in good faith) redistributing modified code the minute it arrives. Still, why did they still deliver GPL'd code, several weeks after the suit, among many many other questionable actions mentioned else-/everywhere?! A multibillion dollar ignorance?! Unlikely. In my view, some lawyer believed in his chance here, and hyped SCO's chances to improportionally good proportions; hence, we have a battle.
Uhm, yes. I bet they're very worried about SuSE's and RedHat's guns.
;-)
Something like Japanese were afraid of Nigerian Navy in WWII
Clinton asked for defered status and then thought better of that, and took his chances. He pulled a 311 in the draft lotto, that guaranteed he would not serve, but he had removed himself from the ROTC program because he said he didn't believe in it and took his chances.
please stand up?
And it's not even the right file. Far more of the interesting stuff (RCU, JFS, ppc64 and s390 code)
is in the United Linux kernel on the same site:
kernel-source-2.4.19.SuSE-152.nosrc.rpm.
I fear you all have to get another 12 MB.
IBM is fighting Microsloth. SCO is just a pawn Bill has pushed forward.
Funny thing is, Big Blue used to be the Evil Empire. Now it's a knight in shining armor.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
that should have been kernel-source-2.4.19.SuSE-152.nosrc.rpm
I almost want to buy something from IBM. Almost.
This, I did not forsee. I also suck at chess. Dammit.
happened to the SCUM at sCOX I would not shed a tear.
They have moved to the top of the worlds most hated list, eclipsing Bill Gate$ and M$, Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda as the number one most hated organization and group of individuals in all of recorded history..
I wouldn't piss on McBride if he was on fire, unless I drank some gasoline first..
http://www.debategate.com/forums/PIC/posts/84363.h tml
Slashdot article discussing the announcement I linked to in grand-parent comment: IBM Dropping Laptop Linux Support
TP T21, T22 - General Overview (Linux models) (interestingely, the page says it was last modified in June, 2003; and it's Caldera Linux of all things - surely it would be a good idea for IBM to stop distributing this ;-)
I doubt that the phrase "distributed by Caldera" matter much, unless the media actually comes under separate cover from Caldera (I'm pretty sure it doesn't/didn't). IBM may want to twist inside and out in its attempts to avoid the GPL, but this Linux distribution is handed out by IBM so they are bound to the GPL.
You mention "a passthrough, *not* a resale". What IBM does, or doesn't do, with the money isn't the point at issue. "Who gave the customer the GPL'd code?" is. Did IBM? So it seems to me.
The GPL is all about passing rights along, whenever the software shifts hands. The GPL is money stream agnostic.
I do find it a bit ironic that IBM is now set to defend the GPL in court --many, many thanks for doing that, IBM!-- while doing its best to evade being affected by the license themselves. Changing the past is difficult, though.
If the above reasoning holds and since it's a complete distribution, you also get a license from IBM for any of the other GPL:d software, such as the GUIs.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
...with what can only be described as a rant. Really, the language is ... well, it's just plain whiny. Here, take a look: http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=1157 25
Eh? The topic of discussion was whether or not IBM has accepted the GPL and whether or not they could apply their patents to OSS.
... executing context switch ...
Yes, but, if I understood what SCO's argument - IBM's patches are directly based upon SCO's own code.
Not really. IBM's patches are based on IBM's experience developing similar functionality for AIX. IBM owns 100% of the copyright on both their Linux patches and on the similar AIX code, but the contract between IBM and AT&T means that AT&T (who sold their rights to Novell, who sold to SCO) has some sort of ownership of the AIX code. Whether that also means they have some sort of ownership of the code IBM contributed to Linux, which was written by engineers who hadn't worked on AIX but had gotten hints from AIX developers, is a question for the court to decide -- and it's going to require a savvy judge.
In my view, some lawyer believed in his chance here, and hyped SCO's chances to improportionally good proportions; hence, we have a battle.
I think you're right here, at least in part. I think it's a little less nefarious than this, though. My suspicion is that SCO started the whole brouhaha with the idea that they could push IBM into buying them out (probably based on bad legal advice). As far as that goes, its a risky but probably legitimate business tactic. When that failed, they decided to turn up the heat, again, and again, and again, and by now they've gotten themselves in so deep that the only option they have left is to bull straight ahead.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Otherwise it forces evry commercial distributor of GPL'ed software to make a full code-review of the software to ensure that they don't distribute source the what to keep their rights to
No, it makes a big difference whether you know or not what you were doing. If someone is distributing code under the GPL that they're not allowed to, then they can just stop, and there's unlikely to be a problem. The problem is when you knowingly continue to distribute the code (as SCO is doing). This is what's going to put SCO in the hot water. They still have the Linux kernel source available for download.
TP T21, T22 - Product information
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
"indemnification" is verbatium Microsoft FUD.
SCO does NOT offer "indemnification" in it's products. Read the license. They don't have the deep pockets required in any case. "Indemnification" is lawyer speak.
King Henry III act IV ii,86 "The first thing we do, lets kill all teh lawywers"
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
From your Link:
" Sun's expanded license permits Sun to use some software from Unix System V Release 4 for software components called drivers, which let computers use hard drives, network cards and other devices. Sun needed the software for its version of Solaris that runs on Intel servers, Sun spokesman Brett Smith said. A source familiar with the deal said the new contract was signed in February, but neither Sun nor SCO would comment."
So Sun in february bought a LICENSE FOR SYS V DRIVERS for their Solaris on Intel hardware. SCO made it look like Sun bought a Sys V license.
As we can't hope that those SCOrsinist will back out or stop their tremendous FUD mill running, there is only one thing to do if we effectivly want to sto this Mr. Bribe show. We buy SCO. We buy SCO and donates all it's IP to FSF. We can do that. We can give $30-40 to s fund and simply buy SCO and put the SCOrsinists out of work.
I can't tellf or sure if SCO's got a case or not. I can just tell that SCO's entered ther mafia way of doing business and will keep this cirkus running for years. We can't allow that. We can't accept that the historically wonderful project of free software is destryed by the SCOsinists.
I don't really have the time to do this properly now
And I don't really have the information to do it properly either.
However, I can tell you that I've discussed the issue personally with IBM legal, and *they* are quite certain they can convince judge and jury that they never distributed Linux. I have a very healthy respect for their opinion on the issue. That isn't to say that they're correct, but they have invested a great deal of effort into it, and they're a smart and thorough bunch of folks.
TP T21, T22 - General Overview (Linux models) (interestingely, the page says it was last modified in June, 2003; and it's Caldera Linux of all things - surely it would be a good idea for IBM to stop distributing this ;-)
But, can you actually buy the laptops from IBM (vs a third party reseller), and, even if you can, do they do a similar "installed under contract" arrangement? Those are at least two ways they can do this without actually distributing Linux.
BTW, I can certainly attest to the fact that those laptops run Linux quite nicely... I'm typing this from a T21 running Debian unstable. :-)
You mention "a passthrough, *not* a resale". What IBM does, or doesn't do, with the money isn't the point at issue.
Actually, you're right here. I was addressing the wrong point. The key is that IBM never makes a copy and gives it to anyone. In the case of the server hardware, Red Hat makes a copy (onto the CD), and the buyer makes a copy (onto the machine's hard drive), but IBM doesn't make any copies. It's actually an IBM technician doing the copying onto the hard drive, but since it's done under contract to a specific client, legally it's the client who makes the copy.
I do find it a bit ironic that IBM is now set to defend the GPL in court --many, many thanks for doing that, IBM!-- while doing its best to evade being affected by the license themselves.
I hear you, but I have another perspective. I've been frustrated by all of the hoops my project has had to jump through in order to avoid distributing Linux and I've repeatedly asked the attorneys to explain why, exactly, IBM won't just distribute it. Now I'm thinking that those lawyers might just have good reason to be so cautious.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
mod parent up!
This is my
http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=1157 25
funny how their response to IBM's IP claims is that IBM has let them be for two decades; they make it sound as if they think they're entitled to IP infringement.
From the news.com.com article:
...and our cash kinda ran out, too!
"What I'm getting a sense of now is there is an effort to counterpunch," said Gartner analyst George Weiss, who has warned clients to take SCO seriously. "What I thought the (Linux) community should be doing is shift the initiative away from SCO and throw them off balance into a defensive posture. Until Red Hat started its counterclaim, all the initiative was with SCO."
This has really suprised me. I mean, I'm not shocked at corporate opportunism of course - especially analysts and people who think of themselves as visionaries, being opportunistic is practically their job description.
But the thing is: I always took for granted that Gartner is just an MS marketing branch, and now they turn around and say that they always thought the Linux community should really take countermeasures, and stuff like that! Wow...
To the paranoid conspiracist mind this can only mean that MS must have realized that there is not much substance behind SCO's claims and that their activities in the fraudulent extortion department didn't go over well at all in the industry.
Probably something like this happened:
SCO: Hey, guess what, we can prove that Linux is just a pirated copy of SCO Unix!
Microsoft: Wow, cool, that would make Linux illegal and discredit the whole open source community?
SCO: Yeah, you bet. Only, if someone could give us credibility.
Microsoft: NP, we'll announce that we honor your Unix rights and pay for your initial lawyer fees with some Unix license, OK? Additionally we will buy some studies and news articles that lend credibility to your claims.
SCO: Thanks, we feel much better now, that really helped. Initiating FUD and extortion campaign now.
Microsoft: What? Uhm, your going to prove your thing in court soon, will you? You know, revealing the evil that is Open Source for what it really is?
SCO: Yah, sure.
Microsoft: SCO? You're making us all look bad.
SCO: We know, but "the software business is binary", remember? Gotta do what keeps us alive!
Microsoft: There is no proof, is there?
SCO: We're still kinda working on that, sir.
Microsoft: OK, that's it, we're bailing out. Steve, call Gartner and tell them they can switch modes from "MS fantasy sales pitch" to default "echo the public opinion" mode. Farewell, SCO.
Replying to myself...
The key is that IBM never makes a copy and gives it to anyone.
This is something I hadn't really thought through before... thanks! In order for the GPL to apply to you, you have to *both* make a copy *and* distribute it. If you distribute copies other people made, you don't need to agree to the GPL's distribution terms, because copyright law has no bearing on it. Likewise, if I were to buy or otherwise legally obtain a bunch of retail copies of Windows XP, I could pass them out on the street and Microsoft couldn't say anything.
On the other hand, the GPL grants you permission to make copies for your own use, but doesn't place any restrictions on what you can or cannot do *unless* you distribute those copies.
So, IBM can hand out Red Hat CDs all they want, as only as they don't make them. And they can make all the copies they want for internal use, as long as they don't distribute them.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
SCO: I got a knife, give me $690 or I cut you. IBM: This here is a 44 magnum, it will take your head clean off. You gotta ask yourself one question...do you feel lucky. Do you punk! This is pure IBM PR. IBM is smart however, unlike SCO, their PR is like a targeted precision bomb, unlikely to cause legal collateral damage, and sure to inspire the kind of confidence a team of kevlar suited bodyguards armed with M16's and HK-5's gives you, ready to pull up in a white Suburban and take care of business. And since SCO can't sue IBM based on the text of the countersuit, IBM can make unsubstantiated broad allegations which may be false, and still be protected. The content of a lawsuit is not grounds for a separate lawsuit. SCO on the other hand has recklessly demanded cash on shaky legal ground, opening them up to all kinds of lawsuits, from numerous sources, and possibly criminal sanction. I admire the IBM team for their tactical skill and patience, a quality most everyone else seems to lack. This is not a game of who has the loudest mouth, it is a game of who is the last man standing. It seems like SCO will need to change their name again, to SCORPSE. They are dead.
The GPL requires free licensing of any patents or IBM loses their rights to distribute Linux at all. Because IBM has already distributed Linux it would be silly for them to turnaround and slap Linux users with patent licensing, because Linux code owners could then turnaround and slap IBM with copyright infringement (Linux distribution without agreeing to the GPL).
RMS thought of all this a long time ago. Give the man some credit; he *is* an official genius, you know.
Admittedly, the GPL clause only covers patents in versions of Linux that IBM has already shipped. IBM could conceivably stop Linux developers from implementing IBM-patented algorithms in future versions of Linux but the current version of Linux is safe.
-
http://www.goingware.com/notes/prosecute-sco.html
You may also want to grab the stylesheet. You will need to adjust the stylesheet URL in the <link> tag: Alternatively you can supply your own stylesheet. It wouldn't cause any trouble to omit the stylesheet altogether except to make the page look plain.Request your free CD of my piano music.
Red hat made no allegations. They simply filed a put up or shut up filing because it is hurting their business. This rejoinder is typical SCO face (and share price) saving doublespeak. SCO will have to start worrying soon because not only are they now being counter sued by two companies but I would not at all be surprised if SuSE doesn't join in.
SCO's defense in its press release is:
In other words, "They let us get away with this forever, so they can't start punishing us now." Unfortunately, as users of the GIF and JPEG graphics formats have learned, past or current non-enforcement of a patent does not prevent patent enforcement in the future. While I personally hate software patents, I find it amusing that SCO may well end up being crushed by them. According to most legal analysis I've seen so far, IBM's patent claims are easily the biggest hammer they have against SCO. SCO may be forced to settle quickly just to get out from under IBM's patent claims.
I mean, he lost last time he was responsible for taking IBM to court, and that time he had the resources of the federal government.. This time he has the resources of a two-bit shell company in Utah.
Please: rip me apart. Why not charge for Linux? It seems hypocritical to me that Linux should be taken seriously as a business system but that it shouldn't cost anything. I'm upset with the crusade for free software. The rest of the world doesn't give a crap about most software, free or not. If you feel yourself to be a charitable person, then by all means volunteer your time and heart to a worthy organization, perhaps a soup kitchen or a children's hospital. But stop parading the idea of free software around as if it were some type of messianic paradigm, because its not - profitable, usable software is best put to use in a business system and thats its. The very nature of business precludes money for a piece of property. Linux is not a magical religious tome, shrouded in mist above the lake of the ancients. It is not sacred. It can be bought and sold, and rightfully so. Thats business baby. Outside the tech world, linux users are hippies, just barely still democratic. They use and work on a system of knowledge steeped in time honored and capitalist traditions (division of labor(modularity), stability(conservatism), diversification (to the point of parties spanning the globe contributing anonymously, about as diversified an investment as possible). Why not just follow through and charge for the product? At this point the free software community is stagnating competition. Lets get some dollars floating around here guys, not liberal crys of SCO contempt!
You might know everything, but you certainly don't know everybody...
Call me crazy, but isn't there something about giving fair warning when patent infringement is questioned? I mean, shouldn't IBM say, "Hey, you are infringing our patents here, here, and here" before they actually sue?
Actually, weren't OS/2 and Windows NT one and the same at one time? I wonder how ugly that licensing is!
Accoring to IBM the JFS they contributed to the linux kernel is based on the version in OS/2 (not the one in AIX) See end of page:
r oj ect/pub/faq.txt
http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/jfs/p
(remove space from URL a usual - I'm too lazy to make a damn link for you)
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I'm pulling 78 kps, maybe we are starting to have some effect.
I very much doubt that the drives were shipped to Caldera for copying the software onto them (without compensation from IBM) and then shipped back to IBM, or that Caldera personnel did the installation without compensation at IBM factories (if they were contracted by IBM to copy the files, then IBM was copying).
It seems the most reasonable explanation is that IBM has made copies of the software, thus agreeing to be bound by the GPL, then distributed the copies. If that's not the case, it would be interesting to hear IBM's official explanation. Can someone verify how the preloaded Caldera Linux software actually ended up on the disk drives of the IBM ThinkPad T21 and T22?
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
And if your dad murdered your neighbor's son, would it then be just for your neighbor to murder you?
--pyro_dude
It is silly. I included the instructions in my post and also submitted it as a story. But I guess we're not as cool as the K5 folks.
Coding Blog
Microsoft developed OS/2 prior to 1.2. IIRC IBM took it over in the 1.2 or 1.3 timeframe. If you ever get a chance to see OS/2 1.3 it looks exactly like Win3.1. It's pretty unlikely you'll ever see it though, since it only runs on 3 machine types (2 IBMs and a compaq IIRC) none of which have been produced for nearly a decade.
OS/2 2.0 saw a completely redesigned GUI shell called the Workplace Shell. It was based on System Object Model, which is related to CORBA. The desktop was completely object oriented, and new objects could be written to extend the GUI system. For the most part, this never happened. IBM extended their file folder to DB2 records but no one ever used that. A few other people did some fairly trivial hacks. As far as the underlying system, a lot of it was still copyrighted, at least in part, by Microsoft.
There were a few problems; OS/2's GUI design allowed for only one input queue. If a program stopepd processing messages in the input queue, the system would hang. You were supposed to process your messages in a thread. Like anyone ever did *snort*. A lot of IBM code was straight win 3.1 ports and even THEY didn't handle the input queue nicely.
OS/2's object oriented desktop was really cool right up until you corrupted your (binary) system INI files. At that point you lost all your changes and all the neat object stuff you installed and would have to reinstall apps to get a lot of it back. Oh yeah, and it allowed modal and system modal dialogs. No windowing system should allow modal and especially not system modal dialogs.
OS/2's kernel was a precursor to NT. It was, in fact, extremely stable. Right up until you installed an OEM driver on it. Most OEMs didn't extensively test their drivers, and a lot of them caused kernel traps, giving OS/2 a reputation for instability despite the fact that the core system was damn solid.
Oh yeah, and OS/2's install process was worse than Debian's. Yes, it IS possible!
Gnome, KDE and the Linux kernel have surpassed OS/2 years ago. Add wine to the package and you've got pretty much all the functionality that OS/2 brought to the table without a lot of its pitfalls.
That being said, OS/2 has stood the test of time extremely well. We haven't advanced far beyond its technology. IBM could bring it back if they were so inclined -- fix the crappy install process, the system input queue and the binary INI files and you'd have a respectable operating system, every bit as good as NT at the very least.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
August 5 Even though it's inbetween the closing of
the quarterly books and the issuance of
their quarterly report, and inside trades
are frowned on by the SEC, Reginald
Broughton (Senior VP International Sales)
sells another 5000 shares, pocketing an
additional $62819 dollars.
You may check out the Form 4 he filed, if
you do not care to beleive me.
That's MY karma you're pimping. Dammit, where's my cut?
IIRC, when Spike Lee filed for a temporary injunction to keep TNN from changing their name to "Spike TV", the injunction was granted in a matter of a few weeks. It seems like IBM, Red Hat, or some other interested party could do something like this here -- file for a temporary injunction against SCO from offering their "licenses". In the course of hearings on that motion, wouldn't SCO have to spell out what the supposed infringing lines in the kernel are? And, couldn't that come before a judge pretty quickly, like in the TNN case?
No wonder it was modded +5, Funny....
This having been said, don't be too quick to embrace IBM as our savior. On my first day at IBM I had to sign away, as a condition of employment, any rights to anything that I might create at any time during my term of employment. If I came up with an innovative way to fold cardboard boxes while sitting at my kitchen table, I was required to present this to my functional manager. She would then pass this on to the proper deptartment, where the IP folks would decide if they wanted it or not. More than 2 hours were spent during orientation drilling us over the "no nonsense attitude" that IBM took concerning this.
This experience, and several other eye-openers that occurred before I quit, left no doubt in my mind that upper management at IBM would skin us all if they thought there was a profit to be made selling custom wet suits to China. We're watching SCO, a bottom-feeder, try it's best to parasite Linux. While IBM may stop SCO, let's not forget that IBM embraces the revenue from Linux as a substantial addition to it's bottom-line. IBM may or may not embrace the interests of the open source community quite as strongly....Those that make a lot of cash from something usually prefer to control it. I can't imagine how IBM could contrive to SCOrew the Linux community, but I -do- know that they would not hesitate the least little bit if they thought it necessary...and they've got the clout to do it right.
Arrgh - I've been bitten by the parody bug. My apologies to Dire Straits, and it's not my fault.
Money for Nothing
Now look at them SCO-yo's that's not the way to do it
They say we're infringing on their IP.
It ain't workin' the way they try to do it
They're getting nowhere, lawsuits ain't free.
No it ain't workin', not the way they do it
Lemme tell ya them guys are dumb
They gots a lawsuit from them RedHat people
And a 'nuther from that IBM.
You gotta buy their UNIX license
Or else they gonna sue you guys
They gotta keep that FUD stream flowing
They gotta keep that stock price high.
See little Darl with the options and delusions
He's got no braincells under his hair
That little Darl wants his own jet airplane
Little Darl wants to be a millionaire
You gotta buy their UNIX license
Or else they gonna sue you guys
They gotta keep the FUD stream flowing
They gotta keep that stock price high.
I shoulda learned to play the market
I shoulda learned to pump and dump
Look at them, they got all those profits
Man I could have some fun
Darl's up there in Utah making lawyer noises
Bangin' out lawsuits like a chimpanzee
It ain't workin' the way they try to do it
They're getting nowhere, lawsuits ain't free.
The 4 patents listed by IBM are completely frivolous. IBM might get 3 million for these, but not 3 billion. BTW, it's amusing how everyone on /. changes their tune about frivolous patents when they're used against someone they don't like. Shows a lot of integrity to change your views on a dime like that. As for IBM's claim that SCO can magically release code for GPL without putting a single copyright notice on the code in question is a very weak case. If this is the best IBM can do, they're fscked, and so is Linux.
I suppose that this means we'll also have the obligatory conference call tomorrow, or soon after, where Darl will blow some more hot air out of that ass that sits on his neck.
Taking a cue from the RIAA, the only thing left to due is send out hundreds of lawsuits to invidual "small time" users across the country. Tracking their IP address view IRC #linuxhelp chat, thousands of newbies will suddenly find themselves forced to pay the full $1399 for single CPU licenses. That will send the message that they really mean business. Then go after CD makers because the other half of blank CD's must be used for burning Linux.
BTW, I don't know if this guy is for real or not but according the this page
one of SCO's board of directors is "Steve Cakebread". Sounds like a bad guy from The Tic.
see darl mcbride
I B M fills all his holes
with lawyer penis
/* Intellectual Property Buster v1.0 (IPbuster.h) Include this in your kernel to prevent that nasty SCO licensing business. */
----------------
*cough cough* Damn.
Anyways, just kidding about the license. It's really GPL!
McBride : I will make lot of moneey from this lawsuit.
Billgate He heh heh plz let me make some too. I would people to by my broken XP and windoze 2003 server which is a piece of crap.
McBride: Reads laws suit from IBM....calls Bill Gates Daddy help.
Bill Gates: your on ur own buddy I made my money.
Boies might be disbarred in Florida, at least it's a start.
Help fight continental drift.
It may be a coincidence, but didn't SCO's rhetoric get more interesting after the Iraqi Information Minister left his post?
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Interestingly, in one of the comments under the K5 article, the K5 poster gave credit to the /. post that he stole from^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^inspired his article.
Its not that they are worried about the SuSE's and RedHat's guns, its the atom bomb with three big blue letters on it that scares them...
Free speech is getting expensive...
Here's an article that has a link to the text of IBM's response/countersuit:
h ives.asp?ArticleID=43784
http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarc
If there is a good thing about software patents, it is that IBM, HP, and Sun's patent portfolios are working for Linux, not against it. That's not because it happens to be convenient for IBM right now to use their patents, it's because those companies are shipping Linux and therefore have given people license to use their patents as far as Linux/GPL'ed software is concerned.
I would feel safer if software patents were just abolished, but with all major UNIX companies shipping Linux, they may actually help. In fact, GPL'ed and open source software may be an effective, cheap, and fair vehicle to achieve patent cross-licensing among multiple companies, because the patents and patent licenses basically go with the software and don't require any separate negotiations.
We view IBM's counterclaim filing today as an effort to distract attention from its flawed Linux business model
I'm sorry, but _WHAT_ ?!?!?!
I think you need to look up "flawed" in a dictionary. Your Linux business model was flawed (ie. you screwed it up and didn't make any money on it.) IBM's Linux business model is working just fine - they're making boatloads of cash.
It repeats the same unsubstantiated allegations made in Red Hat's filing earlier this week
You mean like telling people there is SCO code in the Linux kernel, but refusing to tell anyone where?
The core issue is about the value of intellectual property in an Internet age
Translation: "We're fucked, and we know it. So we're gonna blame 'the internet' for our problems now - just like the RIAA... maybe it will make people think that Linux users are a bunch of dirty pirates."
IBM urges its customers to use non-warranted, unprotected software.
So you're saying that your software comes with a warranty?
This software violates SCO's intellectual property rights in UNIX
I'm sorry, what was it you were saying about "unsubstantiated allegations" a few sentences back?
If IBM wants customers to accept the risks of the GPL, it should indemnify them against that risk.
And if you want people to accept the risks of YOUR license, you should indemnify them against that risk. Hmm, but you're not doing that either, are you?
The continuing refusal to provide customer indemnification is the truest measure of IBM's belief in its recently filed claims.
Why do you continue to say that IBM should do things that you're unwilling to do yourself? How about "lead by example"?
SCO has shipped these products for many years, in some cases for nearly two decades, and this is the first time that IBM has ever raised an issue about patent infringement in these products.
So, it's OK for you to infringe on IBM's intellectual property, but it's not OK for someone else to allegedly infringe on yours? (Hint: IBM has provided proof that you're infringing - why do you not provide proof?)
If I still had the gun in my hand, and wasn't showing any signs of dropping it, it would probably be legal. (but 'just' and 'legal' are two entirely different issues).
That having been said, IBM could do that for users of UNIXware and SCO's other proprietary distributions, but they couldn't do it for for Caldera and SCO-Linux customers. (at least -- not without losing their GPL rights).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Don't even bother replying to that last post. I just re-read what you said.... and I'm embarassed.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I think you're talking W3C.
(Just had to say that!)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
for being so funny
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
I'm sure they are hosted at Center 7 (Canopy Group's data center) and I promise you aren't going to slashdot them. That building has huge amounts of bandwidth.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
It repeats the same unsubstantiated allegations made in Red Hat's filing earlier this week
How does one grow balls that size?
Help fight continental drift.
Now if only we could get everyone to do that with the comments and articles.
--pyro_dude
If SCO doesn't like that arrangement, tough. Most (all?) of the Linux kernel isn't theirs. And if any is, it'll be replaced once SCO's extortion scheme is dealt with. The license is what makes Linux work, because contributions to it remain non-proprietary. It isn't going away, but SCO is.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
In other words, Bruce Perens could call every person inside IBM headquarters by name an uncle fucker and it wouldn't change their tactics. This is about IBM dealing with SCO before they create long-term liabilities against a business unit IBM has invested in. It's not like Bruce is going to be sitting down at the table with the lawyers themselves as they hash this thing out.
And while it's nice that a bully is on your side for once, remember, part of the problem is the amount of power and sway that these bullies have, period, no matter what side they're on. So you can't discount the need and necessity of criticism and dissent towards all the tactics taken by all the parties, even the guys on our side. To not do this is to give into a false dichotomy along the lines of "You're either with us or your helping the terrorists". Besides, if Bruce Perens is able to criticize IBM's tactics, you know that SCO's lawyers (and all the Micro^h^h^h^h^h questionably-funded third-party studies which will be serving as peanut gallery commentary throughout this case) probably are too.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
If they sue God, they violate the patent I just filed.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
It would, however, let us see how truly committed SCO is to their recent rhetoric about indemnification of customers.
Emoticons- :o or :p or :D
Pump & Dump
Get it while it's hot
D'oh!
IBM: Don't you hate it when that happens?
This is the part where you lose
Don't worry, it's only money
At least you still have your health!
This is (SCO) bad
Live by the sword, die like a squashed bug
Maybe you could try saying you're sorry for the whole misunderstanding
This *might* not be the end of your careers...
I don't think Argentina has an extradition treaty
Don't tell your dog about this...right now at least *it* still loves you
Brother can you spare a dime?
Karma
The American Bar Association wishes to thank you for your generous support
So just how much cash do you have?
So, sold many Linux licenses yet, eh?
Litigation: not just for obnoxious pricks anymore
I hear Travelocity is having a sale on tickets to Bermuda...
So IBM *and* RedHat are suing you?
Hey, at least your stock is only down 11% today!
heck, you *might* win
Abandon hope all ye who enter here
Did you say something about Linux?
Goodbye!
Well, you just never know *when* you might get bludgeoned by one of the world's largest patent portfolios...but you have to agree the timing is a little ironic!
I'm sure there's still a computer running UnixWare *somewhere*
Chewbacca defense?
I'm sure there are other revenue streams...maybe you could sell the movie rights!
Burning your cash reserves of $_____ at a rate of $____/minute, you will now be bankrupt in ____ hours. (This is sort of a digital reader board idea.)
I didn't know you could plead insanity in civil cases
Coming soon to this location: Crazy Darl's Dollar Store Liquidation Warehouse!
- Anonymous Coward
This is a large paragraph full of useless text to get around Slashdot's annoying "characters per line" filter. It is generously padded with long lines of text to increase the average line lenght significantly over it's originally puny value of 19.0. Ideally, this paragraph will let me post the above comment. I certainly don't recommend reading all this, since it is intended entirely as filler content, like the other nine songs on a pop CD. This is fluff, like the fluff that drifts from the cottonwood trees, or spewed from major news organizations like so many soggy white drifts from an industrial snowblower. Really, I'm losing my mind writing this. Ok, lets try now! Nope, still not good enough. Right now I'm at 25.7. I'm really not sure where the cutoff is, so I'll just keep going. I gotta tell you, I honestly don't think the film rights to this whole saga are gonna be worth much: didn't Dumb and Dumberer tank? Seriously, SCO should move to California where things are already so far off their rocker that even McBride would fit in. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish...A chicken farmer went out, one dark and windy day. He rested by the coop, as he went along his way. When all at once a rotten egg, hit him in the eye. It was the site he dreaded...ghost chickens in the sky. Ok, maybe that's enough drivel. I'll try posting again.
Over 2000 years ago in the Roman republic, litigation in the courts was used as a method of attacking and wasting resources of advesaries.
That depends. If the software was all written by IBM, they as authors are not bound by any license.
But - switching my brain into gear now - it would be pretty silly to file a patent suit against people for distributing their own code, so I guess your basic point still stands :)
Female Prison Rape in NY
I'm sure there are others... Someone Copied Our-code, Stupid Company Owners, Strange Copyleft Oversight, Sponsor of Community Outrage, Someone Couldn't Obfuscate.
Or maybe their stock symbol explains it better... "S-COX"... you can guess what the S stands for!
Get rid of everything Micro and Soft: Buy Viagra and/or Linux
This is fucking great, someone mod this up
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
$ lftp ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Serv er/CSSA-2003-020.0/SRPMS/- 020.0/SRPMSS SA-2003-020.0/SRPMS> ls linux*S SA-2003-020.0/SRPMS> pget linux-2.4.13-21S.src.rpm
cd ok, cwd=/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Server/CSSA-2003
lftp ftp.sco.com:/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Server/C
-rw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 26701141 May 9 17:51 linux-2.4.13-21S.src.rpm
lftp ftp.sco.com:/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Server/C
26702096 bytes transferred in 71 seconds (365.3K/s)
Note that pget opens four parallel connections to download the file.
A solution to the problem with music today
"If IBM were serious about addressing the real problems with Linux, it would offer full customer indemnification and move away from the GPL license." Will indemnification let me dodge bullets? No Neo, when IBM is done with SCO you wont need to.
[Sorry, no mirrors - I get charged for my bandwidth you know!]
NOTE: There's something very wrong with Acrobat for Linux. It shows this PDF document as blobs of grey, unintelligible text! If you're using Linux, use kghostview or similar - ghostscript renders it fine. So much for the idea that open source clones are inferior.
Female Prison Rape in NY
BTW- Don't you just love how general all of those sound? I'd love to see patent numbers, but it sounds like almost any OS might infringe on one or two of those.
And I'm sure Microsoft, Solaris, most anybody big in the OS business has some other patents, that IBM infringes on. Which is why I think IBM is slow to bring this out. Going to patent wars is kinda like the terror balance of the Cold War. Sure, the superpowers could blow eachother up but what good would that do? But if you make them defend themselves, they will retaliate in force. SCOs business plan is about as good a strategic move as North Korea nuking the US.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Which end is up?
e s/archive03/sco_redhat.html
More evidence that this remains unknown in the alternate universe known as SCO.
On their website, SCO's display of "unity" with other Linux companies is beyond ironic,
and fits nicely with the continuing public FTP of the Linux code SCO is attacking!
SCO is so cah-loo-less that their "United Linux" web page still has a link to SuSE:
http://www.sco.com/unitedlinux
After clicking on the SuSE logo, you can read SuSE's opinion of the actions of their "partner":
http://www.suse.com/us/company/press/press_releas
Besides greed and belligerence, the general state of consciousness seems to be sub-comatose at SCO.
(Of course, that's not news.)
Had water bottles and other assorted garbage thrown at him when he was performing on stage at the Rolling Stones concert in Toronto last week.
-1 Offtopic (Sorry)
If you don't stop reading this right now you owe me $1,000. Send check or money order too...
In that case, it's been a pleasure doing business with you.
It seems like an easy out for 99% of linux users...
Incidentally, can anyone file suit against the *cough*dirty-funded*cough* Gartner Group for similar business damages? I mean, the Gartner guys are supposed to be analysts, right? (Or should I say <DrEvilQuote> analysts </DrEvilQuote>.) As in, they are supposed to know what they're doing, supposed to do the homework needed to really understand the issues, and if they're simply echoing the FUD for what is bound to be shown is a frivolous and fraudulent lawsuit, then shouldn't they also be liable for business damages?
Just a thought...
--------
If I can own an idea, does that mean I can legally claim some portion of your soul once I tell you that idea? Or even if you just come up with it on your own? Heck, who needs contracts written in blood...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
No shit Sherlock!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
As described on their site:
I unfortunately have to agree with them on this. Their licensing program is new and innovative. SCO are demanding money for something they won't prove, have declared is free to the world, and may or may not own off. They're demanding the money from users who are pretty much immune from legal repercussion anyway.That, ladies and gentlemen, is true innovation.
--sanx--
Windows Tweaks
the Linux IP asssets of SCO/Caldera. What
are they? Where are they?
I will believe them when I see them. Until then,
they IP assests are worth zero dollars.
( I suspect this is pump-and-dump stock
manipulation scheme; let's see if we even
get a SCO vs IBM trial, for this may turn out to be
just a distraction. Maybe the main goal was to sell their stock options
to the masses instead of linux "licenses".)
FINALLY IBM gets off their fat duffs and makes a move!
You gotta stick it to SCO to look like an industry leader. And now IBM is looking better.
Between Red Hat and IBM (and maybe SuSE who is said to be looking at joining in), it's looking up for us and down for SCO in the Linux media wars.
Now I can go back to worrying about when Bush will invade North Korea.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
thats classic... haiku rules
People are saying again and again that the GPL requires you to license any patents that you hold relating to the code. It does no such thing. It says that you do not have GPL distribution rights if you pursue patents or other intellectual property [sic] claims.
There is absolutely nothing in the GPL that prohibits SCO, IBM, Red Hat or any other GPL distributor from pursuing patent or IP [sic] claims once they stop distributing. The GPL does not protect from submarine patents. Clearly SCO is too stupid to stop distributing, but there's no reason to believe that IBM will be if it chooses to dump linux distribution.
In fact, there is nothing to stop them from pursuing patent claims while distributing. Their patent claims will be a separate issue from the copy right infringement claims of any contributors who wish to sue them for breaching the GPL license. So far we're seeing Red Hat and IBM launching countersuits against SCO, but what they and other contributors - yes, that means you - should really do is to simply file suit for copy right violation now that SCO have voided their GPL license and continue to distribute GPL code. Why is nobody doing this?
Oh, we all know what the GPL means, but perhaps we should take some time to actually read what it says.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Beware: The link provided does nothing at all due to the fact that the redirection script doesn't redirect, you are not running a browser that will attempt to execute a binary file provided in a file:// URI, wouldn't parse rm%20-rf%20/ to mean rm with the arguments -rf and / anyway, and even if it did wouldn't work as intended unless you happen to be running your web browser as root.
4,814,746 - Data compression method
Communications between a Host Computing System and a number of remote terminals is enhanced by a data compression method which modifies the data compression method of Lempel and Ziv by addition of new character and new string extensions to improve the compression ratio, and deletion of a least recently used routine to limit the encoding tables to a fixed size to significantly improve data transmission efficiency.
4,821,211 - Method of navigating among program menus using a graphical menu tree
The menu hierarchy of one or more computer programs on one or more computer systems is visually displayed in a graphical tree structure to facilitate the navigation by a user from one menu in a hierarchical structure of menus to another. Navigation from one menu to another is accomplished by selecting a menu in the graphical menu tree using a pointing device. The navigation may be from one menu to another in the hierarchy of one application program in a computer system or from one menu in the program to a specific menu in the hierarchy of another application program in the computer system or in another computer system. The benefits of the technique are expanded function for intra and interwindow navigation, enhanced learning of the computer system by visual presentation of capabilities and structure, and reduced learning requirements for the user to achieve navigation.
4,953,209 - Self-verifying receipt and acceptance system for electronically delivered data objects
A system for electronically transmitting data objects such as computer programs with a means for verifying that the computer program was actually received and the terms and conditions of its use accepted by the receiver is presented. In this system, the computer program itself controls the verification for its receipt and acceptance. The sender first modifies the program to be delivered, rendering it non-executable in the form in which it will be received by the user initially. The sender inserts into the program an enabling routine and a verification indicia. The enabling routine is capable of rendering the non-executable program into an executable state if certain prerequisite conditions, contained in the verification and enabling routine, are met. The recipient or receiver inserts or loads the modified, non-executable program into the workstation or computer having a CRT screen display, a printer or the like that allows human observation of certain information that will be presented by the enabling program. The enabling program then displays messages or prompts to the user for entering the user's responses such as acceptance of the terms and conditions of the use of the program. In response to desired indications of acceptance by the user, the enabling program decides whether the prerequisite conditions for enabling the program into an executable form have been met and if they have been met, remodifies the program into a usable, executable form. If the prerequisite conditions are not met or agreed to, the verification and enabling program terminates without rendering the actual program itself into an executable form.
5,805,785 -
... is this just material from a bad Saturday Night Live skit?
SCO's rantings and ravings started out as being very funny to me.
Now, they are beyond absurd, the joke has warn then, so to speak.
And the effort they are expending to keep the FUD alive, definitely points to Darl and his cronies needing professional help (their not nuts, they are just stark raving insane).
I could forgive stupidity, but their actions have been far beyond stupidity for quite a while now.
Regards,
Fredrick
this space left intentionally blank
IBM can't use the patents against the Linux kernel anymore than SCO can -- as IBM points out in its own brief, distribution of the source under the GPL prohibits you from certain legal tactics... like licensing. You are implicitly licensing any IP (copyrights, trade secrets, patents) that you may own that are applicable to the source you distribute.
Sorry, but your arguement doesn't hold water (though I wish it did).
First, the GPL applies only to copyright, not patents, trade secrets, trademarks, or any other type of IP anyone might dream up. The rules for licensing patents are VERY different. If you read the writings on software patents by people like Bruce Perens and RMS, you'll find that this is very much a concern.
Second, IBM doesn't have their own distribution, they just resell distributions made by others. As such, they are under no obligation to accept or comply with the GPL. Your local bookstore doesn't need a license from every copyright holder to sell their books. The same principle applies here. That's why Staples and Fry's, who both sell Linux on their shelves, aren't under any obligations to provide source to their customers.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Well, if IBM sells hardware equiped with Linux then they ARE distributing it, aren't they? Remember, Red Hat and Suse don't write most of the code in Linux either, but they certainly distribute it.
Your local bookstore doesn't write or publish most of the books it sells. Does that mean it needs to get a license from from each and every author and publishing house whose books it sells? No, and for that reason there is no need for IBM to accept or comply with the GPL in order to resell Red Hat, SuSE, or any of the other Linux distros they offer.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
IANAL, but acceptance of the GPL is required for more than just distribution; it's also requried for creation of a derivative work, and it could well be argued that their patches are a derivative work of the kernel (especially as they are useless without the kernel).
Distribution is a confusing term, and I think it's unfortunate that it's the accepted term in this case. What is really meant is publication. The important thing to remember is this: The GPL doesn't take away any rights you would normally have under copyright law. That includes fair use, first sale, etc.
Copyright covers publishing, which is the act of making copies. If you aren't making copies (beyond what you're allowed under fair use), the GPL doesn't apply to you. The GPL ONLY applies when you are publishing AND distributing a GPLed work to a party outside of your organization.
Note also that a copyrighted work can be published under multiple licenses, so if I'm the sole copyright holder of a work that is currently distributed under the GPL, there's nothing stopping me from offering it under another license as well.
More importantly if they have ever distributed the kernel to anyone, by any means, then they also have likewise accepted the license.
This is just plain false. As I said above, if you aren't making copies beyond what you're allowed under fair use, the GPL doesn't apply to you, and in fact you haven't accepted it until you do something with that code which would normally be prohibited under copyright law.
As Eben Moglen pointed out in his recent SCO position paper; despite what the proprietary software vendors would have you believe, you DO NOT need a license to use software. Copyright law simply doesn't support that assertion.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I don't think "usefulness" has any bearing here.
IIRC, "usefulness" is one of the criteria used to determine if a bit of code is derivative or not.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
IBM has in the past distributed Linux pre-installed on at least their ThinkPad series. So there's no escape from the GPL for IBM, either. ...
Note that the GPL isn't about who put together a distribution, but about who distributes.
Wrong. Distribution in this context doesn't simply mean "passing a copy on to someone else". Remember that the GPL doesn't take away any rights you would normally have under copyright law.
IBM has no need to accept the GPL in order to ship systems with Linux preinstalled as long as they are not the publisher of that copy. If all they're doing is reselling Red Hat or SuSE with the added service of preinstalling it then they're protected by First Sale and there is absolutely no reason under American copyright law for them to accept or be bound by the GPL. You can't get them with the "when you install it that makes a copy" arguement either, because that copy is protected under Fair Use.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Buying a copy from Caldera/Red Hat/etc and reselling it is protected under First Sale, and thus not subject to the GPL.
The copy made to the hard drive during installation is protected under Fair Use, and thus not subject to the GPL.
The use of the software is not covered by copyright law at all, and thus not subject to the GPL.
Unless IBM actually made the CDs themselves, they're free and clear.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Your analogy is flawed, primarily since books are not licensed. Once they are published they are standard physical objects and treated accordingly. The content is not under a license of any kind, it is however protected by copyright law which limits what you can do with the content. GPLed software IS licensed, and the license specifically lists what you must do if you distribute said software. If IBM sells hardware preloaded with GPLed software, I believe they would be considered to be distributing the software. This is similar to embedded devices, for example TiVo and certain routers which run on Linux. Since they are distributing Linux with every device they sell they are subject to the GPL. This usually means that they must provide the source to any GPL software they use, but they are subject to all of the terms of the GPL.
Another poster said that IBM works the system so that they sell you the hardware (sans OS), then you purchase the OS from Red Hat or Suse (IBM puts the order through for you) and then IBM installs it for you (as a contractor). By doing this they MAY be avoiding the distribution clause of the GPL, but I'm still not 100% sure. There's been quite a lot of debate on what exactly constitutes distribution lately. On another point, I'm not even sure if software stores which sell boxed versions of Linux are "distributing" the software. I believe they are, but since they likely have none of their IP in the software it's not really an issue.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
The real problem here is that the "spirit" of the GPL is getting thrashed. IP??? Patents??? The GPL was written so that I can write some code and say "see- look what I wrote- I'm so smart!!!" and no one can try and steal my own code from me. Now we have some real smart programmers, and IBM has some real smart lawers, so I'm not worried about the law suit, but hate the fact the we will have lawers analyzing the GPL for glitches when it's meaning is so obvious in spirit. It will also be interesting to see what Trump cards Linus and Stallman have up their sleves if this thing gets ugly.
I notice you leave out OS/2 V3 (warp) and v4.
Right now it's on 4.52 and IBM licensed OS/2 to Serenity Systems and they released a version of 4.5 called ecomstation.
The copy made to the hard drive during installation is protected under Fair Use, and thus not subject to the GPL.
This is probably true (though I'm not sure that it's technically Fair Use; rather I think it would fall under the "copies made during use" exemption that software has), but as I said in a previous post, IBM doesn't take this risk; they install it on the hard drive as a service for, and under contract to, the hardware purchaser, which makes it as if the purchaser did it, legally.
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Hmmmm. That's a good point.
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My analogy is not flawed at all. Books and software are governed by the exact same laws. The flaw is in your understanding of what "distribution" means in this context.
The important thing to remember about the GPL is that it doesn't take away any rights you normally have under copyright law. That includes Fair Use and First Sale. First Sale means that you have the right to resell a copyrighted work without the permission of the copyright holder as long as you are not publishing it (copyright governs the right to copy, not the right to use). Fair Use means that you have the right to make copies that are required in the normal use of the software (meaning the installation copy on your hard drive and the running copy(s) in RAM). Fair Use also allows you to make a copy for backup purposes, but that really isn't relevant here.
The important thing to remember about copyright in general is that you don't need a license to use a copyrighted work. You only need a license to publish it or a work substantially derived from it. You're probably thinking to yourself something like "why do I need to agree with EULAs to use most proprietary software?" The simple answer is: You don't! If you can find a way to use the software without agreeing to the license, that is perfectly legal. In other words; the only reason you need to agree to Microsoft's license to install Windows is because that's how Microsoft set up the installer. There is absolutely no legal reason why an end user needs to agree to a EULA.
The only thing the GPL covers is publication, and that means making copies for reasons other than what is protected under Fair Use. For practical purposes, that means making copies to sell or give away to other people. This is what is meant by "distribution" in the GPL. If you aren't actually making the copies, the GPL doesn't apply to you.
What IBM does is buy a copy of Linux from, say, Red Hat, install it on behalf of the customer as a value added service, and then ship that same copy of Linux to the customer as part of the total package the customer has purchased. At no point in this process does IBM do anything which would require them to agree to the terms of the GPL, since you only have to agree to it when you do something with the software that would otherwise be prohibited under copyright law. To summarize:
Reselling the software is protected under First Sale, and thus not subject to the GPL.
Installing the software is protected under Fair Use, and thus not subject to the GPL.
Using the software is protected under Fair Use, and thus not subject to the GPL.
Since that covers everything IBM is doing in order to offer preconfigured Linux systems, they are free and clear. Note also that First Sale means that all those stores selling boxed distros are free and clear as well.
You should also be aware of how that pertains to you as a user. Basically, you are not bound by the GPL as a user. It simply doesn't apply to you and you are not required to agree to it in order to acquire, install, or use GPLed software. If you want to make copies for all your friends, or to sell, then you are bound by the GPL. If you want to create a derivative work and distribute that outside of your organization, then you are bound by the GPL. That's it. If you aren't making non-Fair Use copies of a GPLed work or a work derived from a GPLed work you aren't bound by the GPL.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
IBM doesn't take this risk; they install it on the hard drive as a service for, and under contract to, the hardware purchaser, which makes it as if the purchaser did it, legally.
IBM is conservative as always, and goes much further to protect itself than it needs to. That's probably a good idea in their situation, but still adds needless complication.
I would say, though, that while the copy made to the hard drive may be protected under a special exemption, it would also be protected under Fair Use. After all, it is in many cases required to install on a hard drive in order to use the software, and the right to use it is protected under Fair Use.
Either way, it isn't something that's restricted under copyright law, and thus you don't need to agree to the GPL in order to do it.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Go ahead and pull yours out. I'll pull out just enough to beat you.
Sorry, but your analogy is flawed. Books are not licensed, most software is. Since software is licensed it is covered under contract law in addition to copyright law.
The flaw is in your understanding of what "distribution" means in this context.
I admit that I'm pretty confused on what exactly constitutes distribution under the GPL anymore. I agree with you that it sounds like what IBM is doing is not distribution, they should be in the clear.
The important thing to remember about copyright in general is that you don't need a license to use a copyrighted work.
Unless the copyrighted work is also licensed, in which case they can certainly restrict you from using the software if you do not agree with the licensing terms (provided that the license is a valid contract).
You only need a license to publish it or a work substantially derived from it. You're probably thinking to yourself something like "why do I need to agree with EULAs to use most proprietary software?" The simple answer is: You don't! If you can find a way to use the software without agreeing to the license, that is perfectly legal.
You believe that most click-thru software EULAs are invalid (I assume because you did not agree to the license before purchase), but this has not been proven by the courts. In fact, I know there have been a couple court cases (sorry, don't have the links) where the judge ruled that the EULA was a valid contract particularily if you had to click thru to install (I know it's possible to install without clicking thru, but how many people actually do this?). Besides, many software licenses ARE reviewed and agreed to before purchase, such as volume purchases by businesses, so those licenses are certainly a legal and valid contract.
What IBM does is buy a copy of Linux from, say, Red Hat, install it on behalf of the customer as a value added service, and then ship that same copy of Linux to the customer as part of the total package the customer has purchased. At no point in this process does IBM do anything which would require them to agree to the terms of the GPL, since you only have to agree to it when you do something with the software that would otherwise be prohibited under copyright law.
I agree. It seems that IBM is in the clear with this approach.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Sorry, but your analogy is flawed. Books are not licensed, most software is. Since software is licensed it is covered under contract law in addition to copyright law.
Wrong. Software is governed under copyright law unless the vendor can trick you into agreeing to a contract before you can use it. There's a very big, and very important, difference there. There's nothing stopping a book publisher from shrinkwrap licensing their books, it just isn't an accepted practice in the book market and customers probably wouldn't buy a book packaged that way.
Unless the copyrighted work is also licensed, in which case they can certainly restrict you from using the software if you do not agree with the licensing terms (provided that the license is a valid contract).
Again, the license doesn't mean dick if there's a way to install and use the software without agreeing to it. Software is under copyright law, and there is absolutely nothing in copyright law that says you have to have a license to use the work. You only need a license to publish the work.
You believe that most click-thru software EULAs are invalid (I assume because you did not agree to the license before purchase), but this has not been proven by the courts.
I didn't say that. While I do think that a "contract" which is non-negotiable and which you effectively have to agree to before you even have a chance to read it should be invalid, I also recognize the legal reality. However, that's a whole other rant and has nothing to do with the GPL, since you only have to agree to it in order to publish the work, not in order to use or install it, which was my point.
Besides, many software licenses ARE reviewed and agreed to before purchase, such as volume purchases by businesses, so those licenses are certainly a legal and valid contract.
Obviously. See my previous point about negotiability and being able to read the agreement prior to purchase.
I should note, though, that I don't really have a problem with the typical click-through EULA as long as it's enforced on ALL involved parties. If I don't agree to the license, the guy who sold it needs to give me my money back. After all, if I'm bound by the license without reading it, then so should he, and the license says he'll give me a refund. He agreed to that by selling me software whose EULA included that clause.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.