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.
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.
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.
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.
I just bought a tool for $699 to De-SCO my windows 98 box. I'm not taking any chances.
I recommend you all buy the utility, the website is http://www.caldera.com/
We can only assume that it took IBM this long to prepare the suit because they wanted to ensure a crushing blow to the SCO extortion ring in one quick sweep.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
In a way, I'm glad it's IBM fighting the first big GPL court battle, rather than any of the advocacy organizations, which while strongly motivated and highly expert, are also woefully underfunded and would almost certainly lose in a drawn-out war of attrition.
For once, a corporate behemoth on our side...
When SCO dies, who will snatch up the assets it has (including if any valid IP)?
Who has more cash floating around than most?
M$... 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
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.
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."
Hope SCO managers cashed in ALL of their stock
Unfortunately for them, right now is the time between the close of last quarter and the official annoucement of results. The SEC generally frowns on insider sales during this time period. Gotta love Red Hat's timing.
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.
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
I bought a single stock that I'm donating to the Darwin awards. First place is a lock for these jokers.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
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."
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.
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.'"
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.
Odd - I'm still getting 191KB/second - Come on, Slashdotters, you can do better than that!
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.
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.
In other news SCO's stock plummetted 11.4%.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
All the money to be made in all industries is made by lawyers, didn't you get the memo?
I bet he's very "disappointed" that IBM countersued.
Heh.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
...I always took it for granted that SCO obtained permission from IBM to use RCU, NUMA, ... in their OS. (I am assuming that those are the patents that IBM is accusing SCO of violating.)
You could assume that, or your could RTFA:
The patents cover a data compression technique, a method of navigating among program menus using options arranged in a graphical tree, a method for verifying that an electronic message was received and a method for monitoring computing systems linked in a cluster.
The infringing SCO software, IBM said, is its UnixWare and OpenServer operating systems, its SCO Manager remote administration tool and its Reliant HA package for letting one computer in a cluster take over if another fails.
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.
the no
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.
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
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.
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.
Does anyone remember the Bill Gates thing on cross-license, well IBM is dumping huge amounts of money into Linux, they see the potential, it's in their interest to never use these patents against Linux, just as it's in their interest to never use them against MicroSoft, as it's in MicroSoft's interest to not use them against Linux as IBM is sitting there with it's portfolio ready to shred MicroSoft if it came down to it, so effectively Linux is using cross licesened patents, and being protected from others by IBM. This is business, this is how patents are used, we should be glad IBM is up on IP law and knows how to use it, and that Linux is so valuable to IBM.
IBM has always agressively defended their IP and they have a shitload of it. a lot more of it is in hardware R&D though. I think IBM puts out more pattents in a week than SCO has in it's entire portfolio. it's like fighting a guy with a knife when he has a tank. there's nothing inherantly wrong with what IBM is doing, they invest a lot in IP so they should be able to defend what they develop. they definately do let a lot of people slide who violate IBM IP rights, it's not like they're going to sue everyone, it's not worth it to them. and besides SCO started the pissing contest, now IBM is just going to finish it.
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
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.
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?
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.
Oh yeah. Been waiting for this, the official "other shoe," to drop for months.
Seriously, what was SCO expecting? On a ranking of groups not to piss off...
999,934,953,021: PETA
999,934,953,020: FSF
127:GNAA, San Quentin Prison Chapter
2: Colombian cocaine cartels
1: IBM
Shoulda seen this coming.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
So, yeah, IBM could kill Linux if it wanted to brush off some patent and take RedHat or someone to court. They way I read this (IANAL, duh), if IBM got a court order saying that Linux infringes some of its patents, people would have to stop distributing programs that cannot be used royalty-free, right?
Seems unlikely they they would do that.
According to forbes:
IBM last year took in more than $1 billion in Linux-related revenue. In its 2002 annual report IBM claims it has 7,500 employees involved in developing, selling or supporting Linux, and that more than 15% of the mainframe capacity it shipped last year was for Linux workloads.
IBM is pulling in some major cash from its Linux business (after having made an equally major investment, it seems). What motivation would they have to piss in their own cornflakes?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
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
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?
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
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
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.
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
I think the term we are all forgetting is: Defensive Patents. Designed NOT to enforce on a regular basis, but instead to say "sue us, and we will bitch slap you back". Lots of companies use defensive patents (especially IBM) in case they tread ever so slightly on someone else's patent. A type of insurance policy.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
You're close. It's actually fellatious in that the more they push that license the more I want to shove my dick in their mouths.
All's true that is mistrusted
It's actually fellatious in that the more they push that license the more I want to shove my dick in their mouths.
That doesn't sound like such a wise idea. I'd bet SCO bites.
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
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.
We view IBM's counterclaim filing today as an effort to distract attention from its flawed Linux business model
You gotta love it when a company that has posted multiple million dollar losses for the last 5 years, can't find a market for their product, and admits in it's sec filings that it's current actions will alienate it from it's market and customers says IBM has a flawed business model.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre