Slashdot Mirror
SCO: Fortune 500 Company Buys License, IBM Retort
An anonymous reader writes "SCO announced today that an undisclosed Fortune 500 company purchased Linux licenses for each of their servers running in their business. SCO: 'This Fortune 500 company recognizes the importance of paying for SCO's intellectual property that is found in Linux and can now run Linux in their environment under a legitimate license from SCO. We anticipate this being the first of many licensees that will properly compensate SCO for our intellectual property.'" kanly writes "The full text of IBM's countersuit against SCO is now online at LWN." M : Our own Roblimo has a pretty good take on it. Keep in mind that SCO could sell a blanket license for $1, for the publicity value.
If you look at their stock chart for Monday:
p =s &t=1d&l=on&z=m&q=l
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SCOX&d=c&k=c1&a=v&
You can see where it was really headed down the tubes, and then this announcement came along at 'just the right moment', and propped things up a bit.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
Just like the infringing code...I bet both don't exist.
With their new 'testing labs', what's the bet that it's Microsoft?
I'm sure they'd love to further finance Caldera's extortion/FUD campaign.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Article length: 184 words
Sales pitch: 169 words
Im taking everything below "For more information on the SCO Intellectual Property License for Linux, contact SCO..." as sales pitch
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
What happens when we win?
Does that fortune 500 company look like a complete fool? Do they get their money back?
Do they sue for extortion?
The company that did it is a fool. It's probably Microsoft... registering their 2 copies.
ChiefArcher
Look at the place I work. A financial firm in downtown New York. A few months ago, we started to shift all the NT servers to Linux.
However, in light of all this, the managers want us to switch to BSD/OS X.
I have been an avid Linux user since '99, and while all this means nothing to me, big companies get worried at all this talk and all these lawsuits. Understandably so. They don't care about the politics. From their view, Linux has some illegal code which SCO is claiming is theirs. The IT Managers don't want to get fired or blamed, if the worst case comes to be that we indeed do have to pay license fees, when all this is resolved.
Such a shame....
Microsoft? They opened a linux test lab recently, right? They have the money to pay the fee, they are in the fortune 500, and they are willing to pay the fee even though they don't have to. Not to mention SCO did not say which company it is.
I read this interesting article over at The Register by Andrew Orlowski about taking GPL to court. My favorite quote:
The greatest strength of the GPL is that it's a social contract, one that makes the most powerful, who can buy the legal system, think twice before going to law. And that's pretty powerful.
But with IBM's counter suit against SCO explicitly defending its rights in terms of the GPL, it looks like The One Thing we Didn't Want To Happen will happen. We'll have a random judge poking holes in the GPL, on some perfectly defensible grounds that bear little relevance to the social obligations these imply. As if he's supposed to know the difference.
Actually, the way I think I understand it, they can get away with it, as long as they do not attempt to charge any users who use the SCO-branded linux versions, since that would be a blatant violation of the GPL, and Linus could swing the hammer of justice down on them.
Now if SCO licenses it's "Proprietary IP", but gives free rights to the SCO-branded version, then they are covered, I think.
Either way, it's a fine test of the GPL, if the courts don't summarily dismiss the case or IBM and RedHat don't pummel them into the ground.
I wonder if they really are suckers.
SCO needed someone to admit paying up. So what if they got a company which has just the one or two linux servers to pay in exchange for SCO paying them back double.
Company is happy, SCO looks more credible and lawyers get their share.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
-
http://www.goingware.com/notes/prosecute-sco.html
Here's the introduction: Also from the article: This page provides the article in the UBB code that some message boards use, with plain text coming soon. I'm also starting to post examples of letters that others have sent to their Attorney's General.Thanks for your help.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The word that keeps comming to my mind is: Microsoft.
They are a fortune 500 company, have had business with SCO this year regarding this UNIX licensing fiasco, and have opened the Open Source Test Lab. I'm pretty sure they would benefit a lot by licensing all the linux in their Test Lab with SCO, that way they support the case and fuel SCO's FUD machine.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
Just so that everyone knows. This "news" became public around the same time as SCO's stock was in free-fall. In fact, the stock was trading 2 dollars lower than its opening price and falling. I found this rather a coincidence because since the news came out, the stock actually regained an entire dollar to its value.
Oh, and by the way, one of the executives (ROBERT BENCH) unloaded 7,000 shares today just after the market opened. How strange.
Keep an eye out on who of loads their shares tomorrow!
Well, this brings up an interesting point: for all that MS makes of software piracy and compansating uber-huge conglomerates what if they DON'T register all their new copies of Linux?
Would it mean that they don't think SCO has a case or does it mean that they really don't give a flip about piracy?
But they prolly did register it. That sucks.
the insider trading allegations with sco execs?
But with IBM's counter suit against SCO explicitly defending its rights in terms of the GPL, it looks like The One Thing we Didn't Want To Happen will happen. We'll have a random judge poking holes in the GPL, on some perfectly defensible grounds that bear little relevance to the social obligations these imply.
If that's the case, maybe the social contract needs work. You certainly see the same in the legal system, people find new loopholes, legislators try to close them. Do you really expect every company under the sun to have a social integrity and uphold those social obligations on their own accord? They won't. And when they break them, the GPL had better have the necessary legal force to rein them in, because that is just about the only real countermeasure available. Any holes they manage to poke will only serve to be the foundation for a GPL 3.0
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
in the larger scheme of things it just makes SCO's complaint look valid
Hardly. Any random judge picked at random might be technically clueless, but I'm sure they all understand the logic behind hedging one's bets against litigation -- aside from seeing it every damn day of their working lives, they are all lawyers, after all.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Okay, so SCO just licensed a product containing (according to them) their proprietary source code combined with GPL'd source code. By the very act of bundling the two, doesn't this now give the licensee the right to modify and/or redistribute said work?
In other words... SCO can claim (*cough*BULLSHIT*cough*) that they had no idea their IP was in linux when they distributed it previously, but now that they have SPECIFICALLY given someone rights to their particular IP, in a product bundled with GPL'd code, aren't they now EXPLICITLY releasing their IP as GPL?
DiscDividers tabbed plastic CD dividers: divider cards f
Army of One!
If it was anybody else they wouldn't have a reason for keeping it a secret. SCO has a huge incentive for being able to publicize any big names besides Micro$oft who pony up. I would think they would be more than willing to cut a deal on the licensing fees just to be able to publicize whoever paid... but that assumes its a company who has a significant number of Linux boxes and who doesn't mind telling the world that they use Linux.
"Undisclosed Fortune 500 company" my a$$.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I know who bought the license..
Straight from yahoo.com
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/47/4393.html
Oemga Protein Corp..
Wilson, M Senior Vice President of SCO Group is also
Vice President of Omega Protein Corp..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Pretty simple, but if I mess something up too badly, someone who is a lawyer can correct me.
1) None of what they (SCO) said we (IBM) did is against the law.
2) No really, none of it was against the law, and here are the contracts we had that prove we didn't do anything wrong.
3) Piss off, you don't have any real reason to file this suit. (No, really, that's what a lack of standing defense means.)
4) Even if we (IBM) did do something wrong (which we didn't), then SCO didn't file in time to actually do anything about it.
5) Even if we (IBM) did do something wrong (which we didn't), then SCO didn't lose any money from it (mostly because their business sucked before any of this started).
6) When they 'found' what they say we (IBM) did (and, no we _really_ didn't do it) they waited too long after they found out about it to tell us there was an issue. [Not the same as #4.]
7) We (IBM) bought the stuff from the Original SCO (now Tarrentula), and the new SCO (dirtbags) can't sue us for stuff we legally liscenced from them.
8) Talk to the Feds. We (IBM) still didn't do anything wrong, and even if we did, Federal law says it wasn't wrong, it was legit.
9) They (SCO) are playing the ball in the wrong court. Come play in our backyard, and this arguement goes away.
10) Even when they (SCO) found what they say we (IBM) did wrong, they didn't try to stop it first, they just went straight to the lawyers.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
It doesn't really matter if they paid for it or not.
Should the IP claims [inevitably] turn out to be invalid, this company now has certifiable legal grounds to sue SCO for all their licensing money back. And more lawsuits over this sort of thing will just hurt SCO's stock values more in the long run.
Just think of it as "insurance."
Good point! Are any other of the pissant Canopy group companies in the Fortune 500? What better way to weasel out a press release than by having your sister company buy a worthless license from you.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Question: Is the company Microsoft?
:-)
Answer: Could be...
Reason: Well, how many LINUX computers are being used to run MICROSOFT, or at least how many do they publically state that they are using to run the business.
Lets face it, if they pay $6000 for a server license, and the publicity convinces 50 people to buy Windows Server 2003 licenses, they have a fantastic return on investment...
Additional Question: Was it the full organisation, or one part of it?
Comment: Well, most of these organisations are large, so just imagine if one division spent $50,000 on licenses and only for that division. Would this press release still be true... probably
I agree with the spirit of what you are saying.
Unfortunately, the GPL doesn't hold anyway in the case of non-distribution. Therefore, the purchasers of the license are not under any legal liability from the GPL. Sure it's an abrogation of the spirit of the GPL, but not the lettter.
Of course, why anyone would *pay* to limit their rights to use the software, I have no idea. I know there are people who pay to have things reamed up their asses once in a while, but they seem to enjoy it. But I don't see how a corporation could find this licensing extortion fun at all.
Oh well, maybe I'm just naive. I mean, you should have seen the expression on my face the first time I heard about a Prince Albert.
Here's a thought I've had. What if this whole thing was actually engineered by IBM? They get SCO to sue them (IBM), spreading all kinds of anti-Linux noise in the process. The benefit to the SCO people is all the money they've been making on their stock since the lawsuit was filed. Microsoft, taking any opportunity to discredit Linux it can jumps on board by purchasing "licenses" to SCO's UNIX property. IBM then countersues SCO, bitchslapping them with patent violations. Microsoft eventually is revealed as the only company stupid enough to buy SCO's license (announced today). IBM eventually wins its countersuit, legitimizing both Linux and the GPL. Microsoft's support of SCO makes them look foolish, causing them to lose credibility. Linux starts getting bigger and bigger marketshare, driving Microsoft out of business, and IBM gets vengeance on M$ for stealing IBM's business back in the day! What, it's better than the other conspiracy theories going around...
Why not?
SCO are clearly in breach of the GPL since they have imposed ...further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights... contrary to paragraph 6; and clearly they may not distribute Linux (or anything linked to any part of Linux) at all. But in accepting SCO's claim to have the right to charge these fees, in paying these fees, the unnamed company is effectively in breach of paragraph 6, and may not redistribute to itself...
In other words, the poor schmucks have got themselves in some very tortuous legal soup, and they end up losing out no matter who wins.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Is SCO a Fortune 500 company? Maybe one of their departments bought licenses from the Linux licensing department.
I explained that I had several linux systems, and that I understood there were some intellectual property issues, so I wanted to be sure to be covered.
The helpful and polite lady on the phone told me that the license program had been "suspended until further notice". She said she was pretty sure it had to do with the lawsuit.
May you should call too (800 726 8649) just to be sure.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
On one hand, MS wants this to continue damaging Linux as long as possible. On the other hand their lawyers are no dummies. I'm sure some IBM execs are still hacked off about OS/2 and would like some payback. IBM's countersuit is as devastating as it gets. I doubt MS want to be anywhere near SCO when their chickens come home to roost. This could be a way for MS to feed them more money under the table to keep the lawsuit/fud machine going. Basically, MS will keep feeding them money as long as McBride and Sontag can at least keep quiet about at least one thing.
I wonder if SCO realizes that Caldera released Unix versions 1-7 (incl 32V) under a BSD license back in '02. Doesn't that still apply or were they "unsure"? Is it the same version they are suing over?
the link: http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf
Soon we'll have McBride swearing there never were any kind of linux license(s) sold... That PR was just... an accident. Yes. Some secretary released it by mistake. Oh, yes.
Oh well, it's interesting to follow, I'll give you that. I've learned a lot about the stockmarket the last few days.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Well, it may be a stupid question, but ... Isn't Microsoft a fortune 500 company? And wouldn't that also explain immediately why it is an undisclosed company that paid SCO?
The fortune 500 company could be Dell. Why not help M$ and SCO spread the FUD. They don't want to see IBM eat into their server market anymore.
"They say travel broadens the mind, so I went over the falls in a barrel." -Thomas Dolby
Yes, (well according to Bruce Perens) if you buy a license from SCO, you are in breach of the GPL.
Here is an except from his Open Source "State of the Union Address (from newsforge)
SCO has recently announced a so-called "license" for Linux. The absurdity of this should be obvious, but let's touch upon a legal aspect. Every party who enters into this license will be in violation of the GPL, and in infringement of the collective copyrights of the Linux and GNU system authors. As a customer, if you purchase the SCO license, you can be sued by every copyright holder who has contributed to the Linux kernel and other components of the system. You can be sued by IBM, by Red Hat, by me, by tens of thousands of people and companies. Of course, nobody's going to buy an license for software that SCO doesn't own anyway, so it's just hollow posturing.
Sun just struck a big deal with SuSE so I doubt it's them.
It could be Disney. They have a lot of their own intellectual property to protect. Rumors of IP infringement spreading among non-technical folk would be much more damaging to them, even though the rumors would be false, than news of their foolishness (if it was them) spreading among the rest of us.
So IBM want to sue SCO for compress. Of course SCO have a license from Unisys. Of course the patent should never have been issued to Unisys, 'cos IBM patented the same thing first.
This case is opening up some of the real horrors of the whole "IP" mess.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
If this company was Boeing or General Motors, don't you think SCO would be quite eager to tell ? And why would such a company wish not to go public about this ? I wouldn't be the least surprised if this company was Microsoft - think of it, they probably have a few Linux boxen (if they didn't have any before, they could easily deploy a couple of installations just for this trick), and they wouldn't mind at all paying a few bucks to try to give SCO's claims more credibility. Going public about it would of course nullify this.
"And you are dying so slowly, you believe to be living" - Bertrand Besigye
Its the oddest thing.. if any individual put up a website that supposedly sells Windows or Adobe software licenses ( or licenses to any other software that they dont own the copyright to, just as SCO are doing with Linux ), and if that person sent threatening letters to not just companies, but Microsoft/Adobe employees, then said individual would be arrested fairly promptly.
Now that SCO have trumpeted their fraud to the world at large in a very public and high profile way, I think this harms rather than helps their cause. Profiting from copyright infringement is a far more serious offense than merely distributing material free of charge or obligation. I think Darl is digging himself and SCO into one hell of a deep dark hole, how long can he maintain the charade of legitimacy? You can be damn sure that IBM have taken careful note of the half-baked drivel that he has been spewing recently, those statements will came back to haunt him with a vengence during the trial.