SCO: FSF Reply To GPL Claims, Conference Sponsors Back Off?

bkuhn writes "Last week's Wall Street Journal (and other news outlets) carried statements by SCO's Mark Heise challenging the "legality" of FSF's GPL. FSF has issued a response to this baseless claim." Also, mcgroarty points out that Intel and HP seem to be backing swiftly away from their sponsorship of SCO's in-progress Las Vegas conference (a EWeek article suggests that "Intel Corp. was recently billed as one of the lead sponsors of SCO's Forum 2003 conference here this week, but then suddenly disappeared from all marketing and press material for the forum. It appears that Hewlett-Packard Co. also got cold feet. As late as last week, SCO was telling attendees that HP would be giving a partner keynote at the forum on Tuesday morning. But on Sunday the schedule of events given to attendees when they registered makes no mention of an HP keynote...") M adds: Now we've got a few stories from the conference: News.com.com and Eweek. Despite some bad headline writing at News.com, SCO simply continues to employ the Chewbacca defense, showing no code to back up their claims. Amusingly, Darl McBride started his rant about copyright infringement by copying some footage from a James Bond movie. Bravo!

Comments

stock

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a stock selling scheme. Run up the stock price and sell out.

Bravo, indeed...

[Empiric]

Seeing Intel and HP walk out does my heart glad.

Hopefully these companies are seeing SCO's actions for what they are; an outright attempt to hijack the work of thousands of developers by fallacious statements, spin, and, at best, a tiny toehold on the body of work Linux constitutes.

Despite SCO's spin to the contrary, this isn't about the GPL model versus the proprietary software model; it's about unethical versus ethical business practices, and SCO is on the wrong side of the fence.

Would any reputable company now risk involvement with SCO on any level? Look at it this way. SCO made, in essence, a business deal. They distributed their software under the GPL, in an attempt to receive the benefits that the GPL approach can offer, much like Red Hat did. Now, they want to renege on the deal because they think they've got something more profitable. For them to now claim that they somehow didn't understand, or were somehow unaware of, their own business decisions is just completely disingenuous. What company would now sign any kind of business deal with them, knowing that given their history, they're likely to try to cry "do-over!" at some point and redefine their contract, making all sorts of legal threats and spurious statements in the process, and perhaps just decide that your IP is theirs by whatever stretch of the contract wording they can muster?

This is what's bad for business, not the GPL.

On a related note, I'd like to suggest that any companies out there contemplating paying SCO's extortion fees, even if the price is not a concern to them, refuse to pay it on principle. One good argument for not paying the Mafia, is that if you do, they are going to get bigger, and "lean" on you even more. And... I really must apologize to the Mafia for the analogy, as most of their profits derive from "consensual-crime" activity, rather than outright attempts to steal the property of individuals, in direct violation of the spirit and letter of the law. The Mafia has a higher percentage of legitimate business activites than SCO does.
SCO's activities are to the benefit of no one, except themselves. HP and Intel, by contrast, benefit themselves largely through developing products and services to benefit their customers, something SCO has apparently lost the capacity to do. Even the companies which have products in direct competition to Linux would have a hollow victory if SCO's legal challenge to the GPL resulted in an invalidation of the fundamental notion of copyright upon which the GPL rests, and the discretion it gives to the work's creator, for-profit, for-humanity, or both. The sooner this is recognized by everyone, as these two companies are taking the lead toward, the better.

Re:Bravo, indeed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Any company that's considering paying the extortion money should demand that the money be put into an escrow account until the IBM and Red Hat lawsuits are resolved.

Demanding a promise from SCO to return the money if they lose in court is not good enough. SCO will most likely declare bankruptcy and all your money will be gone.

Re:The Bond Clips

[bninja_penguin]

Actually, if you read all the articles, you'll notice that the Bond clips were provided by MGM (who owns the hotel SCO is at) for SCO's use. Thus, no piracy.

Ahhhh, but the esteemed counsel that SCO has sought out stated previously, that copyright law allows for one and only one copy to be made, for backup purposes only, so MGM better make damn sure they were using the original footage, with their fingers on the fast forward/rewind buttons, or even they are not in compliance with the SCO version of law.

Re:SCO to sell Samba product...

[Anonymous Coward]

What gives? First they blast the GPL, then proudly exclaim that they're using GPL'd software to extend their capabilities. They blast GPL programmers as being stupid, then get applause when advertising GPL'd software. This is shit. Samba, pull your head out of your ass and revoke their right to use/distribute your software. They're attacking the GPL and can't be trusted to abide by any of the GPL's provisions. Sheesh.

the right to buy a second home???

[The Lynxpro]

Does McBride even live anywhere in Northern California? There are plenty of wage-slaves out here (myself included) that cannot even afford to buy a FIRST HOME, let alone even begin to lust after further real estate like Tom Vu on an infomercial... I guess you could craft an analogy to SCO's profit motives from the following rental unit tale: Mr. McBride is hired by a landlord to squeeze out more profit from an inherited starter-home. The former owners bought the modest home and began making repairs and other improvements to the property. They then were successfully able to find tenants who leased the property. The owners/landlords then mysteriously vanished, presumed deceased. The tenants became the most popular people on the block because they threw great parties, but never rocked-the-boat with the other neighbors. The new owner (who inherited the property) found out from another neighbor the previous owners put in a lot of improvements in the property which caused the tenants so much fanfare in the neighborhood. The owner became jealous because nobody wanted to come over to his own houseparties down the street. The owner found a napkin in another neighbor's trashbin indicating some of the property's improvements, written down based upon observation at the last fondu (sic) party. The notes on the discarded napkin matched some informal notes the deceased owners wrote down on a legal pad. The jealous owner became livid and saw an ad in the Pennysaver from a Mr. McBride claiming he could sell refridgerators to the Inuit and he could bring his expertise to anyone for a nice slice of the pie and a $5 downpayment. Mr. McBride came to town and listened to the whole story. Mr. McBride, a FOB (Friend of Bill) then hires a skilled attorney to figure out a crafty legal strategy out of claiming monies from the tenants based upon the *unjust* enrichment they received from the goodwill of the deceased owners prior to signing their lease agreement. Because the lease agreement was written using a revolutionary new form of compact (ie contract) favored by new-agers, McBride and Company claim it is null and void. The property in question is at the intersection of Caldera Drive and Torvalds Way...

Miscounted, somewhere?

[posternutbaguk]

From one of the (many) articles:

"[SCO] said, for example, that more than 829,000 lines of SMP code had been duplicated in Linux."

829,000 lines for symmetrical multiprocessing code in Linux? I don't have the stats to hand but I seriously doubt that.

Seems a key point

[martissimo]

The whole time this has been ongoing the people have been saying "show us the code", now they are starting to do just that. As I recall there was a very similar correlation between Unix and BSD a long while back, the end result was some offending code being removed and the case being over with no other real repercussions.

Forget the zealotry of we are right and they are wrong, why not look at the code they now show to be infringing and just get rid of (or change) it?

Legal precedent is on the side of this action being the correct one (from my somewhat foggy memories)

Re:Seems a key point

[kevinz]

That is the whole problem from SCO's point of view. If the whole thing goes away they can't continue to sell the stock and enrich the board. IIRC, they've even said as much. To paraphrase: "We'd show you the code, but then teams of open source would remove the code and replace it with their own versions, and then where would we be?" If nothing else, this seems to prove the old adage "There is no such thing as *bad* publicity." I don't know if they've gotten any non-M$ revenue from this, but the stock is up, and they are back in every trade magazine in the country. Who was talking about SCO before the lawsuit? How many people even knew SCO existed back then? Of course that begs the whole exit strategy issue. Press release: "The SCO Group announced today that in the interest of good will they have agreed to abanden their lawsuit against IBM. IBM has also agreed to impelemnt processes and procedures to protect the intellectual capital of all independant software vendors to better protect the livelyhood of programmers everywhere. Finally, in an effort to help prompte open source software the SCO Group has established a multi-million dollar fund to be used to promote and develop open source solutions."

Stupidity?

[sterno]

It's not stupidity, it's a great way to make some quick money. I mean, it's underhanded, and ultimately futile, but you can't deny that the execs and shareholders are making a quick buck.

In the end, what SCO is doing isn't illegal, and it won't get any of them in hotwater unless somebody can proove that they filed the suit only to get the stock up, knowing full well it was a baseless lawsuit. Their claims hold just enough water to keep them safe even if they won't stand up in court.

This is a great demonstration of what is wrong with the focus on creating short term profits in corporate america. The SCO execs are not only sniking the future of their company, but potentially the future of other companies. They are doing so, blindly, for the quick buck.

Re:Stupidity?

[Courageous]

In the end, what SCO is doing isn't illegal,...

Hrm. In the sense of the common law, it *is* illegal to bring frivolous cases to court. Tortious interference is illegal, as is trade libel, and so forth. So I wouldn't be so sure about labeling what they are doing "not illegal," if I were you.

C//

Re:Boycott SCO?

[Experiment 626]

I like the idea, but I'm not sure it would do any good. The current incarnation of SCO doesn't seen to care very much about selling any products. Their present business model revolves entirely around litigation, extorting money from Linux users, and spreading FUD to artificially inflate their stock price. While you might boycott them by not buying into their protection racket license, and removing any legacy SCO Unix you might be running, I'm afraid it wouldn't affect their bottom line nearly as much as with a traditional sales-driven corporation.

Re:On being deserted by Intel and HP.

[BennyTheBall]

Actually, that analogy is a little flawed. If it was like that you'd have mammoth-sized rats fleeing from a 10ft skiff. I think the popular "avoid it like the plague" is a little more appropiate here.

Re:The End is Near

[netsharc]

Man, he does look like he was a fucking jock earlier in life, whose career path is of course bullshiting his way into management, who's never related to or respected the nerd culture. just one major asshole. "The DNA of Linux is SCO code."? Fuck you man!

Re:We are up to a million lines of code!

[rgmoore]

For example, 110,000 lines of Unix System V code for read copy update, 55,000 lines of NUMA code and more than 750,000 lines of symmetric multi-processing code from Unix System V has made its way into Linux, attorneys and SCO executives claimed.

Why does this sound as if somebody just ran the whole directory tree for each of these areas through wc and recited the total number of lines?

Re:We are up to a million lines of code!

[Arker]

55,000 lines of NUMA code [...] has made its way into Linux, attorneys and SCO executives claimed.

That would be a nice trick, since SysV didn't have NUMA.

SCO is so full of shit it's not even funny.

They're already specific about the code

[roystgnr]

It's RCU, it's NUMA, it's SMP, it's a whole bunch of code that SCO didn't write, didn't buy, and doesn't own, but that they believe they have total control over because of their interpretation of a contract that supposedly reassigns to them any code that ever gets linked with a line of System V.

If you want to see their evidence, you'll need to start reading their contracts, not their source code. Any attempt to compare binaries will be hampered by the fact that SCO thinks they own code that they've never even seen, much less compiled.

Chutzpa

[Snorpus]

You gotta admire Darl and Mark and Chris. No, really, think about this...

Without presenting any evidence, or even quasi-evidence, just claims and lawsuits and a magical waving of the arms, they have managed to bring SCO from the verge of being de-listed by NASDAQ (share price under $1.00) to becoming a Wall Street darling, because the share price is now over $10.00.

I'll bet the actual IP of RCU, etc. has already been covered in Operating Systems Courses at dozens of Universities.

Re:Irony - please contact your employer

[Tim Macinta]

You can't say that unless you know for a fact that not one line of Linux code was lifted from SCO source. If any of it was, then SCO IS fighting for IP rights.

Please re-read my post - you missed the entire point. I said that SCO is flagrantly violating the IP rights of others and I said nothing about whether or not SCO's own IP was being violated. They are distributing the copyrighted work of thousands of developers without permission (i.e., the Linux kernel). Regardless of whether or not they have rights to the fraction of code that is under dispute with IBM, there is certainly a very large portion of the kernel which they don't have the rights to, and yet they continue to distribute it in violation of the license. They are also seeking to destroy the right of authors to control how their works are distributed (i.e., they are attempting to outlaw free distribution in general, not just with their alleged code). They can hardly claim the high ground where they say that they are fighting for IP rights in general when they violate others' rights like this.

Re:They shoot horses, don't they?

[Dalcius]

Ah, yes, but other companies won't take heed if SCO isn't replaced with a stinking hole in the ground where even the heartiest weed won't grow.

SCO must be crushed, the open source community and its allies (namely, those who enjoy free development from some really smart folks) must make an example out of this little maggot so that other companies are afraid to follow in SCO's footsteps in the near future.

SCO is a blessing: they're an easy example.

"Fire at will, commander."

Re:They shoot horses, don't they?

[antiMStroll]

Back in the Red Hat 5.1 days, one of the Que how-to books came with a bonus copy of Caldera 1.3 (IIR). It blew Red Hat away, worked like gangbusters, dead solid and fast (for it's P133 time). It really is a shame to see what the company has become.

Re:Irony - please contact your employer

[jefu]

McBride actually admitted today that their attack is about destroying free software which is just disgusting considering that one of the core principals of IP law is that the author should be able to disseminate his work as he wishes - SCO apparently wants to destroy this choice.

But this is completely in keeping with the way American capitalism works. For instance the Department of the Interior sells leases to ranchers to put cattle on (often overgrazed land). But groups like the Sierra Club have been refused those leases, even though high bidder, because they planned on leaving the land fallow.

The rule seems to be "you must profit by your rights or your rights don't count".

The US isn't alone. How about this story about a Canadian city that won't give a place a liquor license unless they server liquor (they want it so patrons can smoke tobacco).

Ain't humanity wonderfully silly?

Re:The Bond Clips

[jeffasselin]

Ahhhh, but the esteemed counsel that SCO has sought out stated previously, that copyright law allows for one and only one copy to be made, for backup purposes only, so MGM better make damn sure they were using the original footage, with their fingers on the fast forward/rewind buttons, or even they are not in compliance with the SCO version of law.

Actually, according to SCO any work derived or made for an original is owned by the first inventor/holder. I hope they paid Ian Fleming in full for writing James Bond at first. Or whomever first wrote a spy novel. Or Boccaccio who wrote the first novel. And the Lumiere brothers for making movies possible. And...

I guess you get the idea. If any and all derivative works are considered the property of the original inventor/creator, there would be no inventions, because everything comes from something else...

Hey, we could probably find a sumerian mummy and bring it in court to file a suit against SCO for use of the written language.

Actually, at this point, I'm expecting SCO to sue God or something like that, since his "creation" incorporates works derivative of Unix.

Re:They showed some code

[joebeone]

Everyone's saying this but I don't buy it. There was code-like context... I bet someone around /. could pull something useful out of this... everyone reads these articles to the letter. Showing obfuscated code is still more information than showing a black slide.

I'm going to sound like RMS here... Don't hate me.

[Chordonblue]

I know I'm going to sound like RMS here but the fact is, Free software really is free for EVERYONE - even those we happen to hate today.

You know, there was a time, not too long ago many of us disliked IBM and their tactics. In fact, that may one day happen again. If we set a precident now where you can revoke a GPL'd license just because you don't like someone, where does it stop?

Free software is FREE. SCO is hanging themselves by it and here's why:

Let them use GCC. Let them use Samba. LET THEM! ANY market acceptance of these free products is good PR for these projects on ANY platform - free or otherwise. This is because any platform in competition can then say, "Our version of Linux running Samba 3.x offers the same benefits as SCO's Openserver, except ours costs half the price."

I know we're all in agreement here about how we feel about Darl(ing) McBride and his band of merry lawyers. But they will get what is coming to them if we stick to the GPL. It's worked so far and this long because there's no fighting it when the playfield is even. SCO can't say they didn't agree to the terms of the GPL when they, to this day, continue to release code under it. Sometimes the best offense is a good defense.

And RMS, if you're listening out there, you can tell all your detractors for me to STFU. At least there's still someone alive that sticks to their principles and I respect that.

Lanham Act

[TheConfusedOne]

Actually, it is going to be relatively easy for IBM to put the big slap-down on SCO. The Lanham Act specifically goes towards finding against companies that make knowingly false statements that injure another company.

In IBM's case you have SCO's press release claiming that they pulled the AIX license when in fact Novell contractually forbade SCO from doing any such thing.