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SCO Prepares To Sue Linux End Users
Bootsy Collins writes "In a brief article,
Computer Business Review Online quotes Darl McBride as saying that SCO has been busily identifying Linux end users and is
preparing to launch lawsuits against them in order to encourage more such end users to buy licenses from SCO. SCO indicates that they'll start with a company that uses AIX, Dynix and Linux, so as to 'settle several legal arguments in one go.'" Not everyone is going to take the SCO approach sitting down; read on for a story on how (among others) Weta Digital and Australia's Massey University aren't jumping to say Uncle to SCO. Update: 08/20 13:11 GMT by T : Oops! Massey University is in New Zealand, not Australia.
Chris Brewer writes "Massey University's Helix supercomputer would incur a licensing charge of nearly US$100,000 for it's 132 CPU Beowulf cluster, and Weta Digital's render farm could cost somewhere between US$1.15 and US$1.5 million dollars at SCO's 'introductory' pricing, according to this Computerworld article. Massey's parallel computing director says it's unlikely that they'll buy a licence, instead, waiting for what the U.S. Courts decide. Weta's CTO Scott Houston says that they're also not going to buy a licence, but are focusing on making movies in the meantime."
Can this thing just end already? When is the US Government, or a federal judge/court system actually going to step in? This just keeps getting more and more rediculous.
Don't Tread on Me
You know, I thought their stock price was getting a little low.
They're making IBM's case for them.
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
I think this action of SCO is smart. Smart from SCO's standpoint. I hate the company, just to make it clear.
By going after the end users they can create clarity in the courts because the end users probably won't put up a defence like IBM or RedHat would. They simply wouldn't be able to afford the legal bill. So by going after these small time offenders first they can set precidence in the courts that would be harder (and take longer) to reverse when Redhat and IBM step up to the plate.
Luckly i am not in the position to be targetted by SCO. First off because i live an ocean away. If i were targetted by them however, thinking im a smaller than fortune500 company, i would probably be very tempted to pay up. I would however demand a addition to the license that would warrent me a refund if on a later date SCO was proven wrong in their statements.
A small company would go bankrupt before they could take on SCO. Is it time for the EFF to step up to the plate for us all? Possible defend the first company being sued by SCO? I would pay for that to happen. I would pay most certainly.
Real programmers don't document.
It was hard to write so it should be hard to understand.
I don't get it. How is it going to sue linux users without showing them the code?
Companies that have been sued by SCO have bought their products from Red Hat or similar companies. This means, the responsibility actually falls on Red Hat and SuSe etc.
In essence SCO is suing Red Hat etc.
But Red Hat and SuSe are already suing SCO, and so is IBM.
This means the companies, users using linux aree insulated because their case will not proceed until the above cases are solved.
That means SCO can kiss my ass.
Bush is on fire and its not good for my lungs.
Yeah, makes me REALLY trust them . . .
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
The company has signed one large customer up to its Intellectual Property License for Linux. [...] "Instead of doing mass-mailings we're now taking a very targeted approach," [Darl McBride] said.
Yes, Darl, Microsoft has let you re-announce that they gave you $10 for a license, and yes, we know that everybody else has ignored you. Do you have any actual news, or are you still just trying to spin your past ineptitude into shinola again?
We need a sweepstake on when he's going to (illegally) dump his stock and head to Brazil for a face change. I'm guessing it'll be the day before they actually hit a court with this farce.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The important word there being 'preparing'. Like they're 'preparing' to audit AIX customers, sue AIX customers, sue Linus Torvalds, raise holy Jihad against the GPL... (continues) They've had months to carry this out, yet their STILL preparing to do so? Yeah, right! Looks like their just trying raise FUD to get their stocks out of a proverbial downard spiral, as seen for the last couple of days.
I'll belive it when I see it!
World to SCO:
Fuck you too!
Seriously, this is the last death-twitch before the body stops moving. SCO is as dead as... death. Their tactics are getting more and more desperate, and they are trying to scare the world into believing their claims without presenting any real proof that the claims are valid. The bigwigs are selling off shares while they are still worth something, and as more and more information leaks out about the lawsuit, we get more and more confident that it does not have any valid grounds.
The code in the Heise screenshots was quickly identified and reviewed, and failed miserably - instead of proving to the Linux community and IBM that the lawsuit really could be something we need to think about, instead it proved the opposite.
My guess is this is what is going to happen:
1. More information about the code SCO claims infringes their copyright will leak out.
2. Code will be reviewed and shown as not proving SCO-s case.
2b. Code can not be shown as "innocent" and will be rewritten quickly.
2c. The Linux kernel will be cleaned from any "suspicious" code and released. Joe User with an x86 uniprocessor desktop architecure will be able to use the "clean" kernel right away.
3. SCO will fall apart together with the lawsuit.
In fact I don't think it will ever even come near a courthouse. My firm belief is that IBM and the Linux community will finally prevail and have an even better position than before the lawsuit.
Sontag warned users that ignoring SCO's requests to license the code in advance of a court case could be costly. "Those who have chosen to ignore the license are more in a situation of potential willful infringement," Sontag said.
How can it be willful infrigement if there hasn't been any violations proven yet? This is getting ridiculous. Germany already stopped these idiots, I can't believe nothing is being done here to stop these morons from talking so much shit!
[alk]
Your memory can't be too good.
/. article published hardly more than two weeks ago,
h tm l
According to a
Red Hat set up a legal fund to deal with this kind of tactic:
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/08/04/1817247.s
If the end-user suits are filed then SCO has taken the fairly obscure legal issue of marginal infringement (never marginal with the expansions in copyright, No Electronic Theft, and the Sonny Bono Acts - innocent infringers simply do not exist) and found a way to snatch total defeat from a nuisance settlement.
When Polaroid (The Land Corporation) sued Kodak for instant camera/photo patent infringement and enjoined Kodak from further production of the infringing products - Land never targeted the jobbers, distributors, end-unit-sales operators or individual owners of the infringing product. They were aware that they would poison the market for their products and create a vast public backlash from such tactics.
(Yes, the analogy is flawed: the laws were different then - but the option to sue a larger group and Land's decision not to do so was a valid option that they eschewed.)
SCO is far from their progenitor the Santa Cruz Operation and their UNIX for the PC OS.
I'm not certain what SCO brings to the market today, save chaos.
Has Ken Starr signed on as chief counsel? What good result can SCO possibly expect from this tactic?
SCO cannot survive this vast expansion of their litigation without a huge (vast, impossible to predict) infusion of cash to fund the litigation. Even with unlimited funds the secondary costs will eat them alive.
Public backlash over time and costs are two things that SCO clearly has not considered properly in this litigation. So long SCO - you won't be missed any more than a broken abacus.
...I guess our buddy Darl is going for the "it's better to burn out than to fade away" method of running one's company into the ground. (No matter how this lawsuit works out, who the fuck is ever going to want to do business with SCO afterwards?
It's not like there's any grounds for going after end-users -- they haven't even proved that there was theft of their intellectual property yet. It'll be hard for them to sue an end-user in court and say, "Well, he's using stuff that illegally contains our IP."
Joe Average end-user is never going to be able to see the SCO code or even bother to look at the Linux kernel code ("kernel? like in corn?"), and will have no basis for comparison. Furthermore, the IP onus is not on the end-user. That would be like Ford suing the owners of Nissan cars if Nissan were to happen to use a mechanical part that Ford owned the patent to, without licensing it properly.
Translation: SCOFUD.
blog |
You are correct, but there is nothing stopping all the projects which use the GPL from sending SCO a cease and desist for violation of the GPL provisions. They don't agree to follow the GPL, they say they don't think it's legal, fine, they don't get to distribute all GPL'd projects where the maintainers of the project say NO. If they continue to distribute, it's a clear copyright infringement.
The brilliance of the GPL is that it is basically a copyright agreement. Those distributing under GPL give those using the software the right under certain circumstances to copy their work as many times as the want so long as the agreement is followed. If they don't, the copyright holders have the right to pull the unlimited copy clause and revert to normal copyright policies. These circumstances are well defined and can be enforced in court.
Like most users of Linux, we are at the point where we are not going to stand still while SCO trashes the entire Free Software movement. I have already authorized a payment of $10,000 to the FSF, and a payment of $5,000 to the Red Hat Open Source Now fund. If you want to do all you can during this waiting period before the trial, I would urge you to sign this petition that signifies the unity of the Free and Open source communities against SCO's outlandish claims.
SCO's manoever has never been about anything else than attacking the GPL and the concept of OSS.
IBM and AIX are entirely incidental to the affair, and the connection between AIX and Linux is a spurious convenience.
If SCO were serious about their original "license agreement" allegations with IBM they would stick to this point and not start commenting on the GPL. SCO may be lying, thieving scoundrels, but they are working for someone else, or they would stick to the issues that might pay off.
I've said this for months now: the most likely director of SCO's actions is Microsoft, the only significant player to benefit from this mess. Every time the "validity" of the GPL is discussed Microsoft get a thrill and achieve what they could not do directly - no-one takes Microsoft's propaganda seriously anymore.
At least one goal appears to be working, namely to discuss the "validity" of the GPL as if it were a law or a contract. The GPL is a license that an author (that is, the person who's sweat, blood and tears were spent on making a work) can choose as the vehicle for licensing his or her work. Period. Anyone taking this work must obey the license conditions.
If I choose to license my work with an agreement that says that you must wear only red, that is my right. SCO may say "we choose not to use the GPL for our work", but to attack it like this is purely malicious.
And, so, we come back to the people who have in the past spent so much effort attacking the GPL because they realize that it frames their demise. The Redmond Gang, the company that believs might makes right, that laws are for buying, not obeying, and that lawyers are for suing other people.
Sigh.
On the bright side, I assume if they sue me for using Linux, and they lose, then they will pay my legal fees?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The best tactic the community could use, IMHO, would be to overwhelm SCO with piddling, individual small claims. I may be wrong on this, but doesn't a corporate officer or some such have to show up for this, as opposed to legal council?
If just the 1500 companies that had received threatening letters were to do this, each claiming the loss of say, 200 dollars for letter processing time and such, SCO couldn't possibly keep up with the docket.
Of course, I could be wrong (and often am).
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
I dunno but I just called their complaint phone number at (202) 942-7040. Their office doesn't open until 9:30AM EST. I am calling then. So should everyone else. Just be polite and and to the point. They probably won't know or care what a kernel is but they will care that a company is making consistent unsubstantiated claims, threatening consumers meanwhile their execs are dumping stocks.
Stick to that. Tell them you are a computer expert if you have to and that it is your professional opinion that their claims are groundless and that it seems everytime their stock takes a dip they make new claims.
Make sure to tell them that in Germany they were required to stop with their threatenting campaign by the German government because they have not produced proof and refuse to do so.
I am sure someone here can come up with better points than me.
For fuck's sake: they are publicly stating that they are going to start an extortion racket! Where's the bloody police? Where's the C&D letters? Why is it so easy to lie and steal if you are a company? Any human individual would be behind bars by now.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
"Wouldn't the GPL being proven invalid just replace it with standard copyright law, and if so doesn't that mean that they have NO rights to the code what-so-ever?"
As I understand it, SCO isn't just trying to get the GPL declared invalid. They're trying to get the GPL declared invalid and all GPLed software declared public domain. Basically, their argument (however invalid it may be) is that anyone who gives you as much freedom as the GPL gives must obviously not care to do anything with their copyright, and therefore "GPL" == "public domain".
I personally find this "They gave us a piece, so they owe us the whole pizza!" argument reprehensible, but it seems as if it is perfectly acceptable to some people (read: SCO lawyers).
I mentioned earlier that I didn't think these cases could survive discovery. However, unless you have a corporate lawyer on staff, it will likely cost you more than $700 just to get to discovery. And, that's why these businesses will pay up -- because it's cheaper to just pay the $700 extortion fee than to spend thousands of dollars just to prove that you shouldn't have to pay the fee.
I'm not a big fan of the 'loser pays' court system, but something has to be done to stop these extortion lawsuits (SCO isn't the only one doing this) that have absolutely no legal merit.
-------------------------------------------------
they'll start with a company that uses AIX, Dynix and Linux
omg! they'll sue IBM again!
No, they'll find a small or financially hurting IBM customer. Then they will settle for an undisclosed fee (where SCO gives financially hurting company a plane ticket to a news conference and a press release to put out). They'll do this a few times.
Their hope is that:
* The media will try the case and most users will lay down.
* They will get away with the trial by surprise strategy.
* IBM will be represented by the same people who represent the EFF.
The minute things go badly, heads will roll at SCO and this whole thing will be a misunderstanding. That's why it's critical that we start documenting actual dammages as a result of SCO's actions.
-- $G
That's 'cos Linux doesn't have a PR department.
Has anyone noticed a pattern here? Every time that SCO gets a major slap-down, they churn out a new press release with some sort of new angle to temporarily bolster their position until the next slap-down? You can practically time the when press releases roll out the factory, folks.
I don't think there isn't anything illegal in that, per se, but in my mind, it kind of points to a goal in all of this. But then again, I could be tying the generation of a 'fear buzz' with the stock price. They are doing an excellent job of keeping the fear buzz going.
Personally I'm going to customize the GPL for my work where you cannot use it with SCO software, for the SCO company, etc. etc.
... are they suddenly banned from using your software. Are you going to ban Darl McBride by name? The Mormons as a whole? America? Where does this sort of thing stop.
... if anyone does so, they will put the GPL in a no-win situation, where if it is upheld, you cannot revoke SCO's license becauuse you don't like them, or it is not upheld, you can revoke the license of people you don't like later, and none of us are safe (the very foundation of software freedom is taken away). One thing is almost certain: violating the license of one product isn't going to mean you lose licenses to all products who happen to use the same license ... I cannot imagine any court of law ruling that, for example, you lose the license to Samba because you violate the license of transcode, merely because the two products' licenses happen to have the same text (the GPL) and are otherwise unrelated.
What do you do when SCO changes its name, is bought out by Microsoft (or IBM), or otherwise metamorphasizes itself through corporate/legal slight-of-hand. Do you ban the canopy group? What if canopy purchases an innocent bystander (if they haven't already)
SCO has violated the GPL on Linux. They are no longer allowed to distribute Linux under US copyright law, and they are violating that law massively even as I type this. That is enough.
Do not try to revoke SCO's GPL license to products they haven't violated the license of
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
So SCO says the GPL is invalid and won't stand up in court... but they use it as the basis to justify suing end users and hold them responsible for (supposedly) someone else inserting questionable code in the kernel? So which is it? Is GPL valid or not. Some of their claims depend on GPL being valid and others depend on it being invalid.
First of all, why are you pretending you know ANYTHING about the procedures of this type of lawsuit?
SCO is a professional organization with a good litigation team with a very good track record.
You're just throwing out assumptions like they were the gospel without bothering to consider that maybe 1 or ALL of your assumptions are wrong!
In layman's terms, Rule 11 is used by a judge to say "You have the nerve to bring that piece of shit argument into my courtroom?"
Do you really think SCO's lawyers are so enept that they're going to break Rule 11?
During the initial stages of litigation, they would have to introduce more evidence or the judge would eventually dismiss the case for failure to state a claim. To get scheduled for a trial they would have to show code.
What makes you think they WON'T show code in court? What makes you think they have to show ALL of the infringing code? Lastly, What makes you think they can't convince the judge to protect their "Trade Secret" from being dissemenated beyond the court?
Have you ever bothered to consider SCO is really fucking with our heads?
Consider Sun Tzu:
All warfare is based on deception.
Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable;
when using our forces, we must seem inactive;
when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away;
when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
Hold out baits to entice the enemy.
Feign disorder, and crush him.
Rather than spouting conjecture about something you seemingly know very little about, maybe you should consider asserting fewer "facts" and asking more questions.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
This is nutty. I actually bought my first Linux distro from - it was Caldera then. Since they have my name, are they going to sue me for buying the product? I'd like my money back please.
If you're in PA and you use Linux, consider filling out this Consumer Complaint Form. Maybe we can get the PA, and other states', attorney general interested.
I've been saying this (and getting modded up) since SCO started, but nobody who matters cares. Linus et al need to start caring, because this is a major problem that is not going to disappear overnight without their involvement. SCO is currently guilty of massive copyright infringement, literally enough to shut the company down and possibly "pierce the corporate veil" and allow the officers to be pursued to help pay up. But they'll keep using that money to trash Linux and threaten others until someone does something about it. A lawsuit by Linus alleging that SCO is improperly using Linux code would allow him to subpoena their code without the stupid NDA.
It seems that the open source community thinks copyright law is something for the RIAA and MPAA to wield against file sharers. It works just as well for us, likely better since nobody likes the entertainment industry outside of Congress.
Anyway, you're right, it's time we go on the offensive. My suggestion was the establishment of a legal fund for offense, which is much more needed than Red Hat's defensive fund. Winnings would be split 50/50, with the copyright holder getting 50% and the fund getting 50% of the winnings. We'd be able to grow it within a few years to the point that nobody would want to mess with us, but only if people (e.g. Linus) pulled their thumbs out of their asses and started defending their property.
Michael
Do you have ESP?
you know there's a reason we're seeing an SCO story every day--it's because we care. This is the first major test of the GPL, and that's a really big deal! Remember when two planes crashed into a couple buildings in New York and the news just wouldn't shut up about it for months and months and we had to hear about it every single day of our lives? We couldn't even watch our favorite shows because everyone just wanted to blab about terrorists? Well, this SCO case is to geeks as that business with NY, Afganistan, and Iraq was to the rest of the world. I, for one, thought terrorism made bigger headlines than it deserved, but that didn't change the fact that the news was hell-bent on giving people the stories they wanted to hear. Nomatter how tired of it you get, Slashdot is going to keep on telling geeks about every SCO development there is. And I just happen to be on the edge of my seat about it, so if you're sick of these stories, stop looking for them and go do something productive. Slasdot isn't going to hunt you down and force you to hear about SCO.
The reason Bill Watterson chose to never license his trademarks for anything besides his comics was to prevent the development of trashy stuff like this. It's sad that his trademark ownership is often ignored.
This article is filled with so much misinformation as to be astounding:
Choosing a user of AIX and Dynix would help the company to back up its position that it terminated IBM's licenses for Unix in AIX and Dynix in June and August respectively
No, actually, it wouldn't help prove that, because SCO could not and can not terminate IBM's right to use AIX. IBM created AIX and has the absolute and unquestioned right to use or not use it.
"There is no warranty for infringement of intellectual property [in the GPL], so all of the liability ends up with end users."
There is no warrantee against infringement for *any* software you buy, from *anyone*, including Microsoft, SCO, IBM, etc. This is also true of the GPL. In fact, to even imply that there could be a warrantee for infringment is absurd. It is, quite frankly, impossible. There is so much bullshit crap out there that you can't write a single line of code without violating some trivial bullshit patent somewhere. At least, with FS and OSS licenses, the code is open-source, so issues of infringment can easily be identified.
There is no hiding skeletons in the closet when you develop FS and OSS software. It's all out in the open. If there really was an infringement issue, it would have been found and dealt with long long long ago (e.g., like when SCO was distributing Caldera). Also, by having distributed GNU/Linux, SCO loses the ability to seriously do any of this crap (which is why they have to attack the GPL).
"End users are improperly using this copyrighted material, and under copyright law SCO is entitled to damages and injunctive relief"
Until there's some actual evidence and a court rules, no-one is using misappropriated material. No-one is obligated to do anything until a court rules on real evidence, that SCO actually has valid claims. This is, of course, why they're pressing so hard, because they know the court will find that their case is non-sense. If they want to have any serious case against end-users, they need to show end-users *proof* that the software they use violates SCO's copyright. Even then, they still have no case, because they distributed a GNU/Linux distribution.
"Those who have chosen to ignore the license are more in a situation of potential willful infringement"
Actually, no, they aren't, since SCO hasn't presented any evidence what-so-ever that anyone is violating SCO's copyrights.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I encourage any Linux users, MIS managers, development managers, CTOs, and CEOs with a fair amount of IT budget, and that have previously bought reports from the Yankee Group to voice their concerns to Yankee's sales department over DiDio's lack of professionalism and competense, as well as the extrememe bias in the SCO case. Since the issues of this case is obvously not her field of expertise, it must be of some concerns that she is willing to issue conclusive and sweeping statements using only one source of information, namely the SCO insiders.
You can no longer can have faith in the Yankee Group's quality control and that this casts a great shadow of doubt over all their research reports. You can no longer trust their research when making decisions about IT investemts and industry trends, and you regret that you can no longer maintain a business relationship with the Yankee group.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
The point is that even if the GPL is valid the end user is still responsible for any infringement.
That might be true if the user committed any sort of copying or distribution that did not constitute Fair Use and if they continued to do so after being reasonably notified that they were doing so in an infringing manner. Simple possession of a work does not violate any clause in Title 17 that I'm aware of. If you are aware of such a clause or a precedent in law that would be sufficient to back up the idea that simple possession of a work that was created or distributed in an infringing manner is illegal, please cite.
Patents are a different issue and there end users cannot use patented stuff without a license. To date I have not heard SCO once mention that they own patents that are being infringed.
I do not have a signature
If someone else is responsible for the infringement and SCO knows who it is (apparently they do) then it is not reasonable to go after end-users who obtained the code in a legal manner from a source that they had a reasonable expectation to provide legal code.
Even if the end-user could in theory be guilty of copyright infringement, I don't think the user can be held responsible until SCO tells us all what sections of code are infringing. So far we just have idle threats with no evidence. If SCO were to let everyone know the supposedly infringing code I think we'd all take action to make sure we weren't using it. The fact that SCO doesn't tell anyone forces end-users to continue to infringe because we haven't been told what they think is infringing.
Basically, we can't do anything until we are sued by SCO. That's bogus.
The point is that even if the GPL is valid the end user is still responsible for any infringement.
I doubt that will be found to be the case if this goes to court. I think the infringement was committed by the people/persons/company that took code from SCO and put it in Linux (if it indeed happened). Those are the ones SCO needs to go after. Going after end users is like going after Honda owners because they own cars that happen to contain designs that Honda stole from Toyota.
Since the issues of this case is obvously not her field of expertise, it must be of some concerns that she is willing to issue conclusive and sweeping statements using only one source of information, namely the SCO insiders.
Not to mention that, as a Windows specialist, she has a vested interest in keeping its market share large enough that it remains newsworthy, so she doesn't have to retrain to stay in business. B-)
But by the same token signing the NDA could end the carreer of a Linux analyst. So it will be hard to get any to sign up just to view the internals of SCO's FUD.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way