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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."
Linus once asked SCO: "Does Linux have the SCO-nature?"
SCO answered: "There is no Linux, only SCO."
I could care less, but not without a lobotomy
Lets see... morning coffee... morning donut... morning SCO story...
the day can start now!
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
If you look at what SCO has done since the start of this debacle you really have to question the method and means. They started by saying that the open source community wasn't good enough to produce Linux, they have now gone on to openly attack the GPL Itself.
We shouldn't be worrying about the gritty details of what they are doing at treat this as what it is. SCO has declared war on the foundations of the open source community and we should be responding appropriately.
If they are claiming the GPL is invalid, the copyright holders of relevant software should be sending them personal letters telling them they are denied use of gcc, samba, apache, perl and all the other mainstays of modern computing that are released under the GPL. I'm not suggesting engaging in any illegal activity but what is kneaded here is attack rather than passive defence. Obviously the RedHat suit is a pretty good thing. The IBM counter suit I'm not sure about, there patent portfolio is a weapon that could just as easily be turned on us.
Just imagine Beofulf cluster of Darl McBrides.. That, would be a twist.
Dephine URL
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
they'll start with a company that uses AIX, Dynix and Linux
omg! they'll sue IBM again!
...from a Prestigious NON-ACCREDITED University.
Until SCO gets squashed, they'll be working so many actions at once, they'll hire any lawyer with a pulse. They'll be lucky if the IBM suit isn't argued by paralegals.
Or maybe they'll just outsource the whole thing to India.
Massey University is in New Zealand. And New Zealand is not a State of Australia (yet?). Perhaps we can brush up on our geography skills...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
I guess their scare tactics worked on you then. "Better do what I'm told or I'll be punished" eh? This is the attitude that has served many a tyrant. You can always trust the ignorant to be timid.
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.
The only code they've so far shown anybody (2 snippets snapped at their show by Heisse) is from Ancient Unix and is covered by the BSD License from BSD 2.2 Onwards also released from its original 16bit Unix V5 under a BSD license by Caldera / the SCO group a couple of years back.
The license you bought, you can wipe your arse with, it's all its good for.
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
I'm proudly registered at the Linux Counter with number #150681, and I'm going show it off on my homepage.
"It is more complicated than you think" (The Eighth Networking Truth from RFC 1925)
World to SCO: Fuck you.
No love lost here then...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Assuming for the moment that Linux does contian SCO copyrighted code,
I was under the impression that it was the distribution of copyrighted
materials that consituted copyright infringement, not the posession.
Is there a valid legal argument that makes users vulnerable to litigation
on the basis of copyright infringement?
*sigh* back to work...
Lets play IP-Infringment Mad-Libs!
"In a brief article, {Industry} Business Review Online quotes {Figurehead} as saying that {Company} has been busily identifying {Debated IP} end users and is preparing to launch lawsuits against them in order to encourage more such end users to buy licenses from {Company}. {Company} indicates that they'll start with a company that uses {Example IP 1}, {Example IP 2} and {Example 3}, so as to 'settle several legal arguments in one go.'"
... why SCO can even sue Linux users at this point? I mean, don't they have to actually WAIT for the court decision vs. IBM to come through before suing the users? They're basically saying "following the court decision in our favor in the case of SCO vs IBM that went to court in 2005, you owe us money". Do they have a time travel section in addition to their litigation one?
Christ, have them stop already. They haven't even been to court yet and are acting as if they won. I wonder how the courts will react to these legal proceeding against the users on the basis of a pending legal case.
A different lawyer joke, for a bit of variety
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.
Wired: Are you afraid of being remembered as the man who killed open source?
... This whole process is going to make Linux and open source stronger.
McBride:
Yeah, that is clearly your goal. It's not about the money for you. No way.
Anyway, lets assume that a lot of people has filed complaints against the behaviour of SCO... then why don't we see any results of those complaints? Are the people that received the complaints all sleeping or is SCO protected from legal investigation?
Sorry for my little understanding of US law, but here in Germany SCO had to shut up quite quickly after complaints were filed, but it looks like that in the US nothing of that sort happens.
the GPL offers 4 freedoms
1 Freedom to use. A GPL licensed program can be used for any purpose whatsoever.
2 Freedom to copy and distribute. You are allowed to make exact copies and distribute these, in both source and binary code, as long as you grant the same right to the person you distribute it too.
3 Freedom to modify. You are allowed to modify the code in whatever way you want.
4 Freedom to copy and distribute modifications. Again, the distribution has to be in source and binary code, and it has to grant the same right to the person it is distributed to.
What you are proposing is breaking the 1st freedom; it is not because they claim the GPL is invalid that we believe so and should break it. A more valid request is IMHO the one GCC did, is to refuse to accept SCO specifics in the later (from now onwards) GCC versions. If they do want the GCC compilers, they'll have to branch them and maintain them themselves...
But I agree, a clear point should be made, they cannot expect to keep on benefiting from our efforts while at the same time attacking the fundamentals of the free and open software community. They basically declared war on us but still expect us to do work for them willingly.
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
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.
This story in the boston globe shows how when even the mainstream media pick up the gist of an isssue they don't get it right. They completely missed the fact the code is licensed under BSD and has twice been granted that license.
I really want to see how SCO is going to sue end users without disclosing the code.
Yeah, makes me REALLY trust them . . .
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
SCO has three groups working on identifying and approaching Linux users. The first is drawing up the list, the second will send out letters offering the chance to license the code SCO says has been copied into Linux, and the third will take legal action against those who refuse.
I seem to hear the sound of baseball bats hitting knees in the background.
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.
...because then I could charge them for criminal mail fraud.
DIE SCO, DIE!
My God! It's full of Voids!
Suing someone using AIX, Dynix, and Linux.
Sounds like they're going to try to use a contrived example to try to scare other users, whose cases are not as related to SCO's claims as SCO would like them to think.
I'm betting the details of their first lawsuit will center more around SCO's claim to have revoked IBM's license for UNIX that lets them make and sell AIX. They'll naturally try to make it LOOK like a general Linux copyright issue to the media, since they know some percentage of the masses won't be smart enough, or thorough enough, to detect the difference.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
---Letter Ripped off of Linux Today---
:
Over the past few months, the SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) Corporation (formerly Caldera International, Inc. a Linux distribution vendor) has been complaining about violations of its Copyright works by the Linux kernel code.
Recently, Darl McBride, the Chief Executive Officer of SCO has been making pejorative statements regarding the license used by the Linux kernel, the GNU GPL. In a keynote speech he recently said
"At the end of the day, the GPL is not about making software free; it's about destroying value."
In light of this it is the depths of hypocrisy that at the same event SCO also announced the incorporation of the Samba3 release into their latest OpenServer product. Samba is an Open Source/Free Software project that allows Linux and UNIX servers to interoperate with Microsoft Windows clients. The reason for this is clear; Samba3 allows Linux and UNIX servers to replace Microsoft Windows NT Domain Controllers and will add great value to any Operating System which includes it. However, Samba is also developed and distributed under the GNU GPL license, in exactly the same manner as the Linux kernel code that SCO has been criticizing for its lack of care in ownership attribution.
We observe that SCO is both attacking the GPL on the one hand and benefiting from the GPL on the other hand. SCO can't have it both ways. SCO has a clear choice: either pledge not to use any Open Source/Free Software in any of their products, or actively participate in the Open Source/Free Software movement and reap the benefits. For SCO to continue to use Open Source/Free Software while attacking others for using it is the epitome of hypocrisy.
The strength of Open Source/Free Software is that it is available to all without restrictions on fields of endeavor, as the Samba Team believes the ability to freely use, modify and learn from software code is one of the grounding principles of computer science, and a basic freedom for all.
Because of this, we believe that the Samba must remain true to our principles and be freely available to use even in ways we personally disapprove of.
Even when used by rank hypocrites like SCO.
Jeremy Allison,
Marc Kaplan,
Andrew Bartlett,
Christopher R. Hertel,
Jerry Carter,
Jean Francois Micouleau,
Paul Green,
Rafal Szczesniak.
Samba Team.
Can someone please do something, like get an injunction against them or *something*?! I don't know crap all about US law (or really any other countries laws), but there got to be *SOME* way the courts can *quickly* stop SCO from charging license fee for software that hasn't even been proven to be theirs yet!
How does the law expcet a regular "user" to stand up to a company like this in a lawsuit? Its next-to-impossible.
If one user is forced into paying the license fee, because they are not able to fight SCO in court, does that form a precedent, which could make it easier to win any/all other lawsuits SCO currently has going on for or against them?
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.
Actually the GPL does have a provision which automatically terminates the license if its provisions are not honoured.
Apache is not GPL, quite a bit of Free software is under BSD/MIT style licenses actually, but SCO has certainly terminated their own rights to use the stuff that is GPL because of that clause. It's just a matter of who has the money and time to C&D them and be ready to back it up with litigation.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
What is being stated is as follows:
:)
1. To use GPL covered software you have to agree with the GPL.
2. SCO says GPL is invalid
3. Therefore SCO cannot agree with the GPL.
4. If you disagree with the GPL you are not allowed to use the software.
5. Kernel, GCC, GNU, samba, etc all sue SCO for violation of the license and SCO goes away.
*6. ???
*7. Profit
Note: * 6 and 7 are just for a bit of karma whoring
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
(IANAL, but) I have bought my Linux in "good faith", which means according to German law that I am not liable if the distributor violated any license terms (which I think is not the case). With me all other end users of Linux distros in Germany are immune to any SCO claims.
And hey, when SuSe 8.3 comes out I will buy it, although I am very satisfied with my current 8.2. Just to send a little "Fuck You" to SCO.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
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]
NUMA is inconsequential on the 386 architecture - applies only to other architectures.
RCU is SMP only, not significant enough to be even mentioned.
JFS is an IBM contribution to the kernel, but since we have other jfs's, it could be removed with little pain.
Ext3, OTOH, is the only item being used by your average Linux user.
The SMP code in general is not in question.
And remember, it's between SCO and IBM. Anyone else got their Linux under the GPL license distributed by RedHat, SuSE etc, and shouldn't bother with SCO (except kicking any SCO products they might have).
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
Summarizing yesterday's events that put SCO's demands of payments into perspective (for references read analysis by Bruce Perens):
On Monday at their trade show in Las Vegas, SCO showed code that they claimed was copied illegally into Linux. Many who saw the slides in Vegas were convinced of SCO's case.
However, probably unknown to and unauthorized by SCO, the German publisher Heise obtained photographs of two slides in SCO's presentation and published them yesterday.
It turned out that the code SCO showed in Vegas originated from 1973. The code has appeared in programming text books already in 70s and it has been released under BSD license several times by many parties, including SCO (then Caldera) itself last year. The code SCO showed, allegedly violating their rights, was therefore in Linux legally.
If this really was a sample of their "best evidence" then SCO and their executives are in deep trouble - considering all unsubstantiated allegations they have made, legal threats, demands of payments and stock pumping and insiders dumping.
SCO won't be protecting users of GPL software it distributes either.
This is just doubletalk.
I would love to see SCO explain how their distribution of GCC, Samba or any other GPL code is any different from someone elses.
I don't think SCO has a general IP strategy. They are using open source, and fighting it at the same time.
I heard they had a Using GNU tools seminar at the same conference where they informed people about the dangers of the GPL. Maybe a corporate strategy would help them?
SCO has basically decided to take this matter to the edge of violence. While the vast majority of open source zealots are peaceful and merely annoying, how many are in the Ted Kaczynski Unabomber Club?
Emotionally unstable, socially detached, angry and brilliant people are going to start having trouble holding it together. Kaczynski didn't have the benefit of the net to get better information or gravitate towards like minds.
What if SCO/Microsoft knows this and is purposely creating an environment where a small group snaps and discredits everything about the "eccentric" hobbies of geeks?
The whole concept of doing geek stuff outside of university walls is a very young concept. Read up on the history of astronomy. Rulers and the church had no problem with what these guys were doing as long as it stayed within the walls.
If we move all knowledge back to universities, corporations will call all the shots on progress. That's exactly what will happen after the first zealots decide that "Bombs not reason" is a good name for a political action committee.
How many idiots have issued death threats against spammers? The clock is winding down.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I wish you people would stop bashing SCO! They are obviously just trying to keep up with the latest trend of giant companies suing their customers and potential customers. They are just trying to be like every other company on the block. If your friend walked down the street in a pair of the newest Nike's, wouldn't you want a pair too? This case is no different! They are just trying to gain acceptance from the RIAA, MPAA etc.
-William Brendel
SEC Enforcement Complaint Form
Booo!
I think I get your point, that Copyright holder's retracting their license on Samba et al. would be antethical to the ideals of the Free Software community. While this could be true, is it not also against our interests to simply lie back and take this sort of abuse without a fight?
I certainly support the right of free use, and nobody is suggesting SCO should be somehow enjoined from using old versions of Samba, Apache, etc BUT it is suicidal for us to continue giving SCO free labor which they sell to their customers to finance a lawsuit to destroy the beauty and utility of one of humanit's greatest (non-profit) community initiatives ever. Consider how amazing the Linux kernel/family of software is... It mostly exists because a few people with some spare time wanted it to. There are people involved in for-profit development on open source apps, and nobody begrudges them that success, but mainly it is a volunteer effort.
Who did what now?
I paid them. I sent SCO $199 in Monopoly money - which I figure is worth MORE than the license they are offering.
Will I get sued, probably since they have my name and address.
Do I really care, not really. Since SCO has been showing *stolen* code (which is actually free code that was written somewhere around 1974).
SCO is a bunch of greedy dumbasses who are just out to make a buck.
At their conference they were saying how damaging the GPL and free software is, yet their latest release has over 100 OPEN SOURCE components.
HEY DUMBASSES (this means you SCO), I challenge you to release a product WITHOUT using ANY Open Source tools.
-- Windows security? Sure, which ONE would you like? -me
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 it goes to court, SCO will need to produce evidence, and that's what they're desperate to avoid. Even if they can show some flimsy but enforceable link to their IP, showing it means there'll be kernel patches the next day and they're SOL.
Apache is not GPL, quite a bit of Free software is under BSD/MIT style licenses actually, but SCO has certainly terminated their own rights to use the stuff that is GPL because of that clause. It's just a matter of who has the money and time to C&D them and be ready to back it up with litigation.
Ehm, IANAL, but I don't think so. The GPL covers distribution, not use. You don't have to agree with the GPL to use software it covers, that's only necessary when you want to distribute that software or derrived works.
If I break the GPL on one "product" I do not have a license to distribute it and I am violating the copyright on that product and no longer have permission to distribute and modify.
This does not mean I lose my license to distribute other products also licensed under the GPL.
I'm rather tempted to send them some empty banana skins or something, just for the looks on their faces... but I'd hate to subject the postal services to the smell of rotting banana skins by the time they made their way over the atlantic (by boat, of course).
Then again, there's a small SCO office not far from where I live in England...
Miri it is whil Linux ilast...
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.
SCO doesn't need to prove anything to file a lawsuit, the courts decide on the validity of the lawsuit after it's filed. My feeling is that they're not even really interested in suing any end users, the return on investment is far too small. What they're really hoping for is that more end users will pony up and pay their extortion fee based on the empty threat of a lawsuit.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
...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 |
So how many of you think that Microsoft is the "one Fortune 500" company to buy licenses...
It would make sense- why not give move money over to SCO to allow them to continue suing (gives them a valid reason to hand over money), and gives other companies the impression that a major company has determined the "bogus" license fees are valid. Then other companies would think, maybe we need to investigate the claims more seriously since someone already paid.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
We haven't even begun. This is the same process that we go through whenever an American company is spiraling toward bankruptcy. It goes out in a blaze of lawsuits in a desperate attempt to pad the executives' golden parachutes. Anyone remember a company called Wang? They were everywhere in the mid-1980s. The only difference is that back then, we didn't have /. chronicling the daily lunacy of profit by litigation.
The good news is that ten years hence, we will be asking, "Remember a company called SCO?" If there were justice in the USA, Darl McBride will be in a gutter, pathetically crawling in a puddle of his own vomit. Unfortunately, there is no justice.
busily identifying Linux end users and is preparing to launch lawsuits against them
Let's see... $699. That's small claims court. As they haven't provided PROOF of anything, I'll be happy to meet them in small claims court for them to get their money. It'll cost 'em more than $699 to have their lawyer drive to the courthouse.
Bad business model.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
IANAL, so this may be rubbish. but, if the GPL is declared invalid in court, wouldn't most of the code be technically unlicensed?
And if code is unlicensed wouldn't SCO (and everyone else) be unable to use it wholly until it was relicensed formally under a different license?
So if sco win, they're guilty of using unlicensed code, if they lose, they're guilty of using unlicensed code =/
I better remove my Linux and install a pirated copy of Windows!...
:: Andrea
Anime Wallpapers
If they are claiming the GPL is invalid
It seems to be worse than that. From the article, the point they keep trying to make is that "[the GPL] has forced it to take action against Linux users". McBribe states, "There's a bouncing ball that ends up in the hands of customers because of the GPL".
So the attack is basically "using GPLed soft makes you liable to the first nutcase who wants to stir up some trouble". Now I'm really starting to wonder what type of deal went down between Microsoft and SCO...
If they demand proof, inform them that they should let you know the exact line numbers within which functions so that you can send them the rewritten code. If they demand all your kernel code, tell them that your modifications are a Trade Secret, and that you are permitted only send them specific small sections of code.
IANAL, but it would seem to me to be a good defence, given that they are unwilling to reveal exactly which sections of code were supposedly stolen.
SCO and the RIAA have teamed together to created a new litigation system! For each friend using Linux or MP3s that you turn over, you get $245! For each friend they turn over, you get $243!
You may not believe me, but I got a check for $10,045! It really works! Forward this email to everyone you know and start turning in friends today!
If I had something intelligent to say, I would have said it.
Here is the best answer I know to SCO's attempt to collect license fees:
I'm afraid I can't pay your license fee as I do not use your SCO Unix product. Should I ever use your software, I will purchase it through my local SCO authorized partner.
Very Sincerely,
__________________
P.S. Your legal department is horrible at sales and marketing. They don't exactly inspire me to want to do business with you.
-- $G
Yes, of course you're right, SCO still has the right, say, to run Samba on their servers.
But the main 'use' they engage in with Samba is modifying it and distributing it in their own system. That 'use' is in fact governed by the licensing which they have forfeited, and is therefore copyright infringement which the Samba team could pursue them for.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
However, SCO has argued that the GPL is invalid because US copyright law supercedes contractual agreements; namely that US copyright law says "one copy only" which takes precedence over "as many copies as you like", unless you are the copyright holder; which means you can make as many copies as you want.
Aside from the lack of legal and historical basis for this position, it also means that they may not distribute GPL-ed software, because they cannot make more than 1 copy, since they do not hold the copyright on the software they are selling.
Also, this would affect all other "freely redistribute" licenses, I would think.
Of course, the whole argument is full of shit anyway, but that's beside the point.
Here is something I posted over at Linux Today:
Any thoughts, improvements. Any weakness in my application of the GPL?
Perhaps this would be worthwhile:
--------- --------
Free Software Project (GPL)
project_leader@Free_Softwar e_Project.org
123 Some Street,
One Town,
A Country
Date
Darl McBride
SCO
Dear Darl,
it has come to our attention that our software is destributed by SCO. In light of recent public statements by SCO, we would like you to clarify your postion re the GPL.
Do you agree to the terms of the GPL. Do you accept it as a valid license? If you accept the GPL, kindly respond via email and registered letter stating your acceptance of the GPL in general and with respect to our software in particular.
If you do not accept the GPL as valid, kindly indicate to us by what authority you are copying and distributing out copyrighted software. In the event that you do not accept the GPL as valid and do not provide proof of some other authority to copy and distribute our copyrighted software, you should cease such copying and distributing right away.
In any case, you may continue to use our COPYRIGHTED software internally within SCO until conditions may change.
-----------------
all the best,
drew
(+1)/10 to email me
zotz@999jamz.com
Finally mainstream press gets a little bit of non-SCO side in this battle.
karma : former act as leading to inevitable results
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.
Nah, just change it to something obscure & impossible. Take your pick:
* Commodore Vic-20
* ColecoVision
* TI-99/4A
* Apple ][
* Adam
* BIC 0.5mm #2 Pencil
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Instead of endlessly repeating our distress over SCO's insanity on /. why not
just pick up the phone and tell them why you think their extortion tactics will fail and you will never buy anything by SCO *EVER*.
If a 10th of the people who read /. call them they're sales staff will be swamped.
Product and Sales Inquiries
1-800-726-8649
Or, call their home office and complain some more...
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042 USA
801-765-4999 phone
801-765-1313 fax
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
Is it time for someone to organize a class action counter suit on behalf of all of us end users?
before the money trail gets traced back to Microsoft? If you seriously look at this, there is exactly one entity that will benefit from all this: Microsoft. Even SCO is screwed, they could never take on Big Blue. Sun has the problem that PHBs don't understand that Unix is not Linux is not BSD. They see it as Windows or Unix (maybe Apple if they do graphics). They see trouble in the Unix world and that means they look to Microsoft.
To sum up, I think that it's just getting waaaaaay too convenient for MS for all of this SCO stuff to be happening. This begs the question, assuming Redmond is behind all this will the truth ever be found, and if so when? If the truth does come out, how will the business world react, or will they?
Find me in ~/.sig
...On a related note, I'm "preparing" to nail Shakira.
Who did what now?
Why, just because you and thousands like you are unhappy about it? Life sucks for millions of people around the world for various reasons at various times and a lot of them end up dead or losing family and friends to brutal militarism, terrorism, religious persecution, natural disaster, etc. So far it's only annoying. Deal.
When is the US Government, or a federal judge/court system actually going to step in?
Consider what you just asked and the ultra-light tap on the wrist Microsoft got for their lousy behaviour, which was a continuation of their lousy behaviour which got them in trouble with courts and prosecutors and well-meaning people at least once before. In short, you'd get jack.
This just keeps getting more and more rediculous.
As opposed to greendiculous or bluediculous which can be very embarassing when explaining to the significant other.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Whoa man, those Linux servers ya got there look mighty fragile. If someone was to accidentally revoke your license, that would be bad for business, see? Bad for you, bad for me, yes? Maybe you'd like some insurance, make sure it doesn't happen? Special price today, only for you my friend, next week it'll be double...
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.
From the article:
/completely/ bonkers, there seems to be no way they can win anything in court.
The downside is that they're making a lot of money with these scare tactics, thus setting an example, and they might be able to scare some companies/people into buying their licenses.
"There is no warranty for infringement of intellectual property [in the GPL], so all of the liability ends up with end users."
"End users are improperly using this copyrighted material, and under copyright law SCO is entitled to damages and injunctive relief,"
The latter statement is close to the truth in that under copyright law they would be entitled to damages and injunctive relief should they be able to prove their case. What they seem to be implying that somehow it's the people who've bought a linux distro that should pay for their 'damages'. Which sounds, put mildly, a bit unreasonable. IANAL, but this appears to be pure FUD.
Read the copyright disclaimer in any book, and you'll not see any warranty for infringement. In fact you'll probably see something more like
THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT
(emphasis added). The example is from "Concurrent Programming in Java" by Doug Lea (Addison Wesley)
The end users are not trying to distribute the bits SCO claims to be theirs or derivative works thereof. SCO should be suing whoever sold the 'linux servers' they're in the process of 'identifying', but apparently consider it too risky.
They are trying to make a (possible although unlikely) case of copyright infringement by IBM seem like a violation of an license agreement between them and the end user. At the same time they're trying to convince everyone that the license they've been distributing their linux distro under is not valid and trying to scare people into accepting whatever licensing terms and prices they come up with.
The upside is that if the US legal system hasn't gone
Which, like pointed out before, is just like paying the Mafia.
This isn't even very funny anymore.
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.
-------------------------------------------------
I don't get it. How is it going to sue linux users without showing them the code?
Patriot Act?
End users individually suing SCO! With the idea from the Windows Refund article, how about if thousansd of end users take SCO to court for the same reasons Red Hat is..
I'm unfortunately not a lawyer but perhaps some lawyer type on here can make up a standard form letter that end users can take to their local courthouse to initiate a small claims action against SCO.
You have to be able to show you were harmed in some way.. surely it can't be that hard to prove that the FUD that SCO is promulgating has harmed your business. Small Claims (at least in NY) is good for up to $3,000 in damages so the independent Linux consultants should at least be able to come up with a couple hundred to a thousand dollars of damanges, at least for the time spent explaining to your clients what the suit is all about, and attempting to reassure your clients that all is going to be OK.
Folks, this is a problem that needs taken care of. SCO has labeled YOU as Fair Game. It's time to return the favor. Make sure to document your time!
Maybe someone who IAL (is a lawyer) can determine if this will work. If not, surely there is something else that the geek collective can do.
If we are to truly take the wind from SCO's sails at this point, we need to cut off their revenue stream. To do this, one of the injured parties (any of the Linux Distributors, for example) must go into court and ask for an injunction to prevent SCO from attempting to collect any licence fees from Linux users or distributors until such time as they prove their claims - either to the Kernel developers or (failing that) to a court of law. Since SCO has a) announced a price list, and b) sold a licence they cannot argue that they are NOT pursuing licencing, so injunctive relief is a valid request for Linux distributors at this time.
Because SCO's current action smells more of extortion than of copyright-licencing there is a pretty good chance that any halfway-decent lawyer (sorry for the oxymoron) could walk out court with a temporary injunction almost immediately
I would think that the sheer insanity of SCO's position ("You have our code but we won't tell you what it is") would be all the excuse a judge would need to step in.
This would cut SCO off from their anticipated revenue stream for the forseeable future, and could even trigger a stock collapse since there was no likelihood of any corporate growth until the completion of the lawsuits sometime in the next few decades.
This does not mean I lose my license to distribute other products also licensed under the GPL.
... yes, even MS has GPLed some software!) doesn't have any bearing on whether or not you've violated the GPL on a completely unrelated product, owned by different people, such as, say, Linux.
... this is exactly the sort of ploy that could hand SCO a victory it otherwise would never achieve. Disclaimer: IANAL, yada yada yada.
Actually it does. Violate the GPL on a GNU product and refuse to be reasonable when it's pointed out and they'll C&D you to cease modifying and distributing anything the FSF owns copyright on and licenses under the GPL, not just that one program.
Yes, but the FSF owns the copyright on all those programs. The FSF cannot tell someone violating the GNU copyright (by violating the GPL) that they cannot use Linux (even though Linux is GPLed) because they do not own the copyright, and can therefor neither license, nor revoke the license of Linux. Likewise, Samba's copyright is owned by a different group of people than Linux, so the fact that SCO has committed massive copyright violations of Linux does not mean the Linux folks can revoke SCO's GPL license to Samba. And, since SCO has not violated Samba's license (the GPL) on Samba, at least to our knowledge, the Samba folks can't revoke that license either.
This is one of the reasons the FSF recommends one assign copyright to them when one GPLs a project...it does buy you a great deal of clout when things like this arise.
As it is, were the Samba folks (or the FSF) to attempt to revoke SCO's license on distributing GPLed software unrelated to Linux (the product whose copyright SCO is violating), I doubt very much it would hold up in court.
Think about it. The GPL doesn't allow willy-nilly revokation without cause, and your violating a license on Microsoft's code (even that small amount of code Microsoft has GPLed
I think any attempt to make one violation on one product apply to all licenses on all products who happen to be identically licensed won't stand a snowball's chance in hell of being upheld in court
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I want to give say $20 to a fund to fight these fuckers, so that the first mom-and-pop store running Linux has a gazillion bucks, and won't settle. Where is this, or do I have to start it?
From a little later in the article:
With as anal SCO is about showing people the code, I seriously find it hard to beleive that SCO just took her word on the agreement and still gave her the code. If she seriously did verbally agree to the NDA and planned on abiding by it, what difference does it make if you sign it? Does the Yankee Group really say "You can't sign NDAs, but you can give your word that you won't violate the NDA"?
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.
Technically, they can *start* a lawsuit without showing code. The initial complaint can be as little as a paragraph saying "They stole my code!" 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. Unless they have a lot better evidence than what they showed at the SCOsource fiasco, they would get bounced in a heartbeat.
Also, Eben Moglen is right about the stupidity of Mark Heise's interpretation of the GPL as being preempted by the Copyright Act. (Heise is the lawyer representing SCO). If any lawyer were incompetent or malicious enough to waste a court's time with garbage like that they would likely get a stiff fine under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. 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?" It is hard to believe that Heise is really stupid enough to believe what he said so maybe he is just being deceptive. On the other hand, SCO has been repeating that reasoning in interviews with the press so maybe Heise and co. really are that dumb.
So take your pick--Heise is:
A. Dumb
B. Dishonest
C. All of the above
IAANAL, but AIUI, the GPL isn't a licence to use, it's a licence to distribute. So, you can reject the GPL and still use GPLed software, but you can't distribute it unless you accept the GPL (or whatever other licensing terms the software author offers as an alternative.)
In the specific case of Linux, the only licence to distribute is the GPL, so if SCO rejects the GPL, then they've breached copyright every time they've distributed a copy, which (in most relevant jurisdictions) is a criminal offence.
Also, declared invalid in court would only apply on a case-by-case basis, and only between parties who disagreed about the GPL. So, even if SCO prevailed in court over its validity, it wouldn't suddenly destroy the agreements it's the basis of everywhere else, unless the parties to those agreements then changed their minds.
I don't live in the US (Canada), we haven't really seen FUD from SCO here. Most large companies have laughed and moved on. Why doesn't the US gov't stop this? No infringement is proven, yet they're threatening lawsuits? Is there some kind of law saying that it's legal? And.. don't you have a blue sky law? I really don't see how SCO is selling anything but that..
The GPL expressly disclaims covering a "freedom to use", stating rather the following:
What does this mean? Not only does the GPL provide authors no handle by which to prevent someone from using the covered code, it also presumes that a user does not need additional permission from the copyright holder to use a copy which is legitimately obtained. If you buy a copy of a work, it becomes your property and you may use it; you need permission and licensure only when you wish to make and distribute copies.
The scammers behind proprietary licenses have come up with all sort of language to mask this fact: "licensed, not sold"; "you own the media, not the work"; and so forth, as if it were possible to deprive someone of a purchase retroactively by declaring it to have not taken place. (It isn't; if you walk into a store, and the store's staff and you carry out the overt ritual of selling and purchasing a given item, then you have purchased the item, even if a paper inside the box describes it as "licensed, not sold". Naturally, you have not purchased the copyright, but the copy you have purchased is yours to use or abuse.)
Vice versa, there is no way that SCO's post facto claims that the GPL is worthless can cause the GPL to be worthless to SCO. They may rail against it for years, and it will still be sufficient to grant them the right to copy and distribute binaries and source together. You can waive many sorts of right merely by saying you do, but the GPL isn't such a right. Rather, it is a grant of permission, which remains efficacious even if you deny it. No matter how much SCO says, "The GPL is worthless," they still have and hold the rights granted them under it.
That is, of course, one of its strengths.
Unable to afford scalpers' price for a Red Sox ticket, the Tawny Titan heard from an East Coast paralegal while he watched the game from a saloon near Fenway Park. The legal eagle claimed two large Linux customers are eyeing racketeering charges against SCO for asking for money before it proves its case. They would need about four more companies to come forward, claimed the tattler. "Seems like a dream come true for some attorney general," said the Furball. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1224399,00.as p
Gnu For President 2004
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 if I have this straight, once SCO starts suing linux end users they must discontinue distribution of the linux kernel, or Linus (or the FSF on his behalf) can sue them for copyright infringement.
Or is it the case that they already lost permission to distribute the linux kernel because they've started demanding fees from end users so they can be sued NOW?
Liberty.
for SCO's legal abuse of Linux users "EXTORTION?"
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
As someone pointed out on http://lwn.net/Articles/45019, the snippet even contains a syntax error, so the code in question cannot even be compiled and certainly cannot be used. I wouldn't call this a very carefully crafted lie but rather a sloppy one, esp. in front of someone who actually has the time to analyze it.
I plan to plan / Dutch course in The Hague
It looks to me that SCO is trying to duplicate the recent success the RIAA has had in suing end users. Stats showed that P2P usage dropped after the RIAA went on their rampage so SCO is probably trying to elicit the same effect with Linux usage. They probably figure (like the RIAA) that if you sue the users they will do anything you want. The only difference is, the RIAA might have a legitimate reason to be doing it, while SCO has none whatsoever. So once again, they are counting on ignorance and fear to prey on the minds of their victims. Just sad, really.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
Wouldn't he be able to ask for big compensations in the following class action for extortion that should follow?
Also what about the story of Microsoft buying SCO shares some time ago? Hasn't SCO become somehow a Microsoft satellite company, spreading all this FUD and intimidation to drive companies away from Linux in fear of litigation (at least for the moment)? I mean, SCO will be scrified at the end of the day, that seems clear.
Look at this a little more closely.
It's true, of course, that they have standing to enforce copyright only where they own it. But don't confuse having standing to enforce copyright with license revocation.
In this case no person would be revoking the license except the licensee. The license terms are clear, if you violate them, the license is revoked automatically. Neither the FSF nor anyone else can revoke your license except for you yourself.
But if you do violate, and thereby revoke, your GPL license, then you stand in copyright violation any time you use any GPL code beyond your basic rights under copyright law. Since the violation is copyright infringment, it is up to the copyright holders to pursue legal sanctions if they wish. They have no obligation to, and so you might get away with it, but there is no guarantee - the copyright holder of any GPL code you are infringing on can serve you for it at any time once you revoke your license.
Now this is exactly what SCO has done - they've revoked their own rights to use GPL code, deliberately, and they've made an enourmous amount of noise about it. They're publically stating that they don't think the GPL is valid anyway. Well, if they don't think it's valid, how can they agree to it? If they don't agree to it, they have no right to use any code under it. They have no right to modify and/or distribute Samba, Linux, Gnome, the GNU toolchain... any of it. Both because they stand in violation of the GPL in the case of Linux specifically, and because their public statements make it clear that they do not agree to the GPL terms on the other packages which means that they have no license for those programs.
Now is it possible that a court would rule that the words of the GPL are not properly written to be able to enforce section 4 in this case? Sure. If so then it would be good to find out so the next revision can fix that. But even so the other line still means that SCO is practicing copyright violation in their use of any and all GPL software too. It's not uncommon or unwise to give courts multiple arguments in these cases, and the arguments can even contradict each other, that's not a problem. Look at SCO and IBMs court filings - both take this approach, saying A, then saying even if you reject A, then B, and in the event B is not true, then C must be...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
What you are proposing is breaking the 1st freedom; it is not because they claim the GPL is invalid that we believe so and should break it. A more valid request is IMHO the one GCC did, is to refuse to accept SCO specifics in the later (from now onwards) GCC versions. If they do want the GCC compilers, they'll have to branch them and maintain them themselves...
Not really. From the statement of the gpl from the gnu site:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
and
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.
The relevant clause SCO is breaking is the redistribution clause. Under the gpl, if SCO does not accept gpl it cannot redistribute gpl-ed programs.
That's right SCO, you go ahead & piss off the MPAA's darling of the moment, WETA. See you at your funeral.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
She saw the code snapshots on Linux Weekly News and Slashdot, of course. :)
Do you know how ridiculous this sounds on its face? Assuming your reasoning applies here, please explain why would the US government take the side of the tiny company (SCO) against the side of the deep-pocketed multinational superconoglomerate (IBM) if it was so beholden to business interests?
This
This is especially amusing because Samba is potentially in much more legal danger than Linux ever was - due to MS's patents & annoying EULAs on documentation, Samba developers have to be VERY carefull about what they read and look at, and it'd be much easier to slip them up or even press claims that they did splip up than against Linux.
Didn't SCO just announce the other day a new product that would be distributed with Samba 3.0? I know I read that somewhere...
Ahh, yes...there's this and this.
Does violating the GPL with one product (the kernel) violate it under another (samba)?
That is, could the Samba team actually file against SCO for injunctive relief to prohibit them from distributing Samba for license violation just because they violated the GPL where the Linux kernel is concerned?
Canopy Group *does not* own TrolTech.
Read...
Me
They have but 5.7% stake in the company. Canopy does technically control SCO, on the other hand. So, who's the real enemy here? Canopy, or SCO?
IANAL, so this may be rubbish. but, if the GPL is declared invalid in court, wouldn't most of the code be technically unlicensed?Yes, but.
Copyright applies to all software. The GPL says, "This software is copyrighted, BUT we're going to allow you to do some things that copyright normally doesn't allow." If the GPL is found to be invalid, then GPL-licensed code is now technically unlicensed. However, that means that normal copyright kicks in. IANAL myself, but it seems to me that if something like Samba is no longer GPLed, then SCO has no rights to modify or distribute the code, since they have not made alternative licensing arrangements with the people who own/control Samba.
If that's true, then SCO is shooting themselves in the foot. Once the GPL is declared invalid, then SCO loses the ability to use any GPLed software until they make other licensing arrangements with the people who control/own that GPLed software.
Isn't part of _ANY_ trial discovery? Doesn't that mean that both sides have to give each other the evidence they are going to use in the case? More to the point, if SCO decided to sue you, could you basically stand up and say to the judge "SCO needs to turn over any and all evidence of infringement, and the trial should not start until they do so?"
Can someone PLEASE come up with a sticker that has Calvin taking a leak on SCO pronto???!!!
Here's the actual text:
Note that this only applies when you are distributing the program in question, not when you are using it internally.So what's the problem? If you want to benefit from the community, but you don't want to put back in, don't distribute the program in any form, including binary.
Or you can distribute in binary and source form. Your intellectual property is still yours, but you've made it available for others to work with/improve. It's not a zero-sum game. You'll benefit in the long run.
Perhaps the morning Crack fix hasn't kicked in yet, but doesn't this whole spaz attack by SCO seem like nothing more than a SLAPP suite?
Evidently since backing up their allegations is 'hard', and IBM shows no interrest in buying them up for their 'IP', they're seeking to make money through frivilous lawsuits.
Now is it possible for the defendants to file a class action suit to recoup legal fees? Is there any sort of precedent where a company using the legal system to harass and financially injure innocent people? Remember, these aren't the people who stole the code, these are people who refuse to pay a licencing fee based on 'because I say so'. So until SCO prooves they do indeed have a claim, how is it legal for them to file suit with impunity?
I suppose the real trick is figuring how the first amendment fits in. If code isn't free speech (decss), certainly your opinion is. What you wear has been (I think) defended to be free speech (or at least a poor fashion statement). So, to me, it stands to reason that your choice in operating system should be free speech. It reflects on what you believe to be the best tool to do your job.
In case its not entirely clear. I am not a lawyer. I am a Minister of the Church of Hump-Hump and born again pimp. These opinions are not my own, they are those of my crack pipe and hallucinatory posessed hootchie mama.
I base these observations on this definition:
A SLAPP suit is a strategic lawsuit against public participation -- civil complaints or counterclaims (against either an individual or an organization) in which the alleged injury was the result of petitioning or free speech activities protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
SLAPP's are often brought by corporations, real estate developers, or government officials and entities against individuals who oppose them on public issues. Typically, SLAPPs are based on ordinary civil tort claims such as defamation, conspiracy, and interference with prospective economic advantage.
While most SLAPPs are legally meritless, they effectively achieve their principal purpose: to chill public debate on specific issues. Defending a SLAPP requires substantial money, time, and legal resources and thus diverts the defendant's attention away from the public issue. Equally important, however, a SLAPP also sends a message to others: you, too, can be sued if you speak up.
This is a case of going after the weak sisters. The idea is go after people that can not afford to defend themselves. The will
1. Settle and pony up some money.
2. Go to court and not afford to pay the big guns needed to defend themselves and loose.
It is a win win for SCO. If the company pays the can use that in court to say, "Look XYZ paid because they knew we where right."
Or if they go to court and SCO wins then which it very well could beacuse a company that is not IBM or Red Hat does not have the knowlege or the money to defend it's self. With a win or two under it's belt they will have "Proof" that they where right all along.
It is a nasty tactic but not a new one.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Class Action Lawsuit...
Seriously folks... there's gotta be a lawyer out there thinking about this... getting all of the American linux community together and suing SCO...
Mmm... the warm glow of that thought almost gets me past my anger that SCO stories foster...
BlackNova Traders
What would happen if a few thousand (million??) end users sued SCO?? Bury them in paper and let them burn up their capital paying lawyers and law clerks to sort it out. Let SCO figure out how to respond to 1,000's of suits filed on the same day in different jurisdictions.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I just got off the phone with the FTC. If everyone calls and complains then the chances they will investigate SCO goes up. They look for patterns. In other words, if the majority of their calls are about SCO then they will investigate. It is time to take the Slashdot effect to the phones.
These are the key points to make:
-You did not purchase software from SCO
-The company that "produced" your software did not purchase it from SCO
-It was not marketed or packaged by SCO
-Despite this SCO is asking for $199 from home users (You) and $699 from business for 1 CPU
They will ask for your name, phone number, address etc. That is mostly to verify your identity and citizenship I think.
Here is the number:
1-877-382-4357 option 4
They are nice and listen well. The lady I talked to even took the time to get a better understanding of what Linux is. The best quote from her "You didn't purchase it from them and they want you to pay them? That sounds crazy."
NOTICE: SCO has suspended new sales and distribution of SCO Linux until
the intellectual property issues surrounding Linux are resolved. SCO will,
however, continue to support existing SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux
customers consistent with existing contractual obligations. SCO offers at
no extra charge to its existing Linux customers a SCO UNIX IP license for
their use of prior SCO or Caldera distributions of Linux in binary
format. The license also covers binary use of support updates distributed
to them by SCO. This SCO license balances SCO's need to enforce its
intellectual property rights against the practical needs of existing
customers in the marketplace.
The Linux rpms available on SCO's ftp site are offered for download to
existing customers of SCO Linux, Caldera OpenLinux or SCO UnixWare with
LKP, in order to honor SCO's support obligations to such customers.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Crimony people, they're using the same tactics as RIAA. They're not expecting to make money off of this maneuver, but they're hoping to scare the shit out of some of the lower tier resellers/companies who can't afford to defend themselves like RH and IBM can. Those companies will either pay or, possibly, funnel that money into some microsoft products. At 700 bucks per linux server, you could almost transfer to a MS infrastructure for that and tell SCO to fuck off, you don't use linux anymore. The conspiracy theorists here have already belabored the possibility that this whole thing is designed to discredit all unix and unix-like OS's to microsoft's benefit.
Same as RIAA, first they went after the corporates and scared them into rethinking linux, and now they're making noise about suing everyone, knowing that at least some people will decide to cut their losses and bail out rather than risk legal proceedings. Not to mention it makes a good news story and i'd bet their stock is up as of this evening.
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
GPl is based in copyright. You are setting out a set of copying rights that increase, not decrease the minimum allowed rights granted under the consitiution and law. As such, it is well established that a person may fairly grant or not grant rights of copying to other persons as they see fit. You may forbid coying entirely (legal), you may grant Public domain (you retain no rights to restrict copying) or you may stipulate resonable actions to allow copying. Mostly, this means money paid to the copyright holder.
The GPL thence is misnamed - it is more fo a copyright "rules of copying". As you have agreed to release your code under the GPL (read, rules of copying), the person doing the copying is bound by the rule you allowed or disallowed copying.
You follow me?
Okay, in this case the GPL says you are allowed to copy as long as you provide source code for free and a whole bunch of other blah in the same vein. As the copyright holder you are allowed to stipulate these resonable actions so that others may legally copy your work.
Thence, SCO is misstating the GPL - it is NOT a licence as per say. The only case the GPL has to be examined for is IF it is a resonable set of copying rules. I believe that as SCO has and continues to release code under the GPL, a case can be made they accepted these terms of copying as fair so to be honest even fi the first court has a brain fart and rules for SCO, it will not survive appeal. Copyright law is well understood and believe it or not, fairly clear.
SCO therefore they have a problem. Code is still copyrighted by the original writers and unless you public domain your right, it is never lost. SCO is copying Linux code AGAINST the wishes of the real copyright holders.
I'm afraid the GPL is better thought out that some realise and it's strength is the fact it is allowable under copyright law. That is a clear fact. The ONLY problem it could face is if it is an unresonable demand to grant rights of copying.
And if it is shown to be such, SCO is still fucked, cause they are distributing copyright code they dont own. Case reverts to normal copyright laws. All it will take is ONE person to sue SCO under copyright breach.
I really dont see how SCO can win.
SCO path is very clear to me ...
They were very close to bankruptcy before they begun with this all.
Then, they challenge IBM with two objectives: burst up their stock options and sell the company to IBM.
When IBM opted to challenge them back, they got in BIG trouble, and now they need to stay in the media and try to get some funds anywhere to maintain their points. If they did not it, they will be accepting that they tried to manipulate the stock options, and will be in serious trouble ?
Now, they are looking for the end users because they are easier to extort. In this case, they will not try to chase everyone, but only a carefully choose handful to stay in the media and to bring fear to the others. Some of them will fail and send money to them, and this money will be used to maintain the process against others ?
In their position, now I will try to make some very public agreements with some minor users and make a BIG media show with that. They need to stay in the media.
The only way to protect us all against them is:
1. do not send any money to them.
2. talk to everyone you know about what they are trying and that they have to saty against it.
We have one thing that they do not. We have a great community in the INTERNET.
We need to use it, and the information we have, against them.
I do not know how your government works (I'm Brazilian), but if they did not block this patern very soon, your software development will became a real mess?
If Didio did not sign the NDA, and they showed her the code, can they still claim the code as a trade secret????
I thought that was one of the big arguements they used for not allowing anyone to see any code without an NDA!!
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.
(bender)
SCO can kiss my shiny metal ass.
(/bender)
I'm running the 2.2 kernel!
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?
What I want to know is - why SCO hasn't set their sights on Google yet? By their own admission, Google has over 10,000 Linux boxes. If SCO still wants $699 a box, that's a cool 6.9 million dollars!!
I'd like to see them try and get that.
Weta Digital are working on Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. I'll be very upset with SCO if they mess with them, as will a few other people I'll wager!
Here's the plan:
Pay SCO the $700.
Ask for it back, on the grounds that they do not have the right to license the "property" that they licensed for $700. (SCO would likely not refund)
Sue them in small claims court for the $700.
If Didio did not sign the NDA, and they showed her the code, can they still claim the code as a trade secret????
Well, an oral contract is just as valid as a written one. A contract's a contract. Oral contracts are generally discouraged 'cause they're tough to prove in court, but they're perfectly legal and totally binding.
This may be a thought that's been done to death...but isn't this RIAA-like announcement of an assault on end-users, based on a claim that has not been proven in court, sort of like extortion, in the *legal* definition of the term?
Doesn't this (here in the US) fall under RICO (racketeering, and used against corporate crooks, as well)?
mark "come on, SCO, come after *me* (now,
what's the phone # for the federal
prosecutor?)"
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/ags/all.cfm
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
___________________________
Mec's post:
The SCO Group is not a real company. They are an operating tentacle of The Canopy Group. More news of interest: Computer Associates Agrees to a $40 million settlement [thestreet.com] Level 7, another Canopy Group tentacle, sued CA and settled for $40 million. Check this line out: Level 7 didn't write its own software, it bought software, entered a contract with Computer Associates, and then turned around and sued them.
These aren't the death spasms of a dying company. It's actually the ordinary life cycle of a Canopy tentacle. The very name "The SCO Group" masks this, because it's associated with 20 years of Unix history.
___________________________
Below is a portion of an article from Forbes magazine; I bolded several sections.
In 1996, SCO's predecessor company, Caldera, bought the rights to a decrepit version of the DOS operating system and used it to sue Microsoft, eventually shaking a settlement out of the Redmond, Wash., software giant. In 1997, Darl McBride, now SCO's chief executive, sued his then employer, IKON Office Solutions, and won a settlement that he says was worth multiple millions. (IKON acknowledges the settlement but disputes the amount.)
McBride joined Caldera as chief executive in June 2002. Two months later he changed the company's name to The SCO Group, based on the name of an ailing Unix product that Caldera had purchased in 2001 from its creator, The Santa Cruz Operation, of Santa Cruz, Calif. The Santa Cruz Operation now calls itself Tarantella. As with the 1996 DOS lawsuit against Microsoft, in the current lawsuit over Unix and Linux this company aims to take a nearly dead chunk of old code, bought for a song, and parlay it into a windfall. Not only is the strategy the same--so are some of the players.
SCO is basically owned and run by The Canopy Group, a Utah firm with investments in dozens of companies. Canopy's chief executive, Ralph J. Yarro III, is chairman of SCO's board of directors and engineered the suit against Microsoft in 1996. Darcy Mott, Canopy's chief financial officer, is another SCO director, along with Thomas Raimondi, chief executive of a Canopy company called MTI Technology. In this cozy company, SCO even leases its office space from Canopy--a fact disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings, along with the fact that SCO's chief financial officer, Robert Bench, has a side job as a partner in a Utah consulting firm that last year billed SCO for $71,200.
Canopy companies sometimes share more than a common parent. They form joint ventures and buy and sell one another's stock. Last November SCO formed a joint venture called Volution with Center 7, a Canopy company. In 2000, Caldera sold off part of its business to EBIZ Enterprises, a Texas company in which Canopy holds a controlling interest and whose board boasts three Canopy execs, including Mott, according to SEC filings. Previously, Caldera bought shares in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, and later wrote off the Troll Tech investment but sold the Lineo shares at a profit, according to SEC filings. In 1999, Caldera sold its own shares to MTI, then bought those shares back last year, according to SEC filings.
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
Unless you are the recipient of a C&D letter from SCO, there isn't a whole lot you can do civily against them. Criminally, however, a case can be made against SCO on two counts:
Fraud
Every time SCO comes out and makes a statement such as this, it is commercial speech (speech for commercial business/profit) and must be truthful. The current case against Nike has been allowed to proceed and would be very relevant here. Even without the Nike case, there is enough evidence to file charges.
Extortion
In most DMCA cases, the copyright owner files a suit against the supposed infringer and settles out of court; this is underhanded but legal. In this case, SCO is not filing suit but is asking for a "settlement" anyway, IOW, "pay your protection money or I'll sue you and put you out of business". This is extortion, and might also fall under the RICO statutes.
You wanna get rid of the SCO monster? Write your attorney general, write the U.S. attorney general, and write your Congressmen and state legislators and make them clean this mess up. The reason SCO can get away with FUD like this is that the Legislature hasn't put in place proper protections and the Executive won't enforce the protections that exist.
Someone asked if I had patched against MSBlast; I said yes, I installed Linux.
http://www.sco.com/scosource/linuxlicensefaq.html and the links from that page. this is fucking unbeleivable. im taking a ciggie break then e-mailing sco telling them i'm a Linux user, run multiple servers, and I will never ever every pay them for anything. If linux becomes warez temporarily until parts of the kernel are rewritten then so be it. It should be illegal for them to hassle users like this before any decision had been make in court. IANAL but it sounds like they are making false claims.
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.
Hmm, I can't help but notice that Microsoft used to more or less own a piece of SCO and that Sun ponied up their license fees too.
So I ask myself, would SCO benefit from the demise of Linux? Not really. Its market share would continue to dwindle in the face of Solaris and Windows.
The battle for the server is between Windows and Unix, for the most part, and Sun's Khosla more or less stated that Solaris was the version of Unix that made all other versions irrelevant.
SCO's claims are an attempt to damage IBM's sales of AIX and it's hardware which benefits Sun. Likewise, SCO's claims are an attempt to damage Linux which benefits Sun and Microsoft. So why would SCO take this course of action that can't really bring it any benefit unless there is some other motive?
Take your pick:
a) McBride and Co. are simply trying to get the last $$$ out of a dead horse.
b) SCO has a deal with Sun and/or Microsoft to be the "bad guy" that will result in SCO being bought by one or the other after irreparable damage has been wrought.
c) There is a greater conspiracy to rid the world of that troublesome GPL concept that SCO and Microsoft (and to some extent Sun) have called "a destroyer of intellectual property rights".
d) All of the above.
Of course, I could be misreading the events and the motives behind them.
Or not.
...and ye shall receive:
s co.gif
http://homepage.mac.com/patgaddis/calvinpissingon
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
If SCO is bound and determined to commit public-relations and corporate suicide, all in one swell foop, I'm sure there are cleaner and quieter ways to go about it.
All this grandstanding (without presenting independently-verifiable proof of their claims, I think that's all they're doing) is only going to do one thing: Create a serious financial drain on the company in terms of court costs.
One interesting side effect to this whole mess may be that BSD-based OS's will get more attention. As far as I know, neither NetBSD, nor FreeBSD, nor OpenBSD have ever been the subject of lawsuits of the type that SCO is pushing.
Whatever happens, I think SCO has gone utterly, irretrievably bonkers if they think this kind of behavior will help them in any way. I feel sorry for the employees...
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I think getting sued by SCO would be good for many slashbots.
That's because you are a bunch of subservient morons who usually never miss a chance to bow down before your MBA and JD masters.
If a broadband company advertises "20 times the speed of dialup" and then caps the modems and blocks all ports, half the thread is taken up explaining in condescending terms that the cable company has to make money, therefore false advertising and fraud just have to be set aside.
Stories on file sharing are full of nervous worry about artists going out of business. So what ? Whose job is it to keep the artist from starving, me or the artist ? Any news of any type of corporate rip-off or fraud generates a nervous round of excuses: sure 1/2 of every telecom bill is fraud, but who will take care of the wires ? (Someone honest who charges half as much ?) Sure every telecom charges fees for number portability that they don't deliver, but we like the idea of number portability ! ( Like the idea of faster than light travel ? Pay me $2 a month and I'll look into it, and you'll never get that either !) Sure Linksys is violating the GPL, but if we aren't nice little victims some board members might thing bad things about the GPL, and that would be awful ! Sure DirectTV is asserting unconstitutional and facist like claims against our ability to manipulate the EM waves they send through our houses and bodies, but . . . but . . . it just feels rebelious to object !
I hope all you fuckers get taken for at least $4,000 to $8,000 in legal fees. I hope the Federal Marshalls come and take your computers, and charge you a nice fat handling fee to get them back on top of whatever SCO manages to get you spinelessly settle for, and I hope the BSA and RIAA jump in there and make you pay for every copy of windows and every mp3. (Let's see the "but I have nothing to hide, so I'm against the 4th Amendment" posts then!) Ideally, the financial hardship will force you to drop out of the university for a semester or two, see the real world, get fucked over and laid off at a couple of different jobs, and maybe grow out of your junior Republican industrial peasant mentality.
"Apache is not GPL, quite a bit of Free software is under BSD/MIT style licenses actually, but SCO has certainly terminated their own rights to use the stuff that is GPL because of that clause. It's just a matter of who has the money and time to C&D them and be ready to back it up with litigation."
Ehm, IANAL, but I don't think so. The GPL covers distribution, not use. You don't have to agree with the GPL to use software it covers, that's only necessary when you want to distribute that software or derrived works.
Firstly, you are right in that the GPL explicitly covers only distribution and says essentially that usage licenses are unneccessary for any software. However, SCO is currently distributing GPL software because they distribute Linux. Not only that, they have been beefing up UnixWare by adding Free Software like Samba, Apache, et al to Unixware, to say nothing of their Linux Kernel Personality which uses Linux kernel code.
They are distributing this code without giving their customers the rights they have under the GPL. Further, they are attempting to require Linux users to pay licensing fees, a practice which directly violates the GPL. All of this adds up to SCO not following the GPL when it comes to distribution, ergo they have no right to distribute any of the Free Software they are distributing.
The copyright holders would be well within their rights to offically inform SCO that they cannot distribute Linux, Samba, et al if they insist on breaking the GPL and especially since they have declared it invalid, and if they persist they will be sued for copyright violation. It would also be poetic justice.
Come to think about it, it woudl be just plain justice. SCO has wrongfully appropriated the IP of others and had the gall to try and turn the whole situation on its head. The company now known as SCO has created 0 IP no matter what they say they own. Now I am willing to concede they own some IP which they have purchased (though what exactly they bought is something they and the people from whom they purchased the IP do not agree on), but the fact of the matter is they are claiming to own all kinds of things, including AIX and Linux which they did not create. They are trying to make themselves the sole licensee for Linux and therefore own Linux.
Their argument that Linux users just do not want to pay for software just does not hold water. After all the people who paid RedHat $2500/pop for Advanced Server or whatever would beg to differ. Besides that they make no sense. If Linus and friends create something and give it away for free, how is that something SCO has anything to do with at all? Why is it that we should pay SCO because "Linux is just too good to be free?" They did not create Linux; it is not for them to be charging jack shit.
Why does every little peep that is pro SCO get spewed all over the investers headlines, yet when they get slam dunked (like yesterdays disputed code) only hit Open Source supported headlines?
One of the execs at my company holds quite abit of SCO stock, but he knows nothing of any of the claims against SCO's stance because all his invester news fails to note these facts?
It's as if SCO was in bed with AOL/Time Warner and all other media/invester outlets.
Has anyone else see any see any negative (towards SCO I mean) information about SCO in the headlines?
I just called a few minutes ago.
Here's some information that may help. They actually asked for this info:
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
801-765-4999 phone
The guy I spoke with was actually somewhat familiar with what Linux is. One of his first questions was how this company got involved with me, which my answer was "Well, that's the problem. They didn't."
He eventually asked if SCO has contacted me personally with regard to this situation, which they have not. Don't lie to them. Be completely truthful. At the end of the call I got a reference number, and he said that if SCO does contact me personally, I should call back and let them know.
It was very easy to do, and took about 5 minutes of my time. The recording while I wated for the counselor to pick up the phone did say that the FTC does track trends in complaints. If we get enough people to complain, something will happen. Please, take a few minutes and call!
Thank you for this information, div_2n.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
How about I give you the finger, and you go sell your scam to someone else?
Thank you.
Finding God in a Dog
I see a (potential) small problem here.
Suppose that program A is distributed under the terms of the GPL. The GPL does not grant any right to use the program (it presumes none is required.) (It is an interesting question of law whether rights to use a program, legitimately obtained, can be covered by copyright law, and to what extent. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm clueless on this one.)
Thus it may (however unlikely) turn out to be the case that SCO's claim and licensing stuff is valid, yet only pertains to actually using the software. Note that they are selling per-CPU licences to use the software, and are placing no restrictions on usage. Thus they place no restriction modification or redistribution, but people who obtain a copy, whilst allowed to copy and modify it to their hearts content, are not allowed to use the kernel without a license from SCO.
Maybe the GPL 3.0 should explicitly include sections pertaining to use of the program (so that it is explicitly agains the license to freely allow redistribution, yet restrict usage of the code on a CPU.)
I suspect there are some serious flaws in the above. I hope there are, and I hope someone can explain where the problems lie.
John_Chalisque
We just ignore anything SCO says or does> They've had enough /.-promotion of their fight against Linux, and quite frankly, each new bit of news is being blown up like they really have a clue what they are doing. Lets just ignore SCO and their demented actions, let IBM and Redhat fight it out, and in the mean time actually have some serious news we actually care a bit about...
This sig is intentionally left blank
I'm looking forward to the point when SCO employees start releasing confidential internal documents and source code to fight back. There must be Linux supporters (or freedom-lovers!) who work for SCO, and surely they're starting to get fed up with all this crap.
WETA isn't the only motion-picture related company using Linux. However, since WETA is in New Zealand and probably have no operations in the United States, SCO will probably have to go to New Zealand to file suit against them. Fat chance a New Zealand court will convict their own media heroes. But, New Line Cinema, a division of AOL Time Warner, certainly has made lots of money off the special effects derived from all of those *SCO-IP infringing* computers loaded with Linux. Then we go to AOL Time Warner itself. A couple of quarters ago, AOL itself made a big deal about replacing all their servers running Unix with Linux. Then we have DreamWorks SKG that rendered all of "Sinbad" using Linux. Last week, we heard that Disney and two (2) refuse-to-be-named movie studios pooled their resources together to get Adobe Photoshop to run under Linux since each of the three (3) studios were switching every PC over to Linux. And then we have Lucasfilm/ILM. They switched everything over to Linux as well. So in summary, the fun is really going to start when SCO pushes all these players too far: 1. AOL Time Warner/AOL/New Line Cinema/WETA, 2. DreamWorks SKG, 3. Disney, *cough cough* 4. and 5. 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures, and 6. Lucasfilm/ILM. Care to wager bets when the bootleg video of Mr. McBride getting a Super Star Destroyer stuffed into him hits Kazaa? It'll be funnier than the *Star Wars Kid* video and far more legally damaging... :)
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
File:
http://www.sec.gov/complaint/cf942sec9570.htm
to lodge on online complaint against SCO for manipulation of security prices.
If you have distributed a piece of code under the GPL that's currently distributed by SCO:
- write a letter asking SCO if they respect the GPL re the use of your code.
- organize a press conference for the occasion.
It's as simple as that. Is this grown up behaviour? No, but it
1) is completely legal;
2) doesn't have any consequenses for you;
3) is a nice public display of the strength of GPL'd code;
4) could seriously embarras SCO even before they go to court;
5) doesn't weaken the position of the GPL in the least.
I presume there are ways to limit the use of said code if they publicly state they don't respect the license it's distributed under.
And if SCO willingly disregards those limitations, it consequently could be taken up by interested parties with deeper pockets... but that's not the issue.
It is not about starting another lawsuit, but about making it public knowledge that Very Powerful Software(tm) is being produced under the GPL and that the same idiots who refute the GPL can't possibly do what they do without it.
That incidentally includes MS.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
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
Feel free to call them and follow up.....
From the following Forbes article we have chief technology strategist from Merril Lynch Rick Carey who is "staking his reputation" on Linux. I'm sure he should be easy to find. Also Steve Yatko who is the CTO of CFSB should be making some calls to the SEC. Someone suggest it to him.
Wall Street Embraces Linux
And from this CRN New Zealand article we have a quote from Merril Lynch VP of Linux strategy Mark Snodgrass. I think he should give the SEC a phone call.
Linux gaining interest from Wall Street (Reseller News)
How about Mark Hunt, Global Directory, Enterprise Product Marketing for Reuters? Or Jeff Birnbaum, CTO of Morgan-Stanley?
Wall Street's Secret Affair With Linux (CIO Update)
How abou Robert Ryan, Linux product manager for JP Morgan Chase? What is Evan Bauer, former CTO of Credit-Suisse First Boston doing these days? Is he calling the SEC to stop the SCO FUD damage? Apparently Robert Liefowitz who is the Director of Meryll-Lynch's Technical Architecture Group thinks Linux is the secod coming of Christ. Has he called the SEC?
Wall Street Gaining Respect for Linux
An excellent quote from Ryan...
These trading firms need to put their money where their mouth is. Something like 3 trillion dollars a day flows through wall street. They have benefitted from Linux more than anyone else.
And let the Bush administration defend what they love more than business, our aresenal of massive destruction.
Okay, so, once again, various threads have descended into mini-flame wars over opinion from a bunch of non-lawyers who got modded up because the mods liked their opinions. You know what? I've had it. If there ARE any law professionals here on /. feel free to reply to this with some sort of proof. An e-mail address from your firm. Something. Anything.
I'll add you as my "friends" with some sort of karma modifier, and make the list publicly available. We should be able to improve the SNR that way.
If someone's already done something like this, point me in the right direction.
Michael C. Hollinger
What the hell is keeping IBM/RedHat/FSF/HP/Samba/the Pope from having an injunction slapped on these crooks?
Probably the same legal issues that caused the judge to throw out a similar move against DirecTV's extortion of money from purchasers of smartcard programming hardware.
They're threatening legal action. Any notices associated with it are "privileged". They don't get a cent unless they prove their cases in court or the defendant folds, so the legal system assumes the defendant is being properly handled and "gets his day in court".
Now AFTER you WIN you MIGHT be able to go after them if you can show they knew their case was bogus. But until it gets ground through the legal mill you're stuck.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
SCO going after Google.
Hopefully Google would respond by redirecting all searches for "SCO" to the goatse man.
Why didn't she have to sign an NDA? Perhaps it's because she's just a SCO tounge wag
one better than mcleodeight
I do not understand how you can legally sue a someone for using software with a revoked license untill you revoke their license. But you cannot revoke the license untill you LEGALLY prove in court you can in fact revoke their license.
Did I miss the SCO vs. IBM trial already being settled? I didn't think so. So fuck off SCO.
"Engineers do the work of man, Physicists do the work of God"
A better example would be, everybody buys a popular DVD, and SCO says "There is a scene in that movie stolen from our IP! But we can't tell you what it is, or it would invalidate our trade secrets! So everybody who owns it, please pay us $125 per DVD player in your household, or else we will sue you!"
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Shouldn't the GPL contain a clause to the effect that "Any entity that attacks the GPL in court or in the press thereby forefeits the right to any use whatsoever of any software granted by a GPL license." Would such a clause be enforcable?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
As end users, we should very well be taking our own futures into account.
Thusly, I suggest that EVERYBODY phone SCO to inquire about a license. Details as to exactly why can be found here.
xScruffx (who is no longer posting this link anonymously)
Yes, the GPL does have that handy section 4 whch allows for the termination of redistribution rights of any company that violates the GPL. I plan to exercise this (actually it happens automatically) to revoke their right to redistribute Nmap. I just started on the wording and haven't run it by a lawyer yet (I will). But the announcement will probably be something like:
SCO Corporation of Lindon, Utah (formerly Caldera) has lately taken to an extortion campaign of demanding license fees from Linux users for code that they themselves knowingly distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL. They have also refused to accept the GPL, claiming that some preposterous theory of theirs makes it invalid. In response to these blatant violations, and in accordance with section 4 of the GPL, we hereby terminate SCO's rights to redistribute any versions of Nmap in any of their products, including (without limitation) OpenLinux, OpenServer, and UNIXWare.
-Fyodor
Concerned about your network security? Try the free Nmap Security Scanner
Ummm, here in this article they say she did sign the NDA... http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/13/10552 20751243.html
The quote is:
" Didio had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with SCO in order to be able to have a look at around 80 lines of code."
Now they say she didn't... So did she or didn't she? It appears that they (Yankee Group) can't remember just what exactly it was they are doing and saying either... no wonder they like SCO!!
Stand up and be counted. SCO can only afford so much in legal expenses, and there are a lot of us. I'll happily sit around in a courtroom while they piss away their cash.
To: bstowell@sco.com
Subject: a request
From: Russell Neches
Hi there --
I've used Linux since 1998. I own and operate a variety of machines of various architectures on which I have installed the GNU/Linux operating system. Furthermore, I use a several Linux machines at school (as well as working as a volunteer administrator of said machines). Furthermore, I use and enjoy a large number of products and services that depend on Linux. This includes, but is not limited to, Akami hosting, Weta Digital movies, Merrill Lynch financial services, New York Times Co. media products, and T-Mobile wireless services (who happen to run my distribution of choice, Debian).
If you plan to continue your pursuit of licencing fees from Linux users, I am hereby declaring my intent to refuse to pay such fees. Please add me to your list of people against whom you wish to file suit.
I may be reached at xxxxxxx@xxx.xxx.xxx, or through my (Debian-using) cell phone service provider at xxx-xxx-xxxx. I shall furnish a mailing address once I have established one.
Russell Neches
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Take a look at his posting history before you mod, and consider his truthfulness, verus the possibility that you're just feeding a troll, eh?
I'm also deeply impressed that people are sending email addresses to someone who four posts earlier claimed that he worked as a spammer.
Seriously, "a small business" that has a *legal department* at all, much less two lawyers, doesn't ring a bell here? Hell, I work at a rather large place that produces scads of patents, and we have *one* lawyer.
May we never see th