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Samba Team Points Out SCO's Hypocrisy
An anonymous reader noted an article talking about the Samba
Team's Statement to SCO. While Darl McBride blasts the GPL, his company simultaneously announces the use of Samba 3 in their OpenServer product. I'm not sure if it breaks my heart or boils my blood to read this stuff. Probably a little of both.
It's a bit frustrating, but a highly principled response. I respect that.
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
SCO is simply lacking a good corporate strategy.
They need to figure out if they will agree to the GPL, or fight it. They can't do both, or if they do someone has to get the cat to chase its tail.
This has been discussed repeatedly in the other SCO posts.
Especially considering that SCO's latest big project has to do with using Samba to link up to the newest peice of overhyped Microsoft vapourware.
Now all we need is for the Apache, X11 and all the *BSD groups to call SCO's bluff, thus drowning out the FUD.
A fairy dies, and another pointy haired idiot buys some SCOX shares at an inflated price, using the psuedo-logic that if there's nothing there to refute, why do we keep refuting it?
Enough already. They're little yapping dogs. Don't give them the attention they crave. There's no story here until and if they detail every last line of code and document why they think it's theirs.
Shush. Shush now.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
...or can they?
At least for a little while I suppose. Darl(ing) can keep shooting his mouth off all he wants, it'll just make the court case that much more interesting.
All this flap about how SCO hates the GPL is pure BS since they don't seem to have an problem using GCC and SAMBA. But when this all comes to court, they'll really have to decide which way it is - is the GPL legal or not? Because it's going to affect the future (if there is one) of their 'product'.
Of course, I'm still cynical enough to believe that this whole thing is an exercise in legality. SCO isn't looking to the future, well unless you're an exec dreaming about tropical climates.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
(Allegedly) taking source from someone elses commercial product and appropriating it in your public domain product?
-or-
Taking a product from the public domain and appropriating it for your own commercial purposes?
-or-
Taking source from the public domain, incorporating large bits of it in your commercial product, claiming suddenly you own it and threatening to sue everybody who took advantage of the same PD source because both your code looks similar?
Actually they should point out that SCO's interpretation of the GPL indicates that GPLed products are not legally licensed to be duplicated and distributed and thus by distributing a GPLed package, SCO is in violation of (their own interpretation of) copyright law.
Most SCO resellers are simply wharehouse license suppliers; they take a cut, give someone a license, and do little else for the end users. These people are frankly scared about software freedom. It means they actually would have to do some work for their clients, rather than just be a middleman that collects money (with some off the top) and shipping license certificates. These are the people that cheared for McBride at SCOForum. Frankly, most SCO resellers are simply dynasours left over from the dawn of the IT age, they have no place in todays world, and would be irrelevent or at least would have to get off their lazy a** in a completely free one.
And then the Samba team wins... then what? ;-)
Just make it so that the Samba code won't run on SCO's products. This is the wisest approach because it's tit for tat. If we pussyfoot around saying that we're going to stick to our ideals while other people abuse them, then we are nothing more than doormats.
Un-news
The final components, "Sink face first in rancid dung in pit of hell. Writhe for all eternity." are an unintended consequence.
I earlier hypothisized that SCO may try to prove that any code published under the GPL should not be covered by Copyright Law, but be put in the Public Domain. If they were (by some unfortunate circumstance) able to do this, then all of thier legal issues regarding the use of GPL code would vanish in a puff of smoke, and thier claims to all *NIX IP would suddenly gain a huge amount of credence. (For those of you wearing aluminum foil hats - Microsoft would be laughing all the way to the bank yet again, too...)
This seems to add some weight to my conjecture.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
This is what I've been saying all along. The GPL is not a weapon of mass destruction. It is purely defensive. Free software is free - even to those we despise.
For instance, it appears that China is using GPL'd software but not giving back the source on their custom binaries. What are you going to do about it? Right, nothing. There's nothing you can do about it.
But that's not the point of Free software. Free is free as in freedom, like freedom of speech. It means we must tolerate those who will abuse it. That doesn't mean we can't be pissed about it. And it doesn't mean we can't boycott, protest, or otherwise demonstrate (vote with out wallets) our displeasure with people like SCO.
That's what SAMBA is saying, and they're right. There's simply nothing else they can do but bitch. AFter a while, this will be a pretty big embarrassment to SCO I should think.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
> You dont have to like the GPL to use it. I use GPL'd software, and I personally dont like it, nor do I consider it a truly free license,
> compared BSD's "do whatever the fuck you want we dont care" mentality.
SCO isn't just using GPL software, they're *distributing* it, *selling* it as a component of their own OpenServer. Obviously they can't do that if they do think that the GPL is a valid license.
Though I appreciate your sentiment, I think the main argument is that SCO isn't just using GPL'd software.
They are modifying, re-releasing and selling GPL'd software. All of which is perfectly fine (under the GPL) but which is contradictory to statements made by their CEO.
That is, they support and exploit the GPL as long as it benefits them for their business model. In the case of Samba, to be free of the GPL they'd have to engineer their own SMB solution, and in such a way that it was not "tainted" by the GPL (i.e., they cannot just steal from the Samba team).
Since this is not likey to happen, SCO has made the choice to charge money for a product that includes a great long list of GPL'd software (which supposedly adds a a lot of value to their OpenServer product) and yet their fearless leader claims that the GPL "destroys value".
I'm thinking this is the part that rankles most with the Samba team.
-- clvrmnky
The day free as in speech / free as in beer is destroyed by law and companies have a right to profits to the degree that they destroy even my 1st amendment rights (see this case, see MPAA + messaging article, etc)... is the day I get the HELL out of this godforsaken country and head to Canada... or maybe even Europe.
I suggest any Slashdotters with half a brain who actually do care about science and technology should do the same.
SCO does not accept the GPL (they state in public, that the GPL is invalid). But in order to use/distribute SAMBA, they need to accept it (otherwise they are not allowed to use it).
So either they stop complaining about the GPL or they imediately remove SAMBA from their servers.
As long as SCO doesn't accept the GPL as a valid license, the SAMBA team and anybody contibutetd to the project (which holds the copyright on their code) can very well and should demand that SCO removes SAMBA from their products.
Our word for the day is Equitable Estoppel. SCO can't say in court that the GPL is invalid and then turn around and distribute software under the same license. If the GPL is invalid they would have to go back to the Samba team and get a "valid" license before they could distribute it.
"You can't ask for that under GPL."
Of course that is correct, but that is exactly what SCO is doing here. Asking for licensing fees from code that they themselves publish under the GPL.
Every time I hear this bozo of a story I think of stupid investors that would actually hang onto this doomed company's stock. Can we just change the icon for SCO news to a picture of their CEO with a clown nose.
... what a huge affront the very notion of the GPL is to the dominator paradigm that runs the show these days. (Excuse me for using the word paradigm, but sometimes it works.)
The whole concept of cooperation and sharing is completely off the radar of these people, and if it should happen to appear, it appears as a hideous threat to all that is sacred in their dinosaur minds.
This conflict goes back a long way, and this is just the latest manifestation.
The REALLY interesting thing to me is the collection of corporate entities that have endorsed open source. Or that there even ARE corporate entities that have endorsed/cultivated it.
I fear there will be no resolution soon...
- Steve
Where are all the SCO employees in this matter? Surely there has got to be some way to let the people who actually do the work in that company know about the fact that their leaders are getting ready to put the company into huge financial and legal trouble and their asses will be on the unemployment line onec all this is said and done. Given the facts, they should form a union and go on strike. :)
....move along....nothing to see here....
One man's "destroyed value" is another man's "low cost". So instead of saying "the GPL is about destroying value", they should be saying "the GPL is about lowering cost".
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I *would* agree that GPL'ed software destroys the business model of larger software companies who have managed to find ways to get people to pay them a lot of money for ideas (programs), that might have been created by someone else, if not by them. The current corporate software market is kind of like:
"Dibs!!! I was here first! Give me a quarter, and I'll let you ride my bike!".
Then when somebody else comes along, doesn't like the looks of things, and decides to donate bike-building instructions to people they say:
"[punch]No way! You can't ride that bike, you have to ride [slap]MINE, and you have to [kick]PAY me, dammit!"
Free software companies won't have the same market cap as Microsoft, that's true. That's because they don't work the same way. Microsoft is in the business of selling software to people who don't know any better (a fairly large population). RedHat is in the business of selling services to people who are too busy to do things that they could otherwise handle themselves. Linux vendors will never have the kind of leverage available to apply to their customers that MS does, because those customers could support themselves if they chose to (in most circumstances).
There's no less value in any of the products that vendors are selling, there's just less ability for them to overcharge for those products.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Actually, they can.
Even under the GPL, there is a provision for a modest copying or production fee.
If SCO is distributing Samba, they must obtain a license to use it in some form or another. If SCO disclaims the GPL license, they have no other right to use the software. It is copyrighted code. At their discretion, the Samba team can choose to offer SCO the right to use Samba under a different, for profit license. This defeats the purpose of Open Source ideals in a big way. However, SCO cannot just dismiss the GPL and continue to use Samba.
The GPL is a legally binding license. It is built upon the copyright laws of the United States and most other civilised countries.
Repeat after me:
To say the GPL is invalid is to say all software EULA's are invalid. Without the GPL, Samba is UNLICENCED COPYRIGHTED code.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Authors! Make sure you include stock symbols if you want your stories to be picked up by news agencies! Without those symbols you have exactly zilch chance of being noticed by news bots. Reuters press releases would work well too. We have to get this info to investors, not just sit around and moan about it!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
SCO is selling Linux licenses now... what happens after they loose the battle in court? ...do the people who bought licenses get ther money back? Does SCO get sued?
And your informative followup illustrates exactly why it's a really bad idea to group trademarks, patents, copyright, and trade secrets under the umbrella term of "Intellectual Property" (IP).
Though they do share some things, they are fundamentally different in how they're structured, enforced, used, and in what they protect.
One can only hope that whatever judge and jury look at this thing can properly weigh each of the issues against the proper area of this "family" of law.
that Robert Heinlein predicted the current state of affairs in his story "Lifeline". I find particularly relevant the judges response to a suit filed to stifle a new technology -- "There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit." - The Judge, "Life-Line"
It's a sad day for technology when we need an acronym for this...
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
>copyrights are only good if someone is "actively
>trying to enforce them"
You are completely wrong about that. You fully misunderstand how copyright works in the US. You seem to have copyright confused with trademark dilution disputes.
You don't lose your copyrights just because you aren't suing people. Although certain corporations would love it if it were so... and they love it that people like you believe it.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
If you get hard precedent that asserts that distribution under the GPL automatically surrenders your copyright and casts your work into the public domain, then you can use the same argument to severely weaken, say, the Microsoft EULA.
Distributing a creative work under a clearly articulated license does not equal surrendering your rights to copyright, or any other rights.
You have articulated a distribution agreement. It is your copyright that secures that agreement.
But the agreement itself is not a surrender of your copyright, and if you want to claim it as such, you will need to arrange a hearing with each and every individual copyright holder to settle the question of law.
If you manage to get a court decision that invalidates the GPL fully and puts all GPL work into the public domain, it would have to be so broadly worded as to threaten anyone else who distributes software or anything else licensed like software.
If copyright cannot back our distribution license, then it cannot back yours either. You think Microsoft would allow this for Media Player? Or Oracle for the database server? They distribute software freely with a license that is backed by copyright as well.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Anyone notice that, no matter the outcome, it's a victory for Microsoft?
If SCO wins case and GPL banished -- General state of disarray and panic in community, MS FUD campaign comes to a head while a new license is created and software stripped of SCO code.
If SCO wins case but GPL upheld -- Microsoft's "We respect IP, Linux is for thiefs" crap is reenforced. Valuable time and market share lost while code is stripped.
Say SCO gets trounced, GPL upheld, victory for Linux and Open Source -- Microsoft points and yells "See, GPL IS viral! SCO released Linux and now that code is GPLed!"
Regardless of the case outcome, MS FUD is the winner.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
I was thinking that SCO is trying to clam that the GPL is invalid because the have already violated the GPL by incorporating GPL code in to there proprietary products. If you think about it if the GPL is invalid why would they have to comply with its terms. It sounds to me like they are trying to justify there own code copying. It may turn out that part of the code they claim was copied is actually GPL code that they copied and are now trying to claim ownership of it.
SCO might not try to claim that copyright is completely invalid but rather that most of the conditions in the GPL are not reasonable. They could say that since the license grants permission to copy and redistribute that is the end of it and an author cannot put conditions on these grants. Therefore GPL == BSD and when you put BSD together with proprietary code you get a proprietary product that is controlled by the owner of the proprietary code. Of course this could backfire since SCO used the GPL as well which means there code would be BSD as well.
Well... maybe. The cheapest man won. I'm not disparaging GCC as a technical project, but the reason that all those other developers went out of business is because one of their competitors cost nothing instead of cositng hundreds or thousands. This is essentially the reason why Internet Explorer defeated Netscape 4 way back in the day when Netscape costed money. This is why Doublespace destroyed Stacker, why Windows Media Player is killing Real, and why you don't hear anything about webservers other than Apache and IIS.
There are many features that GCC doesn't implement or doesn't implement well. Auto-parallelization has and probably never will be a supported feature in GCC due to the technical hurdles. Auto-vectorization support is new, but many commercial competing compilers had support for this in the past. Nowdays, though, only hardware-vendor compilers can keep the marketshare needed to support such features. GCC is a weak compiler for RISC chips like the PowerPC compared to IBM and even Apple's Mac OS 9-only MrC compiler. It lags behind Intel's compiler for x86 systems in performance as well. Don't even get me started on g++ and its sundry issues, especially the way that it refuses to play nice with other compilers and follow system ABIs.
Okay, maybe I'm disparaging GCC as a project now, but it's still an amazing achievement. GCC isn't perfect; no software is. However, there were plenty of niches that other vendors could've filled if they weren't competing with GCC's price. The only competing compilers which are still alive are either (a) free or (b) sold by the vendor of the expensive, non-x86 hardware that they work with.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Interesting, but if SCO uses Samba, doesn't that mean they agree and consent to the GPL for that package of software? If they don't accept the GPL, then how can they accept the license and therefor use the software? It seems that SCO's recent legal statements explicitely state that they reject the GPL as a valid license.
So, either they reject the GPL and therefor can't license (use for free) Samba, or they accept the GPL as a license and use Samba but then that aspect of their lawsuit/rhetoric is null n' void.
It seems to me this should be a gotcha for the SCO punks.
The difference is that the customer does the choosing. MySQL doesn't choose who will get what licence, the customer chooses which licence they wish to use.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
Public DOmain is a very US concept - there's no equivilent here in the UK. As a result, they may be able to make such a claim in the United States, but at some point they're going to want to distribute their software outwith their own borders.
>>If SCO disclaims the GPL license, they have no other right to use the software.
Sorry. The 'use' was supposed to be 'distribute'. The GPL has *zero* usage clauses. It only applies to distribution.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
"At the end of the day, the GPL is not about making software free; it's about destroying value."
But isn't it true? It's undeniable that the GPL and Free Software *does* destroy value, but the key is destroying value FOR WHOM.
You might say that Pepsi Cola is "destroying" the value of Coca-Cola (compared to a monopoly), because they force them to provide it at a competitive price. But I've never seen Coca-Cola sue Pepsi because it's "destroying the value of our product".
It's still not illegal to provide a better product than the competition, thus lowering the value of the competition's product. Yet. The argument is completely hogwash, and SCO is just pissed because they can't steal the work of others and profit off it. That's what they're after when they want GPL'd code to be public domain.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Hasn't SCO said something along the lines of a license not being valid unless it's a physically signed paper document? Then maybe one of Samba's copyright holders could send a nice letter to SCO, pointing out that their recent actions on the one hand indicate that they do not wish to agree to that license, but on the other hand they want to distribute Samba, so the copyright holder could ask SCO for a signed, physical copy of the GPL simply to make sure that they do agree to it with regards to Samba.
I am not a lawyer and I have no idea if, should they refuse to sign the license, this could be interpreted as SCO not accepting the license and thus not being allowed to distribute Samba. On the other hand, if they refuse to sign the license and still distribute Samba, they'd have to claim that signing a paper document is not required. That should weaken their argument about the GPL being invalid.
Even if this didn't result in additional legal trouble for SCO, if done correctly it could at least result in some really bad PR for them. "SCO refuses to sign license agreement for software it distributes" would make a nice headline, wouldn't it?
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
The authors hold the copyright now. They would continue to hold the copyright. Nothing "reverts" to the public domain, because by default everything that is copyrightable (i.e. almost everything, certainly including source code) is copyrighted. Both US copyright law and the Berne convention are clear on that.
Copyrights do not need to be enforced, though not doing so will severely reduce or completely cancel any damanges you can claim, as for instance the refusal to enable developers to remove any infringing code from Linux, as SCO is doing should they actually have any code in there.
The GPL clearly states that unless you can satisfy all claims of the GPL, the entire licence is null and void, which means that it can not be partially invalidated. Which means that noone (at least in the US) would have a valid licence to distribute anymore, and that the authors as the copyright holders individually would have to release each and every piece of code under a new licence, noone else has the right to.
This whole bullshit about GPL entering public domain, or reverting to public domain is pure FUD from SCO. If an EULA provision by Microsoft is held unenforcable (as has happened in Germany, I know) that doesn't mean that the work enters public domain. It just means that you must change the licence to one that is permitted within the legal framework (or as is likely if it really happened in the US, no valid licence at all. Then the rest of the world will continue to develop Linux, while shaking their heads at the US stupidity).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
GPL section 4 states:
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
As I read this, SCO has terminated their right to distribute their Linux-based OS (and anything using Samba...) by attempting to sublicense to others under a non-GPL license (i.e., by trying to extort license fees for Linux from all and sundry). However, those who bought from them are in the clear as long as they comply with the GPL. Am I wrong here?
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
GCC perhaps wouldn't be an adequate (and sometimes better) alternative if the proprietary world hadn't driven itself out of the market
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
MySQL is an interesting situation because the GPL makes it so that if you ship an application that requires interaction with a MySQL database then that application must be GPL. This is because MySQL is GPL, then the ODBC and JDBC drivers must be GPL, therefore the application that uses the drivers must be GPL. So, if you want to ship your application under a different license you need a license from MySQL AB.
If MySQL were LGPL MySQL AB would not have a licensing business.
Dastardly
I'm not sure this is true.
Sure, they've claimed that the GPL isn't worth the paper it's printed on, and it's true that they continue to distribute the Linux code even as they deny anyone the right to redistribute that code. They've even demanded licensing fees in violation of the license under which they distribute the kernel.
The question now is, does this give SAMBA a right to pull their license? I don't believe it does, or that such a rule would be productive. Unless the GPL is written in such a way that violating one piece of GPL'ed software revokes distribution rights of *all* GPL'ed software, Samba cannot revoke the GPL on Samba.
The reason is, they can say whatever they want about the GPL, just as I can stand outside Microsoft's campus with leaflets about why EULAs may not be legally enforceable. What I'm doing isn't violating the EULA of any software I have. By the same reasoning, until SCO actually violates the GPL with regards to Samba software, I think they're legal.
I think that the best thing the Samba team could do would be to draft a letter, asking Darl and Co. to reaffirm their commitment to complying with the terms under which SCO received their intellectual property. Chances are, SCO will ignore it--as I said, I don't think that Samba currently has grounds to revoke the license--but at least it will highlight the hypocrisy of SCO's behavior and provide some good PR for the community.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
The real question is whether or not SCO's bluster is sufficient to demonstrate an across-the-board rejection of all GPL obligations. I don't believe that it is in the general case; but the copyright holder of the linux kernel could certainly use the extortion letters as evidence that the terms of the GPL had been rejected by SCO in the specific case of the kernel, and so they are in violation of copyright law if they distribute any kernel which contains non-derivative work. If Linus chose to sue SCO, he would have a very strong case, IMNLO (In my Non-Lawyerly Opinion.)
I like what the samba team has done here -- essentially asked them to clarify their position. I'll take a failure by SCO to negotiate a new license (assuming they still ship a version of samba) as evidence that they consider the GPL valid in general.
-Craig
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
And don't forget the legal advice. It's important to remember that an organized campaign to influence investors with the sole intent being an artificial move in the share price is wrong and results in jail time.
That same organized campaign with the intent of informing potential investors of a legitmate, profitable investment opportunity is how most financial advisors earn their livings.
The good news here is that this effort actually accomplishes both ends. It simply remains important to place primary focus on the second.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
Public Domain is a very US concept - there's no equivilent here in the UK.
Who do you have to pay when you perform one of Shakespeare's plays?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Just a thought.
What is there to stop Samba or even GCC from checking to see if they are being run or compiled on a SCO OS and refusing to continue (exit with an error message explaining why)?
This would be fully above board, as it is open source, but SCO would be unable to fix the problem without having to abide by the terms of the GPL that they hate so much.
Anyone see a problem with this?
- Paul
I noted that Tridge did not add his name to the "Samba Team"
a -bad-idea?
Should we assume that's for the obvious reasons - the whole IBM-being-sued-and-employees-commenting-would-be-
I got a comment, "No, seriously, I can't comment on that" out of another friend working at IBM. Sounds like the heavies really did come around...