Further Selections From the Mixed-Up SCO Files

grahamlee writes "It may be a case of 'do as we say, not as we do' over at the Santa Cruz Operation. The Netcraft statistics meter says that for the last year, SCO's web site has been served by Apache on Linux. Indeed, it's been more than a year since the site was ever served from a SCO Unix machine. So what is the possible reason for this? Your humble author suggests that SCO found themselves requiring a multithreaded web server, and as SCO UNIX is based on an ancient version of The UNIX spec it just couldn't cope ;-)." Read on for one of the strangest-yet turns to the SCO story, and several merely insipid ones.

An anonymous reader writes "SCO have made much of how their claims about UNIX code being improperly copied into Linux were verified by 3 teams including 'MIT Mathematicians.' However, MIT can't seem to find the mathematicians concerned!"

(SCO's explanation is that the company is talking about a team made up of people who formerly worked at MIT, rather than a group still associated with the school, but "due to contractual obligations, we cannot specifically name the individuals.")

kuwan writes "SCO has responded to the massive debunking of their 'evidence' last week. Chris Sontag claims that the BPF code was 'not intended to be an example of stolen code, but rather a demonstration of how SCO was able to detect "obfuscated" code.' That, however is a flat-out lie. If you look at their Obfuscated Copying slide (#15), it clearly states 'Obfuscated System V Code Has Been Copied Into Linux Kernel Releases 2.4x and 2.5x,' and then the slide labels the BPF code on the left as 'System V Code.'

At this point I think they realized that their case has been severly weakened and they need to spin it any way they can. And in their case this means more lying."

Captain Beefheart writes "According to this story over at The Inquirer (crediting a special edition of Terry Shannon's Shannon Knows HPC newsletter), SCO has officially announced that HP is safe from their infringement lawsuit brigade ... This leads one to suspect that HP is the Fortune 500 company that SCO claimed recently had paid for a license."

Maybe HP just wants to avoid Microsoft/BSA-style hassles: FatRatBastard writes "According to an article on Commentwire.com SCO has started sending invoices to Linux users. If a company signs up for SCO's 'Intellectual Property License for Linux,' they allow the possibility of being audited at SCO's expense to ensure that the user has been truthful about the number of Linux installations it has. Should the audit reveal that the user has underpaid SCO by 5% or $5,000, whichever is highest, the user also agrees to pay the price for the audit."

Blacklantern writes "The SCO lawsuit has made it into "Halloween Documents" gallery. Eric Raymond takes on the contents of the lawsuit point-by-point. "

Comments

Re:Can /. do me a favour?

[Gherald]

> You've got a Mac /., and a games /., so why not a SCO /. and just save the rest of us (who aren't interested) the trouble?

Go here. Click "Homepage".

Under topics, search for "Caldera". Check the box next to it.

While you are at it, search for "michael" on the left, under "authors". Check the box next to him

Scroll down. Click Save.

Novell tells SCO to Shut Up

[Aiua]

According to Australian LinuxWorld is reporting that Novell's CTO has issued an ultimatum to SCO: put up or shut up.

Actually...

[6079_Smith]

According to this story over at The Inquirer [...], SCO has officially announced that HP is safe from their infringement lawsuit brigade ...

No.

Boycott Canopy Group Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Ralph Yarro is the real enemy. SCO is just the means to his evil. Ralph sits on the board and controls many of the the Canopy Groups companies. Look here for the various companies he controls/subsidizes/owns/sits on the board of . If you do business with them, let them know that this lawsuit is a bad idea. The way to get to Ralph is to hurt him in the pocket book. He just doesn't seem to understand logic. The way to make him understand is by showing him that we mean business.

Some of these subsidiary companies, by the way, are Linux/Open source whatever companies. He'll get the message real fast and call of the dogs if we just turn up the fire on his flank side.

Re:Boycott Canopy Group Companies

[Seraphim_72]

HONK!

Thanks for playing - SCO/Canopy own a little over 5% of TrollTech See here

Seraphim

MS and SUn

[linuxislandsucks]

* million was MS's payment SUn deal was an offer to pick up more stock

that filter won't help, much

[Artifex]

Under topics, search for "Caldera". Check the box next to it.

Except that this article was filed under "the courts" and some other department links, but none of them are Caldera, either.

The filter only works if the editors properly tag the stories, but few of the recent SCO stories actually were filed under Caldera. The editors have a cavalier attitude to fact-checking, grammar, and spelling, so I doubt they'll suddenly start enforcing strict filing rules.

Get your facts straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, guys.

The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. dissolved several years ago, and no longer exists. The company that has been in the headlines recently is SCO Group, formerly Caldera, based out of Utah.

There's no such operating system as "SCO UNIX". There's OpenServer (which is based on an old non-threading version of the UNIX kernel...SVR3) and OpenUNIX, formerly UnixWare, which is about as modern as UNIXes get.

Of course, Caldera/SCO Group was originally a pure Linux company, so it's not surprising they use Linux to host their web server. However, thanks to the LKP (Linux Kernel Personality) feature in OpenUNIX, that "Linux" web server may actually have a UNIX SVR5 kernel inside it with a GNU+Apache filesystem on top, making it indistinguishable from Linux from the outside.

Re:Hey!

[WebMasterJoe]

Don't use the full name, you insensative clod!

Actually, the full name is The SCO Group, not Santa Cruz Operations. Caldera, after buying most of Santa Cruz Operation's intellectual property, changed its name to The SCO Group. The original SCO has changed its name to Tarantella.

And now you know, the rest of the story.

HP

[El]

SCO has officially announced that HP is safe from their infringement lawsuit brigade
By my reading of the story, HP has announced that HP doesn't beleive it infringes on SCO code... not SCO.

"no provisions for refunding IP license fees"

[pomakis]

The referenced sending invoices to Linux users article states:

The company has also indicated, however, that should it lose such a case, there are no provisions for refunding IP license fees.

Is this legal? I mean, can they get away with this once the courts decide that they're full of shit? If a person buys an IP license fee and then the courts decide that no such IP license exists, wouldn't he or she be legally entitled to a refund?

FYI, SCO does have a multithreaded UNIX...

[LinuxParanoid]

Your humble author suggests that SCO found themselves requiring a multithreaded web server, and as SCO UNIX is based on an ancient version of The UNIX spec it just couldn't cope ;-).

Well, there's a smiley so I know you're kidding.

But there are also some inaccurate facts and presuppositions buried in those comments.

First, your comment appears to ignore SCO's ability to use SCO UnixWare. SCO has two UNIX products, SCO UnixWare, and SCO OpenServer. SCO OpenServer is a Xenix descendent that is singlethreaded and probably as you suggest, couldn't cope. This is what most of SCO's installed base uses, and yeah it's old cruddy technology. SCO UnixWare uses pretty-sophisticated SVR5 technology that is really the core SVR kernel descended from AT&T & Novell days. It's pretty slick functionally (imho), is quite multithreaded running on 8-way (and NUMA I believe) systems, and conforms to UNIX 95 (although not UNIX 98 or the new UNIX 03 tweaks.) SCO is really suing over technology and rights allegedly derived from UnixWare/SVR4-5, not the older OpenServer technology you'd find in 90% of SCO installations.

Second, having a multithreaded webserver that can cope has little or nothing to do with whether one conforms to the latest UNIX specs from the Open Group. But I know you probably know that and are just trying to toss that in there, right?

--LP, not a UnixWare fan, just trying to reduce misinformation on the subject of SCO UNIXes

Not Stupid -- smart

[Sphere1952]

Most of that $8,250,000 was paid by Microsoft.

Vultus runs Windows. SCO walked away from Unix

[isn't my name]

The latest SCO acquisition is Vultus, which even sounds evil. The SCO stockholders are the eventual losers, but I find it difficult to develop sympathy for someone who buys into a shakedown racket.

Worse, Vultus runs on Windows not Unix.

SCO even had a deal with a web services company called Vista.com that does run under unix and had the option to buy it, but they choose instead to go for the windows company Vultus. Presumably, this is because Vultus is also owned and controlled by the same parent company that owns SCO.

Re:Their own excuse doesn't work...

[be-fan]

No. The BSD license is not viral. You can take BSD licensed code and incorporate the changes into your own code without having to put those changes under the BSDL.

Re:Why pay license fees now?

[pjrc]

On every SCO story, invariably someone posts a paranoid concern that perhaps a clueless judge will be assigned to the case, and rule in favor of SCO. These are often moderated to +5, which is quite silly since Judge Dale A. Kimball has already be assigned to the case, and we can see that he's got a reputation for being fair and capable of understanding cases involving technology.

Groklaw has very extensive research on Kimball's history, which is nicely summarized and easy to read. Every case has links to much more detail. The overall appearance is that Kimball will probably do the right thing.

Probably most important is the Jacobsen vs Hughes copyright case. Apart from considering much of the material uncopyrightable historical facts, Judge Kimball was quite unimpressed by the plaintif's failure to act in a timely manner to mitigate damages. Quoting from that article:

"Had Jacobsen voiced his disapproval in 1996, Hughes would have had the opportunity to take the offending material out of the books," Kimball wrote. "For Jacobsen to wait until three volumes of the series had been published before voicing his disapproval, when it is clear he had ample opportunity to let Hughes know of his disapproval as early as 1996, results in extreme prejudice to Hughes."

Obviously this bodes quite well for IBM and all Linux users. SCO of course will claim they stopped distribution of linux, but this ruling at least shows that Judge Kimball isn't likely to be be charmed with the deplorable way SCO has conducted itself. Kimball's willingness to consider the writing a separate work, even though a part of it was loosely based on Jacobsen's also casts quite a shadow over SCO's chances (assuming the unlikely worst case scenario that SCO has an ace up its sleeve, rather than the bogus examples we've seen so far). It's certainly a good sign that Kimball is unlikely to buy SCO expansive theories about what constitutes a derivitive work.

The groklaw page has examples where Kimball has ruled against big business, where he's shown competence at handling software intellectual property disputes (eg, Altiris vs Symantec), and where he's handled very complex cases.

While nothing is 100% certain going into the courtroom, it is a fact that the Judge Kimball has been selected to hear this case. His history shows he's competent, fair, and at least in Jacobsen vs Hughes, he doesn't tollerate the sort of shenanigans SCO has been pulling!

(yes, -1 redundant... I posted this on the last SCO story.... but the "idiot judge" comments never seem to stop either!)

Re:Why pay license fees now?

[Serious Simon]

That money is not from stupid Linux users. On august 14 it was said:

"The SCOsource revenue does not reflect revenue from sales of its new binary license, which it says protects Linux users from copyright infringement, because the license was only introduced last week, and the first transaction announced Monday."

http://www.internetnews.com/fina-news/article.php/ 2248751

GPL violation

[SHEENmaster]

if you purchase a license from SCO, you are directly violating your license from Linus. Given a choice between the two, I'd assume that Linus has a few more lines of code in the kernel than SCO does.

SCO is also violating the Linux copyright by distributing it outside of the GPL, I see another trillion dollar lawsuit on the horizon. I bet Linus's "look at me, I'm rich enough to own all of you" house will crash a lot less than Bill's.

Re:GPL violation

[MuParadigm]

I'm not a lawyer, but I think you're analysis is wrong. The GPL pretty much grants the end-user the right to do whatever they want with the code, without restriction, except distribute it. If they distribute the code or modifications of the code, then they have to abide by the GPL's terms.

So a Linux end-user could purchase the SCO license without violating the letter of the GPL. The fact that purchasing said license undermines the primary reasons for using GPL software violates, I would say, the *spirit* of the license, but not its terms.

SCO, of course, is clearly violating the GPL with its "IP License".

Re:Apache 1.3.14 is not a multithreaded web server

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not using 1.3.14 any longer. Their Server: header just says "Apache". In Apache 2.0.x a new directive was added that allowed admins to slim down the Server header line (which is security through lameness, but that's another rant). Anyway, if they're using Apache 2.0 they might be using the "worker" MPM, which is indeed multithreaded and multiprocess.

Re:BPF

[benzapp]

The term "Big Lie" is something which is often quoted as coming from Hitler, but that is not entirely accurate. German Prapoganda (The term "Nazi" was in fact a British propaganda tool, the Germans nor the National Socialist Party members referred to themselves as such) was in many ways much more accurate than allied propoganda at the time. Hitler did write extensively about the subject of Propoganda, most importantly in his book Mein Kampf. The term "The Big Lie" was not actually used however. The discussion focused more on how the British extensively used Propoganda whereas the Germans did little more then mock their enemies as idiots. Hitler also went into some detail about how propaganda is the art of selling an idea and rightly compared it to commercial advertising. I highly doubt Arie Fleischer would admit he is nothing more than an advertiser, selling the ideas pushed by the Bush administration. Whatever else Hitler did, he did not lie to the world about his goals, propaganda included.

The real usage of the term "Big Lie" by the Germans was mostly by Joseph Goebbels, the Propoganda minister. It was mostly in reference to the primary British argument for why Germany must be stopped. The British accused the Germans of plotting to take over the world, something you hear often today. It doesn't really matter this was never a stated goal of Germany, nor that they completely lacked the means and admitted as such. What matters is Great Britain already controlled 2/3 of the world in 1940. Not only was Britains lie without any basis in fact, it was incredibly hypocritical.

Here is a speech by Goebbels regarding this topic.

The proper analogy you should be making is SCO's claim that their rights are being infringed upon by Linux are as proposterous as Britain's claim that Germany wished and was able to control the world.

Re:Vultus runs Windows. SCO walked away from Unix

[dnoyeb]

not quite. insiders hold more than 40% of SCO stock. Even though they stock exchange technically reduces investor value, it does not happen till the stock crosses the market.

As soon as they try and off load 500,000 shares into the actual NASDAQ, the price is going to start a nose dive. So they have to sneak it out in maybe 10,000-50,000 share lots per day. Tough job.

in other words, turning that stock into cash is an equally tough job.

Re:Windows update uses Linux with IIS?

[AlXtreme]

Probably, looks fake enough for me, probably a Akamai-frontend of some sort (didn't they have a distributed content network? not bothered enough to check, but probably a joke from their admin's). Do note that windowsupdate.com (thus without the leading www.) uses Win 2k3 and IIS, so don't get your hopes up...

Also, linuxsucks.org uses Linux. It's probably been noted by enough posters, but ohhh, the bitter irony of it all :)

And now back to your regular SCO-bashing...

Hello? Moderators? This is a dupe post

[Overly Critical Guy]

This exact post was in the last SCO story, word for word. Let's pay a little attention, huh, guys?

Another SCO exec cashes in for 75K

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Just released SEC document for HUNSAKER JEFF F VP Int'l Marketing

2 sales, 2500 each, sale price 14.3 and 14.26 for a total of $71375. He only has 15,494 more shares to go.

Re:Why pay license fees now?

[EzInKy]

The problem is Linux is so prone to IP infringement, as it has not established any formal procedures for merging alien code.

Actually Linux is much less prone to infringing other peoples IP than makers of proprietory software are because its source code is available for anyone to read. This is the same procedure that book publishers have been using successfully since the printing was first developed.

Re:Why pay license fees now?

[Malcontent]

" The problem is Linux is so prone to IP infringement, as it has not established any formal procedures for merging alien code. Then, the potentially-infringing code (as part of the kernel) is exploited by RedHat, etc. to make money. Also. I believe that the 2.4 branch leaders allegedly let IP-infringing code to leak in."

You can believe whatever you want. Some people believe the earth is flat some believe that aliens cloned us.

"Why? Does the FS/OSS community give a damn about IP?"

Of course it does. The GPL is wholly dependent on copyright. The FSF owns the copyright to millions of line of code and so do other programmers. If the GPL is ruled illegal then they will exercize that copyright and either prevent people from stealing the code or come up with a different licence.

"My favourite quote:
The suspicious [for IP infringement] code has been removed from 2.6 because it was 'ugly', Linus Torvalds"

You are talking about the malloc code that was only used on MIPS processors right? Anybody running linux on intel chips does not have to worry about that bit of code, it's not in their kernel.

Re:CANOPY:SCO, Not SCO.Call them by their name

[abelsson]

They own 5% of Trolltech. They're not in control of that company in any way.

Baghdad McBride: There are no Americans in Iraq.

[rice_burners_suck]

According to an article on Commentwire.com SCO has started sending invoices to Linux users.

It's a matter of simple accounting. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or an accountant, which I am not) to figure this out: Under accrual basis, the invoices you write go into "accounts receivable" which are considered an asset before you actually receive the currency. In English, that means that by sending out invoices, SCO makes itself look more successful, on its financial statements, than it really is.

CRIMINAL CHARGES were just filed against some of the Worldcom folks. I can't wait until the evening news announces that criminal charges are filed against Darl McBluff, alias Darl Helmet, alias Baghdad McBride, alias Bubba's Bitch.

Loads more SCO sites running Linux

[jdfox]

There are a lot more SCO Group company sites running Linux than just sco.com:

1 internetworld.com 433 461 461 Linux Apache/1.3.11 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.1.2 mod_perl/1.21 PHP/4.2.3
2 www.nft.com 427 462 461 Linux Apache/1.3.11 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.1.2 mod_perl/1.21 PHP/4.2.3
3 www.canopy.com 422 462 461 Linux Apache/1.3.11 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.1.2 mod_perl/1.21 PHP/4.2.3
4 www.in2m.com 408 453 453 Solaris 8 Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) mod_jk/1.2.0 mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6h PHP/4.2.2
5 www.caldera.com 235 490 283 Linux Apache
6 www.sco.de 235 490 283 Linux Apache
7 it.sco.com 234 283 283 Linux unknown
8 au.caldera.com 234 489 283 Linux Apache
9 www.sco.com 234 489 266 Linux Apache
10 sco.com 234 489 266 Linux Apache
11 www.caldera.de 233 489 283 Linux Apache
12 www.za.caldera.com 232 489 283 Linux Apache
13 caldera.com 231 490 283 Linux Apache
14 www.sco.at 231 283 283 Linux unknown
15 doc.sco.com 230 283 283 Linux unknown
16 uw7doc.sco.com 230 489 283 Linux Apache
17 osr5doc.sco.com 229 490 280 Linux Apache
18 uk.sco.com 227 279 280 Linux unknown
19 www.calderasystems.com 227 489 283 Linux Apache
20 www.emeia.sco.com 227 491 283 Linux Apache
21 www.sco.it 226 489 260 Linux Apache
22 au.sco.com 223 283 283 Linux unknown
23 www.smilereminder.com 178 180 180 Linux Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/1.3.23 (Mandrake Linux/4mdk) mod_ssl/2.8.7 OpenSSL/0.9.6c
24 www.bushfam.com 89 129 129 Linux Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_python/2.7.8 Python/1.5.2 mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6b DAV/1.0.2 PHP/4.1.2 mod_perl/1.26 mod_throttle/3.1.2
25 www.vultus.com 34 305 43 Linux Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_jk/1.2.2 mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6g
26 shop.sco.com 17 43 0 Linux unknown
27 canopy.com 15 287 1 Linux Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/1.3.23 (Mandrake Linux/4.2mdk) mod_ssl/2.8.7 OpenSSL/0.9.6c PHP/4.1.2
28 www.centershift.com 4 27 12 Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0
29 www.helius.com - 44 18 Linux Apache/1.3.27 (Unix)
30 www.homepipeline.com - 28 5 Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0
31 wdb1.sco.com - 17 0 Linux Oracle9iAS/9.0.2 Oracle HTTP Server Oracle9iAS-Web-Cache/Oracl
32 wdb1.caldera.com - 17 0 Linux Oracle9iAS/9.0.2 Oracle HTTP Server Oracle9iAS-Web-Cache/Oracl
33 www.communitect.com - 174 174 Linux Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/1.3.23 (Mandrake Linux/4.1mdk) mod_ssl/2.8.7 OpenSSL/0.9.6c
34 www.power-innovations.com - 133 134 Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0
35 ruckus.clan-nua.com - 31 6 Windows 2000 Abyss/1.1.6 (Win32) AbyssLib/1.0.7
36 nft.com - 25 1 Linux Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/1.3.23 (Mandrake Linux/4.2mdk) mod_ssl/2.8.7 OpenSSL/0.9.6c PHP/4.1.2
37 www2.skwire.net - 25 6 Windows 2000 Abyss/1.1.6 (Win32) AbyssLib/1.0.7
38 demo.vultus.com - 41 42 Linux Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_jk/1.2.2 mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6g
39 locutus3.calderasystems.com - 4 0 Linux Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 ApacheJServ/1.1 PHP/3.0.15
40 zeus.ut.sco.com - 17 0 Linux Oracle9iAS/9.0.2 Oracle HTTP Server Oracle9iAS-Web-Cache/Oracl

Re:Paul Hatch?

[Anonymous Coward]

None of his children are called Paul, but as Brent is acting as a lawyer for SCO, Paul Hatch could well be family.