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SCO's Open Letter to Open Source Community
joefish_only_1 writes "SCO CEO has posted an open letter to the open source community. There's some things Mr McBride mentions that I hadn't heard of yet, like an admission by Bruce Perens that "UNIX System V code is, in fact, in Linux, and it shouldn't be there."" A slashdot reader posted a comment recently
that breaks it down quite well.
You can have $699 for my SCO Intellectual Property for Linux License when you pry it from my cold, empty wallet.
Sincerely,
Anonymous Coward
Sure this letter is really open? No strings? Will I be sued if I don't include parts of this letter into my own?
I could be wrong. I'm always wrong...
Don't be fooled by this "open" letter! We've all heard that word used before and now it is costing us $699 per proc!!!
Bruce stated that removing teh rog copyright notice from bsd code that sgi submitted was not right.. now my opinion but that a submission of the same code with copyright notice intact is legal to do fro Linux kernel
Once again McBride is lying..
remember folks some BSd code was org System V code defined as opensourced as part of an out of court settlement between at&t and a cl university..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
There is something rather disgusting about this letter from SCO, and the following passage highlights it rather well:
"There is no question about the affiliation of the attacker - Open Source leader Eric Raymond was quoted as saying that he was contacted by the perpetrator and that "he's one of us." To Mr Raymond's partial credit, he asked the attacker to stop. However, he has yet to disclose the identity of the perpetrator so that justice can be done.
No one can tolerate DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks in this Information Age economy that relies so heavily on the Internet. Mr Raymond and the entire Open Source community need to aggressively help the industry police these types of crimes. If they fail to do so it casts a shadow over the entire Open Source movement."
Now, substitute the phrases "black people", "black person", and "black community" for "Open Source"...
That the DDoS attackers were "members of the open source community" is irrelevent. It is like saying they had red hair, and therefore ALL red-haired people should bear responsibility. No. No. No. No.
You cannot generalise from a person, or even several people, to an entire community. That is wrong. Indeed, the whole letter is full of generalisations from (often inaccurate) specifics.
Down with SCO!
--- My dad's political betting
The article doesn't offer as much insight into SCO's thinking with this apparently suicidal (PR wise anyway) move, but one thing does stand out, the use of the words 'improper contribution'. Not 'improper use' or This for me shows just how empty SCO's talk is. How exactly does someone improperly contribute something? If you contribute something, you do so. If something is stolen or copied from you, it's stolen. SCO didn't even have the guts to accuse anyone of stealing, they just came up with this nonsensical phrase. Kind of telling.
So much to comment on... so little time. Well, the first thing that I see that stands out is this quote by McBride:
The second development was an admission by Open Source leader Bruce Perens that UNIX System V code (owned by SCO) is, in fact, in Linux, and it shouldn't be there. Mr Perens stated that there is "an error in the Linux developer's process" which allowed Unix System V code that "didn't belong in Linux" to end up in the Linux kernel (source: ComputerWire, August 25, 2003).
Here is the original quote from the referenced ComputerWire article:
The other SCO code snippet Perens walks through had to do with memory allocation functions in Unix System V and Linux. He says there was, in fact, "an error in the Linux developer's process," specifically a programmer at SGI, and he says while the Linux community had the legal right to this code, it didn't belong in Linux and was therefore removed.
Talk about out of context! The assertion that the code is owned by SCO is made only by Mr. McBride, who neglected to mention that it has already been found and removed.
I have written an open letter to the open source community. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to reveal its contents since that would mean compromising our trade secrets. However, I welcome you to license a copy of my open letter by signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement and payment of $699.
Yours affectionately,
Darl McBride
CEO, SCO Inc.
I read the Letter earlier, and it struck me that as with so much SCO posturing, this one gets it wrong too. Darl points the finger at the Open Source development process and Linus as the problem.
Instead it is clear to anyone involved in Open Source development that it is the responsibility of the submitter to submit only code they are legally entitiled too. If an SGI developer did strip SCO copyrights from code and was allowed to submit this code to Linus for inclussion, then it is SGI who have the problem. It has long been understood that the very process of submitting code to an Open Source project was an implicit decleration of ownership of that code. The same rules apply in business; unless you're SCO you can only sell something that you own yourself.
I've yet to see a good rebutal of Darls Open Letter, but I suspect ESR or Bruce is typing one up as we speak..
Mr. McBride is a troll. don't feed.
DDoS attacks, maybe your getting DDoS because everyone's trying to get to your site to buy a Linux license from you.
There's all this unsubstantiated talk. If SCO wants the Open Source community to take them seriously, they should publicly release the code which they claim to be in Linux, and furthermore, provide proof that that code did not exist legally before SCO made it "theirs."
A blog like any other.
The subpoena sets September 10th as the date for a deposition, at Snell & Wilmer's law offices in Salt Lake City, and instructs that these are the documents Canopy Group's representative, whoever they choose to get deposed on behalf of Canopy, must produce on that date:
1. All documents concerning this lawsuit, plaintiff's claims or IBM's defenses or counterclaims.
2. All documents concerning any communications regarding this lawsuit, plaintiff's claims or IBM's defenses or counterclaims.
3. All documents concerning plaintiff's rights relating to UNIX or Linux.
4. All documents concerning any strategy, plan, effort, or action (actual or contemplated) to use or enforce (or to threaten to use or enforce) rights to UNIX or Linux.
5. All documents concerning any open-source license, including the GNU General Public License.
6. All documents concerning any lawsuit other than this lawsuit (actual or contemplated) involving plaintiff and relating to UNIX or Linux.
7. All documents concerning any agreement, understanding or communication with Microsoft, Sun, Computer Associates, Tarantella, AT&T, USL, HP or Novell, relating to UNIX or Linux.
8. All documents concerning plaintiff's efforts to license UNIX or Linux.
9. All documents concerning plaintiff's alleged evidence of UNIX in Linux.
10. All documents concerning plaintiff's alleged evidence of misconduct or breaches of duty by IBM.
11. All documents concerning plaintiff's UNIX or Linux business.
12. Documents sufficient to show the organizational structure or personnel of The Canopy Group.
13. All documents relating to the ownership of plaintiff.
14. All documents relating to purchases or sales of plaintiff's stock since January 1, 2003.
15. All documents in the possession, custody, or control of Ralph Yarrow, Jan Newman, Darcy Mott, Raymond J. Noorda, Lewena Noorda, Joyce Wiley, Mark Cusick, or Dan L. Baker relating to UNIX, Linux, or this lawsuit.
16. All documents provided to plaintiff by The Canopy Group or provided to The Canopy Group by plaintiff relating to UNIX, Linux, or this lawsuit.
17. All documents concerning the decision to commence or pursue this lawsuit or other lawsuits relating to plaintiff's alleged rights relating to UNIX or Linux.
18. All documents concerning the decision to suspend distribution of plaintiff's Linux products or code.
19. All documents concerning any analysis of any IBM conduct related to Unix or Linux.
20. All documents concerning any UNIX source code, derivative works, modification. or methods contributed to Linux or to the open source community by AT&T, USL, Novell, Tarantella, or plaintiff.
21. All documents concerning the relationship between plaintiff and The Canopy Group.
22. All documents concerning any statements, declaration, affidavit, analysis, assessment, or opinion rrelating to plaintiff's rights to UNIX or Linux.
23. All documents concerning any statement, affidavit, declaration, analysis, assessment, or opinion relating to this litigation.
24. All documents concerning the nature, calculation, and basis of any damages or injuries plaintiff claims in this matter.
"... was an admission by Open Source leader Bruce Perens that UNIX System V code (owned by SCO) is, in fact, in Linux, and it shouldn't be there"
There is absolutely no way for SCO to spin this. This is a simple lie. Not a twist on a truth, not a half-truth, not something that they could ever show even the most tenuous evidence for. It's a straight lie.
It'll be interesting to see how Darl gets out of that one when the SEC knock on his door.
Does SCO check to ensure the code their programmers submit is legal? Or do they just accept that it is?
I posted this in the previous SCO thread, but am reposting it here where it is more appropriate. Most of the typo's have been cleaned up too. You can also see the full text in my journal.
An Open Response to Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community
(First Draft)
Dear Mr. McBride,
First, let me introduce myself. My name is John Gabriel. I have been working in the technical field for 15 years, as a Network Administrator, Applications Manager, Network Manager, Sr. Networking Engineer, and now, Freelance Consultant. And, yes, I'm an MCSE.
My first experiences with Unix occurred in the late 1970's, during school field trips to local colleges. I also did Unix technical support for students while taking a class in Pascal in the late 1980's. My first experience with Linux dates to 1994, when I downloaded whatever Linux kernel was available at that time.
While I did install it successfully, on a Compaq Deskpro 386/25, I quickly abandoned it as the system didn't have enough memory to support X Windows. Several years later, in 1998, I became a Caldera customer, with a purchase of Caldera OpenLinux Base ver. 1.22, with Linux kernel 2.0.33. I ran into similar problems again.
About a year ago, I became interested again Linux, and now run Linux on my home workstation in a dual-boot configuration with Windows XP.
About 4-5 months ago, I began following the SCO v. IBM story. I was at first inclined to be open-minded towards SCO's claims. It wouldn't be the first time a small company has had its copyrights violated by a larger vendor, though the violator is usually, in my experience, Microsoft, as exemplified by Caldera's history with DR-DOS.
However, the more I researched the story and SCO's claims, the more convinced I became that SCO's claims were, well, baseless. Being the type that usually likes to "root for the underdog", I was surprised by my conclusions.
Anyway, that's enough introduction. What follows is an Open Response to your Open Letter to the Open Source Community. I grant everyone, including you, permission to re-publish it, or quote from it, without restriction, except that my comments be properly attributed to myself. Consider it under a "BSD-style" license if you like.
1) The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model.
Mr. McBride,
Response to Paragraph 1 of your "Open Letter":
This is very difficult to respond to, because your analysis of the issues and of the reasons for the Open Source community's anger is, in the words of the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli, "so bad it's not even wrong."
For instance, your own lawsuit against IBM does not allege that "SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into Linux" -- it alleges that code *owned* by IBM but under contractual "control" rights to SCO has been copied into Linux. Surely, you don't dispute that IBM owns the relevant copyrights and patents to NUMA, JFS, and RCU?
Or do you dispute Section 2 of Exhibit C on your web site, the ATT-IBM sideletter agreement, which states in part, "we (ATT) agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you (IBM) are owned by you"?
The truth is there are many reasons the Open source community is angered with you and the actions of The SCO Group and The Canopy Group, none of which have to do with "intellectual
OSS leaves just as much to "chance" as a closed source model.
How does a closed-source shop know that one of their developers hasn't cut'n'pasted something from glib? Same was as OSS: ask the developer, and assume that they're not out to screw you.
Finally, your solution would be expensive - who would pay for it?
This quote sounds like he's trying to "take back" the BSDs:
"Fair use" applies to educational, public service and related applications and does not justify commercial misappropriation. Books and Internet sites intended and authorized for the purpose of teaching and other non-commercial use cannot be copied for commercial use. We believe that some of the SCO software code that has ended up in the Linux operating system got there through this route. This violates our intellectual property rights.
Best. Troll. Ever.
"Men lie."
"Yeah, about sleeping with other women, but never about bioluminescent plankton."
-Dan Brown
I remember after everyone analysed the SCOForum code prominent people saying things like that (eg. Open Source coders violated SCO's license because they didn't include the BSD attribution statement) and I knew right away they made a huge mistake. I'm sorry to see it's been confirmed.
Anyone who purports to speak for this community should realise the stakes involved and wise up.
In the efforts of Messrs Perens and Raymond to be balanced and reasonable they have given the enemy (Daryl McBeezlebub) significant ammunition. Quoting people out of context is part of lawsuit public relations 101. SCO will hammer away and keep repeating this like an autistic child and unfortunately some weak minded people will be swayed by this argument. If you ever watch television talk shows this is the most common technique for winning arguments.
I think Linux is still winning the public relations war but really, please don't accept collective guilt unless you personally fucked up. Because for all we know SGI has legitimate rights to that code.
Negotiate with who? Why? For what? If you're referring to the alleged infringing code, reveal what it is so it can be confirmed and replaced. Otherwise, shut your trap, sell your stock and go out of business like the market demands.
I can take things out of context too! "The most controversial issue" with having sex with cows "in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property." ALSO "This battle is being fought largely between" various warring factions in my rectum, and "vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community." AND "My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that" we would really like to have repeated sex with cows, and "SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system."
- You may re-publish this material. You may excerpt it, reformat it and translate it as necessary for your presentation. You may not edit it to deliberately misrepresent my opinion.
Isn't Darl taking Bruce's words out of context and misrepresenting them? Copyright violation, anyone?....I'm interested in "Best Current Practices" documents that gives advice on how to best preceed in a Free Software project in order to avoid becoming vulnerable to problems with copyright or other legal issues. Of course the GNU project has some pretty good policies, but asking people to so something just because it's a GNU policy will often just make them complain about "GNU fanatics" instead of them taking the matter serious.
Therefore, it would be very helpful to have insights and policy recommendations from other sources as well.
Greetings,
Norbert.
Likewise, we cannot have a situation in which computer users fear they may be next to suffer ruinous litigation if they take a business or legal position that angers SCO.
This is quite a well-crafted piece of FUD: it perpetuates the notion that Linux is being developed by a bunck of pimply-faced hackers in their parents' basements, and that the developers don't care about IP rights at all. In fact, he is making the hidden accusation that the current open source development model does not "respect the rules of law"
However, the Open-Source Development Model is the most thought-out software development model that I know of, as far as a legal sense goes. Let's face it: who actually reads and follows those shrink-wrapped software licenses? I'm willing to bet that the only people who take them seriously are the open-source developers and users, because the license is the only legal right they have to open-source code. (They're also possibly the only ones anal enough to read the entire click-through license on commercial software). I've always held that if more people actually read what was in those commercial software licenses, there would be a lot more people swearing off commercial software for good.
The GPL and BSD licenses are well-crafted legal documents, and the transparency of the development process should put to rest all patent and copyright infringement concerns: if something infringes, the proof is there for everyone to see, and the maintainers are responsible for removing it, because it never should have been there in the first place. When Microsoft or SCO violates a source-code patent, there's no way of knowing because you can't see the code!
Given many recent statements by people related to SCO (including the Perens quote that others here have said is taken out of context, and SCO's blanket assertion of rights over BSD code that looks to be included in the AT&T settlemnent) that have turned out to be, at best, exaggerations, and at worst, outright lies and mischaracterizations, one has to wonder which side has more respect for the rules of law.
Bruce said:
"The other SCO code snippet Perens walks through had to do with memory allocation functions in Unix System V and Linux. He says there was, in fact, "an error in the Linux developer's process," specifically a programmer at SGI, and he says while the Linux community had the legal right to this code, it didn't belong in Linux and was therefore removed."
Was twisted by SCO into:
"an admission by Open Source leader Bruce Perens that UNIX System V code (owned by SCO) is, in fact, in Linux, and it shouldn't be there. Mr Perens stated that there is "an error in the Linux developer's process" which allowed Unix System V code that "didn't belong in Linux" to end up in the Linux kernel"
So by saying it was REMOVED (we will say it slow so you can follow along Darl), Bruce Perens admitted that it ended up in the Linux kernel? Can SCO tell the truth at all, or do they all just live on Bizarro world?
Insert pithy comment here.
May I suggest that we just ignore this new troll from McBride?
It add nothing substantially new to the discussion.
The only thing McBride hopes to accomplish with this letter is to discredit the community once again. It makes no sense to dissect the letter and refute every false claim, because this will either be ignored or countered with more lies. Can we just stay calm and think of ways to get through to the few uninformed decision makers who believe the libel.
No one is going to claim responsibility for X. Not even sco.
.....
Remove/re-write? hmm....
*rimshot*
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
...and it's *not* meant as an "open letter to the open source community." This letter was written as a PR move, plain and simple. It's riddled with half-truths and full-on lies. McBride knew damn well that the open source community would be able to debunk almost everything he says, but he also know that the media wouldn't. Mr. Reporter reading this letter will simply take everything in it as fact and report it, which is exactly what SCO wants. After all, why would this letter contain lies? So far the media has barely touched SCO's opposition, but take a look at the list of headlines that simply discuss SCO's claims.
Last week someone made a comment that noted that SCO releases something like this right before some of the executives stock is scheduled to sell. The comment closed with something along the lines of "look for more FUD on Monday." Hmmm... is Tuesday close enough?
The developer at SGI stripped BSD copyright information. The code without the proper copyright information does not belong in the Linux Kernel. The code with the copyright information is fine.
Please note: This has nothing to do with Darth McBride.
Get a free ipod.
You are a liar, a fraud, and a thief.
You are a liar (if in nothing else) in deliberately misquoting Bruce Perens' analysis of the memory allocation routines which SGI contributed to Linux. Bruce Perens clearly did not say (as you claim he did) that we had allowed '...Unix System V code that "didn't belong in Linux" to end up in the Linux kernel' (my emphasis). He nowhere agreed that this was System V code.
You are a fraud in that you you claim that these routines are your company's property. They are not property, and they are not yours. They aren't yours, they weren't SGI's, they weren't AT&T's. You cannot inherit from others that which they do not own.
Algorithms for allocating memory have been developed over a period of over half a century by software developers studying and improving on one another's code. No implementation of these algorithms exists in isolation; none is fresh hewn from virgin intellectual territory. Improvements are incremental and have largely developed in an open and collegiate environment. Linux may, indeed, have learned some things from UNIX[tm]; but UNIX in its turn got the algorithms from MULTICS, TRIPOS, CPL and others lost even further in the mists of time. You cannot simply stop this process at an arbitrary point and say 'now this is property'. It is not property, it's a commons, a commons tilled and tended by many hands, to bring it to the state it is today.
And so, Sir, lastly, I say you are a thief. You are a thief in that you seek to enclose commons, to deprive the community of the rightful fruits of its labours over many decades, to make property what is not, never was, and never could be property. To steal our work and sell it back to us.
Sincerely
Simon Brooke
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
McBride is technically correct, although misleading. According to Perens (via the second link in the slashdot blurb) "It is included in code copyrighed by AT&T and released as Open Source under the BSD license by Caldera, the company that now calls itself SCO."
To sum up, the code in question is owned by SCO, but using said code in Linux is permissable under the license terms by which the code was released. The "crime" here was that the SGI developer stripped the copyright notice.
Remember that under virtually all open source license agreements, the code continues to be owned by the copyright holder, but a nearly unlimited license to use, distribute, and create derivative works is granted to the public.
When I first started working on an OpenMP extension to gcc, I bristled at the FSF copyright assignment process.
I was wrong. I now see the value in FSF copyright assignments, which create a paper trail for documenting contributions to free software.
While the SCO attack dogs are extortionists, their greedy actions have shown weaknesses in the free-wheeling process of Linux development.
The "free" and "open" software communities can argue, until they are blue in the face, about the validity of copyrights, patents, trademarks, and other forms of owning ideas. Under existing law and practice, however, those concepts do exist, with the weight of law and tradition behind them -- and ignoring that reality is foolhardy.
Think of copyright assignment as akin to virus protection. I shouldn't have to protect myself against malicious software, but I am wise to do so. By the same principle, tracking contributions to the kernel is excellent protection from the desperate shakedown tactics of a company like SCO.
All about me
It contains such juicy tidbits like:
In the long term, the financial stability of software vendors and the legality of their software products are more important to enterprise customers than free software.I think the enterprises customers can speak for themselves on this matter, and they clearly have spoken...
In enterprise installations, it is customary for the customer to be charged an additional 15% of whatever they payed for the software each year for maintenance. (which ends up being about 13% of the total).
Let's take a theoretical enterprise customer who owns 12,428 computers (you'll see the reason for the oddball number in a moment). Now, if they just spent $700 per client on software, plus an additional 15% on maintenance, they've spent about 10 million in total. Now let's assume that the client software was free, but the maintenance stays the same, then the company has gone from spending 10 million, to ~1.3 million. Now let's suppose that someone at this company likes round numbers, so they take an additional .7 million and hire 10 people (at a nice $70k/position). The company has just saved 8 million dollars (!!!), and now has an additional team of 10 developers whose sole job is to make sure that the client software works best in their environments... The customer doesn't have to re-release this code, because they're not selling it, so no liability for them. And even if they decide to (which we hope they will), it's not part of their product line, so they're not directly helping their competitors...
Face it, McBride, enterprise customers are the ones for whom it makes the most sense to go to free software, and to not put all of their eggs in one basket (software company).
The reason the Darl McBride's of the world don't like Open Source is it takes large amounts of money that went to a single company, where it could be nicely controlled and funneled to the top of the hierarchy (CEOs and the like), and instead distributes it in smaller amounts, spread out, and only to the people who can get the work done.
The large corporations of the world are spending this money anyway, and Open Source is just a way for the doers (developers, admins, e.g. instead of deciders/managers) to take a share.
I know it sounds awfully corny, but in a society that's doing it's best to recreate nobility and privilege, open source is way of taking some power back for the people. The cathedral creates centralization of power and wealth, which lead to class hierarchies. The bazaar distributes power, which leads to an educated and informed participant, and higher standards of living for the majority.
By prefacing his "no warranty" line with a patronizing "Open Source must become more mature" statement he gets two for one. We, of course, recognize this to be yet another of the blatiantly false bits of tripe that McBride has come to be known for. Despite its misleading "Open letter to the Open Source Community" title we are not the target audience for this; the target audience is the managers who make the financial decisions, but don't actually know what is going on. His careful implication that propriatary software is warranted may be effective with them...
Finally, we have his implication, again never explicitly stated, that Open Source is nothing more than a bunch of neo-hippies. Since most managerial types are politically conservative, and old enough to remember and dislike hippies, this implication is intended to strike at the average manager's prejudices. If he can get "Open Source == Damn Hippies" into many people's heads he believes, possibly rightly, that this will create a more hostile environment towards Open Source (much like the current "Open Souce == Communist" line of BS).
On a related note, I'll also point out a bit of his tripe that is aimed at us. His repeated implications that the Open Source concept were fine as long as we were working with toy systems, but now that we want to be grown ups we must adapt to the prevailing (propriatary) business model. This is intended specifically to cause doubt and fear in the Open Source community. Those who haven't given the isssue much thought may agree with this. It is nonesense. The Open Source model is a competitor to the Propriatary model. It is not inferior, and it may be superior. When Henry Ford invented the assembly line he did not think to himself "Well, I guess the Assembly Line was OK as a toy system, but now that I want to be a big boy I'd better switch over to the way everyone else does it." So too, must we refuse to be tricked into believing that the Open Source development model is for children. It is not. It is new, it is different, and it must compete in order to prove its superiority.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
The full text of the subpoena contains several provisions whereby Canopy may apply to withold documents. These provisions include the protection of privelege, litigation strategy, and trade secrets. I expect Canopy's lawyers to avail themselves of these provisions.
No, "unreasonable" is the correct word, however you're right in that the meaning of the sentence would be clearer if the phrase "unreasonable licensing obligations" were changed to "unreasonable proprietary licensing obligations".
Feel free to make this change if you forward/post it anywhere else.
----
a paragraph-by-paragraph interpretation
of what he really meant to say
----
blah blah blah opening fluff
what we're doing is beneficial for us and for our secret
backer in Redmond because we want to spread as much fear about Linux
as possible before 90% of the people realize it is a superior product
to Windows for a cheaper price
whine whine whine, our website got DoS'd
keep attacking us and your company will fire you when they
find out that you're a Linux advocate because they will
just associate you with other open source "outlaws"
now I'm going to talk about how we paid people to put
System V code into Linux. normally these people would
be fired and sued, but we would rather go after Linux.
now I want to talk about why the Linux model can never
succeed because nobody can possibly ever be sure that
people with access to System V source won't sneakily
inject more into Linux. The Catch-22 here is that the
people auditing Linux code most likely don't have access
to AIX, IRIX, Solaris, etc source code. "Hey Bill, isn't
this great!! we're gonna make a fortune on this lawsuit!"
Now I'm going to spend 10 paragraphs explaining copyright
laws, but I will conveniently omit the reasons why we are
persuing the *product* of a crime rather than the people
that perpetrated the crime itself. Remember how I mentioned
the SGI programmer and how we know plenty more like him?
Well we're letting him off the hook because his criminal
acts have been the best thing that ever happened to SCO
and SCO's Redmond backer.
Finally I would like to end by justifying SCO's behavior
on the whole. Why should we go around suing the living daylights
out of everyone and spreading FUD about a platform
that was the result of countless volunteer hours and
philantropic contributions? Because we can! Isn't this great?
We live in a world where this behavior is not only allowed,
but also encouraged!! Now just wait until Bill^H^H^H we
pay off a few judges and lawmakers and have Linux officially
owned by SCO so at long last Windows^H^H^H we can prevail!
Sincerely,
Jerkoff McBride
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
'ancient unix' isn't valid for commercial purposes even though it was licensed under a BSD license.
Oops, SCO OpenUnix or whatever they call it this week just lost the X Window system, developed by MIT and released under a BSD-like license. Darn, the TCP/IP support written at Berkely and released under a BSD license isn't valid for commercial purposes either.
There seems to be more of this open source stuff around than SCO are aware of...
The weaknesses are to do with "free speech" and the spreading of disinformation. In Europe regulation tends to be tighter, the constraints on expression of views by parties in litigation are much tighter, and the silencing of anyone making unsubstantiated allegations that adversely affect another business tends to be a fast track process. Hence the non-action in Germany.
McBride is also pushing carefully selected buttons by trying to show that (a) he has the force of a large legal firm behind him and (b) that his opponents are somehow liberal, pinko, anti-business, unpatriotic, you name it. He knows that his large opponents won't behave like that because they are too staid (IBM) or because they want to maintain an image of reliable business practice and stability (Red Hat, SuSE), while his small opponents won't get quoted in the business press. And knows that the story is too boring for 99% of the population, so investigative journalists on big papers won't be interested.
My suggestion? Make it worth someone's while. Someone with access to the necessary resources start a fund. Hire a decent PR company. There has got to be at least one that is perhaps not already working for large software companies and would like some real exposure. Place a one off full pager in the Wall Street Journal, or whatever the PR company recommends. No mention of Eric Raymond or other well known figures, just originating from an independent coming together of developers and systems implementers. See where it goes from there. Perhaps the ad could mention the number of contributors, ranked by size of company, at the bottom.
I would certainly put a few $ into such a scheme. Would anybody else?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
As quoted from Linuxworld feedback forum:
ProgrammerMan commented on 8 September 2003:
Darl, I see little benefit in publishing this letter. It says nothing new and does little or nothing to settle the disputes over the Linux kernel. It would appear to only stroke your ego and allow you to continue to spread false claims in an illegal attempt to scare Linux users into paying protection money for that which you refuse to document or prove.
About the denial of service attacks, this is likely the work of one irresponsible person, if indeed there was really ever an attack. It's rather curious that SCO didn't put out a press release or make any demands that it stop what would seem to be a significant attack. You also cannot demonize the entire open source community for the actions of one vigilante. I would think you'd realize by now that if SCO executives weren't constantly attacking and insulting open source developers in the media with their ongoing campaign of hype and sensationalism, people like this wouldn't have the motivation to do what they do.
Regarding the SGI code, you fail to mention that code improperly being contributed is just as likely to happen in closed source projects. In fact, it may be more likely to happen there since the code is secret and not visible to outsiders, so the temptation to take some code that you don't have the right to use may be stronger. Why would someone be foolish enough to intentionally contribute illegal code to an open source project that the entire world can view when they know the chance of getting caught is significantly higher?
About the flaws you repeatedly claim in the open source development process, there is no practical way to trace the origin of all source code, regardless of whether it's used in open or closed source. I think SCO's (and most software companies') own development process is equally flawed if not more so. There have been claims that there's GPL code in SCO's Linux Kernel Personality Layer. IBM claims you are infringing on at least four of their patents. Microsoft has recently been stung by patent lawsuits for SQL Server and Internet Explorer. There simply is no way to know that a project with millions of lines of code in it is all legal.
The claims of one million lines of infringing code are propsterous and blatant lies and you know it. There are only about 3.4 million lines of code in the entire 2.4.20 kernel. To claim that nearly all the code changes between the 2.2 and 2.4 kernel are illegal defies reality. Similar claims of over 800,000 lines of illegal SMP code are equally false.
I believe you are intentionally including IBM's code in the count, but this is incorrect. Blake Stowell admitted in a MozillaZine interview that IBM is the copyright owner of all the enterprise code they donated to Linux. Unless IBM's contract compels them to transfer the copyrights to SCO and they actually do so, IBM is the owner of this code and you have no right to claim any ability to restrict its use.
About your repeated use of the terms "intellectual property" and "IP," there is no such thing under the law. There are only copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets. Your repeated use of these weasel words is a feeble attempt to make your claims look more credible. You need to state exactly what type of right you are claiming.
You show repeated instances of hypocrisy through your letter, and one of them is the claim that IBM and Linux vendors don't offer a warranty. Does SCO offer such a warranty on their OpenServer, UnixWare, or Sys V source code licenses? I didn't think so. Neither does Microsoft, as witnessed by the Timeline lawsuit over SQL Server. No company, even ones the size of IBM or Microsoft can afford such liability.
You also incorrectly refer to IBM as a Linux vendor, but they do not sell Linux. IBM partners with Red Hat and SuSE for
Then you accuse the open source community of not following the rule of law, yet SCO has violated the rights of others by continuing to d
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
From what I can see, SCO did no work on UNIX. Leastwise the goddamn thing hadn't changed noticably from the first time I used it in the late '80's and the last time I used it in the late '90's. Ok, none is an exaggeration but they (And the other commercial UNIX vendors, I might add) did such an embarassing job with their "Professional Developers" and their millions of dollars in R&D funds that a bunch of amaateurs working on cast off hardware blew by them and advanced the technology to about where it should be in 5 short years.
And now those companies want to steal that work via a quirk in the legal process? It's not just SCO either. IBM's acting like Linux is their baby. Sun's acting like Mad Hatter was entirely their idea. I bet when it comes out it looks exactly like Gnome. Just like Ximan's "product." What? Evolution? X-Emacs VM's a better mail client. And let's not forget that Microsoft has also benefitted from the original open source process; I've seen a lot of BSD copyrights in things like their TCP/IP stack in days gone by, and they claimed (afterwards) to have "invented" the Internet. Them and Al Gore...
And it seems to me that if any problems are arising in our process, it's from that "professional" sector. Developers from IBM and SGI stripping copyright notices and inserting the code in the code base? What, exactly, the fuck is up with that? And the UNIX family tree is already twistier than the ones you find in Podunk, Alabama. There's been so much inbreeding now that any judge trying to sort out the copyright issues is likely to have a stroke from the complexity of it all.
So that's the Industry's dirty little secret. All that shiny technology that they like to show everyone... was either directly stolen from or was built on top the work of a bunch of "amateurs" who were largely working on home made computers they built in their garages. All those millions in R&D funds, all those "professional" programmers with their "degrees" and their "certifications"... can do great things... once the amateurs have done their work for them.
I guarantee you that if SCO wins their case and the judge grants them rights to all the code developed to date by the open source community, that code would not change noticably ever again. It'd still be Gnome, 2 decades from now, while Microsoft is busy working on their spiffy neuro-synaptic user interfaces that they stole from the MIT Wearable Computers lab.
Yeah, maybe "stole" was too strong a word too, but they take the work and say "look over there!" (more or less) while the copyright notices show. It's not like they draw attention to them, or thank the original authors. A lot of people in the community do it for the recognition, and a lot of companies try to minimize the amount of recognition they award because that would expose the Industry's dirty little secret.
That's how it seems to me.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I find it amusing (but not unexpected) that Darl uses such flawed logic and mudslinging to support his shakey arguments. He paints a picture that the OSS community as a whole has perpetrated the DDoS attacks on SCO's website. I'm surprised he didn't invoke the "T" word during his pleas for justice. He also makes a call for the OSS community to divert their attention to all the infringing code in Linux, yet SCO refuses to show the "million lines of infringing code" they claim is in Linux. Then he not so masterfully spins Bruce's words to mean something completely different thus creating the illusion [*rolls*...makes Will save to disbelieve] that Bruce actually admits to the veracity of their position.
How many points has SCO's stock gone up since that letter was posted and how many shares have SCO exec's divested themselves of?
After reading through much of what is out there I have some interesting comments to make. In some respects, SCO boy is correct. The Linux community should do some due diligence to ensure that code committed to the kernel is IP free to avoid these issues in the future.
The mountains of code which SCO speaks of as being theres however are somewhat ambiguous so outside of anything that SCO can prove as being genuinely 'SCO IP', they should be countersued by both Linux vendors and users as is appropriate and allowable under the law. I do not doubt that SCO has some evidence which supports their case - and no Linux supporter should blanketly dismiss what they have said because they haven't seen any evidence. Whether or not that evidence is as compelling as the SCO Group thinks - well that's up to the judges and justices of the judicial system.
Unfortunately Mr. SCO, some of the other things you've said are slanderous and border on libel. Unless you can prove that the person who performed a DDoS on you was an Open Source supporter that was a representative of the Open Source community - then I suggest you offer an apology to the Linux community for accusing them of something you cannot prove. In addition, even if it was someone who supports open source - your gripe is with them, not the remaining hundreds of thousands who took no action against you. You cannot argue from the specific to the general - to even suggest that is a high level of ignorance on your part.
Finally it is insulting the way you want people to respect a contract with SCO yet you want to shrug off the GPL license which you used to distribute Caldera for many years. As an owner of several copies of Caldera Linux I have clearly seen that you have distributed software under this license. If your legal counsel was stupid enough to let you attach a contractual agreement to software which you sold and distributed with your express consent - then you need to find a new legal group as you have been misled. You agreed to the terms of the GPL by attaching your software into a codebase which you clearly knew was GPL, which you sold knowing it was GPL, and which removed a great many of the rights (though not all) that you had to the IP you associated with UNIX, Linux, whatever. This is just like chess, this is a move that you cannot take back and you will have to live with it.
While I certainly understand that you want to protect your IP, the Linux community and Open Source communities have a right to protect theirs. Anything you've comitted to theirs is now open and that is the nature of the contractual agreement you accepted when you started putting Linux on the shelf. Now you have several choices - to work with the Linux community to get this resolved or take this to court at which time you may find yourself sued through your own admission of contract violation with respect to the GPL and shipping copies of Caldera.
All you have done is awaken a powerful enemy - and fill it with terrible resolve. If Microsoft fears the Linux community and Open Source and its several thousand times your size - perhaps you should reevaluate who your friends and enemies are as without a doubt even if Linux has to be totally engineered to not use anything resembling any of your IP - no self respecting user, administrator, or evaluator will consider using anything associated with your brand as you have threatened them in the past and acted in bad faith. Your brand is now dead - and 'geeks' are reknown for having long memories and vendettas.
I think the CEOs of software companies are hoping the software business will become just like the music business, where the creators and consumers get shafted and all the profits go to the middleman.
Fortunately, I don't think the software industry will necessarily go that way. Software is valuable to its creator in and of itself; it doesn't need to be sold to create value (although it can be sold to create additional value). A CD is of less use to a musician; it must be sold before the creator gets much value from it. This difference will ensure that there will always be open source software.
There is another factor at play in this as well. A lot of companies that create proprietary software are outsourcing their development to India and other cheap countries. Pretty soon, the only development done in the U.S. will be open source. We should support American programmers, and use only open source software! In fact, if open source software were in wider use, there would be more demand for American programmers. With open source, there is plenty of generic code lying around and all that has to be done is customization for a particular business need. Outsourcing is really only good for the mechanical programming tasks, which are already done for you with open source development.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
"What comes of litigation? Poverty and degradation to any community that will encourage it. Will it build cities, open farms, build railroads, erect telegraph lines and improve a country? It will not; but it will bring any community to ruin." -Brigham Young, JD 11:259.
All the tech-aware mormons I know are just as outraged about the SCOurge of McBride and his cronies as you are.
The oldest version of this code we've found so far is in Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, published in 1968.
So the code can't have been legaly copied from there (it's copyright).
In this case Knuth has the deciding vote on how legal the use is. Has anyone asked him?
Even more, the code from "TAOCP" is likely written in pseudocode or MIX and while the pseudocode is likely to be protected by copyright, I'm not sure if a translation of it into C would be - as the algorithm may be the same, but the expression of it very, very different. Enough so that I suspect a patent might cover it, but copyright would not.
funny, Darl's letter sort of reminds me of this letter from Bill Gates:
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands
programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two
months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC.
The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these
"users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time
spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people
who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to
us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional
work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has
invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software
available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the
ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108.
Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software. Bill Gates General Partner, Micro-Soft
September 9, 2003
Open Letter to Darl McBride,
I would like to briefly respond to your open letter to the Open Source Community, dated today. I consider myself to be a member of that community, having developed Open Source software myself, although I do not claim to be any kind of "leader", or to represent the views of other members of the community.
Firstly, I would like to join you in condemning the Denial of Service attacks that took place against your web servers. Using vandalism and illegal tactics is not an appropriate way for people to respond, however strongly they disagree with you or SCO's words or deeds. In your open letter, you quoted Eric Raymond's reaction to the DoS attack, but you seemed to suggest that he knows the identity of the perpetrator. I can't speak for Mr Raymond, but I believe that in the letter you quoted from, he actually said that he DID NOT know the perpetrator; it was an associate of the perpetrator who contacted him. Do you have any evidence to suggest that Mr Raymond is not co-operating with the authorities in helping them to bring the perpetrator to justice?
The memory allocation code you mentioned, does, at first blush, appear to have indeed been copied illegally by SGI, and perhaps SGI have some got some explaining to do. However, this is a very tiny part of Linux as a whole, and the notion that "one million lines of UNIX System V protected code have been contributed to Linux" is obviously based on an incredibly improbable reading of copyright law in terms of what you consider to be "derivative works" (one that if upheld, would turn copyright law on its head).
Contrary to what you suggest in your letter, in my experience, members of the Open Source community understand very well and fully respect copyright laws.
In fact, a very telling remark in you letter where you talk about "transferring copyrights in contributed code to Open Source", leads me to believe that we understand it better than you do Mr McBride. Open Source is NOT THE SAME as Public Domain. Open Source software relies on Copyright Law to protect the authors. There is no "transfer" to some nebulous Open Source status. When I write a piece of software, I as the author, hold the copyright on that work. When I choose to release it, I license it to my customers using the GNU General Public License, the BSD license, or some other Open Source license. My customers agree to the terms of the license. If they violate the terms of the license (for example, they attempt to sublicense my work), they are in breach of our agreement, and they are misappropriating my work.
In your letter, you refer to "problems that exist in the current Linux software development model". The Open Source development model, by its very nature, is transparent. Any intellectual property problems can be quickly identified and addressed because the code is out in the open. I contend that there is absolutely no way for SCO to tell whether a closed-source system such as Windows, AIX, etc has code copied within it. You are holding the Open Source community to a higher standard than the proprietary software community.
Finally, I'd like to address the 5 points in your summary.
"1. Fair use applies to educational, public service and related applications and does not justify commercial misappropriation."
I agree.
"2. Copyright attributions protect ownership and attribution rights--they cannot simply be changed or stripped away."
Absolutely agree. Perhaps SGI have some explaining to do here. But also, I'd like to hear your explanation of why the Regents of the University of California attribution is missing in the Berkley Packet Filter that showed up in your slides at the Las Vegas presentation?
"3. In copyright law, ownership cannot be transferred without express, written authority of a copyright holder. Some have claimed that, because SCO software code was present in software distributed under the GPL, SCO has forfeited its rights to this code. Not so - SCO