SCO Derides GPL, Will Revoke SGI's UNIX License

ComaVN writes "Not a big surprise for those who have followed the recent SCO misery, but SCO is going after SGI. According to SGI, SCO intends to terminate their Unix System V license, much like they did with IBM earlier. I guess it's hard to stop once you've chosen a certain direction for your company." sheddd writes "Does this case have any merit? Joe Formage has written a good article on SCO's strange behavior." Read on below for SCO's odd tactic of attacking the GPL by belittling IBM's legal diligence in not avoiding GPL'd software, and word on why Linux users aren't being served SCO invoices.

larry2k writes "PR newswire has an open letter from SCO to IBM.

From the letter: 'SCO believes that the GPL -- created by the Free Software Foundation to supplant current U.S. copyright laws -- is a shaky foundation on which to build a legal case.'" The release is also carried by NewsForge. Among other things, SCO says "By so strongly defending the controversial GPL, IBM is also defending a questionable licensing scheme through which it can avoid providing software indemnification for its customers."

Doesn't supplant mean "replace"? That's not what the GPL does.

And if you're wondering why you have not received an invoice from SCO for any Linux-based OS you may be running, benploni writes "From Groklaw: In this Detroit News story Blake Stowell explains why no one has received an invoice: 'SCO in August said Linux users could avoid lawsuits by paying a one-time fee of $699. The fee will rise to $1,399 on Oct. 15. Since the response to its appeal was adequate, SCO didn't send bills to thousands of Linux users, company spokesman Blake Stowell said.' [emphasis added]. We all knew there was no way they'd risk actually sending out invoices, and here's the proof."

Comments

Stock?

[geeveees]

How much did their stock go up by announcing

this? Why is everyone so "blind" to this?

Re: Stock?

[Verteiron]

Ever watched a mob? Or even a simple protest? Okay. Bunch of people, acting like fools, right?

Now go out and join a protest. Protest something, anything, and do it with a lot of people. You won't feel like a fool. You'll feel powerful, different, and you'll tend to do things you don't normally do. I guarantee it. Then come back and tell me that a collection of humans is the same as a bunch of individual thinkers. The whole is not the same as the sum of the parts.

Individuals are smart. Groups of people are stupid. Every fireman, cop, EMT and politician in the world knows this. Nature defies logic. Science is counter-intuitive. And sometimes the truth is stupid.

Fantastic News!

[0x0d0a]

At this point, due to SCO screwing everyone over, no company is going to be willing to ever touch another OS based on propriatary code licensed from someone else again. They've been burned once -- not again. Given that an in-house solution is insanely expensive, this just adds more impetus to the Linux push.

The Penguin just gets bigger and bigger.

Open Letters

[aborchers]

SCO's attempt to try this case in the tech media through "open letters" makes it increasingly obvious that this is a FUD campaign inteaded to impress investors and easily cowed corporations who will heel to their extortion. If they had a legitimate case, they would be filing new and improved court documents, not open letters...

License Fee

[WebBug]

I don't you would be particularily wise to pay SCO their fee until after a trial decides just how shaky their ground really is. Why? Because if they lose the lawsuit, then SCO can pretty much say goodnight and you'll never see your tuppence again.

IBM is pretty savy for adopting an open source project as one of their main OS offerings, largely because it does provide them with a certain level of insulation from OS problems, but also because it provides them with considerable developement power at minimal cost.

Let us not forget that Apple has pretty much put their entire future into an open source OS as well, for pretty much the same reasons I think.

It just makes sense to me to build your OS upon a common open source framework. More compatable, more developers, more solutions to problems.

Ya, there are hoards of problems with that approach as well, but I think they can be succesfully managed.

Re:I'd love an invoice.

[Krow10]

Blockquoth the poster:

Since the response to its appeal was adequate, SCO didn't send bills to thousands of Linux users, company spokesman Blake Stowell said.'

Too bad - I'd love to hang up such an (otherwise ignored) invoice here in my office. SCO can kiss my ass in Macy's window during a One Day Sale.

Too bad, I'd like to show it to the FTC, the postal inspector and the Commonwealth's Attorney.

-Craig

Re:Relax

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

The article mentions at the end that SCO has asked that the trial date be set back so it can have more time amending its briefs. The court trial is not expected to start until 2005. It would be much easier to relax, if the trial had started. Right now, Sco has managed to create an atmoshpere of (and they all said...) Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. IBM is fine it can hold SCO at bay, but its obviousl that sco is not going to wait for the conclusion of the IBM trial before going after other companies ( several of which do not have the money to hire a hoard of lawers to defend them).

Pro-Linux Conspiracy

[zeasier]

You know what SGI is going to do if they lose their Unix lisence. The same thing IBM did, they'll start to use Linux even more in their business. SCO needs to shower their clients with gifts instead of alienating everyone Unix and Linux related. Linux seems to be faring well regardless of all this mess. Who's really getting screwed is commercial Unix.

Outcome a Repeat of History?

[soloport]

I predicted that.

Speaking of "predict", I reckon the Closed Source vs Open Source arena we have, today, is much like the Closed Architecture vs the Open Architecture hardware arena of the past (ironic that IBM started this, then tried to re-neg -- remember the Charlie Chaplin ads?).

Back then, we didn't have the World Wide Web, so one had to read about the goings on of that market battle in the trade papers. But I bet history is, once again, repeating itself. This time it's about software, not hardware, of course. Makes sense that it's taken longer to get the software battle under way because hardware, well, just has to come first -- no hardware, no software possible.

But the past is interesting to me because of my (strange?) belief that we can probably predict the ultimate outcome and peer into the future a bit, by looking into the past. But, I can't remember how the last battle went (I was too young to care much, fresh out of college).

BTW, I really like how things turned out. At the time I was a real Motorola fan -- wished that the most ubiquitous desktop hardware hadn't gone little-endian and had shared stack/heap/program space (what a pain it was/is to write firmware for Intel chips vs Motorola!!!). However, what I like, now is paying next to nothing for seemingly endless increases in power!

So, what about the past? Anyone remember the hardware "Open Architecture" battles that went on? Are we closely repeating our technology history? Did anyone get as bent out of shape (as I feel over SCO) toward the "wrong side" at the time? Did we win? ;-)