Slashdot Mirror
SCO Claims IBM/SGI Licenses are Revokable
shadow099 writes "SCO claims in an open letter writen by Blake Stowell, Director Public Relations SCO, that the Unix licenses to IBM and SGI can be revoked. " This is just the latest volley in the ongoing circus. It keeps getting funnier!
in Darl McBride's head. I understand mob rule is teh sucks, but in this case, it's justified. He is insane.
Clinton got away with "it depends on what the meaning of is, is......."
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Do we have to hear about every time SCO takes a shit? I really don't care about the 4 weekly articles about them that says the same shit and then the posts that say the same shit. There has to be more interesting news articles to read about and discuss than SCO.
Irrevocable? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Is it just me that things the 'Hmmmmmmmmmmmm' is very unprofessional?
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
This was first published on Friday...
It keeps getting funnier! ..its just not funny any more. Its downright frustrating, and whilst I appreciate the coverage Slashdot is giving me (I want to see what asses SCO are making of themselves) I can't wait to see SCO screwed in court and hopefully nailed by the financial regulators over their pump & dump tactics.
Sigh.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
not IS! you wouldnt get very far in life not saying IS.
So? What will happen once their licenses are revoked? SCO will shout at them and tell them to pay up for a new license. This is laughable. The SCO has no chance of getting them to renew their licenses! Its just a desperate last hope for a desperate company.
The only way that any company will do well these days is to have a good rapport with developers. SCO is offending everyone. Let's just say they win (hypothetical, not realistic), they will still go under due to all of the bad publicity.
first of all, that quote pertains to AT&T, second of all sco gave 1 week notice, not two months.
I'll get a few obvious observations out of the way.
First, they love to cite that original contract, but they don't talk about the addendums. There's a reason for that.
Secondly, even by that contract unamended, they would still have to actually specify what the supposed violations are before they could start the clock running so far as notice. They've steadfastly refused to do this, proving that they're acting in bad faith.
Third, just because they claim something is a violation doesn't make it so. If they really thought they had violations here, they'd be in a hurry to get to court, but instead they've been stalling.
So, in conclusion, more hot air from a guy that's known for it.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Send them 10,000 copies of Goatse.cx in their email! Better yet just hack their computers and make them display nothing but goatse all day long!
Repeal the DMCA!
Well, he does seem to have a point, whether it's the "right" thing to do or not. If there's no place in the license that says it's irrevocable (and, quite to the contrary, actually says that it is revocable), then they shouldn't assume that it is.
How he goes about saying it, though, is quite assholish, and I don't agree with the whole situation, but it seems that the contract does allow them to revoke the licensing.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Dear SCO management:
SCO, as a company, is revokable.
Yours truly
- r00zky
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
The excerpt from the contract states that ther is a 2 month term to act on the "Breaches specified" in the "Written notice" which should precede it.
As far as I'm aware SCO has yet to disclose all of the code. So what does this add to our circus parade?
Even his own example says that IBM would have two months to fix any problems.
But SCO won't tell anyone what they think the problems are.
"Your honor, IBM is breaking our contract, but we can't tell anyone how"...
Yeah, that'll work.
It's "revocable", not "revokable".
You know, it does make me think that. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm..... (how many ellipsis are appropriate for that many 'm's anyways?)
Fnord.
It's not fair, waaaaaahhhhh! (Red-faced temper tantrum)
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
So the husband is at the door, with the suitcase packed and the and a one way plane ticket in his hand and the wife is screaming she's going to divorce him. Pathetic really.
It looks like the CO's (or lawyers) at SCO are really losing it, revoke a licence?? and compare it with a drivers licence??
When you drive drunk you are a danger to everyone around you, therefore the drivers licence can be revoked.
When you (atleast that is what sco claims) use some code in Linux you can't revoke a licence, you can only sue there assess off (or try to)
I still havn't seen any proof from SCO that source from SCO is/was used in Linux, so i would say, first show the proof THEN revoke/sue the company's.
But noooo.... sco wants everybody to be afraid and start shaking in there chairs because they have a Linux home-firewall-router.
Whats up next?? Sco charging Superman because he has a "S" on his chest, and that "S" is part of "SCO"
When will this soap end??
What would you do without a monitor? Sit and look stupid behind a keyboard and a mouse
C
But since when does one paragraph out of a no doubt lengthy contract definitively prove anything?
what?
Does this mean that weed is now "tocable?"
Blake Stowell (SCO) writes:
"You can't take code based on a license you signed, change it a little and then give it away for free (as in the case of XFS from SGI)." (emphasis mine)
Firstly SGI has a good point in saying it is allowed to make XFS open source. And secondly SCO execs should learn that GPL licencing is not about "free beer". Probably a court will need to tell them soon what the meanings of the GPL licence are.
IBM/SGI's licenses are "fully paid up and irrevokable". That's specific legal language which means "SCO can't demand more licensing fees, and it can't pull the license on a whim". That in no way restricts the ability of SCO to revoke a license which has already been invalidated by IBM or SGI violating its terms.
I'm not saying that IBM or SGI has violated the terms of their UNIX licenses; but if they have, that "fully paid up and irrevokable" language is irrelevant in this case.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
...is this considered a post-worthy piece of news?Surely McBride will say countless other stupid things today. Must we have a post for those, too? We surely have enough reason at this point to have a weekly roundup of SCORN (SCO References/News)?
Seriously, save screen real estate for more interesting things (things with a point, dammit!), like, "Georgy Russell: What will she do now?"
I'm just glad this article wasn't another "So and so's government considers using Linux". Holy christ... lately it seems like Slashdot's main focus is to tell us about every single time someone even thinks about using Linux (of course, as we've often witnessed they often end up sticking with Windows in the end). HOW ABOUT SOME REAL NEWS!!
Then do it already SCO. It might actually help you with your court case.
What? It's a completely bogus claim? Then why are you annoucing it? Who are you trying to impress?
I wonder if their lawyers are working by the hour, and need to do stuff like this to charge billable hours.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Does the current SCO product include a file system as good as XFS? If so, what is it's name and how does it perform?
If not, why do they claim this to be SCO property but don't make their customers benefit from it? Just curious...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Everybody in this charade are sending open letters to one another. It's as if SCO is trying to scare other companies into settling whereas the companies SCO are suing are trying to decide this in the court of public opinion.
They should all just shit or get off the pot. SCO; show some code. IBM/SGI/et all; show what you've found. This fiasco has gone on long enough.
Trolling is a art,
It's not off-topic. Inappropriate and criminal, sure :)
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Seriously, this guy needs to be taken down a couple of notches. Blake and his ilk come around talking smack about how they own code in linux, and they don't show $#!t. I'm tired of this crap. They need to either put up and show some code or the cocky bastards should be sent into fedreal PMITA prison.
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
3.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
"...AT&T may ... at any time terminate all the rights granted by it hereunder by not less than two(2) months written notice to LICENSEE specifying any such breach , unless within the period of such notice all breaches specified therein shall have been remedied;"
Doesn't this say that SCO has to inform the licensee of the violation and give them a chance to remedy the problem within two months?
The letter's main point seems incorrect. IBM and SGI have a license to distribute the quote sounds like it is from a license to use. Given SCO's previous honesty I'd question whether he is quoting the correct license.
One side point was even worse, "You can't take code based on a license you signed, change it a little and then give it away for free (as in the case of XFS from SGI)."
How is XFS based on a license that SGI signed? AT&T and SCO for that matter have nothing similar.
I have read over SGI's licenses and I've found no place where it says it is irrevocable. Why would anyone in their right mind sign over a license to anyone that was not revocable?
You have to ask is Mr. Stowell being disingenuous or is he meerly extremely naieve. The answer is very simple when the license was issued it was a condition of the contract and was a deal breaker. Most hardware vendors particularly in the timeframe of the dealings had much larger capital outlays on their proprietary products than software companies. It would have been foolish to allow a software vendor unilaterally and retroactively terminate their business.
I have to ask once again what Mr. Stowell is smoking when he talks about no one issuing an irrevocable license. Seeing, as all of the programmers that work for SCO have in effect done this with their work product.
While SCO's antics are often confusing and sometimes amusing, this is not a matter that should be taken lightly. Too many people are taking this lightly, and I have a fear that at the end of the day, the OSS community is going to be caught bent over with their pants down looking back on a grinning SCO.
The court system in the US is less than predictable, and often makes ludicrous decisions in favor of seemingly frivolous lawsuits (see RJR Reynolds, McDonalds, and KB Toys.) Linux CAN lose, and defeat in just this one battle would be disasterous.
And what does SCO have to lose? They admit that they only have a few hundred customers, and it would be no big loss to the world for the company to disappear. SCO execs have already made their money, so defeat wouldn't harm them much, even if it meant the end of their corporation.
Linux, on the other hand, would be utterly destroyed. Invalidation of the GPL would mean that existing GPL'd software could be incorporated into commercial code without restriction or credit to the original author. Commercial vendors would be at SCO's mercy, and many would be forced to fold. Non-commercial linux developers without funds to support a lawsuit would be forced to fold. Linux, at least in the US, would be dead.
Be amused, but those that are in a position to make a difference need to take this VERY seriously, or risk a serious blow to Linux' very existance.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
The piece itself is about nothing : the term irrevocable doesn't mean it can't be revoked, it usually just means it can't be revoked for no reason - i.e. there has to be a breach of the terms of the license. (That's assuming there isn't a clause somewhere that says 'This license can never be revoked.')
There is one worrying thing, and I quote:
{Villain fingers pussycat}
If that's an accurate description of what Mr. Stowell was doing, shouldn't somebody call the RSPCA???
Concrete analysis...
SCO issued a statement today saying "Yuh huh!"
IBM and SGI issued a joint reply stating "Nuh uh!"
I hereby claim that I have the power to revoke THE SUN!
I've been dreadfully waiting for this day to cash in my SCO shares. Just waiting for the cheques from IBM/RedHat.
RRS, aka The Notorious BOB
www.notoriousbob.co.nr
SCO will say "No license for j00!" to IBM, towhich they 900 lb gorrilla will walk up to them and basically say "revoke this" in response. I fail to see what this is going to achieve on SCO's part.
This sig no verb.
The end can't come soon enough for SCO. These idiots need to produce something useful rather than trying to litigate a profit. It's just a long very slow death rattle. Hopefully a buy out or bankruptcy will come soon. These guys are ridiculous buffoon looters and everyone but them seems to know it.
The SCO Group can revoke Unix licenses
only with the approval of Novell.
This is why the AIX "revocation" was invalid.
This is why the threat to revoke SGI's
IRIX license is nothing more than a PR ploy,
an attempt to pump the stock price.
And your point is?
TT
Does the hmmmmmmm make anyone else think of a grade school argument. I can't wait for the "I know you are but what am I?" or "I'm rubber and you're glue..." lines in the next SCO letter.
The failure of SCO to specify is advantagous in two ways, one is that anyone can still trod along and still have a two month cushion when they finally prove it, while the other is that everyone has a chance to scour the kenel and it's pieces looking with a magnifying glass for anything that could be a problem. This is merely going to open and set center stage for all the acts in the future as well expose how sedated and trained folks are to having feces pressed into the ear.
I heve held executive positions in a few companies that went tits up and I have seen this before. My view on SCO is that it has come to examine closer the writing on the wall. I don't have to wait for the last chapter, I've read the book. Next steps -- corporate cards will lock up, medical insurance will bounce, creditors will show up at the door, all the good stuff. Why is it relevant to an IT company what a lawer says in this context or another? If you look at the product, it's not there. Why SCO? Why not BSD, Linux, SUN? No reason.
So, by the original language, the license can only be revoked by specifying the breach. SCO has yet to specify the breach so much as point in its general direction.
The other proviso is that if the breach is fixed (ie the infringing stuff is removed) then the license can no longer be revoked. So, if the offending code in Linux is identified and removed- there is no breach.
Is it just me or are they no even bothering to hide their alterior agenda anymore?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Did your post really merit +1 Karma Bonus?
What did you contribute to this discussion?
- SuSE: Use our Linux, we're protected because we were part of OpenLinux along with those SCOundrels
- HP: Use our Linux, we are protected because we have a secret condom and we promise you won't catch anything.
- IBM: So we're being sued. Hell, $3 billion is small change. Excuse us a moment while we thump our chests and then bury these creeps in fecal pellets.
- SUN: Linux is crap for the server anyway. But here's this really, really neat corporate desktop which just happens to be SuSE underneath, see above.
- All together: "Mind you, don't go buying no Linux from some two cent little organisation that just might get sued to hell and back"
I guess if you got all the marketing people from the organisations mentioned above and asked them to write an essay, "Darl McB: pain in the ass or unexpected business bonus", they'd be typing away for a long time.Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
This terrible open-source shit cut off the end of my NORWAY? flood. Here is my humble attempt to make up for it:
N O R WAY?NORW A Y ? N O R W A Y?NO R W A Y ? N ORW A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ?N O R WAY?NORW A Y ? N O R W A Y?NO R W A Y ? N ORW A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ?N O R WAY?NORW A Y ? N O R W A Y?NO R W A Y ? N ORW A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ?N O R WAY?NORW A Y ? N O R W A Y?NO R W A Y ? N ORW A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O R W A Y ?N O R WAY?NORW A Y ? N O R W A Y?NO R W A Y ? N ORW A Y ? N O R W A Y ? N O
You are most definitely correct, sir. Just because we think we have the moral high ground in this case doesn't mean that SCO doesn't have something to go on.
To those of you fighting this case, KEEP FIGHTING!
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
Out of all the comments posted on this article, this is the first that includes a rebuttal.
So what usually happens if a company keeps using licensed material after the license has been revoked? They get sued, are found guilty of using intellectual property without a proper license and punished.
And of course licenses are revokable (unlike some people here seem to believe). Even if the license is fully paid, it can still be revoked if you are found in breach of the contract. Hell, IBM is using a similar argument against SCO's Linux.
BOO! TERRO
SCO has won nothing. They have disclosed nothing. They have accomplished nothing. They keep beating their chests and making outlandish statements every time they go a couple days without being in the headlines. But we keep reporting it and acting shocked. Darl McBride and SCO are the corporate equivalent of a kid eating dog poo out of the sand box for attention. Ignore them, they will go away.
Secondly, if Blake Stowell had actually read his own contract properly he would found this bit: "...in addition to any other remedies that it may have, at any time terminate all the rights granted by it hereunder by not less than two(2) months' written notice to LICENSEE specifying any such breach, unless within the period of such notice all breaches specified therein shall have been remedied.". I particularly find the bits about "other remedies" and "breaches specified" of note. IANAL, but that implies to me that SCO is obliged to to both disclose details of what is in breach (not necessarily publically), which it hasn't done as far as I am aware, then give IBM/SGI two months to correct that breach.
I suspect SCO's refusal to disclose any information prior to an actual trial is going to bite them in the ass somehow.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Slashdotters thought the DMCA was funny and unbelievable, too. Slashdotters seem to believe that the world operates on a rational basis such that they can reliably predict the outcome of cases like this based on what they think are the principles of law in the US and elsewhere. Slashdotters are naive. (Slashdotters generalize a lot.)
Optimism gets you nowhere today. The world's too corrupt. I don't know what the outcome will be, but after the DMCA, the Patriot Act and Operation Pipe Dreams I'm not really finding this "funny". Just scary.
3 ellipses would be .........
Why not fork?
Had me falling off my chair. Simple but well played.
McBride revokes the law of gravity, claiming DMCA issues...
"We licensed that law before, if you want to use it, please send a check for $699"
how long until
The GPL interprets court actions as damage and routes around them.
Seriously I can't see it taking very long for the authors to re-group and patch the GPL to fix the issues.
If this truly were to happen I'd give it about 6 months before the GPL and all the code was re-released.
But wait! That would only happen in a properly working legal society. I forgot that this is all happening in New Berlin where the courts follow George W. Furer.
Or at least that's what he seems to be trying to make it anyway...
*blink*
Why are there black SUVs on my lawn suddenly?
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Which prison do you think Darl will serve his time at?
Namely because there are other ways of enforcing your contracts. I haven't seen all of the SGI contracts, but here is Ammentment X to the IBM contract and it clearly states IBM has an "irrevocable" and "perpetual" contract. It also says that SCO is not otherwise limited from enjoining or prohibiting IBM in other ways.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Princess Linus: "Help me, IBM Kenobi, you're my only hope!"
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
If a company stole your source code, then proceeded to profit off your works, then refused to share any of the profits. Why should you continue to do business with them?
The most logical action would be to cease any business dealings with a company until the issue with their IP theft from your company could be resolved.
SCO is not a megacorporation like IBM, so they have to handle this situation in other ways. It's up to SCO to make the decision how to proceed with resolving their alleged IP theft. Why are there so many arrogant people with the idea in their heads that they are the ones to dictate how this company should be run?
Having possibly learnt this trick from Microsoft. XSF is, whatever else might be defined in the original contract with AT&T, a work produced by SGI. Now, if I license a product from a company, and distribute my own works with that product, I would be quite angry if I was told those works were "derivative".
Yet this seems to be what SCO are arguing. The original SYS V license was, it appears, so powerful that its mere presence on a disk would turn all other software into Unix source code!
It is amusing when you consider the hate focussed onto the GPL for applying a much milder form of a "viral license", namely that true derived works are permitted under certain conditions.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Without slashdot as news platform nobody would hear/know about SCO's crap.
Thank you, slashdot for spreading their FUD since months now. It's NOT entertaining. It never was.
Everyone who pays to read these SCO news first is angry.
SCO appears to be saying that their license had some kind of hidden GPL-like "anything you ship with this is part of it" clause. At least that's the only interpretation I can come to some of their claims that this or that bit of software clearly created by IBM or SGI - and not directly based on System V - is covered as a derivitive work.
:)
Given the effort the FSF has gone into to craft the GPL and make that as watertight as they can, I find it hard to believe that AT&T managed to slip one in under the radar of IBM and SGI and the rest of the big boys. Especially since it seems they did it accidentally.
How long has "beleaguered Apple" been dying now? Has it already been 10 years?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Its nto a Unix License, friend!
The only group that can license Unix is OpenGroup!
Its a license to specifc unix implementation IP code only..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
hot air coming out of SCO contributing to global warming
This is an outrage!
Can we believe it?
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Now suppose that SCO manages to make this stick. How can we ever again have confidence in proprietary licenses, if the customer can have its license revoked through no fault of its own, but through the fault (real or alleged) of its vendors? Or its vendor's vendor? Or its vendor's vendor's vendor's vendor, which turns out to be some small software house in Middle of Nowhere, Idaho, which the customer in question never even heard of?
The GPL, OTOH, specifically disclaims any right to terminate the rights of sublicensees:
---------
[1] Predicated, of course, on proving that IBM actually breached its license, but SCO would rather gloss over that unimportant detail.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
I was thinking that it is important that SCO keep making statements such as these for two reasons:
1. Keeps the price of their stock up.
2. They can be cleared of pump and dump in case they lose. "Your honor, we did not make 'false and misleading statements to the marketplace.' No, your honor we really believe what we are saying. Here's more proof: On these days (shows list of public statements) we said it for the whole world to see/hear!" This way Darl won't be competing with the goatse guy in jail.
Are SCO still distributing Linux?
Invalidation of the GPL would mean that existing GPL'd software could be incorporated into commercial code without restriction or credit to the original author.
No, the authors would still own the individual copyrights to the code they wrote.
Shh.
SELECT manager FROM SCO WHERE clue > 0
0 records returned
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
When does all this bull crap stop? I guess there are no legal ramifications to put these guys in jail for making false claims and statements?
SCO is in blatent violation of the GPL and they continue to include GPL software as if they owned it. If we legally force SCO to stop using OSS, then we stop SCO from existing.
Two more: F U
They were going to name a James Bond film "License Revoked" until they figured that the US market wouldn't understand what it was getting at, so they renamed it "License to Kill".
License to kill... Hmm... Oh Darl...
Treat it as an educational process
We get to learn about:
- Contract Law
- Licensing, notably GPL
- State of the Art media manipulation
- Insights into the stock market and hopefully SEC
- International Law. Notably Australia and Germany
- Criminal Law like Mail-fraud
- History of Unix
Help fight continental drift.
I do not really believe that SCO would allow so unprofessional comments about their case, unless it is a PR trick (very bad one, in this case).
...to revoke the SCO license. If the smarties think they can say "Okay, end of playing, that toys were borrowed and now I want them back", show them they were REALLY borrowed. And after that, Novell will grant licenses to IBM and SGI directly and SCO will remain without OS.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
IBM filed attachments to their countersuit showing that SCO doesn't have carte blanche authority to revoke licenses. The sale agreement of the transfer rights gave Novell a veto card in case SCO wanted to terminate a UNIX source license. According to another attachment to the countersuit, Novell exercised that right with respect to IBM's license.
"It just keeps getting funnier!"
Why is this funny? There doesn't seem to be anything humorous here at all. There's a point of contention involving some legalese as to whether or not some boring old license is revokable. You might agree with some of the points, you might disagree with some of them... but why would it be funny?
The funny thing is that getting it to work under Linux destroys the argument that the code is part of Unix. I.E. you can often prove B has derived status relative to A by showing that B is worthless without A. The fact that SCO admits that XFS works fine with Linux disproves it being "part" of Unix.
"You can't take code based on a license you signed, change it a little and then give it away for free (as in the case of XFS from SGI)."
This guy actually thinks XFS is a minor tweak of 20 year old SySV code?
You might as well staple your ball sack together, 'cause if you can't lick 'em, join 'em!
In which sense was MS "right"???? Morally, maybe. Legally, give me a break. Morality and legality are issues that non necessarily intersect.
MS was found in violation of a patent that the holder registered legally and defended it in consequence. If the US patent system is in shambles that is a completely different matter, MS was not in the right as proven by a court of law.
With SCO we have a company that has nothing, has been shown to be lying in a public forum and in ignorance of what is in their own obsolete code.
I think you are thorhougly confussed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
check the stock price correlation before/after the public hears about this letter. then watch SCO execs dump stock. $@!#!
She spilled the coffee on herself. Therefore, the lawsuit was frivolous and ANY damages unjustified.
Why is that so hard for you people to understand?
int main(int arc, char **argv){
Appears in each's fsck app, as do several hundred occurences of } in both the fsck apps and the kernel code.
You guys just keep bashing SCO as if they have no evidence, despite all the code that has been stolen from them by IBM and SGI.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means.
q:]
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
...the stock price goes up 49 cents on Monday, the execs dump some more stock (I think it's in their business plan), this news fizzles out in about 5-6 days then go back to step 1, which is make some dumb announcement... ...isn't this illegal? Or not really in the land of republicans (The U.S. (TM)(C)(c)) ...
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
So... COLA isn't enough anymore? You wintrolls just have to explode in anal-retentive anger and hunt down those heathen linux-hippies at every curb and corner, huh?
Common wintroll memes:
"Linux makes you stupid."
"Linux users are gay, and most commonly pederasts."
If only one of you fucking M$-sheep would dare tread in front of me...I'd rip your head off and shit down your throat - Duke Nukem-style!
So "hear ye" this: Linux will come down on your imbecile head as a force of nature per se; lean back and enjoy the mushroom cloud...
What is ludicrous is thinking that that an entirely new development (as in the case of XFS from SGI) can somehow be thought of as derivative from UNIX just because it might be added back in to it. Maybe I should be calling up the DEA about the heavy drug use going on in Utah. Just because SGI integrated code licensed from SCO with their own development does not transfer ownership of that code to SCO, unless there were specific terms of that in the license SGI signed. And if that was the case, SCO wouldn't be trying to claim XFS is derived from UNIX, but would instead be pointing clearly to that clause. It isn't there and SCO has no rights to XFS other than as SGI has licensed (GPL?).
Many big businesses all the time do cross-licensing where each ends up with rights to use intellectual property of the other. SCO somehow thinks they get to own everything (like their claim to the entirety of Linux, even though hundreds of developers unrelated to SCO did the actual work).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Don't know if anyone else has noticed, but these announcements usually come by odd coincidence whenever some SCO insider wants to unload.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Licenses really can be revoked under the terms of the license itself. The terms a government issues a drivers license under would include the specific laws involved. They cannot just arbitrarily revoke a drivers' license, but they can under those specific laws. If you commit certain actions the law says you may lose your license for, it can be revoked.
Likewise, a private license for use of some property can also be revoked under the agreed terms. Generally, if the agreed terms are violated, the license can be revoked. If SGI and/or IBM did release UNIX intellectual property to the public, that would be such a violation. And we do know SCO is claiming that.
The issue now comes down to whether such a claim is valid. Did SGI take XFS from UNIX and release it publically. That cannot be the case, however, because there is no XFS in UNIX. SGI developed XFS themselves. Arguably, pieces of XFS might have gotten some UNIX code in there, but once pointed out, that can be removed. Did SCO perform due diligence in pointing that out? Not until recently have they started pointing at any specific violations (while still making vague and unsubstantiated claims that lots of other violations exist), and those are weak due to previous releases in other forms.
And how the hell do we know there isn't any violations in SCO's non-Linux closed-source product ... violations of the GPL with code taken from Linux and put in there?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This "amendment" says that said source code will remain private. If SCO source code did indeed end up in Linux, this document pretty much proves that IBM is in default of the contract. This document doesn't absolve IBM by a long shot.
"(For example, the "woman scalded by hot coffee" suit, which at first blush looked like the height of frivolity proved to be a perfectly legitimate action taken against a corporation that knew, thanks to a string of similar scaldings it had quietly been paying off, that its coffee was not just hot, but dangerously hot. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America provides an excellent description of this case"
Every time someone points out how frivilous this case is and was, one of you scum come crawling out of the woodwork to claim it was reasonable.
IT ISN'T!!!!
If you spill hot liquids on yourself, you will get burned. Really badly burned. The fact that a few people are stupid doesn't mean the lawsuit has merit, it just means that a few people are stupid and that people like you try to profit from stupidity.
I wish trial lawyers like you all die of cancer caused by something funny, like spending too much time whoring yourselves for a few bucks.
You make me sick.
Let me say a prayer for you:
"Dear jesus, let the cleansing cancer take hold in this sub-human and let him die slowly. So slowly that the doctors take all his money, and throw his wife into prostitution and his kids into crack whores. In your name we pray, amen"
"See the difference?"
Yes. You are whore who will defend your right to make money for nothing until your dying breathe. Hopefully, some disease will take you away sooner rather than later. And end the suffereing for the rest of us.
You fucking leech.
"Its obvious you don't know much about the lawsuit"
You're one of those people who either are a trial lawyer trying to defend your whorish behavior or you're a moron.
Neither comparison is particularly nice.
Hope you're sterile so you can't breed and infect the earth with more of your kind.
When the initial charges were leveled against ibm and sco's stock price was in the tank, ibm had a tough decision. Whether to buy sco or fight them. Each time a new "open letter" is put out the chance that ibm will buy sco diminishes. The one great unknown is what will m$ do? After all bill could buy sco with the change he finds in couch. So why doesn't he do it? Because he doesn't believe sco has a case, even if he were to pick up the banner and run with it. After all his over-riding goal is to slow the adoption of linux and given the bungling, foot shooting excercise that sco is doing on a nearly daily basis he is not about to buy a sinking ship.
What seems most interesting is what will happen 3-5 years from now. Sco can only delay the law suits from Redhat and ibm for so long. They continue to alienate there distributors as well as squandering any good will within the development community that might have existed, based on there past performance. At the same time, sun is bleeding to death and can't sustain its support for sco. Sun's problems are really caused by poor management decisions and an inability anticipate the future of the server market.
To sgi's credit they moved quickly to identify and fix the problems they were responsible for. Whether sgi's license will be revoked can only be sorted out in court. This is a real serious problem for sco because they don't want to go to court. Given sgi's quick action to sco allegations it seem unlikely. But this is the us court system so it's probably a crap shoot. Ultimately, sco has only one card to play. They must prove they have some right to linux source code. Whether those rights are direct, as in copied code or whether they can "leverage" some rights by asserting claims of "derived" code remains to be proven. If they were hoping to settle this out of court that bet seems to have been a dismal failure for them since it looks like ibm is willing to go the distance.Only a very small number of companies are buying sco licenses while a very large number are continueing to deploy linux. This shows how the vast majority of people see the long term impact on linux.
"You must like the taste of shit because the linux zealots have been spoon feeding you plenty of it lately"
Dear Sir:
Thanks for the fine input.
Now please die.
With loving respect,
Darl "Shake-n-Bake" McBride
...Now we're going to have to use Linux. Get our 2000 programmers to look through the kernel and make improvements, and submit it back to the kernel tree. Ohhh.... The wonderful sound of SCO being screwed together with Unix. This is a major major Good Thing for Linux. Now they will have elite programmers, the kind that stays overnight to bum a few instructions off that frequently used routine, to add that neat implementation of... oh, yeah, and rewrite... oh and... Can't wait to see what happens now.
toresbe
In the event that IBM loses, it would have to pay damages to SCO and... that's it. SCO would be barred from suing Linux vendors or users because that would be "double dipping".
I think you may have this confused with "double jeopardy" in a criminal case.
If you [contractually] rip me off, and so does the guy down the street, I can sue you both. That's what class action lawsuits are all about.
I have written a few lines of the Linux kernel, and since SCO have publicly stated, that they do not accept the GPL, I see no problem in revoking their license. By SCO logic (since UNIX code is in Linux) that also mean their UNIX license has been revoked.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
... he catches the disease in a McDonalds... big $$$ for the estate!
-pyrrho
They are just trolling again, please don't feed the trolls.
/. crowd riled up again or attract a few more ignorant investors doesn't really matter.
.bomb days.
If they send it to a court it might mean something, something tossed out to get the
And no I don't care about the investors who are getting screwed. "It is immoral to let a sucker keep his money." (quoting RAH) Anyone sinking money into what was a penny stock earlier this year without investigating the situation deserves to get shafted just as hard as the idiots who bid Amazon up to a valuation higher than Boeing in the
Democrat delenda est
Take this as completely theoretical. I believe SCO is evil and IBM is going to destroy them. But...
What if SCO is able to revoke IBM's license to sell Unix? The contract is broken. IBM pays $3B. And IBM needs a quick replacement to convert all those AIX installations.
The contract is broken, so IBM no longer has any obligation to protect Unix. And the customers demand all IBM proprietary technology must be in the replacement that the courts have ordered IBM to provide.
IBM cannot use Unix. They need an OS that can replace AIX, meaning it can run their customers' Unix applications. Can this be done with OS/390? OS/400? OS/2? Or will IBM immediately pump all that technology into Linux?
IBM Linux could become suitable for big iron in a very short time.
Not that all that technology must be added to RedHat or SuSE. The big loophole in the GPL is that it only matters if you distribute the binaries, and that "distribute" means customers, and U.S. law uses NDAs to change a customer into a development partner that is legally associated with the developer so the GPL is not relevant. But it would only take one customer to demand a replacement without signing an NDA to force IBM to GPL all this code. Will any company chance their information systems becoming obsolete because they did not sign a contract that does not affect themselves while IBM is offering a big discount?
Let us assume that IBM plays nice and GPLs all changes to the Linux kernel. They could still keep the code that uses those changes proprietary, but the kernel is improved. (And IBM offers Torvalds $1B to oversee the project, and he would take it because it would mean fantastic progress for GPL'd Linux.)
I have no idea how this situation helps SCO. I think it would be the final straw and "Unix is dead" would appear everywhere. I doubt SCO has put any thought into the consequences of their actions, other than they might get $3,000,000,000. I know that much money would make me happy, so maybe that is the only point, and they expect Unix to die anyway.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Where his quote says SCO can revoke licenses. It clearly says only AT&T has that right, and should have been revised if the power was to be transferred to SCO.
Irrevocable means you can't terminate, you can only get injunctive relief (stopping breaching the agreement), otherwise irrevocable would have no separate meaning."
Yahoo seems to know what 'irrevocable' means:
http://suewidemark.netfirms.com/geocities
Radcliffe also noted that the rights sought by Yahoo and other community sites are exactly those that publishers are granted under U.S. copyright law: the right to distribute, reproduce, publicly perform and display, and modify or make a derivative product.
So while members think they are only receiving space to place their intellectual property, the Web sites are acting like publishers.
Getting back to Stowell, he seems to forget that their amended complaint is a tort about contract violations by IBM, not patents, trademarks or copyrights.
From a Mozilla interview: "An important question in the SCO IP sagas has been whether SCO-Caldera owns copyrights for JFS (Journaling File System), RCU (Read, Copy, and Update), NUMA (Non-uniform Memory Access) software, and other AIX code that IBM contributed to the Linux kernel. Simply put these are important code packages that help to make GNU/Linux an enterprise and server grade operating system.
It appears from Blake Stowell's answers to the copyright-related questions that SCO says it does not have copyrights to JFS, RCU, and NUMA software code or to items (a) through (k) of paragraph 108 of SCO's Amended Complaint in the SCO-Caldera v IBM lawsuit.
It also appears from Blake Stowell's answers that SCO does not claim copyright to any of the IBM-written AIX code. All SCO claims copyright to in AIX is that AIX code which is Unix code that was included with System V code that IBM licenses from SCO.
That seems to remove most, if not all, SCO's claims that the Linux kernel contains SCO-copyrighted code. "
The solution is to use the enemy's strength against him. Kind of a problem here since SCO doesn't have any *REAL* strengths, but at least they claim to have strong lawyers.
Lawyers as assets [asses?] should make the RIAA leap to mind. As already noted, the RIAA is eager to sue copyright infringers, even if the IP addresses can be faked. So setting up a number of P2P servers using IP addresses that belong to SCO should be sufficient to get that side moving.
The other side is more of a challenge. SCO claims they want to defend IP, but RIAA doesn't have any and doesn't pretend to. They haven't actually created anything except money for themselves and a lot of mumbles about "defending artistes" somewhere. Somehow the DMCA has to be linked to IP so SCO will attack via that route... Judging by their existing lawsuits, it doesn't have to be a sensible or realistic link.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
cyt0plas is a moron
Let's just all let UNIX die a graceful death and onward with BSD and Linux. SCO is just digging a deeper grave for UNIX each time they open there mouth.. I would have thought they would have finally woke up to the fact that they are running UNIX with each nail they put in the coffin. But then again maybe that's SCO's plan in since day one.
Fuck SCO. What little market share they had remaining is going to dry up as a result of this silliness. They've had plenty of time to make money by actually providing value to their customers. Since they haven't been able to do that, we end up with this last minute arm flailing as the swimmer drowns a nasty death.
Good riddance.
I thought there was a court case forbidding them to spin fud like this in Germany. Their press releases would be so much clearer and better if they included , except for Germany.
The German justice system needs help/remind/fine SCO once more. Germans read international press releases and news too. Sadly, the ACCC in Australia, has not made a determination, yet. As the list of qualifications grows, people will get the message.
Lets face it, even the lawyers in this group are not experts in this matter. Those who are? IBM and SCO. Work for IBM? Work for SCO ::shudders:: come on down. Otherwise lets stop the legal and tech essays at IANAL or IANAEOTI (I am not an expert on this issue) and leave it at that. Because adding a "but" after that is like saying to the guy having a heart atack "No, I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV"
So is it too much to ask that we all just keep our mouths shut on this, having exhauseted everything we know to say about it before the summer began? Can we all stop arm chair Quarterbacking or backseat driving this issue? Think of it this way- when your boss catches you slacking off a little, what's the best way to handle it- do some goof cover up and start trying to look busy, or play it off as though you're not doung anything wrong, maybe even tell him he has got to take a look at this email you got forwarded... You get the point. SCO is just a big bear. Don't feed it. It will go away.
"So I guess you're the scum!"
... at most... at 185 degrees. As soon as its poured and put into cups, it will cool off pretty fast; usually 160-170 within a minute.
What are the only two creatures that scurry when the lights turn on.... cockroaches and trial lawyers.
That aside.
Lets break it down... see, you get it, but to put the responsibility back on the person isn't *profitable* for people like you. But lets break it down anyway.
1) Coffee is hot
2) People like hot coffee
3) People who want coffee to go sometimes want to enjoy their coffee
4) Some people burn easily
5) Some people are stupid
6) Some stupid people burn easily
7) Water when its bubbling is boiling at around 212 degrees
8) Coffee is never boiling after brewing or else it tastes lousy
9) Cold coffee tastes just as bad
10) So does warm coffee
11) So when the coffee is on the stove, its
12) Still you can get burned at that temperature, although most people will get redness
13) Other people will get more serious burns
14) Life sucks sometimes
15) If you get hot coffee in a fragile cup, never put it between your legs.
16) Rule 15 is understood by everyone over the age of 6.
17) Yes, I checked with my kids
18) Stupid people exist
19) Stupid people go to McDonalds
20) Stupid people drink coffee
21) Stupid people do stupid things with coffee, like...put it between their legs
22) If you do stupid stuff, that's the breaks. Life's a bitch. I feel so sorry
23) Sometimes accidents even happen to good, smart people
24) Life is still a bitch
25) McDonalds likes to sell coffee
26) McDonadls sells coffee that appeals to their customers
27) Othewise, customers will go someplace else
28) Shit heppens.
29) Trial lawyers depend on stupid juries to pay large verdicts to "teach McDonalds a lesson"
30) Lawyers like this should all die of cancer
31) And then go to hell
32) Amen
Hope that was plain enough for you, Moron.
To get dates of insider stock sales, go to the SEC site and go to the EDGAR links.
Then, just pop over to the SCO company site for their press releases announcing various and sundry things that can be expected to increase stock prices.
Draw your own conclusions. You should find some. . . interesting coincidences.
Tech Public Policy stuff
That the only thing that could cause the GPL to become invaild is if the court finds that EULAs over all are invalid. It's much more solid than the EULAs that come from the commercial world. Every commercial software house on the planet would be in a world of hurt if a court comes out and says "EULAs are not legal." Has the general concept of an EULA ever been tested in court?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The bottom line here is the old saying, "Perception is Reality." Yes, the Caldera/SCO Group is blowing nothing but very thick smoke. Yes, indemnification is a joke and a non-issue. Yes, it's all about FUD and trying to kill Linux. However...
The fact of the matter is that the world outside of the Open License community can only go by what it reads and hears. And everything they are hearing, from both sides of the fence, just makes them gun shy. It matters little whether or not Caldera/SCO Group have a real claim on any code. Just the idea that they "might" is enough to do some damage to the Open License community and the actual software produced under said licensing. Ranting about it will not help. Being silent will not help. The only way I can see that will counter this is with calm but firm statements of truth by the community when discussing it with those who are outside of the community or in any published forum. Make sure that you have all the ammunition that is available on the subject when going into a situation where you might be confronted with FUD. Calmly explain to those who aren't as knowledgeable as we are about the facts. Don't get hyped up or excited. Don't make it a big deal. And definitely don't over exaggerate Open Licensed softwares capabilities. Think of it as explaining to your young child that there are no monsters under the bed. Be calm, be reassuring, be honest. This will do far more to take the wind out of the FUD than anything else we could do.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Lets do a little math...
XFS or JFS == Derivative Work?
Noooooo... it just works on top of the OS.
NUMA/SMP == Derivative Work?
Arguably... but SCO ain't making the case, IMO.
So lets shuttup about XFS and JFS. I like 'em both. Lets talk more about NUMA and SMP and what all is going on there.
Alterior does not exist in the english language. The word you are looking for is ulterior. Today's grammar lesson brought to you by the letter K.
I didn't think SCO had a director of public relations...
So should we, as a community, make a hostile takeover of SCO stock? Pay bottom dollar, but take as much as possible (just enough to have 51%, or whatever's written in their agreements needed to force it our way) Shut down the company, and/or give their IP to the public, under GPL or some other license?
I know this would be a *massive* undertaking, but it's possible...
somebody tell me if I'm full of s*** or if this *truely* is viable.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
SCO is going to implode, no doubt about it. What happens to that Unix code afterward?
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Just think for a moment if SCO was right and IBM's license is revoked. IBM will have to pay the licence fee again. SCO will use the money to pay for the lawsuit against IBM.
...the moon is made of blue cheese, but until they can prove it I say they are full of ripe turd there as well.
The Register has a sense of humor. I suspect they are exercising it.
"Why would anyone in their right mind sign over a license to anyone that was not revocable?"
Why would anyone, judging from the statements they made in the recent months, have any reason to believe that the people in SCO's management are in their right minds?
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
Have you even read the GPL? Any modifications to the Linux kernel are necessarily GPL'd as well.
Have you even read the GPL? Did you actually read my post to which you are responding? The GPL has a very narrow scope that is easily avoided.
The paragraph in my post just before the one you criticized explains the loophole in the GPL. Yes, modifications to GPL'd software are GPL'd. But the GPL only applies when you distribute software. If you make changes to Apache, and only use it at your company, the software has not been "distributed" and you are not required to provide the source to anybody. If you give or sell it to another company, you must make the source available to that company, but you could contract that they not distribute the software or the source to anybody else. An NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) allows you to share technology without allowing that technology to be distributed to others. A well-written NDA could be used to sell GPL'd code without providing source code.
Most software comes with contracts/licenses that state that it may be used on a certain number of machines for a given time period and may not be shared. All the DRM news is about companies trying to enforce those contracts through technology, even though the technology does not allow for fair-use.
Even the SCO circus is about the same battle. SCO thinks they own the rights to Unix, and they believe that the licenses to sell Unix implies that the licensees must protect Unix. Given that, then any code written to improve Unix cannot be shared with OSes that compete with Unix. Yes, they have warped minds, but it does make sense if you take the correct drugs.
I was writing about a hypothetical future where IBM dumps all of their technology that makes AIX special into a Linux-based OS. It is likely that much of it can be handled by proprietary programs outside the kernel, but anything related to making the kernel robust on 64+ processors would require kernel modifications. Nothing I said implies that IBM has not obeyed the spirit of the GPL so far, but in this hypothetical future situation, they would be giving away much of their private technology.
It is possible for IBM to take Linux and turn it into the next version of AIX. My point was that if they did this, they would want to protect their technology, and there is a way for them to do it. I was not implying that IBM would violate the spirit of the GPL. I was not implying that these events would ever happen, since that requires IBM's Unix license to be revoked and I doubt that even our courts would allow that. IBM sells hardware; the OS is just an extra, so I doubt they would even care, except for the existence of HP and SGI and the other Unix sellers who would not mind reading the source to an OS that included all of IBM's tricks.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
After all the closing comment to the article was "Villain fingers pussycat"!
You don't want to go popping that pinky in your mouth after that!!
A little planning goes a long way...
"You can't take code based on a license you signed, change it a little and then give it away for free (as in the case of XFS from SGI)."
He's saying that SGI got XFS from SCO and then "changed it a little". SGI should sue the guy for slander.
TA
SCO's arguments get curiouser and curiouser. And their lies get bigger. Consider, from the article:
You can't take code based on a license you signed, change it a little and then give it away for free (as in the case of XFS from SGI). If SCO allowed companies to contribute derivative UNIX code to Linux and give it away for free, it would destroy the value of all other versions of UNIX, including SCO's own, not to mention the versions of UNIX made by SUN, HP, IBM, SGI, Sequent, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Siemens, and every other one of the 6,000 other licensees. Why would SCO not have such a provision in their licenses? This line of thinking is absolutely ludicrous.
Hmmm, why would SCO give a license like the aforementioned? Well, of course they would never allow an irrevocable license! Never! And SCO's licenses would not allow you to create anything remotely related to the licensed product without giving it back to SCO along with your firstborn child! But this is all academic because it was not SCO that granted this license in the first place. It was AT&T, and even then there were addendums upon addendums over the years.
As for the thing about XFS, I think it would be wise for SCO to shut their trap on that one. They are publicly claiming XFS is ripped off from code in SysV UNIX? Really?! That would explain why XFS is standard on all SCO and other UNIX implementations, wouldn't it? Oh I forget it is not. I wonder why that is? Could it be that SGI invented XFS themselves and put it in their Irix and Linux products? Nah! All innovation begins and ends with SCO!
Man, they get more gall every time. The fact of the matter is that the current company has created no IP ever. It has built its business on IP it bought from other companies, and which it is trying to extend to include IP it could not begin to pay for. It wants to take by force what it cannot create or buy on its own. HMm.. sounds like their sole customer, Microsoft!