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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!
Clinton got away with "it depends on what the meaning of is, is......."
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
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!!"
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.
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.
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?
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
True. However the meaning of 'is' can be ambiguous.
Ok, Jonny, run along and play while big people talk. Jackass.
C
But since when does one paragraph out of a no doubt lengthy contract definitively prove anything?
what?
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
Don't mud wrestle with a pig. Not only will you lose, but the pig will enjoy it! Oh, and that's spelt "Mormon", not "moron"... and counter to popular opinion, there IS a difference!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
...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?"
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.
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!
Actually, both spellings are acceptable. It's like grey/gray. They both mean the same thing.
.unsigged
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.
No, it wouldn't. If the GPL is found to be invalid, then normal copyright law applies. Nothing written under it could be distributed, extended, etc. without express permission from the copyright holder. The GPL doesn't protect code; copyright law does that. The GPL grants freedoms where normal copyright law would restrict them.
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
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.
Actually, no, it wouldn't. In that case, standard copyright law would apply, which says that you can't distribute it, modified or not, without a valid license from the author. Copyright authors could still distribute their software under the GPL (it's a copyright license, so the copyright holder can't violate it). GPL v3 comes out (with a fix for whatever made GPL2 get thrown out), they release their software under GPL3, and all is good.
If needs be, Linux could be re-released under GPLv3 from a country which still accepts the licensing agreement. Then work continues as normal.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
Both are actually considered correct.
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.
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?
- 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.
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
I'm starting to wonder if these 'SCO' topic posts are intended to draw off the ignorant potty-mouths and detract them from the important and interesting discussion threads.
Seems to be working.
A Good Intro to NetBS
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.
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, that's totally wrong. If the GPL is invalidated, the code will not go into the public domain. If an existing license fails, the code goes back to the copyright of each individual author. This means legally no-one could use the code without getting permission from each and every author. If the GPL is invalidated for a given chunk of code, it would become unlicensed, but not public domain. And not unlicensable unless that was a specific condition of the court.
And that would be if the GPL were totally invalidated by this court case, which would stun me. At most, I could see a court decide that the GPL license has been invalidated on a given chunk of kernel code due to abuses. Because, yes, courts periodically make decisions that do not seem to be based in the facts. If the GPL license were invalidated for the kernel due to these alleged abuses, I really doubt that would have any legal consequence to any other GPL licensed product.
As an aside, as others have pointed out, SCO quotes the latest revised version of a license when it is in SCO's favor, but quotes the original AT&T licenses (ignoring later revisions) when that license is in SCO's favor. In a court of law, such logic would not hold up.
And as many lawyers have pointed out, SCO's lawyers would be punished for Barratry if they brought their accusations about the GPL into a court of law. That is, the argument that the GPL is invalid because it tries to superceed the copyright act. That's just silly. If the GPL superceeds the copyright act, then most licenses do so also.
I agree with your statement that we should not be complacent. That just because their arguments are specious -- doesn't mean the court will find against them.
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!
Actually, at that point, it would become governed by copyright law, which is more restrictive (without permission by the owner of the copyright, anyway). So crediting the author is irrelevant, because there is still a copyright violation if the code is stuck into commercial code, or distributed, or much of anything really.
As well, commercial vendors wouldn't necessarily be under the mercy of SCO (because, even IF SCO is found to own certain bits of Linux kernel source code, they don't own the kernel in it's entirety), rather they would be under the mercy of the copyright holders of all of the code in question that they distribute (which could very easily be hundreds of thousands of individuals). I would imagine that most of the other predictions you've made are correct, though.
Dogma: Dead (mostly because your Karma ran it over)
The wisdom of age.
No, no, hackers would be better served in downloading this top secret "Linux" operating system of theirs that they seem to love so much and distributing it to thousands of people across the globe! Maybe even for free?
How cool would that be?
What use is that? I'm sure it's all their homepages.
3 ellipses would be .........
Why not fork?
Remember System Enhancements Associates (SEA). As I remember they took public domain code for the then quite popular and advanced *.arc library package and then sued the recognized original author into financial ruin. It traumatized me and, from what I remember, the then incipient open source community. Later came AT&T's corporate (not the creators of UNIX at Bell Labs) legal action against BSDI and Berkeley. Another trauma. SCO's action are the latest attempt to appropriate the work of others (it does not matter if from Linus Torvalds, IBM, or SGI) via perversions (IMHO) of the legal system. What is at risk is the painfully constructed safeguards(BSD and GNU licences inter alia) truly dedicated and creative people have used to protect their output for the common good. We can not help but be distracted from more productive work. And, this distraction and the diversion of resources to utter waste is the real price society is paying.
HermanCarl
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.
Tell me... where does copyright law restrict freedom?
Or are you referring to the "You need explicit permission from the coypright holder before you are allowed to distribute" phrase?
Because if so... you may be interested to know that restriction still applies to GPL'd software. Any copyrighted work that can be legally protected by copyright law may also have, at the copyright holder's discretion, any reasonable terms or conditions that must be met in order to have legally recognized permission to redistribute. More often than not, these terms are something to the effect of "must obtain written permission from the publisher" or what have you. In GPL'd software, the terms are simply that one agree to the terms of the license.
So the GPL doesn't grant anything that normal copyright law doesn't grant. It only grants an easier path to obtain permission to redistribute than most copyrighted works happen to.
This is why the GPL can't easily be invalidated. If it were, the foundations of copyright itself would be virtually destroyed, as copyright holders would no longer be able to freely dictate terms for obtaining permission to redistribute. All copyright holders everywhere would essentially no longer be in control of their own work, and copyright would become legally meaningless.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yes, can't we just blackhole everything that emanates from Utah? It wouldn't hurt if Utah was physically cordoned-off either. Sure, it might inconvenience some people--Utah being so near to the United Sates and all--but I don't think this is an unreasonable action to take. After all, Utah is the source of mostly awful things: Rosanne, The Osmonds, all that horrid salt, and now SCO.
I'm time traveling, right now
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
Because God forbid you filter so that Caldera topics don't come up on your front page.
There are those of us who are genuinely intrigued by this whole debacle. I'm personally already signed up for the SCO Roadshow, and I find every little bit of information useful here.
So if you don't want to hear about SCO, just don't read the articles. I'm certain there are enough articles kicking around slashdot that you don't absolutely need to read every single SCO-related one.
Karma: Non-Heinous
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
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.)
I quote this from Snopes, which I found in my research before posting this reply. Barbara stated it better than I could have: Only rarely do ridiculous lawsuits result in windfalls for the plaintiff; these cases are almost always either thrown out or the judgement goes for the defendant. Some celebrated "outrageous" suits wherein judgement went for the plaintiff prove upon closer examination to be far less "outrageous" than originally presented in the media. (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).
Linux CAN lose, and defeat in just this one battle would be disasterous.
Remember, IBM is being sued, not "Linux". Linux is a product, not a company nor an organization, and IBM is not a Linux vendor. If SCO won in its case against IBM, there would be a chilling effect on Linux to be sure, but I have a hard time seeing it as "disasterous". 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". SCO would have been awarded damages from IBM already and therefore relieved of its harm. Linux would be fixed based on discovery and court records and life would go on. Granted, it would be an indelible mark on the OS and wide-scale adoption would be hampered, but I don't think it would be disasterous.
Linux, on the other hand, would be utterly destroyed.
I highly doubt it. There's simply too much money invested. Do you honestly think that the hundreds of companies, including goliaths like IBM who has invested billions into Linux, are going to just throw up their hands and say "oh well, we give up"? Of course not! Within WEEKS (yes, WEEKS -- not months nor years) Linux, like a phoenix, would be reborn from its ashes. There's just too much force behind it.
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.
This is very incorrect. First of all, SCO hasn't brought the GPL into the lawsuit, only IBM did in its countersuit. In the very unlikely scenario that the GPL is "invalidated" for some reason, the software doesn't become public domain for Pete's sake!! That's just silly and wrong. The GPL only grants rights, it does not take them away. If the GPL is invalidated, then the GPL'ed software would have no license at all, and people would not be legally allowed do anything at all with it, other than perhaps use it... and I'm not even sure about that.
However, most GPL'ed software says that the license is something along the lines of "version 2 or whatever is the latest version". If "version 2" of the GPL is invalidated, there would soon be a "version 3" that solved whatever grounds "version 2" was invalidated on that would be applied to GPL'ed software.
The
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?
most copyrighted works happen to.
The GPL does "grant" permission to redistribute and spells out exactly how you can. You don not have to "obtain" permission, so this certainly is a grant of a freedom that normal copyright does not have.
Even a copyright that says "you can copy this if you send me your first-born" is a grant of freedom, since in normal copyright you cannot copy even if you do send your first-born.
If you have a piece of GPL code, you can still do everything you can with copyright, for instance you can still ask the original author for permission to copy the work (in case you want to copy it in ways that are not granted by the GPL).
I think the reason so many are confused about the GPL is that for 99% of the users it has no effect (since they are not intending to copy and redistribute the programs). There is also the fact that receiving any large block of legalese usually means somehow that you are getting screwed. And also for the modern person, almost any piece of source code they have ever seen has been public domain, leading them to the conclusion that this is the natural state for visible source code and thus to the conclusion that the GPL is some kind of restriction (while those same people would think a GPL on a printed book would be a grant, since the natural state for a printed book is that you are not allowed to copy it). Oddly enough these same people who complain about the GPL's "restrictions" don't see any problem with the fact that they cannot copy closed source compiled binaries, and would not even complain if they recieved a copy of linux that was missing the source. But somehow the existence of source code that they can read but cannot copy is somehow a huge restriction on their freedom, while the absence of that source code at all is ok.
SEA was the original author. They sued PKWare, authors of PKARK, who allegedly took the original SEA ARC binaries and distributed modified versions of them. The result, interestingly, was SEA became persona-non-grata on the BBSes, Phil Katz rewrote his compressor to come up with PK-ZIP, and in turn cooperated with a public effort to create a free ZIP (InfoZIP, comes with most Linux distributions.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The most notable exception to this being the Linux kernel.
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.
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.
SAMBA is copyrighted software. SCO does not own that copyright and AFAIK has not yet claimed to. However, the GPL allows SCO to redistribute SAMBA, and to charge for it if they like. But SCO think the GPL is invalid... This is going to be so much fun.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The copyright law does not "grant" anything, except for limited fair use exceptions. It does, however, allow for the copyright owner to grant permission. The GPL is an example of permission, granted by the copyright owner. If the GPL is ruled invalid, then no permission to copy the GPL'd work exists, and people who wish to copy it will have to request new licenses from the copyright owner.
It's also what SCO are claiming.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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.
Mod parent's parent up. Mod parent down. Mod this up. Mod children down. And get me a beer while you're at it.
Yeah... ;)
But if you feel a bit nihilistic or generally frustrated with the limitations of your language: this would represent the answer.
"The only clear view is from atop the mountain of our dead selves." - Peter Carroll
Absolutely right about the GPL.
Sorry for the following rant, but I really hate to see the concept of "fair use" twisted backwards. Such logic is all too often used to justify horrendous changes to copyright law.
The copyright law does not "grant" anything, except for limited fair use exceptions.
Copyright law does not grant fair use. Prior to the passage of copyright law there was no restriction on any use. Fair Use is a constraint on the extent and reach of copyright. Copyright protections do not reach into or exist in the area of fair use. In some cases these constraints on copyright exist because it would be unconstitutional for copyright law to attempt to restrict certain activities.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
...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!
However, most GPL'ed software says that the license is something along the lines of "version 2 or whatever is the latest version". If "version 2" of the GPL is invalidated, there would soon be a "version 3" that solved whatever grounds "version 2" was invalidated on that would be applied to GPL'ed software.
Actually, there's an increasing number of Free Software developers (myself among them) who are explicitly unwilling to license our software under Version 3 of the GPL. Go read what RMS has planned for it -- basically it's intended to become much, much more incompatible with non-GPL software licenses.
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
I googled around, and looked on Stallman's site and the GNU site and I couldn't find it... do you have any links?
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
Wait... exchanging C for K? Obviously it must mean that SCO will be claiming that they own KDE as well, now.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
Seriously though, you are way off base regarding the effects of "invalidating the GPL", as numerous other posts have pointed out. Not only that, but it's not clear that SCO's suits against IBM and SGI would in any way affect the validity of the GPL.
This "crisis" is nowhere near as dire as you make out. Even if SCO gets exactly what they want, they will get a dead shell of an OS. The Linux userbase will migrate to a kernel not encumbered by SCO pettiness.
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
See the bits about "closing the ASP loophole":
3 62 02
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/01/16
The concern is that there will be some attempted changes to what is considered "linking" (with regard to creation of derivative works) to increase the viral nature of the GPL in cases where no actual inclusion of the GPL-covered code into the would-be derivative work is done (as where a free ASP-type interface is used by a non-free client). There is of course a legal limit with regard to what can be considered a derivative work, but RMS (or was it Bruce Perens? Not sure which) has mentioned something regarding a potential workaround for that. (Sorry, can't re-find my reference wrt that).
Any change potentially increasing (or otherwise modifying) the viral nature of the GPL is something I'll want to review before making my software subject to it.
Isn't that wishful thinking?
Maybe... but I have a lot of faith in the collective power and drive of the open source community. When properly motivated (and I would say that would be more than enough motivation), I think productive output would be amazing.
Imagine hundreds, maybe thousands, of individual open source developers along with dozens of corporations working collectively toward one common goal: "Fix this kernel as fast as possible!"
It would be a coordination nightmare, but the amount of output would be absolutely stunning.
The
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.
The concept of "double jeopardy" (a criminal concept protected agaisnt by the 5th amendment) has nothing to do with "douple dipping" (a tort concept regarding severally collecting damages).
"Douple dipping" is collecting from multiple sources for the same damages. Many jurisdictions have laws barring double dipping. In those that do not, most judges frown upon the practice and tend to summarily reject such claims.
The
Until they could identify all the original copyright holders, and get them to sign off on version 3 of the GPL they would unable to release the software under it. It would mean large sections of the Linux kernel (mainly drivers) would have to be re-written. As far as I know several very important things like ext2 were written by people who fell off the face of the planet. People have been looking for Remy Card for a long time, he was the original author of most of the ext2 filesystem. Maybe he turned up, but last I knew he was still MIA.
Linus Torvalds intentionally doesn't hold all of the original copyright. He doesn't want to be seen as someone who could be co-opted into "stealing" Linux. If he held all of the original copyright. He could literally sell it to the highest bidder under any licensing agreement they want (the FSF could do the same with Emacs or GCC). Linus could sell the copyright to IBM or Microsoft for a big wad of sweaty money if he so chose under those conditions. To build trust with everyone, he decided that that everybody who wrote some retaining their copyright gave everyone a legal hold on the Linux. That build up a lot of trust. However, it is an anchor when it comes to relicening the Linux kernel.
Mozilla had similar problems when they went to a tri-license, so clearly it can be done. However, there are still parts of Mozilla that haven't been relicensed.
Kirby
That's a pretty big IFF.
Thusfar, they have only demonstrated their lack of ability to distinguish their property from elements contributed by others (BSD).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
In MY WORLD, you typically have to PROVE that you have been harmed before you can extract payment from your intended victims.
Thusfar, all SCO has done is to make unsubstantiated accusations bordering on defamation and attempt to lay claim to other people's source code.
"Unix" has a murky past which makes ANY claim of sole ownership highly dubious.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
...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
Really? So you go into a restaurant and get a coffee that's so hot it burns the skin off of you.... and you think that's reasonable? Forget the fact she spilled it. If she drank the coffee she would 've burned her tongue and mouth so badly she might have been a lot worse off. Look at this clip I found...
The simple accident caused third-degree burns on more than 6 percent of her body. She was treated in a hospital for a week. McDonald's served coffee 20 or so degrees hotter than the industry standard. The woman, Stella Liebeck, underwent numerous skin-graft surgeries as a result of her third-degree coffee burns to her thighs and groin area. She had permanent scarring on more than 16 percent of her body.
McDonald's had already ignored more than 700 similar claims of coffee burns, many involving children. The company even ignored a request from the Shriner's Burn Institute in Cincinnati to turn down its coffee.
So I guess you're the scum! Skin grafts and a week in the hospital care of McDonalds is not reasonable.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
You are right, "double dipping" is not the same as "double jeopardy". That's why they have different names. :)
Double dipping is attempting to collect from multiple parties for the same damages. In many places its not allowed and most others it is seriously frowned upon as being unfair.
This is an example of double dipping. Two people together do $500 worth of damage to my property during the same act. Double dipping is if I sue each of them severally and attempt to collect $500 worth of damages from each (for a total of $1000).
SCO has already said that IBM's alleged infractions have caused them $1 billion in damages. If IBM pays up, they've been compensated for those damages and can not seek to be compensated again from others for those same damages. That is double dipping and would be considered "unfair" in the court of equity.
The
Mod parent funny!
Tell me more, tell me more
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
Personally, I say buggers up to that. There's other licenses that require the publishing of any modiications period, use one of those if thats what you're after.
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. "
Since zero work or communication is needed to "obtain" the right to redistribute the source, it can be considered a gift or grant by the GPL. Another way to look at it is that somebody who has zero interest in redistributing the source still has the rights to do so. If in fact there was some "work" required to "obtain" these rights, then the person with zero interest in using these rights would not have them, right?
Thanks for remembering the name Phil Katz. Is there any authorative thread to read up and to bring it into context with the SCO farce. I admit having never researched it and having gotten my info via disjointed BBS postings. It was definitely before general public access to the Internet. Without much hope I will try the search engines on Phil Katz and SEA. It is this potential for fruitful interaction that makes Slashdot valuable and way compensates for the many inane postings.
HermanCarl
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.
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.
SEA found themselves utterly and totally alienated by the BBS community, especially when they started throwing around shit like "We've trademarked the .ARC extension" and saying anyone writing ANY program that manipulated the .ARC format in ANY way owed them money. SEA insisted the file format was copyrighted.
Phil went on to develop a new, better compression file format (Our loyal friend this many years, ZIP). Not simply different compression but the file structure itself was more robust then .ARC, with deliberate room for future additions. And of course Phil went out of his way to make the format of ZIP archives widely and freely available and anyone could make ZIP-compatible programs without owing him anything.
Remember PKZIP 0.91? BBS sysops the world over rapidly switched to that beta from SEA's ARC format/programs and never looked back. ARC died a quick and silent death... SEA did not, unfortunately.
Here's the full story...
The computing community the world over lost a good friend when Phil passed away. :(
In the darkness of future past, The magician longs to see. One chants between two worlds, "Fire, walk with me!"
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
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber, baby.
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.
If you needed more more convincing that it's just silly and wrong, that should do it.
The Register has a sense of humor. I suspect they are exercising it.
If you really want to try thinking differently (and more logicaly), try Latin or Greek.
"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.
I agree...
Authors are free to use whatever license they choose and I am free to not use their software. That said, I find the GPL hypocritical. "This is Free Software, subject to the following conditions.".
It seems to be working, but the BSD license seems to be working too (Before anyone says BSD is dying, consider that things like Apache use a BSD-like license).
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
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
If the GPL would be invalidated all code would be protected by copyright (which is the reason fsf recommends you to turn over the copyright to them, since they got the resources to protect the copyright in case of violation - not really needed if your'e one of the big guys, i.e. IBM, etc). the GPL would be rewritten, all code would be placed under the new lcence and it would all be dandy again.
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
From the GPL itself:
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation. So, if they specify a version, you could go with the new v3. If they don't specify a version, you can still go with v3. Perhaps a program could say "only v2", but I personally haven't seen one do so.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
I've read the GPL, the LGPL, and the COPYING file of the Linux source carefully before. It's pretty clear you've never bothered to read the one for Linux.
Follow the instructions in my message. Specifically, read the message in COPYING from the linux source tree. You would then see a program that says only v2.
From the /usr/src/linux/COPYING, second paragraph:
Kirby
With the GPL, you don't need to obtain permission from the copyright holder to distribute; you simply need to agree to the terms of the license. It is more free in that way; you are assumed to have permission as long as you adhere to the conditions set forth.
I stand corrected. It happens sometimes :)
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
They have one.
But he is doing a piss-poor job of it.
Their "public relations" have been flushed down the toilet, heading for the sewage processing plant.
SCO has given themselves absolutely no future current (or recently current) customers. No one will want to deal with these sleeze bag bunch of liars, cheats and two-faced sons-o-b__ches in the future.
Regards,
Fredrick
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!
I'll have a coffe and two doughnuts.
Uh....
Smoke crack much?
It's under Caldera.
Regardless of whether or not the one they show on the FRONT page is Caldera, it's still a Caldera article. Go ahead. look up. Look wayyyyy up. Now what do you see? OH! A Caldera symbol? Dear God No!
If you had Caldera blocked, this whole troll thread would have been avoided. What a pretty concept.
Karma: Non-Heinous
Thanks letter K! I honestly thought it was alterior all these years. DO'H!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?