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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!
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.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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.
Just picture Dr. Evil putting his pinky to his mouth and saying it: "Irrevocable? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm." See, it fits perfectly, doesn't it?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
C
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
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.
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!"
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.
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).
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?
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.
> SCO gave them that time.
Really? I thought they were required to give them two months from when they told them what the violations WERE, not from when they claimed that violations EXISTED.
Yes, just like how they caught Enron, WorldCOM and Comcast before it was too late. They are a hindsight organization, if ever there was one.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
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!
SCO did not give them that time. They didn't spell out exactly what the breach was, much less what specific remedies would allow SGI to cure it. The contract requires SCO to specify those things before they can take action. That's the purpose of the waiting period- to give the licensee time to cure his breach and avoid losing his license. The clock can't start until SCO does its part, and by failing to detail the alleged wrongdoing on SGI's (or IBM's) part they've failed to abide by their side of the contract.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
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?
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
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!
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:
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[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
Mod parent's parent up. Mod parent down. Mod this up. Mod children down. And get me a beer while you're at it.
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