NY Times Reveals SCO/Canopy Group Hypocrisy

rjamestaylor writes "The New York Times reports that 'SCO, the company that touched off a computer industry slugfest last spring by suing I.B.M. over its use of Unix software, may find itself embarrassed by a similar claim against a company once related to SCO.' Note that the reporter, John Markoff, ties together Noorda's Canopy Group companies, revealing that: 'Canopy is now SCO's largest shareholder, with two seats on the company's board, and has played an important role, analysts say, in shaping SCO's legal strategy.' He even quotes SCOSource shill Laura Didio as saying, 'All roads lead to Canopy...'"

Comments

I'm sure.

[Locky]

I'm sure Mr. Yarro would love to see Linux survice, just as much as Microsoft would have loved to see Netscape survive.

Bad light

[ultrabot]

Mr. Yarro said: "I know I've been painted in a rough light. I hope that our companies are our legacy and not our lawsuits."

You bet. After a while, nobody will remember Canopy from anything else than their lawsuits. And I also hope that Yarro and friends have a nice little cell in their PMITA prison, preferably with a hugely popular LUG consisting mainly of ethnic guys who work out a lot.

Damn, the whole SCO management could make an entertaining episode of Oz.

Lawsuits as Legacy?

[fuzzybunny]

"Mr. Yarro said: I know I've been painted in a rough light. I hope that our companies are our legacy and not our lawsuits."

It's a bit late for that, isn't it? While on the one hand, the massive publicity of the SCO lawsuits may have had, to some degree, the effect of creating some doubt in the minds of cautious CIOs/CTOs, by associating the word "Linux" with "unresolved, potentially damaging IP issues", the comparative lack of visibility of anything actually produced by SCO, combined with the massive media coverage of their seeming focus on litigation will certainly badly tarnish what's left of that company after this whole thing is over.

Large companies, which are normally fairly conservative on adoption of "new" technologies, will be just as loath to look at anything coming from a company so strongly perceived to be as lawsuit-happy as SCO...

Re:Lawsuits as Legacy?

[_Sprocket_]

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR KDE USERS: The Canopy group is a major part owner of TrollTech...

Depends on how you define "major". In Trolltech's investor's page they claim that the company's shares are distrubuted as follows:

64.7% Employees
8.3% Borland
5.2% Trolltech Foundation
4.3% Orkla ASA
4.3% Northzone Ventures
4.3% Teknoinvest
4.1% Canopy Group
3.4% Previous employees
1.6% SCO Group

So it appears that the Canopy Group controls about 5.7% of available shares. Unless one of these other investors is really a holding company or you think Trolltech is lying.

Re:Lawsuits as Legacy?

[_Sprocket_]

...the comparative lack of visibility of anything actually produced by SCO, combined with the massive media coverage of their seeming focus on litigation will certainly badly tarnish what's left of that company after this whole thing is over.

Large companies, which are normally fairly conservative on adoption of "new" technologies, will be just as loath to look at anything coming from a company so strongly perceived to be as lawsuit-happy as SCO...

I found it kind of sad reading one of the articles covering SCO's latest conference. Within the piece were quotes from resellers expressing relief and gushing about the future of SCO's products. A product line that they, apparently, rely on for their livelihood.

Companys balking at deploying Linux aren't SCO's only suckers.

Re:Lawsuits as Legacy?

[killmenow]

In other words: lawsuits are his companies.

Lawsuits is all Yarro's companies produces for revenue generation. Everything else they produce is just fodder for lawsuits. The real product is the lawsuits.

I'm waiting for a new .1 release, though. The .0 releases are always so messy. The SCO v. IBM lawsuit is a .0 release. Even worse, it's like a Microsoft product with a 4.0 release number attached. The worst of the worst. And it'll crash just as badly.

Why was it sealed?

[PowerBert]

IANAL.

I'm curious as to the circumstances under which a case can be sealed. I thought it would be to protect victims, or national secrets, etc. The article suggests this case would have had a bearing on SCO vs IBM, could SCO get the case sealed for that purpose? If so, how is that legal!!

Re:Why was it sealed?

[rongage]

Typically, especially in a civil suit, a case can be sealed on request of both parties involved. This is typically done when one of the parties (usually some company) doesn't want "damning evidence or testimony" to be made public. This company would most likely propose a settlement offer that is contingent on the case being sealed and that the other party be prohibited from discussing the case publically.

In short, it's to prevent bad publicity from getting out.

Remember the battle-cry of the Slashdot'er - IANAL!!!

Re:Why was it sealed?

[jd142]

Well, the suggestion in the article was that Lineo used an "innocent actor" defense. They admitted that they did infringe but did so innocently and without knowledge that what they were doing was wrong. In other words, "Whoops, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that happened, let me just take that code right out of there."

The reason that is important to seal the records is that *if* there is found to be infringing code in Linux (and it is a big if) that is exactly the defense that IBM and others would use. So if Lineo used the same defense tha IBM and others want to use and got off with a slap on the wrists, knowledge of that could taint the jury and they don't want the jury tainted.

IANAL, but apparently ignorance of the law is then an excuse in civil court?

At least that was the speculation in the article.

Keep you eye of the markets

[Picass0]

SEC will be looking into this soon. The girliest screem on the roller-coaster as it goes down will be Darl...

All roads do not lead to canopy. Yours leads to a federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison.

Ouch

[theolein]

Although I'm curious as to how cases in the US legal system can be sealed, I think this will not have much influence on the case of IBM suing SCO for breaching the GPL, as IBM has already subpoened Canopy records. I think the IBM legal team knows full well that canopy is behind it, and if it turns out that GPL software is in SCO without copyright notices, then Darl and Co are in for a lot of pain.

Fix this issue

[devnullkac]

Ralph Yarro, chief executive of the Canopy Group: "The question is: 'How can we fix this issue and move forward?' " he said. "I'd like to see Linux survive."

How about specifying the violations so they can be corrected in all Linux distributions?

Re:Fix this issue

[CmdrGravy]

he said. "I'd like to see Linux survive."

This kind of statement really pisses me off. It implies that Linux is somehow in danger of not "surviving" which is clearly not the case at all.

Re:Fix this issue

[einhverfr]

How about specifying the violations so they can be corrected in all Linux distributions?

SCO's IP in Linux is about as elusive as Iraq's WMD.

GPL involvment

[geschild]

According to the article, Montavista found GPL-ed code in Lineo's product.

Possible implications:
- the issue who copied from whom has become a lot more important to the SCO court-case
- Lineo broke the GPL and decided to settle. Why? Did Lineo think that the GPL does hold water? Any way you turn this, it looks no good for SCO and their bickering over the GPL being 'invalid'.
- The GPL was the basis for law-suit. Just because it was settled out of court doesn't take anything away from that fact. Another strengthening.
- How is SCO going to deal with IBM's and RedHats quid pro quo: innocent infringement? Innocent infringement means that, although an infringement is aknowlegded by the accused party, the infringement was done unknowingly. In the SCO case it would then become very hard to get any compensation because:
a) damage will be hard to show anyway (it is probably easily provable that SCO lost more customers because of the lawsuit than because of infringment of any kind).
b) if any damage is shown, compensation will be low if at all applicable because it was due to 'innocent infringement'.
c) !!!
d) Loss for SCO/MS because the victory for IBM, SGI and RedHat will be complete.

Re:GPL involvment

[cdrudge]

The GPL was the basis for law-suit. Just because it was settled out of court doesn't take anything away from that fact. Another strengthening.

Ah, but it does. It doesn't set a legal precidence. IBM can't come back and say see, this is what happened here in a very similiar case.

In a past life when I had a part time job as a life guard, I was told by my then employer YMCA that they had always settled drowning lawsuits out of court. Even the ones where obviously not their fault. The reason was that future lawsuits couldn't go back and say the jury awarded the victim's family $x million..we want $x+y million to settle.

Re:GPL involvment

[Rich0]

It may not set precedence in the judicial system in general, but it is a legal document just the same.

If Canopy states that it is their position that the GPL is invalid, the settlement can be dug up, and if it states that Canopy concedes that the GPL is valid, that would probably be admissible in the courtroom. Now, if Red Hat sued MS over the GPL, you couldn't bring out Canopy's admission and use it against MS - but you can use it against SCO.

Now, if a judge ruled that the GPL was valid, then that WOULD set precedence, and you could use it against ANYONE.

The settlement in this prior case is similar to finding a memo documenting that a car manufacturer is willing to tolerate lawsuits of up to $x million for wrongful deaths when the company executive just testified that the company doesn't put a price on lives.

Canopy can't argue in the courts that the GPL is invalid while conceding that it is valid after all.

Now, if the settlement was a standard no-admission-of-wrongdoing settlement it may not make much impact in the case. But the article suggests this is not the case.

Re:GPL involvment

[Greyfox]

So far, not one company that's found to be infringing on the GPL has been inclined to take it to court. I guarantee you that IP lawyers in every IT firm in the USA has looked at the GPL long and hard, and they've all come to the same decision about it. That's why no one's dared take it to court. If a company thought it could just loot the OSS code base wholesale, it'd do so in an instant. Companies and their boards don't have morals, they just exist to make money. Upper management goes through a special operation to remove any hint of a conscience.

IBM's legal department is probably bigger than the entirety of SCO. They employ a lot of really bright lawyers and those guys do their homework. They wouldn't be fighting the fight if they thought they could lose, and I suspect they have several knockout punches which they will unveil at the appropriately embarassing times.

Another example of SCO hypocrisy

[kfg]

This from the termcap file which ESR maintains:

# COPYRIGHTS AND OTHER DELUSIONS
#
# The BSD ancestor of this file had a standard Regents of the University of
# California copyright with dates from 1980 to 1993.
#
# Some information has been merged in from a terminfo file SCO distributes.
# It has an obnoxious boilerplate copyright which I'm ignoring because they
# took so much of the content from the ancestral BSD versions of this file
# and didn't attribute it, thereby violating the BSD Regents' copyright.
#
# Not that anyone should care. However many valid functions copyrights may
# serve, putting one on a termcap/terminfo file with hundreds of anonymous
# contributors makes about as much sense as copyrighting a wall-full of
# graffiti -- it's legally dubious, ethically bogus, and patently ridiculous.
#
# This file deliberately has no copyright. It belongs to no one and everyone.
# If you claim you own it, you will merely succeed in looking like a fool.
# Use it as you like. Use it at your own risk. Copy and redistribute freely.
# There are no guarantees anywhere. Svaha!
#

They've been caught at this many times, most recently in obfuscated slides they showed to the press.

Many of their copyright violations claims come from taking BSD code, stripping the copyright notices from it and adding their own.

This is how they come about "ownership" of code in Linux.

I really don't what what could be lower than stealing code that is free for anybody to "steal" at will.

Unless it's. . .Ohhhhhhhhhhh, plagerism and deliberate commercial fraud based on same?

They seem to have invented hypocrisy to the second power.

Go get 'em Red Hat!

KFG

Re:Another example of SCO hypocrisy

[kfg]

The copyright is only on the photograph, not the grafitti.

Under current law such a photograph might even be held to be in violation of the creator's copyright.

Did you know that if you buy an original work of art all you own is the physical object? Just like a book.

If your home is photographed and those photographs contain images of that art and the photographs are distributed you are in violation of the artists copyright.

Print magazines have to deal with this issue all the time and either obtain written consent from the artist or remove the art before the photographs are taken.

KFG

Coolest story bit: GPL upheld in court/litigation

[23]

Applying my "grep -i $anything_interesting $daily_sco_story" yields:

Facts from the story: Montavista writes software under GPL. Lineo uses said software but removes copyright notices. Montavista sues Lineo over that (copyrights must be retained under the GPL)! Montavista wins (settlement).

How cool is that. And here we have people bitching that something as the GPL won't hold up to any major court challenge.

Smile, people. This is really cool considering that numerous people believe the GPL won't stand a chance in court.

roland

Tell me when.

[imbaczek]

When will SCO sue themselves?

just keep crying...

[spectrokid]

We've been bitchin' on SCO for months and at every story somebody posts "Right NOW is the time to sell your stock...." but the truth is simple for all to see: Canopy is a bunch of lawyers with a BIG trackrecord, so you can bet McBride has his ass covered SEC-wise. SCO was dead in the water before this started and they knew it. So McBride and his buddies will screw over SCO, give all the employees a pink slip and all the customers season tickets to go-fuck-yourself-land. Then they will walk away with so much cash you will wish you did it yourself. And there is nothing we can do about it.

Re:Linux is so bloody boring

[g00set]

Why would anyone care about this stupid server OS? It clearly will never make it onto the desktop in any significant numbers, so who cares except for a few nasty multinational corporations and a few Unix-loving geeks.

Because we all know whoever makes it to the storied and fabled desktop awaits untold riches and power beyond your wildest belief.

Innocent Infringement?

[PolR]

The idea that IBM would use "innocent infringement" as a defense is utter nonsense. This not a defense at all. It sounds like a trap. SCO and Canopy would be very happy to lure IBM in this kind of admission of guilt.

The fact the are willing to embarass themselves to try this kind of long shot is very telling of how desperate they are.

Re:Time for a boycott of Canopy companies?

[Dun Malg]

Corperate law, at leas in the UK, says that the major share holder can by out everyone else at any price they want to and the minor share holders have to sell

1) that's can't be true
2) SCO isn't in the UK anyway
3) even if it was, and they were, what's your point?

Offshore IT

[tiny69]

In a telephone interview, Canopy's chief executive acknowledged that Lineo had infringed on MontaVista's copyrights but blamed the transgression on the work of Hexamark Technologies, an Indian outsourcing company that worked for Lineo.

Here is something that many companies that are pushing all of their IT offshore may not have thought about. The developers in some third world country may either not care about intellectual propertiy infringement issues or copying others work may be legal in that country (i.e. - they don't have laws saying that it is illegal). But that doesn't help the company that has pushed their business offshore to make a quick buck on cheap labor and may very well be setting themselves up for failure. Getting sued because of something the company you out sourced to did will eat up any profits from working with that company.

Lawsuits as Legacy when you killed your products

[solprovider]

SCO has killed Unix-branded Unix. Can you imagine any company willing to buy a license after SCO started suing some of the licensees (IBM, SGI)? The effort to start a new OS from scratch is enormous. (See BeOS.) Any new OS is going to be based on BSD or Linux. (See Apple.)

There will never be a new SystemV-based Unix, which means SCO can never sell another license. And most of the current licensees (not including MS and SUN) paid AT&T in full for perpetual licenses, so there is little revenue from the current licensees.

Lawsuits as a business model is all that SCO has left.