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

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.

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!!!

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.

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

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

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: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.