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SCO Asks IBM To Make SCO's Case For It
acousticiris writes "According to an analysis of Friday's memorandum from SCO on Groklaw: 'If I had to characterize it in a brief sentence or two, the sentence would be that SCO tells the court, "How are we supposed to know what code IBM misappropriated? It's up to them to prove our case for us."...' It's also interesting to note that in Friday's memorandum, footnote 4, SCO uses Eric Raymond's Jargon File entry for FUD to take pot shots at IBM (footnote 4). Evidently, Eric was not pleased, according to the updated entry."
Why does SCO keep getting away with talking nonsense in both press and court?
- when bottomfeeders and IP portfolios mix, one shouldn't be surprised by such actions... - sadder however, is that the U.S. court system allows this case to continue to be played out... - the big warning here is that no future technology endeavours or independent software developers are safe from venture capitalists, investment brokers, and reptiles that have passed state bar exams...
I'm reminded of this Slashdot piece on Microsoft claiming Apple is monopolistic.
Copyright law says you are not allowed to distribute without permission from the copyright holder(s). It does not stipulate what you must do to obtain that permission. That is left at the discretion of those that hold the copyright. If I hold the copyright on material, and I insist that you abide by the terms a license that I dictate before you are legally allowed to distribute *ANY* of the code I wrote, that is my perogative.
My having used the GPL does not cause derivative works to be copyrighted by me... You still own the copyrights on any lines of code that you wrote, but I still *DO* own the copyrights on any lines of code that I wrote as well, and if any of those lines happen to reside within software that you write, if you did not agree to the terms of the GPL, you are violating plain old ordinary copyright law.
End of story.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This case becomes more and more ridiculous. I wonder - could someone with appropriate standing subpoena information regarding SCO's $50 million to see if it really did come from Microsoft? If Microsoft were funding this, would that not be a pretty clear anti-trust matter?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Of course you're right. A ruling that the GPL was unenforceable would be as legally absurd as... a ruling that shrink-wrap EULAs are binding contracts, for instance. It's silly, and frivolous, and unfortunately the way the US Justice system seems to be going it just might happen if someone with enough money and connections wanted it to happen.
Which is why the guy you're responding to is right as well. It wouldn't be a good thing for this case to just be dismissed. All signs are pointing to that being exactly what SCO is trying to do in fact. If the case is dismissed they can keep slinging FUD and drag this circus out even longer. Which is why IBM won't let that happen. The countersuit should prevent it, and they're countersuing on several issues, including the GPL. Even though there is clearly no legitimate grounds to suspect the legal enforceability of the GPL, I still think getting a good solid ruling here that can be cited as precedent could be a great thing, a hedge against a possible future where all the money is lined up against it, where there is no longer anyone like IBM with deep pockets and hordes of lawyers to make the case and spare no expense doing it.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
in theory, sco should be able to tell ibm who did it. all they have to do is check out the copyright notices in the code. for example in: we have:so sco really just needs to identify which sections of code they think ibm help create with sco's "technology" and use the info in the copyright notices to inform ibm which employee has been bad. seriously just do the following:
grep -ir ibm.com
-- john
What must happen in this case (assuming, of course, that some code exists in Linux which was never supposed to be there), is that SCO's code *MUST* be removed from Linux. Whether or not SCO wants it there is irrellevent, since SCO at best only hold copyrights on code that they wrote, they do not have the authority to dictate that their code must be bundled with code that other people hold the copyrights on. Because SCO is not cooperating in this matter, it technically is making *EVERY* single Linux distributor in violation of the GPL. SCO cannot legally distribute Linux without GPL'ing their code, but neither can anyone else (in the strictest legal sense of copyright law). This is unreasonable, and will *NOT* be looked on favorably by an unbiased judge.
What is ironic is that SCO's case against IBM would have actually been a lot stronger if they had admitted to where the code was up front. They still would have been eligible for damages by the merit of their code being misappropriated, just maybe not as much as what they were saying. It is apparent that the only way SCO's case is likely to be worth as much as SCO wants it to be is if SCO keeps the code location secret. What SCO is overlooking is that you aren't supposed to use the evidence itself as a basis for determining the suitable penalty, you have to assess the raw damages in order to determine that. When they try to present this in court, SCO will be extremely lucky if the judge doesn't fine them for wasting the the legal system's time with a frivolous and unsubstantiated case.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Fishing expeditions are not allowed. When you are the plaintiff, you have to have your evidence ready before entering court. Defendant has much more leeway in discovery. Otherwise, as PJ pointed out, you could simply file claims against random people, searching for any infringement anyone might have done. This would be abuse of the court system. It would be like allowing the police to preemptively search random people's homes without reasonable suspicion. Sure, they would find more evidence and prosecute more crimes, but the benefits do not outweigh the consequences.
SCO shouldn't need evidence--everything is already laid out, "infringing" source code is known to all. But they have nothing, so they are abusing discovery to go fishing. IBM, on the other hand, can ask for pretty much anything, since they didn't bring action.
SCO is not claiming that JFS contains sys V code. They are claiming that they own JFS, even though IBM invented it, just because they use it for AIX. Their arguemnt makes no sense. Talk about viral licensing!
Time makes more converts than reason
I don't know how the hell you came up with this analysis but whatever you were smoking at the time must be really good stuff.
1) SCO filed suit against IBM for allegedly contributing "millions of lines" of proprietary SCO code to Linux. Not the other way around.
2) SCO supposedly had a team of people somehow vaguely related to MIT who supposedly ran pattern recognition analysis to identify the purportedly donated code.
3) SCO has shown the code to several hundred people (at last count) who would sign a non-disclosure agreement.
At this point SCO has accused IBM of a civil crime (breaking contractural and licensing agreements), has said they have proof. IBM has said, fine, show us the proof and SCO has come back with, "You know what you did so tell us and the court."
Last time I heard, the burden of proof is on the accuser in both civil and criminal cases. If SCO can not provide evidence of the acts they have accused IBM of doing, *there is no case*. All IBM has done is call SCO's bluff and say, show me the code that you claim violates our agreements. At this point, it is up to SCO to show that a contract or license was broken; not continue spreading FUD about how tainted Linux code is and how IBM gave away their secrets.
And yes I read both the motion from SCO and P.J.'s analysis of it on Groklaw. Did you?
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
It wasn't that SCO quoted or used the Jargon file.
It was that SCO *LINKED TO* the Jargon File.
That notice wasn't there because ESR wanted to state he was upset he'd been quoted. The notice was there because if the judge follows SCO's link, he will see ESR's notice.
At any rate, ESR doesn't have the right to stop SCO from using the Jargon File, and he isn't trying to stop them. He does however have every right to be *annoyed*.
The running theory on Groklaw is that there isn't any code in common (and not from BSD origins) between Linux and SCO's SYSV. So SCO can't perform the comparison on their own. Instead, SCO is claiming that there are similarities between Linux and IBM's AIX. SCO also claims that their magical mystical license gives SCO unprecedented powers to control how IBM uses code that IBM writes. So SCO wants IBM to compare the Linux and AIX codebases and thereby give SCO their "evidence" of misappropriation.
In other words, SCO had no evidence coming into this trial and they are fishing for evidence during discovery.
It all makes one wonder where SCO's "rocket scientists from MIT" have gone, if they ever existed.
. . You show us yours, and then we'll show you .... yours.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The GPL cannot be made to apply to code without to copyright owner's consent, regardless of whether or not non-GPL'd software has contaminated a GPL'd work.
Now that's a interesting issue. Lets say a commerical product outsources some of the coding to another firm. That firm cuts corners and knowingly uses code from a GPL project. Now the first company is in violation of the GPL without knowing about, they are distributing software with GPL code. Can they be made liable and did the outsourcing company accept the terms of the GPL by proxy for the orignal company?
IANAL and I don't know the answer to that. Once the violation is found, the easiest path would be to ripe out the code in violation and do a re-write of those sections. But lets say as well they don't want to do that for some reason and continue to distribute the software while knowingly violating the GPL. Have they accepted the terms of the GPL now? They know it's there and they continue to use it. Would they have to GPL the rest of the tainted software now?
-- Ed Bugg --You have freedom of choice, but not of consequences.--
They claimed it wasn't Microsoft. But they also list Microsoft among their top ten investors (#8) and Vulcan Ventures (Paul Allen, IIRC) as #1. It's on page three, the same page where they talk about confidentiality of the source of funds as among the advantages of their PIPEs.
And even if the 60% of the money that didn't come from Baystar came through RBC, that doesn't mean it didn't start out the day in Redmond.
-- MarkusQ
The person who actually submitted the code is public information from lklm posts. So SCO, assuming that they actually have specific lines of code to claim, already know at least one name involved. Given those names, going up the chain for project leaders and managers and whatnot to see who actually gave the authorization is totally legitimate, but thats not what they're doing.
I was thinking....
In keeping with the Bill Gates as Borg theme, maybe Slashdot could create an icon to represent SCO of a Borg Sphere colored like the current Caldera icon.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
Frankly, I hope not: if you did, then your headline is slanderous, instead of merely biased and deceptive.
Are we reading the same headline, or are you retarded? The headline that says SCO asks IBM to make its case for it? What on earth could possibly be slanderous about that?
Assume, for the moment, that SCO is telling the truth.
Telling the truth about what, exactly? Did you read the article that the post referred to? It made it quite clear from a host of documented evidence that SCO can't stick to the same allegations for more than five minutes at a time.
So I'd be quite happy to assume that SCO was telling the truth, provided you limit that claim to SCO's statement that they believe that they own all unix or unix-style code, regardless of who wrote it.
This belief would make them as idiotic as you clearly are, but I have no difficulty whatsoever believing that they believe it.
"Try SCO is not being reasonable to ask IBM to tell them everyone who's worked on "infinging" code without first identifying infringing code. THERE IS NO INFRINGING CODE, you weasel."
Who is to say?
I mean honestly, where is all the manpower on SCO'S side to come from in order to build a technically well founded case? How many software engineers with a deep UNIX background are available on the market to do the grunt work on looking at every single line of code, compare it to innumerable other versions of source code from various other OSs?
This is not a technical case, it's a business case and it's going to fly for SCO as long as the American legal system allows cases like that to drag on for years without getting into the heart of the matter.
So far we have not seen any well researched, sound and reasonabble technical paper from SCO's side and I very much doubt we are going to get to see anything like that in the foreseeable future.
Instead we are going to see an endless legal battle with turns and twists, delays and lots of FUD all over the place. The recent 50$ USD investment of hard cash into the company will provide for an excellent team of highly paid lawyers and stock brokers.
Qui bono?
I can only see one serious candidate to feel very happy about an ongoing FUD campaign against Linux in particular.
OK, my GIMP skills suck, but I was bored (meaning I had something else to do :-)) and put these together anyhow:
Just different filters; I couldn't decide which one I liked. HTH.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage