Slashdot Mirror
SCO Madness Reigns Supreme
Roblimo knows good, honest Constitutional argumentation when he sees it, and over on NewsForge amplifies SCO's claims that the GPL is unconstitutional.
Dopey Panda writes "Looks like SCO has become just a bit worried about their liabilities for distributing the Linux kernel. Starting November 1 you will have to be a registered SCO customer to be able to access their FTP site. So that leaves just a couple days for you to download your own genuine SCO-approved GPL code!"
And perhaps today's most interesting SCO submission: 1HandClapping writes "In alwayson-network.com, Mark F. Radcliffe (HIAL) writes about a little-reported aspect of the SCO vs IBM case: 'Novell, as part of its sale of the UNIX licenses to SCO, retained the right to require SCO to "amend, supplement, modify or waive any right" under the license agreements (and if SCO did not comply, Novell could exercise those rights itself on SCO's behalf). At IBM's request, Novell employed this right and demanded that SCO waive IBM's purported violations. When SCO did not do so, Novell exercised its right to waive the violations on SCO's behalf. Basically, this defense destroys the core of the SCO case: IBM's violation of its UNIX license with SCO.'"
By now, hasn't SCO contradicted themselves so many times on so many issues they're estoppeled from any course of action whatsoever?
Maybe just a non-lawyer's wishful thinking...
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
i used to say...
SCO has every reason in the world to see the GPL killed. That reason is that they have (most likely) been using GPL'd code in their proprietary code. They want to see the GPL nulled and voided so that when "they win their case", they can, at a later date, keep right on using Linux code in their shitty products.
now, it looks like i need to amend it slightly...
SCO has every reason in the world to see all GPL software made public domain. That reason is that they have (most likely) been using GPL'd code in their proprietary code. They want to see the GPL nulled and voided so that when "they win their case", they can, at a later date, keep right on using Linux code in their shitty products, as well as to prevent being sued into oblivion by a horde of GPL contibutors.
it sucks being right.
I'm telling you - we need to see SCO's "closed source" product code - for there, you will see that they have been going what they have accuesed everyone else of doing.
There is NO other reason for wanting all GPL code made "public domain".
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
McBride is *truly* delusional, IMHO.
As for the attorneys, under the amended agreement with SCO, they get 20% of certain licensing fees and investments, I believe. Which means they probably pocketed $1.6M from Microsoft's most recent licensing payment, and perhaps $10M from the RBC/BayStar investment.
Quite a motivation to continue pursuing a losing case. Even if Boies & Co. were to be disbarred, this is the kind of money that can make them say, "So what."
Peace and love, y'all
- November 1 comes.
- IBM buys one (1) SCO UNIX license.
- IBM downloads the full linux kernel from SCO's website.
- By giving IBM said kernel, SCO has just licensed Linux to IBM under the GPL. This can no longer be argued to be mistake, or something accidentally left around on the website. IBM is now not only someone who has grabbed a file off SCO's website-- which is all that you need for the GPL license to be extended-- they are now a paying customer.
- All the code IBM ever put into linux now falls into two categories.
- Code which IBM had the right to put into linux because they own it.
- Code which IBM has the right to put into linux because SCO has granted them an unfettered license to do so by distributing said code to IBM under the GPL in step 3.
- Thus, SCO's lawsuit against IBM-- in which they allege IBM put code into linux which by right of contract is the property of SCO-- is no longer valid, since whether said code is IBM's or SCO's property, IBM now has the right to distribute it under the GPL anyway. The suit can be thrown out.
Yes, I realize the above is utterly rediculous. I'm pointing this out just to elaborate how rediculous SCO's position is. As if it weren't already obvious to all.Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
No.
The GPL is designed to ensure that there is free software. That is all.
Any quality benefits are purely coincidental. (The Open Source crowd disagree, but that's a different kettle of fish, and a whole other bunch of licenses).
SCO's book value will be either billions of dollars or zero dollars after this case is over, and now we've got law professors calling their case "bizarre and ridiculous" - isn't that the sort of thing SCOX shareholders might find interesting? Yet unless you go into the discussion forums there's not a peep about it on finance.yahoo.com, fool.com... marketwatch.com is the only site I can find that's actually linking to any of these stories.
So I'm throwing out two questions:
Is there anything we can do to make the financial folks more aware of this? Every time a deceitful SCO executive makes another $100,000 stock sale to ignorant traders, Adam Smith does another 360 in his grave.
Is there some better news source I should be using for the stocks I buy? I may sound like I'm mocking the "ignorant traders", but how can I be sure I'm not inadvertently funding some con artist myself?
America is not the world. (Reminded about my earlier gaffe about Canadians, perhaps I should say "the USA is not the world.)
If the GPL is ruled unconstitutional in the USA then the rest of the world simply goes for a dual license. With apologies to all the sane people in the USA, I go for something along the lines of: "GPL applicable outside the USA. No licensing terms available within the USA." We move repositories of GPL stuff out of the USA and the rest of the world gets on with business as usual, apart from possibly a few years setback having to replace key developers. The USA, meanwhile, carries on smoking its crack pipe.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Sure, we all love Hanlon, but his razor is not all-encompassing. I don't believe that explaining SCO's actions as "stupidity" is *sufficient* at all. This isn't a personal attitude, it's just that with all the complications, details and seemingly malpracticed legal maneuvers that there is just too much going on for stupid people to be responsible, and furthermore that there are smart people doing stupid things. Don't think for a minute that they don't have a plan, and that SCO execs aren't just flying off the handle randomly because their legal staff thinks that whatever they want to do is just fine. While we may not be able to accurately speculate what that plan is, it doesn't mean that there isn't one that we'll find out about later.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
I think this is like saying that if I live in the woods I'm freer then if I live in a house with a fenced yard. I can go in any direction I want... I am not 'forced' to go to the door or unlock my gate. I'm free!!!
But then, life is complicated, and the result of having no house and no fence is that, for example, I have no place to put my stuff. I'm not really very free to have stuff, and if I do have a VCR in the woods it's easily stolen. You can think that you are more free. There is a semantic argument and a definition of free where you will be "correct", but in the real world, safety measure do INCREASE freedom if they are the right measure (like have a lockable shelter).
The GPL is a lockable shelter. And yet unlockable. Beautiful.
-pyrrho
Argh, who moded this Insighttful? No, it wouldn't. Assuming there intellectual property is in the Linux kernel, if they had knowningly released it as GPL, it would GPL'd and the whole damn thing would be moot anyway.
SCO's claims are that IBM and SGI put System V code, along with other code they developed, but that according to SCO still belongs to SCO by the terms of the Unix license agreement, were put in the Linux Kernel and the SCO Relased it under the GPL _without know it was there_. And that therefore it was IBM and SGI who released SCO's proprietry IP under the GPL. So it wouldn't be any more legitimately Public Domain that it is GPL'd now. At least if you buy what SCO is saying.
Why?
I know it is probably because they are so certain of their case, and because they don't really want to join the current shit slinging freak-show that is SCO, but. . .
I almost get the impression that IBM is not making a sound for fear that too much pressure on SCO will simply cause them to fold.
When you have a million to one advantage against your enemies, there really isn't any reason to jockey for position.
It is hard enough to keep them in the game, and IBM legal knows as well as anyone else that splattering Boise & Co. in the court room will be some seriously positive publicity.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
SCO and Microsoft aren't the first people to dislike the GNU Public Virus. It's a licensing approach that's very aggressively designed to promote certain ideas about how Free Software should work, and there are alternative viewpoints even among people who *do* like free software. However, SCO does appear to be the first group that's sufficiently well-funded, aggressive, and boneheaded to attack it with a large crash-and-burn lawsuit.
They do have a partial case - the Unix source license terms were always unclear and dodgy in terms of exactly how closely derived something from Unix source had to be covered, and it's possible that IBM or Sequent or SGI slipped close enough to the edge to sue, but the BSD lawsuits pretty much established that reverse-engineered work-almost-alikes are ok, at least with sufficiently careful clean-room techniques, and IBM has more experienced software-issue lawyers than anybody except possibly Microsoft or remotely possibly the US Government (who also suffer from combinations of malice and incompetence.) However, SCO's distribution of Linux 2.4.x weakens their position substantially.
Me? I've probably still got my Usenix "Mentally Contaminated" pin from a few years ago, though Unix source has evolved a bit from the System V Release 2.0p days when I last looked at licensed kernel source, or from the early 90s when I was using licensed user-space code, and it's amazing how much bit-rot can set in...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
More importantly (and more accurately), Eben Moglen "could be thought of" as the FSF's Legal Counsel. Why do you think that anyone cares whether you think RMS's actions are acceptable?
Nobody rammed the GPL down my throat. Some people offered some software under a licence they selected. I chose to use the software. Occasionally I have redistributed this software, under the rights and conditions granted to me by the GPL.
There is a certain art in trolling. You have to stay just the right side of acting like an obnoxious idiot, otherwise you'll just get patronised by people who are cleverer than you are.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Yes, GPL software is freer than public domain, in the sense that the source code can never be taken proprietary (other than by the original author) and redistributed.
This is a very odd thing to assert, and I suspect that the same people who believe this believe that the GPL isn't a contract. No matter what, GPL'd software has restrictions -- the restrictions listed in the GPL. Public domain software has no restrictions whatsoever. Public domain software HAS to be more free.
You seem to think that because someone can take a copy of public domain software and make THE COPY restricted, the software is less free. But that applies only to the copy. For example, take the original work _The Wind in the Willows_, by Kenneth Grahame. The copyright on the original book has expired, and the book is now in the public domain. You decide to make the 95th Anniversary Special Edition of TWITW, based on the original work, and sell it. Because it's in the public domain, you may do this, and you may claim a copyright -- NOT on the Grahame's original TWITW, but on your particular derivative version of it. The original book -- and, more importantly, the text -- though, is and always will be public domain. Your buddy can sell "the Real 95th Anniversary Edition" using the original book; your mother can sell "the Unauthorized Complete 95th Anniversary Edition" using the original book; Darl McBride can sell "the Poorman's Library 95th Anniversary Edition" using the original book -- and each can claim a copyright on each of their versions, but none, not even Darl, can claim a copyright on the original book, ever. How is this not as free as GPL, which forces you to do something in exchange for being able to redistribute the subject code?
Another way to look at it is this. When a copyright on a work expires, the work becomes more free, right? I don't think anyone would argue against that. So when the copyright expires on a GPL'd work, what happens to that work? Does it become less free? If I take, then, a copy of a public domain work, and redistribute it but with the GPL, is my redistributed copy more free than the public domain work I copied?
Only one problem, the 9th and 10th Amendments have been effectively removed from the US Constituition. When was the last time a major case turned on one of them? For if the Courts were t rediscover them they would be forced to strike down most of the Federal Government.
Example: I have the babble box on in the background right now, happen to be on CNNFN and was half listening to a discussion about a new proposed EPA rule requiring apartments to install water meters on each unit in the name of water conservation. The discussion covered a lot of issues, whether it would actually save water, how hard it would be to retrofit existing structures, blah blah. At no point was the most important question asked. What section of the US Constituition granted the Federal Government the power to regulate water supply to dwellings? Since there is no such section, the clear language of those same Amendments mean it HAS no such authority. Most of the EPA, FDA, HUD, etc. etc. are illegal according to the Constituition but violate their edicts and you will go directly to jail, not pass go and never find a lawyer willing to take your 200/hr to use the 9th or 10th Amendment in your defense.
The Constituition uses shockingly clear and direct language, but it still gets ignored.
Amendment 9:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment 10:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Democrat delenda est