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.'"
Consider that Noorda has been around the tech industry a LONG time, that he has been involved in a lot of companys, he presumably knows who the A-team and B-team players are, and that he appears to dislike Microsoft a little bit.
So - he takes one of the organizations under his control. He fills it with C-team players. He fills (or prompts someone to fill) the C-team with truthful but misleading information about SCO's purported "intellectual property". He advises them to go after the biggest target first.
Then he sits back and watches while SCO leads a hopeless charge against IBM. This has the dual effect of (a) laying down case law _supporting_ the GPL that Microsoft will have a very hard time overturning (b) smoking out various linkages and anti-competitive behaviour on Microsoft's part.
Crazy, but I have a hard time seeing why else SCO is being so incompetent.
I posted this to LWN earlier....
It's important to understand that this really is a war, and SCO has a point, albeit not one that sane people should accept.
The GPL is a truly revolutionary license, it is *designed*, as SCO says, to reduce the financial value of proprietary software. 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.
SCO's argument will likely be that this contravenes Congress's will, by creating a commons under rules other than those established by law.
SCO will say that GPLed code cannot be restricted by export controls, thus violates national security laws.
According to SCO, GPL purports to grant *too much freedom* and therefore, according to this argument, the lesser freedom of the public domain is and should be the appropriate terms by which previously GPLed code should be distributable.
By this reasoning, then, SCO will claim it has every right to use GPL code in its proprietary distributions, but on the other hand, can contend that its own code (or code which IBM created under a license which grants SCO ownership of their code) was never intended (by SCO) to be released under GPL nor public domain.
Now, to fully understand these arguments, you must put yourself in the mindset of a madman. Which, undoubtedly, Darl McBride is. Microsoft and others have surely encouraged his delusional state, and given him the resources he needs to pursue his dreams of world domination, with the understanding that even if SCO has no chance of succeeding in the final analysis, the legal case can and will create FUD to slow the adoption of Linux and buy time for proprietary firms.
If this is a war, SCO is a foot soldier. SCO will die, of course, but that's what foot soldiers are expected to do.
Peace and love, y'all
In defence to IBM's counterclaims to it's lawsuit, SCO have made public a 21 page document, including 156 'answers'.
In the document the lawyers admit some facts submitted by Big Blue when it counterclaimed, but the important things are what it doesn't admit, of course.
It alleges that Linux is an "unathorized version of UNIX that is structured, assembled and designed to be technologically indistinguishable" from it.
I wonder how much the SCO lawyers are being paid.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Why is SCO trying to get GPL code into the public domain? Could they perhaps be trying to cover their tails in case someone were to uncover GPL code in software THEY have been releasing closed source?
Does anyone else get the feeling that SCO is trying to get the Linux Kernel into the public domain so Microsoft can use it as a base for Longhorn? Robert X Cringley had an article about this a few months back.
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
If there's a Bourne Shell, I'll see you there
Free the meme! Viva la revolution!
Or not.
If the GPL is invalid, what other licensings would also be in question?
How about any licensings that violates or circumvents a persons constitutional rights (US)?
Might such a thing also extend to employment contracts?
'SCO is trying to get the judge to declare all works released under the GPL for the last 3 years put into the public domain.'
There were early rumours about Microsoft having a puppeteer-like hand up SCO's collective ass when this whole mess started.
Everything released under the GPL over the last three years, ostensibly some pretty solid code and products, would suddenly be up for grabs without the viral GPL attachment, including the Linux Kernel.
(Linux - GPL) + (Innovative Open Source GPL Products - GPL) + (Microsoft - Innovation) = ?
- billn
If SCO succeeds in getting the GPL voided and all it's code put into public domain (last 3 years??), can I please be the first to sign onto a class action lawsuit, because it affects me. Surely this damages the work of thousands of people, probably in the trillions of dollars, and I would sure enjoy being part of a coalition to bankrupt and crush SCO. SCO execs will never be able to work in business again.
Ironic, isn't it, that it's Windows that's doing more to remove OS software from the realm of competition than the GPL... by making it unprofitable to create a new OS from scratch because of the cost of reverse-engineering deliberately buggy APIs.
Ironic, isn't it, that it's GCC that's being used by all these operating systems, proprietary or otherwise.
Ironic, isn't it, that embedded system makers are picking BSD over Linux (or wishing they had in the case of Linksys) because they don't want to be in the business of developing operating systems... but the GPL is too onerous?
In the unlikely event that all GPL released works become public domain per SCO's request... wouldn't that include SCO's own Linux release, therefore killing whatever ownership of any fragement code they might have had?
I wasn't really sure where to put this but this seemed like a likely enough spot. SCO has been for years, and is still now, developing and destributing software under the GPL have they not? So wouldn't that mean that they AGREED to the terms of the GPL? So now that it's not working in their favor, they are saying that it's unconstitutional? So did it just suddenly occur to them that the GPL is unconstitutional or did they think so when they initially agreed to it's terms? You'd think that they would have looked into it with the same care and attention to detail when they first agreed to it, knowing that their customers where agreeing to the EXACT same terms.
I don't know where exactly I'm going with this but hopefully you get the jist of it.
OK, I can understand why the parent was modded Flamebait, but I think that I could add little something to it, that would clear it a little (with my own spin naturaly)
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.
I think that there will be no more GPL development in the USA, but all those USA companies developing software based on this newly accesible source code (if it really goes to public domain) will have a lot of problems selling it outside USA & USA controlled areas, where the judgement has any legal value.
Think of it like there's couple of thousand developers in USA alone that could block selling some software (Windows perhaps) outside of USA, just based on presumption that it could use GPL licensed source code. Still uncontested validity of the licence in EU, India, Japan, ... would prabably allow for that. I think that one can sell ony so much in USA, but for real growth the company has to go abroad as well (Germany, Japan, France, UK are not small markets.
Judging in favour of SCO theory would put every USA based compay in jeopard when trying to sell the products abroad. While they can sell & develop in USA without problems, they have no way of selling outside USA without threat of copyright litigation. This could mean that even more business would either wither, specialize for USA only, or move (HQ and jobs) outside USA.
Pretty sad prospect, I think.
On the funnier side, can you image Stallman learning French, FSF renaming to some German acronym, and IBM moving HQ to Taiwan, with SCO reigning supreme in the USA. Oh sorry, that was not funny.
Thank you for your time
Anonymous Cowards Unite
For every seller, there's a buyer. The ignorant are the people who are buying now.
If you saw what they were planning and bought at the right time, you'd probably be guilty of insider trading.
It goes on:
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
That's where.
Constitution of the USA
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
Ok, and how does the water supply to an apartment fall under "interstate commerce"? Sure, you can come up with contrived logic like "the pipes may have been manufactured outside the state". Once you do that, there is *nothing* that is off limits to government, because every single activity anybody performs anywhere can have some remote tangential connection to some act of interstate commerce. I have a hard time believing this is what the founding fathers intended.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Where does the water that's going through the water meter come from? Typically, either an aquifer spanning multiple-state...or a river passing through multiple states.
At least in the Southwest, a lot of it's coming from the Colorado river, and if it weren't for the federal water board intervening to stop state greed, there wouldn't be a Colorado river past, say, Colorado. So the federal government has a clear and compelling interest in water conservation.
If you want to make wacky libertarian objections to the commerce clause, you need a much better example.
Right, the biggest problem with SCO's case is that they refuse to mitigate their damages by telling the Linux community what the parts of the code alleged to infringe are.
It is very clear that the minute SCO reveals that information that the code will be yanked and replaced by non infringing code, most likely within hours, days at the outside.
This limits the damages that SCO can claim, since it is very clear that the infringement is not only not willful, it is involuntary. The only reason why the infringement is continuing is because SCO refuses to release that information.
The analogy would be to the distributor of a compilation 'best of hits' CD consisting of a selection from the distributor's archives, being challenged by a record label claiming that it is actually the legitimate owner of the rights to one of the songs on the compilation but refusing to specify which song is in dispute. The distributor of the compilation is then given the choice between not distributing the CD at all and risking a possibly bogus infringement claim. If the distributor is told the song that is in dispute they can easily swap it for a different one, it is the refusal to be specific that is the only reason that the plaintif's claim has standing.
This is not estoppel, but estoppel could also apply. SCO has allowed Linux to be distributed for many years and is in fact a distributor itself. Failure to enforce claims can result in them being lost. In fact this is the same claim that SCO is making against the GPL.
I don't think that the SCO objection holds because it is the behavior of IBM that is at issue, not the FSF. In this case IBM does not appear to have a history of failure to enforce its limited reciprocal rights under the GPL for the simple reason that SCO is the first company to attempt to sue...
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
RMS has been very successful in promoting his obsessive viewpoints on Exactly How Free Software Should Be, and enough people have been willing to go along with it that there's not a significant body of work covered by the GPL. How many of the authors would have been just as satisfied contributing to something with an Artistic License or a Not My Fault license is debatable; once you attach it to GPLed stuff, it tends to get GPLed unless you're very careful about how you build and use interfaces, and that may not be the best _technical_ choice or may be more work than people want to bother with.
There's Free like in Free Speech, and Free like in Free Beer, and then there's Free like in Free Kittens...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks