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OSDL Releases New Paper on SCO's Claims
Ridgelift writes "The Open Source Development Labs have released a paper entitled SCO: Without Fear and Without Research [PDF, HTML version at the FSF] where Eben Moglen debunks SCO's claims to copyright infringement, and also discusses how they contradict themselves by citing that the GPL is both invalid and provides them legal protection. More information at the OSDL site and via an Internet.com article."
For those of you that choose not to RTFA:
"SCO is full of shit. And oh yeah, Darl has got balls of steel."
SCO claim that there's a non compete clause in their contract with Novell, and hence, Novell may not compete with SCO.
Now, I don't see Novell running around like a madman shitting in their own bathwater and suing everyone who says "boo". Clear evidence that Novell is in no way competing with SCO's core business.
Ok Whens the courtdate? i want to be present. I am dead serious. I am tired of SCO, and i want to see them disbanded.
SimonTek
They are making all the right people mad, just like the Sex Pistols and some certain colonists before them (Boston Tea Party anyone?).
The question is, will anyone remember SCO in 5 years to mention them in the same breath as innovators like Samuel Adams and Sid Vicious? Or are they doomed to VH1 "Where are they now" type obscurity. I would hope for the former, because there is no question that what they are doing is important, and needs to be remembered.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
There is nothing in there that hasn't been said on slashdot previously better, with more detail, and more concisely... I don't even know why they bothered writing such a weak rehash of the news.
I was wondering when I'd get my SCO fix for the day.
From Gartner's comments last week, it becomes clear that SCO's claims, press-releases and lawsuits are damaging the adoption of Linux, in the short-term, in corporate environments. I believe that is, partially, what RedHat's case against SCO is about.
So when do we expect that axe to fall? With the IBM case going into Oral arguments next month? Is there not anyway that this process can be accelerated by one of the judges, so that this hideous trainwreck can be put to bed.
Though Slashdot may not have anything to publish if there wan't a faily SCO story.
What, no Groklaw? How am I supposed to get in "Whatever the merits of the case, Groklaw has a really, really stupid name!" post?
The article is a good summary for those of you tuning in late, or if you are perhaps a bit confused by the whole mess. Like the majority of the SCO news of late, it merely rehashes the situation, but it does provide a clearly articulated dissection of SCO's crack-induced legal arguments.
On the count of three, everybody make the obligatory SCO and/or Darl McBride is insane/Satan/Microsoft's toady comments. Ready? 1, 2, . . .
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
OSDL PDF/FSF HTML RPT WRT SCO GPL FUD
John.
The rest of this text is because the Slashdot lameness filter thinks that I am shouting which in fact I am now because the lameness filter is lame.
but it won't shut up SCO. There is money to be made and FUD to be spread.
What better title can you have than that? I mean, it speaks soo deeply of SCO's stratgies. Without Fear seems to stand for SCO's complete lack of healthy fear that keeps one from doing something fscking stupid, and I think that Without Research speaks for itself. It takes talent to come up with a title that grabs one like that. I know it seems silly to put so much focus on a title- I know "you can't judge a book by its cover," but people do it, and it's good to be able to take advantage of that. Kudos to the authors.
#define DRM chmod 000
While I agree with most things said in this paper it's just propaganda as well. There's the header Just The Facts and in the first paragraph under this header you can find the phrase SCO's cavalier attitude toward copyright law - that's not a fact, it's an interpretation. This could well have been just a mistake (Which of course I do not believe either - still you can't call it fact!)
You've got to question a report from the OSDL on the issue... but likely I bet you most people will just bash the SCO.
If the SCO releases a report saying the exact opposite, you'd use it as toilet paper. I'm not sayin the OSDL report is bad, its probably pretty accurate, but... what we need is a good 3rd party to anaylze this issue!
On Newsforge there is an article worth ignoring;
towit:"Lawsuit Drops 'Nuclear Bomb' on Software Industry".
The article needs a bit a research, to bad the author didn't.
A good example of write first, find out later.
SCO: Without Fear and Without Research
Eben Moglen
Monday 24 November 2003
There's a traditional definition of a shyster: a lawyer who, when the law is against him, pounds on the facts; when the facts are against him, pounds on the law; and when both the facts and the law are against him, pounds on the table. The SCO Group's continuing attempts to increase its market value at the expense of free software developers, distributors and users through outlandish legal theories and unsubstantiated factual claims show that the old saying hasn't lost its relevance.
Just The Facts
SCO continues to claim in public statements about its lawsuit against IBM that it can show infringement of its copyrights in Unix Sys V source code by the free software operating system kernel called Linux. But on the one occasion when SCO has publicly shown what it claimed were examples of code from Linux taken from Unix Sys V, its demonstration backfired, showing instead SCO's cavalier attitude toward copyright law and its even greater sloppiness at factual research.
On August 18, 2003, SCO's CEO, Darl McBride, offered a slide presentation of supposed examples of infringing literal copying from Sys V to Linux at a public speech in Las Vegas. Within hours the free software and open source communities had analyzed SCO's supposed best evidence, and the results were not encouraging for those investors and others who hope SCO knows what it is talking about.[1]
In Las Vegas Mr. McBride offered two examples of code from the Linux program that were supposedly copied from Sys V. The first implements the "Berkeley Packet Filter" (BPF) firewall. Indeed, the Linux kernel program contains a BPF implementation, but it is the original work of Linux developer Jay Schulist. Nor did SCO ever hold an ownership interest in the original BPF implementation, which as the very name shows was originally part of BSD Unix, and which was copied, perfectly legally, into SCO's Sys V Unix from BSD. Because the BPF implementations in Sys V and Linux have a common intellectual ancestor and perform the same function, SCO's "pattern-matching" search of the two code bases turned up an apparent example of copying. But SCO didn't do enough research to realize that the work they were claiming was infringed wasn't their own (probably because they had "carelessly" removed the original copyright notice).
Mr. McBride's second example was only slightly less unconvincing. Mr McBride showed several dozen lines of memory allocation code from "Linux," which was identical to code from Sys V. Once again, however, it turned out that SCO had relied on "pattern-matching" in the source code without ascertaining the actual history and copyright status of the work as to which it claimed ownership and infringement. The C code shown in the slides was first incorporated in Unix Version 3, and was written in 1973; it descends from an earlier version published by Donald Knuth in his classic The Art of Computer Programming in 1968. AT&T claimed this code, among other portions of its Unix OS, as infringed by the University of California in the BSD litigation, and was denied a preliminary injunction on the ground that it could not show a likelihood of success on its copyright claim, because it had published the code without copyright notices and therefore, under pre-1976 US copyright law, had put the code in the public domain. In 2002, SCO's predecessor Caldera released this code again under a license that permitted free copying and redistribution. Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) then used the code in the variant of the Linux program for "Trillium" 64-bit architecture computers it was planning to sell but never shipped. In incorporating the code, SGI violated the terms of Caldera's license by erroneously removing Caldera's (incorrect) copyright notice.
Thus SCO's second example was of supposedly impermissible copying of code that was in the public domain to begin with, and which SCO itself had released under a free software license after erroneou
SCO executives should be in court for stock manipulation and fraudulent billings.
Playing nice with those who could hurt them and trying to fund the trials with cash from those who can't even spell class action lawsuit.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
It looks as if SCO really has no other recourse now except to just give up and wither away. They've tried to massage the facts to make their case believable; they've tried to use laws in an unlawful manner to break the GPL; and now that they've been exposed as a sham, what will they do now?
I hope that when a judge actually sits down and bangs his gavel, he'll take one look at SCO's case and throw it out. At this point there's almost no possible way that SCO could produce anything that would make their case believable, IMO.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
They've kept the Open Source world on the defensive. They experience consistent gains in the stock every time they announce a new initiative in their war on Free Software. They've been able to keep this going for far longer than I would have thought possible, and if this gets to trial the potential is there that they will prevail.
Who would have thought litigation was a way of making a living off of Free Software? I don't like what they're doing, but I have to confess my opinion of their strategy has changed. Fortunately, the rabid response they no doubt expected to provoke from the Open Source community hasn't manifested itself; I've been quite impressed with the professionalism and quality of the response as well. Keep posting these stories... we just can't get enough SCO.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
There is no non-compete clause. There is some fairly limited language in regard to Novell not selling or providing monetary incentives to its salespeople with respect to System V, but even that clause is rendered inoperative due to a Change of Control clause that went into effect when Caldera purchased the Unix assets from Old SCO (now Tarantella).
Welcome to the new diocese, Father. These upstanding lads are the choir...
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
I am not sure I follow this argument: Is it obvious (or known) that the code that SCO has distributed contains everything that, say, a RHAT distribution contains? Or could it (in principle) be that SCO's distro (old and unkempt as it is ;-) does not contain the "infringing" pieces while other distributions do?
Thanks.Similarly, has SCO distributed all of IBM's contributions to Linux (thus necessarily including the alleged trade secrets)?
Hey, did I miss some bad news for SCO? SCO stock jumped from 14$ to 16$.
The only thing I liked about SCO was a software app called MERGE, but now you can find the exact same thing called "Win4lin" for linux. Lets you virtualize your System to run 2 OS's at the same time.
This is the only company I could see SCO sue, the developers from NetTraverse used to work at SCO.
BTW, the article is a rehash. Every lawyer says the GPL is enforceable.
You don't find SCO's claims that copyright law supports their claims, but at the same time copyright law does not support the GPL, to be prima facia evidence of a cavalier attitude? Look Darl, you can't have it both ways. That's what the article is trying to point out.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Quoting the paper posted in the original article: "Unless SCO can show that the GPL is
a valid form of permission, and that it has never violated that permission's
terms, it loses the counterclaim, and should be answerable in damages not
only to IBM but to all kernel contributors."
Could this eventually be used to force SCO to pay kernel contributors because SCO was in fact infringing on their GPL'ed code?
Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementia (There is no great genius without a mixture of madness) - Aristotle
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What about the contract dispute between IBM and SCO? If it is shown that IBM incorrectly included derivitive works of unix into linux, then SCO wins. This is where the "millions of lines of code" come from. This is not same as the few hundred lines of "copied code".
Come the revolution, SCO will be irrelevant. This will be sooner than you think. We live in interesting times.
So what's his plan? Personally I think (2) is the answer, and he's sticking around for the money. He must be hoping there will be a buyout, perhaps by Microsoft or someone else of worth, which would raise the value of the stock he's been given.
I thought it was $1499?
This is also being discussed over at Groklaw, which any of you who still are reading Caldera stories should know about by now...
Why hasn't there been a class-action lawsuit initiated by shareholders in re. SCO executives' selling off stock while initiating these lawsuits to attempt to drive up the stock's value? Do they have to wait 'til later, when the price = 0.01 cent?
...that this SCO thing was covered more in popular media (and accurately).
People would take notice if Jay Leno (as much as I hate him) were making jokes about SCO.
A solution to this bs about who owns what unix legacy code/idea is easily solved by replacing the unix kernal with a posix translation api on top of a non-unix kernal (BeOS).
"What code are you saying is infringing?"
"What have ya got?"
I too think that Prof. Moglen's article's title "SCO: Without Fear and Without Research" is a fine title.
But the Slashdot thread title "OSDL Releases New Paper on SCO's Claims" steers the reader's attention to the wrong movement. I find it interesting that in this instance, the chief counsel for the Free Software Foundation is writing about the GNU General Public License (which both predate the Open Source movement by many years) and yet his work is credited to the so-called "Open Source Development Labs" (OSDL).
The Open Source movement stands for a different philosophy than the Free Software movement. Perhaps people who submit articles for Slashdot don't commonly know who Eben Moglen is, what he does, or what movement's interests he represents.
Digital Citizen
Then the junior members of the board will stage a mutiny and send the good ship SCO back to port.
[For those who are scratching their heads we're talking about the classic film The Caine Mutiny.]
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
The vorst thing that could happen was for this to be resolved out of court. A court is a very nive place to get to information else unavaliable, like, for instance, what the fsck did Microsoft get a license for? The arent in the unix business by any mesure and i cant remember one single product that even touches unix coming from MS. In a court this kind of info might be revealed. If its apperent that they did not buy a license but instead just gave money under the table to fuel anti-linux FUD they will be hated, much more than today. Same goes for Sun for that matter.
The money trail into SCO needs to be resolved since there are some suspicious trails leading back towards Redmond.
Even if this is almost thinfoil-hat material Microsoft has pulled worse stunts than this before and under much less pressure than right now. They have a busuness modell that demands increased revenues each year and if the revenue drops even a bit they are down the tube. Id really like to know just how much stock is inside Microsoft and how fast people would sell if it stops gaining value in current pace.
By this i conclude that they dont have to loose any significant portion of the market to be toast. All it takes is a slowdown in their growth.
Wirh longhorn so far ahead and the impossibility for them to release yet another crappy OS again they have to slow linux implementation down until Longhorn is ready. If linux gains to much momentum now it will be almost impossible to stop, almost exactly like when Win95 was introduced and OS/2 came in too late.
HTTP/1.1 400
To what degree is the mainstream media reviewing reports like this recent one from OSDL? If they are, they're certainly not reporting it. It's looking pretty biased to me!
...There's a chance for more "dramatic gains in the SCO stock price"
...The ability to yank one million lines of code out of five million is substantial; Investors seem to believe that SCO's suit has merit
So, to the average investor, SCO's claim that they matched 1 out of 5 million lines of code in Linux is pretty damning evidence.. whereas domain experts like us can easily see through these lies. Hopefully this comes to light in the courts, 'cause people like us are certainly screaming in a vacuum right now!
I'm thinking that the the financial/business media is leaning towards SCO side since SCO represents a more conventional corporate america, and Linux / GPL threatens that model?
I have two little kids. I frequently tell them, "Hey, let's check your diaper for content."
So there you go.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
I expect Linux momentum to accelerate even more once Longhorn is released. The whole DRM focus will just make the OS more difficult to use, and no one really wants it except for some lawyers and publishers. Once word gets out that the next version of Windows will feature more vendor lock-in and more difficulty of use via DRM, both corporations and individual users will be taking more of a look at Linux.
It really is close to a no-brainer.
This is wrong. If Linux contains any formerly trade secreted code at all, that status has been forfeited not because of the GPL, but because it was published in the first place without their permission, and SCO would actually legitimately be entitled to compensation for damages (assuming that their IP was misappopriated in the first place, which I doubt).
What SCO does not have the authority to do is insist that their formerly trade-secret code remain inside of Linux while they want to continue to charge a license fee for it (SCO's obvious strategy being that by not revealing where the infringing code is, the likelihood of it getting removed is almost nil). The GPL expressly prohibits this, and SCO can't do a thing about this matter as long as the GPL remains a legal way of giving copyright permission.
Now the question becomes *WHY* shouldn't the GPL be a valid form of copyright permission? Just because it enforces derivative works to be subject to the same license is not a valid excuse by itself because derivative works would still contain some or all of the original work.
Put in the context of what is more commonly seen as normal copyright, if a person were to want to publish a book containing a portion of another work that was copyrighted by someone else, the second author would still need permission from the first author to publish his own book. The only way he can avoid needing permission is to simply not include the material copyrighted by another.
Bottom line. SCO is out of luck.
can be found in Lewis A. Mettler, Esq.'s blog.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Moderator -1 IDIOT
...against the wall and some will eventually stick. SOMEONE out there still values SCOX ("Gotta get me sommma that!" (tm)), so obviously they haven't gotten the full picture yet.
:P
Sometimes with all the rapid developments in this case, it's easy to forget their past deeds. Seeing it in full context should set a few more alarms off. Maybe. At least no one can say they weren't warned.
Personally, I think this is all just a money game for the execs and brokers. Care to guess who the losers will be?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
This is the last half or so, just leaving out some fluff.
What McBride concluded was that chunks of copyright-protected SCO software code had been dropped into Linux illegally. And SCO blamed IBM, alleging Big Blue had violated the licensing agreement under which it sells AIX, its version of Unix. "We found they were taking part of AIX and giving it away to the open-source community," McBride said in an interview last week. "That's as blatant a foul as you can get on this."
The plot has thickened in recent weeks. In mid-October, SCO completed a $50 million private placement, selling convertible preferred equal to a 17.5% stake to a pair of private investors. A Larkspur, Calif., firm called BayStar Capital invested $20 million while Royal Bank of Canada, a frequent co-investor with BayStar, put in $30 million on behalf of unspecified investors. BayStar's Larry Goldfarb, a frequent investor in technology companies, says his due diligence led him to conclude the stock could be worth "multiples" of the nearly $17 a share his firm paid for its stake.
SCO may have a small market cap, but its fate will affect many other software companies and potentially millions of Linux users. IBM, of course, must fend off the lawsuit. Hewlett-Packard, another potential SCO-lawsuit target, has announced plans to indemnify its own customers who use Linux against any potential litigation, raising questions about its own financial vulnerability. Red Hat, the leading provider of packaged Linux software, has sued SCO, alleging that it has been harmed by SCO's claims that Linux is tainted. And in a new twist, SCO is threatening legal action against Novell, the once powerful networking-software company, over its recently announced agreement to acquire SuSE, a Red Hat rival that dominates Linux distribution in Europe. SCO contends the agreement under which Novell sold the original incarnation of SCO prohibits Novell from competing with SCO in the operating-system business. Novell says there isn't any non-compete agreement in place.
Brian Skiba, an analyst at Deutsche Bank who started coverage of SCO in October with a Strong Buy rating, says the stakes in the SCO drama are nothing less than the future direction of the enterprise-computing business. But the question at the heart of the issue is a simple one: Is Linux tainted by code that has no right to be in there?
While SCO shares have appreciated significantly this year, Skiba thinks there is a chance for more dramatic gains. "At $15, it's a call option," he says. "If they win their $3 billion at trial, that's about $185 a share, or 20% less after Boies gets his share. It's a lottery ticket." If the company loses that suit, the stock could be worth a lot less, maybe zero.
Note that SCO doesn't have to win the IBM litigation outright for the stock to pay off. SCO could see big appreciation if it persuades large companies to sign licenses -- it's asking $699 for every server running Linux. Skiba points out that there are over two million servers running Linux; at $700 each, the potential revenue is well over $1 billion just from existing systems. Another possibility would be for someone -- IBM, say -- to buy the company and put a halt to the litigation.
Skiba's earnings estimates for the company make the stock look cheap on a fundamental basis: He sees earnings of 87 cents a share in the fiscal year that ended Oct. 31 (the numbers will be reported in early December), and $1.84 in fiscal 2004, which would leave the stock at less than 10 times earnings. Skiba places a price target on the stock of $45, or 20 times his projected calendar 2004 earnings estimate of $2.29 a share. An outright win, however, would mean a stock price perhaps four times higher than that -- and an outright loss could slam SCO right into the ground.
Behind the MUSIC THAT SUCKS!!
Now, that's funny.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Please, everyone, THINK before you go throwing your support behind a concept which is, in its most basic form, designed to undermine our fundamental rights and values.
Etc., etc. Wasn't Slashdot's point to link original sources so as to spare us such tripe? Editors: edit!
Haven't any of you guys known people who had lawyers who told them they could get away with doing something stupid? The corporation will absorb the consequences, he and his lawyers will sleaze off somewhere. Probably move to Boca Raton. So what the hell is so new?
I agree with the guys who said that this discussion is dead.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Yeah, I know all the heavy hitters read OSDL. Not!
Did you sell your soul to the devil yet?
As I understand it, kernel contributors would have a difficult time when it comes to showing damage because they charge $0 for that code. IANAL, but it looks like one could win a case against SCO for copyright infringement and get little or no money. If you could win enough money to make it worthwhile wouldn't Linus or RMS be sueing SCO?
If you just want to hurt SCO why not leave it to RedHat and IBM? They seem motivated and capable, and I think they can get the job done. In fact, if you start a copyright lawsuit right now, and even if you could win a big judgement, don't you think IBM and/or RedHat will have bankrupted SCO before you get yours?
Why bother with "Death by a thousand cuts" when it is going to take longer than the scheduled beheading?
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Its important to continually restate the basic facts of the case. SCO is using the "Big Lie" propaganda strategy. To do this you keep saying big lies, the bigger the better. Eventually, some subset of the listeners will come to believe the lie, and another larger subset will come to believe some subset of the lie. In addition, all will be cowed. "Best not to risk it" being roughly equal to "you win". This method was perfected by Josef Goebbles (not that I want to trivialize his crimes through comparison to SCO). Of course Goebbles had sufficient control of the media to ensure no confilcting messages or inconvenient facts got in the way. Darl doesn't have that luxury. But the best way to counter the strategy is continual restatement of the facts in a credible manner. This paper should be viewed in that light, and is an excellent contribution to the cause.
"SCO is full of shit. And oh yeah, Darl has got balls of steel."
Pretty much sums up the last 20 SCO press release.
While it's indeed shit, the particulars of the shit in question vary from one voiding to another. And if we're not careful, a piece is likely to stick.
This posting is not about SCO's latest press/anal release. It's about a detailed lab report on SCO's fecal output. And the particulars of the report are very useful for forming a treatment plan - or for arranging a suitable quarantine or form of euthenasia for SCO - to prevent an epidemic.
So let's not just dismiss all SCO suit articles out of hand as redundant, shall we?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You are wrong, it is a fact that SCO has a cavalier attitude toward copyright law. It isn't a scientific fact, but it is still truly factual. Not all facts are scientific. SCO has been recklessly abusing the legal system, I don't see anything unfactual about that. This is in a context where SCO puts a legal paradox in front of a judge, and are just about certain to lose because they both use and deny themselves use of the GPL; that proposition seems to be as factual as it is contradictory. They even claim the GPL is against the US constitution! That is ludicrously true and a fact. It seems very truthful and factual to say that SCO is acting outside the norms of accepted behavior and making arguments which don't make logical sense in addition to trampling on the rights of the open source community and damaging their copyrighted holdings in Linux, AKA they are being 'cavalier'. Facts are not necessarily truths, but the truth is a fact. DEAL WITH IT BUCKO! This is whoop ass factuality!
I recently posted this comment on /.org. I sent in my complaints and got a response from the Attorney General's office. They basically said it was an issue under the jurisdiction of the SEC. How do I explain to them that the actions of SCO are also under their jurisdiction? I am thinking of their violating the GPL. Help me out to get a decent response to the Attorney General's office.
What I really love is how instead of actually trying to stop the Novell/Suse merger, SCO merely puts out a notice saying, "Do it and we'll sue." I guess stopping a merger isn't as profitable as suing the company afterwards.
The liver is evil and must be punished.
As this drags out it becomes more apparent that SCO's only real interest in Linux is to damage it's reputation through the media ... which makes me think more and more that some how M$ are involved some how ...
IIRC, the problem was missing strawberries, not ice cream. The thing that always bothered me was that the reconstruction during the trial was done using sugar or something with fine granularity that in no way related to something really chunky like strawberries, but nobody in the film objected to the obvious mismatch. Just over-analyzing the problem, I suppose.
A good stock scam trumps facts and logic everytime.
Of course, it's just a stock scam. Scox is making this stuff up as they go along. And why not? It works, it works like all hell.
Only one person from the Enron scandle was sentanced to do any time. And Enron hurt a lot more people than scox.
The SEC, FTC, DOJ, or any Attorney General could shut scox down in a heart-beat. Just like Germany did, Germany put an end to scox's scam over there months ago. But the US justice system would rather look the other way while scox insiders laugh at them. Scox insiders are laughing all the way to the bank. And there is nothing the US justice system will do.
Spread the word, not the FUD.
But if the GPL is not a valid and effective copyright permission, by what right is SCO distributing the copyrighted works of Linux's contributors, and the authors of all the other copyrighted software it currently purports to distribute under GPL? IBM's counterclaim against SCO raises that question with respect to IBM's contributions to the Linux kernel. Under GPL section 6, no redistributor of GPL'd code can add any terms to the license; SCO has demanded that parties using the Linux kernel buy an additional license from it, and conform to additional terms. Under GPL section 4, anyone who violates GPL automatically loses the right to distribute the work as to which it is violating. IBM therefore rightly claims that SCO has no permission to distribute the kernel, and is infringing not only its copyrights, but those of all kernel contributors. Unless SCO can show that the GPL is a valid form of permission, and that it has never violated that permission's terms, it loses the counterclaim, and should be answerable in damages not only to IBM but to all kernel contributors. (Copyright (C) Eben Moglen, 2003. Verbatim copying of this article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.) . .. ... ..
.
when, and i mean WHEN, SCO loses this case... i pray to the person/being/spirit of MY choice that every linux kernel developer files a suit against SCO! fuck letting them get bought out by someone (who would, and why?) let them wallow in bankruptcy for all the crap they have spewed. But i must thank them for legal precedent they will bring to the GPL and other such open licences.
- You're not paranoid, they really are after you.
Has anyone actually figured out that this is just an Nigerian scam run by CEOs and Lawyers. The targets are shareholders and companies. The shares will become worthless let the directors and law firm would have got their share - and the directors know it http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Aug/08122003/business/8 3193.asp
In my next incarnation, I hope to come back as a code monkey.
Darl would sue himself if his lawyers could think of a way to profit by it.
1. Call corporate meeting with lawyers
2. Order them to sue you.
3. Another drivel-filled SCO lawsuit is filed.
4. ??
5. Profit!!
See? It's easy! Anyone can do it!
For all you know I might be doing it right now.
TIA!
-- Contradictions only exist in thought - not in reality.
Didn't MS just set up a lab to do research on Linux? That would give them an excuse to purchase licenses from SCO.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
Nor did SCO ever hold an ownership interest in the original BPF implementation, which as the very name shows was originally part of BSD Unix, and which was copied, perfectly legally, into SCO's Sys V Unix from BSD.
Ah, so that's why SCO's considering a suit against BSD.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
How many people here are employed by companies doing software development? How many people here are PAID to develop software? How can any of you, in your right mind, even consider supporting the concept of "free" software?
I spent 35 years of my life making money as a programmer (before returning to the "Hard(ware) side of the Force").
And before that I studied under Bernie Galler. In the same issue of CACM as Djikstra's "GOTO considered Harmful" letter, Bernie lamented the choice of some programmers to charge more than reasonable media, copying, and shipping costs for a copy of some source they wrote. His lament predicted the entire commercialization of software and its resulting inhibitory effects on the advancement of the art.
As an author of custom software applications for clients, my main problem was not competition from free software vendors. It was the lack of freely-reusable source code, which forced me to spend extra time re-inventing a plethora of wheels before "assembling the wagons".
If I had had access to the current results of the open-source movement, I could have been far more valueable to my clients - by completing things more rapidly or building more capable software. Thus I could have charged each customer more and moved to new customers more quickly, establishing a better reputation for productivity.
It is only the commercial software market that has any need to adjust its business models due to "competition" from open-source. This market employs a very small subset of programmers. And they're primarily employed by a few, large companies where most of the profit goes to administrators and investors rather than individual contributors.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
SCO is getting close to the first "put up or shut up" point. .
So what was he saying? That code redistributors should give away their hard work for free out of the goodness of their hearts forever and always? How exactly, do you suppose, our civilization would work if everyone did that? Maybe this Bernie Galler guy would like it in Cuba, but I wouldn't.
It was the lack of freely-reusable source code, which forced me to spend extra time re-inventing a plethora of wheels before "assembling the wagons".
So you want someone to provide you free resources for you to build your company on? Again, this is an unsustainable model for software development! Someone, somewhere, has to pay for your "free wheels". If it were that easy, why doesn't the government give us all "free cars"? After all, that seems to be a big impediment to many people's career aspirations.
It is only the commercial software market that has any need to adjust its business models due to "competition" from open-source.
The competition from open source is not true competition and is therefore unsustainable. The development of so-called "free software" is subsidized by the government and by unethical corporations like IBM (who don't mind stealing other companies IP to support their goals). Once you take away the tax base and the pool of professional programmers who develop this software, it will wither and dry up. of course, by the time that happens, all the remaining proprietary development will be done offshore in places like India and Africa, and Americans will once again be left holding the bag of lost jobs and a lost market.
Again, I have no intention of allowing this to happen and I will back any effort on the part of SCO to stand up for their rights and for Microsoft to stand up for what is right and good about this country, even if it means legislating an end to this communist utopian dream.
They have only sued one party, IBM.
Sure they have been threatening to sue everybody
but so far they have not.
Unfortunately, it's these kind of crappy analyses that keep Linux from ever truly gaining the momentum it deserves.
I remember the strawberry part, but wasn't it strawberry ice-cream? Rosebud!
Guess what, asshole. Open source is going to replace mainstream close source software, and if Bill Gates and his billions can't help it, you sure as hell aren't going to do shit about it.
Fuck you and your notion of keeping a market on life support for the sake of sustaining a few jobs (which is unnecessary, since OS will create more programming/service type jobs than proprietary software.) People are sick and tired of being exploited by companies like Microsoft, they are tired of Microsoft dictating how they can communicate with the rest of the world, they fear the power they can have over them. And OS will more likely than not create MORE programming jobs, because more money will be free for such jobs, those jobs will be in demand. The money won't be sitting in Bill G's bank account, it will be distributed elsewhere.
You have no idea what it is to be an American. Being American is about freedom (well, it was before idiots like yourself started voting for shit pieces of legislation), not about supporting anti-competetive corporations just because they may wave a few dollars in front of our faces.
Fuck off and die. You won't get any sympathy from anyone here, most people here despise the DMCA, the Patriot Act, and Microsoft, because all three of these go against the true spirit of American ideals. You can take your $5 bill, I'll take my freedom. Pussy.
Bernie lamented the choice of some programmers to charge more than reasonable media, copying, and shipping costs for a copy of some source they wrote.
So what was he saying? That code redistributors should give away their hard work for free out of the goodness of their hearts forever and always?
Bernie was a professor. I presume that his viewpoint was that of an academic, treating software development as research for publication, not a consumable commodity.
How exactly, do you suppose, our civilization would work if everyone did that?
In the same way that academia has ALWAYS worked: Academics do work for reputation points (much like open-source). Sponsors fund applied research directed at their particular problems while patrons fund basic research for the longer-term benefits it provides. A PARTICULAR patron of basic research doesn't know that the things his PARTICULAR contribution supported will benefit him personally. But DOES know that, on the average, such patronage will result in benefits for him (and others like him).
Remember that writing the original software may be expensive work, but copying it once it is written is nearly free. If the software does enough to pay for itself, its cost is already covered. Copying and giving away any useful portion (that isn't your company's particular buisness advantage) has a large net benefit to the commons and a tiny cost to the contributer.
It was the lack of freely-reusable source code, which forced me to spend extra time re-inventing a plethora of wheels before "assembling the wagons".
So you want someone to provide you free resources for you to build your company on? Again, this is an unsustainable model for software development! Someone, somewhere, has to pay for your "free wheels". If it were that easy, why doesn't the government give us all "free cars"? After all, that seems to be a big impediment to many people's career aspirations.
As I pointed out above, creating additional instances of a piece of software costs almost nothing (unlike creating additional instances of cars). That makes the economic proposition MUCH different.
I would pay for my "free" software by contributing non-mission-specific components that I wrote to the commons. This is a win-win proposition:
- I benefit because the amount of effort I save by incorporating and perhaps tuning, rather than writing, open-source software is FAR greater than the amount I contribute - even if I HADN'T had to write that contribution anyhow to get my job done. I benefit even more if I contribute a fix or enhancement to some maintained package - because it becomes part of the release and I can then upgrade to a later version and incorporate other fixes or enhancements without having to redo my changes.
- Others benefit because they get my contribution, which they otherwise would not have had. My contribution might be small - but with a large number of people making small contributions the commons continues to expand.
As for major packages (like OSes, compilers, and the plethora of other open-source tools), some will be maintained by people who can build a business model around them (i.e. by charging for convenient packaging, support, or customization) or find some other business benefit for doing so (such as being the arbiter of a defacto standard), while others will be built and maintained by academics (for carreer advancement), hobbyists (for fun and recognition), and zealots (for the good feeling of having benefitted mankind and/or influenced history).
There are a plethora of ways to be "paid" for writing software, beyond the simplistic model of taking a cut derived from retail sales.
As to the sustanability of the model: The longer it runs, the greater the benefit/cost ratio. Software contributed to the commons doesn't go away, either with time or when someone "takes" a copy. The benefits go on and on, while the cost of each contribution
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
He stated that M$'s "donation" to SCO was merely a PR investment by M$ to bash Linux.
You know its bad news when someone in the PR industry knows whats up.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
And Boies has voluntarily chosen to associate himself with it... I really find that difficult to understand. He cannot come out of it with credit. Prospective clients are not going to want their names tarnished by association with this mess. There's a good chance that he'll never be able to work again. Why is he doing it?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Keep threatening me, buddy, but that won't stop me from doing whatever it takes to stop people like you from destroying this great nation. I am not afraid of communists and liberals like yourself.
You liberals rally crack me up. You seem almost completely ignorant of the real effect of your support for the concept of "free" software. Lost jobs, stolen intellectual property and the erosion of the fundamental things that makes this country great. Go move back to your university (or Cuba, the same thing really) and come back here when you decide to join the real world where real effort costs real money.
#Feeding a troll and I know better.#
If anyone is the liberal, it's you. Some of us are die hard darwinian capitalists . We accept the market for what it is and move on to make money in ways that makes sense.
You want middle class corporate welfare. In a capitalist society welfare is bad. Remember, reward those that compete smartly. Those who don't, need to die off or re-tool. Your solution to the problem hurts the country (you commie[had to be said]).
Your analogy of the automobile industry is awesome, because back in the day, the automobile industry acted as sco is acting now. Trying to stop henry ford from improving (read: take it to where it was going anyway) upon the system.
-Nuke the moon
You liberals rally crack me up.
And you RINOs are really a scream.
You seem almost completely ignorant of the real effect of your support for the concept of "free" software. Lost jobs, stolen intellectual property and the erosion of the fundamental things that makes this country great. Go move back to your university (or Cuba, the same thing really) and come back here when you decide to join the real world where real effort costs real money.
Clue-by-four time:
I haven't been in college since shortly after the vietnam war.
I've been a multi-millionaire through my own and my corporation's efforts. And busted back to a multi-thousandaire through government economic mismanagement and managerial incompetence.
I've been around since the Libertarian Party was the Society for Individual Liberty and a splinter not yet split off the Republican party.
And I've been described as "to the right of Attila the Hun" - with some justification, I might add.
But you need to learn a few things:
- Corporations are a collective.
- Private property is a formalization of a fundamental animal drive - but "Intellectual Property" is strictly a creation of government. It was tolerated by this country's founders only under strict time limits, in the hope that it would produce more benefit to the masses of citizens than it did harm.
- The things that made this country great included explicit violation of government attempts to enforce long-term monopolies on techniques of production and the destruction of perpetual institutions to sequester wealth and land far beyond the lifetime of their creators and owners.
- In political debate, "Intellectual Property" is a fancy buzzword to convince conservatives that it's moral to use government force to suppress innovation by the population in favor of subsidizing the economic interests of a small number of monopolists, corrupting Capitalism into Mercantilism. It does this by equating information (which does NOT go away if copied) with physical property (which goes away if taken).
What makes me think you're a college student is your use of the buzzwords of conservativism as magic incantations, without apparent understanding of their internal mechanisms. This is similar to the left-wing fallacy of youth: Ignoring the second-order unintended consequences of their well-meaning feel-good plans (the discovery of which turns many of them conservative as they age and think). But your this case it's ignoring the ENTIRE mechanism underlying the institutions whose names you wave like magic talismans.
If you are an Objectivist, get back to your studies. And if you don't understand how the institutions I'm advocating fit into the economic dreams of Rand, then at least remember the first rules of a free market: No hitting first, no depriving others of their products and other valuables without mutually-agreed payment, no using force to keep people from doing something YOU don't like.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I doubt very much that MS realised this at the time. They benefited from it, sure. Another hardware manufacturer was simply another market that they could & should be compatible with...
Interesting that you would equate left wing with naive snce Libertarian is just another word for someone who is on the left wing, but hasn't thought throught their ideas far enough to realize it yet. That is why most libertarians turn into hippies as they age.
PFFFT!! I LOVE IT! A fucking liberal who is EVEN DUMBER than the usual liberal! You are so smitten with your idiotarian liberal concept of "free software" that you are blind to the fact that the proprietary software model DWARFS the open source one in sheer profit potential. How stupid does one idiotic "libertarian" (ie: a leftie pinko who hasn't realized it yet) have to be to ignore a trillion-dollar market for one that barely supports any profitable companies at all. You guys all crack me up, and you have confirmed once again that slashdot is the home of super naive "libertarians" who wouldn't know a statist if one were staring back at them in the mirror (hint: look a little closer next time).
What do you expect? The guy admits he was a "millionaire" (without any proof, naturally) but wasn't smart enough to hold onto it. Typical self-delusion of the neo-left, aka: libertarians. Blame the government when it is convienient, or blame society when it is convienient, just NEVER blame yourself when it is obvious where the incompetence actually is.
Big words from Anonymous Cowards.
The guy admits he was a "millionaire" (without any proof, naturally)
Big words from an Anonymous Coward. B-) Take it or leave it. I have nothing to prove.
but wasn't smart enough to hold onto it.
Yep.
I didn't think it would be POSSIBLE for our management to screw it up THAT badly, so I didn't cash it out in the gaps between the lockup periods. Oops! Silly me.
At least I wasn't as "incompetent" as one of my collegues - who cashed out a bunch and "diversified" - into a basket of other tek stocks that ALL crashed, leaving him with a BIG tax bill and no $.
But at least I got half a house out of it. Might still be a millionaire, or close, if the housing market doesn't crash before I cash out of THAT. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
>that you are blind to the fact that the >proprietary software model DWARFS the open >source one in sheer profit potential.
It just occurred to me what generation you are from. Your beliefs are reflected by the RIAA's failing business model. If adapting means short term losses then it must be bad. Here is a word you probably don't understand, "Commodity".
I guess you miss the Clinton days when a good business plan meant including the prefix e-. Boy that must be good, look at all the money that flowed around "e-". Hmmm, where did it all go?
If consistent easy to obtain large quantities of money are important to you, I recommend you stick by the old tried and true sex or drug businesses. No freeloader hippy is going to be able to give that away for free.
-Nuke the moon