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."

Comments

Re:My problem with SCOs claims against Novell

[grub]

Clear evidence that Novell is in no way competing with SCO's core business.

Of course there is no competition; Novell is a software company whereas SCO is a litigation company.

I love the title.

[cgranade]

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.

Propaganda as well

[Karamchand]

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!)

Biased Reporting?

[c_oflynn]

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!

Re:SCO is a rebel

[El]

Personally, I'm hoping most of the "Where are they now?" stories 5 years from now will contain some mention of a Federal Penitentery.

A very good read, actually

[The One KEA]

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.

Re:A very good read, actually

[Amiga Lover]

My take on this is that (hopefully) just that will happen.

I think in the beginning, SCO looked at code, at what they owned (or thought they did) and saw many similarities and indeed identical parts with the next most popular OS, Linux. Instantly the idea of litigation entered their heads, and they proceeded without checking much further

Now, piece by piece their case has crumbled, and THEY KNOW IT. they can't NOT know it. They can't look at code they said was indicative of copying by linux but was proven to all be open and not know it. They can't look back at their own release of Linux under GPL and not know it. They can't look back at their release of older UNIX code under a BSD license and not know it. These are adults, they're not complete morons in that manner. They thought they had a case they could win, and they went ahead with pursuing it.

Oh they know for sure that their claim to code in Linux is tenuous, they're smart enough to know that. What they're failing to see is that there is a point, when you're losing, that you decide to call it a day, stop, see your mistakes and move on from them having learnt something.

Pressing ahead without fear indeed.

Curiously, what was Darl McBride and co up to BEFORE all this happened? what was his job? what kind of risks/payoffs did he work with before? perhaps that could give insight as to why they're not going "Oh fuck we're screwed, let's stop", but instead going "Oh fuck we're screwed, may as well dig deeper!"

Re:A very good read, actually

[rebeka thomas]

He used to work at Novell.

Darl McBride, Vice President and General Manager of Novell's Extended Networks Group, is responsible for engineering, development, and marketing at the company's Monterey, California site. Since 1988, McBride has held numerous senior management positions within Novell;
other industry experience includes assignments with Texas Instruments' Information Systems Group.

He was involved with selling UNIX IP away from Novell when he was with them. He then shifted piece by piece into a prime position at SCO, and suddenly he has control over IP he's worked with for decades. McBride isn't just a newcomer to all of this who saw a quick buck to be made, I believe he's been planning this for a long, long time. 10 years or more. He's sticking with it because to him it's personal.

Re:A very good read, actually

[darnok]

Your point that "there is a point, when you're losing, that you decide to call it a day..." is normally valid, but I suspect won't apply here.

In this case, SCO's execs have a very clear reason for pushing on, regardless of the apparently diminishing likelihood of a win in court. SCO's share price has gone from about $1 to about $15 (at present), and the SCO execs (a) have a bunch of stock on their hands that's now worth 15x what it was (as others have said, they've been dumping it but they still hold quite a bit), and (b) have employment arrangements in place whereby they get paid a huge bonus if SCO's stock price continues to rise over 4 consecutive quarters. They're now well into their 3rd quarter of rises, so all they have to do is continue pushing for the next 4-5 months and they get their big bonuses. I'd expect the FUD to keep going, possibly getting wilder and sillier, until those bonuses get paid.

If those bonuses are paid in SCO stock, you can bet they'll be dumped fast and the share price will get smashed as a result. All the patsies left holding SCO stock will wonder what's happened...

*That's* the apparent and obvious motivation here, not a desire to do what's "good for the company".

Cavalier attitude

[El]

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.

Re:No Non-compete Clause

[KrispyKringle]

The argument by SCO, to be fair, is that given that their SysV code is in Linux, Novell was distributing SysV code, against the non-compete. But as you said, given also that SCO is not the original SCO, the clause is meaningless. I sorta doubt they'll sue. But you never know.

Re:Great Paper...

[MuParadigm]

DR-DOS.

Re:Where's the shareholder suit?

[darnok]

Logically, that will have to wait until the share price drops to nothing and it surfaces that the SCO execs have in fact dumped their stock for a sizeable chunk of change. It's hard to prove a "pump and dump" is going on when the stock price has risen from $1 or so and is still sitting around $15.

You then have to assume the SCO execs are going to be living somewhere from which the US government can extradite them. My betting is that places like Nth Korea, Niugini, the Dominican Republic and Cuba might be the subject of future travel plans for these guys.

Re:No Non-compete Clause

[SkArcher]

I think they will sue. Its their core business now, remember? They are suing everything and everybody in sight, why stop at Novell. Darl would sue himself if his lawyers could think of a way to profit by it.

I hope this doesnt get resolved out of court.

[miffo.swe]

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.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

"But [SCO] has distributed and continues to distribute Linux under GPL. It has therefore published its supposed trade secrets and copyrighted material, under a license that gives everyone permission to copy, modify, and redistribute. If the GPL means what it says, SCO loses its trade secret lawsuit against IBM, and cannot carry out its threats against users of the Linux kernel."

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.

But it's really GOOD sh*t, Mrs. Crupkie!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

"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?