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SCO Letter to Fortune 1500 Now Online
e6003 writes "The text of the extortion letters that SCO sent out in May 2003 to the 1500 largest US companies is now online. Read in all its glory the lies and misconceptions that SCO has about Linux and the kernel development process. Pamela Jones, the proprietor of Groklaw, suggests Linus Torvalds would have a great case for defamation as a result of this letter and subsequent events."
It's called Open Source, idiot.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
Commercial software is built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure software
No. Commercial software is built by people who write software that's sold for money.
I've sold software, so it's commercial software. It was written by a friend and myself over a few weeks worth of late nights.
When it comes to commercial software made by vendors who make a business of writing & selling software, then it's written by the coders who can best pass job interviews.
"carefully selected and screened teams of programmers" my ass.
Well, the thing is that SCO wants to create a parallel between Free and Open Source Software supporters and pirates in the minds of lawmakers and magistrates...
They do this by capitalizing on the fact that FOSS is often distributed free of charge (these people don't want to pay for things!), the fact that FOSS is in some ways a threat on the usual, exploitative way of doing business (they care about other things than profit => they are dangerous / dirty communists / hoping to undermine Capitalism|America|Freedom to squeeze megabucks out of credulous customers), the negative mass-culture image of the word "Hacker", and other things yet... but most of all, ignorance.
Perhaps Linus has a case for defamation, but I would thing that the case for fraud would be much stronger. SCO is trying to get people to pay them licensing fees based on a set of claims that are clearly false. While I am not a lawyer, it would seem to me this is very much fraudulent, and some state's (Utah especially) should take an interest in this.
People are hoping to make a quick buck on speculation and get out before the risky part. Someone is going to get burned, but it won't be the guys holding the stock right now.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
The author was more interested in taking shots at Microsoft apparently.
If you take the word "Linux" and replace it with "Microsoft Windows" in SCO's claims, you will see how ridiculous their claims are about end users being liable for copyright infringment.
Imagine if Microsoft added some copyrighted code to Windows and they didn't license the use of that code from the owner. Would the code owner be able to sue end users of Windows for license payments?
I believe SCO would only be able to go after users if they owned patents on the code and the users were actually using features in the software that used the patented code. Even then, Microsoft, the distributor of Windows, has been sued multiple times for patent infringement (Timeline, EOLAS, InterTrust), so even in patent cases, the distributor tends to be sued, not the users.
If you also compare SCO's claims to other types of copyright infringment, such as plagiarism in a book, magazine or newspaper, or illegal sound samples in a music CD, it is very clear that copyright infringment liability for users doesn't exist. The people who are benefiting financially from the illegal code, the distributors, should be liable.
Even if users were somehow liable, they are guilty of unintentional infringement, which means SCO cannot get punitive damages or attorney fees. And SCO will have a very difficult time proving significant actual damages.
A lawsuit against most Linux-using companies, even if successful, would almost certainly be a net loss for them. I hope most of the companies that SCO is thinking of targeting are smart enough to see this and decide to fight them in court instead of rolling over and paying the protection money.
I must react.
Isn't General Unix Philosophy "Make small simple tools which consist of small sections of code. Every of them do one specific thing, but do it in the best way. And at last but not least combine them thru all kinds of Interproces and other types of communications between them to provide solutions for bigger problems"
Correct me if I'm wrong.
By contrast, much of Linux has been built from contributions by numerous unrelated and unknown software developers, each contributing a small section of code. There is no mechanism inherent in the Linux development process to assure that intellectual property rights, confidentiality or security are protected.
Correct if I am wrong, but doesn't all open source code include the name of the copyright owner? Doesn't this mean that the software developers, at least a high level, are much better known than that of proprietary software in which the pieces of code might have been subcontracted to who knows where, through who knows how many layer of management? Has anyone actually tried to go to say, Microsoft, and ask who exactly wrote this particular ActiveX control that is now responsible for so many security breaches?
And you may further correct me, but I believe that OSS, at least on the commercial side, generally supplies code to at least those who purchase the program, and such code may be investigated for copyright violations. Any violating code has historically been removed. OTOH, may small proprietary software firms has used copyrighted code without permission, and those who get caught generally say 'prove it', which is really hard to do because the code is closed?
As a consequence of Linux's unrestricted authoring process, it is not surprising that Linux distributors do not warrant the legal integrity of the Linux code provided to customers. Therefore legal liability that may arise from the Linux developments process may also rest with the end user.
I would really like to see the evidence that, on average, proprietary software is more restrictive that OSS. After all, there is great pressure on proffessional programers to produce. Under such pressure there must be great incentive to borrow a bit of code here and there. After all, the source is closed, so who will know?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
No matter what is said on /. or other like minded places it should be noted that this whole fiasco has stifled the open source movement in the court of public opinion. FUD is a very good tactic indeed. The common software buyer will see another question mark regarding Linux and that is all that matters. the facts are irrelevant here and the techies are missing this. I am not sure what the answer to this problem is but no matter what your opinion is, the fact is that Linux is being stopped dead in its' tracks. It is in all commercial software makers benefit to keep the FUD regarding Linux rolling in the public press. Does this letter say anything as far as code goes - NO. Does this help the PR machine to keep Linux as a fringe, maybe illegal OS - YES.
Everybody seems to want to fight this by way of technical discussion when it has nothing to do with technical merit at all. SCO stock is still high even with all of the geeks ranting and raving. This will be in the courts for years and SCO et al will be reaping the rewards the whole time.
This is not a Code war, it is a PR war and the geeks are losing. PR is what is needed.
Stay tuned for new sig...
Quoting the letter...
There is no mechanism inherent in the Linux development process to assure that intellectual property rights, confidentiality or security are protected. The Linux process does not prevent inclusion of code that has been stolen outright; or developed by improper use of proprietary methods and concepts.
Wha-? What about, oh, openly distributed source code??
Isn't SCO in the process of trying to protect its own IP right now? Does he expect us to believe that SCO discovered IBM's putative IP transgressions without looking at the Linux source code?
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
The post this responds to shows in utter clarity how eaten up with socialist thought slashdot and its moderators are.
Thats not necessarily a bad thing... Linux is based on socialist concepts. Not only Linux, but public schools and hospitals... and to decry these things as 'evil', simply because they are socialist in theory, is to overlook their true worth.
(note: I'm not saying you said these things were evil... just pointing out that socialism is not as bad/evil as it is made out to be. Totalitarianism on the other hand...)
5468652047616D65
I wouldn't get too worked up over the "socialist thought" on Slashdot. There are wonderful debates over the merits of profit-driven, collectivist, and command economies, but you'll rarely find them here. Many of the self-styled "socialists" among us are just kids who thinks it's cool to rub against the grain of mainstream America and its authority figures. There are certainly some intelligent and thoughtful leftwingers here, but the post you're responding to is just more cookie-cutter drivel attacking an imaginary opponent.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
You are quite right. He's never explicitly said the word communist. In fact, there's only one article that ever links him to that word, and it's not even a direct quote of anything. He does, however, like to wrap his entire lawsuit in the American flag. He likes to claim that Free and Open Source Software will destroy the American economy (I'm getting real tired of that complaint from everyone who has a problem with new technology), and millions of jobs. Everyone will be poor, and all IT jobs will be exported to India, China, and other foreign countries (Darl needs a reality check on this -- it's happening NOW). His retoric is that FOSS developers are communists or socialists, but explicitly avoids saying it because it would be a little too hard to take it seriously. The entire "GPL preempted by the constitution" and "they're violating export control laws" in their legal claims exist for no other reason than to make these developers look like very bad people who are trying to subvert the USA into something bad.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
SCO telling IBM about the software design process is like someone telling a Bedouin about sand or a fish about water.
Worries that Open Source is being painted as communist are generally overblown. Tell the average politican that anything not for profit is socialist, and his first thought is, "My wife is on the board of two not-for-profit hospital funds, I just took a speaking fee from a not-for-profit organization, and it sounds like this niblick thinks I'm some kind of commie.".
Most politicians have heard someone fussing about communism since they started, as for example: "If this city doesn't put up the christmas lights two weeks earlier this year then they're not supporting local retailers and so they're a buncha communists!". Politicians get used to this very early in their careers.
Say, aren't chambers-of-commerce organizations non-profit? And credit unions? And state universities? Didn't the banks claim credit unions were communistic? Did the politicians listen?
Who is John Cabal?
Since the end of the cold war the word "communist" doesn't hold the fear and loathing it used to.
The new trick is to refer to one's political enemies as "spporting terrorists" Unfortunatly that's much more effective and the sad thing is we see that accusation used to justify all sorts of mistreatment that used to be reserved for communists.
We see this in grand form as SCO has pointed out the GPL doesn't exempt the release of source code requirement to embargoed countries. (never mind that it's irrelevent since you can't relase the binaries there in the first place)
IMHO anyone interested in this case should read the George Harrison vs the Chiffon's copyright judgment over the song My Sweet Lord and He's so fine
You can find it here THE "MY SWEET LORD"/"HE'S SO FINE" PLAGIARISM SUIT
First off - I did not pay any attention to this when it was in the news. I am not a beatle fan nor a Chiffon fan. So probably I'm impartial.
To summarize the summary, the judge in the case held that Harrison may have "subconciously" copied the notes. Personally I think the judge had a grudge. I see so little similarity between these songs that noone will convince me there is plagerism here.
Music is a combination of structure, rhythm and lyrics and in this case, there are differences in all three areas.
So the case basically illustrates the nature of an artist being permanently tainted by something he inavertantly hears. The question that must be asked is if a programmer can be permanently tainted by what he sees.
If as is claimed, many of the programmers who worked on Linux also worked on unix then one might be able to argue that some of their ideas were a subconcious memory of the code they saw before and that hense, the new work is really derived.
This would mean that any programmer who takes a job jeopardises his freedom to write programs for as long as he lives. This would mean that any writer who reads might somehow jeopardise his freedom to write since his new works might somehow bear some obscure resemblance to something he might inadvertantly have read perhaps years before.
This issue here is that the programmer has a much harder problem to contend with because not only must he NOT write the same code as he might have seen before, that code must in fact work in a similar or identical fashion as the code that came before.
On the other hand, this hypothesis brings into question the issue of whether SCO's System V code is in fact plagerizm free. Clearly as ESR has demonstrated large portions of System V were derived from BSD and not only this, AT&T blatently removed the attributions from a lot of BSD code and ignored the BSD copyrights when they included it into System V. Effectivly AT&T tried to steal other people's Intellectual Property.
So what SCO has to understand is that it cuts both ways. If SCO has any claim on Linux then it will be perfectly clear that the developers of UNIX who did not work for AT&T have the same claim on SCO's claimed Intellectual Property.
This means that SCO should be vulnerable to law suits where they claim IP in derived works of others and these claims should be enforcable even though the code was released under the BSD license.
If you go to ESR's website and read the analysis of the example code that SCO released, then you can see very clearly that as ESR says, the code in System V was derived from a common ancestor. Since this is the case SCO cannot control it. Authors have the right to control the character of the derived works as well as what it is used for. This right prevents people from perverting the intended purpose of the original work. An example of a pervertion might be to turn Mickey Mouse into a porn star.
Clearly SCO is trying to pervert the intent of the BSD licening with this law suit. The free nature of the software the original Unix developers created is part of their intellectual property. That SCO is attempting to do now what AT&T tried to do years ago is blatently apparent.
Part of the reason AT&T lost is because they tried to steal other people's work and present it as their own (through the removal of the attributions). Not only this, AT&T then tried to prevent the original authors from being able to use their own work. How is this any different here? If any significant amount of the code SCO lays claim to is in fact derived from other people's work, then SCO lays themselves wide open. Perhaps this is why they won't release any "evidence".
Thats not necessarily a bad thing... Linux is based on socialist concepts.
:)
Even I, who categorize myself into the category of people that believe that most communists should probably be summarily shot, acknowledge that free software is actually a working example of functioning and effective socialism. Really. This sort of thing is good for you.
C//