Slashdot Mirror
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."
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
can be found here.
Yeah, that just smacks of credability....
It's called Open Source, idiot.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
Can anyone please mod the letter SCO sent +5 Funny? ...
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
Did you have to link Groklaw? Its not fair to /. the happy fun (para)legal site.
For your information, the text of the letter has been available here for a few months.
The only reason this is news is that its a document attached to the court docket for the December the 5th hearing on the motions to compel discovery.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
... the development process for Linux has differed substantially from the development for other enterprise operating systems
So, they're admitting that it's an enterprise operating system and not a piece of fluff like winXPhome?
Commercial software is built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure software."
Riiiight. Someone better tell Microsoft they've been doing it wrong.
You will notice some grammar errors, but they are SCO's, not Ralle's.
I would've expected that, having driven away all the respectable engineers, SCO would be full of management dweebs who only knew about how to present themselves. But it seems these bozos even slept through English comp classes. Or maybe their spending so much of their money on lawyers that they can't afford competent secretaries.
Would there be any legal basis for suing SCO executives who either sold their stocks or had public comments about the case (read here our good friend Darl) under a civil court of law for damages?
I can't see how this would be out of reach for someone like Linus who has been publicly targeted by SCO.
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.
Even if linux is shown to violate SCO's IP, ar the end users liable? They bought a product that the vendor said was legal, so it would be up to the vendors to sal with the reprocussions, even if they haven;t imdenified their customers, right? Does SCO think that companies this big will fall for this bs. Especially with a broken URL. Btw, why don't the other linux vendfors imdenify their customers. Id doesn't seem like it would actually be any added liability (especially since SCO doens't really stand a chance).
Spell it correctly and it works.
http://www.sco.com/scosource/
about the demand for virgin sacrifices in front if statues of Mr McBride.
Seriously though, Id I'd received that letter I'd have laughed at it, kind of like I laughed at the plumber who tried to charge me 100 for an alleged adjustment to my shower when he fitted a new boiler. No details of the alleged IP infringements, nothing, but that seems to be their game plan and surely it can't stand up in court if their not prepared to disclose what the problem is.
This worries me. Either people are so dumb, or SCO has some ace up its a^Hsleeve.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The submitter:
Pamela Jones, the proprietor of Groklaw, suggests Linus Torvalds would have a great case for defamation as a result of this letter
The article:
Now that Linus has a lawyer, maybe they'll take note and consider if the necessary elements for an action for defamation are now available. They are hard cases to win, particularly for a public figure, so they may not want to go that route
The requirements to file a suit? Yes. A "great case"? Hell no.
He won't get involved any more than he has to. He'd certainly defend himself if sued, but the guy would rather be worrying about the technical stuff. He's not going to get involved, no matter how nasty the other side is.
Of course, I'd like him to, just to crush SCO. But I'm not even sure that Linus has that kind of cash. Last I heard, Linux had given him lots of opportunities and a steady paycheck, but no millionaire-level fortune.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
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.
If you actually read the article instead of seeing "Microsoft" and pouncing on that like a frothing, rabid hamster, you would have understood that Microsoft was the example Groklaw used to explain why the quoted sentence "Commercial software is built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure software." isn't a very strong argument.
kthxbye.
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.
Anyone know if "Darl" is a Nigerian name?
The resemblance is uncanny...
I wonder if the possible slashdotting of SCO's site due to people reading the letter would also be mis-construed as another DDOS attack by the linux community?
a) Linux has been built from contributions by numerous unrelated and unknown software developers
b)Many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers
hhm do you spot the 2 contradictions?
Famous last words:"but...."
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Yeah, this letter just about sums up Darl's stupidity.
Not to plug myself or anything, but I did reg scolawsuit.com, scolicense.com, scoreport.com, and scofiles.com and scofile.com, and pointed them all to a small web site. I also got a few web addresses to do a 90 day countdown thing. It'll be up tomorrow, hopefully.
It's scheduled for April 11, 2005. It will be amazing if SCO can make it long enough to see even the beginning of the IBM and Red Hat trials.
That was really dumb...reading McBride's blackmail letter while drinking a glass of
wine...
Oh well, now I get to see how tough this 20" flat panel really is!
Oh well.
Please check this article from OSDN. Linux kernel developers are well known and actually SCO's definition for commercial software "built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers" describes better the reality of Linux Kernel development.
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
We believe that Linux is, in material part, an unauthorized derivative of UNIX.
Yes, that's exactly what it is, and Mozilla is also an unauthorized derivative of Internet Explorer, being that it's a web browser...
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
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...
Daryl-the-Dingus says those Linux geeks don't even warant their product, but last time I read a EULA, anybody's EULA, it said they promise nothing, owe nothing, warant nothing, and will take responsibility for nothing.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insuficiently advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
The best part is this line, used to describe the kernel developers:
Numerous unrelated and unknown software developers..
I mean, do they think that everybody at Microsoft is releated to each other?
Hmm - come to think of it, this might explain everything - SCO expects all of their employees to be inbred! What they became is the tech equvalent of Deliverance!
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.
... they STOLE the precious... he LIES... nasty tricksey Linux developers... but they're his friends... but they keeps the precious for themselves... but they love Linus... but they stole the precious....
Don't crack users tend to be way too thin due to undereating?
Why use the white pages when you can use the national do not call list?
In their FAQ about buying a license, question 45 recognizes the AT&T-Berkeley settlement:
I am running BSD. Am I required to purchase a license?
No, you do not need to purchase a SCO IP license to run BSD.
Authored by: hanzie on Thursday, November 27 2003 @ 07:59 PM EST
Daryl is not stupid.
Could you have raised SCO's share price 1500% in less than a year. Could you have made SCO profitable? No way. The sheer fact that you're outraged shows you didn't have what it takes to build up a company which had, and still has, nothing.
Could you have kept your face straight when telling that pack of lies, knowing that you were going to rake in millions by just blathering for a year?
After 4 quarters, he's GONE. He's already made it to the third.
McBride has a degree in Computer Science from BYU. He is as conversant with software as his detractors. His understanding of this case and it's personal ramifications are better known to him than anyone else on the planet, groklaw included. He has known longer than anyone else that his claims have absolutely no merit. Good heavens, he made them up. It wouldn't be possible to fabricate the lies SCO has told without knowing the truth.
Daryl McBride will never be in court. He will be in the tropics long before any judgement can affect him. That has been the plan all along. He and the rest of the in-crowd are going to get their stock options and bonuses.
Microsoft is going to foot the legal bill, again, and stall everything as long as they can. Every day of delay is several million in sales worldwide. Sales that are threatened by any viable competition.
This was never SCO vs IBM. This has always been MS vs Linux.
I imagine it went like this: McBride called up Gates and said "I can throw a wrench into Linux for at least a couple of years, mabye forever. It will cost about 20 Million up front and there's absolutely no risk to MS. You'll probably even make money on the scheme itself. Are you in?"
And Daryl was in Seattle three hours later.
The rest is currently unfolding history.
SCO telling IBM about the software design process is like someone telling a Bedouin about sand or a fish about water.
The only difference between the Titanic and SCO is that the Titanic had paying customers.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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".
"We believe that Linux is, in material part, an unauthorized derivative of UNIX."
Wow, that argument sounds allot harsher than the argument that Linux simply contains "some" copyrighted code. They also say "We have evidence that portions of UNIX System V software code have been copied into Linux and that additional other portions of UNIX System V software code have been modified and copied into Linux, seemingly for the purposes of obfuscating their original source."
That is some scary language if you ask me. I mean seriously, what if the courts uphold that if a programmer who used to work on a particular program for another company then works on a similar program (especially if the specific aspects that he coded for both are the same) for another organization is illegal?
To put it another way, if I used to work as an engineer for Company "A" writing C++ compilers and then I leave to work for Company "B" also writing C++ compilers... clearly some of my code for Company Y is going to look similar. In part, its due to the style ive learned over the yewars and in part, its due to what I learned while working for Company "A." If what I learned about writing compilers at Company "A" is classified as a "trade secret" or "technology" that I "invented" while under their employment... then in a legal sense, I can almost make sense of it.
Will anyone shed some light on this type of situation?
-PizaZ
is so clearly black and white. I can now look onto the ways of my friends and peers who have assisted homeless shelters, batterred womens shelters, food-for-cheap units, and the like, and pity them, for they accomplish nothing. I can look on adbusters, the cult surrounding NO LOGO, my local universitie's student newspaper, union, health plan, dental plan, the eff, as completely despotic and fascist orginizations that bring great harm on everyone who is a member of them.
I can look on the entire Debian Linux distrobution and know that they have accomplished nothing, because nothing collectivist has ever done good, and i must actively fear them because they seek to destroy me, as a user.
That the community environment that thekult (direct action cyberpunk orginization) fosterred, and that to an extent still goes on at rantradio(a not-for-profit, non-commercial, independant internet radio station) must be fought against at all costs. That everything that isn't greed driven is immoral, and counterproductive.
[/sarcasm]
Sure, there are socialist international orginizations, countries, states, unions, orginizations, communes, cliques and whathaveyou that have gone bad. I've seen examples of all of the above. but this does not imply that everything that is done in the name of collective productivity, in the name of humanity as a whole, or a section of humanity...FOR the good of everyone instead of a select few, is in vain.
there are arguments to that effect, but they are not the ones you appear to represent.
but even Plato was keen to point out that good states inevidibly corrupt, and the dialectic will eventually 0wn you.
Hell even the idea of a _corporation_ itself is slightly solcialistic...
while some people seem to think that in order to be pro socialism in any or all ways, is to think that you MUST be the same sort of socialist that would support the regeimes that have failed miserably, and furthermore, that these same sort of regeimes follow from any other kind of socialism by default when both of these things are false. just as not all countries have turned out to be war-driven imperialist states attempting to conquor the world and enslave everyone...likewise there are orginizations that are collective in ideal that do not end up turning to disaster.
i tend to see the suspended state, either way, as pretty ideal, in case my examples havn't shown this... socialist infrastructure paves the way for True Capitalist Progress(it's amazing how worker productivity can be when your work-force is not working with broken limbs they cannot fix, and plauge they cannot cure) as one example,
another example a feudal/exploitive/"corpolitical" imaginary fascist prison-state where most people in a country are imprisoned for free hard labour...and then a state within this state building itself up zion style to house those who are interested in life, in the collective goodwill of themselves, their families, and their communities.
no one in the MIDDLE state would complain about the lack of civil liberty, even if freedoms such as the freedoms of religion and press were not extant.
but no doubt even this state within a state idea i have can be corrupted...
i think i've gone on to far and have wanderred from my original intent somewhat. but make no mistake, your black and white fallacy filled way of thinking about the whole order-of-mankind-orginization leaves a sour taste in my mouth, at least.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
If you think this is offtopic, at least read the whole post before you mod it this way.
First of all, most communists fail to realize how pro-Capitalism Marx actually was. Marx was pro-globalism befure this debate even surfaced. So the idea that left-wing slashdotters have much in common with Marx is rather... insane...
Personally I think that Marx made a few fundamental errors in his line of thinking, and communism (esp. Soviet-style communism) will not be the system that replaces capitalism. In many ways, Communism is simply a blend of some capitalism ideals mixed with a very strong neo-feudal state. It has ONLY prospered where it was taking over from agrarian or feudal states and has NEVER successfully supplanted an established capitalist democracy. In fact the African nations that allied themselves with the USSR are today often MORE capitalist and democratic than many of those that allied themseves with the US. Democratic capitalism supplants feudal communism, not the other way around.
There is, however, a point at which Open Source, though certainly not Communist, is certainly a direct challenge to the prevailing notion of Capitalism today. This is, however a difference more subtle than is commonly understood-- that although many if not most players in the Open Source world are Capitalists, they are a different kind of Capitalist than those that run Microsoft, GE, Lucent, etc.
The difference is how intellectual property is seen-- to the early information-age Capitalist, anything to which one can claim proprietary rights is capital, to be conserved and sold. To the open source capitalist, the only true intellectual property is the brain power of the employees-- that source code, etc. is best spent *purchasing community.* Open source thus places ad-hoc community at the center of production instead of the State (Feudalism/Communism) or the Business (Capitalism). This is not limited to source code, but applies to any intellectual endeavor; NASA has experimented with using these methodologies in other ways too, such as clasifying crators on Mars.
Open Source is competitive because it offers two advantages over proprietary development techniques:
1) Greater efficiency-- fewer reinventions of the wheel are needed becase there is a large quantity of work done under compatible licenses.
2) Greater flexibility-- the network of developers can add whatever features the customers need and, regardless of licenses used, benefit more by contributing these additions to the community.
One of the things that SCO has been very public about is how their fight is about intellectual property rights and the future of software development. They are very much correct but are on the wrong side, despite the fact that they might not actually have much of a case.
The letter/artical is interesting in how it again tries to make this point, but tries to make intellectual property rights the issue by comparing themselves with the music industry.
Do I think Microsoft is involved in this case? Indirectly perhaps, but I don't think they have so much as called anyone at SCO to "discuss" the situation. I think it is more likely that the SCO and Microsoft execs see eye to eye enough that they regurgitate eachothers' PR as if it were their own. Again Microsoft is a transitional player-- caught in the IP game, but aware of the value of open source community. So they are SCARED that they will be unable to maintain their current position. Same with SCO.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP