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SCO Gives Notice To 6,000 Unix Licensees
inode_buddha writes "This article describes SCO's recent letters to its UNIX licensees, asking them to certify that they '...are not using Unix code in Linux.' It also notes another set of letters '...outlining additional evidence of copyright infringement to a subset of 1,500 global Linux users that SCO first contacted in May about copyright infringement.' There's also a decent breakdown of the company's balance sheet and some quotes from company officials. I hope to see one of those 'other' letters; could anyone post it? SCO better have asbestos underwear." Ask and receive: idiotnot adds "Here's the article from the Sydney Morning Herald. Here is a PDF Copy of the letter." "Yours truly"?
.After almost 2 weeks of no SCO stories, I was begining to delevop a bit of a nervous tic!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
I'm still waiting to actually see the evidence that SCO claims is in the Linux source code. They showed us one example, and if I recall it was mostly comments!
By sending out these clearly fraudulent legal notices-- which at best claim copyright over something which is uncopyrightable, and at worst is an attempt by a third party to claim that it is illegal for people to use the materials owned by the BSD regents under the BSD license in the manner in which the BSD regents intended the BSD license to be used-- has SCO opened itself up to legal action?
SCO has in the past managed to sidestep most allegations of fraud by being horrendously vague. They said that they were owned money but never sent any invoices, sidestepping mail fraud. They tried to present things as if you needed an SCO license to use linux, but if you tried to talk to talk to them, they were actually selling UnixWare licenses and not in the process actually distributing linux to you, sidestepping GPL violations. However, this is entirely non-vague. It seems to me that SCO has stepped over some sort of line here and this is actionable.
I know that the law does not seem to have many consequences for people who send out bad takedown notices, but surely there must be something preventing company A from finding lists of competitor B's customers and sending them takedown notices for using some portion of competitor B's product that company A does not, in fact, own.
At the least, can this be added to the lanham act/ restraint of trade/ libel or whatever countersuits that Redhat and IBM have going? What are the options from here, and what will actually happen?
...and i've been putting unix code into linux. Do they expect people to admit it?
This SCO notification is brought to you by the letters 'U' and 'O' and the numbers '6' and '0'.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Just go and buy off SCO (Thats what SCO wants anyway) for us. Write it off as a tax write off as donation to a good cause.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This has to be some pathetic cry for help. Later, we'll look back and think "If we'd said something or done something, perhaps it didn't have to happen that way." Then we'll remember that it was Darl and SCO, and shrug.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
According to the BBB, this is what they have to say about SCO.
"Based on BBB files, this company has a satisfactory record with the Bureau. Any complaints processed by the Bureau in its three-year reporting period have been resolved. The number and type of complaints are not unusual for a company in this industry. "
Something is not....right.
Life is not for the lazy.
Yes I skimmed the story, and I was pleasantly surprised to see an advert for IBMs linux solutions halfway down the main body of the text. That's intelligent ad placement at it's best :)
They have until Jan 8th... :)
Yeah, right.
Ironic that at least two Caldera employees have, with Caldera's blessing, contributed code to Linux. End of case, you can all go home now.
Perhaps Linus should send a similar letter to SCOX and the same addressees, requiring them to guarantee that none of their SCOX or derivative code includes any contributions from the Linux codebase?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
SCO also announced its first full year of profitability today, reporting $5.3m in net income for its 2003 financial year
The company would have reported net income of $14.3m for the year had it not reported a charge of nearly $9m to pay law firms involved in the lawsuit and related efforts to "enforce its intellectual property rights", SCO officials said.
So, any bets on how long after all the SCO claims are thrown out as frivilous until the shareholders sue the officers for throwing money away on lawyers instead of paying dividends?
The officers are legally required to maximize shareholder value. Spewing frivilous lawsuits like a leaky hose doesn't qualify.
There's also a decent breakdown of the company's balance sheet and some quotes from company officials
Here it is, for your viewing enjoyment:
+56.00 1 x Uniware license w/ rebate
-700.00 1 x 1 hour, law firm
-1500.00 1 x law firm, misc.
-89100.65 10000 x threatening letter photocopies, envelopes and stamps
- 23000.00 1 x Blake stowel xmas bonus
- 100000.00 1 x Darl McBride xmas bonus
+699.00 1 x SCO license
-450.99 1 x christmas meal for law firm's Dachsund
- 5000.00 2 x conference call with law firm
- 1500000.00 4 x Payol^H^H^H^H^HReturn on investment for Canopy execs
+9.99 1 x mail-in rebate for postage scale
Company officials statement:
Are we the greatest company in the world or what?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Unfortunately, they still turned a profit.
Can I bum a sig?
This is really getting loony--but I just realized that time is up. It's already been about a month since SCO was told to produce some REAL goods. It's obviously some sort of diversionary move, but a really crazy one. I'm straining my brain to understand it, but all I can think is that they want to claim this is how they are "protecting" their IP rather than performing normal due diligence. I bet the judge is not going to be amused. Can you say "contempt of court"?
Remember the NORMAL non-SCO behavior is to say what the disputed IP actually is--but in that case the problem--if there is any real problem--would have been fixed LONG ago. Want to take any bets if there's any code in the 2.6 Linux kernel that has ANY relation at all to anything from SCO?
In related news, SCO admits they paid $9 million to the lawyers last year--but also claims they managed to clear $5 million net. Which number do you trust more? I say the 5 is just more FUDging.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Running my own small business the question arises why I should certify anything to anyone who has no official business of requesting my certification?
Specifically when it comes to a company who makes the likes of Enron look like a convention of boy scouts?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Err...that's what an existing legal agreement actually is - a formal communication of utilising x within the bounds of what was agreed. I believe -1 Redundant is called for?
Cheers,
Ian
Your imagination is not my problem. I no more need to certify to you that I am not using your intellectual property than that I am not using alien UFO technology in our corporate restrooms. A assertion must stand on its own merit, and any response to that assertion must necessarily be based upon that merit.
Having established that point, I think I have found a use for your assertions in our corporate restrooms.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
From the letter:
Neither you nor your contractors or employees with access to the Software Products have contributed any software code based on the Software Products for use in Linux or any other UNIX-based software product.
Perhaps The SCO Group's legal department would have put better use to their time producing evidence of the so-called contract infringement by Monday. Any recipient of the notice should at least wait until Monday to see whether the judge dismisses the case (translation out of legalspeak: Boies and Co get laughed out of court) due to lack of such evidence, which I've seen nothing to indicate they have.
I expect that the following announcement was heard in SCO offices: "Thank you for pressing the self-destruct button. The company will implode in 6 days."
I am officially gone from
Actually, there is a justification for an apostrophe. Although it's falling out of fashion, an apostrophe to denote the plural of an acronym has been acceptable (even standard - witness the 1984 GPO style guide).
It's a common mistake (in my opinion) to rant and rave about how people who pluralise acronyms with an apostrophe are 'wrong' - it's still really a matter of personal preference and style.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Fishing, yes, but not for the license. They sent the letter to license holders. No, what they're fishing for is who is contributing to Linux (any contributions, from any source.) It's a poison pen: admit that you've contributed to Linux (whether from SCO or not) and you can expect at least a discovery lawsuit, if not a full-bore infringement action from SCO. Not terribly clever of them but I think they're running out of alleged infringement examples. They've been reduced to mining their hapless customer base for both more examples as well as more defendents. Things aren't going well in SCO-land, I think.
RB
The Better Business Bureau is a paper tiger - just because a company is listed as "satisfactory" with them does not mean the company is not a wretched hive of scum and villany.
The BBB used to be feared and respected - threatening a company with "I'll report you to the BBB" caused great gnashing of teeth and usually got things fixed quickly.
But little by little, companies realised that they could target the BBB with lawsuits for definition^Wdefamation of character. They realised that they could join the BBB, and thus slowly subvert its goals toward their own ends.
Little by little the BBB became flooded with reports, and little by little the BBB began to pursue only the most egregious examples of behavior - ignoring little things to concentrate on "what really matters".
Little by little, the response to "I'll report you to the BBB" became <voice name="butthead">" Yawn Yeah, whatever, go 'way, you suck"</voice>
True, if you find a company listed as "unsatisfactory" by the BBB you should run as though the very demons of hell pursued thee, but assuming that a clean bill of health from the BBB means that a company is clean is a very WRONG leap of faith.
(For fun, you can go through the above with the following replacements and it will be equally valid:
s/BBB/MAPS/g
or
s/businesses/posters/g && s/BBB/moderators/g
)
www.eFax.com are spammers
How exactly are the licensees supposed to certify that they're NOT using UNIX code in Linux, if SCO is unwilling to identify said code??? I mean, a kernel changes a lot depending upon what has been compiled in... how do I know if I'm using it or not?
Can somebody mod SCO -1 TROLL?
The PDF is unavailable now but I have a window open with the text. Which is posted below.
December 18, 2003
[Name]
[Address]
Re: AT&T / SCO License No. SOFT-____
Dear UNIX Licensee:
You are designated as Licensee under the above-referenced software licensing agreement
(the "Agreement"). The undersigned SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO") is the successor licensor.
The Agreement is in full force and effect according to its terms.
License Grant to Use UNIX Technology
You were granted under Para. 2.01 of the Agreement:
[A] personal, nontransferable and nonexclusive right to use
in the [Authorized Country] each Software Product
identified in one or more Supplements hereto, solely for
Licensee's own internal business purposes and solely on or
in conjunction with Designated CPU's for such Software
Product. Such right to use includes the right to modify
such Software Product and to prepare derivative works
based such Software Product, provided that the resulting
materials are treated hereunder as part of the original
Software Product.
The Software Product thus includes more than the base System V release licensed by
you. Software Products also includes: (a) the UNIX software release based on UNIX
System V prepared by your UNIX vendor and (b) modifications to, or derivative works
based on, any UNIX product made by you.
Limitations on Use of UNIX Technology
Your limitations on use and other obligations under the Agreement include the following:
Para. 2.05. No right is granted by this Agreement for the
use of Software Products directly for others, or for any use
of Software Products by others. [This is expanded under
2.06 under some contracts.]
Para. 4.01. Licensee agrees that it will not, without prior
written consent of [SCO], export, directly or indirectly,
Software Products covered by this Agreement to any
country outside the[Authorized Country].
Para. 7.06(a) [7.05(a). Licensee agrees that it shall hold all
parts of the Software Products subject to this Agreement in
confidence for [SCO]. Licensee further agrees that it shall
not make any disclosure of any or all of the Software
Products (including methods or concepts utilized therein) to
anyone, except to employees of Licensee to whom such
disclosure is necessary to the use for which rights are
granted hereunder. Licensee shall appropriately notify each
employee to whom such disclosure is made that such
disclosure is made in confidence and shall be kept in
confidence by such employee.
Para. 7.09. Neither this Agreement nor any rights
hereunder, in whole or in part, shall be assignable or
otherwise transferable by Licensee and any purported
assignment or transfer shall be null and void.
Para. 7.10. [N]othing in this Agreement grants to Licensee
the right to sell, lease, or otherwise transfer or dispose of a
Software Product in whole or in part.
Required Certification Re: Use of UNIX
You are also obligated to certify proper use of the Software Products by you under the
Agreement, as required by the following Para. 2.04 2.05:
On [SCO's] request, but not more frequently than annually,
Licensee shall furnish to SCO a statement, certified by an
authorized representative of Licensee, listing the location,
type and serial number of all Designated CPUs hereunder
and stating that the use by Licensee of Software Products
subject to this Agreement has been reviewed and that each
such Software Product is being used solely on such
Designated CPUs (or temporarily on back-up CPUs) for
such Software Products in full compliance with the
provisions of this Agreement. (Emphasis added.)
Accordingly, SCO requires written certification by your authorized representative
under Para. 2.04 within 30 days of receipt of this letter. Such written certification must
include statements that:
1. You are not running Linux binary code that was compiled from any version of Linux
that contains our copyrighte
Pro-forma, yes. Not GAAP. Guess which system Enron used till the end?
They have until Jan 8th... :)
"Your honour, we asked 6000 of our licensees to provide evidence that they are in full compliance with their licenses, but none of them did. Clearly they are infringing on our IP, so we'd like to expand our case..."
Saw this on the Yahoo board:
"From The Wall Street Journal, 1/5/2004, page B1, by Lee Gomes:"
"As for Linux, when will the courts halt the lies of has-been software maker SCO (with $13 million in funding from Microsoft and Sun -- together at last!) as it tries to make the preposterous claim that it, and not the world, owns the free operating system?"
Not even the business press is taking them seriously any more.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I don't see no notification of copyrighted code?
Does anybody have a copy? (pun intended :-)
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Depends I suppose if that's 30 days or 30 business days. If it's business days, they'd have until 22 January. InternetWeek has it listed as "the end of the week" though.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
Running my own small business the question arises why I should certify anything to anyone who has no official business of requesting my certification?
Since the existence of "Unix code in Linux" is at the heart of the litigation, and so is the extent of ownership by SCO of legacy Unix after the AT&T/BSD affair, the recipients of the SCO letter would seem to be within their rights to reply with deferral of any such certification until the ongoing legal process has been completed. (Unless of course SCO offered to pay for the work of certification out of their own funds.)
Given the number of letters sent out by SCO, it might be useful for a lawyer or paralegal to draft a response template along these lines as the basis for company replies.
It's also interesting to note that such formations as "Banana's" and "Tomato's" were once considered correct usage - any plural of a non-English word (as these were considered many years ago) was typically written with an apostrophe. (This information is courtesy of Lynn Truss in her excellent little book about punctuation, titled "Eats, shoots and leaves".)
SCO
If you: license our technology
Then: you are first in line when we roll out our sue-the-world plan.
Whack-A-Burger
If you: buy one of our burger value meals
Then: the fry cook gets one free whack at you with a 2-by-4 on your way out of the restaurant
Ben Dover Bowling Lanes
If you: rent one of our lanes for an hour
Then: the ex-convict who works behind the counter demonstrates who is your daddy when you bend over to pick up your bowling shoes
And they had to fudge numbers to make it not as obvious as it should have been. See:
The fourth-quarter revenue included $14m from sales of Unix products and services, with an additional $10.3m from licensing agreements with Microsoft and Sun Microsystems signed earlier in the year.
The $9m charge for legal fees kept the company's fourth quarter in the red. The company reported a net loss of $1.6m but said it would have seen net income at $7.4m without the legal expenses.
The licensing agreements (which were one-time deals, I can assure you, and smell like protection money anyway) were signed before the last quarter. Which doesn't matter, anyway, but it makes the end of the year look especially bad. The fact that they are so brazen as to suggest that they would have been profitable without their legal schemery is fantastic - there's no chance Sun or MS would have been paying them off without the games they've been playing.
Read between the lines. They are barely in the black, and it won't last. In fact, it's over already.
Not to mention, threatening your OWN customers isn't a very smart thing to do.
No matter WHAT happens, SCO is a doomed company. Even if they win, the cash they get from IBM will be a one time thing, they have so destroyed their reputation they will never be able to do business again.
Even IF their allegations about Linux are proven, they will eventually be FORCED to reveal what is infringing, which will allow Linus, et all to get it out of the kernel. Linux will be damaged, so will Linux business, but the problem will be resolved and no Linux user will need to pay SCO.
Now, we know they have yet to provide _ANY_ evidence that hasn't been quickly made them look stupid. Even IF the doomesday scenario happens, SCO's behavior has made it virtually impossible for them to get the damages they seek (as they've made no effort to mitigate damages as they are required to do under the law), so any court victory will likely be barely enough to pay their lawyers (if that) and the code will be revealed and ripped from Linux.
Any way you cut it, SCO is doomed, and anyone betting on the SCO lottery would be better off buying the Powerball... You are more likely to win that than you are as a SCO investor to see ANY return on any money they get from this lawsuit (it will all go to their lawyers) or from future earnings (there won't be any).
Corporatism != Free Market
To repeat myself, SCO will not get a single reply. These two letters are a fishing expedition to sucker future lawsuit victims into signing up. SCO will probably send a second round of letters to all non-respondants in a few weeks, promising dire, horrible consequences to those who refuse to roll over. Those letters will be ignored, too.
This is not my sandwich.
The article's title reads: SCO sends notices to 6,000 Linux licensees. The rest of the article contains no such error. Now, that wouldn't be false but alarming on purpose, would it?
JeR
So a judge told SCO to come up with evidence within 30 days from December 5.
Would this evidence be the list of header files as printed in this letter, or has SCO chosen not to disclose anything further?
Is that 30 business days or 30 human days?
On how many of its 6,000 licensed customers are going to remain customers after this letter?
I'll set my marker for 1000
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
"SCO may pursue all legal remeidies available to it including, but not limited to, license termination rights."
Here is the text of my certified response letter:
"Dear SCO, I hereby terminate my own Unixware license. The 3 machines we still had running Unixware have been pining for years to join their linux brethren or BSD friends. Today, they do so. Thanks for the gentle push!"
Here are excerpts from an interview with Darl from Dec 23, 2003 in Investor's Business Daily (investors.com). I selected the most interesting parts. My comments are in [ ]. He says some interesting things, that, in my opinion as an attorney, *will* come back to haunt him.
...
...
...
...
Article Title: "$3 Billion Damage Claim Justified, Says CEO"
Author: KEN SPENCER BROWN
Section: Internet & Technology
Date: 12/23/2003
IBD: But don't people have the right to give away their work through a GPL if they so choose?
McBride: Absolutely, we don't deny that right at all. Anybody that wants to develop their work and give it away, God bless them. [He accepts the validity of the GPL right here. SCO gave away software under the GPL, they can't take that back.]
What we have a major, violent reaction to is people giving away works we have control rights over. Obviously what (IBM) is trying to do here is to commoditize the operating system, i.e. the price should be zero. They think the margins should be in the hardware, middleware and services. Not coincidentally, that's where their strengths are.
[Yes, but you distributed software under the GPL, hence you no longer have "control rights" (assuming, arguendo, you did before).]
IBD: Why haven't you publicly revealed the lines of Unix code you say IBM copied into Linux?
McBride: What we have told people is: "Here are the files. Here are all the program names IBM has contributed into Linux. These were all developed under our Unix contract licenses." What we are doing now is breaking that down into a line-by-line format. So if someone doesn't want to take the time, we will absolutely be producing that with these next lawsuits.
[So, with the next lawsuits, he *claims* they'll show the code.]
IBD: Why are you pursuing action against Linux users and not Linux distributors, like Red Hat Inc.?
McBride: The Linux marketplace is very complex and convoluted. You have many players involved in this. The godfather of Linux is really IBM, and that's where we started our claims. They're really at the top of the heap here.
At the end of the line is the end user. And so that's where we go with our claims next. The Free Software Foundation says it's ludicrous for SCO to be going after an end user. They say it's like a reader going into Barnes & Noble reading a book and telling them they can't read those words or we're going to sue. But it's actually much different than that analogy.
First, when a user gets Linux, they inherit a license agreement called the GPL (General Public License) that says you get this product free of charge, so if you have a problem with it, don't come back to us, you're on your own. The words in the GPL are "as is." It pushes all of the liability to the end user.
The second part where their example breaks down is the fact that the end users are part of the problem - they're making copies themselves. What you'll see SCO coming out with in the next few weeks are examples of copyrighted code of ours that have been put into Linux, and the copyrights have been stripped off.
If a reader goes home with a book, reads it, reproduces it and gives it to 500 friends, they are direct infringers. What we see happening here is nine out of 10 boxes of Linux out in the marketplace aren't paid for at all, even if they'd paid for a support contract. Once they get that Linux in their shop, they're free to reproduce it and send it around to their heart's content. They do, in fact, become copyright infringers. That's why we're going there.
[And lets see, SCO distributed software under a LICENSE that allows you to copy the software! So, who's fault if people have accepted that license?]
IBD: Some have accused SCO of using the lawsuit as a ploy to be acquired, something also hinted at by your agreements with your lawyers. Are you in talks with anyone?
McBride: I can say generically that there
From my reading, SCO is telling their customers that they must swear allegience to Darl and be tied in to his fool's crusade or their licence gets revoked and they get sued. In effect, SCO users are being forced to decide immediately between Xenix or Linux.
If a company decides to swear fealty to SCO, they risk being left with an obsolete 1980's Unix that's as useful as a Trabant and vendor who has been counter sued to atoms by IBM. If they decide this ultimatum is a good reason to ditch Xenix for Linux, mad Pope Darl may excommunicate them, send the inquisition and loudly proclaim that Linux is indeed harming SCO.
I suppose the intent in forcing this hand might be to get PHBs to make quick, expedient decisions that minimise their exposure to immediate risk.
Now what I want to know what Sun's going to say regarding *their* letter from mad Pope Darl? Did they get one? How will Scott respond?
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Microsoft buying SCO would be a hideously bad choice for Microsoft. They would assume liability for the lawsuit, and IBM would stand a good chance of collecting damages plus costs from Microsoft (with its $30+ billion cash pile). I think Microsoft will prefer to pay "Unix licensing fees" with an unspoken agreement that the fees will underwrite more Linux bashing -- the trade libel that RedHat filed over.
Here is SCO's treatment of their customers. It is now painfully obvious that they do not have the interests of anyone in mind - they are being greedy and selfish. If for no other reason than that, they will ultimately fail. Once a person or entity gets the greed on, they become blind to reality and make some of the _dumbest decisions known to man_ (TM) Let anyone who thought about buying anything from SCO. You are licensing yourself for continual harrasment from SCO's gestapo. Caveat Emptor.
I read the PDF of the letter.
This letter assumes the guilt of all its licencees until proven otherwise. SCO is demanding corporate HR documents (non-disclosure) for each employee who might come in contact with their software stating that they will follow the licence and letter provisions to the T. The letter also seems to suggest that users of SCO software must swear under threat of legal action never to use Linux, and never to develop GPL software. Unbelievable.
If there was any doubt before, there is none now. This letter can't possibly be seen as anything but insulting, even by historically staunch SCO supporters. I've never seen such arrogance. I feel like I'm reading Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy.
DIE SCO. I can't wait to read that SCO has finally died, and that its officials and officers are being brought up on criminal charges. What a bunch of fucking crooks.
How much?
And don't say $699.
"ok, well maybe it wasn't billions, but didn't SCOG say in their may/june PRs(stop laughing) that they had millions of users world wide. now they are down to 6000."
It is official; Netcraft confirms: SCO is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered SCO UnixWare community when IDC confirmed that SCO market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that SCO UnixWare has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. SCO is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict SCO's future. The hand writing is on the wall: SCO faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for SCO UnixWare because SCO is dying. Things are looking very bad for SCO. As many of us are already aware, SCO UnixWare continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
SCO has lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time UnixWare developers L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: SCO is dying.
All major surveys show that UnixWare has steadily declined in market share. SCO is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If SCO is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. SCO continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, SCO is dead.
Fact: SCO is dying
http://saveie6.com/
Would you like to borrow some money?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Dear Mr. So-and-So
In response to your request for certification that we have not contributed SCO IP into Linux our official response:
Bullshit.
Sincerely,
Mr. Shadow
Director Software Support
XYZ Corporation
Of course legal would nix it anyway. Might get fired for sending it without their chop, but what a way to go out, huh? Hehe.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Did they seriously end the letter in "Yours truly" fashion? Talk about double meaning...
You are forgetting the important point. Those comments came from a common source which was public -- a book on Unix. That is the copyright holder to the code:
a) was known
b) had published the information with intent that it might be used in other's code
c) and therefore did not consider this code a "trade secret"
What this means is that in SCO's example if they are claiming copyright violation then they've crossed over from a stupid civil suit to blatent criminal acts (i.e. its a felony to claim the copyright on something you do not have the rights to)
Dear SCO,
/me
please talk to my hardware/software vendor. We bought this fancy new server with the latest software included. This is called a bundle. They told me the software was free, so we paid $0.
BTW my vendor is IBM!
Best regards
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
IMHO, that letter creates a "case or controversy." Now it's time for everyone who received one of them to go to court and file for a declaratory judgment against SCO. This should be fun.
whuppy enjoys smelling like diesel fuel
So I've got one SCO Openserver box licensed with 2 CPUs. As well, I've got a couple RedHat machines. I'm certainly on some SCO customer list - I was required to register the CPU's. Let's say I get one of these letters, and I hand it over to our company lawyers. I don't believe the request has merit, but that is likely to matter little to anybody other than me in this non-tech company. Even if I say they don't have any right to sue us, that will mean little on the way to the courtroom - or even for management considering the risk. Unless I throw the letter away (tempting) I will likely be expected to respond as directed under the license.
legal. fun. profitable. pick two.
Has it been actually verified that these letters were really sent? Since this scam began, scox has told numerous lies of this nature. Here are a few examples of scox's outright lies (from a yahoo poster):
,"'To clarify, the individuals reviewing the code had been involved with MIT labs in the past, but are not currently at MIT."
Lie: We've gone in, we've done a deep dive into Linux, we've compared the source code of Linux with UNIX every which way but Tuesday
Truth: Experts have shown that SCO used a simple, primitive text search based on a few keywords.
Lie: SCO's expert witnesses are "MIT Mathematicians".
Truth: Among various backpedaling statements, Paul Hatch, a SCO spokesman, wrote in a statement to The Tech
Lie: SCO received the D&T Fast 500 recognition because of the strong UNIX market, IP enforcement and the Web services strategy
Truth: SCO made the list because of revenue growth due exclusively to the Tarantula acquisition.
Lie: The IP protection legal team is on pure contingency
Truth: The legal team is billing at a 2/3 discounted rate with the possibility of contingent commissions
Lie: Boies was compensated $1.6M for a contingent event
Truth: The engagement agreement specifically excludes heritage UNIX OEM license deals; Boies is being compensated 20% of the $8MM Microsoft license deal, which is a follow-on extension of the first deal, a UNIX license deal not eligible as a contingent event.
Lie: Invoices will be mailed to Linux users by October 15, 2003
Truth: No invoices were ever mailed.
Lie: We will show rock solid evidence at SCOForum in Las Vegas
Truth: SCO was quickly shown to not have any ownership of the SCOForum evidence
Lie: The Berkeley Packet Filter code in Linux is "obfuscated" SCO code.
Truth: Jay Schulist, who never had access to SCO code, implemented it from scratch.
Lie: SCO's 2002 UNIX source release was "non-commercial" and excludes 32-bit code
Truth: "The text of the letter, sent January 23, 2002, by Bill Broderick, Director of Licensing Services for Caldera [now SCO], in fact makes no mention of "non-commercial use" restrictions, does not include the words "non-commercial use" anywhere and specifically mentions "32-bit 32V Unix" as well as the 16-bit versions."
Lie: We have been off meeting for the last several months with large corporate Linux end users. The pipeline is very healthy there.
Truth: The pipeline is empty. All inquiries have been to assess SCO's claims and liability exposure.
Lie: We have done additional signups for Linux end-user licenses. We have a number of folks that are in the evaluation process, and we definitely have a lot of interest in what's going on there.
Truth: During the earnings conference, SCO admitted that not a single Linux end-user license has been sold. Follow-on guidance comments warn that no such sales are expected in Q1.
Lie: Our claims are not trivial.
Truth: Based on evidence provided to date, SCO's claims are extremely trivial, debunked in a matter of hours
Lie: claims that SCO has are both broad and deep.
Truth: SCO's has made a breach of contract claim and a copyright infringement claim; all evidence presented to date has shown each of these claims to be trivial and unfounded
Lie: These claims touch not, just not IBM, but other vendors as well.
Truth: Exhaustive code reviews by other SYSV licensees, including HP and SGI, have shown that the only Linux/SysV overlap concerns a small amount of public domain code.
Lie: (To the Utah Judge on 12/5) SCO will make a copyright claim in two days, but no longer than a week
Truth: Many weeks later and a copyright claim has not yet been made.
Lie: During the recent road tour, Blake Stowell indicated that core operations were profitable in Q3.
Truth: Core operations lost $3.8MM in Q3-03.
Lie: Sco will audit AIX users.
Truth: It never happend.
Lie: Sco will revoke IBM rights to use, support, or distribute AIX.
Truth: Those rights can not be revoked by scox.
"What the Heck is SCO Smoking when they write theses things?"
.. Either Put up or Shut up" Deadline pass yesterday ?
Also, Didn't the "SCO
You've also identified yourself as someone who can be bullied and someone who is not getting good legal advice, just the guy SCO is looking for. If SCO ever actually does sue an end user, they want someone who will pay the fee just to avoid the legal costs. That gives them the appearance of legitimacy and might lead to more people caving in. The last thing they want is for someone to fight back. A savvy lawyer will probably raise the issue of Novell's claims to the same copyright and say something like, "Gee. your honor, shouldn't we find out who really owns the code before we start paying for it?" Once that happens, the jig is up. Everyone else will make the same argument and SCO gets no money until the copyright case with Novell is settled, which could take years.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
In fact, comments are probably the most copyrightable thing about software. Becuase they are free form and do not have to conform to a syntax (other than the methods of initiating and ending a comment) and because they don't have a functional purpose, they are purely expressive. Copyright protects original works of expression.
Now the particular comments that SCO pointed out were the actual error messages printed out by the system in association with the various errors the system was prepared to report. Since the text of these messages is largely dictated by POSIX, it is no surprise that they often match SCO's even though the enumeration of them can and does vary on some architectures.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The judge in the USL case ruled that the Unix header files were uncopyrightable. There's already a ruling on the books which holds that SCO has no leg to stand on here.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The fact that they are so brazen as to suggest that they would have been profitable without their legal schemery is fantastic - there's no chance Sun or MS would have been paying them off without the games they've been playing.
Ummm, I'd say exactly the opposite! SUN and Microsoft happen to be two companies that benefit the most from SCO FUD (makers of the most predominant UNIX and "other" operating systems, respectively). They are cheering SCO on in their battle against Linux. Why would they submit "licencing" fees to SCO for UNIX when: (1)SUN owns a perpetual claim to Solaris UNIX (claims they are the only ones who do) and (2)Microsoft has no need for one!
I submit that neither SUN nor Microsoft are stupid. I also submit that neither is the rest of the world, all of whom have ignored SCO. Therefore, it is actually in SUN and MS's best interest to pay SCO for "licencing".
Don't be at all surprised if very shortly (presuming this mess is not stopped by the courts shortly), these two companies are again asked by SCO to "licence SCO's UNIX technology", and lo and behold another $15 million or so flows in to keep the lawyers busy!
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
"All IP in Linux is licenced to us by their respective copyright owners, as indicated by the copyright notice included at the top of each source file. Should you believe any of these licences are incorrect or invalid, we ask that you seek a court verdict to that effect. Until such time that you can provide one, we consider all such IP to be legally licenced.
As required by the 2.04, we certify that following a review, we are in compliance with the terms of the agreement. The contract does not require us to go into further detail on this matter. Should you wish to pursue this matter further, we ask that you specifically list what provisions you claim have been broken, and any evidence to that effect.
Regards,
I.R. Lawyer
Legal department"
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Is to terminate the SCO licence and install Linux/ BSD/ your favourite OS on the machines.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
IANAL - however, I'm pretty sure that in cases like this (license enforcement, trademark enforcement, ip enforcement, etc), it helps your case to show you are actively trying to enforce your rights (in the case of tradmark enforcement, it's a requirement)...this letter is probably a long list of things SCO's lawyers list as required for a successful case (and have suckered SCO into paying them to creat).
So perhaps SCO is fishing for suckers (takes one to know one), but likely, they're don't care and will send out lots of letters like this to show that they've made efforts and have been blantantly ignored. Of course, the only one's getting rich here will be SCO's lawyers.
Again, IANAL - but who cares if anyone responds...the key is SCO is going through the motions of being a proper litigant...
I'm still trying to find out why none of these companies has filed an extortion suit against SCO.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Out of curiosity, how many companies does this really affect? The copyright infringement on code used in the Linux kernel can only be source code, as the copyrighted code could not possibly used in binary form for inclusion in the Linux kernel. So, how many companies have source licenses? IBM, HP, Sun, Motorola, and the US government? Who else? This sems to be directed at a very small number of companies, not 6000.
I guess what I'm really driving at is that this is an obvious FUD attempt. I'm sure the vast majority of licensees are binary licensees. Also, they specifically mention the ABI, which was a specification published by AT&T, in publicly available books sold by Prentice-Hall, prior to SCO owning the copyright. If I write code to meet this published ABI specification, there will be similarities just because there is only a finite number of ways to implement it for any given platform. The SCO claim is so weak as to almost be non existent.
As I've said many times before, I would not rush to sign any agreements, especially this one. There are certain statements that would severely limit your rights.
One final note. How about an interesting mind game. If I manufacture hardware, and distribute SysV and/or Linux with it, and SCO yanks my distribution license, doesn't it hurt SCO? After all, I can still sell Linux boxes, stop paying SCO royalties, sue SCO for pro rated refund of license fees already paid, and switch my SysV code to something else such as OSF/1 or *BSD. With the exception of the pain of the last step, i.e., inability to ship to unix customers for many, many months, I don't suffer a great deal. Isn't SCO shooting themselves in the foot?
I am not a lawyer, and this is only my opinion. Please seek legal counsel prior to making any decisions related to this topic.
" Who wants to bet many future eula's will include a clause that requires you to certify your complience with the terms upon request..."
Wanna bet?
That kind of overt heavy handedness would almost certainly drive more corps to go for GPL/BSD licensed software.
The BSA's blackmail has already been the best Linux/OpenOffice marketing campaign of all time.
Notice that you don't hear as much about the BSA threatening to raid schools and municipalities like we did a year or so ago... This is a stupid thing for the BSA to do anyway, as they INVITE legislation to limit extra clauses above what copyright law allows them to put into their EULA...
Corporatism != Free Market
If some "licensee" really feels that they ought to respond to the letter, but doesn't want to do a cpu-by-cpu certification, there are standard stalling tactics that they can use to keep SCO from calling them non-compliant until IBM kills SCO.
For example, the day before the deadline, send a letter explaining there are exigent circumstances, and asking for a 90-day extension of the deadline.
Repeat until SCO says no, then send a "please accept under separate cover" letter, referring to a document that seems to have gotten lost in the mail. Buy more time by "searcing" for the lost document.
When SCO demands a new copy of the document be prepared and sent, send an open envelope, and marvel at the bad luck that the contents of the envelope have been lost.
So on and so forth.
All you have to do is stall until SCO is killed by the big guys.
This means that anyone who bought a UNIX license under the belief that doing so would give them the license to use SCO's "property" in linux is now being threatened if they do not stop using SCO's property in linux!
:D
So they're being legally threatened for the exact thing they thought they were paying money to avoid being legally threatened for. Whereas the rest of us are still being ignored. If anyone actually fell for this the first time, I'll be they're feeling pretty ripped off.
When the "deal" was first announced on slashdot, I heard two comments a lot: "If you accept, you're probably just going to use it as a pretense to extort more money from you later, since by buying the license you're admitting they're right." and: "Only a fool would buy a license from SCO thinking it provides indemnification; SCO has already revoked "irrevokable" licenses multiple times during this lawsuit fiasco."
Now SCO is demanding the people who bought the license either (1) take drastic steps to stop using SCO's competitors or (2) legally implicate themselves further by making a silly "certification" that could be easily accidentally violated, thus offering up a means for SCO to sue them that they didn't have before (because now they can sue you for violating the certification). And if you don't comply with SCO's demands, they'll revoke your license that you thought was irrevokable.
(BTW, I don't at all *mind*, but I think that maybe, if you liked the grandparent comment, you might be like to know where they copied it from. It made a bit more sense in that story's context, though it of course applies here as well.)
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
So the official public statements of Executive Director Love don't constitute valid grounds for the management to believe him?
Also, I think that your legal theories are a bit incorrect. Someone acting in the name of an organization, i.e. as an agent of the corporation, can, I believe, comit the corporation to a contract. If the agency was fradulent, then the corporation can extract payment from the false agent, but I don't believe that it can usually take back the goods that were, e.g., sold.
It's a lot murkier than that, but I think that that's the gist. And people definitely had grounds for believing that the Caldera employees were acting as agents for the corp., and so did the employees (they had not only their manager's approval, but also the public statements of the executive director).
Were this not true, nobody would sell paperclips to a corp. without the signature of the board on the purchase order.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If I were to receive one of these letters, the first thing I would be asking myself is, "how can certify that I am "not using Unix code in Linux" if I don't know what that code may be. I think they would have to provide me with examples from the latest kernel. Only then could I be sure.
Not necessarily. It depends entirely on the value of the stock at the time IBM would purchase SCO. At the current valuation, it would certainly be a huge victory for SCO.
Now, if IBM succeeds in slamming them back down to $0.05 per share, then buys them out and releases Sys V UNIX into the public domain, that would be a pretty strong, "Don't screw with IBM" message.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
So SCO is demanding certification under a provision of existing agreements stating the Unix licensee must answer compliance queries, at most anually. If I got one of these letters, I would answer... only that I was in compliance with the original Unix agreement (assuming I was).
As far as all the extra crap about not using Linux and not exporting to Cuba, I would ignore. How can you be bound to answer on subjects that you have no contractual or legal obligation?
SCO might as well be asking to certify that the room in which all Unix machines run is not painted green. Why would anyone answer that (true or not)? It's just not SCO's business.
Anybody want a peanut?
Dear Mister Hussein,
Please provide evidence that you are in compliance with UN Resolution 3177, and that you have no active programs to develop WMI, and that you are not in posession of any WMI or WMI delivery systems.
Failure to provide evidence will result in a massive invasion of your country by US Laywer forces, shock and awe, resulting in the eventual extraction of your carcass from a spider-hole.
Sincerely,
Darl McBush
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
That's all well and good; admirable, even. But, SCO doesn't care if they lose Unixware licensees. They aren't making money off Unixware anyway, and it costs money and effort to upkeep, and they have to deal with pesky user problems.
They just want you to send them money. It's the perfect business: no product, no staff, just a lot of money rolling in due to the past efforts of other, complete strangers (both on the Unix side and the Linux side), and the gullibility of people who believe every official-looking letter they receive.
SCO is comprised of every kind of sheister who ever followed a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme, put sawdust in the tranny, or used inferior concrete and rebar when building a dam a mile up the river from a town. They don't care about anyone else, nor the consequences of their actions, nor whether they actually deserve the money.
It's the money that matters, not the users. And if they can get rid of the actual users in the process, all the better.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The Law of the Land, however, does grant you the right to sell, lease or otherwise transfer or dispose of your own property
Dude: this is why software in this country is licensed and not sold. The software manufacturers here in the states want to maximize their profits, so they license the software to you *but not sell it*. This allows them to impose all sorts of additional conditions and terms on the use of said software.
Unfortunately, there are several court cases here in the states that establish this as the way things are - regardless of the "looks like a sale, acts like a sale" bit that occurs when you purchase a retail box at your local store.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
Wow, It this letter is what it appears to be then SCO are going after their own customer base who were unfortunate enough to license software from them in the past. If ever there was a case for staying the heck away from SCO's and their agreements this is it.
requiring them to certify that they are in full compliance with their Unix source code agreements and are not using Unix code in Linux.
Unless I am mistaken, this is a backstep from the original letter. Certifying you have no UNIX code is far different from the whole derivative ideas crap they were claiming last time. A large company's lawyer will reply with:
Please notify us of which UNIX source codes you are referring to, as this company has no legal requirement to SCO to certify anything until you receive a favorable legal judgement. We will be happy to comply beforehand, but there is no burden on us and we require your help. If you can inform us of the violations, we will be happy to work with the programming community to eliminate any current violations once you have made us aware of them.
A letter like this will show a willingness to eliminate any copyright violation, while still putting the burden on SCO to provide actual instances of infringment. The fact that SCO is asking for the good-faith effort in the first place definitely seems a lot weaker than their previous letter.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
If and only if the company officers believe in good faith that their IP is being infringed, because of their duty to maximise shareholder value, they are oblidged to sue.
They should only feel obliged to sue if they are fairly certain they can win the case. People on slashdot continually refer to this so-called duty to maximize shareholder value, and I would certainly appreciate it if someone could provide a link to this law. AFAIK, the only duty company officers have is a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the company. The phrase *maximize shareholder value* is meaningless anyway. Does it mean this quarter, next quarter, next year, in twenty years? If, like SCO, I maximize shareholder value this quarter, and next year the company is a smoking hole in Utah, did that fulfill my duty? The final shareholders are certainly not going to find any value in it.
I know that there have been shareholder suits by people unhappy with the selling price of a company, but that would be the only time that *maximizing value* would make any sense.