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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); }
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 :)
Please don't! Rewarding these criminals will set a bad example for everyone else. You are right. They are wrong. Sit it out. Make them pay in the end. That's the only way to deal with their kind.
(aka "We don't negotiate with terrorists")
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
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.
Why would IBM want to buy SCO, when they can pound them into the ground, and then be handed their assets in settlement by the judge? Much more satisfying for all concerned - well, all that matter, anyway... :)
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
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?
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.
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.
"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!"
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.
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
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)
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.
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
"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
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.
That's absolutely true, but think about how copyright is enforced? Damages are awarded for the value of the breach.
The fact is that the loss I'd cause to you by copying your comments would be a big fat zero. So while you're technically correct, the real-world legal implications have little or no significance.
IANAL, etc.
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.
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.
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