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Did SCO Actually Buy What it Thought?
Int27h quotes The Age saying "Just before Christmas last year, Novell announced publicly that SCO had known for some time that it did not receive all rights and ownership to UNIX technologies, despite public statements to the contrary. Novell has made public correspondence between lawyers representing both Novell and SCO." Lots of links and commentary on what continues to be one of the strangest stories in the history of Linux.
Where this story was posted yesterday, of course.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
Yes, this is being counted down on the following website: http://www.scocountdown.com/
However, this expires at midnight, so expect something the next morning.
The current SCO group is just a renamed Caldera, which bought the Unix group from the old SCO, so it is wrong to say that "SCO didn't know what they bought", as the current SCO isn't the company which bought anything in the first place.
Actually, the current SCO is probably just the 5th owner of the very diluted "Unix licencing rights" - AT&T first sold it to USL (Unix System Labs), which was bought by Novell, which resold the licencing rights to the old SCO, which sold off parts of the company to Caldera, which rebranded itself "The SCO Group".
Of course, the current SCO management tries to confuse this issue, probably as they would rather have everyone forget all their contractual obligations with the previous owners.
Actually, by Novell's own admission, this isn't a clearcut issue, and in fact, my interpretation of the article suggests that while they (SCO) do not currently own the copyrights, they COULD petition to be granted ownership.
The article says that Amendment 2 states that ownership of the copyrights is not transferred until/unless it is shown that ownership of the copyrights is required for SCO to fulfill the purchase agreement, ie: purchasing the rights to develop and deploy the original UNIX code. Obviously, the amendment leaves some play on both sides, but it's not entirely unreasonable for SCO to state (and then attempt to demonstrate) that ownership of the copyrights is required by them in order to defend against apparent illegal copyright infringment from a third party. In this instance, ownership of the copyright would allow SCO to defend its corporation and continue developing and deploying UNIX, and therefore may actually give SCO the rights it needs to claim ownership of the copyrights.
This isn't a cut-and-dry issue at all. There's a LOT of play, and while I have tremendous faith in IBMs lawyers, there is definitely more than one scenario where SCO could come out ahead.
--
Use Vobbo for Video Blogs
SCO is using the term ABI (application binary interface) inconsistently. There is a Linux ABI module, but Darl has previously said this isn't infringing. When they talk about the ABI recently, they're refering to a few header files, notably errno.h, signal.h, ioctl.h, and ctype.h. And it's been pretty well shown that no, they don't own them.
Litigious bastards
Nope, it was 30 days after IBM's newly and fully formed demand, but IBM had one week to ask the question if I remember correctly. so 30 days and 1 week would be the right time
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
of course, SCO has yet to show that the whole copyright claim isn't just a big bucket of warm spit in the first place.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I've been reading a lot about SCO's stock, following a lot of interesting links on Groklaw.
From what I can see the vast bulk of SCO's stock appears to be owned by either SCO or people and business from the Canopy group so the small amount of dealing going on from people not in those groups is pretty small compared to the dealing going on by people in the groups.
This means that it's quite easy for Canopy and SCO to keep the stock price pretty high by simply trading it amongst themselves, specifically a lot of people have noticed that the stock begins to dive in the mornings but then before the close a number of trades will be made at very high prices leaving the stock with a high closing price.
Anyone interested should look for the links and commentary on Groklaw since my memory and understanding isn't perfect.
This has specific implications for anyone thinking of shorting the SCO stock because basically SCO and Canopy have pretty good control over what the stock does and that's bad news for people hoping that it will act as though it was largely owned by members of the public.
Further, copyrights are contained in the list of excluded assets, and that list is not modified in any way by Amendment 2.
Further, that copyrights can only be transferred, under title 17, in writing, and that a vauge assertion that there is an agreement to transfer certain copyrights in the event they are required does not constitute a transfer in writing.
What is your interpretation?
So, since companies have been gladly (well, probably not all that gladly) paying NOVELL for all these years, NOVELL must own it... right?
The article says that Amendment 2 states that ownership of the copyrights is not transferred until/unless it is shown that ownership of the copyrights is required for SCO to fulfill the purchase agreement
Not exactly. It says that they get "All copyrights and trademarks, except for the copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the Agreement required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies."
In other words, they get the rights to use, sell, and license code related to Unix and UnixWare. It doesn't say they have exclusive rights to it.
If I were to write a program, then sell you the rights to use it however you wanted, that wouldn't necessarily take away my rights to do whatever I wanted with it unless we both agreed to that in the terms of the contract.
The amendment even goes on to say that should either party be involved in a buy-out of the copyrights (complete transfer of all rights) the other must be notified. This clearly indicates that the Amendment doesn't transfer all rights to SCO.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
Nightspots says: ... but it's not entirely unreasonable for SCO to state (and then attempt to demonstrate) that ownership of the copyrights is required by them in order to defend against apparent illegal copyright infringment from a third party.
If SCO does not own the copyright there is no need for them to defend it -- that's the job of the copyright owner. And if there is no need for them to defend it, apparently they don't own it.
b.
There put up or shut up day is on the 12th... technicallly the 11th... but they should have turnned in what they have to trun in by Monday Afternoon. Sense they had 30 days from the day that the order was signed.
Even then we will not see what it is for a while less some of the papers are filed in a more public area.
you should read Groklaw.
Chahala
The old SCO is now Tarantella. Caldera took over the name.
The old SCO may have known exactly what they were buying. But the new SCO has to do a lot of detective work.
It should be noted that Tarantella has recently expanded their product support for Linux. They wouldn't do this if they thought SCO had a case, and being the ones that acquired UNIX from Novell, they're in the best position to know.
. . . is already taken
No, I don't see SCO getting much in retroactive damages and imnsho that isn't their plan. Actually fixing the problem kills their ability to license linux in the future. Byebye to the revenue stream they're betting the business on.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Novell didn't have *that* much to sell, in terms of Unix. (They had other stuff
besides Unix, of course.) Most of the Unix copyrights that really mattered,
AT&T had already lost in court to UC Berkeley. I'm sure Novell had some rights
to some improvements that they (and maybe even AT&T before them) had made
since, plus some additional bits and pieces, but most of the core Unix
copyrights belong to BSD. What Novell had (and we're discussing whether SCO
has all of it as well) is if anything actually less than Sun or the other Unix
vendors have, since by the time of the BSD split they'd already made a number
of improvements, and they protected them better than AT&T did and did not lose
them in the court case. AT&T/Novell/SCO only have what they've done since
that time, and what is more they haven't done as much with it since that
time as Sun, IBM, HP, and so on have done.
I'm all for respecting copyright, but SCO doesn't have jack, with or without
the stuff Novell may or may not have sold them.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
While I agree with you for point 1, I just strongly disagree about 2&3. 2&3 will obviously be at the charge of the defense (except for the "They must then prove that it is data that they own" part).
Stop spreading FUD, you're becoming more and more like them.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Funny. I was doing some research on SCO/Caldera and it's previous commitment to Open Source/Free Software. What I found was this guys making some weird announcements. This one seems very strange to me.. Please, look closely to the "unenforceability of the GNU general public license and other open source licenses" phrase. It is from 2001. ....
Also, O'Reilly has a very interesting article about Caldera/SCO releasing old Unix source code under a BSD license
See also the discussion in the Unix Heritage Society.