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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.
I mean, other than the dolts that may actually be paying the licensing fees. But, I don't see any steep declines in RedHat, Suse, or Mandrake sales. People don't believe these guys and it will be a matter of time no before the press quits attending Darl and Co.'s press/phone conferences
And of course Groklaw has had the full analysis for a while now, including the fact that SCOs filings missed mentioning this dispute, even going so far as to deny there was any ongoing dispute with third parties over Copyright...some pants combusting rather brightly over in Salt Lake City.
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
So if they knew, or should have known, that their rights were not as expansive as they represented, and they knowingly misrepresented the scale of those rights to the persons they offered licenses, and those persons bought those licenses based on those misrepresentations.....sounds like a big fat old prima facie fraud case to me.
SCO Group (NASDAQ SC:SCOX)
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SCO has gone to far now to simply back off, or admit they were wrong. They have invested their whole business in this, and have no option but to go forward and proceed with litigation. If they back of now they loose face and the business will probably crash. If they loose in court, they have the same situation, except they lost alot of money on lawyers instead.
:S
HOWEVER, if they win in the quirky US legal system, who knows. They might make alot of money, and keep on putting out super duper products
Novell's sudden assertion of their ownership of UNIX copyrights seemed to derail the SCO case in its early stages; it's nice to see that their explanation of this provides yet another nail in SCO's coffin. Way to go, Novell.
Let's just hope that they remain Linux-friendly.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
I don't think they thought they would be buying the World of Pain they are walking into...
It's also certain that Novell doesn't quite understand what they sold to SCO either. Perhaps Novell would like to take a shot at selling SCO the same thing twice!
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
Today's Lesson: It's better to deny the truth as long as you can, putting off going down in a spectacular and brilliant fireball until it's inevitable than face reality, appolgise and make the best of it.
Small wonder the rest of the world thinks americans are wackos. It's not just the way we do business, it's a way of life.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What ever happened with the Utah judge that ordered SCO to come up with the portion of the linux kernel that supposedly contained their copywrited code? I thought he gave them 30 days about 35 days ago?
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer
Isn't tomorrow "put up or shut up" day for SCO?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Woah!
If what is being said here is true, then that must mean that the people at SCO are not liars, they're just embarassingly stupid!!
You know? This is beginning to make a little more sense... but can the SCO people be put in jail for being ridiculously stupid and making people suffer needlessly from it?
I agree with BlackParrot but I think it's deeper than just the Canopy Group. I think it's an all out war between the current Bush Administration and control of the Internet and OSS.
:) ?
Time to try and dig up a link between the principals at Canopy Group and the thugs over at PNAC
For what it's worth, here's my standard rant. The conjecture is pure conjecture, the facts are _facts_.
Cheers!
Americans are no longer living in a Democratic Republic. They're now living in a oligarchy controlled by super-right wing neoconservatives and big oil, and fueled by scaring the living daylights out of the populace. The constitution has all but been thrown out.
In yesterday's SCO discussion I speculated that, to my mind anyhow, it's more likely that Darl and friends are being funded and directed by Cheney and friends rather than Microsoft.
Have you noticed some of the phrasing of SCO's letters? "the GPL is unconstitutional" (they use the constitution when it fits their needs), "have you shipped to Syria, Iran, North Korea" (read: any axis-of-evil countries)?
Within the next couple of months expect them to start making noises about Linux and OSS being a security threat. I certainly have noticed an undercurrent, a sub-text if you will, of this administration to gain more effective control of the Internet and OSS. What was up with the clandestine use of RFID tags at the Internet Summit?
Ask yourself, who is pulling Darl McBride's strings? Is it Bill? Is it Scott? Or is it, just maybe, Cheney? Kellogg, Brown & Root have been up to far more nefarious activities than this. It's a cakewalk for them.
I'll tell you a little secret. Oil is, and always has been the _top_ national security concern of the United States of America.
This little spaceship Earth of ours is rapidly heading for a major crisis. The United States consumes 20 billion barrels of oil a year. The world consumes 76 billion barrels (2001 numbers).
In 2001 only 8 billion barrels of new oil was discovered, and that was spread out over 300 relatively small and economicaly challenging fields.
Did you catch that? We burned 80 billion barrels of oil this year but discovered less than 10 billion. This has been going on for many years now. A few years ago the rule of thumb was we burned 4 barrels for every barrel discovered. Now it's 8:1. And China and India or only just getting started.
It's January 7th, and you're putting 4 logs a day on the fire, you look out the window and you see only 120 pieces of wood left in your wood pile. Oh well! We'll figure something out before March!
At any rate, the point is, Bush and all is oil patch buddies are painfully aware of this little dilemma and they know just what to do about it. Secure the oil, and batten down the hatches on the populace.
Go to the CIA World Factbook and look up the country you live in, say Norway for example, scroll down to the "Economy" section and check out the "oil produced" and "oil consumed" figures. Interesting, eh? Norway is one of the few exceptions, a country that actually produces more oil than it consumes. In fact, Norway is the _only_ country that produces more than 10 times the amount of oil than it consumes. Anyway, that's not the point. Now click on the little graph icon next to "oil produced". Examine the top 20 oil producing countries. Ask yourself, which of these countries does the US control through one of these means: trade agreement, corruption, bullying, family ties
Which ones does the US not yet fully control? Now you know who's next on the hit list.
Do you think things are bad now? You ain't seen nothin' yet. How are you going to live when a barrel of oil costs $60? When a gallon of gas costs 4 bucks? 5 bucks? How about propane to heat your house at $3/gal? $4/gal? When the price of food doubles
It illustrates how vulnerable linux companies are to legal wrangling; this is different than linux itself being vulnerable.
I spent a few years drafting exactly these kinds of agreements, and having read the SCO/Novell Asset Purchase Agreement, including the dreaded Amendment Number 2, I have to confess, I don't know what SCO's lawyers were thinking.
When you buy technology, you buy 2 classes of assets: (1) the tangible (which includes stored electrons) real-world implementations of the stuff, like copies of the software, units of hardware, copies of manuals, and so on; and (2) the intellectual property rights, including copyright and patent, embodied in the tangible stuff.
The way I'm reading the contract (which could be wrong -- I took a pretty quick pass through it) Novell sold SCO the "stuff" without any of the rights associated with the stuff. In other words, because the stuff was software, Novell sold them pretty much nothing.
When I've done these deals in the past, the purchaser either gets the associated IP rights as part of the deal, or a REALLY broad license to them. From the looks of things, SCO didn't even have the right to make copies of the stuff it bought. That's completely incoherent from a transactional point of view.
That argues for 2 things: (1) SCO's lawyers really pooched it in this deal, which is certainly possible -- I've seen some really dumb language come out of high-end firms, and/or (2) SCO is right, and the agreement couldn't possibly mean what Novell thinks it means, because that makes no sense. SCO might not be able to get that enforced without a court action to do what's called "reformation" of the contract, where the court goes in and rewrites the contract to make it coherent. This is a really rare remedy, BTW, for obvious reasons.
Please, someone who's read this document more closely, feel free to correct me.
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Point and Counterpoint: The Tick - "Spoon!" Neo - "There is no spoon."
They knew this data existed (hello, the linux kernel and all of the CVS logs are open source, they can be read by anyone)
They have the same copies of the contracts as everyone else (Novel, Sun, ect)
They had to know that a judge was going to make them produce evidence and this "We can't show the conflicting code" thing wouldn't fly with a judge.
I worked for a dot-com that provided a service to Corporate Law Firms and I know that they go through a lot of trouble to do their homework. Some of these things would have not slipped their radar.
So is all if this (including us tearing up SCO's claims) just part of their plan? Are we missing the real target of McBride and SCO? I find it hard to belive that SCO and their legal team are, or have ever gone "Oh Shit" since this all started. More like they are saying "This is going exactly to plan".
Someone please shed some light
Open Letter to SCO
Dear Sirs:
It has come to my attention that you claim certain intellectual properties involved in the UNIX operating system and that you intend to prosecute those who violate those claims.
To be more specific you claim that Gnu/Linux is a derivative of your Unix IP and as such is your IP. After extensive research on my own part and reviewing the considered opinions of those in the field of IP litigation I have concluded to my own satisfaction that your position consists of bullpuckey.
As such I feel I should bring my company to your attention. My name is James Burgett and I am the executive director of a not for profit organization called Computer and Technology Resource Center (CATRC). We recycle unwanted equipment and give it to underprivileged people throughout the world.
What I feel should come to your attentions is this: We install Gnu/Linux on over 1200 machines a year and we fully intend to continue. We send said computers to schools, not for profits and underprivileged people throughout the world. We have been doing so for over 3 years and I can safely say that all of them could be classed as "servers". On the basis of your pricing (assuming that our inevitable litigation extends past your discount deadline), my organization owes you at least $ 5,036,400 (5+ million).
We also advocate the further distribution of your alleged IP by other agencies and governments at home and abroad and could quite possibly be held liable for a lot more. (I'm sure you can come up with a price for this.) We have also assembled many multi processor systems (By the way, what is your price for multiprocessor systems?)
So based on an assessment of our operations and your claims. I have concluded the following:
Your ownership of the IP is dubious at best (Novell copyrights, Unix system labs vs. UC Berkeley, distribution of all contested IP by you under the GPL while Caldera,.... etc.)
Your ability to enforce your claims is laughable at best (you would have to deal with Novell's copyrights before you can sue anybody, then demonstrate that you did not release said IP as your Linux distribution and last that you have the right to those copyrights at all as they seem to violate some of IBM's patents. This combined with the fact that your lead attorney seems to be under investigation in Florida that may lead to his disbarment leads me to the conclusion that you are not a credible threat.
Your only redeeming feature is your histrionic and ill-conceived rants, which admittedly have an enviable ability to generate press.
As you represent no threat and can only bring us press, I humbly request that you use us in your act of corporate self-destruction.
If you choose not to sue us I should inform you that I have been consulting with my attorneys about options for initiating lawsuits against you based on some of the fallacious claims made by you about operations such as ours that use Gnu/Linux. You have made direct accusations about Gnu/Linux and its users that could only be construed as accusations of theft.
As I am not a thief and find your accusations harmful from both a personal and corporate standpoint I demand that you immediately cease and desist from your unsubstantiated statements or face litigation.
In conclusion let me thank you for this wonderful opportunity to promote our message on your dime and fully expect to be giving away what you claim is your IP long after your company is dead and gone.
Yours sincerely:
James Burgett
Executive Director
Computer and Technology Resource Center
Primary website: www.accrc.org
email james@accrc.org
The future of Linux (and linux based products) in the US may be effected, to some extent even the rest of the western world might feel the effects of the litigation in the US. ...But the rest of the world is still free to use/exploit Linux without fear of threat from SCO and company.
China (for example) is adopting Linux on a national level. Do you really think China gives a rats a$$ about US copyright law? It may effect their ability to sell Linux based products into the US market, but They can still sell to the rest of the world.
After that rant, let me boil my argument down to the following:
The US market is not the same as the World market. Their are other places to produce, and other places to sell.
Given this limited right, why would SCO need ownership of the SVRx copyrights in order to exercise their rights under the agreement.
Hence SCO did not get the SVRx copyrights. What SCO bought was really the UnixWare business. Not UNIX!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Where is the party defending Linux for Linux's own sake? This is the thrust of my question. A plea more to the OSDLs, OSIs, and FSFs to get off their asses, work together, and start providing that role.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
Let's take your position, so now the Linux companies are either out of business or out of Linux. This is an improvement how? This advances any of the goals that various sectrors of the Linux community embrace how?
Okay, maybe it won't eradicate Linux from the face of the Earth, but it will effectively reduce it to a hobbyist OS again.
The enemy here has allready proven that they are better at manipulating the media machine. The ODSL for example is funded princicpally by a bunch of tech companies. If the legal environment and risk mangement perception of Linux fuyndamnetally change as a result of this mess, what will guarantee that such support will continue? So Linus goes back to Transmeta, but are they going to be as understanding as they previously were? In such an environment? Not likely.
Simple survival is not sufficient, not after the gains we have made. This kafuffle has the ability to undo all that. Is that really a satisfactory result, that Linux is effectively reduced to the point it was at in 1993?
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals