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IBM, Intel Set Up $10m SCO Defense Fund
An anonymous reader writes that the "NY Times reports that a group of companies, led by I.B.M. and Intel, plans to announce today that it is setting up a $10 million legal defense fund to help pay for the litigation costs of corporate users of the popular GNU/Linux operating system if they are sued. ZDnet also has a story on this." otisaardvark points out that "The fund is to be administered by OSDL (Open Source Development Labs) and so, amongst other things, could bankroll legal costs for Linus."
Kudos to IBM/Intel for "doing the Right Thing (TM)". Also found it interesting how the ZDnet article words it "Anti-SCO". Harsh. I like it.
This announcement should add a new dimension to SCO's nonsense about indemnification.
; )
Can I bum a sig?
The SCO vs Linux legal battle took another turn today, as the SCO group plans action against Caldera, it's former self, for releasing their alleged IP. In a move that stunned the rest of the industry, SCO is effectively suing itself for initiating distribution of SCO IP as GPL code. SCO says they are assured of winning the case as they have all of the evidence and can present it in court.
SCO claimed that, to defend itself against such charges, it will be making gratuitous use of the OSDL defense fund.
nude mac desktops
IBM & Intel won't just throw all this money away would they. I think what this means is:
We're pretty damn sure that Linux is clean. You can be sure too, because if you get sued we'll pay the legal costs for the time being, but since we know that you (we, Linux) will win in the end, SCO will have to pay and so it won't cost us a dime.
And so our Linux bussiness can roll on. It's more than PR. It's saying we'll win.
OSDL hopes to raise $10 million, Cohen said. So far it's raised $3 million from a group of companies that includes IBM, MontaVista Software and Intel.
What this may do is set the stage for killing SCO by bleeding them by laywers...
The idea is simple: Ring fence SCO from accessing customer license fees. Meanwhile, bleed them to death by keeping them entangled in the SCO/IBM, RedHat/SCO suits.
If SCO cannot extract a single license fee because it ends up in another court case, their business model is effectively dead, thus (hopefully!) devaluing their stock!
Ofcourse, it is yet another news article with SCO's name in it, but it also seems like IBM and Intel think they need a crapload of money to defend people, which in turn suggests that there is something to SCO's claims.
SCO really wants to go to court, but ofcourse they know they don't stand a chance. This amount of money on both sides could make for a spectacular trial.
At the same time, some people, who hadn't figured it out yet, might realise that there is no way on earth SCO is actually going to win.
Besided that, i wonder if IBM and Intel did return-on-investment calculations on this. Maybe they figure the kudos will be worth more than 10M.
What I find amazing is the big stink that SCO brought up about indemnification, and protecting your customers against legal action. Even Laura DiDio, our favorite shill, brings up the indemnification issue time and time again.
Now look what's happening here. OSDL is indemnifying linux users against legal action (more than an MS EULA can do, by the way), and SCO is... what's that? they're making noises about suing their own UNIX licensees?
Hypocrites!
Megacorps are neither all good nor all evil. They are just human institutions that plug along and do their thing. What they do often depends on circumstances and who is running them. Often when they do seemingly "evil" things it's out of stupidity and shortsightedness rather than malice.
As for why IBM is doing this, that's obvious. Intel and the others? I'd say that being on the list of contributors for that is probably the best PR money can buy with the hacker community. If you are a tech company, the hacker community are your customers. They probably just redirected a few mil from advertising. Intel needs good PR right now with the hacker community to help them compete with the AMD Opteron.
This may be one of the last nails in the SCO coffin, since $10 mil can buy a lot of legal representation and SCO likely can't match that. SCO does not have the cash to bankroll fifty lawsuits. If the legal battle really got ugly, I'm sure the fund could solicit at least another few mil from Linux users.
You need to calm down a bit. Over at Groklaw they "don't expect to know much until the next court date on the 23rd".
Kids today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. - Socrates 400 BC
And they will bring DOOOM TO US ALL!!!
Interesting enough then, that Activision, the one megacorp that would actually be thanked for bringing us Doom (well... Doom 3 anyways), seems unable to do so.
It ends today and SCO has stated they are handing it over today, but no one knows what it will be yet.
It may just be evidence they give to IBM so that they can then look at the code themselves, in which case we don't get to find out anything yet, but they may also submit evidence to the court, in which case we do get to find out today or soon after
IBM & Intel won't just throw all this money away would they.
For these companies, this is not a lot of money. What they really are putting on the line (and have been for a while) is their prestige and reputation.
Donate to groklaw - www.groklaw.net
PJ is doing some AWESOME unpaid work uncovering and collating all the information about the case and the history of unix, sco, novell, the copyrights etc. Many journalists are looking and linking to groklaw already. If there's one person working against SCO who needs support from the community, it's PJ.
If SCO goes after google, a well recognized name outside tech circles and gets thumped in it's first big, real court battle... it may force the "SCO Get Rich Train" right off the tracks before it really gets started.
I'm not a kernel developer either, but if Linux costs me $799 per proc to run, Windows and Apple become the cheaper alternative.
Partner link for the NYT article.
Well, so much for that.
This begs a couple thoughts/questions though.
First, $10M US is not that big a pinch really. IBM could throw that kind of cash around without even a blink (kinda like MS throwing $6M to SCO for a "License",) so $10M really shouldn't be too hard to come up with.
In fact, I would like to see a list of people who are contributing to this, and would like to see some big names on that list (hello Red Hat!)
Also, this would be an EXCELLENT time for Novell to step up and put their money where their acquisition is, and back their SuSE purchase by getting in on this as well.
And someone earlier made an excellent comment: where can someone in the general OSS community donate to such a fund? I mean, its one thing for "We the People" to piss and moan about SCO, and then rely on major corps to handle the legal stuff for us (Which is fine for now, but with the way SCO has acted over the last few months, who knows WHO they are gonna sue next), but it would be a much better show of solidarity if we also contributed to this fund, or sone like it, above and beyond the usual contributions to groups like EFF and such.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Cheers,
Craig
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
A typical legal strategy for a battle like this is for the side in SCO's position to tackle a bunch of little guys first to build up precedents without actually having to prove their case against an oponent equipped with a like legal force. IBM and Intel are simply serving notice to SCO that that isn't going to fly here. They will put on their defense wherever SCO goes instead of waiting for SCO to come to them.