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SCO Responds to OSDL Legal Aid Announcement
Greyfox writes "SCO has issued a response to the earlier OSDL legal aid announcement. Basically the same old story, noting: 'If vendors feel so confident with the intellectual property foundation under their massive contributions into Linux, then they should put their money where their mouth is and protect end users with true vendor-based indemnification.' The release also refers us to their SCOSource web site, which they claim in their announcement shows 'proof' of infringement. I was unable to find any such 'proof' other than their claim that they own errno.h. Since I'm obviously too much of an idiot to find the 'proof' they claim they're showing, maybe someone else could go look and tell me where it is."
While some people are tired of the daily (hourly?) SCO update, I, for one, am not. This is a fascinating story and the first true (iirc) challenge to the open source movement. The outcome is much more important than the future of Linux, or even OSS in general. If you're tired of the stories, filter them out.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
Call me crazy, but isn't that basically what the legal defense fund is? Vendor-based indemnification usually == the vendor will pay legal fees etc. if you wind up in court for using product X. Considering OSDL is technically a linux "vendor" (i.e. they "manufacture" portions of the "product" and distribute it....) and since the OSDL is basically a community figurehead type operation and Linux is a community project.... you can tell where I am going with this right? ;)
Why can't we all just find an automated form to sue SCO for violating the GPL? There's got to be one online these days with all the lawsuits.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Cheers,
Craig
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
With respect to SCO's claims on errno.h, perhaps copyright historians/experts can help me out here:
Since when did the association of a number (e.g. 12) and its specific meaning in a specific context (EACCES: Permission denied when accessing a file) become copyrightable?
Does this mean I can assert copyrights over /etc/X11/rgb.txt?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
They claim to own System V, but give no evidence regarding linux ownership.
They do indeed claim System V. They also claim that this ownership (in the form of copyright to the source code and design, I believe) automatically extends to all works derived in part or whole from System V.
Unless System V == Linux
This means that according to their claim, Linux in fact does not have to be the same as System V, it only has to be derived from it for them to have ownership of (part of) the Linux source code.
IANAL, but it seems to me that this claim of derivation is extremely tenuous. But copyright law does recognize the general notion of derived works, so its just possible that they are right about this. It will take a court - and probably several appeals courts - to decide this.
Even if they did establish that their copyright of System V gave them rights to derived works in the way they are claiming, I suspect they would also need to separately show that Linux was derived from System V in that way.
Again, their claim is not so much that specific blocks of code have been copied from their codebase into Linux, but that the general specifications and design (as well as code) of System V is present in Linux. If they are right about this then recoding specific infringing code may not be enough to satisfy the courts.
I suspect their case is deeply flawed, but it does seem at least based in a reading of the law.
Sailing over the event horizon
Gotta love #6 and #45:
6. Why doesn't SCO just simply publish this code so that it can be taken out of Linux if it is indeed infringing? And why do you require a non-disclosure agreement to view some of this infringing code?
Intellectual property forms the basis of the value of any software vendor. IP is confidential throughout the industry to protect competitive advantages one vendor has over another. Other industry vendors such as Microsoft and Apple do not routinely contribute their IP as vendors spend millions of dollars creating a competitive market.
SCO has confidentiality clauses in all of our contracts with more than 6,000 licensees that specifically state that this UNIX source code has to be held in confidence. If SCO published this UNIX source code, SCO itself would be in violation of these contracts.
SCO has a legal obligation to hold this source code in confidence, so it requires that individuals who view this code sign a non-disclosure in order to see it.
#45
. I am running BSD. Am I required to purchase a license?
No, you do not need to purchase a SCO IP license to run BSD.
This Yahoo! message post does a good job of breaking down the SCO press release. There is a simple rule when it comes to reading SCO press releases and public statements. They're communicating on two levels at the same time.
First is the perception level. This is what you're supposed to get the feel of when you read the statements. The second is the literal/factual level, which is far less impressive, and what keeps the SEC and other agencies off of their butt. But most people don't read at this level. It is *fun* when you do!
In short, the art of lying while telling the truth. You'll see it in the Yahoo! posting.
According to http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=ftp.sco.c om, SCO is
running its FTP site using SCO Unix. However, I FTP'ed the site to see for
sure:
>ftp ftp.sco.com
Connected to ftp.sco.com.
220 ftp.caldera.com Ready.
User (ftp.sco.com:(none)): anonymous
331 Anonymous login ok, send your complete email address as your password.
Password:
230- Welcome to SCO's FTP site!
This site hosts UNIX software patches, device drivers and supplements
from SCO.
To access Skunkware and Supplemental Open Source Packages, please
connect to ftp2.caldera.com.
230 Anonymous access granted, restrictions apply.
ftp> cd bin
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list
zcat
gzip
ls
tar
226 Transfer complete.
ftp: 21 bytes received in 0.00Seconds 21000.00Kbytes/sec.
ftp> get gzip
200 PORT command successful
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for gzip (142512 bytes)
226 Transfer complete.
ftp: 143032 bytes received in 1.08Seconds 132.68Kbytes/sec.
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye
Examination of the gzip executable with the strings command reveals that it
contains the string:
@(#) The Linux C library 5.4.22
As well as the text of the standard "NO WARRANTY" header found in
GPL source files.
So, apparently their FTP site is running Linux, but they are hiding that fact
with deceptive http headers (or whatever it is that netcraft uses).
I still do not understand how SCO can threaten companies with a copyright infringement without first testing their claim in court.
If this is legal then what would stops Joe Schmoe from claiming they had input in some book on the top best seller list and start walking around threating BN and Amazon or anyone who bought the book. Why not since there is nothing to lose and maybe they will pay off.