Slashdot Mirror
SCO Expands Licensing Money Chase Worldwide
drizst 'n drat writes "Article posted recently on ZDNet that 'companies outside the United States that use Linux now face the threat of legal action from the SCO Group, following the announcement on Wednesday that SCO's licenses are available worldwide.'" And cbiltcliffe writes "Vnunet is reporting that SCO is now threatening legal action against UK businesses that run Linux.
Yet again, they claim they're going to initiate legal action against Linux users 'within a couple of weeks.' (Funny...weren't they saying that back in September?)
They also claim that Novell and HP indemnification schemes are essentially useless (similar to SCO's Linux licences).
It definitely appears the media is getting somewhat wiser to the FUD, however, as the story reports 'The run-time licence only permits use of what SCO says is its IP,' rather than 'The licence permits use of SCO's IP' like we would have heard a couple of months ago."
So have they got WIPO to approve their claims?
We have so much time, and so little to do - strike that! Reverse it. Tryn Mirell
Until Novell and SCO sorts out who owns what, anyone can just tell SCO to go to hell. That's if there's anything of SCO left by the time IBM finish with them. Anyone who now pays SCO money is stupid.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Unless and until they can prove in a court of law that they really have these rights they claim, they cannot expect to be paid. On the contrary, they can expect to be investigated for fraud, an perhaps subject to criminal charges of extortion...
And trying to dodge the GPL does not count. Either the GPL is valid and must be obeyed, or it is invalid which makes everyone distributing Linux and other GPL'd software into copyright infringers. This latter seems somewhat less than likely...
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
Yes, they could, but since any defendants could just lift the arguments straight out of the US case and probably win if the other country's laws were similar, it's unlikely they would. Plus, if the prevailing Slashdot opinion regarding SCO's real motives is actually true, the executives will be living it up in Bermuda while the company files bankruptcy right about the time the US verdict is being read.
According to InfoWorld, SCO is now claiming that in it's response to IBM interogatories, they have submitted no examples of copyright infrigement.
Blake Stowell is quoted as saying, "We've not introduced copyright infringement as part of our case with IBM. We've tried to make it clear that it's a contract issue."
Seems quite odd when a SCO press release from yesterday says exactly the opposite. Old Darl said this, "SCO is willing to enforce our copyright claims down to the end user level and in the coming days and weeks, we will make this evident in our actions."
What freakin planet are these guys from? I'm sorry, but I despise them like I despise neo-nazi, racists, thugs.
I'm sorry that I ever bought a Caldera product...
Your mom always said, a PB&J is better than nothing, and God is nothing, is a PB&J better than God?
SCO is just like the schoolyard bully that keeps pushing other kids around until someone hits him in the stomach and leaves him in pain. I was the kid who would never fight, but when one of these guys got to be too much and pushed me around, I fought them. I didn't even have to win. Once word got around that I (the kid who hated fighting) could even hold my own with them, their reputation as a bully was gone.
That's what SCO is doing. They're pushing everyone. When they don't get enough attention, they make more threats. They keep threating more and more people and companies. As long as they can rant and rave, their stock stays high, but once someone (like IBM, hopefully) and kicks them down a notch, it'll all be over.
They know they have nothing. They know the only thing keeping their stock high is the bluster and fuss they keep making. They're reaching out as wide as possible to bully the schoolyard, the neighborhood, and, soon, the whole world. When they reach the end of people they can threaten, they'll have to act. If they had the strength to act and actually do something, they would. Since they don't, they're Shakespeare's idiot, telling a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
I predict one of four things will happen with the threatened lawsuits:
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
If there is we didn't put it there. So far as I'm aware we are running stock AIX software with our stuff on top, and that does NOT contain any SCO code unless SCO suddenly decided to get into banking software.
Ask the nice men from IBM who look after these wee beasties.
Ed
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
Didn't SCO sue IBM to find out what IP was put into Linux? So how can they sue anybody using Linux if they haven't got a clue?
And going to Europe won't be any better. They still have some laws that work against crap like this last I checked.
(Germany for example shut SCO down)
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Second and more interesting there is actually a tort in the UK that covers this exact type of case.
Interesting--can you give a bit of background on this? The barratry thing doesn't apply until after SCO starts sueing aix or linux users, which probably won't happen. The general point I'm trying to make is that sueing or threatening to sue people for profit (hello Canopy Group) is a riskier endeavor in the UK than in the USA.
Remain calm! All is well!
You know, extortion tactics like this aren't entirely new. I am sure there are hundreds of examples of where "smart" people leverage some sort of thing similar to FUD to make "dumb" people give them their money.
There's insurance fraud, there's the nigerian oil scam, there's "Call Chloe For Your Free Reedin's", there's the Lottery, and on and on. In the 1800's people were scamming those unawares with magic hair tonics, snake oil penis enhancements and horny goat weed, etc.....
The funny thing about this all along, is that the tables are turned. Instead of "smart" people trying to outwit "dumb" people, we've got someone who greatly underestimates his target.
You don't go talking IP and code and OSes with PEOPLE WHO LIVE AND BREATHE THIS SHIT DAILY. We wrote this code, we know what we've got and what we can do. Many of us have also worked with UnixWare and well, quite frankly, they can HAVE it.
I'd like to see someone who doesn't know a lick of physics go storming into a major automobile manufacturer's engineering office and demand they pay you $X for suspected stolen technologies in their seat springs or something. Those guys could let you have it in such a way that would make your head spin.
Something tells me that Darl knows all this. He's smarter than what he's letting on, and that he's got an agenda, or is getting funded by someone (insert favourite pump-n-dump/{MS, SUN, HP, Apple} is behind all this, etc conspiracy theorem.)
do() || do_not();
IBM will say little or nothing. They will not give SCO anything that could be used as a weapon against IBM. This is a lesson that SCO should be learning after IBM used SCO's executives' words against them in court in IBM's own motions to compel discovery.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Every company that runs Linux, in any capacity, immediately sues SCO for fraud, extortion, and for willful and malicious interference. There's no way they could survive that many lawsuits. They don't have enough money to even respond to them all.
Then again, IANAL...
This is just SCO's lame attempt at trying to divert the public's attention from the fact that Novell has a firm grip on their balls (= 95% of their licensing revenues, which SCO don't have anymore, not even counting damages and interests) and that they failed to obey a direct court order to divulge all their proof of breach of contract.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
FYI - The retail and investment banking parts of RBC are independent member companies: About RBC
The teller making $32000 a year is not going to have a clue what up with the boys in Investment Banking. These guys can make up to seven figures doing a job very few people in the population can understand. Bottom line: IB guys will never hear about it.
It would be more influential if you were a big retail investor, like a pension fund, and you said "you guys are facilitating a scam that is dicking around with my $50M in IBM stock".
If some world-wide company answered their extortion-letters with something along the lines of: "Please contact our german office about that, they're handling all software our company licenses."
I also wonder why it's aparently impossible to get a similar injunction in the US. I mean there should be a way to say "put up or shut up" in legalese in the US of A too.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks