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One Company's Response to SCO
Great_Jehovah writes "The CIO of Just Sports USA received an extortion letter from SCO, started a thread about it on the pgsql-general and then posted his response letter after weighing the various pieces of advice and info he received. Here's hoping that most of SCO's intended victims do the same." An anonymous reader submits a story in a Utah paper about SCO: "The Salt Lake City Weekly paper is running a front page article on the SCO shenanigans. The reporter interviewed Darl, Linus, Bruce Perens and others for the article with new choice quotes from them all." Also, IBM at Linuxworld claims it will win against SCO (miscellaneous plug: CmdrTaco will be speaking at Linuxworld later today).
January 21, 2004
Mr. Philip Langer
Regional Director, Intellectual Property Licensing
SCO Group
355 South 520 West Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Dear Mr. Langer:
I am writing you in response to your letter dated January 19th, 2004 in which you advised that you would
consider legal action if we failed to respond to your efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement. To date, I
have yet to receive any information concerning our systems and what you allege violates your intellectual
property rights. You have sent me letters that conflict with other statements made by representatives of the
SCO Group concerning SCO's ownership of UNIX ABI's and their supposed (re)distribution under the
GPL in the Linux kernel.
If you would like to detail directly which of our systems allegedly violate your copyrights, and specifically
which code on said systems allegedly violates said copyrights, we will be happy to do an internal audit to
verify your claims. Once the results of said audit are complete, we will be more than willing discuss any
pending licensing issues with you.
Our current understanding of your legal situation is that your organization has yet to prove your claims of
SCO intellectual property being included in the GPL based Linux kernel software that SCO itself has
distributed under the GPL. While I understand your concerns regarding intellectual property and your
desire to protect SCO's property, at this time, the legality and claims concerning SCO's ownership of code
that exists in the 2.4 Linux kernel has yet to be determined by a court of law. I, speaking for myself, follow
with interest SCO Group's contortions in its lawsuits against Novell and IBM, and its defense against the
lawsuit brought by Red Hat. In my study of the events that have transpired, it's my understanding that
SCO Group has yet to produce any substantive evidence as to the claims regarding code misappropriation
by IBM. I am requesting the SCO Group to provide to my organization substantive evidence of alleged
copyright violations so that we may compare the alleged violations for the purpose of internal audit to
determine if any licensing needs to indeed exist. I do, however, intend to publicly document the results of
said audit and any communication with the SCO Group regarding this matter.
Before you waste any more of my time or yours, please detail exact information such as the offending lines
of code and the kernel versions you contend this code is in. Alternatively if your organization agrees, we
can re-address these issues after your current lawsuits regarding these issues are finalized.
Sincerely,
Gavin M. Roy
Chief Information Officer
Just Sports USA
Informative? Did the moderators even bother reading the PDF?
Its got a picture of Goatse. Sheesh!
Freakin' hell.
How did this get moderated up? Did ANYONE actualy click on the links to see if they are real?
The GIF is real, but goatse warning in that PDF.
"...silence is a dangerous sound."
When the spade obviously doesnt think itself to be a spade.
Meaning, there's such a thing as professionalism. Being frank is for engineers, and thats why people dont like them.
I know I didnt actually answer your question, but if I did, I'd have to charge.
That's not even what SCO is claiming. Have you been listening at ALL?
In court where it matters, SCO says that IBM wrote some code for UNIX, then put that code in Linux. Because IBM wrote that code for UNIX and SCO owns UNIX, SCO says that it also owns the code for UNIX that IBM wrote, and thus IBM can't put the code into Linux without violating SCO's "IP."
It has nothing to do with individual contributions of patented/copyrighted code, it has to do with SCO's claim that whatever IBM writes for UNIX, SCO still owns, simply because SCO owns UNIX.
It provides a detailed description of what the supposed 'problem' is, and clearly shows each sides claims.
An excellent article to show to the hestitant boss..
It was run by our lawyer and CEO :)
They can't say a damn thing about any of this in Germany- or face nasty fines and jail time for the regional execs if they DO say anything of the sort.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
That was already done in Germany, they can't talk about their claims there until they are willing to show their "proof" in court.
I wrote this earlier today -- well, ok, very late last night -- in response to SCO's apparent Capitol Hill diatribe.
Anyone interested in reading it can find it here, complete with the minor grammatical/typing errors that I failed to catch when reading it the first 20 times.
I encourage all of you to do the same thing. No one is quite sure how wide a distribution Darl's letter has gotten, but we can certainly counter them.
The profit of GNU-licensed software does not come in the sales of the software itself but the sales of hardware and services.
The production of software may look like a losing venture, since the production costs of any software is not negligible. But once made, once that cost is sunk, as is the case of Linux, the reproduction costs are near zero, and the absence of anyone charging license fees for it makes it very popular for everyone who has machinery or services to sell. It is not a standard economic model but it appears to work well, as evidenced by companies like IBM and Red Hat.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
OTOH(!), at this point I think it would be exceptionally difficult to argue that there is anything in SysV that could be considered a trade-secret today anyway. The way it looks to me, SCO owns nothing but a license to SysV and a license to sub-license it, if Novell does still indeed own it as they claim.
SCO is indeed on shaky ground and it looks like they will not survive the counter-suits.
Good riddance!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
It originally read: "My telephone number is 999-999-9999 or email fud@fud.com" or something like that....
A rather kind thing to do in this situation!
Text from the .pdf of the reply letter:
January 21, 2004
Mr. Philip Langer
Regional Director, Intellectual Property Licensing
SCO Group
355 South 520 West Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Dear Mr. Langer:
I am writing you in response to your letter dated January 19th, 2004 in which you advised that you would
consider legal action if we failed to respond to your efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement. To date, I
have yet to receive any information concerning our systems and what you allege violates your intellectual
property rights. You have sent me letters that conflict with other statements made by representatives of the
SCO Group concerning SCO's ownership of UNIX ABI's and their supposed (re)distribution under the
GPL in the Linux kernel.
If you would like to detail directly which of our systems allegedly violate your copyrights, and specifically
which code on said systems allegedly violates said copyrights, we will be happy to do an internal audit to
verify your claims. Once the results of said audit are complete, we will be more than willing discuss any
pending licensing issues with you.
Our current understanding of your legal situation is that your organization has yet to prove your claims of
SCO intellectual property being included in the GPL based Linux kernel software that SCO itself has
distributed under the GPL. While I understand your concerns regarding intellectual property and your
desire to protect SCO's property, at this time, the legality and claims concerning SCO's ownership of code
that exists in the 2.4 Linux kernel has yet to be determined by a court of law. I, speaking for myself,
follow with interest SCO Group's contortions in its lawsuits against Novell and IBM, and its defense against the lawsuit brought by Red Hat. In my study of the events that have transpired, it's my understanding that
SCO Group has yet to produce any substantive evidence as to the claims regarding code misappropriation
by IBM. I am requesting the SCO Group to provide to my organization substantive evidence of alleged
copyright violations so that we may compare the alleged violations for the purpose of internal audit to
determine if any licensing needs to indeed exist. I do, however, intend to publicly document the results of
said audit and any communication with the SCO Group regarding this matter.
Before you waste any more of my time or yours, please detail exact information such as the offending lines
of code and the kernel versions you contend this code is in. Alternatively if your organization agrees, we
can re-address these issues after your current lawsuits regarding these issues are finalized.
Sincerely,
Gavin M. Roy
Chief Information Officer
Just Sports USA
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
This was moddes as insightful, funny, and interesting (suprising that it was not informative too because it had a link).
An anecdotal slice of the time series data is not going to tell you anything. Considering that when you look at 3 month data you will see that the price for the past 3 months has been basically a sine wave oscilating between 14 and 18 a share. Considering that the stock was in the 1 to 2 dollar range from jan 02 to jan 03 when the current SCO execs bought their stock, I'd say that their plan (pump and dump) is working quite well. They just have to keep the fud going long enough to sell all their stock in smallish amounts over time (to keep off of the legal raday). Trust me at the current price, I doubt anyone at SCO is complaining about the free money.
You may want to scroll up and read this
Okay, now they're sending letters lobbying congress. This is getting so out of hand. But, here's where you and I can actually fight back. If you're involved in open source (or even if you just support it) and you're a U.S. citizen, write your congressperson in support of Open Source. Be polite and be professional. Explain your understanding of the facts and why what SCO is doing is extortion and ask your congressperson to consider the facts before passing legislation.
In particular, point out to said congressperson that to date, no evidence has provided by SCO has survived more than a day's scrutiny by the community. That no court has yet supported any of SCO's allegations, and so on.
Please send snail mail instead of e-mail, if possible. Snail mail is more likely to be read. The great thing about congress is, if you send a lot of letters, they sometimes get the point (though not always, as evidenced by the DMCA among other things).
Amen, brother.
And to paint a pretty picture of what you're saying, an href equals SCO's 1 year data. No one gives a flying care whether SCO's stock flutters around at $15. It was in danger of getting delisted a year ago. Darl has delivered quite handily what he promised to the board when he signed on.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Any company worth it's salt knows that you at least keep your local press on your side:
City Weekly is a paper catering to the non-Mormon majority in Salt Lake, who see Lindon/Orem/Provo as a sureal Mormon enclave a million miles away. People joke that you need to get a visa to go there.
To Darl, the 'local press' is the Deseret News. Their slant can be seen here:
SCO Group now offering license outside the U.S.
Google and SCO hold talks
SCO sues Novell, claiming slander
Bear in mind, Novell is in Orem.
This is one article that is definitely worth reading. I had my reservations, thinking an article in a Salt Lake paper would be backing SCO, but no. Just a very well laid out, easy to follow description of the entire sordid affair that clearly shows just how ridiculously SCO are acting. My favourite part:
"I want to walk the Court through enough of our complaint to help the Court understand that IBM clearly did contribute a lot of the Unix-related information into Linux. We just don't know what it is," Kevin McBride told the court, according to a transcript of the proceedings.
So, imagine your car is stolen, and you go to the police. "What kind of car was it?", they ask. "I don't know, but tell me what cars have been stolen recently and I'll tell you if any of them are mine", would apparently be SCO's response.
Anyway, this article can be highly recommended for lay people wanting to understand what this is all about, or worried if SCO might have a case. They won't be worried after reading this.
It appears you do not work in an environment where tact matters. There are ways to say things without being unprofessional and get the exact same point across - and have a supportive audience. There is a saying that goes "Diplomacy is telling someone to go to hell and making them look forward to the trip". It is always important to be truthful, but as a person that supports many users, I have found you MUST sugar coat it. You can't tell a user (as an example) the problem with their computer is a glitch between the keyboard and chair - not if you expect to keep your job. Coarse language in a professional environment encourages people to ignore and discredit you.
By the same token, if someone is able to point out errors you have made yourself in a tactful way, you are likely to take less offense and actually learn something - but not if they say "Dude, you're fucking up, fix your shit".
I do agree that we have taken political correctness too far, although it is a separate issue from being tactful.
ymmv
That's a "reverse stock split". The "1:4" means "we give you one new share (at 4x the current price) for four old shares."
Compare it to Microsoft (for example), with their "2:1" split(s). "We give you two new shares at half the current price for your one old share."
Take a look at the historical prices here. The Close column makes it pretty clear.
SCOX needed to do this because of the delisting threat. NASDAQ will delist a company that can't maintain a share price over $1, and SCOX was at $0.50 (+- $0.10).
No coincidence here at all.
IIRC, It comes from Joseph Smith's strange quasi-"Hebrew" (and ultimately worthless) translation of old documents from the middle east. I can't remember if this is the one that's actually from a dime-a-dozen copy of the Egyptian scrolls of Ani (book of the dead) or whether it's one of the others that he claimed to have "translated," by making things up (if you ask a non-mormon scholar of these languages) or with help from god (if you ask a Mormon).
Anyway, the name filtered down and became the Mormon's euphemism for the communal society that they wanted to create under Brigham Young after moving to what would become the Utah territory. i.e. "Deseret" is not all that different from Jim Jones' "Peoples' Temple" and so on... a self-sustained society of the faithful, trading and interacting primarily amongst themselves, with external activity being limited, for the most part, to conversion activity. They actually have a Hymn which begins "In our lovely Deseret, where the saints of god have met..."
The point is moot anyway because Caldera, having acquired the rights to UNIX from old SCO, released Unix V32 under a BSD-Style license. This includes the ABI of course, download it yourself and see. The most SCO could require is that their copyright be recognized in the header files and that mention be made that they fall under a different license and not the GPL. Here's the signature on the email about it:
How did Caldera go from "open source enthusiasts" to decrying open source as communist? In your next letter to SCO I would politely offer to change the copyright attribution to Caldera and make note of the license if they would point to the files in question and the author listed in those files in Linux couldn't be contacted to dispute their claims.Darl quote from the article:
.Hey Darl. That's the "Ark of the Covenant". OF. Not "and".
:)
"the ark and the covenant"
Pssst...
**************
The "AotC" contained the two tablets upon which the Ten Commandments were written, the staff of Aaron, and a pot of manna. It was where God manifested His earthly presence.
The Ark of the Covenant could only be approached once a year by the high priest on "Yum Kippur"- the Jewish Day of Atonement. On this day, the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies with the blood of a sacrificed lamb. It was also only on this day that God's presence manifested between the two Cherubs. The high priest would sprinkle the blood of the sacrificed lamb on the Mercy Seat. Once received by God, the blood of the lamb atoned (covered) for the sins of the high priest and the entire nation of Israel. This ritual was performed continuously, year after year. The Ark of the Covenant played a key role in the forgiveness of sins.
***************
Does this mean that Darl and Co are forgiving us of our alledged copyright/license/"whatever they're accusing us of today" sins? Thanks guys!
--Insert catchy
Those mormons also happen to be the most accepting of other peoples religions too. Don't believe me? Look at history. Even recent history. Or why not just move to some bible belt town that will run out anyone who doesn't goto their church. Where I just visited a Hare Krishna temple and find out the LDS church donated money so they could build their temple.
BTW, I just moved to Utah here for a job. And I have yet to meet one person that likes SCO.
Some info that I dug up real fast thanks to google.
mormons helping Hare Krishna Temple
If you want to bash a religion, try the catholic church and the church of england for their known repeated atrocities against man kind. Anyone who thought differently was tortured, killed, as well as the families.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
I assume many others noticed the following odd retort from Darl: {quote} Another gripe Torvalds has with McBride is that the Linux community has pleaded all along, 'tell us what the code is, and if it doesn't belong there, we'll remove it.' McBride says SCO has shown plenty. "They're disingenuous on that or they would be ripping out the million lines of code we've already pointed to," he said, adding that the violations are too far-reaching to simply rip out anyway. One million lines amounts to roughly 20 percent of the entire Linux kernel. McBride says SCO revealed the offending code last August at its Las Vegas SCOForum. "Truly, and then they just ignored it," he said.{end} I beg your pardon, Darl, but... 1) "million lines of code"?!? How many lines of code were even present when the alleged borrowing occurred? 2) "we've already pointed to"?!? That's rich. This is precisely the heart of the issue: which are the offending lines of code, Darl?!? Show them! SCO consistently refuses, although the article suggests that 60 pages of... something... was provided IBM. You cannot blame Linux programmers for not fixing lines that you refuse to point out! Wright's First Observation states: "Whenever someone is in error, they will, at some point, in word or deed, not merely refute but contradict themselves. They will do this not because it is logically necessary but because this is how human beings have been observed to behave." This Observation is subject to Wright's First and Second Laws. McBride's arguments are not merely wrong - they are internally incoherent and self-contradictory.
Why pgsql? Why not some linux kernel mail-lists? First of all, linux mail-lists will be more aporpriate to discuss linux related issues.
Besides, pgsql community is historically negative about Linux - they have roots back in Berkley and keep that love to BSD still.
Also, PostgreSQL is BSD-licensed and their leaders are fanatically against GNU. They actually think that GNU is evil, and they bring MySQL name as a demonstration of it.
With all my love to PostgreSQL as to very well designed DBMS, I don't understant why issues related only to Linux and GNU should be discussed in pgsql mail-lists?
Less is more !
Thanks, and sure, just fix the few typos before you send it out ;-)