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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).
The entire letter was "acceptable" until his closing paragraph where he told them to stop wasting his time and their time... If you want to sound professional you do not tell someone to stop wasting your time in a letter. Find another way to put it.
.02,
I personally feel that ignoring them is a far better approach... Let them waste their time and effort mailing these things out to get no response. It's more frustrating that way.
Just my worthless
My concern with all of this crap, is the fact that someone hasn't forced SCO to shut the hell up. It reminds me of the Bully in grade school. He would consistantly beat up on kids every day. Some even to the point of actual damage, and he was NEVER suspended. Never. Ever. I think that is what needs to be really focused on. Not so much as "When will all of this madness end?", but rather "How can we prevent this from ever getting this far, if history repeats itself?"
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
From the article: "I've been pounding the table here for a year or so saying there's no free lunch, and there is going to be a day of reckoning for every company that thinks they are going to try and sell a free model."
What is with this messianic attitude? Perhaps what Darl does not realize is that folks contribute to Linux and other open source projects through a variety of reasons. Notably, some contributions to open source have happened via tax-payer funded projects from a variety of nations throughout the world. Other contributions are made from the generous and charitable contributions of others who simply want to make a difference. Darl wants to exploit those contributions and leverage his band of merry lawyers to "liberate" Linux from the rest of us. Only his liberation is not for anything other than selfish desires (like any criminal who sees nothing wrong with theft) with no respect to the common good.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
SCO is just trying to get the attention of everyone in an attempt to get people to gain knowledge of their product so they can make money and as we all know they have been lobying congress to get them to ban open-source because they aren't making any money. So if we all just ignore them maybe they will go away. Talk to you all later Joel
'nuff said.
If you want to sound professional you do not tell someone to stop wasting your time in a letter.
Since when is calling a spade a spade unprofessional?
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
I would suggest that response was far more 'acceptable' than the extortion threat that was the letter from SCO.
SCO *is* wasting a valuable person's time... he had to spend time treating that letter seriously, and if I were him, I'd be keeping a log of all time spent on the SCO issue in the hope that it could be used to sue them in small claims court for expenses after SCO loses in court. Of course, I expect that SCO won't have much left at that point, but it would be fun to kick them in the nuts when they're down.
I'm just glad to see someone bringing the threats to a public forum, and responding in a reasonable manner.
Too many of the public responses seem to be nothing more than namecalling and puffed up catfights.
I, personally(not that anyone cares), can forgive one bad line in an otherwise excellent letter.
-
"Vengeance is fine," sayeth the Lord.
Not at all. Nothing happened to the stock price, you're looking at the 5-day graph.
Take a look a the 1-year graph and you'll see how successful their disgusting strategy has been.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
It's hardly that unprofessional. It comes across as a personal opinion, rather than a "purely factual" representation, but it is in no way insulting or offensive, any more so than asking someone to move out of your way in a supermarket aisle. Besides, when has SCO acted purely according to professional business standards anyway?
Personally, I think the mildly-annoyed personal flair indicates that he's seriously considered the issue and is weighing in on it, rather than simply having his lawyers whip up some legalese response. But then, that's just me.
"While we're at it, Mr. Johnson's article should be printed out and mailed to every member of Congress, the Senate, and to Mr. Bush to stop any of the "anti-Open Source" lobbyists dead in their tracks." not a good idea. you forget that Bush's interests are very much on the "for-profit" side of things.
That newspaper article is one of the most approachable versions of this saga I've seen in a long time. Hopefully, with more mainstream press, we can see the FUD factor affecting the rank-n-file investors. We need this to be picked up in the WSJ.
How did this get moderated up? Did ANYONE actualy click on the links to see if his accusations are real?
Er.... That would be RedHat, would'nt it? Isn't that exactly what RedHat's lawsuit is about?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
sPh
What about former (and current?) customers who got their linux from Caldera?
If SCO is right the offending code will be removed. I cant go to you with a bill saying that you owe me money for something that you have and, since that thing belongs to me, you have to pay. What thing? I won't tell or you will throw away and I won't get my money. I may be a liar... and you don't have anything that belongs to me... you will pay in doubt?
Since programmers doing some work for free is prejudicial to the industry we should abolish it. Is that? So all volunteer work should be abolished, since that volunteer work is stopping some professional of making profit somewhere. Is that?
Not to mention that you generally start with a "home field advantage" with the local press, you usually have to hurt them in some way to get them to be against you. Look at the P-I and MS or the Mercury News coverage of MS.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
So what would my options be in said case? Believe it or not, I actually have the unopened Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 disk in a mint condition "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux Second Edition" (C) 2000 (Actually I never bothered to read the book or install the distro, but it is ironic that the "Idiots Guide" came with Caldera.) Are they forcing people who are using Caldera to pay up and sign a satanic contract in blood? Should I switch back to using MS Windows 98? (GOD NO! NO! NEVER AGAIN! NO!) Should I immediately sign up for my free 25 megs of space on Tripod? Or better: Use the free 5 megs that comes with my ISP service and use the URL Forwarding? Is Stallman and the FSF and Linus and the whole Slashdot community going to lend me kind sage advice and hold my hand through trying times? What oh what should I do if the EVIL DARYL MCBRIDE should come after my computer?
In all seriousness, if SCO ever did come after my "amatuer" homebrew server, what should I do? (Besides fold like a wet napkin...)
I disagree. Having read SCO's vaguely worded letter I agree that it was a waste of time.
I personally feel that ignoring them is a far better approach.
I feel that not responding is unprofessional.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
That's the way legal documents are written. Lots of underlines, bolding and CAPITALS.
> If you want to sound professional you do not tell someone to stop wasting your time in a letter
1) It's his damn letter, he can say what he wants, as long as he speaks for himself or as the sole voice of the company.
2) If SCO doesn't want to be told to stop wasting time, they should stop wasting his time
3) SCO wasn't exactly "professional" in this whole thing from the start.
And that's just it - how the hell would SCO know just who's running what? How would they know that any given company is running Linux servers, to be able to claim their Linux Tax? How would they know who's got a Linux desktop at work or personal server at home? They certainly won't be allowed to issue fishing expedition subpoenas to the hundreds of thousands of various sized companies in this country who might have Linux, let alone to the millions of home users that could possibly ever have bought a PC capable of running Linux.
And then there's the rest of the world... Anyone want to bet that any non-US company will submit to the Linux Tax SCO is trying to levy on them?
So far, SCO has only threatened people who they know have any kind of Unix at all, and the reason they know about those people is that SCO sold them the product. In the article, it says that a "few companies have moved away from SCO's Unix", and those are the ones SCO is chasing. Well, that's a sure and certain way to win them back, eh Darl? And to keep the few remaining customers who haven't defected yet...
Nobody said I had to be as infantile as they have been - I decided on that all by myself without your help.
As a matter of fact, I don't believe that punishing people for malicious acts beyond merely stopping them from continuing is a bad idea. I believe in whacking them hard enough that they not only stop what they're doing, but never even think of doing it again.
I think you mean when the claims are found incorrect?
Get your own free personal location tracker
If you go read his posting he says he wants to switch to BSD. IMHO this will not address the problem,
I think BSD is a fine OS as well, BUT if SCO is successful with thier attack on linux, they've already said they will go after BSD as well.
If this guy is really worried about it, then he needs to fight SCO, not just switch to BSD and HOPE they will leave him alone.
SCO is a bully and speaking from alot of experience, the only way to get rid of a bully is to stand up to them and kick thier teeth in if necessary. Once they see you will fight them, they'll go look for easier prey.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
The day I lose the right to call shit as shit is the day I move somewhere else.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Parent is funny. But I guess that is the kind of confusion that is caused (to jornalists and such like) by users and developers saying Linux when they mean GNU. Linux now has two meanings.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
I think I'll let the C*Os of the world decide what's professional and what's not. It's the glaring typo that got me chuckling. As for how to handle SCO, I think that sending back a nastygram is the calmest, sanest, cheapest response there is. Personally I'd be tempted to file a complaint with the FTC (or whichever agency really ought to receive the complaint) and possibly a lawsuit with a local district court.
If a company like SCO sends a letter, it is definitely worthwhile to send a letter back, this establishes that you are acting in good faith on your beliefs rather than ignoring them in hopes that your misdeeds will simply go unpunished for a while. And just because it's a business communication doesn't mean it can't be worded strongly. In this case the "wasting time" comment adds emphasis to the point the CIO was making about the level of detail he expects from SCO should SCO want to insist in pursuing their demands (i.e. don't just send the names of some kernel header files and expect us to cave).
I do not have a signature
> How about if SCO loses? Do they have to refund everyone who was coerced into buying licenses?
No, because at the time, the people "chose" to pay the license. They could have:
- paid the fee
- stopped using the software (however unrealistic)
- challenged the fee in court
- waited for the outcome of this case.
If they choose the last option and SCO wins, they can be penalized even more for not paying "when required." If they choose to challenge it, they put a lot of money on the line (hell of a lot more than $699) to defend themselves. They could switch OSes, but that's entirely unrealistic, and I imagine SCO is counting all this to force the victims to choose the first option: to pay with no chance of refund (unless later they pursue further legal action over the extortion of $700).
I'm sure that lots of people think that the idea is possible. The real problem, though, is that SCO isn't telling anyone what the supposedly infringing code is, so that even if they are right, and even if we wanted to do the right thing and remove the infringing code, we can't.
... unless the buy a SCO license (thereby violating the GPL). In which case a far graver risk than being sued for GPL violations (which could well happen) has been taken, namely establishing a contractual relationship with a company whose CEO has publicly stated that the sole purpose of Caldera/SCO contracts is to give SCO ammunition with which to sue its customers.
Which, based upon 220+ years of copyright law in the United States, makes the Linux-using world liable for exactly $0.00 in damages.
Zero.
It's called having "dirty hands" and is fundamental to copyright law and enforcement, and regardless of the merits of SCO's case (which I think every informed reader agrees are negligable at best) that particular aspect of the law WILL NOT BE OVERTURNED or ignored.
Linux users have nothing to fear
Only an absolute fool, with a corporate suicide bent, would enter into any kind of business relationship with the rabid, barrotrious company that Darl McBride has transformed Caldera into.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
That response is a professional response.
Politesse is important when conversing with a company that possesses some measure of value to your own, or to individuals who can provide services that can get things done.
This case, he was responding to an extortion threat from a company that has nothing to offer him. It's not necessary to be polite, because the company has already proven that 1: They have nothing of value to him, and 2: They cannot even get the suit over with, much less get anything done!
As such, he used an appropriate economy of words, and spoke as, in my opinion, a true professional.
The Penguin Producer
This is what was actually sent to SCO and quite honestly I don't see anything wrong with it. The first clause is dismissive but the demands are reasonable. Unprofessional would have been something like "Blow me."
So it got to the point without using a bunch of $1.50 words or couched in a slew of legalese cliches. Whatever. It most certainly doesn't merit the criticism it's currently receiving.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Daryl and Kevin McBride are just out to make money. This is how they do it, by (ab)using the legal system. They make outrageous claims, pump up the stock price (investors buy the stock like a lottery ticket - hey maybe SCO can do it, who knows?) and Microsoft pays their salary.
They will keep milking this cow until one day in court a judge will say "So, thousands of programmers from around the world help build this Linux system on their own time, or on their company's time, and they specifically state that this work does not belong to you by including the GPL, and yet you claim that you own this property? Next."
At this point Daryl will turn to Kevin and say "Well bro, that was a cool adventure, what do you want to do next? Hey maybe we can sell licenses to people who use smiley emoticons in their email - let's check out a copyright for that!"
And SCO will be a rapidly fading stain on the highway of the history of UNIX.
No, being frank is for everyone. It is sickening that people have to pussyfoot and sugarcoat things. If something sucks, I'll say it sucks, not that "It is moderately deficient in numerous ways." Just say the fucking truth. It Sucks.
Political Correctness belongs in the trash, along with any letters from SCO.
Feh.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
That lot is usually able to get warrants to enter places.
I believe 'the rest of the world' will follow the German way and let a court tell them to either put up or shut up.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
What SCO CEOs are really interested in is getting rich. They are doing very well so far.
Whether they'll win in court or not is irrelevant. Whether they'll collect on those Linux licenses is irrelevant. All that matters is the movement of the stock. This is a wag the dog situation. They have started a bullshit war and winning or losing it is not the point. The point is having the war and make it look as real as possible, for long enough.
This they are very successful at. I guess that's what they teach you in Management School.
What I want is them to be accountable for their actions as individuals, no more able to hide behind the "Corporation".
What I see is the history repeating: Very powerful people use power to create an environment where they are no longer accountable for their actions. Reminds me of "noble" families in the past - owning the land and the lives of others just because they are noble. Able to steal, rape and kill without consequences.
My feeling is, King of England is back.
I am not amused.
What's more, the same ABIs are used in practically every open-source UNIX, including the BSDs and the "ancient" UNIXes. As well as Cygwin's headers (with no copyright notice present), and even Microsoft's headers as well. It would be mighty hard for SCO to argue that it controls the ABI.
And even if SCO can successfully lay claim to the numbering scheme, then they have a problem, because their own proprietary UNIX offering emulates the Linux ABI. Even if SCO didn't steal any GPL'd code (which is questionable at best), they'd still be infringing Linus's copyrights if their theory were to be upheld.
That is cool sounding, and all, but I don't think it's the way to go.
Just like we have manners at the dinner table, we should have manners when in a business enviroment. Following such standards will help one out immensely come review time.
Actually not, it was exactly the right thing to do. What he said was don't waste your time and mine with any future letters unless you can state the specific code items that you claim ownership of.
This has a legal significance. Daryl has been put on notice that SCO's claims are in dispute and are not believed. What SCO want to do at this point is to get to a point where they could claim the infringement to be willful.
It is very clear that SCO have to state their claim with specificity if they want any further action. What the last paragraph does is in effect say 'I won't consider myself as having been put on notice until you address this issue'. The case history of SCO vs IBM shows this is an reasonable point of view.
In summary I don't think SCO would be sucessful in a claim of willful infringement and I don't think any further correspondence will have that effect either unless that point is met.
Rudeness can have a useful legal effect.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
How you ask? Well, SCO provides nothing more than broadbased and unsubstantiated allegations. The SCO letter says, in essence, "You are using our code." Mr. Roy responded with, "Show me were." Further, SCO threatened to litigate the matter if Just Sports did not respond. The SCO letter tells Mr. Roy that if he wishes to avoid litigation then HE HAS to initiate a buisness relation. You'll notice this idea is proposed via:
This whole discussion as to whether the letter was unprofessional or not is stupid. When you look at Mr. Roy's response letter, you will notice that is actually more mature and professional that SCO's. SCO ordered Just Sports to initiate a buisness relationship or face the posiability of legal action. Notice that Just Sports was not given the opportunity to stop using Linux and switch to a "clean" system, SCO said that they have to do buisness.
All Mr. Roy's letter did was say, "We don't believe you," and provide the evidence to substantiate the claim. Furthr, Mr. Roy said that Just Sports and SCO will not talk until the court cases are settled.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
In the meantime, treat the SCO complaint as seriously as you'd treat a drunk cop who's just pulled you over and is trying to charge you with posession of drugs. He has no case, you just have to survive the immediate encounter. Don't sign anything, don't hand over any money, make no representation that you intend to agree with their demands, just keep them talking until you have enough evidence to hurt them with.
Gekido's Lair
IANAL, but this may also be laying the groundwork for possible legal action against SCO if SCO continues to send letters or makes other threats, harrassment, etc. For example, it establishes communication (and a paper trail for it) that defines the beginning of losses (of valuable time) could lead to libel, slander, harrassment, etc. It could even become an initial paper trail for criminal charges (I don't know, could racketeering, extortion, etc. apply to what SCO is doing? A lot of similarities to a Mafia protection scam). An interesting angle would be in proceedings of disbarment of their legal counsel and/or law firms' attornies.
a couple hundred years ago some dumbfuck lawyers agreed that to meet a legal standard of "emphasized" or "clear", something had to be in ALL CAPS, and now our generation suffers for it.
May I suggest that companies given letters by SCO consider filing charges and append to their response letters:
Additionally, if SCO fails to provide the aforementioned documents of proof and continues to try to extract purchases of licenses from us, we will have no recourse but to have our lawyers file charges of extortion and racketeering against your company.
Sincerely,
Now that analysts and journalists are starting to catch on, expect to see more articles like this. I think that SCO's stock price is nearing the end of its plateau. I don't think that it will drop dramatically but will slowly decline over a number of months. If there are no quick wins in any of their lawsuits, then their investors will gradually lose faith.
HH
--
At this late date -- and even in 1991, when Linus created the first Linux kernel -- no "Unix trade secrets" can be said to exist.
The structure and function of Unix have been a matter of public academic discussion and research for years. POSIX, which codifies the behavior of Unix-like systems, is an industrial standard. Published research papers and industrial standards are not places where "trade secrets" hang out.
The exchange of ideas and code between "commercial Unix" and public academic research was so promiscuous that, when AT&T accused UC Berkeley of copyright infringement, the court actually found that it was AT&T who had copied Berkeley code and published it without acknowledgment.
Trade-secret status is something rather narrowly defined. In order to have a trade secret in a given process, a firm has to protect that secret quite thoroughly. At the very least, the firm has to avoid publishing the "secret" itself! That's why you can't have a trade secret and a patent on the same process -- patents require publication. (So, as I recall, do registered copyrights.) And yet Unix code has been published far and wide -- including by Novell and Caldera/SCO.
The idea of any trade secrets existing in System V Unix is, simply, absurd.
...to see someone diplomatically tell SCO to go to hell. I hope the court system and the judges don't let these folks down.
Catherine
Anyone who thinks professionalism consists of euphemism and hiding unpleasant things should learn from the comment above.
Roy did not mince words, nor should he have. You could smell the seasoned businessman in his letter.
Don't confuse professional and polite, they are not the same. All definitions of professional point to your ability to understand and carry out your job in a proficient manner.
This is a very impolite letter, very few people are paid to be polite.
How politely would you respond to extortion?
Um. God doesn't exist. This darl guy will get the same guilt-free nothingness that we all will when we die. It will feel just like before we were born. Remember that long period of nothing?
Of course, you are free to believe whatever crap you like if it makes you feel better. i suppose fostering irrational faith over logical and informed reasoning isn't a problem providing your leaders are all dead nice guys and stuff. Yeah. western leaders don't tell lies. let us pray...
and god bless america. founded on genocide and slavery.
i'm sure there is some ignorant group i've neglected to offend.