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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).
Why is it that no one has taken SCO to court to get an injunction filed against them, barring them from collecting money or sending 'extortion' letters until their case is proved in court? It makes no sense to me that they can send out these letters, making threats, on a legal matter that is nowhere close to being decided. How about if SCO loses? Do they have to refund everyone who was coerced into buying licenses? It's ridiculous that no one has tried to prevent them from talking out their asses yet. It makes sense to me, am I missing something?
That has to be the best damned article I've read on the "SCO" case. Granted, it was slanted against SCO - but it provided logical, point-by-point facts about the history of the case. No new arguments for the geek crowd - but that's one I'll print out and show to the non-geeks I work with who haven't understood what the big deal is.
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.
I used to live in Salt Lake and remember how good the "City Weekly" was, but I had forgotten that every so often, those bastards could really write.
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I'm sure this has been brought up before (though I can't find it right off), but isn't this type of arm-twisting by SCO illegal?
For example, and any input from you legal beagles out there would be greatly appreciated, couldn't a company such as Just Sports use the RICO act as a means of seeking relief?
--- have you healed your church website?
Here's the way I see it:
SCO can't find any code from SysV in Linux. If there were any SysV code in Linux, they would have been able to find it, since they have the source code to both. There would have been no need to ask IBM for Sequent/Dynix code, since they would have found 'their' (SCO's) code in both SysV and Linux.
In other words, no SysV code in Linux
So they asked IBM for all the code that IBM has written, trying to find out exactly what code from IBM made it into both Unix and Linux. This leads me to the conclusion that they consider all code written by IBM for Unix to belong to SCO as a 'derivative work'. However, they (and we) don't know whether IBM developed the code specifically for Unix (and later contributed it to Linux), or whether IBM wrote it for both Unix and Linux at the same time.
If IBM originally wrote the code for both, I can't see how SCO can claim ownership/copyright/patent/IP rights/whatever. However, even if IBM did write it for Unix and later contributed it to Linux, SCO still have to prove that the code IBM wrote belongs to them(SCO). I find that doubtful at best.
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Regarding the "wasting my time" and being "unprofessional", who cares. I use it, and its very effective in dealing with people that are, well, wasting my time.
I recently told this to a salesman, and now he gets all of his info together before he thinks of calling or mailing me. In a nutshell, he's not wasting as much of my time anymore. Give it a try sometime, trust me its very powerful.
I've followed most of the SCO nonsense over the past year, but somehow in all of that I missed something....
In SCO's letter it is talking about the Unix ABIs. I had always assumed the issue involved actual code (e.g., the buffer management code). But they're talking about ABIs here.
For those that haven't dealt directly with ABIs, here's the skinny...
When you want to open a file you issue a command like:
The ABI defines the value of O_RDONLY (0) and the value of ENOENT (2). Without an ABI, one vendor (vendorA) might use the values 0 and 2 while another (vendorB) might use the values 1 and 3. Thus while you would have source compatability (code using the macros O_RDONLY and ENOENT will compile anywhere), you would not have binary compatability (code compiled with vendorA's headers will not run in vendorB's environment).
What all this means is: SCO is basing their case on the values of #defines!
Don't forget the most "capitalistic" of them all:
I need a feature, so I'll pay somebody to do it (or if I can code do it myself).
In the long run, I can see this being the most popular way new featured are added. It's almost as if we cut out the middle man (sales, marketing, useless features to make a 2004 version of the 2003 version for extra cash flow, lawyers, CEOs) and software is directly created by companies and users, or people paid directly by them.
An additional side effect will be small consulting firms for companies to get specialized software. These firms will be local and supply only domestic work.
You know what? I disagree with your "just ignore SCO" policy.
It seems to me that Just Sports CALLED SCO'S BLUFF
And that's exactly the best way to get rid of the posturing buffoon SCO is.
Anything else lends them an air of credibility and permits Darl or whoever to issue more press releases stating that their claim is being addressed by their victims.
Remember silence is consent.
Stand to arms, FIRE! (at SCO's retreating backside)
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I note in the rather excelent salt lake article that Linus was asked if he wanted to pass on a message to Darl, which he declined.
I would of loved that oportunity. I'd ask Darl a question. Sorta like this;-
I'd ask "Darl, Are you happy? I mean *REALLY* happy?. Are you happy that you have made one of the most well loved unix brands into an almost universal object of loathing amongst IT professionals. Happy you are planning to capture and destroy the work of thousands of passionate individuals worth millions of manhours. Happy you are building an enterprise on a foundation of litigation of lies."
I'd ask "Darl. If indeed you are happy then, tell me, would you in all conscience recomend to your children that they act as you do?"
And finally I'd ask "Darl. Men live in this world only a short time. When your day of reckoning comes, just what *WILL* you say to your creator when he asks you if your prescence on this planet has made the world a better place."
Cos sure as heck, I'd like to know.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
# 2004-01-20 20:16:12 What to say to SCO? (askslashdot,linuxbiz) (rejected)
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.
I don't see what was unprofessional about his closing paragraph. He didn't insult them or call them names. The fact that he responded with a thoughtful, detailed and unambiguous letter addressing their points was professional.
He also has a duty to see to it that his company's time and money is not wasted on vague (and almost assuredly baseless) legal claims. Sometimes being professional means giving direct and unambiguous communication priority over 'professional sounding' ear candy.
Now that you have an actual Letter from SCO Please contact the SEC with this letter, inform them that SCO is attemting to extort money from you, send them a copy of this letter and also report this to the DA in your state This should be covered under the RICO act.
If any other company has recieved a letter like this plese report this to the SEC the DA and consider a class action suit against SCO for Extortion and Defamation.
What this means to you.
IF you win against SCO you can MAKE money from the law suit. a class action suit for 100M$ would not be too much for this kind of offence.
IANAL
After reading the SCO letter and Gavin's response, I just couldn't sit around any longer and do nothing. Below is the text of the FAX I just sent Gavin:
Dear Mr. Roy,
I just read the article on slashdot.org about you receiving a demand letter from SCO regarding their yet-to-be-proven claims of IP infringement in linux. I also read your reply letter to Mr. Langer and would like to congratulate you for handling this matter in what I feel is the most appropriate response to these scoundrels.
Please consider this FAX to be a legally binding pledge in the amount of $1,000 to help defray any litigation costs should SCO file any sort of legal action against Just Sports. I sincerely hope you will resist any and all efforts by them to extract payment from linux users until such time as they have proven their claims in court.
as an old, burned-up, has-been reporter and not a lawyer, this is a nicely done version of what is known around the courthouse as a "shit or get off the pot" letter. quite well done.
much better done than the version I sent to the Nebraska Attorney General's office thirty years ago after they tried to dun me instead of my insurance company after a little traffic accident munged up a guard rail.
they preserve your rights, show willingness to negotiate specific questions of interest, and give nothing away, including any further time and effort without specific facts being raised.
Mr. Roy deserves some sort of award for excellence in handling seekers of deep pockets.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The value of SCO would be destroyed if a very large number of application code developers, code maintainers, and installers declared that they would have nothing to do with any SCO products. Getting the message out to the small investors and proprietors that the product was 'black' would pull the rug out from under Mr. Darl McBride and the rest of the associated SCOundrels. There is no point in dealing or trafficking in any product, software or otherwise, which is, in effect, unsupported, because nobody is going to buy it. Bye Bye SCO you've had your day in the sun. Somebody else's turn now.