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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).
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
ha.
Haha.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Heh.
GWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
SCO.
*sniff*
What was the question again?
Sent from your iPad.
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.
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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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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.
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.
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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sPh
It was run by our lawyer and CEO :)
Being /. readers, it's unfortunate that we will never get the chance to give business to Just Sports...
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
I was like, "where have I seen this guy before?" Computer guy...wearing a blue work shirt exposing bare forearms. Cocked a bit to the site with his arms folded across his chest.
And then I realized, it's Peter Norton.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
miscellaneous plug: CmdrTaco will be speaking at Linuxworld later today
/. fashion, the same presentation will be made by Timothy some time tomorrow.
Don't worry if you miss CmrdTaco's presentation today. In typical
jason
jason
Have a good day?! Impossible! I'm at work!
IANAL:)
However, this has been brought up with our lawyers in response to SCO. According to our counsel, to really have any chance of winning we'd need to be able to show that SCO has direct knowledge that their claims are false. At this point, SCO is attempting to assert rights and claims that it BELEIVES it has (apparently). As such, until the courts decide one way or the other they can pretty much get away with this.
What would be gold would be a company memo, high ranking employee, or anything that could clearly show that this is all made up or based on very thin evidence.... which is pretty unlikely to turn up.
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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!
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.
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.
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
In all seriousness, if SCO ever did come after my "amatuer" homebrew server, what should I do? (Besides fold like a wet napkin...)
Roll up a newspaper, and swat them on the nose with it. Say, in a firm, commanding voice, "bad Darl". Then rub their nose in a pile of something appropriate.
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.
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?