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ZDNet Examines SCO Indemnity Options
Ursus Maximus writes "David Berlind of ZD NET has posted a major opinion/research piece. What do you all think? I don't like the story at all, but he does seem to have made more of an effort to try to find reasons to back up SCO's claims than any of their other supporters have."
from Berlind's Bio ...
... Prior to that, he served as editor-in-chief of Windows Sources, where he led the magazine's push for exclusive coverage of Windows NT for business users.
o si um/speakers/DavidBerlindBio.shtml
http://www.wirelessenterprisesymposium.com/symp
Sounds like permanent brain damage to me.
Ziff-Davis is a Microsoft shill. Their bias
is pretty transparent.
Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.
Same. Old. Story.
I stopped caring when the guy took the 10-Q filing as a strong piece of evidence against Linux. 10-Q filings need to include EVERYTHING, essentially in "the sky is falling" mode, just in case it does happen and the SEC gets hard core, or even shareholder lawsuits. Yeah, there's always the off chance that SCO might win, but to take this warning in the 10-Q as strong evidence gives strong evidence he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Take a look at this article from a week or two ago on Groklaw.
PJ compares SCO's worst case scenarios with those of RedHat, IBM & co.
It makes for much more interesting reading than many of the other legal filings I've read... Note how in that article, SCO describes quite a few ways in which its business could fold, compared to rather bland statements that something bad might happen in the off chance SCO ever actually prevailed with some bit of their case.
It's kind of fun to read all the various ways in which SCO might be liquidated, though. I wonder which of them will happen?
In that article the guy talks abuot "what is UNIX", and whether a UNIX clone could be built without looking at UNIX source.
1) Linux is API compatible with UNIX. How? Because they read the standards and the man pages. I keep on bringing up that some code that uses select() for timing breaks on Linux because they copied the man page and not the code. Their cleanroom version was copied from the old BSD manpage, and is not bug-compatible to the way that BSD implemented it.
2) They don't even need to be cleanroom, they can just use the BSD code.
What a freakin' moron. Two uninformed pieces.
RH filed a lawsuit against SCO for "unfair and deceptive actions."
Firing one over the bow like that isn't exactly letting the big boys slug it out...
How did slashdot miss this article?
McNealy has been spewing FUD since SCO first announced their lawsuit. This guy's talk prior to the lawsuit would imply that Sun was not just responding opportunistically. They knew about it beforehand, and maybe even contributed to it.
See this article for some McNealy FUD right after SCO started this. Such as:
"We think open source is wonderful and good, but we also believe in copyright and the rule of law," McNealy said.
"We paid a big, big bag of money a decade ago to get IP (intellectual property) rights to do what we wanted to do with Solaris," he said at a press conference announcing a new line of Intel-based servers on Monday. "We've got a free and clear SCO license. Your audit committee won't get a letter if you are using Solaris." said Sun chairman Scott McNealy.
Compare that to HP's response at the same time:
"HP is unaware of any intellectual property infringement within Linux. The complaint is focused on alleged inappropriate behavior by IBM, it is not about infringement by Linux itself of SCO's IP rights."
and Larry Ellison was quick to point to Microsoft as one of the groups behind the scenes:
"All Bill (Gates) says is, 'Give me the opportunity to innovate,' and once again Bill is innovating," Ellison said during a press conference announcing an alliance between Oracle and Sun to promote Sun's Intel-based servers. "You've seen advanced bundling and now you are seeing extreme litigation...They know a lot about extreme litigation."
Correct. IANAL (but I do have a couple of friend who are, and this is how they explained it to me). YMMV/VWPBL etc. etc.:
As long as the ownership of any property (in this case the UNIX IP) is under dispute between two parties in a court of law, then the end user of that property is under no legal obligation to listen to or believe in the claims of either of the parties. The end user is only obligated to the contract she entered into with the original party at the time she started using the property, until directed to do otherwise by the court.
E.g., A rents B a house, and B, in good faith, signs a contract with A to pay a certain monthly rent, gets the keys to the house and starts using it. A couple of years later, C shows up and tells B that the house actually belongs to C, and B should be paying rent to C and not to A. Then, A and C sue/counter-sue each other re. the ownership of the house, and a court starts to look at the matter. While the matter is sub-judice, (and without any clear directive from the court to put the rent in an escrow fund etc.), B is only obligated to follow the contract with A.
This is true especially if the matter is sub-judice. So the issue of indemnity is moot.
cheers- raga
2. The fact that it took them MONTHS to produce, even for the court, any evidence supporting their claims -- and even admitted that they didn't have all of the evidence they'd claimed to have,
The real issue is that what evidence they have produced in court is simply pointing out a well-known fact: that IBM contributed code that IBM itself wrote into Linux. SCO doesn't even claim ownership of the code; they are just claiming that IBM was supposed to ask SCO before contributing it. SCO does not claim and cannot support that there is any System V code in Linux.
So, regardless of whether IBM contributed code improperly or not, there is no code in Linux that is a "derivative work" of any SCO property. The asking permission thing is a contract dispute between SCO and IBM and end users can't be held liable for that; nobody but IBM can. And it looks very much like SCO has no control over IBMs actions since (1) Novell has retained the control rights for existing Unix licensees, and (2) the AT&T license gave it no rights over licensees own code anyway.
any lawyer will tell you that there's always a risk that a case goes against you, no matter how strong your case.
I work for a large law firm in the UK - we typically advise clients there's a base 10% chance of losing a cast-iron case. Would be surprised if the position is very different in the States (and presumably jury trials are significantly more uncertain).