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Open Source Group Victoria v. SCO, Part II
Following up on last July's complaint, Elektroschock writes that "The Open Source Group Victoria (OSV) made a second complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). In a similar case in Germany SCO Group received an injunction from the court, so SCO never sold Linux licenses in Germany (tarent vs. SCO, district court Munich). Competition police seems to be a strong weapon against SCO-like action."
They claim to have sold a handful to unnamed companies.
I think Darl said something like "we solicited 14 companies and over 40% of them licensed it" So I guess that means about 5 companies.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
- an administrative fine from EUR 5 up to EUR 250.000,
- and, in the case that this cannot be collected, administrative detention
or
- administrative detention of up to six months to be enforced in the person of the managing director
in each case of contravention
prohibited
in business relations from claiming and distributing the assertions
as far as such assertions are not proven to be true.
That's clear enough. No more threats by SCO in Germany, or Darl goes to jail.
SCO isn't fighting this. If they had a case, they would.
I was curious as to why they would do this. MS Services for UNIX is the likely reason, but my theory is that after working for over twenty years to come up with an operating system and only managing to come up with Windows XP, they wanted to see how an OS is supposed to work.
Apple did the same thing... well, no, they bought a company that owned UNIX licenses and used an open-source kernel.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
We DO know who bought licenses from SCO. In Mark Heise's response to IBM's letter about missing discovery items, he says there are only three that he knows of, Computer Associates, Questar and Leggett & Platt. Links here or here.
The problem is, that in the USA there is no marketing law protecting consumers.
In Denmark, marketing must be true,and must be verifiable. And you can't refer to named competitors. So Burger King can't say it is better than McDonald.
If SCO is saying that the competing product, Linux, is illegal, and trying to sell licenses, then their first action is to go to court to have this claim proved.
Since they have not done so here in a timely manner (they waited until Linux became big, rather than following their obligation to liit damages), they have no case at all any more against Linux. At least not here. Here you must act, or you are lose your rights. Even if we had GIF patents here, the delay from the patent owner in filing cases would be enough for him to lose his rights.
Laws are different between countries, and I think the basic principles are way better here. The golden rule is that we look at the interest of the community, and at keeping workplaces running. And the truth is over any technicality (i.e. it doesn't matter how the police found the evidence, as long as it is found. If he got it illegally, that is another case against the police).
SCO has the source to Xenix, because Microsoft sold that operating system to SCO back in the 80s and it became SCO Unix.
Unfortunately that's not true. If you're really keen to give away your life savings and open yourself up to never ending litigation ("contracts are what you use against your customers" - Darl) you can buy one online here:
http://www.thescogroup.com/scosource/linuxlicense. html
What the hell are you talking about?
But they are selling! Their website has an online shop where you can buy those licences. You have to give your credit card number:
SCO Online Shop
NOTICE: SCO has suspended new sales and distribution of SCO Linux until the intellectual property issues surrounding Linux are resolved. SCO will, however, continue to support existing SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux customers consistent with existing contractual obligations. SCO offers at no extra charge to its existing Linux customers a SCO UNIX IP license for their use of prior SCO or Caldera distributions of Linux in binary format. The license also covers binary use of support updates distributed to them by SCO. This SCO license balances SCO's need to enforce its intellectual property rights against the practical needs of existing customers in the marketplace.
For further information on how to obtain RPMS/SRPMS for OpenLinux, eDesktop and eServer see:
www.sco.com/support/linux_info.html
For further information on how to obtain RPMS/SRPMS for SCO Linux 4.0 see:
www.sco.com/support/scolinux_info.html or the SCO Linux 4.0 Update Download Page.
From: www.thescogroup.com/support/download.html
The ACCC sticks up for the consumer, takes bad companies to court, stops undercutting to put small businesses out of business, tramples on monopolies, destroys unfair business and does so regularly.
Most of the big corporates in Australia *hate* them. But I, as a consumer, love them :-)
Some people got upset that a friend of theirs died. They thought the police were chasing this kid who impaled himself on a fence somehow. But the police say it didn't happen.
Either way, they threw some rocks at the very controlled and very restrained and very responsible police, who in Australia don't have the harsh attitude US police seem to have. Our cops pretty much let them throw their rocks, backed off, and left it a couple of days before even starting to arrest people.
It was clear from the way the police behaved that they understood the situation, how bad it could have got, and took a non-racist approach to solving the problem
Look, there may be some racism in Australia, but not where I live, not my friends, no people I know, not people I work with, not people down the street. We are a completly multicultural society, and it's a great thing.
There's much more freedom in Australia than in the US. We don't have the level of "security" the US has, nor the harsh criminal penaltys for petty crimes. We don't have 2% of our population permanantly incarcerated.
Racism is seriously frowned upon in this country. A white man will be ostricised and snubbed from socioty should he choose to be racist. As a white Australian, I don't want to know any racists. And if I ever meet one, they're going to hear a piece of my mind. I honestly believe the vast majority of Australians feel the same way.
Ask the KDE and GCC developers - they seem to be benefitting the most.
Actually Xenix still exists today!
ITs called SCO Openserver. SCO even called it Xenix for awhile and changed the name to openserver when they decided to compile it to 32-bit and update it. They hoped that and a name change would fix its reputation after it lagged behind every Unix out there. Unfortunatly this was the last time they really updated it and again its ages behind and falling apart. They added eide support I think in 2000? I remember I receieved an error message when I attempted to install it in 98 saying that I needed a scsi hard drive.
Talk about lack of support.
Xenix was quite popular and so was Openserver before it became neglected and buggy. Then NT, Sun, and Linux came and stole its thunder.
Ironic oddly since MS paid SCO to license their own code??
http://saveie6.com/