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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."
Competition police seems to be a strong weapon against SCO-like action.
What? Could some explain this?
Funny but also insightful! They haven't sold any because they can go to prison for selling something they don't own. You won't get a license even if you beg for it.
Competition police seems to be a strong weapon against SCO-like action. ... IN countries that have applicable laws
NO SIG
It is sad that there are businesses that will so easily pay the extortion money. This only encourages others to adopt similar extortion techniques where they make bogus claims and want you to pay up *before* any of their claims have been proven. Maybe if I was as corrupt as SCO management I would also make a claim against your Linux installations and you'd pay me too. Oh well.
And please tell me that you at least got a T-shirt.
Darl also said that SCO would sue a Linux user by now.
Darl also said that millions of lines of code were their property.
However, I do think the old Mac OS was crap. And it was a fusion of NeXT and *BSD unixes that created the core of OS X.
I'll calmly ignore the Linux remark. But my roommate's seven year old daughter hasn't had any problems with my Debian box. And debian is solid, flexible, powerful... well, it was more solid before I upgraded to testing.
The only upside I see to OS X is that Mac users aren't being subjected to frivolous litigation by a nervous company.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
Taken directly from
http://www.thescogroup.com/scosource/eula.html
You may not assign, sublicense, rent, lend, lease, pledge or otherwise transfer or encumber the SCO IP, this Agreement or Your rights or obligations hereunder
The SCO group is now distrubuting the kernel with additional restrictions, and thus are violating the GPL. They are truely now in violation of all the kernel developer's copyright on the code.
Molog
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
They claim to have sold a handful to unnamed companies.
In which case they have claimed to being in breech of the GPL and so have no licence to distribute the contributions of the other kernel hackers and so have claimed to have comitted copyright infringement - surely?
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet;
A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell
Competition police seems to be a strong weapon against SCO-like action.
The most salient observation I have seen for some time on Slashdot. You nailed the point.
Intellectual Property, be it trademark, copyright, patent, trade secret, and the related non-IP causes of action such as anti-circumvention, create limitations and monopolies. Ideally, the monopolies are carefully limited against social needs to yield a net societal benefit, but as with all law, horrifying results can occur. IP is a core source these days of examples of unintended consequences.
While IP and pseudo-IP create monopolies sponsored by the government, the government likewise has another body of law, a different kind of trade regulation, antitrust, to keep enterprises from abusing even fairly obtained competitive advantages to the detriment of society. Like IP, the application of these laws must be careful, because fear of antitrust liability can actually result in highly anticompettive consequences to the detriment of society.
Combine that with the corpus of law governing unfair competition and deceptive trade practices more generally, and it is no surprise that when a company really goes out there, there are a kazillion conflicting policies and issues.
That is why some uses of IP can be so "out there" as to rise to anticompetitive conduct, even though the monopoly given was government-blessed. And why some anticompetitive conduct can preclude a right to assert iP.
Look for that whenever: (i) a company with significant market share throws IP weight around; (ii) a company with a fairly fought ownership of a marketplace governed by IP tries to extend their rights to non-controlled markets; and (iii) a company, though not a market leader or innovator, really stretches some IP rights they do have to control a market beyond any reasonable threshold.
"They've made a Unix-based desktop operating system that is solid, flexible, and powerful enough for real Unix work, while still being pleasent to work with and easy enough for novices. That's far more that the Linux developers have done."
You're probably right - I wouldn't know, I'm still stuck with my x86 system(s) - I'm having a hard time justifying the price tag to check the Apple stuff out [I have plenty of systems for a try out, just no apple stuff]. So I guess I am stuck with the inferior stuff the Linux Developers provide for you and me for free.
ymmv
Actually they own Linux as much as Redhat does, the GPL doesn't proclude huge corperations fooling other stupid people into paying them money for it. They can just slap their own gui on it making the gui propreietary and you couldn't even distribute it for free or complain. That's one of the problems with GPL.
When will the U.S. justice system get around to doing anything? 2006? Later? By then scox will be gone, and those who orchestrated the scam will be even wealthier.
It doesn't matter if you're doing something blantantly illegal, as long as you do so in a country with a hopelessly inept justice system.
Back in October, scox filed an absurd motion to dismiss the redhat case because scox cliam - in deference to overwhelming evidence - that scox would never threaten to sue linux users. The Delaware court has been sitting on the motion for all these months. See how easy it is to delay and get away with murder?
I think he's talking about the $699 one, but I confess to having not explored that link very far.
... creative ... interpretations of various 'facts' ... etc.)
I do know that several people have reported calling up SCO and being unable to buy anything, however. I'm not sure if they tried the website too, or what.
That said, I do wonder about the legal angle of it. SCO is rather two-faced, so if the kernel developers try to sue them, they'll probably just try to weasel out of it, and who knows what they'll claim. Whereas if you actually were to buy from them, I'm sure they'd make you indemnify them in all sorts of ways (e.g. various provisions about not being able to sue them even if they don't own what you just licensed, various clauses wherein you agree with their
It's not like they're above lying to judges here. Either that or they didn't mean what they said. Or something. All I know is that they constantly seem to contradict themselves publically and will spin the facts in their favor depending on which questions they are being asked...
When will SCO and other corporations learn they hurt no one but themselves.
Probably when their stock stops going up. A year ago, their stock was worth a tad over a dollar ($1.11), now it's worth $13.84. It's one-year high is $22.29. Talk about making stock holders happy.
I tell you when this will stop. When the people who do it start going to jail.
In other words, although they theoretically can do something illegal in order to get evidence (and may try to use it afterwards), practically it isn't known to happen.[3] Officers have better things to do than bringing legal (and disciplinary) action upon themselves.
And in order to show that it may happen[4], there is currently a case in proceedings, where a suspect would confess to have abducted a 11-year old boy, but would lie about the whereabouts of the child. Believing that the child was still alive, the second highest ranked police officer instructed the officers to threaten the kidnapper to be hurt (by a martial artist) until he would tell. Finally, the suspect told, but the child was only found dead. Next thing, the high ranked officer reported his behaviour himself to the state attorney (he had written a protocol of what happened).
Today, the kidnapper has already been found guilty (the corpse and so being valid evidence) and has to serve a lifelong sentence.
In other words: Yes, the officer did something illegal and he will face the consequences. He did it hoping to find the child before it has to die. Most people sympathize with him, but think he will (and should) be sentenced anyhow, though as midly as law allows. Initially he was charged with a "forced confession"[2], but that was dropped (didn't read why yet), but several other charges still stand: coercion, abuse of authority, etc.
And to come back to my point above: Do you think this officer had stopped and not tried to save the child, even if this would have meant the illegally retrieved evidence couldn't be used?
Luckily, most times, two wrongs don't make a right here.
[1] Unless, of course, they find further proof, like e.g. the corpse at the place where the criminal described.
[2] To force a confession out of someone is a felony which has a minimum sentence of one year of jail.
[3] And no, that doesn't mean it happens and just nobody talks about it. That may happen once or twice but not regularly. Somewhen somebody would talk.
[4] Just to make that clear: that is the first case of that kind in the legal history of Germany (i.e. where an officer does this and then reports himself)
Keep an eye on which arguments are silently dropped in replies. Not always, but often times it's very telling.
But that's on microscopic volume, meaning the SCOundrels are just flipping it amongst themselves. If any real quantity of this crap ever hit the market at once, it would drop like a rock.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Also of note is the fact that it only allows use of Linux in binary form, explicitly disallowing the possesion of source code. So the only Linux distros that would be in legal compliance would be those that do not distribute source with the binaries.
Which is perfectly disallowed by the GPL...