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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."
Literally I puke it up nowadays It goes on to allege that SCO "made a false or misleading representation
And so ... I troll no more
MoFscker
Didn't Microsoft allegedly buy licenses from them?
I plan to plan / Dutch course in The Hague
It's nice to see that the ACCC are doing their job. Does anyone know what the situation in the UK is with regards complaints to the relevant authorities? I would be very, very surprised indeed if the Trading Standards Authority, in their new guise and with things to prove, allow the sale of Linux licenses to UK residents and companies by SCO before a decision is reached in court with regards the allegations against the Linux kernel.
I think this might be a really interesting idea.
Suppose we got a group of people together and bought a SCO Linux License. I mean, would we ever get anything for the 700 bucks we give them? It's illegal if we *don't*, I just wonder what exactly they'd give us if we asked for one of these things [as I can't imagine many people in their right minds have ever bought them].
I think it'd be interesting to put all the material one gets for buying a license online. Not pirated stuff, I just mean photocopies of the documents, etc. It would bring new light to how ridiculous this situation really is.
I don't know how it would be in Australia - Munich obviously was not interested in paying for Linux (they are currently migrating...)
You can defy gravity... for a short time
Why hasn't anybody done something like this yet in the US, where SCO is arguably the "strongest"? That'd REALLY put a damper on their FUD.
And while they were at it, maybe they could get the court to order that SCO pay back any company they scared into paying for a licence.
Help fight continental drift.
You cannot buy a license from SCO. People have tried. If you ask for one they will refuse to sell it to you.
The only way to obtain a license is if you are a large company in collusion with them or threatened with suit by them.
An interesting fact is that while we know of the licenses they have sold in collusion (Sun and Microsoft), and we know of companies that have refused SCO's advances (Lehman Brothers, et al), we do not know anything about those few companies SCO seems to claim have otherwise purchased a license.
Interesting, no? Could one, perhaps, make a crude guess as to what one of the terms of the license agreement is?
KFG
Agree 100%. Slashdot readers seem to think that SCO is going after average home users but they're not, they're targeting corporate users that are using SCO GNU/Linux in the workplace. Last year we replaced 10 SGI Irix servers with Dell Poweredge servers running Linux. We, like you, paid the licensing fee just to make sure we didn't get any trouble down the line. Slashdot readers who aren't familiar with enterprise computing need to realize that $699 is nothing. We were paying almost $80K a year just in MAINTENANCE FEES on our Irix boxes. A one-time fee of $699 is pocket change for your typical mid- to large-size IT budget. And we have peace of mind.
You do know that microsoft put out Xenix, which was a very popular unix in the early 80's right? They probably still have the source code for that hanging around somewhere
Need a Catering Connection
Interesting. I missed that.
It's also interesting that the reference is to a failure of SCO to produce license agreement documentation under the terms of discovery, to which SCO basically replies:
"We'll get around to it. Honest."
SCO is going to a fair amount of trouble to ensure that the general run of people do not see their licensing terms and documentation. Up to, and including, refusal to sell the license they are demanding as their right.
KFG
There was a post from someone on Groklaw A while back, sorry I can't find it. But the guy basically called 5-6 times, trying to buy a license, they said "Um, Uh, we'll get back to you on that". They never called. I agree, they are not selling them, because they are not sure they can.
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
If that was the case (where you could only buy a license if you were approached by them) that *is* extortion. And because they are only selling to people that they choose, they are either discriminating or extorting. If they are discriminating then people that have been charged a license should find out how many have been turned away and file a dicrimination law suit. If it is extortion then those that have been charged should file a law suit allegeing rackateering, conspiracy to commit extortion and extortion. You cannot go around and say that if you don't pay a license you will be sued and then refuse to sell to people that don't meet your profile. What I would like to see is someone that was refused a license sued because on reconsideration, SCO decided they needed one. That would be a great case in court. Then another legal front would be for people that have been turned away for a license should sue and ask the court for a permament injunction barring any legal action against them. Those that would be bring such a suit should only accept "indemification" if that word works, from SCO as the terms of the settlement. Just some legal idea. IANAL.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
And will your legal department have the gumption to sue SCO for fraud when IBM, Novell, and RedHat finish whooping up on them? Your company just paid SCO for something they don't own.
What is the address of your company's billing department? Since its all that easy to beat money out of them, I figure I can make some shit up and get them to pay me too.
Fascinating!
.iso you would be in violation unless you also purchased a source license. And if you go to the source license page you find this:
Making it even more interesting that SCO claims all of 10 licensees in their IBM suit. I'd guess Slashdot is about to give them more traffic than these pages have ever had before.
Of particular interest is the License FAQ page. Bits of it are a real hoot.
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.
So if you bought a SCO license and then downloaded a Mandrake
SCOsource is a SCO business division that manages its UNIX(R) System intellectual property. The charter of this division is to create new and innovative licensing programs to meet the changing demands of today's market and to protect its intellectual property asset.
Followed by an ad for their binary only license.
The plot grows thicker.
KFG
Interesting. I'll ignore your history of trolling for a while and ask you: any chance you could post scans of those licenses, or give us some clue as to their text? It's just that nobody else round here has managed to get SCO to sell them a license even by begging for one. Far be it from me to doubt your word, but... actually, it's not far from me at all, because I don't believe you.
Try your luck: SCO is selling now (credit card required) at their online shop.
Just think about the facts of the lawsuit. SCO no longer claims line by line copying of millions of lines of Unix code into Linux, but that IBM's contribution of AIX and Dynix code developed in-house is a violation of SCO's IP, whose ownership is being contested by Novell. SCO's claim is the ultimate in chutzpah.
Remember that they're not actually *selling* the license here in the US, only claiming to. More than one person has documented the effort of attempting to buy a license, only to be ignored by SCO.
They probably realize that they have the potential to get into serious trouble here if they do sell a fraudulent license. They can yell about it all they want, however, to keep the stock price buoyed, and the clueless journalists who write about it never seem to think to do a little more research into the process of buying one.
Do you have ESP?
Open sourcing quicktime ? - nope
An Open Source client for iTunes ? - nope
They take, but they give nothing back.
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