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SCO Names 1st Lawsuit Target: AutoZone [Updated]
An anonymous reader writes "News.com
reports that SCO has filed the first (of two) soon to be infamous lawsuits. This one is aimed against car part retailer AutoZone, a multi-billion, Fortune 500 company according to the site. Who's next?" Another reader excerpts from SCO's posted claim: 'AutoZone violated SCO's UNIX copyrights by running versions of the Linux operating system that contain code, structure, sequence and/or organization from SCO's proprietary UNIX System V code in violation of SCO's copyrights.'
Update: 03/03 16:28 GMT by T : njan writes with the news that SCO just announced during their ongoing conference call another lawsuit, this one "to be filed against Daimler-Chrysler, alleging that they are infringing SCO's copyright by using code relating to 'core operating system functionality' of SCO System 5."
If I've gotten this thing right, the claimed SCO source is in some specific versions of the Linux kernel... how exactly does SCO find out which version a company is using?
Perhaps they chose Autozone as an easy target? Cars aren't normally associated with computers that much so... perhaps they expect a non-tech based company to just get scared and settle for cash or maybe just do a bad job defending itself? This could just be their way of trying to stab at a large and noticeable, but "weak" target.
Why would SCO not take on a more easily defeatable company, i.e. a software company? Autozone has thousands if not millions of loyal blue-collar customers that could care less what o/s Autozone is running. If SCO wanted to make a point by suing someone, it should be RedHat or some such company that is distributing the systems. You can't blame Autozone for buying a product, but you can blame the company that sold it to them.
stuff |
Autozone is one of the few companies doing well right now... They do not need our assistance... YET...
Your best assistance would be to go to http://finance.yahoo.com under the stock symbol AZO. Go to the messageboards and reassure the stock holders reading the messageboard there that this is just part of SCO's continuing practice and the lawsuit should be taken lightly.
Uh, hello - they use unix terminals to look up part numbers, etc in every store. How it works is you walk into auto zone and say "hey i need an oil filter for my car" and they ask what kind, year, number of doors, etc, and pull up the part number for you to go find it on the shelf. There's usually 3-5 of them in every store. Companies use computers for things other than web servers....
moox. for a new generation.
After just reading this thread and Groklaw afterwards... I think that SCO should give /. more credit, especially after the "the ranting and dribble that takes place on Slashdot" comment...
Now then Ye Prophets of SlashDot, what more predictions can we get from our 'crystal balls' (LCD screens will do) today :)
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
The most likely course of action, I would think, is that AutoZone will get both the injunction and the rest of the lawsuit put on hold pending the outcome of the IBM/SCO wrangle. In the meantime, it will merely act as a potential financial risk of minimal severity.
It's not like this is a company using Linux to derive their core revenue (like a hosting company, for example) - they are using it more as an operational tool. For them, this is an annoyance, not a critical business threat...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The meat of SCO's case will not be the IP Infringment. They are also trying to catch AutoZone for a contract violation in the contract they signed when they bought SCO Unix. They might be able to win a breach of contract suit. The problem is that they will do their best to spin it to the press as a Linux IP infringement suit. Just another pump and dump scheme.
It probably just means they run a WebSphere product as an app server. I'm willing to bet their website had nothing at all to do with the decision to litigate. Odds are, they run in-store or warehousing systems, etc. on Linux servers.
There's more than webservers in life, kids.
From their press release, it seems like the AutoZone suit is not particularly related to "SCO IP in Linux," but to some SCO libraries that AutoZone may or may not have used it improperly.
But it does not matter. Could we discuss AutoZone tomorrow, please?
This is only a distraction from a bleak quarterly report. A rather blantantly obvious diversion. And Timothy, you should know better than this. This story should have been titled "SCO losses double for Q1 2004," or something like that. You should not be helping SCO manipulate the press.
As soon as I seen they were filing suit against a former customer who had dumped their OS for linux I knew SCO's going down. They just want to slap a couple people on their way out of the building. I mean might as well it's not like it's their money in the stocks.
... just not sure what yet ..
Instead of a golden parachute the CEOs of SCO have opted for a semi-bronze boxing glove.
I'm buying something tonight from Autozone
*DrugCheese rants*
In spite of the main focus of a lot of online denizens, there is more to the world than The Internet. The 'market share' of Web Servers, for instance, is not defined by the number of them that Netcraft can access. Some of the most important web servers are on intranets and totally inaccessable to the public. Some of the most important servers are internal to businesses and unreachable on the Internet.
Really, except for companies that do most of their business in ecommerce (still a real minority) it's only the throw-away boxes that are facing outward.
---
The basis for SCO's belief is the precision and efficiency with which the migration to Linux occurred, which suggests the use of shared libraries to run legacy applications on Linux.
So? They paid for the original licenses, they can do anything the want with the libraries except re-sell them or reverse engineer them with an intent to reveal the information for profit. SCO would only have a case if AZ was paying a maintenance license, and let it expire.
You gotta be kidding me! This isn't an intellectual property issue, it's a EULA-violation issue. I'd be laughing my ass off if it wasn't for the fact that I'm seriously pissed off about Auto Zone (long time customer).
Bush and crew, if you want re-election, look here: Barratry is bad for business! Tell Ashcroft to stop worrying about abortion doctors and start protecting American jobs and investors!
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Imagine Autozone converted to away from SCO UNIX and over to MacOSX or BeOS or OS/2 or Windows instead of Linux
It would be exactly the same case - an SCO ex client moving from UNIX to must have used SCO shared libraries as part of the solution because it went so smoothly.
So really this case has nothing to do with Linux at all, looked at in that manner.
Apparently their strategy is to sue their own former and defecting customers. This is a worst-case scenario for SCO customers. Autozone was cited in the complaint against IBM as an example of a licensed Openserver client whom had been lured away to the Linux dark side by IBM, If you know of anyone who is considering signing their company into any SCO contract of any sort, especially an "intellectual property license", THIS SHOULD SERVE AS A WARNING OF WHAT TO EXPECT. All SCO appears to be offering is a license to be sued, and here's the proof.
Jim Greer had a good comment on groklaw a few weeks ago about Autozone and the details of their linux transition.
Look guys, you can twist yourself into shapes everytime SCO does something like this. But here is the deal, as this very informative post suggests, SCO appears to be swinging at fences.
Their entire "case" is built around a single premise that has yet to make it to court to be examined. And yet they are basing their actions in this case as if the outcome of such a trial has already been decided in their favor. It hasn't. Although they are doing an excellent job of looking like asses by ammending their case as they go and upping the ante as if that somehow makes them appear more legitimate.
Point is, they are trying to scare people into forking over money. Clearly the only way they are going to be stopped is by losing and being counter-sued out of existence which they appear to richly deserve.
Unfortunately this is going to take a long, long time. At least the EU has shut them down.
Sure they're retail stores aren't really 'tech' based, but you have to think higher up in the corporation. For one thing, there is probably a nice corporate office where everyone sits in cubes (and offices) and deals with all of the typical IT functions of any enterprise. Add onto that the need to reamin connected to each of their branch offices to monitor inventory to make sure new supplies are delivered when needed (don't know if they actually do this, but wouldn't surprise me). Then look at the transactions that need to be processed every day/hour/minute so they know how much $$ they are making. Then there's all the supply chain management things to look at. All-in-all, I'd bet they have a nice big data warehouse that their business relies on!
I used to laugh at SCO but now they stopped being funny.
/. jokes, but I smiled. A little. At the beginning. ;-)), but now they're just not funny anymore.
Before they sued that company, they were just a dying corp making a big PR splash with a lot of FUD and horseshit to drive their stock price up and make a lot of money. Unethical, dishonest, but no big deal. Now that they're actually suing Fortune 500 Linux-using companie(s), they could actually hurt the OS. Suits will be much more wary about switching if legal tells them they could get sued for it, no matter how much bullshit the lawsuit actually is. At first I laughed at the verbose arguments, the OSS community's cinglant responses and the Slashdot jokes (okay, maybe I didn't laugh at the
They've gone from evil, but ridiculous and harmless, to evil and actually dangerous. The OSS community is a great, grand thing, and now that they're actually starting to get dangerous we should be able to mobilize the power to squash them out of relevance/existence. Couldn't an org like the FSF or a big player like IBM countersue?
The how doesn't matter. What matters is that I've stopped laughing at SCO and I now consider them as a danger.
I imagine that SCO will have to show that specific machines are running Linux
Screw that, they have to first prove what parts of linux are allegedly "stolen"
--rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
contain code, structure, sequence and/or organization
Is this *really* copyrightable? How can you copyright an organization? Perhaps you can patent a method of organizing something, but copyright? I had thought that copyright applies only to a tangible, set of information, such as lines of code, a written document, a work of art.
The first attempts to scare us centered around "infringing code". Now are they trying to say that "Your Linux looks too much like our Unix?" As far as I'm concerend, Looks like and IS are two different things.
Gee, I wonder which of them will be next?
SCO is going to do a lot to promote linux by
spotlighting companies that use it. My boss will
never again be able to say "no serious company
trusts kiddie software like Linux for anything
critical"
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
This is why the Fortune 500 company for whom I work has adopted a new Linux strategy:
We don't talk about Linux to the press.
Hi!
There are a couple of reasons to sue AutoZone. Neither have much to do with AutoZone's tech savvy or their understanding of the different *nix kernels. They're both about business.
Let's talk microeconomics
The cost of any good is measured in currency and utility. Put simply, you'll buy a product if a) it contains what you want, and b) you want it badly enough. That's why people routinely pay $1.09 in a convenience store for bottles of water--they realize that the water is worth pennies (at best), but the convenience of the bottle (and the refrigeration) make the purchase worthwhile. Similarly, utility can be expressed as "reputation," "quality," "resale value," and similar terms. The reason you drive a Honda, rather than a substantially less-expensive Chrysler, is the utility cost of the car. Key point: utility is a significant factor in the price of a good.
The point of this lawsuit isn't to punish AutoZone themselves. It is to raise the utility cost of using Linux in the eyes of other businesses. Probably the single biggest utility cost that managers evaluate is risk. The great marketplace advantage of Linux is that a company can download a copy for free. (They could care less about "free as in speech." They're only interested in "free as in beer.") Microsoft has argued that Linux has a higher TCO--which is effectively asserting a utility cost. SCO is now raising another kind of utility cost: the likelihood of being sued.
The impact will be substantial, and immediate: auto parts retailers run thousands of POS systems. Any company using a Unix-based POS system (and there are tens of thousands of them across the U.S.) who has even been contemplating moving to a Linux-based system is having meetings this morning to assure senior management (or just try to assure senior management) that SCO is bluffing. This afternoon those same senior managers will be talking to lawyers, who will likely tell them that while SCO probably is bluffing, SCO can bluff in court for a long time, and who wants to be lawsuit #2? The effect of this lawsuit is to dramatically raise the ultimate cost of any Linux-based solution.
The other reason: making SCO look more attractive to IBM
Remember that SCO is primarily focused on litigation with IBM. SCO claims that IBM is the reason that Unix code "leaked" into Linux--many observers in the financial markets believe that SCO is really angling to get bought by IBM in a new dot-com form of greenmail. IBM was involved in developing AutoZone's new POS system--but evidently did not indemnify AutoZone against claims of infringement (a common practice in licensing these kinds of systems). AutoZone has liability insurance to cover this kind of claim (any company does). But that coverage almost certainly requires that the insurance company have the "free and unfettered right to conduct a defense". Because the suit is based on actions by IBM, the insurance company will instantly seek to force IBM to indemnify AutoZone. If IBM declines, the insurance company will sue IBM on AutoZone's behalf. That instantly creates a bunch of costs (legal costs, outside counsel costs, etc.) for IBM. And, since it's likely that IBM's own insurors will respond to the claim from AutoZone's insurors, sooner or later somebody will say, "hey--it's cheaper to just buy these jerks out." Which is precisely what SCO wants.
This isn't about free software.
Darl and his investors aren't doing this out of a noble belief in the goodness of their cause--or due to a bad case of technomegalomania. They're doing it because they expect an significant return on their investment. They use a legal claim that has enough merit to at least get them into court, and they leverage that claim to make enough of a nuisance that IBM buys them out at a premium. They make a couple of million, and move on. It's about money.
Wonder how long it will be before companies are asking SCO to sue them, just for the marketing boost.....
The basis for SCO's belief is the precision and efficiency with which the migration to Linux occurred, ...
What a sweet testimonial to the ease of migration to Linux! I hope all the Linux companies will make use of SCO's public opinion in their marketing materials.
Thanks, SCO!Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
"Anyone out there setting up a legal defense fund so we can chip in to help these guys fight the good fight? If we don't help out SCO targets today, any of us could be next.
--G"
Well, the easiest way to help AutoZone would be to actively purchase your auto parts needs there. Photocopy your receipt and write a letter to their CEO stating that you are in support of them against the SCO and you exercise your dollars based upon your beliefs (and I don't mean religious). If everyone did that, and people signed that they gave permission to the CEO to use the letters as how he or she felt fit to, that would help them out. Or, someone could create an AutoZone share purchasing club online...bring media attention to the whole debate.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
You'd need a thousand times the current number of Linux zealots to make even the most miniscule impact on a large company like AutoZone's business.
G
"Now SCO is going to provoke the wrath of the automotive industry and enthusiasts; an entire new group of people to learn to hate SCO."
This is a strategic campaign to install fear in the hearts and minds of corporate CEO's who lack IT skills. Google could laugh the SCO case off and continue with their Linux tinkerings, but if SCO continues to sue companies lacking IT at their core, then this will create FUD amongst other corporations and perhaps SCO thinks they'll actually increase their customer base. Probably the exact opposite will happen, but it will be a bumpy ride for the meantime.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I hope Autozone files a countersuit. I wonder how many charges they could stack up. Racketeering? Extortion? SLAPP (I believe Utah has SLAPP laws)? They could go get the AT&T vs the Regents of the University of California case unsealed, prove that the original UNIX copyrights are all but unenforcable (Didn't Caldera GPL them anyway?) and have SCO owing them the $3 Billion that SCO's trying to get from IBM before that case is even done.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
While I'm sure auto zone has many geek customers, (I'm one of them) I doubt their primary customer demographic even knows what linux is, much less cares about it. They sell car parts. Linux is simply a cheap and effective backend operating system. They'd run CP/M if someone could offer it cheap enough and make it scale.
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
Of course.
Take out RedHat allies at the knees. A long-time buyer of RedHat (Enterprise?) technologies coming down hard might scare away other buyers, for fear of the same thing happening to them. Just like a fascist regime.
'Fear will keep the local systems in line - fear of this battlestation!'
Informatus Technologicus
Think about it, in it's own way its brilliant...
/.'s, just think of the spin (M$ and SCO) would put on this if they were able to get an injuction against AutoZone from using Linux, effectively shutting down their stores - millions of people, that have nothing to do with the tech industry would be effected. It would be all over the news - and why? They used Linux... I would have no doubt that one of either SCO or M$ would spin this so that everything is blamed on soley using Linux it self, and in effect while the tech world loves her - the rest of the world would despise and only view Legal as very illegal, consequently staying very far away from it...
Autozone has thousands if not millions of loyal blue-collar customers...
These customers, are for the majority are computer illiterate in comparison to us
They have how much in the bank, and are losing how much a quarter? Lets toss out a few pseudo-facts. Ambulance chasers will take a case if there is money backing it or they know they have a decent shot at prevailing. No one in their right mind will invest in SCO any more.
Those things said, some simple math will tell you when they will 'give up' due to lack of funds. Some more complex math, basically interpolating based on increasing quarterly losses put them at 'giving up' a few quarters earlier. If you were an SCO customer right now, would you renew your support contracts based on the fact that they will be there to answer the phone in a year?
Smart money says this lawsuit will make the few remaining clients they have run to the hills, and they will go away quite quickly.
-Charlie
Can we all email our local reporters and carriers of this story and inform them that SCO isn't suing over linux, but is suing over a small separate licensing matter that just happens to include linux?
:(
Maybe the reason they all get away with such loose journalism is that nobody challenges it. I've already emailed four. Their stories seem basically correct but still carry the SCO party line as an undertone, and especially in headlines
And if SCO wins in court or AutoZone settles, does anyone think the press will note the distinction?
The press probably will not note the distinction. However, a court of law would. The future ruling/settlement would have nothing to do with the IBM, Novell or Red Hat cases.
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
You cannot test the GPL without someone sueing someone else... it may suck for the defendants, but you can't prove yourself without a challenge.
meh
It seem to see a lot of mix up here. So far what I have understood is that the code SCO claims property to is that for allowing SVRV x86 apps to run on Linux, i.e. code that is not included in genral Linux distros and is primarily only of interest for people migrating from SCO to Linux (requires less mods to do a porting).
And yet reading press releases such as those linked to here we get the impression that SCO is claiming rights over Linux in general.
In reality there only claim would seem to be the right to charge rats for deserting a sinking ship.
Actually the IBM case goes to the first and most fundamental question..."Does Linux infringe upon SCO's IP?" If that isn't clearly decided by the courts other cases are pointless.
You have just fullfilled Microsoft's goal in this suit. If they can obscure the growing use of Linux, they may yet survive...
To have merit, SCO's "belief" that AutoZone copied their shared libs to Linux would need to be proven true.
But it is indeed not true. AutoZone did not use SCO's shared libraries. So not only is the case not really about companies simply using Linux being at risk, but the wrongdoing AutoZone is accused of is merely speculation on SCO's part.
But this case should be a wake-up call for anyone who has actually copied SCO's shared libs.... to either replace them with the GPL's alternative, or do a true port and make a clean break away from anything remoting having to do with compatibility with OpenServer and UnixWare.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Yes, in the short term, an IBM buyout of SCO would settle all this. However, in the long run this makes "claiming to own a peice of the Linux pie, making outrageos self-contradictory statements, and suing everyone" a VERY attractive business model.
That idea is the reason governments and large companies will not pay a ransom if one of their executives is kidnapped. In the short term you may get the exec back, but in the long term you make them and all your other employees attractive targets for future kidnappings.
The only way for this to really end is for SCO's claims to be defeated in court and have SCO forced into bankruptcy. Any buyout offer opens the door for Sun or HP or Microsoft or someone we've never heard of to claim that they "own Linux" and start issuing lawsuits.
0 1 - just my two bits
Not to state the obvious but the court of public opinion here is just as important (if not more so?) then the courts of law. If SCO wins with their FUD then we are all screwed.
I can imagine a future where anybody using Linux is automatically labeled a "hacker" or some other such label by ignorant congresscritters/others in power who have bought into the SCO FUD -- "What? Your using Linux? Why? Do you share movies or something?"
The best thing that could happen here is for SCO to lose and be exposed as the money grubbing litigious bastards that they are. Microsoft's (alleged) involvement being exposed wouldn't hurt either -- shitty software/security aside it'd be nice to expose their ruthless backstabbing business practices to John Q. Public.
However if SCO wins this (or any other lawsuit for that matter) -- and I'm sure they picked something with at least a little bit of merit (they aren't stupid) we could be in serious trouble. You think the FUD and the public perception (DoS attacks against SCO's website don't help us here any) is bad now? Just wait and see how bad it gets if they win one of these...
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It is quite pleasant to see that at least two major business news services have their headlines right. Both Reuters and Dow Jones Business News have articles with headlines that mention the doubling of SCO's losses before their lawsuit against AutoZone. The articles are more focused on the massive financial losses SCO has generated and seem to mention the AutoZone suit as more of a side note.
I doubt the typical cash register jockey gives a shit; you're probably better office contacting the home office. Their investor relations contacts seem like a good choice.
They really ARE against any from of "do it yourself", aren't they?
"Your Honor, these dirty hippies are using software that was designed to subvert and destroy the good capitalist software companies in America to sell parts to other dirty hippies that use them to fix their own cars. This deprives the good capitalist auto repair industry of money they are entitled to"
Finkployd
What will happen is that they will NOT get an injuction, the judge will find that that would cause undue grievous harm to AutoZone. So what then? Well, SCOX will be locked in another costly long term litigation game with a giant, litigation that will only cost them money and give nothing in return. Oh, they'll try to get good PR, but it'll fail.
I love SCO, they're so fucking clueless.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
As has been shown in Germany, where an injunction effectively nipped their entire FUD campaign in the bud and they are forbidden from making statements they cannot prove without showing evidence, there is a big legal loophole in the US. The fact that SCO can make any wild claim that they want, sue anyone they want on the wildest of baseless claims, and get awaya with not having to produce actual evidence in order to go to court is a real problem.
Many companies who are frightened of getting sued by these bastards have little other legal options. Not many, apart from badly researched ZDNet trashmag articles, believe that SCo has the slightest chance of success, but what about the financial damage to companies that are getting sued from loss in stock value, and the fact that there is no way in hell that SCO could really afford to pay for the damages once IBM, RedHat and Novell have finished with them.
What is to stop the next POS crap company that is going down from sueing everybody left right and centre?
The basis for SCO's belief is the precision and efficiency with which the migration to Linux occurred, which suggests the use of shared libraries to run legacy applications on Linux. Among other things, this was a breach of the Autozone OpenServer License Agreement for use of SCO software beyond the scope of the license.
So essentially what they're saying is, "We think they violated our license and are using our code because they did TOO GOOD A JOB OF PORTING THE SOFTWARE." What utter bullshit.
This is so much like their argument against Linux when they said "Linux MUST be using our code, because without it, Linux wouldn't be as good as it is." (Their bicycle/luxury car argument.) Seems to me they have some overinflated opinion of their capabilities, and believe that nobody else anywhere on Earth could possibly be better than them.
Fantastic.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Because SCO has no intention of showing us their complete lack of proof, this case WILL settle out of court. SCO will make AutoZone a nominal settlement offer. AutoZone will take it. The parties will have the file sealed.
Then SCO will claim in the press that it won the lawsuit with the implicit threat that everyone else running Linux had better start paying.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
... and some people wonder why so much business is being sent off-shore to India, China and the like.
Several vendors - the original Caldera Linux distribution company, Red Hat, and Linuxcare - were offering support for enterprise installations of Linux. In fact, Bryan Sparks, then CEO of Caldera, flew to Memphis and met with me during my evaluation of the various distribution and support offerings. I also met and talked briefly with Dave Sifry of Linuxcare during the 1999 Linux Expo. AutoZone settled on Red Hat chiefly because of my familiarity with their distribution and the ease with which AutoZone could negotiate a support agreement with them.
I know this is off-topic, but I've seen this quite a bit. Now that Redhat have discontinued their end-user distribution, how many large contracts will they miss out on because the department head is familiar with some other distribution instead?
Sure, and my not going to the movies isn't even noticed by the RIAA, and my refusing to work for MS-only shops only hurts me.
A quote I heard yesterday - no single drop of rain thinks it's to blame for the flood. We're all at fault for this mess, and if the only benefit I can give is by being an example - OK, I can live with that, as ineffectual as it may be.
Very good point. I think it was a bad move for Red Hat to eliminated the End User version for exactly the reason you mentioned. Whoever has to set up these systems will probably choose the one he is most familiar with, all else being equal.
The thing is, every lazy journo out there will assume the copyright violations are in the Linux codebase .
So, /.ers, here's the plan: every clueless tech-journo needs to be put right as soon as - if not before - they report SCO's (and whoever *cough*microsoft*cough is behind them) misleading PR as fact and the whole movement looks like it may be dodgy.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Well, yes, because you searched for SCO Linux
I noticed that as well, but when I switched the search to SCO sues, without mentioning Linux in my search, I still got a barrage of headlines clearly implying the suit was about Linux.
Only if SCO owns something, the NOVELL suit wikk answer that.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
So what's the difference between this and IBM helping a company to migrate their entire chain from using Oracle to DB2? It sounds like a very shallow case for the SCO shysters.
As others have said, keeping quiet about Linux may not be a good thing, as it helps Microsoft.
However, if every Linux-using company publically says that they're using it, SCO will have 20 zillion lawsuits to file.
Well, they may have just received a Very Good Deal on their Windows machines from a little company called Microsoft. <wink>
Perhaps this is payback? It certainly isn't 'protecting our customers against lawsuits' as Marsh has lie^H^H^Hsaid, because the customers rent the use of the boxes, rather than purchase them and have them hosted.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
So does that mean SCO wouldn't be suing AutoZone if they'd never used proprietry software in the first place? Sounds like an excellent argument for staying clear of software with restricted licenses to me.
I've worked a lot of places in the last 10 years, and I've been as impressed by the people and work environment at autozone as anywhere. From senior management down to phone people, it's a great place to work. There are only 2 drawbacks. Mondays were "Store Uniform day" which I really hated :), and I personally am not a fan of memphis. Its the latter that resulted in my accepting employment elsewhere. You'll love working at autozone.
No, I don't think so. "The court of public opinion" does not ware a black robe with "Judge" embroidered on it. The Judge, if he / she is worth 10 cents of what it cost to go to law school, will consider the facts, not "the court of public opinion." In either case, SCO will lose, and bad.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
This seems a great time to remind you that it's like this everywhere. When reading news articles in fields you aren't intimately familiar with, make sure to take them all with the same grain of salt you're reading SCO stories with. Because they are all of roughly similar accuracy.
Um, a confidentiality clause will not prevent clueless media organizations from headlining the story however they would like, and as has been seen in the past, the more inflammatory the headline the better.
Just released, DaimlerChrysler is the second target. Note to mods: in the event the post is updated, this comment is before that.
-no broken link
It looks like their next lawsuit is against DaimlerChrysler. Check out http://ir.sco.com.
According to cnet, the second company that SCO is going after is DaimlerChrysler. I really think that they have now spread themselves too thin. These are companies with large legal departments that do not generally settle hen frivoulous lawsuits are brought against them.
Let us hope that both of them do not settle, as it would indeed be a bad precedent.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
O.J.Simpson lost the "court of public opinion" and he is still walking around a free man.
Any of us who used to use SCO Unix and is migrating to Linux could be next. If you don't have a contract with SCO and aren't a distributor of Unix or Linux, i.e., if you are normal end user, there is nothing they could possibly get you for.
SCO hasn't been afraid of starting lawsuits it can't win in the past; what makes you think it will be afraid to do so in the future?
Besides, if the allegations aren't true, and no SCO libraries are being used, it should be easy to prove and this case will be dropped very quickly (at least quick for the judicial system).
Ah, that's the catch, isn't it? "Quick for the judicial system" seems to be translatable as "within several months" so:
If SCO needs to bump it's stock price up for a few months, then anyone who looks at them funny and has deep pockets is a possible target.
If SCO needs to make using Linux seem risky (to persuade Microsoft or Sun to "buy more licenses"), then anyone who uses Linux is a possible target.
On the other hand, this really doesn't make Linux much more risky than any other business activity: if anyone can sue you for anything, baseless or not, appeasing them all would mean caving in to threats from anyone whose brother made it through law school, not just Darl.
Well, AZ does use Linux to derive their core revenue in a very real way. Every single terminal in every single Auto Zone store runs Linux, with a custom text-menu front end. They run on very inexpensive Siemens 486 boxes IIRC. Thousands or millions of these things in the field--without Linux they can't look up part numbers and in auto parts, part numbers mean everything.
If SCO wins this one, I can't think of a better profession in this world.
What other job can you make claims like this at this hell hole of an economy and be profitable... while getting global attention from slashdot etc. Only lawyers can do this.
I'll probably get modded down for this.... the richer the lawyer, the bigger the scum bag.
Sue the goverment for the repeal of the First Ammendment on the grounds that it interferes with their business model.
The sad thing is that if SCO were a couple of orders of magnitude larger, the current administration would probably oblige them. Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Tired of not being able to read the best resource on this whole fiasco.
If you do link, please also link to their paypal account link.
Maybe if 1 out of 1000 of you slashdotters who hit groklaw and see it got hosed will go back when it is up and donate a couple bucks, they can add a server or two.
TIA,
Dave
(BTW, I've donated already, twice)
Are you saying everybody doesn't run their corporate webserver on a single box that serves as the NAT/firewall gateway, mail server, Samba server, and print server for the entire company? I'm shocked, absolutely shocked.
P.S.: Sometimes I think the Open Source crowd's "hillbilly" roots show through in that they expect if the products they use work for a tiny subset of their world then it should be suitable for everyone in every situation no matter how big the scale. Most likely Autozone has thousands of SCO UNIX POS terminals or something.
This kind of detailed refutation, obviously easily obtainable by any serious person truly concerned with the theft of their intellectual property, continues to astound me and reinforce in the most blatant manner my conclusion and that of many, many others that the true motive of said SCO Corp. is strictly the destruction of the open source movement in the West and that it is being funded by the usual gang of suspects.
What those "suspects" don't realise is that such an outcome will leave the field open to a complete Far Eastern takeover of open source in the form of that other major player in this area, the various TRONs running on more devices worldwide than either Linux or Windows and will ultimately lead to the demise of Billy Boy and his evil empire. Not a silver lining but a just come-uppance none the less.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
You have just fullfilled Microsoft's goal in this suit. If they can obscure the growing use of Linux, they may yet survive...
Maybe.
But consider the analogy of growing stealth Linux deployments in the enterprise, gnawing away at Microsoft's empire.
It bears an eerie similarity to the stealth PC deployments on the enterprise desktop back in the early 1980s, gnawing away at the mainframe's empire.
In that sense, Linux could succeed using the very same pattern that Microsoft used to succeeded 20 years ago.
p"Provided by the management for your protection."
I didn't see anyone else speculating this, so..
Maybe SCO knows someone at AutoZone and thinks that AutoZone will lay down easily?
AutoZone doesn't want to deal with a lawsuit and
1. Pays for a license
2. Settles out of Court
Perhaps there are other outcomes that will appear favorable to SCO and not be particularly damaging to AutoZone?
-greg
SCOX off by 12.82% at this time for the day. Great job guys even stock holders are starting to think you are insane for taking on 3 multi-billion dollar companies at the same time.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
And if you would pull your head out of your ass, you'd understand that public opinion is determined by a lot more than what some dork in a black robe decides. SCO can lose the case and we (fans of open-source software) could still lose badly because of their PR campaign.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
First of all, we have to wonder: why AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler? When the AutoZone lawsuit was announced, I figured they were chosen because they were a large company, but not a huge company, and they may just settle out of court instead of risk litigous waters. However, DaimlerChrysler is a giant with hordes of corporate lawyers. These lawsuits were not chosen out of weakness of the defendants. Which brings me to a second point. I can't imagine ANY corporate lawyers, how stupid SCO's may be, advising a company to file two HUGE, high profile lawsuits if the suits have no legal ground to stand on. With all this PR generated, to have the suits thrown out of court would just be stupid. Which brings me to wonder: Do Darl and the gang have an ace in the hole? There has to be a reason that they believe that these cases will go through, or be settled. And unfortunately, if they do, we may be in for a bigger battle than we imagined.
Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying. -- Anonymous
There are some interesting parallels. First off, they both treat their customers like criminals, assuming that they have stolen from them, then wonder why their sales are down. Second, they both are completely ignorant of how hated they are by their peers. Third, they both employ high powered attorneys who would rather sue then negotiate anything. Finally, both seem completely clueless regarding the fact that technology has made them obsolete. Rather then embracing the new frontier, they both seem to want to sue it out of existance. This last reason is why both will ultimately fail.....
They gain a lawsuit against a Linux End User. Plain and Simple.
Two days ago you heard them tauting that they would sue a Linux End User. Last night you heard they were going to announce two.
Today you hear about these two companies.
The MUST be Linux End Users because that is what they said the other day IN THE PRESS.
Most people won't even check to see if that is really what they are suing about, because they believe they already know the answer from previous press releases.
They are trying to pull a Magician's trick of mis-direction. So far, it has been working for them.
Scott Carr
Bow your head and join me in a quick silent prayer to the Deity of your choice....
So, if there is a real deity, we get to choose what this deity is like? Surely if there is a deity, it has some nature and characteristics to it, independent of what *I* think? I propose it must therefore be my duty to discern the nature of said deity, based on sound logic, and not merely settle by whim on "the deity of my choice". We don't get to choose.
The fact that this is so plausible is what is worrying. I shudder to think of what would happen if SCO won a case - any case - to do with "IP".
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
Is "we think they used our libraries" really sufficient grounds for a lawsuit? Aren't they required to use due diligence first, before filing? Something along the lines of 1) sending a letter to AutoZone stating "We beleive you are using our libraries contrary to our contract with you. Please cease and desist." 2) Receive a reponse from AutoZone stating "No we are not. Kindly fuck off." 3) Sending another letter stating "We think you are lying. When may we audit you?" 4) Receiving a response from AutoZone stating "We have given our security guards orders to shoot on sight anyone identifying themselves as representing SCO." Then maybe they would have grounds for a lawsuit -- or maybe if AutoZone never bothered responding to their C&D letter, as apparently Daimler-Chrysler never did. What due diligence actions did SCO take before hauling AutoZone into court?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Hypathetical Question.
If Bill Gates were to take copyrighted material say a pirated MP3 and incorporate it in his operating system. Who would be responsible for infringing on the copyright? Bill or the consumer? In all fairness wouldn't Bill Gates be responsible for all copies distributed? I'm by far not an expert on the law but this suit seems asinine and appears to be a gold mining operation/pipe dream/Mob like strong arm tactics. When are they going to gag SCO?
Er, no.
Anything involving copying needs a license. The license they paid for only includes so much copying as is necessary for the license to be effective, and that which is given under the copyright laws. That basically means it allows loading and using the operating system in the normal way, and perhaps making backup copies. It does not allow them to copy the files wherever they please.
If they copied the shared libraries to a Linux system (it seems they didn't, and SCO's case is at best speculative and deserving of summary dismissal), they would be doing so without a licence, and have breached copyright.
Even if they did do this, however, SCO would have to show damage. If these were existing SCO systems that were converted to Linux, they're going to have a hard time showing damage, since they can't point to an alternative scenario in which they would have had more money. It's only if there were additional machines put in place that they'd have a case for damages. Of course they may be seeking other remedies which don't require a showing of damages.