Computer Associates Pays Off SCO

jford235 writes "Forbes reports that CA has paid the fee to SCO for their license. The deal went down in August but today CA has says that they have taken steps to "distance itself from SCO"."

Comments

oooh, this is grey area...

[garcia]

"(SCO) is grasping at straws to purport CA as a SCO supporter," Computer Associates said in a statement. "CA stands in stark disagreement with SCO's tactics, which are intended to intimidate and threaten customers."

In August when CA did this they weren't intimidating/threatening? CA didn't know any better because they weren't paying too much attention to SCO's bullshit and not enough to the people who actually have a clue?

Sucks when you are caught between a rock and a hard place I guess.

What is it with Forbes and inaccuracy?

[Penguinisto]

This is getting to be an ongoing grudge with Forbes... First their editorialists skew every fact they can find in attempts to cheerlead SCO on, now this.

Didn't CA already explain the whole Canopy/SCO financial thing?

/P

Re:What is it with Forbes and inaccuracy?

[cosmo7]

I think Forbes supports SCO as a Microsoft proxy. The article is full of statements which don't really make sense.

I particularly liked this part: "Generally, if an IP holder is able to demonstrate that others in the industry have taken a license, thereby respecting the IP holder's claims, that can be used as evidence that is persuasive to a jury,"

So the score is SCO 4 GPL 4,000,000.

Yeah, CA paid for them - $0.00

[mflaster]

From Dow Jones Business News:

The Islandia, N.Y., company, one of the biggest makers of corporate software, said that although it signed the licenses, it didn't pay for them -- and never would.

Mike

Key legal ammunition?

[msgmonkey]

This article starts of with a complete untruth by stating that this "Purchase" is "key legal ammunition". It is no such thing has it will not have relevance in the court case so is more propaganda ammunition than anything.

Misleading lede

[LightStruk]

Computer Associates International Inc. said on Monday it has licensed the freely available Linux operating system software from SCO -- a move that could become key legal ammunition for the SCO Group Inc. in a battle over who owns the software.

The editor who let this lede get published should be taken out and, er, fired. It does not make a shred of difference in court if somebody actually caved to SCO's extortion; just because CA believed SCO's lie does not make the lie true.

Re:Misleading lede

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, they let Daniel Lyons post some rambling bit of nonsense wherein he "investigated" Groklaw. He read the PO box from her domain registration (which is NOT even the town where she lives...) and discovered that IBM might have an office somewhere in that general area. He then found out that IBM, once upon a time, had given some computers to Ibiblio (which recently became the host of Groklaw).

That's it. That's the supposed "connection" between them. And half of it was WRONG.

And Forbes let Daniel Lyons publish that. Why? Because PJ chastized him for not bothering to do ANY research. And now we see how poor his researching skills really are. Hell, I could do better than that, and I'm just an amature. Yet, given what I know, if I had access to some of the databases PIs use, I could probably have PJs info in a few minutes. And I'm just some schmoe, not an "investigative reporter."

The lesson here? Forbes' "research" consists primarily of corporate PR documents. IBM hasn't put out any, SCO has, so Forbes prints SCO's story and never bothers to research after that.

At least, that's the most consistant interpretation I can give of it. In the mean time, guess which magazine I tell everyone NOT to bother reading or subscribing to? I would encourage the rest of you to do the same, unless you want to read rehashed press releases for some reason...

Re:Misleading Headline

[jeroenb]

They were purchased in the sense that CA had some business with Canopy. Canopy then figured "Hey, let's mention that this stuff also includes Linux licenses blah blah" and the CA people said: "Well if it's not going to increase the price, why not?"

So in the end CA bought licenses, but only because SCO wanted to put the licenses down as "sold", not because they would have sold them in any other way.

It's like giving away free stuff along with other things, then later claiming everybody bought your stuff when they just bought something else.

Re:Misleading Headline

[squiggleslash]

Even worse, the story is completely consistant with the claims quoted yesterday which reported:

By acquiring the UnixWare licenses ( ed: as part of a settlement of an unrelated lawsuit brought by Canopy, not SCO), CA indemnified itself against a possible Linux lawsuit from SCO, said Sam Greenblatt, the senior vice president and chief architect of CA's Linux Technology Group. "We did an agreement with the Canopy Group and in the agreement with the Canopy Group, we acquired UinxWare(sic) licenses," he said. "For every UnixWare license you acquired, you got indemnified for that number of Linux licenses."

Kind of wierd to post this. Am I missing something?

The only reason SCO is doing this

[mslinux]

"Generally, if an IP holder is able to demonstrate that others in the industry have taken a license, thereby respecting the IP holder's claims, that can be used as evidence that is persuasive to a jury..."

To jury in closing args: "It must be our IP, and many others agree... we've already licensed it to several, large, well-respected technology companies."

Whether you agree with SCO or not (I don't), they're making a hell of an effort to control some key elements of open source software. We shouldn't laugh it off and expect them to go away... these guys are going for the kill... they're deadly serious. Their lawyers don't care whether they actually own any code or not. Wake up to this threat before it's too late.

Re:Action Item: Boycotts

[Herbmaster]

I honestly think that for every company that pays SCO for that 'license' should be boycotted by the user community

This would not be productive. CA's minor contribution to SCO is not going to make the difference between SCO winning and losing their case. It might, however, make the difference between CA continuing to use, and sell, free of distraction, linux products to customers who might not feel comfortable using them otherwise. Which of these is better for the linux community?

Re:Misleading Headline

[robslimo]

SCO sued International Business Machines Corp. [...] a year ago

Misleading use of the word 'sued' also.

I've seen this a lot, especially with regard to SCO's actions. Wouldn't the correct usage be SCO filed suit against IBM [...] a year ago?

As stated in the Forbes article, it could be taken to mean that SCO successfully sued IBM... or maybe I'm not as hot at my native language as I thought.

Re:Misleading Headline

[DavidTC]

That's exactly right.

CA went to the store and bought a computer. Someone threw three AOL disks in the box while they weren't looking.

Now AOL's trying to claim they've been a customer for 135 days, because, after all, those were 45 day free trial CDs.

Actually, it's even sillier than that. CA got Unixware licenses. SCO has just gone around saying they won't sue anyone who purchases Unixware licenses to cover their Linux intallations. At no point did CA see 'Linux license' on anything, even if they had checked the box carefully thy would have ended up with them.

Re:CA should have known better than to allow this

[DavidTC]

CA ended up with UnixWare licenses, not Linux licenses. It's just that SCO has turned all UnixWare licenses into Linux licenses.

Re:Misleading Headline

[Bull999999]

I would be like SCO throwing in a Linux license with every Happy Meal and claim that it sold a billion Linux licenses.