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SCO Aims For The Feds
MoFoQ writes "News.com reports that SCO is now targetting the Feds and their supercomputers (the Beowulf clusters, etc.). Looks like they bit off more than they can chew, even before winning a single case "
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This is a bit of bad reporting by news.com (surprise!). It's just referring to the letters SCO sent out in December, and it's JUST been released NOW that two of those targets were Federal institutions.
Just more lame press releases by SCO. Nothing out of the ordinary. Move along, please.
Groklaw covered this yesterday - it's nothing more than confirmation that those institutions received the threatening letter that SCO's been sending out.
Coverage and discussion at Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200403192 34017885
The difference is that if you sue the Federal Government (as opposed to a State or private organization) they get to decide if you are allowed to sue them or not. That may seem unfair on the face of it, but considering the number of people that make a living from deep-pockets lawsuits it's not hard to understand (there aren't any deeper pockets than the U.S. Government.) A judge will say "Have a nice day, Mr. McBride" and that will be that. But in the meantime SCO gets to capitalize on yet another round of high-profile public FUD. I'm not sure what it's going to take: for some reason the American legal system seems unable to shut them up for more than a couple of days. We all keep hoping that IBM will go to the mat for us and take them down. Somebody needs to. They shoot rabid animals, don't they?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
-Matt
linux networx is a canopy company like SCO/caldera is. see: http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/pr042800_canopy.h tml
Now in the news article it says:
"SCO sent letters raising the prospect of legal action for using Linux to two Department of Energy facilities, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)."
But in this press release it says that linux networx is the one that installed the linux clusters at the LLNL.
http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/8.28.2001.49-Lawr ence_Liverm.html
The new lesson of the day is if you do business with anyone funded by the canopy company you risk being sued by other members of the canopy group.
Read the article. This letter was obtained by a FOIA request by an attorney defending the case against Daimler-Chrysler I believe. It's from the round of letters where SCO claimed various header files were in violation of copyrights related to the UNIX ABI.
hasn't SCO already had several unfavorable rulings in the IBM case? Haven't they been ordered to ~finally~ show the offending code? That should end that case quickly...
Basically yes. And now it's changed from a "there's SysV code in Linux" case to a "there's derivative works of code you licensed from us in Linux" case. That's a big difference. They have not been able to identify ANY code, bar similarities in 5 ABI files, that has been ported directly from SysV to Linux. None. And they admitted it in court in the IBM case.
What it's about now with IBM is that, while they admit IBM invented JFS, and IBM own the copyright over JFS, and while JFS may have originally been included in other IBM products (OS/2 perhaps?) that because it's attached to the AIX code, it's a "derivative work" of SysV, and therefore SCO have a say over how IBM can use that code.
How about that. A completely independent IBM invention, used in SysV, and SCO are getting all shitty saying now that IBM cannot now move that code anywhere else after it's been used in IBM's own implementation as AIX.
And they call the GPL viral. Darl's accusations there are that if anything touches SysV code licensed from SCO, then SCO have a right to say what can be done with it. That just doesn't make sense.
In any case, it won't end the case quickly due to these changes, as SCO still want to see exactly what the JFS code looks like, so they can see if it was inserted into Linux, and then they can run around and issue more press releases saying "IBM has revealed 10,000 lines of our code is in Linux. see. they admitted it". I think the worst is yet to come in the press-release war that SCO has been waging.
That is, unless they run out of money first. With their stock price nearly down to a third of what it was just a few months ago and an increasing number of legal fronts being fought, we can only hope that's sooner rather than later.
linux networx is a canopy company like SCO/caldera is. see: http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/pr042800_canopy.
Now in the news article it says:
"SCO sent letters raising the prospect of legal action for using Linux to two Department of Energy facilities, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)."
But in this press release it says that linux networx is the one that installed the linux clusters at the LLNL. http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/8.28.2001.49-Law
The new lesson of the day is if you do business with anyone funded by the canopy company you risk being sued by other members of the canopy group.
As far as Slashdot, we all know even the submitters don't read the articles. "now targetting" my ass.
NIH, The National Institues of Health, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States government, is using Beowulf clusters to help cure diseases such as cancer, Alzheimers, stroke, heart disease and kidney failure.
I'm definitely rooting for the Feds on this one.
No, it's news because the targets of the letters, save a few, hadn't been previously known publicly. An attorney for several of the targeted companies managed to snag these two letters from the gummint labs via a Freedom of Information Act request. FOIA requests are not fullfilled instantaneously.
/. (surprise). I posted this same story to /. early last evening, but it was ignored and then rejected by the editors.
I could say, by the same token, this is just a bit of bad reporting by
"SCO threatened US DOE labs in December letters
18:32 Friday 19 March 2004 Rejected"
SCO would probably like to get bought out. I think the best thing to do is just to wipe them out in court, that way there is a possibility for criminal charges brought against mcbride and company, and gives an opportunity to test out the GPL in court.
Maybe... Remember Darl Mcbride when he claimed that SCO owns C++ So in the future SCO may sue people using QT with C++ See: http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/mai n/0,14179,2877578,00.html
"We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++."
"SCO sent the letter to every member of the Senate and House of Representatives, said Blake Stowell, a SCO spokesman." No, no, they did not send the extortion letter to congress. This refers to Darl's letter warning congress about the danger to our way of life posed by the and their GPL.
None of SCO's desperate attempts to prop up the stock price have worked. Even the announcement of a stock buyback propped up the price for only one hour, between 0930 and 1030 last Tuesday. SCOX continues its long slide. SCOX closed at 8.71 on Friday. It started the week at 9.5, and the year around 20.
SCO has reached the point where nothing they can say can help them. Only winning some of their lawsuits can help them, and that looks increasingly unlikely. They have to win three separate suits (against Novell, IBM, and Red Hat) to even start collecting from end users.
"i wasnt aware that he had any opinions towards/against old billy boy"
Then - no offense - your awareness is incomplete.
Microsoft was found to be guilty of anti-competitive practices. The DOJ recommended breaking up Microsoft. This sound familiar?
George W. handed down the proclamation from on high that the Justice department was no longer allowed to pursue a breakup of Microsoft.
This took the wind right out of the sails of the DOJ's case, and Miscrosoft ended up with a slap on the wrist and a request not to do it again.
I'm guessing that GWB's feelings about Microsoft may be *directly* related to the size of some campaign contributions he's received...
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
This came from English common law.
You literaly could not sue the king without
his permission.
I would not call that disinformation at all. I assume you are attempting to make a subtle distinction between management of the labs, and what one typically means by "belong to", not that you are attempting to troll or anything.
Prime Contract W-7405-ENG-48 (Contract 48 or Prime Contract) is executed between the University of California (UC or University) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and it is under this contract that LANL and LLNL function.
In other words, UC manages the labs under contract from DOE.
The difference is that if you sue the Federal Government (as opposed to a State or private organization) they get to decide if you are allowed to sue them or not. That may seem unfair on the face of it, but considering the number of people that make a living from deep-pockets lawsuits it's not hard to understand (there aren't any deeper pockets than the U.S. Government.)
That's a useful effect. But it's not the reason for the rule.
The reason that's in there is so that when the fed tries to exercise its constitutional authority on some OTHER big pockets (i.e. a state), it doesn't get tied up in a bunch of legal crud.
The fed, however, DOES let such suits proceed much of the time.
And after the CIA ripped off a company's database, installed spyware, and marketed it cheap to the world's banks (wrecking the market for the original authors), and the fed refused to be sued, resulting in the database's company folding, Congress got pissed and passed some laws to prevent it happening again. (That's why you see that bit about federal agencies in ELUAs - to set up a suit they can't wiggle out of if an agency tries to pull it again.)
I don't know if this would keep the agencies from ducking the suits, but it might. (IANAL, and haven't even read the darn gobbledegook directly.) Let's see what shows up on groklaw.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"If not, why announce the Fed-suit instead of going back after BoA?"
Keep your tinfoil hat on; there's plenty of other oddities about this thing of SCO's, but you're a little off on this one point.
1.) SCO hasn't sued the fed labs yet and announced nothing yesterday.
2.) The letters were part of one of the threatening spam runs SCO did in December; the revelation now comes because an attorney representing several recipients of the sco scam spam just now has been able to obtain them, after filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the letters.
2004 campaign contributions thus far
Note the important:
Microsoft Corp $160,850
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
About the only interesting things here are that we now know they've been sending these letters to (pseudo) government organizations, and they've managed to threaten the Regents of the University of California ( thus re-igniting USL vs BSD).
It's also increasingly unlikely that they did any sort of vetting in terms of who they sent the letters to. Dead Tree SPAM.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Give a link. Show the quote. Otherwise, it's just hearsay.
Umm... Its an ISO standard, royalty free... They might get some money licensing an *implementation* but not the language.
Sadly, while I would chalk it up to a poorly transcribed/edited interview if it was anyone else saying it, McBride might actually believe they own C++...
Like most of their previous assertions, they don't let logic get in their way on this either.. As if Linux is the threat here.. By this same logic, you would need to outlow Solaris-x86, Windows, *BSD, and anything else running on x86's.. They key to these systems is not the OS, it's the price/performance of these commodity CPU's.
Where have you been the past 10 years? The U.S. gov has strict export limits on machines that are deemed "supercomputers." SGI, and more recently, SUN have been busted for selling certain configurations to China and other countries. This is fact.
Note to Taco: what is with all the modding up of such idiocy? Don't you have any journalistic integrity? Ohh, wait, I forgot, this is Slashdot. (:
Its an ISO standard, royalty free... They might get some money licensing an *implementation* but not the language.
Since when does being an ISO standard make a technology royalty free?
It's not like MPEG is royalty free.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
SCO thinks it owns the C++ programming language according to one article:
S tory03.html#C++_Issues
http://www.mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-02_
Excerpt:
MozillaQuest Magazine: C++ appears to be one of the properties that SCO acquired through Novell's acquisition of AT&T's UNIX Systems Laboratories and subsequent purchase of Novell's UNIX interests by SCO. At this time most Linux and/or GNU/Linux distributions include C++ compilers and editors. Is this something for which SCO currently charges? If so, just what are the current arrangements? If not, will C++ licensing and enforcement be added to SCO's licensing and enforcement program?
Blake Stowell: C++ is one of the properties that SCO owns today and we frequently are approached by customers who wish to license C++ from us and we do charge for that. Those arrangements are done on a case-by-case basis with each customer and are not disclosed publicly. C++ licensing is currently part of SCO's SCOsource licensing program.
MozillaQuest Magazine: How about GNU C++? Does GNU C++ use SCO IP? If so, could SCO license and/or charge for use of its IP in GNU C++?
Blake Stowell: I honestly don't know.
According to the article, Blake Stowell works for SCO, but I don't know who he is. He goes on say that SCO would have to research any violations on the part of the GCC team.
I know that the C++ language is developed by ANSI and ISO, but the language was developed by Bjorn Straussop (sp) as work property owned by AT&T. Am I correct?
SCO claims it acquired C++ from AT&T or Novell. Despite being a programming language, C++ itself is still a technology no different from a hammer.I can't just create a language and call it C++. If I did, ISO couldn't sue me, but SCO would have us believe SCO could. So if I create my own language and call it Borland C++, I would be liable to both SCO and Borland (who is also liable to SCO).
I know it's always in good form to bash Microsoft. Can we honestly believe that Microsoft is somehow behind this, or that Microsoft is still the evil empire? It looks like we have a new contender. I think it's about time we see more cartoons lampooning SCO like we saw for Microsoft. Where's the pic of McBride as a Borg?