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SCO Changes Tune, Again: Linux Now Just a Riff on Unix
dr3vil writes "eWeek publishes an interview with SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag about the IBM lawsuit. SCO now claim that Linux is a 'nonliteral implementation' of Unix, and compare their claim to those involving Harry Potter rip-offs and Vanilla Ice versus David Bowie and Queen." And ronaldb64 writes "Yahoo Business has a nice summary of the last couple of months of stock movement of SCO, and the reasons why. It contains quotes from business analysts ('Win or lose, the outcome is at least a couple of years away' - 'In the interim, we know the company is going to burn through its cash balance.'), the lack of interest in SCO licenses, the effect the license purchase of EveryOne Ltd. had, and its continuing battle with Novell. The explanation given by pro- and contra-SCO activists is interesting: the pro-SCO group (in the form of SCO CFO Robert Bench) says it is because SCO has been laying low lately, the contra-SCO group (in the form of Eben Moglen) says it is because investors are beginning to understand how weak SCO's case is."
"In the interim, we know the company is going to burn through its cash balance.",
The saddest part is that this money goes to lawyers and only lawyers, who'll just opt for the luxury version of their next car or shop for the more expensive waterfont summer property. Think if that money went anywhere else--charities, disaster funds, education, investment, open source funding--you name it. Dozens of
G-Force music visualization
McBride: When I look at our case, I think anyone who has a rational mind would come down to the same conclusions I do.
Notice how he carefully avoids stating what conclusions he came to...
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1404303,00.as p
Yet the Arse of Lindon continues to distribute (unsupported) Apache as well as other F/OSS products which adhere to the GPL.
Need we any other evidence of the duplicity of these scumbags?
Someone, please shut his piehole. I am sick and tired of listening to the lies and FUD and blastant misrepresentations made by this company and its executives and lawyers (same thing?).
SCO marketeers must have just relized that their lawsuit is in effect telling the public, and in particular the business public, that Linux is Unix for free. Otherwise, why sue?
He is right : everyone with a rational mind would understand SCO initial claims were so silly that it was worth for Darl McBride to change his strategy.
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There are different standards for software than there is for a work of fiction - in a work of fiction, if you have the same characters or the same plot, it looks like plagiarism; but software is about applications (in the generic sense of "things you do"), and one can pretty easily see that a certain amount of workalike implementation would be necessary for competition to be possible. IANAL, but if I were at the business end of this lawsuit, I'd ask my lawyer if the whole MS vs. Apple "look and feel" decision didn't set a damning (to SCO's position) precedent in this area.
You just summed up the state of IP law in the US most beautifully.
Although I'll bet Daryl and company wish it were so.
/. feel like compiling a list of SCO quotes that they have made in the past year for a good 'comedy of errors' read?
Look at todays comment.
SCO now claim that Linux is a 'nonliteral implementation' of Unix,
If it's 'nonliteral' why did they even bother with a copyright suit in the first place? Still looking for the "millions of lines" of infringing code, Daryl.
Anybody on
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Dat gedonder met SCO moet maar eens afgelopen zijn.
Wie gaat McBride eens mee naar de hoeren nemen, het lijkt erop, ik zeg niet dat het zo is, het lijkt erop dat die "kerel" het eens nodig heeft.
Je kunt wel lief blijven, sommige mensen verdienen het!
Bah bah Bah, bij mij in de familie heet al een toilet --> McBride en de keutel die weggespoeld wordt een Sontag.
Dankejewel SCO voor de nodige humor, jullie hebben goed jullie best gedaan.
PLZ translate it to your language.
Actually, you should do your homework. The Linux Kernel may provide basically the same Unix interfaces and API's, but in many areas the Linux Kernel does things completely different than the Unixes before it...
I thought that the hello world example referenced in the article was trivial, so lets consider a non trivial application:
If someone writes a game that plays the same as Tetris, but hasn't ever looked at Tetris' code, can the copyright holder of Tetris sue even if the implementation is completely different?
Now what about older games like Chess or Go? Does the first programmer who writes an implementation of the game get the copyright, and thus the ability to stop everyone else from writing an implementation of said same?
Is it content or implementation that can be copywritten or patented?
That's stupid.
The only question you have to ask yourself about SCO's share price is how long Microsoft is going to keep letting them suck on it's teat.
Doing the "same thing" and "doing the same thing better" are two different things. A Yugo and a Mercedes both do the same thing. But the Mercedes does it differently and is a better vehicle.
Linux is a kernel. It copies POSIX specs, if anything. If anything, GNU are the ones who "copied" UNIX, and did so over a decades ago, but even that is a false argument.
At the heart, we have to ask 'what is UNIX?' Is it the core userspace tools? Then "copying" UNIX has already been shown to be OK, as BSD "copied" (read that "replaced") UNIX bit-by-bit while AT&T had it available to the schools.
Is it a kernel? If so, then SCO's claim of Linux 'copying' UNIX is meritless, as all it does is impliment POSIX calls so UNIX programs can compile and run on it. Behind the scenes they differ immensly, hammered home by the fact that SCO talked of adding a Linux compatibility layer to their UNIX product a few years back, but dropped it because it just would have been too difficult to impliment IIRC.
If UNIX is everything that runs on the 'UNIX' kernel, then there's never been a UNIX. Ever. Because each 'UNIX'(AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Sun OS) has been so drastically different that it has been the major reason UNIX never hit it big until someone came who didn't trying to block other vendors out and prevented others from using it to in turn block other vendors. (Namely, GNU/Linux) Had HURD pushed forward and been the default GNU kernel, perhaps they would have some theoretical merit, but HURD is also drastically different, being a mircokernel design and all the spiffy stuff that comes with that.
To say "Linux copies UNIX" is to say "Timex copies sundials." They have a common ancestory, serve similar roles, but vary greatly in implimentation.
This has more to do with sequence, organization, which is copyright-protectable.
And most cars have doors, windows and 4 tires. Perhaps all of the auto companies should sue each other for making similiar items.
If this is the best they can do they have a hard road ahead.
Got Code?
a nonliteral implementation of Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces
http://www.castlebooks.com/star-wars-myth.htm
Why do you think SCO will *win*???
Anyone, what exactly isn't clear in Darl's answer??? Should he start with : "I think SCO will win because..." or can we at least accept he's gone past 1st grade???
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Ignore for a moment that SCO is SCO and we all at Slashdot hate them for various reasons.
Lots of companies big and small engage in lawsuits everyday as part of doing business. Breach of contract, patent infringement, etc. These things can take years to come to some sort of end, with the parties working something out or a judge making a ruling.
But business should continue to go on. You can't simply put everything on hold due to ONE lawsuit. But that's what SCO is doing. It seems to me that their entire focus has shifted to this ONE lawsuit. And regardless of whether or not you believe in the merits of their case or the ethics of a company whose business model is nothing but lawsuits... they are putting way too much weight into the potential revenue it might generate. And that is quite risky.
This is ONE lawsuit. By putting all their time and energy into this one lawsuit it has dwarfed everything else about the company and its real products. This to me is a bad business practice, and is the real reason that SCO is losing investors.
There is no such thing in Copyright law which says this. Unless you have a line-by-line copy of a significant amount of code, you're chances at proving infringement are remote, at best. If you'll notice SCO has progressively backed down it's case again and again.
:)
:)
We've gone from "full blown copying of 1M+ lines" to "no copying, but those are our derived works" to "we claim these header files" to "Linux is a riff on UNIX". Oh, please.
Come on, Darl, you mean to tell me you think that someone can't write something *similar* to something else without infringing?
What about Free DOS and the myriad of other OSes out there. Hell, according to this logic, Windows would infringe. Why don't you go sue MS? Oh wait, that would be biting the hand that feeds you.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
This is standard operating procedure in intellectual property litigation -- even if you have a good claim. First harvest the low hanging fruit. Build your war chest by first feasting on adversaries who won't put up a fight. Avoid the risk that you may not collect from weak players becaue you attacked a strong adversary too early, and received an adverse precedent (i.e., published) decision that the weaker players can benefit from and couldn't otherwise have obtained.
On the other hand, it is also the perfect strategy if you have a weak claim. Attack only weak adversaries who can't afford to defend themselves, or for whom the cost of defense would be greater the the cost of capitulation. There are companies who survive and prosper by asserting weak (cough) intellectual property claims and offer to settle for amounts less than their adversaries' cost of litigation. The key is to make sure that the claim is not so baseless that you expose yourself sanctions or a subsequent claim for malicious institution of a civil action.
Then again, SCO has already violated these rules by attacking IBM far too early in the game. Go figure.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
The kicker is that if Linux is a "nonliteral" derivative of SysV, then SCO's Linux Kernel Personality must be "nonliterally" infringing on Linux and the GPL.
-m
--- Learn XForms today: http://xformsinstitute.com
from the article: ... Boies will get 400,000 shares from SCO."
... Boies will get 400,000 shares from SCO."
"The stock plunge won't affect star lawyer David Boies' compensation.
Is that statement just plain wrong ?
Shouldn't that read:
"The stock plunge will affect star lawyer David Boies' compensation.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I doubt it would do any good anyways. People already don't bother to preview enough, so another spell-check step likely won't get used much.
Just because I'm bored, I copied your first post into Word and checked it. "Definitely" was spelled wrong, but no grammar errors (like accidentally using the wrong word as you did) were detected. A lot of good that spelling/grammar checker would have done you in this case. Exact same thing with a few other posts I tried (like one with the way too common "loose" instead of "lose" error): all were spelled correctly (technically, yes) and written with perfect grammar (not even close...).
Jeez, Friday night and I'm writing long-winded comments on how Word's grammar checker can't detect Slashdotters' raping of the English language... I'm pathetic.
But, as McBride himself says: The truth will come out in the courtroom.
We can only hope.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
In Federal Court today, Andy and Larry Wachowski, creators of The Matrix, were sued on behalf of God. When asked to comment, God said the Wachowskis had violated his copyright and defamed his family's good name. Said God, "My son would never be that stupid."
The ______ Agenda
For the same reason you don't pay an extortionist: 10 others will line up the next day for a payout.
In fact, isn't that what you're suggesting: paying an extortionist? Sounds like an easy way out, but IBM knows better.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
The first is the Novell copyright situation. To me, it's not clear who's in the right here.
McBride: Would you buy an operating system without the source-code copyright? If you don't have copyright, they can turn around the next day and screw you.
Sontag: Instead, they waited nine years.
McBride: We have no doubts that our Unix copyright claims are valid.
One must, of course, ask why SCO felt that they had to wait years before notifying Linux folks of their alleged horrific infringements, and then felt that it was necessary to avoid actually *telling* Linux folks what the alleged infringements year until months and multiple court orders forced them to do so.
Sontag: We don't have to knock out the GPL for us to succeed on the copyright issue. The GPL itself supports, in a lot of ways, our positions. Section 0 of the GPL states that the legit copyright holder has to place a notice assigning the copyright over to the GPL.
All these contributions of our IP did not have an assignment by SCO saying here, 'We assign these copyrights to the GPL.' The fact that we participated with Linux does not mean that we inadvertently contributed our code to the GPL. You can't contribute inadvertently to Linux. We feel we have a very strong position based on the GPL.
First, this tidbit:
'We assign these copyrights to the GPL.'
Okay, enough fun has been made of Sontag and McBride's lack of competence when it comes to IP, so I'll avoid the jokes. You don't "assign a copyright to a license" (though GNU contributors are required to assign their copyright to the FSF for a number of reasons, in addition to licensing it under the GPL -- Linux is not a GNU project.)
Uh, huh. The fact that you added them to a file containing a GPL header doesn't count, eh? It's been well understood for many years that one header works for multiple contributions. When it comes to licensing, intent matters, and there was very clearly intent to GPL this code. I can't understand how you could make any kind of a counterargument.
The fact that we participated with Linux does not mean that we inadvertently contributed our code to the GPL.
Well, the alternative you have is that you committed massive infringement of thousands of IP holders that licensed their Linux code under the GPL. It's one or the other, SCO. If you want to go after Linux (and it's a damned weak argument -- I can't see how you'd manage to win it), you're also admitting that you deliberately committed a far worse crime. The potential costs of years of theft of perhaps millions of copies of Linux would easily bankrupt your company. I would expect that a shrewd mediator would find that donation of your code's copyright to the IP holders as a group would be the most acceptable form of restitution (trying to work out monentary damages from a class action lawsuit by a mass of coders with no interest in your money would be hard to resolve), which would put you back at square one, except without your money.
McBride: We will admit the things we've contributed and that we can't claw them back.
Darl, your second-in-command just said otherwise five seconds ago. C'mon, guys. At least maintain a cohesive position.
We think we have protection under both the GPL and copyright law.
This makes no sense. Name one right granted you by the GPL to either your IP or anyone else's IP that would entitle you to "protection" from other people using this code. If your code or other people's code is GPLed, everyone is clearly in the right to use it.
the copyright holder must make an explicit assignment, typically in writing, in a contract.
No. Team-written software is a form of joint authorship, which does not require explicit copyright assignment. While SCO might be able to argue that perhaps they have sole copyright ownership of the patch itself, the patched work is also owned by all the other authors of Linux, who
May we never see th
Or maybe the people who own the copyrights on Aleister Crowley's works, of which Lucas's works are derivative, could also get in line.
The term "communist" isn't actually as cut and dried as you make it out to be.
Marxists defined communism as the dissolution of the state, elimination of private property, and the leveling of all class barriers. That idealized goal was not achieved during the Soviet era, obviously, but the term was hijacked by the Communist Party, which for obvious political reasons presented its society as the realization of the communist dream.
The West saw little reason to quibble over terminology, and so bought into this misrepresentation by using the term communism rather than another, more accurate term (such as totalitarian socialism).
So yes, our history books call it communism, but history books simplify presentation of complicated historical material for reasons of clarity, ideology, and so on. Check out Lies My Teacher Told Me to get a glimpse at these simplifications in effect.
For more info about communism, check out this detailed explanation.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
You can argue that you can't accidentally license your work. But I'd argue when they continued to distribute Linux, having learned that it contained their copyrighted code, that they were deliberately and explicitly distributing their own code under the GPL.
Your reading comprehension must not be very keen tonight.
...
Of course we all saw that bit. We know that Darl "thinks" he's going to win (I'm not actually convinced of that). The part the granparent noticed is that Darl isn't able to *give any credible theory or evidence or reasoning about how he might win*
Right now, SCO's case is very thinly strung together. They're making totally new arguements (and few if any tried & true ones, and I assure you that they *would* use precident wherever they could), which advocate an inequitable solution (give us all the code IBM made, due to our strained theory of an ancient contract we discovered after sitting on for years).
The thing about the two contending theories is this: SCO's arguement is thin. If any one piece, each of which is built on top of the other, fails, the whole line of arguement fails, and SCO with it. Whereas, if you read IBM's legal filings (and yes, I have... IANAL, but I've learned a hell of a lot by reading all the tons of legal documents from Groklaw), you will notice that IBM has a layered defense. What I mean by that is that, even if one layer fails, they have not just one, but several other claims, where if *any* of them were to prevail, they would be entirely defended on those grounds.
I mean, look at some of the defenses: SCO doesn't have the copyrights (SCO will have to prove that they do vs. Novell, and they've shot themselves in the foot by contradicting themselves in their own legal filing! They claimed that Novell was slandering their title to the copyrights SCO purports to own, yet asked for the court to transfer them from Novell to SCO as a remedy, implying that they do NOT own them!), even if SCO does have the copyrights, IBM asserts that the work-product doctrine (hey! WE made this, not SCO!) and the old $echo publication refute SCO's reading of their contract. And even if both of those go SCO's way, SCO gave Linux out under the GPL (and the onus would be on SCO to prove the nonsense about it being "unconstitutional" here).
So there are three strong layers right there. Pick any two, even if those fail, IBM still has a defense and SCO is up a creek.
In the mean time, I'm wondering about the SCO publicity. Lately, they have been pretty quiet, probably because of the judge's private conference with IBM & SCO a while back after which SCO mysteriously went quiet and even withdrew from some debate or another. There's also that website that put up a fake press release about them buying a SCO license which SCO asked them to take down. Pity the site was not in English, but SCO's fax to them (which they put up) was, for some reason.
Maybe I should investigate the contact listed in that fax? I believe it was press.winkler@sco.com / 1 (801) 932-5800 -- it would be nice if I could find out what exactly they're up to these days...
Well, this is an interesting point. 10 or 15 years ago, CS was the hot thing to study in school. The Internet was new, the money was fantastic , now it's changed to law. All the kids will be going to law school, because it is now the hot thing, and the money was fantastic
This is a bunch of crap. CS has never been the hot thing to enter if you want to be a big earner. Lawyers and Medical professionals have always made more than CS people. During the height of the dot com boom, 2 things happened: alot of CS majors started to make relatively high salaries, and many were making these high salaries doing NOTHING. Furthermore, unlike law and medicine, there is no true professional certification or barrier to entry into IT (MSCE and other professional "certs" are a joke). From my experience, most CS grads (and most college grads for that matter in the non professional fields) are absolutely incompetent.
During the dot com boom, it was just as lucrative to be a patent attorney, cardiologist, anesthesiologist, or general law partner as it is now (actually moreso for the medical fields as the cost of tuition has gone up significantly). These fields, have remained relatively stable though. A little bit, because it is more demanding and time consuming to get through these fields (I know for a fact that one can go through an accredited CS or EE program without learning a single thing (I work with these people, and they didn't cheat, the program simply had NO rigor whatsoever)). Although I have met many incompetent doctors and lawyers, the style of training and certification for these fields forces one to know something.
Hell, earning a Private Pilot License requires more discipline than earning a Bachelor's degree in the US. Sad indeed.
I assume that you're from the other side of the pond, so I've got a question for you. Have Europeans accepted the poor things their countries did in the past? I don't ask if they dwell on them, I just ask if they understand what happened? Here in the US, we seem to have a serious "we are infallible" complex. Its as if slavery, manifest destiny, the propping up of petty dictators, etc, all never happened...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Do you really want the open source community to develop the true Next Generation operating system? Stop and think about this. If you succeed in killing off all free unix clones, the free developers will have to turn elsewhere. That means, to be safe, a from scratch implimentation of a whole new type of system from the ground up. In other words, implimenting all the computer science research of the last few decades that hasn't been put into practice. The potential of such a system could be revolutionary, and render Unix of any sort yesterday's news. Guess where SCO winds up in such a future.
You can't succeed in hijacking Linux - it's ONLY merit is its freedom. Destroy that and you destroy Linux, and create a new opponent. If you don't believe that the people are determined to create an OS unencumbered by commercial ties, you need to wake up and smell the coffee. The question is - what is your job description? Claim IP for SCO, or hault the spread of free software in business? If it's the latter you have no hope.
Please note I have not gone in to quite how self-flageletory the German texbooks are about WW2...
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
You cannot "copyright" the way something works. That's what patents are for.
Advanced users are users too!
"Here in the US"
I don't think you live in the same US I do. We don't see ourselves as infallible (remember VN?), we don't believe slavery never happened, we study Wounded Knee, Trail of Tears, etc., we are aware of the Shah and others.
We're aware they all happened. We're also aware that each and every child is not *guilty* of their father's sins. Just correct and move on. Then keep correcting and moving on.
And fer the love of man, don't hold your neighbor responsible for what happened 400 friggin' years ago.