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SCO Says No Way To a GPL Solaris, Moves Trial Back
penguino writes "Looks like it didn't take long for SCO to formally respond to claims by Sun that it will open source Solaris. According to SCO 'they [Sun] still have licence restrictions that would prevent them from contributing our licensed works wholesale to the GPL'. The company has also released a statement dated June 8 that 'SCO is making a motion to move the scheduled trial date to September 2005 and split IBM's counterclaims into a separate case'. Also quoted is AUUG president and FreeBSD developer Greg Lehey who recommends 'that the best thing for IBM to do would be to print out every single version as requested and send the resultant 20 tonnes or so of paper to SCO. That would keep them quiet for a while'."
What version of Linux is IBM using now-a-days. Whichever it is, Sun should basically drop Solaris and focus developing Linux for sparks along the same lines as IBM is doing. I like Solaris machines, they're fast and reliable but I only see a future for Sun at IBM. Sun has Java technology that IBM could really use as a synergy for the core products. IBM with SUN would be a large player in the future of computing, but currently SUN standing alone will be like SGI and other once powerful computing companines.
Hmmm. I wonder if Sun expected this response from SCO, allowing them to say "Well, we offered" without actually opening anything.
This one may be partially true. Sun did licence SysV when they moved from SunOS. However, they have done a large amount of work on it since.
Are we going to see SCO try and claim the work that Sun have done on high quality SMP, multi-path support, hardware partitioning etc. as their "Intellectual Property" in the same way that they are attempting for the NUMA and JFS stuff.
The question isn't really if the code has any SVR5 in it, as it likely has little. The real question is how "derivative" is defined, and how that applies to the license Sun had with AT&T and more recently, SCO.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
That would keep them quiet for a while.
We don't WANT to keep them quiet for a while. We want IBM to go in for the kill and cut their tongue out to keep them quiet for GOOD. No more stall tactics, and definitely don't aid them in their stall tactics by giving them something to do. If they get even the faintest air of legitimacy again, rest assured some moron with more money than brains is going to pump funds into their hot air balloon to help reinflate it. I don't think I an take another year and a half of these stories every day like they were coming for awhile...
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
I think IBM have just been giving them enough rope to hang themselves. They've been patient and efficient (mostly) and have let SCO do most of the work for them.
I'd prefer SCO being able to take their time and make that hole bigger rather than being able to make a good appeal.
Silly rabbit
by spending more than $US100 million in Unix licence fees Sun has the broadest rights of any of SCO's Unix licensees
They have paid $100 million over the years to a company that has a market cap of $78 million (market close yesterday). $78 Million! IBM (Not sun) probably spent that on toilet seat covers last year. How is it that a company that could be wiped out (yes I get the irony of wiping andthe toilet seat cover) of existence for $30-40 million is bringing in $100 million in fees from sun and causing lawsuit problems for IBM. I realize that for IBM it is giving SCO just what they want as far as paying them off, but why not have Sun, IBM, Red Hat, SuSe and whoever else is pissed at SCO get together and spend 78 million and buy the bastards? Then open up the source to the world and laugh at what a dumbass Darl was.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
IBM will own all of SCO's IP at the end of the trial anyway - if SCO even go that far.
what happens to the IP of a company that goes backrunpt (does it go to their investors maybe?)
Was there ever any mention of Sun making their license GPL?
Here's a simplified theory :)
1 - MS "funds" SCO to sue IBM (but really to screw Linux)
2 - Sun adds to SCO fund via license agreement
3 - Time passes, SCOX drops like a rock, party nearly over
4 - MS settles with Sun over long standing issue ($$$ -> Sun)
5 - Sun offers (threatens?) to open source Solaris, allowing SCO to delay the inevitable, all while generating more new PR
.sigs are for post^Hers.
You asked what happens to the property of bankrupt companies, specifically what happens to IP/software when companies get dissolved. I recall an Ask Slashdot about that very topic, so you might search /. archives. Alas, Slashdot has never been very good about causing knowledge to 'persist' in that you can't browse by topic for past articles. . . and you have to know there was an article about it to begin with, or at least think to search.
/. crowd doesn't seem to be very good at - ask first, search for answers second.
Which,
Anyhow, the short answer is, it goes through probate. By which I mean, just like when a human being dies, when a company dies all there assets get assigned by the courts to 'heirs' according to an established pecking-order.
Something to the effect of Lawyers that are owed money by the company have first dibs (of course - law is made by lawyers), then I think it is creditors (people/institutions that loaned money to the company, or provided goods or services on credit who never got payed), then Preferred Shareholders, then whatever paltry worthless thing is left is split between the common shareholders, or something like that. I may have the order wrong.
Point is, there is always *someone* who can claim rights over whatever IP a company had when it went bankrupt. If it has any immediate monetary value (like a competitor is interested in the IP) it will usually be sold or licensed immediately, and the proceeds claimed by someone who had an interest in the company).
If it doesn't have any immediate, obvious monetary value, it usually gets forgotten about. Well, sort of - because if anyone else picks up that IP, spends time, money, and/or effort on adding value to that IP, and then tries to make money off of it, the people who neglected it for so long will immediately turn around and scream bloody-murder and demand huge royalties/settlements.
The best scenario I can think of would be for someone to do everything they humanly could to find who is the succesor-in-interest for the IP in question, if it is viewed as worthless, and offer the successor some small amount of cash up-front in order to buy the copyright and trademarks, or patents, or whatever, in whole for the product, and *then* do whatever they want with it.
You have to convince the original 'owner' of the IP that they aren't getting *anything* for it from anyone else, but you are willing to give them *something* for it. If they bite, you get the rights to it, and if it turns out to be worth something later, too bad for them - they no longer have a legal right to sue you after they have signed the instrument of conveyance that transfers ownership to you.
Speaking of which - this debacle kind of proves which license is really "viral". It's the proprietary ones, such as the one half-assedly half-granting Sun use of the Unix source.
"You can use it, but you can't give it away." So much for ownership.
Don't forget hardware will be free, and software will be free, and the stock price will continue to yoyo.
Soon, Sun will have fewer products than these guys.
I don't think Darl's dream of prolonging the FID will come to any fruition. The court has replied to one of their attempts at delay, as reported on Groklaw today:
IBM had argued that SCO didn't need a delay because "two of the witnesses scheduled next week ... are former employees of AT&T, not IBM. .... Similarly, Mr. Rodgers was employed by Sequent, not IBM, and IBM does not have any of his documents. The final deponent, BayStar, is an investor in SCO, wholly unrelated to IBM, and that deposition apparently will not go forward." Today Judge Wells agreed and denied SCO's attempt to prolong the FUD. This guy really seems to understand the importance of getting these decisions out sooner rather than later, since the claims are enormous and the business impact could be huge. Their arguments to postpone the trial date are equally without merit, so expect more embarassing setbacks for SCO soon.
For me this brings up an interesting future scenario re the "Solaris is a derivative work of System V". If a company (SCO) licenses software to a second party (Sun), then the second company builds a huge code base around the licensed work, at what point does the second company's contribution become large enough that it's no longer considered "derivative"?
If enough new code is written to replace original code, is the resultant work still considered to be a derivative of the original? It may be inspired by it, but is it still legally hemmed in under the original copyright?
Maybe in this case Sun feels that enough of the licensed work has been re-written (and vastly improved) by their own staff that it no longer resembles the original System V.
- Jack
Trees for paper are grown specially for that purpose.
If we didn't use trees as a crop the acreage they occupy would likely be paved over for some sort of development.
Without the paper industry there would be far fewer trees in the world.
I think there's a fine point you're overlooking: IBM is saying "if you allege we behave inappropriately with our partners and file suit against us, we WILL crush you. Just to clear our good name."
If I've got this right:
Quite a while back the Grasshopper Group (which was working on a NeWS for Macintosh at a garage-shop level) contracted with Sun to combine it with X as a Sun product. It didn't catch on. But the contract resulted in Sun having enough IP rights over the codebase that the developers couldn't open-source it. Since then they have tried several times to get Sun to allow them to release the code. But nothing ever came of it.
X is already open and NeWS is currently moribund. None of Sun's current or likely future market advantages are the restult of its windowing system, and an open version of NeWS wouldn't be any threat to Sun. (Even if it caught on big time Sun could just grab the open version and use it - and an open project would no doubt include a good Sun port anyhow.)
So if Sun is really interested in contributing to Open Source, here's something they can do on the cheap: Free the orphan.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
IBM thought that way, until about 30 years ago.
At the time, IBM was the big bully of the computer industry. When victims sued, a standard IBM tactic was to flood the plaintiff with documents: a great indiscriminate memo dump from one of the world's biggest bureaucracies. Finding anything relevant would be like finding a particular needle in a needle factory.
When Control Data produced the CDC 6600, IBM responded by announcing a supercomputer of its own, hurting sales of the 6600 as potential customers waited for IBM. IBM didn't actually have any such machine in the works. Eventually CDC sued IBM, and, as usual, IBM sent documents by the trainload.
But IBM's lawyers forgot about progress and CDC's freakin' big computers. Cray hired an army of typists and began building a database of memos' dates, subjects, authors, and recipients. (Later, CDC spun off this group; it still exists.) When IBM found out, it didn't even pause to change its collective underwear before settling the suit, on condition that the database be destroyed (warning very long document; only click if you really care).
echo 33676832766569823265328479713269.8639857989Pq | dc
Although you seem to be trying to slant your argument into an anti-slashdot/pro-microsoft rant, the basic premise is quite true.
The company on top always fights standards, and the companies below it all claim "standards are good".
Even in recent history Microsoft has flip-flopped on this in instant messaging, because they were not number 1 in this, AOL was.
I fully agree that if IBM "wins" they will turn quite evil. And Microsoft will turn into the good guys so fast it will make everybody's head spin. Smarter people are trying to make sure that IBM truly gives away enough stuff so they cannot become entirely evil, such as officially saying that open source is allowed to use their patented technology. So far IBM has not been stupid enough to do that, but there is hope...
People thinking the GPL on Linux will save them are deluded. The design of the Intel 486 is documented quite well and can be duplicated (AMD did so) yet this did not mean that Microsoft could not run a closed-source Windows atop it. In the same way a fully open-source Linux bottom level would not prevent a closed-source upper layer from being written, much like OS/X's user interface code.
It's likely SCO was looking for a buyout for their silence when this mess started. IBM wasn't interested: it'd be seen as a tacit admission of guilt. Given that their services folks run systems & networks for many F500 companies, admitting you cribbed code from a competitor would be a death sentence. Hence the unleashing of the Pinstripe Horde upon SCO; they need a clean reputation and only a flattened SCO will accomplish that.
At this point SCO has nothing to offer but whatever value is left in the SysV codebase, and the Novell case is determining whether SCO even has the copyrights or simply licensing rights. By the time these various lawsuits sort out, it's likely the only thing left of SCO will be a glowing hole in the ground. The key will be ensuring that the rights to SysV revert to either of Novell or The Open Group and get (finally) released under some flavor of OSS license.
I am wondering if there is anyone out there who keeps track of court statistics? If so, how often is it that a company files suit for patent/copyright infringement and then after 1 year asks for a postponement of the trial? And how often do they win as a result? Why bring it in the first place if you are not ready to do so?
> Large, monolithic OLTP databases, such as the ones
> that banks and telcos use. When you have to track
> every single phone call made or received by every
> cellphone subscriber in the US in one huge billing database
Why not split the database into segments, like alphabetically into a,b,c,...,z customers, and then put each one on a separate PC with one master PC routing the calls? I bet it would be just as fast, if not faster than your monolithic system.
> Now you need a ridiculously complex method of searching twenty-six separate databases
Not at all; the point was check your search key and direct the search to the machine that owns the database containing the entries matching that range of the key. Each server is still searching its own database, but the database is 1/26th in size and the incoming requests are only 1/26th in volume. I think that would more than compensate for the extra link, which can be over a very high speed cable. You might not win much in latency, but you will definitely win in throughput and cost.