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SCO Claims Linux Lifted ELF
fymidos writes "SCO has finally spoken. According to this linuxworld article, they claim that linux illegally uses the ELF binary format, the JFS filesystem, the init code and some more 'copyrighted Unix header and interfaces'. Finally SCO makes its move. The JFS part was expected of course, but according to the article, as far as the ELF format is concerned 'the Tool Interface Standard Committee (TISC) came up with a ELF 1.2 standard' and 'granted users a "non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license" to the stuff'. Oh, and of course 'both Novell and the old SCO - as well as Microsoft, IBM and Intel - were on the committee'."
I am not sure what this ends up meaning, legally:
SCO also claims "substantial similarity" between the Read-Copy-Update (RCU) routine in Linux 2.6.5 and Linux patches and SCO's copyrighted work, specifically SVR4.2 MP.
Similarity can be a slippery slope and SCO will slide as far down as need be, I suppose. And how about something that "may" be an infringement:
It also says the journaled file system (JFS) module from later versions of AIX, which SCO believes may derive from the JFS Unix, is in Linux 2.6
The folks at SCO probably look like adults, they are adult-sized and wear nice clothes. However, they act like elementary school kids arguing over a ball on the playground. Whoever yells loud enough, pushes hard enough, and hold their breath the longest wins.
Cheers!
Erick
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From the article:
"In 1995, the year Novell sold Unix to the Santa Cruz Operation, an industry group calling itself the Tool Interface Standard Committee (TISC) came up with a ELF 1.2 standard and to popularize it and streamline PC software development granted users a "non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license" to the stuff, effectively putting it in the public domain, SCO says.
SCOsource chief Chris Sontag, the SCO VP in charge of the company's hate-inducing IP push, claims TISC, which folded immediately after the spec was published, exceeded its rights even though both Novell and the old SCO - as well as Microsoft, IBM and Intel - were on the committee."
So if SCO had a problem with ELF way back in 1995, why didn't they stop this back then? Obviously they had the choice to -- they clearly knew what TISC was doing. So why did it take SCO until 2003-2004 to point fingers at TISC?
I'm sorry, but this reeks of a last-ditch money-grab by SCO...even more than it did before. The release of ELF into the public domain happened nine years ago. IMHO, SCO should not be allowed to pull this into court because their business model is hurting now. Ridiculous.
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The ELF bit is a weak arguement, but what can they do? They have a medium-sized pile of money and a dead-end product line. They can litigate, piss the money away trying to outdevelop both the open-source community and Microsoft in the OS space, or give up and find a new business to try and develop. Given the source of their pot of money, it makes sense to take their shot a the IBM lottery...
Of course, understanding their position doesn't make the decision a smart one.
... and not the last. Anyone remember some little company named Rambus sitting in on industry standard-setting and then running down to the patent office? This seems to be happening more and more often these days, and until we see these IP bullies get their noses bloodied in grand fashion, it's just going to keep on happening.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
do they propose to have copyrighted a binary file format? Infringement would require that the "copied" files be "substantially similar" to the ones SCOX has copyrighted. Sounds a lot more like their usual squishy-"IP" claim: they hold the copyright on a book describing Unix utilities, so any implementation of grep violates their "IP."
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Of course they have to file something--the stock's fallen below $5, and the end-of-day painters can't bring it up again.
(Being below $5 is a bad thing(tm), because many mutual funds cannot own stocks priced that low. Also since one cannot easily sell short a stock on Nasdaq priced below $5, it dries up the pool of short-sellers to be squeezed with price manipulations)
The mainstream press is buying into SCO's claims just (AFAICT) based on the weight of how often they repeat them and the fact that they have an easy contact point, whereas there is no general "Linux" contact person.
... well, to give an equivalent example, if an author of a book included some infringing content, it's like holding every person that read the book liable. Eben Moglen's shot this down, it's been raked through the coals on Slashdot and Groklaw ... but because SCO does a better job of managing the press than the "Linux community, as a whole", nasty disinformation about open source is rapidly spreading around the world and seeping into end users' heads.
Take a look at today's CNN.com article, in which the reporter says:
"The communal aspects of open source can lead to thorny legal questions, particularly when a company claims its proprietary code has seeped into a project. Because developers typically don't offer warranties, end users could be held liable for infringements."
Wow. It's like saying that all code under the GPL is held to a legal standard that's as harsh as
Sad. And probably not fixable.
May we never see th
this is something on which Cisco can buy them just to shut them up
You can not, must not cave in to buy a company like this because it sets precedent for the creation of a million more just like them that will create noise and/or sue for things they don't have ownership for nor can prove there is damage being done.
You must see this out to the end, either being the annihilation of the barratrous company or the squashing of the lawsuit by an informed judicial process. You must send a message to all other wannabes that this type of crap will not be tolerated and that doing so will result in the destruction of their companies, their reputations, and their personal viability.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Anyone remember some little company named Rambus sitting in on industry standard-setting and then running down to the patent office?
Yeah, they're the same, except that the 'little company' didn't exist when the standard was written, don't have clear title to the format, waited *NINE YEARS* to bring it up, and doesn't have a patent, and thinks that this is a *copyright* issue.
But yeah, except for all those differences, it's totally the same.
The problem we see here and throughout the SCO case is that copyright was never designed with software in mind. The nature of software licensing is such that there's frequent cases of derrived works from different sources, which is rarely the case in books.
If you write a book, it's unlikely that somebody's going to excerpt part of your book for their own use. It's even more unlikely that the excerpt they do make will get used by somebody else in their book. This is a standard practice in software.
Linux uses Elf. SCO claims that the committee that opened up that standard didn't have the authority to do so. Well, it's now years later, and there are countless works derived off of that original standard, and now SCO wants to undo it.
Basically this has the effect of destroying copyright in software. How can anybody feel legally safe using any software product at any time when the history of every piece of code isn't out there for our perusal? How many times do we here of code that's out there, gets implemented countless times, and then somebody comes along and claims patent or copyright on some ancestor. The GIF patents are a perfect example of this.
I'm aware of no good solution to this problem. Every year, more code is written like this, and more copyright issues and patent issues arise. This will lead to legal fights, and overall increase the cost of developing software exponentially over time. Keep in mind that the code were dealing with don't date back much further than 1970, so it's only going to get worse.
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well, reading what you pasted, "JFS2" sounds like something linux doesn't have, but rather is available for AIX. Of course, the JFS on linux would be the second version of JFS1 (JFS1-2?) which wasn't developed on AIX.. However, SCO's theory of "all your base are belong to us" is probably trying to claim since jfs1-2 was moved into the AIX operating system starting in 1997, that is, it code later touched AIX, all earlier versions of the code instantly became property of SCO.
Yeah, it's a load of BS.
There are three ways of 'owning' a standard:
The first is patents. For example, something about Betamax tapes were patented, and thus people had to license the standard from the owner, Sony. SCO has no patents, so can't possibly have one over ELF, so let's move on.
The second is trademarks. For example, Firewire is trademarked by Apple. This doesn't stop anyone from making Firewire ports on their laptop, but it does stop them from calling them Firewire ports, without paying a fee. Likewise, anyone can impliment ISO-9001, but you have to get certified if you want to call yourself that. (Technically, I don't think these are trademarks, they're 'seal of approval' marks, but they're under trademark law somewhere.)
The third is ownership of the copyright of the standards document. Quite a few standards organizations make their money this way.
While I know SCO does not have a trademark on ELF, and I doubt they somehow have copyright on the standards document that someone else released into the public domain before they were born, the important thing to remember is that only patents can stop someone from implimenting a standard.
I can sit here without having pay any money to Phillips for their standards documentation or their trademark and build a CD player. I can't call it a 'CD' player without getting their approval, and I'll have a hell of a time building it without looking at their documenation, but as all patents on basic CD players obviously expired already (Yeah, it's been 20 years.), I can build one, and even sell it.
As there never were any ELF patents, there has never been anything to prevent anyone else from implimenting it, period. Even if TISC trademarked 'ELF' and sold the standards documentation, it's still perfectly legal for someone to use that document, or in fact any way of figuring out the format they want, and impliment a system that uses ELF, even if they have to call it 'HOBBIT' or something. (Remember, reverse engineering for compatiblity reasons is still legal.)
(For everyone still paying attention, there is standard information in the format, and I can just hear everyone thinking 'what about copyright on those bytes?'. Well, no go. It's been explicitly ruled that, since copyright is only on creative works, and as information required by a standard is not 'creative', but 'factual', thus, you can't copyright it.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?