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'."

Comments

More school yard fun

[erick99]

SCO, never having a straight-forward and direct claim uses bluster and a childish version of "no it ain't!" to maker their claims. For example, SCO says that TISC ...exceeded its rights... Regarding the GPL that TISC created that SCO doesn't like, SCO calls the GPL "quicksand" and claims it's invalid. I guess they figure it they declare it invalid, then it must be. It still smacks of cowardly playground bullying. There is more than enough sophomoric behavior to go around, though.

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

Re:More school yard fun

[Simon Brooke]

Your hypothesis is certainly one I wouldn't dismiss immediately, but do you know in what kind of timeframe the SVR4.2 release was made? i.e. Who is the cart and who is the horse, with respect to Linux & SCO.

System V Release 4 dates from 1991, according to th copyright statement in my manuals. That makes it older than Linux, though not by much. This is irrelevant anyway because ELF is a published standard with an open license, and if it should not have been so published that is an issue between SCO and the people who licensed it, i.e. themselves.

Why wasn't this brought up in 1995?

[SlashChick]

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.

Development dollars?

[shogarth]

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.

Re:Development dollars?

[Pharmboy]

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...

I think we must be missing something here. I understand your logic, but if you only have $5, you don't go buy a slingshot and take on a Kodiac bear, unless your goal isn't to win to begin with.

They can't really be expecting to make money licensing Linux. They can't expect to win against the other litigants, since even they know all the other judges want to wait until the IBM case is settled before proceeding. They may not have known this before it all started, but they have to know it now. Its as if:

1. Sue everyone
2. ????
3. Profit!

And they REALLY DONT KNOW what step 2 is, so they are trying a little of everything. As hard as I look, I just can't believe that they really think they can win, so it begs the questions: What is the *real* motivation?

Microsoft? Did you read the article about how MS was going to go after open source the other day? (the HP internal docs) I am still waiting for MS to let SCO completely self destruct, then buy their "IP" at a bargain, to hold a cloud over open source. Its like getting your buddy hooked on crack, just so you can buy his stereo cheap.

Of course they have to file something

[Anonymous Coward]

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 Copyright Problem

[sterno]

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.

Standards can't be owned

[DavidTC]

Okay, even ignoring the fact that the old SCO helped write the public domain document, this is a new level of crackheadedness even for SCO...because you can't 'own' standards like that.

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.)