SCO Sells First Linux Licenses in UK

Christopher writes "SCO has actually sold its first Linux licenses in the UK. These licenses permit the use of SCO's intellectual property that is apparently present in Linux distributions, and in binary form only. To my understanding SCO hasn't won yet and these licenses don't grant you any freedoms you didn't already have, but SCO's vice president Chris Sontag says that 20 to 30 organisations worldwide have purchased these licenses."

Comments

Sigh.

[rylin]

05 Aug 2004.
Hmm
Outdated News for Nerds, Stuff that nobody wants to hear anything about anymore.

Actually, SCO licenses do get you something.

[Shag]

As has been pointed out over on Groklaw, under the terms of the USL-BSDI agreement, USL basically couldn't go suing anyone for doing stuff with UNIX unkless the party being sued had licensed UNIX from them.

Sooooo... by buying a SCO license, and thus establishing a contractual relationship with SCO, you basically put your name on the list of parties SCO could potentially file a lawsuit against.

Splendid, isn't it? :)

You automagically get a license

[jaymzter]

If you buy any SCO *nix product a _linux_ binary license is automatically included. This was a recent licensing change to make it look like SCO Source actually had a heartbeat. Someone probably bought Open Server and this is how SCO is playing it. For once, nothing to see here (presumably)

Re:Nothing new

[Phisbut]

It cannot be purchased because nobody has the right to sell it because nobody owns it. IIRC, this has been agreed upon by all countries in the UN (feel free to correct me on this).

You are correct on this. From Wikipedia :

In 1979 a Moon Treaty was drafted by the United Nations which prohibits military action on (Article 3) and ownership of the moon by signatory states, their corporations or citizens (Article 11). Non-signatory UN-member states are free to accede to it at any time. Non-UN-member states appear unbound by the treaty.

Since the US signed the Moon Treaty, no US citizen may claim ownership on any part of the moon.

Re:Nothing new

[lakin]

Except, the US never signed the moon treaty. They did sign the Outer Space Treaty, but that limits the government, not citizens or companies.

http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov/results/ice/moon.htm

This is also mentioned on Wikipedia
There is more detail here:
"Only nine nations have ratified the Moon Treaty (Australia, Austria, Chile, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, and Uruguay), while over 90 have signed the Outer Space Treaty. By UN agreement, five signatures are sufficient to validate a treaty as an international instrument, but there is concern at the refusal of the USA and Russia/USSR to sign--the two nations most likely at present to engage significantly in space exploration."

Re:Woo

[nwbvt]

Keep in mind this "headline" is almost three months old.

SCO licence

[ajs318]

Since SCO never purchased the copyright on UNIX, which remained with Novell;
And Novell own SUSE, who have released a version of Linux under the GPL;
then Novell {being the UNIX copyright holder} have given their blessing to Linux being GPL'ed.

Since SCO do not hold the copyright on any UNIX code that may be present in Linux,
and Novell have not authorised SCO to act on their behalf,
then SCO are acting under false pretences.

Doing something you weren't asked to do to somebody else's property is called trespass in this country, and is a civil offence for which legal aid is not available. It's a defence to trespass that you had good faith that the rightful owner would have wanted you to do what you did; however, there is no way SCO could have good faith that Novell wants them to collect licence money {which would belong to Novell, as the copyright holder, not SCO. Misappropriation of funds is a criminal offence}. Finally, since the GPL does not permit what SCO is doing, SCO are guilty of copyright violation to some extent or other. While there is next to no point in Novell pursuing for damages in the civil courts {they wouldn't have made any money so they can't have lost any money} Novell could still testify against SCO in any criminal copyright violation case.

Did I mention that in the British civil courts, the loser almost always pays all costs; and a successful prosecution for a criminal offence doesn't bar you from instigating separate civil proceedings to recover damages?

Bye-bye, SCO. Thanks for collecting so much evidence againstg yourselves.

Do They Know It's SCO At All?

[Stephen Samuel]

Remember that, with the exception of DV-1, I think that most of the companies who 'bought' an SCO license didn't even realize it. The way that they have things set up, people who buy other SCO software sometimes end up with a Linux License. Part of the reason why they're not identifying the companies who have purchased SCO Linux licenses may be that they don't want all of those companies to know what they've bought.

Computerland, for example, ended up with a bunch of Linux licenses as a reault of a (supposedly unrelated) out-of-court settlement with the Canopy group. They acted very surprised when it was announced that they were among the list of companies owning Linux licenses.

If your company has any vestigal connection to either SCO or Canopy, then it may turn out to be one of the '20 or 30' companies with Linux licenses.

AFAICT the only valid business logic for buying a LINUX license is to comfort skitish investors and/or customers with the knowledge that there is no legal liability. The only other reason for getting a Linux license is that it's a side effect of getting something else that your company needs from SCO. Companies in such a position who care, at all, about such acquisitions may actually be ashamed of them.