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

Nothing new

[Underholdning]

There are also people who sell land on the moon. It's wortless, and people pitty the ones who buy it.

Re:Nothing new

[Zork the Almighty]

Next you'll be sued for depreciating the value of someone's moon land!

Re:Nothing new

[Amiga Lover]

It's wortless, and people pitty the ones who buy it.

It's not worthless to SCO.

According to the recently release USL vs UCal agreement, USL couldn't take legal action against anyone for whom UNIX code had become public knowledge, but reserved the right to still take legal action against licensees to hold them to contracts.

So according to this agreement, anything public knowledge about UNIX can go into Linux if it wanted to. Filenames, headers, code, whatever. It's ancient and decrepit now, but the freedom was there.

Now, they can only sue licensees hence the legal action against IBM, Autozone and DaimlerChrysler, all of whom are licensees of UNIX.

Now if SCO sells licenses, they get more licensees.

Licensees they are OK to sue.

Buy an SCO license, open up a world of litigation upon yourself. Listening EV1?

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."

Sigh.

[rylin]

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Outdated News for Nerds, Stuff that nobody wants to hear anything about anymore.

" 20 to 30 organisations worldwide..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya they all happen to be Microsoft, Microsoft England, Microsoft Germany, Microsoft India, Microsoft Brazil, etc etc etc.

This proves .....

[afxgrin]

...that there is AT LEAST 20 to 30 morons around the world.

Congrats SCO for convincing a bunch of PHBs that they need to pay you for nothing.

In the immortal words of PT Barnum....

[innerweb]

...There is a sucker born every minute.

At the very least, holding out until it is legally decided would seem to be the prudent way to go (unless you somehow *know* that SCO is going to win).

InnerWeb

If IBM wins...

[icejai]

... will all those who bought licenses get their money back?

*who* is important

[Alain Williams]

I should imagine that it would not be too difficult to pursuade a couple of one man bands to buy SCO licences - especially if, quite coincidentally, SCO happened to buy some consultancy ...

A 500 seat/licence company would be quite different.

Woo

[ggeezz]

You must be in bad shape if selling your first license in a country garners a headline. And 20 to 30 organisations worldwide? Is that supposed to lend merit to SCO's case. This just shows that there are still idiots out there, even at the corporate level.

Check the date

[Canyon Rat]

According to the date on the linked article, this is from last August.

Good Morning

[Hinhule]

Good morning inhabitors of planet earth, our scientists tell us that oxygen was licensed in our galaxy far far away a long long time ago. Please pay us one animal or spare bodypart, for us to experiment on, for each and every one of you who want to breathe.

Sincerely,
Sigma Celesti Omega Galaxy.

Who are they?

[tclark]

It would be interesting to know who these org are organizations because:

1. We might want to avoid them like the plague;
2. We might want to help the poor bastards out - they clearly need help;
3. We might all want to hit them up to buy our own "IP licenses". If they will buy this crap from SCO, they will buy it from anybody.

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)

Chris Sontag = Joe Isuzu

[Jaywalk]

Remember the old Isuzu commercials? The spokesman would come out and make some outrageous claim ("Zero to sixty in one second."), but the caption underneath would say, "He's lying." Keep that little caption in mind whenever SCO issues a press release.

Most of the time in the past when SCO announced that someone had "bought" a Linux license it turned out to be a deception. The most common ploy was to tack a Linux license onto a court settlement or a purchase of a Unixware license. The article quotes only SCO sources and the customers are not named, so don't expect this time to be different. Wait a few days and see if any customer names come up, then see what the customers have to say.

I'd guess they'll say something like, "Linux license? What Linux license?"

I'd be Willing to Bet

[Greyfox]

The contract says "Nope!"

The bluff by SCO is that you can buy a license now and pay not so much, or you can wait until after the lawsuit and if they win you'll be paying a lot more. If you fold now, you don't get your chips back if SCO loses. At this point we're pretty sure that IBM holds all the aces, but I bet that most of these sales are politically motivated or the people buying them aren't very good at poker either.

I wouldn't be surprised if the comapnies in question are associates of the companies in the US that purchased licenses. It'd be just like SCO to count the Microsoft or Sun UK branch offices as new licenscees.

Besides which, if SCO loses the next legal action you will see out of them will be a bankruptcy filing.

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.