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IBM Ordered to Show More Code to SCO
editingwhiz writes "Bob Mims of the Salt Lake Tribune has the scoop straight from the courthouse steps: 'A federal magistrate has handed a partial victory to Utah's SCO Group, ordering computer giant IBM to turn over more of its Linux operating system-related program codes. U.S. Magistrate Brooke Wells' ruling, released just minutes after Salt Lake City's federal courthouse closed Wednesday, came in the Lindon software company's contractual suit stemming from Big Blue's alleged distribution of Linux applications purportedly tainted with SCO's proprietary Unix code.' If at all possible, SCO's going to be even more insufferable now -- it has a glimmer of hope."
IANAL, far from, actually, but shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't SCO be releasing code to an independent party to determine if its copyright has been breeched? Or will they keep requesting more code and fish around for something they can 'try to claim' is a copyright violation?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Has SCO been ordered to show any code of theirs that they claim has been infringed upon?
So IBM turns over some code, and SCO says "yep, all of that is an infringement, pay up!" How do we know otherwise?
-kidlinux.
Because the code they're being ordered to turn over is for AIX and Dynix, which isn't Open-Sourced.
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
Uhh Darl, you're fifteen minutes are up.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Paying them off would admit that SCO's got a case. By fighting them (which they definitely have the resources to do), they're sticking up for the entire community. Way to go IBM!
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
Plain English translation: Consider the source.
Seriously, this was reported in the Salt Lake Tribune? Anyway, enough preamble. This isn't a 'victory' for SCO, as reported. This is the judge partially granting a request for more discovery. Which means that SCO gets more delay, hence the 'victory' part.
Anything more is just fluff.
Well, as much as this annoys me, Judge Wells is right. SCO gets to look at still more code, but when they still don't find anything, SCO will have nothing left to say. There's nothing there there, and this order ought to establish that fact once and for all.
SCO has already failed to produce any real evidence of Copyright code in Linux. Nothing produced by SCO from any of this evidence can change that. Everyone using Linux is safe.
This request is to support SCO's weird derivative tale that despite AT&T contracts saying IBM was free to develop code, Novell waiving the rights, and testimony from various people that IBM is bound by contract such that any code that touches SCO code is still controlled by SCO.
The lawyers...
Thank you.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Why would SCO need to analyse IBM's code, if the reason for the lawsuit is in the first place because SCO knows IBM infringed on SCO's code?
I mean, in order to know there is infringement, you'd have to have already figured out what part of the code was "stolen", right?
*adjusts tinfoil hat*
You know, you're probably joking but you do have a point.
Perhaps the whole point of this was to have an increase in SCOs stocks so that folks have the opportunity to dump and jump the ship.
These days when laws are written by the rich and bought over by the powerful, you never know =)
The code ordered to be handed over was AIX, not Linux. I really don't give a crap whether SCO wins on this, because I don't use it, and, since it is commerical and closed-source, if it has copied code, IBM should be punished for it.
If the Bushies want to do something about abusive litigation why don't they start with this case?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
after all, they have tons of money and if they settle, it will only cause harm to their competitors as they don't have tons of money
And this is different than a protection racket how?
You pay them and they never go away. They get stronger and start squeezing others. I'd rather see them wither and die. It's well known how the problem grows. Ever been to Yellowstone National Park. Why do you think there are "don't feed the bears" signs everywhere?
If you feed the bears, they simply become a big problem.
Please don't advise feeding the bears and hope they go away.
The truth shall set you free!
These days when laws are written by the rich and bought over by the powerful, you never know =)
Your comment implies there was a time when it was any other way.
The person who has the gold has ALWAYS written the rules.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
..but IBM (you know, the one on trial?) has all the code they licenced from SCO. I'm sure they've did lots of comparisons and know SCO is smoking crack. I'm sure they'll let us, the courts and the world know in due time.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Ferget that... if we're willing to destroy the forests to stick it to SCO, we ought to be willing to march en mass to even SCO office and sack/pillage them out of existance, barbarian horde style. Leave the damn forests alone, haven't they suffered enough?
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
This is the best news that scox's primary benefactor could hope for.
This ruling will insure endless delays. Which means the legal cloud over linux will remain for years to come. All the while "independant" tech analysts like Yankee Group will be cranking out articles about the overwhelming legal risks inherent in F/OSS.
The scox-scam is the one of the best investments msft has ever made. $50MM for all that FUD is one hullva bargin.
What is seems is that IBM may have gotten System V from SCO and then added some features that were original creations of IBM (to create AIX/Dynix). IBM is then alleged to have given those new features to Linux. SCO is claiming they own those "new" features created by IBM because of some wording in the System V contracts.
Now, we can all reasonably conclude that this is stupid; if I buy a car and design a new fin for it, then sell the fin design to others, the car companies don't claim the fin design is their property. However, when we purchase a car we don't sign a "derivative works" contract with the car dealer or manufacturer.
The way I see it there are a couple of things that could happen. One is that the original contracts may be found to say that derivative works are property of SCO, in which case IBM did not have the right to give them away for use in Linux - and I would say IBM was dumb to sign such a contract and should legally pay. However, even if the contract was written for that scenario, the court might find that such a provision is "unreasonable" and is void (similar to the car example). Another way it could go is that IBM somehow took code that it did not originally create but thought it owned and contributed it to Linux. This is a little more tricky because it's basically an "oops, we didn't read the original contract correctly".
Out of those scenarios, the latter is the worst because it would mean that [Linux] is infringing. In the former case, either SCO owns the derivative works or doesn't. I would argue that, if SCO is found to own the derivative works, IBM charges them some large amount of money for the development of those new works. Probably to the tune that SCO is filing in the suit, since that is the apparent value on those features. After all, IBM did not develop those features gratis for the benefit of SCO!
All in all, I think all sides (SCO, IBM, the Linux crowd) are focusing on the wrong things here. Litigation never added value to society at all and sucks up resources. I definitely agree with the camp that thinks SCO would be better off devleoping product than litigating.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
The good news for linux is that the collective memory will be about 6 months after sco dies, and linux will be free of sco's fud for generations to come.
This is totally insecure, but very convenient.
No. You own the copyright to whatever code you wrote, and can do what you please with it. However, you cannot take code belonging to someone else, licensed under the GPL, and relicense it under some other license.
In your example, if product C contains code from product A, and you don't own the copyright to this code, then product C must comply with the license product A was licensed under. The reason for this is that you must have a right to distribute all parts of product C in order to have a right to distribute it - if you don't, then you are distributing someone else's code without their permission, and are thus in violation of copyright laws.
On the other hand, if product C was completely written by you, or you have somehow else obtained rights to distribute every component of it under whatever license product C is distributed under, then of course you can distribute product C. And of course you have a right to distribute your own code under whatever license you wish, or under several licenses - for example, MySQL is distributed under the GPL, but can also be licensed (for money) under other license(s) that allow you to bundle it with prorietary products. This practice is known as dual licensing.
Think of it this way: if you write a cool compression library, and license it under the GPL so it can be used in some GPL'd program, then of course you can use it yourself in your own proprietary programs - after all, you hold the copyright, the right to copy. And of course you can give out whatever licenses you wish to whoever you wish - why couldn't you ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I definitely agree with the camp that thinks SCO would be better off devleoping product than litigating.
:)
That's where you're wrong. Apparently SCO is not able to develop a competitive product. For them (strictly for them) at this point litigation is the better option. The alternative would be to fold up and die.
For the society in general, it is a different story
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
You're not joking. Talk about a dumb move.
Repeat after me: You do NOT try to play the waiting game against the 800 lb. gorilla who out-waited the U.S. GOVERNMENT!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
... it is a victory for SCO, because it's
A) irrelevant to the case
B) something they asked for
C) onerous for IBM to produce, and
D) something IBM didn't want to give them (because it's irrelevant to the case, as well as onerous to produce.)
Yes, we all know that SCO is going to use this as a delay. First, it will take IBM a long time to produce it, and as soon as IBM hands it over, SCO's gonna request *more* time, because it's too much for them go through in the remaining discovery period.
Litigation never added value to society at all ...
On the contrary, litigation has added MASSIVE value to society. Without litigation, you'd be pledging allegiance to Standard Oil every morning. That is, if you haven't already been killed by a shoddy, fraudulently-marketed product or poisoned by chemicals leaching into your drinking water.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
As far as JFS, EVMS, etc. are concerned, they won't find a damn thing. The AIX LVM code is so tightly integrated into AIX that the EVMS developers hardly looked at anything beyond the headers, and as for JFS, the version in Linux is actually derived from OS/2. The proof of that is in the source where they mention OS/2 support (i.e. case-insensitive filename operation), whereas AIX is maybe mentioned once or twice as a flag in a bitfield, but that's it.
Anyone who questions how tightly integrated the AIX LVM is should go check out the trace tools on any recent version.
I can't speak to the Dynix code, but I doubt the story would be much different. Operating systems components are typically not very "portable" between unrelated systems without major modifications.
First, SCOG's lawyers will have a hell of a time sifting through this code, and then when they do finally find whatever pieces were allegedly copied; the truth about how sadly mistaken they are will come out, and just maybe this horrible waste of time and money will end.