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SCO Tells Courts What IBM Did Wrong
linumax writes "It took more than two and a half years, but the SCO Group finally has disclosed a list of areas it believes IBM violated its Unix contract, allegedly by moving proprietary Unix technology into open-source Linux. In a five-page document filed Friday, SCO attorneys say they identify 217 areas in which it believes IBM or Sequent, a Unix server company IBM acquired, violated contracts under which SCO and its predecessors licensed the Unix operating system. However, the curious won't be able to see for themselves the details of SCO's claims: The full list of alleged abuses were filed in a separate document under court seal. The Lindon, Utah-based company did provide some information about what it believes IBM moved improperly to Linux, though."
So they finally release a list of what they think was put in Linux illegally, and we can't see it to rewrite the code to have a "legal" OS?
How entertaining.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
This is a clear sign that SCO itself doesn't believe their list is worth the paper its printed on. There isn't a time of the year when people are paying less attention. It's like they're saying "Details at Christmas - in the meantime, enjoy your FUD."
and part of that story says:
Yeah? We'll see. Or maybe only the parties and the judge will, but if they had found infringing literal code, there is absolutely no reason not to show it without seal, because if it's literal, it's out there in the public already. All Linux code is freely viewable by anyone on Planet Earth. The astronauts can look at it too. SCO may be afraid the Linux community will pull the rug out from under them before they can get to trial, if they tell us publicly what they think they have. Every time they tell us what they think is infringing, somebody proves they are mistaken. At best.
According to http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200511010 0443634 the Docs are under seal, and as PJ puts it "there is absolutely no reason not to show it without seal, because if it's literal, it's out there in the public already." and "SCO may be afraid the Linux community will pull the rug out from under them before they can get to trial, if they tell us publicly what they think they have. Every time they tell us what they think is infringing, somebody proves they are mistaken. At best."
IMHO SCO is just blowing smoke again, and trying to pump up the stock.
Sig
File Management System means JFS, which IBM developed for OS/2 and later ported to AIX and Linux. Note that the Linux port was from the original OS/2 implementation and not from AIX. However, SCO's theory is that once something touched AIX, SCO's property rights to Unix infect it and travel back up the tree and down any other branches.
And they call the GPL viral...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
What's next, they'll say some IBM employees might have had coffee with Linux developers?
It sounds stupid, but when large corporations have to put up "firewalls" between projects to deal with sensitive issues such as IP leakage, that's *exactly* one of the things they have to worry about.
IBM knows all about the procedures that are necessary in these situations, which is what makes SCO's charges so brazen. But when you have teams of hundreds of Linux developers under tight deadlines and under pressure to get their bonus or an acceptable job performance rating, along with intense corporate pressure to deliver results, it wouldn't be surprising if one or two didn't decide to take a shortcut and help themselves to a little AIX code.
Let me crystallize this a bit more.
Microsoft got a very big speed bump in the road to corporate adoption of GNU-LINUX and got rid of SCO for, what to them is, a little scratch. This was just the opening they needed to inject XP and Windows 2003 Server into corporate America.
With the priceless FUD that was generated and the quiet handshaking between nouveau bedfellow, Sun Systems, Microsoft is in a much better position to foster hegemony in the corporate server marketplace which is their ardent desire. Microsoft got all this for chump change, and good ol' Darl was the chump. Microsoft tossed him out like used toilet paper when they were done with him. Darl's ship didn't go down instantly so he got to hang on to his job for a little while longer and prepare for a quiet departure into retirement.
SCO used to be so damned cool, too. I remember when they had to send out memos to the staff to wear shoes adn be fully clothed when they were going to have an outsider visitor.
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
IBM has its own history of antitrust entanglement, and I believe still operates under some of the consent decrees from that era. Launching a hostile takeover bid against a company that is current suing them for breach of contract would almost certainly invite a lot of the wrong kind of regulatory and legislative scrutiny.
Also: IBM has more money than god: as of their most recent financial statements, they maintain a cash balance of $8,250,000,000 (That's billion with a B, folks.) While the expense of fighting off SCO might seem insane to you or me, and would bankrupt a smaller company, it's literally pocket change to IBM, and it is very likely that their board of directors consider making an example of SCO to be a worthwhile investment.
Credibility in business contracts is a very important thing, and SCO is making a direct claim that IBM entered into a contract with them and proceeded to rob them blind. That's not a charge that any CEO is going to take lying down, and if they have to spend a few million dollars and a few years to have a judge authoritatively dismiss SCO's claim, it's probably worth it.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
If IBM were not entitled to include the code in Linux then it was never under the GPL.
until SCO released it under the GPL, you are correct.
Or else I could just slap the GPL on the leaked Windows Source Code and say "ha, well it's GPL now"
the issue the grandparent was pointing out is that SCO distributed a GPL'd linux kernel containing the code they claim to own. As the (supposed) owners, they certainly would have the legal right to relicense that code and by releasing it as part of the linux kernel under the GPL, they have relicensed it.
The only defense they could have is that they didn't know it was in there and shouldn't be forced to "accidentally" GPL code via an act of copyright violation. This doesn't fly, however, because they continued to distribute the linux kernel, and the code they claim is infringing in it, under the GPL for a year after they initially madethe claims. It's hard to say you didnt know it was in there when you've filed a lawsuit specifically about it.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre