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SCO Claims Ownership of ELF To Court
l2718 writes "In the most recent punch-counterpunch of the SCO v. IBM case, IBM is claiming that SCO is trying to vastly expand their claims beyond what they alleged in their list of material allegedly misused by IBM filed last December, using their expert reports. For example, two years ago we covered SCO's claim to own ELF, the main executable format of Linux. Apparently they are have finally made the same claim to a court of law, after the deadline for making such claims. From IBM's memorandum: 'The final disclosures identify 19 Linux files relating to the ELF specification, as well as excerpts from several specification documents. Dr. Cargill far exceeds this claims ... asserting infringement of the entire ELF format ... also ... for the first time, claims to the ELF magic number.'"
The day had started off normally with SCO making blatant claims--this time about ownership of ELF.
The SCO team was cut-off in mid sentence by a surprise defendent, Will Farrell. He appeared and rushed into the courtroom declaring that his legal team for the motion picture "ELF" had already secured rights to anything with that name.
The court room erupted into commotion as a second prosecutor entered the room. The legal team representing the Earth Liberation Front entered the room demanding all three parties to pay royalties for using their registered trademark name and threatened to bomb the livestock holdings of all parties involved should E.L.F. lose the case.
At this point, a hushed silence befelled the room as Christopher Tolkien (representing The Tolkien Estate) entered the room. He swore that "before the dawning of the next day", all mis-uses of his father's invention would force him to use his "+5 lawyers of speech twisting" to rectify the situation and bring unto him large sums of moneys.
SCO then revealed that they had purchased the rights to use & create ELF from a group of folklorists based in Europe. The judge then dismissed Will Farrell, E.L.F. & Mr. Tolkien. The SCO lawyer cleared his throat and resumed his sentence, "...as I was saying, having invented ones and zeros, we own the rights to all software ever developed..."
Seriously, when will this SCO shit end?
My work here is dung.
So the SCO are terrorists too, eh? I always had a feeling . . .
So... wait... SCO owns the elves and their magic? I knew they were smoking something, but it must be good!
Seriously, is the whole SCO strategy just sensationalism at this point? I mean, do they just put the kernel source on a dartboard, throw, and what gets hit - they own it! I can find any other rhyme or reason to this... Could be a good business plan for a whole company of attorneys.
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
This is the first time I've ever seen an article on Slashdot that came close to making me vomit. Aren't these guys dead YET?!
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
Admit it already! You thieves have blatantly stolen the number 0x0E7F which *obviously* belonged to SCO! ... Pffff kids nowadays!
BoD
BoD
When losing a court case in a particular scope to greatly expand that scope? It seems preposterious to me - if I attempt to claim ownership of B, D, and F, but begin to lose how could it possibly make sense to now claim that I own A thorough G?
Perhaps this is just the first scope-creep in a long overarching strategy which can only lead to one inevitable outcome!
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Who was this TIS Committee that dared give away SCO's property?! Why, SCO themselves. Err, actually, it was Absoft, Autodesk, Borland International
Corporation, IBM Corporation, Intel Corporation, Lahey, Lotus Corporation, MetaWare
Corporation, Microtec Research, Microsoft Corporation, Novell Corporation, The Santa Cruz
Operation, and WATCOM International Corporation. Considering the number of companies that ownership was split across, one has to wonder: Did SCO ask permission from their partners before filing suit over technology that they (nee, Taratala) only helped develop?
Darl is getting incredibly desperate, don't you think? Anything to keep from losing the company under his feet, I guess.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
No no. That's Microsoft. SCO is more slimy than bratty.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
"(SCO) can't be bargained with.(SCO) can't be reasoned with. (SCO) doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And (SCO) absolutely will not stop, ever, until (it is) dead."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
What is SCO's plan?
Originally there were the jokes... 1. claim copyright on core portions of linux, 2. ? 3. Profit.
It seems like 2. will never end, and how they'll accomplish 3. is still quite unknown.
So are we all going to owe $699 per ELF binary on our computers?
Badass Resumes
"... asserting infringement of the entire ELF format ... also ... for the first time, claims to the ELF magic number.'"
Read it again. Then again. Then think quietly to yourself "did a highly paid legal expert really have to stand up in court and claim he owned the magic number of the elves?". Then start to giggle. Then laugh. Then just collapse in fits of hysterics, which is exactly what I'm doing right now.
What about the leprecauns' gold? That's what I want to know. And where's the last unicorn? Centaurs too, I've always wanted to know what happened to them...
Cheers,
Ian
Back off SCO... Santa Claus got the market on them ELF slaves not you!
He has them cranking out IPODS and hopefully PS3 right now for all us boys and girls who have good credit!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
And more boobies. Seriously.
The magic number in question. Is this the shortest number to have ownership? How can someone own a number?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
The fact that I live within .5 miles of the SCO Utah Office makes me want to vomit. It's like living near chernobyl--I'm going to get infected!
I wish the judges would get a clue and just throw everything out. They have no case. Never have & never will. Keep makin' shit up ass hole, you're still going down.
"Apparently they are have finally made the same claim to a court of law, after the deadline for making such claims."
Well I am are have hard time understanding what they are have said.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
People laughed at me for not bothering to switch from a.out, but who's laughing now? Go enjoy your fancy new 1.0 kernel in prison, losers! And take that newfangled glibc with you!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I had always thought that wars of attrition happened because two sides were so evenly matched that neither could gain an advantage. In this respect it would seem that attrition is the most "fair" type of warfare.
However it now seems obvious to me that the concept of attrition can also arise and be used in very unfair and inequal ways.
I find this behaviour reprehensible
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IBM long ago had the opportunity to buy SCO off, or even buy them outright. Their strategy is to make all claims against Linux GO AWAY. If they buy SCO off, they still leave themselves (and everyone else) open to future claims against Linux. By winning the case, they close that door forever. Meanwhile, SCO is hanging on like a punch-drunk prizefighter; if they let their guard down for even a second, they're gonna get CLOBBERED.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
From the headline, "claims to the ELF magic number."
This my sound like a dumb question but, "What is the ELF magic number?" and "Why is it important?"
as Windows Vista is postponed again!
---
Donde Ser Geek No Duele
Donde Ser Geek No Duele
What shocks me even more is that SCO is still in business.
...Use GNU Hurd. It runs Mach-O binaries, Not ELF.
and it looks like it's going to be released by the time this one's settled.
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4
SCO must be hoping that IBM will eventually prefer to settle in order to cap the losses, as shareholders won't tolerate IBM paying out forever over something that won't earn so much as a dime.
If so, I think they picked the wrong target. IBM is doing great in this, as every time one of these ridiculous things hits the newsstands, IBM gets more press about being the good guy, defending Linux against corporate attacks. Plus, it's Big Blue, I'm sure their legal budget can absorb this without batting an eye (and SCO is most likely going to get pegged with IBM's legal fees when the case finally finishes, right before they declare bankruptcy).
"(SCO) can't be bargained with.(SCO) can't be reasoned with. (SCO) doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And (SCO) absolutely will not stop, ever, until (it is) dead."
If I understand the movie you are referencing, aren't you giving the aliens a bad rap in this case? Even Ripley considered Burke worse than the aliens, "At least you don't see them fucking each other over for a percentage."
Now if you were to compare SCO with Burke however...
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
Who wants to go with me to the SCO Forum this year? Held, appropriately, at The Mirage.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
The real question is why bother making the claims at all? I think the answer is a combination of
- bury the court in paper in an attempt to delay proceedings;
- try to salvage some of the original claims: there is a pending motion to throw out the bulk of SCO's items from last December on the basis of lack of specificity; they probably hope that, faced with a mountain of SCO claims, the judge may be reluctant to disallow absolutely everything and will allow some of the vague "methods and concepts" items on SCO's December list;
- material that can be used to spread FUD about UNIX IP in Linux; they can claim that these broad claims were thrown out on a "technicality", but they are "comfortable going to court with what remains".
They really are arseholes.SCO is barely in business. This last quarter it had revenues of just over $7 million compared to revenues of over $9 million for the same quarter last year. Losses for the quarter topped $4 million or $0.22 per share. If it hadn't been for Sun and Microsoft paying some dubious "licensing fees" at the beginning of the case and a completely wacky PIPE deal set up by some Microsoft executives SCO would have been forced to close its doors years ago. No one is the slightest bit interested in SCO's UNIX business these days.
Interestingly enough, if Caldera hadn't changed its name to SCO and followed its current course it is very likely that it would be benefitting from the current pro-Linux climate. Linux companies are making money these days, and Caldera was well situated to profit from a Linux upturn.
Yeah, probably, but you all have to admit that this has GOT to be some record for the duration of "foreplay."
As *the* former Novell/USG employee who rescued the contents of the UNIX International server in 1994 when it went defunct, and saved the electronic copies of the ELF 1.0, DWARF 1.0, Spec1170 (the Single UNIC Specification), TET, ETET, and other documents from extenction before the UI FTP server (hosted in Sumit, NJ) was taken offline (all documents were kindly rehosted for FTP by Ken Germann of Digiboard, Inc., and Utah State University CS Department), I call BS.
I received verbal permission for making the contents of the archive available from USL's representative to TIS prior to the mirroring. I specificallly called on the phone for this, even though it was a publically acessible FTP site, just to be sure.
This can be corraborated by Daren Davis, a former Univel then Novell/USG then Caldera employee, and by others who worked at Novell at the time (Jim Freeman knew about the archive, as did Dan Grice, Ron Holt, Bryan Cardoza, and a number of others, some of whom ended up involved with Caldera, and some who didn't).
The orginal 1.0 ELF specification came primarily out of work by engineers at Intel. The 1.2 specification, which *did* have significant work done by USL, was done under the auspices of TIS, with the *explicit* understanding that the result would be available as an ABI standard for all.
ftp://ftp.digibd.com/ USA GMT -6 25-Jan-95 belal@sco.com (Bela Lubkin> {posting}
DigiBoard
keng@digibd.com
Server : http://www.digibd.com/
Files : Digiboard (digifax, digiline: drivers, isdn); pub: HP4laser (lp
model for autohandling of PCL/PostScript jobs), SCO-ports,
uiarchive (archive of the defunct Unix International effort),
unixware, WWW
Note that this is just an excerpt from a Usenet posting for the site listing for the site - the mirroring occurred in early 1994 (January, if I remember correctly), and the UI servers were defunct as of Mar 1994, when the mailing list archives were moved over. Novell acquired USL from AT&T in Jun 1994.
An ironic, IMO, thing to note in the posting above is that the location of the archive is being disseminated by an SCO (the real SCO) employee.
-- Terry
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Remember that Caldera was the first Linux to try to foist per-seat licenses in their distro.
When you have no or very little competition, something like that can work, but when you have many, many other vendors selling the exact same thing, the last thing you do is try to differentiate yourself by making your offering worse than your competitors.
Nobody is to stone anybody until I say so... even if they do write "Sauron"!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I hadnt really though about what the endgame to all this would be until now. But this is probably a very good point.
Microsoft must have realised they had a problem in having a 7 year gap in releases. They were worried a lot of companies may have switched or considered switching when the security side of XP started taking a battering as malware writers as such started to get to know all it little holes they left.
So they needed a tactic to make Linux look dubious from a mass deployment point of view for the same period. This was especially true when they found out that alot of stuff like WinFS was not going to be ready in time. Combine this with the specs for what Vista would actually contain were starting to look thinner and thinner. Meanwhile various linux developers have read the Vista specs and are trying to implement their versions, some of which may actually be available first (This is quite easy as no company can bring the same number of developers to bear on a problem as the Open Source Movement as a whole)
So their solution was to shop around for a company teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and offer the board a huge cash payout. this would keep the company afloat long enough for the various execs to find other work or reach retirement age. And if SCO get fined I doubt anyone at SCO or MS will care as the damage has been done, and the goldenhand shakes will be protected in the pension fund. (Personally if I was a SCO exec I would still want MS stock as a payout)
The real problem is that the american legal system is such a crock of shit that this tactic will probably work, and the case will still be running until one side stops throwing money at it. Being that IBM have put themselves in a position where they cannot back down (They backed Linux 100%) this will hopefully be if SCO give up.
But I do still worry that the (SCO) lawyers prevail and this results in all the Open Source resources I mentioned earlier being directed at rewriting a large chunk of the OS the same way MicroSoft has. In the case of MicroSoft this was because harsh deadlines caused poor design decisions. This is probably just MicroSoft's way of trying to cause similar problems to appear in Linux (or Linux 2) as the rewrite is hurried by the number of smaller companies that now rely on Linux (Mine Included as we use Linux to host almost everything).
In the situation of worrying about losing your day job if you dont get your hobby programming done quick enough, the hobby programming will suffer in quality. Less Time to complete a task = More Mistakes in it's implementation.
That could buy them decades being the only half decent OS supplier for the x86 platform again, just like the 80s. This would result in the development costs of Windows being halved as they stopped having to worry about quality to anywhere near the extend they do now.
I dont read
Any shareholders that haven't dumped their stock now deserve to lose their shirts on this. I have no sympathy with people whose idea of a wise investment is a company with insanely absurd claims whose whole business plan is to set up a protection racket.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes, Caldera's strategy was stupid back in the day. Heck, both SuSE and Caldera had a better distribution than Red Hat, but Red Hat cornered the market by giving software away and selling services. However, you can always change your business model. SuSE did after Novell bought it. For years SuSE was essentially in the business of selling YaST.
Not to mention the fact that with both Caldera and Novell having common roots Caldera could easily have been the Linux company that Novell snapped up, had it not been for the fact that the two companies were already locked in litigation.
Which means just one thing: IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME!
What? That phrase is trademarked by Marvel? Oops...
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
SCO is absolutely being a bunch of slimebags to infringe on the rights of open source developers everywhere. In a world with this much opportunity the best way they can make money is by trying to pry it from hackers many of whom are coding linux for the love of it, instead of trying to find honoerable ways of making money?
sure it's not easy, I myself struggled every day for years and years trying to figure out what i loved doing. I play games a lot, and it's fun, so I hack, but the best way for SCO to make money would be to find something better to do with everyones time. I'm trying to find ways to make money for my home town area which lost a lot of good paying jobs and has a lot of people who've simply moved away from a community they loved working in.
It's not easy finding the right way to make money, but in the long run everyone profits when instead of trying to sue everyone we find something we're good at, and do it the best we can, until there is no one better and we're happy even if we don't make a lot of money. but a lot of places still need good paying jobs so that the rest of the community doesn't have to suffer living in dilapidated houses.
SCO could make a difference, they need to look inwards and think about if the bottom line is so important that they can't find a way to make money off linux products, like trying to port linux for a company like gateway or dell, for their budget class computers. Linux has a lot of games and provide a lot of benfits but i know a lot of people who can't afford them, because they cost a lot, microsoft eats up a lot of that profit margin, and while sco might not make as much money, at least they could wake up and feel good in the morning.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
I call 69.
I think the word you want is batty, as in freakin nuts.
SCO is like some crazy old drunk ranting at a group of kids to get off his lawn... except that he's sitting in the middle of a park... and not wearing any clothes... and the kids are actually a bunch of squirrels in a nearby tree...
SCO is continuously claiming ownership to something they have no right to, they're threatening to attack the wrong people even if they did have ownership (SCO licenses for Linux users), and meanwhile their ass is flapping in the wind for everyone to see how nuts they really are.
To be locked in litigation is not a problem. Remember - it's about money and power, not honour.
In fact, buying some litigant to make the lawsuit go away is acceptable business practice.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I suppose you are right. However, by the time Novell got around to purchasing SuSE SCO/Caldera didn't really have a Linux business. Besides, if you are going to pick a company and put money in its pocket you probably aren't going to pick a company that is shaking you down for cash. Novell didn't need the lawsuit to go away, it needed a Linux business that it could promote instead of Netware.
Yes, Caldera's strategy was stupid back in the day.
Compared to today?!??!?!?!
They have the same type of morons running it now as they did then. Why do you think they'd be able to make a go of it now?
SuSE and Caldera had a better distribution than Red Hat
Yes, and all this does is go to prove that your original statement is wrong.
If having a superior distro wasn't enough to keep them afloat, what on earth would make you think that they would succeed now?
However, you can always change your business model.
Only if you realize that your business model is what the problem is. Caldera is managed by people who can't understand that they are the ones who are the problem.
Also, they *DID* change their business model: in 2003 they decided to become a litigation company, only they picked a fight they couldn't win, in the hopes that their target wouldn't call their bluff. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
They failed in the Linux business because they're managed by idiots. They're failing in the litigation business for the same reason. No amount of good luck can compensate for that.
It's just corruption - linux and IBM are really just being used for misdirection while the money changes hands. The even sadder thing is that after this if nothing can be found to put Darl in jail he will go on to a better paying job with the reputation as the man who took on IBM and would have beat them too if it wasn't for those darn kids and their penguin.
I always knew seagulls were stupid, but how did they wind up in Utah?
While seagulls are optimized for ocean environments, have their breeding grounds there (so they really shouldn't vacation inland for more than 9 months or so), and tend to hang out there by preference, they do quite well on fresh-water lakes and land. A garbage dump is a banquet for them.
Like other soaring birds they get blown far inland by large storms from time to time - and may hang out there for weeks or months afterward if there's something (like food) to interest them.
Utah is a bit inland even for them, so they don't show up there TOO often. But there is one incident when they did, and it was very important.
Back when the Mormons were first out there, as with any bunch of new settlers trying to farm hostile land, their first crops were somewhat marginal. The spring of their first year the crops were beset by a local crop pest ("Mormon Crickets"), which was devouring whole fields.
Of course the Mormons prayed for assistance.
And suddenly a whole bunch of seaguls showed up (much to the surprise of the Mormons, who hadn't seen any in this place so far and knew how far they were from a seagul habitat).
The seagulls found the locusts, pigged out, and hung around until the locusts were pretty much gone and the crops saved.
This is the "Miracle of the Gulls" - the reason there is a monument to seagulls in Temple Square and why the California Seagull is the state bird of the Mormon-settled inland desert state of Utah.
Of course the story grew a bit over the years. My wife tells of the time, when she was a child and the family was visiting taking the Temple Square tour in Salt Lake City, they visited the monument. A small flock of seagulls had blown in and were hanging out around the monument, eating any dropped food and handouts from the tourists. The tour guide went into the spiel about the Miracle of the Gulls and how seagulls had never been seen in the area before or since - completely oblivious to the gulls wandering around, screeching, and squabbling over food in typical seagull style. B-)
("But Mommy..." pointing to the gulls all around. "Shhhhhh!" says mommy.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
1. The USL settlement, to which Novell was a party, as they had bought the rights to UNIX from USL just before the settlement. This settlement was caused by a prior finding by the judge in that case that USL owned few protectable copyrights to UNIX, as they and AT&T (the original owner of UNIX) had done too little to protect that material. Much of what they claimed was also not theirs to begin with, as it was contributed by Berkely and others over the years. These are the same UNIX copyrights that tSCOg has claimed that IBM violated. Claims that tSCOg, by the way, is no longer making under Copyright Law in the IBM case (see #2).
2. The tSCOg vs. IBM lawsuit has now come down to contract violations only -- no patents, trademarks, or copyright claims by tSCOg have survived discovery -- let alone IBM's upcoming PSJs (see #1). This is the contract that tSCOg claims to be a party since they claim to be a successor in interest from AT&T through USL, Novell, and oldSCO. The same contract that Novel is claiming that they are violating (see #3).
3. Novell's counterclaims, including Lanham Act violations and the fact that *they*, and not tSCOg, by all evidence given so far, own the what few copyrights in UNIX that tSCOg claims IBM violated. Recall that Novell, under the original oldSCO contracts, also has the ability, which they used, to tell tSCOg to cease their claims against IBM -- which tSCOg ignored.
Recall that under the original Novell-oldSCO contract (with the original Santa Cruz Organization, not the current tSCOg knock-off), tSCOg collects royalties for Novell for all UNIX sales, for which tSCOg receives 5% as a collector's fee. Novell's counterclaims include the fact that tSCOg have not forwarded any monies they received from their SCOSource, or from the "UNIX license fees" they accepted from Microsoft and Sun. Nor did tSCOg allow Novell to review those new licenses so that they could accept or deny the terms, which was also their right under the original contract. Nor has tSCOg allowed Novell to audit the collection of fees for those licenses and tSCOg's other licensing collections to ascertain whether they fell under the terms of the original Novell-oldSCO contract.
Thus Novell is also asking the court to freeze $30 million in tSCOg's assets until the court can either determine whether tSCOg owes Novell for those licenses or forces tSCOg to allow Novell their audit rights enumerated in the original Novell-oldSCO contract.
Novell has also started an arbitration against tSCOg to counter tSCOg's claims that SUSE Linux, which Novell now owns, is violating tSCOg's UNIX copyrights by distributing Linux. This arbitration is based upon contracts made between tSCOg, SUSE, and may other members, including Red Hat, of the United Linux consortium whereby no member could sue any others over copyrights, patents, or trademarks contributed or used by any of the members. The same code base that Caldera and then tSCOg, as they renamed themselves, distributed under the GPL well after they began their litigations (see #5).
4. Among the defenses that IBM will use themselves, beyond proving that IBM made no copyright or contract violations with their contributions of their own code to Linux, are the same claims made by Novell (i.e. Novell and not tSCOg own the copyrights that tSCOg claims IBM violated, Novell told tSCOg to cease their claims against IBM, etc.).
5. Among the counterclaims IBM has made are Lanham Act violations by tSCOg and the claim that tSCOg has violated the GPL in how they themselves distributed Linux (this is also the basis for many of IBM's defenses, as well).
6. Red Hat has a lawsuit, currently stayed, whereby they claim Lanham Act violations by tSCOg.
I hope you can now see how intricately bound tSCOg has become in their own misdeeds and deceits.
Based upon the above, and much more, it is my opinion, for what it's worth (as IANAL), but which coincides with many others' opinions (including several ex-lawyers) on GrokLaw, tha