These guys ought to be tried and convicted for barratry, regardless of whether their legal counsel is this stupid or not.
Actually, if they're stupid enough to actually think that they're right, they wouldn't be guilty of barratry.
I look forward to a future case involving SCO with Darl trying to prove conclusively that he was too stupid to realize that his lawsuit was a load of BS.
Seriously, think about what would have to be changed to get up and running again:
* Some debugging tools (gdb, valgrind, etc)
* Linux's binary loader, ld.so
* A couple of components of gcc (this is the bulk of the work, but we could probably borrow an existing binary format that it can already output)
And then the software would have to be recompiled in the new format.
I'll bet that a determined person could be up and running with a new binary format inside of a week, though distros would probably want to wait around and do some testing.
The mainstream press is buying into SCO's claims just (AFAICT) based on the weight of how often they repeat them and the fact that they have an easy contact point, whereas there is no general "Linux" contact person.
Take a look at today's CNN.com article, in which the reporter says:
"The communal aspects of open source can lead to thorny legal questions, particularly when a company claims its proprietary code has seeped into a project. Because developers typically don't offer warranties, end users could be held liable for infringements."
Wow. It's like saying that all code under the GPL is held to a legal standard that's as harsh as... well, to give an equivalent example, if an author of a book included some infringing content, it's like holding every person that read the book liable. Eben Moglen's shot this down, it's been raked through the coals on Slashdot and Groklaw... but because SCO does a better job of managing the press than the "Linux community, as a whole", nasty disinformation about open source is rapidly spreading around the world and seeping into end users' heads.
The JFS part was expected of course, but according to the article, as far as the ELF format is concerned 'the Tool Interface Standard Committee (TISC) came up with a ELF 1.2 standard' and 'granted users a "non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license" to the stuff'
We're talking about *copyright*, right?
So it doesn't matter whether something is an open standard or not. MD4 is an open standard, but that doesn't mean that I can legally use RSA's GPL-incompatible reference code in my code.
That being said, if SCO has even the faintest sliver of a case, I'll be amazed.
Same old traps... It's the same reason that most opensource people do not want to look at the code for Windows. The risk of writing something similar a few years later is too great. Much easier just to ignore it exists.
There's no legal problem with writing something similar after seeing source. Many companies have done so. As a matter of fact, the only place I personally know of where clean room engineering was used was ibm/phoenix, though I'm sure someone else has done so at some point.
I was not using Gopher as an example of software that is BSD-licensed -- I was using it as an example of how software that is not maintained loses value.
I was including content that they could "control" by revising IP -- not as strong a control as owning copyright, certainly, but also not something to sneeze at.
It does nicely validate parts of ESR's Halloween memo collection. I remember when I thought that the collection was on par with the X-Files -- naive little me.
As regards IBM's "we're hip and open source" campaign:
I mean, yes, it's all marketing in the end, and a bunch of people sitting in cubicles trying to figure out how to manipulate me, an open source coder, and people like me. But it's kind of like being manipulated by an attractive woman -- yes, you're being manipulated, but it's *enjoyable*. You don't *mind* it. Having enormous, cold companies pretend to be warm and fuzzy and rub up against you while purring makes you feel *happy*. You just can't help it.
It's irrelevant, because neither company is going to get in an all-out war with the other. It would be stupid. It's why you don't attack someone about the same height and weight as you in an open arena -- you're going to get hurt, no matter what happens, and there are many more enjoyable things that you *could* be doing, like stepping on ants (or better, mugging squirrels for their nuts or something).
Lets put it this way: IBM is to Microsoft as Magic Johnson is to Mini-me.
Not really. IBM has a market cap of $143 billion, Microsoft of $300 billion according to quote.yahoo.com today.
The only option for free software would be to trade patents, but the problem is that few free sofware developers do patent their stuff. So there will be little to trade.
I agree. Furthermore, much of the real "OSS economy" operates without money being involved, and thus it would be difficult to fund patent production.
It *would* potentially be possible, though it would make me a bit uncomfortable, due to the GPL bias, for a company to "cross patent" with the GPLed world. Basically, to say "you may use any patents we have *if* you are using them in GPLed software". If that company is writing GPLed software, they recieve the benefit of all the other patent holders that have climbed on. In essence, the company retains its IP monopoly unless another company is using that IP to produce IP that *they* do not have a monopoly over.
This is good for all companies that do not intend to use their patent portfolio as weapons against GPL-using competitors (which, at least thus far, are probably most companies). This would be an extremely bad trend for Microsoft, for instance.
I'd imagine that someone has suggested this before, but I haven't heard anything about such an initiative.
I guess I don't understand how breaking the DRM cost any royalties at all. From my understanding, it allows people to run Linux on the XBox, but if you buy an XBox, you have already paid for the XBox OS. You're not taking anything away from MS, because you paid their royalties when you bought the XBox.
Well, (a) there's the obvious -- people dump Linux on the XBox, Microsoft depends (like many console makers) on royalties to subsidize the sales of each XBox and sells them at a loss. However, I was thinking of (b) the fact that MR's funding to get Linux on the X-Box also neatly allowed piracy of XBox games. For the $200,000 MR put up, he probably made his money back many times over in going after Microsoft.
He may be selling cheap PCs with Lindows/spire on them, but I've never actually heard of anyone buying one.
He cut a deal with Wal-Mart to have them sell PCs preloaded with Lindows. He also had some sort of commercial application sales thing where you could buy new applications just by clicking a button on your desktop or something. I didn't play around with it.
and from what I recall, the "Linux on XBox" contest stopped short of being able to hack the XBox without using additional hardware.
Nope (see 007/Mech Assault method) -- as a matter of fact, MR's second prize was specifically for whoever managed to get things running without hardware modifications. It was eventually done by taking advantage of non-robust handling of save game data.
Oh, and in his latest suit, MR managed to legally weaken the trademark of Microsoft's core product *and* grab $20 million for Linux development.
He's not the sort of person that you'd want to have working against you.
Did the BSD groups get a net gain out of the deal? Certainly, as they sure didn't lose anything.
Potential development effort that they could have otherwise enjoyed.
Stealing and copyright infringement are different, though copyright infringement can still cause damage through loss of potential sales. Similarly, the BSD license does not allow taking existing code away from a project but does allow reducing its ability to draw from a pool of coders -- and thus may still damage the project (relative to its potential state under the GPL).
Doesn't mean that the BSD license isn't appropriate for software out there, of course.
The original code in either case is always open source.
I'm aware of that. However, the original code, potentially unmaintained, steadily depreciates in value. Try compiling a gopher server anymore (last time I tried, two years ago, I couldn't find one that built out-of-box on my system any more).
Tell me something, if I place some code under the BSD license and publish it on Usenet for all to see, how can a company come along later and un-open source the work I did?
They don't. They compete at an uneven advantage (since you lack information available to them, but they have all information available to you), and if they win, they leave the old codebase to become obsolete. In a BSD environment, developers and users have a tendancy to be siphoned into closed variants.
The difference is that the GPL was written by RMS to further his agenda of making the entire software world open source.
Right. That's what I said. "The GPL is for people that are interested in promoting society-wide use of open-source."
Just a vague feeling that the wicked companies are slowly dragging all that innocent BSD licensed source into their secret dungeons, never to be seen again?
Okay:
* BSD TCP stack, used in the Windows kernel.
* BSD Internet utilities, bundled with Windows.
* WINE code (has been used in several commercial products), eventually had to be GPLed to keep all developer effort from being siphoned off.
* Tripwire (once a major security tool that was moved to a closed license, now folks regaining interest as the Linux version has been GPLed).
I'm sure that I could find more if I wanted to do some research, but these are off the cuff.
WTF ???? Why would BSD code become more unmaintainable than GPL code???
Because each closed-source fork from an open-source project leeches off effort. Sure, a company *could* contribute a patch back, but if they're Microsoft and fix a bug in the BSD TCP stack that they used in Windows... why would they bother?
As a result, you get a tendancy to lose developer effort.
Obviously, because something is "under the BSD license" does not mean that it will become unmaintained.
one of the greatest threats I've seen to MS is the innovative knoppix, mandrake move (and others) playable CD's that allow users to get a taste for linux without installing. who says linux is not innovating? I've yet to see a comparable windows product to counter this.
Microsoft markets a myth of local security to Windows admins -- they try to convince them that their systems are "secure", and cannot simply just be rebooted via CD into an OS that ignores the permissions on-drive.
Releasing a "Windows: Troubleshooting Edition" might help out a lot of admins, but would break this image.
Slashdot Mirror
These guys ought to be tried and convicted for barratry, regardless of whether their legal counsel is this stupid or not.
Actually, if they're stupid enough to actually think that they're right, they wouldn't be guilty of barratry.
I look forward to a future case involving SCO with Darl trying to prove conclusively that he was too stupid to realize that his lawsuit was a load of BS.
Doesn't Solaris use ELF these days as well, or at least support it?
Seriously, think about what would have to be changed to get up and running again:
* Some debugging tools (gdb, valgrind, etc)
* Linux's binary loader, ld.so
* A couple of components of gcc (this is the bulk of the work, but we could probably borrow an existing binary format that it can already output)
And then the software would have to be recompiled in the new format.
I'll bet that a determined person could be up and running with a new binary format inside of a week, though distros would probably want to wait around and do some testing.
Unless the code to implement ELF is identical in Linux, I don't see anything like a case here.
That's what I had assumed that SCO was talking about. But now, I'm not so sure.
Sigh. I can never tell what SCO is thinking.
The mainstream press is buying into SCO's claims just (AFAICT) based on the weight of how often they repeat them and the fact that they have an easy contact point, whereas there is no general "Linux" contact person.
... well, to give an equivalent example, if an author of a book included some infringing content, it's like holding every person that read the book liable. Eben Moglen's shot this down, it's been raked through the coals on Slashdot and Groklaw ... but because SCO does a better job of managing the press than the "Linux community, as a whole", nasty disinformation about open source is rapidly spreading around the world and seeping into end users' heads.
Take a look at today's CNN.com article, in which the reporter says:
"The communal aspects of open source can lead to thorny legal questions, particularly when a company claims its proprietary code has seeped into a project. Because developers typically don't offer warranties, end users could be held liable for infringements."
Wow. It's like saying that all code under the GPL is held to a legal standard that's as harsh as
Sad. And probably not fixable.
The JFS part was expected of course, but according to the article, as far as the ELF format is concerned 'the Tool Interface Standard Committee (TISC) came up with a ELF 1.2 standard' and 'granted users a "non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license" to the stuff'
We're talking about *copyright*, right?
So it doesn't matter whether something is an open standard or not. MD4 is an open standard, but that doesn't mean that I can legally use RSA's GPL-incompatible reference code in my code.
That being said, if SCO has even the faintest sliver of a case, I'll be amazed.
I'd say that "cyber risk" insurance is at *least* as crucial as sherbert insurance.
I'm guessing public access through libraries.
Same old traps... It's the same reason that most opensource people do not want to look at the code for Windows. The risk of writing something similar a few years later is too great. Much easier just to ignore it exists.
There's no legal problem with writing something similar after seeing source. Many companies have done so. As a matter of fact, the only place I personally know of where clean room engineering was used was ibm/phoenix, though I'm sure someone else has done so at some point.
I was not using Gopher as an example of software that is BSD-licensed -- I was using it as an example of how software that is not maintained loses value.
You've got it exactly backward. If you cannot look at GPL'd code then how the heck are you supposed to make changes to send back?
When would you not be able to look at GPLed code?
I was including content that they could "control" by revising IP -- not as strong a control as owning copyright, certainly, but also not something to sneeze at.
Right, but as mentioned above, the bulk of the IP that the FSF has sway over is not because the copyright has been asigned to them.
It does nicely validate parts of ESR's Halloween memo collection. I remember when I thought that the collection was on par with the X-Files -- naive little me.
"Peace, Love, Linux" -- IBM
As regards IBM's "we're hip and open source" campaign:
I mean, yes, it's all marketing in the end, and a bunch of people sitting in cubicles trying to figure out how to manipulate me, an open source coder, and people like me. But it's kind of like being manipulated by an attractive woman -- yes, you're being manipulated, but it's *enjoyable*. You don't *mind* it. Having enormous, cold companies pretend to be warm and fuzzy and rub up against you while purring makes you feel *happy*. You just can't help it.
It's irrelevant, because neither company is going to get in an all-out war with the other. It would be stupid. It's why you don't attack someone about the same height and weight as you in an open arena -- you're going to get hurt, no matter what happens, and there are many more enjoyable things that you *could* be doing, like stepping on ants (or better, mugging squirrels for their nuts or something).
Lets put it this way: IBM is to Microsoft as Magic Johnson is to Mini-me.
Not really. IBM has a market cap of $143 billion, Microsoft of $300 billion according to quote.yahoo.com today.
The only option for free software would be to trade patents, but the problem is that few free sofware developers do patent their stuff. So there will be little to trade.
I agree. Furthermore, much of the real "OSS economy" operates without money being involved, and thus it would be difficult to fund patent production.
It *would* potentially be possible, though it would make me a bit uncomfortable, due to the GPL bias, for a company to "cross patent" with the GPLed world. Basically, to say "you may use any patents we have *if* you are using them in GPLed software". If that company is writing GPLed software, they recieve the benefit of all the other patent holders that have climbed on. In essence, the company retains its IP monopoly unless another company is using that IP to produce IP that *they* do not have a monopoly over.
This is good for all companies that do not intend to use their patent portfolio as weapons against GPL-using competitors (which, at least thus far, are probably most companies). This would be an extremely bad trend for Microsoft, for instance.
I'd imagine that someone has suggested this before, but I haven't heard anything about such an initiative.
You insufferable ass -- you just slashdotted Illinois.
I guess I don't understand how breaking the DRM cost any royalties at all. From my understanding, it allows people to run Linux on the XBox, but if you buy an XBox, you have already paid for the XBox OS. You're not taking anything away from MS, because you paid their royalties when you bought the XBox.
Well, (a) there's the obvious -- people dump Linux on the XBox, Microsoft depends (like many console makers) on royalties to subsidize the sales of each XBox and sells them at a loss. However, I was thinking of (b) the fact that MR's funding to get Linux on the X-Box also neatly allowed piracy of XBox games. For the $200,000 MR put up, he probably made his money back many times over in going after Microsoft.
He may be selling cheap PCs with Lindows/spire on them, but I've never actually heard of anyone buying one.
He cut a deal with Wal-Mart to have them sell PCs preloaded with Lindows. He also had some sort of commercial application sales thing where you could buy new applications just by clicking a button on your desktop or something. I didn't play around with it.
and from what I recall, the "Linux on XBox" contest stopped short of being able to hack the XBox without using additional hardware.
Nope (see 007/Mech Assault method) -- as a matter of fact, MR's second prize was specifically for whoever managed to get things running without hardware modifications. It was eventually done by taking advantage of non-robust handling of save game data.
Oh, and in his latest suit, MR managed to legally weaken the trademark of Microsoft's core product *and* grab $20 million for Linux development.
He's not the sort of person that you'd want to have working against you.
Did the BSD groups get a net gain out of the deal? Certainly, as they sure didn't lose anything.
Potential development effort that they could have otherwise enjoyed.
Stealing and copyright infringement are different, though copyright infringement can still cause damage through loss of potential sales. Similarly, the BSD license does not allow taking existing code away from a project but does allow reducing its ability to draw from a pool of coders -- and thus may still damage the project (relative to its potential state under the GPL).
Doesn't mean that the BSD license isn't appropriate for software out there, of course.
"Offtopic", eh?
Sigh.
It does prove my point admirably, but in doing so stifles my ability to point it out, y'know?
The original code in either case is always open source.
I'm aware of that. However, the original code, potentially unmaintained, steadily depreciates in value. Try compiling a gopher server anymore (last time I tried, two years ago, I couldn't find one that built out-of-box on my system any more).
Tell me something, if I place some code under the BSD license and publish it on Usenet for all to see, how can a company come along later and un-open source the work I did?
They don't. They compete at an uneven advantage (since you lack information available to them, but they have all information available to you), and if they win, they leave the old codebase to become obsolete. In a BSD environment, developers and users have a tendancy to be siphoned into closed variants.
The difference is that the GPL was written by RMS to further his agenda of making the entire software world open source.
Right. That's what I said. "The GPL is for people that are interested in promoting society-wide use of open-source."
Just a vague feeling that the wicked companies are slowly dragging all that innocent BSD licensed source into their secret dungeons, never to be seen again?
Okay:
* BSD TCP stack, used in the Windows kernel.
* BSD Internet utilities, bundled with Windows.
* WINE code (has been used in several commercial products), eventually had to be GPLed to keep all developer effort from being siphoned off.
* Tripwire (once a major security tool that was moved to a closed license, now folks regaining interest as the Linux version has been GPLed).
I'm sure that I could find more if I wanted to do some research, but these are off the cuff.
WTF ???? Why would BSD code become more unmaintainable than GPL code???
... why would they bother?
Because each closed-source fork from an open-source project leeches off effort. Sure, a company *could* contribute a patch back, but if they're Microsoft and fix a bug in the BSD TCP stack that they used in Windows
As a result, you get a tendancy to lose developer effort.
Obviously, because something is "under the BSD license" does not mean that it will become unmaintained.
one of the greatest threats I've seen to MS is the innovative knoppix, mandrake move (and others) playable CD's that allow users to get a taste for linux without installing. who says linux is not innovating? I've yet to see a comparable windows product to counter this.
Microsoft markets a myth of local security to Windows admins -- they try to convince them that their systems are "secure", and cannot simply just be rebooted via CD into an OS that ignores the permissions on-drive.
Releasing a "Windows: Troubleshooting Edition" might help out a lot of admins, but would break this image.