> Assuming all is true, and they do hold patents > for the work, then by law they're entitle to > compensation for it no matter how much > someone bitches about it. Ethical? No, Legal? > Yes.
Use of Patents? Yes. Use of copyrighted work? No.
And no, SCO doesn't own any relevant patents. So no, SCO does not have a legal basis to invoice end users.
I think people that still work for SCO have some serious judgement problems. I wouldn't mind hiring them for a manufacturing position but I would skip them for any position that involves responsabilities.
That's an interesting believe because if it where true it means you knowingly commit copyright infringement for commercial gain by distributing software such as SAMBA without a valid license to do so. That's a federal criminal offense.
All the SCO IP in Linux has been licenced by SCO under the GPL at no cost so I don't think that will generate much revenue.
What might generate some revenue is SCOs protection/extortion scheme (aka binary license) but it will be tricky to cash in on that without committing federal crimes.
linuxjack55's assumption is correct because according to SCOs S-3 filing the complete 8.25 million listed as revenue under "Licensing" comes from the SUN/Microsoft sponsoring: "The two licensing agreements signed by us to date resulted in revenue of $8,250,000 during the quarter ended April30, 2003"
Licensing revenue from other products is booked under "Products" and not under "Licensing"
Yes, it has generated considerable revenue, but in all previous quarters SCO had expenses that were higher than its revenue so in none of those previous quarters did SCO have any profits.
You can repeat the lies, but they really don't suddenly start to become true.
According to SCOs S-3 filing the complete 8.25 million listed as revenue under "Licensing" comes from the SUN/Microsoft sponsoring:
"The two licensing agreements signed by us to date resulted in revenue of $8,250,000 during the quarter ended April30, 2003"
Your licensing revenue from other products is listed under "Products" and you lose money on them quarter after quarter after quarter after quarter.
While you are reading the S-3 don't forget to reread the following part: "'If we do not receive SCOsource licensing revenue in future quarters and our revenue from the sale of our operating system platform products and services continues to decline, we will need to further reduce operating expenses in order to maintain profitability or generate positive cash flow.'"
When your boss talks about "reduce operating expenses" he means firing people who don't work in the profitable part of the company. Somehow I think that might be you.
Nice spin, but in the 10-Q filing you can read that without the 8.25 million SCOsource revenue (kindly donated by SUN and Microsoft) SCO would not have been profittable that quarter but would have made a 3.68 million loss. This has been the first quarter they have been profittable and the only reason for that profitability is the SUN/Microsoft sponsoring. You can also read that Microsoft has promised them another 5 million to be spread over the next three quarters.
> SUN is better than its reputation here, I believe.
It's not where they are today, it's where they go tomorrow. And with Scott McNealy
playing the
FUD-card on open source as well as their cozy relationship with SCO I have absolutely no trust in their future business decisions.
McNealy reminds me too much of pre-SCO Caldera's Ransom Love.
The GPL explicitly states that it does not cover "use". So I don't think I need to agree to the GPL in order to use it.
Take for example clause 5:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works.
Note that here too it doesn't mention "use".
If I don't have to accept the license as end user I also don't have to agree to clause 11 or 12.
The GPL can't go beyond copyright law because it is based in copyright law. It can't reach out beyond derivative works. Whether an application that links against a library is considered a derivative work will be up to a court to decide. The FSF thinks it is. TrollTech thinks it is. I'm not convinced.
You seem to have a poor understanding of copyright law. The only way that the software that you have written can become GPL'ed licensed is when you willfully decide to license it as such.
Your software does not become GPL'ed by linking against other GPL'ed software and then distributing it. Note that this too, requires willful acts from your side. Normally software doesn't link or distribute itself.
It is of course not a very bright idea to link your code to GPL'ed software if you do not intent or are not able to license the rest of the copyrighted work in accordance with GPL. Distributing such piece of software would constitute copyright infringement and can result in quite hefty fines and/or jail time.
Not unlike what can happen if you redistribute proprietary software without authorisation. http://www.theregister.co.uk/conte nt/51/31770.html
I don't think that any European court will hold that it can be reasonably expected from end-users that they examine the source code of the software they use. One reason would be that such behavior isn't common practice, another reason that such users can't be expected to have the necessary skills.
However, a court may expect such behavior from companies such as SCO and IBM that redistribute such code, especially if they have a commercial interest in that redistribution.
I suggest you read the GPL before you license your work under it. By placing your work under the GPL you offer *any third party* a license to your copyrighted work. So you potentially establish a legal relationship with many people and such legal relationship may result in some sort of liability.
The article points out that even if it is IBM who sells the software to their customers, the rights granted by the GPL are directly granted by you to these customers. (My example, the article doesn't mention IBM:-)
On the bright side, the article mentions that this liability is probably limited to severe negligence and malintention only, depending on the situation, so it shouldn't pose any problems in practice.
This is exactly the point when it comes to liability. Because a user doesn't have to agree to the GPL when he installs it, it means that as long as he doesn't redistribute he can be using the software without having agreed to the GPL and is therefor not bound by it. As a result the liability clause of the GPL is not in effect for that user either.
Other than that the article argues that even if the clause would be in effect it may be an unlawful restriction of the users rights and therefor not valid anyway. Whether such restriction is allowed or not depends on the section of the law that is applicable and the article considers several possibilities.
Put in perspective, it is probably simply not possible under German law to lower liability beyond a certain point and no license, GPL or EULA, is going to change that.
They can both be true if you recognize that the world isn't black and white.
Developers of open source software are liable for their work to a certain (minimum) extent, despite what clause 11 says. But they are held to lower standards than a commercial software vendor, mostly because they don't have a direct commercial interest.
When you are starting to sell open source software your liability increases. Traditional software companies are aware of that and counter that by conditions in their EULA. (To an extent that they may very well, at least in Germany, be held unenforcable.)
Open Source companies such as SuSE have recognized this for quite some time already as well which is why your set of SuSE cd's is sealed with an EULA that limits liability.
Slashdot Mirror
And of course fs/reiserfs/fix_node.c which has the word "SMP" in a comment.
It will be fun watching them explain that to a judge.
KDE 3.2 will contain Kontact which resembles Outlook a bit more. Maybe your father will feel more at home with that.
And Novell already did excercise those rights and cleared IBM of SCOs alleged violations wrt AIX.
That's one of the many reasons why SCO doesn't have a case.
There is no SCO vs. Linux lawsuit.
Maybe you are confused with
RedHat vs. SCO
http://www.issproxy.com/articles/80.asp
> Assuming all is true, and they do hold patents
> for the work, then by law they're entitle to
> compensation for it no matter how much
> someone bitches about it. Ethical? No, Legal?
> Yes.
Use of Patents? Yes.
Use of copyrighted work? No.
And no, SCO doesn't own any relevant patents. So no, SCO does not have a legal basis to invoice end users.
Hey, I have seen that movie before... it was with Ransom Love and that linux distributor... Caldera!
I didn't like the ending though.
I think people that still work for SCO have some serious judgement problems. I wouldn't mind hiring them for a manufacturing position but I would skip them for any position that involves responsabilities.
From what I have seen it has changed from a shotgun to a wet newspaper.
That's an interesting believe because if it where true it means you knowingly commit copyright infringement for commercial gain by distributing software such as SAMBA without a valid license to do so. That's a federal criminal offense.
All the SCO IP in Linux has been licenced by SCO under the GPL at no cost so I don't think that will generate much revenue.
What might generate some revenue is SCOs protection/extortion scheme (aka binary license) but it will be tricky to cash in on that without committing federal crimes.
linuxjack55's assumption is correct because according to SCOs S-3 filing the complete 8.25 million listed as revenue under "Licensing" comes from the SUN/Microsoft sponsoring: "The two licensing agreements signed by us to date resulted in revenue of $8,250,000 during the quarter ended April30, 2003"
Licensing revenue from other products is booked under "Products" and not under "Licensing"
Yes, it has generated considerable revenue, but in all previous quarters SCO had expenses that were higher than its revenue so in none of those previous quarters did SCO have any profits.
You can repeat the lies, but they really don't suddenly start to become true. According to SCOs S-3 filing the complete 8.25 million listed as revenue under "Licensing" comes from the SUN/Microsoft sponsoring: "The two licensing agreements signed by us to date resulted in revenue of $8,250,000 during the quarter ended April30, 2003" Your licensing revenue from other products is listed under "Products" and you lose money on them quarter after quarter after quarter after quarter.
While you are reading the S-3 don't forget to reread the following part: "'If we do not receive SCOsource licensing revenue in future quarters and our revenue from the sale of our operating system platform products and services continues to decline, we will need to further reduce operating expenses in order to maintain profitability or generate positive cash flow.'" When your boss talks about "reduce operating expenses" he means firing people who don't work in the profitable part of the company. Somehow I think that might be you.
Nice spin, but in the 10-Q filing you can read that without the 8.25 million SCOsource revenue (kindly donated by SUN and Microsoft) SCO would not have been profittable that quarter but would have made a 3.68 million loss. This has been the first quarter they have been profittable and the only reason for that profitability is the SUN/Microsoft sponsoring. You can also read that Microsoft has promised them another 5 million to be spread over the next three quarters.
It's not where they are today, it's where they go tomorrow. And with Scott McNealy playing the FUD-card on open source as well as their cozy relationship with SCO I have absolutely no trust in their future business decisions.
McNealy reminds me too much of pre-SCO Caldera's Ransom Love.
The GPL explicitly states that it does not cover "use". So I don't think I need to agree to the GPL in order to use it.
Take for example clause 5:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works.
Note that here too it doesn't mention "use".
If I don't have to accept the license as end user I also don't have to agree to clause 11 or 12.
You can use LGPL licensed code in GPL'ed works:
3. You may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General Public License instead of this License to a given copy of the Library.
The GPL can't go beyond copyright law because it is based in copyright law. It can't reach out beyond derivative works. Whether an application that links against a library is considered a derivative work will be up to a court to decide. The FSF thinks it is. TrollTech thinks it is. I'm not convinced.
You seem to have a poor understanding of copyright law. The only way that the software that you have written can become GPL'ed licensed is when you willfully decide to license it as such.
e nt/51/31770.html
Your software does not become GPL'ed by linking against other GPL'ed software and then distributing it. Note that this too, requires willful acts from your side. Normally software doesn't link or distribute itself.
It is of course not a very bright idea to link your code to GPL'ed software if you do not intent or are not able to license the rest of the copyrighted work in accordance with GPL. Distributing such piece of software would constitute copyright infringement and can result in quite hefty fines and/or jail time.
Not unlike what can happen if you redistribute proprietary software without authorisation.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/cont
I don't think that any European court will hold that it can be reasonably expected from end-users that they examine the source code of the software they use. One reason would be that such behavior isn't common practice, another reason that such users can't be expected to have the necessary skills.
However, a court may expect such behavior from companies such as SCO and IBM that redistribute such code, especially if they have a commercial interest in that redistribution.
I suggest you read the GPL before you license your work under it. By placing your work under the GPL you offer *any third party* a license to your copyrighted work. So you potentially establish a legal relationship with many people and such legal relationship may result in some sort of liability.
:-)
The article points out that even if it is IBM who sells the software to their customers, the rights granted by the GPL are directly granted by you to these customers. (My example, the article doesn't mention IBM
On the bright side, the article mentions that this liability is probably limited to severe negligence and malintention only, depending on the situation, so it shouldn't pose any problems in practice.
This is exactly the point when it comes to liability. Because a user doesn't have to agree to the GPL when he installs it, it means that as long as he doesn't redistribute he can be using the software without having agreed to the GPL and is therefor not bound by it. As a result the liability clause of the GPL is not in effect for that user either.
Other than that the article argues that even if the clause would be in effect it may be an unlawful restriction of the users rights and therefor not valid anyway. Whether such restriction is allowed or not depends on the section of the law that is applicable and the article considers several possibilities.
Put in perspective, it is probably simply not possible under German law to lower liability beyond a certain point and no license, GPL or EULA, is going to change that.
They can both be true if you recognize that the world isn't black and white.
Developers of open source software are liable for their work to a certain (minimum) extent, despite what clause 11 says. But they are held to lower standards than a commercial software vendor, mostly because they don't have a direct commercial interest.
When you are starting to sell open source software your liability increases. Traditional software companies are aware of that and counter that by conditions in their EULA. (To an extent that they may very well, at least in Germany, be held unenforcable.)
Open Source companies such as SuSE have recognized this for quite some time already as well which is why your set of SuSE cd's is sealed with an EULA that limits liability.
You may want to use the term KGX (KDE/GNU/Linux cq. Unix) to refer to your desktop OS.