Personally, I find this very subject to multiple interpretations.
I think this is the subject of either the "side-agreement" or "letter of understanding" that IBM received from (I believe) AT&T.
If it was a side-agreement, then IBM should be in the clear regarding any derived works, but any Sequent code may have a problem (assuming the judge agrees with SCO's interpretation of this clause).
If it was a letter of understanding, then a letter of understanding would apply to all licensees, IBM and Sequent, and SCO wouldn't have any leg to stand on.
As everyone on Slashdot knew, SCO's press releases were a pump and dump.
But you know what's going to happen next, don't you. Darl "Comical Ali" McBride is going to have a press conference where he expresses "disappointment" that IBM has responded to SCO's legitimate attempts to protect their intellectual property rights by filing a "frivolous" countersuit. There may be a mention of how IBM is supporting terrorism by supporting Open Source software, etc, etc.
My prediction is that in one or two weeks SCO's whole propaganda campaign will collapse under its own weight and McBride, et al, will resign citing psychological stress resulting from RedHat and IBM's lawsuits.
Sure, SCO will get the money from the lawsuit itself, but nothing beyond that.
Sun.
My opinion is (and, hey, I post on Slashdot so I've gotta have an opinion) it isn't about SCO or Unix at all. It's about some opportunist executives sucking the last life out of a dying company.
I think the original plan was to sue IBM, have IBM buy SCO, exercise their stock options, open their golden parachutes and bail out.
When that plan failed, their backup plan was to pump-up their stock prices using exaggerated claims about the value of their Unix intellectual property rights while quietly exercising their stock options and selling off their stock in the background (I hope the SEC is looking into this).
I think that as soon as they've sold off all of their personally held stock, the executives will open their golden parachutes together and bail out and SCO (and their lawsuit) will die shortly thereafter.
I hope Boies was smart enough to get paid in advance.
Wouldn't Microsoft's bundle of cash to SCO have bought them already?
Good question. I thought I read that Microsoft only licensed the Unix API from SCO. I assumed for POSIX compatibility mode in NT, et al, but I'm not certain. This license would be would be a per cpu fee for running Linux in their test labs.
Well, in my own mind I differentiate between what I consider SCO's Plan A; sue IBM, get bought-out by IBM, exercise their stock options, and bailout using their Golden Parachutes. Immoral, true, but probably legal.
I differentiate that with what I consider SCO's Plan B; a more traditional pump-n-dump stock scheme. Make highly exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims about your company's future prospects while quietly exercising your stock options and selling your stock in the background. Immoral and illegal.
I haven't decided yet, but there might even be a Plan C here. Make unsubstantiated threats against your competitors customer base in order to force them to buy licenses for unspecified intellectual property rights to avoid hypothetical future lawsuits. But that doesn't profit the executive officers directly, only finances their FUD campaign.
Is there any doubt that this was the plan all along? Come on, this is just a large-scale Pump-n-Dump scheme.
Quibble. I think the original plan was to sue IBM, have IBM buy them out, and then exercise their stock options. This pump-n-dump scheme is probably Plan B.
"I am also disappointed that you have chosen litigation rather than good faith discussions with SCO about the problems inherent in Linux."
I practically choked over that statement. "Good faith discussions" assume the parties can come to an amicable agreement. There's no way that can happen in this case because the goals of the two parties are diametrically opposite.
Red Hat wants an agreement that either there is no SCO infringing code in Linux, or that any infringing code is identified and replaced with non-infringing code.
SCO wants any (hypothetically) infringing code to remain in Linux so they can collect juicy licensing fees. McBride's statements to the contrary, the last thing he wants is "good faith discussions".
Of course we don't have copies of IBM's contracts but I'd be shocked if IBM granted SCO standing to sue anyone (much less IBM) for infringements on IBM's AIX code.
True, everything turns on what the contract actually says, but SCO can certainly try to sue IBM over contract violations.
SCO can't sue IBM for releasing IBM's trade secrets into the public.
Ahhh, but here's the if, and it's a big if. If the contract says that IBM will hold System V and derived code as trade secrets (even though SCO doesn't own the copyright to said derived code), and SCO can prove that code (or a reasonable approximation) was added to Linux by IBM, then SCO, at least, believes they have the basis for a suit.
Having said that, my understanding is that JFS was originally developed for OS/2, which would muddy SCO's claim that it's AIX/Unix derived code. And RCU was developed by Sequent(?) and there are several white-papers on the RCU algorithm, again muddying SCO's claim.
On the third hand, even the System V code itself has been studied by generations of CS majors thanks to AT&T's generous academic licensing arrangements and books have been written about the code and algorithms in the Unix kernel, so claiming trade secret status for the code at all is dubious at best.
The thing, though, is that *if* the copyrights are not SCOs in any way, shape or form, they have no grounds for going after end users. My understanding is if a trade secret gets out the game's over. SCO can sue IBM for leaking the information, but they can't then go after users for using said code.
True, but at this time the only actual lawsuit is against IBM. Everything else is just McBride's verbal diarria.
In essence, SCO has admitted that they don't really have *any* copyright case and that Linux intellectual property is all above board. They can still accuse IBM of breach of contract, but I really don't think any of us have the details on what the contracts stated.
After reading the article a couple of times, I think what SCO is saying is, even though they don't own the copyright to JFS, NUMA, and RCU, those features are part of AIX/Unix. Therefore they are trade secrets under IBM's contract with SCO and simply adding those features to Linux is a contract violation, even if IBM owns the copyright.
It seems like the technically legal, but morally reprehensible argument I would expect from SCO.
"Bittorrent as a protocol has nothing to fear from the RIAA."
You can't seriously believe that.. can you?
The most significant difference between Kazaa, et al and BitTorrent is that BitTorrent has no search capability. It's strictly a file transport protocol. The RIAA might as well try to outlaw FTP (which is used for copyright infringment too don't forget).
Having said that, that doesn't mean RIAA won't try to ban BitTorrent.
Perhaps one way to enhance BitTorrent's respectibility would be to formalize the protocol with an official RFC. Something benign sounding like, "Multi-sourced broadcast file transport protocol." Seriously, the BitTorrent protocol is too useful to be banned by know-nothing idiots like the RIAA.
If we were contacted to locate a user who was using a specific IP at a specific time, it would take all of 3 minutes to identify the user, duration of login, newsgroups accessed, pop3 mail access, phone number they dialed in from, and any other transactions that produced a line in the radius logs.
I can at least understand user, IP address, duration of login, and phone number, but is there a reason to log newsgroups and emails accessed and archive that information for a year?
I didn't see this mentioned in the article or in any other posting, but in addition to the long-term cost savings, Munich's $35.7 million goes to a German company, instead of an American one. I can't help but think that had something to do with with the decision.
Perhaps someone from the EFF would set up a campaign fund? I would gladly contribute $50 or $100 if it would result in SCO getting slapped with a suit.
Better yet, contribute $50 or $100 to the Free Software Foundation so that RMS can buy SCO and put UNIX under the GPL.
My guess is they would want all evidence to be secret, and never disclosed to the public else they lose their imagined "windfall" they plan to make via royalties on future sales of Linux distributions (or just extorting users of Linux directly).
I was thinking about that. On the other hand, under section 7 of the GPL, everyone must cease distributing Linux immediately, kind of a GPL catch-22. I guess everyone would have to start using one of the BSDs or GNU/HURD.
As for reducing the slashdot effect using a distributed mechanism, I'd like to see something like this: Slashdot runs a BitTorrent server and provides a "package" for every story.
My, perhaps ill-thought-out, idea would be to use an.RSS or.RSS-like format to download bittorrent link information, in addition to an ordinary webpage. Similar to the relationship of a regular.RSS newsfeed and a news website (like slashdot).
This is simply false. Once you distribute your code under the GPL, you lose ALL CONTROL over that code PERMANENTLY. That is simply what the GPL is designed to do.
You misunderstand me. What I'm trying to say is, what I think Gleef is saying is, just because you distribute one GPLed codebase (i.e., the Linux OS), that doesn't touch any other codebase (i.e., the Xenix and Unix System V codebases).
But that's copyright. If you're stupid enough to copy your trade secret IP from your non-GPLed codebase into a GPLed codebase, then yes, you lose control of that IP. But even so, that doesn't effect the copyright of your original, non-GPLed codebase (though it would diminish its value).
No, but it does provide anyone and everyone with a licence to use their code, under the terms of the GPL. Having granted that licence, they cannot revoke it.
I think what Gleef is saying is distributing under the GPL (i.e., the Linux OS in the Caldera distro) does not touch their copyrights for their own code (i.e., the Xenix and Unix System V codebases).
No, the whole point of this case is that Verizon is fighting to stop judicial approval being given! (Or rather, the court gave that approval, but Verizon decided to appeal.)
My understanding (and it's a little complicated, so I'm not sure I understand correctly) is that that the court ruled that RIAA has the right, under the DMCA, to demand the customer's names without a court order. Not that the RIAA has sufficient grounds to demand the names.
Basically, Verizon wants a ruling on the constitutionality of that portion of the DMCA because that opens Verizon (and all ISPs) up to anybody to demand customer names under the DMCA based on merely the claim of a copyright violation. If they have to get a court order first, that at least filters out most of the nuisance claims.
Copyright laws are strange in this respect. You can't copyright the look of your font, just its name.
My understanding is that there was (is?) a concern that books printed with a particular font could be considered a derivative work (of that font). No, I don't understand that either, but then I'm not a lawyer.
On the other hand, centuries of experience has produced highly readable fonts for european languages (english, french, german, etc.). It might not be a good thing if one or two companies held the copyright to the shape of Times, Times-Roman, and Helvetica fonts for example. They could possibly control what gets printed in those fonts, everyone else would have to be printed in less-desireable, less-readable fonts. Just a thought.
Suppose the software actually does what it was designed for, and no longer needs development? Under the scheme proposed, that project would be labelled 'abandoned'.
Perhaps another statistic to look at is how often the software is downloaded or accessed. Software that is no longer under development, but frequently downloaded, could be labeled 'finished' or 'mature'. However, software that is no longer under development and infrequently accessed or downloaded could be labeled 'abandoned'. Not perfect I admit, but it should differentiate in most cases.
When I was in singapore a few years ago, RCA input LCD screens weren't that bad a price, but the problem is that price hasn't drop that much.
From the department of Who Cares. Cornea Systems has two LCS displays with VGA, DVI, RCA, S-video inputs (and a VHF TV tuner). I have the CT1702 connected to my computer and Dreamcast and it works fine. It's currently available from eCost for US$479.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't just give people the same TShirt they can buy at Thinkgeek or that comes with your distro.
Ha, maybe you could get the guys at Penny-Arcade to do one. I can see it now; Cardboard Tube Linux Samurai.
Personally, I find this very subject to multiple interpretations.
I think this is the subject of either the "side-agreement" or "letter of understanding" that IBM received from (I believe) AT&T.
If it was a side-agreement, then IBM should be in the clear regarding any derived works, but any Sequent code may have a problem (assuming the judge agrees with SCO's interpretation of this clause).
If it was a letter of understanding, then a letter of understanding would apply to all licensees, IBM and Sequent, and SCO wouldn't have any leg to stand on.
But IANAL, so what the hell do I know.
As everyone on Slashdot knew, SCO's press releases were a pump and dump.
But you know what's going to happen next, don't you. Darl "Comical Ali" McBride is going to have a press conference where he expresses "disappointment" that IBM has responded to SCO's legitimate attempts to protect their intellectual property rights by filing a "frivolous" countersuit. There may be a mention of how IBM is supporting terrorism by supporting Open Source software, etc, etc.
My prediction is that in one or two weeks SCO's whole propaganda campaign will collapse under its own weight and McBride, et al, will resign citing psychological stress resulting from RedHat and IBM's lawsuits.
Sure, SCO will get the money from the lawsuit itself, but nothing beyond that.
Sun.
My opinion is (and, hey, I post on Slashdot so I've gotta have an opinion) it isn't about SCO or Unix at all. It's about some opportunist executives sucking the last life out of a dying company.
I think the original plan was to sue IBM, have IBM buy SCO, exercise their stock options, open their golden parachutes and bail out.
When that plan failed, their backup plan was to pump-up their stock prices using exaggerated claims about the value of their Unix intellectual property rights while quietly exercising their stock options and selling off their stock in the background (I hope the SEC is looking into this).
I think that as soon as they've sold off all of their personally held stock, the executives will open their golden parachutes together and bail out and SCO (and their lawsuit) will die shortly thereafter.
I hope Boies was smart enough to get paid in advance.
Wouldn't Microsoft's bundle of cash to SCO have bought them already?
Good question. I thought I read that Microsoft only licensed the Unix API from SCO. I assumed for POSIX compatibility mode in NT, et al, but I'm not certain. This license would be would be a per cpu fee for running Linux in their test labs.
Well, in my own mind I differentiate between what I consider SCO's Plan A; sue IBM, get bought-out by IBM, exercise their stock options, and bailout using their Golden Parachutes. Immoral, true, but probably legal.
I differentiate that with what I consider SCO's Plan B; a more traditional pump-n-dump stock scheme. Make highly exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims about your company's future prospects while quietly exercising your stock options and selling your stock in the background. Immoral and illegal.
I haven't decided yet, but there might even be a Plan C here. Make unsubstantiated threats against your competitors customer base in order to force them to buy licenses for unspecified intellectual property rights to avoid hypothetical future lawsuits. But that doesn't profit the executive officers directly, only finances their FUD campaign.
Is there any doubt that this was the plan all along? Come on, this is just a large-scale Pump-n-Dump scheme.
Quibble. I think the original plan was to sue IBM, have IBM buy them out, and then exercise their stock options. This pump-n-dump scheme is probably Plan B.
At $699 they very obviously don't expect anyone to pay (except maybe some allies like Microsoft who will very publicly purchase some token seats).
Well, Microsoft uses Linux in their test lab. I wonder how many licenses they'll be purchasing.
"I am also disappointed that you have chosen litigation rather than good faith discussions with SCO about the problems inherent in Linux."
I practically choked over that statement. "Good faith discussions" assume the parties can come to an amicable agreement. There's no way that can happen in this case because the goals of the two parties are diametrically opposite.
Red Hat wants an agreement that either there is no SCO infringing code in Linux, or that any infringing code is identified and replaced with non-infringing code.
SCO wants any (hypothetically) infringing code to remain in Linux so they can collect juicy licensing fees. McBride's statements to the contrary, the last thing he wants is "good faith discussions".
Of course we don't have copies of IBM's contracts but I'd be shocked if IBM granted SCO standing to sue anyone (much less IBM) for infringements on IBM's AIX code.
True, everything turns on what the contract actually says, but SCO can certainly try to sue IBM over contract violations.
SCO can't sue IBM for releasing IBM's trade secrets into the public.
Ahhh, but here's the if, and it's a big if. If the contract says that IBM will hold System V and derived code as trade secrets (even though SCO doesn't own the copyright to said derived code), and SCO can prove that code (or a reasonable approximation) was added to Linux by IBM, then SCO, at least, believes they have the basis for a suit.
Having said that, my understanding is that JFS was originally developed for OS/2, which would muddy SCO's claim that it's AIX/Unix derived code. And RCU was developed by Sequent(?) and there are several white-papers on the RCU algorithm, again muddying SCO's claim.
On the third hand, even the System V code itself has been studied by generations of CS majors thanks to AT&T's generous academic licensing arrangements and books have been written about the code and algorithms in the Unix kernel, so claiming trade secret status for the code at all is dubious at best.
The thing, though, is that *if* the copyrights are not SCOs in any way, shape or form, they have no grounds for going after end users. My understanding is if a trade secret gets out the game's over. SCO can sue IBM for leaking the information, but they can't then go after users for using said code.
True, but at this time the only actual lawsuit is against IBM. Everything else is just McBride's verbal diarria.
In essence, SCO has admitted that they don't really have *any* copyright case and that Linux intellectual property is all above board. They can still accuse IBM of breach of contract, but I really don't think any of us have the details on what the contracts stated.
After reading the article a couple of times, I think what SCO is saying is, even though they don't own the copyright to JFS, NUMA, and RCU, those features are part of AIX/Unix. Therefore they are trade secrets under IBM's contract with SCO and simply adding those features to Linux is a contract violation, even if IBM owns the copyright.
It seems like the technically legal, but morally reprehensible argument I would expect from SCO.
"Bittorrent as a protocol has nothing to fear from the RIAA."
You can't seriously believe that.. can you?
The most significant difference between Kazaa, et al and BitTorrent is that BitTorrent has no search capability. It's strictly a file transport protocol. The RIAA might as well try to outlaw FTP (which is used for copyright infringment too don't forget).
Having said that, that doesn't mean RIAA won't try to ban BitTorrent.
Perhaps one way to enhance BitTorrent's respectibility would be to formalize the protocol with an official RFC. Something benign sounding like, "Multi-sourced broadcast file transport protocol." Seriously, the BitTorrent protocol is too useful to be banned by know-nothing idiots like the RIAA.
If we were contacted to locate a user who was using a specific IP at a specific time, it would take all of 3 minutes to identify the user, duration of login, newsgroups accessed, pop3 mail access, phone number they dialed in from, and any other transactions that produced a line in the radius logs.
I can at least understand user, IP address, duration of login, and phone number, but is there a reason to log newsgroups and emails accessed and archive that information for a year?
I didn't see this mentioned in the article or in any other posting, but in addition to the long-term cost savings, Munich's $35.7 million goes to a German company, instead of an American one. I can't help but think that had something to do with with the decision.
Perhaps someone from the EFF would set up a campaign fund? I would gladly contribute $50 or $100 if it would result in SCO getting slapped with a suit.
Better yet, contribute $50 or $100 to the Free Software Foundation so that RMS can buy SCO and put UNIX under the GPL.
I was thinking about that. On the other hand, under section 7 of the GPL, everyone must cease distributing Linux immediately, kind of a GPL catch-22. I guess everyone would have to start using one of the BSDs or GNU/HURD.
My, perhaps ill-thought-out, idea would be to use an .RSS or .RSS-like format to download bittorrent link information, in addition to an ordinary webpage. Similar to the relationship of a regular .RSS newsfeed and a news website (like slashdot).
The German ambassador to the UN was giving an impassioned speech.
The english translator was silent for several minutes.
Finally somebody asked him why he wasn't translating.
He replied, "I'm waiting for the verb."
You misunderstand me. What I'm trying to say is, what I think Gleef is saying is, just because you distribute one GPLed codebase (i.e., the Linux OS), that doesn't touch any other codebase (i.e., the Xenix and Unix System V codebases).
But that's copyright. If you're stupid enough to copy your trade secret IP from your non-GPLed codebase into a GPLed codebase, then yes, you lose control of that IP. But even so, that doesn't effect the copyright of your original, non-GPLed codebase (though it would diminish its value).
I think what Gleef is saying is distributing under the GPL (i.e., the Linux OS in the Caldera distro) does not touch their copyrights for their own code (i.e., the Xenix and Unix System V codebases).
My understanding (and it's a little complicated, so I'm not sure I understand correctly) is that that the court ruled that RIAA has the right, under the DMCA, to demand the customer's names without a court order. Not that the RIAA has sufficient grounds to demand the names.
Basically, Verizon wants a ruling on the constitutionality of that portion of the DMCA because that opens Verizon (and all ISPs) up to anybody to demand customer names under the DMCA based on merely the claim of a copyright violation. If they have to get a court order first, that at least filters out most of the nuisance claims.
My understanding is that there was (is?) a concern that books printed with a particular font could be considered a derivative work (of that font). No, I don't understand that either, but then I'm not a lawyer.
On the other hand, centuries of experience has produced highly readable fonts for european languages (english, french, german, etc.). It might not be a good thing if one or two companies held the copyright to the shape of Times, Times-Roman, and Helvetica fonts for example. They could possibly control what gets printed in those fonts, everyone else would have to be printed in less-desireable, less-readable fonts. Just a thought.
Perhaps another statistic to look at is how often the software is downloaded or accessed. Software that is no longer under development, but frequently downloaded, could be labeled 'finished' or 'mature'. However, software that is no longer under development and infrequently accessed or downloaded could be labeled 'abandoned'. Not perfect I admit, but it should differentiate in most cases.
From the department of Who Cares. Cornea Systems has two LCS displays with VGA, DVI, RCA, S-video inputs (and a VHF TV tuner). I have the CT1702 connected to my computer and Dreamcast and it works fine. It's currently available from eCost for US$479.