They'll probably keep that tied up in court while they harvest the list for numbers.
Anyway, I saw something funny in the article: And consultant Mathias argues that some revenue-desperate carriers might not take such a high road. "To opt out, you'd need to write them [a letter] in Swedish," he jokes.
Just in case, as has so often happened in the past, the bad joke of today becomes the reality of tommorrow, here's the Swedish.
It is obvious that you are not a sys-admin from your above comment also.
What a wildly ignorant comment!
Yes, please let me drop everything to support $DIFFERENT_OS as I've not got enough to be going on with anyway.
If you're too busy to support standards, and/or cannot distinguish such things from platforms, then it's obvious you're not qualified to be a sys-admin.
Unqualified sys-admins are the source of the majority of network problems, in my experience. And experience is something I've had plenty of.
If they're competent, they would know whether or not they have set their DHCP service up properly - or at least be willing and capable of checking when the question arises.. Of course, in my experience, that's often way too much to ask of IT.
Okay, I'm calling shenanigans on this one. If you're an "IT Architect" (presumably that means you have substantial decision-making capability in your organization -- if I'm reading this correctly you're actually working as a contractor) you should know better than to be bringing outside hardware onto a company network.
And I'm calling bullshit on you. Contractors normally provide their own equipment. In some cases it's illegal to do it any other way.
I'm a Mac man myself, I sympathize... but even though you're using a Mac (more secure), you're compromising network security.
War is peace, slavery is freedom, eh comrade?
If you were my employee I'd write you up at the very least.
First, yes, you are correct. As Linux becomes more popular you'll see more viruses for it, without doubt.
But, it's really not so bad as that might sound. You won't see anything resembling parity with windows, that's for sure. Linux is moderately secure by design (it could be better) whereas Windows is really about as far from secure as is conceivable. I'm not talking about implementation problems - those can be fixed, I'm talking about the basic design of the system.
No matter how popular Linux might become, it's still not going to be so easy to write viruses for, and those that are written will have a much harder time surviving.
If you're running a shop of "even just a couple dozen people", and you're savvy enough even to be considering alternatives to Windows PCs, you probably know enough about computers to fix most simple problems yourself. In other words, you can put those extra service calls back into the thin air you just pulled them out of.
You think my time is free? Think again.
I was being extremely conservative in saying a year, btw, it could easily be a week instead, depending on timing. Yes, I can fix most problems myself - pretty much anything that doesn't involve a soldering iron, and some problems that do. So what? My time is far from free. If I only have to format and re-install those windows machines once a year, that's time I could be doing something more productive, and enough of it to pay for the difference in price in getting a Mac.
But if all you want is a cheap and easy box for a non-technical person to run Word and Excel and Internet Explorer on, you can get a workable Dell (Dimension 2400, Celeron 2.2GHz, 40GB HD, 128MB RAM) for $500 to $600, while the cheapest Mac is the eMac (800MHz G4, 40GB HD, 128MB RAM) at $800. Multiply that by even just a couple dozen people, and the price differential really adds up.
You make up the $2-300 price differential there on service calls within the first year. Easily.
Highlight what you want. Put the cursor where you want it. Middle click. Once you get the hang of it it's much easier and quicker than messing around than what you're used to.
Notwithstanding the above, the irrevocable nature of the above rights will in no way be construed to limit Novell's or SCO's rights to enjoin or otherwise prohibit IBM from violating any and all of Novell's or SCO's rights under this Ammendment X, the Related Agreements, or under general patent, copyright, or trademark law.
It seems pretty clear from that sentence that SCO does have the right to revoke IBM's license for cause. Of course the best evidence is that they have failed to follow the terms under which such revocation would take place- in particular by failing to spell out IBM's alleged breach- but they have the right to do so.
Not at all. What you quote doesn't say anything of the kind. It says they may enjoin IBM from violating the contract. It doesn't say they can terminate the contract. There is a huge difference.
They gave the code to the entire world. Can I still go to kernel.org and get an old kernel with the code? I suspect the answer is yes, and if it isn't, I suspect the code is floating around somewhere still. How do you remedy that?
Last I checked you can get it from SCOs site too. The code in question is, at the very least available under a BSD style license, and is almost certainly public domain anyway. So there is no copyright issue that needs to be remedied and never was - only a contract issue. That contractual issue was remedied.
First, the only addenda I've seen are in the IBM-ATTIS contract. This is not an action against IBM, but against SGI.
Actually there are apparently actions against both, with the IBM suit being the biggest. The article was explicitly talking about both of them. So the IBM addenda are definately relevent there.
Also, although I haven't seen it either, SGI claims they have a similar addendum.
More, the AIX issues are clouded by the question of Sequent's contract: it does not contain the extensions of rights clauses in the IBM addenda. If the Sequent-ATTIS contract is held to be binding on IBM for those items which were developed using Sequent's expertise, then the terms of the IBM-ATTIS addendum are irrelevant.
Possibly. I'm sure IBMs lawyers have gone over the relevant documents thoroughly, however, in fact I know they did so long before Caldera decided to rebrand themselves as SCO.
Even if SCO prevails in court on that one issue, they're going to get their butts handed to them on so many others it could only be a pyric victory.
Second, we know that SCO did, in fact, start the clock against SGI some months ago -- SGI's last SEC filing demonstrated that.
They said they did. That doesn't mean they actually did so, in a legally enforceable way. If they can't or won't detail the alleged breach in such a way that SGI could know what to do to rectify it, and/or if the supposed breach is not an actual breach, then it means nothing.
And, third: no, there is no reason at all the SCO would ever be eager to get into court. Just because you're right doesn't mean you'll win. Look at Microsoft and Eolas. Microsoft is "right", but Eolas won anyway. Will that be reversed? Possibly, but how much is the doubt worth?
Actually, I think this example makes my point. Under the law as it stands, Eolas was right and that is indeed why they won against an opponent that was in a far better position to wage a legal battle. Eolas didn't dick around with delaying tactics, they got into court and got their ruling. I don't happen to think that the law as it stands in this case is sensible or good, but that's how it is.
SCO claims this is a pretty straightforward case of breach of contract with IBM and SCO (although they keep making contradictory statements on the periphery) and if that were the case it would indeed be the smart business decision to do everything possible to get this in front of a court ASAP. IBM can pay the lawyers indefinately, but SCO cannot. If SCO had a case, they would be trying to get this heard as quickly as possible, and IBM would be the one scurrying around and delaying things interminably.
SCO's best strategy is to convince one company that they've got a claim and that the company is in violation of that claim. If they can do that without going to court, then they are golden: if any entity which they sued caves, then SCO can move against companies like Red Hat and SuSE, and against the Australian Competition Commission.
Nonsense. Getting someone to cave wouldn't affect the legal issues, it wouldn't set a precedent, it certainly wouldn't have any affect on the Aussies. At best, it would mean an infusion of cash.
I'll get a few obvious observations out of the way.
First, they love to cite that original contract, but they don't talk about the addendums. There's a reason for that.
Secondly, even by that contract unamended, they would still have to actually specify what the supposed violations are before they could start the clock running so far as notice. They've steadfastly refused to do this, proving that they're acting in bad faith.
Third, just because they claim something is a violation doesn't make it so. If they really thought they had violations here, they'd be in a hurry to get to court, but instead they've been stalling.
So, in conclusion, more hot air from a guy that's known for it.
It's not that SCO (or, at the time as you say, Caldera) should not have sold Linux. It's that the lawyers should have let them know what the repercussions were.
That's just the thing though - there's no evidence that they didn't. Caldera had (has? not sure on who they've kicked today) many employees that understand the GPL, and that includes people as high in the organisation as Ransom Love, who was the CEO before McBride. If you read the recent interviews with him, it's clear that he understood it, in a functional sense at least even if he still doesn't seem to understand why we like it.
Even if Darl McBride and the new management team he brought doesn't understand the GPL, which is a big if (I think they're just playing dumb and hoping to confuse people) that doesn't mean Caldera, as an organisation, didn't understand what they were doing when they formed specifically as a Linux distributor long before the current bunch took over. And Ray Noorda, the big man behind the Canopy group, certainly knew what he was getting into.
The lawyers at SCO weren't doing their job when SCO started distributing Linux.
Not at all. Remember, the company that calls itself SCO today bought that name very recently - it is NOT the Santa Cruz Operation that put out Unix on Intel for these many years. It's Caldera Systems. The vast majority of their income has been from Linux. Selling Linux is how they came up with the money to buy the name and the so-called 'IP' from SCO in order to start this scam.
First, no actual breach has been demonstrated, and TSG seems to be working overtime to avoid demonstrating any breach. IBM has been saying from day 1 "show us the breach" but TSG won't.
Second, in the case of the SGI code in particular, even if it was a breach (which it clearly wasn't,) even the appearance of a breach was remedied as soon as it came to light. No thanks to TSG, btw.
Finally, there are many amendments to that original contract signed later which override that clause. There's nothing illegal about that. McBride and co. like to trot out the main contract but ignore all the sidebars and amendments. A court is not likely to do the same.
Santa Clara? I can see someone hasn't been keeping up with the soap opera very well.
TSG (The SCO Group) is based in Utah. The real SCO was the Santa Cruz Organisation, but they sold the name, along with their crusty ancient Unix branch, to Caldera Linux, which then changed their name to TSG and took to referring to themselves as SCO. These are the morons we're talking about. The Santa Cruz Organisation then renamed themselves Tarantella and concentrated on the remaining parts of their business - the ones that still produce products people will actually buy without being threatened.
Isn't it possible to sue for 0 damages and test out the GPL THAT way?
No, but it is possible to sue for all revenue generated as a result of the violation, in addition to damages. It's also possible to sue for statutory, rather than actual damages. Statutory damages are a minimum of $750 per infringement. The maximum is substantially higher, and it goes even higher again if you can prove the infringement was willful.
Anyway, this wouldn't really be a test of the GPL, there's nothing to test. It's a case of copyright infringement, and that law has been tested plenty of times.
Remember, if the GPL is somehow 'invalid' that just means they have and have had no right to use the GPL code whatsoever.
It may be legal to buy SCOs license. Possibly. But if you buy their license, then turn around and hand a friend a linux disk, let alone put it on ftp, you're in violation. One way or another. Either you violate SCOs license, by distributing under the GPL, or you are violating copyright, by distributing GPL code in breach of the GPL.
IANAL, but if I knew anyone stupid enough to have bought SCOs license, I'd certainly advise them to retain a very good one to figure out their position.
OK, the typo where you put a 1 instead of a 2 has been beaten to death, so I'll say no more about it.
But I can vouch for part what you're saying, he's wrong on this, and the way he phrases it in the paper is a particularly arrogant and revolting bit of flamebait.
My first hard drive was a seagate 20megabyte, st-225 IIRC. It was just over 20 real megabytes, that is just over 21 million bytes in capacity. I remember very clearly, it was marketed as 20mb, sold as 20mb, but it did say something like '21.3mb (million bytes)' on the label after I got it home and looked at it. I remember thinking 'that's odd', shrugging, and installing it. Sure enough, just over 20mb. I got what I paid for, and all was good. Damn drive lasted forever too. I retired it because I didn't have space for it with all my new drives, not because it failed.
Anway, the only reason I won't call Mr. Wiebe a flat-out liar is because of that memory - at that date, at least, they were using both definitions of a megabyte, to some degree, but since the short version was only on the sticker, and it was advertised for what it was, he's being extremely disingenous at best - what he writes may not be technically a lie but it's every bit as deceptive as Clintons famous finger-wagging line. Or maybe he really believed what he wrote, in which case he's an ignorant buffoon. Either way...
IIRC this state of affairs stopped about the time 120mb drives were becoming popular, when one drive manufacturer started advertising the inflated number to make their drives seem like a better value than the competitors (was it Maxtor? Quantum? Anyone remember?) and the others quickly followed suit, despite the stink that was being made on BBSs and Usenet, because they rightly saw that most people didn't know the difference and were being fooled. So they figured they had to inflate their numbers too, in order to stay competitive. And I guess that makes some sense. I remember some started using 'million bytes' instead of MB or megabytes, while the less honest started just labeling their million bytes as megabytes without explanation. And yes, by the time consumer level GB drives came around, I think even the ones that had maintained technical honesty by writing 'million bytes' instead of megabytes dropped all attempts at honesty and the re-definition was a fait accompli.
It's still annoying and dishonest. But at least for the drive manufacturers there is a dollars and cents explanation that makes some sense. Mr. Wiebe, however... what's his excuse?
What are his damages then? To bring a lawsuit, you have to be able to show damages. What are SCO's actions costing Linus et. al.
First off, even if your assumption here was correct, a case could definately be made that there were damages, 'reputation' may be something of an intangible but it's tangible enough that many court cases have revolved around it.
But, in point of fact, your assumption is not true - the damages a plaintiff can seek under US copyright law, and that of most other jurisdictions, are not limited to actual damages.
In US law in particular, one may sue in cases of copyright infringement for profits obtained through infringement (read, every penny Caldera/SCO has made through selling GPL software, pretty much every penny they've made period, and this is on top of any damages) and one also has the option of seeking 'statutory damages' instead of 'actual damages' - statutory damages being a sum between $750 and $30,000 per infringement, i.e. per copy of Caldera/SCO Linux sold, in cases where the court does not deem that the infringement was proven to be willfull. In the event a court was convinced that the infringement was indeed willful, statutory damages could be set as high as $150,000 per infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
They'll probably keep that tied up in court while they harvest the list for numbers.
Anyway, I saw something funny in the article: And consultant Mathias argues that some revenue-desperate carriers might not take such a high road. "To opt out, you'd need to write them [a letter] in Swedish," he jokes.
Just in case, as has so often happened in the past, the bad joke of today becomes the reality of tommorrow, here's the Swedish.
Ingen reklam, tack!
What a wildly ignorant comment!
If you're too busy to support standards, and/or cannot distinguish such things from platforms, then it's obvious you're not qualified to be a sys-admin.
Unqualified sys-admins are the source of the majority of network problems, in my experience. And experience is something I've had plenty of.
If they're competent, they would know whether or not they have set their DHCP service up properly - or at least be willing and capable of checking when the question arises.. Of course, in my experience, that's often way too much to ask of IT.
And I'm calling bullshit on you. Contractors normally provide their own equipment. In some cases it's illegal to do it any other way.
War is peace, slavery is freedom, eh comrade?
If I were your employee I'd quit.
First, yes, you are correct. As Linux becomes more popular you'll see more viruses for it, without doubt.
But, it's really not so bad as that might sound. You won't see anything resembling parity with windows, that's for sure. Linux is moderately secure by design (it could be better) whereas Windows is really about as far from secure as is conceivable. I'm not talking about implementation problems - those can be fixed, I'm talking about the basic design of the system.
No matter how popular Linux might become, it's still not going to be so easy to write viruses for, and those that are written will have a much harder time surviving.
You think my time is free? Think again.
I was being extremely conservative in saying a year, btw, it could easily be a week instead, depending on timing. Yes, I can fix most problems myself - pretty much anything that doesn't involve a soldering iron, and some problems that do. So what? My time is far from free. If I only have to format and re-install those windows machines once a year, that's time I could be doing something more productive, and enough of it to pay for the difference in price in getting a Mac.
You make up the $2-300 price differential there on service calls within the first year. Easily.
Highlight what you want. Put the cursor where you want it. Middle click. Once you get the hang of it it's much easier and quicker than messing around than what you're used to.
Not at all. What you quote doesn't say anything of the kind. It says they may enjoin IBM from violating the contract. It doesn't say they can terminate the contract. There is a huge difference.
Last I checked you can get it from SCOs site too. The code in question is, at the very least available under a BSD style license, and is almost certainly public domain anyway. So there is no copyright issue that needs to be remedied and never was - only a contract issue. That contractual issue was remedied.
Actually there are apparently actions against both, with the IBM suit being the biggest. The article was explicitly talking about both of them. So the IBM addenda are definately relevent there.
Also, although I haven't seen it either, SGI claims they have a similar addendum.
Possibly. I'm sure IBMs lawyers have gone over the relevant documents thoroughly, however, in fact I know they did so long before Caldera decided to rebrand themselves as SCO.
Even if SCO prevails in court on that one issue, they're going to get their butts handed to them on so many others it could only be a pyric victory.
They said they did. That doesn't mean they actually did so, in a legally enforceable way. If they can't or won't detail the alleged breach in such a way that SGI could know what to do to rectify it, and/or if the supposed breach is not an actual breach, then it means nothing.
Actually, I think this example makes my point. Under the law as it stands, Eolas was right and that is indeed why they won against an opponent that was in a far better position to wage a legal battle. Eolas didn't dick around with delaying tactics, they got into court and got their ruling. I don't happen to think that the law as it stands in this case is sensible or good, but that's how it is.
SCO claims this is a pretty straightforward case of breach of contract with IBM and SCO (although they keep making contradictory statements on the periphery) and if that were the case it would indeed be the smart business decision to do everything possible to get this in front of a court ASAP. IBM can pay the lawyers indefinately, but SCO cannot. If SCO had a case, they would be trying to get this heard as quickly as possible, and IBM would be the one scurrying around and delaying things interminably.
Nonsense. Getting someone to cave wouldn't affect the legal issues, it wouldn't set a precedent, it certainly wouldn't have any affect on the Aussies. At best, it would mean an infusion of cash.
I'll get a few obvious observations out of the way.
First, they love to cite that original contract, but they don't talk about the addendums. There's a reason for that.
Secondly, even by that contract unamended, they would still have to actually specify what the supposed violations are before they could start the clock running so far as notice. They've steadfastly refused to do this, proving that they're acting in bad faith.
Third, just because they claim something is a violation doesn't make it so. If they really thought they had violations here, they'd be in a hurry to get to court, but instead they've been stalling.
So, in conclusion, more hot air from a guy that's known for it.
That's just the thing though - there's no evidence that they didn't. Caldera had (has? not sure on who they've kicked today) many employees that understand the GPL, and that includes people as high in the organisation as Ransom Love, who was the CEO before McBride. If you read the recent interviews with him, it's clear that he understood it, in a functional sense at least even if he still doesn't seem to understand why we like it.
Even if Darl McBride and the new management team he brought doesn't understand the GPL, which is a big if (I think they're just playing dumb and hoping to confuse people) that doesn't mean Caldera, as an organisation, didn't understand what they were doing when they formed specifically as a Linux distributor long before the current bunch took over. And Ray Noorda, the big man behind the Canopy group, certainly knew what he was getting into.
One error in your otherwise excellent post.
Not at all. Remember, the company that calls itself SCO today bought that name very recently - it is NOT the Santa Cruz Operation that put out Unix on Intel for these many years. It's Caldera Systems. The vast majority of their income has been from Linux. Selling Linux is how they came up with the money to buy the name and the so-called 'IP' from SCO in order to start this scam.
Actually they have several lines of defense.
First, no actual breach has been demonstrated, and TSG seems to be working overtime to avoid demonstrating any breach. IBM has been saying from day 1 "show us the breach" but TSG won't.
Second, in the case of the SGI code in particular, even if it was a breach (which it clearly wasn't,) even the appearance of a breach was remedied as soon as it came to light. No thanks to TSG, btw.
Finally, there are many amendments to that original contract signed later which override that clause. There's nothing illegal about that. McBride and co. like to trot out the main contract but ignore all the sidebars and amendments. A court is not likely to do the same.
Santa Clara? I can see someone hasn't been keeping up with the soap opera very well.
TSG (The SCO Group) is based in Utah. The real SCO was the Santa Cruz Organisation, but they sold the name, along with their crusty ancient Unix branch, to Caldera Linux, which then changed their name to TSG and took to referring to themselves as SCO. These are the morons we're talking about. The Santa Cruz Organisation then renamed themselves Tarantella and concentrated on the remaining parts of their business - the ones that still produce products people will actually buy without being threatened.
No, but it is possible to sue for all revenue generated as a result of the violation, in addition to damages. It's also possible to sue for statutory, rather than actual damages. Statutory damages are a minimum of $750 per infringement. The maximum is substantially higher, and it goes even higher again if you can prove the infringement was willful.
Anyway, this wouldn't really be a test of the GPL, there's nothing to test. It's a case of copyright infringement, and that law has been tested plenty of times.
Remember, if the GPL is somehow 'invalid' that just means they have and have had no right to use the GPL code whatsoever.
No, they're referring to V32, which is one of those ancient unices but is also public domain. Go read up on the BSD case.
That's the same theory under which Stalin and Hussein claimed to be legitimate.
Yes and no.
It may be legal to buy SCOs license. Possibly. But if you buy their license, then turn around and hand a friend a linux disk, let alone put it on ftp, you're in violation. One way or another. Either you violate SCOs license, by distributing under the GPL, or you are violating copyright, by distributing GPL code in breach of the GPL.
IANAL, but if I knew anyone stupid enough to have bought SCOs license, I'd certainly advise them to retain a very good one to figure out their position.
OK, the typo where you put a 1 instead of a 2 has been beaten to death, so I'll say no more about it.
But I can vouch for part what you're saying, he's wrong on this, and the way he phrases it in the paper is a particularly arrogant and revolting bit of flamebait.
My first hard drive was a seagate 20megabyte, st-225 IIRC. It was just over 20 real megabytes, that is just over 21 million bytes in capacity. I remember very clearly, it was marketed as 20mb, sold as 20mb, but it did say something like '21.3mb (million bytes)' on the label after I got it home and looked at it. I remember thinking 'that's odd', shrugging, and installing it. Sure enough, just over 20mb. I got what I paid for, and all was good. Damn drive lasted forever too. I retired it because I didn't have space for it with all my new drives, not because it failed.
Anway, the only reason I won't call Mr. Wiebe a flat-out liar is because of that memory - at that date, at least, they were using both definitions of a megabyte, to some degree, but since the short version was only on the sticker, and it was advertised for what it was, he's being extremely disingenous at best - what he writes may not be technically a lie but it's every bit as deceptive as Clintons famous finger-wagging line. Or maybe he really believed what he wrote, in which case he's an ignorant buffoon. Either way...
IIRC this state of affairs stopped about the time 120mb drives were becoming popular, when one drive manufacturer started advertising the inflated number to make their drives seem like a better value than the competitors (was it Maxtor? Quantum? Anyone remember?) and the others quickly followed suit, despite the stink that was being made on BBSs and Usenet, because they rightly saw that most people didn't know the difference and were being fooled. So they figured they had to inflate their numbers too, in order to stay competitive. And I guess that makes some sense. I remember some started using 'million bytes' instead of MB or megabytes, while the less honest started just labeling their million bytes as megabytes without explanation. And yes, by the time consumer level GB drives came around, I think even the ones that had maintained technical honesty by writing 'million bytes' instead of megabytes dropped all attempts at honesty and the re-definition was a fait accompli.
It's still annoying and dishonest. But at least for the drive manufacturers there is a dollars and cents explanation that makes some sense. Mr. Wiebe, however... what's his excuse?
Wish I could get mod points, cause this AC point really deserves some. Since I don't, I'll just burn a little karma to try to draw attention to it.
First off, even if your assumption here was correct, a case could definately be made that there were damages, 'reputation' may be something of an intangible but it's tangible enough that many court cases have revolved around it.
But, in point of fact, your assumption is not true - the damages a plaintiff can seek under US copyright law, and that of most other jurisdictions, are not limited to actual damages.
In US law in particular, one may sue in cases of copyright infringement for profits obtained through infringement (read, every penny Caldera/SCO has made through selling GPL software, pretty much every penny they've made period, and this is on top of any damages) and one also has the option of seeking 'statutory damages' instead of 'actual damages' - statutory damages being a sum between $750 and $30,000 per infringement, i.e. per copy of Caldera/SCO Linux sold, in cases where the court does not deem that the infringement was proven to be willfull. In the event a court was convinced that the infringement was indeed willful, statutory damages could be set as high as $150,000 per infringement.
Aw, come on, vote for RAW. You know you want to.
I've got a linux box. This is my gaming box. Like it or not, that means that for the timebeing it runs windows.