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SCO Says IBM is Beating Up on Them
Posted by
michael
on Fri Aug 22, 2003 10:28 AM
from the cry-me-a-river dept.
from the cry-me-a-river dept.
SCO's McBride claims that IBM is stage-managing all the attacks and bad press, which would probably explain why I cleared this article with IBM World Headquarters before running it (not!). The publisher of Linux Journal invites SCO to sue. One of SCO's lawyers has this barely coherent interview where he spouts legal rubbish for a gullible reporter. There's an interview in German (machine translation) with SCO's execs. And finally, SCO is still hoping for a settlement with IBM. Update: 08/22 18:26 GMT by M : ESR responds.
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Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
How is a guy ment to make a buck these days
James
Parent
Paranoia (Score:5, Funny)
And we are.
Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no clearer sign that SCO is walking on thin ice here than the desperation of their tactics lately.
Desperate acts:
* They accuse IBM of being this manipulating orwellian company that could somehow motivate us open source advocates to hate them.
* They claim the GPL is invalid on grounds that would effectively destroy the publishing industry if upheld.
* They make many of their claims sound like legal claims without actually filing them in court
They are trying to win a war of public opinion to infalte the stock price. They will lose in court, without question, so they are doing everything they can to try to make IBM bail them out.
IBM is an evil corporation, don't get me wrong, but it's nice to see them excercising a little enlightened self interest and playing chicken with SCO.
Parent
Not "they"; ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)
"You've got all of these guys and it looks like the whole world is coming against SCO."
Geez, Darl, you think? Couldn't be because you're attacking virtually the whole community?
What a putz.
realityshunt
Parent
With apologies to Dave Sim (Score:5, Funny)
"You don't have any...*objections* to signing that, do you...my son?"
Re:With apologies to Dave Sim (Score:5, Funny)
Why do you spell out your punctation questionmark
Parent
Darl must be losing it... (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks, Darl - it's good to kick off the weekend with a good laugh...
Favorite Darl quote (Score:5, Funny)
I think that is a pretty good example of have "relevant" SCO is... This is like the director (?producer, someone else) of Gigli getting quoted as saying "I've seen worse movies [than Gigli]"
Parent
Unilever says it's not going to pay license fees (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1143155
"As far as I'm concerned it's an issue between SCO and IBM, and I expect that IBM's resources will win the day,"
I admit it (Score:5, Funny)
that cnet interviewer... (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the sound of one hand slapping? (Score:5, Funny)
More precisely, what is the sound of an 800 lb. gorilla's one hand slapping?
Or, to be even more exact, what is the sound of an 800 lb. gorilla's one hand slapping an annoying monkey silly?
My friends, it is the sound of delicious justice.
And that other noise? That's the sound of a house of cards beginning to collapse.
Yup (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, and all this proof is, of course, documented with the 'illegal' source code. To see it you'll need to sign an NDA.
Seriously, I don't think Linus' comment that "they are smoking crack" really covered it. McBride obviously seems to believe that the Open Source community isn't capable of refuting their bullshit without the backing of a large company.
Here's a newsflash for you, Darl: IBM doesn't -need- to coordinate an attack on SCO. The way I see it, an attack on one member of the Open Source community is an attack on all of us. And I know it's been said before, but why not: put up or shut up, SCO.
I think you've hit a key point here. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that McBride and Cronys really do believe in their heart of hearts that people are not capable of organizing, co-ordinating, and for that matter, producing functional code, without the direct support of some company as a mastermind.
When you think about it, the forces and processes behind Linux and other Open Source/Free Software are so contrary to what are taught at business schools that it must threaten to make your average MBA's head explode.
In many ways, the whole Free Software movement is a direct refutation of the core principles of the MBA curriculem* I can't wait to see how Alan Cox does on his MBA.
When one reads an SCO press release, one cannot help but imagine a group of dinosaurs confronted by an ice age - and mammals.
DG
* One may interpret through this that I think Free Software in inheritly Communist - and I don't agree. One of the central principles of Communism is Central Planning, and that's NOT how Linux etc development is done - it's more like a free market of ideas. Where the MBA-brainfuck comes in is that this "free market" has absolutely nothing to do with MONEY. There's no PRODUCT here - instead, it's a "free market" designed to provide something for the common good.
So we have a quasi-Capitalist process - with no capital, per sae - in the service of a quasi-Communist ideal. This is, I think, something new and scary, and this fear colours everything coming out of SCO.
Ah, brave new world!
Parent
This clinches it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
A. Because all this SCO fud is being backed by a big corporation (M$).
MS buying shares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering there is 12.6Mu shares outstanding and 40% directly owned by Canopy and 20% indirectly, yesterdays volume is 8% or so of "normal" outstanding tradebable shares.
So question arrises WHO IS BUYING especilly after the code snippet flap earlier in the week.
Consensus, most likely MS' investment arm.
It's the quid pro quo for SCO committing legal suicide.
Parent
A source of nutrients (Score:5, Funny)
I always wondered where they went... (Score:5, Funny)
I guess I found them:
McBride proudly dumped two phone-book-sized binders of press clippings on the stage during his SCO Forum keynote on Monday as proof that his company had become more relevant in the high technology industry. SCO has issued 46 press releases since filing suit against IBM on March 7. Last year it issued only 29 press releases between March and August.
Here I was, worried about unemployment among the "visionary entrepreneur" community. They're working for SCO! And just look at those results -- they've had a 58% increase in press release generation in just one year! I'm so glad to see that they've landed on their feet.
Too bad the rug's about to get yanked out from under them again.
One issue to raise (Score:5, Insightful)
If they did this, however, they would have to show a *minimal* amount of compelling evidence. Enough so that it is justified, but not necessarily the amount it would take to prove the case in a court trial.
My bet is they know they don't have this much evidence. They are simply trying to extort license money from gullible companies. If they saught an injunction, and were denied, all their posturing would immediately be disregarded.
Anyway, just something I was thinking about. Mabey they did seek one already. I admit I've become lazy in my SCO-story-reading duties.
And they expected Chocolates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Boo-Hoo.
Frankly, I think they misdirrected their frustration - I think the OSS community has piled on worse than IBM at this point. Bruce Perins blew the crap out of their Vegas presentation. Linus says the "smoke crack". Grocklaw rips them a new one every day.
IBM is the storm cloud on the horrizon. SCO hasn't even begun to feel what they have in store.
"pre-empted by copyright law" (Score:5, Insightful)
When they say "the GPL is pre-empted by copyright law", they don't mean that the GPL is invalid. What they mean is this: You can't GPL something you don't own. In other words, the fact that the code in dispute was distribute "under the GPL license" is irrelevant -- the company which did that (IBM) didn't own the code, so the fact that they "licensed" the code under the GPL is irrelevant.
Psychology, pathology, personal impressions (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile back at SCO, apparently they're not buying crazy because they've got a stock of it. Claiming IBM is orchestrating some conspiracy to attack them is just another one of the bizarre psychological acrobatic displays we've seen from SCO, admittedly one of the more impressively stupid ones since this started.
Looking at the articles, I'm feeling SCO is stuck in a "ratchet it up until they give in" mentality, where they'll keep making attacks and outrageous claims until someone gives in and buys them or gives them lots of money. However, they have to count on people backing down - which isn't really happening. Since they have no other options, I think they're going to keep at it.
I actually do wonder just how in touch with reality some of the SCO execs are. Now that they've committed to a business path based on lawsuits and dubious legal claims, they can't really back out, so it seems they're becoming wrapped up in the worlds they created to justify their claims.
Expect it to get even more insane.
Get your popcorn out.
SCO Predictions - What's next? (Score:5, Interesting)
- SCO ammends lawsuit to claim damages done by IBM's 'interference' with their business.
- SCO announces new 'secure' initiative (don't they all)
- Darl McBride claims that the original BSD/AT&T lawsuit is invalid and therefore not relevant to SCO, i.e. 'All Code Are Belong To Us'
- SCO accuses the GPL as promoting communism in China, socialism in Europe, and drug use in California.
- David Boies will never make another appearance unless SCO 're-rents' him for another day.
- SCO will continue to reap the benefits of open source projects like GCC and SAMBA and yet slam the GPL for being too 'restrictive' on IP.
Far Future Prediction:
SCO's execs will be living in luxury on some tropical island while their customers, users, resellers, and programmers get totally screwed.
"That's just the way it is. Some things will never change." - Bruce Hornsby
Parent
Clueful Judge (Score:5, Informative)
Groklaw has very extensive research on Kimball's history [weblogs.com], which is nicely summarized and easy to read. Every case has links to much more detail. The overall appearance is that Kimball will probably do the right thing.
Probably most important is the Jacobsen vs Hughes copyright case [deseretnews.com]. Apart from considering much of the material uncopyrightable historical facts, Judge Kimball was quite unimpressed by the plaintif's failure to act in a timely manner to mitigate damages. Quoting from that article:
Obviously this bodes quite well for IBM and all Linux users. SCO of course will claim they stopped distribution of linux, but this ruling at least shows that Judge Kimball isn't likely to be be charmed with the deplorable way SCO has conducted itself. Kimball's willingness to consider the writing a separate work, even though a part of it was loosely based on Jacobsen's also casts quite a shadow over SCO's chances (assuming the unlikely worst case scenario that SCO has an ace up its sleeve, rather than the bogus examples we've seen so far). It's certainly a good sign that Kimball is unlikely to buy SCO expansive theories about what constitutes a derivitive work.
The groklaw page has examples where Kimball has ruled against big business, where he's shown competence at handling software intellectual property disputes (eg, Altiris vs Symantec), and where he's handled very complex cases.
While nothing is 100% certain going into the courtroom, it is a fact that the Judge Kimball has been selected to hear this case. His history shows he's competent, fair, and at least in Jacobsen vs Hughes, he doesn't tollerate the sort of shenanigans SCO has been pulling!
If they really had a case (Score:5, Informative)
What ever happened to the idea that once a case was under way it was sub judice, and if either party discussed it outside the courtroom it was highly prejudicial to their interests?
An honest question (Score:5, Insightful)
But from what I can tell, SCO argues if one of THEIR files (or some of their files) touches Linux, then Linux is essentially theirs, especially because Linux apparently benefitted from the code they "own."
Maybe its just me, but there appears to be some hypocracy here (OK, it's SCO, expecting hypocracy is a default setting). Maybe it relates to their twisted take on GPL and Copyright, but I think the lawyer's statement really makes them look worse.
Thoughts on this?
Signs of Mental Breakdown (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that there haven't been many signs already that SCO has lost touch with reality, but adding in the "it's all a conspiracy by IBM" really indicates that the paranoia has gone into high gear.
[It's akin to Hillary's claims of a "vast right wing conspiracy" out to get Bill. There certainly was (and is) a "vast right wing" that delighted in hating Bill Clinton; but that doesn't make it a "conspiracy".]
McBride's sources (Score:5, Funny)
"McBride declined to reveal the sources of his allegations,
Anyone have a guess as to who these McBride sources are? My hunch is Miss Cleo.
100,000,000,000 press releases! (Score:5, Funny)
ok, ok, old joke, but I just couldn't resist how he's so proud of his 40+ releases.
From the Mark Heise interview... (Score:5, Interesting)
Quote:
Uhhhmmm... It isn't fair to make fun of people with learning difficulties, I know; but -- they pay this guy to work as a lawyer? He can't even construct a sentence!
And then further down he says:
Well, no you're not, but only because the SCO Group is just a new name for Caldera. You'd forgotten these ones, had you, Mark?
Documentation/networking/tlan.txt:(C) 1997-1998 Caldera, Inc.
drivers/net/tlan.c: * (C) 1997-1998 Caldera, Inc.
drivers/net/tlan.h: * (C) 1997-1998 Caldera, Inc.
net/ipx/af_ipx.c: * Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc. <greg@caldera.com>
net/ipx/af_ipx.c: KERN_INFO "IPX Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc.\n" \
You know what would be really interesting (editors, bloggers, are you listening)? It would be really interesting to hear what Marcus Meissner <Marcus.Meissner@caldera.de> and Greg Page <greg@caldera.com> think about all this.
McBride is scared... (Score:5, Funny)
McBride: That's like if someone comes into your house while you're sleeping, takes your jewels, and as you start chasing them down...
I'm no expert, but having dreams about about somebody cutting your balls off and running off with them doesn't sound good to me!
SCO: GPL is valid after all? (Score:5, Insightful)
Heise, a SCO lawyer, claimed that GPL was "pre-empted by federal copyright law", to which Eben Moglen, FSF General Counsel, replied [gnu.org]. Heise repeats his argument in the CNET interview [com.com].
But in the same CNET interview Heise also says:
So - according to Heise - GPL is valid after all!
The only way to make any sense of this is that Heise's real argument - at least today - is that "GPL is pre-empted by federal copyright law" if something is released under GPL without right owners consent... This is of course trivial: if you release someone else's program under GPL without her permission then the GPL is obviously not valid (in that particular instance). But if you release your own or somebody else's code with her permission under GPL then GPL is valid and enforceable.
SCO secretly hires Iraqi Information Minister... (Score:5, Funny)
The SCO FAQ (revision 2) (Score:5, Funny)
A: SCO is run by a bunch of vicious, lying, cowardly, greedy, sociopathic lawyers.
Q: Why is IBM being so slow to respond?
A: IBM is still coming to terms with the fact that a company such as SCO would be so entirely suicidal and stupid. They are not used to dealing with complete and utter morons.
Q: Do SCO's actions present a danger to the Linux and OSS community?
A: Yes, a sociopathic killer who hates you can present a danger. He might just get lucky with that ax he is waving.
Q: Are SCO doing this for the money, for the shares?
A: SCO's executives will end up in prison getting midnight visits from large violent criminals. But that kind of logic never stopped a sociopath before.
Q: How can I defend myself from SCO?
A: This would be a good time to move to Texas and get a larger gun.
Q: Does SCO have any valid arguments at all?
A: Strictly speaking, all arguments have equal merit when digested by stupid and possibly corrupt members of the press, as government ministries of disinformation have shown over the centuries. SCO remain, however, a stinkin' bunch of evil mutant fiends, and everthing they say should be taken to be concentrated pranoid drivel.
Q: Who stands to gain from this circus?
A: Entertainment is good for everyone, and it has been a slow summer, so SCO is actually contributing to the mental well-being of many people with their daily antics. For this we should be grateful. If you mean financial gain, the only party who stands to gain is Microsoft, who enjoy watching people attack the GPL and Free Software, because these represent a way of life that is entirely incompatible with its own.
Q: Could Microsoft actually be behind SCO?
A: Is George Bush the President of the US? OK, poor comparison. Yes, of course they are. Even evil, corrupt, whore-mongering, cocaine-sniffing running dogs like SCO's executives have a sense of self-interest and only leap into dark holes when they know they will be paid well for it.
Q: How is Microsoft paying SCO, then?
A: It only has to pay the executives. SCO is a publicly traded company. I presume MS is offering the SCO legal eagles direct and indirect financial support, promises of future comfort, what have you. There are so many ways...
Q: Should I be buying SCO shares?
A: YES, and if you do, I also have some very nice shares in a brand-new satellite network called Iridium that might interest you. They are sure to do amazing things!!
Screw You, McBride. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck off, McBride. You've got an entire community of angry developers and end-users that are pissed because you refuse to cooperate in resolving this issue. Instead of giving us proof to back up your ludicrous claims, you just sit back and say "Give us money!". Do you really think that we are all that stupid? Nobody is going to give you shit (except, perhaps, for Micrsoft) until you produce some solid evidence... We're ALL going to be after your ass, in some form or another. If the courts find that you have no solid proof, after all, then I'll personally be among the first to jump into a class-action lawsuit against you and your cronies.
IBM hasn't wired shit for relationships. You're just too goddamn stupid to admit that you're digging your own grave. Better bail out while the stocks are high, bucko.
The bottom line. You're going to crash and burn. You're pissed because your company was unable to adapt and your products were bested by FREE alternatives. There's nothing left for you to do except blow smoke up everyone's asses.
You're going to ultimately have every Linux company in the world after you... Doesn't that feel great?
Millions of customers, or hundreds? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think i speak for all of us when I say (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I think i speak for all of us when I say (Score:5, Interesting)
More relevant in the high tech industry? Just by spouting trash all this time will make you more relevant? I guess writing good code and marketing it properly wasn't part of the business plan after all. Sad.
"McBride also pointed to the involvement in the dispute of the Free Software Foundation, whose legal counsel, Eben Moglen, has issued a position paper critical of SCO, and Linus Torvalds, who has been increasingly vocal in his criticism of the Unix company. "You've got all of these guys and it looks like the whole world is coming against SCO. It's really IBM that has wired in all of these relationships," he said. "That's why it looks like they're sitting back and not doing anything. It's us fighting a whole bunch of people that they put on the stage."
What's amusing here is that SCO doesn't realize that it really IS the whole community going after them and they REALLY HAVE pissed off everyone on the planet. WTF did they think would happen? We would simply bend over and pay up like good little lemmings?
Speaking of which... I still haven't received any payments from SCO for the use of my code in UnixWare. I'm pretty sure it's there. Honest
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Re:First long, thoughful post. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh come on. This is their same claim that Federal Copyright only allows 1 copy for backup and the GPL allows multiple copies and is therefore invalid.
Somehow out of all this, they conclude that since Federal Copyright only allows 1 copy, the GPL is invalid and they are now free to make unlimited copies. After all, they are STILL distributing the kernel and, even if you can accept that 1 million lines belong to them, the rest DON'T. Under their own theory, SCO is guilty of vast copyright infringement.
And this, of course, completely ignores the fact that the Federal Copyright law still allows the OWNER of a copyright to authorize additional copies. Duh.
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You've got to be kidding (Score:5, Interesting)
The Open Source community has shown pretty definitively that the source code you displayed was not stolen. Was that your best shot and if not, show me your best shot now, not under NDA.
Your theory of a derivative work is really stretching. Would you please tell me why you think that JFS is a derivative work of Unix? Under a theory that makes JFS a derivative work, aren't you saying that all Unix device drivers are also derivative works? What are the limits to your theory of derivative works?
SCO insiders have been dumping a lot of stock lately. Why aren't your execs holding onto what should become a vastly more valuable commodity?
I'm sure others can add a bunch more hard hitting questions. The interview was a fluff piece at best.
Parent
Maybe slashdot should conduct an interview then... (Score:5, Insightful)
All I'm saying is that was probably the most level-headed, least-spun-out interview between the press and SCO's reps I've seen so far. Maybe that's not saying much...
I imagined myself reading that for the first time knowing little or nothing about the case or the GPL and realizing that the lawyer sounded quite reasonable from that point of view.
Now imagine you're an unbiased jury member (drawn from that same pool), and you here the same line of Q&A. Do you see where i'm going with this?
Parent
Re:incoherent (Score:5, Insightful)
- completely at odds with what the law actually states;
- not even applicable in the current context, which is not about "making a legal backup of licensed software that doesn't otherwise permit copying"
- contrary to the entire body of contract law
- full of lame meanderings, circumlocutions, and just plain bad sentence constructs/grammar
Besides, he still sounds like he's smoking more crack than the worstIt's incoherent in part because it matches everything else SCO has been doing lately.
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Re:First long, thoughful post. (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you address claims that SCO's demonstrated evidence so far is not theirs to copyright!
Nobody has answered the questions about the four kernal modules origin and algorithms being textbook common knowledge - in whole or in part. Why is this considered IP?
Why did SCO keep distributing the GPL'd code while putting out press releases?
Why does SCO make use of many many GPL'd tools for their own product?
Why does SCO [threaten to] spread this lawsuit out to Linux users instead of only IBM's copyright infringement case?
How is SCO planning a business model around a licensed copy of Linux when it will be quickly obsolete once the full body of evidence is released?
What are your definitions of "derivative works" in this case? Would future version of Linux without any SCO IP be within those bounds?
Why are the true numbers of lost existing customers for SCO due directly to their adopting a "free" Linux alternative? How are they calculating damages?
Can SCO provide the complete code references to things it DID contribute to Linux (as SCO or Caldera) and thus differentiate between given and stolen?
These are just a few things I'd like to ask anyone at SCO, legal or not, or both!
mug
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Re:Whole reminds me of the British empire (Score:5, Informative)
Linux Programmers: We don't need a copyright. We wrote it and we have the GPL.
Should read:
Linux Programmers: Duh, of course we have copyright! Without it the code couldn't be GPL'd.
GPL'd code is copyrighted by its author, it is NOT public domain. End broken-record mode.
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Re:Fuck them. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Fuck them. (Score:5, Funny)
Interviewer: Mr. McBride, how tall are you?
McBride: (answers)
Interviewer: Gee, I didn't know you could pile shit that high.
On a side note, I had to defend McBride the other day, when someone said he wasn't fit to sleep with a pig. I said, "That's not true".
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Linus won't sign an NDA... of COURSE not! (Score:5, Insightful)
Any Linux developer would be INSANE to sign anything like SCO's NDA, as it would end their Linux career then and there. OF COURSE Linus won't go near it...
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