IBM Doesn't Comply With SCO's Deadline 593
prostoalex writes "IBM refused to settle with SCO and comply with their deadline, expiring Friday the 13th. "We've got a strong defense case, and we're going to fight it", IBM representative is quoted."
I hate to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I hate to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM has been around for over 50 years now...They have a DoJ sized legal department that is now out for blood.
My money is on Big Blue
Sick of this crap... (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone here knows that Linux is kicking the shit out of Microsoft on the server, and they [M$]know it's not long before it starts cutting into their desktop margins.
This stuff is making me sick. It's a joke, it's friggin' "high-tech ambulance chasing".
I can't wait until they lose and I hope IBM find's something suspect in the case so that they can reveal the true evil behind all this...
I fear that IBM will win. (Score:0, Insightful)
Yes, this opinion might surprise you, but let's look at the fundamental issue of todays open source system:
Modern OSS lack original ideas. Linus created Linux - as he claimed himself - as a Unix clone, to give himself and students access to a decent Unix-like OS on x86 basis. The same goes for many other OSS projects. Usually the ideas of commercial software are copied (of course not the code nobody is that stupid). And this makes exactly OSS always vulnerable to bongus attacks like SCO's nonsense claims.
If SCO would be successful then OSS will be forced to step beyond its inital hobbiest pratices and do original innovation at scientific level. There are some movements in this direction like OpenBSD, but the mass is sticking to the ole power-through-copy concepts like Linux etc.
But we can go beyond this. OSS can make cutting-edge software and the highest innovation level. And we can, indeed much easier than any commercial company, refuse any bounds to old deprecated systems by "compatibility arguments". People should just stop to emacs and vi onto any crappy platform but do something productive and insightful instead.
Re:Sick of this crap... (Score:5, Insightful)
Additionally, I must repeat what has been said before.. "I won't at all feel sorry for SCO when they get completely trashed in court." Also I think this whole case shows how desperate Microsoft has really become to try to spread FUD about linux, to resort to such crude and ineffective methods.
Daniel
Re:Who are we cheering for? (Score:5, Insightful)
If SCO lose because their rights have not been infringed upon, as seems likely, then that doesn't say anything bad about the GPL at all. How could it?
You're assuming ownership... (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, SCO has to prove that the code in question is in fact "theirs". Considering the rather incestuous family tree that is UNIX that is not so cut and dry.
Additionally, there are allegations that SCO has been helping themselves to GPL'd code without credit or redistribution.
No, the thing we're learning here is that if you really have an IP case against Linux or another GPL project than just be right out in the open. Document the code and PROVE your case. Don't hide behind lawyers, NDA's, horribly out of context quotes and vaguely threatening letters.
And, oh yeah, it helps if you can at least stick to one story for greater than a week.
Re:Who are we cheering for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, this is a no brainer, IBM all the way.
Go blue!
Re:Who are we cheering for? (Score:5, Insightful)
And if SCO wins, it'll send a message to the world that you can't trust any GPLed product, because a contributor might suddenly determine that, oops, some of the code in it was "unintentionally" released-- and therefore, you never really had a license to use/distribute it in the first place.
Of course, you really have to break this case into four separate decisions:
1) Did IBM steal proprietary code from SCO in violation of an NDA, and include that code in their Linux release?
2) Does SCO even own the copyrights to that code, or do they still belong to Novell, in which case the determination in (1) may or may not be important.
3) Assuming (1) and (2) break in favor of SCO, does SCO have the right to sue Linux end-users for posessing/distributing Linux code, even if the end-users didn't know they were breaking the law? This turns on...
4) Does SCO's distributing their own version of Linux (under the GPL) invalidate any copyright claims they might have made on code that was (without their knowledge) included in the Linux codebase? In other words, if you steal my code and hide it in a corner of the Linux kernel, can I legally be deprived of my rights to it just because I distributed a copy of Linux?
Quite frankly, the best outcome is for SCO just to drop this nonsense.
Re:I hate to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
Suck it up bitches, I'm looking forward to seeing IBM rip you into small pieces and feed you to the dogs. I only hope that considerable finacial harm can also come to Daryl et al personally.
And I don't think I'm alone in this viewpoint.
Re:Sick of this crap... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish that too, but it will not happen, unless direct collusion can be proven. I doubt it ever will. Remember, MS has the best, most experienced legal team in the business (they need it). There is no way to prove that they gave SCO money to pursue the case, even though that is almost certainly true.
Re:Sad and tragic (Score:3, Insightful)
SCO needs to be destroyed. No bought or settled with, but crushed, utterly and completely. What they have done is unethical, immoral and (hopefully) completely without legal base.
Your wish is most likely granted, and it's going to be by SCO's own hand. Someone called them "the 800-pound gorilla" a while back, when I mentioned that they should be bought up. They may still be an 800-pound gorilla, but gorillas don't fare very well against a well-trained sharpshooter (read: IBM).
What's going to destroy them? Simple. IBM, and anyone else who wanders along and wants to buy in, will happily dedicate the financial resources needed to tie SCO's suit up in court for years. SCO will simply go broke from litigation costs. I doubt even MSFT is going to stand by them, no matter the appearances of MSFT's recent purchase of a license from SCO. This, of course, is predicated on the court not tossing the whole thing out in the first two weeks as a frivolous lawsuit.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a banana split or something.
Re:I fear that IBM will win. (Score:5, Insightful)
First, OpenBSD is probably one of the LEAST innovative software projects. It has to be -- innovative means untested, which usually means insecure. Hardly appropriate for a system which strives for the ultimate in security.
Second, SCO's claims have nothing to do with originality of ideas. They have everything to do with alleged code theft. You will have that problem in any open-source project, period. If it's actually innovative, you may also run into patents, which are much more of a problem.
Third, nobody wants "innovative" software, if innovative simply means "different". This is the fundamental difference between a computer science research project and enterprise-class software (which is what Linux is quickly becoming). Rejecting compatibility, adding "cutting-edge" features, and creating a brand-new untested design are all symptoms of amateurism and are OK for college students, but not for serious use. Rejectng backwards compatibility and/or a proven design is just like saying "let's tear down New York City and rebuild it with wider streets in order to solve traffic problems." It's a rather childish suggestion.
Re:Who are we cheering for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you have sympathy for M$ if their DOS business was threatened by FreeDOS, or would you tell them to grow up and spend a few dollars on R&D?
I find it ironic that SCO/Caldera is the first company to be killed by Linux while simultaneously failing as a Linux company. Good riddance.
Re:I hate to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe SCO can suceed on becomming the most hated company. But I don't think they suceed on becomming the most dangerous company however hard they try. If SCO loose the case, there'll probably be nothing left. So we can laugh at them and go back hating Microsoft.
Re:I hate to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I fear that IBM will win. (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, the entire suite of internet protocols was stolen from, uh, um...oh.
Well then Web Browsers must have been stolen from uh, um...oh.
Well then multi targettable compilers such as GCC must surely have been stolen from, uh, um...oh.
In that case, Perl, Python, Ruby and TeX must surely have been ripped straight off from, uh, um...oh.
Yeah, nothing inovative ever happens in OSS.
Expect IBM to (counter)sue (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if SCO are right, revoking the licencse is the wrong thing to do. The correct thing for SCO to do is to sue IBM. If SCO ask for an injuction to stop IBM selling AIX, it will most certainly be denied because they have offered no proof. Revoking the license is wrong, because (unless the contract explicily states that SCO can do this) it will violate SCO's contract with IBM. In IBM's suit, IBM shows the contract and SCO revokation letter to the judge and jury and SCO loses.
Two wrongs do not make a right, so SCO has to be careful to follow a clear and rational path to redress their alleged grievances. Their public statments already put them on shaky ground and can be used in any suit that IBM would want to bring. IBM are playing it cool and are not saying anything except denying SCO's changing allegations.
Re:I hate to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
They sold census-tabulating machines, that's true. It's not as if the Germans said "Hi, we'd like some machines to help us exterminate Jews please". Every nation takes censuses periodically, so there was nothing to raise a red flag.
You can't blame IBM for this, otherwise it just gets ridiculous... after all, Ford isn't responsible if a bank robber makes his getaway in a Ford truck, is it?
Re:Who are we cheering for? (Score:3, Insightful)
SCO's tactics are a study of ill will. What an honest company would do if they found their code in some GPL software is send an email informing the project leader. Then, certainly 99% of the time, the offending code would be removed from the project. End of story.
SCO isn't protecting their code. They're attempting to blackmail another company for monetary reasons.
MS isn't behind all this, it's Sun (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I fear that IBM will win. (Score:1, Insightful)
I always thought that OpenBSD's goal was to create bug-free software by "doing things right". This includes fixing bugs, and taking steps to ensure that they're not created in the first place. Security is simply an after-effect of software that is designed right, without bugs.
OpenBSD has made some innovations here, like somewhat more paranoid string functions in libc, and probably some changes I'm not too familiar with, since I don't use OBSD much. (Though I do somewhat, and like it very much.)
Anyway. Then you have your encryption. OpenBSD uses encryption where a lot of other Unices didn't. OBSD is what inspired most of us to ditch telnet. They raised public awareness of the problem.
Unix security was actually something of a joke before groups like OpenBSD came along. If you don't believe me, look at an older release of a proprietary Unix. Unix was notoriously buggy. Buffer overflows were more common. OBSD changed the general attitude towards creating bug-free software on Unix, at least somewhat.
The state of Linux binary compatibility is not that bad, and the state of source compatibility is much better.
I don't think introducing an incompatible interface, or changing a struct somewhere that will require recompiles of maybe a few programs or DLLs, has quite the same consequence as tearing down a city. Most of these changes occur in the kernel, or in internal parts that programs don't have to worry about, such as parts of the kernel that userland doesn't see, or parts of a DLL that programs aren't supposed to be using. If any struct is exported somewhere, people generally try to make that struct forward-compatible. The libc also does a good job of generally keeping things happy.
There aren't a whole lot of changes in Linux or GNU libc that cause an old binary not to run, especially if you keep old libraries around.. Most Linux apps you will use will have source available anyway, and if not, you're not out of luck, either. I remember one instance, when an old binary I needed wouldn't run. I wrote a small DLL which I inserted into LD_PRELOAD that emulated the old behavior of a syscall that had changed. It worked.
One thing that is annoying at times, I'll admit: proprietary kernel modules. They always break, because it's hard for them to stay one step ahead of Linus and his merry men. It's possible that they need to have more of a separation between drivers and code that is subject to change... But some of the breakage I can understand, and expect. For instance, much of the code that breaks between major releases, e.g. 2.2 -> 2.4 -> 2.5. Drivers break between NT -> 2k -> XP too. Even from 98 to 98-SE and ME, Windows drivers broke! Kernels and subsystems change structure, and they need to in order to improve. Do you want every driver to disable interrupts for the whole system? No; that ruins SMP performance. That's why that is no longer possible with 2.5. Drivers will need to be adapted. Tough.
Compatibility can go too far, too, and compromise the integrety of a system. Look at Windows 95, or, say, the IA-32 architecture. Both bend over backwards to be compatible with 16-bit code. There are plenty of operating systems and processors that can be considered "cleaner" than those, and both Intel and Microsoft have moved in the direction of abandoning the old stuff anyway. The current Windows isn't designed with 16-bit code in mind. Neither is IA-64.
There's also bug-for-bug compatibility, which is bad in the long run. For instance, when
Re:place your bets!! (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to litigation, IBM is a prize fighter who knows where to hit and knows to hit there very hard.
So there are three possibilities as I see it:
1) SCO wants to be bought out. Darl McBride has mentioned this in the past as being a reasonable thing for SCO's shareholders.
2) SCO wants a token settlement from IBM to use as a weapon for suing other companies who have Linux deployed without a Unix license.
3) SCO has a solid foundation to their case.
Hiring a well-known lawyer like David Boies (ahem, didn't the justice department win the battle but lose the war in their anti-trust suit against microsoft??) seems to imply either #1 or #2. Giving "experts" very small selections of code (80 lines?? give me a break!) for media propaganda suggests either #1 or #2.
I guess agree with what you closed with, SCO probably doesn't even have a case to begin with.
Re:Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Only because they probably don't have any code inserted into Linux. But if they did, it would be under the GPL.
SCO clams that someone from inside IBM inserted their code into Linux
No, they are most definitely NOT claiming this.
They are claiming two things - first that "someone" put their code into Linux.
Second, they are claiming that IBM used "knowledge" of their OS to make Linux better.
The two issues are completely separate.
There are no allegations of code theft against IBM. Their sole complaint is "Linux hackers suck, so the only way that Linux could compete against us is if IBM helped them."
Now, if there really is SCO-owned code in Linux, SCO distributed that code knowingly. They know it's there, they know that the kernel is covered under the GPL, and they are still distributing it [caldera.com].
SCO is implicitly licensing their code under the GPL because they continue to distribute Linux. They must have agreed with the GPL, because nothing else grants them the right to continue distributing it.
even if they had never touched the GPL they still would have had code leakage
True, and thier actions state exactly how much any alleged code is worth to them.
The doctrine of laches says that if an injured party wants to claim damages, they must minimize the damages. Since SCO won't allow anyone to remove the alleged code (they refuse to say what the alleged code is, or where it is), then they are unable to claim injury.
By refusing to tell anyone what the alleged code is, they are effectively saying that any code that might be in the kernel is worthless to them.
Re:I hate to say... (Score:1, Insightful)
it's seeming like gun companies might be responsible if thugs use thier products in the commission of a crime
Re:Sad and tragic (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't think that you've caught onto the idea of Free software yet.
If anyone tries to cut SCO out of GPL programs, they might be liable. And in the worst case, SCO probably already has the code, and if need be could update the software themselves, possibly even using the patches for other OSes. This would be easy since Unix is highly portable.
Free software protects against people against the source code going away. Free software can even protect against itself. If not, how could any abandoned part of the Linux kernel source be used?
Ain't Free software grand?!
Re:SCO stock at 28 month high (Score:2, Insightful)
A couple of things to keep in mind:
Total number of shares outstanding: 12.2 million
Total shares being publically traded: 3.9 million
The public 'float' is 3.9 M shares, worth 43.7 Million dollars.
8.3 million shares are held within the company, unisssued or as backing for option and stock grants. SCO has been beating the litigation drum for a while now, making noises to run up the stock. But now...
They are going to court, and David Boies of Boies, Schiller and Flexner probably is not working pro bono (for charity). He'll want to be paid, at his usual rates.
The company has 4.94 million in cash as of the last reported quarter. Their income (available to common) for the past 12 months is -3.4 million. Given that they'll spend almost that much to continue operating at a loss for the next 12 months, they cannot spend all of that on lawyers and remain a viable business.
So, where will the money come from?
Easy. They'll just issue more shares or options to be backed by new shares. What's that do to existing shareholders? It's called dilution. More shares, same business, less value per share.
And, given that the huge runup in stock value from 0.60 to 11/share was driven by speculation of a buyout or settlement for gobs of cash, which isn't going to happen, I'd say the stock has peaked.
I'll be buying put options Monday. (That's a mechanism to short a stock without the unlimited upside risk.
Re:I hate to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, well, maybe, but until you've actually died rather than do something against your will, would you mind dropping the air of superiority?
Re:I hate to say... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: Huh -- Criminal behaviour by MS and SCO (Score:2, Insightful)
Yep. And if the code is in Linux, it's very possible that it was planted there by someone working for Microsoft or SCO.
Susceptibility to planted evidence is not unique to Open Source. I could just as easily pay a Microsoft employee to plant some stolen code in Windows.
It would, however, be harder to show the authorities that Windows contained the stolen code, due to Windows being closed source.
That's not an argument in favor of Windows. Quite the contrary, it is a good reason to use Open Source software. With Windows, for example, you never know what code you are running, or when it might come back to bite you -- see the Stacker case.
The only real danger to Linux is the same danger that faces every major Microsoft competitor, namely, that Microsoft is a criminal organization, that has been caught commiting sabotage and fraud (as shown by the evidence in the Java, DR-DOS and DOJ cases), yet the law keeps looking the other way.
> By refusing to tell anyone what the alleged code is, they are effectively saying that any code that might be in the kernel is worthless to them.
That's a good point, and I would go further.
By claiming that Linux contains stolen code, then refusing to say where it is, SCO is intentionally damaging Linux businesses. I liken SCO's behaviour to someone who calls in a bomb threat.
Even if they played no part in planting the code, by refusing to say where the "bomb" is located, SCO is making themselves an accomplice after the fact. SCO is taking part in a criminal act against Linux companies, the severity of which depends on whether the threat is real.
It seems to me that SCO is opening themselves up to a large countersuit.
Re:If you own SCOX stock, you'd better read this. (Score:3, Insightful)
So who is it? Previously, I thought it must be a well-known company that wants to remain secret because it fears bad publicity from being associated with SCO. Perhaps someone like Sun, who might even believe that the suit is baseless but sees a license as a form of insurance.
Based on the 10Q, I see another possibility: A shell corporation set up solely for the purpose of selling stock and channeling the money back to the company as licensing fees. This would be a classic pyramid scheme: A company whose only product is its own stock, using a shell corporation to make it appear to be dealing in something real.
Re:I hate to say... (Score:1, Insightful)
>You can't blame IBM for this, otherwise it just >gets ridiculous... after all, Ford isn't >responsible if a bank robber makes his getaway in a >Ford truck, is
>it?
That's actually a bad example. Ford was an anti-semite who bankrolled Hitler in the 1920's.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/4229/usnz
Re:Huh??? Plenty of safer places (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't think the world economy will follow? *Starting* with the Euro?
Traditional Way of Programming (Score:2, Insightful)