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Groklaw Traces Contribution of ABIs back to SCO.
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Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.
Their contribution... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:2, Insightful)
Future SCO's (Score:4, Insightful)
What's to prevent any other contributor from pulling a future SCO? Especially when you have a codebse that has such a large number of contributors. And a large variety of licenses.
Where will Groklaw head... (Score:5, Insightful)
I appreciate they are doing a very worthy work (and getting the slashdot crowd to a more informed talk about SCO, something necessary because the old jokes are starting to become _really_ old).
I sure would like them to go on when this SCO fiasto bluffs down. The free software world really needs an army of lawyers and paralawyers, if we want to stay long. I only can say "Kudos to you, groklawyers! Go on!"
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:5, Insightful)
Isnt that the truth that Groklaw are probably biased against SCO?
Groklaw has probably uncovered quite a lot of dirt on SCO that is correct, and I doubt that they lie about anything.
But if one has taken sides on an issue, can we trust that the person wont turn a blind eye on some facts? Will he present facts that might not go down to well with his own version and side?
I think it is only a fair comment.
SCO are probably a bunch of liars, but underestimating and brushing aside an opponent as "nothing" WILL in most cases come back and bite you in the *ss.
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps a dissenting view is a neccessity. If you want to worry about fair and unbiased, leave that to a judge in a courtroom. Beyond that, people are biased by nature.
Jeez, we're on
Re:Future SCO's (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the SCO pattern. They have made claims ranging from contract dispute with IBM to every OS in existance owing SCO IP money. They have nothing whatsoever to lose. They will merely pursue any interpretation of events which results in people owing them money. I don't know how they'll twist this yet, but since logic doesn't seem to have much to do with it they might say they were an unauthorized release and try to make some specific employee the goat, claim that the ABIs are an insignificant part of their total IP in Linux, or other things I'm not warped enough to think of. They aren't going to shut up for anything.
Even if after everything we've heard from them to date falls through, they may try to make the claim in court that every OS in existance is derived from SCO IP, and that being the case Linux users STILL owe SCO money, regardless of code. Nonsense yes, but when has that ever stopped them before?
Folks, the individual details of this don't matter at all. That's not what this is about. This is about SCO looking for a way - any way - to get Linux users to pay them. Knocking down a given specific detail won't phase them in the least. Until SCO in its current form is gone, we will never hear the end of this. Remember, they apparently even sent that letter to Congress saying open/free software was a threat to the US software industry! Their only concern is to come out on top, period. How is of no consequence.
Yes, this news could be useful to the likes of IBM (I can't see Groklaw so it's hard to say
Re:Technology is Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I think SCO's ownership and their backers believe the latter, but could only trump up a quasi-case for the former.
Re:Where will Groklaw head... (Score:2, Insightful)
Most things *exist* long before they are noted on
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:5, Insightful)
However, if legal research finds a picture of Darl wearing a pair of shoes he says he never owned, well, than that's what they did. Bias doesn't even come into it.
Then it would be up to Darl to try to explain away the picture by saying it was Christmas and his cat DDOSed his regular shoes so he demanded that IBM loan him those, or some such nonesense.
And if it goes to trial Darl will have to try to put the glove on IBM.
KFG
Re:Their contribution... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:5, Insightful)
Bias doesn't automatically indicate dishonesty. Are they biased against SCO? Sure. Does this mean they're looking primarily at SCO rather than the OSS community for evidence of malfeasance? Sure does. Does this mean that evidence they find is worthless? Nope (it's PGP signed by Caldera fer gosh sakes). Just because Groklaw isn't also out looking for "the real killers" deosn't mean they're lying about SCO. You have to judge the honesty of an organization separately. Just because some people lie to support their biases doesn't mean all biased people are liars.
Re:CmdrTick-Oh XOR Linux (Score:2, Insightful)
Steve "I only stole BSD twice" Jobs'
I know I'm replying to a troll but...
You can hardly call it "stealing" when the code is being used within the scope of the license as drafted. The BSD license specifically allows the use of code in a case like this with no strings about having to give back. Apple, in fact, has given back a lot to the community when they didn't need to.
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:5, Insightful)
When a mistake is made in an article, is it analyzed and corrected? (Yes.)
Are the sources for background facts reliable? (Yes. Most of it comes from court documents and SEC filings, and an occasional question posed to directly to Linus or another expert.)
If anyone, even one of SCOG's lawyers, can come up with a single fact supporting their allegations or a consistent legal argument for their highly original interpretation of copyright law, Groklaw would happily publish it. The truth is that the only way to discuss the current and potential lawsuits is either 1) live in a fantasy world where the law and the facts have no effect or 2) talk badly about SCO. There is no third choice.
What can be done is to try to always tie arguments and opinions to the proveable facts as closely as possible, and this is what the Groklaw stories do.
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Code and Cookies (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Code and Cookies (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually is more like the sales clerk stuffing the cookies in there themselves when the shopper isnt looking and then shouting "thief"
Wrong.
I was very clear that I was not attempting to make a statement about the truthfulness of SCO's claim but merely what it was, precisely, that they claimed.
What they are claiming is that whoever included certain bits of code into Linux did so without their knowledge and therefore even if they did distribute their own code under the GPL, they did so without knowing they were doing so. Since they were not aware -- again, so goes their logic -- then they cannot have agreed to including their proprietary software into the code base.
Your analogy is therefore incorrect and clearly so.
If you want to argue the merits of their argument, go nuts, but I'm not arguing that point.
Re:Code and Cookies (Score:2, Insightful)
No, it's more like the store owner gives you a cookie gratis, after which the store is bought out, and the new owners claim that you stole the cookie. And the recipie.
Or something..
Re:Code and Cookies (Score:4, Insightful)
Now things seem even worse for SCO. It seems they contributed the code. That's like some supermarket employee is told by their boss to stick the boxes of cookies into the containers and then label the items as "container with free box of cookies included". Surely they can't make people pay for the cookies now.
Simple Answer (Score:3, Insightful)
This is important to stop SCO's current attack (Score:5, Insightful)
These letters threaten the companies over exactly this ABI issue. In the days before the internet and sites like Groklaw, people had to decide on their own, or with their lawyers, what to do about these letters. Each of the victims might attempt to do the kind of research done by Frank Sorenson and Pamely Jones here, but as the victims are probably not intellectual property experts and have their own businesses to run, they might be tempted to pay off the extortionists.
But, now they each one of the victims has the benefit of this research, and can make a much more informed decision. The Groklaw article also provides links to the original source for each of their assertions, so that the recipients of the letters can look at the actual underlying data.
All that said, the article is reminds me of the opening to Get Smart, where Maxwell Smart goes through an almost interminable series of doors to get to his destination. Sorenson and Jones, and their helpers, have found any number of different ways that the code in question is available for use. SCO is screwed on the basis of any one of those.
Thad Beier
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it matter?
In any legal situation (a trial, contract dispute, or whatever) both sides try to find evidence which supports their case. Neither side is "fair" or "unbiased". Yet legal disputes get resolved all the time. What's the magical secret? The judge and jury get to see all of the evidence, then they make up their minds based on all of the evidence which they have seen.
Groklaw may well be biased against SCO, but all they're doing is presenting more evidence. That's exactly what both sides are supposed to do (and what SCO has been criticized for not doing).
See, you seem to want us to ignore "biased" sources of evidence. "Groklaw is biased, so they can't be trusted" is a decent summary of what you wrote. You've got to think about this on a higher level. Very few unbiased groups will ever get involved in a legal dispute. That's the nature of legal disputes, or even disputes in general -- if you don't care, you don't get involved! So the trick is to focus on evidence and solid, logical arguments rather than rhetoric. Focus on what each side can prove rather than merely what they say. That's the way to deal with situations in which interested parties are involves (which includes almost all legal disputes, and many other situations as well). Simply ignoring any biased opinion (is there any other kind of opinion?) will leave you ignorant.
That'll stop the stupid crooks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft can funnel money to SCO via 'licenses' to fuel the SCO FUD machine. But in the end, Microsoft won't be liable for any counter-suits. At some point (likely when Intel and MS are ready with Longhorn), SCO will be allowed to die, making the countersuits moot.
SCO is just a soldier in the war, totally expendable.
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all. Groklaw is stated to be an anti-FUD site. That is what PJ does, she fights FUD. Guess where most of the FUD has been coming from in this case? So what else would you WANT her to do? Just ignore it?
'Not that there's anything wrong with all that, but you aren't going to convince any outsiders of Groklaw's 'level headed objectivity'. Looks like any bunch of Linux kooks from here."
No it doesn't. Groklaw has been cited in many news articles, is read by CEOs and lawyers and reporters, and has been included in the court case by being cited by IBM. You don't get that level of respect by authorities if you are viewed as "a bunch of Linux kooks." Sorry, go spread your FUD elsewhere, it doesn't apply to Groklaw.
Re:Code and Cookies (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Their contribution... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a problem that Groklaw might or might not be biased in their research. EVERYONE IS BIASED! Why is it that so many people, whether critizing slashdot's "anti-microsoft bias" or now Groklaw's "anti-sco bias" seem to be scouring the world searching for someone to write an article or produce a site on a topic totally neutral on every possible opinion on the subject. Groklaw thinks SCO is full of shit. Therefore they are biased. Groklaw's arguments and evidence seem to substantiate their claims. Therefore they are also probably CORRECT.
Dealing with bias is why you have a brain. Read the articles, judge their evidence, and come to your own conclusion. If you disagree provide a detailed analysis, and prove your point. Enough with the goddamned bias mania.
Chill pill dude (Score:5, Insightful)
"Even if after everything we've heard from them to date falls through, they may try to make the claim in court that every OS in existence is derived from SCO IP, and that being the case Linux users STILL owe SCO money, regardless of code."
Not gonna happen.
"Folks, the individual details of this don't matter at all. That's not what this is about."
No actually the details do matter. They matter in the court of law. Contrary to popular belief you can't just buy your way into winning every lawsuit.
"We are in the way of SCO's using our code for commercial purposes. Therefore we are the enemy to be destroyed, "
Yea, so what? MS wants linux destroyed as well and you how well that's worked for them.
Look, your just acting a bit hysterical here. Facts and law do matter. And contrary to your sky is falling ideas Linux isn't going to be destroyed by anyone. If it turns out that Caldera released the code under the GPL 5 years ago or whatever then this is hugely damaging to the case. This IS helpful. You can't just dismiss that and say "well SCO will just think of some angle to spin this." My advice to you is relax a bit and ease off the coffee. This case will resolve itself and there is no indication from any repudiable legal counsel or expert that SCO will be the end of Linux.
Not a GPL-only problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to say this is a "problem with the GPL" is pure FUD. It is like saying auto accidents are proof that there is a problem with the Lincoln Continental.
Validation of the open source model (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
(as usual, IANAL; IAALS)
But the judge WILL decide if it's admissable. (Score:5, Insightful)
But the judge WILL decide if it's admissable, and the jury is instructed to ignore it (or shielded from even hearing about it) if it's not.
Fortunately, digital signatures were explicitly designed for proving authorship in the digital world of generally untracable bits, and governments, including both the executive (by regs) and legislative (by law) branches of the Fed, are moving to make them legal proof. (See SEAL, E-SIGN, Millennium Digital Commerce Act, etc.) They're already recognized by Utah (not that it matters in a federal court...)
Since this is a civil case, where the standard is a "preponderance of evidence", and the signatures are being introduced by the defense, I'd be surprised if the judge excludes such evidence. (Think about it - what non-digital evidence is there of ANYTHING related to the case?)
If there is no direction from law or precedent, I'd expect him to let it in and let the experts from both sides argue the difficulties of forgery.
(IANAL, your mileage may vary, take this with a grain of salt, etc.)
Quite right (Score:5, Insightful)
If a guy wants to mug you, guess what? You are biased against his claims against your money.
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:1, Insightful)
As for the completely neutral Fox, see "Lies and The Lying Liars Who Tell them".
I learnt all I know from Slashdot (Score:1, Insightful)
How can that be? The books were written in the 30s I think, and Timothy Leary didn't invent pot until 1969. Trust me
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Since groklaw has been well and truly slashdotted since this article appeared, I can't blame you for not RTFA, but the evidence they have collected pretty much destroys any claim that SCO might make about the release of this code being inadvertent. The evidence includes code released by Caldera under the GPL and PGP signed by Caldera's release key. It includes public statements by the former CEO of Caldera concerning their intentions in releasing the code. The last shaky fragment of SCO's case against Linux users has gone.
Why the last, you ask? Aside from the fact that this amounts to the bulk of "evidence" that SCO has publically produced, the documents SCO have released as part of their case against Novell show that the System V ABI is the only source code they could conceivably claim as theirs, and even that was an extremely shaky claim, as "System V ABI" appeared amongst a list of what was clearly documentation, and was in an appendix listing the copyrights that Novell owned, which may or may not have been transfered to SCO (my interpretation, and that of many others with more legal knowledge is that without an explicit copyright transfer agreement, none of those copyrights have been transfered).
Uhm... you could be wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
All this proves is that companies should be careful about what they release under the GPL and that projects that accept contributions should keep careful track of who they come from.
If nothing else this whole SCO fiasco shows that Linux needs a disciplined approach to keeping track of where things are coming from in order to avoid future problems. I am sure that once this is over things will be run a bit differently.
Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus! (Score:3, Insightful)
Same here, for a different reason:
The claim is (if I read the fish babble correctly) that they were turned on to SCO by tracking the initial spread of the virus to SCO as an early focus.
Others are already suggesting that the DoS on SCO is a red herring by the spammers - playing a game of "let's you and him fight" between two of their enemies: The anti-virus people (mainly commercial and law enforcement) and the anti-spammers (expert users and sysadmins, high cross-membership with the open source community).
The worm's structure is consistent with this. It is a spam-forwarder and backdoor installer, of a similar form to earlier spam tools (including function shutdown dates). And the DoS is relatively low-intensity (one ding per second per zombie), which is consistent with not screwing up the spam forwarder by consuming too many of its resources in a DoS attack.
If the DoS on SCO IS a red-herring, doing an initial release by mailing a few copies to SCO and maybe Microsoft (so it spreads from there and gets them blamed) is also consistent: Further social engineering to escalate the distraction.
If this is true, you'd have to examine SCO's mail logs to find the next step closer to the real source. (And infecting SCO would even let you use the backdoor to plant more inciminating evidence on them.)
Nevertheless, it IS in SCO's interest to be perceived as a target. And it can also give them an excuse to take down systems with evidence weakening their case. So taking a known spam virus and hacking it into this form is also consistent with the "attack yourself and blame your opponent" model. So it will be ineteresting to see if there's anything behind the rumor. B-)
Re:That'll stop the stupid crooks (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason Darl and crew are able to take this stupid strategy is they've managed to convince some investors there is a chance they can pull it off. When it turns out to be a dismal, money losing failure for all investors, future greedy unscrupulous CEOs just won't have the backing to persue such a folly.
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not biased to dislike something on the basis of experience, or to distrust someone who has been proven to lie. To accuse someone of bias in this regard is to suggest that having discovered unpleasant truths somehow worsens rather than improves one's ability to draw true conclusions about the world. It is to praise ignorance and naivete' over experience, on the grounds that unpleasant experiences can cause you to think ill of those responsible for the unpleasantness.
Ms. Jones and the others at Groklaw are not biased against SCO. They have come to their conclusions about SCO's dishonesty on the basis of facts, not merely prejudices. People do not simply call SCO liars and scoundrels because they want SCO's claims to be false and self-contradictory, but because SCO's claims have been demonstrated publicly to be false and self-contradictory. That's not bias; it's reasoning.
Re:Simple Question (Score:3, Insightful)
What would M$ have to gain by buying SCO? They don't really have to do anything right now, the world's attention is focused on SCO's fallacious claims, all M$ has to do is sit back and laugh with the rest of us. If there's anything to buy in a couple of years, M$ could pick them up for a song. Until the current suits are settled, they'd just be overpaying for SCO and they know it. They have to answer to their stockholders, you know. Spending money on an overvalued company would be stupid.
Re:If Microsoft bought SCO (Score:3, Insightful)
Caldera/SCO is also the target of more lawsuits than they've filed. They've already lost a suit in Germany, and been additionally fined for violating a court order, and they're under investigation by the Australian government. Doesn't make them look like a very tempting aquisition.
But most of all, yes, MS in particular (who might otherwise be willing to overlook some of these obvious problems) would be in a world of trouble due to their monopoly position. The SEC could and probably would forbid such an aquisition. And remember, US law isn't the only thing they have to worry about. MS also does business in the UK and EU, and would have to deal with major repercussions there as well.
And finally, there are change-of-ownership issues in the contract between Novell and oldSCO. NewSCO seems to think they can sidestep this by claiming that they merged with oldSCO's OS division, and thus the ownership didn't actually didn't change. MS would have a much harder time making such an argument.
Re:Technology is Politics (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it's possible to wreck capitalism. You could destroy the value of money, but substitutes would be rapidly found. For example, in World War II prison camps, cigarettes were used as money.
I don't think there's any circumstance where society would be so degraded that people would not want to exchange goods in one form or another. Money is just a medium that makes that more flexible. If I offer my labor in exchange for a new PowerMac, it might be a long time before I could find someone who would want to make a direct exchange. But if I exchange my labor for money, and use that to buy the PowerMac, then everyone's a lot happier than they would have been without money.
I think your main complaint about money is simply that you don't have enough of it. Unfortunately, the only non-capitalist economic systems I know of solve the money problem by instituting rationing, so everyone gets the same pathetic set of lousy goods, which make them worse off than the American ghetto-dweller.
If you want to destroy capitalism, first think about what you want to put in its place. So far, I haven't seen anything better.
D
Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't spread FUD about "viral"-ness of the GPL.
Imagine a janitor somewhere takes a bunch of secret documents and sets them out on the curb as trash, and someone else finds them and reads them. If there were any trade secrets in there, they are not trade secrets any longer.
The next night, the same janitor sits down at a terminal, takes the company's proprietary code, slaps the GPL on the front of it, and puts it on a public web site. Is this code now GPLed? No. The janitor had no authority to license the code, so he cannot release it under the GPL.
Programmers generally don't have the authority to relicense the code they are working on, and, if they do not, they can never cause proprietary code to become GPLed. They can violate copyright, though.
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:2, Insightful)
I suspect any bias on the part of Groklaw stems from the fact that PJ has done a lot of research about the case. You know, because she knows what she's talking about.
Evidence suggesting that you don't know what you're talking about is provided by the suggestion that "the whole point of the site" is to provide FUD about SCO. Clearly she's devoted a lot of energy to this prior to the SCO case, but Groklaw was around long before it.
Re:That'll stop the stupid crooks (Score:3, Insightful)
If AT&T's failed anti-open-source lawsuit didn't convince investors that the SCO lawsuit (which is far more clear cut) is unwinnable, what makes you think the SCO lawsuit will convince anyone that the next desperate company's threats are bunk? There's a potential SCO investor born every minute, you know.
Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it isn't until it's proven Groklaw withheld damaging information. Until then it's negative supposition and therefore bias.
Totally agree (Score:3, Insightful)
This article is a perfect example. I understood it just fine, but, as much as I like minutiae, I stopped reading in detail and started skimming after about 75% through -- it became much-of-a-muchness. There were a bunch of really important points in there, but they were buried, so that only the geeks would read them. And the geeks already understand the situation!
Oh well. As I said, Groklaw rules, and they're doing such fine work...so I mustn't complain, and I don't have the time or the specialized knowledge to step up to the plate myself.
But I keep wishing that somebody active there would grasp The Big Picture a little more vividly -- The Big Picture as seen by an outsider. Many of the postings there seem just to be preaching to the choir.
Well, back to my hymnal.
Re:Their contribution... (Score:3, Insightful)