SCO Claims Ownership of ELF To Court 227
l2718 writes "In the most recent punch-counterpunch of the SCO v. IBM case, IBM is claiming that SCO is trying to vastly expand their claims beyond what they alleged in their list of material allegedly misused by IBM filed last December, using their expert reports. For example, two years ago we covered SCO's claim to own ELF, the main executable format of Linux. Apparently they are have finally made the same claim to a court of law, after the deadline for making such claims. From IBM's memorandum: 'The final disclosures identify 19 Linux files relating to the ELF specification, as well as excerpts from several specification documents. Dr. Cargill far exceeds this claims ... asserting infringement of the entire ELF format ... also ... for the first time, claims to the ELF magic number.'"
0x7f (Score:4, Interesting)
Disgrace (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh come on! (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the IBM filing on Groklaw, tSCOg actually *is* claiming that the "magic number" concept is their property.
In addition, of course, to header files, the ELF format, the numbers assigned to signals, and a bunch of other POSIX spec stuff.
Re:The only conclusion I can reach... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Quoting a certain SciFi flick (was:Play By Play (Score:2, Interesting)
They could not claim this until now (Score:5, Interesting)
The real question is why bother making the claims at all? I think the answer is a combination of
- bury the court in paper in an attempt to delay proceedings;
- try to salvage some of the original claims: there is a pending motion to throw out the bulk of SCO's items from last December on the basis of lack of specificity; they probably hope that, faced with a mountain of SCO claims, the judge may be reluctant to disallow absolutely everything and will allow some of the vague "methods and concepts" items on SCO's December list;
- material that can be used to spread FUD about UNIX IP in Linux; they can claim that these broad claims were thrown out on a "technicality", but they are "comfortable going to court with what remains".
They really are arseholes.I like this: (Score:1, Interesting)
And it keeps Linux in the news! Way to go SCO!
It's no damage really; every PHB will eventually call in an engineer to ask
"What is it with Linux anyway?"
At this point, the engineers will sing Linux's praises and only mention in passing that SCO is just a joke.
Result: The PHB is left with a good impression of Linux and immediately forgets about SCO.
Accentuate the positive, guys!
Re:Quoting a certain SciFi flick (was:Play By Play (Score:4, Interesting)
sure it's not easy, I myself struggled every day for years and years trying to figure out what i loved doing. I play games a lot, and it's fun, so I hack, but the best way for SCO to make money would be to find something better to do with everyones time. I'm trying to find ways to make money for my home town area which lost a lot of good paying jobs and has a lot of people who've simply moved away from a community they loved working in.
It's not easy finding the right way to make money, but in the long run everyone profits when instead of trying to sue everyone we find something we're good at, and do it the best we can, until there is no one better and we're happy even if we don't make a lot of money. but a lot of places still need good paying jobs so that the rest of the community doesn't have to suffer living in dilapidated houses.
SCO could make a difference, they need to look inwards and think about if the bottom line is so important that they can't find a way to make money off linux products, like trying to port linux for a company like gateway or dell, for their budget class computers. Linux has a lot of games and provide a lot of benfits but i know a lot of people who can't afford them, because they cost a lot, microsoft eats up a lot of that profit margin, and while sco might not make as much money, at least they could wake up and feel good in the morning.
Re:As *the* former Novell/USG employee... (Score:5, Interesting)
me at esr@thyrsus.com
Re:The only conclusion I can reach... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Quoting a certain SciFi flick (was:Play By Play (Score:4, Interesting)
To be locked in litigation is not a problem. Remember - it's about money and power, not honour.
In fact, buying some litigant to make the lawsuit go away is acceptable business practice.
Re:Quoting a certain SciFi flick (was:Play By Play (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose you are right. However, by the time Novell got around to purchasing SuSE SCO/Caldera didn't really have a Linux business. Besides, if you are going to pick a company and put money in its pocket you probably aren't going to pick a company that is shaking you down for cash. Novell didn't need the lawsuit to go away, it needed a Linux business that it could promote instead of Netware.
Re:The only conclusion I can reach... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's just corruption - linux and IBM are really just being used for misdirection while the money changes hands. The even sadder thing is that after this if nothing can be found to put Darl in jail he will go on to a better paying job with the reputation as the man who took on IBM and would have beat them too if it wasn't for those darn kids and their penguin.
Re:Stall some more, VISTA is late. (and Short) (Score:3, Interesting)
If SCO somehow manage to win, there is still FreeBSD. It's an excellent kernel and most "Linux" software works on it, either through native builds or through it's Linux emulation. The downside is drivers (which is why I use Linux). If it did come down to having to rewrite large parts of the Linux kernel, it should be possible to borrow much of the needed parts from FreeBSD.