SCO Says IBM is Beating Up on Them 1133
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.
Fuck them. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fuck them. (Score:5, Funny)
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".
Re:SCO Says IBM is Beating Up on Them (Score:5, Insightful)
It gets even sillier. The Copyright Law says you can't do certain things without the permission of the copyright holder. The GPL says "as the copyright holder, I give you permission to do certain things you ordinarily wouldn't be allowed to do, as long as you follow certain rules."
The question isn't if the GPL is valid, or anything like that, it's if the SCO case can be thrown out because of the GPL. A judge could argue that it isn't valid if you didn't know your stuff was in there. It's not about GPL validity (which SCO seems to think it is) but GPL applicability in this case.
Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
Apply for your compensation here... (Score:4, Funny)
--
Send us your Linux Sysadmin [librenix.com] articles.
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
How is a guy ment to make a buck these days
James
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
How is a guy ment to make a buck these days
so what you are saying is that you had a contract with IBM, but they are dropping you in favour of using the fruits of a bunch of free labor?
wow. that sucks. You should sue them for breach of contract. While you are at it, sue the free guys for violating your copyright anytime they say anything that sounds remotely similar to your anti-SCO comments.
That'll show 'em.
Which brings me to my point (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM is allowed at least as many ridiculous publicity stunts as SCO.
isn't SCO admittedly controlling all of the PRO-SCO stuff?
Someone should tell SCO that if they are going to fight dirty then they should expect more of the same. I really don't care if IBM is paying people to say all this bad stuff about SCO, though the fact remains, they aren't.
PROSCO (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds nasty. Is there a cure for it yet?
I hope it's not contagious!
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
Mine was supposed to hit the ol' direct-deposit account this morning, but email's been a little slow, so my bank hasn't sent me a confirmation yet... Oh, wait, here it is:
Cool, it looks like it's a...
it's a...
it's a...
damn.
Nope. I'm not getting anything from IBM either.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
Five minutes after the code leaks, the world and his wife knows that SCO are completely full of shit and their law suit has suffered a mortal wound. Poor Darl's head must be spinning so fast that he doesn't know which way is up any more.
Darl: "Bwahahahaha. Mom, mom, it isn't fair! That big bully, GPL is cheating. I only wanted to steal a little bit of money from all those linux hippies, but GPL wants to keep it all for himself. Make him play nice. Make him GIVE me the money, or I'll scream and scream and scream until I turn purple and you have to call the doctor out...."
Darl's mommy: "Sorry son, but while you were out playing, I got myself a new boyfriend. Unlike GPL, my new guy IBM is pretty strict and he believes in corporal punishment for brattish children. You'd best run to your room and hide quietly, because I think I see him fetching his strap from the woodshed...."
Paranoia (Score:5, Funny)
And we are.
Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Funny)
Is Linus right that SCO is "smoking crack"? [eweek.com]
Looks like the court of public opinion is speaking loud and clear.
Soko
We Don't Hate Them (Score:5, Funny)
No, we don't hate those people. And we certainly don't want to mash the SCO executives into a bloody pulp, either. Nor would we want to keep their body parts in our freezers. No. Hate is such a strong word.
Let us put aside any negative feelings we might have toward them and simply put flame to some feces on their doorsteps.
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.
Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually no, they don't give a shit about what anyone in the open source community says about them. Their complaint is that the MEDIA is out to get them. And when they say Media, I doubt their talking about a bunch of ranting slashbots.
Not that I support SCO, but it is entirely possible that IBM is controlling a mainstream media attack against them. IBM definitely has the resources (It doesn't take as much as you would think).
Repeat after me: Slashdot is NOT the media.
Re:Paranoia (Score:4, Insightful)
That and.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Paranoia (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux is very prone to IP infringement. On the other hand, Linux being open gives no guarantees. Yes, accidentally, IP-infring code may be discovered, but Linux surely does nothing to prevent that.
And how is this different from proprietary code?
It's different in only one way: Infringing code in Linux is easy to find. At more than one of my places of employment I have had knowledge of misappropriated code, and in every case but one (my current employer, IBM -- where action was taken to correct the problem), the response from management was essentially: "shhh, no one will know".
Source code piracy is rampant in the software industry; I'd wager that the majority of closed-source products contain code that they technically shouldn't (very often in the form of bits of code that a developer wrote at a previous job and reused, or snitched from a library whose license didn't allow cut-paste-modify), but there's essentially no way for the piracy to be discovered and so it's not.
By any rational standard, OSS has a *vastly* better process for identifying infringing code. It may not consist of a documented set of procedures, but at least with OSS identification is *possible*.
Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Funny)
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.
I dunno about the evil-ness of IBM, but...
I pictured an IBM semi-trailer rumbling down the highway, with an SCO chicken (looked like Darl with feathers) standing at the other end of a straight, squaking furiously at the oncoming behemoth. The chicken doesn't stand a chance.
Re:Paranoia (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. I think this is a clear response to the rapidity with which Operation Footbullet (ie showing the code) was discredited by the mass media. This is the first sign I've seen of SCO being genuinely on the defensive. The team have obviously all been told to get out there and start spinning to try and turn this story around again -- another clear indication that they want to fight this action in the court of public opinion, not the law courts.
They accuse IBM of being this manipulating orwellian company that could somehow motivate us open source advocates to hate them.
This, I think, is the clearest sign of their desperation. In the past, the line that SCO were peddling was that they were an upstanding American business who believed in fair play, Mormon values and straight dealing. Someone had ripped off their IP, and they just wanted paying for what was rightfully theirs.
After yesterday's blunder, it has become clear to even the most sceptical of media that SCO are simply taking the piss. What tiny wad of credibility they did have, has now been spattered all over the face of the whorish analysts who were pumping the line about how the GPL was a hippie joke and wouldn't stand up in court.
So now, they are taking the only tack available to them. Seeking to present themselves as a poor battered underdog being fucked out of their intellectual property by evil megacorp, IBM.
It's clear that they are floundering now, as this is the most desperate of tactics. Anyone who isn't totally retarded can see that SCO have been trying to steal the IP of everyone who has written GPL code over the last few year. Even the pro-Microsoft trolls who post here couldn't be taken in by this one.
I don't envisage a short, painless death either. I see a future of protracted, excruciating embarrassment for SCO, while RedHat, IBM, Suse, Novell, SGI, the FSF and a whole pile others slice away at them, one cut at a time while they gradually bleed to death. And the whores who have been touting their propaganda will be reduced to their rightful place in the public imagination, as the clueless ambulance chasers that they have truly shown themselves to be.
Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)
They'd pull the rug out from under linux in an instant if it made buisness sense. As writing operating systems and maintaing them across all of IBM's platforms makes less buisness sense than getting a much cheaper one, maintained largely by other people and companies, working on all their platforms that is unlikely to happen. Especially as it has the added advantage of making ISV programs easily ported between the different IBM architectures, and makes support more easily streamlined within the corporation in the long term. IBM is _the_ company that linux makes buisness sense for.
"It'd be a real sweet plum if someone could take "ownership" of linux."
Not quite. It would be a rotten tomato if someone could take ownership of Linux. Take a quick look at how well buinsess has turned out for the non-free Linux distributions. Take a look at how well buisness was/is going for most other x86 proprietary unixes, even before Linux became more mainstream.
As you'd lose every developer, all support competence, all contracts, all evangelists in a single second, what do you think you could do with the ownership several millions of lines of unmaintained code without a single developer and with everyone in the computer industry hating you?
Proprietary Linux would not be a sweet plum. It would be a worthless pile of unsellable unmaintained code involved in litigation from every contributor to the end of computers as we know them.
Smart companies know the value of Linux is in its freedom. Idiots like SCO have a hard time realizing that there is no money in it for people who dont want to work to earn their money.
Not "they"; ... (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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]"
Re:Darl must be losing it... (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, just think about this for a minute -- IBM and RMS working together.
Is there anything any more absurd than that? I mean, seriously... even RMS's most sane rants are off the deep end for IBM.
Re:Darl must be losing it... (Score:5, Funny)
Judge: You are being charged with criminal fraud and anti-competive and damaging business practices.. How do you plead?
McBride: I plead insanity.
Judge: On what grounds?
McBride: Are you kidding? Did you see all the crazy shit I said? I was rambling for months that "they" were out to get me!
Yeah he's crazy...Crazy like a fox...
SCO's Press Release Method (Score:5, Funny)
$HighSchoolGirl_2 : Yeah, I know! The teacher caught them and read the note out loud before the class.
$HSG_1 : Like, what'd it say?!?!!11!
$HSG_2 : Well, I wasn't there, but Marcy said her friend was there, and Darl was like, "Hey Mark, we ro0l, and IBM sux0rs," and Mark was like, "Yeah, we should kick IBM's ass and take all their IP," and Mark was like "Those dirty linux-using geeks are messing up our plan, too," and Mark was like, "Yeah, I hate those damn hippies," and Darl was like, "We need to start our own web page so we can out IBM to everyone," and Mark was like "Yeah!!11! I can put it up on my 486DX at home! My parents got dialup, but it's 56k and shit. I've got this k-rad script that auto redials!"
$HSG_1 : No. They didn't really say that, did they?!1!one!?
$HSG_2 : YES. They. DID!!1! I think IBM and a few of their friends are going to meet up with Darl and Mark out in the parking lot after school...
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.
Interesting quote regarding Linus (Score:4, Interesting)
I've talked to him via e-mail. He's very pragmatic and tends to be a racehorse with blinders on.
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...
A translation (Score:5, Funny)
Heh. I wonder if the Flat Earth Society is in need of a new CEO. I think that Darl's SCO gig is going to end Real Soon Now.
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!
Re:I think you've hit a key point here. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a big difference 'twixt the two concepts.
In SOVIET RUSSIA (heh, I get to do this straight
This invariably lead to shortages or oversupply whenever the central planners got it wrong.
For the Linux kernel to follow the same method, Linus would have to come up with a development plan and then force each developer to work on his assigned task. You couldn't fix bugs as they turned up unless that bug happened to fit in the plan.
Linus doesn't work that way. He's a gatekeeper, not a dictator. You won't be seeing an email any time soon that says "your job for the next 6 months is to work on the eepro100 driver".
Finally, while it can be tough to get a patch approved unless you're on the whitelist, depending on the nature and correctness of the patch Joe Random can indeed get his patch accepted. Patches that fix obvious bugs in straightforward ways and do not interact or interfere with other sections of the kernel get accepted all the time. Attempts to rework the scheduler in your own image are a little tougher to get approved
So while there are communist-esqe aspects to Linux development, it is by no means a communist undertaking. It's not entirely free-market either, but it's closer to that pole than to the communist pole.
DG
Re:Yup (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see this as just an attack on the Open Source community. This is an attack on our society, because it is an abuse of our legal system. As far as I'm concerned, abusing the legal system is worse than breaking the law. I noticed in an article that some SCO users, who even had booths at SCO Forum, were outraged by what this company is doing. And has been doing. Forbes points out [forbes.com] that SCO has pulled this same shit with Microsoft -- and won. In this case they bought the rights to an old, 'decrepit' version of DOS and proceeded to sue the shit out of Redmond. They are crafty bastards. And they basically leverage intellectual property law to fuck other people over. Obviously.
This kind of behavior, taken to these extremes, has the potential to seriously disrupt the fabric of our society. Especially since our society is becoming increasingly dependant on software. If SCO wins, which they might (I mean hell, they beat MS), their example has the potential to make the software industry even more litigious, even less focused on solid product design and just generally shittier. EVERYONE should be up in arms about this... Darl McBride makes Bill Gates look like freakin RMS.
The only thing that came close to pissing me off this much was when Rosa Parks sued Outkast [mtv.com] -- although the stakes were much, much lower.
Re:Yup (Score:4, Informative)
"And has been doing. Forbes points out that SCO has pulled this same shit with Microsoft -- and won. In this case they bought the rights to an old, 'decrepit' version of DOS and proceeded to sue the shit out of Redmond. They are crafty bastards. And they basically leverage intellectual property law to fuck other people over."
To compare the DRDOS suit with the current SCO activity means that you have not been studying your history. The basis of the DRDOS (the "decrepit" version of DOS) lawsuit is as follows.
DRDOS was superior (by many peoples accounts) to DOS for a brief period in Microsoft's history. The Windows operating system (Windows 3.1 and earlier) ran on top of both versions of DOS. Microsoft deliberately put into their Windows code a test to see if it was running on top of DRDOS and then create a nasty looking crash. Microsoft then spread rumours through its vendors that DRDOS was unreliable. This killed the market for DRDOS.
There is clear and verifiable evidence of this and this is why Microsoft settled.
To compare the current SCO lawsuit to a lawsuit based on clear criminal behavior is to legitimize SCO's current lawsuit -- exactly why Forbes and other magazines give the current lawsuit credibility. The previous lawsuits were valid, why can't this one be as well? Absurd, unfortunate, but probably true.
Obligatory comment (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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.
Re:I always wondered where they went... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not fair to classify SCO and Hitler together: the biggest difference is the fact that Hitler was actually a threat. But there are some similarities:
* Both recycled a bogus concept (racial supremacy/copyright infringement) into a plan to take over the world.
* Hitler envisioned a "thousand-year Reich". SCO envisions a "thousand-dollar License".
* Hitler blamed the Jews for his country's troubles as a way of diverting attention from real, structural problems in the country, and got blindsided when the whole free world came out against him. SCO blames IBM for their company's woes to distract investors from real problems in the company, and still doesn't realize that the whole free (software) world is against them.
* Hitler committed suicide, and ensured that everyone around him would suffer a similar fate. Yep, works for SCO.
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.
Lots of PR, no lawsuits (Score:5, Informative)
SCO have made exactly two legal filings to go with all this PR dross they were boasting about.
First, they filed a suit against IBM (not on copyright grounds).
Second, they amended the suit to remove some of the more blatant lies from it.
That's the lot. None of the many contradictory allegations they've made against other Linux distributors or users have been backed by any legal action whatsoever. They didn't even bother to contest the application to get an injunction against them in Germany to stop them spreading this FUD. The injunction stands (in Germany).
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
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)
Just a little parse error... (Score:4, Insightful)
"The SCO Group (Nasdaq: SCOX) helps millions of customers..." but "Hundreds of customers like and use SCO's Unix products." Why the discrepancy?
If you take the set H (helped by the SCO Group), the set U (use SCO's Unix products), and the set L (like SCO's Unix products), you will likely find that there is a fairly strong correlation between sets H and U. This is not to imply that H is either a superset of U or a subset of U, merely that there is a presumably significant intersection. On the other hand, the set L is by all accounts much smaller than either set H or set U.
Although a case could be made that there are members of set L who are there for the very reason that they are not themselves members of set U, it is logical and seemingly quite likely that all or virtually all members of set L are also members of set U. If we assume that set L is, in fact, a subset of set U then the statement that the intersection of sets L and U contains hundreds of members can be simplified and restated as "The set L contains hundreds of members."
In other words, although *millions* of customers are helped by the SCO Group, only hundreds of customers like them. Yep. Makes perfect sense now, eh?
Is it time to sue SCO for slander? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps it's time for Linux developers to consider suing SCO for slander. After all, SCO is accusing them of theft and therefore damaging their reputations, which not only hurts Linux, but could hurt the developers' ability to advance their careers. Would you hire a programmer accused of stealing code to put into his software? And note that SCO won't precisely define what they allege is stolen or who stole it, but it is crystal clear that they're accusing Linux developers of illegal acts.
Suing SCO will have at least two consequences. First, it'll make SCO clearly define and prove their allegations. Second, any lawyer worth his salt will ask a judge to slap a temporary restraining order on SCO to stop their constant threats and accusations.
Any developers out there who want to consider this?
SCO's Heise is soooooooo wrong! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ms. Bowman:
Yes, copyright law governs, but Mark Heise's interpretation of copyright law is one that would not pass muster in a beginning journalism copyright course, and would get well-buttered dinner rolls hurled at him if he presented it in an after-dinner speech in front of any professional writers' organization.
USC 17 106 Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4-6 deleted because they only deal with visual arts)
If the owner of the copyrighted code wants to authorize, via the Gnu Public Licence or the Lesser Gnu Public Licence, or a license of the owner's own devising, unlimited reproduction and distribution and modification into derivative works, they can do it. USC 17 106 says they have the EXCLUSIVE rights to do so. And when licensing one's work, one can place restrictions in the license if one wishes. The GPL has a "poison pill" restriction in it: if you violate the GPL, the GPL ceases to apply, and your permission to copy and distribute and modify also ceases, making you immediately in violation of USC 17 106, and immediately infringing upon the copyright of the author or authors of the work.
As for the USC 17 301 that Heise cites, claiming that it pre-empts the GPL, I sincerely hope he did not say what your article said he said: The section he cited has nothing at all to do with the author's absolute right to authorize use of the author's work:
301 Preemption with respect to other laws
(a) On and after January 1, 1978, all legal or equitable rights that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights within the general scope of copyright as specified by section 106 in works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression and come within the subject matter of copyright as specified by sections 102 and 103, whether created before or after that date and whether published or unpublished, are governed exclusively by this title. Thereafter, no person is entitled to any such right or equivalent right in any such work under the common law or statutes of any State.
... that does not affect the GPL at all. It does prevent the states from writing their own copyright laws, and nullifies any such laws they might have had before January 1, 1978. Heise fails to grasp that the GPL is not a law, it is a "license" in the legal sense of the word, and it does not conflict with USC 17 in any way. It is merely a widely used way to grant rights which a copyright holder is authorized to grant by USC 17 106.
Microsoft is behind SCO (Score:5, Interesting)
The SCO lawsuit, then, is a conspiracy by Microsoft against Open Source.
Baahh! You say! Here's the Evidence:
There you have it. Microsoft is SCO. Have you indulged in your favorite conspiracy theory today?
Cheers!
-Mybrid
Quoth the simpsons.. (Score:5, Funny)
Nelson: I can't help myself. [punches Tatum]
Tatum: Young man, I insist that you desist.
Nelson: Sorry. [continues punching] I'm so sorry. [near tears, he runs behind Tatum and gives him a wedgie] Please don't hurt me.
Tatum: [rolling up his sleeve] You leave me little recourse.
Source: http://www.snpp.com/episodes/CABF11 [snpp.com]
I think there's a lesson in this for all of us.
Heise.de interview (Score:5, Informative)
A Quote:
c't:Mr. Sontag, the code that showed in the Forum has been analysed by experts. The result: the code was introduced by SGI into Linux, not IBM.
Chris Sontag: That's correct. This example is not from IBM., but from another of our licencees. I can't comment about who that is at the moment.
c't: The copy (of the code in SCO's presenttation) seems to reach far further back than your rights to Unix. On top of this, they seem to have already been distributed by AT&T under the BSD licence i.e. they're freely available, could have gotten into Linux from there.
Sontag: This is completely untrue. We own all the files of this code with the complete development tree all the way back to the original 1969 version. We have researched all the tapes and all versions of the code. The code in question comes the exact version of the Unix System V code that we licenced in our contract to SGI. This version was available to SGI and was never in BSD or other releases. And the to-the-letter copy of this code is in Linux. We are raising awareness about such flagrant violations.
c't: But you can't use this as evidence in your claim against IBM?
Sontag: Correct.
c't: Why are you then showing exactly these pieces of code? Your suit is against IBM..
Sontag: We've found many kinds of copyright and contract breaches. The copying of code word for word was the most obvious kind and we wanted to demonstrate this. This is why we showed this in public and why we also show it under NDA. In the case of IBM we have not yet such cases of direct copying, but we haven't researched all the code yet. In IBM's case, it is mainly about another kind of breach of contract, namely the inclusion of derived code in large amounts. The contract states that all changes in the code and derivations thereof remain part of the origionally licenced code.
c't: Your interpretation of copyright law -- relating both to directly copied code as well as derived works-- is described by Professor of Law, Egen Moglen, as being both snesless and as invalid in court
Sontag: Moglen is not exactly known as an IP expert. I've spoken to IP experts and they state that Moglen's interpretation senseless.
c't: Your lawyer, David Boies, is also no IP specialist.
Sontag: True but his special area is contract law and that will be the deciding factor.
c't: You didn't perhaps hire him because of his role in the Microsoft case?
Sontag: Let's say that that aspect will at least not hurt us.
c't:Are you going to sue this other licencee now?
Sontag: I can't say anything about that now, but we're holding all our options open
The rest is an interview with McBride about who has more resources SCO or IBM. Darl thinks he's got enough. The only interesting question is Darl's opinion of the GPL:
c't: You're acting in a very agressive manner in the Forum. You're declared war against Open Source, because it's destructive for the Software branch. Does the whole movement have to die so that a couple of software companies can survive?
McBride: I really meant the GPL there. There's a lot of valuables work in Open Source. Only the extreme claim that nothing that one has developed belongs to oneself anymore can not go carry on any more. Something must change in the GPL or it won't survive. I've discussed this with many representatives of the Open Source movement.
I wonder if their answers consisted of the words "FUCK" and "YOU"?
Manual tranlation of the Heise article (Score:5, Informative)
SCO: We keep our options open for further law suits
The dispute on whether parts of code from Unix development have possibly entered into Linux, and therefore whether rights held by SCO have been violated, has gained momentum again. At the SCOForum in Las Vegas, the SCO group has for the first time publicly presented parts of code and comments, which are supposed to prove the allegation of the company against IBM and the Linux community. Pictures of the code, which were published on Heise online, led to a first analysis by open source developers. Further investigations led to the assumption that the code shown in greek letters in SCOs evidence for code theft may point towards a transfer. Greg Lehey, for one, thinks so. Bruce Perens, however, merely concludes that none of the evidence brought forward by SCO would be sufficient to prove SCO Group's rights in court. SCO, in turn, argues that the code is protected by a licence with SGI.
c't spoke to Chris Sontag, Vice President Intellectual Property SCO, and Darl McBride, head of SCO, about the origins of the purported stolen code, the further directions of the legal dispute and the situation of SCO as a company.
c't: Mr. Sontag, the code sequences shown by you on the forum have been analyzed by experts. Result: Silicon graphics inserted them into Linux, not IBM
Chris Sontag: That is right. This example is not from IBM, but another of our licensees. At the moment, I cannot comment on who it is.
c't: The copy is supposed to go much further back than your rights on Unix. Moreover, it is said to have already been distributed by AT&T under the BSD licence, therefore freely accessible, and could have entered into Linux that way.
Sontag: That's completely wrong. We posess all files of this code with the complete source tree (lit: pedigree) in all version, up to the origin in 1969. We have looked through all tapes and all versions of the code. The code in question dates from exactly the version of Unix System V which we have delivered to SGI and licenced with a signed contract. This version was at the disposal of the licensee, and it was never in BSD or other releases. And the letter-by-letter copy of this version is found in Linux. We want to point out such flagrant breaches.
c't: But this evidence is useless in the dispute with IBM?
Sontag: Correct.
c't: Why then are you demonstrating exactly this code publicly as evidence? You are sueing IBM.
Sontag: We found several kinds of breaches of copyright and of contracts. Literal copying of code was the most obvious kind, and we wanted to prove this as well. Therefore, we have shown it in the public talk, and demonstrate the example also unter terms of an NDA. In the case of IBM, we have not yet found such cases of verbatim copying, but we have not examined everything yet. With IBM, this is above all about a different kind of breach of contract, namely the transfer of derived results on a very large scale. The licensing agreement provides that all changes and derived products remain within the originally licensed body of work.
c't: Your interpretation of copyright law -- concerning direct copies, as well as derived works -- was said to make no sense and not to be admissible at court by Egen Moglen, Professor of Law at Columbia University.
Sontag: Moglen is not exactly known as an expert for intellectual property (IP) law. I spoke with IP experts - and they think Moglen's interpretation makes no sense.
c't: Your lawyer David Boies is no IP specialist either.
Sontag: Correct, but his expertise is in contract law, and that will be the decisive weapon.
c't: You really didn't chose him for his highly publicised role in the Microsoft case?
Sontag: Let's say that aspect won't harm us at least.
c't: Will you sue this other licensee, as well?
Sontag: I can't comment
Re:Manual tranlation of the Heise article (Score:4, Insightful)
"McBride: Actually, that was more aimed at the GPL, not open source as a whole. There's a lot of very valuable effort in open source. But the extreme interpretation that nobody himself owns anything that he developed himself, that can't remain like this. With this, created value gets destroyed. The GPL must change or it will not survive in the long run. I have discussed with many exponents of the open source side about this already."
So the SCO/Novell licence to IBM and all the other Unix developers and manufactures removes their rights to in house IP perminently and transfers it to SCO. I think the SCO license might get struck down on this basis. That is not how things work in any other field of developement, why make an exception for software? If I modify a physical product then agree to market that modified product and pay a royalty to the original first, I still have the right to apply my own modifications to other proprietary products under different terms and market both. This is just the nature of manufacturing never tie yourself to one supplier of raw materials unless you are a subsiduary and enjoy exclusives. In the case of IBM they learned this lesson with MS eating their lunch.
MS lookout you are about to be blindsided as your CITRIX and other custom site server licensees might eat you up if the SCO license is deemed to be illegal.
Poor Analogy by Lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
McBride: That's like if someone comes into your house while you're sleeping, takes your jewels, and as you start chasing them down [to retrieve your property], and now they want to say you're the one doing the bad thing.
No, more like someone is _alleged_ to have taken your jewels and you try to extort money from the orphanage that got the money from the Pawn shop.
SCO Hires Iraqi Information Minister (Score:5, Funny)
Here are some sample answers he could be giving in an interview:
Question: What do you think are your chances of winning a lawsuit against an industry giant like IBM?
"We are not afraid of [IBM]. Allah has condemned them. They are stupid. They are stupid" (dramatic pause) "and they are condemned."
"I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of [the courts]. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly."
"My feelings - as usual - we will slaughter them all"
Question: Could you elaborate on the perceived media attacks being launched against SCO?
"I blame Al-Jazeera - they are marketing for [IBM]!"
"Lying is forbidden in [SCO]. President [McBride] will tolerate nothing but truthfulness as he is a man of great honor and integrity. Everyone is encouraged to speak freely of the truths evidenced in their eyes and hearts."
Question: What do you think will be a result of your lawsuit against Linux users?
"Our estimates are that none of them will come out alive unless they surrender to us quickly."
"We will welcome them with [lawsuits] and shoes."
"Let the [Linux] infidels bask in their illusion"
My, oh my. (Score:4, Insightful)
So, with all due respect, may I just say how abominably arrogant ESR is to refer the community of Free Software developers and users as "his people?"
My one and only criticism of ESR is the ever so slight note of messianic tendencies that seems to weave in and out of his writings. He is the Saint Paul to RMS's Saint Peter. Now, I may be misinterpreting the remark. He may merely have meant to include himself in the way one does when one says something like "I want to go home to be with my people." Or, "I'll send over some of my people to help with your project." But the tone to me always seems to be "beware the wrath of My People should you oppose me!" A different kettle of fish.
EDITORS: proposal for new SCO article logo (Score:5, Funny)
It shouldn't be a Caldera logo anymore anyway. I think a picture of someone shooting themself in the foot [ecommercetimes.com] is much more apropos :-)
Re:I think i speak for all of us when I say (Score:5, Funny)
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
You're missing the master plan (Score:4, Interesting)
No, but it will give SCO grounds for it's next round of lawsuits, against the news media. Those press releases are SCO's intellectual property, you know!
Of course, the media's lawyers may bleat that the press releases came from SCO attached to terms that allowed redistribution, but that's just as stupid as the people who have copies of the Linux kernel from ftp.sco.com; just because you receive a license for SCO's IP directly from SCO doesn't mean they can't sue you for using it, you know!
Re:I don't know about you (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Not claiming that at all. (Score:4, Interesting)
They are claiming they are the copyright owners and that as such only they have the right to put the code under GPL and that if IBM (or anyone else) put that code out under GPL it is meaningless because they never had the right to do so.
The question of whether SCO distributing Linux has made the code available under GPL only comes into play if IBM don't own copyright in that code.
Re:No. They say copyright law pre-empts (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright must come first, if IBM isn't the copyright holder than the fact they put GPL licence text on a file means nothing.
I totally agree with you on this. The problem is that SCO is not only going after the people who **allegedly** put SCO copywrited code into Linux. They are going after people who are just using Linux.
Now at this point it's really too late to put the cat back in the bag [assuming there really is a cat this time]. I think the best thing SCO could do is to let the kernel developers take the code out of the kernel, and for the kernel developers to put up a big notice on kernel.org asking that people cease using the affected kernels.
SCO is saying that it is not right for code to be released under the GPL without the permission of the copyright holders. They are 100% correct! and if there really is infringing code in the kernel, then SCO has every right to continue its attack on IBM and whoever illegally put SCO code into the kernel. However, SCO has *NO* right to use scare tactics to go after innocent bystanders who just happen to be using Linux. It's not OUR fault that someone else broke the law. It's also not the GPL's fault. The GPL works just fine, and it is BECAUSE of the GPL that SCO was able to find out about infringing code in the first place. If the Linux kernel source was kept behind closed doors, SCO would have never known if there was any of their code in it. And i doubt that IBM went to Linus and said, "Hey...psst... I got some SCO copyrighted code I want you to put in Linux. Don't worry, they won't notice, just don't tell anyone..."
Anyway, by going after innocent bystanders, and by making "crackhead" accusations like "IBM is paying people under the table to attack SCO", they are just acting like a bunch of toddlers yelling "HE DID IT ON PURPOSE!!!!" Haven't Darl and Co. grown out of that sort of thing??
They may have had a valid concern at the beginning of all this, but they have overstepped their bounds, and I hope they get crushed, and that the execs are punished properly.
Ender
Re:First long, thoughful post. (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO had every opportunity to review all of the code that they were distributing before they distributed it. I would say that reviewing each piece of code for IP is the responsibility of any distribution such as Red Hat, or Suse, or SCO. If a distributor is going to make money off of somebody else's work, they better make sure it is owned by the right person.
Distributing code under the GPL is analogous to signing a contract. SCO's argument that they aren't responsible for copyrighted items that they didn't know where in their distribution is simillar to claiming that they are not responsible for a signed contract that was not fully read. Anyone can say that they are not responsible for an item in a contract because they didn't read that part. At the end of the day, when the judge looks at the contract and sees the signature at the bottom - the contract will be full and binding and the person will be as accountable as if he had read all of the items.
SCO has signed the contract - even if they didn't read it before they signed it.
Paul Seamons
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.
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?
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.
male cow crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Example:
What if, during the course of discovery or another time, you find that the code was originally under the GPL?
Using that hypothetical, if Caldera (International) put something into the GPL, with copyright attribution, the whole nine yards, they can't make the claim about what that thing is that they put in there. But that doesn't mean that--well, let's use an example. Let's say you have a hundred files, and you put one of your hundred files under the GPL. That doesn't mean you've lost the rights to your other 99 files. So I don't think it's going to have an impact.
First he tries to lamely categorize this as "hypothetical" then he puts forth the well maybe it's only 1 out of 100 files defense. This completely ignored the question being placed to him and also refuses to acknowlege the fact that what SCO was claiming as "evidence of copied code" in a public forum was shown to be anything but.
Plus we can look at their whole Chewbacca^WCopyright defense:
The Free Software Foundation apparently disagrees. If you look at the terms of the GPL and the terms of copyright law, copyright law governs. It is the exclusive authority regarding the use, distribution, etc., of copyrighted material. In the GPL, (there is a section that) specifically says it applies only to the use and distribution. In other words, the exact same topics that are covered exclusively by the Copyright Act are covered by the GPL. Section 301 of the Copyright Act says the Copyright Act pre-empts any claims that are governed regarding use, distribution and copying. We believe that although the GPL is being tossed into the fray, it is pre-empted by federal copyright law.
This is completely illogical. Copyright exists to restrict ALL rights to a creative work. LICENSES are what allow people to distribute copyrighted works. The GPL is a license, nothing more, nothing less. If SCO's theory were to hold true than ANY site-wide license would be invalid.
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
Re:First long, thoughful post. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think that post was either long or thoughtful, think again.
The thing about Mark Heise's interview is that every single thing he said was quite simply untrue - and demonstrably untrue. It was, essentially, a tissue of lies - at least, all of it that made any grammatical sense at all was.
Firstly, Mark claims that SCO (then Caldera) didn't distribute the Linux kernel under the GPL (at least I think that's what he says, the sentence doesn't actually parse as English). Well, sorry Mark, I have a boxed set here of Caldera Linux and it says clearly that it is distributed under the GPL. Then he says there aren't any SCO copyright notices in the kernel. Well, sorry again, Mark, but there are. Just do cd /usr/src/linux; grep -ri caldera * and you'll find them.
Behind this is a claim that there is SCO source in the kernel which SCO didn't put there themselves. Well, that's a lie too (note: not a 'mistake', not a 'misunderstanding', a lie - a deliberate, intentional and fraudulent untruth). The code which SCO has shown as proof has all been shown to have been legally used. The larger corpus of material which they claim was never theirs in the first place - NUMA and RCU are both well understood concepts in computer science, and have been applied in many different operating systems, but it's a historical fact that they do not exist and never have in SCO's System V. SCO cannot claim to own what they didn't write and never had. Similarly, IBM's journalling file system - the one ported to Linux - was part of OS/2. It isn't SCO's and never was.
Copyright law is pretty much irrelevent here. Except for a few small portions which were legally donated by SCO and are properly acknowledged, SCO don't own any of the copyright. They never did own any of the copyright. So even if copyright law did 'trump' the GPL, it would be irrelevent, because it wasn't ever SCO's copyright in the first place.
It's a lie
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.
Re:SCOX share price (Score:5, Insightful)
Day traders and stock speculators. It's a day trader's dream, being relatively cheap, very volatile because of the small number of shares, and the subject of two lawsuits from companies that have a lot of cash.