OSI vs SCO 655
the jackol writes "As expected, the OSI's just given the SCO vs IBM case a bite with this position paper. "SCO has never owned the UNIX trademark. IBM neither requested nor required SCO's permission to call their AIX offering a Unix. That decision lies not with the accidental owner of the historical Bell Labs source code, but with the Open Group.""
GPL the best bet (Score:5, Interesting)
Question is, can they sue for release of software BEFORE they released the now GPL-ed SCO code in their Linux distro?
Please don't take SCO seriously! (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, we start in 1998 or so before IBM even touched Linux. Linux already was shown to run on 24 CPUs, something SCO still can't do in 2003. In other areas (journalizing FS, NUMA, LVM) SCO Unix is completely lacking.
So SCO thinks that IBM is taking some code out of their SCO Unix - which can do absolutely nothing Linux cannot do even at that time - and submits it to the kernel mailing list. Of course IBM engineers are not allowed to do that, but SCO thinks they did it anyway because - well who knows why. Even though that codes does not introduce a feature or improvement, it mysteriously gets accepted and becomes part of the kernel.
Even though SCO Unix is hopelessly outdated and lacking enterprize features, SCO believes that without that mysteric code above being in Linux, they would have had 1 billion more in sales.
Nevertheless SCO somehow doesn't realize their drop in sales. They continue to distribute Linux. Despite being a Linux distributor, they don't realize how their precious code was included in the kernel. Everything is going on normally - for years. They even provide Linux developers with hardware to do SMP development.
Then, all of the sudden, in May 2003, SCO realizes 1 billion dollars lost in sales and some mysterical code outside the kernel in some mysterical part of the OS. SCO also has so far not realized that Linux was ready for the enterprize, so they accuse IBM that without their code, Linux would be unusuable in a business. - All of the sudden they seem to have forgotten that they themselves have pushed Linux as a business OS for years. Then, also suddently, they realize that that mysterical code is in the kernel, not outside like they stated before.
Then, after they have made numerous threats against IBM, SuSE, RedHat and also against all Linux users, but before they have to pay any legal fees, they are lucky that Microsoft buys a license from them. What a coincidence! Without that cash they certainly wouldn't survive the legal battle with IBM (They lost 1 billion in sales, remember?)
A bit surprised, IBM, SuSE, RedHat, the whole Linux community, numerous newspapers and their own users ask SCO for clarification, but they decline because - well just because.
---
I can guarantee you one thing for sure: This case is so ridiculous and flawed in so many respects, that absolutely nobody should be afraid or uncertain about Linux' legality.
This is whats known asa confirming instance (Score:5, Interesting)
1. SCO is a company that doesn't even understand its own products
2. SCO's Lawsuit is the desperate last gasp of a company going down the tubes.
3. The SCO management team appears to be desperate enough and with such a complete lack of morals that they will lay claim to anything around them, without regard to morality or ethics.
If the SCO people are the best that Microsoft can get to help in their war on Open Source then this will likely backfire due to the disgust with the nature of the people involved.
a good explanation from.... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1007758.html?ta
He doesn't outright say it be he is almost implying that certain monied interests (M$?) could be indirectly funding the whole SCO effort to spread FUD about Linux.
Re:GPL the best bet (Score:3, Interesting)
1). Did Caldera own the code in question when they where in the distro market?
2). I don't think the licence on a linux distro is a boilerplate thing. I am not sure that a SCO distribution with a GPL kernel containing the code would sanction the use of said code unless their copyright was on the kernel code in question.
The kernel is released under a boiler plate licence with a Linus copyright and contains code with other copyright messages also covered by the GPL.
Unless SCO modified the kernel and added their licence to the code above the Linus one (making the kernel in thier release a fork of the linux code) would just bundling the code with other software in a distribution authorise the re-licensing of their code?
sparkes
Position Paper still needs work... (Score:1, Interesting)
There are still some rough edges, though. For instance, directly below the AIX label on the chart the text says "AIX and Solaris are not included..."
It's a wonderful overview of the UNIX world, but it also underscores complacency among UNIX hackers for AT&T's license. I'm not sure the judge in the SCO v/s IBM case will look kindly on the "everybody did it so it was okay" attitude toward sharing code. Isn't that just the thing SCO is talking about?
Confused (Score:4, Interesting)
Are SCO not just looking for a buyout ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that M$ has suddenly bought licencing from SCO seems as though they may have just taken the bait that SCO cast out
So M$ buys them out, because they can claim the IP and put Linux in a bad light - even though the court case gets lost - there will always be doubt in the average corporate manager's mind. So M$ ultimately gain
SCO noises (Score:2, Interesting)
even were we to assume that every dime of their revenue came from the enterprise market, their 2002 share could not have exceeded 3.1% [5] This is at the level of statistical noise
not to mention legal noise and FUD spread by them.
seen this before (Score:2, Interesting)
Honest, I do think this is an interesting case, purely from one view point. The claims SCO have raised are valid, but since the legal submission they gave to the court is 'open source', ie everyone can read it, the amount of evidence piling up against SCO is astonishing. The interesting point is how on earth SCO feel their gonna get out of this. I can't wait for it to hit the courts....
More Conspiracy ... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you don't read anything else, read this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, SCO is barred by the terms of the GNU General Public License from making copyright or patent-infringement claims on any technology shipped in conjunction with the Linux kernel that SCO/Caldera itself has been selling for the last eight years. Therefore, SCO may accuse IBM of misappropriating SCO-owned software to improve the Linux kernel only if that software does not actually ship with the Linux kernel it is alleged to be improving!
Finally, SCO is barred from making trade-secret claims on the contents of the Linux kernel, not merely by the fact that the kernel source is generally available, but by the fact that SCO has made the sources of its Linux kernel available for download from SCO's own website!
Microsoft linkage (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that their is more here than meets the eye in terms of collusion between MS and SCO. I could see MS picking up SCO if they can damage Linux in the process.
To spell it out, here is what I'm suggesting (IMHO): I suspect MS and SCO execs are acquaintences. I suspect that MS execs tugged on the SCO execs to make some troubles for Linux (starting with the IBM thing whenever). I suspect that they have a big bag of such issues with which to harass Linux vendors. I suspect that MS will enter the Linux/Unix arena in the next 3 to 5 years, possibly through an aquisition of SCO.
Question: Was SCO part of the anti-trust suits and related suits against MS? If so to what degree?
They only need to muddy the waters (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:GPL the best bet (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, since SCO/Caldera now owns that code, and they are still distributing it, they are doing so with the full knowledge and understanding that they are bound by the GPL. Pretty much, they're fucked. They may very well be -right- (although I think it more likely that Linux kernel code made its way into Unixware), but they're hosed by the GPL (as they would if it were BSD licensed):)
Re:GPL the best bet (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope. This is wrong, and keeps cropping up again and again here and elsewhere. *Caldera* did their own Linux and released it under the GPL. SCO (the original) produced and sold commercial UNIX under several names. Caldera then bought SCO (again the original) and it's IP, and still under the name Caldera helped to start the United Linux directive. Up until this point, under the leadership of Ransom Love, Caldera "got it".
It would then appear that Ransom Love left and the lawyers took control, which is the point where they "lost it". Caldera became the current SCO, and the dubious comments about UNIX vs Linux started to fly around. The comments then became more legally inclined, finally culminating in the suit against IBM.
I'd guess that SCO started to come up with the prospects of the lawsuits after Ransom Love's departure. As they built up their "evidence" (which has yet to be publically documented in a satisfactory manner), the comments grew in the level of vitriol and FUD content. Presumably this increase was as the lawyers became more confident they could pull off their intended plan. Whether that plan is simply to be bought out, or they actually believe they can successfully sue IBM is a matter for speculation. As far as I can tell, all we can say about SCO's current plan is that it seems to be:
- Piss off pretty much the entire *NIX community with threat of lawsuit.
- ???
- Profit!!!
What step 2. is, remains to be seen, and I really hope it doesn't lead to 3.On an unrelated note, what I want to read at this point is a frank positional summary by Ransom Love who is becoming somewhat conspicuous by his "absense" through all this mess.
Re:Saw this on Google News a while back (Score:5, Interesting)
Err well making money is arguably morally good.
SCO is far less trying to fsck over linux than IBM, yes they've made noises toward the Distributions, but a primary thrust of their suit is to revoke IBM's Unix license. Even a very small likelihood of that happening will grab the attention of people running AIX.
Naturally we expect IBM to address this with the court and if the court considers it likely they will prevail, then IBM will be allowed to continue shipping AIX.
The reasons I think SCO loses this case, amplifying OSI's discussion:
- AIX as a kernel is the Mach microkernel, (derived from BSD not SysV) and among unixes it's the one which outwardly seems to have the most rewriting. The same kernel and hardware have been the basis of os/400 for half a decade.
- AIX as an OS mostly uses bsd-flavored commands (and only adopted sysV-style init as Linux's SysV-style became the lingua-franca)
- IBM is supporting thier Unix clients by building linux compatibility on top of the (far more solid) AIX kernel. This means middleware. Does anyone doubt that IBM has done a GPL-free interface? No way do I believe they'd risk opening AIX source by directly incorporating GPL.
Basing AIX on Mach didn't come cheap. For instance AIX took longer than it's competitors to get 64-bit clean for the same reasons that the Hurd (also Mach-based) just got set-back a year, the 32bit limitations are in the microkernel, not the bolted-on subsystems. One thing they bought with that investment, however was a very strong position in the event that SYS-V's inheritors ever wanted to raise this particular ruckus.Personally I'm hoping SCO gets tapped for IBM's legal fees when they inevitably lose this case. The only winners I can see are SCO's lawyers, and perhaps to a lesser degree microsoft and Sun.
SCO - Too bad they ruined the name (Score:4, Interesting)
Most important (Score:3, Interesting)
A judgment in favor of SCO could do serious damage to the open-source community. SCO's implication of wider claims could turn Linux into an intellectual-property minefield, with potential users and allies perpetually wary of being mugged by previously unasserted IP claims, and ever-more-outlandish theories of entitlement being propounded by parties with only the most tenuous relationship to anyone who ever wrote actual program code. On behalf of the community that wrote most of today's Unix code, and whose claims to have done so were tacitly recognized by the impairment of AT&T's rights under the 1993 settlement, we protest that to allow this outcome would be a very grave injustice. We wrote our Unix and Linux code as a gift and an expression of art, to be enjoyed by our peers and used by others for all licit purposes both non-profit and for-profit. We did not write it to have it appropriated by men so dishonorable that after making profit from our gift for eight years they could turn around and insult our competence.
And here's the really important message:
Damage to the open-source community would matter, because we are both today's principal source of innovation in software and the guardians and maintainers of the open Internet. Our autonomy is everyone's bulwark against government and corporate control of the digital media that are increasingly central in political, commercial, and personal communications. Our creative energy is what perpetually renews and finds ever more exciting uses for computers and networks. The vigor of our culture today will translate into more possibilities for everyone tomorrow.
I think that is a nice roundup of every geek's feelings towards the tendencies found in politics, business and laws nowadays.
Re:GPL the best bet (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, their stock went up 40% (!) yesterday on the MS news. It also was about double from when the lawsuit silliness started *before* yesterday. So SCO stockholders are making money, that's for sure. At least if they bought at a low. Even if they didn't, they have dramatically reduced their losses. The next best thing to making money is to lose less money.
As for the GPL, I really do not think it holds water if somebody misappropriates your code, inserts it somewhere in linux and you unknowingly release it. But, IANAL. If the GPL does stand up and is declared valid in such a case, you can expect large companies to avoid it like the plague. They will not want have to vett every line of code they distribute under the GPL against every line of code in their proprietary portfolio to make sure somebody, somewhere, didn't insert stolen code.
Please note, I am not saying SCO's claim is valid and anybody took/used anything inappropriately. I am just saying that I don't think the "GPL defense" will stand up in court, and *even if it does* that may have worse long-range effects anyway. A lose-lose.
Confused? (Score:2, Interesting)
www.levenez.com/unix/ [levenez.com]
No, seriously, check it out. Best *nix genealogical tree I know of.
Re:Please don't take SCO seriously! (Score:2, Interesting)
Amusingly a few paragraphs later he's still missing the target:
But nobody (except ESR) is talking about OpenServer, it's about UnixWare.Re:GPL the best bet (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes it does. It matters a very great deal, in fact.
Someone else cannot licence your Intellectual Property without your consent. If there was any code that was stolen from SCO and placed in the Linux kernel with someone elses Copyright on it, that code would not legally be under the GPL. Only the Copyright holder can decide that.
This is the same as if you purchase a television at a garage sale, but the cops come around and tell you that the television is stolen. You have no rights to own that television as the seller never had any right to sell it to you. Same deal here.
Now the general argument around here (And also now from ESR) is that SCO distributed the Linux kernel under the terms of the GPL, and even if they were unaware that their code was contained in the kernel they are constrained by the terms of the GPL. It would seem to me that at best that is going to be a huge legal grey area, and at worst it plays directly into the hands of companies such as Microsoft, who have been saying all along that the GPL can "steal" your IP from under you. That would just prove them dead right, wouldn't it?
I personally believe that the worst part about all of this so far is the stuning display of ignorance that surrounds the GPL.
Great paper (Score:5, Interesting)
Examination of SCO's 10Ks reveals that, even were we to assume that every dime of their revenue came from the enterprise market, their 2002 share could not have exceeded 3.1% [5] This is at the level of statistical noise.
Re:If you don't read anything else, read this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:An overblown paper (Score:2, Interesting)
The current version (1.7 as I write) is more accurate than the earlier ones (I think 1.2 was the first I saw).
Originaly it had statements like (from memory, can't find the CVS copy online):
The current version says So now he admits that UnixWare (the code that IBM had access to via Project Monterey) has all but one of the features in his checklist. (It has NUMA as well, but it takes a while to fix those position papers).Mainframes don't run AIX (Score:3, Interesting)
However, you used to be able to get AIX for S/390. It was hugely expensive and didn't really catch on.
IBM will not buy SCO. You're right. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:more a legal than technical issue Re:If you don (Score:3, Interesting)
> something of a concern about it for enterprise level customers.
Then maybe it is finally time for the GPL to have its day in court and do or die. And this looks like an excellent test case.
Way to go for stupid choice of quote (Score:5, Interesting)
"SCO has never owned the UNIX trademark. IBM neither requested nor required SCO's permission to call their AIX offering a Unix. That decision lies not with the accidental owner of the historical Bell Labs source code, but with the Open Group."
Well, this is quite true, but it's a trivial offhand swipe at SCO that has nothing to do with the court case. SCO are claiming breach of contract and copyright infringement, not trademark infringement.
The OSI position paper is actually pretty good, and almost any sentence picked at random would probably have been more relevant than that one.
How about:
SCO alleges (Paragraph 57): "When SCO acquired the UNIX assets from Novell in 1995, it acquired rights in and to all (1) underlying, original UNIX software code developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories."
SCO neglects to mention that those rights had been substantially impaired before its acquisition of the ancestral Bell Labs source code. [...] ten years ago at a time when Linux was in its infancy, the courts already found the contributions of other parties to what is now UnixWare to be so great, and Novell's proprietary entitlement in the code so small, that Novell's lawyers had to settle for a minor, face-saving gesture from the University of California or walk away with nothing at all.
Or:
SCO's claim to own the scalability techniques certainly cannot be supported from the feature list of its own SCO OpenServer, a genetic Unix. The latest version advertises SMP up to only 4 processors (a level which SCO's complaint dismisses as inadequate), no LVM, no NUMA, and no hot-swapping. That is, SCO is alleging that IBM misappropriated from SCO technologies which do not appear in SCO's own product.
Re:GPL the best bet (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not see how SCO could claim proprietary information on something they released under GPL.
However, this country seems so corrupt anything is possible.
Interesting reading (Score:5, Interesting)
The title kind'a get you thinking... "The Fear War on Linux". It seems pretty clear that the only one who might benefit from this is Microsoft. Really fitting for their strategy of FUDing Linux out of existence. Is this just a convenient turn of events for the Redmond guys, or a truly Machiavellian charade orchestrated by them since day one?
Btw, could someone explain these clearly out-of-context quotes? [sco.com]
Re:GPL the best bet (Score:3, Interesting)
re: the GPL and IP thing. They're doing just that. There was a story about it on
Bottom line: The lawyers (or whoever) that are in charge of IP at SCO screwed up, and they screwed up big time. They never should have released the code under GPL if they wanted to protect it later on down the line.
Going back and trying to reassert what ever rights they think they have isn't going to work. This is like putting code out in the public domain and then trying to turn around and stop everyone from using it. Too late. Too bad.
Re:GPL the best bet (Score:3, Interesting)
IMHO, I think SCO is at fault, "not knowing" is no excuse in court, they distributed Caldera, if they wanted to distrubute code without knowing whats in it, hence giving it a blind license, they can't claim that they didn't know. It was their responsibility to look at the code in Caldera to make sure that everything in there belonged there, before they license it with GPL and give it away. If they would of been doing that, the copied code would have been spotted right away and it would of been solved then, but they have been distributing this OS for quite some time, and now claim that they didn't do quality control, it's not anyone elses fault.
They don't belong in the OS industry if they can't even manage their own releases, and/or know what it even does.
Re:Microsoft linkage (Score:3, Interesting)
It's interesting that in the month leading up to this I've seen a couple quotes from Microsoft representatives stating that they would be creating a version of their OS that doesn't require the Windows GUI. This is a big step towards Windows becoming more like Unix. Perhaps this is related somehow?
It would make sense that the best way for Windows to compete with Linux is to become more like Linux. At least in the areas where Linux is clobbering MS. It's just the timing that makes me wonder if these things are related.
Re:Please don't take SCO seriously! (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with you. This is as good a 'FUD' as it gets. Seems to me like MS offered a direct 'compensation' to SCO and made an offer it couldn't refuse (why the hell would MS need SCO IP that they couldn't get from Sun/IBM/Whatever? after all SCO is an ancient unicycle). Hey, if they somehow win they get to dig into IBMs pocket too! For SCO that's the biggest win-win they've seen in a long time.
Where i disagree with you though is that /. and other news sites need to carry this more. Because, i believe, this is MS marketing at a whole new level. remember 'virus'? 'anti-american'? this is part duex.
The reason it needs more air time is that this will be the first of many more to come. we need to make sure everyone is fully aware of the defeat of SCO. For example, my boss is well aware of the lawsuit. If we hear nothing i may run into trouble six months down the line trying to argue why we should keep using linux instead of a more 'reliable' vendor [put your prop. vendor here].
In fact, we are lucky in the sense that it was SCO that sued linux/IBM because, from reading the article, they have a very weak case. (IANAL).
I really am liking this though. It's like M.C. Gandhi said 'first they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win'. Lawsuites are usually signs of the tail end of 'then they fight you'. Next -- we win!
Re:ESR is just as bad, if not worse (Score:2, Interesting)
Hi swordgeek,
I read the first half of the article and skimmed the second half. I saw points taken from SCO's complaint and Raymond discrediting them. He is obviously biased toward free software but that doesn't take anything away from the points he makes.
You said that Raymond is not risking anything by writing this rebuttal, and I agree with you. However, he is not the one who started this fight. He would not have written this article was it not for SCO filing the lawsuit.
Finally, if you respond to this post will you explain to me why you think that Raymond's rebuttal doesn't have clout?
Ciao.
Fight The FUD (Score:2, Interesting)
Help spread anti-FUD.
delmoi, also, apparently is full of shit (Score:4, Interesting)
It was not said that you need to code twice as much; rather, that complexity doubles. This is demonstrably true.
Statistical noise? Yeah, if you were taking a survey with a standard sample size (~1200 samples) Actually, 3.1% is > 2 standard deviations from the mean regardless of sample size. It's noise, plain and simple.
Re:As an attorney... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll assume two things here: 1) You're not a troll, and 2) you've read the OSI paper that was the article. Both are probably wrong, but hey.
So if you have some serious research, I'm sure we'd love to see it. Particularly if some of it invalidates claims in the OSI paper, which are pretty strong.
Yes, we certainly do use AIX. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, we certainly do use AIX, and it is a fine, reliable, stable and high-performance *nix.
telnet (CWX1)
CWX1 (AIX 4.2.1) Unauthorized use/access is prohibited.
login: root
root's Password:
Last unsuccessful login: Wed May 14 13:25:58 2003 on
Last login: Thu May 15 09:28:00 2003 on
Determining terminal type, please wait...
Terminal recognized as vt220 (DEC VT220)
TERM=vt220
/ >#uname -a
AIX cwx1 2 4 00054848A100
/ >#uptime
10:41AM up 337 days, 12:13, 4 users, load average: 0.19, 0.22, 0.54
/ >#
Yes, it's an older, outdated version of AIX, but does its job and runs too reliably to risk dorking with upgrading it. Besides, it's on a private internal network only (hence being able to telnet in as root), and runs an older version of Oracle that's quite happy on this platform. And furthermore, it's long since paid for itself over and over again.
Let's get our facts straight (Score:1, Interesting)
And Bill Gates is the devil because...
Nice try, but guess what? Unixware [sco.com] and OpenServer [sco.com] are still two separate products.
For the most part, though, this seems to have some good points. I'd love to see the reaction from SCO. It's farily obvious from SCO's original presentation (from which this document quotes) was not fully reviewed by enough mind power backed by technical experience. For example,
Virtually none of these software developers and hobbyists had access to enterprise-scale equipment and testing facilities for Linux development. - SCO
Not true at all, including the hardware IBM, Compaq, etc., made available, not to mention the equipment Caldera generously made available themselves to developers. Oops. Too bad they got rid of the folks who could have reminded them of this...
Re:Saw this on Google News a while back (Score:2, Interesting)
I know that AIX (along with every other OS at IBM) was to be hosted under Mach back in the mid-90s, but every system house except OS/2 abandoned that project. And OS/2... well, we know about what happened there. This was all part of the much-hyped and little-designed Workplace project.
AIX does have a rather unusual kernel for UNIX; it has quite a lot of dynamic configuration and device management, and it has had it for a very long time--back when it was still standard practice to reboot a Sun to make a config change, you almost never needed to reboot an RS/6000. AIX has, by Sun and Linux standards, an unusual shared object system as well. But it worked back when everyone was saying, "always build static on Solaris" (ca. 1993). That it hasn't changed much (prior to AIX 5.2) kind of hurts C++, but oh well.
And I can't find any trace of Mach on IBM's marketing pages for AIX; companies who use Mach seem to be quite happy to add it to the list of features they're marketing.
Read it! (Score:2, Interesting)
If the case goes to court (which it should) and IBM wins (which it will), then a lot of FUD about Linux and IP actually will be out of the way.
Re:My experiences with Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not failing. It's gaining marketshare. It's winning people contracts in larger and larger organizations for larger and larger installations.
There's no such thing.
Put another way... I felt that I was up to the job to perform a heart-and-lung transplant. I had several experiences applying band-aids to minor scrapes and recommending chicken soup to people with the sniffles.
You got the wrong memo. It's in honor of Richard Nixon, who also (unlike Karl) has an 'i', an 'n', and an 'x' in the same name.
Ought to be easy, as you clearly don't have any.
Sue SCO for slander and libel (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading thru the OSI document, it became clear to me that the SCO suit and surrounding PR are an attempt to do to Linux what the USL/BSD suit did to BSD a decade ago -- that is stall it's adoption in a cloud of legal FUD.
For those who are not aware, back in the early '90s Unix Systems Lab (the inheritor, at that time, of the bell labs IP in Unix) sued the BSD people over their attempt to split off the BSD code from the Bell Labs IP. At that time, they had realized that the BSD code base had very little code that had actually sourced with AT&T and decided that it was time to excise what was left of the AT&T code and go their own non-proprietary way. USL was indignant at this abandonment of fealty and attempted to sue the BSD group back into compliance.
As the OSI paper succinctly puts it: "The suit was settled after AT&T's request for an injunction blocking distribution of BSD was denied in terms that made it clear the judge thought BSD likely to win its defense." -- (and after Berkeley's threat to counter sue AT&T over their own violations of the BSD copyright and license).
Many people, however, credit the current popularity of Linux -- at least in part -- to the legal cloud that the AT&T suit placed over the BSD codebase -- at about the same time that Linus released the early (and relatively primitive) versions of the Linux kernel with the GNU utility codebase.It is believed that a number of people decided that it was easier -- legally speaking -- to throw their lot in with the clearly IP-intact Linux than to risk getting caught by the BSD license debacle.
As a result, Linux is now the dominant Unix-variant OS OS, and the various BSDs -- which started with a much more stable and mature codebase are now holding a relatively niche market space.
SCO's suit along with their rather bombastic and (as shown by the OSI document) seriously misleading and unfounded PR claims seem intended to create precisely the same kind of 'chilling environment' around Linux. The fact that Linux is just about to get into a serious head-on fight with Microsoft for control of both the server market and the desktop market may be either coincidental or part of a conspiracy.
Although SCO's legal filings have a limited immunity to claims of slander and libel, to the extent to which they have repeated those claims in press releases, public statements, and letters, they are not. Those public and semi-public statements appear to be a large part of SCO's 'legal' campaign, and open them to some serious libel claims.
I honestly believe that it would be appropriate for the Linux community to seriously look at suing SCO over the insulting, degrading and clearly untruthful statements that they've made about us. The intent of those statements is to degrade the image and financial value of the work of the Linux community, and if they're allowed to stand, they may succeed in doing so to a greater degree than they already have.
Re:GPL the best bet (Score:2, Interesting)
If they are indeed going to court to stop the distribution of code which they did not intend to distribute, but still did, then you know what, they lose. They are a vendor. If they don't know what is in their product, they are idiots. If they didn't take the time to find out what was in their product, they're careless.
Bad example. The actions of disgruntled employees are a separate issue. If it was a disgruntled employee that released proprietary information, there are a barrage of different issues at stake (like when was this purported employee released, why did it take so long to find this problem, etc). At the end of a case of disgruntled employee doing something, they have every right to retract the leaked information. I'm not sure if it can still be considered a trade secret, but it is most definitely still under whatever copyright the employer wants it to be. But we're not talking about the "what if's" of a disgruntled employee. We're talking about a company that should've known it's code was in there, could've known earlier if the code was in there, but did nothing about it until it realized that it was a rodent and about to be exterminated.
The main thing that needs to be considered is:
Caldera released a product under a license. Since, we can assume that code review was done (see above about not knowing what is your product and being an idiot), we can also assume that the product passed said review and was authorized to be released with the appropriate licenses. As a result, said proprietary information was approved to be released under GPL and thus made non-proprietary. End of story.
Regardless of whether or not SCO knew the code was theirs. If they did, then this lawsuit is thrown out and SCO punished for being gits and wasting the courts time. If they didn't know, then this lawsuit is thrown out and SCO punished for being idiots and wasting the courts time.
As for your last point, such is life. If it is found that proprietary code was released thus exposing trade secrets, I would think that several things would have to happen:
However, given the information in the linked position paper from the Open Source Initiative, I am sure that SCO is toast. But now it's up to a court to decide how serious a case of cranio-rectal inversion SCO has.
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:2, Interesting)
Look at PL/S, a PL/I derrivative that IBM has used internally since the early '70s. It generates compact systems-level code (like C can) and supports in-line assembler instructions for when a high-level language just doesn't cut it. Mention that you know PL/I and you'll get laughed outta Dodge, but if you've ever seen a PL/S listing, you'll understand why they still use it. All their mainframe code is written in PL/S, so it'll be around for a long time.
Similarly, IBM has a lot of code and a lot of trained programmers invested in OS/2. They're not going to throw that away without a compelling business reason. "But Linux is cool!" is compelling, but it's not a business reason.I used to work for a subsidiary of Fujitsu. They made a box that competed with IBM's 3705 and 3745 communications controllers back in the day. Their programmers knew that architecture inside out, so they wrote -all- of their code in 3705 assembler and Fujitsu even produced a proprietary 3705-based microprocessor chip for internal use.
Never underestimate the value of a code base.Could be that SCO believes IBM's Monteray PR speil (Score:2, Interesting)
It appears that SCO's claims about Linux scalability, etc, may have been as a result of some IBM PR in 2000.
A vunet article from June 2000 [vnunet.com] quotes Miles Barel, IBM's program director for AIX and Monterey, as saying that scalability, volume and systems management features present in IBM's Unix operating system, AIX, are still missing from Linux.
Of course, an IBM'er would (at that moment in time) push AIX over the (then) hobby project called Linux. But, it seems that it is this comment that's sparked SCO's much delayed attack.
The most interesting point I've found on this (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GPL the best bet (Score:3, Interesting)
If a proprietary entity releases some of their software with unique GPL'ed code in it, then they're obligated to either release the entire thing under the GPL, stop offering the package, or remove the GPL'ed code. For lines of code long enough to be clearly copy&pasted or of clearly enough similarity to be directly modified GPL'ed code, they knew damn well what they were doing. The GPL license is not hidden -- it is made very clear on every piece of software that comes with it. There is no such thing as "proprietary developers accidentally using GPL'ed code". That's bullshit.
No auditing is necessary for proprietary entities, if they follow simple procedures. For every piece of code they use that isn't theirs, they need to document where it came from and the license it was covered under. If they don't, that's their own fault, and it's too damn bad for them.