SCO May Countersue Red Hat, SuSE Joins The Fray 622
uninet writes "The SCO Group, Inc. today released a statement concerning the lawsuit filed against it yesterday by Red Hat, Inc. The release quotes Darl McBride, SCO's President and CEO, as being 'disappointed' with Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik for not being 'forthcoming' about Red Hat's intentions in a previous discussion."
Reader psykocrime adds "According to this SuSE press release, SuSE has publically announced their support for RedHat's actions against SCO. Quoting from the press release: 'SCO has already been halted in Germany and we applaud Red Hat's actions to help end their activities in the US -- and beyond. We applaud their efforts to restrict the rhetoric of the SCO group -- and the FUD they are trying to instill -- and will determine quickly what actions SuSE can take to support Red Hat in their efforts.'" Read on for a few more links.
Vladimir writes "What no one has really touched upon is that the SCO vs. IBM court date is in April 2005, which could mean that the resolution of this case could be somewhere in 2006-2007, by which time Linux or any other OS may be irrelevant. People please keep your wallets in your pocket. Also, this lawyer has a long analysis of SCO extortion attempts and debunks a lot of their FUD."
Besides which, Omega writes "VNUnet has a story on how the economic analysis firm The Butler Group predicts that even if SCO can demonstrate there is offending code in the Linux kernel, it could easily be replaced."
See the code (Score:5, Interesting)
Forthcoming about their intentions? (Score:5, Interesting)
What, just like SCO were when they decided to distribute a Linux distro, including code that said "Please use me", and then get all of their revenue by suing people for doing so?
Remind me, what SEC filing that that plan appear on? Because it seems to me like "Abandon development and marketing of obselete product, make all of our money from barratry" would be the sort of thing that investors would like to know about beforehand.
Re:See the code (Score:5, Interesting)
Probable view: If they show the code, it would be out of the kernel in 4 hours, and re-written in a day, their case would collapse.
Speaking of licenses (Score:5, Interesting)
Ha! I can just see Darl "Pirana" McBride's next bright idea, SCOO, the Santa Cruz Other Operation.
Wallpaper of the Penguin smashing the SCO Logo ? (Score:3, Interesting)
It needs to be something tasteful and non-libelous that can be placed, for example, as wallpaper on a corporate desktop.
Anybody got anything that they would like to contribute ? (The kind of thing that I am thinking of is the Penguin smashing the SCO Logo with a sledgehammer)
Question (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd love to see Sony sue SCO... and everyvendor of Linux devices (Sharp, Matsushita, and other big boys)
SCO is like a mouse surrounded by dozens of 800lbs gorillas
AHAAHAHAHAH
a long period of uncertainty (Score:4, Interesting)
i think there are several things going on here, but they all originate from strategic, and not tactical, decisions by redmond. let me start with a comment i heard from a coworker (he's in technical sales), "if anyone can figure out how to make money out of linux, its microsoft."
one: microsoft has recently started to be perceived in the marketplace as stodgy. no, i don't have any business case studies to back it up; i feel it. so they're attempting to tell the world that they can change with the times like the best of them. how? by announcing open source initiatives, etc.
two: despite microsofts continued rants about TCO, business' experience probably show that linux TCO, especially in the area of server administration, and down-time associated with virii, patches and other security issues, is in fact lower. ergo microsoft's focus on security and providing 'enhanced' command-line tools for server administration.
three: they (redmond) know just how long it takes a suit to be completed. this whole series of events figures into some long-range plan. what, i don't know. remember though, this court date for the start of the suit is after the release of longhorn. my bet is that there will be a slew of patches and other enforced upgrades between now and then to change the balance. not in the home, where microsoft is feeling threatened, but in the corporate world, where they are quite seriously running scared.
Open letter to McBride (Score:2, Interesting)
Dear Mr McBride,
If I understand SCO's position correctly, it is:
1. Linux 2.4 consists of copyrighted work licensed under the GPL by various authors, as well as some form of SCO's IP which has never been legitimately licensed under the GPL.
2. SCO believes in protecting IP holders' right is important.
While I will leave the merits of your claim of SCO's IP being in Linux to another day, I would like to ask you about the rights of other Linux copyright holders and whether SCO's actions are consistent with your stated position on the importance of protecting IP holders' rights.
As you are aware, the GPL forbids distribution of a combined work contains both GPLed and non-GPLed code.
I believe you are aware of this, and agree with this interpretation of the GPL, because it says so on your company's web site:
Quoting from http://www.sco.com/scosource/linuxlicensefaq.html it says:
"Why doesn't SCO offer an IP License for Linux to the Linux distribution companies so that they can bundle SCO IP with their Linux distribution? " "The SCO compliance program is an end-user program for the right to use SCO IP in binary format. The IP License for Linux does not grant distribution rights, nor does it grant any rights associated with source code. SCO doesn't offer a license to cure the infringement on the part of the Linux distributor because SCO's source license agreement directly conflicts with the GPL. "
Furthermore, you reiterated this position in your August 5 conference call, referring to Red Hat's Linux distribution:
"But if infringing code is found, RH is required under the GPL to stop shipments of Linux."
It would therefore seem that distributing Linux would not be appropriate, in your view. As any such distribution, by anybody, would in fact infringe the copyrighted IP and GPL license, of the various Linux coders, for the portions of the code that does not form part of the alleged infringing code in Linux.
So I have to ask, by what right do SCO continue distribute GPL software (SCO Linux) from your official FTP site ftp.sco.com ?
I am not aware of any special provision in the GPL that grants SCO more rights to distribute Linux than Red Hat. So if Red Hat have no right to distribute Linux, why do you think SCO have that right?
I am aware you now (added today) state on your web site that your distribution is only for existing SCO Linux customers, but again I would do seem any provision in the GPL nor am aware of any special provision for SCO or anybody else, that says you may ignore the GPL if distributing to existing customers. So can you please explain why you think SCO is legally entitled to distribute GPL licensed Linux software, and especially the non-contested portions, at all?
Finally referring once again to your license FAQ at http://www.sco.com/scosource/linuxlicensefaq.html
"If SCO doesn't offer a license that would permit the distribution of an in house customized Linux OS to internal data centers, what is the value of correcting the infringement on the part of my end users when my company as a whole is still infringing SCO's intellectual property? What should I do?" "Consider migrating from an in house customized version of Linux to a shrink wrap, off the shelf version of Linux or to an alternative operating system. If you are unable to migrate, consider outsourcing the development of the customized Linux distribution. SCO understands that these options are very constraining and is investigating alternative that both protect its intellectual property and are less burdensome for end users."
Specifically I would like to ask about these two sentences:
"Consider migrating from an in house customized version of Linux to a shrink wrap, off the shelf version of Linux or to an alternative operating system. If you are unable to migrate, consider outsourcing the development of the customized Linux distribution."
If as you
Bickering Children (Score:3, Interesting)
I as an interested outsider can do two things: laugh my ass off or argyly ignore all post concerning SCO. Since I am finding it more and more difficult to do the first I will shut up now and have me mod -1 now...
SCO (Score:3, Interesting)
I feel soo bad, considering that I just ordered about 2K of licensing upgrades from a SCO distributor for a client yesterday. :(
If it wasn't for a proprietary set of apps, Linux + SCO bin emu was looking very good. I even had a chance to test this scenario, but encountered some serious issues.
This just proves that, like any other commercial OS, if a company adopts a commercial OS, and their production apps are taylored to that environment, the companies are just locked-in, wether they like it or not.
Any ideas what for? (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean.. what's there for SCO to counter-sue for? Remember, the do not want to have to display code in court, so they can't very well turn around and sue for the very thing RedHat disputing, namely infringement.
Or maybe they could, but to a layman that doesn't make any sense. Maybe good for one final pump of the stock though, so I guess there's some logic to that line of thought... yeah, we'll probably see a counter-suit in order for the insiders to pump the stock for another round of sell, sell, sell [sec.gov].
I can't see any registered sales for a while now. I wonder if maybe they know the earnings report is so very depressing that no insider dares to sell this close to it. Might look suspicious to sell just before announcing ten figure income and large overall losses... nah, they don't care -- The SEC is toothless.
Re:Replacing the Code (Score:5, Interesting)
How exactly is this insightful?
His analogy is way off base. He compares knowingly comitting theft, to unknowingly using code that was distributed in breach of contract.
You are not all square... you have to pay for the IP you stole. End of story.
Doesn't this line along give away the post as a troll? There's no end of story. Even if SCO wins the case against IBM, there's nothing saying the will be able to collect damages from anyone else, especially since they have refused to disclose the infringing code. (They were knowingly adding to the damages through their own actions.) Heck, despite what SCO says, it seems the only suit they have filed is about their contract with IBM. Even if IBM did break this contract, it doesn't mean CO owns the copyright to the code.
SCO might have to license Unix from IBM (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Replacing the Code (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that SCO themselves claims that they knew back in 2001 that their IP was allegedly in the Linux source tree. Why did they wait 2 more years? So more people could use, buy, adopt, and adapt "their" code, which means more people to extort this bogus licensing from. Sorry, that sword cuts both ways.
No, that would be like the law letting a rapist rape 20 women, instead of 1, so they can nail him on 20 counts of rape, instead of 1.
End of your story, yes, however, reality goes on. The real story is that the GPL is not a EULA. If there was infringing code or IP in the code I was given, which was transferred with the GPL, and no other exclusions or contracts that CLEARLY state that there is IP in the code I've received, I am not guilty of copyright infringement. Got that? Repeat it slowly.
Also, if IBM writes code on their own, which works with the SysV source tree that they bought a license to from SCO, IBM owns the copyright to that code that IBM created, NOT SCO. You can't claim copyright on someone else's copyrighted code. That's not how the law works.
In any case, I do not owe SCO anything for my dozens of Linux boxes, nor does any other Linux user, company, or business using, deploying, distributing, modifying, or selling Linux. Period.
..or should I say, "End of story."
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
hedging one's bets (Score:3, Interesting)
The case applies to kernel version 2.4 or later. If you're using 2.2, you're okay. Right?
In order to hedge one's bets, maybe a distinct fork of 2.2 is called for? If we want to be utterly over-the-top paranoid, we need to make sure that if we're called upon to roll back to 2.2, we can do that, even four years from now. Which means we need to make sure device drivers written for new hardware up until then can be made to work with the 2.2-series kernel architecture.
It'd also be good if distributions continued to give the option to use a 2.2-series kernel up until this is resolved. The current stable Debian distribution does; I hope the next two or three do as well.
Re:An insult on the US justice system... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the Securities and Exchange Commission needs to get involved. An SEC investigation would cast a little FUD right back at SCO, though it would be much more truthful than the crap SCO's spreading around.
Free Software on SCO (Score:4, Interesting)
http://ringtonetools.mikekohn.net/license.php
http://asp2
for example.
Maybe other free software developers will do the same?
1 2 1 2 The Naken Crew
The worrying aspect (Score:2, Interesting)
This is where it gets interesting, and I implore the ./ crowd to point out any referencing material to help me out here, but why on earth would IBM team up with SCO for Project Monterey? IBM have experience in developing UNIX (and other enterprise class Operating Systems) operating systems for 64-bit architectures, as well as the supporting tools to go along with such a beast.
What exactly did SCO bring to the table? Considering that the answer to the last question above is quite possibly "Nothing", one must ask why it was that SCO claims that enterprise-strength features are the bulk of the misappropriated property here? Most of the products SCO are claiming ownership of don't exist in any SCO product line except OpenLinux (if you can call that a product). SCO don't have any experience in developing for anything other than x86, and no one would call that an advantage when developing code for the Itanium. It seems that the only thing SCO have that gives them reason to go on in this game is their legal team - people who know about how IBM works.
Looking at the Novell situation, it is terribly convenient that SCO happened to "find" a document detailing their ownership of various copyrights after Novell had made a public statement. As Novell were quite methodical and timed in their release of their press statement, one could very well assume two things:
The factualness of the second point above can be further asserted by the fact that Novell basically went quiet soon after SCO responding. To paraphrase saint McBride, SCO's legal "team" have been going over the Linux codebase for over 12 months now. Yet, in that time:
Regardless, SCO has told the nice blokes at SuSE that they'll be on SCO's list of potential victims at some point, they continue to refine LKP for UnixWare and exclaim on the excellence of OpenLinux as the ideal conduit for migration from commercial UNIXes (they also say that UnixWare is the best commercial UNIX though...) Looking at the above, you could be led to beleive that SCO has planned all of these events. This is not a conspiracy of any sort - simply a possible example of excellent planning, with very questionable overtones in each of the three major cases above.
In reality, could a closed-source kernel (such as UnixWare or OpenServer) contain code that was suitable for copying straight into Linux? Everyone seems to forget here that Linux departs majorly from the way that most UNIXes do things. Linux doesn't use working sets for memory management as one prime example. It has two memory allocation mechanisms as another case in point. With the resources that SCO has, one would seriously doubt their ability to make changes to their codebase that depart massively from the "traditional" way of doing things while still maintaining a supportable product with the release cycle they're committed to. Seriously though, OpenServer doesn't even seem to have anything looking like kernel-space threads (no offence to any open source OSes that like their user-space thread implementations. In your case, your threads are that way because they serve you
Re:See the code (Score:3, Interesting)
We'll see:
PinkFairies.org [pinkfairies.org] - Home of the SCO code bounty hunt.
Hopefully we'll sweat it out of 'em. Got code? Claim your prize!
~Will
Re:An insult on the US justice system... (Score:2, Interesting)
The patent system (which you are now successfully trying to shove down to the european throat) protects big companies.
See: in europe the competition is regulated by government which most of the US citizens see as a communist way.
In the US competition is regulated by the big companies with 10k+ patents in their briefcases.
Disclaimer: I'm not living in America.. and I'm not sorry.
Re:Stay Tuned, Don't Change That Channel! (Score:3, Interesting)
Conspiracy? What the flying-a-747-through-a-Krispy-Kreme fuck?
If they cross the line from bizarre and groundless civil claims into even more bizarre and groundless criminal claims, then all bets are off. I got yer conspiracy right here, and it has to do with issuing press releases in order to manipulate the price of securities.
Several have pointed out that the insider sales are "scheduled" and therefore legal. Correct.
But if you know the trades are going to happen between Day X and Day Y, it can still be insider trading if you manipulate the price of your stock by means of press releases.
This is a rare case - most scheduled selling is unrelated to the stock's day-to-day trading activity. For instance, consider an insider who knows earnings for the quarter are gonna suck.
An insider selling XYZ (unscheduled) the day before it reports earnings - legal.
An insider selling XYZ (scheduled) on the first of the month, every month - legal.
An insider selling XYZ (scheduled), knowing the quarter's gonna suck, and knowing his (legal) insider sale is likely to take place on the first of the month, browbeating the board to release earnings a week ahead of schedule - very interesting.
Assuming they were smart enough not to discuss this in email, it would be very difficult to prove whether any particular group of individuals set out to schedule their (legal) insider sales in advance of a series of (questionable) lawsuits... or if they scheduled the lawsuits, and in full (insider, nonpublic, material) knowledge of what the lawsuits were likely to do to the stock price, scheduled their sales. Some might even call that a conspiracy.
Re:They always countersue (Score:4, Interesting)
Replacing the code in Linux won't shut SCO up... (Score:2, Interesting)
At least one of the FUD statements that SCO has made in the past couple of months is that they own the control over derivative works. They have said as much when clarifying the IBM suite by conceeding that they don't own the copyright to the IBM-written code, but they should have control over it becuase it is a derived work.
Anyone who looks at the offending code and then proceedes to write their own code to replace the offending code has been tainted, and their work could be considered a derivative.
Re:I've just spoken to Larry at SCO (Score:2, Interesting)
Debian GNU/BSD (Score:2, Interesting)
Lawsuits extend long enough to hurt linux badly
Debian/BSD is propperly finished
Debian GNU/BSD is started and we end up with the exact same debian with a bsd kernel (not the same as the one above). It would be good to get berkeley relicense it GPL if possible (ya right).
We port all the linux drivers and relevant coolstuff(TM) to the BSD kernel.
We still have a full FLOSS OS with a killer ultra-scalable kernel.
If HURD is done before that (dont grin), then kill BSD and use plain HURD.
we need a class action lawsuit in the US.. (Score:3, Interesting)
SCO's Secret Formula (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been drawing an analogy in my mind. Something akin to Coca-Cola's (SCO - nothing against Coke) having a secret (trade secret) ingredient that they claim Pepsi (Linux) is using. But the claim they can't tell what that ingredient is or the secret is out. So instead they ask Pepsi to pay royalties or stop producing the formula.
Pepsi says no, just tell us what it is and we'll remove it from our formula, but in Coke's mind, that could reveal the formula to all of the non-Pepsi world, a fate possibly worse in Coke's eyes since no longer does just one competitor know their trade secret but all of them know it.
Remember before you flame that I'm just trying to see things from SCO's point of view. And I don't believe for a second that they have a tenable position.
It seems to me if Coke had released their entire formula at one point (including the trade secret part), they forfeit claims to that trade secret.
Also if claims of trade secrecy can trump the right of a defendant to know the accusation, then "trade-secrecy" claims could be abused way to easily. (Again, the not-a-lawyer-disclaimer goes here.)
I'd love to get comments from well educated lawyers about what parts of the above are bad assumptions/incorrect and what is accurate, just to help my understanding if not others.
Re:An insult on the US justice system... (Score:3, Interesting)
Aparenntly it's impossible in the US to make someone personally responsible for the statements he issues or to make a corporation responsible for the statements their management issues.
The people can't be charged with anything since the corporation did it, not the person. I mean the person actually DID say it, but that's just pedantics, according to law.
The corporation, on the other hand, CAN be, but those laws have been challanged as unconstitutional, since they gag the corporation (Who is a person), which violates its right to free speech.
What COULD happen, though, is that AFTER the stock price collapses, the shareholders can sue the execs, IF they can prove that they KNEW they were BSing, and that their actions were not in the best interest of the corporation's profits.
SuSE doesn't 'enter the fray' (Score:1, Interesting)
Personally, I think if thousands of individual Linux consultants, users, etc. were to file suits in small-claims court, that would kill SCO.
Calling on Linux hackers/admins to fight back... (Score:2, Interesting)
Essentially, we are in for a fight. The corporations "for" linux are going to fight the battles on the front lines (in court), but as we all know that is going to take forever - we as a community needs to start supporting ourselves because this is not going to go away and is just going to get worse.
SCO (as the front man) is strong arming and scaring innocent linux users into paying them a lot of money. They expect you to pay if you use the 2.4 kernel and later - there are two sets of people; those listening to the FUD from SCO and those flipping them off. We dont nedcisarily need to worry about those flipping them off, its the ones listening to them. We need to focus on those that are worried about it, this is linux afterall and we can twist her into a pretzel and she will still sing and dance - its time to do so for those that are worried about this...
Solution: For those that are concerned, install the 2.2 kernel or if worse comes to worse an experimental 2.3 kernel that is stable for there setup. There are patches and everything else out there to make the 2.2 kernel work with what is neccesary like the ext3 journaling fs. And all the apps will still work just fine (most atleast). The fancy desktops will have issues, but the people worried about this wont be using linux in that way. We may have to do some serious patching to the 2.2 kernel - but it is very possible and it needs to be done.
This isn't going to stop - we have another 2 years before anything will begin to happen in our favor. In the mean time SCO (and there backers) are going to push this very hard and litterally scare users away from linux. From the way the letters sounded with regards to the case with RH adn SCO - this is just the tip of the ice berg. If we dont figure out a way to get around the scare tactics, they are going to win. We cant fight this battle on the front lines - and we dont need to...
SuSE is a SCO/United Linux business partner (Score:1, Interesting)
I find it amusing that SCO is threatening action against Linux users. This includes customers of their own business partners.
And now SuSE bites SCO?
Moreover, the legally observant will notice that SCO continues to link to SuSE (and, therefore, to "infringing code".) Does that not make them contributors to their own IP infringement, at the very least?
It certainly would be a problem if the RIAA had (intentional) links to copyrighted MP3's, right?
Check out SCO's United Linux Page [sco.com]
Re:Yes, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure. Imagine RedHat succeeds and wins the case. They are awarded triple damages, putting a hurting on SCO in a big way, SCO can't pay up (no huge cash reserves, and all the lawyers fees are adding up). RedHat and the Linux community graciously accept the right to the "Unix" name and all original source code as compensation.
Suddenly, Linux *IS* Unix.
Ok, it really wouldn't be, and Linus has no real desire to make it so. But think of the chaos!
Re:See the code (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it's not SCO's code: SCO Unix doesn't contain any interesting advanced features.
I'd bet that the code fragments available under NDA actually compare Linux and AIX, or Linux and IBM written code fragments in Montery.
SCO doesn't have the right to show code written by IBM to the public, thus they can't show it to anyone without an NDA.
Re:What about UnitedLinux? part 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
This could be the backdoor Linux needs. If SCO lawyers visit a UL shop and demand $$ then the partners have a contractual complaint against SCO. Suse could demand remedy [under NDA of the current agreement of course!] and make the neccessary changes to their kernel. BUT...that kernel would be under GPL and of course redistributable. We would have our patch. SCO would have IP protection. GPL would be saved.
Don't expect any common sense to come from really expensive lawyers though...sorry.
Re:Interesting thing.. (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't know what Boies law firm is charging SCO, as that's between them. I'd doubt they're working on full contingency, but they might have cut their rates in exchange for a percentage of any future recovery from IBM.
But Boies is out of his field here. He's an antitrust lawyer (he defended IBM for 10 years, then prosecuted US vs Microsoft). It's possible SCO hired him because he knows IBM's lawyers, and SCO might have thought he could smooth a buyout by IBM. Well, that obviously didn't work out, but now Boies is stuck with his sleazy client, SCO.
But he's not an intellectual property lawyer, so he's at some risk of focusing on irrelevancies and paying insufficient attention to what's really important. Just for example... business correspondence (including email), statements in business meetings, and patterns of conduct are important in antitrust law, because they show intent and acts to further anticompetitive practices. But such factors mean little in intellectual property cases, where the emphasis is on concrete facts. So Boies might screw up here, if he has to actually go to trial. He could be as badly mismatched to the contest as a swordsman at a gunfight.
Re:Buying the SCO-licence in Germany not possible (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually, this isn't a very accurate translation, but you get their drift, don't ya?