More Damning SCO Evidence At Groklaw 404
An anonymous reader writes "There's a very interesting story up at Groklaw right now. PJ reports on new evidence that Chris Hellwig, a SCO employee, contributed code to SMP, XFS, and JFS and did so with the knowledge of his supervisor." Groklaw is thorough, and this is another good example of just quite how thorough.
conspiracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Internet archive (Score:5, Interesting)
Look here [archive.org] and enjoy SCO's own word on how they supported and contributef to Linux. Year 2000 is the best.
Quote from May 2000 [archive.org]
A corporate sponsor of Linux International, SCO has always supported open standards, UNIX Systems and server-based technologies and solutions that benefit business computing. Our engineers have continuously participated in the Open Source movement, providing source code such as lxrun, and the OpenSAR kernel monitoring utility.
Compare this to the legal filing they made here a few days ago telling the Judge that they never contributed Code.
Re:Conspiricy theory (Score:5, Interesting)
One Amazing Lady (Score:4, Interesting)
Pamela Jones and Groklaw is a huge asset (Score:5, Interesting)
Pamala Jones has my early vote for "Linux Booster of the Year for 2003".
i really can't wait until all of this is over ... (Score:5, Interesting)
i suppose this does pose a threat to linux in terms of leaving a bad taste in vendors' mouths concerning but there really is absolutely no way SCO is going to shut us down.
even if SCO gives linux and gnu somewhat of a bad reputation, we already have major players in the industry who are committed to supporting linux (ibm, novell, sun). and by the time all of this bullshit blows over, linux will be even more robust and marketable, and our detractors will soon find themselves knocking down our doors once again to profit from our technology.
really the only thing we have to fear from the whole sco debacle is discouragement
but really the most appalling thing about the situation is sco's utter lack of common sense; it makes me wonder how they thought they were going to win in the first place (see below). how do they expect their argument to hold up in court when they STILL HAVE NOT YET PRODUCED ANY HARD EVIDENCE?!?
darl mcbride: "well
SCO, if you are reading this, pack your bags, go home. to quote eddie murphy (quoting richard pryor): "have a coke and a smile and shut the fuck up."
we all get the point that you don't like us, but unless you are going to actually do something about it, piss off.
Re:Conspiricy theory (Score:5, Interesting)
To the extent that an agent of The SCO Group helped develop and promote these technologies, The SCO Group is barred from making claims against others on that basis. There are lots of other defenses available, and other forms of estoppel than simple promissory estoppel (when you say something is acceptable, either explicitly or implicitly), but the above would apply to many defendants at once.
I'm willing to bet... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Old news (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll dig up the old standby: RTFA. Better yet, RTFPTLTFTA, otherwise known as "read the f'ing post that links to the f'ing article", as it pretty well spells out the difference between what Groklaw discovered and what's been "known for quite a while" - namely that SCO willfully and knowingly not only distributed but also contributed to specific features of the kernel that they specifically claimed never to have touched in their legal filings. As far as I know, this is completely new - and it's not just an allegation, it's proved in the linked article.
In other words, they both modified and distributed the specific code they are claiming to now have been stolen from them and they did it under the GPL. This code did not get "misappropriated" from SCO's Unix into Linux, this code was put into Linux by SCO. This is huge.
IANAL, but it would seem to me that this blows pretty much their entire case out of the water in one fell swoop. This renders any contractual issues (the basis of their case against IBM) moot and leaves them only one fallback - that the GPL is invalid and is trumped by their own copyright. Of course, this is something they've also been saying now for a few months (not since the beginning of their case, though - I think they probably realized their case against IBM was flimsy at best a while back), but to say this news is "old" or doesn't affect their legal standing seems to be a misunderstanding of the facts.
If these are facts (and it seems Groklaw has done their homework to me), then SCO will get laughed out of court on day one. They did something, they lied about it, then they filed a lawsuit based on that lie... and now they've been caught.
Re:We still have problems people.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure a rogue programmer could do something on his own, or not be aware of the legal nuances behind a piece of code. But if a programmer is working on it, and the marketing department knows and advertises it, it's really hard to say that management and legal didn't know about it.
And yet that's what SCO is saying.
Some comments from the man himself (Score:5, Interesting)
I feel sorry for the guy.. like so many other linux contributors caught up in this BS..
"Most of that stuff is also bullshit. The folks in IBM LTC that work
onm the kernel are mostly ex Sequent, not ex AIX folks. Now
Sequent also had a SVR4 source license for Dynix/PTX, but in fact
most of the scalability changes in SVR4.2 SM / ES actually come from
Sequent! (Just take a look at the Authors of the VFS and VM design
documents for SVR4.2 ES / MP).
AIX OTOH was only developed with a SVR3 source license up to AIX4,
and neverless the actual kernel does not resemble SVR3 or SVR4 at
all, and although I'm not sure I think they even only used it for userland
not the kernel.
AIX5L (that project Monterey) had additional components licenses from
SCO UnixWare like procfs or bfs - but IBM has very strict policies
that the AIX5 and Linux groups basically don't communicate. For example
I was involved in the JFS/Linux project which is very similar to the JFS2
in AIX5L because they're both based on JFS in OS/2 - when there were
bugs found in the old OS/2 codebase they weren't able to inform the
AIX folks about it or send patches. Similarly I wasn't able to get
information about the layout used for Posix ACL on AIX when I started to
implement those for Linux."
Re:Pamela Jones and Groklaw is a huge asset (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll cough up some cash.
Re:Conspiricy theory (Score:3, Interesting)
So this should be an affirmative defense against violating their copyright on these portions of the code that they intentionally placed under the GPL, assuming that the corporate entity SCO knowingly did so, the agent had proper authority (it would be hard to argue he didn't, since they had some of these specific claims in their marketing literature and under United Linux joint press releases and so on). Nonetheless, as with any legal argument, there are no guarantees or magic bullets in court. You still have to go pitch that the GPL was a legimitate contract that was entered into by SCO and the recipients/licensees.
Now it starts to seem more clear why SCO's attorneys want to attack the GPL itself. If the contract is illegitimate for other reasons, it seems like it could weaken an estoppel defense. Furthermore, to actually invoke promissory estoppel, I think you need to show that there is a lack of mutual assent as to the contract or the terms thereof. Since there's really no acknowledgement at all of what code may or may not have been "lifted" or where the infringement occurs, it's not yet possible to invoke estoppel until the discovery phase airs all this stuff out publically (which may never even happen).
Re:Internet archive (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be kind of like DaimlerChrysler claiming they never made the Plymouth Aries K. They certainly didn't in modern times, of course. But they acquired what used to be Chrysler Corp., who owned Plymouth, who made the K. The legacy came with the purchase. But, to add a nice SCO twist to this whimsical example, let's imagine DC is sueing all surviving Aries K owners for not paying a mendatory re-engine fee to become a Mercedes. "You didn't really buy that Plymouth from us, so you don't actually own it."
Ok, so maybe it is a stupid analogy . . . Kinda like the whole SCO suit.
Re:Pamela Jones and Groklaw is a huge asset (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't imagine the hours that Pamela has put into this, and from all I've seen, she's not into the tech aspects at all, she was and is a paralegal.
Now, how long before ThinkGeek comes out with "Go Pamela, you go Grrl" T-shirts.???
Re:Pamela Jones and Groklaw is a huge asset (Score:1, Interesting)
SCO Contributors to Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Without a kernel debugger, developing an SMP kernel becomes increasingly difficult. Register at Groklaw, or wait till the article is published for all the nitty-gritty details.
Re:Emmm.....is this fair? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well MS was the first company to pay SCO a ton of money to bankroll this thing. SUN was the second. These companies have repeatedly said awful things about linux and open source sometimes reffering to OSS developers as communists and cancer.
It makes perfect sense to presume that MS is behind all this. It's just like them to something like this and they even hinted at doing something like this in one of the haloween documents.
If it walks like a duck
Re:Old news (Score:5, Interesting)
In this I wholeheartedly agree. Not to mention that if this goes to court, which it presumably eventually will, killing as much time as possible so the perps can liquidate as much of their holdings as they think the SEC will ignore.
I hope the judge explains the penalties for perjury very carefully to the members of both legal teams while stareing straight at the SCO side of the table. Including Darl McBride if he has what it takes to show up without dipping his face in liquid nitrogen to keep it straight while he testifies.
Bah, bunch of losers, and I'm damned if I can understand why the VC and market analyst people cannot see that. There must be some kind of a soundproof barrier between reality and the guys bidding this crap on the marketplace floor...
But like P. T. Barnum said, there is one born every minute.
Cheers, Gene
Re:Overall Picture (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:SCO Supporters (Score:2, Interesting)
Or a win by RedHat in their suit against SCO....
Re:Old news (Score:5, Interesting)
It could get more complicated than that. IIRC, SCO is claiming that its existing code was taken from another product and put into the Linux kernel. In that case, the "scope of authority" would have to be the authority to relicense that code under the GPL.
But if the programmer only had authority to help write code for the Linux kernel... that doesn't necessarily include the authority to relicense SCO's other code.
Anyway, I think SCO will lose because they released the code under the GPL. Copyright is strict liability. Even if they didn't know there own code was in it, publishing it under the GPL puts it out under the GPL.
The fact that their own employee may have contributed some of this code directly only adds fuel to the fire that will take SCO down.
BTW, I'm a law student too.
Bigger Conspiracy Theory (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:what!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Like the FBI and DOJ and SEC are doing now??
They're not doing ANYTHING about corporate crime, even AFTER they found conspiracy emails at Enron detailing how to bring plants on and off-line in such a fashion as to inflate prices (there never was a shortage).
The ONLY reason you're hearing about new scandals on Wall Street is due to the New Jersey state investigations.. the "feds" have tried to ignore this for as long as they can. (Hell, the feds ignored the Phoenix Memo, so why should this surprise anyone. Fucking traitors).
Re:We still have problems people.... (Score:5, Interesting)
They could simply say that Hellwig was doing this in his spare time, or that he and his boss were coding for Linux in their spare time. The problem here is, Hellwig is a peon. Just another worker bee. Doesn't matter what employees do, it's a question of whether the top executive know. Did they know what Hellwig was doing? Did they realize all the implications? Those are the real questions. And here we enter the realm of plausible deniability (lawyers can jump in to correct me anytime now). Did the executives know what one worker bee was doing? Hell no! Why do they care what one of their workers was doing in his free time?
Wake me up when Hellwig's boss's boss's boss's boss knew about the problem, understood the implications, wrote a letter, and forwarded it to his boss, who then fired it up through management to the upper echelons.
You're wrong actually. A CEO is entirely responsible even if he is not aware of what is happening. This is the first thing anyone learns in asset protection. You have to be aware because if you are not you will still be held liable. CEO's have been held liable in the past. This is not theory, it has happened.
Re:SCO Supporters (Score:3, Interesting)
For that matter, wouldnt' it be possible for IBM and SCO to both win their suits? IBM is smacking down on GPL violations and patent issues that don't require them to be innocent of contract violations to still win. SCO might win against IBM, but get crushed when IBM blows them out of the water on GPL and patent violations.
This requires popcorn.
Re:Buying damage (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mr Hellwig (Score:4, Interesting)
In other parts of the document, they take the presence of his contributions to mean that SCO was still involved recently. Wrong.
The older stuff where he had an e-mail address belonging to SCO / Caldera is good, though.
Weasel words. (Score:3, Interesting)
I see three examples of it here. The opening phrase allows the writer to say, "Oh, I didn't think you wanted that information." The phrase "authorized, approved or knowingly released" allows the writer to respond that any releases (note they never claim not to have released the code) were not sanctioned. And, of course the big one: "the subject code." Until SCO deigns to define what code they're talking about, they can continue to claim that any releases they authorized are not the code in question.
In spite of this, they're in for a rough time if they need to argue in front of a judge that all of Caldera's pre-lawsuit Linux work was unintentional.