SCO Tells Courts What IBM Did Wrong 389
linumax writes "It took more than two and a half years, but the SCO Group finally has disclosed a list of areas it believes IBM violated its Unix contract, allegedly by moving proprietary Unix technology into open-source Linux. In a five-page document filed Friday, SCO attorneys say they identify 217 areas in which it believes IBM or Sequent, a Unix server company IBM acquired, violated contracts under which SCO and its predecessors licensed the Unix operating system. However, the curious won't be able to see for themselves the details of SCO's claims: The full list of alleged abuses were filed in a separate document under court seal. The Lindon, Utah-based company did provide some information about what it believes IBM moved improperly to Linux, though."
The hell? (Score:5, Insightful)
How entertaining.
Merry Christmas (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a clear sign that SCO itself doesn't believe their list is worth the paper its printed on. There isn't a time of the year when people are paying less attention. It's like they're saying "Details at Christmas - in the meantime, enjoy your FUD."
question that has to be asked (Score:3, Insightful)
Either rate, the effects are all still the same. McBride sued IBM without any proof of wrongdoing. SCO has seriously opened itself up for a plethora of lawsuits with this action and once it's proven in court that there was nothing going on.
bigger issue at hand. (Score:1, Insightful)
There is no real check and balances to prevent a small author from stealing code, and then publishing it under one of the OSS licenses. At that point a larger company (red hat maybe?) picks it up and integrates it into their distro. They sell a million, and then a million violators. The author fades a away, and red hat gets stuck with the bad press and a big bill.
What are the ways to avoid this when you use community code? Is it to only use the big developers code (kinda defeats the purpose)? Anyways, what do you guys think about this...
Re:The hell? (Score:5, Insightful)
Groklaw got a story ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah? We'll see. Or maybe only the parties and the judge will, but if they had found infringing literal code, there is absolutely no reason not to show it without seal, because if it's literal, it's out there in the public already. All Linux code is freely viewable by anyone on Planet Earth. The astronauts can look at it too. SCO may be afraid the Linux community will pull the rug out from under them before they can get to trial, if they tell us publicly what they think they have. Every time they tell us what they think is infringing, somebody proves they are mistaken. At best.
Re:What me worry ?? (Score:3, Insightful)
The documents are under SEAL (Score:5, Insightful)
According to http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200511010 0443634 [groklaw.net] the Docs are under seal, and as PJ puts it "there is absolutely no reason not to show it without seal, because if it's literal, it's out there in the public already." and "SCO may be afraid the Linux community will pull the rug out from under them before they can get to trial, if they tell us publicly what they think they have. Every time they tell us what they think is infringing, somebody proves they are mistaken. At best."
IMHO SCO is just blowing smoke again, and trying to pump up the stock.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
And they call the GPL viral...
Re:What Next? (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds stupid, but when large corporations have to put up "firewalls" between projects to deal with sensitive issues such as IP leakage, that's *exactly* one of the things they have to worry about.
IBM knows all about the procedures that are necessary in these situations, which is what makes SCO's charges so brazen. But when you have teams of hundreds of Linux developers under tight deadlines and under pressure to get their bonus or an acceptable job performance rating, along with intense corporate pressure to deliver results, it wouldn't be surprising if one or two didn't decide to take a shortcut and help themselves to a little AIX code.
Re:Big Blue Marbles (Score:3, Insightful)
1. They are getting a lot of good geek press/word of mouth. Fighting for Reasonable IP could be good business for them.
2. They may want to make sure anybody else that tries a frivolous lawsuit to see what happens - not only will you loose, but you will be bled dry in the process.
3. It may be a message to Gates to fight his own battles and not through proxies.
4. Somebody is really pissed at Darl and want to see that the only job he is able to get after this is hired hand on a dirt farm.
myke
Re:question that has to be asked (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft got a very big speed bump in the road to corporate adoption of GNU-LINUX and got rid of SCO for, what to them is, a little scratch. This was just the opening they needed to inject XP and Windows 2003 Server into corporate America.
With the priceless FUD that was generated and the quiet handshaking between nouveau bedfellow, Sun Systems, Microsoft is in a much better position to foster hegemony in the corporate server marketplace which is their ardent desire. Microsoft got all this for chump change, and good ol' Darl was the chump. Microsoft tossed him out like used toilet paper when they were done with him. Darl's ship didn't go down instantly so he got to hang on to his job for a little while longer and prepare for a quiet departure into retirement.
SCO used to be so damned cool, too. I remember when they had to send out memos to the staff to wear shoes adn be fully clothed when they were going to have an outsider visitor.
Vortran out
Re:Big Blue Marbles (Score:4, Insightful)
Also: IBM has more money than god: as of their most recent financial statements, they maintain a cash balance of $8,250,000,000 (That's billion with a B, folks.) While the expense of fighting off SCO might seem insane to you or me, and would bankrupt a smaller company, it's literally pocket change to IBM, and it is very likely that their board of directors consider making an example of SCO to be a worthwhile investment.
Credibility in business contracts is a very important thing, and SCO is making a direct claim that IBM entered into a contract with them and proceeded to rob them blind. That's not a charge that any CEO is going to take lying down, and if they have to spend a few million dollars and a few years to have a judge authoritatively dismiss SCO's claim, it's probably worth it.
Re:One big problem for SCO AKA Caldera is.. (Score:5, Insightful)
until SCO released it under the GPL, you are correct.
Or else I could just slap the GPL on the leaked Windows Source Code and say "ha, well it's GPL now"
the issue the grandparent was pointing out is that SCO distributed a GPL'd linux kernel containing the code they claim to own. As the (supposed) owners, they certainly would have the legal right to relicense that code and by releasing it as part of the linux kernel under the GPL, they have relicensed it.
The only defense they could have is that they didn't know it was in there and shouldn't be forced to "accidentally" GPL code via an act of copyright violation. This doesn't fly, however, because they continued to distribute the linux kernel, and the code they claim is infringing in it, under the GPL for a year after they initially madethe claims. It's hard to say you didnt know it was in there when you've filed a lawsuit specifically about it.
Re:I have some inside information... (Score:2, Insightful)
So, yes, it would seem SCO is dumb enough to use antiquated C.
Re:The hell? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:One big problem for SCO AKA Caldera is.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Not quite (Score:3, Insightful)
Now they can try to claim that they didn't realize that they were licensing their own code but that's a hard sell especially when they didn't yank the code immediately off their site when they made the claim. You could download Linux from SCO's site for at least a year after their initial claim.