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."
What Next? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's next, they'll say some IBM employees might have had coffee with Linux developers? This still just looks like a fishing expedition by SCO.
this is still going on? (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought they had given a bunch of supposed code a long time ago that was supposedly "lifted" from them, and it was pretty much proven on all counts that prior art existed, etc etc...
Won't SCO just keel over and die already?
Five pages, 217 violations? (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Does file management system mean file-system, or the actual names and structures (i.e. folder tree) of the files?
. . . others are communications by IBM personnel working on Linux that resulted in enhancing Linux functionality by disclosing a method or concept from Unix technology.
Metod or concept? I would sure like to see the technical list, cause these generalities are putting ants in my pants.
Two things: (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Even if SCOX were correct in this, and it was against the contract for IBM to give *THEIR OWN SOURCE CODE AWAY*, why does this mean I owe them $699 per CPU? If (as in SCOX's insane world) IBM did something wrong, and IBM has to pay them Five Brazillion Dollars, doesn't that mean that SCOX has already been paid, and they can't go after someone else for the same thing?
Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
To put it simply, SCO looks like they knew they messed up a long time ago and now they are trying to delay their death as long as possible while they try to get an actual business model up and running. That explains why they are partnering with MySQL and some others and hyping their ironically named OpenServer.
Re:Sucky lawyers... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What Next? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, you have to read what the intro says, the story says, and some history about the case. As I understand it, SCO is finally saying the ways that IBM abused it's contract with SCO. Notice the lack of Copyright claims in this statement. That's because the original case, regardless of what Darl liked to spew to the public, was about a contract violation. Whether that's still what the case is about eludes me right now, I thought they dropped the contract claims to focus on Copyright.
It's been reported that IBM's contract with SCO stated that they weren't allowed to put technologies from their Unix into any other OS. This is not exclusive to those that weren't put there by IBM. That means that IBM could not use their "IP" in any other OS without consent from SCO. Many think that, if this stipulation were in IBM's contracts with SCO that SCO had a decent case against IBM.
Then SCO started with all of the Copyright junk.
If I'm reading this right, then this still would seem secondary and SCO still hasn't provided any evidence of Copyright infringement. They've just strengthened a case that few contested, and they've declared as less important.
Nightmare if SCO folds with case unresolved? (Score:3, Interesting)
Will list of violations to be unsealed? (Score:3, Interesting)
If not, I suspect the final list of supposed transgressions (in December if the schedule does not slip) and the battle over IBM's motions for summary judgments to be mostly sealed. We can then expect some spectacular media grandstanding from tSCOg, trumpeting the strength of their sealed case, before they finally go down in flames.
Re:Apple should just buy out SCO (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What Next? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also been reported that a fat guy in a red suit flies around the earth once a year in a reindeer-powered sleigh.
What you miss in that is that *everyone* who was directly involved in the contract (which was with AT&T, not SCO, or SCOX) has said that it does not mean what SCOX says it means. This includes the $echo newsletter, in which AT&T explicitly clarified that the clause only refers to AT&T's code, not code owned by the customer.
One big problem for SCO AKA Caldera is.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Then, of course, there's that nasty little detail wherein SCO/Caldera never owned the copyrights anyway.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that SCO can't feasibly cut and run. First, there's IBM's counterclaims. Their admission that they didn't have a case won't dismiss those counterclaims, but it will make IBM's proving them a slam-dunk and the penalties there are more than SCO's got in available assets. Then there's the RedHat case, and if SCO admits to not having any case in the IBM case they virtually guarantee RedHat a win. Again, RedHat's claims would be ruinous. And then there's the AutoZone case, and if SCO abandons the IBM case AutoZone's sure to demand costs in their case. In short, SCO's currently backed into a corner where the only option that lets them survive at all as a company is to fight to the bitter end and pray for a miracle. It's pretty clear right now that the only way they'll win is if a large chunk of the judiciary suddenly goes insane, but that's still a better chance for survival than any of the other options so SCO's taking it.
Re:The hell? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:One big problem for SCO AKA Caldera is.. (Score:4, Interesting)
If IBM were not entitled to include the code in Linux then it was never under the GPL.
Or else I could just slap the GPL on the leaked Windows Source Code and say "ha, well it's GPL now"
Re:What Next? (Score:3, Interesting)
well, it's not *good* coding practice, but I have seen people do that on purpose. They use break to get out of the loop. Personally, I would never do it. I like to imagine that chic track or whatever where jesus is looking over the guy's shoulder while he's on the computer, only in my case I imagine that Knuth is looking over my shoulder and would slap me on the back of the head if I wrote while(1)
Re:Remind me (Score:3, Interesting)
SCO's complaint boils down to this ... (Score:3, Interesting)
"The numerosity and substantiality of the disclosures reflects the pervasive extent and sustained degree as to which IBM disclosed methods, concepts, and in many places, literal code, from Unix-derived technologies ..."
The last part "Unix-derived technologies" is where they give it away. According to their "understanding" if IBM wrote any code for IBM's AIX (based on sys V) that code became toxic the moment it touched the AIX system. All hope is lost for IBM to wish their own code as they please from that point on.
Re:Nightmare if SCO folds with case unresolved? (Score:5, Interesting)
I expect IBM to refile its motions for summary judgement early in 2006 because from the evidence apparently filed here, SCO is still doing the same old dance about JFS, RCU and NUMA which no-one in their right mind believes are either copyright or contract infringing.
Nope (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure even that would be enough to satisfy IBM, but if it was, it wouldn't be so bad...
Remember: Today's SCO isn't the old SCO (Score:5, Interesting)
It was that got me involved in Un*x, back in 1988 [robert.to]. I had decided it was time to move from the Long Island defense industry, and make a move to Silicon Valley. I started with Andy's "MINIX" and then paid the $1200 bucks or so for SCO Xenix, installed it on my 80386 PC (with an American Megatrends/Mylex motherboard!) and learned Unix (especially low-level matters like writing device drivers.) Shortly after, I was able to get a job with Olivetti Advanced Technology Lab in Cupertino.
My job involved close interaction with the engineering staff at SCO--folks like Mike Patnode [mpsharp.com] (whose name sounds like a Unix command) and others who knew SysV inside and out.
The company is completely different now. The same in name only. They're not in Santa Cruz anymore (a hippy beach resort in Central California)--instead they're in Utah.
Re:What Next? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, actually, it isn't.
It's much cleaner to break out of a loop at the instant the termination condition becomes true. This occurs at the loop-control statement only in trivial loops, and only by coincidence. Coincidences don't make good code.
Another way of looking at the question: if it's better to begin a variable's scope where it's first used, which most C++ users agree is the case, it's also better to explicitly end that scope when it's potentially obsolete. The only ways you can do that in C/C++ are with break, continue, and goto. Goto obscures scoping altogether, so it's not much help, but loops constructed with while (1) and explicit breaks can be considerably easier to understand.