Law Professor Examines SCO Case 558
An anonymous submitter writes "This law professor from the University of California points out weakness in SCO's legal bluster, and further takes a poke at closed software, for those hungry for more SCO scraps. At the end, he references Slashdot for more info ('itself a demonstration of the power of dispersed individuals working together')."
The Biggest SCO Weakness (Score:5, Flamebait)
Re:The Biggest SCO Weakness (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Biggest SCO Weakness (Score:3, Interesting)
Their lies and threats (the threatened SuSE, RedHat, Linus Torvalds, all Linux users, and others - without ever really suing anybody) have given their stock a big rise and by now the executives should have sold their stock.
Re:The Biggest SCO Weakness (Score:3, Insightful)
Insider Trading.
As much as they wish they can sell their stock, the SEC would nail them to the wall, and the way the public is feeling, I doubt 'Club Fed' would be in the cards.
Re:The Biggest SCO Weakness (Score:5, Informative)
They know better, if the executives are dumping stock don't you think people would notice? SCO is either hoping to be bought by IBM, or they actually belive they have a case.
Re:The Biggest SCO Weakness (Score:4, Informative)
That is, apart from their VP of engineering selling ALL his stock [sco.com] and others [sco.com]
Re:The Biggest SCO Weakness (Score:3, Interesting)
they threaten everybody, here's the thought train. If they can convince a judge or jury to rule that the code that was inserted into Linux was the same code as was previously inserted into System V they win,( it's a system V derivative, and therefore owned by SCO). If IBM can convince the judge or jury that the code that was inserted into Linux came from the non-specific imp
Re:The Biggest SCO Weakness (Score:2, Insightful)
No, but there is a difference between not volunteering the truth, and outright accusations based on no fact.
It is business smart not to 'volunteer' information which can hurt you, and every company does it.
We've got grounds for a lawsuit! (Score:5, Funny)
Sue! Sue! Someone, call SCO!
Re:We've got grounds for a lawsuit! (Score:3, Interesting)
As to the 2nd part, I don't know, not too well I expect (which assumes such a suit would succeed which is a big assumption), and I imagine Canopy might be an obvious target for any potential litigant too.
Next Slashdot Article (Score:4, Funny)
"Slashdot User notque from the University of Arizona points out weakness in SCO's legal bluster, and further takes a poke at closed software, for those hungry for more SCO scraps."
Uhh.. I think SCO sucks, and I think Microsoft sucks.
Re:Yeah, that was news (Score:4, Funny)
And that's really all I'm saying. Thank you Anonymous Coward, you troll quite a bit, but you sometimes are right on the money.
Re:Yeah, that was news (Score:5, Insightful)
NO you could not have.
there is a difference, a big difference, between an Anonymous Coward IANAL saying "the SCO suit has no merit", and a law professor saying "the SCO suit has no merit".
sure there are no new facts, no brilliant new insights there, (nor from you). it's an opinion piece. What is significant is not what was said, but who signed their name to it.
Re:Yeah, that was news (Score:5, Insightful)
T'is very true. If I point a CEO or CTO to my article on Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org], they'll just yawn and walk away. On the other hand, if I point them to the same article signed by a lawyer and law professor, they're a bit more likely to sit up, take notice and possibly even sell their inflated SCO stocks.
If I say "Let's go to war against North Korea", people talk about putting me in a psyche ward.
If Bush says "Let's go to war against North Korea", people go and buy duct tape and plastic(!).
The difference is not the words, it's who says it and how people listen to them that counts.q1
Re:Next Slashdot Article (Score:4, Funny)
If i've grasped SCO's approach so far, I can see them trying something along the lines of:
In which case a shareprice rise from 60 cents to 10 dollars is NOTHING.
Farcical, but at times it does begin to look as though the inheritance of the OS religious wars has come down to a claim by SCO that UNIX was indeed the 'one true OS' and that any other OS, by virtue simply of BEING an OS, must be a 'derived work' of same, and thus the rightful property of SCO.
Nice piece on chutzpah [guardian.co.uk] in yesterday's Guardian, by the way.
TomV
Re:Next Slashdot Article (Score:3, Interesting)
If SCO was truly clever they would have gone after Microsoft first. Maybe they could build a case on BSD code in Windows. Lots of OSS people would cheer them on, and help SCO find material and arguments to support their claims. At the end of the case MS pays up, and SCO would have a precedent for controlling BSD-stuff which they could then sue against Linux, IBM, etc.
If
Re:Next Slashdot Article (Score:4, Insightful)
What's especially interesting about that case, is when Caldera acquired DR-DOS it was already effectively destroyed and devalued, and presumably Caldera paid much less for it when they acquired it (like buying a car that's already wrecked from a scrapyard, and then suing whoever wrecked it, in my view).
The people who would have suffered any real damages from MS's conduct would have been primarily DR, and possibly Novell. But Caldera was the one who sued and ended up getting the settlement.
I doubt they're going to win. (Score:5, Interesting)
It could be that they've got a solid case. It could be that they're working out some great shenanigans. Irregardless, I'm starting to wonder if Linux should be open to the average user to contribute, or if perhaps it should be restricted to a core group of companies and Linus who can afford lawyers to vet the code. Things are getting pretty scary in the open source world, particularly with the lawyers getting involved...
Re:I doubt they're going to win. (Score:2, Insightful)
Where there's money there's greedy people - a necessary evil that goes with the creation of a new paradigm for software.
Pull out the duct-tape and expect the herd to move in and trample everything. By next year David Letterman will be making lame jokes about Linus' hair.
Re:I doubt they're going to win. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not _that_ open. Try getting a patch without review to the vanilla tree..
And besides, isn't IBM one of these "core companies"?
Re:I doubt they're going to win. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone ever hear the phrase, "Even bad publicity is good publicity"?
txs SCO (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope that, then, more and more people will feel more confident about open source, then start to use it.
Re:I doubt they're going to win. (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead why don't we refuse contributions from corporate companies. After all it's mainly the U.S. based corporations that erode everything that is even remotely based on benevolent principles -- Capitalism at work primary focus is not on the advancement of humanity...
This is no more a good idea than yours - to do either will do more harm than anything some [insert evil doer here] can dream up to deter the growth of GNU
Re:I doubt they're going to win. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not? SCO is going BR anyway. SCO has everything to win and nothing to lose by filing this lawsuit. At the very least, SCO sent their stock price from $2 to $10. Insiders are still selling like mad.
IBM, on the other hand, has a lot to lose if SCO has a case. If SCO had any case at all, it would have been best for IBM to settle as quickly and quietly as possible.
There is no way IBM would want this to court if the
Re:I doubt they're going to win. (Score:3, Informative)
I think Cringely made the best point about this possibility when he pointed out that IBM HAS THE BEST IP/LEGAL DEPARTMENT IN THE BIDNESS. Nobody is in a better position to vet the code than IBM, so if there were anything there to be concerned about, I would have expected to hear from them by now.
As stupid as it sounds, SCO is bluffing -- if you're going to be stupid, be stupid big.
Re:I doubt they're going to win. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I doubt they're going to win. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just wait until the big shareholders have quietly unloaded their stock, and expect a retraction of the lawsuit (on second thought, we may not have a strong case against IBM at all...)
[Any ressemblence to actual persons or situations is purely coincedental]
What has been said all along (Score:5, Interesting)
The second principle is that a party's rights can be affected by its later conduct - which can constitute a "waiver," giving away rights. Until recently, SCO was a willing player in the Linux movement, releasing code under the open source ("copyleft") license. Everything that happened to Linux was in the open. Yet SCO delayed in suing.
SCO had made their bed in deciding to take advantage of the open source movement. Now they want to retroactively change the decision.
Re:What has been said all along (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy in the article made a similar comment and I fail to see how it's relevant at all. The issue here is that IBM licensed some code and SCO is claiming that IBM then used this licensed code in Linux. That SCO also participated in Linux development is utterly irrelevant unless they themselves also put proprietary Unix code into Linux.
Now the issue of what took SCO so long to figure this all out might be more relevant. But it would appear that SCO and IBM have been in talks about this for a while, so it's hard to say how long the "offending" code has been there.
Ummm, no (Score:4, Insightful)
That would be like saying since McAfee wrote Virus Scan on top of Windows and using the information from Windows then they can't reuse any of that code in writing a Virus Scanner for any other OS.
Re:Ummm, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummmm no. There is a huge difference between writing an application FOR an OS and writing code that is a PART of the OS. SCO is claiming that any code that becomes a PART of the OS becomes their property (rightly or wrongly). To clarify your analogy, it would be like McAfee being granted a license to make VirusScan a PART of Windows, but in return, M$ now makes claim to that code. If their license says that McAfee then can't use that code in other apps, then they'd get sued if they tried.
Re:Ummm, no (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ummm, no (Score:5, Interesting)
No, no there isn't. The difference between application level software and operating system software is completely arbitrary, and many people disagree about what the difference is.
And no matter where the line is, doing the actual programming is absolutely the same.
Re:Ummm, no (Score:3, Interesting)
But that is beside the point. What I mean is that writing explorer.exe doesn't have to be different from writing winword.exe. That is all. Sure, you and I might both understand the explorer.exe is not technically part of the opera
A part of "Unix"? (Score:3, Informative)
SCO is trying ot claim that since the writers worked on both the Unix variant and the OS/2 one that the knowledge used from the one extends the license to the other.
They're trying to lay claim to a derivative of a derivative of a derivative. To make matters more entertaining the actual derivative was a paper abou
Re:What has been said all along (Score:5, Interesting)
But their claims are far broader than copyright, and seem to stem from a questionable interpretation of the word "derived".
You might be able to build a case that SCO had no reason to know about the alleged copyright infringement, but clearly SCO new about and even participated in incorporating "enterprise class" features into Linux. Not only wasn't it a secret, it was widely publicised by IBM.
Now, looking a the contracts as shown on SCO's web site, you might be possible to interpret them SCO's way (well, I don't really think so, but let's pretend for the sake of argument). There's no way you could conclude, however, that SCO didn't know that IBM was porting JFS or RCU to Linux. SCO knew it, and continued to distribute Linux anyway as part of their business.
Re:What has been said all along (Score:5, Informative)
NO. IBM did not license any of the technologies in question from SCO. What SCO is claiming is that even though the code was developed by IBM (during AIX and OS/2 development) that SCO has exclusive rights over it because it constitutes a derivative of Unix. This affects Linux because now that this "Unix derivative" code is in Linux, SCO claims Linux is a derivative of Unix.
If you're going to quote SCO's bullshit lies, get it right!
Re:What has been said all along (Score:3, Informative)
The specific instance I'm referring to is the RCU code done by Sequent. Sequent (now IBM) licensed the Unix code and made modifications. SCO is claiming that the conditions of the original license agreement makes these modifications their property. This code they claim has now found it's way into Linux, therefore is a
Re:What has been said all along (Score:5, Insightful)
That is only one issue. SCO has been claiming that ALL modern operating systems are in some fashion derived from ideas that they own. They have been talking about per CPU licenses for Linux users and that the "free ride" is over. I'd say their previous Open Source participation is EXTREMELY relevant.
Re:What has been said all along (Score:4, Informative)
SCO's court filings, which must conform to US law, only say that IBM violated their contract. Now, if court decides that a contract was violated for many years and out in the open, they may rule that it is now too late to enforce that contract.
The other legal argument (not the argument that may make sense to you and me on first reading, but the argument that actually cites law and legal precedent) is that if SCO's copyrighted, contractually protected source code was in the Linux kernel, and that source code was available for examination by anyone in the world with a computer, SCO should not have been distributing that source code themselves. "It's really hard to know" usually does not cut it in a US court.
US courts are not likely to find "I didn't know (the gun was loaded | the car had drugs in it | I was distributing my own source code without knowing it)" persuasive.
We will know nothing more until the evidence comes out. Finally, any argument I have made above presumes evidence which does not as yet exist, as far as the court is concerned. I would not be surprised if SCO files a motion to keep the discovery process and evidence hidden from the public.
Evil Plot (Score:5, Funny)
Now, if only we could breed, we would rule the world! Muh ha ha ha!
I attack the darkness.
Re:Evil Plot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Evil Plot (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, we can't even work. That's why we're reading Slashdot in the first place.
Re:Evil Plot (Score:2, Funny)
and here we see your plan's tragic flaw... good try tho
Re:Evil Plot (Score:3, Funny)
Credit where credit is due... (Score:5, Informative)
At the risk of parroting RMS here, Linus started the kernel roughly a decade ago.
GNU started the OS itself about two decades ago.
It is an important distinction. I really wish that there was a distribution of the GNU OS that used a non-Linux kernel (but was otherwise like other GNU/Linux distros), which would be more concrete evidence of the importance (and extent!) of the GNU portions of the overall OS.
Re:Credit where credit is due... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a lot of vagueness there -- aside from the kernel, GNU had recreated the majority of the OS long before SCO owned any such trademarks.
The part they lacked most, the kernel, has been so long in coming almost because of that fact -- they recreated the OS to work with existing kernels, so there wasn't a dire need for one.
In other words, reinventing the OS was more important than reinventing the kernel. But the OS (GNU) was recreated legally, and the FSF owns copyright to every line of code in a GNU project (to prevent silly suits such as this one).
Re:Credit where credit is due... (Score:3, Insightful)
Given the philosophical drive of the GNU Project, I highly doubt this statement. I don't think GNU thought it was such a great idea to run free utilities on top of a closed-source proprietary kernel.
the FSF owns copyright to every line of code in a GNU project (to prevent silly suits such as this one).
Nothing can prev
Go SCO!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Finally a legal perspective (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Finally a legal perspective (Score:5, Funny)
It's nice to see a legal perspective on the case, but what I want is to hear how a 7th grader feels about the case.
We've heard everyone elses opinion on it, Little Jimmy deserves to be heard.
The *only* thing Linux should fear is patents..... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft or anyone else gets coordinated enough, maybe 10 years from now, the software industry will be so littered with software patent landmines that Linux will no longer be able to continue development. This is a very real possibility.
Please, Slashdot readers, we need to join together to figure out how the hell we are going to stop this, or else we need to come up with implementations of new ideas, business methods, software algorithms before anyone else like Microsoft can, and publish them open source so that no one else can claim a patent on them!
Talk to your representatives in Washington, Europe, whereever because this is a very real and very serious threat that **will** kill software development.
The *only* thing Linux should fear is patents..NO! (Score:4, Insightful)
Since it's the US that's pulling most of this nonsense. It's the US that will suffer the most, while the rest of the planet will shake it's collective head, and mutter something under it's breath about those silly Americans.
If there's any dark knight? It's the same force that brought about the mess in the first place.
That's right, greed. You'll see change when rampent software patents make it nearly impossible to continue to make money.
Then you'll see the gordion knot undone quicker than it took to tie.
No, patents are LESS worrisome than SCO case (Score:3, Insightful)
With this full transparency, legions of open source coders could write around the protected algorithm. Although important code might be sacrificed, no legal problem would remain.
Much more distressing is the possibility that a company like SCO finds a judge who a
Patents are a danger only to some countries... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, this will come as cold comfort to those of us in the idiot countries, because if M$ and company DO manage to erect software patent barriers to OSS, Linux will be a banned article we cannot legally import.
The logical result of all this will be that the US and (probably) EU will lose their technological edge to China and India and become second-rate powers (and probably not just in the software field) until the software patent madness is overturned.
Our leaders, if they had any ability to think strategically beyond the next election, would realize that Open Source is a critical resource for their countries' ability to compete in the only area they have a critical advantage in -- their technological edge. (Not that I like what's been sliced up with that edge recently, but living in a declining country is an unpleasant prospect...).
Runnaway process (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot refers to him, he refers to Slashdot. HELP!!! I'm stuck in a DOS loop!
Due process (Score:5, Informative)
References Slasshdot for More Info (Score:5, Funny)
Misunderstanding the GPL (Score:5, Informative)
What would Brigham Young do? (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, the federal government wouldn't let old Brigham retain governership of Utah when it became a state, but wouldn't it by nice if we could install the guy as head of SCO? Even as a man who's been dead for more than a century, he could probably run that ship better than its current leadership.
Re:What would Brigham Young do? (Score:5, Funny)
-Shadow
SCO biggest Goof (Score:3, Insightful)
After they lose this case there will be nothing lkeft but the angry mob of customers taking McBride's hide and stapling it to the wall..
I'm more important than I thought (Score:5, Funny)
I though slashdot was a 'demonstration of dispersed individuals procrastinating together'.
Who knew I was demonstrating power all this time?
ah come on, I thought everyone figured this out ! (Score:4, Insightful)
can't you see it's obvious what SCO is doing?
and what this is all really about?
no... ok clueless ones, here's a clue for you...
after they announced the lawsuit their stock went up $10 a share, and the VP sold over 100,000 shares that day!
hello?!? Don't you get it? They don't care if they lose (and they will) that was never the point!
just like the WMD crapola in iraq (there never were any, it never was about that), it was about the oil!
all SCO wants to do is jack the stock high enough, long enough for their CEO, VPs, etc to cash out nice and RICH, and leave a burning twisted pile of rubble at the end....
they probably figured IBM (or someone - say Mr. Bill at M$) might buy them out, but either way, they're getting fat and rich off the share prices.
its a stock scam, and the securities people should be all over this!
so now you know the truth... what are ya gonna do about it?
Re:ah come on, I thought everyone figured this out (Score:5, Insightful)
Word of advice; personally, I wouldn't accuse the SCO folks of running an illegal pump-and-dump scam in a public forum, since that could potentially lead to a libel suit. Since you've represented this as fact and not opinion, I'd say you're at pretty high risk...
Re: SEC (Score:3, Interesting)
Or perhaps, it suddenly occurs to me, the SEC is hesitant to interfere with ongoing private litigation and will act if and when the case is shown to be meritless and it all becomes public record? (NB: a sealed settlement with IBM would massively complicate that effort). Twitchy they may be, but they're still run by an administration that is decidedly anti-regulation; that might limit their potential eagerness and make
Re:ah come on, I thought everyone figured this out (Score:3, Insightful)
OTOH I bet they *will* listen to hundreds of SCOX investors after they get bilked.
Re:ah come on, I thought everyone figured this out (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. It is obvious. This is discussed again and again each time SCO comes up. Thanks for restating it.
But you,
Re:ah come on, I thought everyone figured this out (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the fun thing about "intellectual property". It doesn't burn to the ground. It survives corporate implosion - at pennies on the dollar. With a fire-sale price, such "property" can even be snatched up by those with relatively little to lose and a lot to gain if they can leverage their new holdings in a creative manner.
And, of c
Re:Nope. (Score:3, Interesting)
It won't be IBM. There has to be a room somewhere in Armonk with reams and reams of case material. If they don't use it to stomp SCO they can surely use it against whoever buys that material. Anyway, I don't think IBM is necessarily opposed to buying that IP themselves. They're just not going pay SCO's market cap for it. Once SCO craters, then yeah
Imagine the Microsoft win-win from this. (Score:5, Insightful)
a] SCO wins and Linux and/or IBM is injured
I have to wonder if they researched the issue and then clued in SCO to go after people.
Also...
What if it is determined that IBM gave up its rights (by helping Linux) and that SCO isn't the sucessor the the rights? Would nobody own UNIX, and if so, would that devalue it in some way?
SCO's real game (Score:5, Insightful)
Assume for a second that this case goes to court. What are the chances that it will be resolved quickly? Not good. The matter is arcane enough that it will spend several years going through judgement, appeal, judgement, appeal, as long as SCO can pay their own (cheap) legal fees.
What on earth can SCO be after? I don't believe it's a settlement from IBM. They _know_ IBM, a company that has always lived by the fist.
What else? Their business is bankrupt. They sell _nothing_. Their IP is worthless - indeed, realizing this may have been the trigger that set them on their course.
Nuisance value, that is their game. They are attacking Linux and all OSS by association, and they are attacking it a level that plays directly to the paranoia of managers making a Windows / Linux choice today. What SCO are saying, and getting lots of attention to, is that Linux/OSS is not a safe choice. Even IBM are likely to be sued. How about your business next? If the RIAA can sue ten thousand P2P users, why can't SCO sue ten thousand Linux users?
Normal decent paranoia suggests that Microsoft's hand and money lie behind this move, but that is not the crux of the matter.
What is important is that we are at the stage when Linux/OSS seriously threatens commercial interests, and this looks like an undeclared war by those interests against it. War is not nice, not decent, not logical.
Such attacks can go either way. Linux has never has so much publicity as during the last weeks, and the association IBM+Linux is now strongly in the minds of many managers. This is a good thing. People trust IBM.
The OSS community must counter attack. The best approach would be a collective libel and defamation suit by some thousand OSS developers, seeking punitive damages against SCO.
Such a suit would not win but it would show SCO that their opponents are not helpless nerds unable to understand the meaning of cold, hard steel. Knives out!!
Perhaps someone from the EFF would set up a campaign fund? I would gladly contribute $50 or $100 if it would result in SCO getting slapped with a suit.
More SCO insider stock sold. (Score:5, Interesting)
I just reloaded [msn.com] to see a Reginald Charles selling $55,450 worth of his SCO stock. At $55,450 that's the largest insider trade listed since this thing started.
06/20/03 BROUGHTON REGINALD CHARLES Sold 5,000 $11.09 $55,450
SCO violates BSD license too (Score:5, Interesting)
ok, enough already (Score:3)
SCO is publicly making a public ass of it ('s corporate) self.
there, it's been said. i don't need to say it again. if the subject comes up here around the water cooler, i may voice my opinion again to a new party, but really, i'm pretty confident that SCO has no legal grounds here (yes, IANAL, like most other slashdotters). this "me too"ism that is growing here is getting out of hand. how many people do we really need to tell us that darl and co. are raving?
i am sure that there are all kinds of interesting submissions that are being passed over in favour of SCO stuff, and most lilely because of volume, so please - i beg you: don't submit more SCO stories. pretty please? with sugar? unless something changes?
i'm done whining now (which is my right as a slashdotter). move along...
McBride interview (Score:3, Informative)
Buying "damaged" goods (Score:5, Interesting)
I wasn't aware of the timing, but according to the article, SCO's McBride said:
Let's see. He's saying that IBM quit working on Project Monterey before Caldera bought Santa Cruz Operation's UNIX rights. That Santa Cruz Operation sold the rights precisely because they weren't as worth much at that point.
But part of SCO's lawsuit against IBM is SCO's claim that because IBM quit working on Project Monterey, IBM is conducting anti-competitive behavior.
Since SCO knew about this at the time they bought it, then surely, the price SCO paid for those rights was already discounted because IBM was no longer pursuing Project Monterey.
It's kind of like buying a junked car that had been damaged in a collision and then suing the driver of the other vehicle for wrecking your car. It was already wrecked when you bought the car! At best, the seller might have had a claim against the other driver, but not the seller.
If SCO wins, maybe we should buy the salvage rights to a World War II navy vessel sunk in a World War II battle. Then we can sue Japan for the full cost of the ship plus interest and penalties because they sunk our boat.
Re:Buying "damaged" goods (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is:
DR-DOS was already damaged when Caldera bought it. Caldera got it cheap as a result.
MS actions may have damaged DR-DOS, but it was DR that suffered, not Caldera. Yet Caldera was the one suing for damages (and getting a settlement).
Seeing a pattern here? You should.
MS funds SCO while disposing of Corel (Score:3, Interesting)
Corel shareholders fight suspicious takeover deal
Corel is being buried alive, and at breakneck speed [corelrescue.com], by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen [www.cbc.ca] and a former MS executive who, incidentally, also worked for the McKinsey consultancy firm which validated the post-MS investment strategic U-turn. Under the deal all Corel products [corel.co.uk] would be privatized for a measly $30M. Corel shareholders [corelrescue.com] - who've also pushed for Linux support long and hard - hope to canvass enough NO VOTES to scrap the deal but the raiders are tilting the rules in their favour.
It all went horribly wrong after the Linux powerhouse merger [vnunet.com] agreement between Corel and Inprise/Borland was derailed three years ago. We understand that Borland (in which MS had a shareholding stake) had valid reasons for pulling out under the agreed terms, but the combination would still have made perfect sense. Corel founder and CEO Mike Cowpland was soon ousted and CTO Derek Burney was named interim CEO. Conveniently soon afterwards Burney's half-acquintance, Microserf Tom Button, gave him a call [com.com] and invited Burney for a visit at the MS campus and before we knew it, he had signed a $135M investment deal with MS, accompanied by an incredibly one-sided Alliance deal [macworld.com] in which Corel had all the commitments [216.239.39.100] and Microsoft basically none. In his debt of gratitude, Burney even promised not to sue MS over any anti-competitive tactics that MS "may" have used in their MS-Office offensives. Next Burney drew up a new strategy based on those commitments - again incidentally [www.cbc.ca] killing all Linux efforts and reducing emphasis on anything competing with Microsoft - and submitted his ideas for "validation" [itworld.com] by McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm with strong culture of alumni networking [mckinsey.com].
From 2001 onwards Corel milked the increasingly-abandoned WordPerfect Office for revenue while toiling away on its dotNET descendant. Staff was getting laid off as a three-year turnaround plan was revealed to be centered on a dotNET-based enterprise system for massaging corporate data and delivering it in realtime to any type of devices through extensive use of XML and SVG graphics. Corel even bought SoftQuad and Micrografx to merge their technologies into the project codenamed Deepwhite [zdnet.co.uk]. Great idea but with somewhat misguided execution.
In 2002 Corel managed to strike a few high-profile albeit limited OEM preload deals [com.com] with the likes of Dell, HP and Sony. While Corel received little in terms of revenue from those deals, even that limited success must have come as a shock for Microsoft. "How dare those ingrate nobodies invade our holy turf!" could have been the likely reaction at Redmond. With the anti-trust spotlight under a friendly operator it was time for the final strike, and how better add insult to injury than by not just taking Corel out but actually keeping the corpse within the family!
In December 2002 the Paul Allen financed Vector Group, managed by a fo
Revisionist history (Score:5, Insightful)
Linus Torvalds did not "indtroduce an operating system...that did some of what UNIX did". Linus wrote a kernel, which is complementary to UNIX kernels (though different in architecture, design, etc). He did not write the entire operating system -- properly called GNU/Linux. He wrote one component necessary for the operating system that is now improperly called "Linux".
This is not a knock again Linus. He has never claimed credit for any entire GNU/Linux operating system, nor GNU/Linux in general. He has simply claimed credit for the Linux kernel.
It is, however, a prime illustration of how simply calling all GNU/Linux OS' "Linux" is revising history. People here talk about it like, "so what, everyone knows Linus didn't write all of the software for Linux-based OS' [GNU/Linux distros]". We know that. Obviously, no one else does. This lawyer thinks that Linus Torvalds created the GNU/Linux distributions from the ground up, single-handedly.
It is an example of revisionist history. Just like how Issac Newton is credited as the founder of Calculus, but no-one mentions Leibniz, who invented calculus at the same time as Newton independently.
Linus has done great things for the FS and OSS communities. We should, however, credit others where credit is due.
Re:Revisionist history (Score:3, Insightful)
You can help SCO! (Score:5, Funny)
robertb@sco.com [mailto]
kmartens@sco.com [mailto]
darlm@sco.com [mailto]
chriss@sco.com [mailto]
shitheads@sco.com [mailto]
A clear and interesting article (Score:5, Interesting)
All of this begs the question as to what SCO have been showing to their independent experts. Suppose they grab the code for XYZ scheduling, as seen in AIX. Then they grab the code for XYZ scheduling, as seen in Linux. Obviously, these two pieces of code, are going to be a pretty good match, even down to the comments. They tell the independent consultants that the former is System V code (because SCO claims that everything that was ever added to AIX belongs to them). And they tell the consultants that the latter is from kernel 2.4.XX. So the independent consultants, in all good faith, report that there is a match between "SCO code" and Linux code. My bet is that this is what SCO have been doing. I believe that this is the reason for SCO wanting people to sign NDAs. They can't risk anyone who knows anything about the kernel saying exactly what the code represents. It is in their interests to fudge the issue of where the code has come from. If some random hacker has grabbed the original SVR4 code and slipped some of it into a patch that has found its way into the Kernel, that could occasion some sympathy for SCO (not $3bn or even $1bn worth of sympathy). If that is the case, it looks like code that SCO originally paid for is being used without SCO being compensated. On the other hand, if it's IBM's implementation of XYZ for AIX, which they have ported to XYZ for Linux, then SCO's case is dead in the water, and SCO knows it.
Re:A clear and interesting article (Score:5, Informative)
SCO does not lay claim to the Sequent code. IBM owns that free and clear. SCO's opinion is that because it was first integrated to AIX, it is a derivative work of UNIX, and can not be released to anyone without a UNIX liscense. But SCO does not lay claim to it, since they did not write it.
Some speculate that Sequent covered these bases quite well. In a white paper released before code was developed, they described the generic algorithms and functionality outside of any actual implementation. The UNIX port can be said to come from that whitepaper, which indicates it is not derivative of anything.
The Monterey Project (Score:5, Informative)
This is how IBM and SCO have NUMA cache concurrency code. NUMA made it into Linux because IBM wanted to improve Linux reliability on their SMP Xeon-based servers, and instructed some of their programmers including some people who worked on Dynix/Sequent that wrote NUMA in the first place. This is how NUMA came to be in Linux. What I believe is the management at SCO has little knowledge of the code history of their SVR4 UNIX product. Caldera upper level management is populated with experts in hostile takeovers and making a business out of patent and copyright enforcement. I have no doubt that they took the effort to see if the Linux kernel had any resemblance to their UNIX code tree, and lo and behold some of the SMP memory management code is identical.
SCO quickly informs IBM to stop putting UNIX code in Linux, but they don't seem to know that NUMA belongs to IBM, it is a derivitave work of AIX, which is a derivitive work of Dynix, both of which IBM owns, and on top of that IBM's source license with UNIX Systems Lab gives them intellectual property of code they create based on AT&T code.
Claims that IBM is "diluting" UNIX by putting UNIX-based code in it and having UNIX-knowledgeable software engineers working on it is rather a stretch of the imagination. If IBM has sole intellectual property on Dynix/Sequent, just because they shared it with Santa Cruz does not mean they cannot use the code elsewhere. SCO wants to compare their SVR4 UNIX with Linux code, but what we really need to see is Dynix and AIX right beside them. This will prove that IBM owns NUMA.
Claims that using NUMA in Linux will place SCO UNIX under the GPL are also false. SCO will retain rights to use and improve NUMA code they received from Monterey, because it pre-dates the NUMA code used in Linux. So in the end there are essentially who Sequent NUMA forks, the one in AIX and UnixWare cum SCO UNIX is proprietary and the other written for Linux is open source.
Re:Derivative works on proprietary code? (Score:4, Informative)
If I take a piece of GPL code and extend it with my own code to make a new program, it is true that I cannot release the result without also releasing my code. However (and this is a big one that everybody that calls the GPL "viral" ignores) I can remove the GPL code and sell the rest, the part I wrote, as closed source!. Now it is true that I will have to replicate the functions I need from the GPL code, but everybody knows that is not impossible or even difficult. This could even be a reasonable business plan as temporarily using the GPL code may allow development and testing to be done sooner.
SCO is basically claiming you cannot do that with their code. They are trying to say the Unix code is truly "viral" and it really "infects" everything it touches. The GPL does not "infect" at all and is completely harmless once you seperate it from the code it came in contact with.
To put it simply (Score:3, Informative)
More generally, companies trying to derive more revenue from their intellectual property portfolio may lash out at licensees. But licensees of open source software distributed under a permissive license do not have to worry about this possibility.
Nuff said. Here's your argument for your PHB.
Chris Dibona discusses SCO at Usenix. (Score:3, Interesting)
RTFC professor Chander (Score:3, Interesting)
Some defensive items in the article are correct but that is because previous reporting got those right already, for example the delay in SCOX taking action and their willful distribution of supposedly infringing code under GPL terms (fully willful, there was no "inadvertent" element, they were "advertising" these featues)
The closing comment highlights how much this article is about politics more than law Otherwise, there will be no such thing as truly open, free software - and as a consequence, there will effectively be an economy-dragging tax on information technology. A judge will hardly be bothered with the existance or not of free software, there isn't a law or constitutional principle or similar that says freedom of software is protected. Same for SCOX being able to collect a "tax" from others, if judges were bothered by this, stupid patents wouldn't have a chance and we know this is not what actually happens...
So, Mr. Chander, please read the freaky claims before speaking about them. Getting infected with slashdotters' bad habits can be very dangerous in court.
Read history McBride (Score:5, Interesting)
In the final years of the 1930s the german army raced across Europe trashing all opposition in their path. At the time of their greatest military successes the German army was running a field command structure called "mission based" command.
Mission based command placed the authority to act in the hands of the soldiers on front line, the idea being that those closest to the front would undoubtably be best positioned to make fast assessments of a situation. Should an opportunity present itself they were free to exploit it to their advantage without having to check with the beaurocracy above. The overall target was known - to win, and as long as your actions fitted the target it was up to you.
This system worked so well that all fell in their path 'til they hit the English channel and turned on Russia (at the instruction of their one leader).
Contrast this to the latter half of the war. The more centralised command became around the leader and his sycophantic entourage, the worse things got until eventually the leaders own incapability to understand the demands of those at the front line led to the collapse of the whole system.
The first example was Hitlers order to Rommel to stand fast to the last man at El-Almain. The same mistake was made again at Stalingrad and in several other situations.
The distributed, "module based" development of Linux allows developers to react in the same way as the soldiers on the front line, patching and adding features on the fly without having to discuss it with their manager, product manager, product devlopment manager, product development management manager etc. leading to events like the KDE team patching the SSL flaw in konqueror while the MS FUD machine was still denying it was a problem.
NO! before you start saying it their are no insinuated similaraties between OSS community developers and certain historical characters of an evil nature it's the model that's similar. Ironically the intent in the case of Linux is freedom not enslavement.
Minor historical nit. (Score:3, Informative)
In point of fact, Ritchie created Unix to run a chess program, not for telecommunications. Only later, when AT&T discoverd that Unix was a very creditable OS, was it used for more prosaic, business related work.
his argument (Score:4, Insightful)
How long before SCO's claims can be debunked? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why this article helps. (Score:5, Interesting)
At least one has come into my office asking if we use Linux and expressed concern about the lawsuit when informed that we do. (Samba, CUPS, etc.)
I explained the lgeal reasons why they should not be concerned but since I am just the IT manager my words have little credence.
This is the kind of article I can forward to all the lawyers who ask as it's from the kind of source they will listen to, speaking a language they understand.
As other posters have pointed out, it's not what he says (which we all already knew), it's who is saying it.
Eat a cake and have it too (Score:3, Interesting)
If SCO sold the SCO Linux to its customers legally then that sell is governed by GPL and SCO loses right to its proprietary code. If it didn't sell them under GPL, then SCO had no right to sell at all and its customers are using illegal copies and now anyone can sue SCO Linux customers. In truth, the SCO Linux customers are doomed. Either SCO must recall the product or they can be sued by Linux developers. SCO wants to sell SCO Linux but without GPL and it can't do it.
The SCO case against IBM is altogether a different matter. That is between IBM, SCO and let them figure out in court. But if SCO tries to sue Linux customers, it is in deep trouble.
SCO vs. IBM vs. [INSERT YOUR NAME HERE] (Score:3, Funny)
"In its complaint, SCO claims, in essence, that without its UNIX contracts, IBM was nothing, and without IBM, Linux was nothing. But both of these claims, like SCO's allegations, are dubious."
He worded that entirely too nicely.
No Kidding? (Score:4, Interesting)
If I could spell more than 15 words in the english language correctly, I'd create an article and submit it.
They are rehashing the same statements, we can all tell that SCO has almost no case to stand on, which is why the story is so compelling.
It's like watching the Iraqi Information Minister. It's hilarious to watch someone openly ignoring the blatent obvious.
And we get really mad when they make headways in the case, because they are so utterly moronic.
Re:No Pirate has Yet matched those of Penzance (Score:4, Funny)
There's antimony arsenic aluminum selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel neodymium neptunium germanium,
And iron americium ruthenium uranium.
Europium zirconium lutetium vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold protactinium and indium and gallium,
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium ytterbium actinium rubidium,
And boron gadolinium niobium iridium,
There's strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth bromine lithium beryllium and barium.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
And lead praseodymium and platinum plutonium
Palladium promethium potassium polonium,
And tantalum technetium titanium tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium einsteinium nobelium,
And argon krypton neon radon xenon zinc and rhodium,
And chlorine carbon cobalt copper tungsten tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discar-vard.
Re:closed makes it easier to hide patent infringme (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact it can be easily argued that open-source discourages copyright infringement because it can so easily be detected.
Re:Give credit where credit is due. (Score:3, Interesting)