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Caldera Software The Almighty Buck Your Rights Online Linux

SCO Seeks Licenses Down Under 278

Posted by timothy from the whatcha-eatin'-under-there dept.
WildCode writes "SCO is now targeting Aussies in its continuing Linux licence saga. According to the story, one Aussie organization has already signed up for the licence. The ACCC has no comment at this time but this certainly puts a twist on things as the ACCC were waiting for the results of the lawsuits in the U.S. before making any judgement. Personally I think its time for the ACCC to say to SCO 'wait for the U.S outcomes before taking action here.'" An anonymous reader points to another story at internetnews.com.
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SCO Seeks Licenses Down Under More

SCO Seeks Licenses Down Under

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  • Personally, I think... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @02:54AM (#8653794) Homepage Journal
    I think that we should all boycott Linux until SCO either loses the case or gives up trying to get licensees. Hit them where it hurts - their pocketbooks.
    • I'm hoping you mean "Boycott all Unix" until SCO kicks the can.. Why boycott Linux? There's absolutely nothing wrong with Linux, and if SCO comes to you seeking money, give them the middle finger and get a lawyer. Odds are that very soon SCO will have to go to court... I'm just anxiously awaiting...

    • READ for THE FINAL sco OUTCOME (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I think it will happen like the movie Contact. The first "machine" blew to shit and then Hadley phones from space and tells Ellie there is another machine. (Why buy one when you can have two for twice the cost?)

      I think Linus will disappear for about 8 months, and then one day he will email us all from space, with a replacement operating system for us to use:
      "Linux is gone, it is SCO's, we will now use the Mannix operating system."

      Did you know that Hadley, in the movie "Contact" was also Olivander from Har

    • Re:Personally, I think... (Score:5, Funny)

      by yobbo ( 324595 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:31AM (#8654135)
      Well, the typical Aussie response would be:

      "Tell 'em to get stuffed"

    • Re:Personally, I think... (Score:5, Funny)

      by spellraiser ( 764337 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @05:57AM (#8654380) Journal

      No worries, mate

      The soon-to-be-released MyDundee worm will take care of 'em SCO bastards in a hurry.

      MyDoom is not a worm, THIS is a worm!

  • How much (Score:5, Interesting)

    by VMaN ( 164134 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @02:56AM (#8653800) Homepage
    How much money CAN they trying to salvage from the biggest backfire in recent history? ... ONE company per continent doesn't seem to me like it will pay the legal fees, and not to mention the destroyed reputation...
    • SCO's stock closed at 7.77 today. If it stays below 8 for a while (I think 60 days, not sure), they lose a shit-load of funding. C'mon, let's keep that stock below 8...

      • Re:How much (Score:4, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:20AM (#8653892)
        If the stock stays below 8 for a while (I think 60 days, not sure), they lose a shit-load of funding. C'mon, let's keep that stock below 8...

        damn right. BUY BUY BUY and then SELL SELL SELL for LOW LOW prices. It will spook the market and everyone else will start selling and won't buy again. Sure, you'll lose a lot of money but now is the time to ask yourself: "how much do I love linux?"

      • Below 6.75 for 20 days, according to this article (Score:5, Informative)

        by expro ( 597113 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:18AM (#8654089)
        According to this article [sltrib.com] in the Salt Lake Tribune, it needs to stay below 6.75 for 20 consecutive days. A little over a dollar to go. Buyback could be used to try to make a bounce, but I would hope that the threat of 6.75 would cause the stock to dip enough in anticipation once it is in the neighborhood and so the buyback is just throwing away more money.
        • With some 30+% of their stock sitting on the table waiting for the roulette ball to fall, I can't see how anyone could consider this SCOX as a safe investment. Its appears that its owners are 46% insiders, 40% institutions and the rest is small investors playing games hopeing for the high margin options to go their way. When the equivalent of 15% of the share holders are betting on you going broke in the next few months, its not a good sign. It appears that options on SCO are something like 75 times more
          • With some 30+% of their stock sitting on the table waiting for the roulette ball to fall, I can't see how anyone could consider this SCOX as a safe investment. Its appears that its owners are 46% insiders, 40% institutions and the rest is small investors playing games hopeing for the high margin options to go their way.

            There appears to have been a lot of manipulation of the stock price by insiders: a big drop in price during the day is followed by incremental increases in the price just before close, so

        • According to this Baystar Trigger [groklaw.net] it's 8.46 for 20 days. Yesterday was day two under the Bay Star Trigger price.
      • The trigger price that screws SCO is 8.46 a share. If it stays below this for 20 consective days they get nailed with a conversion option that will cost them about 50 Million dollars. Yesterday was day two under the trigger price.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:35AM (#8653947)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • On the other hand, winning the IBM case (if SCO were to win it) will take a lot of time and money. Since revenue from sales and licenses might not be enough for SCO to survive that period, they need something else. And winning cases mights just be their only option.

        At the same time, if a few judges (anywhere in the world) might go with SCO, it might give them some form of platform of precedents to use in other cases (like he IBM one). And they might need something extra, because it isn't really lokking go

      • It would make sense that the IBM case would set precedent and all other cases obide by that ruling.

        Take a closer look at SCO's charges. Most of the complaints aren't copyright infringement, but contract violation. SCO isn't just saying "IBM isn't supposed to do that with our code!", they're saying "IBM isn't supposed to do that with their code!"

        I personally don't expect either claim to survive a trial, but it's theoretically possible for SCO to lose all of the copyright claims and win some of the contr

    • Re:How much (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jaywalk ( 94910 )

      not to mention the destroyed reputation...

      Reputation is irrelevant because SCO is playing an end-game. Caldera's hopes for a viable company ended with Project Monterey [rice.edu] and the head of that company left for better things [eweek.com]. The original SCO took their one viable product and changed their name to Tarantella [tarantella.com], selling off their unprofitable ventures -- and their old name -- to what is now SCO. The Canopy Group looked over what was left and determined that it was not possible to make a real company out of it

      • Re:How much (Score:3, Interesting)

        by HiThere ( 15173 ) *
        Caldera was never a part of Project Monterey, that was the original SCO, now called Tarantella. And when Caldera bought SCO they specifically said that it was for the sales and distribution network, not Unix...and that their plan was to scrap the SCO Unix for parts to add to their Linux distribution.

        Then there was a change in management. I had thought that they would have a hard time doing worse than Ransom Love, whose community relations were...abysmal. But they have pulled off a truly stupendous coup.

  • Ultimate Goal (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @02:57AM (#8653805)
    I'm just waiting for SCO to start sueing themselves.

    • Re:Ultimate Goal (Score:4, Funny)

      by Deraj DeZine ( 726641 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:48AM (#8653999)

      More realistically, I think they may start suing their programmers on Fridays before a weekend. Everyone knows that as soon as coders have seen a few lines of SCO source code, all their subsequent thoughts (and possibly emotions) are the intellectual property of The SCO Group, Inc. I think this interview with Darl McBride sums their tactics up well:

      Interviewer: So have you told your programmers that they're going to get sued when they attempt to leave their cubicles?

      Darl: [Laughing] No, no. We find it's always best to sue our own workers on a Friday; studies have statistically shown that there's less chance of an incident if you backstab before a weekend.

    • Re:Ultimate Goal (Score:2, Informative)

      by mrbuttle ( 587604 )
      Well, they're getting close. They're threatening legal action against Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for using Linux. LLNL is a customer of Linux Networx, part of the Canopy Group.
    • I would rather suggest to sue SCO. Or report the offence to the police so that managers of the SCO Group will be helt accountable in Australia and everywhere else.

      When somebody sells licenses about something he does not own its fraud, when you send wrong signals to the finacial market it is financial fraud. The aussies shall report it to the police.

      BTW.: Werent there lawsuits or injunctions against SCO in Australia?

  • Bring it on! (Score:5, Informative)

    by a.koepke ( 688359 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @02:59AM (#8653812)
    The good is that we have the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission [accc.gov.au] (ACCC).

    If SCO calls you, give them the finger and then report them to the ACCC. The Perth company, CyberKnights, lodged a complaint [smh.com.au] earlier on this month.

    If SCO keeps going with trying to get UNIX licenses in Australia they should be prepared to face the ACCC.

    • Re:Bring it on! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Disevidence ( 576586 )
      If IIRC, a Victorian (as in state, not culture) Open Source group appealed to the ACCC about SCO's actions.

      But this is direct proof of the problems with our governments adoption of American Policies and Laws. When a US company goes litigious, this country is next in line due to more and more similarities every day.

      Aussies - Vote out John Howard. Latham is no angel, but he's way better than Bush's bum buddy Howard.
      • American Policies and Laws

        You know what the funny thing is, most Americans think American laws and policies are too fucked up to live. Its just really hard to change things.

    • Give Kieran a call (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:26AM (#8653915)
      If SCO keeps going with trying to get UNIX licenses in Australia they should be prepared to face the ACCC.


      And prepared to face us.


      Give Kieran (SCO AUS CEO) a call or email and let him know what you think (politely)


      His voicemail is answering at the moment - 'I am away from my desk' but he will listen to your message as soon he gets back'


      Haven't tried his mobile yet....


      Kieran O'Shaughnessy
      Regional General Manager ANZ
      The SCO Group
      Level 11, 56 Berry Street
      North Sydney NSW 2060
      Australia
      Tel +61 2 9440 7577
      Fax +61 2 9440 7588
      Mob 0419 66 00 16
      email kierano at sco.com
      web www.sco.com

    • Re:Bring it on! (Score:3, Informative)

      by jakoz ( 696484 )
      ACCC online complaint form here! [accc.gov.au]

  • Do you come from the land down under? (Score:5, Funny)

    by macshune ( 628296 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:00AM (#8653821) Journal
    Where women glow and SCO plunders?

  • SCO seeks what? (Score:4, Funny)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:00AM (#8653822) Homepage Journal
    SCO seeks licenses down under

    Should not this read......"SCO seeks victims down under?"

  • The only companies more stupid than SCO are the ones falling for their FUD.

  • Sco still dropping (Score:4, Interesting)

    by akaiONE ( 467100 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:03AM (#8653831) Homepage Journal
    I don't know about the rest of you, but to me this seems to be one of the late very desperate moves by the SCO to prove they have a business here.

    Lets just take a look at their current stock-price? This url [url.raw.no] [nasdaq.com] trully shows who's dropping here. It's for sure that SCO now seem desperate, and for a reason. Their business is dying, and so are their case.

    • Re:Sco still dropping (Score:5, Informative)

      by shanen ( 462549 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:39AM (#8653961) Homepage Journal
      This link [yahoo.com] shows SCOX price relative to IBM over the last three months. While this will change depending on when it is generated, right now it shows a steady drop of SCOX relative to IBM, on the order of 60% loss for SCOX.

      Here is a one year version [yahoo.com]. It currently shows that SCOX rose pretty steadily relative to IBM until last September, and then it oscillated a bunch until January, when it started down. In this view, SCOX still hasn't gone below the relative position it was at last year.

      Of course, there's also the short term absolute status [yahoo.com], which currently shows SCOX under $8 and falling. I believe that's already below the critical panic level for Darl. Don't they have to put up some real money now?

      • Yeah, but I think it will be Microsoft's strategy to come in before the stock dips too much and buy up a lot of the stock.

        The recently leaked memo shows that MS has a whole huge budget earmarked for just such an occasion.

  • Wi (Score:5, Informative)

    by skimitar ( 730902 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:04AM (#8653835)
    The previous chair of the ACCC (Allan Fells) wasn't popular with business, which in my view, meant that he must have been doing something right. The current chair (Graeme Samuel) doesn't seem to be so so proactive (or controversial), so they may adopt a wait and see approach. In any case, I am wondering if what the SCO group are attempting to do could best be covered by Fair Trading laws which, in Australia, are administered by the State governments. I guess the anti-competition aspect of SCO's behaviour could give the ACCC jurisdiction.

    • Re:Wi (Score:4, Informative)

      by shplorb ( 24647 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @06:45AM (#8654533) Homepage Journal
      The current chair (Graeme Samuel) doesn't seem to be so so proactive (or controversial), so they may adopt a wait and see approach.

      Have you been reading the news lately? The ACCC has just taken action against Telstra (again) by compressing what would normally take nine months into three weeks!

      Give the man a break, he hasn't even been in the job for a full year yet!

    • Re:Wi (Score:2, Informative)

      by iamplasma ( 189832 )
      In any case, I am wondering if what the SCO group are attempting to do could best be covered by Fair Trading laws which, in Australia, are administered by the State governments.

      Unfortunately, this is not acutally correct. While it is true that each state has a "Fair Trading Act", it is limited to trading by natural persons, all fair trading laws relating to corporations are under the federal Trade Practices Act. So to put it simply, don't expect to see state governments going after SCO any time soon.

  • Meanwhile, their stock... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dominiv ( 741746 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:07AM (#8653846)
    is plummeting further and further. Check out

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=3m&l=off& z= m&q=l&c=

    or google to scox.

    Best to view the 3month graph, in a linear scale to get that good vibration...

  • It's quite obvious why they are doing this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by amigoro ( 761348 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:09AM (#8653856) Homepage Journal
    Well apart from the much publicized link with Microsoft [internetnews.com] SCO is a dying company who have very little to lose. Their profits are heading south and they are about to go down under (Pun Intended). They have obtained pariah status sooner than you can say "litigious bastards". They know they have very little room to stand on legal-wise in the US, so it is pretty damn obvious they will try some other market, where things might just turn out more to their favour.

    Justly or unjustly, rightly or wrongly, they have already paid a heavy price for their underhand techniques, in the form of the mydoom worm. This clearly shows how much anger and resentment the society has against this vulture of an organisation.

    Under these circumstances, it is highly unlikely that their legal action will work anywhere in the world. Even if MS pumps more money into SCO to damage Linux, it will not save SCO.

    SCO can't kill Linux. What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger.

    Moderate this comment
    Negative: Offtopic [mithuro.com] Flamebait [mithuro.com] Troll [mithuro.com] Redundant [mithuro.com]
    Positive: Insightful [mithuro.com] Interesting [mithuro.com] Informative [mithuro.com] Funny [mithuro.com]

    • Perhaps they should try in the EU? I'm sure Ballamer could give them some tips on how to deal with Mario Monti.
    • May I remind you that the MyDoom virus did very little real damage to SCO, and far more damage to Linux users. It was also probably written by Spammers to redirect attention from the spam engine in it. Please dont give these morons any justification for their work. Professional spammers and their programmers deserve a very long walk of a very short pier, from the russian criminals engaged in kiddie porn to that american granny spamming insurance offers.

  • Return on Investment (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:11AM (#8653860)
    While the lawsuits might not have any result in the long run, and will probably be turned down by the courts (depending-- I know very little about the facts of the case, and have no real pressing reason to find out more), it seems like in the short run, the could be very useful... for Microsoft.

    I mean, obviously Microsoft threw in some funding to this group to help sponsor the lawsuits. And they don't nessecarly have to succeed in order to have effect. Defending oneself from lawsuits is expensive and undesirable. Any moderatly to low executives now have more to worry about in any thoughts of migrating to Linux. This seems like it will help Microsoft in the short run.

    It seems like the time bidding might be all they need. If they can prevent massive pop-culture defections from Windows until the migration to 64 bit, they would most likely continue the prevelance of windows for a long time to come.

    How effective do you think this tatic will be for them.
    • ... that Microsoft was eager to cast the lawsuits themselves, but had so much less useable "evidence" as SCO to do it ?

      I wonder if, in a kind of "last resort" move, they could buy out SCO and pursue the legal actioins themselves, but then they'd need to really believe these could end in their favor, and I doubt it. Maybe that's why they went with such a trojan horse as SCO ? Less effective as press releases go (imagine the taglines: "MS sues Linux companies", "Linux plundered Windows code ?" etc...) but m

  • Working for SCO outside US (Score:3, Interesting)

    by physick ( 146658 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:11AM (#8653863) Journal
    Imagine being a non-US regional director for SCO. You come to work one day and have a conference call with Utah:

    "Start sending out license letters."

    "But,.. but I have a meeting with N clients in the next week, we are closing deals on M systems."

    "Forget that. Send out license letters."

    Why are people still working for SCO?
    • Simple - because they are being payed. You have to get money from somewhere to pay the food for the kids and the mortgage.

      Personally, I would not get my hands dirty with such a job, but many people have landed in it and carry its stigma now so they cannot find another one in the industry even if they want.
    • I have a meeting with N clients in the next week, we are closing deals on M systems.

      Where N=1 and M=0.

      -

  • No surprises here (Score:5, Funny)

    by thefixer ( 461139 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:12AM (#8653866)
    It's no surpise that SCO is targetting Aussies. Just have a look at their stock.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=scox

    It's going down under!
    • Something tells me you didn't actually check your link all that carefully before posting the link. Yes, they've gone down in the past week. However, if you check the graph for the past year [yahoo.com], you'll probably notice that it started at a low of 2.23 in March last year, reached a high of 22.29 in September/October before it started declining to it's present value of 7.77.

      Oops.

      • Re:No surprises here (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Kierthos ( 225954 )
        Yes, true, it's still above the yearly low, but it's also far below the yearly high. And it's had one day in the last several days where it ended higher. (A whopping 0.04, no less!)

        The fact of the matter is, they're getting incredibly little money from licensing, they're having to continually meet payroll of their existing staff AND their lawyers, and the number of lawyers can't be decreasing if they continue to add lawsuits, without having won a judgement on a single suit yet. If they win a suit, which I

  • Perhaps by buying a license....... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrIrwin ( 761231 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:17AM (#8653882) Journal
    .....making it known and getting all that negative karma, you gain the right to sue SCO when it all caves in.

    We know SCO will go under but there will be possibilities of suing the companies who have been financing SCO to do this.

    OTOH, thinking about how much IBM are likely to hammer SCO and thier backers for them I don't think there will be anything left even in the upper layers of the pyramid;-)

  • one Aussie organization has already signed up (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:20AM (#8653890) Homepage
    Sure, but do they know they've signed up? Sneaking a free license onto the end of a contract doesn't exactly make your case, does it, Darl?

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:27AM (#8653919)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Unjustified Threats (Score:5, Informative)

    by plgs ( 447731 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:28AM (#8653927) Homepage
    Luckily, we have s202 [austlii.edu.au] of the Copyright Act [austlii.edu.au] which says that it's illegal in Australia to make groundless threats of legal proceedings. That is, you cannot say "buy a licence or I'll sue you" unless you are really in a position to sue and win. We also have a "loser pays winner's costs" rule in litigation, which means that once you've started to sue, you cannot discontinue without being ordered to pay the other side's costs.

    • That's certainly a nice bit of law, but I'm not sure those "groundless threats" provisions will apply here. For them to apply, you really have to show that the organisation concerned was reasonably knowledgeable that it had no grounds to make the claims, and it made the claims in a clearly threatening way. It doesn't seem as though SCO could meet that test, despite the fact they might use stronly worded letters, and eventually lose the dispute in the US.

      What should occur is that if anyone does pay for lice

    • Luckily, we have s202 of the Copyright Act which says that it's illegal in Australia to make groundless threats of legal proceedings.

      If your legal system is based on English common law, which seems to almost certainly be the case given Australia's history, then such threats would be illegal anyway without the copyright act.

  • Four words for SCO... (Score:3, Funny)

    by fpga_guy ( 753888 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:37AM (#8653950)
    In the finest Australian tradition:

    How's "get fucked" sound?

    Yeah yeah contractions blah blah

  • What sales??? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by shadowtech ( 161397 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:40AM (#8653970)
    From the article:

    Last week, he was fairly certain at least one sale had been completed, but would not comment on how many more were in the pipeline. "The first sale may well have gone through, but I'm not going to comment on each and every sale," Mr O'Shaugnessy said.

    Fairly certain? may well have gone through?

    You'd think the SCO Australia-New Zealand general manager would have more of an idea if they'd made a sale.

    With all the money Microsoft has raised for them they should be able to afford a decent accounts department. After all, its the only income they're going to see in this country for a while.

    $AUD999... doesn't even buy their legal team breakfast.

  • Of course (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ttys00 ( 235472 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:41AM (#8653973)
    Of course SCO is going to try its luck in Australia. If our companies are anywhere near as keen to bend over for their American counterparts as our government, SCO will make a fortune down here. After all, our Prime Minister was only too happy to say to Bush "I'll have a ridiculously restricted FTA and with a side order of DMCA please".

  • SCO meets Crocodile Dundee (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aexia ( 517457 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:04AM (#8654061)
    "You call *that* a lawsuit? Now *this*, *this* is a lawsuit!"

  • SCO's form of 2-up !. (Score:3, Informative)

    by openmtl ( 586918 ) <polarbear@bti[ ]rnet.com ['nte' in gap]> on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:25AM (#8654112) Journal
    SCO toss letters to companies. Chances are someone will send back a cheque just like various drongos send off moolah for 419 scams, "International Directories", non-State controlled lotteries, or domain name registration services or non-existant eBay auctions.

    SCO are simply forum shopping. When they get a bite then Darl cracks a fat saying how some Aussie wuss fell for it.

    You gotta call SCO's bluff mates. They have never asked anyone to remove any SCO code from the Linux source tree because it just isn't there.

    ps: My first car was a Holden (Just Hold'in Together) Premier V8 so please forgive me !.

    • ... Chances are someone will send back a cheque just like various drongos send off moolah for 419 scams,......When they get a bite then Darl cracks a fat saying how some Aussie wuss fell for it.

      As far as I know Slashdot does not have an official language but, generally speaking, posts are made in English.

      Can babelfish translate whatever this is to American? :)
  • send them packing like the shysters they are. I know my company will

  • Why wait for the US? Germany didn't (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NKJensen ( 51126 ) <nkj&internetgruppen,dk> on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:35AM (#8654152) Homepage
    Why wait for a broken system to produce an answer?

    Germany told SCO to shut up or bring in some evidence [slashdot.org]. The aussies should do the same.

    It's still a mystery to me how the US legal systems works (or doesn't work)

  • Wait for US? Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by anothy ( 83176 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:54AM (#8654205) Homepage
    ...I think its time for the ACCC to say to SCO 'wait for the U.S outcomes before taking action here.
    um, what? why? one country's legal system shouldn't be beholden to another's. this is true regardless of the outcome. SCO shouldn't have to wait to start sending out licenses or lawsuits in any jurisdiction outside the US - and every other country should have to wait to say "bugger off!" or the nearest local equivalent. why the hell is the US legal system some sort of benchmark for the world?
    (asked by an american)
    • I suppose the claims made by SCO are going to be tested in the case against IBM, a US company, so US courts will make a decision on that issue. I'm sure an Australian court could ignore that decision if they had reason to, but it makes sense to see how it goes first.

      Of course, SCO should be waiting until that case is resolved of their own accord before they start on their licensing scam, but I'm sure they know that.

      I think it would be more a matter of the ACCC telling SCO to bugger off until they have som

    • Re:Wait for US? Why? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Secrity ( 742221 )
      I am not a lawyer and I agree with you in principle. I also believe that there should be laws similar to the German law that essentially says "put up or shut up". In this case, it is not a matter of waiting for a US court to decide whether Linux contains SCO's IP, it is a matter of waiting for a US court to decide whether SCO even owns the IP at all. I believe that the US has jurisdiction in deciding who owns the copyright for Unix System V code. After that decision is made, then let the lawsuits (again
    • one country's legal system shouldn't be beholden to another's. this is true regardless of the outcome

      I'm confused on this issue... but ownership of the IP in question is being disputed by American companies, it would make sense for the ACCC to wait for the courts to establish ownership before making the valued judgement of whether they have any evidence to support their request for license fees for their property. Also... why waste your own nations money on something that is little more then a Jerry Spri
    • Because, good sir, Australia is not the world. Australia is the fifty-first, -second, -third, -forth, -fifth and -sixth states. Haven't you noticed our collection of arse-licking Prime Ministers over the years?

  • Why is this under "your rights online"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @05:08AM (#8654237) Homepage
    SCO are not the law. On the contrary - it seems their business is extortion. They're certainly guilty of massive copyright infringement - distributing hundreds (thousands?) of software packages to thousands (hundreds?) of customers without a license (since they rejected the GPL).

    There should really be a section for "Corporate crime" or something along these lines. Posting this as a YRO makes it appear like the law is on SCO's side.

    P.S. Another SCO Linux licensee? We should really start referring to any companies that fall for this scam as SCOXsuckers.

  • They haven't proved ownership (Score:3, Informative)

    by Steven Reddie ( 237450 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @05:10AM (#8654238)
    ...as the ACCC were waiting for the results of the lawsuits in the US before making any judgement

    This is the whole point. It hasn't been proven that they own any IP in Linux. Novell have stated that SCO didn't even aquire ownership of what they claim to own. A respectable company would prove such things before pursuing users. Respectable, SCO is not.

  • Why wait? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by stm2 ( 141831 )
    Personally I think its time for the ACCC to say to SCO 'wait for the U.S outcomes before taking action here.'


    I don't think so. Even if the outcome is favorable to SCO in the US (I doubt it, but lets suppouse it just for the sake of the argument). The US court ruling doesn't apply to other independent countries.

  • Doh (Score:5, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @07:09AM (#8654620) Homepage Journal
    "SCO Seeks Licenses Down Under"

    Sorry Darl, when I told you where you could stick the license, I meant that figuratively.
  • Thank God... I was beginning to have severe withdrawl symptoms without my regular dose of SCO silliness. I can now breathe easy and stop gouging long furrows in my arms.
  • Personally I think its time for the ACCC to say to SCO 'wait for the U.S outcomes before taking action here.' Actually, they ought to grow some balls, make a decision, and stick it to these SCO suckers!
  • Darl pulls out a legal document. Mick purses his lips in scorn.

    "Tha's nah a loy-since," he says. He whips out a copy of the GPL. "Tha's a loy-since!"

    Darl flees in terror.

    What tribe was that guy?

  • They had to do something! This tidbit already got them $.04 per share!

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