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Darl McBride's Harvard Appearance - Transcript |
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Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 01:40 AM EST
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Here is a transcript of the speech given by SCO CEO Darl McBride on February 2, 2004 at Harvard, with Q & A afterward with him and Chris Sontag. Of course, this isn't an official Harvard transcript, although I did request and receive permission to do it. Harvard placed no restrictions on taping the public event. Although we strive for accuracy, any errors/inaccuracies are the fault of Groklaw and not the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, who invited McBride to speak, or the fault of SCO, or any other person or organization. If accuracy is vital, do check with the Harvard video. If you wish to hear the talk to verify it, or to see the slides here is the Harvard video [scroll down; now also
on Google Video]. Note that Harvard has also made it available in Speex format. [Update: And here's an account of the evening by Mary Bridges, of Harvard's Berkman Center.] Transcribers for Groklaw on this project were Creysoft, Scriptwriter, fjaffe, Kelledin, RSC, PM, be2weenthelines, coffee17, jbeadle, Gregory, and coordinator LHJ. We left off last names of audience members. In most cases, we couldn't make out the names, and even when we could guess, we had no idea of spelling or if the parties would wish their names used. If, however, you were the one asking a question, and you'd like to provide your name, we'd be happy to insert it. Note that while they announced that Chris Stone of Novell would be the next speaker, Eben Moglen will be the speaker on February 23.
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Mike Zarren: So welcome everyone. I'm Mike Zarren, the Editor-in-Chief of the
Harvard Journal of Law and Technology. Thanks for coming, all of you who are
both from Harvard and not from Harvard.
Just a couple announcements. We started this speaker series quite some time
ago with the intent to educate people here most specifically on all sorts of
emerging issues in the fields of the intersection between law and technology,
mostly because a lot of the people who go to school here and people who are
interested in what goes on here are people who actually have to deal with all
the issues at stake in cases like this one. So, since then, you know, we've started to
webcast these events and they've always been open to the public, and I think
maybe the webcasting in some way has not necessarily always been the best
thing for us, if only because then people who are watching who aren't here
and who aren't affiliated with the school don't necessarily realize, you
know, the people we invite to speak are just people who we're interested
in hearing from, not that we're endorsing them or not endorsing them or
whatever. So, I don't know what we'll do with the webcasting in the future,
but in any case I do want to announce we're going to have another speaker in a
few weeks. Chris Stone, the vice chairman of Novell will be here speaking on
these same issues. So for people who are perhaps concerned about editorial
issues and the like, not to worry.
Second of all, I just want to say a very brief thing about our journal. Our
latest issue should have been out today. We don't have it yet, but the
articles are all available online. Some interesting articles about a tax on
devices used to fileshare, and then free filesharing, another interesting
article on antitrust and the FCC, selling a service by email,
nanotechnology, other articles like that. So you should check out our website
at jolt.law.harvard.edu if you're interested in any of those things. With
that I'd like to turn it over to John Palfrey, the executive director of the
Berkman Center for Internet and Society, whom we've invited here tonight
to introduce our speaker. So, John.
John Palfrey: Mike, thank you so much. So, I suspect, judging from the
phone calls and emails that many of us have gotten today about this event,
that it may be nearly as controversial as last night's Super Bowl half-time
show. Hoping that it will perhaps be just as revealing in a way as
well.
It is my great pleasure to be here tonight. Mr. Darl McBride joins us,
president and CEO -- I think as everybody here knows -- thank you very much --
of the SCO Group. He comes with a number of colleagues as well. He is no
stranger to big business and no stranger to the technology world. He is
actually quite a learned man on things like the GPL, as we are going to hear
shortly. I noticed in his slides he has references to former professor Mr.
Justice Breyer, so I look forward to seeing how he incorporates the Harvard
Law School into his remarks as well.
A couple of other quick notes. Just by way of tone and format here tonight.
There have been a number of conversations about this event and the format. I
want to credit Mike and JOLT and others for bringing this event here tonight,
and credit them also for what they're going to do shortly with counterpoint.
I suppose it comes as no surprise to anybody in this room that there is a
lawsuit at stake here, a lawsuit with some very, very big stakes. And I want
also just to state really quickly that it strikes me that this is a very
important thing to have happen here tonight, and with this crowd.
I think that there are two important things that those of us who spend our time in
the Academy do. One is to frame the hard questions -- framing hard questions
for ourselves and for the society around us. This is an issue -- this open
source/free/libre software issue versus, or in addition to, other forms of
software production -- is a critically important topic and one where there are
lots of different viewpoints, and I think it's wonderful that we're framing
up the many hard problems that this has. And secondly, is to seek the truth.
I think that we will have a very interesting presentation shortly. I would
urge in the question and answer session that follows, for all of us to treat
with respect this -- excuse me ... to treat
with respect this microphone -- but treat with respect this forum and
this space, and there are a lot of brilliant minds I see in this room, not
just from Harvard Law School and 02138 but some friends from 02139 as well,
and so welcome. So I mean this as a two-part introduction, one of Mr.
McBride, a distinguished businessman, and second, of this community, broadly
writ, and I urge us all to keep our minds open. With that, Mr. McBride.
[5:00]
Darl McBride: Thanks, John. And better put this on. Here we go. Is that on? OK.
John and Mike, I appreciate the invitation to come back and join you as well as
everyone who has joined us today. It's tough to compete with nudity, and I
didn't bring any here today, and you don't want me. So
I bring that up as a little bit of an interesting point. There was an article
written about this issue you are about ready to hear about today, around SCO's
intellectual property fight with the Linux community and, by extension, with IBM.
Or maybe it's the other way around. It was written in Forbes magazine earlier this
summer, and it was posted out on Forbes.com. And the story was the most hit story in
the history of Forbes.com except for one. And that story was called "The Ten Best
Nude Beaches in America". So, once again, it's tough to compete with that.
But, I do look forward to meeting you here today. I would say I am very excited.
I showed up at a time where we had a bunch of meetings tomorrow in Copley Square
right around twelve o'clock.. We scheduled this two weeks ago. And, if anybody
knows what's going on in Copley Square tomorrow. . . Anybody watch the game last
night? Anybody Patriots fans here? Yeah. That was a great game, wasn't it?
Boston man back there. Is that a Red Sox hat?
Audience Member: Yes, it is.
McBride: OK. I went into the game as not a Patriots fan and exited the game as a
Patriots fan. That was just an outstanding game. Kudos to your team, that was a
great game.
We have a little bit of a Super Bowl ourselves going on here in the computer world
right now. And it's ... I would argue it's around defining the future of how
digital rights are going to play out in the software world.
The players on the field here are the SCO Group, which after a series of
acquisitions over a number of years owns this thing called the Unix operating
system. So we're the owners of this source code and copyrights around Unix.
And, the other player on the field is International Business Machines, who is also
stepping up as a leader for basically the Linux environment. If you read USA Today
you would see -- as you saw in the game last night -- you've seen ... a lot of
people around the world have been seeing IBM running a lot of ads around Linux.
If you open USA Today, the second page, you will see IBM integrally tied to this
thing called Linux.
How many of you in here have even heard of this thing called Linux before? Raise
your hands. Virtually everybody. OK. So,
I appreciate the fact that we are coming into a well-educated audience on this
issue. So those are the players on the field. What's at issue here if SCO wins vs
IBM wins? I think that it's going to reshape the future of software one way or
another. That's my view on it.
So with that said, why don't we just dive in here? This is a few stats on our
company, what we're about. As you put the two combatants on the field, clearly you
see this is a David-Goliath type of thing when you see our revenue versus IBM's.
We measured out in market capitalization one time, if the size of us is measured
against IBM in market cap, IBM would be the 10,000 pound man, if we were 200 pounds.
So clearly, obviously, they are much more powerful and much bigger than us.
The topics that I would like to go through for discussion this evening are as
follows:
The importance of intellectual property, go through a little bit there.
I want to talk about SCO's ownership position around this thing called Unix --
it looks like we have a few people here that are pretty clearly expert in that -- and
give you my view on that.
We want to talk about what we're doing to defend our intellectual property rights.
And then with some of the things going on as we speak.
You know, the side show in the Super Bowl yesterday was the half-time show. The side show
in the IBM-SCO battle are things that have happened in the last week with the MyDoom
virus. The largest virus, supposedly, in the history of the computing industry,
launched the largest attack, DoS attack, on a company website, which was our
website, yesterday. So, that's a little bit of the side show going on. But it is
going to have an impact, I think, in terms of how things are playing out in this
digital age.
Finally, what does the future hold?
So starting off -- let me back up just a minute. I -- as a precursor to this --
sat in a room a little larger than this about a year ago out on a campus at
Brigham Young University, and the CEO of a leading open source company came out
there and spoke. And I was kind of interested to go and hear what he was talking about.
So this was a competitor of ours, and I was actually kind of interested in going and
breaking bread with him and talking about how can we move the ball down the field
together? How can we work together?
As I went to hear his speech, I was sitting up there amidst a bunch of students.
I didn't
look like a student, which I wasn't, therefore it made sense I didn't look
like one. But as he spoke, there were a couple of things that were
striking to me. The first thing that was striking is
he got up and started talking about how the copyright system in America
was outdated, that the copyright laws had been on the books for
hundreds of years, and they were totally out of sync with what was going
on in the digital age, and he was calling on students to write your
Congressperson, lobby Congress to, sort of, overturn the current
copyright laws. We need to get these copyright laws out. This DMCA,
Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- you're all familiar with that, I'm sure
-- is a disaster, we've gotta get it out. And it was interesting for me as a
CEO of a company who has very important copyrights to hear. The
attack was not on us directly. It was, We've gotta get rid of copyrights,
because that plays into what we want to do with our open source
system. So that was interesting to me. Second thing that was interesting
was he said, one of the questions along the way was, Who do you
compete with? What are you selling in the marketplace?
[11:30]
So he's selling this thing called Linux. He said, Well, what we do is we
have this operating system, and it's Free. OK? And we go into
corporate environments, and we go out, and we're basically ... essentially what
he said is we're trying to displace a company called SCO and Sun. And I
was like, "SCO!? That's me!" You know? So I took that real personally.
And we didn't break any bread that day. And
about a month or two after that, after some things happened between us
and IBM, we launched into what became a $3 billion lawsuit with the SCO
group against IBM, filed on March 7th .. March 6th of last year. So one of the
questions that I want to have all of you take a hard look at as we go through - I'm
going to speak for, I don't know, 30 minutes, 40 minutes or so, and then
we'll go to Q&A. I'd like you to take a hard look at this question of the
importance
of copyrights. This Dilbert cartoon just came out here last week, and it
was interesting to me.
"I created software that makes all copyrighted work on the net
available for free."
"Well, gee, wouldn't that destroy all forms of creativity and
plunge us into a depression?"
"Yeah, but it was very neat."
I think some of the elements that we're dealing with here are along
those lines. So, I'd like to start off by talking about this whole issue
around intellectual property. And what's going on there.
[13:00]
If you look at some of the statistics, what you see is that copyrighted
works are a big driver for the industry. Look at the GDP numbers there.
You know, a half trillion dollars. You know, significant workers involved
with that, and export and sales of those products are also significant.
Another interesting statistic here to look at is how the intellectual assets
are gaining in momentum. If you look over the last 20 years or so, what
you see here [points to slide]
is the percent of corporate assets in the US that were physical are
shrinking. What's not stated here is the soft assets, the
intellectual
property assets, inversely, are gaining ground. So, as we've all heard for
a long time now, you know, intellectual property is becoming a significant
part of our society. And this is just a chart that supports that notion. If
you go to this whole issue around the protection of intellectual property,
and we're going to talk here in a moment about a case, Eldred v.
Ashcroft. How many of you are familiar with that?
OK. Obviously, it was
a big deal here in the last year. But the setup for that case is this
Constitutional power that's granted to Congress. "They shall have
the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing
for limited times for authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries." This progress of science,
"for promoting the progress of science" really becomes the key turning
point in Eldred v. Ashcroft. But, you know, some of the underlying points
to this, you know, it really justifies the initial investment in intellectual
property, based on a return of future investment. You know, the ability
to license your work and see that as an investment. It ensures value not
only for you, but also the customers that you may be licensing that to.
[15:00]
So, as we get into this, then, one of the things that we see in this digital
age that we live in, that is, just over the last five years I would say, really
accelerating, is the question of how you deal with digital works that are
easily available. OK?
If you look across these various industries up here, what you see is there are a
lot of industries struggling with the notion of how you deal with free, downloaded
copyrighted works over the internet. So let's start with Napster. So five years
ago, anybody download over Napster? I'm not with the RIAA -- feel free to raise your
hand. We won't put the camera on you. OK. So five years ago, how many people around
the world were doing Napster downloads for free? Anybody remember the numbers?
What's that? I thought I heard something over here. I heard numbers as high as 40
million people were doing downloading of Napster songs. And it was very exciting,
you know. Loading up. It's like going into a CD store, getting CDs, putting them in
your pocket, walking out the front door, and it's great. Obviously, nobody's doing
that now because, you know, it's been deemed, seemed to be not a good thing to do. So now you have, what have you got out there now? You've got
iTunes, you got Napster for pay, so you have all these music sites that are now out
there not for free.
You have the video industry that's out there. We sat through a presentation that
one of the leaders out of Hollywood talked about: We can not compete with a free
model. OK. These films were out there, they were being pirated, bootlegged, and
spread around the world for basically viewing before they even showed up in the
theaters.
The...[lights go down and up][laughs] As long as you're not sending any messages, I just want to make sure there's no
coordination there.
You know there are a number of industries here that are struggling with this. You
know, the drug industry has these patents, and they protect them, and they have a certain
life, they expire, and then they go to something else. There's this underlying
question as to how big of a role are these free models going to work in protectable
industries?
So in the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft, Congress -- basically their view on that --
Congress came in with a number of prominent artists. They expressed their belief
about the copyright system, how important it was for them to get fair compensation
and so the comment that came out of that, we would not take Congress to task for
creating this evidence, which as Justice Breyer acknowledges, reflects general
propositions about the value incentives that are undeniably true. So the basic
concept that comes out of this is, fair compensation with an incentive to create
your works.
Now let's move on. What are some other things that happened in that case? You have
Justice Stevens' characterization that the reward to the author of a copyrighted
work is really a secondary notion. The primary driver, he argued, was really around
the progress of science, and that's what should be driving and dictating how these
copyright laws come down.
Now, significantly, he was in the minority on this case, and so as they came back in
and explained on the majority opinion, the economic philosophy behind the copyright
clause is the conviction that the encouragement of individual effort by personal
gain is the best way to advance the public welfare, through the talents of authors
and inventors. So I think one of the things you are going to see here, and maybe
many of you or some of you in this room are going to help to shape this argument as
you graduate and go on from here, is this question of which side of this is going to
win? Now clearly, from where we stand now, Eldred v. Ashcroft, seven Supreme Court
justices have already ruled heavily in favor of the notion that copyrighted works
are extendable, they're protectable, and this notion of progressing science will
happen best through leaning to the side, and to the favor, of individual artists.
OK.
The minority opinion, and the people who argued that, I understand there are some
folks here at your university, as well as obviously Larry Lessig, Eben Moglen,
there a lot of folks that are on the other side that say No, the progress of
science is going to be the key determiner of how this whole thing plays out. So
that battle is still going on, even though there's been a Supreme Court decision
ruled there.
[20:00]
So, intro part here then is basically a few slides establishing the basis for how
important this intellectual property is and that there are some big arguments that
are still on the table. [new slide]
I'd like to shift gears for a moment now and talk about my company, and why we are
so involved, embroiled, in this big argument that's going on inside the computer
landscape. So -- history of Unix, this thing was started -- so, if you think about
computer operating systems, there are two major types around the world. You have
Windows, Bill Gates, gazillions of dollars, they got all -- that whole thing, OK,
that's desktop-centric and then works back towards the back-end server.
Unix is the other big type of operating system, and Unix is not so much geared
towards the desktop or a consumer environment. It's really geared to run
businesses. So when you look behind businesses, and you look at the servers and
the IT infrastructure that runs a business, primarily it's geared around Unix.
So this is the operating system that started at AT&T. It was passed on to Novell
and eventually acquired by SCO. And this is what is at the center, the
intellectual property rights and the contract rights around this operating system
that were started at AT&T and passed on to SCO, is what we are talking about. We
paid a hundred-plus million dollars along the way to get the rights to this, and
that's really at the center of attention of the battle.
There are a lot of people out there making a lot of opinions as to SCO's ownership
around Unix. Again, when you go look at the winding road, that's one question.
The other question is, when you get there, you read through these contracts, what
do we have? OK. What I'd like to do for you right now is to lay out just in real
simple terms, rather than going through all the details of all the contracts we
have here...the basics of what is netted out of all of those contracts. So the
first thing is there's this thing called Unix System V which is basically the
commercialized version of Unix that AT&T passed along, and that is the...we own the
source code. So when you think about code, you think about object code, or binary
code, and source code. Source code is the one that you program with. That's the
valuable underlying crown jewels.
You go to the next point here. SCO owns the agreements to all the Unix vendors. So
whereas Bill Gates and Microsoft is very monolithic -- they own Windows. They own the
code. It's theirs lock, stock, and barrel; they've driven it singularly as one
company. The way Unix played out was you had Unix, that was then partnered and
licensed out thousands of times. The source code to Unix was licensed over
thousands of times by AT&T. So, how common is it to license source code this
broadly? The answer is not very. We're going to come back to that point in just a
moment.
The third thing that SCO owns is the Unix System V copyrights. We...as part of
this agreement, if you go to the original Asset Purchase Agreement, what you'll see
is eight pages of copyrights that came to SCO. There was an amendment to that
original purchase agreement that came on a year later that basically reinforced
that we did own those copyrights. And now, you're going to hear, if you come to
this room here in two weeks, from a company that has stepped up and claimed
ownership to those copyrights. So we bought the property from Novell, and now
within the last six months, Novell has gone out publicly and said, "Wait a minute,
we didn't sell you the copyrights." OK, so we disagree violently over that
point--violently to the point that we filed a lawsuit two weeks ago against Novell
to reinforce our ownership claim to them.
Now, why did we file a lawsuit against Novell? We went to the copyright office and
registered our copyrights. Is anybody here a copyright holder? Anybody gone
through this process? Tell us what the process is. What do you do?
Right. Yeah, if you could speak in the mike for us, that would be great.
Audience Member: So if you were specifically speaking to the registration process, you
just provide them essentially with a copy of the work, and you fill out
some forms, and I believe we had to pay a small fee when we did this. It's
simple.
McBride: What was this, a book or software code, or what was it?
Audience Member: It was, yeah, essentially software.
McBride: So you developed some software, you registered it, you sent it in to the
Copyright Office, you paid a small fee. And then what did the Copyright
Office do?
Audience Member: Well, essentially the net result of that as I understand it, and I'm not a
lawyer, is that we received basically, essentially, additional legal
protections from someone who infringes on that.
McBride: Did you get your certificate back?
Audience Member: Yeah, exactly.
McBride: Was it kind of cool when you got it?
Audience Member: Well, my partner has... handled most of this, but yeah, I guess. He talked about it
a lot.
McBride: So it's cool. You get it, and it's like, wow, I've got a copyrighted work
now ... piece of paper.
Audience Member: Well, it wasn't as cool as knowing that there were certain legal
protections that came along with it.
McBride: That's the key part. So I've got a piece of paper, I have certain legal
protections and the copyright office granted this to me. OK. We went through
this same process as you and your partner did last July. In fact, one of
my partners here, Chris Sontag, will join us on the Q and A, who runs our
source licensing division, was responsible for that, and when the
registrations came back, it was like, cool, right? Remember when we got
those back?
So a few weeks ago, I guess it was in December, we got word that Novell
had gone into the Copyright Office after we did and had filed for
copyright registrations on the same works that we had already filed for
and had received registrations on. OK. And guess what the Copyright
Office did?
[inaudible from the audience]
McBride: Granted them a copyright.
[inaudible from the audience]
McBride:So...Exactly.
[inaudible from the audience]
McBride:It's a registration. OK.
The copyright... the net of this story is the Copyright Office does not --
unlike patents -- vet out the validity of the claim. OK. What was your
name ma'am?
Audience Member: Diane
McBride:So, Diane, if you went into the Copyright Office tomorrow and filed for
Unix copyrights, the same ones that us and Novell now have a piece of
paper, what would happen?
Audience Member: I'd get it.
McBride: You'd get it.
Audience Member: Plus, I don't even have to show them the whole thing.
McBride: You don't have to show the whole thing. So now we'd have three copyright
holders. OK? We filed a lawsuit against Novell. So then we went back to
the Copyright Office and said, "Woah, timeout. Who's the referee over
there? Somebody's got to step down and fix it. We feel very strongly
about this point, we have a piece of paper, a contract, that they've
transfered these over to us." OK? And so what do you suppose they said?
Audience Member: Go to court.
McBride: Go to court. That's why we went to court two weeks ago. We sued them for
slander of title. And we're going to be working through that process here.
And the court system is set up to referee that situation. So that's
what's going on.
I'm getting a lot of, you know, legal education along the way here. Not as much as
obviously you're getting here, but on some specific issues it's pretty
interesting to learn this stuff along the way.
The next thing SCO has ownership rights on are the claims for violation of
all Unix licenses. So we have these six thousand contracts out there and
in our contract that we got from Novell, it says that if anybody violates
their contract as it relates to Unix source code, any claims for damages
are due to SCO. And then finally it says that if you create a derivative work
on this source code, again the control of that is owned by SCO.
If you go back and look at what AT&T did when they created this licensing
program, they had a notion of getting Unix far and broad, they wanted it to
go around the world. Let's really spread Unix. Let's make it become
a world-wide phenomenon. But at the same time, let's control it. I mean
these two objectives are working against each other. When you take source
code and spread it far and wide, how do you keep control of it? How do you
keep control of the derivative works?
The way they did it was with very strongly worded confidentiality clauses
that were in the contracts. So if you look at the actual contracts which we
won't go through right now, but we have some copies right here, you'll
see that these are strongly worded devices that are designed to keep this
harnessed in over the years. If you look at the contracts that SCO has,
you see that we have the ownership rights around the core Unix IP that
runs down the trunk of this [chart] -- so in other words System V -- and then you see
all these different companies that have created derivatives. They've gone
off and taken our System V code and created a derivative work.
[30:00]
Now the reason that we are in litigation with IBM -- they are one of these
licensees. And what we claim is that they have taken important key parts
around one of these derivatives, their version, they have two versions,
AIX which is the one they've natively held, and then Sequent Dynix which
is one they
acquired in the late '90s. The key portions of this code that was protected
under our rights has been taken by IBM and donated into this Linux
environment.
So, you all heard about Linux, I won't go into that whole detail. But
Linux then is the operating system for free started by Linus Torvalds back
in 1991. Donated to by thousands of people around the world, but significantly
donated to by major vendors that have contracts with us.
If you look at the effect of Linux ... from a ... over the last four years, if you
look at where it was in 1999 versus where it is right now, you see a quantum
leap up in terms of the capabilities. Whereas in 1999, this was a hobbyist level
technology, very simple multiprocessor capability and moderate degrees of
reliability. When you look at Linux today -- the 2.6 kernel just released here
in December -- you see enterprise-level performance: you see 32-way
multiprocessor SMP configurations, 128-way NUMA configurations, high degrees
of reliability. In other words, you can take Intel processors with today's
versions of Linux, and because of contributions major vendors have made,
establish a supercomputer-level configuration, with Linux as the base
operating system.
It took the Unix environment, development environment, 25 years to get this
kind of capability. Linux has got there ... has been able to get there in just
a few short years. So that's at the heart of our IBM lawsuit.
Now, after we
filed a lawsuit against IBM, they countered against us. Basically at the
core of their counterclaim against us was this thing called the General
Public License. And if you look at the General Public License, you basically
see an instrument there that is designed to make software available for free.
And because we were involved in the Linux environment along the way -- we're
not currently -- then their claim is, Oh, you gave all this stuff all away.
If you look at some of the issues that surround the GPL, we think they're
fairly significant. The founders of the GPL, the Free Software Foundation,
have this notion of Copyleft, and Copyleft is designed to be exactly opposite
of a copyright. Whereas a copyright is designed to protect your property, to
be able to give you proprietary rights, something you can go license and charge
a fee for, with a copyleft, the idea is, This is a free work. It's something
that you don't charge a fee for, and in fact, over time you have everybody,
sort of getting into this free sharing mode of software.
They believe adamantly over there that proprietary software is evil. I mean
the words they use there is evil, that proprietary software is bad for the world.
Those are the words that come out of the free software camp.
That issue becomes significant because again if you go back to Eldred v. Ashcroft,
these same arguments are made in the Supreme Court hearing. And in the majority
opinion, again I forget which Justice wrote this. Is it Ginsberg? The
statement is made, the copyright law celebrates the profit motive.
And in fact, the profit motive is the engine that ensures the progress of
science.
The copyright ... the GPL has had no significant court test up to this point.
IBM has put it on the table in our case, and we expect that it is going to
see a major court test as we go through our litigation with them.
To speak again back to the minority opinion, Justice Breyer's opinion was that
copyright statutes must serve public, not private, ends. The majority response
to that was, this misses the mark.
[35:00]
Copyright law serves public ends by providing
individuals with an incentive to pursue private ones. So I think, again,
this is a major issue that we're going to see coming out as we go through
the litigation battles.
Now another really key, interesting point about this General Public
License is the lack of indemnification. We are moving now through our
court-related issues. You're going to see a -- we basically, we have a litigator
by the name of David Boies you may have heard of. And as we go through
our situation with our feeling that in the IBM case we had our contracts
we felt were being violated, in the copyright situation, the question is,
who you go after?
The open source software world is very interesting. There is a string of
players there. You have Linus Torvalds that accepts a bunch of changes,
a bunch of code, includes them in a version of software. Then it comes
down to distributors of the software like Red Hat and SuSE. Then it comes
down to a hardware player like an IBM. Eventually it ends up in the hands
of an end user. But if you read the GPL language, it says, so if you're
a user now, a buyer, I guess you don't buy because you're receiving it.
The GPL language when you get a Linux license says because this program
is licensed for free, there is no warranty. And so the entire risk on
this is on your shoulders. So we have basically said within the next
few weeks, by February 18th we are going to be in the courtroom with an
end user to go through the copyright-related problems that we are having
from an infringement standpoint.
The free software response to SCO is, You guys are crazy. This would be
like -- I believe Professor Moglen was quoted as saying, This would be
like going to Barnes and Noble, getting a book, going home, and while
you're sitting on your couch in front of the fireplace reading it, you know,
SCO comes in and sues you for reading the book. Well, that's lunacy.
You can't sue someone for reading the book.
OK, but I would point out, there are two major differences, in the case
of Linux, compared to his Barnes and Noble example. The first major
difference is that you didn't buy the book in this case. Let me grab
my GPL license here. In the case of Linux, again, as it says here, this
is licensed Free of Charge. So you didn't actually pay anything for the
work.
But at the same time they gave it to you, they said, By the way,
if somebody comes after you because there's a problem with this, if
there's an infringement, if there's a problem, then you're on your own,
don't come back to us, because you... we didn't receive any compensation.
You're on your own.
The second major issue is that in the first example, when you sit at home
reading the book, it sounds fairly innocuous. If you look at how Linux
is playing out in customer environments, when people receive Linux, they
don't typically just receive it and use it, they typically receive it,
use it, and then copy it. Many of the organizations we looked inside of
have gone out and got a license for Linux, and they've copied it around
another nine or ten times for each version they receive down. So this
would be like the Barnes and Noble user reading the book, enjoying it,
getting up, and then going out and making 500 copies and spreading it around
to their friends and neighbors. OK?
That's our point about it being a copyright problem at the end user ...
at the end user level. And so, again, on these key points, we're going
to be highlighting them in some end user lawsuits, and again the courts
are going to be helping us sort through all that.
As we have put these plans in place and stated that we are going
to be going into the end user litigation side of things here soon, a
number of vendors have stepped up and said we're going to provide "SCO
protection." OK. If SCO sues you with a lawsuit, we will provide you
protection. Now typically, the protection revolves around, you pay us
some money, then if SCO sues you, then we'll give you some money back.
In Novell's case I believe, you know, they give you a bit of a premium on what
you pay them. But at Linux World here a couple weeks ago, a prominent
technology publication was saying all the vendors were trashing each
other's indemnification programs. Basically, what you start realizing here
is that this free software is starting to become not so free. You know people are
now going to users, saying you need to pay money and then we'll step
up and protect you.
[40:00]
As we come back to the backdrop to all of this, and again, as we
start talking about some of the sideshows and some of the corollary issues
that are coming into play in our case, you see some interesting problems
starting to pop up here. You know, take this MyDoom virus. Anybody
get MyDoom showing up in their mailbox? Yeah? Did anybody actually get
infected? Oh.
Audience member: I use Linux so I did not.
McBride: [laughs] You're in Linux, so you did not.[audience laughs] So.[points to another audience member].. Thanks.
So, you got infected, and so you were part of the guys who were hammering
our web site yesterday then. Thanks a lot.
You know this MyDoom virus, we don't know where it came
from. We've been attacked on our website. We've had four DoS attacks on
the SCO website in the last ten months. OK? On one of those occasions
one of the Linux leaders stepped up and said, It was one of us, a senior
member of the Linux programming community, and he shouldn't have done it,
but he did. [Chart behind him says "The Age of Cyber-Terrorism".] We don't know where this attack came from; we don't know if
it was spammers from Russia.... I understand Darin just came back
from Russia and you were there the day that the thing launched, right?
[inaudible from audience]
OK, I just wanted to highlight that coincidence.
We do have a reward program, you understand.[audience laughs]
So you've got some interesting things going on. You've got these denial
of service attacks, you've got worms, you've got viruses, you have
international terrorist threats, outside from cyber-terrorism, you have
actual terrorists out there. There's an article that Rob Enderle wrote
today where actual hard-core terrorists are now getting involved, kind of
scanning - getting involved in the digital terrorism side, which becomes a
very scary thing. And then on the top, here you have your basic harassment,
civil disobedience, and different things coming from email and web logs.
There was a second DoS attack that was launched yesterday. Did
anybody hear about that one? The Microsoft DoS attack is scheduled
for tomorrow. There was another one that hit yesterday. It's a
little-known one, but I personally know about it because it hit my
house. OK? Somebody went out on Slashdot.org, which many of you
have heard of, and they were kind enough to post my name, address and
telephone number, and they launched an attack on my home phone. Right
while I'm trying to enjoy the Super Bowl, the phone was ringing
off the hook. OK. And it drove my wife crazy. I mean, she's
been dealing with these things for a while now -- we've had all kinds
of threats and different things -- but she finally started calling these
people back. It was like, "Time to fight back."
So there are these kind of issues that at one level you say, Well,
big deal. One guy got bugged at home. I think what you see here though,
is there's a new frontier out there. And if you look at the digital age
and what's going on right now, I view this as a digital frontier. And if
you look back at the Western frontier, there was a period of time when there was
a lot of lawlessness. A lot of the things we're talking about here is just
outright lawlessness. Some of it is fairly innocuous and it doesn't harm
very many people. Other things that are going on are very harmful. Did
anybody see the Mi2G numbers in terms of how much this MyDoom virus
was responsible for in the last week? The reports coming out of London
was $26 billion, spelled with a "b". That was shocking to me. I mean,
I still don't know how they get those numbers. But, no matter how you
calculate it, there was a lot of damage done, a lot of people that have
been basically injured and had economic damages as a result of
this virus. From our company's standpoint, obviously it was a big deal.
On Saturday night web traffic started to flood our website and
by midnight Eastern time Saturday, our website was flat on its back. We
launched an alternate website this morning, so we're now up and going
and, you know, that's ... we have a number of contingency plans in place
for dealing with the problems as they come up.
But I think there's . . . I see there's an underlying problem here just
overall. You have a rule of law out there that is set up to deal with
problems. We have problems,
we went into the court system and that's the way we're working through
our problems. We have people that are fighting back against us that
are trying to use intimidation and fear tactics, to try and shut us
down from the court system. So we're fighting back. As Lombardi said,
and since we're at Super Bowl time, "It's not whether you get knocked
down, it's whether you get back up again." Okay. Our site got knocked
down Saturday night, this morning we got back up. We're taking on a
lot of fights, a lot of issues right now, but we're gonna continue to
fight for what we think is right here.
If you look at some of the other issues going on, this whole area
around export control... People say that we're alarmists because we're
communicating with Congress around issues where... As a proprietary Unix
operating system vendor, we have very tight export control restrictions.
We can't send our software, for example, into North Korea, Libya,
etc., there's a number of countries there that are restricted.
And now we have a situation where those same technologies have been
put into an open environment, into Linux, where these same people can
go download and get this available for, not just that you can get it
for free, the fact that you can get it at all. And so, we think that
there's some serious issues around the controls that are lacking as it
relates to Linux and open-source systems.
[46:34]
We put the bounty program in, you know somebody said, Well, that seems
like a new thing. No, it's an old thing. That's what they did in the
Wild West days. And it's very difficult when you have a website here,
sco.com, and you have a perpetrator over here and you have multiple
layers of networks and computers in between, it is very difficult, even
for some of you smart MIT guys in here, it's very difficult to track down
where these launches actually came from, where these attacks came from.
And so, the thinking was to put in a bounty program. We put up two
hundred and fifty thousand and we'll see if, if that's effective or not.
[47:14]
So, if we look at the future... This is the last slide, then we're gonna
go to Q&A. If you look at the future of software, where are things going?
On our left here, that's my left, [slide] you've got Richard Stallman, who is the
head guy over at the Free Software Foundation. That's gotta be nearby
here, not too far away, I guess, right? I first heard about the Free
Software Foundation and "GNU is not Unix" all the way back... When I
was at Novell, we bought Unix back in the 90s. I mean Richard's been at
this for a long time. And I actually highly respect Richard's ethos,
is who... I mean he is very strong about one thing, which is he's not
done until all software is free. I mean that's very strongly his opinion.
I totally disagree with it, but I respect his opinion.
[48:18]
On the other side you have the intellectual property organizations,
and there's a pamphlet you can read on your way out, or pick one up,
that talks about intellectual property as a power tool for economic
development. And in fact IDC is projecting by the year 2007 the software
market to be 289 billion dollars. Now the question that I would pose
to you, going back to one of the early slides, what is the value of
intellectual property? What is the value of software? What happens
to society if, if the 289 billion is zero? Any economists in the room?
I would argue that is a very bad thing for us and for society, for the
tax base, for the ability to have an incentive to go create more and
more software. And so, I think as we go forward, this is going to be
a very key issue that... It blends technology and the law. I think it
comes down to, Can you protect your works? In the future, is the current
stance of the U.S. Congress going to be held up? Is the progress of
science going to be advanced by leaning more towards individual rights?
Or are we going to create a commune where everybody throws all their stuff
in the pot and says, It's all over here and it's all for free. Okay?
So, I...
[49:45]
Again, going back to the ad that was run here today, IBM's position on
this is very clear. This is another point that I agree with them on.
The battle right now is over open versus proprietary. Okay? IBM is
saying open is good. It's about open standards. And they're trashing
the world of closed environments, proprietary systems. The ... so I agree
with them that that's what the argument's over.
[50:20]
And in terms of where we go forward, clearly we're on the proprietary side. We
believe we have very significant proprietary property rights, and we're
protecting those through the legal system.
From IBM's perspective, they hold thousands of patents, I think the number is
around ten thousand patents. I would say to Sam Palmisano, the minute you
put your ten thousand patents into the public domain, I will follow you with my intellectual property.
So with that, why don't we go to Q&A?
Zarren: This is Chris Sontag. He is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of
the Licensing Division, is that...?
Sontag: Overly long title.
Zaren: I just ask to please be respectful in your questions etc. We'll take the first
one over here.
Question: Your talk confuses me. On one hand, you argue that you've got some proprietary
technology that's copyrighted that was stolen, and that's perfectly reasonable.
Then the rest of it seems to be FUD talk, which I get the impression, free
software is bad and shouldn't be allowed is the message I get from what I hear
here and what you've said elsewhere. And I don't understand that. That's sort
of like saying, you should only be allowed to sell music, and nobody could
put a song out for free. Am I misunderstanding what you're saying?
McBride: You bring up a good point, which is, I'm not saying it's bad for someone to
contribute their works, OK. I'm saying it's bad for someone to contribute my
works and say I'm going to commoditize and destroy your business against my
will.
I am not saying... When I said I respect Stallman, I believe that Stallman
would horrified, if this thing comes out, that property that is protected
is showing up as a part of GNU/Linux, OK.
I believe that at a voluntary level, anyone who wants to contribute, if IBM wants to
put INFORMIX in there, if they want to put anything in there, OK, that
doesn't violate my rights, God bless them.
Ourselves as a company, we've put things in there, OK. Those are not the
things we are arguing about. But I do believe that as a society, we're on a
very slippery slope right now, if we move down this path of saying, let's all
jump on the software is free, and software is good, movement and let's just
make all software free, because I've had my eyes opened, in the last year or
so, that I think that is a slippery slope, and it doesn't have a good destination.
Question: I've got to use this new-fangled technology here. So my name is Eric Jonas and
I am a student at MIT, and in fact my friends here, we're also all MIT
students, and we are all essentially engineers and scientists. So intellectual
property is extremely important to us. Because this is all we are ever going
to do, with our lives, right?
Mcbride: Sure.
Question: So what I don't understand... Well, first of all, in our own act of civil
disobedience, you mentioned people copying Linux many times. We actually gave
out copies of Linux to everyone in the audience today. If you didn't get a
copy, feel free to see me afterwards, because we truly believe that the
intellectual property foundations of GNU and the GPL, are very strong.
But, amongst the millions of questions I would like to ask you, my number one
is, you've been telling people that you believe that your intellectual
property has been contributed to the Linux kernel all night.
This seems to be the most substantial portion of your talk. But I am curious,
if the code is already out there, if in fact -- I have a copy of the Linux 2.6
kernel right here in my hands -- what do you have to lose by telling people,
Well, these are exactly the parts that are infringing, because as I understand
it, and in fact Linus Torvalds has said himself, you guys refuse to tell
people, except under NDA , which portions you believe are infringing. Now
I am not a lawyer, but I know that if someone was doing something that I
felt was harming my rights, I'd try and stop it as quickly as possible.
McBride: Let me take a first shot at that Chris and if you want to follow up.
Sontag: Sure.
McBride: Have SCO shown the code? OK. First of all, SCO owns intellectual property at
System V level. When we say we've licensed this thing six thousand times,
we've licensed it and people are under very tight restrictions about not
being able to show that.
If we go out and just throw it out in the public, we are basically violating
our own commitments we have with our licensees. Now, with respect to code
that we have shown, let's follow the bouncing ball here for a moment.
[55:00]
Last summer, we came out with code that was very clearly replicated and
showed that last August. It was done under NDA, because we didn't want to violate our own
agreements. A number of people saw it, and shortly after that a Linux leader, in fact
Linus came out and said, That code has been removed from Linux. We then had some
other code that tied to it, that Silicon Graphics came out and said,
That was System V base code; it wasn't supposed to be in there; we took it out. OK? So
there's two occasions. Again, SCO said it was in there, wasn't supposed to be in there;
they took it out. Now they didn't take it out of the thousands and millions of servers
running around the world, so even at that level, you still have an infringement
problem. But they did take it out of future versions. We then said, there is roughly a
million lines of code tied into contributions that IBM has made, and that's subject to
litigation that is going on. We have basically supplied that. In fact, that is going
to be the subject of a hearing that comes up this Friday in a Utah courtroom. We have
supplied them with ample evidence, in terms of where those infringements came from,
and then finally a month ago we came out, or December I guess it was, we published 75
header files that showed up inside of Linux that tied to not just our intellectual
property agreements, but to the BSD settlement agreement from back in the nineties. And the settlement agreement says -- What does it say, Chris?
Sontag: It says basically that there is a set of files that had to be removed from
BSD. It was a set of files for which copyright attributions to AT&T USL, and
effectively SCO, had to be placed on all those files, and there was another set of
files for which there was no issue. Those files that were, had to have the copyright
attributions;
portions of those files ended up in Linux -- which is a problem. Which means we have
copyrighted work that was part of a court-approved settlement, that have ended up in
Linux inappropriately, and we haven't seen any action to correct that problem yet.
McBride: We did send out letters notifying people to your point. We did send out
letters in December. We said we are concerned about this. And the deadline for
responding to that was Saturday.
So if you look, when we say we're moving down the path of litigation, we are doing things to try
and mitigate. We are trying things to try and get things resolved. And we'll see how
that plays out.
Zarren: There's a button on the bar you can press.
Question: Sorry I've never been here before. Hi. I'm very concerned about the argument
you're making against Free Software because the reason Free Software is so valuable is
because it provides the basis
- the substrate - upon which other software, whether Free or proprietary, is built on.
And it seems to me that by creating Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt in the filing of
your lawsuit, you're doing the opposite of promoting the sciences and useful arts. You
are trying to undercut the basis upon which much science and useful art is being built.
Furthermore, you're not the author of Unix; you're not the developer of Unix; your
company had nothing to do with creating Unix. So why should anybody in this room
support what you're doing?
McBride: Any contract lawyers in here?
Question: I... Not yet.
McBride: Again, if you go back and read, very clearly, the contracts, did Chris or I
develop Unix? No. Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson did.
Sontag: And many others.
McBride: Yeah, and so from the latest copyright legislation out there,
those copyrights are good for 70 years, plus the life of the inventor. We're sending
those guys vitamins and spa treatments every day. No, we didn't create them. But we
paid millions and millions of dollars to acquire them. From a contract standpoint,
there has to be some meaning assigned to a piece of paper you have that you paid
millions of dollars for that says you own all right, title, and interest in Unix. It
says those words.
OK? From a standpoint of your first argument, which is the Free Software side of it
- again, we're fine with Free Software. We're not fine with somebody taking our
proprietary software and making it Free. And that's all we're trying to say.
Sontag: Let me just add one thing, two points, to that. One is in Free Software, the concern is
with the extremes. If we're going to end up as a society, a world society where the extreme
of "all software must be Free" -- we view that as being problematic.
The second point is,
in terms of ownership rights, you know, most of us here probably didn't build our
house, or didn't build the apartment that we live in, yet we still have rights in
terms of that property. So the fact that Darl or I didn't code Unix is immaterial. The
fact is that we've purchased that house. We've purchased those rights. And we have the
right, title, and interest in that business.
And so ownership is important. Property rights are important. You know
we're talking about software; that's somewhat intangible right now. But
ultimately we're talking about an issue that can be stretched to all sorts
of other things. Your right of your ownership of your IPod. Can I just
walk up to you and take it away from you? What is my right? I want it so
I should be able to take it? How far do we stretch these issues? Right
now we're dealing with software, or music, or with a play. But at some
point
we're talking about physical property rights. And at what point is
society's rights, individual rights balanced. And that's what we're
dealing with and we're trying to deal with it in the court system. And
not deal with it in terms of being beat up in a web attack or other
things. So.
McBride: Let's go here and then back over here, 1, 2, 3.
Question: Assuming, let's assume that your claims about SCO's ownership of
copyrights are held to be valid. Is it then possible to clean Linux of
that code, or are we all in kind of limbo until we know all this winds up
in courts and we know it's legal?
Because apparently much of it was created as free software, without the
contributions of code that originally came from Unix. Is it possible to
go back to that state, or would the act of doing so reveal the code that
you're forbidden from revealing by your licenses? Would ...
McBride: Part of the reason that I got into the licensing program is that we had
people actually asking that question. "Is there some way that I can
license this from you and feel free that I can just run this stuff
irrespective of what happens in your court case?" If you look at Unix and
Linux. If you go down to the bookstore right now, and look for a book on
how to program in Linux, typically they'll say how to program in
Unix slash Linux. OK? Making the point that Linux is a clone of Unix.
We absolutely recognize that there have been many contributions many
works, starting with Linus and going to many people around the world that
we don't have anything to do with. And we're not trying to say we have
anything to do with it. All we're trying to say is the property that we
feel is in there, that is violating our rights, we want to get
compensation for that.
Question: But if people agree with you, they agree your property is in there but
they don't want your property, they just want everything that's not your
property. How can they get that? How can they go back to the free... at
some point, somewhere in the beginning there was a Linux that had no
proprietary code in it because it was all Linus and anyone else who was
making free contributions. Along the way there've been many similar
contributions, so how can we get back to that?
McBride: Let me answer your question. So what we've said is like, in the case of
the IBM code that we claim is in there, that we think is material and we
say it goes into a high-end high-powered processing system, we think that
if you rip that code out, it's going to make Linux not nearly as
attractive. But if the common wisdom is to take that out and to go down
that path, assuming we win that court case, then absolutely that's
something we'll sign up for.
Question: Hi, I understand that you insist on the respect of copyrights. And I think
everyone in this room would agree with you on the respect of copyrights.
However, SCO's currently distributing GPL software products such as Samba
in some of own SCO products. Since you believe that the GPL is invalid, I
was wondering under what license are you currently distributing Samba and
other such products?
Sontag: We, Darl's mentioned earlier that SCO has participated in many open source
projects, has made contributions to open source projects, doesn't have
issues with open source projects that the IP basis of that work is sound.
Same with our participation with Samba and with other GPL or other open
source projects. So we continue to participate in some open source
projects, Samba being one of them. And we do have concerns with the GPL,
and the GPL may have to be reworked, changed, a new license put in place.
But in terms of ... as far we are aware right now there are no
issues in terms of IP with Samba that we're aware of right now. And so we
continue to participate with that.
[65:00]
In terms of the Linux kernel we specifically have an issue, and that is a completely
separate problem, so you can't drag it to the extreme and say 'urp', therefore all
other projects all other issues are completely out of bounds. We've
participated, we will continue to participate. So as far as we are concerned right
now, until we have evidence to the contrary, there are no issues as far as we
are aware of with Samba .
Question: Hi. My name is Ben [inaudible] from MIT. You are right that the GPL has not been
tested in court but then I would say neither has your claim about copyright. At
this stage your claim about copyright over Unix which you are more than welcome to
make has not been proven. At the same time you kind of cherry picked various
opinions from the open source community and blamed the whole community for these
random little attacks, but the actions of your company, SCO, as an entity have
included tactics such as sending letters to various users of this software and, as a
company, before your claim to copyright has been made in court you've tried to
intimidate people into paying you $700 -- at a discount price -- for Linux and $1,200 at
the full price, and you make this claim based on this idea that the GPL has this
warranty disclaimer which has no relevancy whatsoever to copyright. It is about the
way the software functions, not about the copying of the source code. So how do
you justify going after people before you've made your claim, going after users,
people who believed they were in the right because they dealt with Red Hat, because
they dealt with SuSE and acquired this software, and how do you justify that
kind of action?
McBride: Well, I think you bring up a number of good questions here. Let's go back to the
first one which is our letters to users saying that we have a problem and pay us
money. If you look at the letter we sent out back in May we didn't say a word
about paying any money. We said we feel like we have intellectual property problems inside
of Linux. Your point that this has not been tested with end users, we ... is a
good one. We are going down that path. We've said that we're going down that path and we're are going to test that, and
that is coming up in the next few weeks. The question earlier is, what are you
doing to mitigate your problem, what are you doing to let people know you have
problems? We sent out letters in December saying, specifically people have
clamored saying SCO won't even show where the code is. We sent out letters that
said here are 75 files. Linus stepped forward and said two of those he did and did not
comment on the other ones, not to my awareness, maybe he has, but on the one that I saw he said, Two of those I remember writing myself. Great. Somewhere in America there is
going to be a judge that is going to sit down and the rubber hits the road when you
get into the court system, and we are going to be there. And so on the contract
issues we have various contract claims with various vendors, we have isolated them
down to IBM because we feel that is where the biggest area of concern is. On the
copyright side and on the end users' side, we will be in a courtroom somewhere in
America soon and that will play out.
There was a question back up here. Oh, right here.
Go ahead.
Question: Thanks. I am Derek [inaudible] a third-year student here at Harvard Law and we would
like to thank JOLT and thank to you for bringing the debate here to campus. It's
great. My question is, if we assume for a moment that you prevail in the suit
against IBM and that you hold a copyright such that Linux has infringed, if I go to
the COOP and I actually purchase a Red Hat box, a boxed version, or over the internet,
or somewhere I buy a PC that has Linux pre-loaded on it, would it be your position
that by either installing the operating system on that Red Hat CD or by using the
OEM version of Linux that I have violated your copyright?
Sontag: Our opinion is that if it's proven that our intellectual property is in Linux and --
I'd like to separate out two points -- one, you are dropping it all into our case against
IBM, which is a contracts case involving their violation, as we have alleged in our
lawsuit, certain portions of the contract, specifically confidentiality of
material, derivative works, those sort of things. So, let's separate out the IBM
case, and that stands on its own. In terms of separately copyright issues, let's say
that is proven as we go forward, with, as we prove our copyright issues, we would have
a basis to then come back to, as we've stated, commercial users of Linux. If you
are using it for educational purpose, we are probably not going to deal with you.
If you are using it in a large commercial environment and getting a great deal of
economic benefit [from] the use of some of our portions of our intellectual property, we
will probably have an issue with you, and at some point we may choose to enforce
those rights. So that's what it comes down to.
Question: Hi. Question involving another local company with whom you
are having a bit of a run in. Well, they are a local company now, Novell.
McBride: Right.
Question: Just announced, by the way, last week, they are now officially a Massachusetts company.
McBride: It was through their 10-K, I understand ...
Question: That's right.
McBride: ... they announced.
Question: That's right. Yeah, so they are now local boys.
McBride: Right.
Question: Anyway, they've got an interesting little approach to this. They say, We
still own a permanent, irrevocable license to SCO Unix as part of the
deal with you guys. So then they turn around and say they say, Now we've
just bought SuSE, the second largest Linux developer. We're going to
sell SuSE Linux. And if any legal problem comes up, it won't apply because,
hey, we have a license to distribute SCO Linux, SCO Unix, so any copy we
sell is clean. What do you make of that argument?
McBride: We make a lot of things of that argument, but ...
Sontag: You want to take the first cut, or...?
McBride: Yeah, ah, let me take the first wave.
It's interesting -- you actually used very good words there, very
precise words. They say they have a license. They're a little, talking
out of both sides of their mouth here a little bit. On one hand, they say they
own the copyrights. They went to the Copyright Office and said, We own the
copyrights. But on the other hand, in the public marketplace, they're saying,
We own a license. OK? They, they licensed back the technology. They sold
us the technology, and then they took a license back. It's bizarre to say
you're owning the copyrights at the same time you took a license back from the
people that own the property. That's the first interesting point. When
you dive down in and you do a thorough reading on all the contracts
there, what you see on the license-back portion says that they received a
license back to use the technology for a) internal purposes, or b)
externally so long as it does not compete with the core products of SCO.
And it's a substantial part of the value proposition of the packaged
product. So, that becomes an interesting question. Our product is
Unix. Does Linux compete with Unix? OK? That is going to be a question that
the courts are going to be settling on that front. Right now, we're just
very singularly on the point of copyright ownership issues, and, you
know, that's, that's why we filed the lawsuit.
Sontag: I guess the one thing I would add to that is, you know, many of you are
in law school or have completed law school now. If you think back to your
contracts classes, do you interpret a legal contract in terms of
the whole document, that the basis of the contract is the whole document, or
can you interpret it based on selectively just a few lines that are of, you
know, most benefit and desire to you? No, it's the whole contract that
matters. And so, what, unfortunately, [it] appears Novell is doing is
selecting out and cherry picking the best parts of the Asset Purchase
Agreement with SCO and trying to spin that out there and create
confusion. And, we'll have our day now in court to settle that issue
with them, and we're very confident of our position because, in two areas, one
in terms of the copyrights, and second in terms of this, you know, perpetual
and irrevocable license. Only thing I'll add to that is, there was a
perpetual and irrevocable license that Novell would obtain based on their
license back, if SCO had been purchased within two years of when Novell sold
to old SCO, the Unix business. Well, old SCO was not purchased or there was no
change of control that occurred within that two year period, so that unlimited
perpetual license back did not occur. Also, in that same contract, there
is language that says if Novell ended up competing with a business that
is substantially the same as what they had sold us. So they had sold us this
Unix business, and then turn around now with their SuSE Linux business are
competing with SCO. There is a limitation of their license where it
becomes substantially less and incapable of supporting their, you know,
desired license to a broad audience of rights they really don't have.
[75:00]
McBride: OK, let's see, we haven't got any on this side of the room, let's go over there...
Sontag: How are we doing on time? ...OK...
Question: One quick question. We've talked primarily about companies owned
and operated within the US. I just wanted to get a sense of the
international implications for your arguments. Specifically China,
for instance, an emerging market, particularly in the desktop
realm. And where do you guys fall from an intellectual standpoint, and
who do you appeal to to make sure your intellectual property rights
are protected across the world?
Sontag: Want me to take that?
All right. If you're familiar with, you know, copyright law, there is
a lot of international conventions and so on that have established, you
know, bilateral agreements between different countries in terms of
respecting and enforcing each other's copyright laws. So, most of the
major countries around the world, there is effective, you know,
reciprocal action. If you have a US copyright and have registered it in
the US, that you have a very high level of rights in many other countries
around the world. There are a few exceptions to that, a few countries
that do not fully recognize copyright protection or don't see the
value of copyright protection or other intellectual property rights
protection. Which, you know, as a world body will continue to be,
you know, worked on and hopefully corrected. But for the majority of
the major countries around the world, we have a very strong basis and
mechanism for being able to enforce our copyrights and other intellectual
property and contracts in just about any place around the world.
McBride: Except China.
Sontag: Except China.
Question: Yes, hello. I just have a couple of quick questions in regards to the concept of copyright to specifications and, like, well, as
a programmer, header files or interfaces as opposed to the actual
implementation. For example, when you're sharing software, particularly
for collaboration, you will publish an interface, but you'll keep your
implementation private. And if some other person chooses to implement
that, they can, and then, they stand up on their merits. Does copyright
apply to both, and if so, if the interface is made part of a public
specification, can that then later be claimed as part of the copyright,
for your own implementation, thus making the implementation of that
specification by a competitor invalid because it's programming to
the same copyrighted interface?
McBride: It's a great question, and...and...
Sontag: If we have a couple of hours, we can, you know...
McBride: The real simple answer is, if you go through and look at the...there
was a big court case back in '94 that was settled between AT&T and BSDi
around the very issue of, you know, different versions of Unix and how
much was over here and how much was over there. And one of the things
that came out of this, as Chris said earlier, were 90 some-odd files
that were protected for SCO, or for AT&T at the time, and a number
of these were tied into these header files for the interfaces.
OK. So it reinforced the copyright protection, these transferred
over. We do have those copyright protections, and that in fact, so the
way it reads is, a lot of these files in BSD, if they put the files in,
they could use them, but they just had to include the header information.
They had to give attribution notice to us.
If you look at the DMCA, it actually gets to this very issue, of if you
file off copyright header information, that's a violation under the DMCA.
There's a company out there that we used to be associated with,
called Lineo, that was sued by a Linux company called MontaVista over
this very issue. You took off header file information. Lineo ended up
paying in that case. So, this is exactly the same case that we're on,
and we feel that we have very strong rights.
Who hasn't asked one yet?
[Zarren raises hand]
You...you take control of...
Zarren: I'm going to ask a question.
Sontag: You're going to take privilege here.
Zarren: Exactly. It's one of the fun things you get to do when you're in charge of a journal.
So, basically there's two sets of claims that you're talking about
here. One is a copyright slander--which shouldn't be
confused with a different kind of slander--claim, against Novell, and
you're going to figure out, that case will figure out who
owns certain copyrights. The rest of the claims that you're talking
about here, as I take it, are all revolving around the factual question
of, Do certain lines of code appear in Linux or not?
McBride: Against our property rights and the confidentiality disclosure standpoint.
Zarren: OK, so maybe there's two pieces there, one's a contract issue...
McBride: Breach of contract, right.
Zarren: ...because they disclosed and shouldn't have. And the other is
over just straight copyright violation, or not?
McBride: Right.
Sontag: Not through IBM.
Zarren: But the end-users might conceivably violate...
McBride: Right. Exactly.
Sontag: ...but from other sources.
[80:00]
Zarren: Then the question that I have is this. Let's say, again, I'm not a
copyright lawyer by any means, let's say it were to be the case that
the courts say, No, these were sort of developed independently,
it happens to be the same, but for whatever reason not infringing
and not exactly your code.
What happens to all
these claims then? Do they, do you have other claims, do they exist, or
is it really just rest on...is it the existence of these particular lines
of code in Linux, yes or no? Is that the basis for most of these claims?
That's my ... does that make sense? ... slightly complicated question.
McBride: No, it's a good question, and I think the basis for our claims does
revolve around the growing up of Linux so rapidly and how much of that
relates to our contract rights or our property rights or not. Again, when
you come back to the point that Linux is a clone of UNIX, and we already
admit, going into the game, that a good body of work that's in Linux is
OK--by definition it's OK, by definition part of it was the BSD stuff,
Linus's put stuff, other people--OK, fine, X percent of that is OK.
We argue that X percent of it is not OK. That really is the basis of
our claims.
Red Sox guy.
Question: How would you respond to...
It seems to me...I don't have much of a computer background, but from
what I've gathered here, in trying to put together the notions of
copyright in the computer context, it seems to me that you're kind
of hiding the ball in the sense that if you put that excerpt from the
Constitution back up on the screen, I don't see how you're living up to
any part of that notion of copyright as getting the expression out for
the public to ponder in awe at, even if you're worried you're a monopoly.
You're sort of not even providing the expression for public viewing,
and yet you're still acquiring and maintaining all this monopoly power.
How do you justify that from a copyright perspective?
I'm not trying to argue is there infringement or not, but how do you
even sort of, outside of your individual rights and your capitalistic
notions, how do you even tie it back to progression of science?
McBride: Well, I think we're arguing the other side of it. I think what you're
saying is there's an argument that says the progress of science should
make all of this stuff available for free. We're arguing the flip side
of that, which says the best way to progress science is to make this
stuff more protectable, that you can profit from it over the years,
and that's in fact what the Supreme Court majority decision came down on.
Question: I just think when we were talking about interface before, it just
sort of seemed to me that this is more of like what you guys are trying
to provide here is a functionality, is a certain function. And it
seems to me like that is more of a patent notion, and you should have
some disclosure there. Yet here you have this code that you're trying
to make millions of dollars--rightfully so, you've spent them, millions of
dollars--and yet, you're not even providing the expression, which is
sort of the basis of copyright.
Sontag: Yeah, let me take a run at this. Because we're dealing with, you have
a number of different types of intellectual property law. You have
patents that you were talking about for a moment, where you publish the
invention. You have copyrights, for which you may or may not publicly
publish the actual expression. I'd say, in a lot of ways, that UNIX is
widely published in terms of the binary run-time implementations, the
actual program running out there that people are able to see, use, and
benefit from. What we're protecting in that case is our copyrighted work,
the actual programming code that makes that UNIX system and licensed to
many users out there that have developed their own versions of UNIX and
created derivative works. By contract, they had the right to do so, so
long as they kept that derivative work, that product based on UNIX System
V, as part of that work that they built, and kept the code confidential
and didn't freely give it away. So that's our issue with IBM: they
took a body of work that they licensed from us, they built upon it,
they created a derivative work called AIX, they took portions of that,
ultimately, and contributed it into Linux. That's one whole body of work
for which we have concerns, that ultimately can become a copyright issue. All right?
We have a whole other body of copyright issues independent of IBM that
we also have issue with.
[85:00]
So, you can't, let's not just muddle it all as...I think a lot of
times people confuse intellectual property and think it's only patents.
There's many different types of intellectual property. I would even
put in contract law as a
basis of, in some cases, intellectual property or defining of intellectual property.
Deciding what you can do with your derivative works for licensing something or
not. So all of those elements have to be combined together to be able to decide what
is allowed, what is licensed out, what is freely available and in the case of SCO we
have a couple separate issues that are going on here and it's not ... the
easiest thing for people to just in five minutes looking on one particular website to
get the full understanding of the issue at hand but simply we are, you know, trying to enforce
our rights that we paid, as you mentioned, a lot of money for. And that's just part
of the process. We are trying to use the legal system to be able to go through the
process and prove that we have ownership of things. But we are not going to publicly
expose all of that because a lot of that evidence and so on, is confidential
information that we have licensed out widely and if we publicly make it available, it
breaks those confidentiality provisions with all those licensees. It would be very
damaging to our company.
So we are trying to give out and expose as much as we can. We are also trying not to
just try this whole case out on the internet. We are trying to make sure that the
appropriate information is made available to the court system first, such as the
evidence, we supplied in terms of our case with IBM. It's been made available to IBM,
made available to the court and if appropriate and the judge so chooses it may be
available more widely or in a public arena. So there's a lot of steps that we have to
go through. Our hands are tied on some things in terms of what we can show and what
we can't. But we are trying to make as much information available as possible while
also respecting the legal system.
McBride: Let's take a few more questions then we'll ....
[inaudible]
Zarren: Sorry can I just ask you to use it? There's people watching online and
they can't hear unless you use it.
Question: Well, let me tell them who I am.
I'm Kathy [inaudible] , a law student at BU.
And my question has to do with derivative works, that when you put up your slide, you
mentioned that there was kernel 2.2 and you described that as the hobbyist. So I'm
taking from your inference that you don't have any issue with any of the intellectual
property in kernel 2.2. So my question would be: What would happen if all of your
allegations are true, and you win on all of your claims, and you have the copyrights
acknowledged as being yours etc., etc.
What happens to all the people upstream who did Linux up until that point where your
intellectual property may have gotten in, if you manage to make it that you end up
getting revenue from Linux? What happens to all those prior people and isn't your work
a derivative of theirs? Where you are benefiting from the work that happened upstream?
What happens, how do they get compensated, for instance?
McBride: So, very very interesting question, intriguing question. So
we're ... we've basically...we didn't start off with a license. We didn't even roll
the licensing program out until somebody came in and said, How can I get access to
your IP?
So the only thing we said with our licensing program ...
We've never said, Here is a license for Linux. We've never said, This is, if you
take this, boy, you've got a license for Linux. All we've said is, if anybody wants
to use our intellectual property and use it across any operating system, Linux,
whatever it may be, here's how you do that.
So, we're not speaking for Linux as a whole. If, if we get into a mode where you say
O.K. SCO wins all these things and, boy, you've got to get your check out and start
writing. All we're commenting on is the intellectual property rights that we feel are
in there, as it relates to us.
Who hasn't, we'll go back there.
Question: Looking beyond your case. Do you feel there is a point at which intellectual
property protection, a point at which the pendulum swings too far? The main point to me in Eldred was about the length of a copyright term. So, in that or in, just in general,
the strength or amount to which the copyright law favors the producers of work instead
of the consumers of intellectual property.
Is there a point at which that balance shifts so far that science and the useful arts
are no longer promoted? And, if so, what do you think that point is?
[90:00]
McBride: On the way out here, I was reading the ABA Journal, of all things. It's like,
how did I end up in this spot, you know?
The American Bar Association Journal and its talking about Lessig's
crushing defeat on Eldred/Ashcroft, and his point, that he's gonna, you know, if you
read his stuff, he says, The only reason we lost that is -- 'cause I just didn't argue
it very well, so we're gonna, you know, charge the hill again and next time we'll get
it right. We recognize that there are two arguments here, you know. Maybe it's a
self-serving interest for us because we have these copyrights, to be in the
position we're in, but clearly there were also seven Supreme Court justices that
are saying that it should lean this way. On the next run up the hill, does it, does
it start swinging back? I don't know, I'm just telling you, you know, this is where
the status of it seems to be right now.
Question: But in your opinion at what point does intellectual property protection
no longer promote science?
Sontag: It, it's a, there's a balance there, and that, you know, society and
individual, you know, rights are what have to be balanced, and that's what occurs in
the court system every day.
But, you know, just think of it, you know, law isn't just, you know, about balancing,
you know, words that are in a contract but ultimately having to balance the issues
of, you know, human behavior. And, when we're talking about, you know, rights of
individuals versus rights of society do we ultimately get to a point where if it's
all free, it's all shared, there is no, you know, individual contribution that is
recognized, how are people going to function? Are we ultimately going to see a lot
of progress in the useful work in science, or are we going to see people sitting
back and going, I get nothing for this, so why am I going to contribute? It's just
like, if there was no grades with going to college, would you work so hard? If
there was no benefit for amassing knowledge for a career beyond that, would you
work so hard in school? You know, if there was no individual benefit ultimately, are
you going to work so hard to pursue something? And that's what ultimately has to
be balanced.
Zarren: I can take one more question.
McBride: All the way back.
Question: Thanks. Earlier you mentioned the files that you released to the, as
examples of where Linux infringed on your intellectual property, and you also
mentioned that Linus himself pointed out that some of those he had written himself
way, way, way back when. That kind of undermined your argument, and you lost some
credibility there, and I believe an article came out last week that threw into
question where some of the other ABI source came from, and if in fact it may have
been even released to the world by Caldera themselves. What are your comments on
that? And are you going to show better diligence in the future when you do release
source code as an example of infringement?
McBride: Well, let's just stick right on those files right now. Again, Linus said
two of those files I remember writing back in the early nineties. I ...
Sontag: I still have issues with those two files, by the way ...
McBride: Right, we don't, we'll get to that as we go through the court system
here. But what about the other seventy? I mean, again, we have brought in some
experts that understand Unix and Linux, and this is not Chris and I up here making
this stuff up. There are very strong experts that are going to be weighing in on
the witness stand that have gone through all of our property rights, and they've
gone through everything on Unix and everything on Linux. Take the AT&T/US . . . or the
AT&T/BSD settlement agreement that governs the use of these files that we're
talking about. Has anybody in here, in this room seen that agreement? It's under
seal, OK? So the starting point here is, as Chris said earlier, its real easy to
throw some stuff out there and say, Well, this argument is gone because of that.
It's real easy to go onto a website and put up a bunch of stuff as arguments. We'll
be more than glad to get all of the issues on the table and basically sort
everything out and that's what we expect to do through the judicial system. Last
question?
Question: [inaudible]
Zarren: The question, just for those of you watching online, is, What's the
timetable for resolving the court issues, and also what are the implications
of winning and losing? Is that, what are the implications of winning and losing?
That's probably a good last question.
McBride: Yeah, OK. She really wants to ask one, let's do hers first and then
we'll have that as the last one. Go ahead.
[95:00]
Question: Hi, I'm Erica [inaudible], I'm also from MIT. I've been listening to you
all evening repeat that you have no problem with developers who choose to
distribute their copyrighted works under the GPL. But I have a quote here from you
on December 4th where you said, "SCO asserts that the GPL under which Linux is
distributed violates the US Constitution and US copyright and patent laws." I'm
curious why you would say that?
McBride: So, if you take a look at, go back to the notion again, we
basically would say, from a voluntary standpoint, to the extent that people put
this in there, then great. God bless you.
When this thing moves into, what this whole thing is ...
The crux is, with Linux, it's the operating environment. And when the operating
environment becomes standardized, and there aren't choices out there for people that
have to play. An operating system is a unique beast, because you're not just
talking about an application. You're not talking about a widget or a piece of
hardware . You're talking about something that a lot of people have to play into.
When you come back and basically say at the underlying level here, from a
voluntary perspective, if people are putting things in there, fine. If people are
putting things in there that are in violation of our rights, if they are putting
our stuff in there, then we do have a big problem with that.
The last question up here then:
The time frame on all of this. We filed the initial suit against IBM March of last
year.
We've been going through the discovery phase. There have been motions back and
forth. So we are in the discovery phase right now, and it's set to go to a Utah Federal
Court jury trial on April 11 of 2005. So we're a little over year away from having
that heard in a Utah court room.
The Novell issue. We filed for, basically we think that is going to happen more
quickly. It's a very simple issue. Preliminary and permanent injunctive relief we've
filed for there. We expect that one to probably come in ahead of the IBM decision.
And then as far as these end user cases that we're talking about. We don't know
yet.
You should expect to see... Boies basically said that we'd have these filed by
February 18th. And from what I can see right now, that's probably, I expect that is
what's going to happen.
So, in the end, what happens to the SCO company? So if we start out talking about
this big giant David-Goliath battle, it's turned into a much bigger, more intense
issue with thousands of people around the world. Many here in this room that are
not particularly pleased with our company. We are working through these issues. We
feel like we have very strong property rights. We feel as strongly that our
property rights are being stepped on and violated as many people here feel these
SCO guys are coming after our free work.
I would like to dispel one thing right now.
We are not, I repeat not, trying to go after the legitimate contributions that
Linus, maybe some of you in this room, or people around the world or even
legitimate contributions that IBM has made.
We are going to fight extremely hard until we get what we think is the justice due
us. Due to things that we think are being violated against our rights.
In the Super Bowl parlance, you win the Super Bowl, you lose, it's a big
difference. I read a study a while ago, communities where the team wins the Super
Bowl, the following year the morale of the whole city is higher and violent crime
is lower. Particularly domestic violence crime goes down.
Sontag: So let's look forward to a good year.
McBride: Look forward to a good year here in the Boston area. It's pretty
interesting that that one thing can have such a big impact on a community. I would
expect a similar things here. I think the winner of this case, one way or another,
it's going to be a big win. We look forward to having our case tried through the
court system. Obviously for us to win this, it would be a huge deal. So that's what
we're fighting for. We're going to, again, go through the court system. We look
forward to the results. We feel confident in our claims.
But just like the Super Bowl, you gotta go to the game and play to know what's
actually going to happen.
Zarren: At this point I just want to [mention] a couple of things. First of
all, I would like to thank Darin Sands here, who organizes all of our speaker
series. He put this whole thing together. And then also thank these guys for
coming and responding to all the questions. If people want to hang around and
chat about the journal or any of these issues, obviously, we'll stay around. There
may still be some food outside. But I would just like to thank Darin and the SCO
people for coming. And please ...
Question: What's the other event?
Zarren: The other event is, I believe it's two, three weeks. Monday, February
23rd. We'll put some details of that on our website. We're not sure exactly when or
where. But Monday the 23rd of February, Chris Stone the vice chair of Novell will
be here, talking about many of the same issues. So I'd like to give a round of
applause to our speakers. [APPLAUSE].
|
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Authored by: Joss the Red on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 02:14 AM EST |
I've said it before and I'll probably say it again - Watching Darl is like
watching a street performer blowing off his own feet with an Uzi, while so
called fans and friends throw money in the pot and urge him on. Sure, we may
dislike him, but that seems like nothing compared to the contempt that Mr. Gates
must hold him in to help fund his little shooting expidition by paying millions
of dollars to supposedly licence some code, all the while urging him on to make
a bigger and bigger fool of himself, to the point where Darl might even do
something that pierces the corporate veil.
---
I don't even play a lawyer on TV.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 02:25 AM EST |
Everytime I read his response to the last GPL question, I feel myself losing
brain cells. That really stumped him.
LOL[ Reply to This | # ]
|
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Authored by: Thomas Frayne on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 02:27 AM EST |
It looks like SCOG has a case against Novell that SCOG let out of the bag at
Harvard.
----------------------------------------
Sontag: ... Only thing I'll add to that is, there was a perpetual and
irrevocable license that Novell would obtain based on their license back, if SCO
had been purchased within two years of when Novell sold to old SCO, the Unix
business.
Well, old SCO was not purchased or there was no change of control that occurred
within that two year period, so that unlimited perpetual license back did not
occur. Also, in that same contract, there is language that says if Novell ended
up competing with a business that is substantially the same as what they had
sold us. So they had sold us this Unix business, and then turn around now with
their SuSE Linux business are competing with SCO there is a limitation of their
license where it becomes substantially less and incapable of supporting their,
you know, desired license to a broad audience of rights they really don't have.
-----------------------------------------
Sontag might be referring to the following sections of the APA between Novell
and oldSCO, but did not bring up 6.6. However, SCO has asked us not to take
statements in the contract out of context, so here is my version of the relevant
context.
-----------------------------------------------
ARTICLE 1
THE ACQUISITION
...
1.6 License Back of Assets.
...
The license agreement shall also provide Seller with an unlimited royalty-free,
perpetual, worldwide license to the Licensed Technology upon the occurrence of a
Change of Control of Buyer described in Section 6.3(c) hereof.
...
ARTICLE VI
CERTAIN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE MATTERS
...
6.3 Right of First Refusal on Change of Control
...
(c) Expansion of Seller's Rights Relating to the Licensed Technology upon a
Change of Control. Until two (2) years from the Closing Date, in then event
Buyer has merged with, sold shares representing 50% or more of the voting power
of Buyer to, sold all or substantially all of Buyer's assets to, or engaged
voluntarily in any other change of control transaction with any party identified
by Seller on schedule 6.3(a) hereof, or in the event any party identified by
Seller on Schedule 6.3(a) hereof, shall acquire shares representing 50% or more
of the voting power of Buyer, Seller shall automatically have unlimited,
royalty-free, perpetual rights to the Licensed Technology.
...
6.6 Buyers Right of First Refusal
...
(c) Change of Control. For purposes of this Agreement a "Change of
Control" with respect to one party shall be deemed to have occurred
whenever (1) there shall be consummated (1) any consolidation or merger of such
party in which such party is not the continuing or surviving corporation, or
pursuant to which shares of such party's common stock immediately prior to the
merger have substantially the same proportionate ownership of common stock of
the surviving corporation immediately after the merger or (2) any sale, lease,
exchange or transfer (in one transaction or a series of related transactions) of
all or substantially all the assets of such party, or (ii) the stockholders of
such party shall approve any plan or proposal for the liquidation or dissolution
of such party, or (iii) any party, other than such party or a subsidiary thereof
or any employee benefit plan sponsored by such party or a subsidiary thereof or
a corporation owned, directly or indirectly, by the stockholders of such party
in substantially the same proportions as their ownership of stock of such party,
shall become the beneficial owner of securities of such party representing
greater than fifty percent (50%) of the combined voting power of then
outstanding securities ordinarily (and apart from rights accruing in special
circumstances) having the right to vote in the election of directors, as a
result of a tender or exchange offer, open market purchases, privately
negotiated purchases or otherwise. or (iv) at any time after the date of this
Agreement, individuals who at the date hereof constituted the Board of Directors
of such party shall cease for any reason to constitute at least a majority
thereof, unless the election or nomination for election by such party's
stockholders of each new director was approved by a vote of at least two-thirds
of the directors then still in office who were directors at the date hereof, or
(v) any other event shall occur with respect to such party that would be
required to be reported in response to Item 6(e) (or any successor provision) of
Schedule 14A or Regulation 14A promulgated under the Exchange Act.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For once, Sontag seems to have stated a reasonable case. It looks like SCO will
argue that the definition of Change of Control includes the 2 year limitation in
the right of first refusal clause. Novell will say that Section 1.6 refers to
the definition of Change of Control, not to when it occurs. Further, Novell
will argue that the reference to 6.3(c) in Section 1.6 is a typo, and what was
meant was 6.6(c).
With no other information than 1.6(c) and 6.3(c) of the APA agreement, I
couldn't imagine how the judge would decide. However, once I saw 6.6(c), I can
easily imagine the judge deciding in favor of Novell for the following reasons:
* 1.6 is clearly referring to a definition of "Change of Control". It
does not say that rights should be overridden bu statements in 6.3(c), which is
only a subsection of section 6.3
* 6.3(c) looks like a summary or draft of a definition mixed in with a
discussion around a 2 year right of refusal agreement.
* 6.6(c) Is a precise definition of Change of Control with respect to either
party for purposes of the agreement, and nothing but the definition.
* 1.6 is in ARTICLE 1 THE ACQUISITION, and is clearly meant as a major item.
The reference to a definition was clearly meant to put a needed definition where
it would not clutter up the main item.
* It is not reasonable to interpret an unlimited perpetual license taking effect
on a change of control as not to take effect unless a change of control occurs
within 2 years. It is more reasonable to interpret the meaning of change of
control according to its English meaning, as made more precise by 6.3(c) and
6.6(c), without trying to attach "2 years" to the meaning.
I don't think that this will affect the current suits: IBM does not depend on
Novell's license back, and Novell's motion to dismiss was brilliant. However,
it seems unlikely that the judge will bar SCO from suing again, since the
dismissal motion is purely on procedural grounds. (Could dismissal with
prejudice be a sanction for filing a frivolous lawsuit?)
If SCO files a properly pled claim against Novell that is based on SCO's
interpretation of Change of Control, what is likely to happen? I understand
that the judge can decide matters of the interpretation of the law and the
contracts. However, what if the judge refuses to decide, and the interpretation
has to depend on depositions from those who negotiated the contracts, and SCO
and Novell cannot agree on the truth of the depositions? Does the case have to
go to trial to see whose testimony the jury believes?
SCOG continues to give the impression that the only goal of all their legal
manuevering is delay. They don't seem to be interested in winning any lawsuit,
or even in complying with court orders. In that case, they have won this round,
and, if they can delay filing another suit against Novell, that will be another
victory.
However, IBM and Redhat did not fall into SCOG's time warp. IBM did not ask for
dismissal, and when it does, IBM will probably be certain the it will be
dismissal with prejudice and will continue with the countersuit. The Redhat
judge seems to be playing into SCOG's hands, but, perhaps, is just waiting until
the time is ripe for a summary judgment. Finally Novell could break out of the
time warp whenever it desires, just by filing suit against SCOG.
Other aspects of the Harvard speech still need more discussion, e.g.,
copyrights, the non-compete clause, and the GPL.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- SCOG has a case. Can the judge decide it? - Authored by: nealywilly on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 04:54 AM EST
- Are all contracts written this badly ? - Authored by: KevinR on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 05:44 AM EST
- SCOG has a case. Can the judge decide it? - Authored by: nealywilly on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 06:34 AM EST
- Apparently, Novells' license was continued by SCO - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 07:12 AM EST
- SCO has NO CASE w Novell!! - Authored by: sam on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:30 AM EST
- SCOG has a case. Can the judge decide it? - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 01:24 PM EST
- SCOG has a case. Can the judge decide it? - Authored by: whoever57 on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 07:20 PM EST
- SCOG does not have a case. The TLA does not include the 2 year clause. - Authored by: Thomas Frayne on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 12:05 AM EST
- SCOG has a case. Can the judge decide it? - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 03:55 AM EST
- SCOG has no case. Sontag misdirected. - Authored by: Thomas Frayne on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 02:30 PM EST
|
Authored by: pb on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 02:27 AM EST |
I do have to thank Darl for taking the time to flesh out his absurd statements,
and explain in detail his ignorance on these matters. Let's just say that SCO's
interpretations of their own contracts, copyright law, and Unix source code all
leave much to be desired. They should really let competent professionals like
IBM and Linus Torvalds deal with these things.
To highlight one blatant bit of misinformation--sure, Linus said he remembered
specific implementation details about two header files... so where did the other
ones come from? Well, many of them were probably copied from the first two, as
SCO listed all of the files with the same names, but for different
architectures... But apparently they never even checked to see what code came
from where, in violation of the "due diligence" that they should be
practicing...
As for the Constitutional copyright argument, that is ridiculous on its face.
The progress clause has more than enough room for both interpretations, but it
certainly never talks about a specific profit motive. Both proprietary Unix
vendors and free Linux distributions can co-exist just fine without ever running
afoul of The Constitution. (never mind that people sell Linux distributions
too...) The market will decide which one(s) dominate the industry, there's no
reason to intervene, and no right to, either.
So that's enough for me, but as for the rest of you, feel free to pick this
apart, it should be both easy and entertaining.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- [Slightly OT, constitutional argument] lies, damn lies, and Darl McBride - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 02:59 AM EST
- [Slightly OT, constitutional argument] lies, damn lies, and Darl McBride - Authored by: creysoft on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 03:47 AM EST
- [Slightly OT, constitutional argument] lies, damn lies, and Darl McBride - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 09:21 AM EST
- [Slightly OT, constitutional argument] lies, damn lies, and Darl McBride - Authored by: Xenographic on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 07:39 PM EST
- lies, damn lies, and Darl McBride. - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 04:56 AM EST
- lies, damn lies, and Darl McBride. - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:54 AM EST
- Roll up, Roll up, ... - Authored by: tgf on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 02:25 PM EST
|
Authored by: SirFozzie on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 02:33 AM EST |
(looks at the clock)
Get some SLEEP, PJ.
We can tackle this in the morning :)
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 02:34 AM EST |
this is not Chris and I up here making this stuff up.
Maybe
its the late hour, but reading that one sentence set me into fits of laughter.
Its been said before, but I'll say it again anyway: Linus Torvalds is the
premier Linux expert on the planet. No 'expert' from SCO is going to provide
better insight. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 02:59 AM EST |
Thanks to all the people who transcribed the presentation.
That must have been tough. My eyes glazed over several times just reading this.
Darl's language skills need a good deal of polish. Very lazy use of English, and
typical grammatical style (bad) for Utah.
It appears that Darl did not convince many at the gathering that his way was the
right way.
I also noticed that Darl did not answer many of the questions put to him -
rather dodged the more important ones and poked briefly at the others while
repeating himself and his message.
I was disappointed that no one continued the line of discussion on either
derivative works and progressing of science for the public good. The derivative
works issue we have done to death.
The progressing of science argument is a strawman that needs to be burnt to the
ground rather quickly, as the claims of money moving science are specious at
best and beyond wrong at worst.
Money progresses science only along the lines that provide significant financial
benefit to the funding organization, and in many cases the progress is not all
that far, as there is a built in hedge to protect the cash cow by bolstering
your data points. Most of the truly innovative industry breakthroughs do not
happen within the walls of a company in that industry, but from the outside.
I do not remember reading anything in the Federalist Papers or in commentary by
Franklin or Jefferson that Copyrights were intended or setup to specifically
monetize the progress of science.
Comments?
...Paul[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 03:32 AM EST |
Everything coming out of SCO/McBride is starting to sound the same to me. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 04:06 AM EST |
Well, with rather a dearth of thoughtful commentary coming to mind, I would
add:
Captain SCOG strikes again! Tune in next week whilst Captain SCOG launches his
army of cloned Underrodents on the population of OSS Prime! Will the planet be
able to withstand this evil scourge? Find out next week on the
groklaw.net[work]. Same SCOG time, same SCOG channel!
...or something like that.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: golding on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 04:15 AM EST |
McBride is a consumate magic man, using sleight of speech he didn't answer the
questions. Sure, it looked like he was, but after reading the answers, you ask,
where did it (the answer) go?
Very neat trick, however it only works when listening. The vapour goes away
when you get to read it and double check what you are reading.
---
I opened my mouth and proved them right.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: OK on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 04:42 AM EST |
Personally, I would rather like to see Caldera's purchase agreement, because
what Darl is citing is SCO-Novell contract, not Caldera-SCO, and in order to
determine what rights SCOG has it's needed to see both. After all, SCOG did not
purchase anything from Novell - it [when it was called Caldera] purchased it
from SCO who purchased it from Novell.
So, my question is this - is it
really useful to analize SCO-Novell purchase agreement without knowing what is
written in Caldera-SCO agreement?[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: GLJason on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 04:49 AM EST |
Here would be my three questions:
-
SCO seems to have a liberal
view of "derivative work" with respect to software that courts don't seem to
agree with. You appear to claim that JFS, which IBM has written and owns the
copyright to, is a derivative of UNIX SYSV. Even if it is true that JFS was
once included with AIX, how can you conclude that it is a derivative in and of
itself since it doesn't contain any code from UNIX SYSV?
The motion
picture "Holes" is a derivative work of the book of the same name by the author
Louis Sachar. It is a derivative work because it contains the same expression,
the plot, characters, and some dialog, that are in the book. The movie also
contains the song "Honey" by the musician Moby. Would you argue that "Honey" is
a derivative work of Louis Sachar's book and that Moby needs Sachar's permission
to distribute his song or to perform it publicly since it was included in the
movie that was a derivative work of the book?
-
You have said that
Linux contains code from Unix SYSV, but have failed to point out what code,
which is currently publicly available, had supposedly been copied from Unix
SYSV. You have threatened legal action if end users do not pay up for a
UnixWare license for each computer running Linux. How would you feel if
Microsoft publicly said that they found out part of Unix SYSV was copied from
Microsoft Windows and went to your customers and licensees demanding they buy a
Windows 2003 Server license for each computer running any version of Unix in
order to avoid being sued by Microsoft? What if Microsoft then said that they
no longer had to pay attention to the license that you gave the customer for
your code?
-
You have commented on how you believe the header
files are copied from BSD and are infringing on your IP because they are missing
the copyright attribution. Let's say that your theory is true, even though
others claim they wrote that code. What would a valid remedy be in your eyes?
Would reinstating the copyright notices be sufficient, and if not then why not?
What if they were completely replaced with versions from Unix V32 with the
Caldera copyright notices and with the license that your company released them
under in 2001?
I'd probably try to fit in a few others, like
if they though Linus Trovalds should file a slander of title suit against SCO
for claiming the copyright on his work, how they think they can succeed in their
lawsuit since they failed to mitigate their damages by attempting to remove
their code from Linux, and what the heck was Caldera thinking when they released
the Unix V32 code under a BSD-style license? [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: brian on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 05:03 AM EST |
It is a pretty funny song and dance show. SCO's circular
logic is astounding!
One question that I'm sure has been asked a lot here but I
am going to do it again....
Humor me in this one minute.....
Assume that SCO is entirely correct and wins all they ask
for.....Ok, you can get up off the floor now and wipe the
tears out of your eyes....
How hard would it be to remove all the "offending" code? I
know SCO has no intention of releasing ANY lines so how
hard would it be to just completely redo those sections
that they are claiming infringe? You know, JFS, NUMA, SMP,
the like...
I am not a Linux kernel programmer (although I have done
some minor hacks) so I really don't know how hard it would
be to either dump or recode the offending sections. Any
taker on this one?
B.
---
#ifndef IANAL
#define IANAL
#endif[ Reply to This | # ]
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|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 05:03 AM EST |
I've come up with a scenario that seems promising, and I'm wondering whether
it's possible... if/when SCOG goes down in flames, if their costs are so high
that they are bankrupted, what happens to their assets (including any IP that
they may or may not genuinely hold)? Could it be seized and passed to some other
party... who (there being some sensible and benign other parties around) might,
seeing that it has no financial value, release it into the public domain,
whether as Public Domain, Open Source or whatever? I don't even know whether
this is possible under the relevant laws (I'm from another country (or possibly
planet)).
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: blacklight on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 06:30 AM EST |
If I understand Eldred vs. Ashcroft correctly: Lessig (and we the public) lost
not on the issues of the case but because the Supreme Court made the decision
that the Legislative branch has the right to pass silly law and bad law up to
the point where this law violates the Constitution, and that the Supreme Court's
opinion is that this point has not been reached with respect to the law being
challenged.[ Reply to This | # ]
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|
Authored by: blacklight on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 06:41 AM EST |
"We've had four DoS attacks on the SCO website in the last ten months. OK?
On one of those occasions one of the Linux leaders stepped up and said, It was
one of us, a senior member of the Linux programming community, and he shouldn't
have done it, but he did." Darl McBride.
The Darl is still making mileage out of Eric S. Raymond's shooting his mouth off
at the expense of the Open Source community several months ago. To quote a
Spanish (or Latin American) proverb: "the open mouth draws flies".
Remind me to pimp slap ESR on principle if I ever meet him. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Raymond on DOS: - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 07:14 AM EST
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 06:42 AM EST |
any information on this:
[48:18]
"...and there's a pamphlet you can read on your way out, or pick one
up.."
it seems that SCO gave out a paper as well
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Pamphlet? - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 01:49 PM EST
|
Authored by: blacklight on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 06:57 AM EST |
"Deciding what you can do with your derivative works for licensing something or
not. So all of those elements have to be combined together to be able to decide
what is allowed, what is licensed out, what is freely available and in the case
of SCO we have a couple separate issues that are going on here and it's not ...
the easiest thing for people to just in five minutes looking on one
particular website to get the full understanding of the issue at hand [my
italics] but simply we are, you know, trying to enforce our rights that we paid,
as you mentioned, a lot of money for ..." Darl McBride
I think the Darl
gave the groklaw community the back of his hand. Did a mosquito just bite my
butt, or are you trying to whip me to death with a feather, Darl?[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: blacklight on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 07:03 AM EST |
How many of the ABI files did Linus actually write: do we have a final count? [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: shareme on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 07:09 AM EST |
Look at Darl's concluidng remarks about 2 paragraphs up from the bottom..He
stated the real reason for the lawsuit against IBM.. its not protecting SCO
copyrights but motivated by SCO Group's failures
His words, paraphrasing..
The crux is, with Linux, it's the operating environment. And when the operating
environment becomes standardized, and there aren't choices out there for people
that have to play.
What is strange is that SCO Group was involeed in contributing to distinct OS
systems like this Unix and Linux..
We need to flesh this out..is Darl saying that SCO Group's failure in Montery is
everyone else's fault and thus we owe money to SCO Group?
---
Sharing and thinking is only a crime in those societies where freedom doesn't
exist.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 07:54 AM EST |
A question I would have asked.
Mr McBride, If you invalidate the GPL will you (SCO) compensate all those, who
hold copyright in Linux and whose copyright you will have, directly infringed?
Not withstanding the fact that you are already at present infringing upon their
intellectual property by issuing, or intending to issue, a licence that directly
runs counter to the GPL. If not are you not, infact, commiting the same offence
against those copyright holders as that which you are claiming against
yourself?
Tailgunner.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: xtifr on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 07:54 AM EST |
Man, what a master of, uh, spin (to use a undeservedly polite term). Right
at the start of the talk (right around the [11:30] mark), when he tells the
little story about hearing a speech on open source, if you didn't know better,
you'd swear that he's describing the first time he ever heard of these supposed
threats to his supposed "intellectual property".
The CEO of a "leading
open source company" comes to BYU, and Darl is there. "So," reports Darl, "he's
selling this thing called Linux." Yes, Darl, "this thing" that happens
to be the exact same thing your company was selling at the time. This
"thing" your company was founded to sell. Maybe you've heard of it?
Darl continues, "He said, 'Well, what we do is we have this operating system,
and it's Free. OK?'" Yes, I think just possibly the fact that it's Free was
mentioned in your own company's articles of incorporation!?
And IPO? And in your company's literature and brochures and such? Do you have
a point here?
"Essentially," continues Darl, "what he said is we're
trying to displace a company called SCO and Sun." Just as your company had been
doing for most of its existence? (Up until you finally bought SCO's OS
division, with the express and stated plan of incorporating parts of their code
in Linux.) I see. Fascinating. Do go on. "And I was like, 'SCO!? That's
me!'" Really? So this was after your company's name changed? Are you
sure the guy knew?
Gah, I can't go on; I'll start beating my head
against the wall. Heck, after hearing Darl talk about the Superbowl, I'm
starting to wonder if the Patriots really did win. And I watched the game!
:) [ Reply to This | # ]
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|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 08:06 AM EST |
After his amazing letters to Congress, I was waiting for Darl to mention
"precious bodily fluids", but it didn't happen. But who would play
Darl, Boies, and Gates, now Peter Sellers is dead?[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 08:48 AM EST |
Does anyone know the lecture Darl is taking about at Brigham Young University?
He said it was by a CEO of an open source company which specifically mentioned
SCO as a competitor (which is interesting in itself, because I believe they
would have been known as Caldera back then, right?)
Can anyone confirm this event? When did it actually happen? Is there a
transcript available?
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: SilverWave on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 08:53 AM EST |
$3 Million Reasons
See this article for Darls real motivation.
“It turns out SCO didn't simply use stock to buy another company. SCO printed up
about $3 million in new stock. Then, in the complicated deal in which SCO
acquired Vultus, the stock was cashed out, with most of the proceeds going to
Canopy.”
Opinion by Frank Hayes
JULY 28, 2003 ( COMPUTERWORLD )
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,83452,00.html
---
RE:SCO's House of Cards
"Ooh!… and a Black pirate flag flying from the top ;-)"
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Nathan Hand on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 09:00 AM EST |
I'm still holding onto the theory that Darl isn't a conman or a
greedy
opportunist, but that he actually believes what he's saying. People
tend
to disagree because they have different views of the same information.
So
I'm of the opinion that Darl can be educated to realise why we disagree
with
him.
So rather than find specific faults in his speech - of which they
are
many! - I'm going to try and find Darl's point of view.
Bear in mind I
don't agree with Darl's statements. I'm trying
to put his arguments down
in English so we can educate him as to why he's
wrong.
The
players on the field here are the SCO Group, which after a series
of
acquisitions over a number of years owns this thing called the Unix
operating
system. So we're the owners of this source code and copyrights
around
Unix.
I think Darl truly believes that The SCO Group owns
the copyrights
to UNIX.
I believe a potential source of the confusion is
that The SCO Group
did not enter in an agreement directly with Novell, but
rather Santa Cruz
signed the initial APA and The SCO Group entered into a second
agreement
with Santa Cruz. I believe Santa Cruz misrepresented what they sold
to
The SCO Group. Possibly the contract between Santa Cruz and The SCO
Group
states a transfer of copyrights. So The SCO Group is acting from
that
position and interpreting everything they read to reinforce that point
of
view, including the original APA between Santa Cruz and Novell.
I think that it's going to reshape the future of software
one
way or another. That's my view on it.
I think Darl
sees himself as representing a number of software company
CEOs who are too
"timid" to express their distate for free software.
This ties in with
Darl's claims that the Linux community are vandals. He
sees the DDoS attacks and
the phone pranks as being representative of the
"unprofessional" Linux
community. I believe he is also passing on this point
of view to close friends
of his, such as Laura Didio, which explains why
her articles often closely
reflect Darl's opinions and why she seems to have
the early-breaking scoops from
The SCO Group.
So he's selling this thing called Linux. He
said, Well, what we do is we
have this operating system, and it's Free. OK? And
we go into corporate
environments, and we go out, and we're basically ...
essentially what he
said is we're trying to displace a company called SCO and
Sun. And I was
like, "SCO!? That's me!" You know? So I took that real
personally. And
we didn't break any bread that day.
I
think this is central to Darl's beliefs: he thinks that open source
is
specifically targetting his company. He doesn't see there being any
compromise
or coexistence because, in his mind, we started this "war"
against traditional
Unix companies.
Darl quotes a Dilbert cartoon:
"I
created software that makes all copyrighted work on the net
available for
free."
"Well, gee, wouldn't that destroy all forms of creativity and
plunge
us into a depression?"
"Yeah, but it was very
neat."
The implication is obvious. Darl thinks that open
source is going to
destroy innovation and creativity. He repeats this point of
view a number
of times in different ways. He says that without the monetary
incentive
of being able to charge licensing fees, why would anybody work on new
and
exciting software? He repeats this point of view later:
... we would not take Congress to task for creating this
evidence, which
as Justice Breyer acknowledges, reflects general propositions
about the
value incentives that are undeniably true. So the basic concept that
comes
out of this is, fair compensation with an incentive to create your
works.
The logical extension of his argument is that
Linux is currently just
mimicing existing software created by "real" software
companies such as
the original Santa Cruz Operation. If Linux destroys all
competitors and
all we have left is free software, then future development will
stall
because there won't be any money to pay the programmers.
If you look at some of the statistics, what you see is that
copyrighted
works are a big driver for the industry. Look at the GDP
numbers
there. You know, a half trillion dollars. You know, significant
workers
involved with that, and export and sales of those products are
also
significant.
Darl here recognises that software is a
big industry making lots and
lots of money. He sees open source as trying to
destroy that wealth.
So lets start
with Napster. So five years
ago, anybody download over Napster? I'm not
with the RIAA -- feel free to raise
your hand. We won't put the camera
on you. OK. So five years ago, how many
people around the world were
doing Napster downloads for free? ...
You have
the video industry that's out there. We sat through a
presentation that one of
the leaders out of Hollywood talked about:
We can not compete with a free model.
OK. These films were out there,
they were being pirated, bootlegged, and spread
around the world for
basically viewing before they even showed up in the
theaters.
You know there are a number of industries here that are struggling
with
this. You know, the drug industry has these patents, and they protect
them,
and they have a certain life, they expire, and then they go to
something else.
There's this underlying question as to how big of a role
are these free models
going to work in protectable industries?
As much as this
annoys me, we are seeing another belief from Darl. He
equates Linux (and all
free software) with the same criminal actions of
Napster users and movie
bootleggers. In his opinion, there is no difference
between free but legal
downloading of software (eg, where the license
permits such copying) versus free
but illegal downloading of music/movies.
I do not believe he intends to demonise
Linux here; he honestly can't see
the difference.
So this is
the operating system that started at AT&T. It was passed on
to Novell and
eventually acquired by SCO. And this is what is at the
center, the intellectual
property rights and the contract rights around
this operating system that were
started at AT&T and passed on to SCO,
is what we are talking about. We paid
a hundred-plus million dollars
along the way to get the rights to this, and
that's really at the center
of attention of the battle.
Darl repeats this statement about his company - The SCO Group -
paying
$100+ million. Now we know that Darl's company did not pay
$100+
million. The Santa Cruz company paid $100+ million.
But
playing along, I'm going to say that Darl isn't intentionally
lying. The logical
conclusion is that the agreement between Santa Cruz
and Caldera (now The SCO
Group) wasn't a transfer of assets, but rather
something which transfers SCO
itself to the ownership of Caldera. I don't
know how that could be possible, but
it would explain a number of things,
including how Darl thinks he can avoid the
Change Of Control discussed in
the APA.
McBride: You don't
have to show the whole thing. So now we'd have three
copyright holders. OK? We
filed a lawsuit against Novell. So then we went
back to the Copyright Office and
said, "Woah, timeout. Who's the referee
over there? Somebody's got to step down
and fix it. We feel very strongly
about this point, we have a piece of paper, a
contract, that they've
transfered these over to us." OK? And so what do you
suppose they said?
I think Darl truly believes he has
been wrong here. He believes that
Novell has maliciously acted to harm The SCO
Group. If Darl believes that
the copyrights are owned by TSG then this is
reasonable behaviour.
The next thing SCO has ownership rights
on are the claims for violation of
all Unix licenses. So we have these six
thousand contracts out there and
in our contract that we got from Novell, it
says that if anybody violates
their contract as it relates to Unix source code,
any claims for damages
are due to SCO. And then finally it says that if you
create a derivative
work on this source code, again the control of that is owned
by SCO.
The derivative work angle is interesting. I know
the general opinion on
Groklaw (and my opinion also) is that JFS is not a
derivative work of SYSV
but rather a filesystem that can be ported to any
operating system. The
fact that JFS works on OS/2, Linux and AIX is proof of
that. But it's clear
that Darl believes JFS as a derivative of SYSV.
If you look at the contracts that
SCO has, you see that we have
the ownership rights around the core Unix
IP that runs down the trunk of this
[chart] -- so in other words System
V -- and then you see all these different
companies that have created
derivatives. They've gone off and taken our System V
code and created
a derivative work.
Now the reason that we are in litigation
with IBM -- they are one of
these licensees. And what we claim is that they have
taken important
key parts around one of these derivatives, their version, they
have two
versions, AIX which is the one they've natively held, and then
Sequent
Dynix which is one they acquired in the late '90s. The key portions
of
this code that was protected under our rights has been taken by IBM
and
donated into this Linux environment.
Both of these
paragraphs reinforce the conclusion that Darl believes
that JFS is a derivative
work of SYSV.
If you look at the effect of Linux ... from a
... over the last four
years, if you look at where it was in 1999 versus where
it is right
now, you see a quantum leap up in terms of the capabilities. Whereas
in
1999, this was a hobbyist level technology, very simple
multiprocessor
capability and moderate degrees of reliability. When you look
at
Linux today -- the 2.6 kernel just released here in December --
you see
enterprise-level performance: you see 32-way multiprocessor
SMP configurations,
128-way NUMA configurations, high degrees of
reliability. In other words, you
can take Intel processors with today's
versions of Linux, and because of
contributions major vendors have made,
establish a supercomputer-level
configuration, with Linux as the base
operating system.
Here is another strongly held belief by Darl. In his mind, it
is
inconceivable that the free software community could have created so
quickly
an operating system that is better than Unixware, which has
taken nearly 30
years to get to its current state. This ties in with
his belief that Linux must
have been illegally "powered up" by vendors
with access to SYSV.
It took the Unix environment, development environment, 25 years
to
get this kind of capability. Linux has got there ... has been able
to get
there in just a few short years. So that's at the heart of our
IBM
lawsuit.
In other words, the problem isn't that Linux
exists, nor that IBM
contributed to Linux, but that the only conceivable way
that Linux could
be so good is because IBM donated Unix code to Linux.
You know this MyDoom virus, we don't know where it came from.
We've
been attacked on our website. We've had four DoS attacks on the
SCO
website in the last ten months. OK? On one of those occasions one of
the
Linux leaders stepped up and said, It was one of us, a senior member
of the
Linux programming community, and he shouldn't have done it, but
he did. [Chart
behind him says "The Age of Cyber-Terrorism".] We don't
know where this attack
came from; we don't know if it was spammers from
Russia.... I understand Darren
just came back from Russia and you were
there the day that the thing launched,
right?
Darl believes that the attacks were orchestrated
by a member of the
Linux community. That's certainly a possibility, though I
personally
consider it more likely to be perpretated by a juvenille delinquent.
I
don't have much faith in the theories that organised crime or spammers
were
involved. In my experience, viruses for the Windows platform are
trivial to
write. Children with minimal experience can do it because of
the existence of
virus writing kits. The keystroke loggers and spam
relays are possibly an
undocumented trojan in the virus writing kit. I
consider it more likely that
organised crime released a virus writing
kit and a juvenille delinquent deployed
the virus without realising the
actual (secret) payload being inserted by the
kit.
If you look at some of the other issues going on, this
whole area
around export control... People say that we're alarmists because
we're
communicating with Congress around issues where... As a proprietary
Unix
operating system vendor, we have very tight export control
restrictions. We
can't send our software, for example, into North Korea,
Libya, etc., there's a
number of countries there that are restricted. And
now we have a situation where
those same technologies have been put
into an open environment, into Linux,
where these same people can go
download and get this available for, not just
that you can get it for
free, the fact that you can get it at all. And so, we
think that there's
some serious issues around the controls that are lacking as
it relates
to Linux and open-source systems.
Darl
believes proprietary software is more accountable. I don't agree
with his point
of view - foreign countries will simply smuggle software
across the borders if
they want it - but Darl's beliefs are what I'm trying
to document here.
On the other side you have the intellectual property
organizations,
and there's a pamphlet you can read on your way out, or pick one
up,
that talks about intellectual property as a power tool for
economic
development. And in fact IDC is projecting by the year 2007 the
software
market to be 289 billion dollars. Now the question that I would pose
to
you, going back to one of the early slides, what is the value of
intellectual
property? What is the value of software? What happens to
society if, if the 289
billion is zero? Any economists in the room? I
would argue that is a very bad
thing for us and for society, for the
tax base, for the ability to have an
incentive to go create more and
more software.
This is
the most important belief in Darl's world view: money. The
idea that free
software will materially harm the economy of the world
is a key theme throughout
all of his speeches, so I believe this is a
core belief of his.
Darl's
opinion is that if licensing fees are driven to $0 by licenses
like the GPL
then the entire software economy will disappear. In his
mind, there is no other
way to make money from software. This will destroy
the relatively young software
industry, just as it is poised to become a
powerhouse of the world economy.
So here's a summary:
- Darl believes that without a profit
incentive, there is no way that
Linux will survive once it has balkanised
Unix.
- Darl believes that because the software is free, the only
incentive
must be theft (his analogy to Napster) or destruction of competitors
(what
he believes IBM is doing to The SCO Group).
- Darl believes that Linux
could not have achieved its current state of
technological superiority without
theft of technology from more mature
operating systems like SYSV.
- Darl
believes that The SCO Group legally owns the copyrights to Unix
and that the
actions of Novell are a conspiracy with IBM to disrupt The SCO
Groups attempts
to collect compensation for their Unix software.
- Darl believes that free
software in general is a threat to the economy
of the software
industry.
- Darl believes that IBM has contributed derivative works to Linux:
I
think he will continue to believe this in spite of overwhelming evidence
to
the contrary.
- Darl believes that free software is unaccountable and
therefore is rife
with theft, patent infringement, copyright infringement, and
is regularly
exported to sanctioned countries.
Now on Groklaw we have
been focussed on uncovering the facts. That's
the purpose and charter of
Groklaw! So to that end we have been looking
at the history of Unix, the history
of Linux, the contracts and the law.
My opinion is that the facts will
never change Darl's mind. Not while
he still maintains the beliefs I listed
above. People tend to gloss over
facts that disrupt their world view, or
re-interpret them to reinforce
what they want to believe.
And changing
Darl's mind is important. If we can reverse his opinion
on these core beliefs
then it is likely he will realise that the lawsuits
are without good grounds.
I think the easiest one to start with is to educate Darl that free
software
will not destroy the software industry. Licensing fees are a
tiny percentage of
the total wealth in the software industry. There are
very few pure-software
companies and they employ only a few 1000 fulltime
staff. The majority of
software development is:
- Customising or maintaining existing in-house
applications.
- Developing a custom application not served by existing COTS
products.
- Developing software to sell hardware (eg, drivers).
And
of course, free software doesn't destroy any of the other computer
industries
such as hardware, research, support, management, administration,
etc. Actually,
free software will increase spending in those areas by
freeing up money that was
being wasted on licensing fees.
What free software will do is redistribute
the wealth in the software
economy away from the monopolists and the entrenched
companies, into the
hands of the companies that add true wealth to the software
industry.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- The World According to Darl - Authored by: tcranbrook on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:24 AM EST
- Great read - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:35 AM EST
- Santa Cruz misled Caldera? - Authored by: Thomas Frayne on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:51 AM EST
- The Courts will educate Darl - Authored by: linonut on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 11:00 AM EST
- The World According to Darl - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 11:21 AM EST
- The World According to Darl - Authored by: Scriptwriter on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 11:31 AM EST
- The World According to Darl - Authored by: sphealey on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 12:16 PM EST
- The World According to Darl - Authored by: blacklight on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 04:11 PM EST
- The World According to Darl - Authored by: blacklight on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 04:19 PM EST
- Bullcrap! If darl uses this logic He needs a psychiatrist - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 04:51 PM EST
- Darl's copyright infringement - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 08:56 PM EST
- The World According to Darl - Authored by: PJ on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 01:16 AM EST
- The World According to Darl SCO=SCO - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 24 2004 @ 02:31 AM EST
|
Authored by: rejiquar on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 09:15 AM EST |
Shortly after the [15:00] time mark (2nd par. after, 2nd sentence) the
transcript reads:
So lets start with Napster.
"Lets" is a contraction of `let us', and so therefore should read `So
let's start with Napster.' Only because you're a perfectionist do I even
mention this, my tiny 'trib. I know I should've read the whole thing with equal
care, but as other folk have mentioned, SCO-speech requires real
discipline--more than I have!
---
sylvus tarn
rejiquar works[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: PeteS on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 09:17 AM EST |
He would really hate this anlaysis of Open Source and it's effects beyond
software.
The article notes that the commons approach was used in farming
centuries ago (where farmers would share grazing land, for example) - very
interesting read.
From the article:
Open source has at least three
benefits for conventional enterprises. First, it creates new wealth and new
businesses, such as the Linux-based consultancy Red Hat, which now has an annual
turnover of $100m. Second, it stops companies reinventing the wheel in areas
of open source research, and thus releases time and money for more fruitful
activity. Third, open source's decentralised methods may, as we have seen,
produce results otherwise unobtainable. Member-based websites are yet another
example. Friends Reunited has assembled a database of the school histories of 9m
Britons. This is unavailable anywhere else and the cost of compiling it has been
distributed among its members, who fill out their own details.
--- Today's subliminal thought is:
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 09:39 AM EST |
Darl says that a Opensource businessman said he wanted to get rid of copyrights.
I dont think Darl gets it but the GPL needs copyright law in order to work. I
was watching the video and Darl really doesn't look like a good speaker. Saying
how he was with a bunch of students but didn't look like a student but he is a
CEO so that why he doesn't look like a student. WOW anyone else find that usless
fumble of words?
Also towards the beginning of the video he calls it a "thing called
Linux" then he asks if anyone has heard of this. His face when he sees the
whole room raise their hands tells you he didn't expect to be in attendence with
a well educated group.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 09:44 AM EST |
McBride: First of all, SCO owns intellectual property at System V level. When we
say we've licensed this thing six thousand times, we've licensed it and people
are under very tight restrictions about not being able to show that.
If we go out and just throw it out in the public, we are basically violating our
own commitments we have with our licensees. Now, with respect to code that we
have shown, let's follow the bouncing ball here for a moment.
[55:00]
Last summer, we came out with code that was very clearly replicated and showed
that last August. It was done under NDA, because we didn't want to violate our
own agreements. A number of people saw it, and shortly after that a Linux
leader, in fact Linus came out and said, That code has been removed from Linux.
We then had some other code that tied to it, that Silicon Graphics came out and
said, That was System V base code; it wasn't supposed to be in there; we took it
out. OK? So there's two occasions. Again, SCO said it was in there, wasn't
supposed to be in there; they took it out.
Now they didn't take it out of the thousands and millions of servers running
around the world, so even at that level, you still have an infringement problem.
But they did take it out of future versions. We then said, there is roughly a
million lines of code tied into contributions that IBM has made, and that's
subject to litigation that is going on. We have basically supplied that. In
fact, that is going to be the subject of a hearing that comes up this Friday in
a Utah courtroom. We have supplied them with ample evidence, in terms of where
those infringements came from, and then finally a month ago we came out, or
December I guess it was, we published 75 header files that showed up inside of
Linux that tied to not just our intellectual property agreements, but to the BSD
settlement agreement from back in the nineties. And the settlement agreement
says -- What does it say, Chris?
Sontag: It says basically that there is a set of files that had to be removed
from BSD. It was a set of files for which copyright attributions to AT&T
USL, and effectively SCO, had to be placed on all those files, and there was
another set of files for which there was no issue. Those files that were, had to
have the copyright attributions; portions of those files ended up in Linux --
which is a problem. Which means we have copyrighted work that was part of a
court-approved settlement, that have ended up in Linux inappropriately, and we
haven't seen any action to correct that problem yet.
-> These comments seem reasonable to me, yet the open source crowd is
unwilling to admit that code theft obviously occurred on at least one level if
not more. If theft didn't occur why were these portions of Linux removed? And
I'll laugh in your face if you say it is obsolete code, because it obviously
wasn't when Torvalds put it in Linux to begin with.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Sounds reasonable to me - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:10 AM EST
- TROLL! - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:39 AM EST
- Sounds reasonable to me - Authored by: phrostie on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 11:16 AM EST
- Exactly - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 02:02 PM EST
- Sounds reasonable to me - Authored by: turbopro on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 02:54 PM EST
- Sounds reasonable to me - Authored by: leguirerj on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 04:46 PM EST
- Sounds reasonable to me - Authored by: Philip Stephens on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 07:04 PM EST
- Sounds reasonable to me - Authored by: PJ on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 12:37 AM EST
- Why there was no code theft - Authored by: swillden on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 09:29 AM EST
- Summary: There was no infringement - Authored by: Thomas Frayne on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 12:01 PM EST
- Troll without a dictionary - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 17 2004 @ 11:40 AM EST
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 09:54 AM EST |
I finally see where Darl comes up with the millions of lines of code. It comes
in the first and second paragraphs of minute 55. Basically what it comes down to
is a couple of lines of code directly lifted from SysV that were removed from
future kernels but are still out there on the "thousands and millions" of Linux
servers not running the future Linux kernel.
Now we have already
discovered that there were two lines of code that were directly copied from
SysV:
/*
and
*/
2 lines * 1
million servers = 2 million lines of code. Now, all we have to do to be
compliant is to strip all the comments out of the kernel.
Void
[ Reply to This | # ]
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|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:02 AM EST |
Another point that bothers me is that Darl makes it seem like you have to go
through the copyright office to get your piece copyrighted. It's copyrighted
once you write it, and you register it with the copyright office. Just like PJ
had to obey Eben's license because he is the copyright holder. I assure you that
he didn't register that piece yet.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Copyrights - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:05 AM EST
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:04 AM EST |
I just read in the AT&T @ echo paper the ways in which it is allowed to
use the trademark UNIX.
Mister McBride seems to have said:
"The players on the field here are the SCO Group, which after a series of
acquisitions over a number of years owns this thing called the Unix operating
system. So we're the owners of this source code and copyrights around
Unix."
Did he really say "the UNIX operating Stystem"?
See echo:
"1. Reference to "the UNIX operating system" is inappropriate
There are several UNIX
operating systems. For a collective term, use "UNIX operating system,"
if that is what
is meant."[ Reply to This | # ]
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- I think... - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 03:31 PM EST
|
Authored by: bobn on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:10 AM EST |
I'm glad somebody went to the effort of transcribing this. Thanks.
But, no, I can't read and dissect this. I tried and it just turns my stomach
how Darl lies every time he says *anythng*.[ Reply to This | # ]
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|
Authored by: mitphd on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:26 AM EST |
In his introduction, John Palfrey says
...there are a lot of
brilliant minds I see in this room, not just from Harvard Law School and 02138
but some friends from 02139 as well...
Just so people can
understand the context, 02138 is the ZIP Code for the part of Cambridge around
Harvard, and 02139 is for the part of Cambridge around MIT. (From the
questions, it actually sounds like the event drew students from all over the
Boston area.)[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- ZIP Codes - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:51 AM EST
- ZIP Codes - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 24 2004 @ 02:45 AM EST
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:38 AM EST |
Cutting through all the bluster, it appears that they are counting on both their
viral derivative works theory, and missing ATT attributions on the BSD headers.
Does anyone know if the attributions required by the settlement between ATT and
the Berkeley regents were not actually added? Or if these headers actually got
put into linux? It would seem more likely that any BSD headers that made it
into Linux originated in the BSD development.
The issue is also probably affected by the relationship of the ATT headers to
the date of the change in the copyright notice law. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 11:00 AM EST |
This company is using Microsoft technology to secretly upload advertisements
to your PC and automatically begin playing commercials without your
permission.
This is based on Windows Media Player technology, using Java
(not Javascript). This happens when you visit a participating Web site like MSN,
and other sites you may not know about. Anti-popup companies are busily finding
a way to block these popups, too.
But the scary part is that you don't know
it's happening until the commercial shows up on your screen as a movie.
If
I'm a virus writer, I have to be licking my chops at the possibilities of
this.
Or, if you're running a business, think of all your users having to
deal with popup movies on their screens and while trying to get their work
done.
Or -- instead of buying popup blocker software to counteract all this,
just use Linux.
Evading popup blockers
[ Reply to This | # ]
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|
Authored by: Peter Simpson on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 11:21 AM EST |
Rambling.
Darl had an opportunity to state his case clearly and concisely, and he blew it.
The guy's just not a good public speaker. And he's totally unable to stay on
topic. (and, apparently, also having trouble keeping his story straight).
I'm a bit disappointed that nobody brought up the part of the Unix license that
says "code written by you is owned by you". Clearly, IBM (and
everyone but SCO) interprets this to mean that if you extend UNIX by adding a
spiffy new file system, or multiprocessor capability, the software engineering
work, including the code resulting from it, remains yours to do with as you
wish, and does not somehow become SCO's property by virtue of the fact that you
choose to insert it into your version of UNIX.
Anyway, it will all be over soon. I can't wait to read the judge's ruling!
Oh, and PJ? Congratulations on the new job, and I'll be sending you my copy of
your book for a signature :-)
Now, *get some sleep*!
[ Reply to This | # ]
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|
Authored by: AMc on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 11:26 AM EST |
Darl's comment about wanting to resolve the multiple copyright issue strikes a
nerve. I'm just floating thoughts, so feel free to rip them up.
We've heard alot about SCO Groups "six thousand" licensees. A few
names have come up obviously; Sun, HP, Microsoft. And we've also heard the
terms of that 'license' which for all intents sounds like it offers zero
protection long term (given that we do not know what the fine print was on any
of the licenses at this point). We do know that IBM and Sequents Unix licenses
are contested as belonging to SCO Group at this point. It was alluded that Sun
and HP's also might be perpetual licenses held by SCO Group.
If you were an officer for a company that held a license, and you were watching
the proceedings, what would you be doing right now? Having your legal team go
over the fine print and try to find a way to get a guarantee out of SCO Group?
Or more than likely distance yourself from them publically and privately in
light of the increasingly poor performance of their legal efforts?
In another direction, Caldera was one of the first linux vendors to ship
'proprietary' software with it's distros. OpenLinux 2.2 for example had half a
dozen 'trialware' packages with purchase information in the documentation.
Meanwhile, JFS is a module that adds support for a formerly proprietary file
system to linux. SCO Group is claiming that module as being a derivative of
SystemV. Legally, what is the difference between a third party program and a
module? Could this be the 'next step' that has been vaguely hinted at? This
does assume many things, including the program's maker having a license from SCO
Group and a successful legal case establishing JFS is a 'derivative'.
I guess the main direction of these ramblings is if SCO manages a win or even a
draw, they will have the ability to lay claim to a substantial amount of work
rightfully belonging to others. At some point, you'd think companies would
start to distance themselves from SCO Group merely to protect their own products
and livelihoods.
AMc[ Reply to This | # ]
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|
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 11:55 AM EST |
Strange as it seems. Darl seems to believe he can convert peoples' beliefs.
He opens with the story about becoming a Pats fan after the game; I'm wondering
if he'd have still been a Pats if they lost.
And at this point, what does it matter what others think, the only people who
counts at this moment are the magistrate and the judge.
kaycee77025@yahoo.com (lost my password and I don't know how to get it back)[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Converts - Authored by: PJ on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 12:18 AM EST
|
Authored by: zjimward on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 12:05 PM EST |
I find it interesting that companies like SCO and Microsoft are always pointing
to a freely available product as some thing you can't make money doing.
Interestingly enough the government defines software as a service. Did you ever
notice that you don't buy software? Companies sell you a license of use when you
purchase software. Therefore, you've purchased nothing more than a license
agreement, not a software product. There has always been a big separation in
canned verus custom software also. Canned software is the type you walk-in and
purchase as is right off the shelf. Custom software can be changed to suit your
business or personal need and normal comes with a consultant that charges
monthly maintenance costs. What does open source offer? It offers companies the
opportunity to share resources. Sure it takes away the shroud of intellectual
property, but on the other hand you don't have useless lawsuits about look and
feel or we own the right to use right-click mouse menus. It's hard enough to be
creative enough to develop just the right interface that users feel comfortable
using. Let alone worrying about who will sue you because it resembles there
product. There could be more creativity if there were less time spent needing to
research patents and look and feel issues.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: deep_throat on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 01:35 PM EST |
I posted this (accidentally) anonymously yesterday on another thread, wanted to
get this in again under my account, on this thread, and add one additional
thought after reading the posts thus far. I'd also like to again thank PJ, in
my opinion the work she is doing epitomizes the ideals that this country was
founded on. We will never be able to pay her for the value Groklaw has
created.
I do have some strategic planning experience, please consider this "open
source" strategy post in the spirit that it is presented -
1) Waggoner Edstrom -
FSF, ODSL, IBM, and the open source community need to understand, regardless of
the ironclad merits of their position, why Waggoner Edstrom is important. They
MUST have a strategy to counteract this colossus, or they will fail, period.
Groklaw is unbelievably valuable, and the information contained herein needs to
be properly organized, packaged, and placed externally. "Preaching to the
choir" alone will not facilitate the outcome this country desperately needs
regarding competition in OS and application software.
2) The derogatory lable "you are a conspiracy theorist/tin foil hat
wearer" label.
Referece "Gates" - (c)1994 Stephen Manes & Paul Andrews,
Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster - Read this, and then the excellent
chronology in Wired Magazine regarding the details behind the judgement against
MSFT in the anti-trust case, and then catalog behavior since the judgement
issued by Justice Jackson. Then do pattern recognition exercises, and draw your
own conclusions regarding what might be happening now. The book is dated, but
ask yourself, do I currently see patterns that are similar to pre-1994, and
pre-antitrust trial, and since anti-trust judgement and remedy phase (such as it
was)?
3) Critically Important FUD counterstrike - Issue: GPL
It is VERY IMPORTANT for lay people to understand that the "GPL" part
stops at the API, and anyone can write apps against the API, sell them, and have
exponentially more opportunity to make a living that they ever would have under
the status quo. What we want is free enterprise in software. Our opponents
will spend money to brainwash lay people into thinking we want communism (while
ommitting the fact that what they want is really fascism.) That will be the
lobbying message.
My biggest fear here is not in the courts (unless these issues makes it to
SCOTUS, then there is the potential for "mischief", reference Election
2000 5-4 bizarro opinion.) My biggest fear is legislative action lobbied for by
a company (through fronts) with multiple billions of dollars in cash to dole
out. That got us the DMCA, Copyright extensions to almost "forever + one
day", and indirectly the Patriot Act (which will be irrelevantly invoked
around this issue at some point, or used to threaten dissent.) Many of the the
legislators weren't totally sure of the consequences of their votes, saw the
money, said "what the hell, I don't hear from anyone else", voted with
the money, and now are having second thoughts. But the damage is done, and it
is hard and expensive to undo.
Unfortunately for our issue, it could get much worse if the GPL is allowed to be
spun as harmful and that it means that "all software must be free/IP is not
protected/no one can ever charge for software again/the software industry will
be destroyed/the Kumbaya singing hippies want a commune, etc., etc.. There is
an option here though. The only thing more bothersome to legislators than
turning down hundreds of thousands of dollars in soft money for a
"vote", is the fear that they might lose their next election. There
are real issues in the electorate related to jobs, and the future for real
opportunity in this country. I think the GPL (which is absolutely based on the
freedoms that this country was founded on), can be rightly championed as an
unbelievably powerful job creator. The fully documented Linux kernel API, open
to EVERYONE (not just one company arbitrarily granting meaningful access) would
ignite a wave of private sector job creation and prosperity in this country not
seen since the 1st industrial revolution.
Market forces, competition, and meritocracy would be brought to bear on a key
growth engine for the future of this country, information systems. We would not
be able to find enough knowledge workers to fill all the jobs that would be
created. Even in its current nascent stages, look at what open source is doing
for IBM, HP, NEC, etc. We are seeing a fraction of one percent of what can
happen. Think of what what has happened thus far, and multiply it to the 10th
power. This is also an illustration of the incalculable opportunity cost the
country has borne by turning away from market-based free enterprise in the
computer OS industry and allowing the most restrictive monopoly in the history
of the country to be inserted around the basic, commodity instruction set that
runs the information processing boxes that are fundamental to the future
prosperity, growth, and security of our economy and our country.
Where I'm going with all of this is that it is important to the well-being of
the US economy and for our country for the GPL issue to be won, for that to
happen it is CRITICALLY IMPORTANT for legislators and lay people to understand
that the "GPL" part stops at the API, and anyone can write apps
against the API, sell them, and have exponentially more opportunity to make a
living that they ever would under the current status quo. And it is important
to note this doesn't mean MSFT has to go out of business. They do have to
compete though, like the rest of us who get up every day and go to work (and
lose our job if we don't compete.)
You may now be saying - "Deep Throat" why take all this time and
Groklaw bandwidth for this, everyone knows this stuff." I disagree. WE
know it, but EVERYONE does not. As Adlai Stevenson once said, to paraphrase, we
don't need just the smart people on our side to win, we need a majority.
So WE need a strategy to counter Waggoner Edstrom, and WE need to make sure a
complicated issue is clearly stated on merits, cleanly packaged, and pervasively
distributed. Between Linus, Eben, FSF, ODSL (and supporting corporate
entities), IBM, and the open source community, this has to happen.
I remain humbly yours,
deep_throat
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: John on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 05:53 PM EST |
>>I understand Darren just came back from Russia and you were there the
day that the thing launched, right? <<
I'm confused by who this "Darren" is. I think "Zarren" would
make more sense in this context. Just a thought! :^)
---
JJJ[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: N. on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 05:53 PM EST |
This "two year" thing that Darl's repeating is starting to concern me,
and reading the comments on this page have confused me somewhat. Any chance of
an analysis of this and how it actually fits into everything, please?
Or have you done one already?
N.
---
N.
(Recent convert to Linux)[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Chris Cogdon on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 06:08 PM EST |
I had cause to poke acounr Canopy's
Website, and I discovered that I could NO LONGER find any reference to the
25 or so companies that they have significant investments in.
I know PJ is
not one for speculation, so... I'll do it instead...
I'd say that the
companies have been getting so many letters along the lines of 'You're
indirectly associated with SCO, I won't do business with you', that the
companies have 'strongly suggested' to Canopy that they no longer display their
portfolio on the web. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: JeR on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 06:45 PM EST |
Why did noone get up and ask this:
Hi, I'm So and So, and I am also an
engineer at MIT, and I have been working at MIT for over fifteen years now.
Admittedly, I have come to know quite a few people there. You mentioned in the
press a team of MIT experts who had compared the System V source with the Linux
source and had concluded that parts of System V were copied into Linux. Who were
these experts? [ Reply to This | # ]
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- They misspoke - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 07:12 PM EST
- They didn't mispeak - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 09:01 PM EST
|
Authored by: ciaran on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 09:23 PM EST |
Hi all,
As mentioned at the top of this article, Eben Moglen is the next speaker in
the JOLT talks series. I've just sent an email to someone at JOLT asking that
they make an audio recording of Prof. Moglens talk available in a format
playable with Free Software (ie .spx, .ogg, .mpeg, or maybe .mp3).
I don't want to post the email address here though because I'm not 100% sure I
mailed the right person - but if anyone else would like the recording to be
available in a playable format, please also send a short polite email. (maybe
the correct email address will be obvious to others, or if a variety of wrong
people get our mails maybe one will be forwarded to the right person.)
---
--
faq[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 10:07 PM EST |
Something has occurred to me reading the more political/society/freedom of
speech articles (NOT political left/right - I believe this is politicaly
left/right neutral in a free democratic society).
Tech journalists are now caught between a rock and hard place.
I don't include the Inq. Reg. and other free journalists. Thanks to the efforts
of Groklaw and others, I believe most are trapped between their revenue stream
from the suppliers, most noticebly MS, and the knowldge that you have given
them.
What I notice, is that the mainstream press and television is slowly beginning
to pick up this arguement, but they are still seeing it as an arguement between
software cultures and associated legal issues.
I live in the U.K., and here we won't even carry ID cards, at least not yet,
unless the world situation forces it.
We still vote in booths, put a cross against our choice and post it in a black
box. The system, between there and the counting desk, is open. Although, the odd
black box may go missing, if only because it is left behind, i trust the system,
nothing is perfect, and i can follow my vote all of the way if i ever felt the
need.
Now introduce computers and think "chads", and much, much worse. The
U.K. government is trialling online tax returns etc., AND "online
voting".
Major news organisations tend to have big knowledgable IT departments. Think,
the likes of the BBC, try their website, and look at the systems they run.
If a few mainstream political journalists could be persuaded to go down to their
main IT dept., and take a vote over the question "who would feel safe
voting on a closed, proprietry
system, conrolled by a commercial company and the current government?"
Then, take a vote over the question "who would feel safe voting on an open
system, running open source software?"
If people could explain to him, in words of one syllible, why they voted the way
they did, I'm sure he'd have a few follow up questions. Don't forget, he is a
socio/political animal, not a techie.
Brian S[ Reply to This | # ]
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- ABOUT JOURNALISTS - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 11:38 PM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 15 2004 @ 11:06 PM EST |
Darl said: "This Dilbert cartoon just came out here last week, and it was
interesting to me."
As a regular Dilbert fan, I was puzzled by this quote, as I didn't remember
seeing it. I went to the Dilbert site and searched through the last few months
of strips and could not find the quoted strip.
So I did a Google search on the internet and an interesting link showed up. It
was an an interview by Tim O'Reilly of Bill Joy (Sun!!) and he was discussing
the Napster issue, copyrights, and used the same Dilbert quote.
http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/02/13/joy.html
The other thing of interest was that this interview happened occurred 3 years
ago (Jan/Feb of 2001).
So Darl is a little off on his timeframe (strip was from 1/5/2001), but it is
also interesting that the only other reference to this strip was used by Sun, 3
years ago. This could be a coincidence or it could not be.
Craig[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Sun - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 02:38 AM EST
- Dilbert quote - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 04:26 PM EST
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Authored by: roman_mir on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 01:37 AM EST |
I am not impressed with the questions that these students asked McBride. Well,
the last question (the one about SCO trying to destroy GPL itself) was good,
remembering that Caldera distributed GNU/Linux was good, and the question about
the header files being an API description rather than implementation was good,
but most of them plain sucked.
Someone should have whent over the first minutes of Darl's speach and asked
questions based on that, for example he was comparing book sharing (Barnes and
Noble) to software sharing, or the music piracy. Well, if you distribute
copyrighted material you are breaking the law, but in Linux theys still have to
prove any copyright violations.
He was talking about copying books and how it is against the law, but copying
GNU/Linux is not against the law, it is allowed specifically by the GPL.
The whole thing about 'civil disobedience', that was just pathetic! For someone
to display civil disobedience, doesn't the matter at hand have to be against the
current law? (I am not a US citizen and never lived in the States, please
confirm.) Civil disobedience is more like speeding (against some laws, I am
sure) or actually breaking copyright (against the copyright law.) But it still
has to be proven that the Linux kernel has any illegal copyright in it.
But Darl, what a freak of nature.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: LionKuntz on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 03:15 AM EST |
If there are clear documents that NOVELL licenced back use of the UNIX System V
that is a clear indicator of NOVELL's state of mind that they did transfer
rights to SCOG. $100,000,000 was paid out for SOMETHING to NOVELL and NOVELL
sold SOMETHING to SCOG (through
predecessor).
[65:00]
...
McBride:
Yeah, ah, let me take the first wave.
It's interesting -- you actually used
very good words there, very precise words. They say they have a license. They're
a little, talking out of both sides of their mouth here a little bit. On one
hand, they say they own the copyrights. They went to the Copyright Office and
said, We own the copyrights. But on the other hand, in the public
marketplace, they're saying, We own a license. OK? They, they licensed back the
technology. They sold us the technology, and then they took a license back.
It's bizarre to say you're owning the copyrights at the same time you took a
license back from the people that own the property. That's the first interesting
point.
When you dive down in and you do a thorough reading on all the
contracts there, what you see on the license-back portion says that they
received a license back to use the technology for a) internal purposes, or b)
externally so long as it does not compete with the core products of SCO. And
it's a substantial part of the value proposition of the packaged product. So,
that becomes an interesting question. Our product is Unix. Does Linux compete
with Unix? OK? That is going to be a question that the courts are going to be
settling on that front. Right now, we're just very singularly on the point of
copyright ownership issues, and, you know, that's, that's why we filed the
lawsuit.
...
Question: How would you respond to... It seems to me...I don't have much of a
computer background, but from what I've gathered here, in trying to put together
the notions of copyright in the computer context, it seems to me that you're
kind of hiding the ball in the sense that if you put that excerpt from the
Constitution back up on the screen, I don't see how you're living up to any
part of that notion of copyright as getting the expression out for the public to
ponder in awe at, even if you're worried you're a monopoly. You're sort of not
even providing the expression for public viewing, and yet you're still acquiring
and maintaining all this monopoly power. How do you justify that from a
copyright perspective?
I'm not trying to argue is there infringement or
not, but how do you even sort of, outside of your individual rights and your
capitalistic notions, how do you even tie it back to progression of
science?
The entire concept of
copyrights revolves around a trade: Author contributes to the public benefit;
public protects Author's rights to profit from literary creation for a fixed
period. The public receives no benefit from secret works; therefore society has
no duty to Author. Law may be challenged as regards secret works qualifying for
the copyright law protections, but for the time being SCOG has benefit of the
law.
This is not to say that SCOG will prevail in their theory, because
there are other fatal flaws in the whole theory, but they have a legal cause of
action to be decided by a court. Because an (as yet) unknown portion of UNIX is
in Public Domain through AT&T forfeiture during the 1968 through 1972 time
period, UNIX System V is less than fully protected by current copyright laws
post-1972. UNIX System V can only claim verbaitum copying as violations, not
derivative works.
The sealed AT&T v UC Berkeley case probably delineates
the exact public domain portions of AT&T UNIX as of what was discovered up
until then. More information is public from non-court sources, and a more
complete description of the Public Domain content of UNIX can be assembled if
IBM's legal defense cares to investigate, and undoubtably IBM has rights to know
what has been sealed in that old case as
well.
...
[80:00]
...
Question:
I just think when we were talking about interface before, it just sort of
seemed to me that this is more of like what you guys are trying to provide here
is a functionality, is a certain function. And it seems to me like that is more
of a patent notion, and you should have some disclosure there. Yet here
you have this code that you're trying to make millions of dollars--rightfully
so, you've spent them, millions of dollars--and yet, you're not even
providing the expression, which is sort of the basis of
copyright.
Sontag: Yeah, let me take a run at this. Because we're
dealing with, you have a number of different types of intellectual property law.
You have patents that you were talking about for a moment, where you publish the
invention. You have copyrights, for which you may or may not publicly publish
the actual expression. I'd say, in a lot of ways, that UNIX is widely
published in terms of the binary run-time implementations, the actual program
running out there that people are able to see, use, and benefit from. What
we're protecting in that case is our copyrighted work, the actual programming
code that makes that UNIX system and licensed to many users out there that
have developed their own versions of UNIX and created derivative works. By
contract, they had the right to do so, so long as they kept that derivative
work, that product based on UNIX System V, as part of that work that they built,
and kept the code confidential and didn't freely give it away. So that's our
issue with IBM: they took a body of work that they licensed from us, they built
upon it, they created a derivative work called AIX, they took portions of that,
ultimately, and contributed it into Linux. That's one whole body of work for
which we have concerns, that ultimately can become a copyright issue. All
right? We have a whole other body of copyright issues independent of IBM that we
also have issue with.
85:00]
So, you can't, let's not just muddle it
all as...I think a lot of times people confuse intellectual property and think
it's only patents. There's many different types of intellectual property. I
would even put in contract law as a basis of, in some cases, intellectual
property or defining of intellectual property. Deciding what you can do with
your derivative works for licensing something or not. So all of those
elements have to be combined together to be able to decide what is allowed, what
is licensed out, what is freely available and in the case of SCO we have a
couple separate issues that are going on here and it's not ... the easiest thing
for people to just in five minutes looking on one particular website to get the
full understanding of the issue at hand but simply we are, you know, trying to
enforce our rights that we paid, as you mentioned, a lot of money for. And
that's just part of the process. We are trying to use the legal system to be
able to go through the process and prove that we have ownership of things. But
we are not going to publicly expose all of that because a lot of that evidence
and so on, is confidential information that we have licensed out widely and if
we publicly make it available, it breaks those confidentiality provisions with
all those licensees. It would be very damaging to our company.
So we are trying
to give out and expose as much as we can. We are also trying not to just try
this whole case out on the internet. We are trying to make sure that the
appropriate information is made available to the court system first, such as the
evidence, we supplied in terms of our case with IBM. It's been made available to
IBM, made available to the court and if appropriate and the judge so chooses it
may be available more widely or in a public arena. So there's a lot of steps
that we have to go through. Our hands are tied on some things in terms of what
we can show and what we can't. But we are trying to make as much information
available as possible while also respecting the legal
system.
The CONTRACT LAW is what SCOG
relies upon, NOT COPYRIGHT LAW, for binding IBM to SCOG's interpretation of
derivative works. Neither AT&T nor NOVELL will support SCOGs interpretation
of the contract.
SCOG has made clear in their pleadings, and oral arguments,
that they claim ownership control rights on IBM independent development once it
has been used in UNIX System V. They claim this under CONTRACT.
SCOG is ALSO
making out-of-court claims of COPYRIGHT LAW violations, but this has not yet
been incorporated into an actual court case. A SCOG Motion to Amend is
pending.
The out-of-court public position developing by SCOG is "derivative
work", but it is not a stong argument to make when (A) IBM developed technology
in-house at their own expense with no contributions from SCOG, and published or
used their independent works in a properly licenced product, and (B) IBM's work
took none of the UNIX System V assets with it when IBM also contributed the same
independently created technology to LINUX. Without AT&T and NOVELL
supporting SCOG, neither a CONTRACT interpretation, nor a COPYRIGHT
interpretation has any chance of success.
In order to sue based on
COPYRIGHTS, first the work needs to be registered. SCOG recently registered
copyrights. ONLY that code can be in issue for future copyright lawsuits. The
LINUX code which is related to those filed copyrights needs to be sorted
out.
This is not to say that there is any copyright violations in LINUX
about these files, but these are the files LINUX needs to get the history on.
This is the "millions of lines of code" McBride has been talking about.
As
Linus and others have repeatedly claimed: "if there is offending code we will
remove it". SCOGs filings with the Copyright Office is the specificity everybody
has been asking for.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: jmichel on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 08:45 AM EST |
So, you all heard about Linux, I won't go into that whole detail. But Linux then
is the operating system for free started by Linus Torvalds back in 1991. Donated
to by thousands of people around the world, but significantly donated to by
major vendors that have contracts with us.
Nice to see that thousands of people from around the world can donate their time
and code, yet when it comes to innovation it takes a major vendor.
I have worked with some of the developers from major vendors their levels of
creativity and coding are not what I would consider stellar.
"If the shoe doesn't fit don't worry about me..."[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: jmichel on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 09:34 AM EST |
Question: How would you respond to... It seems to me...I don't have much of a
computer background, but from what I've gathered here, in trying to put together
the notions of copyright in the computer context, it seems to me that you're
kind of hiding the ball in the sense that if you put that excerpt from the
Constitution back up on the screen, I don't see how you're living up to any part
of that notion of copyright as getting the expression out for the public to
ponder in awe at, even if you're worried you're a monopoly. You're sort of not
even providing the expression for public viewing, and yet you're still acquiring
and maintaining all this monopoly power. How do you justify that from a
copyright perspective?
I'm not trying to argue is there infringement or not, but how do you even sort
of, outside of your individual rights and your capitalistic notions, how do you
even tie it back to progression of science?
McBride: Well, I think we're arguing the other side of it. I think what you're
saying is there's an argument that says the progress of science should make all
of this stuff available for free. We're arguing the flip side of that, which
says the best way to progress science is to make this stuff more protectable,
that you can profit from it over the years, and that's in fact what the Supreme
Court majority decision came down on.
Question: I just think when we were talking about interface before, it just sort
of seemed to me that this is more of like what you guys are trying to provide
here is a functionality, is a certain function. And it seems to me like that is
more of a patent notion, and you should have some disclosure there. Yet here you
have this code that you're trying to make millions of dollars--rightfully so,
you've spent them, millions of dollars--and yet, you're not even providing the
expression, which is sort of the basis of copyright.
Sontag: Yeah, let me take a run at this. Because we're dealing with, you have a
number of different types of intellectual property law. You have patents that
you were talking about for a moment, where you publish the invention. You have
copyrights, for which you may or may not publicly publish the actual expression.
I'd say, in a lot of ways, that UNIX is widely published in terms of the binary
run-time implementations, the actual program running out there that people are
able to see, use, and benefit from. What we're protecting in that case is our
copyrighted work, the actual programming code that makes that UNIX system and
licensed to many users out there that have developed their own versions of UNIX
and created derivative works. By contract, they had the right to do so, so long
as they kept that derivative work, that product based on UNIX System V, as part
of that work that they built, and kept the code confidential and didn't freely
give it away. So that's our issue with IBM: they took a body of work that they
licensed from us, they built upon it, they created a derivative work called AIX,
they took portions of that, ultimately, and contributed it into Linux. That's
one whole body of work for which we have concerns, that ultimately can become a
copyright issue. All right? We have a whole other body of copyright issues
independent of IBM that we also have issue with.
This is an outstanding question. I believe this person is asking from the basis
of constitutional copyright that in order for it to be a copyright doesn't the
code have to be published?
Then we have answer that basically states that if the code is published how do
we protect it.
I thought that was what the copyright was for. :)
The the questioner turns the wheel and states that functionality should be
patent issue not a copyright issue.
To me if IBM has truly improved functionality of Linux using Unix should that
not be a patent issue. Of course then you have to know if SCO owns the patents
on NUMA, JFS, and the like. Probably NOT! (sorry for yelling)
So then they answer that AIX is a derivative work. The entire AIX is a
derivative work of System V? This may be the SCO explaination of what a
derivative work is, but I believe even their license agreements with IBM state
that you make it you own it. So was it made or copied?
\IANAL.h\and all that jazz\[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 05:10 PM EST |
I just started reading Darl's speech, and after number of paragraphs, the
following two stuck out at me. Darl is talking about going to a speech at
Brigham Young University, given by a CEO of an open source software company (he
does not name who it is):
...So he's selling this thing called Linux. He
said, Well, what we do is we have this operating system, and it's Free. OK? And
we go into corporate environments, and we go out, and we're basically ...
essentially what he said is we're trying to displace a company called SCO and
Sun. And I was like, "SCO!? That's me!" You know? So I took that real
personally. And we didn't break any bread that day.
And about a month or two
after that, after some things happened between us and IBM, we launched into what
became a $3 billion lawsuit with the SCO group against IBM, filed on March
7th .. March 6th of last year....
So, let me get this straight, this speech
would have been about January or February 2003, based on interval of a month or
two after that speech that they filed suit vs. IBM.
Darl was so "surprised"
that this other open source company was competing against "SCO" only a month or
two before they filed suit vs. IBM. That tells me, that SCO abandonded their
Linux business, for all intents and purposes, well before Darl went to this
speech.
I also recall that Darl had made some speeches, comments or
announcements regarding Linux, between about June 2002 and January/February
2003, that wrankled some feathers in the Linux and/or open source community.
Forgive me, but I do not have the exact time and quotes.
This tells me that
Darl had pretty much abandonded the Caldera Linux side of their business within
months of becoming CEO of Caldera, and IMHO, had already started the ball
rolling on getting a lawsuit going in an attempt to get Caldera/The SCO Group
purchased to make them just shut up and go away.
I am hoping that IBM's
disovery sheds some light on this time period from "Darl becomes CEO" to the
filing of "SCO vs. IBM". I am sure it will be enlightening, and would probably
confirm that much of what has happened since then, was part of an overall plan
to try to sell the company off, make some money for Canopy, the Board of
Directors and key senior executives, and just go on their merry way.
In a
way, I am glad it did not turn out that way, as I see that the way will be "less
than merry" for a number of people connected to or part of The SCO Group. I
certainly hope that Darl, Blake, etc. are soundly thrashed in SCO vs. IBM, and
afterwards in lawsuits for fraud from investors, SEC, etc. I would laugh, if
their actions didn't make me so sick.
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Authored by: pyrite on Monday, February 16 2004 @ 07:58 PM EST |
While this nonsensical rhetoric is familiar, seeing a transcript where we get
over an hour of this type of rhetoric uninterrupted, at Harvard, yet, is
interesting.
Obviously, the entire presentation is just nonsensical rhetoric, but it did
remind me, in a strange way, of this one X-files episode. It's the episode where
the there is the time/space anomaly, where the civil servant and the old woman
switch bodies; where the gas station clerk finds himself merged with the floor
at the waist, the one where the tail end of a lizard, and only the tail end, is
wiggling, protruding from a rock. The rock and the lizard had
"merged", or collided to occupy the same physical space and time, and
the results were disturbing.
I think we all know that there is something wrong. All of the people at SCO
mgmt. know there is something wrong. It seems that whatever this speech at
Harvard was about, it certainly had nothing to do with reality; it is more like
one of those school projects or something. Or perhaps a debating society or
something.
On the other hand, SCO brings up some good points, points that we can all learn
from: copyright law is important; respecting intellectual property is important,
being willing to stand up and fight for what's right even when you are not the
strongest competitor is important - but the problem here is basically that there
are no real-life counterparts to these scenarios and things that SCO mgmt. are
talking about. We need Mr. Rogers' neighborhood trolley to carry us back from
the land of make-believe, but the land of make-believe has become
"fused" with reality as we know it. Houston, we have a problem...[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: mdmcginn on Tuesday, February 17 2004 @ 01:11 AM EST |
Here's what fascinates me about this case, and disappoints me about SCO. Pardon
me for using a very American analogy (but please refrain from off-topic
responses - Groklaw isn't about politics).
When I first read about Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman, I felt I was reading
about a early pilgrim, a pioneer, an inventor. The sort of images that the word
"America" conjures up on a day when you're feeling good about
America.
But SCO's claim that Linux owes them something conjured up this image in my
mind:
America's founding fathers are gathered at Constitution Hall to sign the U.S.
Constitution. On that grand occasion, Benjamin Franklin has the quill pen in
hand, when a British tax collector walks in the door to make an announcement.
"Your interpretation of the peace treaty we signed after your so-called
American Revolution is all wrong," he says. "According to Paragraph 3
of my version, America didn't gain its independence. All we actually did was to
allow you to merge with Canada. And you now owe back taxes, payable to
Montreal."
What a let-down that would have been. There's nothing wrong with being Canadian,
there's nothing wrong with being British. But that isn't why we fought the
Revolutionary War, or froze at Valley Forge, or bled at Bunker Hill. For what it
was worth, the point of it all was for America to be free. It may not be much,
but that was what we were trying to do.
We say, "GNU's Not Unix". SCO says, "Oh yes it is. Fooled
you". Personally, I'm on my third GNU/Linux distro, and I'm finally making
it work for me. But I'm not giving up. Because I want to be free from the Mighty
Software Empire That Watches Out For Us All -- for what it's worth.
--
Disclaimer: I was a poet before I was a programmer. But I may not be very good
at either one.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: mobrien_12 on Tuesday, February 17 2004 @ 04:14 AM EST |
Finally, what does the future hold? So starting off -- let me
back up just a minute. I -- as a precursor to this -- sat in a room a little
larger than this about a year ago out on a campus at Brigham Young University,
and the CEO of a leading open source company came out there and spoke. And I was
kind of interested to go and hear what he was talking about. So this was a
competitor of ours, and I was actually kind of interested in going and breaking
bread with him and talking about how can we move the ball down the field
together? How can we work together? As I went to hear his speech, I was sitting
up there amidst a bunch of students. I didn't look like a student, which I
wasn't, therefore it made sense I didn't look like one. But as he spoke, there
were a couple of things that were striking to me. The first thing that was
striking is he got up and started talking about how the copyright system in
America was outdated, that the copyright laws had been on the books for hundreds
of years, and they were totally out of sync with what was going on in the
digital age, and he was calling on students to write your Congressperson, lobby
Congress to, sort of, overturn the current copyright laws. We need to get these
copyright laws out. This DMCA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- you're all
familiar with that, I'm sure -- is a disaster, we've gotta get it out. And it
was interesting for me as a CEO of a company who has very important copyrights
to hear. The attack was not on us directly. It was, We've gotta get rid of
copyrights, because that plays into what we want to do with our open source
system. So that was interesting to me. Second thing that was interesting was he
said, one of the questions along the way was, Who do you compete with? What are
you selling in the marketplace?
So he's selling this thing called
Linux. He said, Well, what we do is we have this operating system, and it's
Free. OK? And we go into corporate environments, and we go out, and we're
basically ... essentially what he said is we're trying to displace a company
called SCO and Sun. And I was like, "SCO!? That's me!" You know? So I took that
real personally. And we didn't break any bread that
day.
This sounds like a crock of #$%^. Somebody comes
out and wants to "get rid of copyrights" and "displace...SCO" with this thing
called "Linux" which Darl took "personally." Riiight.
Do we need any
more evidence that Darl is nuts? Here are the facts according to
Darl:
- Some guy (supposedly) says that the copyright system in the
USA needs overhauling and that the DMCA is bad.
- This guy is supposedly
part of a Linux company.
- When asked what competition Linux has, this
guy mentions SCO
It is highly unlikely that this person wanted
to get rid of copyrights. The GPL is based on copyright. But Darl gets to spin
a call for copyright reform into those darn open source people who don't respect
IP.
Darl didn't hear of "this thing called Linux." At the time he was
head of a Linux company! He hadn't started his jihad against OSS yet.
As a linux company, of course SCO was competing. So was Red Hat. So was *BSD.
It's a free society, you don't take competition personally! To take competition
personally is sheer insanity. And there is nothing wrong with someone wanting
to "displace" another company, so long as that someone tries do it with fair
play and a superior product (something SCO seems to have no grasp of).
To be honest, I'm very suspicious that this anecdote ever happened at all, and
I'm darn near certain that it didn't go down the way Darl implies.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 24 2004 @ 01:57 AM EST |
Well thank your for letting me comment. I will make a comment I promise. I just
wanted to say something before I made a comment though. On this other thing that
I wanted to talk about. But before I do that I wanted to say.......
<changing from daryl speek to normal human speek>
The beginning of his speach reminded me alot of the documentation from M$. M$
keeps repeating over and over what they are just about to tell you. Then they
conclude. In the mean time they really haven't told you anything. Introduction,
conclusion. NO MEAT in the sandwich.
Mr. G is even worse at talking coherently. I bet atleast Mr. G reads a
teleprompter or practices what he is going to say.
I would have to say the Mr.G and Mr. M have been hanging out together way to
long. Their speech paterns have started to merge.
Or
At the last minute someone threw some slides at poor daryl and said, "Just
go out there you will be fine, just use these slides."
I just read the transcript so I didn't get the true timing of the words. But it
seems to me like Daryl is trying to talk and there is a loud voice in his head
telling him what to say. Which he keeps ignoring. And that is why he is so
incoherent.
I think the only time that, you know, the voice shut up, you know, was when he
was answering one of the, you know, last questions.
BTW Daryl made reference to web site that was tracking the case. Hmm I wonder
which one that could be? Of course any moron knows that you cannot make an
informed descision with 5 minutes of reading. Opps. I forgot about Soundbites
and the newsmedia. I guess the general public do make most of its descisions
that way. But I would think that the more inteligent crowd actually studies and
doesn't take hearsay as fact. Kinda like the Linux comunity.
I did understand what Daryl was saying though. His points were.
<crying sound> someone called my house and ruined the football game. {AK:
I agree what was done on /. was wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right.}
The GPL is flawed and we are going to make it beter though our legal actions.
There is no money in suing every single Linux user. So we are only going to
charge the ones that are using it in business, because they have money.
We are not going to charge people to use Linux. We are only going to charge for
the part of linux that is ours. {AK: If my rough calculations are correct. Their
part is worth $1,000.00 that would make the whole Linux worth ~$100,000.00 a
copy.}
We cannot tell you the code because then we would financially injure the people
that we already sold licenses to. But we did the best we could by giving out
general file names. So if you strip those files out. (Hint, Hint, wink, wink:
AIX / Posix) Then we would be less injured. But there would still be some
businesses using the versions with our code in them so we will still have to
charge them. But after you strip out the offending code we would be happy
campers once again.
We are going to win against Novel because you have to read the contract as a
whole, not just take out individual parts that you like.
In my opinion if SCZero is going to win this case they really need to Gag Daryl.
He is making SCZero Look like a bunch of fools. I suffer from Adult ADD. I know
I sound like Daryl when I don't take my Meds, eat alot of sugar and caffine. I
definetly don't go out and make public speaches when I'm like that. At least I'm
smart enough to know this about myself and make efforts to stay away from making
a fool of myself. Maybe Darly hasn't been taking his medication and has been
taking too much sugar. Either way I think that he should see a Doctor.
At least the VP sounded more coherent with his double speek. He still didn't
anwer the questions. He Waffled very well. (in reference to Congressman Waffle's
style of speach. His tacktic was, when confronted, not to charge forward, not to
back up, but to sidestep.)
Isn't SCZero a High tech company? You would think that Daryl would have turned
on the answering machine, turned off the ringer and looked at the caller ID. Or
maybe he just wants sympathy.
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