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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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All Your Code Are Belong to Us
Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 02:03 AM EDT

When I first heard that SCO's lawyers had "declared" the GPL "invalid", as one headline earnestly put it, I thought that SCO still just didn't get how the GPL works.

I was going to write a funny piece explaining it in Little Golden Book style so as to make sure they really grasped it. I figured I could solve McBride's anxiety about proprietary code ending up GPLd ("Everybody is scared to death that their own IP is going to get sucked into this GPL machine and get destroyed.") by simply pointing out that he doesn't have to distribute his code with GPL code in the first place. Presto. Worry solved.

Nobody is forced to use GPL code. If you leave GPL code alone and just don't distribute it yourself with your code aggregated with it, you never have to worry about your code ending up GPLd. Evidently, however, "everybody" wants to use GPL code, hence the worry. And their dilemma: How to "use" it, in the worst connotation of the word, and get away with it, without having to pay for it or give anything back.

And what to do about about SCO's already having distributed their code under the GPL and continuing to distribute GPL code after they filed the lawsuit, as IBM accuses them of doing? That, at least, is a rational worry on their part. Their attack on the GPL, then, is an attempt to wiggle out of that result by creating an escape hatch. That indicates that they finally read the GPL and now agree with us that unless they can get the GPL declared invalid, they have no wiggle room at all and are like a butterfly pinned to a display.

Here is what "lead attorney", note not David Boies, according to the article, but Mark Heise of Boies' law firm, said:

"'The GPL tries to define the rights of copyright holders with respect to copying, distribution and modification of copyrighted source code. These are activities covered by the [US] Copyright Act,' the lawyer firm said.

"'Article I of the [US] Constitution vests in congress the right to regulate copyrights. When congress enacted the Copyright Act, it defined certain exclusive rights that copyright holders can rely upon to protect their rights.'

"These rights include copying, authorising derivative works, modifying and distributing the copyrighted material, while an interest in copyrighted material cannot be transferred unless expressly authorised in writing, they said."


Translation: Woops, our code is GPLd. What to do? What to do? Attack one particular aspect of the GPL, namely whether you must GPL your code if you distribute it aggregated with GPL code. That's the part that sticks in their craw.

They are afraid their claim of not realizing their code was being distributed isn't going to fly. Now, they are in a tight spot, and getting that code back isn't what they really want anyway, so they now come up with this argument: copyyright law defines a copyright holder's rights to restrict copying. The GPL broadens the amount of copies recipients can make, so it overrules copyright's protection, so it can't be valid without a written waiver from the copyright holder, because you can't waive your copyrights without a written waiver, and they never signed the GPL, so therefore they can rely on their copyright limitations on copying instead of the GPL. It's as incomprehensible and hard to explain as the Trinity, unless you realize that they mean quite simply this: "We don't want our code that we distributed under the GPL to be GPL any more, because that would be the end of our lawsuit, and we don't want our UNIX code to end up GPLd." Then it all makes a kind of SCOSense.

In short, it's Hail Mary time. They would like to eat their cake and have it too. They want to be able to have accepted other people's code under the terms of the very license they now seek to invalidate, make money from the code for years, money which helped them have the funds to buy rights to certain UNIX software, presumably, and then turn around and not abide by the rest of the terms of the GPL license because, according to them now, the license conflicts with copyright law.

Maybe they can get Judge Kimball to recuse himself and get the case assigned to Judge Judy instead. She might buy this. Even with Judge Judy, though, they will face another issue: the GPL isn't a waiver of copyrights, despite what they are saying. Those rights are retained, not waived, and the license, which sits on top of copyright, merely relaxes some of the limitations of copyright law and says the copyright holder is willing to expand your rights.

They didn't accept the code under the terms of the GPL, you argue? Then they had no right to copy, authorize derivative works, modify, or distribute the aggregated code at all, according to the very copyright law which they rely on. But they did all those things. Linux is copyrighted, in addition to being under the GPL. Faced with two poisons, I gather they chose what seems the least damaging.

Evidently they have decided it's less dangerous to rely on copyright and get sued for violating all the coder's copyright rights, which is the position they are in if the GPL were to be declared invalid, rather than losing their code to the GPL and their case. Yes, that IBM counterclaim is what they are responding to, and their response is, to me, quite a validation of the strength of the GPL if their only escape is to rip it up. Here's what the GPL says happens if the GPL is invalid (that is, invalidated in toto, as opposed to one part only being invalidated):

"4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

"5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it. . . .

"7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program. . . ."


If only one part is invalidated, this is what the GPL says, as section 7 continues:

"If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances."

You can't blame them for trying, I suppose, but it does indicate that they are beginning to grasp the full implications of the GPL and what it means for them that they have allowed continued downloads of the kernel and all the rest, even after the lawsuit. Yes, I heard their "explanation" that they only allowed updates, not the full kernel. But I have heard and seen too much to believe that story. So they are in a real pickle. Talk about all your code are belong to us. Not to mention "You are on the way to destruction." That's what must have had them staring at the ceiling at 2 AM. They are not alone in wanting to invalidate the GPL, of course.

But the deeper question is, why are they still using GPL applications, like Samba, if the GPL is invalid? They reportedly had a How-To on GNU tools at SCOForum. And why are they, even now, offering code under the GPL from their web site, and I don't mean the kernel? Reading that they are working on a new kernel gives us the necessary clue to what, I believe, has been the plan from the beginning: to destroy or at least taint the reputation of the Linux kernel, replace it with their own, and offer UNIX with GNU tools and applications on top as something "better" than GNU/Linux, Linux without the lawsuit. And then charge you fees until your eyeballs pop out. Here's what gives me that idea:

"The SCO Group, on a mission to monetize its Unix assets using legal and licensing maneuvers, told channel partners that it expects to revive its Unix business in 2004 with the help of licensing revenue and the significant launches of its OpenServer and UnixWare products.

"At SCO Forum 2003 in Las Vegas, SCO channel partners will see better upgrade and sell-in opportunities from the company's SCOx Web services platform, the planned delivery of major new version of OpenServer being developed under the name Project Legend, and a major upgrade of UnixWare in late 2004, said Erik Hughes, director of product management at SCO. The first components of SCOx were delivered this week at the Las Vegas conference.

"The 'Legend' edition of OpenServer, which is targeted at SMB customers, will be refitted with SCOx Web services support, an XML parser and SOAP toolkit, an OpenLDAP directory, better multithreading, open-source tools Tomcat, PHP and Mozilla, enhanced J2EE support and enhanced security with support for IPsec, VPN and PAN capabilities.

"SCO also plans to debut in 2004 or 2005 a 64-bit version of UnixWare for enterprise customers that incorporates all of the features of Legend as well a major new version of the Unix kernel itself, System V Release 6 (SVR6), the executives said.

"UnixWare 2004 -- SCO's latest stab at providing a 64-bit platform -- will also offer built-in SCOx Web services support with XML and SOAP support, as well as better support for enterprise databases and large file support, they said. . . .

"However, at last week's partner event, SCO product executives insisted that they will fight to keep SCO Unix alive in the marketplace by modernizing the code and broadening its base of value-added options on top of the Unix kernel."


Hmm. SOAP means Windows, does it not? Why, yes it does. The plot thickens. Now if they can just slow down the Linux juggernaut and keep it off 64-bit long enough to get that kernel written...

When this all began, Eben Moglen in May said that he had approached SCO's lawyers and personally promised that if they would identify the code, it would be immediately removed. The Free Software Foundation, not IBM, holds the copyright to the Linux distribution IBM created, Linux for S/360. IBM created the Linux distribution but released it under the GPL and signed the copyright over to the Free Software Foundation. If all SCO wanted was to protect their IP, that's irrational on their part, not to accept that kind offer from Moglen. But if the goal is to destroy or at least slow Linux down long enough to come up with a replacement for the enterprise customer, Brand X Linux, then every irrational act becomes rational in SCOThink.

When Bruce Perens posted on his web site a 2002 letter in which SCO, then known as Caldera International, put some older Unix code under an open-source license, it drew this response today from SCO's attorney, Michael Heise, and ask yourself as you read it, does this sound like the response of a man who truly and authentically believes the GPL is invalid? If so, why didn't he say that?:

"Michael Heise, a partner with Boies, Schiller & Flexner who's representing SCO, downplayed concerns that the contested code may be covered by an open-source license. In an interview with CNET News.com at the SCO show, Heise said even if, hypothetically, some older Caldera code were open-source, it wouldn't make a difference to the case.

"'Let's say you have a hundred files, and you put one of your hundred files under the GPL ( GNU General Public License ). That doesn't mean you've lost the rights to your other 99 files,' Heise said. So I don't think it's going to have an impact.'"


Except to your entire case, that is. And your credibility. You'd better sit down, Mr. Heise. I need to explain something to you, and I don't want you to faint. You are basing your entire licensing program on an allegation of copyright infringement. Can you connect the dots from here?


  


All Your Code Are Belong to Us | 116 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:42 AM EDT
quote: "Here's what the GPL says happens if the GPL is invalid (that is, invalidated in toto, as opposed to one part only being invalidated):"

Unless I am missing some hidden pun, I think that is supposed to read "invalidated in total." :)

This appears just before you begin to quote the sections of the GPL (if that makes it any easier to edit).

Anyway, I really enjoyed the writeup and have really enjoyed your writings in general as well as the very intelligent postings made in the comments section. I feel, as I think most every intelligent person who has covered this case does, that the sooner SCO just goes away the better as they clearly have shown no proof up until this point (even when pushed in other countries by their court systems) and acted like a company that is extremely desperate from the very beginning and have only gotten more desperate (as their latest threats as Linux users show).

Sorry to make my first post a spelling correction ;)

Will


w_ready99

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:54 AM EDT
Welcome, Will.

I always appreciate it when someone points out a mistake. I want Groklaw to get it right. That means a group effort, as I'm a mere human, prone to error.

In this case, however, I was using a Latin expression, which means the same as total: http://www.hyperdiction ary.com/dictionary/in+toto


pj

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:59 AM EDT
Will,

The phrase "in toto" is Latin for "entire" or "totally"; PJ is a paralegal and used to using phrases from a dead language. My knowledge comes from three years of translating Caesar's war campaigns in high school.

Don't be embarrassed; the vast majority of lawyers who let Latin phrases fall from their lips with wild abandon have never taken a course in the language and can't form a single intelligible sentence. In fact, they can't even pronounce them properly - I know from my too-frequent contacts with them.


Dick Gingras - SCO caro mortuum erit!

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 01:08 AM EDT
You learn something new everyday :)

In all seriousness, I appreciate the responses and next time before I open my (big) mouth I will make sure to do a dictionary search for the word/phrase in question.

As a programmer, I am only recently learning (being forced to learn?) more and more about the legal system as things like the DMCA becoming law, silly software patents being upheld, and even sillier software patent and IP claims are occuring.

Sorry to make first post an incorrect spelling correction ;)

Will


w_ready99

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 01:11 AM EDT
PJ,

I don't think that scenario will fly; the FSF can easily put the kibosh on it. Here's how:

1. FSF "owns" the copyrights to the vast majority of GNU software, including the Linux kernel and GCC.

2. SCO, in their current public statements, says they don't accept the GPL.

3. GPL Section 5 says "These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License."

4. SCO continues to distribute other GPL'd software, such as GCC (which they do).

5. FSF sends Cease & Desist order on all distribution of software for which they own the copyrights.

6. End of Story.

There are rumors that the FSF has already threatened to do this to certain recalcitrant GPL violators, who subsequently relented. It would be interesting to verify this with Eben Moglen, FSF's General Counsel.


Dick Gingras - SCO caro mortuum erit!

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 01:14 AM EDT
For the record, SCO is still distributing the Linux kernel. URL:

ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Server/current/ SRPMS/linux-2.4.13-21S.src.rpm

I just downloaded the Linux kernel source package and verified that it contains a tar ball(linux-2.4.13.tar.bz2), identical to the one available from ftp.kernel.org. Instructions for those wanting to verify this themselves: http://www.iki.fi/kaip/misc/lin ux-sco.txt

ftp.sco.com also contains a legal notice ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/O penLinux3.1.1/Legal_Notice saying that the files are available for download for existing SCO/Caldera customers only.

However, I doubt that this disclaimer has any value. I would be very surprised if you could put a file (Linux kernel, Madonna's latest single, ...) to your server to be freely downloaded by anyone and avoid your responsibilities under the copyright law by such a disclaimer. And even if the disclaimer would be relevant, distributing the kernel only to clients would in itself be illegal without permission from all right holders (contributors to the Linux kernel). In this case the only such permission is given by the GPL.


Kai Puolamaki

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 01:14 AM EDT
PJ, This site is great! Thank you. I know it must take a lot of time, but there are many who appreciate getting the insight of a member of the legal community.

There is an old expression, "Never take what your enemy gives you." I find it hard to believe that SCO would be so stupid as to let the cat out of the Bag and have the code that they have so vehemently protected so easily accessible to the public.

Though it is possible that they have done so, I have to wonder what they may stand to gain by releasing a red herring for us to chase. Could they be looking to sue a smaller company with perhaps small legal resources, and at the same time giving them a stick to chase that the smaller company may use to base a defense around, thus drawing their focus away from other defenses. Then perhaps at trial time hitting them with a something totally different? Or turning the stick around and using it to beat them to death with.

If they did something like this and won, would winning a case against a smaller company in anyway strengthen their case against IBM? I am not a lawyer, but I am sure that if they were to win against one company, that other companies would be more likely to settle.

No matter how much we disrespect what SCO is doing, I think they must have some sort of plan, but I lack the legal insight to figure out what it may be.

Anyone have any thoughts?


CB-in-Tokyo

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 02:09 AM EDT
Just a nit-pick; SOAP is not just Microsoft, it's a W3C recommendation. Admittedly, MS are the major sponsor, but it's a proper standard.
Simon Farnsworth

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 02:15 AM EDT
The SCO lawyers are beginning to trip over themselves. Their statements are contradicting

Here we have Hesse on Copyrights: "These rights include copying, authorising derivative works, modifying and distributing the copyrighted material, while an interest in copyrighted material cannot be transferred unless expressly authorised in writing, they said."

But they are claiming that this language "Such right to use includes the right to modify such SOFTWARE PRODUCT and to prepare derivative works based on such SOFTWARE PRODUCT, provided the resulting materials are treated hereunder as part of the original SOFTWARE PRODUCT." means they have a Copyright interest in millions of lines of Linux code.

This case will be imploding sooner than the time the insiders need to sell all their shares under the plan. Look for more desperate press releases (probably the filing of lawsuits) right before the next sale is scheduled.

Oh, and Dick, you say "1. FSF 'owns' the copyrights to the vast majority of GNU software, including the Linux kernel and GCC." The FSF does not own the copyright on the Linux kernel. Linus and the other kernel developers own the copyright on their contributions and Linus owns a copyright on the entire kernel as a collaborative work. The Linux kernel is not GNU software, though it does use the GNU Public License.


Ruidh

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 02:20 AM EDT
Dick Gingras says "1. FSF "owns" the copyrights to the vast majority of GNU software, including the Linux kernel and GCC".

That is incorrect. The copyright to the kernel is held by many people. It is also likely to be an advantage to have the copyright distributed among so many people. If the FSF were the only copyright holder, a company such as SCO could win by making the FSF go broke in a legal battle as happens all too often in today's legal system.


Chuck Peters

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 02:25 AM EDT
Haise is (intentionally?) mis-stating the copyright law... "These rights include copying, authorising derivative works, modifying and distributing the copyrighted material, while an interest in copyrighted material cannot be transferred unless expressly authorised in writing, they said."

The copyright law allows copyright owners to not only authorize derivitive works, but also authorize straight copying. I.e., a book author can authorize a publisher to make copies, in return for money.

The GPL authorizes copying of the copyright owners code in return for granting the same terms for any code you use GPL code with.

It's simply a statement about, under what circumstances, the copyright owner will grant you authorization to copy his or her code.


Mark Levitt

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 02:31 AM EDT
Actually, I spotted a further bit of sophistry...

What does "interest in" mean? The copyright act may say that you cannot transfer *ownership of* a copyrighted work accept in writing, but *ownership of* is not the same as "interest in"

He's trying to confuse people into thinking that the GPL requires you to do something (transfer ownership of copyright) that it does not do, and that it, therefor, violates copyright law.

As he's an expert in copyright, he surely knows that what he's saying isn't true. Explain again why he can't be disbarred for ethics violations?


Mark Levitt

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 02:42 AM EDT
About the "grand plan" of SCO. I guess things started quite innocent: demanding licenses for unauthorised use of some of their Unixware licenses. My take of what's happened:

After a chain of mistakes they made their first (flawed) UNIX additional license plans.These plans don't work out as they intended. Something has to be done: they rush out their Linux infringes UNIX theories, compensating small errors with bigger ones. (It makes sense to do your homework before sending out press releases.)

Their first blunder is to mess with the AIX license. (Can one speak of fatal blunders when a company is heading for imminent death anyway?) IBM provided them opportunity to retreat, SCO refused (blunder?).

So SCO finds itself wedged in a vermin invested corner, no way to escape, except through a patch of hungry dogs.


MathFox

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 03:03 AM EDT
And more importantly, SOAP is the invocation protocol for web services.

Does it ring a bell? Was SCO not trying to advertise itself as trying to become a Web Services provider for integration with proprietary systems?

(I took their press releases and the connection with some companies forming partnership with them to mean this in overall).


Robvarga

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 03:07 AM EDT
Oh, and by the way, those examples they provided, they not only distributed with
the GPL license only, but some of it they already distributed with the BSD
license as well (those which are already in the ancient UNIX codebase they
published under BSD in 2002). The BSD license allows anyone to do anything with
it except for claiming it is their own code. That everyone includes Linux
developers too. They are perfectly authorized to use that code in Linux. style="height: 2px; width: 20%; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto;">Robvarga

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 03:12 AM EDT
I believe the FSF works the other way around. People pool thier copyrights so they can defend them with shared resources, even if the orginal author has passed on. The advantage of the not pooling them would be the ability to lititigate more monetary damages with seperate cases. The FSF would never lose because of lack of resources to fight a case, as I believe community members would donate whats required to keep it going if needed. One of the nice advantages of being a member of an alturistic community.
Supa

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 04:04 AM EDT
"You are basing your entire licensing program on an allegation of copyright infringement."

I was under the impression SCO is accusing IBM of breach of contract as well as trade secret misappropriation, not copyright infringement. In fact SCO has publicly admitted IBM holds the copyright to the "misappropriated code" (see http://www.mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-24-Copyrights_Story01.html).

To attack this claim, it needs to be shown that the code in question became publicly available without help from IBM. If SCO itself published UNIX under the BSD license, or Linux under GPL, that would seem to be sufficient. The confidentiality clause in the UNIX license agreement no longer applies to publicly available code.

I am not sure how "IBM stole our trade secrets and put them in Linux" leads to "therefore we have controlling IP rights on Linux" though.

Arnoud


Arnoud Engelfriet

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 04:20 AM EDT
Deliberate Red Herring theory, shot down.

> I have to wonder what they may stand to gain by releasing a red herring for us to chase.

First, I don't think it's a red herring. Read the Byte article from June. Read the German guy who didn't sign the NDA. Read the Ian Lance Taylor report. They all fit one or other of the samples. They also fit (most of) the rumors that have been going round about what was shown.

IANAL, second, IBM is after SCO for a variety of things, including I think Trade Libel. If SCO were to admit (or be found out) to have used fake evidence, red herrings or misdirection of this sort, can you imagine what it would do to any their defense about that. Effectively they'd be saying "We accused you of X, which we (now?) know isn't true, and was just deliberate misdirection. However we now think you're guilty of Y."

IANAL, Third, SCO's lawyers were involved in the SCOforum presentation, press releases, press statements, and presumably some of the NDA presentations. I hate to think of the consequences that might follow if it turned out part of the presentation was a deliberate misdirection. I don't know what the consequences might be, but I don't expect that they would be pleasant.

Fourth, as has been put forward on this forum several times, stupidity can be a much more parsimonious and logical explanation, than conspiracy.


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 04:24 AM EDT
PJ,

Really like your analysis of the laywer quotes in the press. And the explanations about the GPL.

If you have time could you take a look at the law quotes in the SCO's Las Vegas Slide Show that Bruce Perens posted at http://www.perens.com/ SCO/VegasSlideShow/frame.htm

As a programmer I can look at the snippets of code they posted and, knowing the context which has now been very well documented, appreciate how utterly bogus claims about "owning" these things is. So for me the direct and "obfuscated" copying issues are dealt with.

The first part of the slides about which contracts they actually own and what they say is not hard to get a handle on since the context is so unclear. We would need input from Novel, which has said it is not over yet and IBM who actually signed the contract to know how releevant these quotes are.

But you might be able to help with the last part which quotes all kinds of US law snippets. Could you put them in a bigger context knowing from which parts of the law they come. And how relevant these parts are for their conclusion that they can go to end users of GPLed GNU/Linux programs to make them stop using it and/or pay for "their" license?

Thanks,

Mark


Mark

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 04:31 AM EDT
There are some questions I would like SCO to be asked, preferably by a reliable member of the media:

- If the GPL is invalid and SCO respects IP, then are you planning to license all the Open Source software from the copy right holders that you plan to include with your Unix products?

- If not how can you justify distributing this software legally since copy right law still applies?

- What happens if you cannot get agreement from all copy right holders to allow you to use their software?

I don't think they fully understand that without the GPL they would need all copy right holders to agreee to let SCO distribute Open Source products and there is a high probablity that many would refuse. Plus, any that agreed might decide to charge SCO on a per copy basis, that would put a crimp in their profits ;-)

The GPL is a brillant license for those who want to work with it and a nightmare for those trying to break it.

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored" - Aldous Huxley


[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 04:55 AM EDT
Since Bruce Perens his site is still a bit slow and the ppt format is not really easily accessible and the HTML version is almost unreadable (at least with my browser) I used OpenOffice to turn the presentation into a PDF file (note that it seems to have some font problems, but it is still readable). You can find a compressed (gzip) version at http://www.klomp.o rg/mark/SCOsource_Briefing_II.pdf.gz
Mark

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:18 AM EDT
Senior analyst Dana Gardner of The Yankee Group says in this E-Commerce News article dated August 21, 2003 at http://www.ecommercet imes.com/perl/story/31386.html

"He added that the damages stage of the case, which could take two years or longer with appeals, also will be significant because SCO might pursue a theory based not only on IBM's software sales Latest News about software sales, but also on Big Blue's associated hardware sales, which could raise the stakes even higher than the current claim of several billion dollars."

Looks like the "we own everything theory" was just enlarged in scope by another senior analyst. Could be that damages will reach into the trillions. Has this guy been dating Laura Didio ?


gumout

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:18 AM EDT
http ://www.cbronline.com/latestnews/99b6f24885f8551f80256d890018ceb4
quatermass

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:18 AM EDT
SCO wouldn't have to separately license all the Open Source software they plan to use; they already hold such license (as does anyone else). When I read P.J'.s quote of the CRN article, I went looking at licenses. None of the packages they claim they will base on (Tomcat, PHP, Mozilla, OpenLDAP, Sendmail) are GPL; they are all licensed under *other* open source licenses. If the GPL is indeed killed, they still have license to use and distribute these products with their proprietary Unix kernel. How 'bout dat? (Of course, they will still be faced with the possibility of removing GCC from their distributions, which, as has been noted here, even their own coders would not be happy with...)

Incidentally, all of the licenses of these packages explicitly permit copying and redistribution, as does the GPL. I wonder how that will fit in with SCO's allegation that such licenses are "preempted" by federal copyright law? Will that not affect their plans for their "Legacy" UNIX distro??


Steve Martin

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:22 AM EDT
gumout, I think it's right their in SCO's claims and press releases - IBM owe them for hardware and services too - according to SCO. I think there's even one article where the figure of $50 billion was mentioned!

Of course the assumption behind there being damages of billions, is that SCO wins, and IBM doesn't crush SCO and/or Canopy.


quatermass

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:30 AM EDT
gumout,

It's not suprising that the very biased yankee group would say such a thing. What would be nice is if someone could confirm whether yankee group is on the payroll of the canopy group or sco itself. My guess is that they are, as they are behaving as sco's shill.

If history is anything to go by, the words of business and technology analysts should be taken with the same scepticism and caution we impose on the words of politicians.


MajorLeePissed

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:36 AM EDT
5. FSF sends Cease & Desist order on all distribution of software for which they own the copyrights.

I wonder if perhaps this might not be a good thing to do now. SInce SCO has declared the GPL to be invalid, it's obvious that they do not accept the license terms, which means they no longer have the right to distribute GNU software as they are doing now on ftp.sco.com, even (especially) under contract to their existing customers. This once again could put SCO in that well-known spot between a rock and a hard place; either they face prosecution as software pirates, or they face suits from existing customers for breach of contract.

Just a thought.


Steve Martin

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:56 AM EDT
IANAL, but if I had some GPL software that SCO distributed, I might be *thinking* about (but I'd *definitely* go talk to an attorney and get proper advice before actually doing anything)

(1) register copyright with US government

(2) send them a letter telling them that their only right to distribute is if they accept the GPL license. If they do not accept it, or think it invalid, they have no right to distribute it. I might also point to their press statements about the GPL being invalid, and therefore seek clarification and/or cease and desist them.

(3) Keep copies of all the correspondance, and maybe share them with IBM, FSF, etc.


quatermass

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:03 AM EDT
Upon rereading Heise's argument about why the GPL is invalid, I was struck by a new angle, which isn't (quite) as silly:

"These rights [given to copyright holders] include copying, authorising derivative works, modifying and distributing the copyrighted material, while an interest in copyrighted material cannot be transferred unless expressly authorised in writing, they said."

Possibly what he is saying is that SCO could not have GPLed its contributions to the Linux kernel, without having signed a written agreement with some other party?

I _still_ think this is a silly argument since SCO had to be bound by the GPL in order to distribute Linux in the first place without massively infringing the copyrights of the kernel authors.

Anyone else have a take on it?


Dan

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:10 AM EDT
Dan, I think he is conflating two meanings of "interest". There is a difference between transfering copyrighted material and licensing it.

In any case, when you download or install from CD, SCO software, or Microsoft software, or most other software, under license, do you sign a written agreement?


quatermass

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:58 AM EDT
"Possibly what he is saying is that SCO could not have GPLed its contributions to the Linux kernel, without having signed a written agreement with some other party?"

Right. But SCO doesn't seem to understand that "GPLed" doesn't mean "transfering ownership of copyright". It means "authorizing the copying and distribution of". Not the same thing.

Furthermore, SCO DID provide a written agreement. It was titled "GNU Public License" and they sent it to everyone who bought their product.

Perhaps SCO is going to back themselves into a corner such that they'll have to effectivly argue against click-through EULAs. I wondor how their MS partners will feel about that?


Mark Levitt

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:05 AM EDT
Well, I took a look at the Dutch Copyright law (Auteurswet 1912) and that states explicitly that a transfer of copyright must be done in writing. It doesn't specify the form that a licence to use or copy a work should take.

I wonder how SCO can claim "all rights on derived works" without showing a written agreement that transfers copyright ownership for every change that the SysV licensees made. When A modifies (with permission) code from B, then A has the copyrights on his modifications. A and B together hold a copyright on the modified work. A's copyrights are 'born' the moment he creates or publishes his modifications. I seriously wonder how one can transfer copyrights in writing before these rights exist. It must be something like selling your unborn children, before having a partner.


MathFox

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:05 AM EDT
Mark,

I hope you don't mind, but I've downloaded your gzip'ed PDF and unzipped it. It's now available at http://compsoc.dur .ac.uk/~sf/SCOsource_Briefing_II.pdf for anyone who's interested.


Simon Farnsworth

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:08 AM EDT
Concerning the UNIX copyrights, there is an interesting tidbit in a ruling that came out of the old AT&T v BSDI case. AT&T had sought a preliminary injunction halting further distribution of BSD. This was not granted.

"I find that Plaintiff has failed to demonstrate a likelihood that it can successfully defend its copyright in 32V. Plaintiff's claims of copyright violations are not a basis for injunctive relief."

This ruling was based on a procedural mistake by AT&T. The law at that time was that if you wanted something protected, you had to put explicit (c) notices in the work. AT&T had not. They failed every test the judge had to consider. Essentially the ruling was that AT&T had let version 32V (the one Berkeley UNIX was based on) slip into the public domain, according to the law as it was at that time.

IANAL, but it seems to me that even though this point was never litigated all the way through, the judge's reasoning is air-tight. The law was very explicit and the facts were uncontested. AT&T screwed up and let their code (of that era) escape into the public domain. 32V was at that time the pinnacle of development and included all the stuff from V7 back to Day One in the labs.

As I read this, System V might be copyrighted, but any code that can be found in 32V is public domain.


Bob

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:11 AM EDT
My take on all this is that someone spotted a snippet of code similarity and
didnt know what the history of the UNIX code is.all they saw was similarity.like
HAHA we caught you stealing from us.where SCO makes its mistake is they didnt
act professional and try to deal with IBM and LINUX people professionally.they
start by making demands.it steamrolls cause their attitude sucks and IBM thinks
they may be nuts.it escalates and now they are caught in the rollers and have no
choice but to go forward and get crushed.
when do they have to respond to REDHAT suit? i really want to see the answer now
since their case is going down the tube and also if they dont respond what
happens?
br3n
brenda banks

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:16 AM EDT
Bob,
And if I recal, another problem was that Berkely could show that AT&T had taken
BSD code and placed it in UNIX. Hence, a few years later, it shows up in "SCO's"
UNIX.
Mark Levitt

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:26 AM EDT
Backpedaling?

http://newsfo rge.com/newsforge/03/08/21/132219.shtml?tid=23

From Stowell: ...this code wasn't put in by IBM...but we're going to court with IBM...this code just illustrates issues with Linux...

"Issues?" Yes, it's easy to believe they have issues, but legal ones?

Guilt by proximity between sentences? Am I missing some sort of logical or causal connective here? Is this rejoinder truly as weak as it appears?


Frank Brickle

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:29 AM EDT
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CNBCTV/Articles/StockPicks/P50807.aspquatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:34 AM EDT
This is the same "Jonathan Cohen of JHC Capital Management, who is buying shares" 2 months ago:

htt p://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_25/b3838120_mz027.htm


quatermass

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:36 AM EDT
PJ,

Where does this quote written by LINUS fit into the scene where companies are "afraid" to get near the GNU GPL? Do these words below change the intent of the GNU GPL - and what affect do they have?

From: Book: Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution Chapter: The Linux Edge written by: Linus Torvalds in 1999 excerpt on GNU GPL as written: "The other part of modularity is less obvious, and more problematic. This is the run-time loading part, which everyone agrees is a good thing, but leads to new problems. The first problem is technical, but technical problems are (almost) always the easiest to solve. The more important problem is the non-technical issues. For example, at which point is a module a derived work of Linux, and therefore under the GPL?

When the first module interface was done, there were people that had written drivers for SCO, and they weren't willing to release the source, as required by the GPL, but they were willing to recompile to provide binaries for Linux. At that point, for moral reasons, I decided I couldn't apply the GPL in this kind of situation.

The GPL requires that works "derived from" a work licensed under the GPL also be licensed under the GPL. Unfortunately what counts as a derived work can be a bit vague. As soon as you try to draw the line at derived works, the problem immediately becomes one of where do you draw the line?

We ended up deciding (or maybe I ended up decreeing) that system calls would not be considered to be linking against the kernel. That is, any program running on top of Linux would not be considered covered by the GPL. This decision was made very early on and I even added a special read-me file (see Appendix B) to make sure everyone knew about it. Because of this commercial vendors can write programs for Linux without having to worry about the GPL.

The result for module makers was that you could write a proprietary module if you only used the normal interface for loading. This is still a gray area of the kernel though. These gray areas leave holes for people to take advantage of things, perhaps, and it's partly because the GPL really isn't clear about things like module interface. If anyone were to abuse the guidelines by using the exported symbols in such a way that they are doing it just to circumvent the GPL, then I feel there would be a case for suing that person. But I don't think anyone wants to misuse the kernel; those who have shown commercial interest in the kernel have done so because they are interested in the benefits of the development model.

The power of Linux is as much about the community of cooperation behind it as the code itself. If Linux were hijacked--if someone attempted to make and distribute a proprietary version--the appeal of Linux, which is essentially the open-source development model, would be lost for that proprietary version".

Comment: I wonder if SCO's main reason for all this legal action is to try to define a "gray area" that they can live in by creating a fork of LINUX that is being produced by them in a BSD kinda way (and hurting LINUX along the way)? However, if they are looking at the intent of LINUS as the above words describe, then they are going to have problems with the GNU GPL kernel, which is where it appears that LINUS has 100% intent, in the above writing, for the GNU GPL to be the anchor of the kernel... and so the problem for SCO is that this does not allow them the option to fork it to the BSD model that they could make proprietary! This is what McBride said about his talks with LINUS, ( http://linuxtoday.com /developer/2003081901826INSWLL ) "He's very pragmatic and tends to be a racehorse with blinders on. (and then the quote continues) ...He doesn't want to know about IP or [commercial issues]. He readily admits that IBM has put a lot of code in Linux and says if you want to pursue it [legally], go ahead". Hmmm, This is maybe to say that McBride can't convince LINUS to allow SCO to fork and own (and thus benefit from all the work that everyone else has been doing all this time on SAMBA, and other projects, etc.)!


annon

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:43 AM EDT
Mark, I will do the analysis you request. I can't do it today, because of time, but I will.

Mathfox, you are brilliant.

Dan, you are correct. That is what they are saying, but, sadly, for them, they are wrong, as the commenters after you point out.

Simon, thank you for the pdf. I'm going to post this info for the world. Before I do, I'd like to ask if anyone can pls. verify that the kernel is there, intact, with the high-end stuff in there. Thanks.


pj

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:55 AM EDT
One more thing. Dick, you are correct that Latin is used a lot in the law, but believe it or not, I learned Latin in high school. Two years of it. And I loved it. It helped me understand every other language, including English, from that point onward. It's so logical and dependably law-abiding in structure that you can parse any other language after that, because the concept is so clear. Anyway, in the who cares department, but since it came up, those are the facts. : )

annon: "But I don't think anyone wants to misuse the kernel" I'd say this was a mistake in judgment, in light of current events. rms was less trusting. And he was proven right. Any holes, IMO, need to be closed, and I'm sure a new GPL version will emerge from this. What is derivative code is, obviously, a huge part of this case. And, sadly, Linus now has his PhD in human nature, and no doubt he's rethinking some things too.

Chuck Peters: I don't agree with you about copyright. My opinion is that transferring copyright to FSF is the way to go, as I've expressed before.


pj

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 08:06 AM EDT
Yes, Jonathon Cohen of JHC Capital Management is pumping his own stock.

Here's where we learn he is buying stock:

htt p://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_25/b3838120_mz027.htm

Here's where we learn he is pumping his stock:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CNBCTV/Articles/StockPicks/P50807.asp

Here's where you can report this insider trading to the Securities Commission:

http://www.sec.gov/divis ions/enforce/insider.htm

Okay, so maybe it's not quite insider trading, but there has to be some law against analysts pumping their own stocks.


Belzecue

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 08:06 AM EDT
annon: Your quote shows that Linus is smart enough in legal afairs not to show his cards early. His comments on the SCO case half a year ago: "I am waiting for SCO to show proof." His comments now: "SCO, the stuff you showed isn't good enough, show us some real proof."

What SCO is attempting to do know is making a GPL project propriatary. Richard Stallman designed the GPL to make such a move impossible. OK, there are some grey areas on the subject on what constitutes a derived work. Kernel modules, application plugins and linking with shared libraries are some of those grey areas.

To make Linux propriatary SCO has to extort copyrights or licences from all of the kernel contributors. (At least the ones that made a substantial contribution.) I am sure that SCO sees that it will fail here. One contributor short -> no profit.

McBribe badmouthing Linus indicates that Linus listened to his arguments and probably answered something like "you didn't convince me." Linus has a home, a family, a very good name and gets paid for his hobby! Why does he need dirty SCO money?


MathFox

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 08:11 AM EDT
More Cohen

http://ww w.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=19031947


quatermass

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 08:19 AM EDT
Oops... typo in my last post: s/McBribe/McBride/
MathFox

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 08:21 AM EDT
Mathfox: Maybe you were right first time ;-)
Cambo

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 08:26 AM EDT
Kai wrote:
And even if the disclaimer would be relevant, distributing the kernel only to clients would in itself be illegal without permission from all right holders (contributors to the Linux kernel). In this case the only such permission is given by the GPL.

That's actually not true. The only condition in the GPL is that you make the source available to those that you gave the binary, and that both are covered by the GPL.


Chris Cogdon

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 08:33 AM EDT
Somewhat OT, but I'm so pissed at Jonathon Cohen's irresponsible behaviour that I gotta post it.

http://moneycentral.msn.co m/content/P22892.asp

"Rekas says that the real purpose of research on the Street has always been to provide a veneer of intellectual respectability to a sales endeavor that otherwise might not be considered much more lofty than the retailing of shoes, cars or potted plants..."


Belzecue

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 08:36 AM EDT
E-commerce times on SCO's statememts of the day,

http://www.ecommercet imes.com/perl/story/31386.html

And comments on LWN

http://lwn.net/Articles/45504/

Worth noting is Chris Sontag's statement "The vast majority of the code [in violation] is the derivative work from IBM, so that's a great place to start," Sontag stated. "We're talking about more than one million lines of code that can be remedied."

And the fact the the line count difference between kernel 2.4.2 and 2.2 is less than a million lines. As an earlier responder on LWN noted, SCO is trying a huge "land grab"


Larry

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 09:03 AM EDT
What struck me about that article is Sontag said they'd revealed the code and it could be remedied.

Yet the reality is SCO's presentation was in private, and possibly under NDA (according to press reports it was), not to IBM or Linux authors. So whatever was revealed, was contrary to their wishes.

And that's aside from the fact, that "vast majority" is not the same as being in sufficient detail to fully remove, even if we accept your claims.

It was only days ago SCO was saying that it couldn't be removed, if it was removed that wouldn't be sufficient for them, and they wouldn't allow and/or didn't want it removed.


quatermass

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 09:49 AM EDT
I am amazed at the irresponsibility of the so-called experts at the Yankee group. Much noise and speculation on the potential liabilities of IBM (ooooh they caneven go after Big Blue's hardware sales...drool...buy this stock!) but seem oblivious to the possibility of any downside. Has any of these hucksters taken a serious look at IBM's defense and the implications of it? 1) The court rules that SCO cannot terminate IBM license. DiDio, Lyons, et al: define "pertual and irrevocable". No multi-billion dollar payday.... 2) The GPL is valid and SCO has no right to charge license fees to Linux users. No lovely revenue stream based on the hard work of others, bummer. 3) There is a strong possibility that the Smoke Crack Often Group may be counter sued into oblivion by the copyright holders of the works it is trying to co-opt? 4) That the NUMA, RCU, and JFS code are the property of IBM to do with as they see fit. 5) That IBM's patent infringement claims may be upheld? Have any of these purported analysts looked into the implications of those claims? If they have, they are strangely quiet about them. SCO may be ordered to cease and desist distributing Unix AND Linux. Smoke that!

IBM is the ultimate "Big Picture" corporation. When they look at this case they see Canopy, Sun, and Microsoft. McBride and Sontag are disposable sock puppets for Canopy. Sun and MS are funding Canopy's actions. I strongly suspect that the four patents IBM are much more than throway gambits to remind people of their collossal portfolio, rather they are applicable to core technology employed by other Canopy properties, as well as Sun and MS. I think the reason IBM took so long to come out with their second response was that they were planning how best to deal with the root causes of the situation. Harshly.


Greg T Hill

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 10:06 AM EDT
FYI, but Lawrence Lessig has his own blog (http://www.lessig.org/blog/), and in the story posted today about 'copynorms' someone asked Professor Lessig about the SCO claims. Here was his response:

"I've not read the claims, but anyone claiming the GPL is “illegal” because “preempted” by US copyright law is someone who knows nothing about preemption or US copyright law. » posted by lessig on Aug 21 03 at 8:13 AM (PT)


Nick

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 10:07 AM EDT
Thoughts on this, anyone?

http://slashdot.org /comments.pl?sid=75499&cid=6751966

Greg, one thing seems to clear in my opinion, SCO better darn well have the rights to terminate AIX (and I personally can't see how they do), because if they don't, the counterclaim just on this will be enormous.

If I was Sun, I'd be watching my back too. McNealy's mouth, and those ads about "our friends at big blue", could yet come back to haunt them. Hard.

I'm sure Microsoft is enjoying the FUD, but watch how quiet they are. They obviously have something to gain (far more than Sun) if Linux is in doubt, but they haven't taken the kinds of risks that Sun did.

My feeling is Microsoft would just love to stick it to Canopy. You need to remember *how* Canopy got a settlement on the DR-DOS issue. I don't think it's something Gates or Balmer will quickly forget. It's bound to be something that sticks in their craw. They might not want to help out Linux, but I bet they'd just love get revenge on Canopy?


quatermass

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 10:16 AM EDT
Has anyone looked at the cases cited on the SCO slides?

http://www.perens.com/SCO/SCO SlideShow.html

The "Liu v. Price Waterhouse (7th Cir.)" is odd - if I understand it correctly a case where the court/jury decided to assign the copyright of a derived work (i.e. the copyright to the changes) to the original owner. Perhaps SCO thinks about something like that? Although it would be odd if a court would assign ~ 5 million lines of code to the owner of 80 odd lines preexisting code.


Manfred

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 10:38 AM EDT
I don't think that "Liu v. Price Waterhouse" applies to this case as it is a contract case, with very specific clauses with respect to copyright in the contract that governed the work. A nice writeup is at http://www.ivanhoffman.com/de rivative2.html

Google is your friend :) Doublecheck anything that SCO tells you :(


MathFox

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 10:40 AM EDT
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1143148

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030 821.gtlinuxjackaug21/BNStory/Technology/


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 11:21 AM EDT
Re. Lessig

Nick, I wouldn't assign much significance to this response, because the question was badly stated. Heise never claimed that the GPL was *illegal*. (That would require much more crack.)


Lev

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 11:36 AM EDT
Roy and Chuck: I stand corrected; Linus does own the Linux copyrights - http://fb1.hdm-stuttgart.de/linuxfaq (see 1.9). This doesn't affect my argument that if SCO continues to distribute other GPL software, such as gcc, the FSF can stop them.

As Robvarga and ecprod point out, some of the software SCO wants to redistribute is under the BSD license. For the rest of my argument to survive, there must be at least one GPL'd package that is essential to SCO's Web services plan.

ecprod: your second post wondering about good timing for the FSF to use the hammer is apt; I suspect Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen are contemplating that very issue.

PJ, OT: You're absolutely right about the usefulness of Latin; I was just bemoaning the fact that lawyers in general don't know the language.


Dick Gingras - SCO caro mortuum erit!

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 11:54 AM EDT
The publisher of Linux Journal baits SCO: http ://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7087&mode=thread&order=0
Dick Gingras - SCO caro mortuum erit!

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:07 PM EDT
Dick, "Linus owns the Linux copyrights" is an oversimplification. Linus owns the copyrights on parts of the Linux sourcecode. Other contributors (Alan Cox, Greg Page) own the copyrights on their contributions. (Except if they transfered them.)

There also is the copyright of the one that combines all code into a distribution. The copyright on the Linux 2.5 tarballs belongs to Linus, because he selected the pieces that went into the bundle. In a similar vein Marcelo Tosatti (as kernel maintainer) owns the copyrights on the "official" 2.4 kernel distributions.

I guess Alan Cox has to transfer the copyrights on the Red Hat kernel packages that he makes to Red Hat, that's the sad part of being an employee.


MathFox

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:13 PM EDT
Something is cooking in Canada: Globetechnology.

A coalition of Canadian computer professionals dedicated to open-source software is planning to oppose legal efforts to extract licence fees from Linux users.


MathFox

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:15 PM EDT
quatermass, I think you misunderstood Sontag. When he said "remedies" he talked
about taking out a Unix-in-Linux license(s), not removing the alleged codes.
:))
Quan

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:18 PM EDT
Quan, well only he knows what he meant

But McBride has repeatedly said things along the lines of it being impossible to remove, and that it makes no "business sense" for SCO to allow Red Hat to remove it (check the transcript of the conference call the day after Red Hat sued). So I don't think they want it removed, and in their view it can't be anyway.


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:25 PM EDT
One of the odd things to know is the relationship between the FSF and the rest of the open source community. Linux is NOT a FSF endorsed project and does not fall under the GNU umbrella. GNU has their own kernel called Hurd. Richard Stallman (RMS) promotes the use as "GNU/Linux" to indicate that GNU software is the foundation of all UserLand (non-kernel) code that is needed to run an entire operating system not just the kernel. You indicate that there exists a S/360 distribution of Linux. I believe this is a typo and you meant the S/390. S/360 are extremely ancient, with the S/370 and S/380 existing between the 360 and the 390s. The original S/390 themselves are considered ancient as they have 31-bit processors rather than 32-bit we see today.

The reason I bring this up because you indicate that FSF holds the copyright to the S/390 linux port. I didn't believe that was true. A quick look of some of the s390 (the older 31-bit processor) and s390x (the newer 64-bit processors) architecture specific files shows IBM, IBM Deutschland Entwicklung GmbH, and/or the original author(s) the code was based on as the copyright holders. S390 maintainer is s390@de.ibm.com, indicating that IBM is supporting the S390 port directly.

It is generally recommended that authors of GNU projects transfer copyrights of their code to the FSF so all the code is owned by one entity. This is not the case with Linux. IBM may have transfered copyrights to FSF, but I have never seen it.


pedantic

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:33 PM EDT
"Cohen said the company's stock has done well this year on the back of solid fundamentals."

Excuse me?? "The back of solid fundamentals"?? Fundamentals of litigation, perhaps.


Steve Martin

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:40 PM EDT
CLASS ACTION SUIT NOW!
MajorLeePissed

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:46 PM EDT
SCO's big legal gun takes aim

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1 104_2-5066642.html

SCO's big legal gun takes aim and shoots own foot

http://forums.com.com/group/zd.News.Talkback/zdnn/tb.tpt/@thr ead@223216@forward@1@D-,D@ALL/@article@223216?EXP=ALL&VWM=hr&ROS=1&PAGETP=2100&S HOST=zdnet.com.com&NODEID=1104


David Mohring

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:54 PM EDT
I'm pretty sure IBM did assign some copyrights (S/390 Linux contributions?) to
FSF. I have seen it referenced on FSF's site, June I think... and FSF even wrote
a letter to SCO to ask SCO if they felt any of these infringed on SCO's rights?
No reply AFAIK.
quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:57 PM EDT
Check this:

http://news.com.com/200 8-1082-5066520.html?tag=nl

Sayeth Heise: So the difference is that SCO didn't say, "Here is my copyrighted material, and I'm knowingly and willingly giving it to you under the GPL. Here's my copyrighted work." You're not going to see that when you go into Linux. You're not going to see "copyright, The SCO Group."

Technically accurate, but try this: h ttp://www.google.com/search?q=sco.com+OR+caldera.com+site%3Akernel.orgRand

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 12:58 PM EDT
But at least a bit of balance:

http://news. com.com/2100-1016_3-5066410.html?tag=fd_lede1_sl


Rand

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 01:13 PM EDT
Mathfox,

IANAL, but:

U.S. Copyright law (17 U.S.C) under definitions says:

'A “compilation” is a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. The term “compilation” includes collective works.'

If Linus holds the copyright for the compilation called Linux, I believe he'd have no problem exercising his right to issue a C & D and, if necessary, pursue violations in court.

Of course, it would be even better if all the kernel contributors who still hold their own copyrights united in this effort. The fact that some of the contibutors are employees (Alan, Red Hat; Marcelo, Connectiva; Andrea Arcangeli, SuSE) may make it easier, additionally providing economic backing.

SCO backed themselves into a corner by attacking the GPL; they're damned if they do (accept the validity of the GPL and have to explain to the judge how they released their own code under it and continue to do so) or damned if they don't (being sued for copyright infringement).


Dick Gingras - SCO caro mortuum erit!

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 01:40 PM EDT
Someone posted a link in a comment to an earlier article to this analysis http://www.lemis.com/g rog/SCO/code-comparison.html where it is pointed out that the layout of the comment in ate_utils.c does not exactly match the ancient unix code but does match the claimed SVRx code. The author of that article claims he has it from a "reliable source" that the formatting was not changed until SVR3. I just looked in the educational use only System III code (educating myself about the history of Unix although I didn't have to click the accept button when I downloaded it) and noticed that the file usr/src/uts/vax/os/malloc.c contains the comment exactly as shown by SCO as the SVRx code.

That code contains no copyright header but the Unix Timeline lists Nov 1981 as the release of System III. This is still before the US adopted the Berne Convention in 1988 so (and a very big IANAL here) I believe the guidance given in USLvBSDI would still apply as System III was even more widely distributed than 32V and this code is public domain as it fails to meet any of these conditions (even if it was registered within 5 years no attempt was made to retrospectively add copyright notices as even the owners own copies aren't labelled). http://www4.law.cornell.ed u/uscode/17/405.html


Adam Baker

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 02:41 PM EDT
PJ asked earlier about the contents of the source RPM still available for download from SCO.

It contains a kernel tarball which matches in MD5 sum the 2.4.13 one on kernel.org and a collection of patches for that kernel. The rpm header says:

Name : linux Relocations: (not relocateable) Version : 2.4.13 Vendor: Caldera International, Inc. Release : 21S Build Date: Sat 03 May 2003 15:17:07 BST Install date: (not installed) Build Host: build311.ps.asia.caldera.com Group : System/Kernel Source RPM: (none) Size : 27986389 License: GPL Packager : Ashish Kalra <ashishk@sco.com> URL : http://www.kernel.org/ Summary : Linux kernel sources and compiled kernel image. Description : Linux kernel sources and compiled kernel images. B- Distribution: OpenLinux3.1.1

Note especially the Build Date, License and Packager


Adam Baker

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 02:43 PM EDT
Another link about the code, this time from ESR

http://www.catb.org /~esr/writings/smoking-fizzle.html

I think what it all boils down to was that the presentation was a naturally biased rah-rah speech for the troops, with little relevance to the law suits. But what else would you expect from a keynote speech in this situation?


Chris Priest

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 02:50 PM EDT
Adam Baker: Eric Raymond has an analysis of the code up: http://www.catb.org /~esr/writings/smoking-fizzle.html He comes to a different conclusion about the original source. So I started looking around: ACM declared first fit an inefficient algorithm for memory managment in articles dating from 1972 & 74. The kernel coders thought it was ugly as hell and someone should be shot for writing it. ESR sums it up as crap. Greg Lehey claims the 17 year old BSD version was superior. Linus said "So one code snippet was from pretty much original Unix"

Almost everyone is asking SCO to reveal more inefficient, ugly, crap so we can eliminate that too (although I don't know why our QA of System V should be done for free;-)


Harlan

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 03:03 PM EDT
Adam,

Great work!

I think Bruce Perens would be interested in that info - you might want to email him the details at bruce at perens dot com.


Dick Gingras - SCO caro mortuum erit!

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 03:41 PM EDT
The name SCO have been mentioned numerous times all over the forums, etc. Out of the curiosity, I did some digging and here what I saw:

- July 2002: McBide became CEO of Caldera International, Inc. http://www.caldera. com/partners/estreet/0207/ceo.html

- August 26, 2002: Caldera to Change Name to The SCO Group http://ir.sco.com/Rel easeDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=88781

- January 22, 2002: SCO Establishes SCOsource to License UNIX Intellectual Property http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104& STORY=/www/story/01-22-2003/0001876394&EDATE=

MY CONSPIRACY THEORY: Based on these facts, it seems to me that McBride was never interested in making better products. Rather, he immediately went to work on creating a plan to extort money from other businesses. Hence the birth of SCOsource. SCO then launched the lawsuit against IBM in March, hoping IBM would pay to avoid publicity. If that worked they can then go after other businesses.

Unfortunately for SCO, IBM didn't blink at the threat. The rest is history as it is unfolding before our eyes. SCO is certainly not interested in showing the alleged infringed code. They didn't do their homework. SCO knows their case doesn't hold water but they have no way out. It's just too late. The damage is done. They will have to pay the price for their action.


Quan

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 03:41 PM EDT
I've just remembered, PJ also asked what features were in the 2.4.13 that SCO are still distributing. NUMA is there but it appears to predate JFS. IA64 support is in there but not ate_utils.c - that first appeared in 2.4.19 as far as I can tell. RCU also appears to be missing but I haven't traced when that was first introduced. Obviously there is some SMP support but I can't tell how good it is.

Apparently some of the code that was shown in the code viewings in Germany came from the Scheduler. As can be seen here http://www.ge ocrawler.com/archives/3/5312/2001/1/0/5052740/ Caldera / SCO employees were contributing to the scheduler so the possibility that any SysV contamination there came from SCO / Caldera will need to be examined if that code is ever publicised.


Adam Baker

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 03:46 PM EDT
On a side note, SCO stock jumped a big 21% positive today. That's big.
Clint C.

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 03:53 PM EDT
Yeah, a lot of clueless investors must have hearkened to Cohen's plug on
CNBC.
Jeremy Stanley

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 04:44 PM EDT
Broughton's holding is down another 5000 to 115,000 - I sure wouldn't like to be facing his tax bil :-)

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102542/0001102542030000 53/xslF345X02/edgardoc.xml


Adam Baker

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 04:55 PM EDT
Quan, thanks for the link to the SCOSource announcement. I had been looking for that.

"SCO, the Majority Owner of UNIX Intellectual Property". McMride says "SCO owns much of the core UNIX intellectual property". Seems they are singing a different tune now.

I reckon if they had stuck to licensing UNIX libraries to Linux and similar schemes, people might have grumbled but paid up. The move into web services should have been done earlier, but they cut the R&D budget instead, and look at when their recent product announcements are due out because of that cut. They coud have been on a nice little earner by now.

Although IBM needed a bit of a slapping for some of the things they said (see the complaints), SCO instead underestimated IBM and the open source community, overreached themselves and are going to go down the tubes, taking OpenServer and UnixWare with them.

Did anyone else notice this comment in ESRs analysis of the malloc code (and the following paragraph)? "Any SCO lawyers tempted to make a fuss over the publication of these diffs or my access to the SVr4 code should think carefully about the sorts of things that happen to corporations with already poor reputations who try to sue journalists engaged in fact publication with respect to a dispute of wide public interest."

Skeletons in the code which IBM might find in the discovery phase?


Chris Priest

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:01 PM EDT
Mark Heise talks

http://news.com.com/200 8-1082-5066520.html?tag=nl

More on the "proof"

http://www.inter netwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=MGQAXM0RMFVGOQSNDBCSKH0C JUMEIJVN?articleID=13100927&pgno=2


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:12 PM EDT
> Although IBM needed a bit of a slapping for some of the things they said (see the complaints),

What exactly are you referring to?

If you mean suggesting Linux should supersede IBM's main UNIX (AIX), then that their choice. They have no obligation not to follow that path, if they so chose - it's called competition and a free market - somebody else can present a different product strategy - and let the customer decide whether IBM or their competitor's have a better product strategy.

Furthermore, as IBM's AIX license was both royalty-free and fully paid up, it made no financial odds to new SCO, whether IBM kept offering AIX in future.

Besides which, new SCO and to a lesser extent old SCO, were both largely singing from the same song sheet as IBM.


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:14 PM EDT
> Skeletons in the code which IBM might find in the discovery phase?

I wonder if IBM will question Christoph Hellwig. He's already given some public hints that he knows where any GPL bodies might be buried.


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:16 PM EDT
http://weblog.infoworld .com/yager/2003/08/21.html
quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:28 PM EDT
Enjoy

http://www.justi nsanedesign.com/staff/justin/penguin.swf


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:30 PM EDT
Comments on the Heise interview, couple of interestng ones

http://lwn.net/Articles/45717/


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:46 PM EDT
McBrides seems to think IBM is behind: Novell, Red Hat, Eric Raymond (whom he alleges is on their payroll), Linus Torvalds, and Free Software Foundation.

http://www.nwfusion.co m/news/2003/0825scoatta.html

And SCO's press campaign - is just self-defense!

"Responding to criticism that his company is trying its case against IBM in the press, McBride said that SCO has simply been responding to attacks and standing up for its rights when attacked."

PJ, come clean, are you paid by IBM??? Ha ha

Just for the record, I'm not and have no financial interest in IBM. I may have very occassionally bought IBM products or recommended them, but so rare as can't remember any specific product(s) if there were any. I have used a variety of IBM PCs, RS/6000, AIX, and IBM printers - many years ago.


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 05:52 PM EDT
From last link

"McBride declined to reveal the sources of his allegations"


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:09 PM EDT
Chris Priest: Did anyone else notice this comment in ESRs analysis?

SCO purported to show "Line by Line Copying", but didn't really show any code. The community wanted to compare something to something and sought to supply the need by eliminating the Greek encoding. That only revealed that the "trade secret" was a non-matching bit of comment containing no code at all. In Kansas we call these "Dog and Pony Shows".

Bruce Perens, Greg Lehey, and Eric Raymond have all supplied some excellent conjectures and supplied their own snippets of their favorite candidate code. Eric has even gone out and supplied a diff of some code that may be "SVR4", or something else of unknown origins. None of these were ever in SCO's "evidence" anyway. In Kansas we call this a "Three Ring Circus".

The packet filter code wasn't from a Unix licensee and was so well "obfuscated" that it will pass muster with the Copyright Office anyway. In Kansas we call that a "Sham".

SCO claims they have released the proof and asked us to remedy it - millions of lines of code. In Kansas we call that a bald face lie!

There is only one evidence of any code ownership that SCO offers as proof in these slides. No one is analizing it. That is Slide 17.

What I was discussing here yesterday is kind of interesting in regard to that slide. On SCO's slide 17 they claimed that they own IBM's code in accordance with paragraph 2.01 of the old 2-1-1985 AT&T license - their complaint Exhibit A. http://www.caldera.com/ scosource/ExhibitA.qxd.pdf As many of us know Caldera appears to have entered a side letter dated 2-1-1985 from AT&T into evidence that counters that claim (their exhibit C. http://www.caldera.com/ scosource/ExhibitC.qxd.pdf

Perhaps they have another interpretation of it. They have some novel ideas about the GPL after all. Dennis Ritchie has performed an invaluable service by putting up a lot of the old USL V BSDI documents. One of them mentions the depositions of two AT&T employees concerning the meaning of paragraph 2.01 of AT&T's 1985 license. It even mentions that AT&T sent out a side letter in August of 1985 to ALL OF IT'S LICENSEES explaining paragraph 2.01:

http://cm.be ll-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/930107.amicus.txt

"[fn13] It appears that AT&T similarly tried to restrict other licensees' rights with respect to code they derived from AT&T's UNIX, because AT&T sent out a clarification to all its licensees in August, 1985 which stated: "Section 2.01. The last sentence was added to assure licensees that AT&T will claim ownership in the software that they developed -- only the portion of the software developed by AT&T." Exhibit H, attached to the Shapreau Decl. The 2.01 referred to in Exhibit H is the same 2.01 contained in the SOFT- 00089 agreement. Frasure Depo., at 1 08:21 -1 1 0; 1 1 2:7-21. USL's Mitzi Bond participated in the preparation of Exhibit H. She testified that the clarification to 2.01 "indicates that all we did was add a sentence to the existing one so that licensees would clearly understand that we were not claiming the ownership in code that they developed that didn't contain ours" (emphasis added). Bond Depo., at 189:14-191:21."

If we are going to attack these slides as the farce that they are, we need to get the media to see those kind of facts.

On another note, everyone keeps fumbling the ball on 32V (see ESR's analysis). The Bern Convention and Registrations that are done out of regret 14 years after the fact have no bearing on the case of 32V. If it ever was in the public domain it still is, and these Caldera's copyright claims are fraudulent. http://www.tuhs.org/Archi ve/Caldera-license.pdf


Harlan

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:09 PM EDT
Hmmm...sounds like actual, clinical paranoid schizophrenia to me. Would explain
a lot...
Jonathan Williams

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:11 PM EDT
Broughton's new SEC filing

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102542/0001102542030000 53/xslF345X02/edgardoc.xml


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:18 PM EDT
OK! I admit. McBride blew my cover. I may as well come clean on this one. I own an IBM Thinkpad which I use to post this message.

It's getting better and better by hour. SCO PR have got to be the best comic relief this year.


Quan

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:27 PM EDT
Well, I think that article makes him look bad, or more accurately, paranoid

Why would the press publish an article that might make him look bad?

Maybe they are in the pay of IBM?

Actually I should 'fess up to something else... I briefly worked using an early version of OS/2 (although to be fair, my memories of the experience are more likely to turn me against IBM!)


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:38 PM EDT
"McBride proudly dumped two phone-book-sized binders of press clippings on the stage during his SCO Forum keynote on Monday as proof that his company had become more relevant in the high technology industry."

ROFL! Uh, yeah, that's the reason his company has been in the news lately, its relevance to the high technology industry. Uh huh, yup, that must be the reason.


Nick

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:41 PM EDT
McBride also pointed to the involvement in the dispute of the Free Software Foundation, whose legal counsel, Eben Moglen, has issued a position paper critical of SCO, and Linus Torvalds, who has been increasingly vocal in his criticism of the Unix company. "You've got all of these guys and it looks like the whole world is coming against SCO. It's really IBM that has wired in all of these relationships," he said. "That's why it looks like they're sitting back and not doing anything. It's us fighting a whole bunch of people that they put on the stage."

Okay, that was from The Onion right? Please tell me that was from The Onion.


Paul

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:43 PM EDT
If that was true then Groklaw would be running on a IBM S/390 mainframe with a pink bow and a thank you note on it right now, rather then a rusted tin can on a string in Dave Winer's basement. jk Dave
Supa

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:49 PM EDT
Paul, no it was to an IDG reporter. Expect to see this reprinted everywhere.

Didn't you know Linus only got involved with this Linux operating system thing, after IBM paid him? Ha ha, that's it right.

And, if it weren't for IBM, every Linux user would BOGU and happily pay the $699 per CPU fee!


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 06:59 PM EDT
Linux does not need IBM to orchestrate a defense. Years before IBM knew what Linux was,
Every time that ANYONE has attacked the Linux community, said community has risen up like like a cobra, in both defense and offense.
WITHOUT ANY IBM involvement AT ALL.

But more to the point,

Darl McBride and SCO is trying to steal the work of volunteers, and at the same time, calling those same volunteers thieves. Darl McBride and SCO slander Linus Torvalds, a man who some see as some kind of saint. Darl McBride and SCO threaten to sue Linus Torvalds, a man who some see as some kind of saint. Darl McBride is threatening to sue people who are gratefully using the works of volunteers.

And Darl McBride now wants to act all hurt? What did he think would happen? That the Linux community would elect him King of the Prom?

Anyone who knows the history and expects the same thing won't happen to him would have to be monumentally stupid. Or just playing the victim to try to score points.

Oh, PS - my real name is Sam palmisano, yeah ...... WHAT A MAROON.


Sanjeev

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:01 PM EDT
ROFL. I have no connection to IBM at all. I own no stock at all in all the
world, let alone theirs. In my dreams I have a Thinkpad, but when I wake up, I
still don't. I don't know where I'd fit a mainframe. The bathtub? I don't
even have a paypall donations box on Groklaw. To tell you the truth, it's tons
of fun, but it costs me to do it, because of all the time it requires. It's
strictly from the heart, something Darl may not understand.
pj

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:10 PM EDT
pj: All the more reason why we admire your work so much! Thx!
Cambo

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:27 PM EDT
Ditto Cambo

By the way, while I'm not paid by IBM, if they want to send me some of their spare money instead of spending it on chess computers, I'd gratefully accept :-)

Jokes aside, I'm not even an OSS advocate (nobody shoot me please). As far as I'm concerned, use Open Source, use Closed Source, I don't care, sometimes one is better, sometimes the other, often it depends on what you, the user, wants, not so much as how the software is developed.

BUT I respect Linus, and other Linux programmers. I especially respect Linus as he has done some magnificent work, and essentially done it for public good, without trying to cash in on it (I'd probably admire him even he had cashed in - the work is good regardless). However, what sucks, is Darl and SCO, having failed at trying to profit from using this public work, Linux, now turning their verbal guns and trying to control something on what allowed them to get their company started in the first place, and grab control over things they have no *moral* right too - the work of Linus, IBM and others.

And I also think it sucks that Darl and SCO is trying to get money from Linux users, based largely on the theory that they won't be able to fight back.

And the SCO press campaign against IBM and Red Hat, is something that I strongly dislike too.

I expect IBM to win on all the issues, and I'm looking forward to it.


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:31 PM EDT
Ditto Cambo

By the way, while I'm not paid by IBM, if they want to send me some of their spare money instead of spending it on chess computers, I'd gratefully accept :-)

Jokes aside, I'm not even an OSS advocate (nobody shoot me please). As far as I'm concerned, use Open Source, use Closed Source, I don't care, sometimes one is better, sometimes the other, often it depends on what you, the user, wants, not so much as how the software is developed.

BUT I respect Linus, and other Linux programmers. I especially respect Linus as he has done some magnificent work, and essentially done it for public good, without trying to cash in on it (I'd probably admire him even he had cashed in - the work is good regardless). However, what sucks, is Darl and SCO, having failed at trying to profit from using this public work, Linux, now turning their verbal guns and trying to control something on what allowed them to get their company started in the first place, and grab control over things they have no *moral* right too - the work of Linus, IBM and others.

And I also think it sucks that Darl and SCO is trying to get money from Linux users, based largely on the theory that they won't be able to fight back.

And the SCO press campaign against IBM and Red Hat, is something that I strongly dislike too.

I expect IBM to win on all the issues, and I'm looking forward to it.


quatermass

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 07:50 PM EDT
> wonder if IBM will question Christoph Hellwig. He's already given some public hints that he knows > where any GPL bodies might be buried.

You bring up an aspect of this that hardly anyone is talking about. Corporate cultures are funny things. This corporate culture (Caldera's) was pro-linux and pro-open source. Many of the people there -- including former president Ransom Love -- "had the religion." McBride replaced Ransom Love in mid-2002. My hunch is that the release of all the "old and obsolete" versions of UNIX under the BSD license in January 2002 was a trick played on the Canopy Group by forces inside Caldera that saw what was coming and moved to sabotage it as best they could. It is not humanly possible to take a group of almost 300 people who have been open source zealots, and announce that "here is our new president Mr. McBride, and from now on we're all about defending our intellectual properties." To that crowd, McBride looks like The Suit From Hell. The whole culture would have set out to destroy him. You betcha Hellwig will help... but probably quietly. So will almost everyone there. It's a good bet that the people who worked at "Caldera" hate the people who run "The SCO Group." It's oil and water. You watch: it'll be testimony from former Caldera employees that does the most to damage the SCO case.


Bob

[ Reply to This | # ]

radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 08:24 PM EDT
Sanjeev, Darl and co remind me all too well of spammers I've seen interviewed. They have absolutely no qualms about doing what they do; screwing people over and lying about it in public evoke no guilty conscience on their part. Rather, it's the nasty world that, inexplicably, is trying to screw them.

It's actually a rather remarkable similarity.


Jonathan Williams

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 08:48 PM EDT
The McBride gang might be feeling a little pressure right now, which would explain some erratic behavior. Their standard mode of operation looks to be conspiratorial, so that's likely how they're forced to construe everybody else's behavior.

After all, what if they're nothing more than hatchet-men for their Canopy overlords? They're caught having not done their homework on where the "copied" code comes from. Their weapon-of-mass-destruction lawyer won't be seen in public with them.

They might just be feeling a bit of a squeeze right now.

If this is true, you have to wonder how long the Canopy puppet-masters would be willing to let this go on. Not much past the point where it starts to cost some real money, you might suppose.

On the other hand it could be all bluster and nothing else. Wasn't it Mark Twain who said there are two ways to success in America, genius and bluff?


Frank Brickle

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 09:05 PM EDT
If they issue a press release quoting a letter they never sent, or contracts are what you use against people, or similar, then we'll know they're flustered.

One thing that baffles me about Heise (and Boies for that matter when he was popping up), is why is he doing PR appearances for SCO. Shouldn't he be preparing his case and arguments? Do SCO pay him for the PR - or is that part of the contigency arrangement?


quatermass

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 09:08 PM EDT
I have a copy of OS/2 Warp I got from St. Vincent De Paul for $5. My dad had a IBM Selectric typewriter. My brother has a Thinkpad. That's the extent of IBM with folks I know.

I'm not even a Linux nut. I tend to prefer Mac OS X. I just don't like what SCO has been doing. I am completely for the Open Source movement, and SCO threatens that. If they can attack Linux today, it's only a matter of time before they go after BSD, which is what Mac OS X is built on.


J.F.

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 09:08 PM EDT
From the articles I've been reading it seems David Boies has quietly slipped
away and left Mark Heise in charge as SCO's Chief Counsel. Heise is a rather new
partner or associate or whatever with them.
Z

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 21 2003 @ 09:08 PM EDT
I just read about Heise's reasoning why the GPL in valid in that Zdnet interview: Section 301 of the US Copyright Code. My open is that he's either an idiot or imcompetent. If he was representing me in a case, I would fire him immediately.

I'm not a lawyer, but even I can under the legalese and see that that Heise is totally wrong. Section 301, in essense, says that any copyrightable work that is fixed in a tangible media of expression, that were created before or after Feb 1 1978, and whether thy are published or unpublished are now governed by the Federal Copyright law as defined in Sections 102 and 103. Federal laws now preempts copyright or equivalent right defined under common law or state statutes. There are some other bits to he section but they are irrelvant for out purposes.


Stephen Johnson

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, August 22 2003 @ 03:21 AM EDT
David Boies already has gained a not inconsiderable reputation for losing major
cases, so he might be thinking that continuing to get maximum exposure from the
SCO-cum fiasco might not be an astute career move: enter Heise who is promoted
to chief clay pigeon (with the cluelessness as to his eventual fate to match).
If Heise was looking for his 15 minutes of fame, he's got them. In fact, he's
even got himself a bonus: far more than 15 minutes of infamy and a unique
opportunity to showcase his incompetence as a lawyer to the rest of the world.
The moral of the story: you shouldn't take an opportunity to get yourself killed
or seriously maimed, just because someone is giving it to you. Some things in
the world are worth refusing.
blacklight

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, August 22 2003 @ 03:21 AM EDT
David Boies already has gained a not inconsiderable reputation for losing major
cases, so he might be thinking that continuing to get maximum exposure from the
SCO-cum fiasco might not be an astute career move: enter Heise who is promoted
to chief clay pigeon (with the cluelessness as to his eventual fate to match).
If Heise was looking for his 15 minutes of fame, he's got them. In fact, he's
even got himself a bonus: far more than 15 minutes of infamy and a unique
opportunity to showcase his incompetence as a lawyer to the rest of the world.
The moral of the story: you shouldn't take an opportunity to get yourself killed
or seriously maimed, just because someone is giving it to you. Some things in
the world are worth refusing.
blacklight

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, August 22 2003 @ 09:32 AM EDT
yahoo article on Raymond and Perens on the code.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1 817&e=1&u=/cmp/20030822/tc_cmp/13100927&sid=96120750


david l.

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radiocomment
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, August 22 2003 @ 10:50 AM EDT
quatermass: pr is definitely a lawyer function. Any jury case means you need
to reach people's minds and hearts.
That unofficially begins with pre-trial schmoozing with the press to get your
point across. Usually, in fact, it's
the lawyers, not the principals, who do the bulk of that talking. This case has
been unusual because McBride and
his gang have done so much talking, instead of letting the lawyers handle it. style="height: 2px; width: 20%; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto;">pj

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