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hopefully someone can get a quote on her personal reaction

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Linuxtag threatened a suit against SCO in late May (28th I think). And followed through with their threat in early June. If the articles that I have read are correct, SCO was bound by court order not to mention their lawsuit against IBM on their European website. Guess they didn't take that court order too seriously <G>.

What I am trying to find out is the amount of influence that Suse has with Linuxtag; publicly Suse has supported the RH lawsuit so I am wondering if they are pulling the strings here. Linux is entrenched firmly in Germany (govt. and business entities as well as users), and I think this signals the end of SCO's European operations.

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http://www.i nfoworld.com/article/03/05/29/HNnovellsco_1.html http://www.suse.com/us/company/press/press_releases/archive03/sco_redhat.ht ml http://www.theinquirer.net/?art icle=10018 http://www.eweek.com/ article2/0,3959,1113018,00.asp

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http://www.i nfoworld.com/article/03/05/29/HNnovellsco_1.html

http://www.suse.com/us/company/press/press_releases/archive03/sco_redhat.ht ml

http://www.theinquirer.net/?art icle=10018

http://www.eweek.com/ article2/0,3959,1113018,00.asp

The article from The Inquirer is a riot- shows the text of an e-mail that one of the Linux kernel developers sent to SCO, threatening legal action because of copyright infringement. SCO might consider switching to the excavating business- they seem to be very adept at digging a big hole for themselves....

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yay.

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For the interest of the readers, our primary Australian telecom organisation Telstra is now moving firmly towards Linux and is sending shockwaves through the local area - particularly those involved with Windows application software. Telstra is opting for choice and interoperability as well as stability and security and have been testing things under the name of 'Project Firefly'. Telstra's chief information officer, Jeff Smith, has firmly stated that Telstra will eventually move to Linux. Their desktops are intended to be StarOffice, the Gnome interface and the Mozilla browser. To quote Jeff: "We'll deploy what we want, where we want and when it makes business sense". Hmmmmmmmmm - this is not the philosophy of a very large monopoly which says "Upgrade, we need the cash flow !" I know the Linux supporters will enjoy this one - we rather like it.

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Clear enough?

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Here is a summary of this article (http://www.linuxworld.com/story /32697.htm): "June 4, 2003 Summary The German subsidiary of The SCO Group Inc. has temporarily shut down its Web site after a local Linux user group received a restraining court order against the U.S. software group, but plans to reactivate the site shortly."

I believe that there was a court appearance in which SCO was threatened with up to a 250,000 euro fine if they mentioned this case on their European website. I looked at their Euro website earlier this summer, and there was no mention of the lawsuit.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the Linuxworld article: "We deactivated our Web site on Friday while we continue to scan for any statements or references to Linux," said Hans Bayer, managing director of SCO GmbH in Hamburg, Germany. "We decided to wait for the new corporate design that the parent company is preparing for all its Web sites worldwide before we reactivate ours."

On May 23, lawyers for LinuxTag e.V., an association representing largely Linux program developers, told SCO's German subsidiary to retract its claims regarding ownership of Linux kernel code by this Friday, May 30, or make its evidence public. "

This information agrees with all of the other articles I have read on the matter (most of them NOT appearing in the American press). What was extremely interesting about this situation is that SCO was called on their nonsense- told to produce evidence of IP theft or shut up- and they shut up, but hardly a word was mentioned in the US mainstream IT press about this. If it was reported in the US, I saw no mention of it- and I have been keeping up with the news on this matter.

It has only been in the last week or so that any accurate reporting has been done in the US IT press on the SCO lawsuit (with decent stories on ZDNet and Computerworld).

If you read between the lines of this article, it seems the orders for defying the German court must have come from Utah- evidently SCO HQ must have finished that "new corporate design ... for all its Web sites worldwide." <G>. I think SCO is playing a game here, to see just how far they can push this before someone gives them a bloody nose.

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SCO has an office in Germany and is actively doing business there (although maybe not so much anymore). That office is subject to German law. The www.sco.de site is in German and is aimed primarily at German companies.

I don't think SCO can hide behind the U.S. First Amendment when it's pretty clear their use of the .de TLD is aimed almost exclusively at the German audience. The fact that that site redirects to the U.S. is irrelevant.

SCO's case there is already irreparably damaged; they were called on the bluff and folded the hand.

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Why the heck mention their lawsuit on a German website if the German courts have ordered them not to? I don't see this as a rational response of any sort- not even in a determined FUD campaign. This is either a mistake (maybe the web design boys at corporate had not been informed about the German court order), or SCO has not a clue what to do at this point. Maybe they were trying to see if they could get away with the court order- but if that is the reason, WHY? So their German mgr. gets 10 free days in jail?

I'm sorry, but I am not seeing a rational game plan being used by SCO. It's almost as if they had some sort of plan at the start, but they didn't get the reaction they hoped for (buyout by IBM?), and now they don't frickin' know WHAT to do. The bozos-in-charge at SCO seem to be doing one silly thing after another.

The more I see, the more I think SCOs lawsuit was an attempt to get an IBM buyout- if they were SERIOUSLY going after IP violations, why hire Boies, who is not an IP lawyer (IBM, in contrast, has some very good patent lawyers who would shred, slice and dice Boies if this ever went to trial). When that failed utterly, they started to "improvise." Only problem is- the people doing the improvising are dopes. And M$ threw them some cash to keep up the nonsense, because it fits very well into the M$ FUD plans.

It will sure be interesting to read any of SCO's internal documents regarding this fiasco if they are ever made available. At least one book will be written about this!

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Maybe we can get Tracy Kidder to write "The Soul of the New Machinations"!

(For the younger set, Kidder wrote "The Soul of a New Machine" in 1981, documenting the birthing of Data General's MV-8000 32-bit minicomputer". It's an excellent tale of how technology gets done.)

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http://transpatent.com/gesetze/uw g.html

more specifically §14 of of this one.

[Basically: §14.1 The [firm] that spreads allegations against another [firm/product], which damages or hinders the other [firm/product], must in case the allegations aren't proved, pay damages to the damaged party. The damaged party may also demand that the allegations stop].

pj / get someone versed in law and fluent in German to translate ;-)

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But Kim, it seems you can read German, and so if all you are lacking is the legal, plunge on in, and I'll do the rest. If you feel like it. We're all volunteers here.

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https://www.sco.de/s cosource/letter_to_partners.html had the following letter or maybe a german translation.

Letter To SCO's Partners SCOsource

Subject: SCO Suspends Linux Activities

Dear SCO Partner:

As a SCO Partner, we thank you for your support and continued business. Because you are a valued partner, it is important that we make you aware of important SCO business decisions and announcements as soon as possible. As such, we wanted to make you aware of an important announcement made today.

This communication is about recent efforts SCO has made to license and protect our patents, copyrights and intellectual property pertaining to the UNIX® operating system. As you know, on March 7, 2003 SCO announced that it filed legal action against IBM in the State Court of Utah, for misappropriation of trade secrets, tortuous interference, unfair competition and breach of contract. The complaint alleged that IBM made concentrated efforts to improperly destroy the economic value of UNIX, particularly UNIX on Intel, to benefit IBM's new Linux services business.

As we have progressed in our discovery related to this action, SCO has found compelling evidence that the Linux operating system contains unauthorized SCO UNIX intellectual property (IP). Due to this discovery, we are taking three immediate courses of action.

1 - The first is to send a letter alerting commercial users to the fact that legal liability for the use of Linux by businesses may extend to end users.

2 - The second action we are taking is to suspend all future sales of the Linux operating system from SCO until the attendant risks with Linux are better understood and properly resolved.

3 - Finally, although this action affects future development and sales of SCO’s Linux offerings, SCO will continue to support our SCO Linux and OpenLinux customers and partners who have previously implemented those products and we will hold them harmless from any SCO intellectual property issues regarding Linux. SCO will continue to honor all contractual obligations with existing customers including product updates, service, and support.

As many of you are already aware, SCO UNIX systems continue to sell well – including an increase in OpenServer sales over the previous quarter. Our UNIX products continue to support many of the world’s largest businesses. In addition, new customer sales indicate that there is still no better option for rock-solid, dependable technology for their core businesses than our SCO UNIX solutions.

We are excited to be building on our SCO UNIX history as we roll out our next generation UNIX operating system and SCOx framework this fall. SCOx will allow small and medium business customers and branch offices to plug their existing applications into a Web services environment. Details of this strategy will be unveiled at SCO Forum in Las Vegas late this summer. (For more details, see: www.sco.com/2003forum/.)

SCO remains committed to building new business opportunities for our partners such as you. We recognize that you have depended on us to provide reliable, solid technologies for your customers for over twenty years. We look forward to helping you and your customers meet your business needs for the next twenty years.

Sincerely,

Darl McBride
President and CEO
The SCO Group

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That'll be 10,000 Euros please.

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Why mess exactly with the government in Munich, which itself decided to move over to Linux? :)))

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The text translates roughly as:

Q: When and where did tarent obtain a temporary injunction (t.i.) against SCO? A: The t.i. was obtain on 05. June 2003 at the court [Landgericht] Munich I and delivered to SCO on the same day.

Q: What is the subject of the t.i.? A: The court [Landgericht] Munich I has prohibited SCO to make or spread in business communications the assertions 1. that the software "Linux" contains illegally obtained intellectual property of SCO, 2. that end users, who use the software "Linux", may be liable for injury of protection of intellectual property [Schutzverletzung geistigen Eigentums] of SCO, and/or 3. that the software "Linux" is an unauthorised derivate of UNIX, unless this is provably true.

Q: What is the legal basis for this prohibition? A: SCO contravened against §14 of the law against unfair competition [Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb, UWG], whereby defaming ["Anschwärzen"] of goods or services of competitors may be prohibited if the made statements of facts [Tatsachenbehauptungen] are not provably true.

Q: Who did SCO react? A: SCO did at first take off the web only some of the web pages containing the statements that were objected to [beanstandete Äußerungen], later the whole German site [Angebot].

Q: What happens if SCO does not obey the t.i.? A: Tarent can proceed against offences by using distraint [im Wege der Zwangsvollstreckung] and request at court disciplinary fines [Ordnungsgelder] of up to 250.000 Euro or disciplinary detention [Ordnungshaft] of up to 6 months. Since SCO (at first) did not remove from their website all pages containing the statements that were objected to, did tarent request a disciplinary fine of 10.000 Euro.

Sorry for the clumsy translation. I put some of the original words and phrases in brackets since I don't know whether they have specific translations.

BTW, I tried to find out SCO's side of the story, but their website was down again. :-)

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think they may be catching on?

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Indeed, Yankee Group analyst Gardner said he believes Linux has yet to reach its full potential. The OS increasingly is in use as both a server platform for enterprise or hosting use and as an embedded platform for set-top boxes and other consumer electronics. Its multitier architecture allows for horizontal scaling and enables administrators to link many low-cost servers, he noted.

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"For example, SCO asserts that more than 829,000 lines of its proprietary symmetric multiprocessing code has been duplicated in Linux."

Anyone know just how many lines of SMP code there actually are in 2.4? This claim seems unlikely to me (and what a
surprise that is, eh kids?).

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Maybe we can get Tracy Kidder to write "The Soul of the New Machinations"!"

Actually, I'll vote for pj to write the definitive SCO book when this is all said and done. This generation's Tracy Kidder (and yes, I've read that book, it's great)

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nothing new in this one just another link

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It was pointed out in an earlier Groklaw post ("SCO's Math Is Off, Or Maybe It's Their Ethics") that if you add up the number of lines in all the files which reference SMP *at all* you get about a million. i.e. SCO's argument is that since they "own" SMP, any file which references any smp function is an "unauthorised derivative" of SysV. Similarly for RCU and JFS. In the latter cases, they don't even dispute IBM owns the copyrights on those technologies (see an interview with SCO in mozillaquest) but assert they have "control rights" by virtue of the ATT contract. Unfortunately there is no such thing as "control rights" in IP law; that is to say, no contract between SCO and IBM can create an obligation on a third party. If IBM owns the copyright on JFS it can give it to anyone it likes. If giving it to Linux breaks a contract with SCO (and even this looks very unlikely,) SCO can get damages but it can't invalidate IBM's actions as a copyright holder.

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SCO could even spin it as standing up for the free speech and free trade. The market apparently likes to hear SCO say such stupid stuff, so their shares may even get a boost.

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They have to pay 10.000 euro simply for not pulling the offending web pages quickly enough. Putting such pages on their web site again will cost them much more.

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That's first violation.

Next violation's retribution would be harsher.

The subsequent ones ever more harsher.

The leading manager of SCO Germany would quite soon be fed up with Darl's sending him to prison every once in a while, or interfering negatively with his quarterly balance, and quit the company and issue some press claim about it.

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See also the http://worldwatch.l inuxgazette.com/article.php?sid=49 report from june 6.

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And maybe a few "sensitive" internal memos to go with it? We can hope. :-)

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If you look at Über uns (About us), you see, that the Company data mentions Lindon, Utah, US as the main seat of the company (Hauptsitz), and the The SCO Group GMBH only mentions a Seat in Germany (Sitz Deutschland), with Executive Officer Hans Bayer.

This is not what I would call an independent legal entity, although they may not be liable for everything done by SCO US. But certain sanctions may come into existence if they try to waive liability, such as discontinuing the selling of SCO products as a representative of SCO US, and instead they would be able to sell it only as a reseller.

IANAL, of course, but I think that this approach to it is quite possible to keeping SCO.de at bay.

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Summary: SCO.de is forbidden to say that Linux illegaly contains SCO's intellectual property and/or that end-users are liable for using Linux. They can be fined up to 250000 euro (US$ 270000) and their CEO can be jailed.

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This is something that I've wondered about it.

Sontag said removing all the IBM stuff would be a good place to start, in remedying the infringement.

Now let's say you are IBM. Potentially you can contribute code to Linux of three types:

1. IBM's code that was previously used in conjunction with AIX (although of course, you are argue that your entitled to use your code how you want).

2. IBM's code that was previously used in conjunction with Dynix (again you are argue, you are entitled to use your code how you want).

3. IBM code that is brand new, never used with AIX or Dynix.

Now I can see that SCO would argue that IBM shouldn't be doing 1 and 2 (although IBM of course disagree)

What I can't see is how SCO can argue that IBM shouldn't be doing 3.

Do SCO think that they have rights to restrict IBM from doing totally new stuff?

If yes, do SCO think their right to restrict IBM from doing totally new stuff extends only to Linux, or to any new IBM project? (and yep, this doesn't seem right or logical to me)

If no, wouldn't SCO demanding removal of all IBM stuff potentially exceed any remedy for infringement? If there is any code of type 3, that would be code that SCO has no claim to.

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I am slightly confused regarding WHY the US IT press covers news like the Linuxtag suit so dismally. I started reading some of the British IT magazines about 5 years ago, and was often surprised at some of the anti-MS events being reported on in Britain that never made it to our shores. A case in point was when the British courts got tired of the MS licensing BS, and gave consumers who didn't like Windows 98 but were forced to buy it the right to return it for a full refund. At the time, some US users were trying unsuccessfully to do the very same thing. Not a word about the British decision in US periodicals.

Now we are seeing events which happened in Germany 3 months ago, and which have a great bearing on the SCO lawsuit, not being reported in the US IT Press. Is this just lack of diligence on the journalists' part? Cultural centrism? Or is there a real attempt at FUD-ding by the mainstream IT press as well?

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Maybe somebody ought to contact Matt Whipp, author of above, and send him the NetCraft graph and GROKLAW links, re: hacking

Germany http://www.theinquirer.net/?art icle=11321

Re: Germany - I wonder if this will appear in SCO's next 10-Q, in the litigation section.

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Code of type (3) could be affected if IBM had signed a contract which says "we promise not to write code for any product which competes with UNIX", but (a) as far as anyone can tell they didn't and (b) even if they did, damages liability would be restricted to IBM and SCO could not demand the code be removed.

Yes John, I also read the analysis saying that the lines of code was a count of code contributed by Unix licensees. Given the number of times the line count has changed in SCO's statements, perhaps they're trying every possible way of counting? ;)

I'm aware of what SCO's argument is, I just have great difficulty seeing how it could possibly hold up, given the side letters from AT&T disclaiming interest in derivative code and that they have conceded that, for example, *IBM owns the copyright to JFS*. JFS for Linux is not a derivative work of SysV since it is a port of the clean-room JFS for OS/2. There is precedent on the meaning of derivative works in software, as documented in Groklaw, and it's not on SCO's side.

SCO has plenty of legal theories, such as their bizarre argument vs the GPL, which is so feeble as to beggar belief (I've seen better legal attacks on the GPL in Slashdot talkbacks ;) but they either revolve around nebulous phrases like "control rights" or consist of bald assertions without supporting argument. Witness the statements they made, for example, when Novell blew a hole in SCO's right to revoke IBM's AIX license.

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Apparently SCO thinks that if ANYTHING was developed by IBM or Sequent and put into AIX, that SCO owns rights to control further use of that code as a "derivative work". That is NOT how USA copyright law works regarding derivative work ... and my reading of the contract cited by SCO doesn't support their view.

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http://www.opensource .org/halloween/halloween9.html

Here is the most relevent part of the document concerning SMP:

82. The first versions of Linux evolved through bits and pieces of various contributions by numerous software developers using single processor computers. Virtually none of these software developers and hobbyists had access to enterprise-scale equipment and testing facilities for Linux development. Without access to such equipment, facilities and knowledge of sophisticated development methods learned in many years of UNIX development it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Linux development community to create a grade of Linux adequate for enterprise use.

Linus Torvalds had an Alpha processor system donated to him by Digital Equipment corporation in 1994. One of the first things Transmeta did when they hired him in 1996 was put him to work upgrading the SMP version of Linux, which Transmeta used extensively. Beowulf systems date back to 1994, and became widely publicized in 1998, predating IBM's first Linux product (DB2).

SCO itself supported the rise of enterprise Linux for years before joining the UnitedLinux effort, which is headed by SuSE. Here's a recording of an hour-long keynote speech given by Dirk Hohndel, CTO of SuSE, in February 2001, entitled, Open Source and Enterprise Computing.

Linux has moved into areas which SCO has not historically participated in, and enterprise computing is only one of them. When was SCO in a cell phone, or in a supercomputing cluster? IBM put Linux in a wristwatch. When has SCO put any of its products in a wristwatch?

One of the larger niches Linux has taken over without the help of IBM is Computer Graphics Imaging (CGI), used to produce computer animation and special effects in hollywood. Traditionally, this has been a proprietary Unix stronghold dominated by Silicon Graphics (SGI) with its "Irix" version of Unix. Over the past few years, virtually all of Hollywood's CGI modeling, rendering, video capture, editing, compositing, and playback tasks [8] have migrated to Linux, as detailed in the article Linux Invades Hollywood. This is an area where SCO has never been, and never publicly expressed any plans to go, and has been technologically completely incapable of surviving in.

The move is industry-wide, not just a single company. Dreamworks moved from SGI to Hewlett Packard Linux systems, prompting Ed Leonard, Dreamwarks Animation Lead Technologist to give a keynote speech at the O'Reilly Open Source convention. George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic moved from SGI to Dell Linux, and Steve Jobs' Pixar switched from Sun Solaris to commodity Intel based Linux systems from RackSpace.

Pixar is an especially important pioneer in the computer graphics industry, the first fully computer generated movie, Toy Story, and going on to box office success with Bug's Life, Toy Story II, Shrek, Monsters Inc., and its most recent offering, "Finding Nemo". Pixar employed Linux guru Bruce Perens for 12 years (1987-1999). During that time, Perens was in charge of the "Debian" Linux distribution, and left Pixar to become HP's "Senior strategist, Linux and open source" until the Compaq acquisition.

Pixar's history with Linux, and Linux's momentum in the industry, helps explain why Pixar moved to Linux instead of MacOS X. Steve Jobs is CEO of both Pixar and Apple; Pixar started when Steve Jobs purchased Industrial Light and Magic's first computer graphics division for $10 million in 1985.

This is a multi-billion dollar industry in which Linux plays a pivotal role, without the help of IBM and without any participation at all from SCO.

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Here's the Heise link, English translation by Babelfish:

http://tinyurl.com/lzqv

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It's in German, but if anyone out there would like to see what they can find, now you have the place to begin. I'll be doing so myself, but my German limitations could result in Babelfish-style consequences.

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On the site you mentioned I could find no additional information, but the Tarrent site has a Q&A in german and english:

http://www.tarent.de/html/tarent-vs-sco/030612_Questions-and-Answers.htmlBert

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The Big Lie at work again.

It's getting hard to tell whether there's any synchronization between something SCO is doing and these stories that show up. Is there actually something new today besides the German story? Or just a rehash to divert attention from it?

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" Goldman has an investment banking relationship with IBM and Seagate and intends to seek one with Dell. The analysts do not own shares of the stocks." it had been pointed out on the board that cohen had stock in scox i about fell over laughing that this groups makes a point to post that they dont own any shares

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Kim Peterson linked in this comment section to a LinuxTag press release which pointed to Darl's letter hosted on www.sco.de (not linked to sco.com)

I can only hope that any FUD activities there are mitigated at least somewhat by the fact that their own court has found the SCO claims to be unsubstantiated and has penalized SCO Gmbh for repeating them.

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Not quite ... because SCO.DE failed to produce any evidence the claims were true, the court issued the preliminary injunction. Main action to come.

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Wow, you're mad at this?

From the outside, it appears so bizarre and so ridiculous that I fear their argument is being misstated,"

Three weeks ago there would have been no outside law expert calling the argument bizarre. Just a word-for-word quotation from Heise, which would then be treated as reasonable by the reporter.

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Isn't that what unsubstantiated means? "failed to produce any evidence the claims were true"

The claims may theoretically be substantiated at some later time but for now, SCO Gmbh is paying for making claims that the court has found are unsubstantiated.

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" IBM, in an unexpected and damaging retort, argued that since SCO had already signed on to the GPL, it could not seek a monetary reward for alleged damages to its Unix product."

an "unexpected and damaging retort?" It was the very first retort any of us had expected. The writer was clearly um... *smoking crack* underinformed.

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We may be so used to seeing apparently SCO-sponsored slanders that we don't recognize a pretty good article.

If someone calls IBM's countersuit unexpected and damaging. That's a good thing. It's pretty clear he means damaging to SCO. And if its unexpected, clearly it's unexpected by SCO.

The best part of this article is that instead of reporting a he said/she said, he found third parties that he considered neutral and trustworthy and those parties came down pretty strongly on the side of the Linux advocates.

Heise made a claim about the GPL. Mogden, the lawyer of the free software foundation called the claims ridiculous. The reporter, Murray took the extra step of finding at least two independent different lawyers. Both of them express doubt at Heise's claim.

A very good piece of journalism.

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What the hell is Boies thinking?? The GPL is not based on any State's law, so the doctrine of pre-emption
cannot apply as described. Or am I missing something?

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Totally agreed -- it's a relief to see something like this in the press. But the timing does just seem odd. After all, it isn't exactly new news.

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Copyright doesn't protect methods and concepts, and etc. Patents require non-obviousness and some originality - they are also expensive to obtain and protect. Trade Secrets can last forever, but must have some independent economic value - and of course you may loose them to the public domain if they are ever revealed. Since they become public domain your recourse is to sue for damages or breach of contract.

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What? The GPL is not based on state law. It is a convenient, uniform way to exercise your authorial rights that are EXPLICITLY given to you in USC-17-106. The author has the EXCLUSIVE right to authorize reproduction, under any terms the author chooses. If they choose the GPL, it's OK! It is becoming obvious that SCO has not hired a good copyright law person, opting instead for a high-profile firm that is all noise and no brains.

§ 106 · Exclusive rights in copyrighted works Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work; (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

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Unfortunately for SCO they publicly admit that IBM/Sequent own the patents and copyrights to RCU, NUMA,JFS, and etc. Those pre-empt the AT&T contract or license agreement.

In short it's a dumb agrument. If you want a lawyer representing you ask for the one that defended Grokster, not the one that defended Napster.

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On the eetimes article, I like Frank's perceptive comment. I think this is the significant part of the article:

"Boyle of Duke University argues that while federal copyright law prevents IP owners from protecting their property too much — users can make a single copy of a software program, for example — it makes no provisions regarding owners who want to protect their property less. 'How can copyright law pre-empt a copyright holder who says, "I don't want to limit people's ability to reproduce?"' Boyle asked. 'The GPL people are the people who own the code. They can do with it whatever they want.' Boyle said, however, that he knows of SCO's position only through newspaper and Internet accounts, and acknowledged that there might be more to SCO's position. 'From the outside, it appears so bizarre and so ridiculous that I fear their argument is being misstated,' he said."

I believe it's more evidence that they just don't understand the GPL, just like they still talk about free software as if it meant free as in beer.

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All you're mising is the fact that Boies is not a patent/copyright lawyer, and the fact that the GPL was written by some very good legal minds.....

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No they did not

Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (now renamed Tarantella) bought the stuff in December 1995

Caldera bought the stuff from Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. in 2000 or 2001

Caldera renamed themselves to SCO Group Inc., in 2003

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SMP is pretty old in Linux terms. the original work was done by Alan Cox. Guess who gave him the hardware specifically for this purpose? Caldera! Yes that Caldera.

(I'm sure that SMP has progressed since then, and have no idea of the specifics)

JFS was offered by IBM. Some helpful person helped them with a lot of stuff, and appears no less than 5 times in the announcement email. His name? Christoph Hellwig. Who did he work for? Caldera. Yes that Caldera.

Incidentally JFS and SMP are mentioned on a marketing leaflet that I have a copy of. The authors of the marketing leaflet seem pretty pleased about these new additions. I think the leaflet dates from 2002. Whose marketing leaflet I hear you ask? Caldera. Yes that Caldera.

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About the only "IP" (oh, so broadly claimed by SCOG) left that can be litigated over is the questionable copyrights on the old AT&T code base.

Ownership trail of these copyrights is as follows (for the source code).

1) AT&T (plus wholy owned subsiduray Western Electric, and joint venture of WE And AT&T Bell Laboratories.) 2) Unix Systems Laboratories (USL). Spinoff of the AT&T/WE/BL breakup. 3) Novell, Inc. 4) The Santa Cruz Operation. (old SCO) 5) Caldera. AKA Caldera International. (This company changed their name 2-3 times.) 6) The current company calling itself The SCO Group. They are currently in the formal process of changing their name from Caldera International.

Needless to say the claims that SCOG is making, are open to considerable question.

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JFS: inserted into kernel 2.4.20 released Nov. 28, 2002 SMP: Alan Cox originated work in kernel 1.3 (1995), Linus Torvalds et al thereafter NUMA: worked on througout 2.5 development kernel, still not stable as of 2.6-test4. RCU: inserted into kernel 2.5.43 development kernel, still not stable as of 2.6-test4.

Note that only beta testers are using the 2.5 and 2.6 kernels - the 2.6 kernel isn't scheduled to be released for some months yet.

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2.5 kernel released in Dec 17 2001.

2.5.43 kernel released Oct 16, 2002.

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And according to copyright law, you can't copyright an idea, and if the idea REQUIRES certain text in order to make the idea happen, you have a darned hard time copyrighting even that.

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