SCO Drops Linux, Says Current Vendors May Be Liable 1105
Hank Scorpio writes "Well, SCO is at it again. I just received an email from their Developer Partner Program stating that not only are they suspending all future sales of their own Linux product (due to the alleged intellectual property violations), but they are also beginning to send out this letter to all existing commercial users of Linux, informing them that they may be liable for using Linux, a supposed infringing product. They mentioned that they will begin using tactics like those of the RIAA in taking action against end-users of Linux. This seems like it will be about as successful as the whole GIF ordeal a few years back. Where is UNISYS today? Is SCO litigating itself into irrelevance?"
Mirror for the letter (Score:5, Informative)
They'll have to change their webserver I guess... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unisys... (Score:3, Informative)
Prior to that, it was Burroughs and Sperry-Univac. The "Power of Two" campaign was to promote the merged company, renamed Unisys.
Re:Excuse the ignorance... (Score:5, Informative)
UNIX the commercial product was sold by ATT to SCO (or its precursor). SCO then licensed this source code to IBM for the development of their own products (AIX?).
The charges then alledge that IBM contributed to the Linux product by (directly or indirectly) submitting code additions to the OSS project before its first release.
SCO maintains that the code, if checked line by line, matches their original design and sometimes syntax. They claim that only IBM could have perpetrated such a thing, and that designing some of the algorithms was beyond the OSS project's stand-alone capability without IBM's help.
By showing that Linux is indeed a viable alternative to SCO UNIX, and that they are losing money based on the commercial installation base of Linux, they can claim that either IBM (1) pay them for the infringement or (2) a judge deem all Linux distro must license from SCO, or both.
To them, IBM didn't want to pay the license fees any more, so IBM starts to sell Linux as their *Nix solution, not the SCO-compile. This locks SCO out from at least IBM's fat check to them. This makes them unhappy. SCO claim foul play.
these are the facts as i understand them, but i write this to ask for clarification from everyone.
mug
SCO has Dirty Hands. Will not be able to collect (Score:5, Informative)
Not telling the world what the code is, is a legal blunder of the first order. This means that they have unclean hands, as they are supposed to try and mitigate the damage in order to receive compensation.
You can't knowlingly add to the damage and then ask for compensation incl Punitive damages based on same. Any suit against Linux vendor in the future can site this as an Affirmative Defense" and pretty much get the suit tossed on that account alone
SCO schmo (Score:3, Informative)
As for the question "Is SCO litigating itself into irrelevance?", in my opinion no they are not...they were already irrelevant, and have been for several years. This is the last gasp of a dying company. If SCO were a horse, it would have already been shot or sold to a dogfood factory. A better question might be "Has SCO ever been relevant?"
Re:"All Linux users"? Including Caldera users? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's come to the edge of the cliff... (Score:2, Informative)
Ransom Love is, was, and will continue to be, an idiot.
Caldera is staffed by clueless layabouts -- I've been there! They were amazingly not interested in having us -- an ISP -- use and promote their version of Linux in our datacenter.
They asked us questions about if we though "Gnu userspace with a SCO kernel" would be a good "enterprise Linux." I said "it wouldn't be a Linux at all, dipshit."
This was several years ago. I'll bet that if there is any SCO code in the Linux kernel, CALDERA put there.
Criminals.
Since when are Stallman and Perens ... (Score:3, Informative)
Eric Raymond's Rebuttal (Score:5, Informative)
I highly recommend reading ESR's comment [opensource.org].
Re:Timeline (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SCO schmo (Score:4, Informative)
Does anyone know more about this?
Old tactic against IBM (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Excuse the ignorance... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:It's come to the edge of the cliff... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mirror for the letter (Score:5, Informative)
I turns out that that link [bangroot.com] is a link to a copy of the SCO email that was sent out... The email links to the SCO letter which is referenced in the main posting. In other words, it's a different letter and worth reading on it's own.
Article Subject WRONG! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where? (Score:3, Informative)
I recall from previous discussions that they do.
Re:Since when are Stallman and Perens ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What is Linus Torvalds' views on this mess? (Score:5, Informative)
Many other possibilities here (Score:2, Informative)
Unix was written by AT&T in the seventies when it was ILLEGAL for AT&T to market an operating system (in violation of the TRUST agreement with the U.S. Government). To prevent prosicution by the U.S. Government AT&T did not sell the OS and released the source for anyone to use. UC Berkeley picked up the source and expanded it into Berkeley UNIX which was partly AT&T code and partly Berkeley code. At this point all UNIX code was in the public domain (it would have been illegal for AT&T to exercise any copyright or patent claim to the OS.
After the breakup, some idiot at AT&T decided that there might be some economic value to the OS and AT&T re asserted ownership of UNIX. Whether or not this reassertion of ownership was legal was never tested in the courts. UC Berkeley considered challenging AT&T's right to the old code but elected (in the end) to just pack it in.
The question of whether or not AT&T had the right to retroactively appropriate code written while they were a monopoly has never been tested in the courts. Since they were required to give up ownership of the code when they were a monopoly, I suspect that the economic advantages of the code could not (at a later date) revert to AT&T.
You see where this is going. Since Berkeley had re-written (Cory hall) 80 percent of UNIX as it stood in 1985, it was deemed easier by the UNIX community to rewrite the remaining 20% than fight with AT&T.
Caldera may have trouble proving that what they purchased from AT&T is even property (of any kind).
Tom
Re:Possibly where this is coming from (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think that M$ owns any of SCO at all.
Perhaps this could be moderated up to correct a high scoring inaccurate posting
Re:Unisys... [ObTechnical] (Score:3, Informative)
PNG is a raster image format, not vector.
You might be thinking of SVG (scalable vector graphics), which is essentially an XML format for describing vector graphics (note that IIRC the SVG format requires support for PNG and JPEG images, to include said images in an SVG file). None of this, however, makes PNG a vector graphics format by any stretch of the imagination.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Checkj this out: (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html
Re:could they use more pointless misqoutes? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Microsoft Backing SCO (Score:2, Informative)
Google Cache of The Reg article [216.239.39.104]
Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera Systems, will become CEO of a new Caldera Inc, which became a shell company after Caldera won its antitrust case against Microsoft. SCO president David McCrabb will become president of Caldera Inc. Bryan Sparks will remain with Lineo, which has filed for IPO.
The deal is interesting because of the complex and somewhat incestuous relationship between Caldera, SCO, Microsoft, Citrix, and Novell. Microsoft acquired SCO shares as a result of getting SCO, founded in 1978 by Doug and Larry Michels, to produce a version of Unix called Xenix. Microsoft had licensed Unix from AT&T, and the product was first marketed in 1979. In 1987, Microsoft was concerned that AT&T's Unix applications might not run with Xenix. As a consequence, AT&T agreed to add some Xenix code to its Unix and to pay Microsoft a royalty for this.
Ray Noorda subsequently acquired Unix from AT&T for Novell, held it for two years, and then it was sold to SCO in 1995 - with Novell receiving a 13.8 per cent holding in SCO as part of the deal. The next year, SCO realised that the code added to Unix was no longer needed or relevant, so it asked Microsoft to agree to end the agreement. Microsoft refused, with the consequence that SCO complained to the European Commission competition directorate early in 1997. In FY 1998, SCO paid Microsoft more than $1.138 million in royalties. In January, Microsoft sold its entire 12.3 per cent holding in SCO, and the SCO share price began to collapse.
Sorry, forgot links... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mirror for the letter (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. (Score:2, Informative)
OS/2 was developed with the master source code repositories running on Xenix for OS/2 1.0 and OS/2 1.1, but that's it. Actually to be technically accurate the master copies ran on MVS, since IBM considered their copies to be the masters and Microsoft's to be shadow copies, but....
Once the first IDW build of NT was done (sometime in 1989), NT ran 100% on NT.
So from 1988 to 1989 NT's source repository ran on OS/2, but it's been NT ever since.
Check out Helen Custer's Inside Windows NT or G Pascal Zachary's Showstopper! for more info.
Re:Unisys... [ObTechnical] (Score:3, Informative)
I just wandered over to one of Macromedia's support pages [macromedia.com] and noted the following statement:
As little sense as the paragraph makes if you try to parse it closely, this second "chunk" has gotta be what contains the vector information. Maybe the setup is something like the TIFF/PICT preview that some EPS files have? Sigh. I'm kindof disappointed...
Re:Mirror for the letter (Score:4, Informative)
It is true that TrollTech controls who can write closed-source applications for KDE, but they have no control over open-source applications for KDE, or KDE itself. In addition, AFAIK they have never prevented anyone from buying a QT license that wanted one. That would be stupid of them, since they would only be denying themselves revenue. It is not true that SCO controls TrollTech. TrollTech is its own company, not controlled by anyone, and it is fully committed to supporting open-source software.
Re:So what SCO is saying... (Score:3, Informative)
No, what they're saying is that they're no longer selling Linux because with it they give royalty-free license to use, distribute, etc. their alleged IP (see GPL).
Unfortunately, the cat's out of the bag.