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?"
What about SCO Linux customers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Picture this: SCO warning customers that they may be liable, can those customers sue/claim compensation from the company that sold them the infringing product? Isnt this comparable to SCO sueing themselves?
Whatever the outcome, people are going to feel this for years to come.
Re:Excuse the ignorance... (Score:2, Interesting)
The big question, is when will SCO tell us what they think is in violation. I read the last interview here with an SCO PR dude and he avoided being clear if it was copyright or patent. I only assume it's not trademark, because they would be require to say what the think is a violation there.
If there is a real violation, SCO should fscking say what it is or go the fsck away! I hope the stock price falls and they all go broke.
They already shipped it. (Score:3, Interesting)
I realise that the ~$150 million SCO got from microsoft three years ago (after purchasing DR-DOS just so they could sue a recent antitrust-convicted abusive monopolist) has now run out, and at the rate they burn through cash they'll be out of money soon. But just because they managed to get a big windfall from Microsoft doesn't mean they'll get a big windfall from IBM next time they need money...
IBM is going to have a ball with this...
Rob
Prove it. (Score:3, Interesting)
could they use more pointless misqoutes? (Score:3, Interesting)
This had better be a joke (Score:5, Interesting)
In the business world, you do not want to piss off you *entire customer base* like this!
Please tell me this is an April 1 joke that got leaked late...
A last ditch effort (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I think AT&T/Lucent/Avaya should form a company and bring the Unix rights back home.
Re:Best thing that could happen for Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
Only in the short term - in the long term it'll permanently dispell the SCO/UNIX/Licensing FUD that MS keep pushing so hard.
Given the speed that the courts move, it should all be worked out just around the time of the release of Longhorn - giving Linux a clean bill of health just in time to get in the way of Windows 2005.
A blatant lie (Score:2, Interesting)
From the letter: Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights.
"All actions necessary?" Just tell us what code has been copied and it'll be fixed in under a week. The violation will cease to continue. Fast, simple, zero effort.
Or does he mean, "similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we've decided to avoid the main issue and try to make money on the technicalities, while in the long run benefiting nobody and harming ourselves as well as our users."
So why did they "suddenly discover" this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, the code for the various parts of Linux have been available for quite a long time. Why this "sudden discovery" of IP problems? Obviously this isn't something that just appeared with the latest versions of the various distros...
Finally, if the stolen code is so bloody obvious then why not show even one example of where there is direct copying. This wouldn't affect their legal strategy one bit (despite claims to the otherwise) and would grant them so much more credibility.
As it stands it still seems like SCO's jumping up and down and shouting "BUY ME NOW!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!"
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Did anyone read the link to Gartner group paper? (Score:2, Interesting)
In the first paragraph, we have:
"IS departments using Linux or other open-source code should have an internal process, possibly with advice from their legal departments, to perform due diligence (see Note 1) on the nature and origin of open-source code for possible infringement of patents"
The suggested process is:
Due Diligence Options
1. Name and reputation of source and origin of software code
2. Names of the contributors and developers
3. If outside libraries are included, the source of the code, its use and deployment
4. Checks with the Free Software Foundation on patent infringement claims
5. Negotiations for indemnification from liabilities, or support from the vendor 6. References and contacts
Reading these, items 1, 2 3 and 6 have absolutely no relevence to patent claims. So, what are they doing as part of a due diligence for patent issues?
Re:This had better be a joke (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you considered sharing this particular bit of news with the MPAA/RIAA/TV Studios and anyone else accusing their customers of being thieves?
Timeline (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Excuse the ignorance... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problemo that they have though is that 'SCO' is really Caldera inc which in turn used to sell Linux. There is a big problem with distributing linux if you intend to get heavy on the IP trip. As Bill Gates observed, Linux was released under a viral license which in effect strips away most of SCO's intellectual property rights.
The only things that Caldera can enforce its rights on at this point is code that is in the SCO code base AND a Linux distribution AND NOT in any Caldera distribution that shipped after the SCO acquisition.
The other tricky problem they have is detrimental reliance. Oh and don't discount the fact that getting into an IP pissing contest with IBM or Microsoft or any of the really big players is suicidal for any technology company, those guys have more patents to fire back in self defense its not funny.
The only reason SCO is doing this is that its their last gasp survival attempt - get bought by someone big.
A much cheaper way to do the same thing would be to put the company up for sale on EBay.
With tactics like these..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, if companies start to think that using Linux could get them into legal entanglements- like what SCO is starting now, RIAA-style- then they might be more likely to go towards microsoft products, because Microsoft and their army of lawyers will make sure everything is properly licensed. Or so the reasoning should go.
Moreover, Microsoft certainly has the cash and interest to put down bullshit claims that might arise like this, whereas the companies that sell linux products have much smaller resources to put into fights like this. Again, this is the line of thinking that they would hope to instill, to steer customers torwards MS products.
Yeah, yeah, I've got my tinfoil hat right here....
I'd be looking at somebody's offshore accounts (Score:2, Interesting)
Possibly where this is coming from (Score:3, Interesting)
In August 2000, the company known as SCO became Tarantella Inc.
The SCO tradename was bought by Caldera (now a subsidiary of Microsoft)
So this lawsuit isn't from the original SCO at all, but the new company using the SCO tradename.
Interested in knowing when (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, everything could be moved overseas and/or somebody like Alan Cox could continue to maintain a branch of the kernel like what is being done today but, if I really, really wanted to shake corporate confidence in Linux disrupting actual development would be the primary target. It would also make sense for SCO to attempt to do something like this. An arguement can be made that stopping distribution of the kernel sources and any binaries produced would put a halt on the continuing alleged infringement.
Would it stop everyone from using linux? Nope. But it would totally derail business adoption of linux here in the States first. Elsewhere I don't know.
Re:File and Line Number (Score:3, Interesting)
If SCO distributes (distributed) GNU/Linux under the GPL/LGPL/etc licenses it's required to, doesn't that mean that anyone can freely copy and redistribute it? If this is true, anything that is in Caldera Linux is free game, regardless of whether reams of source code were lifted verbatim from UNIX because SCO licensed it under the GPL when they distributed GNU/Linux. Anyone have any insight on this? Surely there must be someone at SCO who read the GPL before they released software under it! (Though it seems it took them quite a while to read the software they were releasing... sigh)
Order Yours Today (Score:3, Interesting)
Yet another case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.
SCO is Scared of Linux (Score:1, Interesting)
that statment says to me that they are afraid that Linux. It threatens their UNIX OS. Sounds to me like they are scrambling to do whatever they can to hurt linux so they can shove THEIR (version of/whatever it is) UNIX up everyones arse's and to shutdown anything that remotely resembles the software they own.
I havent studdied up on SCO cuz from the get-go they seem to be plain idiots and i've had enough laughs for right now, but this just seems like an underhanded way to shut down a growing competitor in the OS market.
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.
Sounds like Microsoft Propaganda to me...
Re:Where? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, and for two primary reasons:
1) SCO's bluffing until the bitter end. There is no copyright infringement, and everyone in high level positions at SCO knows it. SCO's market exit strategy (to be bought by IBM) backfired in a huge way, and there is no way to repair the damage. If SCO backs off now, it will be destroyed by the SEC for gross negligence towards the shareholders. Everyone at SCO knows that IBM is going to destroy SCO, and are merely trying to hold off the inevitable for as long as possible.
2) There is no copyright infringement. When the trial starts (and it's a given that this will get to trial considering #1 above), SCO will have to produce something (and I guarantee it will be manufactured ala Microsoft). At that point, the jig will be up. SCO doesn't actually want to go to trial, but now the company has painted itself into a corner and will -have- to go to trial. This is a great big "OOPS!" on SCO's part.
"And what, exactly, happened to their statement that they weren't going after Redhat or Joe Linuxuser, but instead just IBM?"
SCO realized that IBM wasn't biting, and panicked. This is SCO's flailing around for anything and everything to halt its inevitable destruction.
Re:"All Linux users"? Including Caldera users? (Score:5, Interesting)
I presume this means that derivative works created by SCO users who received SCO code under the GPL are still legitimate, and that this license to create derivative works has not been revoked, right?
So any SCO user has the right to grant a license to any non-SCO user to make derivative works.
Any SCO users out there want to pipe up and grant such a license to IBM, Redhat, etc?
Actually, *are* there any SCO users out there?
Re:Best thing that could happen for Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
My take on this is that they're going to pump this whole issue as much as possible before anything becomes public, and at that point the executives will probably dump most of their stock. That's another good reason to go after IBM first; it's not hard to convince IBM to agree with the court to "guarantee that proprietary information is kept secret."
So, it's back to BSD then? (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope SCO is totally humiliated in this lawsuit.
Other members in Canopy Group (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"All Linux users"? Including Caldera users? (Score:2, Interesting)
did Microsoft buy SCO??? (Score:3, Interesting)
why do I get the feeling that Microsoft money is somehow behind this effort???
Re:File and Line Number (Score:5, Interesting)
As SCO's own source is closed, how can we possibly verify that they didn't merge Linux code into their Unix source? If there is code that matches, there is a public verifiable trail of Linux and GNU software development, with archives of that old code for confirmation.
We aren't allowed to see any similar development history with SCO's code, not even the source snapshots that would have been purchased by IBM et. al.
Finally there is the wee issue that the vast majority of *nix kernel algorithms have been analyzed and discussed to death in dozens of textbooks for operating systems courses. By definition those algorithms are not patentable, because they have been published to the public domain as part of those textbooks. If Linux and SCO both happen to implement those algorithms, SCO cannot claim infringement because they don't own that IP.
I really can't think of any Linux features that aren't discussed in such texts. The kernel doesn't use SVR4 signal APIs or semantics. The network stacks are from BSD origins. Resource scheduling algorithms are a dime a dozen from the textbooks, as are approaches for process and application/user security. What does that leave for SCO to claim they "own"?
An attempt at stealing Linux for sole ownership (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's how it works:
1. Stop selling OpenLinux.
2. Sue everyone except Caldera OpenLinux users, and win.
3. SCO are now the only company able to legally use the Linux source code, and they effectively own it. This could result in the GPL being legally nullified.
4. Once the legal battle is won, start marketing Linux again, as the only vendor.
I suggest that all future work to Linux source code and GPL'd applications is released under a new version of the GPL. This version should include a new clause which specifically prohibits the use of the code and application by SCO, any of it's subsidiaries, or any parent companies.
It's time to put a stop to this (Score:3, Interesting)
My concern is that, given how SCO has been conducting itself, they will try to use fear as a reason not to use Linux by first suing individual Linux users and developers. Although I do not believe that SCO has much of a case, but how can you know as they will not release any evidence, the suits SCO would file against individuals would probably be very difficult for these individuals to defend themselves against, and, regardless of whether SCO is right or wrong, these individuals will probably choose to settle.
Therefore, I am proposing the following set of initial steps to bring a quick end to this situation:
I believe that under the combined pressure of a stock sell-off and rapidly decreasing revenues SCO will not even be able to continue its current legal activities.
Unix based on older OS Multics (Score:3, Interesting)
Multics was originally concieved of by MIT. GE Information Systems and Bell labs became part of the project.
I'm not sure of the exact details but GE sold their computer business to Honeywell. At one point I think Honeywell and french computer company Bull merged/joined and later separated and I believe that Bull ended up with the rights to Multics.
For more details about Multics you can look at the usenet for the group alt.os.multics or http://www.multicians.org/
Two delightful possibilities... (Score:5, Interesting)
2: IBM, in discovery, demands a receives the source to SCO's flavors of Unix and finds evidence that SCO stole GPL'd source code to put into unixware / openserver. Sco is forced to release the whole shebang under the GPL.
Isn't there anything we can do? (Score:1, Interesting)
It seems they just want to sour the milk for everyone (including themselves). Or they think they will continue to exist after such litigating behavior? Who would even want to look at their "valuable source code" after this?
The problem is that now they have already lost the Linux bandwagon. There's nothing left for them. They have to litigate or they are dead. Problem is: I believe they will fail anyway. Fail in their lawsuits and fail in the marketplace.
Regardless, I think the Open Group should jump in and tell them to stop calling their valuable little IP just plain Unix:
"UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group."
http://www.unix.org/trademark.html
Re:File and Line Number (Score:4, Interesting)
I imagine they can claim that they were previously unaware of the infringement. That's why they've now stopped selling their Linux.
The problem I see them running into is that their claim seems to be based not so much on specific violations relating to copied source code, but on the general idea that people working under non-disclosures later "disclosed" information in the form of source code which they wrote for Linux, thus violating their agreements.
There are a lot of problems with this. Perhaps SCO misunderstood what they were purchasing. Unix is not some brand-new system that was developed in a secret lab, with code disclosed to no-one. The violations Caldera is claiming are likely to be vague and almost impossible to prove. Unless they have specific information to the contrary, anything in Linux might very well have been put there by someone with the necessary knowledge who was not bound by an agreement. The Unix code base has been subject to all sorts of outside interactions over the years.
This legal action is simply a mark of SCO's desperation and lack of income from products. If they're lucky, they might collect an out-of-court settlement from IBM and some other deep pocket customers they choose to go after. They'll never win anything substantial in court, though.
Re:did Microsoft buy SCO??? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is Linus Torvalds' views on this mess? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Excuse the ignorance... (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems that they did not understand the full implications of the GPL when they filed their original suit against IBM.
However, the cat is now out of the bag. Any code that was in any kernel that SCO distributed after filing suit against IBM is now "in the public domain" and they can't take it back.
This just may end up being a test case for the GPL.
How about an injunction? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Where? (Score:5, Interesting)
From the text of the Copyright act:
In other words, you can copyright a binary, or you can copyright the actual printout of the code (verbatim.) You cannot however copyright any workalike code.
As far as patent infringement goes, they would have a leg to stand on if they were to prove which specific patents they were seeking to enforce. Given the System V was released in 1983, any and all patents on System V expired in the year 2000. Worst case scenario, they were pending for 2 years, and would have expired in 2002.
Considering IBM's license to all of that technology is an established fact long before any of the events described, I think SCO is going to find itself in the hurt box if this case is placed before a Judge.
Re:"All Linux users"? Including Caldera users? (Score:5, Interesting)
Any SCO users out there want to pipe up and grant such a license to IBM, Redhat, etc?
That's an excellent point, and I can't help but wonder....
Suppose for a moment SCO is right -- there's some dead-on, no quibbling, not even kidding evidence of code-lifting. However, Caldera/SCO has simultaneously been releasing the same code -- which they have rights to either way -- under the GPL. Wouldn't the very act of releasing that code effectively cancel the argument that it was proprietary?
Re:"All Linux users"? Including Caldera users? (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, I hereby grant a license to any non-SCO user to make derivative works of all SCO GPL code to IBM, RedHat, etc.
Oh, and while I'm at it, I hereby revoke SCO's license to its own code, citing violations of the GNU General Public License, which basically says that those that violate the license have no license to use it, so there.
Re:This had better be a joke (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe the management is just hoping that they'll draw enough attention so that gullible investors will drive their stock price up so they can cash out [yahoo.com] and do something useful with their lives.
That's perfect! (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, someone with gimp skills, please design a banner we can put on our web sites to tell SCO what we think.
My suggestion: A penguin on the left, with Bender doing a lean-in from the right, saying "SCO can bite my shiny metal ass".
This is exactly what the Linux community needs. We need to rally against a lawsuit claiming we're infringing on SCO's intellectual property by using someone else's intellectualy property in web banners. That will really make us look innocent.
Trying to marginalize Linux like they did BSD (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly right. When AT&T/USL sued UC Berkley over BSD, they crippled BSD for a decade. Now they are trying to do the same thing to Linux. The AT&T vs BSD lawsuit introduced enough FUD and left a big enough cloud over BSD to drive commercial users away from BSD and make vendors license SysV "just to be safe". Even a strong BSD varient like the orginal SunOS has been supplanted by a SysV varient Solaris. I suspect that one of Sun's reasons in switching to SysV was to avoid legal issues, in addition to getting the "newer and improved" features of SysV. It is only very recently, with Mac OS-X, that BSD is finally coming out from under the cloud and starting to become mainstream again.
I find it interesting that the letter claims control over UNIX "methods". It sounds like they are contending that they have a lock over all "UNIX-Like" systems, even those with non-encumbered code because the ideas and methods are facsimilies of proprietery methods. I think they are actually saying that they have a monopoly on *nix-likeness. So regardless of the cut-and-paste issue with the code, they are still going to fight over the implementation itself. How they expect this to hold up in court is going to be interesting because the already "gave it up" when they cleared the BSD settlement.
Re:Excuse the ignorance... (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming there's nothing obvious (eg, SCO copyright notices in the comments), one of SCO's challenges will be to establish the pedigree of their code. Just because there are identical sections in the two source trees now does not imply the direction in which copying occurred. To prove that, for example, code that existed at SCO in 1994 showed up in the Linux kernel in 1995 is somewhat more challenging. IMO, most companies' backup procedures are probably not adequate to establish the necessary chain of evidence. You can't just show up with a tape that you say has filesystem dumps from 1994. Look at what goes on with photographs of crime scenes:
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The prosecution will call the photographer, who swears that they were at the scene and took pictures.
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Then they trace the film through development by the lab, again with people swearing that they developed that film, made these prints, etc, with records to back that up.
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Then they ask to admit the photos as evidence.
As a defense attorney faced with a backup tape cartridge, I would demand that the other side at least prove when it was dumped, and that the security arrangements were such that it was not feasible for another tape to have been substituted between then and now.Re:This had better be a joke (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, it looks like that might be the current business theory of the day. Making money by pissing off your entire customer base, that is. After all, SCO's trying it, Microsoft's trying it, Intel's trying it, the MPAA and RIAA are trying it... Heck, I can't think of one American company that isn't!
Hopefully they'll all go out of business in a year or five and the startups that replace them will... I don't know... Care about their customers and community?
Re:Trying to marginalize Linux like they did BSD (Score:3, Interesting)
Sun's switch to System V predated the AT&T vs BSD lawsuit by several years, and I'm fairly certain (although I have never worked for either of the two companies) that Sun had an AT&T UNIX license years before switching to System V, as that was typical for Unix vendors back then (I vaguely recall AT&T copyrights scrolling by on SunOS 3.2 startup).
Report from what went on on the inside (Score:4, Interesting)
In the complaint SCO mentions 4000 application developed for their operating system. I remember a higher number being mentioned back when I was involved. I also remember a catalogue of the applications, and a lot of them were really silly apps obviously put there just to make the catalogue bugger. Also, if you'd could count the number of Linux applications, I'm sure you'd reach a number a couple of magnitudes greater.
SCO is as bad (or worse) as Microsoft. They were back then too, although I was blinded because I worked with the stuff all the time.
For example: Back when OpenServer 5 was released, it used a product activation scheme almost identical to Microsofts, which the difference that while corporate customers don't have to activate their copies of XP, every single SCO customer had to call in to activate their system. The activation scheme itself worked pretty much the same.
OpenServer 5, when released, was a huge improvement to the old version, but at release it lacked a lot. One of those useful things was threads. In order to get a pthreads implementation you needed buy DCE. And, if I remember correctly, DCE was shipped by a third party. (I believe that third party is owned by IBM these days, but please double-check that information before you pass it on as fact).
While I worked with SCO products I kept hearing how great SCO was, and how they were the market leaders and the largest UNIX supplier in the word (1 million installations was a common number being passed around). At the same time very people outside the POS (and a few other businesses) business had heard about SCO. As far as I know, SCO got _very_ few new customers during the 90's, but mainly kept selling copies to providers of various POS systems. Another common customer was coporate telephone switch providers.
Most SCO customers, after installing the base OS, started off by installing the full GNU toolchain. The provided tools sucked too much.
There were 3 different C compilers available for OpenServer 5: SCO's compiler, the Intel conpiler, and GCC. GCC was free, so most people used that. Intels compiler provided the best code (but compiled slowly). SCO's tools were somewhere in the middle. I'm still not sure why people payed for them (I'm desperately trying to remember why _I_ used them... I guess I was blind... But me not having to pay for then helped, I guess :-) ).
I still remember the Monterey launch tigether with IBM. I remember having doubds back then even, especially when the SCO representative said that Monterey would take over after AIX as IBM's main UNIX system.
The Monterey launch wasn't the first major launch of amazing new products that was supposed to show the world just how great SCO really was. After SCO purchased UnixWare I remember it being touted as the next big thing, and the product that would change SCO. Naturally, it didn't.
Somehow I doubt the statement SCO made in the complaint about them having Monterey finished in 2001, ready for release. As I mentioned, I left the SCO world in 1997 and even then the star had begin to fade (it didn't take long), after that, nothing was heard about Monterey. Would they have continued working on it for 4 years and then be suprised no one wanted it? I don't think so.
I really hope that this goes to court, and SCO becomes required to show the allegedly finished Monterey product. I'm not so sure they will have anything to show.
sco probably did the copying too (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, a heavy hint was dropped on linux-kernel by a former SCO employee (iirc) that if one were to look very carefully at the support for a certain filesystem (*cough* 0x83) in the SCO kernel that one would find an example of the type of copying above.
Re:Mirror for the letter (Score:2, Interesting)
Clash of copyright and copyleft (Score:4, Interesting)
Presumably, timing is important. Caldera was originally a Linux company, not much different from Red Hat. But over the course of events, they negotiated to get ownership of the Unix IP. Now, I presume that if they act in a timely manner, they would be permitted by the courts to get their house in order with respect to IP issues. Therefore, they would be allowed to go ahead with lawsuits that seek to protect their Unix IP. But, if what they claim is true, then Linux is a mix of copyright and copyleft code. Obviously, copyright and copyleft are polar opposites. SCO cannot simply collect royalties from anyone using Linux, as that would be attempting to damage the copyleft of the GPL. I mean, it seems that in that case what we have is an IP no-man's land. SCO has no right to Linux, and the general public has no right to it. I can't see any alternative, then, to a painstaking process of separating copyright and copyleft code. (Okay, copyright is probably not the right term, because they are more likely to claim violation of trade secrets. But it's the same idea.)
So, what then of Caldera, the Linux company? Presumably, their license was similar to Red Hat's license, which disclaimed any indemnification for IP violations. In other words, Caldera was a service company, providing support contracts for Linux. So, maybe they would be free from lawsuits from their customers. However, they would be required to consider their customers as committing IP violations against the Unix IP. There is absolutely no way they could violate the GPL and grant any kind of waiver of royalties to customers who bought Caldera Linux.
In any case, we have to wonder what kind of due diligence the Caldera executives undertook before they acquired rights to the Unix IP. And does that due diligence, or lack thereof, affect their legal position. I mean, imagine if they knew that Linux contained violations of the Unix IP. If, at the same time, they were negotiating to acquire rights to the Unix IP, and they knew the requirements of the GPL on Linux, then they made a horrible business decision -- one that cannibalized their Linux business. I mean, what were they thinking?! That they would use the Unix IP to dominate the Linux market? That they didn't understand the GPL, which prohibits using IP to dominate copyleft software?
The way I feel right now, it's like that duck in the AFLAC commercial, which walks out of the barbershop shaking it's head and going "Aaaaahhh!"
No due dilligence. SCO has no case. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ignoring the fact that it defies all sense of credibility to think that this sort of "erasure" could actually occur, it doesn't carry any legal weight anyways (IANAL, but I checked with one about this recently because I was curious). By not being forthright about the specifics of the violation, SCO has not shown due dilligence to minimize the damage that could be caused by allowing the infraction to go unstopped. IBM and any other companies that SCO wants to sue about this won't have to pay one dime to SCO on this matter, and can even independantly file countersuits to cover their own legal costs.
Re:Since when are Stallman and Perens ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bruce
Could sue, too. (Score:2, Interesting)
and therefore found huge added value because you realised the amount of code that would be added by others to such a "viral" license...
In other words, in an era where most products are "end-of-lifed" in 3-5 years, Linux has no end-of-life under the GPL, and therefore is far more valuable. And their violation of the GPL destroys that.
Sounds like a class-action lawsuit to me.
M$ owns 14% of SCO (Score:1, Interesting)
Neither would suprise me, after all everyone is trying to control where the money flows.
Rubbishing SCO is not useful, they played thier part in the UNIX arena. There actions are predicatable regardless of M$ involvement
SCO would have an interest in doing this as they have a very rich set of applications that run under SCO. It's not much of a stretch for them to see Linux as a threat as SCO apps can be made to run on linux, This in itself is a serious threat to M$ in the SME market. I think it's understandable that SCO are on the offensive.
Please, before you flame me I'd like you to know I am an advocate of Open Source and I now work for IBM. I think it's important to maintain a balanced perspective. If this is a FUD a court case will expose it as that, if it isn't then we will finally be able to test the GPL properly in a court, possibly backed by IBM legal muscle.
Back atcha SCO with a big angry blue penguin!!!!