SCO Targets US Government, TiVo 1539
An anonymous reader writes "According to SCO, if you have a TiVo set-top box, or those models of Sharp Zaurus which use Linux, someone now owes them $32, since the company wants money 'for each embedded system using Linux.' SCO also says government agencies must pay up to $699 for each copy of Linux that they use."
Phone calls (Score:5, Interesting)
1) WHAT you get by paying them
2) WHAT part of linux infringes
3) TO SEE PROOF of infringement
When they don't provide it then it's time for lawsuits out the wazoo!
Cannonballs (Score:5, Interesting)
Call me an idiot, but I can't imagine that they'd go down this path if they knew they were only bluffing. Who would honestly be stupid enough to take on the US government on a money issue like this, just when the electioneering is getting started for '04, without thinking they could win?
Maybe SCO, maybe not.
Re:One small point (Score:4, Interesting)
The gov't, eh? (Score:2, Interesting)
Refreshing management trend (Score:5, Interesting)
No wishy-washyness. It's damn the torpedoes, and full speed ahead. Never a moment of doubt that they may be making a huge mistake. No second guessing themselves. We know what we want, and we know where we're going. And we'll be damned if ANYTHING is going to dissuade us. Full court press, lads.
Three Points (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Linux code should be de-SCOed to prevent this sort of problem from continuing to flair up
3) Would someone please investigate the RIAA to see if they're using any Linux systems? Personally I'd love to see the RIAA and SCO duke it out in court instead of on consumers who have to settle on their terms...
SEC complaint (Score:4, Interesting)
Exorbitant... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone want to crunch the numbers line-by-line to discover how much a boxed linux version should set you back if SCO's per-line cost is translated across the entire code?
Is extortion legal in america now? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is getting silly... (Score:3, Interesting)
Double dipping like this is a joke. I'm sure SCO's lawyers justify this by saying it's analogous to selling stolen goods and then receiving stolen goods but, assuming for a second that SCO's claims are valid, if a Linux distributor like Red Hat or SuSE settles up shouldn't that settlement cover their existing customers? If not, why do those customers have to license the software twice?
Makes you long for the good old days of instance justice - if this was the Wild West, someone would have put a bullet in SCO's back a long time ago.
how can this go one ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cannonballs (Score:5, Interesting)
Agent Smith:"That's right your Honor, after our thorough investigation we found that the code in question is nothing more than fiendishly hidden links to terrorist organizations and kiddy porn sites placed in the program by SCO."
Holy Fucking Shit (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not selfish. It is not stupid. It is downright crazy. They must be laying the groundwork for an insanity defense for when the SEC picks them up.
Those who... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's one nasty door you don't want to open. Maybe next law will say that everyone who ever spoke against the goverment will be shipped to re-education camps.
Re:Cannonballs (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe this is the final push and then the shit will hit the fan, all over the people who are left holding the cards.
Hmmmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They're not demanding money from TiVo owners. (Score:5, Interesting)
Last time I checked, TiVo used one of the 2.1.something kernels. The underlying hardware (in a Series 1, anyway) is a single PowerPC 403GCX running at (IIRC) 53 MHz...less power than an old PowerMac 6100. Out of the box, it's equipped with 16 megs of RAM (but you can bump that to 32 if you're good with a soldering iron).
I strongly doubt that TiVo used any of the technologies that $CO claims it owns (no SMP, no RCU, etc). Then again, $CO doesn't seem to be constrained too much by the truth.
Re:Must... have... licensing... revenue... (Score:5, Interesting)
They know they'll now be crushed out of existence by this move - hence the selling of stock.
This is nothing but simple stock fraud.
stocks (Score:5, Interesting)
Did SCO get bought by the guy who bought Pabst, closed all the breweries and leased the Pabst name? Charles Hurwitz, the same guy who bought the logging companies in Northern California, upped the logging, sold his stocks high, and then the logging companies went under when they logged out everything. Maybe it's 2 guys and I'm just thinking (hoping) it's just one evil guy.
Re:Slander? (Score:3, Interesting)
Dust off Kernel 2.2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Since 2.2 apparently doesn't infringe, why not create a super 2.2 kernel and swap it in for the (allegedly) infringing newer kernels on as many systems as possible?
Here's what I'm thinking/wondering:
1. How many Linux users actually need/use the components that IBM contributed?
2. How much non-infringing post-2.2 stuff can be back-ported to the 2.2 kernel?
3. If you managed to back-port as much as possible and polish-up a 2.2 kernel as much as it can be polished, will it meet the needs of most users?
I am a Microsoft fan....... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:SCO (Score:5, Interesting)
Better Yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
When someone's property is needed by the governement for the public good, the government can appropriate it for pretty much whatever they deem it's worth. (Courts rarely prevent this, no matter how egregious an abuse by a governmental entity.)
Linux is used in National Security situations and powers a good deal of the Internet. Having Linux remain free is of serious national interest. Claim emminent domain over SCO's intellectual property. If they fork over the disputed code, just take that and put it in the public domain. If they resist, raid them and take all of Unixware.
I'll leave it to the bean counters to determine the appropriate worth of a dying piece of software from a dying company.
Enterprise class UNIX (Score:3, Interesting)
SCO claims that enterprise class UNIX would not have been possible without their intellectual property. I had no idea that the TiVO OS was enterprise ready!
How much of a cut do they want for the Sony PS2 Linux kit. Are they going after Sony too? Hell, let's see SCO take on the entire fortune 500! All the more to crank up their legal burn rate.
Anybody who has contributed to the other 99.9% of the kernel should start a class action suit against SCO for attempting to hijack THEIR intellectual property, and sell a binary only kernel image containing GPL code, in clear violation of the GPL. Any sharp lawyers out there want to pick this one up?
Bright side for SCO (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Linux routers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:show sco where to stick their license fees (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html visit their webpage and tell them were they can stick their license fees.
Mod parent up, and this is an easier link [sco.com]. That was cool. They just got a request for Linux licensing requirements from Usama in Afghanistan, and they thanked me for it. Slashdotting their chosen extortion response system seems like a Good Thing. :)
Looks like they've got the Navy scared (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Must... have... licensing... revenue... (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally, can someone point me to a better spot that ir.sco.com to see 'SCO exec's dumping their stock over the weekend'... most edgar-ish sites seem to be a month or more behind in reporting compared to this page? Is the 24th the weekend AC meant?!
Hmm... I despise SCO enough that I'm finally found something journal-worthy... Details for the masses off http://ir.sco.com/edgar.cfm on my
PS: I propose a different kind of DDOS to the sco pages... lots of legalese asking for clarification of license terms for OpenLinux, FreeDos, BSD, or anything else. The tougher the question, the better. I suspect this is a method (overwork) that Shakespeare would feel applied when he said: First thing, let's kill all the Lawyers. (Henry IV or V?)
--
Advaitavedanta, and don't you forget it.
Update (somewhat OT -- sorry) (Score:3, Interesting)
Everone thank sheddd for the idea.
Thanks sheddd
Re:Must... have... licensing... revenue... (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets assume that they are. And lets assume they loose the lawsuit, and are proven not to own any Linux code.
What then? Do those people get their money back? Do they get to sue for extortion? What happens to the SCO execs?
Many questions, few answers.
This ... is so surreal. (Score:2, Interesting)
And McBride has already stated, on numerous occasions, that their problem is with 2.4 and above? And that they claim to own Linux because it is a "dirivative" work?
Oh wait
Maybe they took a bad bong hit or something?
--LordKaT
who is the mastermind behind this? (Score:2, Interesting)
First of all, I doubt SCO actually believe they have a chance in collecting these $699 license fees.
I also doubt SCO believes they can win the lawsuit against IBM, and now against RedHat as well. This is because they are at a advantage with IBM financially, also they have a weak case.
From all these SCO fiasco, I'm getting one common impression: SCO is trying to scare people off of using Linux. Afterall, if they are sincerely trying to see licenses, they would have taken another approach.
But why would they want to give Linux bad publicity? Why keep customer away from Linux? I think MS is behind all these...
SCO may have finally found... (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course most of them will simply block any further use of Linux and mandate using Window's for everything instead (the "Well we don't need the hassle" syndrome). The 10 million Bill payed SCO at the begining of this may be the smartest 10 million Gates ever payed out.
On the other hand, when this BS finally plays out and SCO is ground to dirt in the courts, it will forever foreclose this attack on Linux again. The question is can this get to litigation fast enough to cut the rising tide of dust and smoke that SCO is putting out.
Re:stocks and Stallman (Score:5, Interesting)
You know I thought it was as simple as this, up until yesterday. Yesterday mention was made that McBride had started mentioning targeting Stallman as one of those responsible for infringing on SCO IP. Stallman is certainly well known to most of us here, however to the stock broker and day trader monkeys he and his ideas are way too esoteric (for better or worse) to have any meaning at all in an attempt to manipulate stock price. Indeed Stallman has gone to great lengths to distance himself from the linux kernel (the only part of the GNU/linux package currently under contention by SCO), and is deeply involved in developing the independent HURD kernel - in these ways he is a completely incorrect target for the stock manipulation purpose.
I'm starting to think (with credit to others who have ruminated on the idea as well) there's something more insidious to all this than just a stock manipulation scheme. We've heard it before a dozen times - we'll just switch to a BSD, or we'll just remove the offending lines of code, or we'll just drop in HURD for the kernel instead of linux - our linux "problems" from SCO's perspective are seemingly easily solved, and in the short run you'd probably be right. But the scope of the SCO attack is too broad based (and seemingly getting more broad daily) to be simply focused on corrupting the linux kernel now - that is too easily thwarted - and if we can see it I'm sure someone at SCO sees it too. (Sorry chums we're not the only +5 insightful people on the planet)
I think that this is more about someone (and it has been suggested before on these boards by others, but bears repeating) is trying very hard to cut the legs out from under the entire OSS movement here and now. I think interested parties have come to realize that the time is near when it will no longer to be possible to perpetuate the proprietary program for rent business model of software development due to OSS having gained far too much momentum and widespread adoption. Even despite things like the SCO suits, we get more reports of more and larger businesses, governments and institutions committing firmly to integrating OSS and OSS products into their infrastructures on an almost daily basis. If those who wish to stop this are going to do so, they must do so now. I think this isn't only a last desperate gasp by SCO for some money, I think its a desperate gambit by proprietary software interests to kill OSS before it kills them. The stock manipulation thing is too transparent to be the only goal of the SCO attacks.
Or maybe I'm just giving too much credit and being too conspiracy theory. What the heck, it's interesting to consider.
As an aside, how bitter is the cup of vindication Stallman must be sipping from right now? And those who thought he was a bit too evangelical in his stance must at least be taking a moment to reflect that what he has been warning and working against is now beginning to happen right in front of us. Additionally, had people been more willing to acquiesce to the idea of using GNU/Linux as the name of the package used, it may have been more readily appearant to even laymen that even were SCO's claims valid their "contributions" still represent a ridiculously small amount of the overall package and thus their claim would have been more obviously worthless. I'll leave that for others to debate.
Re:Must... have... licensing... revenue... (Score:3, Interesting)
For all the rest, they are of course wrong.
Sun got options in SCOX at $1.83 per share (Score:3, Interesting)
More than that: in connection with their license, Sun received a warrant (that is, stock options) to buy 210,000 shares of SCOX at a price of $1.83 per share.
SCO's actions start making more sense when you abandon the "last gasp of dying company" paradigm and use the "paid FUD attackers" model. 40% of SCO's revenue, and all of their profit, come from Microsoft and Sun via the SCO Source licensing program.
Re:show sco where to stick their license fees (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:$699 = trying to kill Linux (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Get your insider sales info straight from sec.g (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're even thinking of investing in a company, read a recent 10Q first. This will clue you in on the state of the company, you'll find out if there are any external forces that may jeopardize the business and -- best of all -- it will point you in the direction of their competition.
Look at the competetors. Weed out the weak companies and get the one that is most likely to succeed in a sector (not necessarily the one that your "gut" tells you to go with).
Re:Must... have... licensing... revenue... (Score:2, Interesting)
How to you spell "IANAL" in Elizabethan era English? Methinks hell hath no wrath like a yuppie lawyer scorned. Thy legal hassles doth make me shiver fortnight upon fortnight, and bandwidth comes forth not unto me. Lo, for I am neither bestowed nor endowed with Antarctic fowl, nether as they fly--for they fly not!
...
To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hinder'd me of half a million, laugh'd at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorn'd my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Penguin. Hath not a Penguin eyes; hath not a Penguin hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer that a SCO luser is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Penguin wrong a SCO luser, what is his humility? revenge. If a SCO luser wrong a penguin, what should his sufferance be by SCO luser example? why revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
Let the FTC Know (Score:2, Interesting)
I submitted this today... (Score:5, Interesting)
An Austrian Free Software group by the name of FFS [ffs.or.at] has been talking to SCO Austria and SCO Germany, who have assured them SCO's European branches have "nothing to do" with SCO's claims, and there will be no Linux licences available from SCO in Europe. What's perhaps more interesting is that a SCO lawyer has admitted that SCO's copyright claims have little substance [pro-linux.de]. The article is in German, unfortunately. Here's a very rough translation of the title and the first paragraph:
SCO Plays Dead: No License Fees in Europe
As reported by Pro-Linux, representatives of the FFS [ffs.or.at] have been in touch with legal representatives of the Austrian and German branches of SCO, which has in the past few months accused Linux developers and users of intellectual property violations. These accusations, which remain as yet completely unsubstantiated, have recently culminated in SCO demanding license fees for Linux. This would amount to a misappropriation of Linux by the company, which would thus itself be exposed to accusations of software piracy. The FFS has now obtained a letter from SCO's legal counsel literally affirming that SCO's local branch has "nothing to do" with the claims. SCO's counsel, who has also admitted in a phone conversation with the FFS that SCO's copyright claims have little substance, goes on to protest that the company is doing everything to comply with the court decisions barring it from doing further damage to the reputation of Linux or its users.
[The rest of the article then goes into a rant on software patents etc.]
Comments on the linguistic side of my translation are also welcome, but bear in mind this was just a quickie.
And yes, I am karma whoring. But then, isn't everyone?
TiVo uses Linux 2.1!! (Score:5, Interesting)
# uname -a
Linux (none) 2.1.24-TiVo-2.5 #8 Wed May 8 15:38:27 PDT 2002 ppc unknown
TiVo and the DMCA (Score:5, Interesting)
Um....someone remind me what GNU means.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Doesn't this mean that by distirbuting Linux they may have implicitly agreed to the terms of contributing their code? Wouldn't that then mean they have no right to charge for it as it was contributed to the benefit of the open source community? Just a thought. I'm sure it's been said before.
Here's what I sent them: (Score:5, Interesting)
I respectfully ask that your company please stop with the nonsense. It is making our valley look bad. It is making Utah look bad. I am embarassed for you as a neighbor.
If your IP has been injected into the Linux kernel, all you have to do is tell the maintainers what the offending code is and they'll remove it immediately. I don't understand why you insist on receiving revenue when everyone is willing to correct the code *immediately*.
Again, please stop with the nonsense. It is hurting the future of Linux and embarassing all of us.
Respectfully,
Dr. Conan Albrecht
Re:Get your insider sales info straight from sec.g (Score:3, Interesting)
Opinder Bawa, VP of Engineering, sold everything he had a couple of months ago.
You have to go back to March for all the sales and probably 12 months for the purchases. It's a lot of slogging.
For example, the dilution of shares used in buying up the other company?
Off the top of my head (might be wrong), those are Form 3's, Form S-1's, and Form 8-K (other events). Also look in the 10-Q's for "total number of shares outstanding" and "fully diluted share counts". The shares have to appear there eventually.
Buying Vultus for shares was a slick move, all right.
And can YOU find anywhere offering prices on Put Options available for SCOX?
I've looked, but not found them.
There would be a couple of problems with options. First, there are people who have material non-public information. Think of everybody who works in the SCO's law offices, and all their friends who trade favors with each other. An options market maker would be trading against people who are doing exactly this, and there will be a lot more of them for SCOX then there are for a normal stock.
Second, this is such a humongous story stock that there is not enough liquidity in the stock. Even if there is no manipulation, it's still possible for news to whipsaw the stock violently. I have already suffered that once.
It's like a dot-com. It is trading on some kind of emotional resonance, not on business prospects. And there is not enough stock to go around -- just like the dot-com.
Think of the most rabid anti-open-source people you've ever met. Software is useless unless it comes from a company, linux developers are dirty hippies and amateurs, all that stuff. These people now have a way to express their emotional revulsion for open source by buying SCOX. And there's not much SCOX to go around so the price can bubble.
I believe the time to short SCOX is when it's going DOWN. I'm not even going to try to call the top. The idea is that the rabid stock owners will be in denial and will not sell immediately, so that the price will take some time to drop -- that it won't go from $12 to $5 overnight, but there will be plenty of time to short in at, say $7.
The denial period for dot-coms lasted three years!
And if I'm wrong and it does go from $12 to $3 overnight? Then I missed out. But everybody who shorts now might get taken to $20 before the bubble bursts.
Re:show sco where to stick their license fees (Score:5, Interesting)
To whom it may concern,
I am currently running a non-commercial webserver using linux. It is currently running a vanilla 2.4 kernel with no NUMA, SMP, and/or RCU options compiled. The physical server is located outside of the U.S.
Do I need to purchase a licence for my machine, as I do not have support for the big sticking points as outlined by Mr. Darl McBride? If so, could you please inform me of which portions of the kernel I may not compile, as to avoid infringing upon your intellectual property. I do not need specific source code segments, merely listing which kernel modules infringe upon your property will suffice.
Thank you
Re:TiVo uses Linux 2.1!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Must... have... licensing... revenue... (Score:4, Interesting)
The real question is how is Microsoft going to execute the next transfer of cash into the SCO litigation fund. Are they going to buy another perpetual Unix license?
SCO ripped off Open Source? (Score:3, Interesting)
Can the do it? (Score:2, Interesting)
If they lose the court battle - can Linus (and IBM) sue SCO for defamation - and claim damages?
Nandz.
erm, after reading some replies... (Score:2, Interesting)
To the point:
I got to thinking... (bad thing) what if SCO is right? Let me go further because that's only a small part of my point. What if SCO is right...they have IP in Linux. So they're going on this balls-out, almost comical (it is to me, mind you, but almost for the sake of professionalism?), crusade against Linux.
IBM was the beginning, they're in their own lawsuit.
Red Hat has a lawsuit against them now. SuSE is playing the "how can we help?" game on the outside, at least. TiVo has to have SOME sort of response.
As far as I know, that sums up the corporate side of the anti-SCO side.
Now, SCO did also target the US government? Alright, we've got corporations against SCO, we've got all the Linux geeks in the world against SCO, we've got most of the tech geeks interested in Linux against SCO. Will the US gov't give it a full glance or will they go the popular route or will they just ignore it?
After all is said and done, though, if SCO is right, and they lose due to this public outcry from populace and business, what then?
It's a victory for the GPL, for Open Source, etc, but is it a good one?
I suppose it's truly a democratic process, but if SCO is right, they're screwed in a way none of us would ever want to be screwed -- mind you, with these statements, I question that they don't deserve a good screwing one way or another.
*shrug* just a random, yet interesting thought.
Re:show sco where to stick their license fees (Score:3, Interesting)
1) If I purchase a licence and your lawsuit with IBM is lost, can I have my money back?
2) Your claims to IP in the Linux kernel have been vague at best. Can you clarify exactly what I am purchasing a licence too?
3) If simply recompile my Linux kernel without the sections of code which you claim contain your IP, do I still need a licence?
4) If I purchase a licence and subsequently encounter technical problems with those sections of Linux which you have licenced to me, am I entitled to technical support from yourselves?
5) Am I entititled to upgrades from yourselves?
6) If RedHat wins their lawsuit, can I just use Redhat without purchasing a licence from you?
7) Could I not simply download a copy of the Linux kernel which you are offering on your own FTP servers and then continue to use Linux under the terms of the GPL?
I look forward to your response.
Insider sales (Score:3, Interesting)
everyone's selling!