Samba Team Points Out SCO's Hypocrisy

An anonymous reader noted an article talking about the Samba Team's Statement to SCO. While Darl McBride blasts the GPL, his company simultaneously announces the use of Samba 3 in their OpenServer product. I'm not sure if it breaks my heart or boils my blood to read this stuff. Probably a little of both.

text of article

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the past few months, the SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) Corporation (formerly Caldera International, Inc. a Linux distribution vendor) has been complaining about violations of its Copyright works by the Linux kernel code.

Recently, Darl McBride, the Chief Executive Officer of SCO has been making pejorative statements regarding the license used by the Linux kernel, the GNU GPL. In a keynote speech he recently said :

"At the end of the day, the GPL is not about making software free; it's about destroying value."

In light of this it is the depths of hypocrisy that at the same event SCO also announced the incorporation of the Samba3 release into their latest OpenServer product. Samba is an Open Source/Free Software project that allows Linux and UNIX servers to interoperate with Microsoft Windows clients. The reason for this is clear; Samba3 allows Linux and UNIX servers to replace Microsoft Windows NT Domain Controllers and will add great value to any Operating System which includes it. However, Samba is also developed and distributed under the GNU GPL license, in exactly the same manner as the Linux kernel code that SCO has been criticizing for its lack of care in ownership attribution.

We observe that SCO is both attacking the GPL on the one hand and benefiting from the GPL on the other hand. SCO can't have it both ways. SCO has a clear choice: either pledge not to use any Open Source/Free Software in any of their products, or actively participate in the Open Source/Free Software movement and reap the benefits. For SCO to continue to use Open Source/Free Software while attacking others for using it is the epitome of hypocrisy.

The strength of Open Source/Free Software is that it is available to all without restrictions on fields of endeavor, as the Samba Team believes the ability to freely use, modify and learn from software code is one of the grounding principles of computer science, and a basic freedom for all.

Because of this, we believe that the Samba must remain true to our principles and be freely available to use even in ways we personally disapprove of.

Even when used by rank hypocrites like SCO.

Jeremy Allison,
Marc Kaplan,
Andrew Bartlett,
Christopher R. Hertel,
Jerry Carter,
Jean Francois Micouleau,
Paul Green,
Rafal Szczesniak.

Samba Team.

Re:SCO has no strategy

[Surak]

Or maybe they do. Perhaps they'll violate the GPL by distributing Samba and not distributing the source. Or perhaps they'll even go so far as to distribute a MODIFIED Samba without source. THat would even be worse.

Re:samba team...

[akiaki007]

You can't ask for that under GPL. You can however ask for money to download. Though they can't single out individual computers and organizations, as that would be anti-competitive behaviour. So they can't do anything about it except the post they just made.

SCO users depend on GNU

[eric76]

One of the SCO articles of the last few hours quotes SCO users as saying that SCO's utilities are useless and they depend on GNU to be able to do anything.

From SCO users divided over GPL [infoworld.com]:

"The OpenServer compiler is crap. Without (the GCC) they would be up the creek," said Hans Anderson, the director of software development with Price Data Systems in Louisville, Kentucky.

SCO against GPL? Not according their website...

[Mister Agony]

http://www.sco.com/products/openserver507/features /open_source_tools.html Strange...

Re:SCO has no strategy

[Atzanteol]

If you *read* the Gnu GPL, not that anybody does, it doesn't say that you must distribute source with the binaries. But that you must provide a means whereby the user can request the source code from you, and that you will give the source when requested. SCO could even charge you for the price of a medium on which to put the source and the price of mailing it to you. The catch here is that SCO would need to include a file or something that tells how to request the source, which I doubt they would do.

For some reason, everybody seems to think the GPL requires everything to be on a FTP site...

And SCO is down

[edgrale]

As seen here [yahoo.com] SCO is down some 2.39% today. 10 bucks for air is still a lot.

Re:SCO Resellers

[FatRatBastard]

Some [yahoo.com] ain't [yahoo.com] happy [yahoo.com] at all. There seem to be a small core set of ISVs / Developer that are sticking by SCO, but according to this guy things aren't looking too healthy on the "product" side of SCO.

Re:SCO has no strategy

[Brahmastra]

SCO has nothing. No one wants to pay ridiculous licensing fees for UNIX anymore when Linux works just fine. This is SCO's last ditch effort before they sink into sewage. Sun will follow soon. No one wants Slowlaris.

Two flaws with that arguement.

[nuggz]

1. Copyright does not have to be actively enforced, trademark does.

2. The GPL allows much use, only violations need to be enforced.

It would be a bad day for IP if they rule that poor enforcement of copyright == public domain.

Most tellingly

[temojen]

2. There are FAR fewer than 1000 people here and FAR fewer sponsors than I was led to believe. No major discussion (some disappointment and some worry though) about HP pulling out of the Keynote...for everyone that made mention of the pull-out, 10 reminded them of who sponsored the little reception last night (HP). That was little comfort, since HP did a MUCH better job at LinuxTAG and LinuxWorld. No mention at all or concern about Intel (which I found to be, potentially, far more damaging to the attendees.).

8. VERY few, if any, Europeans or Middle Easterners. No reaction to the defeat today in India, or the greater defeat last week in China. No Australian or New Zealand accents heard. The only French accents I heard were Creole (Louisiana) and French-Canadian. High concentration of attendees from Florida and California/Arizona and some from the Midwest. Pitiful turnout compared to last year of real VARs or potential customers and REALLY bad Vendor area.

11. There ARE a few clueful participants here that are preparing to or have been convinced by the show today to drop SCO. They are tired of the impact on their businesses and they see real advantages in moving on without SCO. The many cheerleaders have not convinced them to stay. The many defections evident this year are worrying. The no-shows are worrying. Armed, uniformed guards in the show areas do not signal a healthy environment to them. Most of all, they see the products falling further and further behind, while the company continues to concentrate on this ridiculous lawsuit.

Re:Drop SCO support from Samba

[interiot]

Doing this, and especially being very successful at it, will make business decision makers aware that by using open source products, they are placing their company at risk of the whims of young individuals who sit at home in their underwear everyday. We want adoption of the free software foundation's ethics and more players to the OSS table, not fear of young punks.

Re: SCO has no strategy

[eric76]

I was wondering about whether or not their sales talks at their little get together are real or are they just hot air.

They seem to have convinced their faithful that they really do have some new products coming out.

From Users and resellers say SCO's news is good news [computerworld.com]:

"I came away willing to invest in Unix" again, he said. "I was very pleased that SCO appears to be very committed to Unix, that there is a road map. It appears that it's a company that wants to partner, and therefore we should explore a lot of technical opportunities with them."

S. Arshad Raza, CEO of Premier Systems Ltd., a SCO reseller and systems integrator in Karachi, Pakistan, said he has worried for several years about the apparent end of SCO Unix, but he now has a renewed belief in the company's outlook. "When [customers] lost confidence in SCO," he said, they stopped paying him for licenses and bought and installed pirated copies of the operating system because they didn't feel they needed to pay money to a declining business. But that's now changing, he said, since SCO has filed an intellectual-property lawsuit against IBM, and customers are gaining new optimism.

Considering the ethics of the current SCO, would you trust them to deliver products they promise?

Re:samba team...

[gbjbaanb]

SCO can continue to use Samba, as long as they comply with the requirements of that licence. The don't need to pay out anything to use it, and if the Samba team want to offer SCO a different licence, SCO can happily say 'no thanks, we'll stick with the GPL version'. Nothing anyone can do about that.

SCO can also *say* what they like about the GPL, its only when they stop complying with the terms can anyone do something about their use of the software - like take them to court to see who a judge agrees with.
I think the 'person' taking SCO to court to see whether the GPL is effective or not is in fact SCO, in a roundabout kind of way with their IBM litigation :)

Re:SCO has no strategy

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

But I don't drink beer... ! :-).

Seriously though, I appreciate the support but please
don't send more email. I'm trying to separate out all
the RC1 bug reports and fix them at the moment :-).

If you want to do something useful, complain to the SEC
about SCO's obvious stock manipulation strategy.

Cheers,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

Re:samba team...

[digitalunity]

That's a big if...

SCO has no doubt modified the Samba source to suit it's use in their products. If they don't ship the source, or make it available, then they aren't complying with the GPL's terms. In which case, they have no right to distribute it.

Re:samba team...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it what MySQL is doing?

From www.mysql.com: Commercial licenses for either version can also be purchased from MySQL AB, for those who don't wish to be bound by the LGPL or GPL. For more information on licensing MySQL Connector/J, please contact us. MySQL AB also offers commercial support for MySQL Connector/J.

How is that different from licensing Samba to SCO to distribute it in a non-GPL way?

Re:samba team...

[shepd]

>If SCO disclaims the GPL license, they have no other right to use the software.

Actually, they may continue to use the software without accepting the license. They simply may not distribute it. The software defaults to plain copyright under these conditions.

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

Re:text of article

[Rinikusu]

Ahh, but therein lies the "crux": Who determines what "overcharging" is? Sure, the medium and cost of duplication (if you're dealing with CD distrubution) is only .50. Does this mean that everything above .50 is overcharging? How and more importantly, who determines what a fair price is? Apparently, Microsoft has determined that $199 is a fair price for Windows XP. While I or you may disagree, millions and millions of customers pay $199 for Windows XP and to them, it's a fair price for what it offers. Sure, some pundits would point to the lack of competition and MS's government-labeled "monopoly" as the reason why they can get away for charging $199 for Windows, but I've found, as have others, that paying $199 for Windows 2k was a hell of lot easier and more painless than installing Linux.

Microsoft does more than just sells software to people who don't "know any better". In fact, I know a bunch of people (including myself), who buy Microsoft and we DO "know better". It's just that we use our computers as tools and want a minimum of hassle and $199 represents a HELL of a bargain compared to spending our nights fucking around with what really is a really good Server OS. The old saying really is true: "Linux is only free if your time has no value." My time currently goes for $15/hour (not much, I admit), during normal business hours, and really has no set price outside of those hours: my spare time is "priceless" in the sense that the last thing I want to do when I'm not working is WORKING on a computer. Redhat also does the same thing, to an extent. I certainly could not roll my own distribution and their work into hardware auto-detection and setup saves me countless hours of "fiddling". It's not that I'm too busy to "do things myself", it's just that I don't feel like doing it myself. I'm lazy, overweight, and American and we've got nukes to prove the point (why invade a country when you can just blow it to smithereens at the push of a button? hrm...).*

No company has the power to prevent you from using someone else's software unless you were stupid enough to sign some sort of contract stating otherwise. And even if you did, I have my doubts as to the legality of such a contract, much like you don't have the right to sell yourself into slavery. However, I'm no lawyer, nor am I the legal system, but if I see a piece of software that I think sucks or think I could do better, or I think is too expensive and that it would just be easier to write my own version (or even maybe "That's an interesting program, I'd like to see what it takes to write that..."), MS is not going to stand on my doorstep and beat me up because I'm doing it unless I'm violating their patents or copyrights (and that in itself is worthy of another long, lengthy, passion filled debate, see DMCA). Witness that it seems most "OSS" projects are quite literaly clones or functional equivalents of "commercial" software (OpenOffice, Apache, KDE/GNOME, etc). While on occasion we really get some innovation (I think dashboard is pretty innovative in concept, I hope they really can deliver), the point is that people are "publishing better bike plans" everyday. (caveat: A lot of those better bike plans are no such thing). I offer freshmeat and sourceforge for your perusal to discover this for yourself. (and again: It's not necessarily a bad thing, either).

From a strictly monetary point of view, Free Software kills value. No one says that's the only point of view you have to have, and indeed I mentioned that there's actually a trade-off involved (human interest value vs. quantifiable monetary value). Some people hold the first with more value, others the latter (see various dictators that would sell their own people into slavery for a few more bucks.. life is cheap, we'll make more, but money buys really nice things).

*I use Windows 2k because it works. I also have another system with Redhat9, and it mostly just works, as well. If Redhat 9 didn't find/support my hardware, or meet most of my needs, you can bet your sweet ass I'd have Win2k or XP on the new machine pronto.

Corrected URL (sigh)

[kroyd]

The correct URL is of course:

http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&act io n=m&board=1600684464&tid=cald&sid=1600684464&mid=3 0218

Hehe, I guess I should have used that preview button after all..

Re:samba team...

[johnnyb]

Actually, they can sue SCO for copyright infringement. SCO has publicly said that they do not believe the GPL is valid, and are implying that they aren't bound to the legal implications of it. Since GPLd programs can only be distributed under the GPL (nothing else gives you that privilege), SCO can be sued for violating the Samba GPL (as well as many other GPLs).

Re:SCO has no strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that the I'm gonna sue the shit out of everybody to make our nearly worthless stock more valuable so we can sell it and get on with our lives because our company is fucked and it's either that or try to find another job in a depressed economy strategy is a pretty good one.

That is if you don't mind having an entire industry of your peers hate the shit out of you.

Re:samba team...

[saden1]

Doesn't them saying the GPL is not valid say that they have rejected Samba's GPL license requirement?

SCO loses only the rights to distribute the kernel

[tjwhaynes]

As I read this, SCO has terminated their right to distribute their Linux-based OS (and anything using Samba...) by attempting to sublicense to others under a non-GPL license

See that little bit in Section 4 that says 'the Program'? That means that each GPL license applies to the code it is with, rather than a blanket provision on all GPL software. So SCO has almost certainly violated the Linux kernel GPL license by attempting to sublicense the kernel but that does not remove their rights to distribute Samba 3 under the GPL.

Still does nothing to remove the hypocrisy of their situation, but quite frankly if the court of public opinion counts for anything, SCO is going to be feeling the draft of departing VARs and customers for a long time. Last one out switch out the lights. Although "better take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure" has a nice ring to it. :-)

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Re:samba team...

[BrynM]

"if you ship an application that requires interaction with a MySQL database then that application must be GPL"

Not true. Actually, there is no restriction saying that your application must be GPL if it interfaces with MySQL. Heck, you don't even need a MySQL commercial license unless you are distributing MySQL with your application. Since I've been working on an app that I'm going to sell in a closed source full standalone version (don't throw rocks at me - I need to eat too) and tone down to GPL in a "lite" version that works with another GPL product ,I've been doing a lot of reading on this very subject. From the MySQL licensing document [mysql.com]

If your application is not licensed under GPL or compatible OSI license approved by MySQL AB and you intend to distribute MySQL software (be that internally or externally), you must first obtain a commercial license to the MySQL software in question.

If they required you to GPL your application, then they wouldn't have many paying users as all of the commercial projects would migrate to PostgreSQL, Oracle or SQL Server to avoid the GPL.

Re:Heh, this can get funny

[47PHA60]

Not pedantic, just stubborn. You need to let go of your viewpoint, which seems to be that the new license terms somehow don't practically exist without enforcement. If I break a law and the police are too lazy to arrest me, have I still broken the law? Of course I have. With that in mind, read the GPL [fsf.org], where you will see section 4:

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

The copyright holders of the Linux kernel are within their rights to say that the mere definition and announcement of a new license on top of the GPL invalidates SCO's rights to redistribute, and the word 'automatic' implies that those rights are lost even if the copyright holder does not know yet what SCO is doing. As for the idea that "we never tried to enforce the sublicense," I would argue that imposition of the new license by itself shows an intent to enforce its terms, and that the copyright holder explicitly forbade this by licensing his work under the GPL.

Eben Moglen, General Counsel for the FSF, has written that the FSF has used its rights as a copyright holder on GNU software to tell distributors to remove 'click-wrap' licenses that attempt to sublicense GPL'd software. The FSF has never sued over these violations, nor has it waited until a distributor tried to enforce their click-wrap licenses. The FSF contacted the offender to say that he was in violation of section 4 of the GPL, and in every case, the offender brought his product into compliance, probably because he read the GPL and talked to his attorneys.

Yes, they can terminate the license

[fv]

So they can't do anything about it except the post they just made.

Actually they can. Section 4 of the GNU GPL [gnu.org] states that violations of the GPL automatically terminates distribution rights for GPL'd programs. The GPL also states that you must agree with the GPL or you don't have any distribution rights. SCO/Caldera has publicly announced their refusal to comply. I plan to exercise section 4 to revoke their right to redistribute Nmap [insecure.org]. I just started on the wording and haven't yet run it by a lawyer (I will). But the announcement will probably be something like:

SCO Corporation of Lindon, Utah (formerly Caldera) has lately taken to an extortion campaign of demanding license fees from Linux users for code that they themselves knowingly distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL. They have also refused to accept the GPL, claiming that some preposterous theory of theirs makes it invalid. In response to these blatant violations, and in accordance with section 4 of the GPL, we hereby terminate SCO's rights to redistribute any versions of Nmap in any of their products, including (without limitation) OpenLinux, OpenServer, and UNIXWare.

-Fyodor
Concerned about your network security? Try the free Nmap Security Scanner [insecure.org]
PS:I just posted a similar comment to an older SCO article, but it is more relevant here. Also I don't know if OpenLinux or any of their other products include Nmap. Most Linux distributions do, but Caldera wasn't exactly at the forefront of technology.

Re:SCO has no strategy

[mandolin]

email me.

AC, I hate to point out the obvious, but when you want somebody to email you, it helps if you provide an address.