SCO Changes Tune, Again: Linux Now Just a Riff on Unix 573
dr3vil writes "eWeek publishes an interview with SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag about the IBM lawsuit. SCO now claim that Linux is a 'nonliteral implementation' of Unix, and compare their claim to those involving Harry Potter rip-offs and Vanilla Ice versus David Bowie and Queen." And ronaldb64 writes "Yahoo Business has a nice summary of the last couple of months of stock movement of SCO, and the reasons why. It contains quotes from business analysts ('Win or lose, the outcome is at least a couple of years away' - 'In the interim, we know the company is going to burn through its cash balance.'), the lack of interest in SCO licenses, the effect the license purchase of EveryOne Ltd. had, and its continuing battle with Novell. The explanation given by pro- and contra-SCO activists is interesting: the pro-SCO group (in the form of SCO CFO Robert Bench) says it is because SCO has been laying low lately, the contra-SCO group (in the form of Eben Moglen) says it is because investors are beginning to understand how weak SCO's case is."
What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
"In the interim, we know the company is going to burn through its cash balance.",
The saddest part is that this money goes to lawyers and only lawyers, who'll just opt for the luxury version of their next car or shop for the more expensive waterfont summer property. Think if that money went anywhere else--charities, disaster funds, education, investment, open source funding--you name it. Dozens of
Re:What gets me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Interesting)
The only alternative to capitalism is rationing, otherwise known as the government deciding what products you should have, and handing them over.
I've been fascinated by the idea of an economy without money, but even in Communist Russia, there was always money - you just couldn't buy anything with it.
Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's the best system we've been able to come up with.
D
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the problems with capitalism seem to be realted to individuals lacking information or acting in line with a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Take the example of those executives. Why do investors turn their money over to individuals who have nothing to lose by running the company into the ground? I certainly don't.
Why do companies structure themselves like a monarchy or oligarchy? It doesn't work for nations, yet big companies routinely take the revenue-generating power away from the individual workers or team managers, and make corporation-wide decrees (e.g. "the whole company will run windows"). If the execs would just cede a little of the decision making to the smaller units, the smaller units could pick up the small-scale revenue and efficiencies that can't be seen from the boardroom. I'm waiting for the day big business is run more like a bunch of small companies working together. That's a place I might invest.
It's only the last 100 years that banking and investing have been even close to the scale of today. We have another 100 years to go before people realize that it's a losing proposition to buy into litigious companies that are bound to fall apart ("I'll get out before it blows up...", sure, uh huh). People will stop playing the stock market as though they were just letting a bet ride in Las Vegas. People will start looking at the real incentives they create for the corporate execs (in the case of Darl McBride, the incentives are not apparently long-term).
Maybe in the longer term the banking system will facilitate larger investments more quickly, which will mitigate the monopolistic powers (the monopolists rely on have more money than any competitor can access). A monopolist couldn't employ "predatory pricing" unless the monopolist has way more money. A bank would be willing to loan the money in order to, in the long term, get it's foot into the lucrative (and previously monopolized) market. With a powerful enough banking system, competition would take hold and benefit the consumer.
At least I hope these things can start to happen in 100 years. I have my doubts that anyone is going to invent anything better than capitalism. After all, you speak of the different economic systems but they are really just different points along the spectrum of government control. Capitalism is close to 0 government control of the economy, and the other systems' governments control different aspects of the economy different amounts. Feudalism is really just about land ownership and tennants (in a time when you couldn't pick up and move quite so easily to find a better lord). So, are you planning to just pick different points on the scale until you find a "sweet spot"? Or are you hoping for new scale to appear?
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a big one. I think a tendency is to want to regulate executive contracts and pay, but I believe there's another solution. Instead of attacking this symptom directly with hard to enforce laws, attack it at the source.
I'm talking about the role of financial analysts. It's a bit suspicious to me when 30 out of 30 analysts all decide to make the same call on a company in the same day, when there was no activity in the prior three months. I also think that analysts should somehow demonstrate a knowledge of the industry they're following.
I remember awhile back when Merrill finally canned Henry Blodget, the guy who made the self fullfilling call on Amazon. The guy was still recommending buys on stocks that were tanking. Here's an article [upenn.edu] that goes into a bit more detail - the short version being that these jokers recommend 100 buys for every sell.
Rant aside, these CEOs are encouraged into doing short term, risky, and often times very ill-thought out things in the name of their stock price. If analysts would cry foul when they're supposed to, I think you would finally start to see the market correct itself in what might otherwise be ethical or behavorial issues.
Re SCO, I think a group of analysts that a) knew what they were doing, and b) felt they were there to work for the stock buyer (you and me), would have saved the day already. Darl would have seen his stock hitting the floor, been reading the bad press, and stopped his action. I think Enron is another obvious example, with the same conclusion.
Rant over, sorry.
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Simply tax gains and prorate losses based on the holding time of a stock.
In other words, if you make a killing on some sort of quick runup in a security, you take a 99% tax hit if it's the same day, 95% after 7 days, 90% for a 30 day window, on a sliding time scale.
Similarly, if you buy in on a 'hot tip' at 9am, and lose your shirt by afternoon, you can only deduct 1% of your losses. Further out, you can deduct progressively more.
The whole idea is to discourage trading stocks on temporary price, and encourage trading on long term value and real earnings.
Sounds like something worth trying, if you ask me.
Re:What gets me... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to talk completely out of my ass here, I hope you'll bear with me. But this relates to what keeps my interest in following the Free Software movement.
To me, the most fascinating thing about Open Source is simply this: it provides an example of motivated co operation that does not directly involve the transfer of currency; but yet, it's very self-interest direc
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Informative)
I've given a fair amount of thought to economic systems. The first step is to admit that capitalism is flawed. It is not the end all and be all system that gives us exactly what we want. It does tend to work better than the other systems tried so far, but it is a poor substitute for what we as a society seem to really want. (What sicko is really happy that people are unemployed as opposed to accepting it as an unavoidable problem in capitalism)?
At the same time, the various other isms seem to fall apart rather quickly in most cases. They certainly do not seem to work.
Socialism sort of solves the unemployment problem, but produces a situation where the workers almost wish they WERE unemployed. Productivity tends to become nearly non-existant. Nobody tends to get what they want, only the bare necessities are met (just)
Most of the other isms are little more than a scheme to allow a small class to live in luxury while the masses struggle for subsistance.
Capitalism suffers the perverse problem of like attracting like. It's expensive to be poor, but the more money you have, the easier it is to make more. If you have $10,000 to deposit, you get free checking with interest. If you have no money to deposit, you get to pay 5% of your (tiny) income to a check casher and pay for money orders. Poor people lose deposits and flush rent down the drain. Wealthier people build equity. It's cheaper to own a home than to rent, but you can't own a home if you don't have a down payment.
While socialism holds a gun to your head (perhaps literally), capitalism is no less coercive. Starvation and homelessness is a powerful motivator. That is a coercian so pervasive that it goes unnoticed (until you become unemployed).
Clearly, in capitalism, the path to freedom is business ownership. However, that requires money and a skillset that only some people have. Society needs people with that skillset, but also needs doctors, engineers, carpenters, etc.
I don't have a fully developed alternative to capitalism that works, but I do have a few ideas.
One direction is pervasive automation. Not just automated production lines and welding robots, but robots that make and repair robots. The cost of anything in a healthy capitalist market is driven towards the marginal cost of production. If sufficient automation is in place, it is entirely concievable (though not yet realizable) that the entire chain of production could be automated. That includes gathering raw materials, energy production, transportation, and maintainance of all of the machines. At that point, the real marginal cost is zero. The only obstacle is that someone will own those machines and won't allow them to run for free even though they could. The problem is that starting from a capitalist system, we will never reach the automated ideal. During the transition, most people would end up unemployed, and the cost of things will never quite reach zero.
One possability is a hybrid system. For that, we start with the idea that food, clothing, shelter, medical care, transportation, communication and education are rights. Recieving those from the state is not a form of societal charity, it is simply the recognition of those rights.
That is not as unreasonable as a capitalist might think at first glance. After all, simply being born obligates an individual to obey the law and potentially to serve in the millitary, and all but obligates the person to participate in the economy, so it is only reasonable that society in turn has an obligation to the individual.
So far, it sounds like socialism. The capitalist part is that while those basics are rights other posessions must be paid for just like now in the U.S.
I maintain that such a system will actually encourage capitalism. MOST people actually can't stand to just do nothing and live off of the state if given a choice. Sure, a lot of people might lay around the house for a while given the chance, but eventually, boredom will drive them to hobbies, and ho
Re:What gets me... (Score:3, Interesting)
My main point of disagreement is that saying food, shelter, etc. are rights even if you don't work. I think that for someone to collect on those rights, they (if able bodied) should do SOMETHING for the government. But there should ALWAYS be some kind of job available, so no one would be truly unemployed.
Ultimately, the economy and society should exist to bring the maximum quality of life to all of its ci
Re:What gets me... (Score:3, Informative)
The thing is, as things like automation and such take over, that simply means the workforce needs to re-educate itself to take new jobs. Robots might replace workers on the assembly-line, but humans have to build, design, and maintain those robots as well as draw up the design for the cars.
Using a human mind capable of re-educating itself to do more skilled work as a mindless machine is a huge waste of a valuable resource. In addition, currently that process of re-education is made needlessly painful
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Interesting)
We don't need to improve capitalism--we need to improve the greedy, amoral practitioners thereof.
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
For example if gas prices rise high enough then people will eventually reduce their driving or buy more fuel efficient vehicles. It happened in the early 80s.
I bring this up because sometimes people think a market economy is about getting people everything they could possibly want. It's not. It's about allocating resoruces efficiently. As a result of efficiency, people tend on average to get more of the kinds of things they want.
With respect to a future system that improves upon capitalism, I suspect that any such system will probably be due to to the fact that efficiency is not the highest possible goal in every case. Effectiveness, defined in different ways, can be a distinct goal. Efficiency supports effectiveness, and inefficiency saps it, but this tendency to go hand in hand does not mean they are the same thing.
As an example, businesses have efficiency as a primary goal. If they can produce a widget for less money, they make more money. On the other hand an army is more concerned with winning a battle with the greatest possible certainty, efficiency being a secondary consideration.
Actually wartime rationing is an example of this logic. It would be more efficient just to let prices soar as goods are shifted from the civilian economy to the war effort. The market would produce more civilian goods per dollar. However, in practice only the wealthiest people could buy a commodity like gasoline, or coffee. The lack of shared sacrifice would undermine the morale of the greater part of the population, and in turn reduce the effectiveness of the war effort. Although rationing saps the profit motive and exacerbates shortages, under wartime circumstances these considerations are less important than fairness, which in turn is instrumental to victory.
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
that's because Russia wasn't communist.
this is one of those situations where the answer is in the question: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
>Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's the best system we've been able to come up with.
no it's not, the best system that we've been able to come up with is a mixed economy in which there exists elements from capitalism (private ownership of means of production) and elements of socialism (social security, free education/health care)
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Education and health care aren't free, it's just a question of who pays the costs, and how.
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Informative)
Do you have parents or grandparents that are retired and have social security?
These are socialist ideas, a purely capitalistic society would not provide anything for anyone without pay. If you can't pay for that heart surgery, you die. Speak to the Ayn Rand cultists if you are interested in such a society.
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Informative)
Pure capitalism doesn't prohibit others from paying the cost (perhaps the doctor would work without pay, or many other possibilities that can and do happen today without government involvement).
Pure capitalism prohibits the government from forcibly seizing one persons property to transfer to another person.
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Informative)
And the other side of that coin is that it doesn't save the sick and the old from being beggars whose survival depends on the mercy of others. That pretty much brings us full circle to the original poster's complaint. Without some flavor of socialized health care, if you can't afford the medicine, you are left for dead -- Oh, unless you beg appropriately or someone takes pity on you.
The rich stay healthy and the sick stay poor. Capitalism will never adjust that situation.
Re:What gets me... (Score:3, Informative)
Think bigger (Score:3, Interesting)
It wasn't a tough climb just for the USA, but most of the countries in the world. To directly comment on your statement:
I have studied the events of the early 1900's and came to the conclusion that e
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lol.
You see Marx and Engels said, "Under Communism the State will wither away."
Maybe I should spell out that there has never been a country that claimed to be Communist that showed any sign of the state withering away.
Was real communism possible? I doubt it. Human nature being what it is there is just too much opportunity for petty corruption.
But the "free market", that so many Americans worship, is also, in practice, extremely corrupt. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, what embarrassments those guys are. Awarding lucrative defence contracts to their corporate cronies. Aren't those huge, useless, defence contracts a form of corporate welfare?
"Communism" is a tricky term (Score:5, Insightful)
The term "communist" isn't actually as cut and dried as you make it out to be.
Marxists defined communism as the dissolution of the state, elimination of private property, and the leveling of all class barriers. That idealized goal was not achieved during the Soviet era, obviously, but the term was hijacked by the Communist Party, which for obvious political reasons presented its society as the realization of the communist dream.
The West saw little reason to quibble over terminology, and so bought into this misrepresentation by using the term communism rather than another, more accurate term (such as totalitarian socialism).
So yes, our history books call it communism, but history books simplify presentation of complicated historical material for reasons of clarity, ideology, and so on. Check out Lies My Teacher Told Me [uvm.edu] to get a glimpse at these simplifications in effect.
For more info about communism, check out this detailed explanation [wordiq.com].
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Interesting)
The only alternative to capitalism is rationing...
That's pretty closed minded. I guess we should rule out just plain old "giving".
Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's the best system we've been able to come up with.
So don't even think of looking for or making up something better? There are still some people on the planet that might take issue with your statement, but I'm sure that capitalism IS the best system for some. Most people that believe that are really saying, "It's good to be king."
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Litigation Bad.
Farmers under capitalism grow food to make a buck.
Computer companies make computers to make a buck.
Factories make pollution spewing SUV's (but at least they make something) to make a buck.
Lawyers and CEO's like Daryl just produce briefs and FUD. They delay, lie and prevaricate. They make nothing to humanity's benefit.
Even a low mileage, polluting SUV can bring kids to school. It has a purpose and is productive. SCO has not produced anything in years now.
There comes a point when money loses its proper function. In a capitalist society it is a portable ticket carrying your labor or the value of your labor. Instead of trading 500 chickens for your SUV you bring little green pieces of paper that say "I have produced something of value to society. Society says my 500 chickens is worth the same as this SUV."
Daryl has no chickens to trade. He never made any chickens. He just makes up lies. Someone somewhere is saying his lies are worth 500 chickens. I do not agree. Daryl deserves no chickens. Daryl deserves no SUV. He has produced nothing. Please someone take away his little green pieces of paper and don't give him any new ones until he stops lying and produces something.
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Interesting)
One point that we must never forget: SCO has produced something very significant in the past year. Prior to their lawsuit, SCOX was hovering around $1. After they released their lawyers, it shot up to $22. IIRC, all the major insiders dumped their shares prior to the current downturn. The travesty of this story isn't the Trial By Fire that Linux/OSS have had to endure and it isn't the FUD that's been generated and weathered. The sad fact, my friends, is that when all is said and done, Darl and his cronies will still have been made obscenely $rich$ by this little pump && dump scheme. And we must not lose sight of this fact. As long as our present system "rewards" slimy execs for this kind of behavior, we will always have another Darl and another Boies waiting for their turn to cash in. The only happy ending for this story could be if Darl and his sychophants are imprisoned for Securities Fraud. That's the only way justice will be served in this case.
Re:What gets me... (Score:2)
Their product IS kinda gross:-)
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Interesting)
That doesn't bother me so much - it looks like SCO and Microsoft have determined that it's in their collective best interest to hire this legal team to represent SCO. If it didn't go to the lawyers, it'd just be another lump of cash in Gates' pocket.
As for the IBM legal team, I hope their lawyers trounce on what looks to be this SCO/Microsoft partnership.
And given the details that I know, it looks like IBM will succeed in showing that a SCO/Microsoft partnership is in fact a losing partnership.
The saddest part is some lowly investor who was dupped into buying the stock at more than $1 a share.
Ah lawyers! The next big thing! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, this is an interesting point. 10 or 15 years ago, CS was the hot thing to study in school. The Internet was new, the money was fantastic , now it's changed to law. All the kids will be going to law school, because it is now the hot thing, and the money was fantastic .
Re:Ah lawyers! The next big thing! (Score:3, Funny)
This assuming that by JD you mean Jack Daniels...
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
GDP? What ever happened to coming home to your kids and convicing yourself that you are decent human being?
Fuck the GDP.
Nick
--
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Funny)
It moved to Europe.
Re:Europeans are trained from birth... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Europeans are trained from birth... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please note I have not gone in to quite how self-flageletory the German texbooks are about WW2...
Re:Europeans are trained from birth... (Score:3, Interesting)
i must have seen the non-US and non-UK history textbooks where it talks about the slavery of various forms in colonies around the world. the massacares in india.. oppression.. but you said you read the US and UK history books. i'm not surprised you didn't see any of that.
"what is history but a fable agreed upon" - Napoleon
"The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down." - Whitney Brown
and
"History will be kind to me for I
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Informative)
We don't have to knock out the GPL for us to succeed on the copyright issue. The GPL itself supports, in a lot of ways, our positions. Section 0 of the GPL states that the legit copyright holder has to place a notice assigning the copyright over to the GPL.
All these contributions of our IP did not have an assignment by SCO saying here, 'We assign these copyrights to the GPL.' The fact that we participated with Linux does not mean that we inadvertently contributed our code to the GPL. You can't contribute inadvertently to Linux. We feel we have a very strong position based on the GPL.
Sorry, but you don't assign copyrights to the GPL. The GPL is a licence. A licence is not a potental copyright holder. You don't need to assign the copyright to anyone in order to licence your work under the terms of this licence.
Even better, lets look at section 0 of the GPL to see what it really says.
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains
a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
under the terms of this General Public License.
Where does it talk about copyright assignment here? Where?
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
The first kind of lawyer is neccessary in a civilized society. I'm not very glad that so little can be done to prevent the second kind of lawyer of abusing the legal system.
But I'm sure that there must be a way to do this, because else we'll all get stuck in a lawsuit mud stifling competition, and, vastly more important, constraining the freedom of individuals in one or another way.
Re:Why doesn't IBM just BUY SCO? (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, isn't that what you're suggesting: paying an extortionist? Sounds like an easy way out, but IBM knows better.
The Money Shot (Score:5, Funny)
McBride: When I look at our case, I think anyone who has a rational mind would come down to the same conclusions I do.
You mean, just like IBM, and the FOSS movement in general?
Re:The Money Shot (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice how he carefully avoids stating what conclusions he came to...
Re:Are you even reading it people??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you think SCO will *win*???
Anyone, what exactly isn't clear in Darl's answer??? Should he start with : "I think SCO will win because..." or can we at least accept he's gone past 1st grade???
Re:Are you even reading it people??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course we all saw that bit. We know that Darl "thinks" he's going to win (I'm not actually convinced of that). The part the granparent noticed is that Darl isn't able to *give any credible theory or evidence or reasoning about how he might win*
Right now, SCO's case is very thinly strung together. They're making totally new arguements (and few if any tried & true ones, and I assure you that they *would* use precident wherever they could), which advocate an inequitable solution (give us all the code IBM made, due to our strained theory of an ancient contract we discovered after sitting on for years).
The thing about the two contending theories is this: SCO's arguement is thin. If any one piece, each of which is built on top of the other, fails, the whole line of arguement fails, and SCO with it. Whereas, if you read IBM's legal filings (and yes, I have... IANAL, but I've learned a hell of a lot by reading all the tons of legal documents from Groklaw), you will notice that IBM has a layered defense. What I mean by that is that, even if one layer fails, they have not just one, but several other claims, where if *any* of them were to prevail, they would be entirely defended on those grounds.
I mean, look at some of the defenses: SCO doesn't have the copyrights (SCO will have to prove that they do vs. Novell, and they've shot themselves in the foot by contradicting themselves in their own legal filing! They claimed that Novell was slandering their title to the copyrights SCO purports to own, yet asked for the court to transfer them from Novell to SCO as a remedy, implying that they do NOT own them!), even if SCO does have the copyrights, IBM asserts that the work-product doctrine (hey! WE made this, not SCO!) and the old $echo publication refute SCO's reading of their contract. And even if both of those go SCO's way, SCO gave Linux out under the GPL (and the onus would be on SCO to prove the nonsense about it being "unconstitutional" here).
So there are three strong layers right there. Pick any two, even if those fail, IBM still has a defense and SCO is up a creek.
In the mean time, I'm wondering about the SCO publicity. Lately, they have been pretty quiet, probably because of the judge's private conference with IBM & SCO a while back after which SCO mysteriously went quiet and even withdrew from some debate or another. There's also that website that put up a fake press release about them buying a SCO license which SCO asked them to take down. Pity the site was not in English, but SCO's fax to them (which they put up) was, for some reason.
Maybe I should investigate the contact listed in that fax? I believe it was press.winkler@sco.com / 1 (801) 932-5800 -- it would be nice if I could find out what exactly they're up to these days...
Re:The Money Shot (Score:3, Insightful)
But, as McBride himself says: The truth will come out in the courtroom.
We can only hope.
Re:The Money Shot (Score:3, Insightful)
What a joke (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry no more responses allowed after this, or else I'll sue you for non-literal illiterate literation.
Re:What a joke (Score:3, Funny)
But then wouldn't you open yourself up to being countersued for illegal levels of litigious alliteration?
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
So Linux is "Cool as Ice" (Score:3, Funny)
"Free words of wisdom baby. Drop that zero, and get with the hero."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101615/quotes
It took them! (Score:4, Funny)
Then why is Microsoft still invested... Oh, wait a minute...
Wow, Just Like This New Sim-Game.. (Score:5, Funny)
I noticed Sim-SCO was one of the first to die off.
McBride on record as opposing the GPL in business (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet the Arse of Lindon continues to distribute (unsupported) Apache as well as other F/OSS products which adhere to the GPL.
Need we any other evidence of the duplicity of these scumbags?
Someone, please shut his piehole. I am sick and tired of listening to the lies and FUD and blastant misrepresentations made by this company and its executives and lawyers (same thing?).
Re:McBride on record as opposing the GPL in busine (Score:3, Informative)
Rock...Hard Place...Oops (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO marketeers must have just relized that their lawsuit is in effect telling the public, and in particular the business public, that Linux is Unix for free. Otherwise, why sue?
Re:Rock...Hard Place...Oops (Score:5, Interesting)
Sontag: We don't have to knock out the GPL for us to succeed on the copyright issue. The GPL itself supports, in a lot of ways, our positions. Section 0 of the GPL states that the legit copyright holder has to place a notice assigning the copyright over to the GPL.
All these contributions of our IP did not have an assignment by SCO saying here, 'We assign these copyrights to the GPL.' The fact that we participated with Linux does not mean that we inadvertently contributed our code to the GPL. You can't contribute inadvertently to Linux. We feel we have a very strong position based on the GPL.
End quoth.
I think that what Sontag is saying here is that they inserted their code without the required notice assigning it to the GPL. This would mean that their code is not covered by the GPL (which is counter to their business model) and is still theirs. (Assuming that any code put there actually is theirs).
He says that you "can't contribute inadvertently to Linux" and I think they new that. Their code, according to them, is in Linux, being used by Linux, having never been assigned to the GPL. This means that they deliberatly attempted to "poison" Linux. I can here him saying "Too bad for Linux that they didn't look for the copyright notice."
Re:Rock...Hard Place...Oops (Score:5, Insightful)
Quoth the GPL:
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
parties under the terms of this License.
End quoth.
Therefore, by modifying a piece of GPL software (linux), they agreed to distribute the modification under the GPL. If they didn't use the appropriate notification of the change, they are violating the terms of the GPL, which they agreed to by contributing to a GPL program. They aren't released from the terms of the GPL. If you refuse to make a payment on your apartment, does that entitle you (because you broke the contract) to choose any new contract terms you want (rent is now $-10,000 a month, k thx!)? No, obviously. So why does a violation of the terms of the GPL entitle them to exemption from their legal requirements?
Sontag lies (Score:3, Informative)
b) The required notice is the GPL. Everything in the kernel is covered by that statement and licence. SCO distributed the kernel with the GPL.
Don't trust SCO. Read the GPL yourself.
He is right (Score:3, Insightful)
He is right : everyone with a rational mind would understand SCO initial claims were so silly that it was worth for Darl McBride to change his strategy.
-----
Right on the money. (Score:5, Funny)
That company no longer has the ability to sustain itself from day to day operations.
Or Maybe it's better to buy 1 share of SCOX, wipe my ass with it, and mail it back to Darl McBride. It's just too hard to say what gives me more pleasure.
SCOX rampage. (Score:2, Interesting)
This last one hasn't a ghost of a chance but SCO can always fantasize.
Umm.... yeah. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Umm.... yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Umm.... yeah. (Score:3, Funny)
To sum it up perfectly he should add, after saying that he is writing a login function that is exactly the same as every other login function
Path of least resistance (Score:2, Interesting)
SCO might be making more deals than we know with companies less likely to fight back because they know they will lose the IBM fight... so they're profiting while they can.
In other words,
Re:Path of least resistance (Score:5, Insightful)
This is standard operating procedure in intellectual property litigation -- even if you have a good claim. First harvest the low hanging fruit. Build your war chest by first feasting on adversaries who won't put up a fight. Avoid the risk that you may not collect from weak players becaue you attacked a strong adversary too early, and received an adverse precedent (i.e., published) decision that the weaker players can benefit from and couldn't otherwise have obtained.
On the other hand, it is also the perfect strategy if you have a weak claim. Attack only weak adversaries who can't afford to defend themselves, or for whom the cost of defense would be greater the the cost of capitulation. There are companies who survive and prosper by asserting weak (cough) intellectual property claims and offer to settle for amounts less than their adversaries' cost of litigation. The key is to make sure that the claim is not so baseless that you expose yourself sanctions or a subsequent claim for malicious institution of a civil action.
Then again, SCO has already violated these rules by attacking IBM far too early in the game. Go figure.
Non-Literal Implementation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Non-Literal Implementation ... (Score:3, Informative)
Elcorton notes that SCO's First Amended Complaint against AutoZone, section 19, asserts, "The Copyrighted Materials include protected expression of code, structure, sequence and/or organization in many categories of UNIX System V functionality ..."
Elcorton writes, "The phrase 'structure, sequence and/or organization' comes from the opinion of the Third Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in the 1986 case Whelan Associates
Ice Ice What the FUCK?! (Score:5, Funny)
Now that lawyers are jumpin'
Billy Gates' cash in, and my analysts pumpin'
Insider trades, all the sales I'm makin'
Cooking short sellers like a pound of bacon
Burning them - if they're not quick and nimble
I go crazy when I see the symbol
of my high stock - S-C-O-X tempo,
I'm on a roll, it's time to go solo
(Rollin!) In shareholder dough,
Press releasin' now, up my stock will go,
Pamela's on standby, tryin' just to ask "why"?
(Did you stop?) No! I just drove by,
Kept on - I'm filin' to the next suit,
Judge busts me down, so I gotta try a new truth, -
That truth was dead, yo, so I continued to,
(IBM) - Lawsuit avenue!
Darl and Chris, wearing less than bikinis,
*** VIEWER PROTECTION FAULT - CORE DUMPED ***
From the Queen/Bowie lyrics (Score:5, Funny)
What these lawsuits are about.
SCO investors screaming
Let me out.
Press-release tommorow - get the stock high, High, Hiiiiiiiiiiiiggh
Pressure on SCO - SCO on the brink.
Under pressure.
Okay (Score:5, Interesting)
Did Darl ever bother to explain under which portions of copyright law, exactly, it is legal or a civil infringement for Linux to be Similar to UNIX?
Just checking.
Sontag and McBride - confused cats (Score:5, Interesting)
Sontag: We don't have to knock out the GPL for us to succeed on the copyright issue. The GPL itself supports, in a lot of ways, our positions. Section 0 of the GPL states that the legit copyright holder has to place a notice assigning the copyright over to the GPL. All these contributions of our IP did not have an assignment by SCO saying here, 'We assign these copyrights to the GPL.' The fact that we participated with Linux does not mean that we inadvertently contributed our code to the GPL. You can't contribute inadvertently to Linux. We feel we have a very strong position based on the GPL.
The GPL is a license under which copyrighted material can be used by others, it is not an entity to which copyright can be assigned (transferred). Sontag seems to think that the GPL == the FSF, or something along those lines.
It is perfectly possible to "inadvertently" license your copyrighted material to someone else under conditions you don't approve of. The solution is to create a new license to distribute your works under to new people, not to pretend you never did it in the first place.
I also love this part:
Sontag: We feel very covered under the GPL itself, and second, U.S. and international copyright law does not allow for inadvertent assignments of copyrighted material; the copyright holder must make an explicit assignment, typically in writing, in a contract. If that's the strongest argument that's out there that SCO has a big problem here, that's a molehill as far as we're concerned.
This crap is right out of Novell's Motion to Dismiss and Notice of Removal. Novell argues that US Copyright law requires very strict wording to assign copyright, and it does. Unfortunately for this gang of thieves, the GPL is not an entity copyright can be assigned to.
Pierre
Re:Sontag and McBride - confused cats (Score:3, Insightful)
Follow the money (Score:5, Informative)
Happy Trails!
Erick
Re:Follow the money (Score:3, Insightful)
The only question you have to ask yourself about SCO's share price is how long Microsoft is going to keep letting them suck on it's teat.
eWeek clarifies - Linus replies re: "tainting" (Score:5, Informative)
"In other words," Torvalds said, "there is no code taint that I'd be afraid of, since no such tainted code exists in the kernel. There is only the issue of SCO's NDA. And, at least back then, Darl was aware of the issue, so this is not a question of misunderstanding. It's a question of Darl knowingly misrepresenting the truth."
like his code, his words are to the point and clear.
Fuck Darl, he's a kockbite.
best use ever for SCO letters (Score:5, Funny)
Extremely week argument (Score:5, Insightful)
And most cars have doors, windows and 4 tires. Perhaps all of the auto companies should sue each other for making similiar items.
If this is the best they can do they have a hard road ahead.
April Fools !!! (Score:3, Funny)
Yesterday ??? Over ??? Oh, sorry I thought I was just getting some bad lag.
--Tsiangkun
SCO's one track mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Lots of companies big and small engage in lawsuits everyday as part of doing business. Breach of contract, patent infringement, etc. These things can take years to come to some sort of end, with the parties working something out or a judge making a ruling.
But business should continue to go on. You can't simply put everything on hold due to ONE lawsuit. But that's what SCO is doing. It seems to me that their entire focus has shifted to this ONE lawsuit. And regardless of whether or not you believe in the merits of their case or the ethics of a company whose business model is nothing but lawsuits... they are putting way too much weight into the potential revenue it might generate. And that is quite risky.
This is ONE lawsuit. By putting all their time and energy into this one lawsuit it has dwarfed everything else about the company and its real products. This to me is a bad business practice, and is the real reason that SCO is losing investors.
Non-Literal?? (Score:5, Insightful)
We've gone from "full blown copying of 1M+ lines" to "no copying, but those are our derived works" to "we claim these header files" to "Linux is a riff on UNIX". Oh, please.
Come on, Darl, you mean to tell me you think that someone can't write something *similar* to something else without infringing?
What about Free DOS and the myriad of other OSes out there. Hell, according to this logic, Windows would infringe. Why don't you go sue MS? Oh wait, that would be biting the hand that feeds you.
GJC
MUSIC! I missed the MUSIC!!!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Bois and his SCO stock (Score:4, Insightful)
"The stock plunge won't affect star lawyer David Boies' compensation.
Is that statement just plain wrong ?
Shouldn't that read:
"The stock plunge will affect star lawyer David Boies' compensation.
Heavy trading in SCOX today (Score:3, Informative)
We may be seeing SCO's announced "stock buyback" program in action. Each day, for the last week or so, there's been a big buy in the hour before the close, which tended to stem the day's decline. (Except for Tuesday, when the stock finished about where it started.) Look at the stock volume charts, and notice the late-day peak. Yesterday, there was a really big transaction just before the close, which pushed the stock up to about where it was at the beginning of the week.
Today, trading volume was way up. Unclear how much of this is the buyback. But until the buyback program was announced, the stock had been sliding down steadily, almost linearly, for weeks.
I am a little confused here? (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of code that you'll be seeing coming on in these copyright cases is not going to be line-by-line code. It will be more along the lines of nonliteral copying, which has more to do with infringement. This has more to do with sequence, organization, which is copyright-protectable. It's interesting when you go down this path that everyone wants to go to the exact lines of code, but most copyright cases
-- McBride, 2004-4-01
Will this change... (Score:5, Interesting)
By constantly changing what they're saying, does this change the strength (or weakness, as it is) of their case at all? I'm just waiting for some judge to look at this and say, "You guys are full of shit and you can't make up your minds. Case closed, you're ordered to be neutered so that you have no chance of ever reproducing ever again".
We're irrational? McBride says GPL is unconstituti (Score:5, Interesting)
So McBride says that we are all irrational because we do not agree with his side. Traditionally, legal disputes are fought with the admittance that each side is rational - a sort of gentlemen's approach to the fight. Of course, often legal proceedings come down to screaming that the other side is wrong because he's just crazy.
The article mentions SCO's opinions on the GPL, so it may come off redundant that I mention this here, especially since Slashdot rejected it when I submitted it days ago:
SCO's website lists five reasons [sco.com] for choosing SCO over its competitors. The fifth reason; that SCO UNIX is legally unencumbered, contains some inflamatory statements that hint at litigious behavior to come. In an open letter [sco.com] from Darl McBride, SCO has stated that the GPL license violates the US Constitution and current US Copyright and patent laws. From a legal perspective, it seems that SCO is gearing up for a floodgates argument (the weakest kind) that even if Linux doesn't contain SCO code, the GPL license itself is void such that no software can be distributed under the terms of the GPL. This would leave an opening for SCO to attempt to claim ownership of Linux technologies that have not been implicated in SCO's original lawsuit.
Now, McBride is essentially arguing that the Court will find that it is morally wrong for people to develop free software, or software for free since profit is the engine that blah blah blah:
We do so knowing that the voices of thousands of open source developers who believe 'software should be free' cannot prevail against the U.S. Congress and voices of seven U.S. Supreme Court justices who believe that 'the motive of profit is the engine that ensures the progress of science,'" McBride said.
Okay, admit it guys, if there was ever one company you wish Microsoft would just up and swallow, it's this one!
Beautiful (Score:5, Insightful)
McBride: Would you buy an operating system without the source-code copyright? If you don't have copyright, they can turn around the next day and screw you.
Sontag: Instead, they waited nine years.
McBride: We have no doubts that our Unix copyright claims are valid.
One must, of course, ask why SCO felt that they had to wait years before notifying Linux folks of their alleged horrific infringements, and then felt that it was necessary to avoid actually *telling* Linux folks what the alleged infringements year until months and multiple court orders forced them to do so.
Sontag: We don't have to knock out the GPL for us to succeed on the copyright issue. The GPL itself supports, in a lot of ways, our positions. Section 0 of the GPL states that the legit copyright holder has to place a notice assigning the copyright over to the GPL.
All these contributions of our IP did not have an assignment by SCO saying here, 'We assign these copyrights to the GPL.' The fact that we participated with Linux does not mean that we inadvertently contributed our code to the GPL. You can't contribute inadvertently to Linux. We feel we have a very strong position based on the GPL.
First, this tidbit:
'We assign these copyrights to the GPL.'
Okay, enough fun has been made of Sontag and McBride's lack of competence when it comes to IP, so I'll avoid the jokes. You don't "assign a copyright to a license" (though GNU contributors are required to assign their copyright to the FSF for a number of reasons, in addition to licensing it under the GPL -- Linux is not a GNU project.)
Uh, huh. The fact that you added them to a file containing a GPL header doesn't count, eh? It's been well understood for many years that one header works for multiple contributions. When it comes to licensing, intent matters, and there was very clearly intent to GPL this code. I can't understand how you could make any kind of a counterargument.
The fact that we participated with Linux does not mean that we inadvertently contributed our code to the GPL.
Well, the alternative you have is that you committed massive infringement of thousands of IP holders that licensed their Linux code under the GPL. It's one or the other, SCO. If you want to go after Linux (and it's a damned weak argument -- I can't see how you'd manage to win it), you're also admitting that you deliberately committed a far worse crime. The potential costs of years of theft of perhaps millions of copies of Linux would easily bankrupt your company. I would expect that a shrewd mediator would find that donation of your code's copyright to the IP holders as a group would be the most acceptable form of restitution (trying to work out monentary damages from a class action lawsuit by a mass of coders with no interest in your money would be hard to resolve), which would put you back at square one, except without your money.
McBride: We will admit the things we've contributed and that we can't claw them back.
Darl, your second-in-command just said otherwise five seconds ago. C'mon, guys. At least maintain a cohesive position.
We think we have protection under both the GPL and copyright law.
This makes no sense. Name one right granted you by the GPL to either your IP or anyone else's IP that would entitle you to "protection" from other people using this code. If your code or other people's code is GPLed, everyone is clearly in the right to use it.
the copyright holder must make an explicit assignment, typically in writing, in a contract.
No. Team-written software is a form of joint authorship, which does not require explicit copyright assignment. While SCO might be able to argue that perhaps they have sole copyright ownership of the patch itself, the patched work is also owned by all the other authors of Linux, who
The tragedy of SCO (Score:5, Interesting)
The World According to Darl (Score:5, Informative)
Mr McBride asserts that there is line-by-line code copied into the Linux Kernel
"When you look in the code base and you see line-by-line copy of our Unix System V code... you see that everything is taken straight across. Everything is exactly the same except they have stripped off the copyright notices and pretended it was just Linux code. There could not be a more straightforward case on the Linux side." - Darl McBride, 6/27/2003
Darl is confident that the SCO case is just and good. It couldn't be any more straightforward. The line-by-line copying is so blatant that SCO will win.
"To date, we claim that more than one million lines of UNIX System V protected code have been contributed to Linux through this model. The flaws inherent in the Linux process must be openly addressed and fixed." - Darl McBride, 9/9/2003
Millions, and millions lines of code have been copied right into the Linux kernel!
"A lot of code that you'll be seeing coming on in these copyright cases is not going to be line-by-line code. It will be more along the lines of nonliteral copying, which has more to do with infringement." - Darl McBride, 4/1/2004
Darl.. what happened? For the last year there has been line-by-line copying from UNIX V to Linux. Now "when the rubber hit's the road" that line-by-line thing isn't happening. It is more along the lines of infringement? I'm so disappointed.
Re:karma whoring opportunity! :D (Score:4, Funny)
Re:karma whoring opportunity! :D (Score:2)
Re:it's basically true -- no point in denying it (Score:5, Insightful)
Not so (Score:5, Insightful)
At the heart, we have to ask 'what is UNIX?' Is it the core userspace tools? Then "copying" UNIX has already been shown to be OK, as BSD "copied" (read that "replaced") UNIX bit-by-bit while AT&T had it available to the schools.
Is it a kernel? If so, then SCO's claim of Linux 'copying' UNIX is meritless, as all it does is impliment POSIX calls so UNIX programs can compile and run on it. Behind the scenes they differ immensly, hammered home by the fact that SCO talked of adding a Linux compatibility layer to their UNIX product a few years back, but dropped it because it just would have been too difficult to impliment IIRC.
If UNIX is everything that runs on the 'UNIX' kernel, then there's never been a UNIX. Ever. Because each 'UNIX'(AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Sun OS) has been so drastically different that it has been the major reason UNIX never hit it big until someone came who didn't trying to block other vendors out and prevented others from using it to in turn block other vendors. (Namely, GNU/Linux) Had HURD pushed forward and been the default GNU kernel, perhaps they would have some theoretical merit, but HURD is also drastically different, being a mircokernel design and all the spiffy stuff that comes with that.
To say "Linux copies UNIX" is to say "Timex copies sundials." They have a common ancestory, serve similar roles, but vary greatly in implimentation.
Re:Not so (Score:4, Insightful)
If this is the case, than SCO should have to go after microsoft next because, to my knowledge NT 4.0 was POSIX complient as well.
Plus it's not like they don't have a history of biting the hand that fed them.
Re:it's basically true -- no point in denying it (Score:5, Informative)
No, OS X is NeXTSTeP with updated BSD. NeXT already was a BSD userspace on top of Mach. OS X just updates it from 4.2BSD (or 4.3, i dont remember exactly which 4.x) to FreeBSD (4?). The major changes were in the addition of the MacOS compat layer (Cocoa?) and much work on refining the UI - but its still essentially, IIUC, display postscript (oops, updated to display PDF, iirc) graphics engine with the OpenSTeP API (oops, called carbon now isnt it?). I dont know if OS X uses Objective C as its primary language of choice for its APIs as OpenSTeP did though (but judging by the docs on apple.com, ObjC bindings are supported).
Re:Wat een gelul (Score:3, Funny)
d00d, SCO's f'ed up. They're like "we coo" and then IBM's like "nu uh!" and they were like "dude, we own you" and IBM's like "sh-yeah right. Like quit bein posers. Want some o' this?" then SCO was like "well, you're all just wannabe unices" then IBM was like "man, ya'll are trippin! Like fer sure!"
Re:SCO gives MS and other vendors more time (Score:3, Informative)