SCO Invokes DMCA, Names Headers, Novell Steps In 770
Sparky writes "We've already heard that SCO have invoked the DMCA via 'letters sent to select Fortune 1000 Linux end users.' The specifics come via a copy of the letter reprinted at LWN.net - they've decided that they own the copyright to about 65 header files contained in Linux - largely errno.h, signal.h and ioctl.h." balloonpup also notes "CNet News has reported that SCO has reported a fourth quarter loss of $1.6 million, owing mostly to hefty legal fees in its war against Linux. SCO said they would have reported $7.4 million in earnings, if not for the $9 million payout to their lawyers. Way to go, SCO!" Many readers also point out a Groklaw article indicating Novell has registered for the copyrights on multiple versions of Unix with the U.S. Copyright Office, so that "both the SCO Group and Novell have registered for UNIX System V copyrights for the same code."
Re:If you don't have a product sue! (Score:5, Informative)
Even better news from SCO SEC filing (Score:5, Informative)
If the above information is correct, SCO revenue in Q1/2004 will be around 15 M$ and net loss could be >5-10 M$. It seems they don't get more money soon, they will be out of business before summer.
I listened to the call (Score:5, Informative)
One of the first questions in the Q and A period was "If I pay the $699, do I have rights to use the source and continue to run Linux?" Darl very neatly sidestepped half the question and answered "Yes, you can continue to run the binary (emphasis mine) within the agreement."
From that, I take it that if you pay, you can run the kernel, but they won't say you can play with it.
Re:You people called it upon yourselves (Score:2, Informative)
This is nothing but FUD.
Re:not just Linux... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:clue me in.... (Score:5, Informative)
Listen to their conference call here (Score:5, Informative)
Re:clue me in.... (Score:5, Informative)
#define EPERM 1
#define ENOENT 2
#define ESRCH 3
#define EINTR 4
#define EIO 5
#define ENXIO 6
#define E2BIG 7
errno.h and signal.h are from POSIX (Score:5, Informative)
Do these guys have any brains at all?
Re:clue me in.... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/b
Re:errno.h and signal.h are from POSIX (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/bas
Re:not just Linux... (Score:4, Informative)
For that matter, I could also say:
(printf("Hello, world!\n"));
The parens may be superflous, but they certainly don't hurt anything, and in fact they can allow you to play some cool tricks, such as redefining return:
#define return(x) {printf("Returning from %s:%d\n", __FILE__, __LINE__);return x;}
Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top? (Score:5, Informative)
If a Linux kernel programmer took some header files from FreeBSD or 4.4BSD, for example, but removed the BSD copyright notice, that is a violation of the BSD license terms. HOWEVER, that does not mean that SCO was wronged. The only party that could sue for violation of the BSD license is, of course, the Regents of the University of California. AFAIK, but IANAL.
Re:9 million? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:checking out insider holdings (Score:5, Informative)
I have a little reality check for you people who think SCO is gonna get shit for this little pump and dump:
-Our esteemed Commander and Cheif pumped and dumped his little oil company and sold all his shares 2 days before it went bankrupt. The appropriate investigative organizations where politely told to bug off.
-The above's best friend and cheif campain supporter via donations was the CEO of Enron. Need I say more?
-Worldcom went bankrupt over executive fraud and now has a cushy contract in Iraq.
-Microsoft pretty much got let off the hook as soon as someone they "donated" money to got the presidency.
-Our Vice President is busy riding a gigantic $100,000 a month retirement golden parachute from his company, Halburton, with strangely enough is getting the most, best, and highest paying government contracts.
What makes you guys think that ANYTHING bad will happen to SCO because of what they are doing? Wake up.
This is all of course assuming memory serves me correctly.
actual link (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Vote bush out of office (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The FreeBSD file says: (Score:4, Informative)
It's not like that. The coder could well have been Linus himself, and the reason is below (verbatim copy of a comment posted to LWN, emphasis mine):
(Posted Dec 22, 2003 18:03 UTC (Mon) by doitroygsbre) (Post reply)
IANAL
Ok, I read an article on groklaw (I think) that made a pretty good guess as to what SCO's claim is. They are claiming that the settlement reached between BSD and novell required that certain files in BSD have copyright notices added. The files that SCO is complaining about were added to linux before the settlement was reached and since the settlement was only made known to Novell and the BSD developers (sorry, can't quite remember exactly who was involved in the settlement) no one knew to add the copyright notices to linux. Now that SCO has possibly inherited the Novell side of the settlement, they're trying to claim copyright infringement because linux has these files without the notices. Even though they were released under the BSD license without the notices before the settlement.
Oh well, I'm starting to wonder if I'll live long enough to see this whole mess sorted
Re:clue me in.... (Score:5, Informative)
examples:
(p33):
[E2BIG] Arg list too long
The sum of the number of bytes used by....
(p36):
[EPERM] Operation not permitted
An attempt was made to...
Re:The FreeBSD file says: (Score:5, Informative)
>In Linux 2.0.36 kernel there is a networking headder file where the BSD licence is gone and the coder admits that they took the code from FreeBSD.
>So you say 'coder got a little too happy' I say 'thief' and Darl has to have lawyers convince a judge that is was a theft.
Copyright violations aren't theft, they're (follow this closely, it's tricky) copyright violations. They are not called theft because they're different. Different act, different name. Told you it was tricky.
Where does Darl come in? It's BSD's copyright; did BSD make Darl their agent? I don't think so. If there was a screwup (which remains to be shown), the quarrel is between BSD and Linux, with no room at all in there for SCO.
>>Then all that needs to be done is add the copyright notices back in.
>Gee, what about actual PUNISHMENT for breaking the law?
The usual, when there's a GPL violation, is that the violation cease, at least when the FSF is enforcing the terms of the agreement. I suspect that it would take some pretty egregious bad behavior, and some serious profits involved, to get a court to actually see monetary damages as being in any way appropriate.
There is no copyright issue (Score:5, Informative)
http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&ac
To All Licensees, Distributors of Any Version of BSD:
As you know, certain of the Berkeley Software Distribution ("BSD") source code files require that further distributions of products containing all or portions of the software, acknowledge within their advertising materials that such products contain software developed by UC Berkeley and its contributors.
Specifically, the provision reads:
" * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
* must display the following acknowledgement:
* This product includes software developed by the University of
* California, Berkeley and its contributors."
Effective immediately, licensees and distributors are no longer required to include the acknowledgement within advertising materials. Accordingly, the foregoing paragraph of those BSD Unix files containing it is hereby deleted in its entirety.
William Hoskins
Director, Office of Technology Licensing
University of California, Berkeley
Re:Vote bush out of office (Score:3, Informative)
Forgive me, I'm forced to use SCO at work.. (Score:5, Informative)
"old, crufty environment" -> oldstyle/errno.h
"Xpg4v2 environment" -> xpgv2/errno.h
"Xpg4 environment" -> xpg4/errno.h
"Posix environment" -> posix/errno.h
"Pure Ansi/ISO environment" -> ansi/errno.h
"Old, Tbird compatible environment" -> ods_30_compat/errno.h
"Normal, default environment" -> just the standard errno.h file
Some of the comments, dated 94/12/04:
Portions Copyright (C) 1983-1995 The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
The information in this file is provided for the exclusive use of the licensees of The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. Such users have the right to use, modify, and incorporate this code into other products for purposes authorized by the license agreement provided they include this notice and the associated copyright notice with any such product. The information in this file is provided "AS IS" without warranty.
Portions Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. Portions Copyright (c) 1979 - 1990 AT&T All Rights Reserved
THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. The copyright notice above does not evidence any actual or intended publication of such source code.
Here are the comments from an older version of the same file, specifically 91/06/06. I wonder why they've dropped Microsoft from the copyrights list?
UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T
Portions Copyright 1976-1990 AT&T
Portions Copyright 1980-1989 Microsoft Corporation
Portions Copyright (C) 1983-1991 The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The information in this file is provided for the exclusive use of the licensees of The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. Such users have the right to use, modify, and incorporate this code into other products for purposes authorized by the license agreement provided they include this notice and the associated copyright notice with any such product. The information in this file is provided "AS IS" without warranty.
Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988 AT&T
All Rights Reserved
THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T
The copyright notice above does not evidence any
actual or intended publication of such source code.
Re:That's what usually happens (Score:5, Informative)
now, the compiler-supplied errno.h in
looking at the errno.h included with kernel source, it looks like a relatively boilerplate file. just a bunch of #defines for error codes. the only way you could really infer copyright infringement is from the comments on each line that says what the error code means. however, i would think that all these are documented somewhere, so even if SCO's file is identical, it's still arguable that in both cases the comments were copied verbatim from some specification document (where copying is possibly allowed).
looking through the files listed, it seems like all of them fall under this general premise - boilerplate kernel constants and macros for very basic stuff that's really hard and silly to try to implement any other way.
blah, SCO can bite me.
Re:not just Linux... (Score:1, Informative)
lets get less buggy version
int const x(int const y)
{
return y+5;
}
#define return return x
int main( int const argc, char const * const argv[] )
{
x= 11111;
return (0);
}
Re:"Loser pays" only benefits corporations (Score:3, Informative)
If you sue and lose, you pay for the defense. If you sue and win, you win your court awarded damages. If you are sued, and win, the plaintif pays your fees. If you are sued and lose, you pay the damages ordered by the court.
Besides, I would fell more encouraged to defend myself when I know I'm in the right. A high profile law firm would also be more inclined to take on such a case, as they know the plaintiff will have to pay their fees. The lawyers wouldn't have to worry about the little guy defendent being able to pay the tab.
Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA (Score:3, Informative)
The DMCA also makes it illegal to "pick the lock" as well
Sort of. Title 17, section 1201 (a)(1)(A) says that it's illegal to "pick the lock". However, section 1203, which describes the civil remedies available, says that "any person injured by a violation of section 1201 or 1202 may bring civil action", so since no one can claim injury from fair use civil remedies are not available. Also, the criminal penalties in section 1204 only apply to "Any person who violates section 1201 or 1202 willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain", so, again, most fair use is clearly not prosecutable.
So circumvention for benign purposes is illegal, but has no penalty.
Creation of circumvention devices is trickier. Even if you don't gain financially from the devices, if some of your users use them to make infringing copies and the copyright holder can claim injury, you may be subject ot a civil suit. Further, if you do sell the devices you are clearly subject to criminal prosecution.
IANAL.
errno.h from Microsoft.... (Score:3, Informative)
I thought this bit interesting - from Microsoft Visual Studio .Net Enterprise Architect...
Better call the SCO police on their licensee Microsoft - releasing "Unix" proprietary methods without authorization....
Re:Vote bush out of office (Score:5, Informative)
The corporation is its own entity. That's the whole point of a corporation - the business' liabilities are incurred by the corporation, not by its owners, so that if it fails, the owners don't lose their asses.
When you attack a corporation, you attack a business entity. The owners (shareholders) have nothing to do with it; in fact shareholders have a right to anonymity. Why do you think nobody goes to jail when Exxon destroys hundreds of miles of Alaskan coastline, but if you take your dirty oil and dump it in the storm drain and get caughty you get fined and maybe thrown in jail? It's because the shareholders aren't personally liable for the actions of the corporation. Again. That's the whole point of the corporation.
This takes a leap of one level of abstraction to get, so I can see why a lot of people don't comprehend this. Libertarians and conservatives tend to be concrete-reasoning keep-it-simple-stupid types that can't recognize a non-corporeal entity - unless it's a middle eastern diety that's been pounded into their head from birth.
Re:Vote bush out of office (Score:4, Informative)
7 votes for A, B, C
6 votes for B, A, C
5 votes for C, B, A
3 votes for D, C, B
D gets dropped, then B gets dropped, and finally A wins (A:13 vs C:8).
But if the last three voters instead voted A, D, C, B then A loses BECAUSE they voted for A:
7 votes for A, B, C
6 votes for B, A, C
5 votes for C, B, A
3 votes for A, D, C, B
D gets dropped, then C gets dropped, and finally B wins (B:11 vs A:10)
In instant RunOff Voting there are the following problems:
-Raising your vote for someone can cause them to lose (Monotonicity Criterion)
-Lowering your vote for someone can cause them to win (Monotonicity Criterion)
-A one on one comparison between the winner and any other candidate should show the winner being preferred in every pair. IRV doesn't do this. (Condorcet Criterion)
-Doesn't scale at all. The possible votes are basically a factorial. Sorry if its hard to describe the formulaes. But the number of possibilites without truncation is N! with truncation its the summation of permutations. sPn (where s=1 to n-1) xPy = x!/(x-y)!
California's recall would of just not scaled with IRV. Suppose 100 candidates then the number of possible votes is 100! + 100!/2! + 100!/3! +
-It's not easy to understand by the common guy (not
For detailed explanation of these problems:
http://electionmethods.org/evaluation.htm [electionmethods.org]
A condorcet method would be a more sound election method, because basically the voter ranks the candidates. Then the method sees which candidates are preferred by one-on-one comparisons. Joe Shmoe can understand this because when the news comes on, it just shows the comparison of the winner to every other candidate.
Bill Hicks on political parties in America (Score:5, Informative)
I'll show you politics in America: "I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Wait, there's one guy holding up both puppets!" "Shut up! Go back to bed America. Your government is in control. Here's Love Connection, watch this and get fat and stupid. By the way, keep drinking beer, you fucking morons!"
Re:clue me in.... (Score:3, Informative)
Fiduciary duties.. (Score:2, Informative)
It's obvious to me that a lot of people _will_ be suing SCO when this all blows over and it turns out they squandered millions on a case they knew they couldn't win. But I think they should start now, and use this quarters' losses as their case.
Re:A few .h files? (Score:4, Informative)
hehe
Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA (Score:3, Informative)
Um, no, it doesn't. Software you *own* (not software that's licensed; guess which one most software is?), under section 117, and private audio copying under the Audio Home Recording Act, are exceptions to the rule. Take another look at 17 USC 106. Reproduction is an exclusive right, still.
Re:What happened to '4 quarters of profitabiity'? (Score:4, Informative)
That wasn't really speculation... That part of Darl's contract was documented in one of SCO's SEC filings. [groklaw.net] If he made SCO made a profit for four consecutive quarters then Darl would get 150,000 stock options.
If you read the article though, he still gets a ton of options regardless of the four quarters of profitability... It will be interesting to watch when they start to vest.
Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA (Score:3, Informative)
Would you say the DMCA is more niggery than the NAACP? How about being more kikey than the ADL?
And if not, why not? It's the same difference -- casual and stupid use of an offensive slur.
Whatever point you may have had was obscured by the white hood.
Comparing SCO Openserver errno.h to Linux errno.h (Score:4, Informative)
I will not post the file here, but a couple of points are obvious.
1. The comments between the two versions are different. Even specific error message comments vary, such as:
and on and on.
2. There are a bunch of defines in Linux that don't exist in SCO.
3. Some of the defines are completely for different things:
4. The SCO file has a bunch of errors for things like TCP errors that aren't in the Linux file at all.
5. The formatting of comments is very different.
In general, there is no way that the Linux code is a simple cut and paste of the SCO code, at least at this level.
Maybe the code started out closer, but all that is left is symbols and numbers. The numbers are arbitrary and vary from target to target. The symbols are a part of the POSIX spec. The files are available under a BSD license. Just how is this infringing on SCO's copyright and even if it were, just what are the damages.
SCO Better Sue Microsoft, Too. (Score:4, Informative)
Two were from Cygwin, but the other two were Microsoft's.
For instance, c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\include\errno.h says it is copyright Microsoft. This file includes preprocessor directives that seem strangely familiar
#define EPERM 1
#define ENOENT 2
#define ESRCH 3
#define EINTR 4
#define EIO 5
etc.
Which look sufficiently like what SCO is claiming is their copyrighted code!
This is fun!
URL Encoding. (Score:1, Informative)
Linus proves he wrote errno.h and ctype.h (Score:4, Informative)
Can SCO really be that incompetent?
Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA (Score:3, Informative)
The DMCA effectively outlaws the use or mere possession of a crowbar, because someone might use one to break open a door. Never mind that they have plenty of legitimate, useful uses besides breaking open a door -- or that you might have a need to break open your own door.
But the DMCA goes further than that. It's also illegal for me to sell one to you, or even give one to you, or to manufacture such an item. I can't even tell you where to buy one, even though I know the hardware store on Spicewood Springs sells them. I also can't tell you how to use a crowbar, and I certainly can't tell you how you might theoretically use one to break open a locked door -- even if you own the door in question. I can barely even acknowledge that such a tool exists.
Oh, and if you manage to find one, and manage to figure out how to break your door open with it, and you manage to get rid of the crowbar before the law shows up, you can still be arrested just for breaking your own locks!
Comparing Linux-1.0 errno to Linux-2.4-20 errno (Score:3, Informative)
Linus also had some interesting things to say on the LKML:
It's rather long, so read the rest at http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/22/137
Re:1 dead == 15 dead? (Score:4, Informative)
That statistic applies to most legally owned and properly licensed firearms. Not just fully automatic weapons. Even legally owned and properly licensed handguns are rarely used in the commission of crime, even in states that permit concealed carry. While the numbers aren't quite as low as they are for fully automatic weapons and other similarly licensed arms they are still quite low.
The essential truth is few law abiding firearms owners ever commit armed crimes. On the other hand plenty of crimes are prevented by legally owned civilian firearms every day.
2.3.50 v 2.6.0 -- Diff anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
Kernel 2.6.0 has errno.h in two files. To make my life a little easier, I combined the two files, errno.h and errno-base.h. In Kernel 2.3.50 it is one file.
Well, as we know, SCO is claiming that 2.4.21 is the kernel that started with the problems. If that is the case, assuming that SCO actually has a case then we have a problem.
But the thing is that the errno.h and errno-base.h in 2.6.0 and the errno.h in 2.3.50 have only one difference other than being split up and the appropriate location indicators. THe only difference is:
#define E2BIG 7
#define E2BIG 7
So if you buy SCO's argument they are saying that a comment is to blame on this. Again, this is an SCO FUD campaign, but come on.
Thanks to diff for the comparision.
It's unlikely BECAUSE of the armed population. (Score:3, Informative)
And it works. So well that some people now believe that a conversion to a tyranny is so unlikely that they argue for the elimination of guns as an unnecessary hazard - completely oblivious to WHY it is unlikely.
But it will only remain unlikely as long as a large part of the population is armed. The US has had a number of near-misses with tyranny even in recent times. Some examples:
In the period just before WWII, when the NAZIs were coming to power in Germany, the KKK actually HELD power (especially in law enforcement) in many of the towns, counties, and states of the US. Their ideology was similar. But in the US people were able to resist with firearms. (My wife is here because, in separate incidents, her grandfather and mother held off the Klan in battle.) So while the NAZIs were able to suppress opposition and rise to power in Germany, the Klan in the US was held at bay, and finally defeated, in thousands of tiny battles.)
Nixon, president during the peak of the '60s anti-war movement (with a terrorist faction that makes Alkaida look tame), actually hired a think-tank to examine what would happen if he suspended the presidential election. Answer: That would precipitate the population to oust him by armed might and restore the election - and this would succeed, mainly because over half the population was armed and partly because some of the military would side with them.
The Battle of Athens [constitution.org] is another county-level example.
(Of course not all near-misses were averted by an aroused, armed population, or the threat of one. For instance, there was the "Butler Plot" [members.shaw.ca] in 1933, when the heads of several of the US' largest corporations plotted a coup to replace Roosevelt with a fascist regime under general Butler. Butler was appalled, went to a congressional committee (the predecessor of HUAC) about it, and the plot was suppressed. Imagine if they'd found a more sympathetic general...)
And I could go on.