SCO offers UnixWare licenses for Linux

http://lwn.net/Articles/40526/

interesting.

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-----------------------------------
Micskó Gábor
Compaq Accredited Platform Specialist, System Engineer (APS, ASE)
Szintézis Computer Rendszerház Kft.      
H-9021 Gyor, Tihanyi Árpád út. 2.
Tel: +36-96-502-216
Fax: +36-96-318-658
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.hup.hu

Very interesting. It'd be interesting to see if they are able to do this and get past the GPL. However, even if they are selling "Sys V" or "Unixware" licenses, it doesn't mean that they have the right to sell Linux licenses.

To put it simply, just because they "may," - and I say may here simply because we have no evidence to prove their claims but cannot flatly deny them - own the rights to Sys V, does NOT mean they own the right to the code that was released under GPL and does NOT give them the right to reassign a license to it.

If I were a lawyer for the FSF, I'd take this opportunity to investigate how they are selling the licenses, and go smash them up...

Michael Bernstein
michael AT seven-angels DOT net

So they want to sell us something that still hasn't proved....cool.

No. They want to sell you something you already own. SCO is the owner of a non-exclusive license to a 30 year-old operating system. There are many others who have such a license including the University of California in Berkeley. Much of Linux was designed to interface with the API that they published, in a method that minimizes the changes to a 'C' runtime library. This made porting of various Unix utilities developed by the students at Berkeley, relatively easy. The actual Unix API used by Berkeley, was published by AT&T in December 1983. It is Called "Unix System V, Release 2.0, User Reference Manual Including BTL Computer Center Standard and Local Commands". I have a copy of that two volume ring-bound book.

A "non-exclusive license" means that you you are not the only person who has been licensed. It's just that simple. In my opinion there is no way that SCO will ever convince any court that their version of "non-exclusive" is any different than all the others including, but not limited to, BSD, Digital, Interactive, Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, etc. I have read the complaint and they allege that somebody must have stolen their secrets because nobody could make a version of Unix good enough for "the enterprise" without their secrets. So, they contend that they are the only people smart enough to write software for "the enterprise", whatever that is. Nice trick.

Note that in the complaint against IBM, SCO seeks a jury trial. I guess they think it's easier to snow a jury than a judge. We'll see. I think SCO thinks juries are stupid and will treat them as David and Goliath. I think a jury will treat them like thieves, instead.

It is instructive to read the annual reports, filed with the United States Security and Exchange Commission, by many of the companies that produce software. These reports are available on the "Web" and the various company's Web Pages usually have links to recent filings. A quote from a portion of Novel's 2002 Annual report goes like this; " The software industry is characterized by frequent litigation regarding copyright, patent, and other intellectual property rights."

The fact that somebody sues somebody else in the Software Industry is kind of like having the sun rise in the East. You get to expect it. Now, back to writing some software that somebody may claim I stole.............

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.

The copyright owners own it.

Anyway:
1. SCO cannot redistribute the parts of the kernel that are not theirs under a binary only license.
2. Linus own's the "Linux" trademark (® or tm, I dunno) so SCO can't call what they own "Linux" if Linus says no.
3. Even in the unlikely case that SCO wins the © case against IBM, Linux developers will be hard at work reimplementing the parts of the wheel that some uninformed troglodyte found was SCO property.
4. Are you actually afraid SCO will have an impact this drastic on Linux?
5. RedHat should step up and chime in, and the more likely is that SCO will piss IBM off for a while and interrupt some of RedHat's revenue stream through FUD.

EVERYONE who has ever contributed to Linux should call SCO on their bluff and formally object to the blatant violation of all your collective licenses. That way, at least it's on record.

And can be rewritten from scratch if necessary... They're crazy!

There seems to be a prevailing opinion that if there is stolen code in Linux that came from SCO owned code that all that needs to be done is to remove it and everything is fine. I don't think it works that way. If code was stolen and the fact that it is in Linux helped destroy SCO's business then SCO has the right to try and get damages. I.e., Linux damaged SCO by using the code.

It's also not a simple case of rewriting. _Assuming_ that there was something significant in Linux which came from SCO, i.e., they can make the case that the Linux community wouldn't have thought of it on their own, then you don't get to rewrite it because now you know how whatever "it" is works and you didn't before.

The business world takes their IP seriously. If, and it is a big if, there is code in Linux from SCO, that's going to be a nasty mess to clean up and we had better all pray that IBM just buys them and puts Unix into the public domain. Otherwise I think SCO could force Linux backwards to whereever it was before the tainted code came in. If that happens, I (and I suspect a lot of you) will work to make sure that things which couldn't possibly be tainted (like drivers) do make it forward.

If SCO prevails it won't be the end of the world. A lot of that scalability stuff is just a waste of time, IMO. 32 processor systems are dinosaurs that are going away and I'm not the only one who thinks so, Dell and IDC agree:

	http://news.com.com/2100-1010_3-1027556.html

Don't get me wrong, there are some cool things in 2.5 that we all want but if SCO puts a dent in the works Linux will recover and maybe be better.

---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Hi,

<[email protected]> escribi?:

I wish to know are we have backup plan any backup plan. Most of Linux users are gonna worry.

Today I get a e mail from our local mailing lists. Says SCO sued Red Hat for this. another one asks Can M$ send BSA to check their systems and request licence money (because of buying SCO Unixware Licences).

Rumors everywhere, people can't track of all sources about SCO vs IBM(Linux) case and each Rumor hurt us too badly. Every news people are gonna make worst case scenario and this is preventing people to buy expensive linux server systems (like rhas etc).

Of course Linux will live. I haven't got any question about it. But I fear this case between SCO and IBM may hit Red Hat, Suse and others. I believe non of these distros are disposable (uh oh expect Caldera/SCO).

Is there any way for backup plan?

I believe the backup plan will shut up SCO and burn those plans forever.

Waiting for IBM is not good idea.

Ps: I home my enlish enough to tell what I mean.. :)

Sancar "Delifisek" Saran

Well if IBM did steal stuff my backup plan is to sue IBM, as I suspect is everyone elses. There are basically three outcomes

#1 The whole thing is without merit (as it seems to be now) #2 IBM did it and have to buy SCO (because everyone will sue IBM, every Linux developer, every business, every user)
#3 SCO gets bankrupted by countersuits (popular US approach to law)

At the moment it seems like the games Intel played against AMD in the 486 days against motherboard vendors, except that Intel had a better case

SCO Unixware licenses don't entitle you to copy Linux. In fact if you sign one of their "settlements" you probably lose your right to distribute Linux under the GPL license terms and give them the right to break into your office by signing one. But I'm not a lawyer

You can still today download Linux kernels from sco.com which claim to be GPL. Given what I know about estoppel and law I suggest everyone may wish to download a copy and log the date they did so.

These same issues are true of Windows btw. If you are using any of the following products you might want to worry about the Intertrust patent suit against Microsoft...

http://www.intertrust.com/main/ip/accused.html
http://secure.zdnet.com.au/newstech/enterprise/story/0,2000048640,20276337,00.htm

and also Timeline - who have made it clear they are considering targetting Microsoft customers

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/29419.html

"particularly those Microsoft customers who relied on Microsoft's
assurances, failed to investigate them thoroughly, and knowingly
continued to provide material steps in an Infringing Combination. These
infringers, if any, may face treble damages for the entire three and
one-half years the case was tied up in the courts. Microsoft is not a
law firm. Relying on its advice should not constitute acting in good
faith; which is the required defense to treble damages for failure to
investigate and honor patents once on notice of their existence."

Just the press cover that one mysteriously less often.

Final amusement: http://www.talkleft.com/archives/003727.html

Hi,

First, thanks for replaying my mail.

It look like good plan, and my question is not answered. Are distro makers safe in these time line? What if Red Hat goes bankrupt before the SCO falldown.

I believe without them we are lost very valuable assets. Losing Red Hat or SuSe are unacceptable. Because of the whole thing slowes down the sales of RHAS class expensive Linux contracts may lead economically trouble our very importand distros.

Of course I can live without them, when everything goes bad, I can do linux from strach. But what about Joe Sixpack or, Johny WannebeLinux Admin. I think none of us want to return status of 1997.

I don't mean technological status of 1997, I mean industry acceptance. Last six monts I see lots of system sales & IT consultant people gonna buy expensive Linux contracs.

Before the expensive Linux offerings these guys have serious trouble to understand Linux nature. Now they are very happy to buy RHAS for 2499$

And now SCO looks like gonna destroy our industry acceptance.

Today I see gartner suggestions about status.

http://www3.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=116445

(of course this is M$ biased FUD. But to many people listen them. Remember PR ;) )

Its look like our distros gonna hurt badly.

Oh.. I think my broken English leads some misunderstanding. I mean, non technical (or don't know too much about GNU/Linux communty or even /.) Linux users are believe these rumors. They just sing-up some local IT sites, also these sites have very limited knowladge about situation. And thoose (I believe some M$ biased aproachs) speculations make them nervous. They have no clue about status, they have not real information sources and they are chooses which operating systems run their cooperation or they give

Personally I'm living in Turkey, we are very very far away that questions, problems etc. I have no fears about SCO,his case and others. Neither SCO nor M$ can distrub me.

Anyway this is Kernel list, a harcore technical list. That much politics may distrub you or others.

But I'm fear about thoose distros, loosing them not good and I believe if this mess not finish in A.S.A.P we gonna loose them.

And this is what M$, Sun wants.

Regards

Sancar "Delifisek" Saran

At least in the United States, you are not going to get away with claiming there is some stolen code that caused damages. The sole responsibility of a person who discovers stolen property is to make "good effort" to return it. So the party that claims that his property was stolen needs first to identify that stolen property. Then, and only then, the party that has possession of the property needs to make "good effort" to return it. Good effort means that, amongst other things, the person who returns the property must not suffer undue cost.

Child's poem describing this point of law; "Finders keepers, losers weepers!"

This is a very important concept. If it did not exist, I could lose my personal property anywhere and then claim that somebody stole it, causing damages. Instead, to prevent this kind of "legal theft", the only thing a person found in possession of "stolen" property needs to do is to return it, unless there is evidence that the possessor actually stole the property in question.

Of course there's always some lawyer(s) that attempt to make new case-law. See http://www.overlawyered.com for details.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.

...

Yeah, right.

``I "found" these 3GB of mp3's of music and I had no idea that they were stolen but now that you mention it, here they are back. Finders keepers, right?''

What were you thinking? That's obviously incorrect, I know that it is incorrect from both observation of recent court cases as well as direct personal experience.

---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

You're both right. The thing you may be missing is - intellectual property ain't the same as material property and the law has to (and does) take this into account.

Tomas Szepe <[email protected]>

A more reasonable analogy is that you download a bunch of free programs while one of them has some copy-righted music in it for sound effects. Surely you'd have the ability to remove this once you found out without penalty?

It really depends. If you were an end user and the amount that the copyright holder could hope to get from you is small, probably. If you were a distro maker and you made $50M/year off of things which included the copyrighted material, I doubt very much that you'd get away with it.

All this stuff boils down to money: how much the violator has, how much the copyright holder thinks they can get.

Read up on the law, Google is your friend. It is complex but the prevailing idea here that you can just rewrite the infringing material and that's the end of it is not true in my opinion. If you think about it, it makes sense. If someone damaged your business and all they had to do was say "whoops, we'll stop", that's not much of a disincentive.

---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Ahh, but if you're MS you don't even have to promise not to do it again, and you get offered additional monopolies (see the "justice" dept's first settlement offer). Why can't we do the same?
Nick

Hardly comparable. There is a difference between getting something knowing it to be improperly obtained and believing it to be the property of the supplier. Just to follow your example, you buy a second hand disc or computer. When you hook it up you find a load of illegal MP3s. If what you say is correct you'd be guilty of theft, or at the very least copyright infringement.

Or another example with the second hand computer. You discover that some of it's software isn't properly licensed, even though you believed that license to have been legally transferred to you when you bought it. Does that misjudgement make you guilty?

OK, if IBM illegally included SCO IP into Linux then they might have done it knowingly. If Linux Torvalds accepted that code believing it to be legally supplied then how can he, or any other unwitting Linux user, be guilty? It seems to me that SCO is more interested in making a quick profit than in preventing infringement of any rights they may have.

Of course I personally do not believe there is any real basis for SCO's claims. Then again we are talking about a court case where the "truth" will be "decided". Any similarity with similarity with reality will be purely accidental, if the lawyers have their way.

Ian.

You bet you would. Unless you could make a case that the seller sold you the system with legal rights to that data, and that case would have to include some plausible fee for the data, then the judge would say "there is no free lunch son, if the deal looked too good to be true, it was and you saying you didn't know isn't an excuse".

---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Sorry, Larry, but we live in the post-dot.com age and all have experienced astonishing business models where virtually everything was handed to the "customer" for free. I even know a business model where you get a free _car_, have to pay nothing and it _works_ for the company.
So your argument is indeed one of the "unkowning" type, it would take me about 10 minutes to fundamentally prove such a judge plain silly.

Regards,
Stephan

I think the phrase you're looking for is "receiving stolen property." I am not a lawyer, so I really can't comment further.

David Benfell
[email protected]

I see the point but... Take Linux as a community. Let's say someone contributes stolen code, but the community doesn't check if the contributed code violates any IP or copyright law. So, is the Linux community guilty? Or else should the one that contributed code be considered guilty?

We can't be liable for the work of others over which we don't have total control. Or is the law forcing us to check line by line the contributions made by hundreds of programmers all around the world?

Joe coder cannot reasonably "check" anyway, and therefore cannot be held liable. Only those with access to someone else's IP can reasonably be held liable.

I really think that even though this thread is meta-relevant, it should die now. No one has any relevant input.

Instead of saying "doesn't check", I would rather say "cannot check". Without access to proprietary source code I'm going to have a hard time telling whether a patch that someone sends me is IP-tainted or not.

A company doesn't check contributions line-by-line either. In fact they often prefer to hire someone who has several years of experience in the field, so they are intentionally trying to hire people that have had access to some other company's IP.

Jan

... and the winner is: Mr Solana!

Congrats: you just came across the simple fact why "IP" and its patenting is fundamentally flawed by design.

You, as a second inventor, cannot know your brand new black box violates in fact some patent buried in tons of paper in some patent office 10.000 miles from your home. And as you are not rich, you do not even have a chance to ever find out, up to the day you get sued by the the holder of that patent for infringement.

If you think longer about it you may notice that _knowledge_ is a fundamental part of life for human beings. During evolution only the fittest survived, in case of fish the ones that can swim fast, or cannot be seen on the ground or whatever made them special. In case of human race it is knowledge, the individuals with best trained brain survived, this is why the brain of this species is as big as it is.
And now some idiots invented "IP". So they in fact try to cut you off from the very basics of your human nature: knowledge. If you cannot pay, you get none. point.
Have you ever thought if there is a group of hardliner sharks under water that tries to cut off the rest of the fish from the water to gain royalties (whatever it may be you can pay a shark)? Would you call that sharks' idea stupid? Yes, you would. Would you think the vast majority of fish would (and should) unite to do just about anything to erase these sharks from the water planet? Sure you would. See? Politics is sometimes just like swimming, if you don't move, you drown.

Additionally, this is why you have trousers on, because if there were a fundamental patent on the invention of trousers you can be sure just about 10% of the worlds people could afford them - why should the patent holder sell something so cheap everybody can afford it? He wouldn't, he would maximize his profit - of course.

Regards,
Stephan

I'm sure someone else has asked this by now, but...

Given that we don't have access to the proprietary source code that might be contributed, how could we check to make sure that submitted code wasn't stolen?

Oh yes, Dell that mainstay of high-performance
computing... and of clustering BTW! ;-)

The day Dell 4-way 32-bits CISC machine clusters start menacing
32-way 64-bits RISC machines I'll see your point.

Until then, it is simply a case of Dell not managing to make a
dent on a financially attractive, but technically too difficult for them, market.

Or perhaps the Hurd will, if damage and confusion are too
widespread here. But I hope not.

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"SCO has announced its latest move: concerned Linux users will be able to buy a UnixWare License for a "run-time, binary use of Linux." If you buy into their protection scheme, they promise not to sue - but only for binary use. Looking at the source (or modifying it), it seems, will not be allowed. It will be interesting to see how many companies actually buy these licenses."

Sounds like extortion to me..

Jeff.

- --
The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers.
- Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, pg. 265
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I hope not many companies buy the license as a hedge against future lawsuits...

By buying such a license, a company becomes obligated to the terms of the license. Even if a party weren't previously at risk, they could find that they become at risk for future lawsuits based on having accepted the license.

I am no legal expert. My lay person's understanding is that SCO's offer appears to forfeit SCO's right to distribute Linux under the GPL, due to the GPL's "no additional restrictions" clause.

Anyone for a countersuit? :)

-- Jamie

Quoth Gabor MICSKO:

Insofar as extortion is "interesting."

Kurt

"I drink to make other people interesting."
		-- George Jean Nathan