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DRoseDARs
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"My god, it's full of peas..."
Jul 2002
time: 21:28
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Sorry, don't have a http:// link, just the copy that was physically mailed to my house. This is typed, so there might be an error or two in spelling or grammar.
From EE Times - Monday, May 26, 2003 - Issue 1271
Legal Threat rocks Linux
Letter from Unix house SCO puts 'open source' at risk
by Charles J. Murray
Park Ridge, Ill. - Legal storm clouds formed over the Linux community last week, as software vendors and corporate giants reacted to an ominously worder letter from SCO Group advising them to seek counsel if they use Linux. Basically, SCO claims that the open-source Linux operating system infringes on the intellectual property developed for Unix. If the claims were to be hold up in court, the business model of providing "open" software, closely associated with Linux, could be broken.
The letter, sent on May 12 to Fortune 1,000 companies and 500 other global concerns, fired a shot across the bow of the Linux user community, which reacted with angry criticism on Web sites and message boards. Hundreds of e-mails poured into SCO (Lindon, Utah), and a few postings threatened violence, executives said.
"There have been postings threatening dive-by shootings at our corporate headquarters, and there have been postings of our executives' home addresses and phone numbers on message boards," said an SCO spokesman.
"It's as if somebody whacked Santa Claus," a competing software developer said of the irrate public responce.
SCO says it decided to issue the written warning to 1,500 corporations around the world after hiring three groups of mathematicians and programmers to comb through Linux in search of patent infringments against Unix software patents that SCO owns. "There were three independently found incidents of our code being incorporated into Linux," said the SCO spokesman.
Linux supporters last week charged that SCO Group is hiding its real agenda. "This is a tactic used by someone who just wants to create fear, uncertainty and doubt about whether or not Linux, or any free software, should be used at all," said Jon (Maddog) Hall, executive director of Linux International (Nashua, N.H.), a global organization advocating Linux.
Hall and other open-source advocates argue that in the real world, software code is frequently co-opted, even in "closed-source" software projects. "SCO seems to think that every time a piece of code is written, it is reviewed by people who are knowledgable about existing patents," Hall said. "But that doesn't really happen."
Hall also said that SCO "has refused to talk about what they claim was copied." SCO countered that it will let industry analysts see...
Cont'd on page 84
...the alleged infringements in the next few weeks, provided they agree to sign nondisclosure agreements beforehand.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash.) weighed in with a different reaction, agreeing to buy a license for SCO's Unix patents, which form the crux of the case against Linux.
Microsoft's move added fuel to the debate over the imminent legal battle, which some believe could have profound implications not only for Linux but also for the software business at large. That is because, historically, chunks of propriety code have landed in unusual places, including the commercial programs of big-name vendors.
"This is the biggest thing that has ever happened to Linux and maybe even to software in general," said Dave Fraser, group vice president of products for Wind River Systems Inc. (Alameda, Calif.), whose software competes with Linux products. "It's ignited a huge amount of interest in what will happen to the open-source movement."
"At the very least, it forces all those companies to do a legal investigation to see whether they have anything to be concerned about," said Brian Ferguson, an intellecutal-property attorney for McDermott, Will & Emery in Washington (see story Users, suppliers 'on notice' , this page).
SCO Group in March announced a $1 billion lawsuit charging IBM Corp. with misappropriating trade secrets and competing unfairly in the Linux market. The complaint, filed in the State Court of Utah, charged that IBM improperly made concentrated efforts to destroy the economic value of Unix in order to benfit its Linux service business. To argue its case, SCO hired high-profile attorney David Boies, who prosecuted for the U.S. government and later represented Al Gore in the 2000 election's vote-counting scandal. At the time the lawsuit was filed, many experts saw the action against IBM as a private scrap between the two companies that had no bearing on the Linux community at large. But with SCO's warning letters to the broader industry, all of that has changed.
'More than IBM'
"When we started coming coming across those infringements, we realized that we as a company needed to elevate this to a level of more than just the allegations against IBM," SCO's spokeman said. "We needed to make Linux users aware taht we were finding our Unix code in Linux, and that legal liability could rest with them." SCO's letter advised the corporations to seek the opinionof the counsel to determine whether or not they should be running Linux in their organizations.
Wind River executives said last week that fear of legal action caused them to abandon their own Linux program, which was quietly moving into high gear three years ago. After investigating they said they decided against releasing it because Linux is subject to the laws of the general public licence, which allows users to demand access to an OEM's source code. "We decided we didn't want to expose our customers to those kinds of issues," said Frser of Wind River. "This like going after the tobacco companies. If it's successful, it will tear down the precepts that support Linux, and it could affect the concept of all software."
Even before mailing the warning letter on May 12, SCO was feeling the heat. On May 3, SCO's computers were struck by what the company calls a "coordinated denial-of-service" attack, which forced its Internet service provider to take the site off line for about five hours. SCO blamed Linux supporters.
Some observers say the anger in most keen among users with a deep belief in the concept ot free and open software. "This is an argument taht you can't win, because it's not so much a technology issue as it is a religious issue," Fraser said.
Users, suppliers 'on notice' story refered to ealier in article
Attorneys last week termed SCO's warning a serious concern for users and providers of Linux software. "If you are put on notice of another company's intellectual-property rights and you ignore it, you can be found to have acted willfully in your ignorance," said Washington lawyer Brian Ferguson. "That can open you up to punitive damages if you don't take appropriate steps to make sure you are within the bounds of the law."
Ferguson said taht the legal issues grow stickier if users aquire the Linux software from a vendor. If so, he said, they have to determine whether the vendor's software provides an indemnity clause. "They need to know whether they can turn around and put the vendor on the hook for any potential infringemnet," he said.
Jon Hall, executive director of Linux International, said he believes most Linux vendors do not offer such clauses. "Most say that if there are issues around the intellectual property, they don't want to be responcible for them," Hall said.
- Charles J. Murray
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God, that was a lot of typing 
I don't use Linux so this is effing hilarious... 
...but still a little concerning at the same time, both the threats (duh) and the course that the SCO has chosen to take. 
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:28
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--"Legal Threat rocks Linux"
This is far too overblown a title. SCO is trying to get IBM to buy them out is all. Their legal threats are on very shaky ground, especially since Linus has said that if they show what code they claim infringes it'll be removed. Sad thing is SCO hasn't done this yet... There's also the little problem of them distributing it themselves under the GPL, which is going to cause them further problems.
This blanket letter-writing campaign against companies using Linux is ridiculous. All it's doing is making the SCO lawyers some money in letter-writing fees and killing any reputation SCO may have had. They're going to piss a lot of people off with this, especially if they continue to refuse to tell anyone what code, exactly, infringes on anything.
--"Go figure, the immature Linux tw*ts lifted code illegally."
Sasuga Asher.
Sorry, but if SCO is correct, those "immature Linux tw*ts" worked for IBM...
Edit:
Oh, and you're finally admitting that MS has lifted BSD code? What changed your mind? Noticed the BSD copyright info in the MSDN code? ^_^
Wraith
Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity
Last edited by Wraith on 28-05-2003 at 05:57
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:28
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quote:
Originally posted by Asher
Go figure, the immature Linux tw*ts lifted code illegally.
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Actually, (a) this is a problem for the entire development industry, screw Linux; and (b) it's not evident the Linux ***** did anything.
If you're a small to midsize developer doing any kind of commercial work, there's no way in hell you can check against every possibly related software patent within any kind of sustainable development budget, and if you need venture capital for new projects, this kind of mass-threat BS adds a whole new layer of risk management crap you have to waste time with to get your venture money. If SCO is successful, it will encourage other big fish to play games with little fish - and you can get your source code happily filed in court, for the entire world to check out, if you get sued.
As far as what the Linux ***** did or didn't do, it's not real useful that SCO found three things they claim are their property - Lotus Development once claimed intellectual property rights to "File Retrieve" and File Save" in menus - they won the first one, didn't win the second one, but if someone has more money than talent, you can always litigate other people out of your way. Three pieces of how much code? 50 lines of code verbatim? Or 1500? How much of the overall product is represented? It will be interesting if this litigates, to see if and how much the bar is lowered for these kinds of claims.
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Ari Rahikkala
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Unreported loss of streaming in atomic read operation
Oct 1999
time: 07:28
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quote:
"This is the biggest thing that has ever happened to Linux and maybe even to software in general," said Dave Fraser, group vice president of products for Wind River Systems Inc. (Alameda, Calif.), whose software competes with Linux products. "It's ignited a huge amount of interest in what will happen to the open-source movement." |
Nope, it isn't. As already mentioned, the whole thing is blown hugely out of proportion. I'd have been a lot happier if everybody had just ignored SCO and its everchanging story about what has been stolen by who (Linux is a bicycle and our code made it a luxury car! IBM took it! Now RedHat has it but it isn't in the vanilla kernel! No, it's in the vanilla kernel too! Hey look, Bruce Perens and RMS are filthy thieves if we take stuff they've said out of context and put it on our website! If you have Linux you're a filthy thief, too, and we're going to sue you!).
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:28
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--"I think you're confused -- I've always acknowledged BSD's contribution to Windows"
Nonesense. You can change your opinions if you want, but don't try to change them retroactively. Last time I brought this up your response was essentially "bullshit -- prove it".
In any case, this has become even more amusing.
http://www.novell.com/news/press/ar...05/pr03033.html
Novell, the company SCO bought the Unix code from, is now saying that SCO never had the copyrights, so obviously can't sue people for infringing on them...
They also say SCO must agree to this, since they've been repeatedly asking Novell to transfer the copyrights to them over the last couple months.
Too bad, SCO. Guess IBM isn't going to be buying you now.
Wraith
"Unix is not a "A-ha" experience, it is more of a "holy-****" experience."
— Colin McFadyen in alt.folklore.computers
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28-05-2003 02:37
Smug bastards are finally getting thier just reward! 
I expected him to be the first one to post a response. 
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