Today's SCO News

joebeone writes "Linus has commented on the SCO v. IBM suit saying "SCO is playing it like the Raelians" and that he will withhold his judgement until the code in question is shown in court. He has also recommended that former slashdot editor, Chris DiBona, be appointed to a panel offered by SCO to examine the evidence." Businessweek has an interview with SCO's CEO. The Open Group would like to remind everyone that SCO is only one of many in the Unix world.

Linus for Panel Member

[aridhol]

Linus is the maintainer of the whole system. He should be allowed to see the code. If not him, then his designate, preferably a maintainer of a large part of the kernel.

Even better, if SCO is willing to say what area of the code infringes, the maintainer for that section should be allowed to see the code. Along with Linus.

If SCO gets to pick all the "experts", they can seriously stack the deck. Linus and IBM together should be allowed to choose the same number of experts as SCO chooses.

-1 Troll

[42forty-two42]

$ whois sco.com
[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.dotster.com]
[Querying whois.dotster.com]
[whois.dotster.com]

The data contained in the WHOIS database, while
believed by the company to be reliable, is provided "as is",
with no guarantee or warranties regarding its accuracy. This
information is provided for the sole purpose of assisting you
in obtaining information about domain name registration records.
Any use of this data for any other purpose, including, but not
limited to, allowing or making possible dissemination or
collection of this data in part or in its entirety for any
purpose, such as the transmission of unsolicited advertising and
solicitations, is expressly forbidden without the prior written
permission of this company. By submitting an inquiry, you agree
to these terms of usage and limitations of warranty.
Please limit your queries to 10 per minute and one connection.

Registrant:
The SCO Group
355 S 520 W
Suite 100
Lindon, UT 84042
US

Registrar: DOTSTER
Domain Name: SCO.COM
Created on: 03-SEP-87
Expires on: 02-SEP-04
Last Updated on: 22-JAN-03

Administrative, Technical Contact:
Administrator, Domain [e-mail]
The SCO Group
355 S 520 W
Suite 100
Lindon, UT 84042
US
801-932-5800

Domain servers in listed order:
NS.CALDERASYSTEMS.COM
NS2.CALDERASYSTEMS.COM
C7NS1.CENTER7.COM
NSCA.SCO.COM

End of Whois Information

opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html

[Mensa Babe]

OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint by Eric Raymond, President of The Open Source Initiative [opensource.org]. Do we really have to say more, than what have already been said?

Re:considered the father of Linux?

[RoLi]

The person who did the paste would certainly be guilty of copyright infringement,

Exactly.

but is that liability passed on to every user of the infringing derivative work?

No, it isn't.

No matter how much you or SCO's CEO wishes it to be, there is no liability passed to the end user, period.

Wouldn't make any sense or would it? Just because some vendor is guilty of a crime, suddently all users shall be guilty of that crime, too? What nonsense.

Re:considered the father of Linux?

[Dr. Manhattan]

Weel, patents are a problem, but because of the stupid laws it's actually worse for the kernel types to check patents! If they do, they open themselves up to the charge of "willful violation" and triple damages; if they can plausibly plead ignorance the risk is much lower.

Just one of those fun legal quirks.

Re:show us the CODE!

[laughing_badger]

Yes. Their 52 week range is 0.60 - 8.94. Most of this is over the last 3 months.

Damn, but I wish I had followed through with my 'dumb' idea to remortgage and dump the cash into SCOX! 'Idle rich' is such good job title.

Re:show us the CODE!

[arivanov]

The article is incorrect. The actual SCO OpenServer certification status is:

1. SCO OpenServer does not hold a Unix 98 cert, AIX does.
2. SCO OpenServer does not hold a Unix 98 cert, True64 does
3. SCO OpenServer does not hold a Unix 98 cert, Solaris does.
4. SCO OpenServer does not hold a Unix 95 cert, AIX does

ad naseum...

infty. SCO holds only a 95 cert for Unixware which it bought (and certified for the bought code, nothing later on) and for which the Open Group holds some of the trademarks anyway.

More info on:

http://www.opengroup.org/products/cert/certprods .h tm

So SCO has no legal right to call their flagship product unix anyway. Openserver is not and should not be allowed to be called Unix.

Re:considered the father of Linux?

[YU Nicks NE Way]

No matter how much you or SCO's CEO wishes it to be, there is no liability passed to the end user, period.

Not exactly. I can't speak to the issue of the end user of a single copy bought from Red Hat -- that'd be complicated. However, the liability would be inherited by anyone who made an infringing copy of the work in question. Thus, Red Hat, IBM, and VA Linux would unquestionably be liable. If you installed Red Hat on more than one computer, I think that a lawyer might well argue that you were liable for the second and subsequent copies of the product you installed. If you went out and downloaded a copy from one of the kernel mirrors, then you, the end user, would be liable, period, whether or not you actually installed the system. (Installation may not be infringement, but making media from which you could install unequivocally is.)

Re:Something Mismatches

[GrenDel Fuego]

This months issue of a US linux magazine (Probably "Linux Magazine", but I'd need to go home to check) has a pretty favorable review of SCO Linux in it.

The problem is that magazines are put together quite a while before they actually are released, so the information in them can be out of date by the time people actually see it.

The May issue of a magazine usually comes out in April. It probably goes to the printers 6 weeks before being released, so that would put the magazine being created in each March, before the lawsuit.

SCO is still using Linux on its web server

[Anonymous Coward]

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?mode_u=off&mod e_w=on&site=www.sco.com&submit=Examine [netcraft.com] Stefan

Re:Even if SCO shows the code

[hobbes75]

Take a binary release of the date in question and compile the closed source in front of witnesses. The code in question should compile to the same binary. Of course you need a trustworthy source confirming the date of the binary.

Re:considered the father of Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if someone has, in the past or future, malicously or accidentally, injected proprietary code w/ copyright or patent entanglements, into core Linux systems?

From the GPL:

If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

The implication is that the offending code will be removed and rewritten to make it non-infringing if at all possible.

Basically, it's the same thing that would happen if infringing code were found in a commercial product, except because the GPL allows anyone to redistribute the product, this possibility must be written into the copyright license.

Re:Key quote. My question: how to remedy?

[eli173]

What is an 'program' doing in the linux-kernel?? What does that mean??
I remembered when I read that statement that I quit reading the rest, since it is obvious BS (to me that is).

Actually, there are a number of user-land utilities in the kernel source tree. Try doing a
grep 'include.*stdlib.h' -r .
in a recent source tree. (Ignoring the hits from the Documentation directory.)

Eli

Re:Can we "short" SCO's stock?

[glitch!]

Suppose some of us believe SCO is lying. What's involved in "shorting" their stock?

SEC rules probably make this more complicated, but I think this is a pretty good simplification. Shorting stock is basically selling stock you don't have, with the intention of buying it back later (at a lower price). So you borrow stock from someone else and sell the stock. So how do you borrow stock? (Stockbrokers, please correct this as necessary...) When you do a "short", your stockbroker borrows shares from one of his other customers that has that stock. That stockholder probably does not even notice that his stock has been borrowed, and if the occasion comes up that the stock is needed, then your stockbroker will have to buy the stock immediately so that the stock "lender" is covered. This is one of the dangers of selling short, since a volatile stock may need to be re-bought any time the actual stock owner wants to do something with it, which may be RIGHT NOW. Or it might be some time that is really invonvenient for you, since the price is not where you want it to be. Tough luck. If you sell short, and the price goes up, you could be liable for many, many times your investment. Your stockbroker will probably hold the cash proceeds from your sale as insurance against this sort of thing. Compre this with simple investing, where you buy a stock and the worst case scenario is losing all of your investment. But if you sell short, it can get much worse if things go badly for you.

Re:show us the CODE!

[lfd]

The law suite is with UnixWare 7 _not_ OpenServer.

Microsoft had it's problems with copyright too

[VortexVertigo]

Microsoft had issues with licensing code for their SQL Server product. They told their customers not to worry, their customers believed them. Then Microsoft loses the battle and the customers are exposed to potentially huge fines and fees. I say that is worse than any of the current mess with SCO. Someone needs to make sure that this is brought up to counter any anti-GPL FUD that might be flying around. Sagent Vs MS Story [com.com]

Re:Lawyers to the rescue!

[ebh]

does anyone know who is representing SCO?

Among others, David Boies [sco.com].

I don't want to guess what he bills. $400/hour? I bet he bills his paralegals out at more than that.

Re:Something Mismatches

[steveha]

This months issue of a US linux magazine (Probably "Linux Magazine", but I'd need to go home to check) has a pretty favorable review of SCO Linux in it.

That's the June 2003 issue of Linux Journal, page 78. And I didn't think it was "pretty favorable". It was as neutral as possible. The part about the delays in the sendmail security patch was not at all favorable.

The May issue of a magazine usually comes out in April. It probably goes to the printers 6 weeks before being released, so that would put the magazine being created in each March, before the lawsuit.

The final draft was submitted to the magazine about a week after SCO announced its lawsuit, but most of the writing was before that.

I know this stuff because I wrote that article.

steveha

Gartner Group now warning against Linux

[G27 Radio]

They seem to find SCO's claims as "questionable," but are warning that end users might in fact be sued. Despite calling it a "remote" possibility, their recommendations could hold back the deployment of Linux.

One of their recommendations is "Minimizing the use of Linux in 'complex, mission-critical systems' until the dust clears on how valid SCO's claims are." How long is that going to take?

Gartner to users: Don't take SCO suit lightly [infoworld.com]