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SCOvsIBMDiscussionArchive

Summary

Archive of old discussions from the SCOvsIBM main page.

Please do not take offense if your comments were moved here. This is just a bit of pruning to encourage new discussions and cut the size of the index.

Discussion Archive

Is this page trying to present a comprehensive set of resources for an information consumer interested in the SCO v. IBM litigation? Or is it meant to be an active collaboration tool for information producers? That is, is this page aimed at people who are taking seriously the Work in progess appendix to the OSI Position Paper?

Or more simply, is this page supposed to more and more resemble a finished product -- or a shared work space used by an active research group who are publishing their (semi :- ) finished products elsewhere?

-- NedUlbricht - 03 Jun 2003

Yes

Mikael Pawlo made an initial request for "a Web page tracking the SCO / IBM proceedings". As I maintain this TWiki and was thinking of starting a similar page anyway, I offered it.

The idea is to be a little more bazaar to ESR's cathedral, if you will. His document is open to suggestions though they're gatewayed through ESR. One characteristic of TWiki is to remove the role of central editor. Another is to allow anyone to be an editor. Which means that we're both open to contributions from many, and can restructure the document as needed. (So, don't be surprised if the overall look-and-feel suddenly changes.)

The general idea is to provide a rapidly accessible location to be able to record or link new occurrences or information. Dredging up historical documents is also an interest.

-- KarstenSelf - 03 Jun 2003

Also, with a Wiki-based collaboration tool, you get the wonderful "diff log" that allows you to instantly know what was "improved" as opposed to a change log with entries like "Minor corrections"

-- ChrisKoontz - 03 Jun 2003

I've been asking myself, if SCO has a case, how does their behavior communicate that they know they are right and they're doing the right thing? The only answer I've come up with thus far is they are impatient to be proved right and their FUD is all self-righteous posturing.

On the other side, when I ask myself what if they have no case, how do their actions make sense, I come up with the following - Could someone give me feedback on these thoughts? The nightmare scenario. IBM settles.

There could be many reasons for this. IBM comes to believe it's the cheapest/easiest way. Or IBM just gets tired of it. Or enough customers complain that IBM just feels the need to make it go away. SCO gets a whack o'cash. SCO NEVER REVEALS the allegedly offending code. This is the reason for the threatened license withdrawal. This is the reason for the NDA crap. This is the reason for the increase in volume, aggression, and posturing. The more it looks like this thing will go to court and SCO will be required to prove their assertions, the more desperate SCO becomes. I think they are this desperate not to show the code because they have no case.

SCO uses whack o'cash and uses the settlement as 'precedent' to go after the Linux distributors, offering deals that are expensive but slightly cheaper than than full litigation.

Linux distributors at this point are losing customers fast, because the FUD now sticks better. (IBM settled, Gartner claims, because SCO has a smoking gun.) Linux distributors, being strapped for cash, settle. They will really have no choice. 'Fiduciary duty to shareholders' and other CR*p justifications of that type will be trotted out. SCO NEVER REVEALS the allegedly offending code. SCO now goes after the non-profits (Gentoo, Debian, etc...). With no money to fight, they go under.

End of this story? SCO bluffed, FUD-ded, blustered, bullied its way to complete control of the Linux world. They never had a case to begin with, but no one will know that because they were never required to prove it.

We have to let IBM know, DO NOT SETTLE. PLEASE, DON'T DO IT!

IBM should do something to let the world know, on the sly, "SCO will be in court for the next 20 years before they get a penny from us, and by then Linux will have gone through a hundred iterations, with any possibility of any trace of code accidentally-in-common-with-SCO expunged a hundred times over."

I think this scenario explains a lot of what we're seeing. I have a gut feeling that maybe this entire scenario was whiteboarded by Sontag and McBride, and the shrill, strident stuff now is them ad-libbing situations they hadn't planned on. The threat to Novell to sue them for the copyrights makes no sense unless SCO is planning to get the rest of the Linux world after they (think they can) make short work of IBM. Sontag made it completely clear when he said 'We hope to get our arms around all the Linux out there' and 'There is no legal use of Linux'.

This is similar to one of the other articles, where a lawyer mentions the 'shoot the moon' strategy in Hearts.

-- SanjeevSharma - 03 Jun 2003

I can't imagine a scenario where IBM would settle this. Not only have they made a huge publicity investment, they have also spent significant effort porting code -- both porting applications to Linux and porting Linux to OS/390.

IBM also has to see an advantage in supporting anything that opposes Microsoft. If IBM decides to just buy a resolution, they will do it by buying SCO, not by settling. If they decide this still leaves them open to the same FUD as in your nightmare scenario, I don't think they will shy away from litigating.

-- DrewKime - 03 Jun 2003

Pulled out all press releases from my current heap of references and added them to SCOvsIBMPressReleases. Some of these have been applied to OSI position paper. Rest are intended to be used as references, although a few might be just interesting (and probably should be pulled back out to keep the index as short and relevant as possible).

Found http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/HierarchicallyNestedTwikiWebs, but I'm a TWiki newbie and didn't understand how to use, so, if someone will please fix my temporary underscore notation, I'll try to learn by example.

-- NedUlbricht - 04 Jun 2003

Here's an utterly hilarious take on the lawsuit as a Nigerian-style business scam: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66399&cid=6111707

-- RickMoen - 04 Jun 2003

Has anyone see the NDAs? Can they be published verbatim, so we can get a good look at what legal risks SCO is asking people to assume?

If not repeatable verbatim, how about somebody putting up their 'take' on what legal rights you give up, to what extent SCO demands editorial control, and how rigorous SCO's proof will be to track the exact path the code took from SCO through IBM to Linux.org kernels.

-- SanjeevSharma - 04 Jun 2003

Yes, there is an entry above with a link to it to a summary and the full text.

-- ChrisKoontz - 04 Jun 2003

Nike v. Kasky - the California commercial speech law

Has the Supreme court decided this case? Google does not list any decision handed down but a TON of opinion pieces.

Would any readers in California be able to launch a (perhaps small-claims? I haven't the slightest idea how CA works) case against SCO on this issue? Or does everyone need to wait for the Supremes to rule on Nike v. Kasky.?

We know that when forced to put up evidence to a skeptical forum where the evidence will be examined for validity SCO will turn tail and RUN (like in Germany).

As I understand it, regardless of Nike v. Rasky, companies can still be taken to the mat for 'advertising'. Nike v. Rasky will decide if interviews, op-eds, press releases can be subject to the advertising law. If this is right, then would those 1500 letters and the conference calls be subject to that law? Are there no laws anywhere in the US that mirror the German laws, that could be prosecuted QUICKLY?

This is probably not the forum to start a discussion of the merits of Nike v. Kasky or corporate free-speech issues; I'm just wondering if we can use an existing law to get justice in a situation that just about everyone agrees is completely unjust.

UPDATE jun 27 2003 great news, sort of. not the best news possible, but.... http://www.freep.com/money/business/ruling27_20030627.htm
Nike can be sued for misleading PR corporations are not people.
Sort of... the case is not open-and-shut that free speech applies equally to corporations and people, but it's mostly in the air, unfortunately.

-- SanjeevSharma - 05 Jun 2003

Is it possible to format this metasearch as a better-looking list, and maybe put it in a box somewhere on this page?

%METASEARCH{type="parent" web="Main" topic="SCOvsIBMDiscussionArchive" title="Children: "}%

Tried format=" * " and separator="\n" in NedsTestSandbox, but those didn't seem to work.

Just a random thought for the day: Someone should apply for a DARPA grant . I hear the CIA has really lousy tools.

-- NedUlbricht - 09 Jun 2003

Ned, the WebHomeTopicList is probably pretty close to the search you're looking for. And the Table of Contents block at the top of the page makes a pretty decently formatted table container.... How about, say, the above %TREEVIEW% search. Adjust depth with the stoplevel parameter.

Another option is to structure the %INCLUDED% pages so that their title is part of the included text. Remember that a WikiWord will itself be a link, so that will work. You might want to look at this site's home page in raw format for ideas on how a set of seperate pages can be assembled to a single whole, while (mostly) preserving page references. For that matter, simplifying the homepage might not be all bad either

-- KarstenSelf - 11 Jun 2003

Thanks. Having both the included-page title and the navigation sidebar make it easier to navigate for editing.

Just now, I almost started to refactor this part of the discussion, and then held off.

-- NedUlbricht - 14 Jun 2003

See TrillianProject : Old SCO , Old Caldera executives and developers helped in the development of Linux on the IA-64, including linked proof of an Old SCO core developer suppling linux kernel patches.

-- DavidMohring - 13 Jun 2003

GREAT STUFF on the Trillian project. Maybe UnixWare will need to be GPLd too.

Something is becoming clearer - some quotes from an interview with McBride http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10300886

"Sun paid more than $100 million to Novell for a Unix royalty buyout and the ability to redistribute the Unix source code in derivative works." "IBM paid $10 million to buy the rights to an older Unix. It allegedly didn't pay for the rights to bypass the owner of Unix on derivative works."

So it looks like SCO is claiming EVERYTHING IBM has done with AIX to be a Unix derivative. Would IBM have been so silly as to give away all rights to those of its own technologies that IBM decided to put into AIX?

Of course Sun would have a huge incentive to pay a lot for Unix and sign that kind of deal. Around that time, Sun did not have a huge IP portfolio of its own, and Unix was the BASE of Sun's business.

IBM would have no such incentive. Unix started as a very small part of their business, and with a huge pool of its own IP to add to Unix, it didn't need to pay AT&T, if IBM felt that was (paying twice for)/reinventing IBM's own wheels.

So anyway, the story is changed again, and this time the power grab is even wider.

BUT McBride doesn't stop there. He has to do the obligatory threat against Red Hat and dig at Linux.

"The whole concept of getting something for nothing just doesn't hold up."

His current behavior comports admirably to my thesis that they have no case, are bullying and fudding for a settlement, and are getting desperate. I predicted a while back they'd get louder and nastier, the closer they got to having to prove their case. They're right on cue.

Couldn't figure out how to add these to the "complaints / raw documents " section. These are on the right hand sidebar of http://www.sco.com/ibmlawsuit/.

[snipped - KarstenSelf]

-- SanjeevSharma - 13 Jun 2003

Sanjeev: That is part of the SCOvsIBMReferences page. (I'm trying to keep breaks at sections.) You can view source of this page with the SCOvsIBM?raw=on option (see the "More" link for this and other options) and figure out where it's at. Or if you're editing this page, search for the %INCLUDE% tags. Helps to use a real text editor (I tend to prefer w3m with vim as editor once a page gets past a certain size).

Anyway, I've parked those links for you. Or rather, moved existing links to more appropriate places as the material was already linked here.

-- KarstenSelf - 15 Jun 2003

LOOPHOLE for SCO's barren-cow loophole defense.

SCO is claiming that SCO did not GPL their trade-secret code because that code was supposedly incorporated into Linux without SCO's permission or knowledge. If SCO did not know their secret property was being mixed into Linux under their noses, then SCO could not have GPL'd the alleged code, since GPL requires deliberate GPLing.

Currently, SUN KNOWs that SCO's allegedly stolen code is in Linux. SUN is distributing Linux under GPL. SUN HAS THE RIGHT, by SCO's own mulitple admissions, to release the alleged code any way they see fit.

SUN has, AND CONTINUES TO independent of (allegedly) IBM, and independent of Caldera/SCO, GPL'd SCO's allegedly protected code.

THANKS SCOTT!!!!!! Whatta guy!!

I also wonder how many other licencees of AT&T, Novell, and old SCO have valid license to GPL SysV or SysV derivatives. Sony (they made Unix workstations from MIPS chips, right? or was that NEC?) Hitachi? SGI? HP? INTEL?

-- SanjeevSharma - 17 Jun 2003

Technical point for those familiar with contract law. It seems SCO's "case" against Linux (if they are ever going to seek Linux licensing fees) is
1. "80 lines" which Ian Taylor found on the Internet outside of Linux. and
2. Contracts with IBM giving SCO rights over derivatives.

My question is, Either IBM may have (and SCO absolutely HAS) broken the contracts, what contractual rights rights does SCO retain (if they ever had them) over IBM's patented and copyrighted IP that's been incorporated into Linux?

After all, the only (tenuous) hold SCO putatively had on that IP was throught the contracts and the contracts are now DEAD.

Whether IBM will be forced to pay SCO for allegedly violating the contracts is completely beside the point on this issue AFAICT. -- SanjeevSharma - 17 Jul 2003

Has anyone tried filing a "Complaint for Declaratory Judgement and Injuctive Relief" against SCO since they are clearly threating to sue linux users? if so... how do I contribute to the case?

-- ChrisKoontz - 23 Jul 2003

I contacted someone who would know and it would be tricky, you'd need IBM' co-operation and the on going lawsuit would complicate matters immensely. Even the California consumer fraud lawsuit would definitely not be the slam-dunk I thought it would be, mainly because of procedural issues.

-- SanjeevSharma - 23 Jul 2003

How would IBM be a party once SCO comes out with its license? At the point SCO says to "sign this or risk a lawsuit", doesn't that put me in a position of needing a judgment on the matter before I can continue to use Linux?

-- ChrisKoontz - 23 Jul 2003

-- AllanKim - 30 Sep 2003

I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob. -- William F. Buckley