SCO Group CEO Darl McBride says IBM, Red Hat, others have exposed customers by hiding behind the General Public License.
Posted on 01/06/2004 9:33:36 AM PST by ShadowAce
Even as it considers filing a legal claim against a Linux customer, The SCO Group must produce by week's end some proof to support its lawsuit against IBM.
Following a court order issued early last month, the Lindon, Utah-based Unix company has until the end of the week to specify and hand over to IBM attorneys the hundreds of thousands of lines of Unix System V code it says IBM improperly donated to the Linux kernel.
SCO filed its multibillion-dollar lawsuit against IBM last March, claiming the Armonk, N.Y.-based computer giant had violated its contract with the Unix company by improperly contributing code to the kernel. IBM has denied those claims.
As it awaits the outcome of its claim against IBM, SCO has said it still intends to file a separate copyright infringement claim against a Linux customer by the end of February. And on Dec. 22, the company confirmed it had sent cease-and-desist letters to select Fortune 1000 companies, charging them with using more than 65 SCO-owned Application Binary Interfaces (ABIs) without permission.
SCO Group CEO Darl McBride says IBM, Red Hat, others have exposed customers by hiding behind the General Public License. |
Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, has characterized SCO's latest intellectual property (IP) claim as technically baseless.
Torvalds, a fellow with the Open Source Development Labs, said the so-called violations relate to a group of simple header files, not significant IP.
"It's basically something like five files, it's just that several of them are replicated for every single architecture out there," Torvalds said in an e-mail to CRN, referring to the files listed in SCO's cease-and-desist letter. "And the thing is, those files don't even contain any code."
SCO has not yet proven any claims against the Linux community in court, a fact that has caused consternation among Linux vendors, customers and open-source advocates, who vehemently dispute all of SCO's highly publicized IP claims.
Nevertheless, SCO sent out warning letters last spring to hundreds of Linux customers maintaining they could be liable unless they obtain a Unix license from SCO. And in December, another letter sent to hundreds of its SCO Unix licensees requested written certification that each licensee is in full compliance with the AT&T Unix source-code agreement. SCO has approximately 6,000 licensees total.
While acknowledging that moving to file a case against an end user would be an unpopular and aggressive legal tactic, SCO CEO Darl McBride said IBM, Red Hat and others have exposed their customers by hiding behind the General Public License (GPL).
"Everyone points to a clause where they don't have liability. They are pushing the liability down to the users," he said.
Meanwhile, Novell has moved to register for copyrights on several versions of Unix System V with the U.S. Copyright Office over the past quarter. Novell's planned acquisition of Linux distributor SUSE Linux could make it,along with Red Hat,subject to potential copyright infringement litigation.
McBride has characterized Novell's copyright claims as fraudulent.
SCO is also awaiting word about a Red Hat counterclaim, which seeks to throw out SCO's legal claims to Linux.
McBride said he is not intimidated by the legal backlash from Linux vendors and that SCO's rights to Unix under the DMCA will prevail over the GPL.
"We're stepping up our enforcement activities," said McBride, noting that the letter sent out late last month will tie in to pending litigation. "There's a huge amount of copying of Linux going on. Copyrights are there to protect people from making copies, and at the end-user level is where the substantial amount of copying going on. That's the target area with litigation coming."
Anthony Awtrey, vice president of I.D.E.A.L. Technology, a Linux solution provider in Orlando, Fla., said SCO's actions continue to highlight the value proposition of Linux technology. "We love Linux, and we won't pay SCO a dime," he said. "Please come after us. It would be a wonderful way not only for us to promote our business, but how the hell can [SCO] make the statements [about technology ownership] when they [haven't produced] the files that are in dispute in court?"
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Got root?
Some individual or organization to claim ownership of Linux.
This would give them a legal entity to attack and if that entity were tied to Linux, then to attack Linux simultaneously.
Your mileage may vary.
All a person would be doing is claiming legal ownership of a couple hundred or so lines of code within Linux. The GPL gives SCO license to distribute that person's code along with the rest of Linux, but if SCO is violating the license, then SCO doesn't have license to distribute the code, therefore it's a copyright violation, not on Linux, but of the couple hundred lines of code within it.
"We're stepping up our enforcement activities," said McBride, noting that the letter sent out late last month will tie in to pending litigation. "There's a huge amount of copying of Linux going on. Copyrights are there to protect people from making copies, and at the end-user level is where the substantial amount of copying going on. That's the target area with litigation coming."
Bring it on, Darl. OBTW, January 11th is coming up real soon now.
I'll also note another point: Reportedly, the judge ruled in the AT&T/USL - Berkeley/BSD suit that header files cannot be copyrighted.
I haven't yet been able to confirm it, but if it's true, the precedent has already been set. And, the precedent was set with exactly the same set of code over which SCO is claiming ownership.
Somebody has. IBM did it as part of their countersuit. That's how the GPL became an issue in this case... IBM sued SCO for violating it. This way IBM gets to force the issue. SCO made a lot of noise saying they were going to have the GPL declared invalid, but they never actually filed anything except press releases. So IBM called their bluff and sued them first.
Darl probably has several more months in which he can try his case in the press and declare pre-emptive victory, but in the end he's going to have to do it in court where press releases and initials aren't going to impress anybody.
It's all noise with SCO. They don't have any court cases; they have press releases that use pending cases as props, before the cases can get tossed out on their ear. It's a new form of stock scam.
Thanks, I didn't know that.
SCO made a lot of noise saying they were going to have the GPL declared invalid, but they never actually filed anything except press releases.
Maybe they realized that if the GPL is declared invalid then they never had any right at all to distribute Linux.
It's a new form of stock scam.
How much have he and his cronies made so far? Last I heard it was loads. I wonder if at the deadline they can't produce anything and the case is thrown out (I'm dreaming), if they'll be indicted for "pump and dump."
Actually, the technical term for the tactic is "barratry", and it can result in various unpleasant sanctions.
Also, if the case includes submission of a demand for payment without proof of an actual debt, it is also mail fraud or wire fraud (depending on the transmission mechanism).
A bunch. Stats for the last 6 months available here.
They're covering their butts nicely. While Most of them seem to be automatic sales at a certain price, and the target prices are much higher than the $1 a share SCOX used to be. I bet they set up these auto sales just before they started this pumping scheme (in the <$5 days) so they could cash in without legally performing insider trading.
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