[ShadowAce]

[Izzy Dunne]

Acronymaphobia alert

[rawhide]

That means, to me, that SCO can't sue anybody over ELF from this day forward. Period. Game over. We'll see if they agree.

SCO will still sue. They will attempt to explain this away.

[ericthecurdog]

This is series.

[Xenalyte]

SCO is Distributing ELF Under the GPL

Seeing as how the VP is such a VIP, shouldn't we keep the PC on the QT? 'Cause if it leaks to the VC he could end up MIA, and then we'd all be put out in KP.

[steve-b]

they should knock a huge chunk out of SCO's case

Knocking a huge chunk out of SCO's case is impossible, for the same reason it is impossible to desanguinate a turnip.

[Golden Eagle]

What, no mention of the meltdown on Jokelaw over the weekend, that resulted in "PJ" telling Linus Torvalds her Mom runs Windows and warning him about breaking the Jokelaw forum rules?

How can you post Jokelaw without dare mentioning the massive controversy there right now?

http://news.com.com/2061-10795_3-6099985.html?part=rss&tag=6099985&subj=news

[theFIRMbss]

>SCO ELF GPL Yes. Now. Today.

---------------------------------------------------

In A.D. 2101, war was beginning . . .

Captain: What happen?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us.
Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Cats: HA HA HA HA ....
Captain: Take off every 'zig' !!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'zig'.
Captain: For great justice.

[ShadowAce]

SCO Is Still Distributing ELF Under the GPL, Part 2.

I expect you will find this hard to believe, but SCO is *still* distributing ELF from its website, and yes, it's still under the GPL.

The other day, I told you that SCO was distributing binutils, which includes ELF, in its Skunkworks package. Following that article's publication, SCO removed that binutils from the FTP site we pointed to. Now, a couple of readers inform us that binutils is still available in their gnutools package for OpenServer 5, which is freely available to the public, with no legal notice that it's only for prior customers. Not only that, but it's binutils-2.14, which is the version I believe SCO listed.

Don't click unless you intend to immediately have it download, but it's at ftp:// ftp.sco.com/pub/openserver5/opensrc/source/gnutools-5.0.7Kj-SRC.tar.bz2. It's an FTP site, so it will begin to download automatically, if you click on the link. No warning. No password, no legal notice.

Don't everybody go there, please. They'll call a press conference and pretend they were DOS'd or something ridiculous. That url is for proof, not so you all download. The proof is already accomplished.

As you'll recall from the prior article on this, SCO has claimed the following in the SCO v. IBM litigation:

1. SCO, as the copyright owner of source code and/or documentation upon which the following files and lines of code were copied or derived, has never contributed or authorized these lines of code or the documentation related thereto, for use in Linux as specified under part 0, or any other provision, of the GPL.

2. SCO, as the copyright owner of source code and/or documentation upon which the following files and lines of code were copied or derived, has never granted a license to any party that knowingly authorized use of these files or lines of code outside a UNIX-based distribution.

Well, that's not so, obviously. In fact, SCO can't seem to *stop* distributing it under the GPL. The way I understand the GPL works is this: by redistributing these files from SCO's own FTP server, SCO is itself distributing the files under the GPL. It's either that or it is guilty of copyright violation, and for years, judging from the timestamps. I wonder how many violating downloads there were. What is the penalty under copyright law for each violation again? Pick your poison, SCO.

Anyway, it's obvious to me that what they told the court about never authorizing or distributing binutils under the GPL is just not at all true. The copyright on gnutools, by the way, belongs to the Free Software Foundation, which gives SCO no right to redistribute the package under any license but the GPL. I guess if the FSF wants to sue SCO to collect all that money, if SCO pretends in court that this distribution wasn't under the GPL, they should be able to.

Is it plausible SCO doesn't know that gnutools includes binutils, which includes ELF? First, SCO has a duty to check that it isn't violating anybody's precious most holy intellectual property, n'est-ce pas? Then SCO sold Linux for a living for years, both as Caldera and as SCO, so it certainly ought to know, not to mention that it was SCO that put gnutools up on the FTP server. The COPYING file, dated January of 1999, informs us that the package is licensed under the GPL. SCO had a duty to check that. People in glass houses and all that.

I have to ask myself this: if SCOfolk thought this case was ever going to make it to trial, would they be this careless? Or maybe it's true: you can't fix stupid.

It is true, I guess. You really can't fix stupid.

[FourtySeven]

I have some pictures to show you. They should knock your socks off.

That's about as much as I understand from this article.

[CORedneck]

I used SCO s/w back in the early 1990's. I "cut my teeth" on that s/w to learn Unix. However, the SCO Group that put out the s/w is a different company than today's SCO. The original SCO became the Tarantella group.

In 1995, I bought a second computer and I wanted to get SCO for the older machine but the cost was prohibitive especially for a multiuser license. The person w/ SCO got me to check out Linux and been hooked ever since.

It is alleged that SCO (today) has some connections to Microsoft.

[ShadowAce]

SCO is Still Distibuting the Linux Kernel. Yup. The Whole Enchilada

We've been busy in the last week or two demonstrating that SCO is still distributing items it is suing over, like ELF and binutils. Why so modest a scope? SCO is still, three plus years after suing IBM, distributing the entire Linux kernel under the GPL right here: ftp://ftp.iso.caldera.com/pub/skunkware/contrib-3.1.1-10-20011130.iso

This is like reporting on the Keystone Kops. I guess we can now call SCO the KeySCO Kops.

Here's what our informant tells us:

This is the ISO image that contains Linux kernel source and binary RPMs under EXTRA/RPMS and EXTRA/SRPMS. The current disk image is dated April 1, 2004; the difference from the previous version is the removal of nmap (after Fyodor's request that SCO not distribute nmap any more).

The ftp.iso.caldera.com site doesn't have any of the "Legal Notice" files that have been strewn about in some other places. The "freely distributed" is inside the ISO, in the file README (also attached here). The relevant snippet is

"This CD is freely distributed. An ISO image is freely downloadable from http://www.caldera.com/support/contrib/ and it is freely included in media kits. The owners of some components do not permit commercial resale, so you cannot charge for copying those components, and therefore you cannot sell or resell this CD. However, most components, including all components licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), do not prohibit you from copying, modifying and/or reselling those components, for any price you want. See the individual COPYING, LICENSE or README files for a component for specifics with regard to licensing and redistribution of that component."

Of course, the Linux packages come with the GPL, but this snippet mainly just shows that this CD is not restricted to existing customers, and was not intended to be so restricted. It's "freely distributed," "freely downloadable," "freely included in media kits."

So the date, April of 2004 and the change, removing nmap, shows that SCO knows what is in here and it still distributed it long after it sued IBM.

All that is missing is a little running around madly music.

Another update on the fiaSCO....