SCO says it's time for Linux users to pay up.

The Register ^ | 21/07/2003 at 15:47 GMT | Ashlee Vance

[amigatec]

This man is a bigger fool than I thought. This is going to get even crazier.

[amigatec]

Calling all Penguins!!

[dr_who_2]

To think he could be one ruling away from getting away with this.

[isthisnickcool]

SCO also added a little pressure to Linus Torvalds. Up to this point, SCO has been attacking IBM on contractual issues which left Torvalds out of the fray. With the new copyright claims, however, SCO says Torvalds may come under attack.

I first ran across Linus in 1991. That boy is wicked smart. Smarter than everyone at SCO and certainly smarter than David Boise. SCO knows that. They have been wise enough to keep away from Linus. This looks like desperation to me.

[Wonder Warthog]

"After dolling out threats of legal action, SCO has called on enterprise Linux users to come forward and pay for code the company claims to own."

Just a scam by a bunch of lawyer con artists UNTIL the courts settle whether or not SCO actually DOES "own the code".

[Jack Black]

OK, just for the sake of discussion let us stipulate that:

An engineer at a Very Large Computer company was asked to work on the getting Linux (a key strategic initative to blunt Microsoft for this Very Large Computer company) to "fix" Linux so that it ran well on bigger machines, which were a speciality of the VLC Co. Lets say that he was lazy, or tired, or overworked, or upset because his job was being outsorced, and for what ever reason didn't think about IP, patents, etc. but just grabbed a bunch of code that he had from VLC's other project and dumped it into Linux.

Only later it turns out that code wasn't owned by VLC, but was licensed. But it's too late, the code is everywhere because Linux publishes source. The License holder is unhappy, the contract said licensees would "protect" it's assets.

If this happened (SCO says it did, but may be wrong, I suppose) here are the questions:

Does SCO deserve compensation from VLC?

Does SCO deserve compensation form people using Linux? If not why not?

Does Linux (the organization) need to compensate SCO for misuse of their property?

Do other companies making money off of the Linux w/ misappropriated IP in it need to pay SCO?

[Jack Black]

Rather than argue about the actual facts, which we can not determine I think it is interesting to stipulate the facts (for the sake of discussion) and answer the 4 questions as if the stipulated facts are true.

This gets us to the crux of some interesting questions on IP I believe. I'd appreciate people answering the 4 questions.

[Jack Black]

BTW: If you answer the 4 questions yes, then the SCO suit makes sense. I have assumed from day 1 that they have the "smoking gun" otherwise they are truely insane. By smoking gun I mean they have exact duplicated line by line examples of misappropriated code.

What I find interesting is many people answer the 4 questions no. Just like people don't see file-sharing as a crime. As we've seen with Napster though, judges aren't real influenced by Wired or the EFF and tend to stick to the law.

[Nick Danger]

SCO creates an interesting box for itself doing this. By asking for money to run "linux," SCO must assert that the presence of its code in linux (that itself is an unproven claim, and will be until the IBM suit is decided) makes "linux" an SCO property. Anyone threatened by SCO with litigation unless they pay can choose to go to court and dispute the SCO claim to linux.

Here's the fun part: if SCO loses, then they were wrong all along and they could presumably be made to return whatever license fees they had collected. However if SCO wins, then the GPL is abrogated, and all the hundreds of little chunks of copyrighted code belonging to linux contributors fall back to basic copyright law. Now SCO is charging money to license works that are neither GPL'd nor SCO's property. They are, in short, stealing money from all of the hundreds of copyright owners who had previously GPL'd their code. Every one of those people hates SCO's guts, and every one of them has a lawsuit against SCO for stealing their property.

Boies is not so dumb that he wouldn't see this coming, so actually getting to that point cannot be in their action plan. This is just more "pump and dump" on the SCO stock. They will probably accept money if they can find any sheep who wish to be shorn, but the minute they are challenged on this, they have to fold because they lose either way if the case is ever decided.

[ThinkDifferent]

McBride is reminding me more and more of Kim Jong Il. I expect both of them to meet similar fates.

[FreeMeansNoID]

SCO is such a joke. I'm quaking in my boots.

[FreeMeansNoID]

In order to prove their case SCO would have to reveal what code is infringing. At which point we'll just clean-room rewrite it. If it really exists.

[ThinkDifferent]

In order to prove their case SCO would have to reveal what code is infringing.

Exactly. And their refusal to reveal such code means one of two things: either it doesn't exist, or it's so trivial that a halfway competent programmer could reimplement it in an afternoon.

[rdb3]

The Penguin Ping.

Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!

Got root?

[dr_who_2]

Anyone who is not knowingly using SCO owned code should not be held responsible for the actions of this engineer. Said engineer should be held responsible for stealing. Any code belonging to SCO should be removed from the Linux tree, assuming there really is any (Anyone distributing tainted Linux code/binaries after such a ruling is in violation of the law and in danger of being sued unless they pay a license). The burden of proof lies with SCO. The mere fact that Linux may implement SysV-like features with pointers, structures, well-known algorithms, and similar variable names in /usr/include/sys header files proves zilch. The truth lies in data from revision control logs.

[Redcloak]

I hope that more than a few people respond to their phone calls with something like: "But I downloaded my free copy of Linux from your server. That means that I have your permission to use it."

[sigSEGV]

(Anyone distributing tainted Linux code/binaries after such a ruling is in violation of the law and in danger of being sued unless they pay a license)

Which, ironically, includes SCO.

[demlosers]

Are these guys for real??

How are they going to extort money?

[TheEngineer]

In order to prove their case SCO would have to reveal what code is infringing. At which point we'll just clean-room rewrite it...

I doubt it would be that simple. With the SCO source code [allegedly] all over the internet, creating a clean-room environment would be impossible. SCO would undoubtedly make this point in court.

[demlosers]

I'm getting a whiff of a Microsoft weenie behind SCO.