he SCO Group, which has spent the last few months suing I.B.M., a leading supporter of the Linux operating system, and warning that Linux violates its copyright, announced plans yesterday for profiting from Linux rather than trying to fight it.Posted on 07/22/2003 12:37:42 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
he SCO Group, which has spent the last few months suing I.B.M., a leading supporter of the Linux operating system, and warning that Linux violates its copyright, announced plans yesterday for profiting from Linux rather than trying to fight it.
SCO, a small software marketer, said that it would offer the large corporations that use Linux a license so they can continue to use it without any worries about lawsuits that accuse them of copyright infringement.
SCO contends that Linux is an "unauthorized derivative of Unix." SCO bought the licensing rights to the Unix code and Unix copyright in 1995. Yet it is unclear, legal experts say, whether SCO's rights are as wide-ranging as the company claims.
Linux, which is closely related to Unix, is distributed free, improved and debugged by a far-flung network of computer programmers. SCO contends that I.B.M. took code covered by SCO's Unix contracts and illegally contributed that code to Linux. I.B.M. is a Unix licensee, and it markets its own commercial version of Unix, called AIX.
While offering corporate Linux users a way to sidestep a legal headache, SCO is also using a threat as its marketing tactic. The company announced yesterday that the United States Copyright Office had granted SCO copyright registrations for its Unix code — a necessary first step, the company said, to enforcing its copyright claims.
"This is a new front that we're opening up in our legal case," said Darl C. McBride, chief executive of SCO, which is based in Lindon, Utah.
SCO's legal strategy is indeed broadening. Its suit against I.B.M., filed in March, contends that the company violated its licensing contract with SCO by shoveling code into Linux. In May, SCO sent warning letters to 1,500 large corporations, warning them that their use of Linux was probably a violation of SCO's intellectual property rights.
Yet SCO's intellectual property rights were soon challenged by Novell, the company that sold Unix to SCO. A copy of the 1995 contract cited the license rights but did not mention copyright. Later, SCO found a 1996 amendment to the purchase agreement, which passed the copyright to SCO. The 1995 sale took place a couple of generations of management ago for both SCO and Novell.
Mark J. Heise, a partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, the law firm representing SCO, said yesterday that he expected that a copyright claim would now be added to the contract accusation in the I.B.M. suit. Unless the case is settled, a resolution of the matters in the suit will not come soon. The trial is not scheduled to begin in a federal court until April 2005.
But SCO says its copyright claim is strong enough to assert without awaiting a court ruling, so it is prodding corporate users of Linux to sign up for licenses.
"It's not necessary to resolve the I.B.M. case before resolving — or litigating, if it comes to that — the issues with end users," said David Boies of Boies, Schiller & Flexner.
A renowned litigator, Mr. Boies was the trial lawyer for the Justice Department in the government's antitrust suit against Microsoft. His representation of SCO has given the private suit a greater measure of credibility.
I.B.M. characterized SCO's moves yesterday as merely the latest tactical step in its campaign to extract money from the corporate backers and users of Linux. I.B.M. has repeatedly dismissed SCO's legal claims as groundless. "SCO seems to be asking customers to pay for a license based on allegations, not facts," I.B.M. said in a statement.
SCO did not disclose yesterday the pricing of its license program for Linux users. But Mr. McBride said it would be in line with its Unixware license program. Using that as a guide, analysts estimated that the licenses would cost $400 to $700 for each processor in a data serving computer. The server computers running Linux typically have one to four microprocessors.
SCO's copyright claims and effort to seek licensing fees could slow the advance of Linux into corporate data centers, said George Weiss, an analyst for Gartner Inc. "Companies are suddenly going to realize that they at least have to look at this issue closely," he said.
But Linux supporters said most corporations viewed the SCO campaign as mainly a dispute between two companies, I.B.M. and SCO. "The Linux momentum continues to be strong," said Stuart Cohen, chief executive of the Open Source Development Lab, a corporate consortium backed by Linux supporters, including I.B.M.
I think this sums it up succinctly.
Did they get the ownership of Unix with Novell straightened out? Last I heard was that Novell said they owned Unix and merely licensed it to SCO, but I haven't paid much attention lately.
Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!
Got root?
Boies is renowned for more than just the Microsoft case. He was Gore's legal thug-in-chief in the attempted Great Election Robbery of 2000. How does his performance in that outrage enhance his credibility?
It looks like David Boise and his crew will keep working fro Caldera as long as they get paid. This will eventually turn out to be another Napster for Boise.
There is one interesting comment from Linus here.
LINUS:"I do not take code from IBM, or Intel, or CA, or Oracle. I take code from engineers. It just happens that some of those engineers work for IBM or Intel or CA or Oracle. But this is not a consideration when we accept donations of code."
I hadn't even noticed that before, but I am out west watching the California fiasco!
| SCO is also using a threat as its marketing tactic
We seem to be skipping over the part where they get to prove that they actually own this thing they want to charge us for using. It's sort of like, "Well, never mind that, we'll sue you. Just pay, and everything will be fine." Say what? This is a new low in American jurisprudence if a company can use the nuisance value of lawsuits to extort money from people... and on the basis of an unproven claim, no less. If this isn't against the law, it ought to be. Let them go prove this claim they have before they make a public offer to sell "protection" for money. If these guys don't get slapped with some kind of an injunction prohibiting them from selling these "licenses" until they prove they actually own the-thing-to-be-licensed, I will weep for the nation. Anybody could do this, about anything. This is robbery-by-lawyer. |
We saw in the Florida election battle just how his mind works -- he argues primarily on a level of legal abstraction, and isn't too concerned with details like facts that get in his way.
By the way, Bois used to represent IBM in his days with Cravath -- now isn't that special? He obviously believes he knows where the "cave-in" point is with IBM, and he probably sees this ending in a courthouse-steps settlement for his client.
I'm betting that he's wrong.
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"Do business with us, or we'll sue you!" I gotta admit, this is the most creative new accounts sales program I have ever seen.