SCO Defends Against Open Source Advocates

Internet Week Online (internetweek.com) ^ | August 26, 2003 | Mitch Wagner

[Golden Eagle]

Interesting indeed.

[Golden Eagle]

Latest Developments in the IBM/SCO case should you be interested...

[Pearls Before Swine]

Y'know, the idea behind property rights is to encourage innovation and to give the fruits of it to those who do the work. It seems to me that SCO is not the one doing most of the work here--it is the open source community, working under the GPL. The Linux community is willing to rewrite any offending code, but that's not what SCO (perhaps backed by MS) appears to want. It appears that what SCO wants is to get paid by users of Linux for work done by others, not by SCO. That's abuse of the copyright laws. My 2 cents.

[PatrioticAmerican]

SCO is dying and desperate.

[jammer]

inadvertently and accidently assign

Huh? Placing source code on a web site for download is inadvertent? More SCO horse hockey.

This is better than watching Green Acres. What's Arnold gonna' do next?

[ikka]

Amazing how the lawyers involved and all the SCO folks can libel and slander millions of Linux users without presenting ANY facts at all and not face ONE stern word from the judge involved in the case. Why does the judge not call them up and tell them to cool it?

[flashbunny]

they're trying for a dead cat bounce...they have nothing left. Their only hope is to be bought out or settled with. No one wants what they're selling anymore.

[Golden Eagle]

My 2 cents...

Certainly welcome to them, as well as share them on FR. However it is the opinion of many others that SCO is simply trying to exert its rights over its own property in an age of growing internet piracy. Are they overpricing the value of the supposedly stolen code? Sure looks like it, but if it is their code they have every right to set the price.

If the majority of Linux users had ever paid one dime for the software they are using, their complaints might be more understandable. However, most didn't, and many have said they will still be unwilling to pay SCO a dime if/when it is positively proven the code was hijacked from Unix, again making their positions fairly unsympathetic. Launching the denial of service attacks against SCO further alienate their innocence.

[Coral Snake]

The Coral Snake Ping.

Calling all Anti Commies and Anti Pirates

When should businesses be "upgrading to Linux?

See above PICTURE for the answer!!!

[Golden Eagle]

SCO is dying and desperate.

Well their stock went up ~10% Friday so it's probably too early for a fire sale. They still have a good hand to play, and are further setting themselves up as the victim going into the trial if reports of these latest DOS attacks are true.

[Golden Eagle]

Placing source code on a web site for download is inadvertent?

Yes, what he's saying is if they didn't explicitly waive copyright, and they didn't since they had no idea IBM/SGI had planted their code, they aren't liable. Makes perfect sense to me.

[Golden Eagle]

Why does the judge not call them up and tell them to cool it?

One would have to guess he feels they are within their rights. As high a profile as this case is, along with IBM's recent counter suit, chances are he is aware of exactly what is going on.

[Coral Snake]

I've been studying and writing about what is called the "poison pill" provision of the GPL last night for my article and have come to the conclusion that it is mainly for socialist code stealing through GPL "poison pill" landmine Linux programming libraries. I will agree with Mr. McBride and Mr. Songag on one thing. This "license" certainly should be revoked in this country. It sure sounds to me like they are trying to use this sneaky "poison pill"
provision against SCO as well.

[jammer]

2 more cents
GE, I have to question that motive. I am all for IP rights--I make my living on a proprietary piece of software (Windows based). I only know one Unix command "MGet", whatever the heck that is. I HAVE heard of Perl and Python.

But I don't believe that the primary motive of "many others", including you, is to hope that SCO gets its property rights fairly assigned. Furthermore, I don't believe that SCO has any case.

I think that the motivation of most people on SCO's side, considering the total mishandling of a court case (if they were serious and not dice-rolling) is to see chaos in the Linux community.

I think that if SCO were not desperate for a buy-out or playing legal roulette with our--your word here--"communist" legal system, that they would have either kept their damned mouths shut, as attorneys tell people to do, or they would be offering examples that are not easily skewered.

I believe that if Microsoft were being sued for IP violations--oops, they have been and lost--those very people on SCO's side would be, and have been, on Microsoft's side.

That's worth what you paid for it. And I am not a Communist, Socialist, or any other leftist, and I am not a thug or thief.

[Golden Eagle]

Yes, you will notice the #1 defense of the Linux crowd is that SCO lost copyright to their code when they released a version of Linux even though SCO likely had no idea their code was in there. In this one example, it appears the code was listed as "copyright SGI", so how in the world was SCO supposed to ID this as theirs?

But to your point, according to the Linux crowd when this happened it somehow stole the code from them. This repeated argument seemingly displays their apparent motives above all else.

[TechJunkYard]

But Sontag said the BPF routines were not intended to be an example of stolen code, but rather a demonstration of how SCO was able to detect "obfuscated" code, or code that had been altered slightly to disguise its origins. The slide displaying the code should have been written differently to reflect that intention, he said.

Riiiiight Chris. That's why the slide was titled "Stolen Code".

[jammer]

That "communist, etc." was for Coral Snake. Sorry. Also, I'm not a traitor, crook, or any other thing in the tag line.

[Golden Eagle]

jammer - you are correct that is *MY* motive, as I freely indicate is that Linux is a foreign controlled peice of software that is detrimental to the overall US for-profit software industry. I also feel based on evidence I have seen that a large part of their "community" are internet pirates and hackers capable of launching denial of service attacks and generally aren't the kind of movements we should be supporting.

However there are many others (like yourself in many ways) that are only concerned about IP property rights, and who understand code contribution to a project that is simply playing catch-up is unfortunately likely to infringe by it's very nature. They are reinventing the wheel in many aspects, and should drop the holier than thou attitude and realize that infringement is probable when building clones of long standing systems.

[Golden Eagle]

No problem, you can check my reply anyway.

[jammer]

Good, well-reasoned points.