Posted on 08/19/2003 7:39:56 AM PDT by Joe Bonforte
No, AT&T already tried that, against BSD. They lost, big time. Interestingly enough, a major reason was because AT&T was found to have copied significant amount of BSD code. I don't know all the details, but you can find more info at:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/930303.ruling.txt
SCO's claim about the invalidity of the GPL is hogwash. A first-year law student could demolish it. Copyright law grants the right to make a single copy in the absence of permission by the copyright holder. But, the copyright holder can grant whatever permission they want.
For instance, Microsoft grants OEM's the right to make many copies of Windows for installation on new computers. If the GPL violates copyright law for this reason, then many other commonly-accepted practices are also illegal.
I wonder if SCO had any clue that their little love-in for their true believers would go that ugly on 'em? I think it's past time for them to hire someone who can read code, and someone who can drive Google... skills they seem to be lacking.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
When SCO first made the complaint against IBM, I thought it was possible they had a case. I am not privy to business parternship agreements made since AT&T Unix System Labs first started selling source licenses. I felt it was plausable that IBM over stepped its bounds when it came to some of its intellectual property.
However, SCO's actions since then have changed my opinion. I have never, ever seen a company move with such reckless abandon when an important lawsuit is on the line. Even when the outcome is virtually assured, companies are cautious in the extreme when referring to a potential outcome. There are very good reasons for this not the least of which is federal law.
After doing some light reading, I believe that SCO may have comitted deceptive trade practices when it announced that various commercial companies and governmental agencies owed them per Linux install. I have never in my years in the computer industry seen a company demand license fees relating to a court case that had not yet been decided. I am not a trade attorney, but from my limited understanding of federal deceptive trade practices law as well as similar state laws prohibit causes of confustion or misundertanding as to ownership or affiliation of a product, misleading statements concerning prices and fees, as well as disparaging statements directed towards compeditors. Under federal law, it is not necessary to prove actual deception, only that a company had the capacity to deceive others with regards to the business activities of others.
Without judicial backing, I think that SCO by demanding payment from various parties and announcing ownership of Linux as theirs without proof has uncautiously opened themselves up to legal action, even if in the end IBM is orderd to pay fines and Linux is ordered to remove files with SCO code.
Speaking without the facts proved in a court of law is very reckless of them. I thought that they had a chance when they had only filed their complaint against IBM. But once they started announcing press releases that contained claims of ownership and a large installed base of fees, I knew something had to be wrong. No company in its right mind makes announcements such as these. I don't care how cut and dried the facts of the case may be, making such statements before they are proved is extrememly dangerous -- which is why no other company I have seen has made such wide-sweeping claims.
Furthermore, GNU Hurd was tied up in lawsuits for a time, shortly before the emergence of Linux. Stallman himself has been rumored to have whined and complained that while he was tied up in court, people were installing Linux.
The BSD and Hurd suits are one of the reasons why I believe SCO is five to ten years too late to raise the question of "unauthorized UNIX implementations."
Under your interpretation, I would expect a consent agreement to restore the copyright notice (which is similar to what happened between BSD and USL/AT&T). But, it hardly supports SCO's claims of misappropriation of proprietary code.
Is a Berkeley license included in Linux? This is a broader issue than just this piece of code, it applies to anything from Linux that was borrowed from BSD.
Yes, it is. Those parts of Linux that were taken from BSD are supposed to include a notice acknowledging the source (it's a condition of the license).
The BSD license is less restrictive than the GPL: it doesn't require redistribution in source form. That's why you will find it in many operating systems, including Windows. The TCP/IP networking code is a common example.
$ uname -r
2.4.20-gentoo-r6 $ find . -name \*.[ch] | xargs egrep -il \ > 'Copyright \(c\) [0-9]+(, *[0-9]+)* (The )?Regents of the University of California'
./drivers/net/bsd_comp.c
./drivers/net/slhc.c
./drivers/char/tpqic02.c
./drivers/isdn/isdn_bsdcomp.c
./include/net/slhc_vj.h
./include/linux/quota.h
Is that all it takes to permanently steal code these days? Just have some rogue post it on Usenet, and *BAM*, no longer yours.
You're not? Well that is the question, I believe, down to the root, and were they authorized to do that. If it was a previous licensee, how do you know they were allowed?
It actually makes sense that if SCO was willing to show any portion of their evidence in public, it might be something that was already 'public', even if illegally. Maybe that's giving SCO more benefit of the doubt than they deserve, but I've certainly not seen any of this frantic evidence gathering by these partisans as proof of anything yet.
Look at the date. It predates SCO Unix. SCO can't claim prior art afterwards.
All you have to do is follow some of the links. It provides information about the origin. At the time I posted that comment, I didn't know and hadn't yet found it.
The important part is the date: 1979. It predates SCO Unix, and invalidates their claim of prior art.
I find the SCO executive staff beneath contempt.
Most of the links I posted early in the thread were to archives of source code -- the story was developing fast and I was trying to provide info to people following this thread. I subsequently posted links to articles that summarized the relevance and provide the information that you were asking for.
If you don't want to take the time to read them, then don't waste my time. Personally, I think the problem is that you are afraid of what you will find -- irrefutable proof that SCO's claims are bogus.
If you want to stick your head in the sand, please do so. But be sure to take a deep breath first, as you may have to stay there for a while.
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