[CLUE-Talk] Why SCO still sucks...

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Fri, 2003-05-02 at 21:11, Jed S. Baer wrote:
> On Fri, 02 May 2003 20:00:18 -0600
> Dennis J Perkins <djperkins at americanisp.net> wrote:
> 
> > >>>What I expect is that they will go to court and largely claim that
> > >>>someone "stole" particular ideas from UnixWare and re-worked them.
> ...
> > >>"We're finding...cases where there is line-by-line code in the Linux
> > >>kernel that is matching up to our UnixWare code," McBride said in an
> > >>interview. In addition, he said, "We're finding code that looks likes
> > >it's>been obfuscated to make it look like it wasn't UnixWare code--but
> > >it was.">
> > >>http://www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=4239
> ...
> > >Of course, if SCO/Caldera shipped the same kernel code, wouldn't that
> > >make it fair game under the GPL anyway? 
> 
> No, why would it? Now, if SCO decided to use already GPL'd code, yes, but
> that isn't what they're saying happened. Also, the owner of any piece of
> code can, in fact, release under multiple licenses, even withdraw later
> versions from the GPL.

They can choose to release later versions under a different license,
providing they're the sole owner, but they can't withdraw what they've
already put out there. 

What I'm saying is -- SCO is accusing IBM, Red Hat, SuSE and presumably
others of shipping code that they claim was part of SCO UnixWare -- but
if they've shipped products with the very same code, I don't see how
they can later say that the other companies didn't have the rights to do
so... are they really going to go into court and claim that they didn't
know what their own product contained? 

If there is actually SCO UnixWare code in the kernel, and they shipped
it, how can they have a case against Red Hat or IBM or SuSE? They're
either proving that another vendor would have had no way of knowing it
was there, or proving that they in fact approved of it being released
under the GPL. 

> > If their case is so ironclad, why not prove it?  And how do we know that
> > Caldera did not contribute some code?
> 
> Uh, I think that's what the lawsuits are about. Prove it, in court, and
> collect your damages, or whatever you get out of it.

Why not provide the proof before resorting to a lawsuit? They had the
audacity today of releasing a statement saying that IBM didn't address
their complaints -- how the hell could they? They were so vague as to be
ridiculous. 

Their execs are making all this noise about this being "about
principle." That's a load. It isn't as if the Linux Community at large
is trying to rip off SCO -- even if some jerk did submit SCO code to the
Linux kernel, it's not as if the entire community was in on some kind of
scam.

If this were going the other way, someone claiming that SCO had
appropriated GPL'ed code for proprietary products, the same SCO execs
would be screaming bloody murder if they were sued without an
opportunity to remedy the problem prior to a lawsuit. What CNet and
others aren't pointing out when they write about this is that this is
the first time that anyone has claimed (at least that I'm aware of) that
proprietary code has wound up in a GPL'ed product -- but the reverse has
happened a number of times already, and they've all been resolved
without a lawsuit. 

I sincerely hope someone will file a suit against SCO claiming that the
company has appropriated some Linux code into UnixWare -- and I wouldn't
be at all surprised if that has happened at some point. 

> As far as whether SCO/Caldera code being in the kernel makes it
> automagically GPL'd, I'd say that would depend a great deal on how it got
> there. Certainly, anyone with legal rights to a chunk of code can release
> it under the GPL. What if someone didn't have the rights, and re-used the
> code anyway? As someone else said, now we have a mess.

I think it remains to be seen how much of a mess there is, depending on
what "proof" SCO actually brings to the table. 

At this point, I have little confidence that SCO has much of a case.
They've been lying every step of the way. First, they denied that they
were planning a lawsuit when it was leaked that they were talking to
David Boies. Then they admitted they were planning to "enforce their IP"
but they certainly weren't going to be suing Linux distributors. Then
they sued IBM, but they said they didn't have any plans to sue other
Linux vendors like Red Hat or SuSE. Now they're talking about "a day of
reckoning" for Red Hat and SuSE -- ostensibly about issues other than
IBM bringing SCO IP to Linux, since that would be strictly between SCO
and IBM. 

While one SCOster is claiming that they've found SCO UnixWare code in
the Linux kernel, another was quoted recently as saying that it
definitely didn't involve the Linux kernel. They can't even get their
lies straight amongst their executives. 

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
jzb at dissociatedpress.net
Aim: zonkerjoe
http://www.dissociatedpress.net