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The Linux vs. SCO Decision Matrix
Con Zymaris has put together the
Linux vs. SCO decision matrix, a concise exploration of various ways in
which the SCO lawsuit could play out. The conclusions ("Linux is
unaffected" in all scenarios) may be a bit optimistic, but it is a
worthwhile exercise regardless.
(Log in to post comments)
What about this result? Posted Jun 25, 2003 18:22 UTC (Wed) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] "United States government collapses as citizenry relizes just how stupid and counter to the interests of the free exchange of ideas its intellectual property law and legal precedent has become."-Rob
What about this result? Posted Jun 25, 2003 20:08 UTC (Wed) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] I think all the people who are despondent over the IP laws in my country ought to ask themselves:What special interest group did *you* ignore or belittle when they asked for help? I've seen a few come and go, and a few that are still around, struggling. I can't wait until the day that smoking tobacco becomes illegal, and some poor schmuck has all his property stolen by the government because he wants a cigarette. I'm a U.S. citizen, and I believe my fellow citizens have seriously lost sight of waht they came here for, which was supposed to be freedom. I've never forgotten that stupid cell-phone commercial "I'm free to do what I want any old time..." completely lost sight of the original idea of the music. Willie Wilcox got it right. IN the corporate world, it's "freedom by the minute."
What about this result? Posted Jun 26, 2003 18:16 UTC (Thu) by melauer (guest, #2438) [Link] >"United States government collapses as citizenry relizes just how stupid>and counter to the interests of the free exchange of ideas its >intellectual property law and legal precedent has become." Unfortunately, a large part of "the citizenry" of (pick _any_ country) wouldn't even understand that sentence, much less understand or care about the underlying issues. Intellectual property just isn't an issue which excites most people.
The Linux vs. SCO Decision Matrix Posted Jun 25, 2003 19:49 UTC (Wed) by dwalters (subscriber, #4207) [Link] The GNU General Public License may well turn out to be Linux's saviour here. The fact that SCO continued to knowingly ship Open Linux under the GPL for over two months after their claim was filed appears in every scenario of this decision matrix.SCO will probably argue that they spent some time after their initial claims looking through the Open Linux source code, and pulled it as soon as they believed they had found specific sections of copied code. However, I don't honestly believe any judge or jury will buy that. They should have stopped distributing Open Linux on March 6. I suppose SCO could plead ignorance, and say that they did not realize the implications under the GPL of their continuing to freely distribute the source code until May 14, but pleading ignorance does not normally work very well in court. I certainly can't see the notion that GNU/Linux as a complete work is somehow a derivative work of System V getting anywhere. It seems to me if they have any case left at all, it's against IBM, and IBM alone for breach of contract. When all is said and done, Linux will almost certainly survive unscathed (without any SCO licensing strings attached), and thanks in large part to the GPL. Far from inviting legal liability on users (an argument that proprietary software vendors like to make about free software licenses like the GPL), the GPL will have protected users against litigation. Contrast that to all those AIX users out there right now who are losing sleep because they chose the "safe" route of a proprietary software license.
The Linux vs. SCO Decision Matrix Posted Jun 25, 2003 20:18 UTC (Wed) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] Yes...and what if two of the "safe" software providers got into a fight over "stolen" *proprietary* code. Now wouldn't *that* be an interesting fight?Closest I've seen is that Microsoft vs. Stacker mess. The difference there was that we, as citizens, had to take both parties at their word (we weren't in the court.) In the case of Linux, everything we do is public. The problem is that SCO is hiding things. The other problem is that they assumed responsibility for the actions of Caldera when they took over, and by that score, they're basically traitors. They really ought to set their sights on IBM now, and if they're smart, they'll start mending their ways with us. Treachery isn't a good thing to foist on such a huge number of people, especially when many of those people *contributed free work* to the projects SCO's assumed company were selling.
What do you mean May 14th? Posted Jun 25, 2003 22:50 UTC (Wed) by dark (subscriber, #8483) [Link] SCO may have stopped selling Linux but they never stopped distributing it. They were notified of this so it's no accident.This means it's not two months, but three months and counting.
What do you mean May 14th? Posted Jun 26, 2003 2:39 UTC (Thu) by dwalters (subscriber, #4207) [Link] I believe that SCO have pulled the Linux kernel source from their FTP servers too (on or after May 14). I could be wrong on that, but I think I read that somewhere.
Believe? Read somewhere? Posted Jun 26, 2003 22:35 UTC (Thu) by dark (subscriber, #8483) [Link] There's no need to speculate about this. You can see for yourself. That's why I included the "distributing" link.
GPL, the legal cure for everything -- NOT Posted Jun 25, 2003 20:30 UTC (Wed) by bertox (guest, #11146) [Link] Con assumes the answer to IBM's woes is the GPL and in a way he is right. But I don't think IBM is going for the GPL defense at all. If they were, the time to use it would be at the very beginning of the case, in order to get the judge to throw it out. But SCO and IBM are apparently past that and are in the process of "discovering" each other.If IBM were to use the GPL, they would surely win and geeks everywhere would be dancing in the streets. But then only those parts of System V found in Linux would be covered by the judgement. And that is probably not very much code we are talking about and probably comes by way of BSD. This means SCO or Novell or AT&T or anyone with two bits and a grudge can always come back and complain about something else. Rather than go through the same mess every few years, I think IBM wants to permanently dispell the spectre of System V over Linux and the Unices. They are going to move to get System V declared devoid of trade secrets and to do that they are going to use Eric Raymond's list of people who will testify to spreading System V around with impunity. If someone convinces the judge that they did it with AT&T's full knowledge and approval, then SCO can kiss their sweet patooties goodbye. That judgement would leave them with no patents, no secrets, just a lot of worthless bits and bytes.
GPL, the legal cure for everything -- NOT Posted Jul 12, 2003 14:30 UTC (Sat) by me (guest, #12863) [Link] If you would have been reading the statements from Novell, you would realize that they are for Linux. Novell doesn't care about the system V code in Linux if it exists. AT&T doesn't own the patents or copyrights. Novell recently announced in April that their core products will run on Linux, beta products are expected to be as soon as soon as fall of this year. In fact Novell recently made agreements with Dell, HP, and IBM to ship their up and coming Linux services with their hardware. Novell as a company supports Linux. Novell won't complaining about code in Linux. All of this information is stated on various public web sites.
Missing entry Posted Jun 25, 2003 20:49 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] "IBM owns the code they add to UNIX, but SCO claims IBM is still bound by the contract not to distribute the new code to third parties."The consequences would be similar to "SCO claims to own ALL derived works of System V Unix", but it may be easier to defend in court.
The Linux vs. SCO Decision Matrix Posted Jun 25, 2003 23:07 UTC (Wed) by dbunker (guest, #267) [Link] I don't agree with the "they made it GPL" argument.It sounds great from a theoretical point of view, but I tend to think that a judge won't care that they continued distributing a Linux distribution for a couple of months. SCO could justify it as "supporting current customers", and the judge might accept that. In addition, SCO has repeatedly said that you "can't accidentally GPL something," which is only partially true, but probably true enough for a judge.
Can't accidentally distribute copyrighted works either. Posted Jun 25, 2003 23:47 UTC (Wed) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] > I tend to think that a judge won't care that they continued distributing a> Linux distribution for a couple of months. SCO could justify it as > "supporting current customers", and the judge might accept that. In > addition, SCO has repeatedly said that you "can't accidentally GPL > something," which is only partially true, but probably true enough for a > judge. *Any* distribution of a copyrighted work, to anyone, is covered by copyright law. If they gave it once, to one person, that is still distribution of the work and they are bound to satisfy the copyright terms of the work. In the case of the Linux source code, those terms are the GPL. Any distribution of GPLed work that doesn't satisfy the GPL terms is a breach of the copyright license. I don't see how a judge could disagree with that without setting a precedent against *every* copyright license.
Can't accidentally distribute copyrighted works either. Posted Jun 26, 2003 2:43 UTC (Thu) by dwalters (subscriber, #4207) [Link] I concur. Copyright law would be turned on it head if a judge "turned a blind eye" to a couple of months of distributing a copyrighted work to a number of people.
The Linux vs. SCO Decision Matrix Posted Jun 26, 2003 13:09 UTC (Thu) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link] I think the key point is that they knowingly continued to distribute GPL code even after their initial claims against IBM. I guess it's true you can't accidentally GPL something, but more than two months (at least) of distribution, fully well knowing that this distribution is being done, can hardly count as accidental.
The Linux vs. SCO Decision Matrix Posted Jun 26, 2003 15:21 UTC (Thu) by rickfdd (guest, #4519) [Link] More importantly, SCO has stated that SCO customers need not fearlawsuit from SCO for using SCO Linux. This is in essence a license granted after the lawsuit filing, and coverting the contested copyrights by the claimed owner. If you GPL for one, you GPL for all.
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