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Bay Area Software Professionals for Responsibility and Accountability
If you receive an "invoice" from The SCO Group, please do not waste it
on a prank or expression of contempt for SCO -- they're certainly
expecting that. If you want to do something symbolic with your
"SCO invoice", make a copy.
After careful consideration, you may decide to give the false invoice
to law enforcement as part of a request to investigate SCO for fraud.
We are starting a low-traffic announce-only mailing list to share
information on Bay Area community responses to the SCO invoice
scam, which will most likely include giving the "invoices" to law
enforcement.
We're calling the organization "Bay Area Software Professionals
for Responsibility and Accountability" for the obvious reason that
we are Bay Area software professionals who are for responsibility
and accountability.
Who: Bay Area Linux users, especially anyone who thinks that he
or she may receive a false invoice from The SCO Group
What: Mailing list for announcements regarding local responses to
SCO's fraudulent mailing
Where: Sacramento, probably, that's where California Attorney General
Bill Lockyer is.
When: Subscribe now, more info after the "invoices" come.
http://lists.alt.org/mailman/listinfo/baspra-announce
Why: Because we're software professionals who are for responsibility
and accountability.
Doing some symbolic action with your "invoice" may be satisfying
or attention-getting, but SCO is expecting this. But as soon
as they use false claims to attempt to get money from anyone,
they're doing something that is at least legally questionable,
and that you may wish to have law enforcement take a look at.
Please _save_ the "invoice" and envelope.
--
Don Marti Reform copyright law -- return abandoned works
http://zgp.org/~dmarti to the public domain after 50 years:
dmarti@zgp.org http://www.PetitionOnline.com/eldred/petition.html
KG6INA
_______________________________________________
linux-elitists
http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-elitists
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Bay Area Software Professionals for Responsibility and Accountability Posted Aug 27, 2003 16:40 UTC (Wed) by murry (guest, #13033) [Link] Should Embedded Linux developers pay SCO a licence fee to avoid future litigation?The Embedded Linux Consortium encourages embedded developers to save the envelope and invoice as suggested by Don Marti. We further encourage developers to reject the concept of a license before the fact. It's extremely unlikely that even a miniscule fraction of embedded Linux designs (going back as well as forward) may somehow transgress on yet-unproven intellectual property owned by SCO. Rather than trying to alarm the embedded community about false potential lawsuits, we encourage SCO to step back from the abyss and return to an ethical, logical and reasonable form of behavior.
Bay Area Software Professionals for Responsibility and Accountability Posted Aug 27, 2003 16:47 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] If you do, you agree with all they say and you always will be paying to avoid "something".In short, SCO would have FUD you out of your money.
Bay Area Software Professionals for Responsibility and Accountability Posted Aug 27, 2003 17:13 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] There's another issue: if you do pay the fee, and then after that you engage in copying, modifiying, or distributing Linux, you have arguably violated the GPL (by engaging in sublicensing), which means that you have forfeited your right to copy, modify, or distribute Linux. This would not happen if you pay the fee and never do any modifying or distributing, but if you're in the embedded Linux business it is not possible to avoid this.
Invoices? We've got invoices... Posted Aug 27, 2003 16:51 UTC (Wed) by mali (guest, #4553) [Link] Since SCO is blatantly violating the GPL, how about all the kernel contributors send their "invoices" to Darl's gang?
Bay Area Software Professionals for Responsibility and Accountability Posted Aug 27, 2003 17:17 UTC (Wed) by namaseit (guest, #13940) [Link] Seeing as how the embedded linux version is very small, and has many features cut out. Ivery highly doubt you will find SMP, RCU, NUMA, JFS, etc. in an embedded kernel. Think about it.
Bay Area Software Professionals for Responsibility and Accountability Posted Aug 27, 2003 17:21 UTC (Wed) by chrism (guest, #4713) [Link] One of my colleages suggested that someone could make a case for SCO in the US to be prosecuted under the RICO act (the racketeering act, typically used against organized crime). I thought this was prescient, since what SCO is doing really does amount to extortion, as they are demanding "protection money" for protection from themselves, just like organized criminals do.
Sending out big invoices Posted Aug 27, 2003 23:14 UTC (Wed) by dwalters (guest, #4207) [Link] By merely invoicing a lot of companies, SCO are increasing their Accounts Receivable balance. It'll be interesting the next time their financial statements are published just how much SCO's increase in profit corresponds to an increase in A/R.If a lot of companies just ignore or do nothing with their invoices, this could still make SCO look more profitable.
Bay Area Software Professionals for Responsibility and Accountability Posted Aug 28, 2003 1:19 UTC (Thu) by jklaus (guest, #14332) [Link] Imagine for a minute that a company decides to cover themselves in the eventual possibility that SCO might actually win. (yes I know it sounds ludicris, but don't laugh)By purchasing licenses and handing over their money to SCO, the company has now provided SCO with more money to spend on lawyers and now gives them a better chance to survive to an actual trial before IBM's legal team drains the company dead. Not only does this help SCO directly, but it also makes SCO's situation look just a little bit better, which might increase it's stock price just a little bit more and attrack even more investors, giving SCO even more money. In addition to helping SCO out, this company can also expect to never see their money again. Why? Well if (when?) SCO loses, IBM will probably drop huge fines on them for violation of intellectual property from the counter-suits. Combine this with the fact that they can't sell what's left of their products without incurring more fines to IBM, and that their stock price will tank because they lost, and it seems pretty likely that SCO will go into receivership. I'm sure the lawyers and the creditors (of which Canopy is the largest, how convenient) will get their share of SCO's assets, and IBM will get whatever's left. Redhat might even be picking at the scraps if their case goes through. The only people who will really lose out in the end will be the stockholders who lose everything, and the companies left with a worthless SCO license. Sure SCO won't have sold them the license legally, but there will be nothing left to sue and nothing left to collect by then. Playing devil's advocate, assuming that SCO does win and every Linux user must now buy a license, it has been brought up on this thread that the GPL will probably prevent you from copying Linux with this licence. So, in this case the company who saved some money by buying the license early will still be unable to make use of it effectively, again making the license next to useless. IANAL, but that seems like something very important to consider before your company goes out and purchases a SCO license.
Bay Area Software Professionals for Responsibility and Accountability Posted Aug 28, 2003 15:03 UTC (Thu) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] I use Linux for hobbying.If I ever get any mail of *any kind* from SCO, I plan to send a copy of it to my lawyer. If he doesn't have the expertise to handle the case, I'm going to see of Eben will help out. If he won't, I'm going to find a lawyer with enough technical expertise to handle it. First and foremost, I will arrange to swear a peace-bond on SCO. Under no circumstances (whether they win against IBM or not,) will I pay them a single penny, because they have an obligation to meet the commitments of their Caldera subsidiary's claims about Linux. Caldera got involved with it, knowing full well what the legal and ethical implications were, much less the philosophy behind it. Any attempt on SCO's part to try and extract money out of me would therefore be hypocritical, to say the least. The next thing I will do is seek out someone who was at that SCO forum, who would be willing to break their NDA on the grounds that SCO were lying about the code they *did* show. Since that "evidence" would be part of the reason why SCO might send me any mail, I will make every effort to use it against them. Of course, if there was no NDA on the public forum, then someone may have a tape-recording of McBride's big mouth. I am extremely angry at these people for what they have done, and I may not be the bravest soul in the world, but if I do find that I have the ball, I'm going to run with it. I haven't contributed very much code to the Linux kernel, and that which I have contributed wound up being "bettered" anyway by someone else. However, I did contribute some code, and it was done freely and with no expectations other than that I would still have an OS freely available to me, to learn from, and maybe to contribute more when (if) I can find the time and energy. To have the likes of SCO (and Microsoft) turn around and slap me in the face for that... They had better forget my name, address, and telephone number, or they will regret it.
Bay Area Software Professionals for Responsibility and Accountability Posted Aug 28, 2003 18:02 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] I use Linux for hobbying.If I ever get any mail of *any kind* from SCO, I plan to send a copy of it to my lawyer. If SCO starts sending invoices to individual Linux users and/or developers, probably the best course of action is to organize a class action lawsuit. That way you at least have a chance of geting something out of them when they file for bankruptcy. Maybe 1/256 of a scrap. On an individual basis, you probably won't even get that.
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