SCO's copyright letter
December 19, 2003
Re: The SCO Group, Inc. (“SCO”)
Dear Unix Licensee,
In May 2003, SCO warned about enterprise use of the Linux operating system in violation of its intellectual property rights in UNIX technology. Without exhausting or explaining all potential claims, this letter addresses one specific area in which certain versions of Linux violate SCO's rights in UNIX.
In this letter we are identifying a portion of our copyright protected code that has been incorporated into Linux without our authorization. Also, our copyright management information has been removed from these files.
These facts support our position that the use of the Linux operating system in a commercial setting violates our rights under the United States Copyright Act, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. We are notifying you of these facts so you can take steps to discontinue these violations. We believe these violations are serious, and we will take appropriate actions to protect our rights. No one may use our copyrighted code except as authorized by us. The details of our position are set forth below. Once you have reviewed our position, we will be happy to further discuss your options and work with you to remedy this problem.
Certain copyrighted application binary interfaces (“ABI Code”) have been copied verbatim from our copyrighted UNIX code base and contributed to Linux for distribution under the General Public License (“GPL”) without proper authorization and without copyright attribution. While some application programming interfaces (“API Code”) have been made available over the years through POSIX and other open standards, the UNIX ABI Code has only been made available under copyright restrictions. AT&T made these binary interfaces available in order to support application development to UNIX operating systems and to assist UNIX licensees in the development process. The UNIX ABIs were never intended or authorized for unrestricted use or distribution under the GPL in Linux. As the copyright holder, SCO has never granted such permission. Nevertheless, many of the ABIs contained in Linux, and improperly distributed under the GPL, are direct copies of our UNIX copyrighted software code.
Any part of any Linux file that includes the copyrighted binary interface code must be removed. Files in Linux version 2.4.21 and other versions that incorporate the copyrighted binary interfaces include:
|
include/asm-alpha/errno.h include/asm-arm/errno.h include/asm-cris/errno.h include/asm-i386/errno.h include/asm-ia64/errno.h include/asm-m68k/errno.h include/asm-mips/errno.h include/asm-mips64/errno.h include/asm-parisc/errno.h include/asm-ppc/errno.h include/asm-ppc64/errno.h include/asm-s390/errno.h include/asm-s390x/errno.h include/asm-sh/errno.h include/asm-sparc/errno.h include/asm-sparc64/errno.h include/asm-x86_64/errno.h include/asm-alpha/signal.h include/asm-arm/signal.h include/asm-cris/signal.h include/asm-i386/signal.h include/asm-ia64/signal.h include/asm-m68k/signal.h include/asm-mips/signal.h include/asm-mips64/signal.h include/asm-parisc/signal.h include/asm-ppc/signal.h include/asm-ppc64/signal.h include/asm-s390/signal.h include/asm-s390x/signal.h include/asm-sh/signal.h include/asm-sparc/signal.h include/asm-sparc64/signal.h include/asm-x86_64/signal.h include/linux/stat.h include/linux/ctype.h lib/ctype.c |
include/asm-alpha/ioctl.h include/asm-alpha/ioctls.h include/asm-arm/ioctl.h include/asm-cris/ioctl.h include/asm-i386/ioctl.h include/asm-ia64/ioctl.h include/asm-m68k/ioctl.h include/asm-mips/ioctl.h include/asm-mips64/ioctl.h include/asm-mips64/ioctls.h include/asm-parisc/ioctl.h include/asm-parisc/ioctls.h include/asm-ppc/ioctl.h include/asm-ppc/ioctls.h include/asm-ppc64/ioctl.h include/asm-ppc64/ioctls.h include/asm-s390/ioctl.h include/asm-s390x/ioctl.h include/asm-sh/ioctl.h include/asm-sh/ioctls.h include/asm-sparc/ioctl.h include/asm-sparc/ioctls.h include/asm-sparc64/ioctl.h include/asm-sparc64/ioctls.h include/asm-x86_64/ioctl.h include/linux/ipc.h include/linux/acct.h include/asm-sparc/a.out.h include/linux/a.out.h arch/mips/boot/ecoff.h include/asm-sparc/bsderrno.h include/asm-sparc/solerrno.h include/asm-sparc64/bsderrno.h include/asm-sparc64/solerrno.h
|
The code identified above was also part of a settlement agreement between the University of California at Berkeley and Berkeley Systems Development, Inc. (collectively “BSDI”) and UNIX Systems Laboratories, Inc. regarding alleged violations by BSDI of USL's rights in UNIX technology. The settlement agreement between USL and BSDI addressed conditions upon which BSDI could continue to distribute its version of UNIX, BSD Lite 4.4, or any successor versions, including certain “UNIX Derived Files” which include the ABI Code. A complete listing of the UNIX Derived Files is attached. The ABI Code identified above is part of the UNIX Derived Files and, as such, must carry USL / SCO copyright notices and may not be used in any GPL distribution, inasmuch as the affirmative consent of the copyright holder has not been obtained, and will not be obtained, for such a distribution under the GPL.
Use in Linux of any ABI Code or other UNIX Derived Files identified above constitutes a violation of the United States Copyright Act. Distribution of the copyrighted ABI Code, or binary code compiled using the ABI code, with copyright management information deleted or altered, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) codified by Congress at 17 U.S.C. §1202. DMCA liability extends to those who have reasonable grounds to know that a distribution (or re-distribution as required by the GPL) of the altered code or copyright information will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement of any right under the DMCA. In addition, neither SCO nor any predecessor in interest has ever placed an affirmative notice in Linux that the copyrighted code in question could be used or distributed under the GPL. As a result, any distribution of Linux by a software vendor or a re-distribution of Linux by an end user that contains any of the identified UNIX code violates SCO's rights under the DMCA, insofar as the distributor knows of these violations.
As stated above, SCO's review is ongoing and will involve additional disclosures of code misappropriation. Certain UNIX code, methods and concepts, which we also claim are being used improperly in Linux, will be produced in the pending litigation between SCO and IBM under a confidentiality order.
Thank you for your attention to these matters.
Sincerely,
THE SCO GROUP, INC.
By:______________________________
Ryan E. Tibbitts
General Counsel
Posted Dec 22, 2003 16:59 UTC (Mon)
by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
[Link]
Posted Dec 22, 2003 17:13 UTC (Mon)
by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)
[Link] (5 responses)
In any case, I very much doubt the files where copied verbatim, as they claim. The simple fact that there are versions for different architectures (and they claim the stuff for MIPS, and S/390, et al as theirs!) shows this is completely bogus.
No substance, nothing to see here. Move on, folks.
Posted Dec 22, 2003 20:44 UTC (Mon)
by botz (guest, #18038)
[Link] (3 responses)
Really? I thought, that people, that take BSD code, then change the license and copyright, then release the code under different license should already know, that their actions are illegal.
Posted Dec 22, 2003 21:54 UTC (Mon)
by NotReally (guest, #18040)
[Link] (2 responses)
I mean, the current BSD licence doesn't even specify the inclusion of the "Copyright U.C.-B" clause any more. Theo deRaddt's writing on the subject leaves me with the impression that once something has been released under a (modern) BSD licence, you give permission to everyone to do whatever the heck they want to with your code. It's not a coincidence that BSD's TCP/IP stack ended up in MS products...
Posted Dec 23, 2003 10:15 UTC (Tue)
by ngg (guest, #18071)
[Link]
Using the code without including the licence is a copyright violation. This is even true for "modern" BSD code, because (think about it) it is a derivative work of older BSD code.
Posted Dec 23, 2003 16:19 UTC (Tue)
by bsdimp (guest, #18082)
[Link]
BSD License *REQUIRES* that you maintain the copyright notices. (that's from the errno.h file from 4.4BSD-lite) And no, there's no USL copyright on errno.h, per the settlement. Also, it is unlawful, and in bad taste, to take BSD licensed code, file off the copyright, and then release it under the GPL. I'm not saying that happened in the case of errno.h, but it has happened in the past.
Posted Dec 22, 2003 21:19 UTC (Mon)
by wastl (guest, #18039)
[Link]
I hardly think so. From include/linux/stat.h (2.6.0-test11):
It's fairly reasonable to assume that SCO does not use the GLIBC.
Sebastian
Posted Dec 22, 2003 18:03 UTC (Mon)
by doitroygsbre (guest, #18028)
[Link]
Ok, I read an article on groklaw (I think) that made a pretty good guess as to what SCO's claim is. They are claiming that the settlement reached between BSD and novell required that certain files in BSD have copyright notices added. The files that SCO is complaining about were added to linux before the settlement was reached and since the settlement was only made known to Novell and the BSD developers (sorry, can't quite remember exactly who was involved in the settlement) no one knew to add the copyright notices to linux. Now that SCO has possibly inherited the Novell side of the settlement, they're trying to claim copyright infringement because linux has these files without the notices. Even though they were released under the BSD license without the notices before the settlement.
Oh well, I'm starting to wonder if I'll live long enough to see this whole mess sorted out
Posted Dec 22, 2003 18:27 UTC (Mon)
by nchip (guest, #13292)
[Link]
Ofcourse the amount of error numbers has accumulated over the years, and I
wouldn't be suprised if SCO unix contained nowadays error numbers
originally introduced in Linux..
Indeed do the bsd:s carry the following notice
from here
And a three-step BSD licence which is not GPL incompatible like the
fraudsters in the letter claim.
Posted Dec 22, 2003 19:03 UTC (Mon)
by mhoyes (guest, #18032)
[Link]
This would seem to conflict with a statement the Blake Stowell made to Mozillaquest Magazine at the first of the year.
Blake Stowell: No, none of the code in the Linux ABI modules contains SCO IP. This code is under the GPL and it re-implements publicly documented interfaces. We do not have an issue with the Linux ABI modules. The IP that we are licensing is all in the shared libraries - these libraries are needed by many OpenServer applications *in addition* to the Linux ABI. So, apart from some header files that have been around since before 1994, and the reference to ABI that one of their employees denied, what do they have? Why should I get a license from them?
Posted Dec 22, 2003 19:13 UTC (Mon)
by Phong (guest, #18033)
[Link] (2 responses)
However, copyright doesn't limit something's use, just who can copy it. So, isn't this statement without legal merit?
Posted Dec 22, 2003 22:12 UTC (Mon)
by pjs (guest, #10927)
[Link] (1 responses)
Presumably SCO argues that all of their licensing agreements have imposed limits on how the code can be used. Then again, they've made all sorts of arguements that have been shown to be (mostly) bogus. Of course, IANAL, so this is merely my impression from what I've read from what seem to be credible sources. The questions of "legal merit" or even the more pragmatic question of how one would settle or fight in the event of a real threat are beyond me. But it is clear that software vendors do utilize contract law to impose restrictions that copyright law would not.
Posted Dec 23, 2003 12:17 UTC (Tue)
by hingo (guest, #14792)
[Link]
Posted Dec 22, 2003 19:45 UTC (Mon)
by NZheretic (guest, #409)
[Link] (1 responses)
signal.h, errorno.h,and ioctl are all parts of many released standards including The Open Group and IEEE POSIX Base Specifications and the Federal Information
Processing Standards Publication 151-2.
Note that The SCO Group does not own the copyrights on any of those standards and it does not own clear title to the copyrights on most of the AT&T Unix base. From 1989, the then SCO activity pushed for the adoption of the iBCS Intel Binary Compatibility Specifications across *all* i386 Unix vendors
In LOTR:ROTK there is a seen where the souls of dead men rise up in mass to totally overwhelm the enemy in anwser to a broken promise. Such a fate awaits the SCO Groups claims.
Posted Dec 23, 2003 9:41 UTC (Tue)
by NZheretic (guest, #409)
[Link]
standard MAY !=free :But participants must declare It is a requirement of the ISO, IEEE and ANSI standards body that participants involved in the development of standards must pre-declare and clearly lable and identify any section of a standard in developent that an implementation would be dependent upon a patent for which royalties must be paid.
Both AT&T and Santa Cruz Operation participated in the development of the POSIX / FIPS 151-X standards and they did not identify any such royalty/patent dependent section as required for Federal endorsed standards.
In terms of copyright, anyone and any organization who has purchased and ISO standard and any subsequent recipients, are free to release implementations based upon those standards.
Posted Dec 22, 2003 23:06 UTC (Mon)
by MajereDB8 (guest, #18047)
[Link]
Ever heard of Rambus? The company that convinced the memory industry that they didn't own patents on a specific memory bus type, convinced companies to use their patented bus as the industry standard, and then started suing for patent infringement? This seems rather similar to SCO. Interestingly enough, most of the header files they now claim to be infringing files may be included in most modern operating systems. And since many companies (Microsoft included) don't indemnify their users, SCO seems to be suggesting that they could sue any end user of any operating system. Hrm... maybe it's just me, but it's sort of ironic that SCO attempts to paint Linux users as "communist" when really the company that wants to take the hard work that everyone else has done for themselves without any payment is run by Mr. McBride.
Posted Dec 23, 2003 0:24 UTC (Tue)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Dec 23, 2003 0:34 UTC (Tue)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
IANAL -- You can't copyright a purely functional aspect of an interface, right?SCO's copyright letter
The claim is rather weird... BSD is somehow supposed to be able to use those files, but only in BSD derived Unices? And this is part of the sealed settlement, so nobody can even know about this restriction? Sure, if (big IF) this were true, the BSD folks are to blame for not placing notices to this end into the affected files. But that is not the fault of the Linux people who used them in good faith.
SCO's copyright letter
> the BSD folks are to blame for SCO's copyright letter
> not placing notices to this end into the affected files
Not Really.SCO's copyright letter
Nope. Sorry.SCO's copyright letter
The BSD licence still says that you have to keep the copyright notice in the source code. The reason you know that MS used BSD code is that MS complied with the BSD requirement that binaries reproduce the BSD licence, also.
YOU ARE INCORRECT.SCO's copyright letter
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
In any case, I very much doubt the files where copied verbatim, as they claim
SCO's copyright letter
#if defined(__KERNEL__) || !defined(__GLIBC__) || (__GLIBC__ < 2)
IANAL
SCO's copyright letter
From
1973!
Ancient code haunting..
* Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1993
* The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
* (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
* All or some portions of this file are derived from material licensed
* to the University of California by American Telephone and Telegraph
* Co. or Unix System Laboratories, Inc. and are reproduced herein
with
* the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
Contradiction
MozillaQuest Magazine: Regarding binfmt_coff, abi-util, lcall7, abi-svr4, abi-sco; are any of these modules SCO IP?
SCO's letter contains this: No one may use our copyrighted code except as authorized by us.
SCO's copyright letter
This would seem like a reasonable conclusing IF copies of the code were sold, as books, records and newspapers are. But SCO and virtually all proprietary software vendors do not sell, but rather license their code. You enter into a contractual agreement in exchange for receiving a copy of the code.SCO's copyright letter
You should remember, that every time you use a computer program, the code is copied from your harddrive to RAM memory. Altough this seems to be nitpicking, this fact alone is usually used as an argument, why any use (other than using the discs as frisbees) of a computer program falls under the governance of copyright law. Therefore analogies from the world of books do not always work with software, because "using a book" (reading it) has nothing to do with copyright, while "using a computer program" has.
SCO's copyright letter
henrik
The SCO Group cannot expect to win any case based upon application interfaces which it's AT&T, USL and Novell predecessors relased in open standards specifically for the purpose of interoperability.NOT SCO's copyright ! A letter of reply
For the benefit of the entire user base, as well as the industry as awhole, SCO encourages all UNIX System vendors for Intel processors to join SCO, USL, Intel, ISC and OSF in supporting the iBCS-2 standard for x86 applications.
The second to last link is incorrect and should link as Correction and More on standards
Note that The SCO Group does not own the copyrights on any of those standards and it does not own clear title to the copyrights on most of the AT&T Unix base.
It would seem that SCO has been misusing their intellectual property since they've been actively trying to convince BSD/Linux users for years that Linux doesn't violate their intellectual property, perhaps even actively adding such code to Linux. In certain circles, we call that "entrapment."SCO's copyright letter
Well, this does look like a letter from someone that really wants to cure a case of copyright infringement. All righty, good move SCO. Now people can finally show you, the courts and the public that they did in fact have a valid licence to copy, modify and distribute those files. While at it guys, maybe you should simply show the rest of the "infringements" so that we can be done with it. OK?
Finally!
Linus already took the first stab at this whole thing (his analysis is on Groklaw) and it seems that SCO are trying to claim copyright to some of the files that Linus wrote himself. Oh, such fun... :-)
Finally!