The crux of SCOs argument
The crux of SCOs argument
Posted Aug 21, 2003 21:28 UTC (Thu) by stevegehl (guest, #3738)In reply to: The crux of SCOs argument by juvvadi
Parent article: SCO's big legal gun takes aim (ZDNet)
The Title 17 arguments are something of a red herring. But the argument further down in the article, about open source being different, like a play and a movie, so that the license agreements do not apply, is scary. I think he is trying to say that IBM does not have a license to make "open source", they can only make normal copyrighted material, similiar as one who is licensed to make a play does not have a right to make a movie. Very clever, just the kind of bs courts sometimes listen to.
Posted Aug 22, 2003 3:06 UTC (Fri)
by dkite (guest, #4577)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 22, 2003 4:49 UTC (Fri)
by urulokion (guest, #14350)
[Link]
So the case boils down did IBM donating their code to Linux violate their Unix Contract. If the answer is yes, then IBM will pay X amount of money for the contract violation(s). But that will not give SCO any legal claim to go after the Linux kernel, because they have no ownership claim. If they try "we own Unix processes and methodologies" argument, it will short as well. "Unix processes and methodologies" sound a lot like trade secret. For the sake of argument, let say they were trade secrets before the of IBM contributions. OK, IBM revealed trade secrets, shame on you, pay some more money. Those secrets have now been seen countless legions of people. So they are now longer secrets. But you can't hold a copyright on methods and processes, so ergo SCO still has no claim to Linux. IANAL JALSUA
If in fact SCO owns all of IBM's intellectual property, they have a case. If all of The crux of SCOs argument
IBM's developments that were incorporated into AIX belong to or are
controlled by SCO, they have a case.
But consider the fact that IBM released EVMS under GPL. Note this comment
from http://evms.sourceforge.net/terminology.html
Quote:
Storage Region
An ordered set of logically contiguous sectors (that are not necessarily
physically contiguous). The underlying mapping can be to logical disks,
segments, or other regions. Linux LVM and AIX LVM LVs, as well as MD
devices, are represented as regions in EVMS.
end quote.
And another from http://www.faqs.org/docs/evms/layerdef.html
quote...
There are currently four region manager plug-ins in EVMS: Linux LVM, AIX,
OS/2, and Multi-Disk (MD).
Linux LVM
The Linux LVM plug-in provides compatibility with the Linux LVM and allows
the creation of volume groups (known in EVMS as containers) and logical
volumes (known in EVMS as regions).
AIX LVM
The AIX LVM provides compatibility with AIX and is similar in functionality to
the Linux LVM by also using volume groups and logical volumes.
end quote.
Obviously IBM's legal team feels quite confident I doubt this decision was
taken lightly.
Derek (I fully expect SCO to file another claim due to this being brought to
their attention. Hi Darl!)
SCO does not have any owner ship claim on IBM's work. SCO's own Exhibits show it. IBM got an aaddenum added to their Unix Contract. It pecifically says that any works that IBM creates or has created for them is owned by IBM. SCO has even publicly that IBM owns the RCU, JFS, NUMA and SMP code they donated to Linux.The crux of SCOs argument