SCO's motion to dismiss the Red Hat suit

But, again, what does any of that have to do with their motion to deny Red Hat their lawsuit?

As open source software development becomes prevalent and digital music can be downloaded for free, many people are simply ignoring copyright and patent laws. Many public commentators recognize this disintegration of property rights as a danger to our economic system.

Oh boy, there's so much in these tiny two sentences to object to....

First off, the implication (or plain statement) that violating copyrights and open source development have anything to do with each other is misleading, false, and offensive. One, whatever you think about copyright terms, is breaking the law, the other is a cooperative model of sharing information which is about as in keeping with the idea of individual liberty (i.e. the philosophy on which the USA was theoretically founded) as you can get while still developing software.

Second off, the sentence nicely goes directly from "copyright and patent laws" to "property laws". Proponents of very draconian copyrights and patents would like us to believe that "intellectual property" is just like normal property, and that therefore copyright and patent laws are property laws. We can't cede this point of the debate by letting the draconing IP proponents paint those of us who think copyrights ought to expire in a reasonable amount of time as being "against private property". (And this is a separate issue to SCO's idea that "open source is copyright violation". Open Source doesn't even directly address the idea of how long copyrights should be. But this is another thing that SCO is letting slip that I object to.)

-Rob

Nobody seems to have yet been able to explain exactly why IBM subpoenaed The Canopy Group and not The SCO Group. I'm half-expecting thermonuclear writs to start landing in Utah at any instant.

This must mean that SCOX has "No ownership or contol" of Linux either, since they claim to understand the open source development model so very well. It appears that SCOX conveniently forgets about the same legal principals it intends to use against others when it is convienient like copyright law and the GPL license.

Hell, it worked for Nike, and they were directly lying about their exploiting child labor in third world countries.

15 SCO has never asserted in any statement that individual, non-corporate users of Linux may be liable to SCO, or otherwise would need to purchase a right to-use-license.

Let us see:

1) digital music: freely downloaded and copied without consent of the copyrightholder.

2) open source software: freely downloaded with express consent of the copyrightholder. Licensed to prompote free copying.

Now, if I find myself in a position of having to compete with open source software, something I cannot buy or undercut in price, I want to discredit open source software. Seeing that attempts to badmouth it on tecnical grounds are fruitless and futile I may seek other ways to badmouth it. So I may wish to connect 1) to 2). As there's nothing wrong or unlawful with 2) I need a new ingredient: I assert that some pieces of a popular open source software product, Linux, are owned by me. I increase the credibility of my claim by showing some of those pieces to selected people under a NDA.. When the Linux authors ask me to tell them what those pieces are, so that they can mitigate my damages by removing the pieces from Linux, I can, of course, only refuse, otherwise the connection between 1) and 2) wpuld be lost. And of course, when it was shown that some of that pieces where actually not even mine or released by myself to the public, I simply maintain my position, for the same reason. What I need to do is insist in my possition as long as possible so that I can maintain the impression that 1) and 2) are connected. The longer this impression exists the more time I have to badmouth Linux.

I reckon everyone at SCO should lay off crack immediately.

Below is an excerpt from the recent Nike case appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. I have added my emphasis.

"This case presents novel First Amendment questions because the speech at issue represents a blending of commercial speech, noncommercial speech and debate on an issue of public importance.5 See post, at 12—13. On the one hand,<<< if the allegations of the complaint are true>>>, direct communications with customers and potential customers that were intended to generate sales–and possibly to maintain or enhance the market value of Nike’s stock–contained significant factual misstatements. The regulatory interest in protecting market participants from being misled by such misstatements is of the highest order. That is why we have broadly (perhaps overbroadly) stated that “there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact.” Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 340 (1974)

Dear neighbour,

We are the S-C-O. Since your garden:
- Adjoins the garden we recently bought,
- Contains similar plants to what's in our garden,
- You do in it same kind of "development" that the owner of OUR garden we think to have done and
- Our plants pollinate your trees and have done that for several decades
(we deny any evidence of the reversal to have ever happened),

We hereby declare that:
- your garden is derivative of our garden and we own it.
- We own averything you've added to it and worked on for the last few decades.
- We own "IP rights" to any garden designs etc.that you've done in that garden or your designs that were innovated by it.
- You have to pay a license when you use your garden and when you or somebody you've hired, works in/for it.

You owe use 1 billion dollars in unpaid licencing fees and as a one-time compensation for trampling on our intellectual property (regardless of whether we've ourselves ever exerted any intellect in creating it).

In addition, we have an irrevocable right to badmouth you publicly and call you a thief. Rest assured that we've already exercised that right extensively.

Cordially yours,

- The S-C-O

"15 SCO has never asserted in any statement that individual, non-corporate users of Linux may be liable to SCO, or otherwise would need to purchase a right to-use-license."

From SCO web-site:

Q) If I am running SCO Linux or Caldera OpenLinux do I need to obtain a SCO IP License for Linux?
A) Yes. SCO will distribute an IP License for Linux to all SCO Linux users.

http://www.caldera.com/scosource/linuxlicensefaq.html

"Specifically, Red Hat cannot identify any express or implied threats to enforce SCO's intellectual property rights against Red Hat."

From press release:

"Of course, we will prepare our legal response as required by your complaint. Be advised that our response will likely include counterclaims for copyright infringement and conspiracy."

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030804/lam110_1.html