SCO’s own Chris Sontag responds to the recent remarks about SCO’s presentation of “stolen code.” My Take: Is there an IT professional left in America who would ever consider buying SCO software again? Update: It never ends. Novell has joined the fray.
The SCO Saga Continues
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Adam Scheinberg
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No.
for what SCO is doing. I believe it contains the words “clutching” and “straws” …
I’ve been giving serious consideration buying and deploying their software.
I got a business to run, why would I care about their war vs linux? It’s not like Linux is 2nd nor 3rd option anyway… SCO Unixware works fine here and why should we have any intention to switch???
My advice: let’s condemn SCO to oblivion. Let’s not giving the benefit of mindshare. They do not exist, they are useless and I will not speak about them
We gave serious consideration and then bought and deployed their software. Dunno why that sentence got left out!
And I’ve been giving serious consideration deploying more for our clients…
Not now, no, and not simply because of my opposition to their ill-considered crusade against Open Source. Even without that, I wouldn’t deploy any of their products because their management is behaving in such a manner as indicates that the company itself will not be around much longer, and once it goes, so goes any support for their products. You’d have to be quite foolish to deploy any software solution that has such a tenuous future now.
OK, assuming you’re not a troll, would you mind specifying why you chose to go with SCO? I did a detailed consideration of various OS’s (including UnixWare) a while ago and ended up concluding that SCO had noting to offer at any level. And this was before the lawsuit stuff so there was no politics involved.
<troll> their ill-considered crusade against Open Source</troll>
Their crusade against GPL. GPL is just a small part of Open Source, there are a lot more to Open source than just that.
Have you seen them complaining about MPL? Apache? BSD? MIT? Nah, don’t think so!
No more trolling please
That’s nice, good luck finding clients.
It all comes down to marketing and merit. It’s a matter of convincing potential clients to why your OS is better than your competitors. Poor marketing, bad business decisions, and lack of innovation has left SCO in the dust; taking legal action that is inadvertently targeting OpenSource isn’t helping either (BTW, how many projects are posted on SourceForge??). Of course, when your competitors offer a robust, free OS, how can you market against that?
The IT industry is constantly changing. If a company wants to survive, it has to embrace change. IMB, HP, and Sun all embraced change by making a choice to embrace Linux as an enterprise solution.
I’m not saying SCO’s products are bad, and for those who buy and implement them are doing so for a reason, b/c they hold some merit that other products don’t.
It also comes down to preference. IT departments who use SCO do so b/c they like SCO. The same for Linux, Solaris, AIX, etc. It’s just like chosing a car to drive, some like BMW while others may like Mercedes, Ford, etc.
At first I was taking a wait and see approach at this ordeal, but know it has become more apparent that SCO is not out to protec their Intellectual Property but rather they are looking for a way to gauge people who wouldn’t give them their god given right to be number one in the server market. Wether you think SCO is in the right or not you should probably do some research before throwing away your money on something as expensive as a UNIX Operating System, there are alot better commercial options when it comes to UNIX. Jut some thoughts.
“”But what about BSD?” I asked. Sontag responded that there “could be issues with the [BSD] settlement agreement,” adding that Berkeley may not have lived up to all of its commitments under the settlement.
“So you want royalties from FreeBSD as well?” I asked. Sontag responded that “there may or may not be issues. We believe that UNIX System V provided the basic building blocks for all subsequent computer operating systems, and that they all tend to be derived from UNIX System V (and therefore are claimed as SCO’s intellectual property).”
“So is anybody clean? What about Apple and Microsoft?” I wondered. “Sun is clean,” he said—but he gave no answer in regards to Apple and Microsoft.
“But I thought that Microsoft had signed a license agreement?” “No,” Sontag said. Microsoft merely licensed an “applications interface layer.”
The above was quoted from _SCO Owns Your Computer_ on Byte.com. http://www.byte.com/documents/s=8276/byt1055784622054/0616_marshall… I recommend you read the entire article.
I could be mistaken but Clutch, from where I’m reading, you seem to be the one who is trolling.
AFAIK we don’t use SCO products, and don’t plan to, but the IT department has agreed to boycott them just in case. Our legacy HP and VAX machines were finally retired last year, but maybe we missed a few and there’s a rogue SCO box hiding in a closet somewhere. At least in my organisation, SCO’s behaviour is considered so foul that all 23 IT staff hate the company for all eternity or at least until they disappear from the planet. The joke around here is that SCO is behaving like scum to curry favour with George Bush so they can get a billion dollar contract in Iraq.
The thing about SCO that I haven’t quite figured out just yet is whether they are really that stupid or that ignorant. Originally when all this started with them I thought that they were just stupid. Now with all the hot air coming out of their mouths, I have to believe that they are some of the most ignorant people on the planet. The one that kills me the most is when Darl McBride said that SCO was now relevant in the IT world because of the increased number of press releases in the past year, throwing down a binder with copies of the press releases. That made me ROFLANPIMP (roll on the floor laughing and nearly peeing in my pants)! It is that kind of idiocy and ignorance that will forever condemn SCO to become the laughing stock of the IT world. These guys need to be dealt with swiftly before they hurt themselves seriously.
SCO has not contributed its code, and as soon as we became aware of the copyright violation we suspended our distribution,” Sontag said.
This made me laugh. You were able to download it from their servers for weeks after they sued IBM. There were even links to it from their http://www.sco.com website.
And didn’t they recently say they would integrate Samba 3.0 into their operating system? It’s all very strange.
By the way, while SCO can easily check if SCO code has been made open-source, almost nobody can legally check if SCO stole any GPL code.
I never thought I’d say this, but….
I’D GO WHOLE HOG MICROSOFT BEFORE I BOUGHT SCO.
Imma go puke now.
Who did SCO steal code from?
SCO Unixware works fine here and why should we have any intention to switch???
Well, I hope you don’t have any bugs in your SCO systems. Because SCO won’t be around much longer unless they can back up all their claims in court. A failure to do so will eliminate any chance that company had to be profitable.
They will be facing many law suits and potential criminal charges if they can’t back up their claims.
Linux, duh. SCO has hundreds of thousands of lines of Linux source code in it. How do you think they brought it to market so fast with all those enterprise features?
I got all the proof right here, but I can’t show you unless you sign my NDA.
Let’s forget about the actual details of this case and consider the long term implications. What if SCO’s System V code is really in Linux? Then does that mean that Linux can be completely ruined by any programmer working at a corporation that has access to a company’s intellecutal property? Which is more important? The community’s right to make open source software or corporate rights to make proprietary software? What’s to stop some malicious Microsoft-loving programmer from deliberately adding proprietary code into open source software? It seems like that regardless of the legal merits of SCO’s case, there is a seriously potential weakness in the legality of OSS.
Funny that you mention UnixWare considering that one could deploy Solaris on x86, which has better hardware support, and, IIRC, you can run UnixWare x86 binaries on Solaris or if you have the source, it is only a recompile away.
Its too bad that SCO has resorted to such cheap shots instead of improving their product line up. In the x number of years Caldera owned UnixWare and OpenServer, could someone here, who has used it, point out any improvements? apart from the Linux kernel personality, is there anything that has been added and as a result, push itself infront of its competition?
“Who did SCO steal code from?”
It has been leaking out, from former SCO employees, that GPL’d
Linux code was incorporated int the The Linux® Kernel Personality (LKP) for UnixWare by SCO.
This intellectual property theft by SCO from the Linux kernel developers may well come up again as the various legal cases proceed.
It has been alleged SCO inserted BSD code into their closed products without giving credit (advertising clause of the older BSD license).
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75844&cid=6774264
It has also been alleged that SCO inserted Linux kernel code — GPL’d code — into their closed products without negotiating a non-GPL’d license for the code.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1123176,00.asp
SCO said, they had three teams, including a team from MIT math department, examine their “proof” of UNIX code improperly in Linux
1. No such team could be found at MIT.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V123/N33/33sco.33n.html
2. Here is an example quote SCO made about MIT
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/legalissue…
SCO was able to uncover the alleged violations by hiring three teams of experts, including a group from the MIT math department, to analyze the Linux and Unix source code for similarities. “All three found several instances where our Unix source code had been found in Linux,” said a SCO spokesman.
Actually, this is a good thing about an OSS project. Public access to the source code allows people to audit for bugs, backdoors, security violations, and stolen code. This is WAY better than closed source software, where we have no choice but to blindly trust money-grubbing corporations (and their programmers) to do the right thing.
Sorry, I sent the wrong URL for the reply on SCO allegedly violating the BSD license. It should have been: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/23/1731245
rm -rf /bin/sco && rm -rf /bin/sontag
killall -TERM sco_employees &&
cat sco_press_releases > /dev/null
…as much as they want the monopoly on UNIX-like impelented operating systems. Read SCO’s statements, paraphrased: all forms of modern OSs–to an extent–are derivatives of System V… In other words, if you ain’t running Sun OS or Solaris, which are clean, you must buy rights to execute a UNIX-like OS. By the way, when Novell’s sold UNIX, it split the code and licensing rights to Caldera (which incidently means pit inside a volcano), and the rights to call something Unix to what is now known as The Open Group. UnixWare doesn’t even pass the muster as a UNIX-like OS by UNIX-98 standards… How ironic!?!
Anyway with this sort of licensing monopoly, SCO doesn’t need to sell UnixWare. This is even easier money than selling UnixWare, because now they don’t need to maintain or improve their OS; they merely collect royalties and licensing from all other OS vendors (and from users when its OSS).
Also, Caldera’s purchase of UNIX IP from Novell required Caldera to pay major bucks to Novell per annum in licensing royalties if Caldera sold more than a given threshhold of licenses. This term expired seven years after the contract, which was, not long before this lawsuit was filed this year…
Hmmm…
SCO’s slide examples are the best they have, Dont be shocked Sontag is an idiot and he couldnt find a needle in a stack of ten needles. SCO’s claims are bogus and if they even go to court I give them maybe a 5 to 10 % chance that they will prevail and thats only on how well the judge and the jury are versed in software development. SCO doesnt want to show us the code because they know they dont have a case and they just want to inflate their stock price, when a source close to me asked if they could indemnify Linux users because they use a custom Linux kernel for deployment and they have stripped out Linux’s enterprise functions and substituted them with there own code, he was told by SCO that if he goes to press SCO will sue them for Copyright Infringement. Its a stock play and nothing else, they can send out all the invoices they want. Nobody will send them money.
I think it’s hard for the world to purchase less SCO products than they already do. Come to think of it, does SCO even offer products anymore?
Why does anyone make a big deal about support? All I hear is, “Linux leaves customers out to dry,” and, “If you have problems, who will you turn to?”
Even SCO itself makes a big stink about support, as if it were some Holy Grail.
Here’s a serious question: when have you ever received any REALLY helpful support, where they have solved your problem? For me it has been years. EVERY time I call tech support, I know more than they do and it a complete waste of time. I know a rookie tech support guy when I hear one, and 99% of the time I get the rookies.
Linux is free, and it comes with it’s issues. Some apps don’t work right, and it can be frustrating. However, I used to use Windows (up until about 1 year ago), and it had *many* more problems with applications! WIth Linux, I never have to reboot anymore due to lockups nor do I have to be careful about what I install for fear of trashing Windows as a whole. With Linux, I just kill the process and I have my system back.
Linux is powerful, robust and extremely fast. Plus it’s free. Given the fact that I battled MORE with Windows, why would anyone use Windows anymore?
So the next time someone uses the “support availability” argument against Linux, try calling Microsoft for support and report back to me. Then try visiting a Linux help forum, and tell about the DOZENS of immediate responses you get.
The writing’s on the wall, folks. Only SCO can’t read it.
Apache?
IIRC, Apache is released under the GPL. So, presumably, if they are going after the GPL (a case they are very much likely to lose) then they are going after Apache as well.
I believe SCO/Caldera contributed once upon a time, to webmin. Webmin, is a nice solution to managing -many- boxen, no not the only and maybe not the best, but it works and works out well. (Whatever happened to linuxconf?) Also, IIRC, Lycoris still uses a derivative version of Caldera’s hardware setup and installation routine, it’s called the lizard or somesuch. SCO has jettisoned the Caldera work and now uses SuSE’s yast. Well they probably don’t have much call to use anything anymore, but thats beside the point.
SCO was putting there money where their mouth was, in the case of linux, before some of these linux specific companies were sprouting up with their ‘server’ distro’s. They were gauranteeing on site support within 24 hours of a helldesk call. AFAIK linux specific companies are just starting to spread their wings in that direction.
Yes we won’t ever buy any of sco’s stuff the company is finished we all know it’s the thrashings of dying management, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some bright people there and if their contribution wasn’t squarely aimed at the kernel the contribution caldera made helps Lycoris and they have left behind a usuable cross platform gui admin tool.
Supporting SCO amounts to, in the long haul, supporting the Wincartel club (BSA membership) because M$ has a monopoly market position and is now extending it to all reaches of the internet. Basically, you either believe in the concept of open source and open standards as the best way to achieve economic growth in the global information economy, or you don’t; it really does come down to taking a hard political stance. Users will either control their information, or their information will control them, that’s the choice users and businesses have to be informed about, and have to make. Users of SCO products may very well find themselves to be skating on thin ice as it relates to their IT investments. I predict that sooner or later, users of SCO will have to convert to Wincartel products and the excessive license costs and loss of control (EULA) that comes with them.
“Linux advocates say that SCO undercut its own case by releasing its own version of Linux under the GPL. The SCO version of Linux contains the disputed code and – even if the code was once proprietary – SCO released it into open source when it released its own Linux, the advocates argue.
“However, Sontag said that argument holds no water because SCO never intended to release its proprietary code into open source. “U.S. and international copyright law asserts you cannot inadvertently and accidently assign your copyright to someone else,” Sontag said.”
Sontag confuses copyright and license (intentionally or not, I can’t say). Releasing code under the GPL has nothing to do with assigning copyright to someone else. It may be debatable whether redistribution per se constitutes “releasing code” – SCO perhaps is true to say that even if they allowed it to be downloaded, they did not release it under the strictest reading of the GPL because the copyright holder was not properly listed in the files. Nonetheless, it is the most brazen of hair-splitting because the executives of Caldera at the time made it very publically clear that the intention of the company was to merge Unix into Linux, and said so in the context of their IPO that got them most of their funding at the height of the Linux craze.
IIRC, Apache is released under the GPL. So, presumably, if they are going after the GPL (a case they are very much likely to lose) then they are going after Apache as well.
LoL, this is a top of the line open source project just like Mozilla with heavy commercial support. Of course Apache is not GPL neither is Mozilla. Check below for Apache license
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/apachepl.php
I believe Apache is one of the few projects which even Microsoft has given a look at and accepted. Would that happen with a anticommercial product? not likely…
If it meant the profits would be used to ship Sontag and McBride to some deserted island so they wouldn’t be confused with being members of the Human race. Those two are monkeys in suits…
The advantages to Open Source Software are undeniable. I am a big fan of OSS. I’m just curious as to what would happen in the future if this issue gets brought up again. I don’t think that it will end with SCO. Besides, I often wonder if Microsoft isn’t involved in this somehow. It would be the perfect way to frighten corporations into not adopting Linux. If you only have to sneak some proprietary code into an OSS project to bring it down, then this could be an effective tool for a company to ruin an OSS project that competes with one of their products.
Anyway, for my two cents, SCO doesn’t seem to offer anything that Linux doesn’t offer cheaper. At least OpenServer doesn’t. I guess it depends on your perspective… is SCO going to kill linux? It seems unlikely. Is SCO going to kill SCO? I’m thinking that’s a far better bet.
Try SCO OpenServer sometime, you’ll feel like you fell into an alternate universe where MS wrote UNIX and made it suck. (Hey, that’s a troll all my own!)
If you feel threatened by SCO, please file a complaint with the Internet Fraud Complaint Center.
I’m not a lawyer, do your homework first. 😉
Also they shipped their their 64 bit Linux after making that announcement. This included the 2.4.19 kernel. Go figure.
Glenn
Probably the main way that any Sys V code could sneak into Linux is via a proprietary software company such as SGI where you you do not have the abilty to check the pedigree of the code.
SCO has registered the copyright for the Sys V codebase. That is a collective work and they do not own the copyright to every piece of code in Sys V. It was determined in the USL vs BSDI suit that Sys V was something like fifty percent BSD, with the copyright notices removed.
But again, the IBM and SCO lawsuit is not about copyright infringement. It is a contract dispute. Or it was until IBM countersued. Now it is about contracts. copyright, and patents.
Glenn
In his answer to this Clutch said that SCO’s beef was only with the GPL, but yet they are going to include Samba 3.0 in their next Unixware release, a GPL’d product.
Another “go figure” is required here.
Glenn
You’re right, it has its own license. But it is very close to the GPL: it gives the recipient of the software the right to redistribute and modify, as long as the original notice of ownership and those rights themselves are transferred with it.
In fact, the only main difference with the GPL (I think) is that the redistributed and modified product cannot be called Apache or have Apache in their name without the written consent of the Apache foundation.
In other words, from a “commercial” point of view, the Apache license and the GPL are almost identical. That is, neither are anti-commercial, nor can they be subverted by a proprietary company who would wish to unduly profit off some other people’s work. So one can assume that, being virtually identical, SCO is against the Apache license as well as the GPL – if not, perhaps you can tell us what major difference between the two exonerates the Apache license rom the anti-GPL dogma?
Oh, and Microsoft, “accepting” Apache? What does that mean? It’s their main competitor in the Wev Server wars, they’d better acknowledge that it exists! 🙂
The Apache Software License is more similar to the BSD license than the GPL…
AFAIK, the GPL doesn’t allow you to distribute a GPL’d package only in binary format, where you are with the ASL. You can also include some Apache code in your software without having to release your software with their licence. It makes it more commercial-friendly.
No it’s not even close to being GPL. Did you read it? It’s almost word for word BSD/MIT license at the beginning. Please read it.
Another give away that it’s not related to the GPL, I can read the entire license without having to scroll my browser.
AFAIK, the GPL doesn’t allow you to distribute a GPL’d package only in binary format, where you are with the ASL.
True. However you do have to transfer the Apache licence with it. In that case it is “viral,” like the GPL, but without having to give out the sources (which lessens the viral impact, to be sure).
From the Apache License and Distribution FAQ:
“[It requires you to] include a copy of the licence in any redistribution you may make that includes Apache software.”
http://www.apache.org/foundation/licence-FAQ.html#WhatDoesItMEAN
So it is in fact closer to BSD than GPL, in the sense that you don’t have to publish the source code if you redistribute it or derived products…but at the same time it does transfer those other rights and obligations to the recipient. So I stand partially corrected. 🙂
Looks to me it’s an hybrid of the two. Another sign of its ambiguous origins is that the Apache foundation considers its license to be compatible with the GPL, while the FSF does not…In any case, I believe that it is sufficiently GPL-like to be targeted by SCO – in fact, we don’t even know if the BSD license (or the actual BSDs, for that matter) won’t be targeted by SCO as well…after all, the BSD distributions are their biggest hurdle in dealing with the allegedly copied code in Linux, as Perens, Raymond et al. have shown over the past week…