“I do not think any company except a few of the largest companies can offer any reasonable insulation to their customers from these types of judgments. You would need a market cap of more than a couple billion to just survive in the OS space.” A very interesting read from S2’s CEO about the legal side of OSes today. And it seems he is not far off the truth at all.
S2 ‘mystery man’ Anderer Speaks on MS, SCO, and Licensing
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This points to two things. That the IT industry is no longer about innovation, coding, and doing what’s right for consumers. It’s about a massive land grab for spurious patents. He/she/it who has the most patents wins.
However, one of the things that must piss people like this guy off is that linux may be immune from this kind of pissing contest. Say, a company produces a piece of closed source software. Somehow an aspect of that software breaches someone’s patent. They get sued. They lose, and pay the patent holder $1 gazillion in damages. They go under. Even if the patented part of the software were removed, that product is lost to the world, as the source goes with the company. However, with open-source, if a developer breaches someone’s patent, they may get sued, but the software is still there to be developed. That’s the beauty of it. No-one is ultimately responsible for the whole damn thing. Bits of it, yes, but not the whole shooting match. Even in a patent pissing match, I still don’t see now open source software could be killed.
Can someone enlighten me if I’m wrong?
Matt
I think you’re right. After a company vanishes or a person died his/her copyright lives on. It does not become public domain. This has been changed in the copyright law somewhere near the 70’s IIRC (not sure, only sure it was changed before the 80’s). To give examples: what Caldera has developed as GPL remains GPL even if they’d like to turn it back. What RedHat has developed as open-source lives on even. What several passed away GNOME developers coded remains FLOSS. This point is a point BSD advocates use: “the BSD licensed source remains free. Derative works are free to do with it what they want to but they can’t make the BSD licensed code less free as-is.”
There are some companies which develop proprietary software and when the company dies they state the software is made ie. GPL or BSD license (for example the case with BitKeeper). The irony in that, as some put it: when the product is being boycotted the software will become Free. I see a flaw in this argument. To put it simple: when the software is better than FLOSS competitors it will be used. When the software is worse than FLOSS competitors it won’t be used. The company or product dies instead. When there’s no FLOSS while a non-FLOSS, proprietary competitor kills off the proprietary software and the company dies because of that, the proprietary product becomes Free and brings life to 3rd party developers who are willing to continue it, that at the expense of the better proprietary product (Netscape / Mozilla!). I prefer one licenses his/her software as FLOSS, but when one doesn’t want to, this is a very cool approach including a revenge to the non-Free competitor.
…MS no longer feels like it can compete on quality, so it is now resorting to legal attacks in order to quelch the competition.
It’s utterly disgusting.
1. Smaller companies, or unincorporated developers, have less assets/money and are pretty well not worth suing.
2. Not even SCO has sued *customers* of GPL’d software for violating the copyright on code the customer itself did not put in the software. (SCO is suing IBM only for code IBM, not anyone else, is alleged to have put in Linux.) Anderer’s statement that the GPL puts responsibility for such things as copyright violations on the non-coder end user is full of crap as a legal proposition.
MS has never competed on quality, and legal attacks of this sort are nothing new for MS. It is just business as usual. There are plenty of websites dedicated to the illegal tactics MS has employed against competitors over than last two and half decades. And yet some sick individuals still praise MS for how well they’ve done.
SCO did sued Daimler Chrysler and two or three other companies for using Linux without their licence. Dunno where the cases will go but they still did.
Hi
“SCO did sued Daimler Chrysler and two or three other companies for using Linux without their licence. Dunno where the cases will go but they still did.”
Read the cases properly. One was sued for using sco shared binaries. another one was sued for not meeting license auditing requirements
regards
Jess
Both suits of Daimler and Auto(something – can’t remember) were for breaches of pre-existing sco licenses. They had nothing to do with inclusion of sco IP in linux.
Matt
1. Jess is correct.
2. I said “Not even SCO has sued *customers* of GPL’d software for violating the copyright on code the customer itself did not put in the software.” There was no claim of copyright violation in the cases you cited. There is a claim of copyright violation in SCO’s suit vs. IBM, but that is for code IBM itself is alleged to have put in Linux.
“SCO did sued Daimler Chrysler and two or three other companies for using Linux without their licence. Dunno where the cases will go but they still did.”
vs.
“Read the cases properly. One was sued for using sco shared binaries. another one was sued for not meeting license auditing requirements.”
What’s the difference?? SCO has said in all the letters it sent out: ‘Buy a license or be prepared to go to litigation.’
dumbkiwi, it was AutoZone.
That’s strange as I was pretty sure they were both sued *because* they were using Linux. Did I missed something last week? I was away.
Hi
getting a linux license whatever it is is not the way to go forward when you have allegedly used sco shared libraries and infrigment of sco license has nothing to do with linux. it just doesnt work that way legally. sco can push the media to believe its everything to do with a linux license. fact is it is not. they even lied that ca got a license while transparently adding a linux claus to any sco license
even if you hate linux please dont support sco
regards
Jess
Software patents really are outrageous (not on all fronts but there are so many stupid ones, look at the patents IBM is countersuing SCO with) and I think lawmakers are finally starting to see it. There has been more and more talk about reformation. While there is a land grab for patents I wonder how much is to enforce and how much is just to protect yourself. I mean the problem is if you don’t have patents then you are very vulnerable to be sued (since you can’t countersue with anything). The bottom line is it’s a mess that will hopefully be fixed.
The GPL is doing interesting things. I think sometimes it’s mixing up patent issues so much that they will have to change something or face chaos.
Microsoft is being dirty for suing a company for something as stupid as a name and Michael was crazy for picking a name he knew damn good and well that MS would come after him over. It’s alright to stand up against a competitor, but don’t give a competitor a half-ass reason to sue you to death.
Copyrights are not forever
http://www.abanet.org/intelprop/comm106/106copy.html
Copyrights are not forever
As long as Linux is continually developed the copyright on it will remain. See this clause:
a joint work prepared by two or more authors who did not work for hire,” the
term lasts for 50 years after the last surviving author’s death
In order for Linux to survive, new people most constantly contribute and therefor the last surviving author will be one that has died after the development of Linux has ceased.
TheObserver is absolutely correct about what SCO has been *threatening*, but even they haven’t had the gumption to try something quite that outrageous in court (yet, at least).
The universe of end users of Linux is much larger than the universe of end users of Linux who had contracts with SCO (i.e., SCO’s Unix sales have been getting killed by Linux). Thus, the apparent hope in threatening all major business users of Linux with litigation is to get many more people to buy SCO licenses than if they just threatened former customers.
SCO executives’ public pronouncements may be designed to aid that licensing push – that is, to make all Linux users feel under threat. And reporters (other than Groklaw’s PJ) have been doing a remarkably bad job separating SCO’s executives’ talk in public from what the company is actually doing in court. This produces the understandable impression among most people (you are not alone, Wrawrat:) that SCO is suing companies for copyright violations merely for using Linux, which isn’t true.
>>
What’s the difference?? SCO has said in all the letters it sent out: ‘Buy a license or be prepared to go to litigation.’
<<
The difference is: not even scox will sue somebody just for using linux. If scox attempted to do so, that would be a slam-dunk case against scox for fraud, barratry, and extortion.
So far, scox’s “IP license” is writen in such a way to give scox enough wiggle room to side-step crimminal prosecution – although scox is getting awfully close.
BTW: Boies real speciality is keeping corporate crimminals out of prison. Just in case you’ve wondered why Boies is getting millions, but never appears in court.
Re: Lindows
Lindows deserves every bit of trouble they are having. All they had to do was change their name and everything would have been fine and they wouldnt have spent so much on Lawyers fee’s and time. Everyone knew when Lindows first started that this was going to be a problem and there was even mention of it on their mailing list when the company first started. Michael Robertson decided to keep it up as a way to get his name in the press and bring some attention to his company.
Re: SCO
SCO thinks what its doing is right, if you look at the suits from Daimler Chrysler its about License auditing, which SCO has clearly laid out in its contracts what is supposed to be done and how, Daimler Chrysler ignored this. Autozone is being accused of continuously using shared libraries from SCO without paying them for it, now, the problem I have with this is that on Groklaw they have a guy who supposedly helped Autozone do their migration and he said it was done so without the use of the said libraries. Which is fine, I dont care about that but if it is true then why did Autozone enter into the licensing agreement to begin with? As an IT manager and technician I would not license anything from anyone that I didnt need or didnt have to use. I think people are forgetting this and I think it was silly for Eric Raymond to make the announcement that they will assist Autozone and DC in any way without first getting the intimacies of the case.
“BTW: Boies real speciality is keeping corporate crimminals out of prison. Just in case you’ve wondered why Boies is getting millions, but never appears in court.”
That’s a fairly interesting statement i haven’t heard yet. Care to back it up with sources?
Lindows and SCO: Regarding why Autozone had a license from SCO – Because they were running their company applications on SCO’s Unix. (Google the name of the fellow who sent the message to Groklaw – I forget it for the moment – and you will see that he was involved in helping others on newsgroups and mailing lists with questions pertaining to SCO Unix.)
It is not accurate to say Autozone was “continuously” using SCO shared libraries. Rather, if you read what SCO alleges regarding Autozone, it is that Autozone *must have* used the shared libraries in transitioning their corporate systems from SCO Unix to Linux, since the transition went so smoothly. The message to Groklaw, from the fellow who says he was in charge of the Autozone transition (I Googled to confirm that someone by that name actually was in that position at Autozone), is that no SCO shared libraries were used, and that he would take SCO’s statement about the smoothness of the transition as a compliment.
To summarize: Autozone did not buy a license from SCO in order to use the shared libraries in transitioning to Linux. Rather, Autozone had been a customer of SCO, using its Unix to run their corporate systems, then decided to move to Linux. SCO does not say it has specific knowledge that Autozone used the SCO shared libraries in the transition to Linux, but says the transition went so well that Autozone must have used the shared libraries. The person who was apparently in charge of the transition has written to Groklaw, specifically denying SCO shared libraries were used.
walterbyrd: Boies is arguably the finest lawyer in the country. See for example http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,89445,00.html describing Boies successfully defending CBS against a libel suit from General William Westmoreland over Vietnam reporting, and winning the antitrust case against Microsoft, among other famous cases. (What Boies showed in the Microsoft case, that MS committed antitrust violations, was upheld on appeal. The appeals court reversed the trial judge’s prescribed remedy for the violations, which was that Microsoft should be broken up into two separate companies.)
The public pronouncements of SCO’s executives concerning the IBM case while SCO is represented by Boies’ firm continue to mystify me. I would think his advice would be to act in a much more restrained fashion. Even the judge in charge of discovery in the IBM case advised SCO not to publicly discuss her latest ruling, a most unusual step for a judge to take. Who knows, perhaps Boies has advised restraint – he can’t physically hogtie and muzzle his clients.
“Lindows deserves every bit of trouble they are having. All they had to do was change their name and everything would have been fine and they wouldnt have spent so much on Lawyers fee’s and time.”
Lindows DID change it’s name, and MS is suing anyway. Their latest suit against Lindows claims that Lindash sounds like Lindows, and that Lindows has been ruled too close to Windows in the Netherlands, therefore Lindash is too close as well. If you can believe that bull… MS has some gall.
It just proved that the name had nothing to do with the lawsuit, and Linux had everything to do with it.