Working largely on their own time, Linux devotees apply their collaborative model for creating software, known as open source, to attack SCO and its case. Dozens of online detectives comb corporate documents, analyze legal filings and publish everything they can find about the company, its finances, management and connections to Microsoft.
Showdown with the Linux Gang
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
“We do not like to be in the public forum,” Goldfarb said.
===========================================
Place Baystar in the public forum…. find out as much information about them as possible… open the cuboards…
n let the goolies out…
keep placing baystar back in the centre of things…
just to see how long sco would last… or baystar could stay..
======== =========
All in all, it was a pretty bad day for SCO. Judge Kimball has declared that it is not clear at all that there was a transfer of copyrights from Novell to oldSCO. Chances of SCO winning its slander of title against Novell now seem dim as best, something which could have a huge impact on the AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler lawsuits.
Check out the story on Groklaw:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040610202858631
It seems to me that Microsoft and its proxies (such as SCO) would be better to play it clean (i.e. compete fairly) rather than try dirty tricks to get their way. Faced with an army of volunteers they don’t stand much chance…
Well all know M$ and how they use monopoly and mula to fight any one standing on their way.
The conclusion is this:
“For the reasons stated above, Plaintiff’s Motion to Remand is DENIED, and Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss is DENIED as to Plaintiff’s pleading of falsity and GRANTED as to Plaintiff’s pleading of special damages. Plaintiff is granted 30 days from the date of this Order to amend its Complaint to more specifically plead special damages.”
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040610183918915
Whole article as text in URL from a non he moos.
On newSCO vs IBM
Here is Judge Kimball’s Order on the two SCO motions, to bifurcate the patent claims, which he denied, and to amend the scheduling order, which he partly denied, partly granted, as text.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040611010408489
includes PDF + comments
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040610231630729
what on earth did novell sell sco and why would the contract say novell cant release a competeting product against what novell sold to sco?
novell somehow translates it if sco ‘needed the copyrights’ then they can have the copyrights.
i think that since sco sells unix licenses, the’d need the copyrights.
don’t get me wrong i dont like SCO but this is the only damning thing SCO actually has against anyone right now.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2003111023050367
The above link is the APA (Assets Purchase Agreement) that’s supposed to have all the answers. oldSCO seems to have bought the right to sell SVRX on Novells behalf for a 5% administration fee. There’s nothing about Novell not being allowed to release a competing product, just that they are not allowed to use SVRX code in a competing product. So far it doesn’t look like Linux includes any SVRX code.
From the APA:
[1.2] (b) Royalties. Buyer [oldSCO] agrees to collect and pass through to Seller [Novell] one hundred percent (100%) of the SVRX Royalties as defined and described in Section 4.16 hereof. Seller agrees to pay Buyer an administrative fee of five percent (5%) of the SVRX Royalties.
And:
Seller agrees that it shall use the Licensed Technology only (i) for internal purposes without restriction or (ii) for resale in bundled or integrated products sold by Seller which are not directly competitive with the core products of Buyer and in which the Licensed Technology does not constitute a primary portion of the value of the total bundled or integrated product.
This isn’t a decent site at all. You’d kind of
expect a Linux site to be pro-Linux, or even just
neutral at the bare minimum. Not so in this case.
You don’t need the copyright on the source to sell the binaries. SCO has AFAIK always been binary only.
You don’t need copyrights to sell licenses, you just need permission from the copyright holder. That’s what Santa Cruz/SCO bought, and apparently passed on to Caldera/SCO at some point.
One very good reason why Novell wouldn’t have signed over all copyrights in SVRX is that they are unlikely to know what they actually own copyrights on – there’s a lot of baggage from the BSD case around SysV.
it would be nice to believe that a world of volunteers and common folk are standing up against MS and winning. That is partly true.
Its also true that two very large corporations (IBM and novell) and one mid-sized one (redhat) are pouring lots of money into defending open source from what i believe is an MS funded attack.
Don’t forget this. those same corporations who are defending open source today could very well turn around and start suing people using open source for violating their own (ibm, novell) IPR when the MS threat is reduced.
NO corporation is a friend of open source for long.
“who said that some “Linux loonies” have harassed her over her research reports on the lawsuits,”
This from a woman who claims she “saw” 80 lines of code, which have mysteriously disappearred, now that SCO is actually in court and have produced no evidence of Unix code in Linux, but are instead, begging the judges for more AIX & Dynix, since they can’t find anything infringing in Linux. So much for research and Didiot calling anyone “looney.”
From 6/13/03:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/13/1055220751243.html
His analogy to stealing cows was wrong [linux does not steal cows], but a much better one could be made.
Using the Cow analogy, consider that many states have “free range” laws allowing your cows to go anyware…not necessaraly on your property [much like ideas!] SCO may have prized stock cows, but they’ve been out in the wild for a very long time. Linux [and other input from SGI, IBM, SUN, etc] is more like SCO trying to claim ownership of the childern of other people’s cows because their bull knocked them up!
SCO let their bulls run free… Even rented them to other “farmers” to do work for them. [which ideas do of their own rights anyway] and now SCO wants claim over all the children simply because there’s some SCO genes in there.
You don’t need to own the copyrights in order to distribute someone else’s stuff. Amazon.com Distributes how many books a year?
SCO had one other option, they could change the text of the books as needed. SCO couldn’t distribute the source code though.
Well, why did BayStar, RBC, etc, volunteer to be a test case for the collaborative model in public, open research?
They’ve just proved it works.
Now to get it working for some of the other serious issues – anyone read Arundhati Roy’s “The Cost of Living”?
http://www.irn.org/programs/india/roy.cost.html