WTF
WTF WTF WTF!!
The seemingly endless legal battle between SCO and IBM battle over who owns UNIX, and perhaps bits of Linux, too has re-emerged. And this time SCO has had a win. As Groklaw records, this case kicked off in 2003. The dispute centres on “Project Monterey” a joint effort by SCO and IBM to build a unified UNIX capable of running …
As one close friend [of Darl McBride, SCO CEO], Ty Mattingly, a former co-worker at Novell, said to him: "Congratulations. In a few short months you've dethroned Bill Gates as the most hated man in the industry."
source: https://web.archive.org/web/20040202025445/http://www.crn.com/sections/special/top25/top25_03.asp?ArticleID=45992
Now, Darl is irrelevant, however, for some reason, the pile of excrement who has repeatedly lied to all and sundry, even under oath in front of various courts, is now considered some kind of God-like creature because he promised something ? Gates is a serial liar and a fraud!
IIRC it wasn't SCO at all. There was "The Santa Cruz Operation" that was frequently called SCO. For most of the active part of the litigation, the plaintive was TSG (The SCO Group) who fooled others into referring to them as SCO. The Santa Cruz Operation got renamed to Tarantella to avoid making the deception too obvious.
The good news is this has nothing to do with the vast majority of Linux/Android users. TSG's barely surviving complaint is violation of tort. If you never entered into an agreement with TSG then they have nothing on you.
There was a complaint about IBM contributing to Linux. It failed for pretty much every possible reason. According to TSG, when IBM added code to AIX that made the code a part of System V and therefore TSG's property and so couldn't be contributed to Linux without TSG's permission. Adding code to AIX does not make it a part of System V which belonged to Novell (later acquired by Attachmate). IBM created design documents for new features. Those design documents were used by different teams of programmers to implement the features in AIX and Linux, so AIX code was not contributed to Linux.
TSG filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. What they got instead was a court appointed trustee who did a thorough job of converting TSG's (and Novell's) asserts into legal advice from his law firm. Something to do with System V was sold. I think the victim purchaser believed he had bought System V, which the trustee never had. TSG used to have the right to collect license fees for System V on behalf of Novell, give all the money to Novell and Novell would give back 5%. Long before the bankruptcy, TSG treated Novell's money as their own and there was no mention of the trustee sorting this out. The purchaser could have bought the right to collect license fees, but TSG could not transfer that right without Novell's permission.
Last I heard, TSG retained the litigation - and there is some value to it. David Boies of Boies Schiller and Flexner agreed his law partnership would do the legal work (including appeals all the way to the high court) for a percentage of the settlement. The obvious thing for the trustee to do is to keep sending BS&F to court until BS&F buy their way out. Clearly the Trustee and BS&F have not agreed on a figure yet.
David Boies of Boies Schiller and Flexner agreed his law partnership would do the legal work (including appeals all the way to the high court) for a percentage of the settlement.
ISTR that TSG also paid them a lump-sum up front and BSF agreed to pursue the case to conclusion. That money ran out long, long ago and so BSF is effectively paying for the court case to continue.
I wonder if they are using it to train apprentice attorneys?
"TSG also paid them a lump-sum up front and BSF agreed to pursue the case to conclusion"
BSF noticed owning part of the case was going to cause them a lot of legal problems in court even before noticing the case was worthless. To dig themselves out they had to offer an underpriced fixed fee deal and it's still biting them in the wallet. Given it was hard to tell which of SCO or BSF were the slimiest scum on any given day it's nice to see the pain shared.
@Flocke Kroes - "The SCO Group" was originally Caldera Linux - one of the also-ran Linux distributors of that era. They bought the Unix business of SCO, and then renamed themselves The SCO Group.
I read the legal paper, and essentially the ruling has to do with technicalities about whether SCOG is allowed to appeal their loss and amend their complaint.
The remaining issues mainly revolve around how the IBM-SCO partnership was dissolved, and whether AIX for Power contains source code which should have been limited to AIX for Intanium. this latter issue revolves around release dates and versions for each product.
There's not much if anything which affects Linux users. Groklaw noted some years ago that the IBM-SCO partnership issues were separate from the supposed Linux issues.
" when IBM added code to AIX that made the code a part of System V and therefore TSG's property and so couldn't be contributed to Linux without TSG's permission."
Except that the code added to Linux didn't come from AIX.
It came from OS/2. JFS v1 was added to AIX; but JFS v2 had a different foundation. The only thing that was the same was the three letters "JFS"
So the claim still fails.
"Zombie SCO need to die."
too late, it's already "undead". Not even "destroying the brain" would be enough...
Patent Trolling, la, la-la, la-la
We do not care if it is fair,
We just want YOU to pay!
We're just pirates, sailing the lawsuit waves
Forever we continue forth,
until the end of days!
pirate icon, because that's really what SCO is
It should be noted that the first 6 posts in this thread were downvoted about 10 minutes after the first post was published. I've never really cared about thumbs (up or down) since ElReg implemented them many moons ago ... so I'm kinda ashamed to admit that if I had moderator capability here at ElReg, I'd be curious as all hell about the posting history of the thumbs-downer.
NOTE! I do NOT want to know whodunnit, and I'm not asking! In fact, I'd be the first to bitch about it if ElReg were to out the individual. Consider this a metacomment, nothing more.
"It should be noted that the first 6 posts in this thread were downvoted about 10 minutes after the first post was published."
So now we know what Darl McBribe is doing with his free time - trawling El Reg and downvoting any posts that denigrate TSG. Hard to believe tha anybody but a few lawyers still give a positive shit about TSG - the rest of the world hates them like a burning rash.
"TSG - the rest of the world hates them like a burning rash"
I think a burning rash is preferable, even a burning rash *IN* *HELL*.
TSG ranks below explosive diarrhea, going through an aggressively contested divorce [in Cali-fornicate-you], getting fired for doing the right thing, and being audited for the last 7 years' worth of taxes. All at the same time.
/me reminded of 'Little Nicky' opening scenes
That's a rather useless definition of insanity. The Large Hadron Collider, for example, smashed zillions (I don't know the actual number) of protons into each other before detecting the Higgs boson.
Or how about coin flipping? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern comes to mind - when they spend ages flipping heads, and considering the implausibility of the result being the SAME every time.
> We'll get right on that ... as soon as you fix your government.
Why is is with so many Americans (not all) that if a non-American dares criticise something, they take it as a personal insult, and some sort of one-upmanship attempt, and so reply with a counter insult...
It's almost like:
"So? My Daddy is bigger than your daddy"
Our government needs fixing.. damn right it does, and I don't care if an american points it out, but I'm puzzled as to why we have so much apparent power that you "won't fix your problems until we fix ours" - do you care for us brits so much, you'll sacrifice your own interests until our problems are fixed? mighty galant of you Jake!
Earth to AC, come in AC, is there anybody home, AC?
The original poster made the comment with the above subject line. I replied in kind, but in jest, as signified by the offer of purchasing a round for all so we can commiserate on our various awful executive/judicial/legislative fuckwits-in-charge.
You, in all your glory, decide that *I* am somehow at fault for something because I'm a Yank, and for no other reason? You, sir or madam, are in the words of your countrymen "a right wanker". Have a nice day.
Dear Mr Jake, resorting to the ad hominem now?
Not sure which earth you are on, but on the real one, at no point did this "right wanker" accuse you of being at fault over anything.
To top it off, when you then said I made that (imaginary) accusation because "you're a yank", then you go and prove my point.
Thanks for that, but please stop - I love America, and Americans, whilst you are just helping to promote that very negative stereotype I mentioned.
HTH.
The case has outlived Groklaw but there were other reasons why PJ closed down new sumbissions to Groklaw (the site is still there) including death threats to her.
You can read the final straw in her last post on www.groklaw.net.
Things have only gotten worse since she wrote it.
As for the court appointed trustee... that job seems to be a license to print money, someone elses money.
The more work they do at $150/hour the more that the case needs to recover just to pay the trustee.
I think that it is a rather nice retirement plan for aging judges. Get a golfing buddy judge to appoint you and you are set for life.
No, I have to stick up for IBM here. IBM's lawyers are exactly the kind of ruthlessly efficient legal machine that Linux needed to fend off SCO at the time. Sure esr and his buddies did excellent, excellent work - but in front of a judge, SCO would have crushed him. When some douchebag organization sues you, you find your best lawyer. IBM has some of the best.
(Ruminates on what might have been if IBM had sued Windows for infringing on OS/2 and won...)
ruminates on what would've happened had IBM and MS swapped marketing teamsI had once suggested that as a remedy/punishment in the Microsoft case some years back. Along with making MS use Lotus Notes.
Cruel!
Normally I hate torture.. Even the idea of it.. Even brief mentions of it.. But in a case like this, I'll get the popcorn!
Surprisingly it's not.
IBM are either using their in house lawyers aka The Nazgul , who'd be getting paid any way or a law firm on a retainer and SCO's law firm agreed to do the job, for a percentage of the payout, until, as far as I can tell, the heat death of the next Universe.
movie references, yeah. how about these:
"They're BA-AAACK!" (ok a quote not a title)
"Shark-C-O III - Oh, Hell No!"
"SCO Wars - revenge of the ASS-HATS"
"Source Code II" <-- has a kind of groundhog-day-like theme in it,name appropriate
"Ghost in the Shell (corporation)" <-- what SCO has really become
"Appalled XIII"
"Pirates of Santa Cruz County"
grabbing coat now...
This may be the point. The District Court may have erred in dismissing the case on the grounds it did, and as a legal point that precedent should not be allowed to stand. It doesn't mean the District Court can't immediately dismiss the case on other grounds, like SCO not actually owning what they claim to have owned.
Novell just owned the copyright to the UNIX source code, it obviously does not own the company.
The distribution was originally Microsoft Xenix, then sold to the Santa Cruz Organisation (which became Tarantella), and again to Caldera (which became The SCO Group).TSG is of course bankrupt, but a successor 'owns' the rights to payments by IBM if it loses this case (originally claimed at 5 G$).
SCO Open Server was based on ATT Unix SVR3 and had a large market share among Unix-on-Intel variants in the nineties - Linux was cheap, except for Caldera's distro. They never proved that IBM ever illegally copied SCO into the Linux kernel ..... but Caldera may have illegallly copied Linux kernel code into their Open Server product so that it could run Linux programs. Linux continually improved and after 2000 became an enterprise class OS.
SCO now claims that IBM illegally copied parts of their UnixWare OS (based on ATT Unix SVR4) into their AIX on POWER (when they were working on AIX on Intel Itanium). I guess their chances of a major victory are slim since they do not own the copyright....
The lawyers win.
> I guess their chances of a major victory are slim since they do not own the copyright....
While The SCO Group, or their successors, did not obtain any copyrights from Novell when they bought the business of collecting licence fees that were to be passed to Novell (but stole them instead), any code written by the original SCO, or subsequently written by TSG in their copyright.
In the case of Project Monterey it is likely that any code written for the project would be owned and copyrighted by the company that employed the author and automatically cross licensed to the other(s).
It is false to claim that TSG does not own _any_ copyrights.
IBM had and have valid AT&T UNIX source licenses, and were part of Project Monteray, which included the Santa Cruz Operation (before Caldera bought them), so I think that it is very likely that IBM also had a SVR4 source license.
I would assume that, unless IBM's SVR4 source license explicitly prohibited code from SVR4 to appear in AIX, that IBM behaved entirely appropriately with regard to AIX.
The initial product of Project Monteray that IBM produced was a version of AIX 5L running on Itanium. This was harmonized with the release of AIX 5.1 on Power, so that the new features in 5L were also in 5.1 (which some people, even in IBM, did call AIX 5.1L or AIX L 5.1)
I actually did a bit of investigation on an AIX 5L Itanium system, and decided it looked like AIX on Power. walked like AIX on Power, and quacked like AIX on Power, so it was just another AIX platform (apart from some features that were still missing), and promptly decided to deliberately lose interest until Itanium systems running AIX 5L appeared in the market place, which they never did.
What IBM were accused of was not copying UNIX code to AIX, but of copying UNIX code into their contributions to Linux. TSG (ex. Caldera) claimed they had a right to rescind IBM's UNIX source licenses on the strength of this accusation, something that was not possible as the licenses were in perpetuity, and then tried to accuse all IBM's AIX customers of running UNIX variants illegally. IBM promised to defend any AIX customers from TSG's claims of running UNIX illegally if they ever were taken to court, so TSG never carried out any of their threats to AIX customers.
TSG's management were idiots!
They will keep going until they win and take over total rights to Unix and Linux both. Only way to stop this is to kill the organization and keep it's agreements from changing hands to some other blue blood run organization. This is war. A war to control the population's access to free use technology for communication through control over the OS that it runs on....and PROFIT hand over fist!
Will Groklaw come back to life as well?
I believe that PJ stopped active contributor involvement when she learn (through the owner of Lavabit) about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court/FBI/NSA/DOJ/TLA letters giving the government unlimited authority to obtain data, and making it illegal to disclose the existence of the letter: Groklaw forced exposure link.
At this stage it is becoming akin to arguing over the rights to the first printing press. Most people don't use printed media anymore and those that do are using presses that probably bear little or no resemblence to that first one. Even movable type presses (not sure that is the correct name, but you know the ones) are not really relavent anymore. The code in linux and thus android no doubt has some old parts but it will gradually be removed ... its not like they're arguing over the rights to that tune Happy Birthday
Ultimately SCO might win (I doubt it, but for the sake of argument) and have the rights to ... oh, nothing that is being used anymore. Then good luck retrospectively suing everyone for once using it.
King Arthur: [after Arthur's cut off both of the Black Knight's arms] Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left!
Black Knight: Yes I have.
King Arthur: Look!
Black Knight: It's just a flesh wound.
[the Black Knight continues to threaten Arthur despite getting both his arms and one of his legs cut off]
Black Knight: Right, I'll do you for that!
King Arthur: You'll what?
Black Knight: Come here!
King Arthur: What are you gonna do, bleed on me?
Black Knight: I'm invincible!
King Arthur: ...You're a loony.
King Arthur: You fight with the strength of many men, Sir Knight.
[the Black Knight doesn't respond]
King Arthur: I am Arthur, King of the Britons.
[no response]
King Arthur: I seek the bravest and the finest knights in the land who will join me in my court at Camelot.
[no response]
King Arthur: You have proved yourself worthy. Will you join me?
[no response]
King Arthur: You make me sad. So be it. Come, Patsy!
[attempts to get around the Black Knight]
Black Knight: None shall pass.
King Arthur: What?
Black Knight: None shall pass!
King Arthur: I have no quarrel with you, good Sir Knight. But I must cross this bridge.
Black Knight: Then you shall die.
King Arthur: I command you, as King of the Britons, to stand aside!
Black Knight: I move for no man.
King Arthur: So be it!
[they fight until Arthur cuts off Black Knight's left arm]
King Arthur: Now, stand aside, worthy adversary!
Black Knight: 'Tis but a scratch!
King Arthur: A scratch? Your arm's off!
Black Knight: No, it isn't!
King Arthur: Well, what's that then?
King Arthur: I've had worse.
King Arthur: You liar!
Black Knight: Come on, you pansy!
[they fight again. Arthur cuts off the Knight's right arm]
King Arthur: Victory is mine!
[kneels to pray]
King Arthur: We thank thee, Lord, that in thy mercy -
[cut off by the Knight kicking him]
Black Knight: Come on, then.
King Arthur: What?
Black Knight: Have at you!
King Arthur: You are indeed brave, Sir Knight, but the fight is mine!
Black Knight: Oh, had enough, eh?
King Arthur: Look, you stupid bastard. You've got no arms left!
[after slicing one of the Black Knight's arms off]
King Arthur: Now stand aside, worthy adversary!
Black Knight: 'Tis but a scratch!
King Arthur: A scratch? Your arm's off!
Black Knight: No, it isn't.
King Arthur: What's that, then?
Black Knight: [after a pause] I've had worse.
King Arthur: You liar!
Black Knight: Come on, you pansy!
[King Arthur has just cut the Black Knight's last leg off]
Black Knight: All right, we'll call it a draw.
King Arthur: [Preparing to leave] Come, Patsy.
[King Arthur and Patsy ride off]
Black Knight: [calling after King Arthur] Oh, oh, I see! Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!
This post has been deleted by its author
Actually, Santa Cruz were in deep shit, Linux was growing strong and was ready for the low and mid end servers throughout the 90's, this cost Santa Cruz aplenty customers. Intel announced iTanic and IBM, the only UNIX vendor with a pair of functioning brains, chose Power AND iTanic, just in case. For iTanic UNIX, they ventured with Sanat Cruz (Project Monterrey).
Intel were late with iTanic and the chip was nowhere near as powerful as it was initially "purported" to be ... the first dev kits were slower than a Casio 100 pocket calculator,
iTanic perception tanked severely, Santa Cruz believed Intel's Gospel and IBM saw a better opportunity, beef up :Linux, but kept the project with Santa Cruz going ... YEARS LATER, still no progress on Intel's side and Santa Cruz was acquired by SCO^HUM.
IBM released something based on Monterrey but without a compiler, ROFL. UNIX without a compiler is basically useless ... Ok, not to me, but to software vendors, anyway...
This, SCO^HUM is claiming did not fulfill the agreement in project Monterrey, so have found another angle to sue IBM.
However, this is a completely different case, this is IBM vs SCO^HUM only, no Linux code to be concerned about ... they already lost that case years ago ... I guess IBM will have to buy them ... will be cheaper in legal fees ... After all, SCO^HUM has backers in many proprietary software houses ... and can sue on any grounds until and after kingdom come ...
It was foreseeable the moment BS&F were on the hook there could be no decision that wasn't pushed all the way to a trial, however pointless or already lost the point at issue was. TSG were captured by chancers, some like McBride with a long history of serial corporate demolition, others with history of sharp legal practice.
SCO may have their lawsuit but back but IBM still has the Nazgul who made Boies, Schiller, and Flexner look more like Moe, Larry, & Curly. Ultimately SCO has to cough up actual infringing code in Linux and my recollection is the only things they ever showed turned out to be a snippet of deprecated Itanium code that was actually from SGI and the Berkeley Packet Filter which as you might expect came from BSD on a BSD license.
Lets not forget this is about one commercial entity trying to screw-over another commercial entity and former partner. (similar to what MS did to Big Blue, twice) Who currently owns SCO, who exactly is funding the SCO case and in the unlikely event SCO wins, who do they expect to collect revenue from? Or are the lawyers hoping to extract some go-away money from IBM?
AIX started out as 32 bit SVR3 .. drastically modified to be 64 bit NUMA platform
UNIX/SVR4 was the merging of SVR3 and Berkeley UNIX that resulted in SMP platform now known as Solaris, SCO , UNIXWARE ,... and HP UNIX . All the big iron jumped on the band wagon : HP/Tandem/SUN/MIP in the mid 90's. I use to visit AT&T Bell labs in NJ to replace 3b2's with MIPS based servers running SVR4.
Linux is stolen 100% from SVR4 .. ok .. so Linus renamed some functions to hide the IP.
Anyone who has worked on the originals know Linus is a thief .
There ain't no SCO left. No Darl, no Ralph, nothing.
It's all about using up the final bits of what was SCO's assets. SCO went into Chapter 11, then Chapter 7 ,bankruptcy; they are run, without any oversight or need to keep business records, by a trustee (The right "honorable" Judge Cahn) - the only meaningful cashflows they have are going from the rotting corpse of SCO to Cahn's firm (and, presumably, some minimal flow for "expenses" to BS&F, who are otherwise stiffed on doing the litigation for free).
The "business" side of things (xinuos.com) has shrunk to nothing, all but two of their offices are closed, a one-roomer at best (shared, no less, with "Effectual Systems", whoever they might be) upstairs from the Bellevue Eye clinic in Berkley, CA, and something similar in Tokyo. There's no real estate, no real "offices".
Here SCO comes again, "Hey, hey, we're the Monkees..... And people say we monkey around
But we're too busy... suing..... to ever stop Monkeying around" and so if TSG is for the Team of Lawyers who promised they'd take this case to Jupiter and Beyond.... before they'd drop it.
What's really ironically is the fact if they somehow pull off this IBM AIX Lawsuit is that they could end up with enough money on the side to go after every UNIX out there today. If that happens.... you'll see Google, Apple, Redhat, Oracle, etc all running for the hills to keep from being called a UNIX OS! .....it'll be hilarious to see..... especially companies like Apple claiming OSX or iOS are not a UNIX then!!! :D
> if they somehow pull off this IBM AIX Lawsuit is that they could end up with enough money on the side to go after every UNIX out there today.
You seem to know nothing about the various cases around 'The SCO Group'.
That horse has already bolted a long time ago. The courts have found that TSG has no standing on Unix or AIX. The case against IBM is completely different and based on a specific contract for joint development.
I swear, looking at some of the absurd comments here, I'm fairly convinced that there are perhaps only 3 people out of the (at this time) 90 who commented WHO ACTUALLY READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE instead of sounding off like children after reading just a sentence here and there.
Or perhaps just the title/byline.
Guys, this particular ruling this wasn't a judgement in favor of SCO's argument. It was merely a sending BACK to district court.
The question now is what happened in the meantime (this comment is written June/2018).