MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-07-21 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] SCO Escalates Linux Battle
|
As soon as I get done paying the royalites on my MP3 collection,
Ruben
On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 11:02:11PM +0100, Inker, Evan wrote:
>
> Ok, who's going to be the first to send SCO a check for the licensing fees
> for their linux box?
> Ruben, how about you being the first.....
>
>
> July 21, 2003
> SCO Escalates Linux Battle
> By Thor Olavsrud
> http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/2237771
>
>
> Laying the ground work to take its battle with Linux directly to Linux
> customers, SCO Group (Quote
> , Company Info
> ) said it
> has received U.S. copyright registrations for its Unix System V and UnixWare
> source code, just the firepower it needs to pursue copyright violation
> suits.
> "SCO now has broad legal rights against end-users," Darl McBride, president
> and CEO of SCO, said Monday. "We intend to use these rights carefully and
> judiciously."
>
> Until now, SCO's conflict with Linux, which it claims is an unauthorized
> derivation of its Unix code, has centered on a breach of contract suit
> aimed at IBM
> (Quote , Company
> Info ). But
> with the copyrights in hand, SCO said using Linux is essentially software
> piracy, and it is ready to open a new revenue stream by giving Linux users
> immunity to copyright violations through licensing.
> "Today is really the formalization of our going down the path of broadening
> our case to go beyond just contracts to include copyrights," McBride said.
> He added, "Today's announcement really is a new front that we're opening
> up."
>
> The company said it plans to offer UnixWare licenses tailored to support
> run-time, binary use of Linux for all commercial users of Linux based on the
> 2.4.x and later versions of the Linux kernel. SCO said any commercial Linux
> customers that purchase the license will be held harmless against past
> copyright violations and for any future use of Linux in a run-only, binary
> format.
>
> "For several months, SCO has focused primarily on IBM's alleged Unix
> contract violations and misappropriation of Unix source code," said Darl
> McBride, president and CEO of SCO Group. "Today, we're stating that the
> alleged actions of IBM and others have caused customers to use a tainted
> product at SCO's expense. With more than 2.4 million Linux servers running
> our software, and thousands more running Linux every day, we expect SCO to
> be compensated for the benefits realized by tens of thousands of customers.
> Though we possess broad legal rights, we plan to use these carefully and
> judiciously."
> The company is still establishing pricing on the new licenses, which McBride
> said will be available with volume licensing discounts.
>
> "Since the year 2001, commercial Linux customers have been purchasing and
> receiving software that includes misappropriated Unix software owned by
> SCO," said Chris Sontag, senior vice president and general manager of
> SCOsource, the company's intellectual property unit. "While using pirated
> software is copyright infringement, our first choice in helping Linux
> customers is to give them an option that will not disrupt their IT
> infrastructures. We intend to provide them with choices to help them run
> Linux in a legal and fully-paid for way."
>
> The company said Linux's Symmetrical Multi-Processing (SMP) capabilities,
> which are essential to making Linux an enterprise-grade operating system,
> are derived from Unix System V and its derivative works (like IBM's AIX).
> McBride claimed SCO has found three distinct areas of infringement:
>
> * Direct line-by-line code taken from SCO's Unix System V, which he
> noted made its way into Linux from various vendors, "primarily other than
> IBM"
> * Direct line-by-line code taken from derivations of Unix System V
> code, like IBM's AIX; McBride noted that its contracts with Unix vendors
> prevent those companies from donating any code based on or derived
> from the Unix System V kernel
> * Non-literal infringement which stems from code which borrows from
> the concepts and structure of Unix.
>
> Despite speculation that some of the alleged infringing code may have come
> from BSD (at one point, System V code borrowed from 4.4BSD, removing
> attributions and copyrights), McBride said that is not the case.
>
> "We're not talking about BSD code," he said. "We're talking about high-end
> SMP code that has been donated in the past year or two and has not made the
> rounds through BSD."
>
> SCO said it will begin contacting companies regarding their use of Linux
> this week, and give them the option of buying a UnixWare license. The
> company's stock price rocketed up about 15 percent, to $13.75 a share, in
> mid-morning trading after the licensing plan was unveiled.
>
> SCO's crusade against Linux began with IBM. On March 6, the company sent a
> letter to IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano, warning him that IBM had
> allegedly breached its contract with SCO by contributing portions of its
> Unix-based AIX code to the open source movement, and by introducing concepts
> from Project Monterey, a joint effort by SCO and IBM to develop a 64-bit
> Unix-based operating system for Intel-based processing platforms, into
> Linux. IBM scrapped Project Monterey in May 2001.
>
> But in the meantime, while maintaining that its problems were with IBM and
> the alleged violation of its contract, SCO has also been giving customers
> notice. In May, it sent a letter to some 1,350 companies that use Linux,
> warning them, "similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry,
> we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation
> of our intellectual property or other rights."
> It also issued a statement
> that "Linux is
> an unauthorized derivative of Unix and that legal liability for the use of
> Linux may extend to commercial users."
>
> While the case against IBM is still in the initial phases, SCO has already
> terminated IBM's
> license for the AIX operating system. IBM maintains the license is perpetual
> and irrevocable, and continues selling AIX.
>
>
> Unix Background
>
> Unix was developed at AT&T's Bell Labs in 1969, but its history since then
> has been convoluted at best, leading experts like Open Source Initiative
> President Eric Raymond to delineate definitions for various operating
> systems that fall into the Unix family. Raymond uses "genetic Unix" to
> describe those operating systems which are derivative works of the original
> Bell Labs Unix.
>
> Outside contributors, especially academics working from UC Berkeley and
> other institutions, supplied much of Unix's development after 1975,
> according to Raymond. Around 1980, Berkeley Unix hackers added Internet
> capability to the code base. By 1990, the relationship between AT&T's Unix
> Systems Laboratories (USL) and Berkeley had soured, leading to a three year
> lawsuit with a settlement that severed Berkeley's version of the Unix
> source, BSD, from AT&T. In 1992, the Unix trademark passed to the Open
> Group, a technical standards consortium which now maintains the Unix
> standard. Unices which adhere to and verify conformance with the standard
> are "trademark Unix" operating systems.
>
> The Bell Labs code passed from AT&T to USL when AT&T spun it off in 1992 in
> a joint venture with Novell (the Unix trademark went to Open Group -- then
> known as X/Open -- as part of the deal). Novell bought AT&T's stake in USL
> in 1993. The property then passed from Novell to SCO in 1995. Meanwhile, the
> Unix universe had seen a birth of a number of other Unices, including:
>
> * AIX, IBM's Unix, a proprietary genetic and trademark Unix developed
> between 1987 and 1990
> * Solaris, the proprietary genetic and trademark Unix used by Sun
> Microsystems
> * SCO Open Server, SCO's version of Unix, a proprietary genetic and
> trademark Unix dating back to the early 1980s
> * BSD, an open source genetic Unix, but not a trademark Unix, which
> now has three variants of its own
> * Linux, an open source variant developed in Finland in 1991 which
> Raymond said is neither a genetic Unix nor a trademark Unix.
>
> SCO added UnixWare, the brand name carried by later versions of Bell Labs'
> Unix, after it acquired it in 1995. In the meantime, to further muddy the
> picture, System V, the Unix that later evolved into UnixWare, borrowed from
> 4.4BSD, leading Berkeley to sue.
>
> "It seems that from as far back as before 1985, the historical Bell Labs
> code base has been incorporating large amounts of software from the BSD
> sources," Raymond said in OSI's position paper
> on the SCO-vs.-IBM complaint.
> "The University's cause of action lay in the fact that AT&T, USL and Novell
> had routinely violated the terms of the BSD license by removing license
> attributions and copyrights."
>
> The lawsuit was settled and the record sealed.
>
>
>
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