MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-07-21 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] SCO Escalates Linux Battle
|
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.
****************************************************************************
This message contains confidential information and is intended only
for the individual or entity named. If you are not the named addressee
you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail.
Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received
this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system.
E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free
as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive
late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not
accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this
message which arise as a result of e-mail transmission.
If verification is required please request a hard-copy version.
This message is provided for informational purposes and should not
be construed as an invitation or offer to buy or sell any securities or
related financial instruments.
GAM operates in many jurisdictions and is
regulated or licensed in those jurisdictions as required.
****************************************************************************
____________________________
NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
NYLXS is a trademark of NYLXS, Inc
|
|
