Re: SCO offers UnixWare licenses for Linux

From: Shawn <core@enodev.com>
To: root@chaos.analogic.com
Cc: "Diego Calleja García" <diegocg@teleline.es>,
	"Michael Bernstein" <michael@seven-angels.net>,
	gmicsko@szintezis.hu,
	"linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: SCO offers UnixWare licenses for Linux
Date: 21 Jul 2003 15:36:07 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1058819767.9574.37.camel@localhost> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0307211518420.421@chaos>

The copyright owners own it.

Anyway:
1. SCO cannot redistribute the parts of the kernel that are not theirs
under a binary only license.
2. Linus own's the "Linux" trademark (® or tm, I dunno) so SCO can't
call what they own "Linux" if Linus says no.
3. Even in the unlikely case that SCO wins the © case against IBM, Linux
developers will be hard at work reimplementing the parts of the wheel
that some uninformed troglodyte found was SCO property.
4. Are you actually afraid SCO will have an impact this drastic on
Linux?
5. RedHat should step up and chime in, and the more likely is that SCO
will piss IBM off for a while and interrupt some of RedHat's revenue
stream through FUD.

EVERYONE who has ever contributed to Linux should call SCO on their
bluff and formally object to the blatant violation of all your
collective licenses. That way, at least it's on record.

On Mon, 2003-07-21 at 15:09, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Diego Calleja [ISO-8859-15] García wrote:
> 
> > El Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:52:21 -0400 Michael Bernstein <michael@seven-angels.net> escribió:
> >
> > > To put it simply, just because they "may,"  - and I say may here simply
> > > because we have no evidence to prove their claims but cannot flatly
> > > deny them - own the rights to Sys V, does NOT mean they own the right
> >
> > So they want to sell us something that still hasn't proved....cool.
> >
> 
> No. They want to sell you something you already own. SCO is the
> owner of a non-exclusive license to a 30 year-old operating
> system. There are many others who have such a license including
> the University of California in Berkeley. Much of Linux was designed
> to interface with the API that they published, in a method that
> minimizes the changes to a 'C' runtime library. This made porting
> of various Unix utilities developed by the students at Berkeley,
> relatively easy.  The actual Unix API used by Berkeley, was published
> by AT&T in December 1983. It is Called "Unix System V, Release 2.0,
> User Reference Manual Including BTL Computer Center Standard and
> Local Commands". I have a copy of that two volume ring-bound book.
> 
> A "non-exclusive license" means that you you are not the only
> person who has been licensed. It's just that simple. In my opinion
> there is no way that SCO will ever convince any court that their version
> of "non-exclusive" is any different than all the others including,
> but not limited to, BSD, Digital, Interactive, Sun, IBM, Microsoft,
> Novell, etc. I have read the complaint and they allege that somebody
> must have stolen their secrets because nobody could make a version
> of Unix good enough for "the enterprise" without their secrets.
> So, they contend that they are the only people smart enough to write
> software for "the enterprise", whatever that is. Nice trick.
> 
> Note that in the complaint against IBM, SCO seeks a jury trial.
> I guess they think it's easier to snow a jury than a judge. We'll
> see. I think SCO thinks juries are stupid and will treat them
> as David and Goliath. I think a jury will treat them like
> thieves, instead.
> 
> It is instructive to read the annual reports, filed with the
> United States Security and Exchange Commission, by many
> of the companies that produce software. These reports are
> available on the "Web" and the various company's Web Pages
> usually have links to recent filings. A quote from a portion
> of Novel's 2002 Annual report goes like this; " The software
> industry is characterized by frequent litigation regarding
> copyright, patent, and other intellectual property rights."
> 
> The fact that somebody sues somebody else in the Software
> Industry is kind of like having the sun rise in the East.
> You get to expect it. Now, back to writing some software
> that somebody may claim I stole.............
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Dick Johnson
> Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
>             Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.
> 
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