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More entertaining than fiction
2003-12-06 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbearEvery once in a while reality comes up with something that's so weird you know it couldn't possibly have been made up. For some time now, a large fraction of my entertainment reading has been coming from Groklaw -- Pamela Jones' blog about the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit and related matters. PJ's writing is excellent, the comments are intelligent, she has complete copies of all court filings and transcripts (many of which are amusing in their own right), and the schadenfreude is beyond compare.
It's sort of like watching a slow motion trainwreck in a movie, when you know that the villain and his cronies are on the train. You watch the hero (last seen in a sticky situation involving a bridge and some dynamite) jump out of the bushes, throw the switch, jam a two-by-four in it, and untie the girl. They share a good pull of something bracing from his hip flask as the film cuts to the look on the villain's face as he slowly begins to realize that, with the switch thrown, the train is now headed straight for the bridge he just blew up.
It's too early to roll the credits -- the villain may still have a few more tricks up his sleeve -- but so far it looks very much as though good will triumph.
Perhaps more to the point, this seems to be the scene in the courtroom drama where the high-priced lawyer starts to realize that his client's evidence may be a lot shakier than he'd been led to believe, but they're both in it too deep to stop.
For those few on my friends list who just switched channels from the California energy crisis/budget crisis/recall election/budget crisis (which I'm told is terribly amusing if you don't liveon the train in the state in question), here's the story so far (greatly simplified):
It starts out a lot like The Producers, or maybe The Mouse that Roared. It's pretty clear that the original idea was to sue IBM for a couple of billion and either get bought out (their high-priced lawyers get 20% of the proceeds if that happens), or at least pump up SCO's stock high enough and for a long enough time (it's speculated that they have to have four profitable quarters before the CEO's options are vested) to cash in.
SCO's claim is that IBM put pieces of the Unix operating system (which SCO owns certain rights to, having purchased distribution rights from Novell, who bought it from AT&T) into Linux, in violation of IBM's contract with AT&T which said that IBM would protect the trade secrets in Unix. Of course, what IBM actually contributed to Linux was some modules developed at IBM, but SCO's claim is that these constitute a derived work, and the contract said IBM was supposed to treat derived works as if they were part of the original product.
It must have seemed like an open-and-shut case at the time. Trouble is, IBM didn't just buy them out, they decided to fight. In part this is because it's not exactly clear what rights SCO has, and what IBM's contractual obligations really are, and to whom.
SCO has had a long and rather unsuccessful history as a Unix vendor, having bought the rights to a version of Unix, called Xenix, that ran on IBM PC-compatible hardware, from a company that was no longer interested in Unix because they had what they thought was a better OS. This company was called Microsoft. But this story isn't about Microsoft, it's about SCO and IBM. Anyway, SCO was bought out by a second-tier Linux vendor called Caldera. They later changed their name to The SCO Group after the original Caldera management left what appeared to be a sinking ship, leaving the old SCO folks in charge. Or something like that.
It was actually Caldera that bought the rights to Unix from Novell. They gleefully announced their intention to combine the two operating systems, taking the best ideas from each and putting them in the other. Even after they gobbled up SCO, they continued working on both Unix (of which they now had two versions: SCO's and Novell's, which had previously been AT&T's) and Linux. Even today they continue to distribute Linux for free on their FTP site under the terms of its license, the GPL.
You can see where this is going, can't you? On the one hand, SCO is saying that IBM has misappropriated code derived from their (well, AT&T's) trade secrets and put it into Linux, while at the same distributing Linux containing both IBM's and Caldera's contributions. Of course, that was before the old SCO execs took control. The bridge has already been blown up.
Oh yes, there was also a very old lawsuit between AT&T and UC Berkeley; the settlement is sealed, but the BSD folks only had to remove three files from their entire distribution to free it. If the case had gone to trial they probably wouldn't have had to do even that much -- AT&T had been so careless with its "trade secrets" that they probably had nothing left to protect. SCO is calling that old settlement into question, and is also claiming that the GPL is unconsitutional, apparently not realizing that, if the GPL goes away, they lose the right to distribute the code of tens of thousands of other Linux contributors.
It gets better, though, because a few months ago SCO started threatening to sue Linux users, offering to sell them licenses to SCO's IP for a mere $699 per copy. Of course, they can't specify exactly which lines of code are their property, because then the Linux kernel developers would take it out. They don't want the Linux developers to stop misusing their IP, they want it left in so SCO can continue to charge for it. Naturally IBM has asked for this information as part of the discovery phase of the trial, and so far SCO hasn't delivered.
In the most recent hearing in the case, which took place yesterday, the judge gave SCO thirty days to come up with the full list of files, line numbers, where the code came from, and what rights SCO thinks they have to it. Two-by-four in the switch.
Here's the best part: they probably never had such a list -- as part of their discovery they asked IBM to provide a list of all the code IBM contributed to Linux! They did provide IBM with a list of several hundred files that SCO "has reason to believe" contain their precious IP. The geeks on Groklaw promptly reverse-engineered the list and determined that it must have been obtained by searching for a handfull of strings like "IBM", "SCO", and a couple of others.
I get the feeling there are the makings of a song or two in here, if I can just simplify things enough to make it believable. Full speed ahead.
At this point the question appears to be, not whether SCO will win or lose, but whether their execs and their lawyers will manage to stay out of jail.
It's sort of like watching a slow motion trainwreck in a movie, when you know that the villain and his cronies are on the train. You watch the hero (last seen in a sticky situation involving a bridge and some dynamite) jump out of the bushes, throw the switch, jam a two-by-four in it, and untie the girl. They share a good pull of something bracing from his hip flask as the film cuts to the look on the villain's face as he slowly begins to realize that, with the switch thrown, the train is now headed straight for the bridge he just blew up.
It's too early to roll the credits -- the villain may still have a few more tricks up his sleeve -- but so far it looks very much as though good will triumph.
Perhaps more to the point, this seems to be the scene in the courtroom drama where the high-priced lawyer starts to realize that his client's evidence may be a lot shakier than he'd been led to believe, but they're both in it too deep to stop.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here
For those few on my friends list who just switched channels from the California energy crisis/budget crisis/recall election/budget crisis (which I'm told is terribly amusing if you don't live
It starts out a lot like The Producers, or maybe The Mouse that Roared. It's pretty clear that the original idea was to sue IBM for a couple of billion and either get bought out (their high-priced lawyers get 20% of the proceeds if that happens), or at least pump up SCO's stock high enough and for a long enough time (it's speculated that they have to have four profitable quarters before the CEO's options are vested) to cash in.
SCO's claim is that IBM put pieces of the Unix operating system (which SCO owns certain rights to, having purchased distribution rights from Novell, who bought it from AT&T) into Linux, in violation of IBM's contract with AT&T which said that IBM would protect the trade secrets in Unix. Of course, what IBM actually contributed to Linux was some modules developed at IBM, but SCO's claim is that these constitute a derived work, and the contract said IBM was supposed to treat derived works as if they were part of the original product.
It must have seemed like an open-and-shut case at the time. Trouble is, IBM didn't just buy them out, they decided to fight. In part this is because it's not exactly clear what rights SCO has, and what IBM's contractual obligations really are, and to whom.
SCO has had a long and rather unsuccessful history as a Unix vendor, having bought the rights to a version of Unix, called Xenix, that ran on IBM PC-compatible hardware, from a company that was no longer interested in Unix because they had what they thought was a better OS. This company was called Microsoft. But this story isn't about Microsoft, it's about SCO and IBM. Anyway, SCO was bought out by a second-tier Linux vendor called Caldera. They later changed their name to The SCO Group after the original Caldera management left what appeared to be a sinking ship, leaving the old SCO folks in charge. Or something like that.
It was actually Caldera that bought the rights to Unix from Novell. They gleefully announced their intention to combine the two operating systems, taking the best ideas from each and putting them in the other. Even after they gobbled up SCO, they continued working on both Unix (of which they now had two versions: SCO's and Novell's, which had previously been AT&T's) and Linux. Even today they continue to distribute Linux for free on their FTP site under the terms of its license, the GPL.
You can see where this is going, can't you? On the one hand, SCO is saying that IBM has misappropriated code derived from their (well, AT&T's) trade secrets and put it into Linux, while at the same distributing Linux containing both IBM's and Caldera's contributions. Of course, that was before the old SCO execs took control. The bridge has already been blown up.
Oh yes, there was also a very old lawsuit between AT&T and UC Berkeley; the settlement is sealed, but the BSD folks only had to remove three files from their entire distribution to free it. If the case had gone to trial they probably wouldn't have had to do even that much -- AT&T had been so careless with its "trade secrets" that they probably had nothing left to protect. SCO is calling that old settlement into question, and is also claiming that the GPL is unconsitutional, apparently not realizing that, if the GPL goes away, they lose the right to distribute the code of tens of thousands of other Linux contributors.
It gets better, though, because a few months ago SCO started threatening to sue Linux users, offering to sell them licenses to SCO's IP for a mere $699 per copy. Of course, they can't specify exactly which lines of code are their property, because then the Linux kernel developers would take it out. They don't want the Linux developers to stop misusing their IP, they want it left in so SCO can continue to charge for it. Naturally IBM has asked for this information as part of the discovery phase of the trial, and so far SCO hasn't delivered.
In the most recent hearing in the case, which took place yesterday, the judge gave SCO thirty days to come up with the full list of files, line numbers, where the code came from, and what rights SCO thinks they have to it. Two-by-four in the switch.
Here's the best part: they probably never had such a list -- as part of their discovery they asked IBM to provide a list of all the code IBM contributed to Linux! They did provide IBM with a list of several hundred files that SCO "has reason to believe" contain their precious IP. The geeks on Groklaw promptly reverse-engineered the list and determined that it must have been obtained by searching for a handfull of strings like "IBM", "SCO", and a couple of others.
I get the feeling there are the makings of a song or two in here, if I can just simplify things enough to make it believable. Full speed ahead.
At this point the question appears to be, not whether SCO will win or lose, but whether their execs and their lawyers will manage to stay out of jail.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 12:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 05:26 am (UTC)Steve, thanks for the wonderful summary of what's been going on. While I do have a professional interest, I admit I haven't had the time to really keep up on the details of the case, so this was a wonderful way to get caught up with the latest situation!
no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 08:25 am (UTC)There are also complications about what rights Novell retained after the sale. Including the right, which they have exercised in the case of IBM, to change contract conditions on Caldera/SCO's behalf.
And then there are the additional complications of United Linux (a joint venture of SuSE, Caldera, and -- somebody else; was it TurboLinux?) and Monterey (Unix for Itanium, a joint venture of SCO, IBM, and DEC).
I really don't think this thing can be simplified down to the point where it would fit into a two-hour operetta, but Pirates of SCO has a certain ring to it.