[NCLUG] Breaking news! SCO is full of crap (big surprise)

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 05:06:00PM -0600, Daniel Miles wrote:
>As I understand the American legal system, SCO's claims of code-copying,
>bad clean-room practices etc. etc. are invalid until they are proven in
>court. Because no trial has yet taken place, the statis of those

John has been pushing the comparison with someone who steals everything
you have, and then sells it to someone who knows it's stolen.  In US
law, my understanding is that the purchaser of the stolen goods is in
trouble.

Unfortunately, the case isn't quite that clear cut.  The above is pretty
obvious because you clearly have a unique, physical thing that someone
else paid for.

To me, the SCO case seems more like this.  You call the police over and
point at the TV in your living-room and say "These 100 people around town
stole my TV."  Now, maybe those people do indeed have the same kind of
TV as you.  The police aren't going to arrest those people, because you
still have your stuff, and those other people (probably) aquired the
TV through legitimate means.

It'd be great if the case were as clear-cut as SCO and John like to make
out it is, but it just isn't.

Again, SCO's examle of IP copied directly from them is code that was
published under the BSD license at least once, published in a book which
has been released without NDA requirements, published in another book
without SCO's copyright, and published under the GPL by SCO itself.

SCO likes to portray their claims as being just rock solid, but they
quite simply don't seem to be.  SCO doesn't want to release details
about the aledged theft, and based on the evidence they've provided so
far they're probably right not to.  So far, it's shown that SCO doesn't
have a leg to stand on.

I can understand that maybe they wouldn't show their MOST damaging
evidence, but if that's the best example they can show, I've got to
wonder if they have any legitimate claims at all.

>So, (as I understand it) if the result of the trial is that everything
>they're saying is true, they may charge those fees that they've been
>threatening. However, attempting to collect them *before* the issues are

The legal analysis by Lawrence Rosen
(http://www.osdl.org/docs/qa_re_sco_vs_ibm.pdf) seems to say that SCO
has no way to get money from both IBM and Linux users.  SCO is aledging
that IBM released SCO proprietary IP into Linux, thus preventing SCO
from selling that IP to Linux users.  If IBM compensates them for it,
they've been compensated.  If the Linux users pay for it, then there was
no loss and their claim against IBM evaporates.

Again, IANAL, but that's my interpretation of the analysis.  See the
above PDF for more the details on it.

Sean
-- 
 "You took quite a chance..."  "You take a chance getting up in the morning,
 crossing the street, or sticking your face in a fan."  -- Police Squad
Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995.  Qmail, Python, SysAdmin