[glug-t] SCO vs The Free software community

There has been lot of interesting developments in the Caldera's Law suit
against IBM. It started with IBM, then Redhat, then attacking GNU/Linux
Users, then claiming the GPL is VOID!, and ended up in some malloc code
that was already distributed under free software licenses multiple times!

I have collected some important events and have listed them below.

March 6, 2003: The SCO Group initiates a civil lawsuit against IBM,
claiming that IBM through its support and development of the Linux kernel has
breached contracts IBM entered into with Caldera/SCO's predecessors in
Unix ownership regarding non-disclosure of Unix code.

Note: SCO is the current owner of Unix, which originally was developed
by AT&T. SCO, which used to be named Caldera, purchased the rights to Unix
from a different company named SCO, which has since changed its name to
Tarantella. Along with Unix, SCO purchased a number of contractual
agreements, including one with IBM. SCO is alleging that IBM has violated that
contract.

March 10, 2003: The OSI responds. http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html

April 30, 2003: SCO's responds to IBM's letter:
SCO will revoke IBM?s AIX license on June 13, 2003 as stated in the
letter that was sent to Sam Palmisano on March 7, 2003. IBM may contend
that their UNIX license is perpetual and irrevocable, but those rules only
apply to companies who uphold the rules of their UNIX license and don?t
misappropriate SCO?s UNIX source code. 

May 18, 2003: Microsoft has entered into a license agreement with
Caldera/SCO "to respect SCO's intellectual property". The move is widely
regarded as a way to provide financially strapped Caldera/SCO with funds to
survive prolonged litigation and to cast doubts over the legal status of its
major challenger Linux.

July 21, 2003: Caldera/SCO announced a forthcoming licensing program for
Linux users.

June 23, 2003: SCO smear campaign can't defeat GNU community - RMS.
Here's a quote from the article:
In a community of over half a million developers, we can hardly expect
that there will never be plagiarism. But it is no disaster; we discard
that material and move on. If there is material in Linux that was
contributed without legal authorization, the Linux developers will learn what 
it is and replace it. SCO cannot use its copyrights, or its contracts with
specific parties, to suppress the lawful contributions of thousands of
others.. Linux itself is no longer essential: the GNU system became popular in
conjunction with Linux, but today it also runs with two BSD kernels and
the GNU kernel. Our community cannot be defeated by this. 

Get the whole article from 
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2914132,00.html

August 6, 2003: IBM countersues Caldera/SCO. IBM argues that because SCO
distributed a version of Linux under the open-source General Public
License (GPL), it can't claim that Linux software is proprietary. IBM also
argues that SCO software violates four IBM patents and that the company
interfered with IBM's business by saying it had terminated IBM's right to
ship a Unix product, AIX. 

Augus 14, 2003: SCO's cheif counsel challenges the legality of the GPL.
They say that the GPL violates the US copyright law and is thus null and
void!!!!

August 18, 2003: FSF issues response to SCO's baseless claim. This
article by Eben Molgen cleanly describes the stupidity of SCO's claim.
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/sco-preemption.html

Note: Eben Moglen is professor of law at Columbia University Law School.
He serves without fee as General Counsel of the Free Software
Foundation. 

August 19, 2003: In an event at Las Vegas, SCO displayed slides showing the 
similarities in the Linux Kernel code and its source code. A German journalist 
photographed some of SCO's presentation slides, despite attendees being 
required to sign non-disclosure agreements before attending the event. The 
slides then came under the full scrutiny of Linux advocates, with one, former 
Hewlett-Packard open-source strategist Bruce Perens, publishing a damning 
analysis online. 

http://perens.com/Articles/SCOCopiedCode.html

Linus Torvalds says if the code that SCO showed off this week is their best
example of copyright violations, 'they are bound to lose'.

- Vijay

Non-free* software sucks. - RMS
* 'free' as in freedom.


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