[nylug-talk] Companies demonized as "Scummy" and "Evil" -- WAS: Looking for recommendations

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Tue, 2008-03-18 at 06:41 -0700, Peter C. Norton wrote:
> What I recall of the beginning of the bru-ha-ha, there was threats
> from SCO that linux included infringing IP in the form of
> contributions from IBM employees in the form of portions or all of
> JFS and LVM, and possibly other parts of the kernel.

Yes, in the original, 2003 March filing citing $1B, SCO named items
#1-49 named many things that seemed "inflammatory."  I felt that too,
until I read times #50-55, then it made sense.  It was leading up to
their citing the Non-Compete terms of Project Monterey, a signed
contract between IBM and SCO, in items #50-55 -- i.e., state "damage"
inflicted then contractually binding "terms" that apply.

The irony was that Caldera-SCO had been GPL'ing a lot of SCO's IP.
Caldera was planning on GPL'd some of Project Monterey, one of the
reasons why IBM terminated the agreement 20 days after the acquisition.
I.e., the reality was the exact opposite, something IBM regularly
pointed out.  SCO was now complaining about what they themselves had
done, not what IBM even planned on doing.

[ SIDE NOTE:  I distinctly remember one of the reasons why JFS was
ported to Linux from OS/2, and not from AIX and its native inode
implementation, was because of the possible Project Monterey aspects.
This was before IBM withdrew from the contract. ]

As of late 2005, with one (1) exception (namely IBM withholding source
code from prior to Caldera's acquisition of SCO), most legal experts
believe none of the terms of Project Monterey are applicable to IBM,
given various circumstances.  I.e., SCO has little case.  Namely Caldera
didn't do their homework before buying SCO, and didn't do what was
required before they did (let alone after, which IBM countered anyway,
and SCO had no case there either).  But in any case, 100% of SCO's case,
in 2003 March, was based on those terms, term which were -- again -- not
made public until late 2005.

It was 2003 May, not 2003 March, when SCO expanded the lawsuit and
damages they were seeking ($3B), started the rhetoric outside of the
filing.  That's when Novell and Red Hat started their counter-suits,
based on everything from who owned UNIX(R) IP to industry practices.
That's when I formally started to support those lawsuits against SCO.
When SCO went further and started lobbying government in 2004 January
about the "dangers" of the GPL, I spoke out publicly against SCO
"working against our freedom of digital assembly."  I stopped short of
condoning, although I did point out, that some people were practicing
"civil disobedience" as SCO was threatening all our rights.

But in no case did I never touch SCO v. IBM, for various reasons.  SCO
v. IBM was not SCO v. Linux, Linux advocates were the ones that made it
that _first_.  Because before that, it was a "contract dispute" -- not
just my words, but the words of ESR, Linus' and many others in 2003
March.  A great number of us assumed SCO sued believing IBM would buy
them out.  In reality, there may be some legal malpractice involved here
(I won't go into).

Again, it wasn't until 2003 May that Linus said "SCO's smoking crack,"
and most of us then changed our attitude.  But that didn't have to do
with SCO v. IBM or SCO v. AutoZone, Chrysler, etc...  100% of those
lawsuits are over written contract disputes.  The key is to point this
out, that SCO was 0% threat, legally, to any end-user or even OEMs.  And
that's why SCO v. IBM was not our concern, which is part of the problem.
People thought it was, and gave SCO that "rhetoric" avenue.


-- 
Bryan J  Smith              Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
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