Back in March 2003, some of you may remember the (in)famous SCO vs IBM lawsuit claiming that Linux had code which was stolen from Unix. And that Unix was owned by SCO. (neither of those two claims were true, and the falsity of the latter was proven in court first by a bench trial, then after an appeal, by a jury, then after another appeal, just because, by another judge)
The story is very long, and I can't tell it here. SCO claimed for years to have mountains of evidence. Never showed any. After protestations from IBM, the court ordered SCO three times to produce its evidence, the third and final order was Dec 22, 2005. Eventually the court began knocking out the legs from SCO's purported "case". Eventually trial was finally set to begin Monday, September 17, 2007. After boasting loudly for years that SCO wanted its day in court, on the Friday afternoon preceding trial on Monday, SCO declared bankruptcy. How can a company remain in bankruptcy for so many years, until this very day!? Good question. It's stuck at an appeals court that hasn't touched it in years. The docket alone is hundreds(!) of boxes. I'm sure no court unfamiliar with this long and complex case is very eager to first have to read through the docket. This case is firmly in Jarndyce and Jarndyce territory here.
At some point in bankruptcy, the court separated the assets from the litigation. The assets went in one direction (Xinuos), and the lawsuit went in the other direction -- thus keeping the assets now out of reach of any possible counter claim damages from IBM.
Yesterday (March 31, 2021) Xinuos filed a new lawsuit against IBM and Red Hat.[1] [2] [3]
When I saw this a few hours ago this morning, I was skeptical it was an April fools joke. But it appears to be real. I have not read this complaint yet. I don't know if I have the stomach for it after watching SCO for so many years. (This "ongoing" case had its 18th anniversary last month, and it's now in its 19th year)
I am confident that both IBM and Red Hat (the latter recently acquired by the former) can defend themselves. Especially since IBM has all of the materials from the ongoing case.
The entire Groklaw site is still available for research into the nauseating history.[4] It is also archived in the Library of Congress.[5]
Footnotes:
[1] Xinuos sues IBM
[2] SCO Linux FUD returns from the dead
[3] Xinuos Sues IBM and Red Hat for Antitrust Violations and Copyright Infringement, Alleges IBM Has Been Misleading its Investors Since 2008
[4] Groklaw - Wikipedia
[5] Groklaw - Digging for Truth
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @02:25PM
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @02:30PM (8 children)
IBM declares bankruptcy and then SCO/Xinuos is SOL... world becomes a better place on both counts.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @02:50PM (3 children)
Yes, please! IBM needs to stop existing. It would be a major win for software freedom.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @03:40PM (2 children)
I guess you didn’t get the mono. Nobody cares about FLOSS. Especially the GPL stuff. Developers don’t need it to make software. Large companies control the direction of Linux. And where’s FLOSS in the mobile world?
The old coders are dead or too old to contribute. And younger coders, who might have contributed code in the past to bolster their resumes, now show potential employers the apps they are working on right in their phone. Something employers can try out instead of looking at code.
So where’s the next generation of coders going to come from? Large companies, who will steer it towards their needs, and lock most of the modified code on servers as services, not habits distribute the source.
The average user? Don’t make me laugh. I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny’s.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @07:47PM
I lol at Redhat! Why get the mono, when we can just boot into Windows and use the real thing? Besides, a relative of mine got mono, and he was sick from it for a month!
I care about the GPL. I will continue using Linux distros that provide me with trans affirming, non-binary logging. I love programming, especially with RAII languages, which the mono is not, so the GPL has value to me on that basis.
But yeah, there's really no point in Redhat's offerings, so I make bank with micros~1 software instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @01:45PM
And yet, I just downloaded Kicad the other day.
(Score: 2, Informative) by NPC-131072 on Sunday April 04 2021, @03:57PM (3 children)
Former SCO CEO [unicourt.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @05:05PM
Haha! Though I would feel pity even for Darl McBride if his bankruptcy was caused by the government intrusion into our lives the last two weeks.
Wonder why he overextended himself personally. Did he not find enough investors in Utah for his trivia business?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday April 04 2021, @10:42PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @01:20AM
How is it not true bankruptcy? You overextended yourself to a degree that you cannot meet your obligations and the government offers you protection from your creditors coming in and repossessing the sofa under your ass.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @02:43PM (2 children)
Obviously this requires money.and time.
Somebody is bankrolling this operation ... and too bad anonymous bitcoins can even be bought by m$.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @03:43PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @10:17PM
There is nothing to capitalize. SCO had no real assets, only smoke and mirrors. The only reason to buy the lawsuit rights is if someone else is bankrolling it, Microsoft pumped as much money as they could into it last time, and there is no reason to believe that anything has changed this time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @02:49PM
So, who owns Xinuos? How can we feed anyone with a more than 1% share in the company to the Nazgul?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @03:29PM (6 children)
Xinuos was formed in 2011 according to their web site. In the filing they claim that IBM stroke Xinuos code in 1995 - guess they forgot to include the boilerplate “successor in interest.”
The statute of limitations is long over for filling a claim, becatthey “sat on their rights “ or alleged rights) WAY too long, so any claims are tolled.
So what is this, really? Another “but me or pay me to go away” attempt.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @03:47PM (5 children)
Like the original SCO case, it is more 'our secret and Magnificent Sponsor is paying us to drive up your legal bills as much as we can and there is nothing you can do about it.' From that perspective SCO won and this is just round two. The takeaway is that even if you are the largest, best heeled company with an all star legal team and both the law and the facts are on your side you can still be shaken down and held hostage by a shell company with suitcases full of shredded newspaper and the courts will happily ignore the rules to oblige them. Smaller players have no chance against that.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by choose another one on Sunday April 04 2021, @05:06PM (4 children)
Yeah, but the focus seems ever so slightly different to the original SCO case. Not copyrights (which it turned out SCO didn't own anyway), but looks like contractual around project Monterey and AIX, with anti-trust allegations as sugar on top.
There have been various commentators over the years saying that while SCOs decision to focus on Linux and copyrights was fatally flawed they might have had a serious claim regarding Monterey.
To quote one from over a decade ago ( https://www.computerworld.com/article/2468455/even-as-sco-dies--the-company-lies.html [computerworld.com] ):
Seems that it what this successor in interest is now doing. I hope they fail. Monterey is decades ago now, its effect on a business created on assets bought out of bankruptcy is nil - yeah UnixWare and OpenServer are worthless dead ducks, but any sane observer knew that they were when the current owners bought them, what RedHat and IBM have done since is irrelevant.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @08:34PM (3 children)
Fatally flawed? That presumes that SCO as hoping for legal justice or some kind of monetary compensation. SCO was only ever about Linux. It made Linux 'risky' for decades. No large organization would touch Linux while impending litigation was ongoing. It didn't matter what the litigation was, or whether it had merit or even made sense. As long as it dragged through the courts it was hands off. It was dragged through courts for as long as possible. Bankruptcy and re-emergence is just another step in the longer goal of dragging it out further. And that was the whole point. It doesn't matter who wins or loses or what the court case is even about. It's just another fud nail in the wider adoption of Linux in the computing environment. Whispers in board rooms from vendors about the risks of getting caught with Linux in your tool box if the ruling goes south.
(Score: 4, Informative) by choose another one on Sunday April 04 2021, @11:37PM (2 children)
BS. The copyright litigation (the first one) went on from 2003 until 2010 when final ruling that SCO didn't own them anyway.
In that period I worked with multiple large organisations that were using Linux, but beyond my personal experience just look at Google for one example - Android was started in 2003, Google bought in in 2005, that a large enough organisation for you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @03:50AM (1 child)
Nope. Google is huge. By my recon, big enough to buy SCO, MS and IBM outright to end the whole debate with the stroke of a pen. They have lawyers and technical experts capable of picking apart the key points of the case and deciding if it's a risk to them or not. They can even decide to go ahead with a buy out plan as a contingency. Google isn't just "large enough" they are large enough to not care what they use and how they use it.
It's not the Googles and Facebooks of the world that cared about the sco litigation. Nor was it the small mom and pop businesses that would just as happily use a pirated version of windows if that's what they needed. It was the enterprises in between that already had Windows licensing in their portfolio. The same enterprises that were using Linux if for no other reason than to renegotiate lower Windows support costs. This litigation cost Linux adoption in a huge way.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday April 05 2021, @07:35PM
Again, BS, I actually worked for a primarily windows-based enterprise software provider from 2005 onwards from almost a decade, we no-bid on legions of ITTs because we couldn't deliver (read: mgmnt wouldn't commit to / risk the port) on Linux. Many of those were 7 or eight figure contracts - not mom and pop shops, enterprises, on Linux and committed enough to Linux to specify it as delivery platform. Wasn't a problem - plenty enough Windows work for us - but definitely a large (and growing) presence.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday April 04 2021, @03:42PM (2 children)
At least we know they are not out for Brrrraaaaiiins ...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @10:40PM
The zombies didn't need brains last year, when they rose en masse from their Civil War cemeteries to vote for sleepy Joe.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Sunday April 04 2021, @10:44PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday April 04 2021, @06:23PM
With all this mad money from the fed engorging Wall Street, they have to find new ways to spend it. Velocity, babe...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @06:53PM (2 children)
Well, what is Xinuos' position on systemd's transphobic binary logging, and will they help us smash the gender binary by promoting good, old-fashioned non-binary logging?
Oh who am I kidding. Nobody will counter-attack Redhat on a basis equally stupid as their attack on RMS, so I might as well just keep on getting rich developing micros~1 software and writing free as in freedom socialist feminist software on the weekend. Redhat's offerings are completely useless, because if I wanted broken software with binary logging, I could just use micros~1, so I will.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @09:45PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @02:31AM
Ok fine. Yes I'm mendaciously mixing up trans-gender identities and enbies, and I of all people should know better. So that line of attack is flawed. May Redhat dissolve into the Windows subsystem for Linux!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Sunday April 04 2021, @07:50PM (18 children)
This has nothing to do with Linux. The lawsuit is about AIX on x86. SCO and IBM had a joint project to make that possible, the project closed down, and the claim is now that some of that code was incorporated into mainstream AIX on RISC. Since the tech was owned by both SCO and IBM, and the claim is IBM took their joint code and used it on an unrelated project, this may be a valid claim. This is not a continuation of the old lawsuit - it is an unrelated matter.
Back in the early 90s, we had this version of AIX - running on the PS2. Not quite the powerful solid and expensive hardware the mainline AIX runs on. That went nowhere, because the OS headed down the high performance high requirements route, and PS2 went the consumer/DOS route.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AIX#IBM_PS.2F2_releases [wikipedia.org]
As X86 systems grew bigger and more performant, IBM considered making their golden child run on the powerful generic hardware. Sun did the same thing, and we god Solaris on x86. SCO worked with IBM on this, then they killed the project. The only way to run AIX now is on something that can emulate RISC, like Qemy. That's if you want to just play around with it, with half the features people actually use AIX for being unavailable, like VIO.
for example, the AIX PowerPC releases go to 7.2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AIX#POWER.2FPowerPC_releases), and you can emulate PowerPC, so it should work.
https://worthdoingbadly.com/aixqemu [worthdoingbadly.com]
So, different lawsuit, doesn't look like a troll lawsuit, and the tech from that joint IBM and SCO project could potentially be still used in AIX today. Since the original co-owned code was limited in scope to AIX on x86, and IBM used it for something else w/o SCO's approval, this may have merit. Or the lawsuit could be completely full of shit. Keep in mind, IBM is not some super-ethical company, and it's absolutely possible some decision-makers at some point decided to secretly steal the co-owned code and put it into the mainstream version of the OS, w/o letting the partner know. I can absolutely see some MBA asshats making that decision.
Picture this scenario: you and your friend thought it would be cool if TVs had a touchscreen - a long long time ago. You worked on developing the first ever touchscreen, then hit a snag - TV makers just weren't interested in putting your tech into their TVs. You took your financial and time losses and ended the idea. However your friend, let's call him Steve, then make a phone w/ a touchscreen, using the tech you both developed. He didn't tell you, and made a lot of money from this touch phone, let's call it a t-Phone (because it has a penis as well as a pair of tits). He's still selling that phone. Does he owe you any money? Yep, he certainly does - and I would be interested in the details of why he was so into trans people, as well as his flight history - any frequent visits to Bangkok to bangcock?
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Sunday April 04 2021, @08:16PM (10 children)
It's not completely unrelated to the old lawsuit, because they did bang on about project Monterey and contractual issues in that too - but the main focus and most of the noise back then was on copyrights.
More than one person back then did suggest that they maybe had a lot more of a case over the Monterey / AIX stuff, but that was old SCO who actually had some connection to it, these new guys bought existing assets out of bankruptcy knowing (if they did any due diligence at all, or had any clue at all) that IBM shafted old SCO over Monterey, I can't see how they have any claim.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday April 04 2021, @08:34PM (5 children)
I may be wrong here, it's been a while, but I'm going to double down that this has nothing to do with the old lawsuit. The claim made by the OP is that it's a continuation of the old lawsuit. It's literally not - it's a different lawsuit, for different things.
The claims of the original, iff I remember correctly, were that IBM purposefully blew the project in order to boost AIX sales, and that it took project code and released it to the open source community. This has nothing to do with the claim here, which looks to me like "you put our shit into AIX, so you owe us money from the AIX sales." It's quite literally the touchscreen example I gave.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @10:22PM (3 children)
It has to appear to be different from the old lawsuit in order to prevent the judgment against them from being finalized but the motivation is exactly the same. This is just another shell company out to cause as much damage to Linux as possible before the funding runs out.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday April 05 2021, @04:42AM (2 children)
lol this literally has zero do do with linux. if you don't know the difference between aix and linux, please go back to your buildapc subreddit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @04:00PM (1 child)
I know full well what the difference is between AIX and Linux. The original lawsuit claimed that Linux infringed on SYS-V because IBM donated some AIX-specific filesystem code. They also falsely claimed ownership of the Berkeley Packet Filter, which suggests that AT&T violated the terms of the original BSD lawsuit. That was their entire justification for shaking down Linux users for licence fees. This suit looks to be a continuation of the same stupidity only dressed up slightly differently to avoid the original judgment against them.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday April 05 2021, @07:47PM
> This suit looks to be a continuation of the same stupidity
to someone who literally cannot read. to everyone else who can read the suit and the explanations in my post, to which you replied, it has zero to do with Linux. because this lawsuit is for AIX code being used in AIX, not AIX code being used in Linux.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Sunday April 04 2021, @11:29PM
From 2017 article ( https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/appeals-court-keeps-alive-the-never-ending-linux-case-sco-v-ibm/ [arstechnica.com] ) regarding the original lawsuit:
I think that this claim might have been stuff they tried to add to SCO vs. IBM later, which has been part of multiple appeals as to whether they can amend complaint or not - so you may be right in that it may not actually have been in the original version of the original lawsuit. Either way some judge(s) really needs to tell the ghosts of SCO to just go away and die and stay dead, it is long past far too late to be whinging about that shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @09:51PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday April 05 2021, @04:52AM (2 children)
sjeesh, again, for the really really dumb -this lawsuit is not about ibm or anyone stealing code from sco's unix. sco worked on an ibm aix port to x86. in tjis lawsuit, they claim ibm used that co-owned aix code w/o sco's permission. tje copyright on that code is certainly not in any way expired or irrelevant -you are making up laws here to fit your viewpoint, while i'm watching still copyrighted mickey mouse cartoons older than every dev who worked on that code.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @04:18PM (1 child)
That port work you refer to was called Project Monterey, and SCO's claim that AIX is somehow 'co-owned code' was always nonsense. AIX does contain some SYS-V code, for which IBM paid AT&T a hefty sum. This fact has never been in dispute. SCO's original infringement claim (and what is being repeated here) was over IBM donating some of their own AIX code to Linux, under the ridiculous theory that since AIX includes some SYS-V code then that means that all of AIX belongs to SCO. That stupidity is the only possible 'co-ownership' claim, and the only possible infringement of it was the donation of JFS2 to Linux.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday April 05 2021, @07:52PM
SCO's original infringement claim (and what is being repeated here)
SCO's new claim is that their code from Monterey is used in AIX. Not their SystemV code, not code from any UNIX they own, code they wrote for AIX x86, is being used for AIX on RISC. So noting to do with giving code to Linux, and not that AIX belongs to SCO, or any of the original claims. Thank you for proving yourself wrong.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @03:19PM (6 children)
All the fun parts ^___^
Besides, what do you care about Steve's genital preference? I would be suspicious on grounds of sexual exploitation if he's going all the way to Thailand just to find somebody with that body type, but this is coming from somebody who is going all the way to Nevada to find somebody of another body type. For now let us study [theculturetrip.com] the history [medium.com] of third-gender identities [wikipedia.org] in Thailand, and reflect on how karma can be abused in the service of good old social control. Perhaps priests who act as Guardians of the Gender Dichotomy and bathroom/hairstyle/fashion police come back as trans people.... Seems legit to me.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday April 05 2021, @08:03PM (5 children)
Gender is for grammar (words), not people or things. The Thai language, much like the English language, has no gender. Animals have a sex. The word Table, which has a feminine gender in French and a masculine gender in Russian, does not have a sex. Russian has 3 genders - feminine, masculine, and neutral. French and Spanish have two genders. There are also a bunch of languages with more than 3 genders.
A female fox is a vixen, a female dog is a bitch, a female human is a woman. Vixen, bitch, and woman have a sex. Sex is biological, and not something you identify with. It is not possible for a male to be a woman, because a woman is female. Female is not something that can be changed with surgery or clothes or mindset. Gender is something words have in grammar, and have nothing to do with properties of the object being described. There is no 3rd gender in Thailand, nor a first or second gender, because Thai grammar, like English grammar, does not have gender. There is no "gender identity" because gender is a property of words, and words are a concept, not a sentient being, so they cannot "identify" with anything because they aren't a thing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @11:34PM (4 children)
Despite all that, reality disagrees with you.
How is your phlogiston theory of fire coming along? Personally I find the argument that the 4 elements are made from the first 4 regular solids compelling. Perhaps dark matter is made from dodecahedrons.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday April 06 2021, @03:22AM (3 children)
Opinions of hipsters who grew up in a language w/o genders and don't understand gender disagree with me. It's funny you talk to me about reality while defining reality as "I'm a woman because I think I am." What's funny is people, like me, whose first language has genders, aren't confused by genders. For you, well, it's a new word you learned, and you don't know how to use it. Strange that since you're on this site you're probably quite old, yet have the mindset of an edgy teen. Enjoy your dodecahedrons - here in reality, the shape of a triangle doesn't change depending on your opinion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @06:57AM
Maybe I misunderstood you.
Are you taking a nihilist position on human gender because you were traumatized that grammatical gender is more or less arbitrary?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @05:33PM (1 child)
Also was really high with some nice dude weed lmao last night so wasn't sure, but I double-checked, and my dodecahedron theory of dark matter requires triangles with 5 edges, so it seems that triangles do indeed change shape! But I think in the intersectional Euclidean geometry, triangles with 5 edges sexually identify as pentagons. Just beware the line segments if you're in flatland, or if you're a 19th century misogynist (Poe's law applies) who attempts to comprehend polygon gender in terms of gender binary!
Also beware non-Euclidean geometries, where the sum of the angles in equilateral triangles changes based on my opinion of the curvature of the surface! Perhaps that is the real reason why Lovecraft feared spherical and hyperbolic geometries.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday April 06 2021, @05:44PM
pretty sure you're high now, or the more likely scenario that you just have permanent brain damage from being high too many times before. this is what explains you thinking random scientific-Sounding garbage is funny. it is, but in a "have all the normal people laughing at you" kind of way.