Last of original SCO v IBM Linux lawsuit settled
While at the Linux Foundation Members Summit in Napa, California, I was bemused to find that an open-source savvy intellectual property attorney had never heard of SCO vs. IBM. You know, the lawsuit that at one time threatened to end Linux in the cradle? Well, at least some people thought so anyway. More fool they. But now, after SCO went bankrupt; court after court dismissing SCO's crazy copyright claims; and closing in on 20-years into the saga, the U.S. District Court of Utah has finally put a period to the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit.
I learned of this yesterday on a forum I visit every day that still follows this. It only took 18 and 1/2 years for the case, and 14 years of SCO in bankruptcy.
But...
So is this it? Is it finally all over and only people who lived through the battle will remember it? I wish.
Xinuos, which bought SCO's Unix products and intellectual property (IP) in 2011, sued IBM and Red Hat for "illegally Copying Xinuos' software code for its server operating systems" on March 31, 2021.
How? Xinuos bought SCO Unix operating systems in 2011. These operating systems, OpenServer and Unixware, still have a few customers. When Xinuos made the deal, its CEO, Richard A. Bolandz, promised that the company "has no intention to pursue any litigation related to the SCO Group assets acquired by the company. We are all about world leadership in technology, not litigation."
That didn't last.
I will point out a few things from this almost two decade saga:
- Novell owned the copyrights to UNIX.
- SCO sold a Unix product and kept 5% of revenue and sent 95% to Novell.
- Novell, as copyright owner, said SCO has no standing to sue IBM.
- SCO immediately claimed copyright ownership of Unix, and stopped paying Novell all sales royalties.
- SCO began making incredible wild claims. SCO wants their day in court, yet they stalled and stalled at every opportunity. The press believed it. These open source people must have stolen something, SCO is a commercial company.
- SCO claimed that every user of Linux, for any purpose whatsoever, even home user who compile from source, owe SCO $1399 per CPU, but because SCO are such nice guys, the introductory price is $699 per CPU. Remember this is in 2003 and created huge fear and doubt about any future commercial viability of Linux.
- SCO's claim to own Unix copyrights eventually spun out a separate lawsuit over ownership of Unix copyrights which was found in Novell's favor. This alone, removes SCO's standing to sue IBM over copyright infringement, so SCO morphed its case into a contract dispute over a joint project Monterey with IBM that wasn't as successful as Linux.
- The fact that IBM had also invested in Linux must mean that IBM had some nefarious intent not to fulfill its contractual obligations to SCO on this project.
- On the SCO vs IBM lawsuit, due to SCO's stalling, despite that they are anxious to get their day in court, the court had to order SCO three times to produce some actual evidence, any evidence of their allegations. Finally on the third court order, the court set a deadline of Dec 22, 2005 for SCO to produce some evidence.
- SCO produced a stack of handwaving. The magistrate judge threw out 2/3 of that on its face. The remaining 1/3 was technically plausible enough to actually be somewhat questionable, an therefore couldn't be thrown out. The judge's comments were telling.
- The court started making rulings unfavorable to SCO based on the "evidence", and set a trial date.
- On Friday afternoon before the Sept 17, 2007 trial, SCO declared bankruptcy. The evening before this, while planning this, they ate pizza, and charged it on a credit card, knowing that the pizza shop would never be able to collect the debt.
- Normally a company does not stay in bankruptcy for long. It either reorganizes or gets liquidated. SCO managed to convince people that it had some kind of legitimate claim.
That summary is the tip of the iceberg. Many here are probably too young to remember all this.
The whole nonsense is documented at Groklaw, until mid 2013 when PJ stopped blogging about this after more than a decade. This blog was so good and valuable that the Library of Congress added to its permanent archives for posterity.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Opportunist on Thursday November 11 2021, @02:18PM (9 children)
Because the last person who gave a fuck about it died last year.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday November 11 2021, @03:11PM (5 children)
SCO vs IBM was the thing that GALVANIZED the entire open source community almost overnight to take copyright, and soon patent threats seriously.
Immediately every open source project under the sun began making sure it had documentation of all contributions and by who. To the extent this was possible. Some projects would require a copyright assignment of contributions to someone while keeping it under an open source license.
The idea that some bad actor could come along and make claims against an open source project was now a real actual thing. They could tie it up in litigation for years. Now as we see, almost two decades.
At the beginning, many people and businesses did not take open source seriously. Didn't quite understand it. Some were afraid of it. Considered it risky. The idea that you could incur some liability and owe SCO a lot of money merely for using Linux was enough to scare plenty of people away. And some of the press helped give SCO's FUD a loud voice. And boy did SCO make lots of headlines about this, for a long time. They had time to do this because litigation is slow. Especially if you stall.
Do not make this mistake of not learning from this.
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11 2021, @03:35PM (2 children)
Which was a bit hypocritical of Linux users when they were more than happy to use that BSD lawsuit to convince people not to use BSD just a few years earlier.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday November 11 2021, @03:42PM
That predates my interest in both open source and Linux. Assuming your facts are correct, I would have to agree with you.
Reading Groklaw daily for years, I remember that the entire history of the BSD lawsuits (mostly related to AT&T) were discussed. I seem to recall that the copyright situation with regard to who owned what became extremely muddy. So in the settlement, they all agreed that there were no more claims to be made against one another.
Certainly once the settlement was reached, Linux users should not be spreading FUD against BSD. There was no longer anything to fear. Even if the concern prior to settlement was more hypothetical than it was real or likely.
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Thursday November 11 2021, @05:39PM
Perhaps a few. Most who chose Linux were just fine with other people choosing some flavor of BSD.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday November 11 2021, @08:00PM (1 child)
The press, including those who should have known better. Forbes broke a record of decades of investigative reporting to parrot the bullshit.I lost all respect for them.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday November 11 2021, @08:32PM
Yes. Forbes. Article "What SCO Wants, SCO Gets" by Dan Lyons.
I never forgot that piece of trash article. Filled with SCO's wild unsubstantiated claims. Uncritically accepted by Dan Lyons.
I'm sure it had weight with a lot of business people.
Dan wrote several articles about SCO and doubled down. There were several people like that.
Years later, after it was no longer even credible to believe this nonsense, Dan published a mea culpa, of sorts. "Snowed by SCO." It didn't really apologize. Just claimed that SCO had conned him with things that turned out to be untrue. But he sure seemed to have been willing to swallow it all hook line and boat anchor. Very soon after that, Dan moved on to some other publication. I don't remember exactly, but I seem to recall it had "New York" in the publication title. I know that's not very specific.
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday November 11 2021, @03:16PM (2 children)
I don't think I am a zombie. At least as far as I can tell.
And despite programming in Java, I don't think I've been committed to a mental institution (yet), at least, as far as I am able to determine.
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.
(Score: 5, Touché) by sjames on Thursday November 11 2021, @05:41PM (1 child)
This *IS* the mental institution. Only Wonko the Sane is not in the asylum.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday November 13 2021, @12:25AM
Isn't he in a chocolate factory, playing with little orange men? :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Thursday November 11 2021, @02:25PM (12 children)
Back in the 80s, Microsoft was a huge Xenix licensee. They often promoted Xenix as the "future" back before Bill declared OS/2 as the "Operating system of the 90s" and then promptly jettisoning OS/2 for Windows NT.
It often felt like Bill Gates and Microsoft were using SCO as sock puppets to eliminate competition. If not, it was at least fueled by Microsoft's own anti-competitive behavior.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday November 11 2021, @03:03PM (2 children)
Very soon after SCO vs IBM started, Steve Ballmer and Darl McBride played golf. Then suddenly, and purely by coincidence, Microsoft suddenly discovered that they needed to obtain some licenses from SCO for about $15 million. Chump change to Microsoft. A veritable fortune for SCO to continue their FUD campaign against Linux.
I don't think it ever was about IBM. Other than the fact that IBM had lots of money. And SCO was stupid enough to pick IBM for it's first shakedown. Dumb move. Dumb.
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11 2021, @06:16PM (1 child)
Not some experienced fighter who has been going around shaking down other people for money from way before you even started.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 12 2021, @04:44PM
A standard practice for IBM, which they did in SCO vs IBM was to countersue SCO for infringement of 4 IBM patents. The 4 patents (out of gobs of patents IBM owns) just happened to cover every single product SCO sold. Thus IBM could end every one of SCO's products.
Patent infringement defense is very complex and expensive. So that would also bleed SCO dry. But later in the case, because SCO was dragging thing out and would never present any actual evidence of copyright infringement (or ownership of Unix for that matter), IBM eventually voluntarily dropped its patent infringement claims with prejudice. This signals to the judge that it is not IBM trying to drag this out for many years. Unburdened from the complex and expensive patent infringement defense, SCO still continued to stall, stall, stall. All the while making loud boisterous Trump style ranting and raving in the industry trade press. How strong their case against IBM was. How much evidence they had. (then why won't they produce it?)
Darl McBride said loudly and multiple times that SCO would present "its evidence in a courtroom setting". (his words; I don't remember if he said present or produce)
What poor Darl didn't seem to get was that real court doesn't work like Perry Mason. There are no surprise gotchas. If SCO suddenly produced some new evidence of copyright infringement, IBM's lawyer would object and say "your honor, this is the first time we've seen or hear of this new evidence. It was never produced in discovery."
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jelizondo on Thursday November 11 2021, @03:37PM (8 children)
Back in the day I was in charge of IT in a company and we used Netware in the servers and DR DOS in the PCs. I played with OS/2 for a while and was convinced that it would take over the world so I started a plan to rewrite our software alas, IBM dropped the ball.
Then Novell started selling Unixware and I wasn’t too sure the change would be good but I was willing to try.
Funny thing, I started getting heated opinions from the CEO, CFO and others who had no clue about operating systems to move to Windows. The reason? A barrage of articles in magazines like Forbes and Fortune designed to “inform” non-technical users about the greatness of Windows.
MS won this one on pure marketing. A while after I left the entire company had moved to Windows and Office.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday November 11 2021, @03:46PM
FUD is a powerful thing to influence the non-technical.
If you don't understand how things really work, it all seems mysterious. Black magic. Don't want to make the wrong decision.
Early 1980's I heard the phrase: Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. I was young, it was explained to me. Even if you buy IBM and it fails, your excuse is: well, I bought the best. And paid the highest price. What more could I have done.
In the 1990's it was: Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11 2021, @06:25PM (4 children)
Guess you missed out on one of the important greatness of Windows. In most cases you didn't need to rewrite the software. The MS DOS stuff would still work on Windows.
In 2021 Microsoft no longer seems as committed to backward compatibility. But few else are - the Desktop Linux team may break compatibility more often than they change their underwear.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday November 11 2021, @10:10PM (2 children)
There is no "THE" Linux desktop team.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 12 2021, @04:14AM
Well it doesn't reimagine itself every 5 minutes?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 12 2021, @08:22AM
That's good news, isn't it?
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday November 12 2021, @10:08AM
They change their underwear? Is that more or less often than they come out of their Mom's basement?*
*This posting is a meta-Poe
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday November 13 2021, @12:33AM (1 child)
IBM promoted OS/2 and Warp very little: they knew they had a superior product and so relaxed.
Microsoft knew they had an inferior product, so promoted THE FECK out of it: buying the use of the Stones song "Start me up", doing the "Line up at 3am at the store to get your copy(copies!) first!!" thing... advertising like feck. As Ballmer once said, "Advertisers, advertisers, advertisers" while jumping up and down like a monkey......or something like that anyways, lol.
MS out promoted IBM, convincing programmers to write for their product instead of the superior product. Just like that, IBM lost.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Saturday November 13 2021, @12:12PM
There was that. True. There were also two other problems.
The first problem was that M$ and IBM worked jointly on OS/2 in such a way that M$ owned the copyright to much of the system. That prevented IBM from doing much of anything with OS/2 once M$ bailed.
The second problem, and the reason M$ bailed, was that while there was an agreement for M$ to develop key desktop applications for OS/2, they covertly used the time to create those applications for Windows NT instead. By they told IBM about the double-cross, it was far too late for anyone anywhere to get anything ready for OS/2 by the planned release date. So as far as NT versus OS/2 went, the market was presented with the choice of either familiar programs on the steaming pile of crap NT which was "ready" right then, or else an excellent operating system which was advanced for its time but which had no desktop applications to speak of.
The third party applications, especially games, were ready for NT out of the gate, too. The way that was managed was through those little Windows-compatible logos on the packaged software. You know, the one there on the corner of the box, usually on the side or the back. In order to get that logo for the old, MS-DOS versions of Windows, software houses were required to simultaneously release an NT version using the official NT software development kit. However, to get access to that NT software development kit, the software house was required to follow licensing which absolutely prohibited the same team from working on software development for both NT and non-Windows systems. Yes, it was too many levels of indirection for either the public or the court. So it worked quite well to remove MacOS from the games market, prevented Amiga from moving forward with games (or other software) at the height of it popularity, and most of all prevented OS/2 from gaining any traction. And, again for emphasis, M$ owned copyright on much of OS/2, thus ensuring paralysis regarding the operating system itself while the legal battles were worked out.
I hadn't noticed before but that was also about the same time period that the false copyright lawsuits were brought against BSD [softpanorama.org]. Without the false claims of copyright against BSD, it would have never happened that Linus Torvalds would have written his own kernel. He has said as much. Who knows, maybe we would have seen the WWW grow on BSD instead, leading to a proliferation of BSD distros.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11 2021, @03:07PM (2 children)
i think we all know why linux is called linux(tm).
we all owe a great debt to ibm for championing the cause.
without BIG blue, linux would have gone the way of the dodo, squashed under boots carrying the weight of heavy and deep pockets.
well, maybe not "squashed" but traded and downloaded on the "dark" net providing news headlines of the sort "illegal linux distribution server ring busted!"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 11 2021, @03:22PM
I am sure that IBM was a big supporter of Liinux, and invested in its development, purely for commercial benefit.
It is nice that it happened to align with the interest of everyone else using Linux also for commercial benefit.
Prior to SCO vs IBM, back in about the year 2000, I remember some big headline where IBM had announced that it was investing $1 Billion in Linux over the next some odd years. That got a lot of people's attention. And then Mar 6, 2003, came SCO vs IBM.
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by sjames on Thursday November 11 2021, @05:45PM
The 'funny' part is that SCO and their products were bottom of the barrel compared to anything other than DOS.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday November 11 2021, @08:03PM (2 children)
This has "ended" more times than I can count.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 11 2021, @08:36PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Friday November 12 2021, @02:23AM
"Nuke the site from orbit".
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday November 12 2021, @10:13AM (6 children)
SCO* and IBM have settled, which means there are some arguments that have not been judged. This leaves the door open for SCO* to go after someone else. IBM paid someone 14 million dollars to go away and not bother them any more, but that means the issues have still not been fully litigated, and someone else can now become a victim. The SCO Zombie can continue to cast its baleful influence. Which is not good.
*Shorthand for whoever owns SCOs rights in litigation
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 12 2021, @04:51PM (2 children)
I think there will be no more SCO. It is still in bankruptcy. The CEO position was eliminated long ago as being unnecessary, once SCO was placed under the "protection" of a Trustee. (That is a whole other scam of bankruptcy cases that we learned about) The Trustee gets to bill for time. So gradually, over time, they can bleed the company dry of assets. Naturally, they don't want the company to be paying other people, such as the former CEO and employees, who would also siphon off those assets that are under the "protection" of the Trustee.
I suspect SCO will get billed for various services and things, as part of closing this all up. There will be nothing of material value left. There is no actual reorganization plan for SCO to emerge as an ongoing concern. I suspect it will be liquidated. There will be some small pittance of assets left to pay all of the outstanding creditors who will get basically nothing.
Just IMO. But I've been watching and learning for a long time now.
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday November 12 2021, @09:40PM (1 child)
As the Original Article says, Xinuos are patching up the zombie and so continuing the fight. I'm not convinced Pamela Jones gets to wear her red dress just yet. Which is a crying shame.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 12 2021, @10:15PM
Who knows at this point whether we will hear any more from PJ.
She sure did more to cover this and educate the open source community that anything or anyone else that I know of. The ongoing blog was also informative about how a lot of court procedure and lawyering actually works, vs what you see on TV.
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 12 2021, @10:33PM (2 children)
1. In another forum, which I visit daily, which has continued to follow this for all these years, thee is now a post that the judge has taken SCO off bankruptcy life support. It is short on details. No links to court papers, etc. But, if I am reading it right: It's dead Jim.
2. Xinuos may still be alive and suing IBM, but all of the original issues of SCO vs IBM are resolved. Novell owns Unix -- thus SCO nor anyone else can sue over copyright infringement (if there were any, and there is not) of Unix code in Linux. The contract dispute about Project Monterey was between SCO and IBM. I'm sure IBM's lawyers will make short work of this. They've got the entire seven hundred boxes of paper docket from the court case of SCO vs IBM. All the arguments and answers that other lawyers researched long ago. Just because Linux was successful for IBM, and Monterey was unsuccessful for both IBM and SCO, doesn't mean IBM did anything wrong. Maybe SCO should have also had the foresight to invest in Linux and convert their product offerings to Linux. After all, by this time Red Hat was already publicly traded.
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.
(Score: 4, Informative) by r_a_trip on Saturday November 13 2021, @01:42AM (1 child)
It seems we have forgotten who The SCO Group really were. They were not the Santa Cruz Operation. The Santa Cruz Operation sold their Unix business and became Tarantella. The SCO Group was formerly known as Caldera. A reasonably unsuccessful Linux company, who bought the Unix business from SCO and cleverly renamed itself to resemble the original outfit so it could give itself a sheen of standing with IBM.
So SCO (as in the Santa Cruz Operation) had the foresight to jettison their ailing Unix business and focus on middleware. Caldera (what's in a name) ditched their Linux business and bet the farm on a dying, mediocre Unix business and found out you don't sue IBM unless you have a bomb proof and iron clad case against them.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 15 2021, @06:57PM
Thanks for the reminder.
There was another shenanigan they tried to pull a few years in to this lawsuit.
Nobody was trading under the USL trademark. I think that was Unix System Laboratories, or something like that.
SCO (TSG) tried to get a trademark on USL and also go by Unix System Laboratories to make their copyright claim appear more legitimate.
Of course, the community, who was galvanized at this point, all called them on it. That even got in to the press, which was starting to wake up to how fake these claims were after enough time had passed.
And it's all on Groklaw.
Pigs not displaying registered tail numbers can qualify as unidentified flying objects and violate FAA regulations.