Yep, the 'Who owns Linux?' case is back from the dead
- Reference: 1617698712
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/04/06/xinuous/
- Source link:
The details need not worry us: they were bad enough at the time. Have a look at this [2]timeline if you want to follow the trail of dead.
[3]
At its most basic, the whole saga started with the reanimated Unix dev corpse SCO Group claiming it owned the rights to core technology in Unix and Linux, and that everyone else was using them illegally. An opening court case against IBM was followed by a salvo of letters demanding money from 1,500 companies, then the pre-IBM Red Hat countersued to stop the nonsense.
This sort of thing went on for decades in various forms, with other bit players circulating in and out.
[4]
Did SCO Group even own the rights to Unix it claimed it had got from Netware? Did those rights extend to code that everyone else was using? SCO Group presented this as a solid piece of litigation seeking to protect the rights of the innovator to profit from their work: a more correct image would be a skeletal hand stuffing a slot machine with coins. Lots and lots of coins.
The odds were slim, but as with so many gambles the gambler is blinded by the size of the pot. Take the copyright claim – sure, every major company had that code running somewhere.
But as copyright only covers [5]what a thing is rather than what it does , any offending code could easily be removed and new, non-infringing code written instead. There may be damages from the infringement, but there's no question of needing a licence thereafter. Here, the gamble was that enough companies wouldn't want to take the risk and would pay up rather than risk the costs of a court case they'd probably win.
Over a decade on, and millions in legal fees, Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle in Java API legal war [6]DON'T MISS
Nobody bit – but as SCO Group had extracted a $50m war chest from investors, there was everything to be gained by carrying on anyway. The court case against IBM – well, in most cases back then where people claimed infringement by IBM, IBM gave them some money in exchange for signing a legal promise never to go near Big Blue again. But every so often, it decides to fight – as it did this time.
SCO Group mostly lost, but the odd appeal let it carry on until it had spent every cent of its investors' money and it shut up shop in 2008, having had a fine five years on someone else's dime.
And thanks to the wonder of bankruptcy laws, the rights that SCO Group claimed would make it rich still had some residual value and could be bought out of bankruptcy by someone else with a fondness for the fruit machines.
This new zombie should not scare anyone building their enterprise stack out of IBM, Red Hat or Linux
That someone was Xinuos (try spelling it backwards). And they've found some more coins down the back of their – or someone else's – sofa. IBM and Red Hat are once again in the firing line for a rehash of the copyright claims with a little extra antitrust thrown in, because why not. Once again, the details don't really matter, it's just that someone's put some more money in the slot machine and is having another tug at the handle.
This new zombie should not scare anyone building their enterprise stack out of IBM, Red Hat or Linux. The idea that people will pay for them to go away didn't work then, and it certainly won't work now. The market for open-source stacks may have grown enough in the past 10 or so years and the potential winnings may look even better than before – on paper. Nothing has happened to shorten the odds.
In fact, the opposite is true. When the first case was filed, corporate unease at open source was far higher than it is now. Open source has won the argument, it has won its court cases, and it has won its place as the primary model for computing innovation. When the first SCO Group lawsuit was filed, Steve Ballmer had just called Linux " [7]a cancer ." Today, [8]Ubuntu for Windows is a thing. The revolution is over, the palace has been stormed, and the penguin flag flies high.
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Last time, the fear wasn't that SCO Group had a strong case, it was that with something so odd and messy in court, anything could happen. This time, the only question is who on Earth is pumping their money into such an uninviting machine? As scary zombie movies go, it's even funnier than an April Fool. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/31/ibm_redhat_xinuos/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YGwxSZVds77@qypfoBZcFwAAAEQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YGwxSZVds77@qypfoBZcFwAAAEQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/07/google_vs_oracle_6_jan_supreme_court_brief/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/05/google_prevails_over_oracle_in/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/01/canonical_ubuntu_on_windows_preview/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YGwxSZVds77@qypfoBZcFwAAAEQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
What?
Ah, I wonder if PJ will get her Red Dress out again.
This is getting ridiclous.
More FUD, more money wasted and the only people getting anything out of this are the lawyers.
Groklaw, we need you now!
Re: What?
I doubt it. Just load up the old site in the Wayback machine and sync it to the start of the case. As idiocy is defined as trying to do the same thing the same way and expecting a different outcome, I fully expect the transcripts to be very, very close.
Yet it could provide some entertainment for those who missed the last round of fuckwittery. errno.h, anyone? Because of course you'd reinvent the wheel and completely fsck up error parsing on a POSIX-compliant operating system running cross-platform code, wouldn't you?
My favorite screw-up
The kernel memory allocator - kmalloc(). SCO presented it as the grand example of copying from Unix; they did not realise that (a) the code they were presenting came from BSD Unix, and hence could be freely used in Linux if they wanted, and (b) it had been replaced in by a more efficient implementation some time before.
Re: My favorite screw-up
The best entertainment someone else's money could buy at the time. That was a howler, especially given that 4.4BSD-Lite had already been through its own SCO moment, albeit rather more seriously given the Deathstar's power, and was specifically tailored to nullify this sort of challenge. Thanks for reminding me. I needed a chuckle today.
Re: What?
Is quantum mechanics idiocy? I always thought its defining property was doing the same thing the same way and getting a different outcomes.
Re: What?
Context, sir. Quantum mechanics, by its very nature or lack thereof, suspends the usual norms including those of when to apply the clue-bat.
Follow the money
Last time round Microsoft was caught red-handed pass wodges of used fivers to SCO via intermediate cut-out organisations who turned out not to be so cut-out as Balmer thought. I cannot see the Microsoft of now repeating that mistake** given that they have adopted Linux with open claws (and been accepted by the Linux community, albeit with the odd hesitation), so the real question is - who is funding this trip into a legal Wonderland? If we can answer that we might get a clue what this is really about.
** Did I really say that?
Re: Follow the money
My guess is it will be a nation-state. There are plenty of nations that would benefit from throwing a spanner in the works of western IT companies (and to be fair, the western governments are doing what they can to keep IT innovation from challenger states limited). This is easier than finding 0-day vulnerabilities and infiltrating companies' networks to slow their innovation - just make them spend their budget on lawyers - and it's all defensible in the UN if it comes down to that. ("We bought a stake in a patent-holding company and are defending our interests, just as many western investors do").
The question of who?
Any one of the billionaires who have a few million spare for a long shot as a bit of entertainment?
If it paid off they could afford another Olympic sized pool to fill with filthy lucre to bathe in.