[Fsfe-ie] IPRED2 draft 0.4

[Éibhear]

Hi,

teresahackett at eircom.net said:
> Corrections in the News
> This section of our Website is presented as a ready source for media,
> analysts, and others regarding corrections and clarifications to
> recently-published articles about The SCO Group.
> http://www.sco.com/company/presskit/corrections/

I would wholly disagree that this page is anything close to worthy. This
web page is part of a campaign that The SCO Group, formerly Caldera, is
waging to counter the manner in which Groklaw is so effectively debunking
it's efforts to hamper the GNU/Linux market.

Looking at some of those "corrections":

  - SCO's Lawsuits Do Not Involve Patents
    The SCO Group has always wanted to drag patents into the law
    suits. For example, I have shown on a posting on the Groklaw
    web site
(http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040329193519159#c108346)
    that patents were specifically mentioned as being part of the
    complaints twice and another 24 times where patent claims could
    be inferred. These are press quotations from the CEO himself, and
    there is no specific mention of patent infringement in the court
    documents. However, The SCO Group has found that talking to the
    press is very effective, as journalists tend not to read the
    court filings. As a result, for the first two years into these
    cases, very few in the press knew that patents weren't
    specifically involved and some, those who ostentatiously support
    SCO, asserted that they were. Mostly it was assumed that patents
    were part of SCO's problem.
    However, SCO does claim in the courts that "methods and concepts"
    belonging to them have been misappropriated by IBM and others.
    As copyright extends only to the expression of methods and
    concepts, it can be inferred that they want to fight in court
    over something akin to patents as we know how they're used these
    days.
  - SCO's Claims Regarding All Versions of UNIX
    From the page: "SCO has never claimed to own all additions to or
    versions of UNIX that were ever made by companies that licensed
    UNIX source code..." Among the claims against IBM in the initial
    filing was that IBM has violated The SCO Group's copyrights
    by contributing RCU (Read-Copy-Update), NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory
    Access) and JFS to the Linux kernel. These were "derivitive"
    technologies developed by IBM for AIX, and in one case initially
    for OS/2, and are excluded in the standard UNIX contract used by
    AT&T. This exclusion was confirmed by a newsletter issued by AT&T
    in early 1985. See
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040211153230800
    for more information.
  - SCO and DaimlerChrysler
    The SCO Group contends the interpretation of a Slander of Title
    law suit. In order, however, to prove Slander of Title, The SCO
    Group must prove it owns the title. It has yet to do that. In an
    indirect, but most compelling, way, the Daimler Chrysler suit
    "does indeed contest the ownership of Unix copyrights."
  - SCO Has Revealed the Code
    Not really. The non-disclosure agreement that those who were
    shown the "mountains of code" precluded the view from ever,
    in their lives, working on UNIX code again. Therefore, those
    who did get to see it were not expert in the labrynthine
    provenance of all the code in the current UNIX and Linux
    kernel bases. Those who would have the knowledge and experience
    were not going to touch that agreement with a barge pole.
    Part of The SCO Group's claim regarding header files includes
    errno.h. Read http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031222174158852
    for Linus' own discussion of how SCO cannot have a claim to
    Linux' errno.h.
    With respect to ABIs, however, SCO doesn't own the copyright on
    the specifications and developers are free to implement
    these specification as and when they wish.
    Also, look at the discussion on
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040130235310123,
    which also suggests that SCO released it's own versions of the
    header files in question under the GPL anyway.
    Finally, on the one occassion that SCO showed code publically,
    the two fragments code they claimed demonstrated whole-sale
    copying on the part of IBM, were quickly shown to be (i) from
    the public domain (i.e. not copyrighted, available for anyone
    to use), and (ii) incorrectly contributed by SGI. SGI corrected
    that some months before SCO brought it to the attention of
    anyone.
  - SCO is a Products and Services Company
    The SCO Group contends that CNN's statement that "SCO, with its
    lawsuits against IBM (IBM: Research, Estimates), Novell (NOVL:
    Research, Estimates), Red Hat (RHAT: Research, Estimates), and
    others, clearly likes to make a name for itself through its
    legal actions" is wrong and clarifies it only with: "SCO has not
    filed a lawsuit against Red Hat. Red Hat filed a lawsuit against
    SCO in August 2003." Why didn't it explain how it is a products
    and services company?

I refer to Groklaw a lot because I read it every day and have contributed
to it in some small ways. Its primary mission at present is to be an
anti-FUD web site, and it certainly fosters proper thought and
consideration. Groklaw (as yet, some might think) is not a party to any of
the law suits, and accusations of who, other than Pamela Jones (PJ), is
behind it have yet to have a shred of evidence to support them. As a
resource for getting to understand the details and nuances of SCO's
claims, tactics and strategy, it's invaluable.

A web page managed by The SCO Group can not be anything other than a
propaganda site intended to promote its own side of the story.

Look at that page if you must, but bring along a large salt lick.

Éibhear

-- 
Éibhear Ó hAnluain
IFSO
Dublin