SCO steps up licensing battle, reports loss

[Renew Deal]

Unix developer sends letters to large Linux users charging them with violations of DMCA

By Joris Evers, IDG News Service December 22, 2003

SCO sent out letters to selected large Linux users charging them with violations of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The letter outlines what SCO claims are copyright violations related to Linux. Certain application binary interfaces have been copied from SCO's Unix System V code into Linux without proper authorization or copyright attribution, the Lindon, Utah-based company said in a statement.

The letter, dated Dec. 19 and posted to the www.sco.com Web site on Monday, includes the largest listing of alleged copyright violations provided by SCO to date. It lists 71 files from the Linux 2.4.21 kernel that, it claims, are identical to SCO's Unix System V code. These files were allowed to be re-distributed as part of a 1992 settlement agreement between AT&T Corp. and the developers of the Berkeley Software Distribution operating system, but they may not be used in Linux, SCO said.

"We have a clear-cut set of violations here," said Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive officer.

Removing the code in question would make it impossible to run current applications on Linux, he added. "This is very substantial in reach in that every application that's been written, you're going to have to rewrite," he said.

Linux advocates disputed McBride's interpretation, saying that the issues SCO brings up have already been addressed in the 1992 AT&T settlement. "This issue has actually been resolved in court quite a long time ago in that APIs (application program interfaces) are not copyrightable," said Bruce Perens, a founder of the Open Source Initiative.
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http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/12/22/HNscobattle_1.html

[uberotto]

1. Letter sent out Friday...

Proven to be based on faulty information by Monday
(http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031222174158852)

For any who might be interested in what is going on with the SCO vs. IBM case, there is a site http://www.groklaw.net which has been doing an excellent job covering it.

For those who might not be interested in either SCO, IBM or Linux, this case also gives a good insight to the changing face of American Capitalism (it's not what you make, it's who you can sue). SCO has joined the ranks of such noble companies as Enron and WorldCom by abandoning productivity and hard work as a business model and replacing it with deception and lies used to drive up the stock price. However, they've added a new twist, they've given the law firm which is representing them a 40% stake in the companies future.