[plug] Copy of my response to SCO ANZ, FYI

[Kai Jones]

I'm prolly slow and you guys have prolly seen this but Leon's in the news...

Aust firm tells SCO to detail evidence
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/21/1074360802009.html

> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-admin at plug.linux.org.au
> [mailto:plug-admin at plug.linux.org.au]On Behalf Of Leon Brooks
> Sent: Tuesday, 20 January 2004 4:37 PM
> To: Perth Linux User Group
> Subject: [plug] Copy of my response to SCO ANZ, FYI
>
>
> Subject: I want to know what's for sale
>
> The SCO Group in the person of Kieran O'Shaughnessy announced on 19
> January 2004 that:
> > The SCO Intellectual Property (IP) License permits the use of
> > SCO's intellectual property, in binary form only, as contained
> > in Linux distributions.
>
> What intellectual property?
>
> If SCO ANZ can't _specifically_ identify any significant
> portions of The
> SCO Group's intellectual property in a timely manner in any of the
> Linux distributions which CyberKnights deploy, we must assume
> that SCO
> ANZ is making fraudulent claims and must in defense of CyberKnights'
> good name vigorously pursue public acknowledgement of fault and
> material redress from SCO ANZ.
>
> Linux distributions which CyberKnights currently have
> deployed include,
> so far, Mandrake (up to 9.2), Debian (stable and testing), Red Hat
> (7.3, 8.0, 9.0 and Enterprise), Fedora (1.0), SuSE (9), Gentoo and
> Knoppix (3.2, 3.3).
>
> Take notice that even if SCO ANZ substantiates this somewhat nebulous
> claim to ownership-through-contamination of software not designed or
> written by them, a binary-only licence would be of limited use to me
> since some deployments require the use of source code in rebuilding a
> kernel, specifically for drivers whose intellectual property claims
> appear to conflict with SCO ANZ's and whose evidence of ownership is
> somewhat more substantial.
>
> As a Director of CyberKnights Pty Ltd, I personally know and trust
> several contributors to the Linux kernel, including the original
> author, Mr Linus Torvalds. As of three days ago, Linus told
> me that he
> knows of no substantial code in his Linux kernel source code
> tree which
> could possibly be subject to ownership claims by The SCO Group.
>
> Linus has been consistently truthful and unambiguous in all of the
> accessible public and personal statements which I have been able to
> locate. The SCO Group has a well-documented history of ambiguous and
> often surprising claims, contradictions and retractions. On
> this basis,
> I find it unreasonable to do other than prefer to trust statements by
> Linus in favour of statements by The SCO Group or any of its
> branches,
> agents or other minions.
>
> In short, the burden of proof lies with The SCO Group. Unless
> and until
> SCO ANZ demonstrates serious and specific substantiation of
> the claims
> it makes in this announcement, CyberKnights Pty Ltd does not believe
> that it is using The SCO Group's property at all, and
> therefore refuses
> to even consider paying any licence fees.
>
> > The SCO IP License is currently available at introductory pricing
> > of AUD$999.00 per server processor and AUD$285.00 per desktop
> > processor.
>
> This would more than double the customer's cost per server, including
> the hardware, for most of the servers which CyberKnights
> installs, and
> for no material advantage. In our eyes these properties make it an
> unreasonable demand.
>
> If SCO ANZ were to demonstrate ownership of substantial Linux
> code, the
> only viable alternative such pricing would leave CyberKnights is to
> reinstall a system other than Linux on customers' machines - such as
> FreeBSD - involving considerable disruption to customer services.
>
> MS-Windows is too unstable, insecure and expensive, and opens privacy
> and control concerns which are unacceptable to several of my
> customers;
> SCO's own Unix offerings are pitifully feature-starved, too
> expensive,
> and recent versions appear to include driver code stolen
> wholesale from
> other authors without acknowledgement; Sun are a licencee of The SCO
> Group and CyberKnights could not in good conscience use software
> licenced from a company which appears to be unreasonably greedy,
> unpredictable and apparently disrespectful of the
> intellectual property
> of others.
>
> > Forward looking statement safe harbor:
>
> The weaselly disclaimer which followed does not provide SCO
> ANZ with a
> safe harbour. Threatening letters demanding monies with menaces can
> hardly be thought to be defused by statement to the effect that
> enforcement of the unambiguous claim to fees is yet future and might
> possibly not be followed through.
>
> That this disclaimer is placed among the notes for editors well after
> the content of the announcment is delineated with the line
> "ends" is a
> fairly clear indication that it is not a part of the announcement
> proper.
>
> If CyberKnights has not recieved clear, precise and substantial
> identification of the specific code which SCO ANZ claims fees from us
> for by 01 February 2004, we will begin our defense by referring the
> matter to the appropriate legal authorities, and vigorously pursue a
> positive resolution from there.
>
> Cheers; Leon