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

[Luke Dudney]

Australian Firm Asks SCO To Detail Evidence
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/01/21/0220251.shtml?tid=123&tid=130&tid=185&tid=187&tid=190&tid=88&tid=99

On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 16:36, Leon Brooks wrote:
> 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
> 
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