February 03, 2004
A Free Market in a Proprietary World
Posted by nerdling | February 3, 2004 03:05 PM
Not only can corporations and CEOs be ruthless, they can be childish, too!
During a speech at Harvard, two higher-ups from SCO Group—the company currently suing IBM for supposedly stealing code they added to Linux and the recent target of the MyDoom viruses—managed to sound like petulant children by declaring that they would make their code available as soon as IBM agreed to make their 10,000 patents available to the public. That has the distinct ring of "If you show me yours, I'll show you mine!"
The suit hinges on SCO's claim that IBM copied proprietary code from UnixWare, illegally duplicating a kernel for the version of Linux that IBM released for servers. In order to prove this claim, SCO must make their code public first (by court order) in order to establish exactly what code is in question, and whether or not IBM used it and, if it was used, whether or not that use was legal.
Not that I am a big IBM fan or anything, but it seems to me that SCO has a hard sell here. Not only are they avoiding showing their "proprietary" code, but they contend that they deserve to be compensated for the use of that code, written to improve the original kernel, written by Linus Torvalds. The original code and the addition, it should be noted, were released internationally by SCO under the GPL.
In fairness, they do own the patent for Unix, but Unix has been in free circulation among developers and students since its early stages of development in the '60s. So why, if I may be so bold, do they deserve to get paid licensing fees for Linux if they have already distributed the software as open-source, ceding their rights to compensation in perpetuity? I, much like many people, am baffled by the suit and by the logic behind it.
One student, who said he distributed copies of Linux outside the hall, offered to hand out more after the talks. Another asked why SCO refrained from publicizing the code they claim is infringing, so the Linux community could gut the code from the kernel and move forward without risk of violating copyrights.
McBride said that while Linux is the compilation of thousands of people donating their time and programming skills to improve kernel code created by Linus Torvalds, SCO deserves compensation for the improvements it made to Linux. Without the illegal use of SCO's code, he said, Linux isn't an attractive option anymore for high-end servers.
"We think that if you rip that code out, it's going to make Linux not nearly as attractive," he said. "But, if the common wisdom is to take that out, and to go down that path, assuming we win that court case, then absolutely that's something we'd sign up for."
Basically, they want the money and will only offer users the ability to comply with copyright law if they get what they feel is coming to them. Whatever the answers to my questions, however, SCO is planning to forge ahead in the style of the RIAA, prosecuting users of "their" software—though they "likely" won't go after individual users, such as students, who are not utilizing Linux for commercial purposes.
Their benevolence leaves me speechless.
