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June 19, 2003
SCO Update
My apologies to my non-tech readers for harping on this, but I think it's fascinating....the clash between the legal, business and the technical worlds. I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more of this, especially if SCO's successful.
All the comments on my previous post on SCO v. IBM have been very interesting and informative. I really appreciate everyone's input and opinions. If you want more, just click on the extended entry.
To keep the discussion going, here's something I ran across, an interesting opinion piece on the problems with business use of Linux in general and the SCO lawsuit that y'all might want to look at. And you can find all the filings in the suit here, for example there's a link to Exhibit A which will bring up a copy of the software licensing agreement in question. (Which I should warn you, is annoyingly in .pdf format)
I think the op/ed author brings up an interesting point. The business world depends on contracts being upheld and ownership rights being enforced, which I think will prohibit open source from ever becoming widely used there. From a business standpoint, open source just doesn't make sense.
Let's suppose you have a business that is looking for software to use for some valuable business function like tracking and predicting sales of your product. You know that whatever software you get will have to slightly modified to fit your particular business. But your IT department has developed a particularly effective method of doing that, one that is not widely known in your industry and is in fact a tightly protected business secret....a very valuable resource of your business.
Now, which do you think would make the most business sense? Open source software with the potential for litigation and/or the revelation of your valuable method of predicting sales? Or a software licensing agreement with a non-open source company that says whatever modifications that you make are yours as long as you don't start distributing the modified program to unauthorized third parties? Kinduva no brainer, especially with the potential of a shareholder's derivative suit for not protecting your business's interests hanging over your head....not to mention your own interest in protecting your profit margin.
For isn't that what open source means? That you have access to the modifications made by others, and they have access to any you might make? Now IF that's true, and IF SCO's lawsuit is successful, which I recognize are mighty big IF's, there's going to be all kinds of interesting ramifications for the software development community....and they aren't going to be particularly pleasant.
What do y'all think?
Posted by Rita at June 19, 2003 08:11 AM
Comments
I read a piece on Forbes yesterday about SCO, and its history of lawsuits. In recent years, SCO has gotten some pretty fat settlements from the likes of Microsoft and others.
It's linked on /. today, but I found it somewhere else yesterday.
I'm inclined to think that the motiviation behind the suit is primarily financial, given what the Forbes piece details. However, if they (SCO) do happen to win this thing, I'm not sure what the end result would be. IBM pays them some money, and takes out the offending code? OK, fine, but that code is out there already, so do they try to go after everyone who has the code? Seems like that would be an exercise in futility.
In the end, though, I'll bet that IBM will just end up giving them a lot of money to make the problem disappear.
BTW, I was quite surprised to find myself on your "experts" list on your previous post. :)
Posted by: mtpolitics at June 19, 2003 10:07 AM
Why are you surprised? After all the discussions about esoteric code that no one uses anymore that you & Mike have had, I figured you probably knew more about programming than I did...which granted doesn't take a lot of coding knowledge. : )
You bring up an interesting question that I've been wondering about too. From my understanding of SCO's prayer for relief (what they're asking for), they're also wanting a permanent injunction against selling Linux. (which makes me suspect money isn't the only motive) Plus, their software agreement specifies that any breaching software must be recalled and destroyed. So how would that work with people who'd already bought it? I mean, from a legal standpoint, if the court decides to enforce the entire contract, it's going to enforce the entire contract. But how is that going to work? And will Linux users then have a cause of action against IBM? And you know that'll also lead to a booming black market in Linux, so how would the court even enforce their decision?
See what I mean? All kinds of interesting stuff will come out of a decision in favor of SCO. It's going to be a defining case in the area of software rights I suspect....one of the reasons I'm so interested in it. And why programmers should be also.
Posted by: Rita at June 19, 2003 10:24 AM
I started to post this mondo response but decided it belonged over at The Church...
This whole thing is akin to a religious war, with all the irrationality that entails...
I wonder if, a thousand years in the future, we will have "The Knights of Intel" who protect the faith (and the only true source code)?
Posted by: Mike S at June 19, 2003 07:22 PM
Oh... Craig... when you wonder about how the court can order the recall and destruction of all that code, you're thinking like a geek...
I keep doing the same thing then I remember... these are lawyers, they don't think like us, you know, logical and with an engineers mindset...
To the non-technical, everything we do is BFM anyway...
Posted by: Mike S at June 19, 2003 07:30 PM
The courts might be able to order the removal of the code, and Linus can actually do it in the "official" kernel, but how in the world are they going to track down everyone who has the code?
Are they going to sue me for my little dinky webserver?
I look at it like the DeCSS fiasco. As hard as the RIAA has tried, DeCSS is still out there for anyone who looks hard enough.
Posted by: mtpolitics at June 19, 2003 08:27 PM