Welcome to the Troll Economy

It began, perhaps, with SCO's insane attempt to obtain money from IBM and others for alleged infringements of its code. It proceeded with the music recording industry's increasingly vicious but fruitless threats to ordinary users, expanding more recently into the film business. Now, the Troll Economy has now come to the world of words:

Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission.

Strangely, perhaps, I think this is a great development. As the world of music shows, once rights-holders start making unreasonable demands, the implicit compact with the public is broken, and people no longer respect a copyright system that does not even attempt to treat them fairly.

The Troll Economy will simply lead to more people rejecting intellectual monopolies altogether, sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Troll away, chaps....

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SCO What?

I'm struck by the almost unanimous chorus of indifference that has greeted the news that a court has reversed one part of an ealier ruling regarding who owns the Unix copyright:

For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s judgment with regards to the royalties due Novell under the 2003 Sun-SCO Agreement, but REVERSE the district court’s entry of summary judgment on (1) the ownership of the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights; (2) SCO’s claim seeking specific performance; (3) the scope of Novell’s rights under Section 4.16 of the APA; (4) the application of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing to Novell’s rights under Section 4.16 of the APA. On these issues, we REMAND for trial.

As well as Groklaw, others that are distinctly unimpressed are Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, Roy Schestowitz and Eric Bangemann.

And me to that list: SCO still has everything to prove, and very little money to prove it with. And even if it *did* prove anything, all it would gain would be the right to be ground into very fine particles of dust by IBM's legal department....

Why TomTom is the new SCO (in the nicest possible way)

The 2003 SCO lawsuit, for those of you too young to recall, began as a modest request for $1 billion from IBM for allegedly “misusing and misappropriating SCO’s proprietary software” amongst other things....

On Open Enterprise blog.

SCO What? It's Patently over for Copyright

Remember SCO? It's a once-important company that developed a death-wish by suing IBM in 2003. As Wikipedia explains...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Where Sun Doesn't Shine

Pamela Jones has been digging through SCO stuff again, and doesn't like what she finds:

We learn two primary things from Jones' testimony: first, what a cynical role Sun played in the SCO saga, and second, that all the time SCO was calling on the world, the courts, the Congress -- nay heaven itself, if I may say so -- to sympathize with it over the ruination of its Most Holy Intellectual Property by it being improperly open sourced into Linux, not that it turned out to be true, it had already secretly given Sun the right to open source it in OpenSolaris. Remember all that falderol about SCO being contractually unable to show us the code, much as it so desired to do so, because of being bound to confidentiality requirements? What a farce. SCO had already secretly given Sun the right to open source Solaris, with all the UNIX System V you can eat right in there.

The simple fact is, I gather from Jones' testimony, Sun could have prevented the harm SCO sought to cause by simply telling us what rights it had negotiated and received from SCO prior to SCO launching its assault on Linux. Yet it remained silent. When I consider all folks were put through, all the unnecessary litigation, and all the fear and the threats and the harmful smears, including of me at the hands of SCO and all the dark little helper dwarves in SCO's workshop, I feel an intense indignation like a tsunami toward Sun for remaining silent.

Extraordinary to think that the SCO circus is still running; even more extraordinary if, as PJ suggests, Sun could have stopped all the FUD directed at Linux with a word.

Desperately Seeking Pamela

Groklaw's Pamela Jones is a true eminence grise of the area in the intellectual Venn diagram where computer technology and law intersect. And yet, as befits her eminent greyness, she's a shadowy figure - some have even gone so far as to claim that she does not exist.

Against that background, this interview is all-the-more welcome, not least because it contains insights from PJ such as the following:

What is so unique about IP and FOSS is that computers are a relatively recent thing. So is FOSS. So there are people still alive who remember very well the early days, the beginnings. That has implications for prior art searching, for example. It had implications in the SCO litigation, because when SCO made broad claims in the media, there were people saying, "That's not so. I was there. It was like this..."

Oh yeah: now, why didn't I think of that?

SCO Zombie May Take a Few More Steps

The SCO saga may stagger on awhile:

SCO has gotten a $16 million bid from York Capital for its Unix business. Coupled with the $10 million line of credit York is ready to provide, it's money enough to keep SCO's litigation against Novell and IBM going and to underwrite its budding mobile interests, the company says. SCO's lawyers will be filing papers related to the bid this afternoon with the bankruptcy court in Delaware.

...

The deal SCO has cut with York would reportedly leave SCO with ownership of the litigation and what is being called the "core IP," apparently any IP necessary to the lawsuits. York, a $12 billion Manhattan firm known to buy small software companies with declining revenues and turn them around, would get a 20% interest in any licenses SCO's litigation produces. Say, if circumstances conspired to allow SCO to restart its hated SCOSource Linux licensing scheme. York would also get the right to license SCO's Unix source code and get control of its contracts with licensees. York is expected to invest in the business, which includes a bunch of sterling accounts, and attempt to grow it.

Haven't people got better things to do with their lives?

Behold: Son of SCO

Well, that nice Mr. Ballmer did warn us, and here it is:

Plaintiffs, IP Innovation L.L.C. and Technology Licensing Corporation (collectively “Plaintiffs”) complain of defendants Red Hat Inc. (“Red Hat”) and Novell Inc. (“Novell”) as follows:

1. This is a claim for patent infringement arising under the patent laws of the United States, Title 35 of the United States Code.

Of course, this is replete with ironies.

First, "IP Innovation" - as in, zero innovation. These are patent trolls, and the patent - which looks like basic windowing technology - is both obvious and probably covered by prior art.

Secondly, poor old Novell: they probably thought they were immune to this kind of thing. But their deal with Microsoft says nothing about not getting sued by trolls. Or rather, trolls with interesting connections to Microsoft:

So in July one Microsoft executive arrives [at IP Innovation]; then as of October 1, there is the second, a patent guy. October 9, IP Innovation, a subsidiary, sues Red Hat. And Novell. So much for being Microsoft's little buddy.

The good news is that this is all too late: even in the US, a modicum of sanity is returning to patents as the US Supreme Court begins to rein in some of the excesses that have spawned in the last decade. The other good news is that Microsoft will come out of this looking bad, again. However much they huff and puff, the clear link back to them shows them not only to be underhand, but cowards, too.

SCO Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

One of the many pleasant knock-on effects of SCO's deliquescence has been some long-overdue crow-eating by high-profile critics of the open source position during that saga. Since I have rigorously vegetarian tendencies when it comes to partaking of that particular dish, I have to admire the, er, guts of Daniel Lyons, who has publicly swallowed his pride and admitted his errors (although, sadly, his potshots at "freetards" in his otherwise wonderful Fake Steve Jobs blog now stick in my craw, for some reason....)

Rob Enderle's case here is more complex. He has written a long and fascinating tale of how he came to do and say what he did and said, but ultimately refuses to apologise for either ("Dan Lyons, me and no apology ). For me, the key paragraph is the following:

Unlike Dan Lyons, who has recently said he was tricked by SCO, I was tricked both by SCO and some Linux supporters who, unintentionally through their nasty behavior and threats, made me see them as the criminals. Nothing I had done gave these people the right to attack my livelihood, threaten my life or the lives of my family, and I still view the folks who engaged in such behavior as criminals.

I too thoroughly repudiate those who, while claiming to be part of the open source community, made any such threats, which were unjustified and unforgivable. But I don't think the word "tricked" is appropriate here. These people did not "trick" Enderle into believing them to be sad sacks: they truly were. But that had nothing to do with the merits of SCO's case.

Aside from SCO's trickery, Enderle made an error of judgment in not believing people like Linus when he said there was no infringing code. The point is, if you examine Linus' track-record - to say nothing of his coding - it was simply inconceivable that large chunks of code had been filched. It was (just about) possible that small parts had been sneaked in by some less-than-scrupulous coders, but given the level of scrutiny the code undergoes, even that was highly unlikely.

Ultimately, it comes down to the fundamental difference between free software and black-box code: one is open - and can be examined by anyone, without signing NDAs - the other is not. The presumption should always be, then, that the former, unlike the latter, has nothing to hide, because it has nowhere to hide it.

Update: ESR says much the same, though with rather more force...

First Chapter 11, Then Pamela's Book

Hardly unexpected, but good news, anyway:

"We want to assure our customers and partners that they can continue to rely on SCO products, support and services for their business critical operations," said Darl McBride, President and CEO, The SCO Group. "Chapter 11 reorganization provides the Company with an opportunity to protect its assets during this time while focusing on building our future plans."

Er, what future would that be, Darl?

As ever, the most thorough analysis of all this is at Groklaw. Now that we've reached Chapter 11 for SCO, Pam's book on the subject can't be far behind....

SCO KO'd, Novell Renewed

Well, we all knew it would happen, and, finally, it has:

Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling [PDF] on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here it is as text. Here is what matters most:

[T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights.

That's Aaaaall, Folks! The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". That's the ball game. There are a couple of loose ends, but the big picture is, SCO lost. Oh, and it owes Novell a lot of money from the Microsoft and Sun licenses.

But there's another interesting aspect to this: SCO lost, and Novell won:

But we must say thank you to Novell and especially to its legal team for the incredible work they have done. I know it's not technically over and there will be more to slog through, but they won what matters most, and it's been a plum pleasin' pleasure watching you work. The entire FOSS community thanks you for your skill and all the hard work and thanks go to Novell for being willing to see this through.

As I've written elsewhere, we really can't let Novell fail, whatever silliness it gets up to with Microsoft: it is simply too important for these kinds of historical reasons.

Update: Here's some nice analysis of the implications.

Gagging Linus

I seem to recall that Darl McBride, the man behind SCO's suicidal strategy of suing IBM, once received a box of worms as a token of displeasure from someone. I think he would have got rather more than that had this idea gone ahead:

SCO suggested that all parties involved in the litigation be subject to a stipulated gag order. The company then stretched the definition of "involved parties" to include SCO, Columbia Law professor Eben Moglen, OSS advocate Eric Raymond, and Linus Torvalds. "Because of Mr. Torvalds' position in the technology world, his comments about SCO's evidence in this case are given particular weight in industry and popular press," argues the letter from SCO attorney Kevin P. McBride.

SCO: This Time It's Personal...

...and pathetic.

When a company starts harassing someone in this way, you can tell they've given up hope. On the basis of what's happened so far, I don't expect the management of SCO to be ashamed, but I do wonder what the lawyers involved see when they look in the mirror.

Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything: 326

Forget about 300, this year's hot number is 326:

On this day, we learn from IBM's attorney, David Marriott that the "mountain of code" SCO's CEO Darl McBride told the world about from 2003 onward ends up being a measly 326 lines of noncopyrightable code that IBM didn't put in Linux anyway.

On the other hand, SCO has infringed all 700,000 lines of IBM's GPL'd code in the Linux kernel.

Goodbye, Darl, it was vaguely fun while it lasted - well, not much actually - but now, it's over. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Those who Cannot Remember the Past...

...are condemned to release again it ten years later.

I was interest to read that Sun has launched its Looking Glass interface. Not just because it's yet another 3D-ish approach, with some interesting applications coming through. But also because Sun seems to be blithely unaware of the history of the Looking Glass moniker. As I wrote in Rebel Code:

Caldera was set up in October 1994, and released betas of its first product, the Caldera Network Desktop (CND) in 1995. The final version came out in February 1996, and offered a novel graphical desktop rather like Windows 95. This "Looking Glass" desktop, as it was called, was proprietary, as were several other applications that Caldera bundled with the package."

Caldera, of course, eventually metamorphosed (hello, Kafka) into SCO....

From Ransom Love, With Love

One thing I could never understand about the whole SCO affair is how the people at Caldera, which took over SCO, could be in any way part of the mess. And now comes this from the ever-diligent Groklaw:

Here's Ransom Love's Declaration [PDF] as text, which he has provided to IBM, another of the 597 exhibits IBM has offered in support of its summary judgment motions. I want to thank Laomedon for doing the work.

Love was the CEO of Caldera prior to Darl McBride. And he tells the court about Caldera when it was a Linux company, about the Santa Cruz assets acquisition, a bit about Novell, where he worked before starting Caldera and worked on the Corsair project, and about his view of SCO's claims regarding header files. He didn't have to do this declaration. It's voluntary, unlike a deposition, and that speaks volumes right there.

He thrusts a dagger right into the heart of SCO's claims. I see no way to recover from his declaration, because there is no one who can convincingly contradict. He was the CEO, the co-founder of the company to boot. Who can possibly know more than he does about the history of the company, what it did with Linux, its striving for POSIX compliance, and particularly whether the company knew about the header files being in its own distribution of Linux that SCO claims are infringed? Even if SCO were able to trot out Bryan Sparks, the other co-founder, Sparks was not CEO at the time of the Santa Cruz acquisition. There is no one but Love to testify at this level. Love has done the honorable thing and told the truth. I take my hat off to him.

Me too. When I interviewed him for Rebel Code, he seemed a very decent chap. This latest twist in the sorry SCO saga confirms that view.