SCO Thwarted In Unix Decision

Some final matters of law still need to be hammered out, but it looks like a decision handed down in Utah by federal judge Dale Kimball has finally knocked out SCO’s claims to Unix copyrights.

Their lawsuit against Novell has drawn a 102-page ruling from the bench, and as Pamela Jones at Groklaw noted, it’s all about Novell:

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.

Groklaw also said the trial scheduled for September 17th "appears it will mostly (but not all) be about what SCO owes Novell. Novell’s slander of title counterclaim goes to trial, for example, but SCO’s does not."

SCO responded to the decision with a statement, saying they were "obviously disappointed" in the ruling.

"However, the court clearly determined that SCO owns the copyrights to the technology developed or derived by SCO after Novell transferred the assets to SCO in 1995," said SCO.

Both Microsoft and Sun licensed Unix technology from SCO in 2003.

Neither licensee has released a statement yet regarding the Utah court’s decision. The stock market has weighed in with its opinion, and the verdict from Wall Street has been a bigger bloodbath than the last Harry Potter novel.

Shares of SCO plunged from their 1.56 open to a current price of 44 cents. SCO may present a defiant tone in their post-verdict statement, but investors aren’t listening.

SCO would like to know. Their attorneys have been pursuing her with subpoenas in hand. CEO Darl McBride would love nothing better than to find out if her Groklaw site is actually a front for IBM, according to Forbes. IBM has long denied a connection, as has she.

The last post attributed to her on Groklaw said she is taking a health break:

I can’t predict exact dates, because what I really need is a real vacation and time to just do nothing until I fully am myself again. I’ve done almost 3,000 articles on pretty much a daily basis, with a lot of time stress, since mid-May of 2003, and I think I’m a bit worn out, between SCO and the ODF thing.

The question is, does Pamela Jones really exist? Or is the name simply a pseudonym for one or several people, just like any one of thousands used on the Internet every day.

Back in 2005, journalist Maureen O’Gara tried to locate PJ, tracking her to an apartment building ten miles from IBM’s HQ in Armonk, NY, and then to her mother’s home in Darien, CT.

The subsequent outrage over O’Gara’s investigation by pro-Linux bloggers cost O’Gara her regular gig with technology publisher SYS-CON. Jones remained a mystery then, as she does today.

But if O’Gara’s account is correct, and Jones has a mom in New England, then there is a Pamela Jones at the front of Groklaw, the same Jones who managed to pickup some testimony from the trial a couple of days before it became public.

Maybe Jones is taking a health break somewhere warm, and more importantly out of the reach of SCO’s lawyers. Perhaps once the court puts a merciful end to SCO’s years of delaying tactics and wraps the case up for good, one way or the other, Jones will come back with a tan and a face to put with her Groklaw persona.

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This was at a hotel; apparently formerly a Bass Hotel but now owned by another firm. Their system printer stopped working, they brought someone in to look at it, he worked at it with a printer repair person from IBM, but no luck. They found me on the web and after an hour of getting nowhere (half an hour of which was spent finding someone who knew root’s password), I gave up trying to help by phone and decided it was easier to drive up to where it lived – fortunately only 50 miles away.

When I arrived, I was able to fairly quickly identify the first problem: “lpstat -v” showed me that the printer was using /dev/tty66 on the Digiboard serial multiport, but in fact was plugged into /dev/tty67. The consultant that was still there suggested that the IBM person might have done that, no doubt mistakenly thinking that a multiport box is a bus rather than individual serial devices.

On the other hand, the IBM Laser printer was not able to even print a test page, so it didn’t really matter where it was plugged in. The other consultant had already reached that conclusion without my help, and had scrounged an HP LaserJet with a serial interface. He had set it all up correctly as to baud and flow control, but we couldn’t get it to print. I hooked up my old Radio Shack RS232 tester (when was the last time I used THAT, I wonder) and showed him why: both the cable from the printer and the cable from the Digi were acting as DCE devices (see Serial Printers for more on that. That wasn’t going to work very well, but magically he popped up with a DTE wired RJ45-DB25 adaptor – good thing; I used to carry all that stuff in my car but those days are long gone. We swapped the adaptors and now my tester showed the right lights and indeed I could send print jobs. OK so far, right?

Ummm, not quite. The printer wouldn’t eject a page. We always had to press “Go” twice to get it to feed paper and print. It all looked right in the setup menus, but somehow it was convinced something was confused in the trays. We asked where this printer had come from.. the unsurprising answer was that it had never been used in anyone’s memory – it had just been sitting in a closet for years. Well, maybe its confusion about paper was why.

After a brief discussion with the manager, we decided to go out and buy a new printer. I didn’t think there was much chance of finding a serial port option board at the local Compusa or Staples, and of course that was true. So we brought back a LaserJet 1320 instead and I hooked it up to the parallel port. This would necessitate users traveling a few more feet to pick up their print jobs, but they felt this was fine, especially as the whole system would be replaced within six weeks. They could live with a new location until they got the new system.

So, I issued the lpadmin command to change the device to parallel: “/usr/lib/lpadmin -p lp_printer_1 -v /dev/lp0″. We ran a few test jobs and immediately realized another problem: the default font needed to be 16.7, it needed 8 lines per inch and 66 lines per page. Those had apparently been programmed into the front panel of the IBM, but the 1320 is too consumerish to have a front panel menu. So back to lpadmin: “/usr/lib/lpadmin -p lp_printer_1 -m HPLaserJet”. I then edited the /usr/spool/lp/admins/lp/interfaces/lp_printer_1 file to set the needed defaults.

We had the users print out several different reports and they reported satisfactory results. Total time: 2.5 hours plus travel, which is a ridiculously long time but considering the switched wiring, the wrong adaptor and the final need to buy a new printer, I guess it’s not too outrageous.

So will this be the very last SCO 3.2v4.2 system I see? Who knows..only time will tell.

*Originally published at APLawrence.com

A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com

I say “may see” because I really expect that some marketing person is going to get fired over that one and that it will soon be gone, so enjoy it while you can.

The “Scamp” name was probably inevitable (Sco, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl). SCAMP against LAMP! Those rascals! Don’t you just want to hug ‘em?

Probably not.

I guess we have to give SCO some credit for trying to hang on. The lawsuit isn’t going quite as well as they thought it might (duh!), revenues are slipping rapidly, and previous efforts like their silly mailserver haven’t done jack. What’s hotter than LAMP? Not much, so here they are. But anyone familiar with SCO products has to at least raise an eyebrow over this one. No matter how favorable you are toward the bumbling bunch, you surely have to admit that there is nothing in that acronym that SCO ever excelled at.

I’m not a SCO hater.. I’ve had a lot of SCO customers over the years and still have a few. SCO systems are stable and reliable, but their strong points never extended to the GUI; they never, ever made good web servers. In fact, they made abysmally bad web servers that caused a lot of frustration for the folks that ventured into that territory. They used Netscape, by the way, not Apache, so even if they had done a wonderful job at it, you’d have to wonder if that would translate well to Apache. They never had any SQL at all, and Perl was a late arrival: SCO scripting was always TCL based (horrible, horrible choice in my opinion). So what expertise is being pitched here? I dunno.

But do go take a look at the bulldog. While he lasts, that is.

*Originally published at APLawrence.com

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A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com

IBM subpoenaed a quartet of tech companies to give testimony as it defends against SCO’s claims that source code from SCO made its way into the version of Linux that IBM distributes. Microsoft, Sun, Hewlett-Packard, and BayStar all have March appointments to provide more information about those companies and their dealings with SCO.

The Groklaw website has followed the case closely virtually since it began. The site’s secretive author, Pamela Jones, wrote about the news with the kind of excitement normally associated with small children, puppies, and Christmas morning:

IBM’s defense against SCO could bring some uncomfortable relationships to light. Microsoft and Sun both paid SCO for Unix licenses; H-P’s contracts with SCO are not known. BayStar’s involvement reportedly began with Microsoft referring SCO to them; BayStar later arranged a $50 million investment in SCO, CNet reported.

Suspicions have been voiced in the past about Microsoft and SCO, with Microsoft allegedly supporting SCO’s legal actions from behind the scenes. Those actions would help slow down Linux adoption in the lucrative enterprise market due to legal concerns.

Confirmation of those allegations would be “explosive stuff” indeed.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

MySQL Network is a comprehensive, cost-effective subscription offering that provides modern businesses with everything they need to successfully develop and deploy ANSI-SQL database solutions with MySQL. It includes access to certified MySQL software (certified binaries), updates and upgrades, proactive alerts and advisors, the online MySQL knowledgebase, and full production-level technical support.

“SCO OpenServer 6 and MySQL Network Edition provide a complete, certified and fully tested solution for customers running mission-critical database applications in their business,” said Tim Negris, senior vice president of marketing, The SCO Group, Inc. “SCO OpenServer 6 customers who utilize this new MySQL offering can now develop and deploy enterprise-grade software applications supported by an extremely powerful and scalable database solution.”

“We are seeing tremendous uptake in MySQL adoption across the enterprise, and SCO is very well known and used extensively in the SMB and retail markets,” said Mark Burton, executive vice president of worldwide sales for MySQL AB. “MySQL Network is the perfect database solution for these SCO OpenServer customers looking to build and manage low-cost distributed business systems-without sacrificing reliability or speed.”

MySQL Network for SCO OpenServer 6 includes:

* Premier Enterprise-Class Production Support — high-level, fast responses directly from the developers of MySQL software.

* Certified Software — The certified binaries for SCO OpenServer 6 have been rigorously platform tested and authorized as reliable and ready for business-critical production use.

* MySQL Knowledge Base — a centralized library of hundreds of technical articles written by MySQL’s own developers and support staff. This searchable collection provides quick resolution to many issues, as well as troubleshooting, performance tips and best practices.

* MySQL Update Advisor — an automated message system that will alert customers of new and relevant MySQL certified software for their environment. The Update Advisor can also assist developers and database administrators with the installation and upgrade process. Alerts are available via email, pager, or SMS messages and the complete list of updates and alerts can also be viewed using a standard Web browser.

* Technical Alert Advisor — The Technical Alert system notifies customers about issues related to their specific computing environment — before they may adversely affect their applications. Also completely customizable, these bulletins cover such issues as operating system security vulnerabilities, new features, performance enhancements and important Knowledge Base articles.

MySQL software is currently available from SCO resellers throughout the world, offering SCO OpenServer customers a single point of contact. SCO will include a trial subscription to the MySQL Network enterprise database service with each new copy of SCO OpenServer 6-and offer the fully certified release of MySQL 5.0 Network subscriptions through its reseller channel in mid-to-late February 2006.
SCO offers a number of support levels for MySQL Network, including Basic, Silver, Gold and Platinum. Per-server pricing for a one year subscription to MySQL Network is:

* Basic = $595
* Silver = $1,995
* Gold = $2,995
* Platinum = $4,995

John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

It looks like IBM senses victory in its legal battle with SCO. SCO had claimed that Linux infringed upon patents it held, and sued IBM. IBM countersued with several accusations of patent infringement and other issues.

IBM has dropped the patent claims, but still has eight counterclaims in place against SCO, IDG News reports. The trial still won’t happen anytime soon; it has been scheduled for February 2007.

In its motion to drop the patent infringement claims, IBM noted that it still thinks SCO infringed on its patents, but is dropping these claims to help speed up the case. Each claim of infringement required a certain period of discovery, and that was causing an already slow court case to move even slower.

Groklaw contends that IBM does not need the patent infringement claims in order to beat SCO in court. “Here’s a simple rule of litigation. You never, ever offer to drop anything you think you’ll need for victory or to make yourself whole,” Groklaw’s Pamela Jones posted about the move.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.

The August 13, 2002 email from Michael Davidson to Reg Broughton, later forwarded to new SCO CEO Darl McBride, seems to indicate SCO’s claims of copyright infringement by the Linux community had no foundation in fact.

Further, the email discusses “the idea that (SCO) would sell licenses to corporate customers who were using Linux as a kind of insurance policy’” should the investigation show they were infringing on copyright.

“That e-mail probably creates a lot more questions than it answers,” SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said to CNET News. “We’ll be fully prepared to address that, but we will be doing that in a court setting if it is necessary.”

That evidence to the contrary has not been forthcoming from SCO. Last week, SCO releases a 1999 memo claiming the same 2002 consultant looking for copyright infringement, Bob Swartz, had found some similarities in “fragments of code.”

To date, SCO has gained $30 million due to added investment in the firm since filing its claim, and signed license agreements with Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. The disclosure of the 2002 email doesn’t preclude SCO from pursuing other legal avenues against IBM.

SCO has tried to reposition its action against IBM more as a contract dispute than an infringement case, according to the Register. But the judge in the case has been very critical of SCO’s failure to produce almost no evidence supporting their claims.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.

The SCO Group, announced that on February 16, 2005, the Company received a notice from the staff of The Nasdaq Stock Market indicating that the Company is subject to potential delisting from The Nasdaq SmallCap Market for failure to comply with Nasdaq’s requirements to file its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2004 in a timely fashion, as required under Market Place Rule 4310. Receipt of the notice does not result in immediate delisting of the Company’s Common Stock.

Nasdaq stated that, unless the Company requests a hearing on Nasdaq’s delisting notice, the Company’s securities will be delisted from the Nasdaq SmallCap Market at the opening of business on February 25, 2005. As of the opening of business on February 18, 2005, an “E” will be appended to the end of the Company’s trading symbol for its securities. Therefore, commencing on February 18, 2005, the trading symbol for the Company’s common stock will be changed from “SCOX” to “SCOXE”.

The Company expects to make a request for a hearing with the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel to appeal the Nasdaq staff’s determination. This request will stay the delisting pending the hearing and a determination by the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel. There can be no assurance that the Panel will grant the Company’s request for continued listing.

The Company has been unable to file its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2004 because it continues to examine certain matters related to the issuance of shares of the Company’s common stock pursuant to its equity compensation plans. The Company is working to resolve these matters as soon as possible and expects to file its Form 10-K upon completion of its analysis.

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This was an old DEC MP433 system with half a dozen small SCSI drives, and a 1 GB Tandberg tape drive, which had probably been running for 15 years or more. The root hard drive had apparently died. They had a backup of that, and emergency boot/root floppies, but no backups of the other drives. Fortunately all application data was on the other drives, so we had reasonable hope of recovering the system.

The customer also told me that everything was written in Acucobol, and that he had source code too, and he had already bought Acucobol run-time for Linux but hadn’t been able to get it working. We decided to first get the SCO system back up and then look at the Linux.

A fresh root drive had already been installed, stolen from a DOS box of the same vintage that had been sitting around as a transplant source. They had the SCSI ID set wrong, but I reset it to 0 and booted from the emergency boot floppy. It asked for the root floppy as it should, and dumped me at a prompt. I confirmed that the tape was working with a “cpio -itv < /dev/rStp0 | head" and we were ready to begin.

First step was to run "fdisk -f /dev/hd0root" and create a Unix partition, followed by a "divvy -i /dev/hd0root" to create filesystems. Then, "mount /dev/hd0root /mnt" and we were ready to go. I did

cd /mnt
cpio -ickvABdu < /dev/rStp0

The files began to restore. I’d need to restore boot file before this would be fully ready to run again, but we were on our way.

(Restoring boot files)

dd if=/etc/hdboot0 of=/dev/hd0a
dd if=/etc/hdboot1 of=/dev/hd0a bs=1k seek=1
dparam -w

Unfortunately the happiness was short lived. I started looking at the Acucobol, and actually had it installed and working on the Linux box, when the DEC machine started spewing disk write errors. I had forgotten to run /etc/badtrk, so I started that while continuing to work with Acucobol on Linux.

Acucobol

We had no current backups, but there were some older sets. Although these were SCO cpio tapes, which would normally use the “c” option, that didn’t work. I knew that Linux has a different idea about the c flag, but the only way I could restore was to leave all that out:

cpio -ivdu < /dev/st0

The programs actually ran, with some screen issues - no line draw characters, screen clears inconsistent, some positioning off. Acucobol uses /etc/a_termcap, so the client felt certain he could clean that up with some experimentation.

Unfortunately, the SCO box wasn't doing as well. The badtrk ran with no problems, but another attempt to restore files crashed again at a different point. Trying cpio with leaving off "u" let it go farther, so it seemed plain that this was not a hard drive problem, but it did keep crashing.

As the Linux box obviously was working, and the client wanted to transition to that anyway, we decided to extract tapes from the SCO boxes other drives and restore them to Linux. Enough of the root file system had been restored to make this very easy: I checked /mnt/etc/default/filesys to see what devices had been mounted, and looked in /mnt/dev to get the right major/minor numbers. I then used "mknod" to create entries in /dev on the root floppy. The procedure would then be:

umount /mnt
fsck -y /dev/data1
mount /dev/data1 /mnt
tar cvf /dev/rStp0 /mnt/data1

This would be repeated for each disk, and the tapes then restored to the Linux box.

*Originally published at APLawrence.com

A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com