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Letter of Support to AutoZone
The Linux community, and the wider open-source software movement of which it is a part, learned this morning that SCO is suing AutoZone over alleged IP violations related to its move from SCO Unix to Linux. We regret that you have become the latest victim in the campaign of barratry, fraud, and stock-kiting that SCO has been waging. We want you to know that you are not alone, and that you have in fact just made a great many friends. Our news channels and web forums are already full of people urging everybody to go buy something at AutoZone, even if it's as trivial as an air freshener -- that could be several million new customers for you. You're also in the same corner with corporate powerhouses like IBM and cutting-edge outfits like Red Hat Software. These companies and others have already set up common legal defense funds in anticipation of further SCO attacks SCO has filed a complaint around allegations that were denied in public and on the record two weeks ago by the former AutoZone employee who led your move to Linux. To those of us who have been following SCO's five-billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM for the last year, this is unsurprising; they have yet to produce credible evidence or even settle on a coherent legal theory in that case, either. Accordingly, we urge you to fight this lawsuit with every effort you can muster. It's the right thing to do by AutoZone's shareholders, and more generally as well. Thoughtful people everywhere are seeing in meritless IP lawsuits an increasing drag on innovation and economic health. AutoZone can both serve its own interests and do good by helping make such parasitic tactics generally unprofitable. We'll be with you -- and that "we" includes a lot of expertise on the technical, legal, and historical issues bound up in SCO's lawsuit. If there is any assistance that I personally or the Open Source Initiative can reasonably provide, please do not hesitate to ask. (This letter is on the Web at http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/autozone.html) |
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Comments (3)
If you are an EV1Servers.net customer with a Linux hosted server with root access, you could effectively Catch 22 the company with a GPL Vs SCO licensing paradox.
The terms and conditions of The SCO Group's Intellectual Property Licence conflict with the SCO Group obligations to downstream recipients of works received and distributed under the GPL license.
The terms and conditions of The SCO Group's Intellectual Property Licence also conflict with licensees obligations to downstream recipients of works received and distributed under the GPL license, if that licensees provides customers with read access to the binaries and/or source code.
Both parties are making use of derived works under the terms of the GPL. They are obligated to provide the source code under the terms of the GPL if they make the binaries available to the customers.
EV1 provides hosted web servers with pre-installed Linux (RedHat Enterprise) systems with root access for the customers to allow customization. With root access the customer is free to download the Linux kernel binaries. Therefore if EV1 installs the Linux Kernel and provides root access to customers then EV1 are implicitly allowing distribution of Linux kernel binaries to those customers.
1) Log on to your EV1Servers.net hosted Linux web server. 2) Download a copy of the Linux kernel binary and all the modules. 3) EV1Servers.net are making use of derived works under the terms of the GPL. They are obligated to provide the source code under the terms of the GPL if they make the binaries available to the customers. 4) Either EV1Servers.net must provide a copy of the used source code for the cost of the media plus a small duplication fee ; OR EV1Servers must provide the source code on the same system ; OR provide a link to another site that EV1Servers has made a positive arrangement thus ensure that the source will be available there for as long as you keep the binaries available. http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#SourceAndBinaryOnDi... 5) Any such arrangement in (4) would be a violation of the SCO Group's License with EV1Servers.net - Catch 22.
EV1Servers.net signing SCO IP license have potentially put themselves at greater legal risk.
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Mind you M$ may take this as an opportunity to say “see you would not have this problem with us” and a few weeks later when enough people move to M$ Windooz, Darl moves to Redmond and become VP of propaganda for M$ ...