CACTUS

Back before SCO began its lawsuit against IBM, their stock was trading in the $2 to $3 range... Now that it's almost a year later, it really looks like SCO's stock is on the downward side of a parabolic trajectory... just like you would see with a falling object in gravitational free-fall.

Their flurry of press-releases and their "innovative" theories on intellectual property and derivative works gave them enough of a kick to send their stock to $20 for a short time... But without significant victories for SCO in the near future it looks like they'll be back down to the $4 level (or lower) in just a couple months.

After the first anniversary has passed, all I'm expecting to hear out of Lindon, Utah is a giant "SPLAT" sound...

This week, Novell made life much more interesting for SCO by exercising one of the clauses in the contract . Basically, according to the contract (links provided later), Novell has the contractual right to waive any claims SCO might have against a Unix licensee. Novell has ordered SCO to waive any purported claims they have against Sequent (IBM).

SCO, of course, doesn't agree with Novells' actions and still claims that they have the right to control what IBM (Sequent) does with it's contributions to System V Unix.

While trying to wrap my head around all the legalese that AT&T's lawyers came up with for their license, I think I may have stumbled on a good analogy for the situation.

Baking a cake.

SCO bought rights to a cake mix recipe from Novell. This is the same cake mix that Novell bought from AT&T, and part of the purchase agreement is that the cake mix (and the resulting cake) has to be kept confidential...

IBM licensed the recipe from Novell and has added it's own eggs and milk to bake AIX. According to the original agreement IBM has to keep AIX confidential. And according to all reports, it has done this. The problem is that SCO, who now administers the IBM contract for Novell, believes that the contract not only requires that IBM keep the AIX cake confidential, but that it also requires that IBM not tell anyone about the eggs and the milk.

SCO keeps hollering about the eggs and the milk, and IBM keeps saying that it's kept the cake mix confidential. I just don't see anything in all this legalese that would prohibit IBM from taking its eggs and milk and using them in a different cake recipe, even one licensed under the GPL.

I just want all this to be over with so I can have my cake and eat it too...

This morning the Travis County Clerks' office will be conducting a test of the Hart InterCivic eSlate voting systems. The eSlate voting systems replaces Travis County's old optical scanning system which could not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Todays tests are primarily for logic and accuracy, but candidates and representatives from both parties will be present to review the results and examine the ballot. Testing will begin at 9:00am at the County Clerk offices at 5501 Airport Blvd and are open to the public.

UPDATE: Representative Lamar Smith (TX-21) is a co-sponsor of this bill !!!

The link I originally used to point to the bill text turned out to not be permanent. I've now got a copy of the full bill text for H.R.-3261.

As was reported on Slashdot (and Cnet, Internetnews) the House Judiciary Committee has proposed a new copyright extension bill to protect databases (HR-3261). This is not the first time this type of legislation has been proposed and it probably won't be the last, but the interesting twist here is how I think it could affect SCO's attempts to squash Linux.

I'm going to assume that everyone knows about SCO vs. IBM, and about SCO's attempts to get licensing fees from end-users because (their claim!) Linux contains Intellectual Property that they own. So far, the only "evidence" they've brought forward is a bunch of legacy Unix header files like errno.h... This has been dissected ad-nauseum on several web-sites, but the real problem for SCO is that these header files are really just a collection of facts... simple name-value pairs ... and it's been well established in case-law that a collection of facts does not deserve copyright protection.

SCO sues, SCO loses, Linux wins. End of story.

But it might not end this way... HR-3261 looks to overturn all this pre-existing case law and provide copyright protection for collections of facts. Under this Act, Linux could be considered in violation of Section 3.A.3 because (as SCO would argue) it allows "...other parties to free ride on the efforts of the plaintiff [and] would so reduce the incentive to produce the product or service that its existence or quality would be substantially threatened."

Now I'll admit that this isn't a perfect fit, but it's close enough to give me the willies... This could also explain why SCO is suddenly interested in lobbying Congress, because if they can't compete, and they aren't able to win in court, then the next thing to do is get the laws changed so that they'll win round two.

Ugh.


HR3261.html