New story!

[elfs]

A new story is up at the Pendorwright site. The ASSD code is M/M Fur(rept). The title in unimaginative, Rear, but I couldn't come up with anything better. It's a cute story. I should write more M/M stuff, I really should.

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I just read with amusement SCO's last collection of counterclaims to IBM's complaint filing. Among the other titters, SCO claims that "Caldera was not established for the purpose of creating Linux solutions," "Linux was developed in order to destroy proprietary operating systems" (again, SCO goes for the intentional confusion of the word proprietary; it won't succeed as any judge can cite the definition out of Black's Law Dictionary), and "SCO denies participating in the Open Source Development Labs with the purpose of furthering open source development." Hey, is that last one fraud?

Amusingly enough, SCO is laying claim to the idea of Unix. Even if everything Linus did is legally available, it's still illegal because Linux didn't ask the holders of the Unix trademark. But this has been covered ever since Compaq successfully reverse-engineered the IBM BIOS. No case.

And IBM finally raised an estoppel argument, meaning that they're accusing SCO of saying so many contradictory things that nobody really knows what they're saying and the judge should throw out SCO's complaint. Rockin'.

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US Donates A Lot Of Sperm.

A Constitution of Convenience. I think Technoshaman will get a charge out of this one: A j'accuse that the U.S. Government is selectively enforcing only those parts of the constitution that give them power, not charge them with responsibility, while doing the opposite to the people.

Comments

[rfreebern.livejournal.com]

It reads to me like IBM is saying SCO's use of the GPL constituted an implied promise to abide by the terms set forth in the GPL, and that IBM feels that SCO has broken that promise by now attempting to lay commercial claim to GPL'd material; hence estoppel, or damage caused by violation of a promise.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I suspect this is more concrete. Note in the portion I quoted, IBM has sustained damages.... IBM is saying that it has reacted to public statements SCO has made that have damaged IBM's business relations, only now to find that SCO is denying that IBM's interpretation of those statements is the correct one. SCO is arguing that if IBM had understood SCO's statements correctly, IBM would not have suffered damages.

It is now up to the judge to determine if a reasonable person would have found SCO's public statements threatening (promissory of action) and warranted a reaction that, as IBM put it, sustains damages. If the judge so rules, estoppel is warranted because SCO is claiming in court that it never meant to say any such thing. The appeals could go on forever, true, but that's the basic gist.

[rfreebern.livejournal.com]

But if you look at paragraph 114, you'll see that the promise that IBM claims SCO made is that SCO would copy, modify or distribute programs distributed by IBM and others under the GPL only on the terms set out in the GPL; and would not assert rights to programs distributed by SCO under the GPL except on the terms set out in the GPL.

They go on to state that they made business decisions based on this promise, and that SCO's violating the promise caused injuries to IBM. It's not about any public statements that SCO made, it's about SCO implicitly agreeing to the GPL at some point in the past (described in paragraphs 108 through 112) and then breaking that agreement.