CyberKnights

Modern tools.
Traditional dedication.

Followup to SCO-ANZ letter

First reported here, contact Farifax for reprint rights to Sam Varghese's SMH articles.

From: Leon Brooks <leon@$THISDOMAIN>
Organization: CyberKnights - modern tools, traditional dedication
To: "Kieran O'Shaughnessy" <anz_info@sco.com>
Subject: What? No evidence?
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 09:35:16 +0800
User-Agent: KMail/1.5.3
Message-Id: <200402020935.17322.leon@$THISDOMAIN>

Good morning, SCO ANZ!

Today dawns fine and clear, and I see no invoice from you, and no evidence for any of The SCO Group's code being in Linux.

In my office, I constantly run a uniprocessor server on Linux 2.6.1, a UP server on 2.4.23, a dual-processor server on 2.4.22, two UP workstations on 2.6.1 and a UP laptop on 2.4.22. In addition, I regularly run up other Linux-based machines as they are prepared for installation on client premises.

If you know that in doing so I'm using any of your code, copyrighted material, patented processes or anything of the kind, please send me an invoice for those but only if you can accompany the invoice with precise specification of the rights you can prove are being used.

By "precise" I really do mean precise: vague references like "the RCU code" will not do because they are not sufficient to make an independent determination of the veracity of your claims. The SCO Group must surely have at least some of this evidence available already, as it is being required to collate it for presentation to a US Court in a week or so.

If you have any trouble identifying the kernels I'm using, just pull the latest Mandrake Cooker kernels from a file mirror like the one below, and supply the version number of that along with a list of file names and line number ranges referring to that which you claim as your property:

http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/mandrake/devel/cooker/SRPMS/

Do take care when nominating "your" code, because if you claim as your property any code written by non-SCO developers, you can be sure that at least some of them (incensed by The SCO Group's recent high-handed tactics) will certainly take the opportunity to sue you for copyright infringement.

I haven't seen any response to my previous communication, which is odd given that The SCO Group's lawyers rushed to include accusations of attack from the MyDoom virus in their most recent 10K filing:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102542/000104746904002142/a2127332z10-k.htm#page_dm1113_1_38

This is significant because The SCO Group has essentially accused the Linux community (and I am unequivocally a part of the Linux community) of writing MyDoom, specifically "We've been working through a judicial system here. But now you have people going outside the system, trying to attack us, to try and shut us down before we have a court verdict" although Darl later backwaters this to "We don't know for sure if this attack is coming from Linux^<1>, but we have very strong suspicions that is the case":

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0401/30/lol.01.html

This is even more significant because MyDoom has been traced to commercial spammers in Russia^<2>:

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/01/30/002.html

I'm wondering if this demand for licence fees might be more of the same? If it is, do bear in mind that Australian law is a lot less inclined to let freedom of speech trump fraud than US law.

Either way, today is your final chance to either prove your claims against my company for our use of Linux, or to publicly retract them. If you need more time to prove your claims, please contact me promptly with the details to negotiate a deferment of action.

Cheers; Leon

<1> Doubly ironic because the MyDoom attack is coming only from Microsoft Windows-equipped machines.

<2> At the time MyDoom had not yet been formally activated against www.sco.com (they'd be getting the odd angry shot from machines with incorrect clocks, that's all) so Darl seems a little confused on this point.

-- 
http://cyberknights.com.au/     Modern tools; traditional dedication
http://plug.linux.org.au/       Committee Member, Perth Linux User Group
http://slpwa.asn.au/            Committee Member, Linux Professionals WA
http://linux.org.au/            Past Committee Member, Linux Australia

Replace $THISDOMAIN with cyberknights.com.au to reconstruct the original text. Some headers have been deleted for clarity and simplicity.

Linux reseller Bryce Coad had audiences eating out of his hand as he demonstrated the operating system running OpenOffice.org [. . .] Igor Portugal, technical head at Linux reseller Asterisk, which made its first appearance at the show in 1999, says Orix, Linfox Logistics, the Health and Disability Commission and Vita New Zealand are among its customers. Portugal collected a wad of business cards from visitors to his stand, many of which he expected to turn into sales. — ComputerWorld Expo 2002

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