[DMCA-Activists] Trying to give SCO Money, Part II

[Seth Johnson]

(Forwarded from Free Software Law Discussion list)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [fsl-discuss] Trying to give SCO Money, Part II: Success (sort of)
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 22:55:04 +0000
From: "M. Drew Streib" <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden,address@hidden

A followup to my first letter, in which I tried to give SCO Money...

"Trying to Give SCO Money, Part II: Success (sort of)"
by Drew

To recap, about a week and a half ago, I posted a short letter describing
some woes in trying to give the Santa Cruz Operation money for a Linux
license. After all, who wants to be in violation of copyright?

(To placate one well-placed criticism of that letter, and to correct a light
statement of mine that my code was without copyright: Linux is not without
copyright. It is copyrighted under the GNU General Public License, which is
very different than the public domain.)

Since that letter, I have seen news stories that SCO has announced
_available_ licensing plans to the general public. Hot Damn! This is my
chance to get me some of them licenses. Roughly a week after those news
stories, I had still not received a phone call, so today it was time to
followup with sales.

A quick call indicated that indeed, SCO was ready to transfer me to a sales
rep for the licenses, and in fact, the person was extremely kind and
helpful. I had a few questions regarding my specific business needs, and how
those would be addresed in the license, which s/he was willing to answer on
the phone, or email to me after checking with the product manager/lawyers. 

Here's the kicker.

Sales reps are currently authorized to take your credit card information and
sell you a 'license' over the phone, but are apparently unable to actually
send you a copy of said license.

It seems odd that I should be able to 'sign' something over the phone
without having actually had theh opportunity to view it. If the license
itself is a grant, and not the contract, then shouldn't the terms of the
contract itself require that I at least know what I'm getting in return for
my hard-earned (sometimes) bucks?

The sales rep was very helpful, and obviously had some notes which produced
answers to many of my questions, but his phone assurances that I was in the
clear (after a license purchase, of course) cannot be misrepresented as
legal assurance. For all I know the license states that my grant is invalid
if I spend more than an hour a day watching TV, or ever have eggs for
breakfast (stupid examples to make a point).

To repeat, because it is important:

Can I be bound to a contract that I'm not allowed to see? If this isn't a
contract, can I be sold a license under whose terms I am liable, but whose
terms are hidden from me?

(I don't wish this particular sales rep harm, as s/he was actually very
understanding of my reluctance to sign a contract I wasn't allowed to view.
If SCO doesn't blacklist me within their sales department, maybe I'll even
get a helpful callback.)

SCO appears to be willing to sell me an item for which my only knowledge is
some non-binding assurances from a sales rep and a line on my credit card
bill that says "Linux license".

I want to give SCO money (at least in this academic endeavour), but not this
way.

It almost seems warranted to start up a lawsuit on the premise that SCO is
taking money for misrepresented claims of what they grant in return
(completely independent of the issue of whether or not they have rights to
the code to begin with). I'm not a lawyer (as is often painfully clear in
some of the things I say), but even _if_ SCO is  100% right on their
copyright claims, this deceptive and secretive sales method is unethical at
best.

Anyway. I'll get my answers soon, and maybe they'll even send me a copy of
the license. I'm not holding my breath.

-drew, probably gonna get sued by SCO eventually for this, streib

-- 
M. Drew Streib <address@hidden> 
Independent Rambler, Software/Standards/Freedom/Law -- http://dtype.org/

nsmailSJ.TMP
Description: PGP signature