Groklaw

Last updated
Groklaw
Groklaw logo.gif
Groklaw screenshot.jpg
Screenshot of Groklaw on June 18, 2008
Type of site
Law
Available inEnglish
Owner Pamela Jones
Created by Pamela Jones
URL groklaw.net
CommercialNo
LaunchedMay 16, 2003;20 years ago (2003-05-16)
Current statusOnline

Groklaw is a website that covered legal news of interest to the free and open source software community. Started as a law blog on May 16, 2003, by paralegal Pamela Jones ("PJ"), it covered issues such as the SCO-Linux lawsuits, the EU antitrust case against Microsoft, and the standardization of Office Open XML.

Contents

Jones described Groklaw as "a place where lawyers and geeks could explain things to each other and work together, so they'd understand each other's work better". [1]

Its name derives from "grok", roughly meaning "to understand completely", which had previously entered geek slang.

Other topics covered included software patents, DMCA, the actions of the RIAA against alleged illegal file sharers, and actions against free and open software such as Android and Linux.

Origins

According to a 2003 interview with Jones, the blog was started to cover legal news and to explain it to the tech community. [2]

The first article was entitled "The Grokster Decision – Ode To Thomas Jefferson". It was about the effect of P2P on the music industry, and the then-recent court decision in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. , by Judge Steven Wilson in favor of the defendants. It also covered the previous Napster decision, and why it was different, causing Napster to be shut down. The article included a quote from Thomas Jefferson and references to David Boies, who was Napster's attorney.

The second post, on May 17, 2003, also covered legal issues – the SCO v. IBM lawsuit – entitled "SCO Falls Downstairs, Hitting its Head on Every Step". It criticized Caldera Systems for the way they were handling the suit outside of court, and included quotes from Bruce Perens, Richard Stallman, Steve Ballmer, and Linus Torvalds. It ended:

David Boies has agreed to represent SCO. I am trying to remind myself that our legal system is predicated on lawyers sometimes representing people they don't personally admire, and the system really does depend on someone being willing to take on unpopular clients. I know Boies doesn't use email, or at least he didn't the last time I checked. So maybe he doesn't quite get the tech ... ah, hang it all, there's no way around it: I feel bad he's chosen to represent them, especially after I posted an Ode singing his praises, and I hope he loses.

The blog soon became popular with the free software and open source communities and others, and attracted a community of volunteers and commenters. Its popularity caused it to outgrow Radio Userland, and on November 22, 2003, the standalone Groklaw website, hosted by ibiblio and running Geeklog software, was up and running. [3]

Main focus

The main focus of Jones's writing became the Caldera Systems v. IBM litigation (Caldera Systems changed its name to The SCO Group during this time). Other issues were explored, including intellectual property and patent issues (for example, Microsoft IP claims against Linux, and the drafting of the GPL version 3). Groklaw was known for its contributors' ability to explain complex legal issues in simple terms and the research used in putting together articles. Members of the Groklaw community attended court hearings [4] and interviewed movers and shakers in the software/IP world. [5]

The site became a community effort. While Jones understood law, she was not a programmer. Many readers were techies, however, and when technical issues arose they provided relevant comments.[ citation needed ] This enabled Groklaw to solicit guest commentary on issues such as:

Each of these issues appeared to have some application to the SCO v. IBM case[ citation needed ], and most were revisited many times. Additional topics included later lawsuits by The SCO Group against Daimler Chrysler, Autozone, and Novell, the countersuit by Red Hat, and their implications and Microsoft's attempt to fast track OOXML as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard. [6]

Awards

Groklaw was cited by the attorneys for several firms in law journal articles. It also won awards:

Editorial stance

Groklaw was the personal creation of Jones, and it published articles (both news and opinion) from a self-described pro-FOSS, anti-FUD perspective. [15]

I made a decision early on to concentrate only on the entities, ideas, and actions, not on individuals.

Interview with Pamela Jones [16]

While articles meticulously followed SCO's litigation activities, they were accompanied by reader-submitted comments that were "overwhelmingly pro-Linux and anti-SCO." [17]

Media controversy

Jones was widely respected by journalists and people inside the Linux community. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote, "Jones has made her reputation as a top legal IT reporter from her work detailing the defects with SCO's case against IBM and Linux. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that her work has contributed enormously to everyone's coverage of SCO's cases." [18]

Despite the high regard of Jones' peer journalists and the Linux community (or possibly in part because of it) [ citation needed ], a number of prominent attacks against Groklaw and Jones occurred. These attacks were documented and addressed in detail, on Groklaw and other web sites and also in court as part of the SCO litigation [ citation needed ].

During the first week of May 2005, Maureen O'Gara, writing in Linux World, wrote an exposé claiming to unmask Jones. Two weeks before O'Gara's publication, McBride said that SCO was investigating Jones' identity. [17] The article included alleged, but unverified, personal information about Jones, [19] including a photo of Jones' supposed house and purported addresses and telephone numbers for Jones and her mother. [20] After a flood of complaints to the publisher, lobbying of the site's advertisers, and claims of a denial-of-service attack launched against the Sys-Con domain, [21] [22] Linux Business News' publisher Sys-Con issued a public apology, [23] and said they dropped O'Gara and her LinuxGram column. Despite this assertion, O'Gara remained with Sys-Con; as of 2009, she is the Virtualization News Desk editor at Sys-Con Media, who describe her as "[o]ne of the most respected technology reporters in the business" and has her work published in multiple magazines owned by Sys-Con Media. [24]

SCO executives Darl McBride and Blake Stowell also denigrated Jones, and claimed that she worked for IBM. [25] Jones denied this allegation, [26] as did IBM in a court filing. [27] During an SCO conference call on April 13, 2005, McBride said, "The reality is the web site is full of misinformation, including the people who are actually running it" when talking about Groklaw, adding also "What I would say is that it is not what it is purported to be". Later developments in the court cases showed that McBride's statements to the press regarding the SCO litigation had limited credibility; very few such statements were ever substantiated and most were shown to be false. For example, McBride claimed that SCO owned the copyrights to UNIX, and SCO filed suit to try to enforce these claims. [28] The outcome went against McBride's claims. The jury found that SCO had not purchased these copyrights. [29] [30] SCO appealed this ruling and lost. [31] McBride also made a claim to the press that there was a "mountain of code" misappropriated to create Linux. [32] When SCO finally presented their evidence of infringement, which centered on nine lines of error name and number similarities in the file errno.h, Judge Wells famously said "Is this all you've got?" [33] Professor Randall Davis of MIT later made a convincing demonstration that there were no elements of UNIX which might be copyright protectable present in the Linux source code. [34]

Additional projects

Anticipating further legal threats against GNU, Linux, and the free software community, Jones launched Grokline, a Unix ownership timeline project, in May 2004. [35] One notable result of the Groklaw/Grokline effort was obtaining and publishing the 1994 settlement in USL v. BSDi , which for over a decade had been sealed by the parties. [36] The document was obtained through a California freedom of information statute (the University of California, being a publicly funded institution, is required by law to make almost all of its documents public), and the release of the settlement answered many questions as to the ownership of the Unix intellectual property.

The Linux documentation project Grokdoc wiki was started in 2004, with the stated goal "to create a useful manual on basic tasks that new users will find simple and clear and easy to follow." [37]

Groklaw extensively covered patent problems with software and hardware, use of the DMCA against free software ideals, Open standards, DRM, GPLv3, and published The Daemon, the GNU & the Penguin, [38] a series of articles by Peter Salus covering the history of Unix, Linux and the GNU project.

It covered the Oracle v. Google in which Oracle alleged that Google's Android platform infringed copyrights and patents related to Java. [39]

Later history

In January 2009, Groklaw entered a second phase, focusing on consolidation and cleanup of the legal history collected on the site.

In April 2010, Groklaw was selected by the Library of Congress for its web archival project, in the category of Legal Blogs. [40]

On April 9, 2011, Jones announced that Groklaw would stop publishing new articles on May 16, 2011, its 8th anniversary, as it had accomplished its original mission of revealing the truth behind the SCO lawsuits. [41]

On May 16, 2011, Jones reaffirmed her desire to step down from writing daily articles and announced that the new editor would be Mark Webbink. [42]

Subsequent to this decision, new patent and copyright based attacks on the Android operating system led to Jones resuming an editorial role, and along with Mark Webbink she moderated and edited the site.

On August 20, 2013, a final article appeared on Groklaw, explaining that due to pervasive government monitoring of the Internet, there could no longer be an expectation of the sort of privacy online that was necessary to collaborate on sensitive topics. Citing the closure of Lavabit earlier that month, Jones wrote "I can't do Groklaw without your input.... and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate." and "What I do know is it's not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7... I hope that makes it clear why I can't continue. There is now no shield from forced exposure." [43]

During 2020, the site was intermittently unavailable. [44] As of 2022, the home page and parts of the content are still available.

See also

Related Research Articles

Darl Charles McBride is an entrepreneur and CEO of Shout TV Inc. McBride is known as the former CEO of The SCO Group. On March 7, 2003, during McBride's tenure as CEO of the company, The SCO Group initiated litigation against IBM, alleging breach of contract and copyright infringement claims connected to Unix. SCO Group lost in a series of court battles, and was eventually forced into bankruptcy.

<i>SCO Group, Inc. v. International Business Machines Corp.</i>

SCO Group, Inc. v. International Business Machines Corp., commonly abbreviated as SCO v. IBM, is a civil lawsuit in the United States District Court of Utah. The SCO Group asserted that there are legal uncertainties regarding the use of the Linux operating system due to alleged violations of IBM's Unix licenses in the development of Linux code at IBM. The lawsuit was filed in 2003, it has lingered on through the bankruptcy of SCO Group and the adverse result in SCO v. Novell, and was reopened for continued litigation by order of a new judge on June 14, 2013. Pursuant to the court order reopening the case, an IBM Motion for Summary Judgment was filed based upon the results of the Novell decision. On December 15, 2014, the judge granted most of IBM's motion, thereby narrowing the scope of the case, which remained open. On March 1, 2016, following a ruling against the last remaining claims, the judge dismissed SCO's suit against IBM with prejudice. SCO filed an appeal later that month. In February 2018, as a result of the appeal and the case being partially remanded to the circuit court, the parties restated their remaining claims and provided a plan to move toward final judgement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SCO Group</span> Defunct American software company

The SCO Group was an American software company in existence from 2002 to 2012 that became known for owning Unix operating system assets that had belonged to the Santa Cruz Operation, including the UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, and then, under CEO Darl McBride, pursuing a series of high-profile legal battles known as the SCO-Linux controversies.

Pamela Jones, commonly known as PJ, is the creator and was editor of Groklaw, a website that covered legal news of interest to the free and open-source software community. Jones is an open source advocate who previously trained and worked as a paralegal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UnixWare</span> Unix operating system

UnixWare is a Unix operating system. It was originally released by Univel, a jointly owned venture of AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) and Novell. It was then taken over by Novell. Via Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), it went on to Caldera Systems, Caldera International, and The SCO Group before it was sold to UnXis. UnixWare is typically deployed as a server rather than a desktop. Binary distributions of UnixWare are available for x86 architecture computers. UnixWare is primarily marketed as a server operating system.

In a series of legal disputes between SCO Group and Linux vendors and users, SCO alleged that its license agreements with IBM meant that source code IBM wrote and donated to be incorporated into Linux was added in violation of SCO's contractual rights. Members of the Linux community disagreed with SCO's claims; IBM, Novell, and Red Hat filed claims against SCO.

<i>SCO Group, Inc. v. Novell, Inc.</i>

SCO v. Novell was a United States lawsuit in which the software company The SCO Group (SCO), claimed ownership of the source code for the Unix operating system. SCO sought to have the court declare that SCO owned the rights to the Unix code, including the copyrights, and that Novell had committed slander of title by asserting a rival claim to ownership of the Unix copyrights. Separately, SCO was attempting to collect license fees from Linux end-users for Unix code through their SCOsource division, and Novell's rival ownership claim was a direct challenge to this initiative. Novell had been increasing their investments in and support of Linux at this time, and was opposed to SCO's attempts to collect license fees from Novell's potential customers.

Beginning in 2003, The SCO Group was involved in a dispute with various Linux vendors and users. SCO initiated a series of lawsuits, the most known of which were SCO v. IBM and SCO v. Novell, that had implications upon the futures of both Linux and Unix. SCO claimed that Linux violated some of SCO's intellectual properties. Many industry observers were skeptical of SCO's claims, and they were strongly contested by SCO's opponents in the lawsuits, some of which launched counter-claims. By 2011, the lawsuits fully related to Linux had been lost by SCO or rendered moot and SCO had gone into bankruptcy. However the SCO v. IBM suit continued for another decade, as it included contractual disputes related to both companies' involvement in Project Monterey in addition Linux-related claims. Finally in 2021 a settlement was reached in which IBM paid the bankruptcy trustee representing what remained of SCO the sum of $14.25 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Project Monterey</span> 1990s UNIX coalition

Project Monterey was an attempt to build a single Unix operating system that ran across a variety of 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, as well as supporting multi-processing. Announced in October 1998, several Unix vendors were involved; IBM provided POWER and PowerPC support from AIX, Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) provided IA-32 support, and Sequent added multi-processing (MP) support from their DYNIX/ptx system. Intel Corporation provided expertise and ISV development funding for porting to their upcoming IA-64 CPU platform, which was yet to be released at that time. The focus of the project was to create an enterprise-class UNIX for IA-64, which at the time was expected to eventually dominate the UNIX server market.

Wallace v. International Business Machines Corp., 467 F.3d 1104, was a significant case in the development of free software. The case decided, at the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, that in United States law the GNU General Public License (GPL) did not contravene federal antitrust laws.

Caldera OpenLinux (COL) is a defunct Linux distribution. Caldera originally introduced it in 1997 based on the German LST Power Linux distribution, and then taken over and further developed by Caldera Systems since 1998. A successor to the Caldera Network Desktop put together by Caldera since 1995, OpenLinux was an early "business-oriented distribution" and foreshadowed the direction of developments that came to most other distributions and the Linux community generally.

In Unix computing, lxrun is a compatibility layer to allow Linux binaries to run on UnixWare, SCO OpenServer and Solaris without recompilation. It was created by Mike Davidson. It has been an open source software project since 1997, and is available under the Mozilla Public License. Both SCO and Sun Microsystems began officially supporting lxrun in 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of free and open-source software</span> Aspect of history

In the 1950s and 1960s, computer operating software and compilers were delivered as a part of hardware purchases without separate fees. At the time, source code, the human-readable form of software, was generally distributed with the software providing the ability to fix bugs or add new functions. Universities were early adopters of computing technology. Many of the modifications developed by universities were openly shared, in keeping with the academic principles of sharing knowledge, and organizations sprung up to facilitate sharing. As large-scale operating systems matured, fewer organizations allowed modifications to the operating software, and eventually such operating systems were closed to modification. However, utilities and other added-function applications are still shared and new organizations have been formed to promote the sharing of software.

Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds to create a new free operating system kernel. The resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to the 4.15 version in 2018 with more than 23.3 million lines of source code, not counting comments, under the GNU General Public License v2 with a syscall exception meaning anything that uses the kernel via system calls are not subject to the GNU GPL.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU General Public License</span> Series of free software licenses

The GNU General Public License is a series of widely used free software licenses or copyleft that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general use and was originally written by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. These GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. It is more restrictive than the Lesser General Public License and even further distinct from the more widely used permissive software licenses BSD, MIT, and Apache.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft terms, such as with its own GNU General Public License. The FSF was incorporated in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, where it is also based.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt is a manipulative propaganda tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics, polling and cults. FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information, and is a manifestation of the appeal to fear.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unix-like</span> Operating system that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-like application is one that behaves like the corresponding Unix command or shell. Although there are general philosophies for Unix design, there is no technical standard defining the term, and opinions can differ about the degree to which a particular operating system or application is Unix-like.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unix</span> Family of computer operating systems

Unix is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others.

Xinuos is an American software company that was created in 2011 and was first called UnXis until assuming its current name in 2013. Xinuos develops and markets the Unix-based OpenServer 6, OpenServer 5, and UnixWare 7 operating systems under SCO branding. Xinuos formerly sold the FreeBSD-based OpenServer 10 operating system.

References

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