-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Independent Rambler, Software/Standards/Freedom/Law -- http://dtype.org/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/bw6O2MO5UukaubkRApNfAJ4lOrQcu5bjPkF9fXgxmuT0puHozACgjL6T AP88Wzp7kqIbonmhiEhYeuo= =OLt5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc -> http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
