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From SCO attorneys' presentation today...

The cameras flashed when SCO attorneys briefly highlighted on screen alleged examples of "literal" copyright infringement and improper use of derivative works of Unix System V code that appear in Linux 2.4X and Linux 2.5X.

While it was difficult to ascertain the exact code being shown on screen, attorneys pointed to exact copying of some code from Unix to Linux and claimed that IBM improperly donated almost a million lines of Unix System V code to the Linux 2.4x and Linux 2.5x kernel that infringe on its Unix System V contract with SCO -- and SCO's intellectual property.

Okay, so can we start seeing some photos or filenames or something now? Let's put this story to rest. Either SCO is wrong in their claims and we all get on with life, or they are correct and those of us with 2.4+ kernels might consider applying patches. Photos! Filenames! Output from a 'diff'! Anything dammit!

I've been doing a lot of Google News trolling for SCO lately. Sometimes for a good laugh, sometimes to get my blood up to a good boil. Found this article at CRN about SCO bashing IBM and RedHat's counterclaims.

SCO Blasts IBM, RedHat Counterclaims

Best part about it:

"We're fighting for a right in the industry to make a living selling software," McBride said. "The whole notion that software should be free is something SCO doesn't stand for. We have drawn the line. We're supposed to be excited about that and we're not."

Now, if I'm not mistaken, SCO uses the GCC compiler, and Samba (and is using Samba 3 as a big part of their new OS plans) which are both free software. I'm also sure they are using Apache and many other free software packages. It seems free software is just fine and dandy in SCO's eyes as long as it's not infringing on their marketshare.

mewyn dy'ner

It is the first LEGAL statement I have seen. This is important as everyone can hide behind this if they are later sued.

It is not a good defense in court to state that you chose to ignore this whole issue based on advice from you uncle or your friends at Slashdot.

However if you say that you sought legal council and behaved as advised, you are OK in the sense that your max exposure is the License payment not recieved, no Punitives, fines etc.

Best quote from the Article: Quote:

Simply by being an interested and aggressive defendant with deep pockets, IBM is now effectively shielding Linux users from damages, even without an indemnity provision in the GPL.

SCO execs really have been dumping stock since the lawsuit was filed according to this article.

Some highlights, since the lawsuit was filed SCO's stock has quadrupled. The insider sales since March were the first such sales in more than a year. So far they've taken in U.S. $1.2 million.

McBride says you should just run Unix

Quote here http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarch ives.asp?ArticleID=43802

The 46 page response is now available as a multipage TIFF and converted to a PDF file.

Highlights include "20. Although it completed an initial public offering, SCO has failed to establish a successful business around Linux. SCO's Linux business has never generated a profit. In fact, the company as a whole did not experience a profitable quarter until after it abandoned its Linux business and undertook its present scheme to extract windfall profits from UNIX technology that SCO played no part in developing."

Grocklaw has an overview of the IBM countersuit. And for added fun, the whole 46 page filing is available in multipage TIFF or pdf.

The patents are at:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,814,746.WKU.&OS=PN/4,814,746&RS =PN/4,814,746
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,821,211.WKU.&OS=PN/4,821,211&RS =PN/4,821,211
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,953,209.WKU.&OS=PN/4,953,209&RS =PN/4,953,209
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,805,785.WKU.&OS=PN/5,805,785&RS =PN/5,805,785

After reading the actual countersuit filing, it looks like an even bigger, more comprehensive smackdown than even was speculated yesterday. IBM is fully ready to press SCO's GPL transgressions, talks at length about the failure of SCO's business, makes clear in several locactions the difference between Old SCO (Tarantella) and Caldera/New SCO, they even mention that some of SCO's claims have exceeded the statute of limitations. IBM has clearly been tracking SCO FUD and mentions specific quotes from SCO execs that are damaging. They also reiterate that IBM's UNIX license is perpetual and irrevokable, but they also say that even if that wern't the case SCO still can't revoke IBM's license because SCO has not followed the agreement on the procedure to revoke the license. SMACK, SMACK, SMACK!

Patent numbers that IBM claims SCO infringes are 4814746, 4821211, 4953209, and 5805785.

The one thing SCO has mentioned has been the Read Copy Update code that IBM gave us, and that wasn't accepted for the longest time into the kernel exactly because we knew the patents were owned by IBM. [But] we said we couldn't take it until you [IBM] said very explicitly that you also license the patents.

Overture used to be paid search portal GoTo.com which recently bought AltaVista for $140 million and then bought Fast Search / Alltheweb.com for $100 million. It was one of the IdeaLab properties. Interesting AP article about Overture's history and challenges over the last six years mirrored here.

Sorry, but I don't buy it. The speed with which Sun pounced on the lawsuit to attack IBM tells me that they have a vested interest in the whole thing. Their total silence (unlike Novell) on the implications for Linux, offering absolutely no assistance to the community to fight this harassment lawsuit tells me that they are using it in the same way as Microsoft. That is, to spread fear through the Linux industry and slow its progress. Don't kid yourself, buddy, Sun is playing hardball here and we're up for bat.

Oh, bullshit. Care to produce a single cite for this wild-ass claim of yours, or is this merely speculation? Because I can produce several studies pointing the other way - see this article for the latest. Sure, you can huff and puff all you want but I'll take concrete data over claims that "PerryMason (535019)", that well-known fount of all knowledge regarding the cost of information systems, has pulled out of his arse.

so long as standards are followed (and work is documented) any reasonable unix admin (and I mean an administrator of any *nix) can pick up how any linux system works

And as for this... sunshine, have you ever worked with a real Unix, rather than the toys you Lunix obsessives dribble on about? If so then tell me what fmt does, and, for a bonus point, why I wouldn't like to use it on HP-UX? And as for Linux having anything more than a nodding acquaintance with standards - why, YUo R TEh FUNN3H! Hell, the different mainstream Linux distros haven't even approached standardisation *with each other* yet, let alone converged with real Unixes.

From this related article:

Nathan Hanks, managing director at Continental Airlines, said, 'All the guys hacking Windows are Linux guys.' Continental was hit hard by SQL Slammer and 'our CEO said we'd failed,' Hanks said.

and

Having one vendor throat to choke is helpful in crisis situations,and the Linux/open source alternative does not offer that, Hanks said. An IT pro can't go to the CEO and say that a server is down, 'and hopefully some guy in Amsterdam' will get to a fix when he gets back from the 'dope house,' he said./p

We just need to do the same thing to fight back.

http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarch ives.asp?ArticleID=41480

McBride: What if SCO is right? We're not trying to destroy the Linux industry. They say we're attacking Linux, but IBM brought this on. We are in defense mode. We've been attacked. To the open-source community, I ask them how they feel that IBM knew about these contracts and did what they did anyway. You have to shift the responsibility back to IBM and ask them why they're ruining [the open-source community's] party.

Can be quoted as: ...SCO is right ... We're ... trying to destroy the Linux industry ... we're attacking Linux ... We've ... attacked. - Darl McBride, president and CEO of The SCO Group

Linu$ ha$ commented on the $CO v. IBM $uit

CRN reported that Sun is abandoning its plans to deliver Project Orion on its own version of Linux and will instead support distributions from other Linux vendors. read more at: http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/breakingn ews.asp?ArticleID=40833

it's game over for Linux on the desktop. Xandros is $100. LindowsOS is $130. Hardly anyone would be willing to switch to Linux, when for just $20-$50 more, they can buy the latest and greatest version of Windows

The OEM version of Windows that is preinstalled by Dell, Compaq, etc on new computers goes for around $50. There are people who use Linux on their desktops, but they're definitely paying for that priveledge in time & effort. For me, it's well worth the $50 not to have to deal with all of the driver problems, compatiblity issues, and other headaches that come with running Linux on my desktop computer. I swear if one more install package screws up my ld.so.conf file on my server I'm going to kill somebody.

Most likely the tire did blow, but why? NASA has said over and over that the heat inside the left wing was not indicative of a hull breach. This email, posted on NASA's web site, details the scenario of a tire rupturing in the wheel well. Essentially what happens is it blows the hatch off (the overpressure inside the wheel well puts a quarter million pounds of load on the hatch), the hatch flies into the slipstream, then the orbiter is no longer a craft, it's just debris.

NASA has said for two weeks straight that the foam was not the cause of this orbiter breakup, this isn't a guess, they have done the math using a model that overpredicts the damage then overpredicts the effects of that damage and it was deemed NOT A SAFETY CONCERN, and that it would NOT affect the flight properties of the vehicle.

Rich Garcia of the Directed Energy Directorate told the media they had "high-resolution" images of the orbiter taken from Hawaii and from the New Mexico labs. The Directed Energy Directorate makes beamed energy weapons, they've already created and are producing the world's first laser attack aircraft for the Air Force. They use dynamic optics and reflected laser light to compensate for the refraction of the atmosphere in real time. Their dynamic optics have hundreds of actuators and are able to self-adjust to compensate for this refraction due to the atmosphere, enabling them to literally subtract out the interference caused by the atmosphere. What this means is that the atmosphere is not translucent to them, it is transparent (about ninety-five percent more transparent than it is to "normal" optics).

This process not only "takes the twinkle out of stars," it also allows them to use the telescopes to propagate lasers

It's long past time we stopped trying to blame NASA and point the finger where it belongs, at the US Air Force/Directed Energy Directorate.

Is this purple beam part of a missile defense system?

NASA orbiter struck by "electrical phenomena" - San Francisco Chronicle - "The pictures, taken with a Nikon-880 digital camera on a tripod, reveal what appear to be bright electrical phenomena flashing around the track of the shuttle's passage, but the photographer, who asked not to be identified, will not make them public immediately." - February, 2003

Orbiter hit by "purple lightning" - San Francisco Chronicle - "Investigators are combing records from a network of ultra-sensitive instruments that might have detected a faint thunderclap in the upper atmosphere at the same time a photograph taken by a San Francisco astronomer appears to show a purplish bolt of lightning striking the shuttle." - February, 2003

NASA admits photographs of "bolt of something" exist - NASA - "DITTEMORE: I have seen the photo. We have sent the photo off to be examined, to verify its validity. We have not completed that activity yet. We have invited some atmospheric scientists to come to the Johnson Space Center to help us understand is there any phenomena that they know of that might exist in the upper atmosphere." - February, 2003

Starfire uses a telescope for "sending and receiving laser beams" - CRN - industry newsweekly - "For the Starfire Optical Range (SOR), a division of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, near here, measuring the effect of that air turbulence is critical to a project that uses a telescope for sending and receiving laser beams." - January, 2003

Directed Energy Directorate's "plasma projectiles" - Global Security - "Garcia said the directed-energy unit, which also is working on laser weapons, space-based optics and plasma projectiles some have likened to firing a bolt of lightning, has about 600 employees with an annual budget of about $120 million." - February, 2003

The curiously mislabeled document on NASA's web site. Check the title if you load this document.

Here is something odd. As people have been posting links I have been eagerly following them. I am noticing a disturbing trend. Every link has led to a place that had laptops on average $500 to $1000 more than the same laptop from a major vendor with windows on it.

It's not odd at all.. The major manufacturers make money by selling large quantities with low margins. They put Windows on there because that's what >90% of the people buying systems want. The smaller companies selling custom setups or Linux installations don't do nearly the volume, so they need to have higher margins. Yes, there's a "Windows Tax", but it's more than offset by using a mass-produced configuration. If you're more interested in saving money than you are in making sure that Microsoft doesn't get your $50, you're probably better off licensing Windows and wiping the hard drive.

I suspect that the reason Red Hat aren't part of it is that they don't really care that much about Linux on the desktop

I'm not so sure that is the case, according to this article a RedHat Corporate Desktop distro is due out later this year.

The juicy bits for those who don't want to bother reading the whole thing:

Red Hat executives told CRN that Red Hat won't attempt to unseat Windows and Office but will aim its desktops at targeted customer segments such as call centers at financial institutions needing only Word and Excel, or highly technical audiences that use one or two productivity applications.

Dell is in discussions with Red Hat and plans to load the 32-bit workstation on its Precision workstations, Dell said.

Sources in the Linux channel are cautiously optimistic about the desktop aspirations of startups but say endorsements by Sun Microsystems and Red Hat give the Linux desktop more credibility. Sun also plans to debut its Linux desktop this quarter.

not me.

i will wait for redhat 8.1

Also, I am not alone in my concerns about Microsoft's patent threat, even Red Hat Chairman and CEO Matthew Szulik has said that Microsoft's legal efforts to challenge open source by employing patent infringement law represent a big threat.

Microsoft could settle this issue by making a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA.

CRN already was a pro windows site before they even made the review or article. Proof you may ask for? Well, their web pages are in ASP and not to mention that the pages are servered on an IIS box. This proves they used M$ technology before hands and are not open minded to other solutions.

If you have a skilled employee in Linux and they are unskilled in M$, it would be alot cheaper to implement a linux box than a M$ box. The article is using the other side appproach, a M$ skilled employee that has no clue about Linux, will cost alot more to implement Linux.

The software appears to be winning friends among military and intelligence agencies.

A study completed for the Pentagon by the Mitre last week identified 249 U.S. government uses of open-source computer systems and tools, with Linux running on several Air Force computers, along with systems run by the Marine Corps, the Naval Research Laboratory and others.

The report recommended further use of open-source computing systems, on the grounds that they were less vulnerable to cyberattacks and far cheaper.

This was linked off Red Hat's site sometime back in the RHCE hype. This data is pretty old; I haven't seen them post any updates.

I myself have an OCP; I would think Java would be more reasonable cert for a new grad.

I am following up my own post with a link to a biography of Noorda. He sounds like an interesting guy.

One interesting result was that the fastest growing certifications were Linux Professional Institute Certified (LPIC) Level 1 and the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE).

CRN reports on CEO William Krause's (CEO for a month) conference call. "The action we took yesterday has given us the protection we need to restructure our debts and proceed on much more stable footing than before, and if you felt secure doing business with Exodus six months ago, you should feel even more secure today."

I submitted this earlier but I guess the editors wanted to wait until they could get a copy of the complaint (understandable). The story about it is at CRN earlier today.

Sure, call me a karma whore, but there are some quotes/explanation from the executive director of EPIC.

Aside from the layoffs which are expected to hit all walks of e-business, I wonder how this will impact Linux to have a company go under. See what I mean by this is, VALinux is pretty cool (wassup Jim Gleason) but their model of selling Linux only appliances is trivial.

Why didn't they just focus on selling servers no matter what they were running. VABSD, VANT, nothing else but Linux came out of it. Now when you look at CTO types who know squat but sign those purchase orders, sadly they're likely to be under the impression if it doesn't have a price it's not worthy, meaning Microsoft lurks in their eyes.

Moreso interesting, Linux posted its first profit which sadly is puny on a business aspect. So will VALinux' layoffs shadow Linux as a whole to people who don't know much about OS' ... Think cluebie here "Linux stinks because they make no money, and their business falter.. I'll stick with MS, a money maker they must be doing something right."

The author of the article that started this all has also interviewed Linus.

It's rather interesting in that Linus contradicts many of the comments that have been posted here -- that Linux will never support NUMA or big iron servers, and things like that.

Definitely worth the read...

Especially obvious given that in the article at the bottom of the page they talk about AOL being their biggest consumer competitor. How many "biggest competitors" can one software company have? See the AOL article.

Walt

heres another story on the same thing:
http://www.crn.com/Sections/BreakingNews/dailyarch ives.asp?ArticleID=22871

.brad

Drink more tea
organicgreenteas.com

Fact is that not a single ISP uses S/390 systems for serving web content. If the IO of these machines would be so excellent, why don't they use them?

Bzzt. Wrong answer.

Granted, S/390 is not the most popular hardware for ISP's, plenty use S/390. Here's an article about one.

Here's an article where ebay discsses the possibility of moving to the S/390 platform.

This article discusses how some government agencies are web-enabling their mainframes.

I'll grant that traditionally IBM mainframes can be a bear from the usability perspective. However, things are changing quite quickly, especially with the advent of Linux on the S/390.

have a day,

-l

The death of Open Source is inevitable. It will be caused by complexity and simple economics. In fact in the real world, outside the insular hive mind of Slashdot, it never really lived. And if you anyone doesn't agree with that, explain how Sun could develop an Open Source Star Office without a thriving business based on proprietary hardware.

I think you misunderstand the free software business model. Aside from the existence of many companies have managed to profit quite handsomely from various free and open source products and aside from the existence of many successful free software projects, you are asking the wrong questions.

What needs to be explained is not how Sun could develop an open source project on the magnitude of Star Office without other income. What needs to be explained is how open sourcing a product like Star Office is more beneficial to Sun than keeping the product proprietary.

For a hardware company like Sun (or IBM or SGI) certain types of software are necessary but unprofitable. IBM, Sun, and SGI do not make any money off of much of their flagship software (AIX, MVS, Solaris, IRIX, etc.). This flagship software is necessary to sell their hardware. The question one needs to asks is can these companies create better software at a lower cost by using the free software or open source software development models. These companies are already going to lose money on these products. That is simply not the issue.

An excellent example is that IBM is selling many more mainframes because Linux now runs on their S/390 machines. This is not conjecture. The ability for an ISP to run thousands of instances of Linux on one box is incredibly appealing. One S/390 costs less and takes up much less space than tens of thousands of rack mount Linux or NT boxes that would be needed to provide the same service. Like this article mentions:

instead of having a huge data center filled with up to 20,000 rack-mount servers, Metahost.net is refining its applications to run on two S/390s, 17 terabytes of storage and 1,200 "pizza box" servers (so named for their size), all fitting into a 500-square-foot facility. "That would be acres of space in traditional data centers with servers, air conditioners and so on," says Rogers.

In the case of Star Office we have a slight difference. Sun's goal with a free office suite is not to sell hardware but to kill off an enemy's product that is both a cash cow (Microsoft Office) and the major means by which the enemy maintains its desktop monopoly. Maybe no one without the resources of Sun could afford to set free a product like Star Office. So what? It doesn't matter. What does matter is whether or not the freeing of Star Office will help or hinder Sun. Will the benfefits of freeing Star Office to Sun outweigh the cost of freeing Star Office to Sun? That is the only question that needs to be answered.

But if you want non-trivial free software success stories that were not started by companies with enourmous cash reserves, there are plenty:

• The Gimp
• Linux
• Apache
• Nethack
• Emacs

And these are just the ones I can think of from the top of my head. I'm sure that there are many, many more non-trivial free software and open source software projects that were not started or driven by large corporations.

The free software revolution is upon us. I don't really care whether or not you join us because the only person you're hurting by not joining is yourself. While I and others will have the freedom to choose whatever products we want at no cost and with the freedom to change them to suit our needs, you will still be paying too much for a product you have little or no control over.

have a day,

-l

It's the "One throat to choke" theory.
Besides, have you checked out WebSphere lately?

WebSphere Studio allows you to develop on the Windows platform, and drop your application into AIX.

of antitust violations. What are you going to do now?

We're going to the Supreme Court!

Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected

according to cern the goverment is in fact going and using the expiditing act. This case is one more step closer to going into the supreme court.

Under Kaplan's definition of "DeCSS", he mentioned the Distribution Contest from awhile back. He also mentions that the winner of the contest was awarded with "copies of DVD's". EXCUSE ME? This gives the impression that a group of hacker kids gave away burned copies of DVD's as prizes - not true, AFAIK. Especially since Eric Raymond was one of the judges.

Why hasn't the news hit Slashdot that Linus Torvalds blasted the DVD CCA in his LinuxWorld keynote yesterday? Linuxtoday.org has been carrying the news all day; I'm surprised it hasn't made it here.

The Word 97 and RTF versions of the Stevenson whitepaper are now online. You can grab them at this site.

Defendent #46

Here is another article. Also has a quote from Ransom Love of Caldera that basically dodges the DVD question. He didn't really say what he thought about the current cases. What we need now is someone like Bob Young, Larry Augustine and maybe even someone from IBM's linux division to publicly condemn the actions of the DVD-CCA and MPAA. IBM would be unlikely though since they have interests other than Linux like DVD on PC's with WINDOWS installed.

Or at least JBuilder3 is. Look here.

It was posted on CRN on April 23.