Slashdot Mirror

That is what one gets when one keeps crying wolf!

Unfortunately, the number of words in that sentence did not exhaust the immense volume of even the big lies told by SCO.

I hope the wolf is IBM.

That is what one gets when one keeps crying wolf!

Unfortunately, the number of words in that sentence did not exhaust the immense volume of even the big lies told by SCO.

I hope the wolf is IBM.

That is what one gets when one keeps crying wolf!

Unfortunately, the number of words in that sentence did not exhaust the immense volume of even the big lies told by SCO.

I hope the wolf is IBM.

That is what one gets when one keeps crying wolf!

Unfortunately, the number of words in that sentence did not exhaust the immense volume of even the big lies told by SCO.

I hope the wolf is IBM.

That is what one gets when one keeps crying wolf!

Unfortunately, the number of words in that sentence did not exhaust the immense volume of even the big lies told by SCO.

I hope the wolf is IBM.

All this happens, and then SCO suddenly becomes 'victimized by all these EVIL Open Source people', virtually guaranteeing the press won't report on SCO's other misfortune because it's 'unimportant' compared to this. Morover, they get to make Open Source people look like terrorists and bad people, and try to make it look like people should not be using software developed by these 'evil people'.

From the Groklaw article:

If their bandwidth is consumed, then any servers nearby will also be inaccessible. That is www.sco.com has the IP address of 216.250.128.12 and ftp.sco.com has the IP address of 216.250.128.13 so the two servers are side by side, probably even on the same physical network hub/switch. Note that there is no room for a broadcast, etc., address - these servers are on the same subnet - i.e., on the same network device (hub/switch).

Unfortunately for SCO, from Australia, ftp.sco.com is highly responsive.

Mod the parent down. There's nothing "insightful" here-- it's just a rephrasing of the Groklaw article.

I haven;t (sic) seen an explanation for the fact the earlier traceroutes stopped at multiple points in xo.net. Thos (sic) seem to indicate that there was filtering going on upstrean from SCO. This is a reasonable response to a DDOS by a backbone provider. That would also explain why there was now (sic) bandwidth problem on other systems close to www.sco.com. The putative attack traffic was never reaching SCO's colo.

We should resist the temptation to believe that everything SCO says is a lie, just because most things are. This could blind us to real threats from SCO, if they exist.

Again, even when SCO shows a shred of the truth, it only reveals they're either incompetent or unethical.

• MR. MCBRIDE:

• Thank you, Your Honor.

  Frankly, we can appreciate the intention of the Court based on the submissions and understand the basis for it. We think, Your Honor, however, that in a few minutes this morning we can convince you that the more appropriate path is to follow a rule or an outline of the rule in Rule 3 3 that basically says that because the issues involved in this discovery involve a complex interplay between facts and law, that instead of granting the motion, what the Court should simply do is put the motion on hold until very specific discovery has been identified and produced and then make a ruling. And before I address this -- [judge interrupts] yes, Your Honor?

  THE COURT:

  No.

  What I was going to say, Mr. McBride, is that in reviewing all the submissions and reviewing the pertinent case law, it appears to me that what is happening is somewhat circular in that defendant indicates that it cannot answer plaintiff's interrogatories until plaintiff has identified the source codes, et cetera, but the manner in which those have been submitted make it, I believe, unduly burdensome on the defendants and so we go 'round and 'round.

  And I find also that it appears to me that if there's any argument to be made on the failure to confer under Rule 37 that -- that there has been a good faith effort to comply, but that because we can't get off the ground because of this circular problem, that I would not find that a sufficient basis for, you know, further postponing.

There are hours of argument you can read through, in which SCO proposes novel legal theories under which they don't have to specifically identify infringing material. The judge doesn't buy this at all.

I suspect that SCO will not produce specific infringing material in thirty days. That will lead to an appeal from the magistrate judge to the district judge. Then it gets complicated. SCO may try to litigate their concept of discovery at the appeals court level before proceeding to trial. That's usually not allowed, but there are exceptions to that rule and some of what SCO's lawyers are saying hint that they may try to go in that direction.

Fundamentally, once SCO's novel theory of vague infringement gets knocked down, it's all over for them. So we'll see all sorts of maneuvering to keep it alive. But so far, they lost the first round.

So here's a question - have you or any friends of yours taken part in SCO DDOS attack? If the overwhelming answer on Slashdot is no, then I guess we know the value of SCO's claims.

How about this question: have you or any friends of yours taken part in Groklaw SlashDotting DDOS attack?

Netcraft had a posting about the supposed attack, but didn't doubt the actual situation. I've sent them the following letter:

To: webmaster@netcraft.com
Subject: News on your front page

You have a news article about SCO's network downtime posted on your front page, claiming that SCO is the target of a DDoS attack. Due to availability of services on other machines on the same netblock, like the FTP protocol on ftp.sco.com (one IP address higher than www.sco.com), I question the veracity of your news article, and I felt that I should call this into question.

groklaw.net has information posted that you might find interesting, potentially leading to a revision of your news article. The page can be found at:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200312101 63721614

Much of the information that I have read about this is available from them, as are some theories as to what is actually happening.

Thank you for your time,
TWX


Basically, if you doubt the truth of the "news" about SCO/Caldera's troubles, call it into question with those reporting it, especially those who are supposed to be some kind of authority to listen to.

Well said.

This article refers to the possibility that the DDOS attack might be fake, and cites a Groklaw link as a reference.

It also refers to a previous Slashdot article when the original news reports about the alleged attack came out. In that earlier Slashdot article, a +5 article CITES THE SAME BLOODY Groklaw link!

I mean the Very First Comment in the previous SCO Group Website Attacked story was:

...and the happy folks at Groklaw already have a statement up with arguments to effect that SCO is fibbing. They think the attack could be a hoax.

Speaking as a Sysadmin/Firewall guy, my first priority in any attack is to solve the problem - not issue a press release.

Ow. That was mean. Slashdot is also rampant with people shooting their mouths off without a modicum of research. At least I try.

I'm probably going to get modded down for this, but here we go...

While I'm ignorant of a great many things, illiterate I am not. In fact, one of my chief interests is history. I also have a tendency to include a certain flippancy into most comments I write. This makes it more likely that I "it" was intended, don't you think?

I'm also a pedant, and something of what you call a "grammar nazi" (horrible term).

Go easy, and if you're going to utter a stereotype, make sure your subject is a member to the class.

Eibhear

Ow. That was mean. Slashdot is also rampant with people shooting their mouths off without a modicum of research. At least I try.

I'm probably going to get modded down for this, but here we go...

While I'm ignorant of a great many things, illiterate I am not. In fact, one of my chief interests is history. I also have a tendency to include a certain flippancy into most comments I write. This makes it more likely that I "it" was intended, don't you think?

I'm also a pedant, and something of what you call a "grammar nazi" (horrible term).

Go easy, and if you're going to utter a stereotype, make sure your subject is a member to the class.

Eibhear

Ow. That was mean. Slashdot is also rampant with people shooting their mouths off without a modicum of research. At least I try.

I'm probably going to get modded down for this, but here we go...

While I'm ignorant of a great many things, illiterate I am not. In fact, one of my chief interests is history. I also have a tendency to include a certain flippancy into most comments I write. This makes it more likely that I "it" was intended, don't you think?

I'm also a pedant, and something of what you call a "grammar nazi" (horrible term).

Go easy, and if you're going to utter a stereotype, make sure your subject is a member to the class.

Eibhear

Ow. That was mean. Slashdot is also rampant with people shooting their mouths off without a modicum of research. At least I try.

I'm probably going to get modded down for this, but here we go...

While I'm ignorant of a great many things, illiterate I am not. In fact, one of my chief interests is history. I also have a tendency to include a certain flippancy into most comments I write. This makes it more likely that I "it" was intended, don't you think?

I'm also a pedant, and something of what you call a "grammar nazi" (horrible term).

Go easy, and if you're going to utter a stereotype, make sure your subject is a member to the class.

Eibhear

Come on.....

There are only a few possibilities:

1: SCO's IT department doesn't know what syn cookies are and how they relate to Linux (which the DO run their site on). They evidently don't know how to configure CISCO routers in order to block syn floods either. In this case SCO is incompetent...

2: SCO is deliberately not protecting their networks in order to draw attention to themselves.

3: SCO is sabotaging their own networks.

4: The ctber-attack story is completely made up and has no truth value.

The Groklaw story is worth reading:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200312101 63721614

micantos wrote:
Grow up. Settle it by the law.

I think that comment should be directed at SCO, instead of "guys". Their description of the attack is flawed, their upstream ISP was contacted, and says there's no attack, and their ftp server right next to their web server on the network is having no problems. It's a fake.

Justin.

Search Google News for "SCO" and you will see headlines like "SCO attacked by Linux folk."

The top story is currently Slashdot's, so it might seem that their plan backlashed... Especially if the the editors would make an update and put the Groklaw story on the frontpage.

No one can fall victim of a SYN flood attack these days. You don't need a DDOS with "thousands of servers" to do a SYN flood attack. SCO's ISP isn't suffering anything related to a DDOS attack. The shutdown pattern of the SCO's servers shows that they were unpluged. Groklaw has a good disection of the hoax.

Therefore, I would like to know what are the /. editors waiting for, in order to update the story stating it as a fraud from SCO.

I wouldn't be surprised if SCO issues a press release tomorrow saying that the evidence they were going to show in January 5 was destroyed.

This is just too much. I thought "evil corporations" existed only on comic books, and hollywood movies.

According to Groklaw, not only is it implausible that this is a real attack, it's not even competently done. SCO blames a SYN flood, which is trivial to ignore. Their ISP hasn't had anything to do about it. While they say their email server was down, it actually wasn't. Their FTP server on the next IP over (and on the same block of addresses) had no problems. Their internal network almost certainly isn't anywhere near their Web server, network wise, and, if it was, it would almost certainly have a firewall that's not the web server.

It's clear that SCO's run out of technical people; not only are they faking technical problems, they can't even make up a technically sound attack on their own systems.

This is a load of rubbish. See Groklaw for a much deeper and more insightful look at what really happened, a full explanation of the technicalities of the DDOS attack (claimed as a SYN attack that took up all the bandwidth and flattened their e-mail - and yet you can still get to ftp.sco.com (on same subnet), smtp.sco.com all other XO.net fed servers. Groklaw also noticed that the machine was down well before the press release claims and that it went straight down - no hiccups or other indications of a DDOS attack, just a straight gone - switched off or unplugged most likely.

See the netcraft stats for that little bit. If SCO make any claim that this is a DDOS, they are lying through their teeth and the evidence was collected as it happened - see the members zone at Groklaw for the raw Traceroute returns.

LMAO I'm friggen dying here!! "Speaking as a Sysadmin/Firewall guy, my first priority in any attack is to solve the problem - not issue a press release."
ain't that the truth...

> Grow up. Settle it by the law.

Yes. SCO should do that instead of lying about their downtime

There's been a ton of discussion of this on Groklaw today -- consensus is that either this is no attack, or their network is run by doofuses.

...and the happy folks at Groklaw already have a statement up with arguments to effect that SCO is fibbing. They think the attack could be a hoax.

The fact is, despite what /. would have you think, no one is 'well-informed' about this case. It is a huge tangle of intellectual property law, contract law, and source code. No single person really knows what SCO can prove, what IBM can prove, where the code came from, where it is now or who owns what. There's plenty of speculation, and I personally wouldn't buy into SCO, but investors like to gamble -- and given the fact that SCO (David) is taking taking on IBM (Goliath) I guess the conclusion is they must have some kind of case. Darl's putting up a BIG front, and that's what investors look for.

The fact is, despite what /. would have you think, no one is 'well-informed' about this case. It is a huge tangle of intellectual property law, contract law, and source code. No single person really knows what SCO can prove, what IBM can prove, where the code came from, where it is now or who owns what. There's plenty of speculation, and I personally wouldn't buy into SCO, but investors like to gamble -- and given the fact that SCO (David) is taking taking on IBM (Goliath) I guess the conclusion is they must have some kind of case. Darl's putting up a BIG front, and that's what investors look for.

I've always thought there was something fishy about RBC's rold in this. I can tell you such speculative investments are way out of character for a Canadian bank. Even if the money comes from the New York office of their brokerage/investment bank arm. When the deal was first announced, RBC refused comment saying they never comment on client affairs. That cryptic response caused some questions as the relationship with SCO didn't look like a bank/client relationship. An SEC filing in November indicated that the $30 million was RBC's money and did not belong to anyone else. It also indicated that RBC did not intend to sell its shares and had no prior arrangement to sell them.

Now another cryptic statement. I've felt (with no evidence) that RBC was indeed up to something. But what? My best guess is that they have used their own money, and are not holding the shares for anyone else. And that they have an agreement with a third party about the disposition of any profit or loss from the deal. The logical arrangement would be that RBC puts up the money and gets to keep any profits. But the third party would compensate them for any loss. Thus the investment is clean, and the third party gets to funnel cash to SCO without disclosing their involvement.

For the record, I have no idea who such a third party might be. I don't think it would be Microsoft. They have lots of money marching in the front door. Why would they need to sneak money in the back? But that doesn't leave any other likely suspects. Its possible that one of the other big propriatory software companies, like Adobe, could be behind it. We may never know.

I love how I don't even need to say that copyrights are good, I can just say that they're necessary to a software-based business model and people jump all over me like I'm this crazy right wing zealot.

I'll say it for you, then: Copyrights are good, and not just because they're the foundation for copyleft. They're an important tool for motivating the production of all sorts of intellectual works.

Of course, current copyright law has strayed rather far from the real purpose of copyright, copyrights are too broad (see the fight over the regionalized Harry Potter clones) and they last far, far too long. Further, there are some significant differences between software and other works, differences that really require copyright law to be customized to better meet the real goals of copyright with respect to software.

I wrote a small essay about this topic in a Groklaw post. If you're interested, you can find it here

What the hell is so bad about copyrights?

Wow! You dont seem to understand copyright at all.

First, copyright contradicts free speech. Second, it limits public access to the arts and science.

We accept these bad things on the theory that the overall, long-term interests of society will benefit by stimulating production in the arts and science, by rewarding authors with an unnatural monopoly on publication. Also note that in order for society to obtain that benefit, the publication monopoly must be strictly limited -- something the US congress seems to have forgotten.

I suggest that you read Eldred v. Ashcroft - Justice Breyer's Dissenting Opinion for an eloquent description of the dangers of copyright.

... here

is it just me, or do i recently see heaps of old stuff appearing on the front page?

This was just mentioned here on /. the other day, but according to this article on Groklaw, Christoph Hellwig is (was?) a Caldera (SCO) employee.

SCO is going after SGI for XFS, when one of their own employees was working on it.

after a code review by Christoph Hellwig

Incidentally, this is the Christoph Hellwig who contributed code to the kernel on Calderas behalf. His contributions may become an important point in the SCO-IBM-RedHat battle.

All I know is, I'm glad I switched to OS X.

Um, so if they win, that just means your next. What makes you think SCO will stop at Linux? They've already mentioned *BSD. SCO has a case? I'm glad you somehow know, when IBM (and the court) have asked SCO to tell us "what this case is actually about". So perhaps you could share this evidence with us, and "grep -R SMP *.[ch]" doesn't count.

I know this is a little late, but from something that I read at groklaw.net it appears that there was many CDs of information submitted by SCO. The problem with them is that 46 (IIRC) CDs are of TIFF images of the code. Check out this article and search for tiff (being that that string is in the word "plaintiff" you will have to do it several times to get past the beginning briefs). To quote from one of the responses:

SCO's 122 CD's of Discovery Authored by: JohnGabriel on Saturday, December 06 2003 @ 06:21 PM EST

In an earlier thread, someone asked if the 122 CD's of SCO's discovery included the CD's of TIFF images.

The answer is yes.

From page 5 of IBM's first Memo In Support Of Motion To Compel (Document 45): "...on September 20, 2003, SCO made an initial production of 46 CDs containing over 900,000 pages of source code..."

A little quick math shows that each CD contained about 20,000 pages of source code. At approximately 700,000 KB per CD, each page would be about 35 KB in size. I'm sure we can all agree that in text form, a page of source code would be about 5 KB max. (80 bytes per line x 60 lines per page) and this would only be reached if every line were filled with blank charaters rather than returns at the end of the line.

This is probably Judge Welles asked about the "hundreds of thousands of pages of unusable text" in her questioning of Kevin McBride. Clearly, if SCO claims that they gave a hundred CD's of discovery more than IBM, but those CD's were in an unusable format, their claim of having delivered more discovery materials than IBM is disingenuous.

The judge may well have felt insulted by SCO's presumption that whe was too ignorant to know the difference between usable and non-usable discovery materials.

SCO may have dug an even deeper hole for themselves than we realized yesterday. Treating a judge as if she's stupid is not going to win them any points.

Kevin Mack's Top 10 Linus SCO quotes (in reverse order):

[thanks to Dee-Ann LeBlanc for the link.]

10. Not About IP"None of the SCO accusations have anything to do with IP rights; they're all about contracts between IBM and SCO. All the IP rights blathering by SCO was just that -- blathering"

9. Custody Battle"SCO is claiming parenthood of that child and now wants to make money off the earnings of that child. Even though SCO has refused to undergo the technical equivalent of DNA testing, and even though my (and other people's) DNA is probably all over Linux."

8. Lottery

"we have to sadly decline taking business model advice from a company that seems to have squandered all its money (that it made off a Linux IPO, I might add, since there's a nice bit of irony there), and now seems to play the US legal system as a lottery."

7. Copyright Law"So . . . when he attacks the GPL as being somehow against 'financial gain', that notion that the GPL has of 'exchange of receipt of copyrighted works' is actually EXPLICITLY ENCODED in the US copyright law. It's not just a crazy idea that some lefty commie hippie dreamed up in a drug-induced stupor."

6. Raelians

"SCO is playing it like the Raelians [the organization backed by Clonaid's founder, known as Rael], saying, 'We'll show you proof in a few weeks, through an expert panel that we trust.' Let's see if there is any baby or not."

5. Jerry Springer"Quite frankly, I found it mostly interesting in a Jerry Springer kind of way. White trash battling it out in public, throwing chairs at each other. SCO crying about IBM's other women. ... Fairly entertaining"

4. Stealing Cars In Bright Daylight

"Do you steal a car in the bright daylight with a lot of people around? Or do you steal a car, go for a joyride at 4 am in the morning when there aren't a lot of people around. With open source, there is a lot of daylight. A lot of people looking at the code. You don't really go around and steal things."

3. Constitution and Marriage"If Darl McBride was in charge, he'd probably make marriage unconstitutional too, since clearly it de-emphasizes the commercial nature of normal human interaction, and probably is a major impediment to the commercial growth of prostitution"

2. Smoking"They are smoking crack."

And number one, according to Mack...

1. Please Grow Up"we find your references to a negotiating table somewhat confusing, since there doesn't seem to be anything to negotiate about. SCO has yet to show any infringing IP in the Open Source domain, but we wait with bated breath for when you will actually care to inform us about what you are blathering about."

What do you think? Join the Feedback to this item.

I'm thinking that their boyancy may have to do with two things.. One is that someone is pretty apparently supporting the stock. The other might have something to do with so many people selling their stock short I'm wondering if a lot of their liquid stock is now caught up in shorts. If nothing else, this might now make it a lot easier to manipulate the prices...
In any case, if SCO's lawyers get their heads kicked in in 34 days (the clock doesn't start ticking until IBM perfects the motion on Wednesday), I don't think that a flock of messiahs could keep their stock afloat.

Please see http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200312051 35223118
for Linus Torvalds' very interesting and intelligent take on the foundations of US copyright laws and how they apply to the GPL. Leave it to a native-born Finn to elucidate the obvious in the US legal system!

IBM wins this case if they can prove (ie, get the court to agree) that any of several different things are true:

• The contract is not binding, or
• AIX is not "derived from" the old UNIX after some point in history (and if the development of the particular features postdate that), or
• The features over which SCO is suing were developed in an environment not covered by the contract and ported to Linux from there, or
• SCO's distribution of Linux source that includes the code in question provided implicit approval for revealing the secrets.

Based on the AT&T/IBM side letter, it's hard to see how SCOG can claim that IBM isn't allowed to use its own tech (JFS, RCU, etc.) any way it pleases:

2. Regarding Section 2.01, we agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you are owned by you. However, ownership of any portion or portions of SOFTWARE PRODUCTS included in any such modification or derivative work remains with us.

SCOG has been very careful not to bring up this particular clause.

--Troy

More on the hearing :
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200312051 61348100

Links to static headline page:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page= Headlines

More on the hearing :
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200312051 61348100

Links to static headline page:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page= Headlines

I'm sure I don't know any more about the law than you do, but Lawrence Lessig does. And he seems to think that McBride's claims are preposterous. Another source for (para)legal opinions on this nonsense is Groklaw, where even Linus Torvalds has something to say about the latest McBride open letter.

ROTFLMAO. Here is some more humor from Groklaw:

Reporting live from the courthouse; Kermit the Frog

SCO Has Their Day In Court

The David Boies Blues

ROTFLMAO. Here is some more humor from Groklaw:

Reporting live from the courthouse; Kermit the Frog

SCO Has Their Day In Court

The David Boies Blues

ROTFLMAO. Here is some more humor from Groklaw:

Reporting live from the courthouse; Kermit the Frog

SCO Has Their Day In Court

The David Boies Blues