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In the now "Open Letter Frenzy" Linus responds to Darl.

My favorite:
However, 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.

Article at Infoworld

There's an article over on Infoworld that includes an Open Letter from Linus Torvalds on the situation. I won't quote the whole article, but here's the letter:

Open letter to Darl McBride -- please grow up.

Dear Darl,

Thank you so much for your letter.

We are happy that you agree that customers need to know that Open Source is legal and stable, and we heartily agree with that sentence of your letter. The others don't seem to make as much sense, but we find the dialogue refreshing.

However, 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. We in the Open Source group continue to believe in technology as a way of driving customer interest and demand.

Also, 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.

All of our source code is out in the open, and we welcome you point to any particular piece you might disagree with.

Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission,

Yours truly,

Linus Torvalds

There's an article over on Infoworld that includes an Open Letter from Linus Torvalds on the situation. I won't quote the whole article, but here's the letter:

Open letter to Darl McBride -- please grow up.

Dear Darl,

Thank you so much for your letter.

We are happy that you agree that customers need to know that Open Source is legal and stable, and we heartily agree with that sentence of your letter. The others don't seem to make as much sense, but we find the dialogue refreshing.

However, 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. We in the Open Source group continue to believe in technology as a way of driving customer interest and demand.

Also, 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.

All of our source code is out in the open, and we welcome you point to any particular piece you might disagree with.

Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission,

Yours truly,

Linus Torvalds

The following has been cut and pasted from the InfoWorld article "Torvalds to SCO: Negotiate What?"

--- cut here ---

Open letter to Darl McBride -- please grow up.

Dear Darl,

Thank you so much for your letter.

We are happy that you agree that customers need to know that Open Source is legal and stable, and we heartily agree with that sentence of your letter. The others don't seem to make as much sense, but we find the dialogue refreshing.

However, 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. We in the Open Source group continue to believe in technology as a way of driving customer interest and demand.

Also, 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.

All of our source code is out in the open, and we welcome you point to any particular piece you might disagree with.

Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission,

Yours truly,

Linus Torvalds

In a new article, SCO's Blake Stowell is quoted as saying, "As of Tuesday [Sept. 2], we actually began making the license available. Selling it and mailing it to someone is not something we've actually done as yet, but as of today we are able to do that".

Excuse me for being shocked, but didn't SCO announce on August 11th in a press release, that they'd sold the first license? And didn't SCO then go on to tell us that SCO had signed up at least one additional customer since it sold its first IP License for Linux on Aug. 11?

Wait there's more...

There is an interesting coincidence about the timing of 1st license announcement.

According to marketwatch.com on 11 August:
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/historical/defaul t.asp?detect=1&symbol=SCOX&close_date=8%2F11%2F03& x=48&y=18

Stock opened at $10.45
Heavy trading (965,500 shares)
Fell to a low of $8.27. From Yahoo message board (see below) this low appears to be part of a sharp decline around late lunch time.
Stock closed at $9.289

Go look around here for what was being said on the yahoo board around 1.30 to 2pm this time: http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&actio n=l&mid=&board=1600684464&sid=1600684464&tid=cald& start=26210

The press release when SCO announced their first license was at 2.03pm ET according to the time stamp on it:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030811/lam083_1.html

No doubt the timing is all coincidence.

Another coincidence is that Michael Olson, had a 10b5-1 sell on that day:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102542/000 110254203000049/xslF345X02/edgardoc.xml

No doubt, another coincidence.

So here's the quick summary:

1. SCO issued a press release, August 11, saying they sold their first Linux IP license: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030811/lam083_1.html
2. The press release, luckily for SCO, appeared immediately after the stock crashed to a low of $8.27
3. A SCO insider had a pre-arranged plan to sell stock (and did so) on that day , 11 August: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102542/000 110254203000049/xslF345X02/edgardoc.xml
4. In September, SCO later said they had sold at least one other Linux IP license: http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/09/03/HNscocus tomer_1.html
5. In September, SCO later said they hadn't sold any Linux IP licenses: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1 817&e=2&u=/zd/20030905/tc_zd/59210&sid=9612075 1
6. I am not sure of the order of articles 4 and 5 in date, but article 4 appears to have been published before 5.

In a new article, SCO's Blake Stowell is quoted as saying, "As of Tuesday [Sept. 2], we actually began making the license available. Selling it and mailing it to someone is not something we've actually done as yet, but as of today we are able to do that".

Excuse me for being shocked, but didn't SCO announce on August 11th in a press release, that they'd sold the first license? And didn't SCO then go on to tell us that SCO had signed up at least one additional customer since it sold its first IP License for Linux on Aug. 11?

Wait there's more...

There is an interesting coincidence about the timing of 1st license announcement.

According to marketwatch.com on 11 August:
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/historical/defaul t.asp?detect=1&symbol=SCOX&close_date=8%2F11%2F03& x=48&y=18

Stock opened at $10.45
Heavy trading (965,500 shares)
Fell to a low of $8.27. From Yahoo message board (see below) this low appears to be part of a sharp decline around late lunch time.
Stock closed at $9.289

Go look around here for what was being said on the yahoo board around 1.30 to 2pm this time: http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&actio n=l&mid=&board=1600684464&sid=1600684464&tid=cald& start=26210

The press release when SCO announced their first license was at 2.03pm ET according to the time stamp on it:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030811/lam083_1.html

No doubt the timing is all coincidence.

Another coincidence is that Michael Olson, had a 10b5-1 sell on that day:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102542/000 110254203000049/xslF345X02/edgardoc.xml

No doubt, another coincidence.

So here's the quick summary:

1. SCO issued a press release, August 11, saying they sold their first Linux IP license: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030811/lam083_1.html
2. The press release, luckily for SCO, appeared immediately after the stock crashed to a low of $8.27
3. A SCO insider had a pre-arranged plan to sell stock (and did so) on that day , 11 August: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102542/000 110254203000049/xslF345X02/edgardoc.xml
4. In September, SCO later said they had sold at least one other Linux IP license: http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/09/03/HNscocus tomer_1.html
5. In September, SCO later said they hadn't sold any Linux IP licenses: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1 817&e=2&u=/zd/20030905/tc_zd/59210&sid=9612075 1
6. I am not sure of the order of articles 4 and 5 in date, but article 4 appears to have been published before 5.

Google can probably find you more, if you ask it nicely.

Windows 2000 sp3 and Windows XP sp1 give Microsoft full access to your data. So for most bankers, doctors, insurance companies, and so on, if they run MS-Windows they get to choose from getting taken out by the worm of the week now or grabbing their ankles and waiting for the lawyers to read the license.

There is a third option, which is cheaper and more practical: upgrade to linux, using your existing hardware. Or, next time it's time for new hardware, re-examine lower TCO options.

guess what...They already are...

Acutally that's probably unfair. They're outsourcing the jobs to a manufacturing company and getting out of the low-level microelectroncis (read, less profitable) so they can work on processor (G5, Power4+, Power5, etc) design work

InfoWorld recently compared Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, and Turbolinux for a use inside a corporate environment. The result was that the 4 all products were excellent, but the Mandrake Prosuite 9.1 ranked first with the best overall note. Additionnally the ProSuite is by far the less expensive product (around $200). You'll find this 3-page article at InfoWorld. And the Mandrake 9.1 ProSuite is available for purchase directly from MandrakeSoft at MandrakeStore (Mandrake Club Members usually get rebates on most Mandrake products).

More information to add to the above:

I've read about overly restrictive Microsoft EULAs, but this is all I can find now.

Runtime Runaround. (You can't use a program you wrote in the Microsoft FoxPro language under Linux.)

Remember this about EULAs: They bind you now. However, maybe the most scary thing about EULAs is that the vendor can change what they say in the future, after you have heavily invested in your tools, and cannot easily change. Basically, you can be held to a contract to which you didn't agree and which did not exist at the time you first made your decision to use a particular tool. Yes, you can always use the old tool under the old EULA, but the computing industry changes fast and you may need an update. If you need the update, then you either agree to the new EULA or spend the huge amount of time and money necessary to change tools. Moral: Choose your business partners carefully. They have serious control over your future. It's like getting married. You want someone you can trust with your life. When you pick a tool vendor, you want someone you can trust with your corporate life.

In the first comment to the story linked above, there is mention of a Microsoft EULA prohibiting benchmarks.

You are prohibited from using VNC, an excellent free program for remotely interacting with a desktop, with Microsoft Windows XP. See the bottom of this article by Brian Livingston: "Except as otherwise permitted by the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop features described below, you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display, or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product's user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product."

These are just notes about what Microsoft feels it has a right to do.

Reading this thread (which of course I found via my aggregator (RSS Bandit) from the Slashdot Feed, there seems to be a lot of confusion about what RSS actually IS. The beauty of RSS, IMHO, is that is is Really Simple. The Creative Commons licensed spec for RSS 2 shows that there's a tiny core of mandatory information and reasonable extensibility through the use of XML namespaces. I use RSS to locate new articles from here, from The Register, BBC News, The Guardian, ITN news (yes, I'm a news junkie), kuro5hin, InfoWorld, Wired, for product update news from various SourceForge projects I use, for tracking a bunch of techie blogs I read without having to visit every one of them regularly, for recently-posted-article lists from thirty or so sites that I couldn't possibly keep track of by visiting them individually. I figure that if you've had a look at the examples I've given, and optionally the spec, you ALREADY have enough to successfully expose and consume RSS.

But the thing is, RSS is Really Simple. Simple to consume, simple to produce. So, since I already have my reader in place, I've also got a bunch of private feeds - an RSS file that shows me login/logout events from my server logs, an RSS feed that shows me the last 25 orders valued over 250 placed by our customers, an RSS feed that lists the 25 most recent software releases we've done, outstanding Service Requests and Change requests.

All of this could be achieved in other ways - what makes it a winner for me is that, for anything that's a series of events, it's pretty much trivial to expose those events as RSS <item>s, and then I can monitor all those items, from their diverse sources, in one place.

But then, I'm already somewhat smitten with RSS, obviously.

TomV

I recently reinstalled Windows XP. There were 47 "critical" updates. Installed service pack 1. Then there were 29 critical updates left. About time for Service pack 2.

Don't expect SP2 anytime soon, Microsoft pushed back their release of WinXP SP2 until 3rd quarter of next year.

Here's a U.S. Supreme Court Decision that does just that: InfoWorld article

No, actually they are facing a uninformed public...

I supposed the prohibition on product reviews and general criticism are contributing to the problem by preventing informed decisions. Likewise when the media refer to the Microsoft Worm / Virus of the Week as an "E-mail Worm" or "Internet Virus", they are effectively providing spin/damage control for a single company's design and production defects by neglecting the scope of the problem.

No, actually they are facing a uninformed public...

I supposed the prohibition on product reviews and general criticism are contributing to the problem by preventing informed decisions. Likewise when the media refer to the Microsoft Worm / Virus of the Week as an "E-mail Worm" or "Internet Virus", they are effectively providing spin/damage control for a single company's design and production defects by neglecting the scope of the problem.

Microsoft IS involved.

[McBride:] "Terrorists do things designed to intimidate people, and we see a lot of that going on all the time -- people trying to attack us or people that we're associated with," he said at the time. "If you look at a DOS attack, that's a form of cyber-terrorism," he said. "when you're shutting people's Web sites down, you are impacting commerce. That's against the law."

I have to agree with the parent to your post. I was concerned, not with the fact that ESR wrote that missive, but because of some of the actual content:

I'm in at least semi-regular communication with most of the people and organizations who are causing you problems right now.

That one could be construed as involvement, participation, encouragement of such things as ... say a DOS attack on SCO's website.

That's not freedom of speech. It's a question of being party to a criminal act. I think you read the parent post's concern incorrectly which of course led to the kind of off-kilter spirals that this forum is famous for.

Actually I think someone should shut him up or give him some lessons on tact. Sure he's pissed of with SCO but we should be taking the high ground on this and not ranting and calling people names and having a go at a whole state just because that is where SCO are based.

Secondly his comments on this DoS attack on SCO are outragous, sure he might know who it was, but don't go bragging about it and don't associate the whole OSS movement by saying stupid things like this.

"He's one of us. He is part of the community around open source software and the Internet infrastructure and he's pretty senior," Raymond said.

Right, so what he's saying to a casual observer is that all OSS developers are vandals who resort to illegal acts when someone pisses them off just because they have the skills to do so.

You can mod me down for having a go at one of the open source figureheads, but he needs to think about the results of what he says before he says it.

Tom.

One little problem with your one little issue: Sun paid SCO after SCO publicly announced they hired David Boies.

SCO hired David Boies on or before, January 10, 2003.

SCO Threatens to Press IP Claims on Linux

On January 22, 2003, SCO made their public announcement.

Has SCO Fired Shot to Start Linux War?

Sun closed their deal, paid their money, and received their stock warrant on or after February 1, 2003.

SCO 10-Q

I think Sun knew what SCO was planning to do with Boies, especially since SCO and IBM had already held talks by then, and Sun negotiated an equity stake in SCO as part of Sun's deal with SCO.

We'll find out more when SCO files their next 10-Q.

See, e.g, here:

http://archive.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/11 /27/021127hnerniball.xml?s=IDGNS
November 27, 2002

http://linux.bryanconsulting.com/stories/storyRead er$172
10 June 2003
1 May 2002

etc. etc.

A little research please, editors

Least supportive? I think its fair to say they have been the most supportive, willing to give it the most chance. They began experimenting with the frickin NES online, back in the 80s in Japan.

The company doesn't consider online will generate its worth, which is fair to say, The Xbox and Xbox Live obviously do not prove their worth.

In Bruce's commentary, there was a link to an Infoworld article/interview with Bruce. It's pretty good. Bruce disputes SCO's claims, and the reporter didn't minimize/trivialize it. Coupled with the eWeek interview, I think we might stand a fighting chance in the court of public opinion.

You may re-publish this material. You may excerpt it, reformat it and translate it as necessary for your presentation. You may not edit it to deliberately misrepresent my opinion.

An SCO presentation shown in Las Vegas on August 18th alleged infringement by the Linux developers. The presentation, in Microsoft PowerPoint format is here, and an conversion of the presentation that can be viewed using a web browser is here .

SCO released the presentation to Bob McMillan, a reporter for IDG News Service, without any non-disclosure terms. Bob asked me to comment upon it. here's his story.

I will start with SCO's demonstrations regarding "copied" software. It is likely that SCO would present the very best examples that they have of "copied" code in their slide show. But I was easily able to determine that of the two examples, one isn't SCO's property at all, and the other is used in Linux under a valid license. If this is the best SCO has to offer, they will lose.

Slide 15 shows purports to show "Obfuscated Copying" from Unix System V into Linux. SCO further obfuscated the code on this slide by switching it to a Greek font, but that was easily undone. It's entertaining that the SCO folks had no clue that the font-change could be so easily reversed. I'm glad they don't work on my computer security :-)

The code shown in this slide implements the Berkeley Packet Filter, internet firewall software often abbreviated as "BPF". SCO doesn't own BPF. It was created at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory with funding from the U.S. Government, and is itself derived from an older version called "enet", developed by Stanford and Carnegie-Mellon Universities. BPF was first deployed on the 4.3 BSD system produced by the University of California at Berkeley. SCO later copied the software into Unix System V.

The BPF source code is here on the Lab's web site. A paper on its design, published in 1993, is here

BPF is under the BSD license. That license allowed SCO to legally copy the code into Unix System V in 1996, but since SCO doesn't own the code, they have no right to prevent others from using it.

So, in this case the SCO "pattern-recognition" team correctly deduced that the Linux and SCO implementations of BPF were similar. But I was able to determine the origin of BPF after a few minutes of web searches on google.com . Why couldn't a "pattern-recognition team" do the same? It's difficult to believe they simply didn't bother to check. It's also likely that SCO dropped attribution of the Lab's copyright from the System V copy of the BPF source code, or the team would have known.

The Linux version of BPF is not an obfuscation of the BPF code. It is a clean-room re-implementation of BPF by Jay Schulist of the Linux developers, sharing none of the original source code, but carefully following the documentation of the Lab's product. The System V and Linux BPF versions shown in slide 15 implement the same virtual machine instruction set, which is used to filter (allow, reject, change, or reroute) internet packets. And the documentation for that VM even specifies field names. Thus Schulist's and the Lab's implementations appear similar. Had Schulist chosen to directly use the Lab's code, it still would have been legal. But the version in Linux is entirely original to the Linux developers. There is no legal theory that would give SCO any claim upon it.

Slides 10 through 14 show memory allocation functions from Unix System V, and their correspondence to very similar mat

I found the link about this. Control with fine print

One of the SCO articles of the last few hours quotes SCO users as saying that SCO's utilities are useless and they depend on GNU to be able to do anything.

From SCO users divided over GPL:

"The OpenServer compiler is crap. Without (the GCC) they would be up the creek," said Hans Anderson, the director of software development with Price Data Systems in Louisville, Kentucky.

It's good to see articles in the mainstream news finally appearing that show SCO for what they are. Here is an intersting one in InfoWorld from yesterday. Some more Fact and a little less FUD should help enlighten some of those poor, misguided stock-holders.

Didn't SCO just announce the other day a new product that would be distributed with Samba 3.0? I know I read that somewhere...

Ahh, yes...there's this and this.

Does violating the GPL with one product (the kernel) violate it under another (samba)?

That is, could the Samba team actually file against SCO for injunctive relief to prohibit them from distributing Samba for license violation just because they violated the GPL where the Linux kernel is concerned?

"Sontag and Heise also presented some short snippets of source code that they claimed had been directly copied from SCO's Unix to Linux."

According to this Infoworld article, Airgo Networks is working on enhancing 802.11a. This is not a new version of 802.11.

The parent was modded Redundant, but I can't find any other comment with a working link. I notice the URL works for either infoworld.com or archive.infoworld.com but NOT for www.infoworld.com (which was the URL given in the main post); it just gives a "Not Found: Nothing matches the given URI" error. So somebody please either fix the main post by putting a working URL there, or at the very least mod up this comment's parent.

The parent was modded Redundant, but I can't find any other comment with a working link. I notice the URL works for either infoworld.com or archive.infoworld.com but NOT for www.infoworld.com (which was the URL given in the main post); it just gives a "Not Found: Nothing matches the given URI" error. So somebody please either fix the main post by putting a working URL there, or at the very least mod up this comment's parent.

The parent was modded Redundant, but I can't find any other comment with a working link. I notice the URL works for either infoworld.com or archive.infoworld.com but NOT for www.infoworld.com (which was the URL given in the main post); it just gives a "Not Found: Nothing matches the given URI" error. So somebody please either fix the main post by putting a working URL there, or at the very least mod up this comment's parent.

2. Unix has a much longer history than Windows NT+. It's had more time for the holes and buffer problems and other stuff to be fixed. Linux essentially "lengthens" its short history because it has so many eyes looking at it.
...
Unix is just built better. It has a longer history. I'll ceed that perhaps with a larger user base (pretend Unix has 90% market share) it would be a bigger target, but it is *not* as susceptible as Windows is. Not by a large margin.

I wouldn't be so quick to jump to this conclusion. Even though there's a huge community working on open source code, plenty of companies stake their survival on the quality of their code (Microsoft included).

Check out this story, for example. Some company called Reasoning did a code audit on Apache and found a defect density of .53 defects per 1000 lines of code, compared to an average .51 defect density for commercial products. Now, this was a review of Apache and not the Linux kernel, of course, but there's clearly going to be a correlation. I also think any reasonable person would agree that Microsoft's defect density probably isn't very different from the commercial average. Despite what you may feel about them, they certainly have some of the most qualified software engineers working for them.

The link in the main post doesn't work. This one does: Microsoft.com falls to DOS attack

Microsoft is now confirming what was speculated: About 8:45pm PT Thursday, Microsoft.com and Windows Update went down for several hours. One reason was a DDOS attack Microsoft says was unrelated to the MSBlast worm.

And Microsoft sources also say the company has moved at least the Windows Update domain (and perhaps Microsoft.com itself) to new IP addresses isolated from the rest of their networks to blunt the expected worm attack.

Upon reading the interview (too tired to read the study), it will become clear, that the alleged invalidity of the GPL concerns mostly the no warranty part and some other minor concerns.

Also, it's worth noting this study was funded by the VSI, a german alliance of closed-source software companys.

DISCLAIMER: IANAL (yet - I am a law student), so the following is not legal advice -- go ask a lawyer if you want to know for sure.

Germany follows the continental-european tradition of the droit d'auteur (Author's right). This means not the right to draw benefits from a specific work but rather the right of the author to his work. The assignment of copyright - as done in the US and even required by the FSF - is impossible under german legislation.

What is possible is for the owner of the Author's Right to grant Usage Rights to others, meaning he allows others to exercise certain rights over his work.

The GPL seems to me (where it concerns redistribution) to be such a case, where the original author offers to grant an irrevocable, royalty-free Usage Right to anyone who wants to exercise it.

As for the modifications: Modification of a work by the holder of a Usage Right is not allowed according to 39 I UrhG, UNLESS otherwise agreed upon.

So it seems the legal constuction employed is totally different from the one in countries with an anglo-saxon Copyright tradition, but the spirit of the GPL holds true (apart from liability problems. I did not read the study, just the interview).

The bottom line is that SCO's argument about 1 copy allowed -> GPL allows more -> GPL is invalid is bullshit in Germany like in any other part of the world.

Else, if the Author cannot waive his rights (which is correct), how could anyone make copies, even if they only intend to distribute it and hand him all the cash? (which clearly is incorrect)

P.S.: I am from germany, so please excuse my strange English and my awful (esp. legal) vocabulary.

I know it is the "in" thing to rag on script kiddies but it does not matter who did the damage. Why someone has more or less respect for a root kit user or a exploit writer because it was easy or hard to implement is beyond me. It would not matter to me if my systems were cracked by Solar Designer, Linus, or a t33n gamer. My claiming I was only cracked by a script kiddie does not make it any better, the damage is still the same. If it was something I could have patched but did not, I'd blame myself first.

IMHO (not probably not a popular one), someone who writes a virus that replicates by seeking out other victims through sockets is not what I consider to be a script kiddie. Code Red and Slapper were similar. Regardless of how poorly you think it is written, it has taken down between 250,000-500,000 internet users in only three days.

Very interesting article on the topic of HTML/JavaScript email. In short: never ever ever allow your email client to run JavaScript. :)

The article talks about some very interesting possibilities that make simply knowing how long you viewed the mail seem pale by comparison: JavaScript can be used to track any text added when forwarding the mail, track who gets the mail next (their email address), how many times a specific copy of a message is forwarded, etc etc. So, if you leave JavaScript turned on, there may have been some truth to those "If you forward this mail to everyone you know, Bill Gates will give you a penny" type of chain emails after all.

Note that this functionality is still available in some clients, but ought to be turned off by default.

Interesting points about their earnings announcement:

1) Profits were $3.1 million
2) According to a story over at Infoworld, Microsoft may have paid $6 million for their Unix license.
3) Out of $20.1 million in revenues, $7.3 million came from SCOsource, which is the unit driving this whole nonsense.
4) And according to SCO itself, they've spent around $1 million on legal costs so far related to the IBM suit.

Bottom line: SCO's fundamental business is still in a death spiral. Take away the legal fees and the SCOsource revenue, and the rest of the biz lost around $2.2 million, on revenues of $16 million...

It's not a new problem. Nor is any amount of wishful thinking is going to fix the problem, Microsoft's products just aren't engineered for security. It's a problem that would take years to fix. Bill Gates himself made allusions to the U.S. Apollo space program of the 1960's which was $25 billion over 10 years. However, for the time being, the security issue is treated like a PR problem and the customers are taking the lumps.

A this point the problem is sociological or psychological. Like any other cult, Microsoft provides a sense of purpose and belonging to it supporters. Note that neither a technical background nor even an analytical way of thinking is a prerequisite, thus fulfilling even the unconditional acceptance aspect of a cult.

As much as IT staff and, especially IT manangers, admire the personal wealth of Bill Gates, they just need to be able to let go of Windows and move on.

Move on, either to Macintosh or Linux or QNX or BSD or Novell there are many choice. There will be some up front costs, but even without the viruses and worms these upfront costs will be offset by the number of maintenance hours saved.

It's not a new problem. Nor is any amount of wishful thinking is going to fix the problem, Microsoft's products just aren't engineered for security. It's a problem that would take years to fix. Bill Gates himself made allusions to the U.S. Apollo space program of the 1960's which was $25 billion over 10 years. However, for the time being, the security issue is treated like a PR problem and the customers are taking the lumps.

A this point the problem is sociological or psychological. Like any other cult, Microsoft provides a sense of purpose and belonging to it supporters. Note that neither a technical background nor even an analytical way of thinking is a prerequisite, thus fulfilling even the unconditional acceptance aspect of a cult.

As much as IT staff and, especially IT manangers, admire the personal wealth of Bill Gates, they just need to be able to let go of Windows and move on.

Move on, either to Macintosh or Linux or QNX or BSD or Novell there are many choice. There will be some up front costs, but even without the viruses and worms these upfront costs will be offset by the number of maintenance hours saved.

A legal test of the GPL is a good thing no matter how it turns out.

This interesting thought is being currently put to the test in another and less formal way, in Germany. Legal expert Prof Spindler (link to Infoworld report) recently provided a legal opinion (in German - very long) saying that GPL is invalid in Germany (mainly it seems because of excessive disclaimers of liability).

Spindler provided this opinion for VSI, a lobby group for closed source. It might conceivably be suspected that the legal objections could have been inadvertently exaggerated, or simple possible fixes overlooked. If the objections are confirmed as legally solid by independent opinion, maybe their effect could be taken away by relatively brief or simple amendment to GPL, e.g. making a specific saving for overriding statute/case law if a lack of saving for that law would otherwise invalidate the applicability of the GPL. (But I don't know enough about German law to make any more specific suggestions).

This kind of thing may be a test of how the GPL can adapt in practice, given the large bodies of code that have been GPL'd under the existing version.

Instead, competition has been the major stimulus of innovation at Cisco.

Too bad all you're innovating is ways to fuck people who buy barely-used Cisco hardware from dead startups and other places.

I just see Microsquish as having the spare pocket change and I don't remember whether Sun or HP is still a Fortune 500 company. Also, Sun seems to have been fairly successful at utilizing Linux as an introductory product that gets customers into the *nix world and then they can sell them Solaris.

I just see Microsquish as having the spare pocket change and I don't remember whether Sun or HP is still a Fortune 500 company. Also, Sun seems to have been fairly successful at utilizing Linux as an introductory product that gets customers into the *nix world and then they can sell them Solaris.

The deal is not with Microsoft Corp. or Sun Microsystems Inc., two prominent companies that have already signed other licensing agreements with SCO to cover their commercial products, Stowell said.

And this would seem to substantiate your guess.

It's being reported that a Microsoft sales pro admitted that Microsoft gave SCO six million dollars to help them with the lawsuit.

From Infoworld: SCO strikes gold, Verizon just strikes:

$6 Million, Man

What does it cost to license an OS you don't really need? A cool $6 million. That's the figure a Microsoft sales pro let slip when asked why the Redmond boys acquired a Unix license from The SCO Group. According to my source, the pro said Microsoft ponied up because "SCO needed money for their lawsuit problem." SCO PR dude Blake Stowell issued a staunch denial, saying MS wants the code for its Services for Unix product. Still, $6 mil would certainly keep SCO attorney David Boies' legal machine nicely oiled -- and the news is sure to make thousands of Microsoft conspiracy theorists happy.

That brings up an important question.

Red Hat and IBM both bring up SCO's problems with the Lanhorn Act in their suit and countersuit, respectively.

If Microsoft is indeed helping fund SCO in their FUD campaign, does this mean that Microsoft may be a co-conspirator in the Lanhorn Act violations?

Is it possible that Microsoft and SCO may both be financially liable for damages?

After all, if SCO is involved in false advertising, tortious interference, and other violations of the act, it seems natural to question whether they are doing it on their own.

I really can't imagine SCO painting themselves into the corner that they did on their own.