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The SCO case includes some behind the scenes activities that might cause an otherwise sane person some paranoid thoughts. http://www.linuxbusinessweek.com/story/48789.htm?D E=1 The suicide of Noorda's granddaughter and heir to the fortune he built up at Novell and Canopy (the holding company that is SCO); the legal and family proceedings revolving around his Alzheimer's disease http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jh tml?articleID=193200278&subSection=Breaking+News; the suicide of Robert Penrose, a key canopy partner shortly after his firing from the Canopy http://www.smallworks.com/archives/00000250.htm and other details too lurid for even slashdot.

Canopy (and Noorda's family and associates,) apparently are not people who have both oars in the water.

Does anyone want to speculate as to whether PJ has a right to fear these deaths were other than self-inflicted? Under the circumstances, would YOU feel threatened by these people?

Val Noorda has committed suicide. I'm susrpised that this never made it to the slashdot front page at the time, though, of course, we'll never know the true cause of it.

http://www.linuxbusinessweek.com/story/48789.htm

Don't forget: despite it's name, linuxbusinessweek is Anti-Linux, Pro-M$, Pro-SCO, Pro-SUN.

Maureen O'Gara, who hitched her wagon for whatever reason to the SCO star, looks to be in all sorts of trouble too by the look of this feedback thread.

Here's an article looks like CS2C has made some changes to JDS and is calling it NeoShine?

On the heels of Austin, Munich, Vienna and entire countries e.g. in South America, LA City Councilmembers have unveiled plans for an extended transition to FOSS in their press release conspicuously labelled "FREE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE MEANS MORE POLICE ON THE STREETS - COUNCIL BETS THAT OPEN SOURCE MOVEMENT CAN SAVE CITY MILLIONS".

Despite the telling omission of "AND" in its caption, the statement actually does look beyond the "...as in beer" part of the equation.

A spokesman also explained the project and its inspiration in greater detail to German heise online news.

For Ballmer and Gates, the good news is that they won't have to travel quite as far any more to try and win back their latest defectors.

The "bad" news (for them!) can be summed up as "Tux ante portas": their arch-enemy and worst nightmare already knocking (or should we say: pecking?) right at their porch now.

Maureen O'Gara spin on it.

I can't wait to see how Rob Enderle and Maureen O'Gara and Laura Didio are gonna spin this one in the trade press...

Read and laugh: http://www.linuxbusinessweek.com/story/48199.htm.

But various new sources have mentioned that Ms. Jones resigned from OSRM because SCO had systematically smeared her participation in that organization. No hard feelings between her and SCO could have crept into any of her announcements about that fine purveyor of THE Unix OS.

I don't expect they'll publish any more of Ms. O'Gara's articles. But all the other sites owned by their parent will continue to do so. So the ad revenue will flow.

The LinuxWorld editors tried to apologize, blaming it on the LinuxBusinessWeek editors and mentioning that several LinuxWorld editors threatened to resign in protest. Since they're both owned by SYS-CON, both infact running basically the same site, they're expected to cross publish certain articles.

http://www.linuxworld.com/story/46821.htm

The LinuxBusinessWeek editors on the other hand say they disagree with the LinuxWorld editors about the quality of the article, and that LinuxBusinessWeek stands by that article and look forward to publishing more of Maureen's works. But "We will no longer provide news content to LinuxWorld Magazine's accompanying Web site."

http://www.linuxbusinessweek.com/story/46854.htm

So the ad revenue will still flow to the FUD flingers (parent company), but if the LinuxWorld editors have their way the FUD will stop appearing on LinuxWorld, or they'll resign, or they'll get raises.

Look at some of the stuff she's written in the past. It's clear that she and her editors are thriving on the advertising impressions that trolling gets. Slashdot is just encouraging them by giving them attention - they have no concept of negative press or feedback.

Several people have pointed out that Bruce Perens is on the SYS-CON Media "International Board of Advisors". Bruce, I don't know if this gives you the ear of anybody significant at SYS-CON (this could just be an honorific with no meaning whatsoever), but if it does, we would all seriously appreciate you using that ear to express your disgust over this practice.

Giving her articles front page placement on Slashdot is exactly what she intends. It get tens of thousands of ad impressions, her bosses think she's writing controversial, hard hitting opinion pieces, and everybody is happy except a bunch of fuming Slashdotters. This is EXACTLY like Rob Enderle - these people desperately want attention, and they don't care if it's negative.

Please dear Slashdot editors, once it's been established that a particular writer is trolling for page views (i.e. they brag about how hated their articles are and exerpt Slashdot hate mail their publication has received) STOP giving them the front page placement they want, or you'll just encourage more of the same.

O'Gara's fondness for anonymous sources and unattributed quotes diminishes the corroborative value of the story.

We are now publishing the article and welcome Groklaw readers' further contributions, corrections, improvements, and comments. This is an ongoing project. This article is the first in a series where we'll discuss the System V UNIX ABI, or Application Binary Interface. We approached the research as, What if Linus Torvalds had not already claimed paternity of most of the header files? Then what?

The article will first explain what the ABI is and what it does, then discuss whether the code was released under the GPL and if so whether management at SCO knew and approved, and finally show how the Linux files that pertain to this do not appear to be infringing files that SCO can claim.

For those who are not programmers, such as myself, there is a footnoted section to explain in greater detail and in plain English what ABIs and APIs and shared libraries are and how they work. If you read it first, it will clarify the terminology for you and you will be able to follow the thread in the article more easily. At least, it helped me tremendously.

I think you will see from this article alone that if SCO is planning to sue anyone over the ABI files, unless there are facts we haven't unearthed, they seem to be leaning on a rickety bamboo reed.

GROKLAW TAKES A CLOSER LOOK AT THE ABI FILES
~by Frank Sorenson et al

Back in January 2003, word leaked out that SCO was planning to charge Linux users for "System V Intellectual Property" in Linux. SCO created a new business division called SCOSource to come up with new ways to make money from this "intellectual property". The original SCOSource Presentation (PowerPoint version) talks of licensing SCO's shared UNIX Libraries from OpenServer and UnixWare for use in Linux.

A Little Background: What Are ABI Files? [1]

As background information, shared libraries are files containing information to be loaded when an application is run. They usually implement common routines, and their inclusion simplifies programming, reduces file size, and standardizes interfaces. A simple example of this would be the "copy file" and "move file" commands: both commands check file permissions and manipulate the file system. When applications have a great deal of functionality in common, this functionality is often placed into shared libraries.

Shared libraries are architecture, operating-system, and version specific. Executables for different systems follow various standard formats, such as a.out, ELF, and COFF. To load an application, the system must do several things: the system interprets the format of the executable (or binary), loads any shared libraries referenced, and begins executing the code found in the binary.

If the executable is in a different format from those the system supports, or if the library files are for the wrong architecture or operating system version, the binary normally will not run. In 1991, Intel announced the availability of the iBCS-2 (Intel Binary Compatibility

We have been working on a ground breaking music discovery technology called MusicMagic... which does what captainclever is asking.

You can read more about MusicMagic in "Moving Linux into Commercial Applications" which discusses the use of Linux for MusicMagic.

Serious business inquiries can be emailed to JUSTinquiry@NOpredixisSPAM.com.