SCO Threatens to Press IP Claims on Linux -$99/cpu

Tangential writes "New story on LinuxBusiness week says SCO is about to mount an effort to get all Linux sites to pay a per cpu license for so-called patent violations."SCO has been proposing to charge users $96 per CPU for a so-called one-time System 5 for Linux software license to protect their systems from SCO-enforced patent issues if they ante up as soon as demand is made." They've retained David Boies (DOJ prosecutor of Microsoft) to handle the legal issues." Note: I've been unable to substantiate this - which are fairly incendiary claims. Further updates as more is heard.

Comments

Re:Patents as deterrence against enforcement

[spencerogden]

No, WWII was a reaction to Hitler's campaign to conquer the world and exterminate the jews. The only reason it could be seen as small incidents getting bigger and bigger is that no one could believe that Hitler was so ambitious and insane.

Mod Abuse!

[stinky wizzleteats]

Alan Cox picked up an overrated mod which was clearly an emotional reaction to his contreversial post! We need these chickenshit overrated mods in the M2 queue so i can weed the bastards out.

Re:Mod Abuse!

[sbuckhopper]

No offense to Alan Cox because I think that it is an interesting point, but he also picked up a whole lot of mod points because he is Alan Cox.

It was an interesting point, but he was trying to be prolific and whether you think he is right on wrong, he isn't necessarily more interesting than the thousands of other wanna-be philisophical posts on slashdot that are making some prolific statement so that some day they can say, "see I told you so."

So you are correct, people shouldn't mod things as overrated as a matter of an emotional reaction, but people shouldn't be lazy with their mod points and think, "Oh Alan Cox, yeah, I'll mod that one up."

To keep this on subject, yes I think that Alan has an interesting point, but one of the things I've noticed about computer programming types (myself included) is that we tend to over-react to things and bring them to an extreme end. This has been more evident to me as I am a computer programmer that just married a computer programmer. She and I think of the worst possible outcome. We have to, by following the different paths that a problem can follow and choosing the worst possible outcome, you can fix the worst problems first.

This gives us, as computer programmers and interesting view of the world. In other words we tend to view the world in a pessamistic view. Alan has every right to say what he said, and I think that he makes some good points about how things are. Perhaps he has just predicted the demise of the U.S., but I'm still not going to call him a prophet or a fortune teller or whatever.

The fact of the matter is that with a machine in a finite set of rules he most likely has an accurate prediction, however man kind is not necessarily a machine. That means that the people of the US may wake up someday and decide that they are stupid for doing what they're doing and correct the situation.

So like I said, it was an interesting point. The whole point of what I'm saying here is that its just a prediction. He feels that he has history to back himself and maybe he's right. But short of calling him God (which I know some people around here do), he has no definitive way to say that he is 100% correct. An interesting point that may or may not be overrated, may or may not have been modded up to +5 because it was Alan Cox.