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SCO Group Lawsuit Q&A
althalus writes "PLUG, the Provo Linux Users Group, of Utah recently requested representatives from SCO to answer the questions of the local *nix users regarding their lawsuit. Since this topic has been the point of a bit of discussion here on slashdot (
1,
2,
3,
4) We figured it might be nice to get some of the questions from here. SCO has agreed to allow us to submit a list of questions ahead of time, and we will contain some of the highest moderated slashdot questions. SCO has warned us, that since this is an active lawsuit, there are some questions that obviously cannot be answered at this time, but overall, feel free to ask. Notes/Answers will be submitted to slashdot afterwards." Think of this as a third party Ask SCO almost anything.
SCO also gets tremenous points for being vindictive - a failed Linux business doing its best to sink the ship on their way out. It's fortunate for us that their best isn't enough.
Bruce Perens.
I run the Bay-area Unix Testing Tribe [BUTT].
Our organization proposes an alliance for this lawsuit. We have already opened defense fund. the BUTT-PLUG alliance should have no problem getting out of this sticky situation.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
How do you (SCO) plan to deal with the loss of community goodwill due to this lawsuit?
And SCO's reply...
What??? No CowboyNeal option?
What evidence do you have that IBM did anything? All your previous releases were vague and void of any hard evidence. If you cannot give out details, could you tell us at least in vague terms the kind of evidence that you have?
SCO --- what is it that you do again?
Do you think the publicity you will lose over this lawsuit in the linux/unix community is worth it?
Even though you (SCO) have a large base in the commercial industry, wouldn't you agree that the general opinion of your company will greatly sink if this goes through?
are you wasting everyones time with this lawsuit? You do know that if SCO played nice and put itself in a position to be bought out it's quite possible someone would buy you out. The way things are going right now you are just wasting time and money. The likelyhood of you winning any money at all is so nil that it's pointless. In any event, preface over; Where do you see SCO in the next 5 yrs, what's your current business plan or model to retain revenue in today's rough economy especially in regards to Unix(tm)?
I'm curious just exactly what you think Linux was incapable of doing without stealing from you?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
In some of the articles that I've read, Mr. Sontag specifically stated that none of the code you believe was stolen from Project Monterey has shown up in any of IBM's developed code. The only "evidence" of foul play is that IBM's code you claim comes from Unix System V/AIX was developed too quickly to have been anything but a derivative of your intellectual property.
Obviously, the best way to demonstrate that this is the case is to prove that IBM was not working on this code prior to having joined into Project Monterey. In other words, if they began working on this prior to gaining access to your IP, then it is conceivable that they found an independant solution and the timing was just coincidental.
Do you have any way of combating this or is your only evidence of foul play the coincidence of timing?
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
It's fairly reasonable to suggest that SCO has no chance against IBM, IBM being a multibillion dollar corporation and SCO being a minor also-ran with a shakey case. So, my question is: Assuming SCO loses, and the costs put SCO out of business, will SCO, as a final act of good will, release the sources of Unix, NetWare, etc, into the public domain, so that whatever misery this company has inflicted on the rest of the world can at least not have been in vain?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
2. Has this lawsuit affected the public perception of SCO? If it has, is this the result you anticipated? Is this something you want for your company?
3. Should SCO lose the lawsuit, what would be the future prospects for the company? Why would anyone want to buy SCO stock at this time?
4. Who made the decision to file this lawsuit? Was it approved by SCO's Board of Directors? Was there a vote among shareholders, or were any consulted in making this decision?
I don't expect these to get answered, but I'd sure like to know.
IAAL
I was just wondering, did you guys wake up one morning and just decide to be evil? Or did you have to work at it for a while? Or did it just happen by accident?
I was going to start my own Evil Corporation(TM) and I was trying to gauge the level of effort required. Also, you didn't happen to aquire the IP rights on Evil(TM) as well, did you? If so, what are your licencing fees for that one? I don't want to get sued over here.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
I've worked with SCO products since the XENIX days, around 2.3.2 or something along those lines. Back in their time, SCO XENIX was pretty good, as compared to the other X86 offerings back then. I have my SCO CUSA, SCO ACE, and SCO Master ACE for both OpenServer, and UnixWare 7. I worked for my area's best reseller a few years ago when their technical expertise was the tops.
;-)
About five years ago, Linux was starting to get known by most people in the computer field, but was still not catching on big. It was at a point where you could run it on decent hardware and have a machine that was every bit as nice, and then some, as an Intel box running OpenServer 5.0.x. I told my bosses then that this was going to be the up and coming thing. Two of them agreed and said SCO would get their ass kicked, and one of them said it wasn't going to catch on. I love being right.
The vast majority of our UNIX customers ran OpenServer, not UnixWare. We could hardly get UnixWare out the door, because legacy applications vendors stuck with OpenServer. UnixWare was a non-seller.
My questions are as follows:
- Why wasn't SCO able to get the software vendors on-board to switch to UnixWare so that the VARs could follow through and have a new revenue stream? Without that, the OpenServer sales died off after Y2K.
- Why didn't SCO watch Linux more closely and get their ass in gear when everyone in the industry realized more than five years ago that Linux was going to cook SCO's goose.
- OpenServer 5's X windows is just plain fugly. Five years ago, RedHat 5.0 was fast, easy to install, and had a beautiful interface compared to OpenServer 5. Why didn't SCO realize they had a chance to do something with their user interface and target the desktop market, even before Windows 95 came along?
- Why does SCO, after having dropped the ball over and over and over again, and after having failed miserably at keeping up with technology (meaning not even trying), think that they are entitled to win a lawsuit, especially since their lack of keeping up with the rest of the world has rendered them obsolete?
- Does SCO expect what's left of their reseller base to remain loyal to their following, especially since most of their resellers probably use and love Linux?
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
What do you think you are doing?!
Sure, they won't give an honest answer, if they respond at all. That too is information useful to those still invested or working for them.
It's amazing that they can't or won't turn around and do something useful. Why is it that they can't act more like Red Hat?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Are you the least bit worried that IBM will tap this considerable "witness base" and demolish your case?
to be the Worst Linux distribution?
to have filed the worst linux lawsuit?
to be the worst enemy of open source?
to have such a low sense of ethics that you would sue anyone and everyone in desperation just to keep above the red line?
to realize that your repeated buyouts, mergers, lay-offs, etc. have left you without anything worth buying and that extortion is your only chance of making a profit?
Sure, you have some software that was cool once---a long time ago. What have you done lately?
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
Let's assume SCO wins a monetary judgement from IBM. What are SCO's plans thereafter? Where will they be putting that money? Will they be updating and improving SCO, will they concentrate on Linux, or will they be going into a new direction?
In the last couple of months, my company tasked me with trying to come up with a way for our developers to start porting some of our enterprise applications to zOS and Linux/390. We didn't have the budget for a mainframe, and Hercules would probably work, but we'd still need a license from IBM to get zOS. This is not cheap or easy.
Then I discovered FLEX-ES from FSI. This emulator comes with a legal s390 license from IBM and seemed like a great solution to our problem. Except that it runs on SCO Unix. They also have a Linux version, but it might not support some of our hardware requirements.
Because of the lawsuit your company has filed against IBM, we have decided not to purchase this software, or the underlining SCO Unix OS license.
Now I'm sure my company's small purchase wouldn't help out a company expecting a billion dollar settlement that much. But if my company is not willing to purchase your flagship OS for fear of the reprocussions, how many other companies out there will also not purchase SCO based products or licenses...
If SCO is to continue in the future, come what may from the lawsuit, how do you expect companies to purchase products from you without fear of a future lawsuit against another company for IP infringement?
Your mom always said, a PB&J is better than nothing, and God is nothing, is a PB&J better than God?
Are you willing to let the OSS community examine the UnixWare code, so as to make sure that no part of the Linux / GPL code found it way into your software. SCO engineers has worked on Linux so by your own reasoning there is a fair chance code was "borrowed" and reused in Unixware.
A small insignificant company like SCO can not possible have the engineering expertise to make enterprise ready SW, therefore they must have stolen from someone.
Help fight continental drift.
Could you please explain the acquisition of thousands of shares of your company's stock stock by many of your company's officers 10 days prior to the announcement of this lawsuit?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The net result of this lawsuit appears to be the turning of SCO into something like an IP brokerage firm which carries considerable more risk than the type of company that the majority of your investors originally invested into. Has management and the board properly disclosed these new risks thoroughly enough to avoid future lawsuits by investors?
Why does SCO now believe it can suddenly succeed as an IP speculator, when the majority of its fixed company assets (funded by investors and creditors under the pretense that it would be specifically used for a certain type of business) are not intended to be used in the IP speculating business? How does SCO intend to compete with firms that specialize in the IP industry and has SCO received proper permission from its investors to drastically change its industry and business model?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Your lawsuit says that if IBM hadn't used Unix intelectual property to improve Linux, Linux wouldn't have gotten beyond being a hobbyist system. I do not agree with this view, but lets accept that idea as the basis for this question.
If this is true then it means the only reason Caldera managed to build a business, and do a hugely successfull IPO, the same IPO that gave Caldera the financial muscle to buy SCO, is because of IBM's actions.
In other words you are making a lawsuit against IBM for making it possible for your business to become successful enough to buy SCO?
Or in other words, you are taking IBM to court for dilluting the value of property you would never have owned in the first place if it where not for IBM's actions?
You don't find this a tad weird?
This question is addressed to CEO Darl McBride and SCOSource VP Chris Sontag, although it applies to the whole management team. What are your plans after the death of SCO? Won't you constitute a liability to any company you work for in the future, due to the association of your names with this lawsuit?
If you manage to get a ruling that seriously harms Linux, it will negatively impact tens of thousands of people worldwide. What effect do you think this will have on your personal life, and how will you cope with it?
Many big OS vendors - IBM, Sun, Apple - have realized that if a decent free kernel is available people are not willing to pay $$$ for pretty much the same thing. Instead they are selling software that runs on top of Linux/*BSD, basic UNIX utilities and gcc.
It seams that SCO decided to hold out like Microsoft and try to compete from the kernel level up. What are you plans to make this approach succeed when even IBM, with more money to pay for development, is trying to hedge its bets on AIX.
It seams to me that a better strategy for SCO would be to take advantage of existing SCO binary compatibility Linux offers and release a professional quality Linux workstation and a low-end server using SCO applications, administation tools and so on.
But in this case, the lawsuit makes no sense. Sure, there is a chance of one-time payout from IBM. But nobody except law firms builds a successful business on lawsuits alone. If applications is what matters, you guys might as well release whatever "corporate secrets" you think will further increase Linux scalability, stability and so on and let the enormous number of willing hobbyists integrate them into the kernel.
There are a lot of things going for this approach. For one thing, nobody buys an OS itself. Customers buy an OS to be able to run certain programs. Nothing prevents SCO from selling those proprietary, closed-source programs under Linux. Just look at MacOS X.
On the other hands, lots of people are obviously willing to write, optimize and improve OS code just for the fun of it. SCO could just use their work to get a performance boost for both UI and server applications with no investment. Also, writting device drivers is a thankless work but thousands already exist on Linux, free for the taking. Is there an optimized NVIDIA or ATI 3D driver for SCO?? How about adding some rendering applications and shipping a serious alternative to SGI based on Linux?
I don't know if IBM used any knowlege of AT&T UNIX to make improvements in Linux. But I am pretty sure that trying to guard yesterday's technologies is not in the long-term interest of SCO and its shareholders. Spend effort where the new markets are today.