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SCO SCO SCO!
Still more links on SCO's assorted allegations of copyright infringement. They say they're going to sue Novell. Software analysts refuse to be part of the hoax - also some good quotes from Linus here. SCO and UNIX: a Comedy of Errors. Salon has a story on SCO too, but sadly it's not available to read freely. And Wired has an old story which I think sums up the SCO claims pretty well.
Would the team at SCO really keep pushing a lie, even though they know that by doing so they will face unspeakable countersuits after the trial(s)? I think that SCO is cleverly hiding an ace-in-the-hole, and it's going to hurt Linux and IBM badly. This is unprecedented: no company would ever commit suicide so blatantly and openly. I fear the worst is yet to come.
HAHA, yea right. Had ya going there, didn't I? SCOX stocks plummet some more.......
PS: fist post fools
I'm suprised some of the SCO shareholders haven't sued the directors for essentially making SCO stock worthless. It may have seen a temporary increase when this mess started, but its been on the downslide lately, and announcing ignorant lawsuits isn't going to help.
If you ask Chris Sontag, a vice president at the SCO Group, how his tiny software firm decided to launch a billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM and became, in the process, the most reviled name in the open-source programming world, he'll tell you that the whole thing started rather innocently. Sontag says that SCO did not go looking for trouble with fans of free software; instead, trouble found SCO. In January the company, which makes most of its money from the sale of Unix and Linux operating system software, embarked on a routine review of its business holdings. And during the review, "we identified some concerns we had in terms of our intellectual property."
Specifically, the company determined that some source code in Linux had a lot in common with code in Unix -- and SCO says that in 1995, it purchased rights to all the original Unix source code from the software firm Novell. In other words, SCO believes that Linux, an OS that can be freely copied and modified by anyone, is illegal. Linux is, SCO says, "an unauthorized derivative of Unix." If SCO's accusations are affirmed in court, the millions of companies and individual users who have increasingly built their lives around Linux over the last decade might have to start scrambling for an alternative or face costly penalties.
But that was not all. During its examination of Linux source code, SCO says it found that it could trace what it believes was Unix code in Linux to one of its longtime partners in the Unix business: IBM. Sontag says that SCO immediately tried to notify IBM of copyright violations in Linux, but "we effectively got no response." So on March 7, SCO filed suit against IBM, alleging "misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and breach of contract." In its complaint, SCO claims that IBM took parts of SCO's Unix code and illegally inserted the code into Linux. Last month, to warn end users about its findings, SCO sent about 1,500 corporate Linux customers a letter saying they could be in legal hot water if they continued to use Linux, which SCO told them was "developed by improper use of proprietary methods and concepts."
SCO's war on Linux has become a hot topic in open-source circles, inspiring heated discussions on developer listservs and almost daily posts on Slashdot. Opinion in these forums, as well as among more dispassionate industry observers, runs about 99 percent anti-SCO. Nobody believes Sontag's story, and it's not hard to see why. SCO's version of the history of Unix and Linux -- as the company has explained it to reporters and as it outlines in its legal complaint against IBM -- comes off as a one-sided and self-serving account. Critics say the company misstates and exaggerates its own contributions to Unix, and SCO has yet to provide a single example of infringing code it says it has found in Linux.
Industry watchers have attributed SCO's actions to economic desperation. The firm's products have not been doing well recently; the company lost about $25 million last year. SCO now has a stated goal of trying to make money by selling licenses to its Unix intellectual property, and critics see the IBM suit as perhaps only the first of many litigious efforts SCO will attempt. IBM intends to fight the case, but SCO may hope that escalating its rhetoric will make business for Linux companies so difficult that they'll cave in -- either by paying SCO licensing fees or buying the firm out.
The strategy is not entirely illogical, and SCO's efforts have met with some initial success. In mid-May, Microsoft, which considers Linux its main software rival, made headlines when it decided to purchase a Unix license from SCO. The sum Microsoft paid for the license was not disclosed but is thought to be around $10 million -- pocket c
blah blah blah blah blah!!!
*i_am_not_lis-ten-ing*!!!
For Immediate Release
June 3, 2003
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
The SCO Group is based in Salt Lake City, Utah and has done nothing of interest for many years.
Trolling is a art,
SCO must know something that Novell, IBM and others don't. There has to be some clause, or wording that says "SCO ownz you". Otherwise why do all this crazy stuff? Why sue everyone and everybody? Is it for attention? No, this is a bad way to get some. Ahh well lets see how this plays out...
Whether SCO's code has been infringed or not will be exposed in court.
Anything we say here is irrelevent. What is there to discuss except to say that having 'many cooks' increases the chance that any one of them may have tossed in a poison pill unwittingly?
I have been pwned because my
is it me or is SCO suing EVERYBODY now? I wonder if they will soon decide to sue God for creating a universe in which all these patent infringement stuff takes place.
I can see it now: SCO vs. Creator of All Things [2003].
btw - Kirk and his big ego won against God, maybe SCO has a chance...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
It so happens that this "Free Day Pass" is, today, sponsored by Microsoft.
-- Support Ometz le-Serev.
SCO apparently seems to be suing everyone and anyone that stands in their way. So lets recap:
SCO sues IBM
SCO threatens sue Linus
SCO threatens to sue Novell
The whole unix world is in some kind of uproar now thanks to this crappy company over IP thats so old that it should have lost most of it's value anyways. Theoretically, the concepts and whatnot in the unix world can also be in Cisco and everywhere else.
What really blows my mind is that they don't own any of it, they are a sub licensee of Novell. Maybe Novell can revoke the contract with SCO and then they can no longer sue because they no longer can enforce the copyrights? I don't know, IANAL.
sri
"The month of June is show-and-tell time," McBride said.
How do you take someone seriously that says stuff like this. I'm sure he thinks he's being tough and serious.. but it just comes off like a bad joke.
"If Linux had all of the capabilities of AIX, where we could put the AIX code at runtime on top of Linux, then we would.
"Right now the Linux kernel does not support all the capabilities of AIX. We've been working on AIX for 20 years. Linux is still young. We're helping Linux kernel up to that level. We understand where the kernel is. We have a lot of people working now as part of the kernel team. At the end of the day, the customer makes the choice, whether we write for AIX or for Linux.
"We're willing to open source any part of AIX that the Linux community considers valuable. We have open-sourced the journal filesystem, print driver for the Omniprint. AIX is 1.5 million lines of code. If we dump that on the open source community then are people going to understand it? You're better off taking bits and pieces and the expertise that we bring along with it. We have made a conscious decision to keep contributing."
On the surface, those comments seem fairly damning, but let's think outside the box for a moment, something Bruce Perens is used to doing. "IBM is smart enough not to open source other people's intellectual property," he says. "Maybe the comment about being willing to open source any part of AIX that the Linux community considers valuable simply means that there is no portion of AIX that would be considered valuable by the Linux community."
I don't understand why they would force analysists to sign an NDA, when the whole basis for their lawsuit is that their code is already in the public domain. Nothing new can be revealed if it is indeed already part of the Linux code. Perhaps they are going to tell analysists that its all one big hoax and they don't want them to write about it.
Salon has a story on SCO too, but sadly it's not available to read freely
Salon gives you a "Free Day Pass" that allows access to all of the content if you are willing to sit through a 15-second ad.
Maybe in an alternate universe, SCO and RIAA are actually of the same entity with the same people that sit on the board of directors of both institutions.
This is awesome news, I hope this sort of thing keeps up. Excellent.
This site has described the SCO-Linux situation using the Dukes of Hazzard metaphor.
:)
I found it quite helpful
There is an enormous difference between an expert programmer sitting down with a pile of textbooks and disjointed segments of code to write out an operating system from scratch, and that same programmer downloading the operating system intact from a public network.
---US District Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise ruling in the AT&T/BSD lawsuit
All this talk about this technology known as SCO. It seems cool, hell, it has to be with all this Slashdot coverage. But does it run Linux?
Normally this would not be right, but since this won't stop until they run out of cash, and they have to pay for bandwidth... here goes...
a dmin.pdf
Got bandwidth? Mad at SCO? Download a 5mb file from here or launch an unspecified number of wget processes:
wget http://www.sco.com/images/pdf/eserver/eserver_sys
This way, you'll know how to administrate their linux server which they discontinued.
Why has nobody mentioned that SCO lost their courtcase against LinuxTag? They are gagged.
3 -0 00/
The german branch of SCO has taken down its web site. Hans Bayer, SCO's executive director in Gemany confirmed that this measure was taken as a consequence of Friday's injunction of a German court against SCO
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/odi-02.06.0
SCO wasn't able to support their claims that Linux has infriging SCO IP in it. Isn't this kind of important? It pretty much proves that SCO cannot support their claims.
I submitted this story already. Can a few other people do it as well?
NOBODY in the US media has picked up on this.
Read: a review of the code by *anyone* "means absolutely, positively nothing".
Anyone wanna take bets? My guess is Bruce and Eric.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
John C. Dvorak weights in his two cents
2) You'll show me the secret code in question IFF I sign an NDA.
3) The code for Linux is freely available.
What's in the secret code that I can't see by looking the kernel source?
Are they the super secret comment statements that surround the code?
Is the secret code surrounded by super-double-secret code ?
What's next? I have to sign and NDA and wear a tin foil hat so Linus can't suck the super-double-secret code directly from my head and add it to the source?
Sounds like someone was sniffing glue and listening to the M$ FUD about the GPL over at SCO...
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
From the Comedy of Errors site, a poll: "Do you believe SCO has a legitimate case against Linux? Yes or No". And the results folks? 4% yes, 96% no. Time to start selling short on SCO stock.
Lawyers against Linux
A software company launches a billion-dollar suit against the open-source operating system's biggest backer, IBM -- and only succeeds in underscoring Linux's strength.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Farhad Manjoo
June 3, 2003 | If you ask Chris Sontag, a vice president at the SCO Group, how his tiny software firm decided to launch a billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM and became, in the process, the most reviled name in the open-source programming world, he'll tell you that the whole thing started rather innocently. Sontag says that SCO did not go looking for trouble with fans of free software; instead, trouble found SCO. In January the company, which makes most of its money from the sale of Unix and Linux operating system software, embarked on a routine review of its business holdings. And during the review, "we identified some concerns we had in terms of our intellectual property."
Specifically, the company determined that some source code in Linux had a lot in common with code in Unix -- and SCO says that in 1995, it purchased rights to all the original Unix source code from the software firm Novell. In other words, SCO believes that Linux, an OS that can be freely copied and modified by anyone, is illegal. Linux is, SCO says, "an unauthorized derivative of Unix." If SCO's accusations are affirmed in court, the millions of companies and individual users who have increasingly built their lives around Linux over the last decade might have to start scrambling for an alternative or face costly penalties.
But that was not all. During its examination of Linux source code, SCO says it found that it could trace what it believes was Unix code in Linux to one of its longtime partners in the Unix business: IBM. Sontag says that SCO immediately tried to notify IBM of copyright violations in Linux, but "we effectively got no response." So on March 7, SCO filed suit against IBM, alleging "misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and breach of contract." In its complaint, SCO claims that IBM took parts of SCO's Unix code and illegally inserted the code into Linux. Last month, to warn end users about its findings, SCO sent about 1,500 corporate Linux customers a letter saying they could be in legal hot water if they continued to use Linux, which SCO told them was "developed by improper use of proprietary methods and concepts."
SCO's war on Linux has become a hot topic in open-source circles, inspiring heated discussions on developer listservs and almost daily posts on Slashdot. Opinion in these forums, as well as among more dispassionate industry observers, runs about 99 percent anti-SCO. Nobody believes Sontag's story, and it's not hard to see why. SCO's version of the history of Unix and Linux -- as the company has explained it to reporters and as it outlines in its legal complaint against IBM -- comes off as a one-sided and self-serving account. Critics say the company misstates and exaggerates its own contributions to Unix, and SCO has yet to provide a single example of infringing code it says it has found in Linux.
Daypass sponsored by
Microsoft
Industry watchers have attributed SCO's actions to economic desperation. The firm's products have not been doing well recently; the company lost about $25 million last year. SCO now has a stated goal of trying to make money by selling licenses to its Unix intellectual property, and critics see the IBM suit as perhaps only the first of many litigious efforts SCO will attempt. IBM intends to fight the case, but SCO may hope that escalating its rhetoric will make business for Linux companies so difficult that they'll cave in -- either by paying SCO licensing fees or buying the firm out.
The strategy is not entirely illogical, and SCO's efforts have met with some initial success. In mid-May, Microsoft, which considers Linux its main software rival, made headlines when it decided to purchase a Unix license from SCO. The sum Microsoft paid for the license was not disc
Even Slashdot posting could be next.
Pretty much the best write-up of this farce so far.
Help fight continental drift.
It only fails to make sense if you are looking at it like a programmer. From a lawyer point of view, they see some money to be made.
Of course, the problem is that the lawyers don't understand what the underlying issue is, and have made a real mess of themselves.
But, if it works out in their favor, they will have future clients for the next 20 years.
Don't shoot the messenger...
Killing Linux by John Dvorak
Sensationalism bullshit at it's very worst, IMO.
Lets think about this. If you look at the history of that last major UNIX legal battle ( I highly recommend reading http://opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html )
it's quite obvious this is going to be a very long drawn out ugly deal. How is SCO going to pay for it? This could honestly take years. Who's helping them? Are the lawyers employees or are they hired? Are they just working on the chance of a big payout?
This is the worlds biggest and most expensive poker game. Someone is bankrolling the players, and I don't think it's just Microsoft.
However, it seems to me that the incentives are totally analogous. Programmers in the open source world code (mainly) to help others, or show off their skills (for prestige or a better job). If they are caught cheating then they obviously are not helping, and plus they lose a lot prestige.
Similarly, the people who manage open source projects clearly want their project to be successful and popular. If they accept infringing contributions then they jeopardise this, so they have an incentive not to. There may not be a direct economic incentive, but that doesn't mean the incentive isn't just as strong. The only conundrum is the familiar one that, in the free software world, people do things for reasons other than money.
From the second link:
Overly said a review of the code by anyone other than a judge "means absolutely, positively nothing" in determining the merit of SCO's claims.
Is it just me, or is there something scary about a judge, who may or may not use his/her computer for anything other than e-mail and word processing, trying to interpret two snippets of source code to determine if one uses the other in an illegal way?
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
McBride said. "Everybody's been clamoring for the code...and we're going to show hundreds of lines of code."
So, it takes only "hundreds" of lines of code to turn a OS with the quality of a "bicycle" into one fit for the enterprise. It took me hundreds of lines just to write an AVL Binary Search Tree.
No data, no cry
I believe the injunction only applies to SCO's German subsidiary. Maybe this is why www.sco.de has been blank for several days.
"[SCO] should tell everybody what they have," said Quandt, who has advised clients of Cambridge, Mass.-based Giga to continue with their Linux adoption.
As long as it's not on the desktop.
McBride characterized Novell's move as "a desperate measure..."
Pot to Kettle, come in Kettle, are you there?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I see where this is headed!
IBM buys SCOX...
IBM changes name to SCOX...
SCOX sues Microsoft... "You should of read what you bought! 0wned!"
I'm not going to lie to you. That's art. Clear as day after wandering through Hazzard County.
In a smaller arena, it seems other struggling companies are trying this survival technique. Sapient is claiming a patent on Computer based system for monitoring and processing data collected at the point of sale of goods and services (filed 12/29/1995) infringes upon any company collecting data from a POS system and reporting and alerting on it in a Business Intelligence application. A number of companies serving the restaurant industry have been notified to pay up or face legal consequences.
Fact is, Ralph Kimball was doing this stuff in 1982 for Metaphor Systems. Seems like that's "Prior Art". Won't someone come up with prior art in the SCO case, or is it a contract, not a patent that everyone's worried about?
Mind the gap
They wont let you see the NDA ..... unless you sign an NDA on the NDA .....
Version E: SCO wins for some crazy reason, which means that Microsoft wins
Version F: SCO loses but the FUD lingers on among the CEOs and CIOs, which means that Microsoft wins
Only solution to this and the future problems is to have a tort reform to prevent companies from suing every one and asking questions later. Maybe civil cases such as this should be required to go through a grand jury system like the serious crimial cases to prevent parties like SCO from generating excessive FUD.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
This is funny. Someone should mirror it before ot dies.
http://www.arie.org/doh/
SCO's German website is down. A German court had ordered them to stop telling that Linux contains stolen code or to pay a fine of 250,000 Euro. And since everybody at SCO is now busy fighting lawsuits, the had no time to remove only the FUD from their webpage. Consequently they removed the whole website in order to follow the court's order.
Oh, and a German artice about this can be found here
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
The chart linked in the parent post shows that the stock value was all downhill. That seems reasonable. Then SCO's stock began going up in December of 2001. Anyone know why?
Then it went down again. Then the stock value began going up when SCO threatened everyone.
Apparently a lot of people who aren't technically minded think that SCO may win.
I am a lawyer--specifically an IP litigator.
Any litigator knows that you don't want to go to trial--you want to force a settlement. If you hae a halfway decent case, you'll show your evidence up front, so the other side sees that it's going to lose. On the other hand, if you have no case, then you try to keep everything under your hat and stretch out the legal proceedings until the other side pays just to make you go away.
Which of these sounds like SCO? I think that they have squat and I think that SCO and their lawyers know it.
BTW, if SCO doesn't produce evidence, IBM can file a motion to compel discovery and demand to get it. If they still stonewall, IBM can move for dismissal and get the whole case thrown out.
I think "blow" is the wrong metaphor. A "blow" implies strength, power, and the ability to inflict pain and damage. None of those apply to SCO.
SCO is making a lot of noise and releasing a lot of hot air, something that should be embarrassing to SCO and is somewhat annoying but generally harmless to the bystanders. That kind of event is more accurately described as a "fart", not a "blow".
So, using this more accurate metaphor, the reporter should probably change the article to read:
That SCO may be run by this guy?
The dogcow says "Moof!"
What's that SCO ad doing right in the middle of the article???
Just kidding.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
I dunno. I thought this was funnier when I read it last Friday.
A real Rebel Yell. Best summory I've seen so far.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
She (MRS. M. GOTCHA), has as a result of the trust and confidence she has in me mandated that I search for a reliable and trustworthy foreign partner, who will help receive some UNIX source code which she has totaling Five Million United States LOC into a personal, company or any reliable foreign Unix-like system for safe keeping for a short period of time, since her family computer accounts within and outside the country have all been frozen by the authorities.
This source code in question has however, been carefully kept in defaced form and deposited with a security company that has branches in Europe and America. You may therefore be required to travel to any of the branches to collect the source code on behalf of my client for safe keeping.
I shall let you into a complete picture of this mutually beneficial transaction when I have received your anticipated positive reply. This matter should be treated as urgent and confidential. This is very important.
PS, it's very important that you maintain your current good relationship with Dr. Linus. Only he has the keys to the vault in which we must deposit our Five Million United States LOC. When added to the Millions of LOC already there, we will all become very rich.
Best Regards,
Dr.Darl McBloodsukr
Pragmatically, the same thing can happen in a proprietary product, but the customer has someone to hold responsible in that situation (the developer of the product) so the economic incentives discourage such illegal contributions
Unless the EULA states that they can't be held responsible. Like Microsoft on the famous Timeline SQL Server Patent infringement.
This point needs to be HAMMERED home, Closed Source is no better actually worse since you can't easyly remove the offending code.
Help fight continental drift.
They don't have a product line that anyone wants.
They haven't been able to make the switch to Linux.
This is their ONLY option left.
Lawsuits.
Maybe one of them will stick and SCO will get some money or someone will buy SCO rather than fight the battle.
This is pure desperation.
The German branch of the SCO Group removed their website from the internet. According to Hans Bayer, Managing Director of SCO Group Gmbh, the measure is in response to the Preliminary Injunction issued on Friday. The Injunction prevents SCO from claiming Linux contains, or that Linux users could be liable for infringement upon, the Intellectual Property of SCO Group. SCO's internaitional site is still available via www.sco.com, or through 216.250.140.125, the IP addresss formerly associated with www.sco.de/www.caldera.d. Likewise, https://www.sco.de points to the USl site.
hey I used cluster fuck in one of my post. I am going to sue you for 1 Trillian Dollors. And everyone who read your post. And read this page article. I'm going to be rich. heheh
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
If SCO sues Novell over Unix, won't that make SCO Unix and other Unix revenues a contested asset? You would think that would limit what SCO can do with those revenues.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't remember anything in my High School civics classes about court rulings in Germany having any bearing whatsoever on pending litigation in the United States.
This question was posed at the recent press conference, and McBride said that the lawfirm were on a "Profit aligmnent" basis. Euphemism I guess for sharing the loot if they get any, in exchange for not being paid if they fail.
Help fight continental drift.
or worse than slashdot... where you get to stare at an MS ad 20 seconds while the restof the page loads and renders.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Netware NDS (and NCP in general- Netware Core Protocol) will be sold as a service(s) to run on Linux. They also are fostering major support with Netware 7 (the kernel will be Linux based): http://www.redhat.com/partners/press_partner_novel l.html
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0414novlinux.htm l
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,590629,00.asp
I sent out my resume to the Stockholders board at SCO Group today and offered my services as its new CEO..do you think I will get any answer back?
Of ocurse it was printed on the same fake paper that SCO has claiming Patents to Unix and copyrights..maybe they could not see it?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
SCO..SCO..SCO.. If I hear that name -one more time- I think I'm going to flip out and sue somebody..... *grin*
-Brad
a world in progress...
...it was well used by this man. Never underestimate what a company would do to keep up the illusion that they're winning.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Several years ago I made a strong push to move my career from SCO to Linux. One of the main motivations for this was that I was so fed up with SCO, SCO support, SCO licenses (and policy daemons), and most of all SCO crashes. It was so bad - SCO eventually made the entire OS mirror a bunch of soft links to the real files, and changed their FSCK program so as not to do a real fsck on bootup. (which made things worse) They litterally had programs to undo the damage of their crashes like "fixmog".
I also got sick of people insisting that SCO was commercial quality UNIX while blowing off Linux, while I knew darn well that Linux was more trustworthy and stable, and the only way to get decent productivity out of a SCO box was to install tons of free software on it that was often better then the software you licensed out the nose for from SCO - they even licensed TCP/IP for chrisake. Anyhow, sometimes I still do SCO work, because I'm one of the few that know how to nowdays - but none the less I am so thankfull that this next generation will never need to deal with them. And I am so thankfull that many of the businesses that toiled under SCO now have the freedom to be productive with their computers.
I am also thankfull that people no longer need to suffer under their lies, lies about quality, lies about stability, lies about being for the enterprise, and most of all lies that they were better than free software. They are so full of it. At home I tell my 4yr old daughter no-no, and in the enterprise I tell business men sco-no.
Goodbye and good-riddance SCO, I should have known you'd sue IBM. You maximized damage and harm to the computing industry for years, it only makes sense you'd do it on your death bed too. Goodbye and good riddance.
Or am I reading that wrong?
Never thought i would be routing for Novell any time soon.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
If I read one more peterson or SCO story I'm going to get sick!
Article here: http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_965_1.asp
Essentially, a judge threw out on summary judgment Meade's claim of patent infringement on its computerized telescope systems.
The judge believes just because a software works alike does not make it automatically infringe. According to the article, the judge said[Celestron's] "Go To telescopes do not infringe on Meade's patents under the "doctrine of equivalents."
This decision must make SCO shudder, as it was summary and never reached a jury.
Slate is an MSN property, not Salon.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The real outcome of this fiasco is easy to see. Dvorak thinks he's got the scenarios covered, but in my book, he's missing the likely outcome if SCO somehow wins this case.
...but I'd still hate to be Red Hat.
Linux is free and available. Provided SCO wins anything, they will HAVE TO come clean about what parts are offending code and which are clear. As soon as that's done, SCO will have a field day with IBM, RH, and other Linux vendors.
However, within a few weeks/months, the Linunx community will rally to replace all offending parts of the kernel/GNU utilities/whatever with something equal if not better, it will be tested, and deployed within a year. Linux will suffer a setback, but Linux will NOT die.
It's been said that open source projects never die, they just cease to be developed. Linux ain't going anywhere. There's no imaginable way that hackers around the world will simulaneously abandon Linux and move to FreeBSD or some other alternative. If, by some miracle, there's something to all this, we'll have it behind us within a few months.
The more I think about it the more I begin to wonder if SCO have grabbed completely the wrong end of the stick. Having read the "Comedy of Errors" link I was thinking about the "ham handed" comment, i.e. the fact that so far SCO have done just about everything wrong. So I ask myself this : is it less likely or more likely that they would have done an equally bad job when doing their technical investigation. Clearly it's more likely that they did a bad job. From that I think there's a good chance that a) yes, there is code in Linux that is also in SCO (I mean, can they really be bluffing, surely not ?). b) investigation of said code will show that the code was appropriate FROM Linux and placed INTO the SCO product. From a technical point of view this is a more likely scenario. And of course that mean that SCO would have to GPL their source code.
for(i =0; i j; i++)
I have a very small mind and must live with it.
-- E. Dijkstra
It gets better Look what else he said. Finally via Google we can see what these clowns said.
Help fight continental drift.
Anyone working on free code should be highly suspicious of NDAs and other agreements that limit free speech and co-opt IP. There's no reason to sign a NDA to look at Linux source code. You have to wonder what SCO has that they don't want you to talk about.
Chances are SCO are going to make some realy stupid terms. They would love for only their clueless dupes to sign and therby raise their credibility in the land of the lost. What kind of objective opinion can be written if you can't describe the thing you are talking about? An even more devious prank they can pull is full publication, "against their will." All they've done so far is sling insults. "The anarchists are publishing the Linux source code again, even after they agreed not to!", echos from the future.
Smells like more M$.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yes, this was ripped right out of AT&T Unix and was found in Linux after careful examination by SCO:
++i;
Note the use of the letter "i", indicating it got there via IBM.
decided to sue IBM.
Just when the buzz was wearing off
they got some cash from Microsoft
So there's no stopping the attacks
Never mind their changing 'facts'
Then they said "Oh, what the hell -
we might as well include Novell"
I bet they could, in nothing flat
draw up the papers on Red Hat
And at this rate (It's just a guess) .
Bruce Perens, Linus, RMS . .
If that does not bring in the bucks
Sue everyone who's worn a tux!
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
The real issue here probaly has something to do with large dollar federal contracts from homeland security and/or defense agencies.
Just as it was a remarkably convenient time for Microsoft to license technology it already owns from SCO, this lawsuit is probaly happening during a bidding process for a massive contract.
Microsoft recently gave some very serious discounts and other carrots to get a 750,000 user Exchange implementation in the face of stiff competition from IBM running Linux mainframes in a large northeastern state government. I imagine larger federal contracts would justify more "agressive marketing".
Check this out:
SCO's CEO says buyout could end Linux fight
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
don't the employees worry that once their ship finally sinks that they'll all look like assclowns for having SCO on their resume?
-
Everyone (including Eric Raymond) keeps talking about IP that "existed at one time" and is no longer enforceable. But WHAT IP? Filesystem layout? The use of /etc for configuration settings? Shared memory?? NONE of these or any of the features of Unix as we no them were EVER defensible IP. Some of the code for implementing them maybe might have been ... for a while ...
But Unix as an OS is more of a general concept - not patentable - reimplemented in several guises. Where's the IP?
I was running this:a dmin.pdf > /dev/null ; echo "hit " ; done
s admin.pdf'
while ( true ) ; do lynx -source http://www.sco.com/images/pdf/eserver/eserver_sys
and got this after a few dozen hits:
Looking up www.sco.com
www.sco.com
Making HTTP connection to www.sco.com
Sending HTTP request.
HTTP request sent; waiting for response.
Retrying as HTTP0 request.
Looking up www.sco.com
www.sco.com
Making HTTP connection to www.sco.com
Sending HTTP request.
HTTP request sent; waiting for response.
Alert!: Unexpected network read error; connection aborted.
Can't Access `http://www.sco.com/images/pdf/eserver/eserver_sy
Alert!: Unable to access document.
lynx: Can't access startfile
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
Yeah, but contrary to your analogy.... a supernova is also pretty bright. Need I say more?
I find it amusing that the story states Copyright issues raised by Novell, from which SCO bought the rights to Unix, are irrelevant, McBride said during a conference call with media and analysts. SCO licensed the code to IBM, who allegedly misappropriated it. However, if they don't actually own the copyrights, then isn't SCO guilty of the same thing they are suing IBM for. Makes no sense to me, but I'm just a computer geek.
RandomIO
Even if SCO in fact owns the code that they claim was copied, how can they expect to get a billion off of it? They themselves say it's only a couple hundred lines at most. That's nothing. How much do you think the author of the code was paid? $30 for writing it? Plus $200 for debugging it? Lets say he was drunk that week and got $500 total for the code in question, or about $2 a line. SCO's demanding a 200000% markup on that. That's not justice and the leaked IP has nothing to due with SCO's financial troubles.
They decided to stake their future on a small set of products and instead of introducing new products and services when faced with tough competition, they just ignored the problem for so long that now the only way they can profit is by suing their once most valuable customers.
This from the guy who predicts the death of the Internet every 6 weeks.
Trillian Dollars? Cerulean's issuing currency now?
With this: "Everybody's been clamoring for the code...and we're going to show hundreds of lines of code." and this "SCO's CEO, today said that five or six analysts have expressed interest in viewing the code under NDAs"..
I feel some leaked code coming soon, perhaps even a T-shirt ala DeCSS...
Seems to be only the index page affected. Take a look at http://www.sco.de/images/ =)
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
--21:01:18-- http://www.sco.com/images/pdf/eserver/eserver_sysa dmin.pdf
=> `output.pdf'
Resolving www.sco.com... done.
Connecting to www.sco.com[216.250.140.112]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
Read error (Connection reset by peer) in headers.
Retrying.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Right after Duke Nukem Forever and Evil Dead 4 come out right?
This is the ultimate in legalese vapourware.
Damn, thanks for making me respond.... I really wanted to mod this post too... =)
Karma: Non-Heinous
sco.com isn't repsonding to my http requests, nor apparently anyone else here. If I were the one posting the code to DDOS them, I'd be praying for a "delete comment" option right about now.
but not as funny...i think its more insightful.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
All I've got to say about it is.. ... Fairly entertaining," said Torvalds. :-D
I love what Linus was quoted as saying..
As for what he thinks of SCO's actions, Torvalds in an e-mail interview compared the fight between SCO, IBM and Novell Inc. to bad TV. "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.
Now there is a man with his eye on the ball
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
wget sco.com/images/pdf/eserver/eserver_sysadmin.pdf -O /dev/null
In order to get a 5 MB file from SCO's site (and put it in a "while true" loop to keep sucking down their bandwidth, which they pay for).
Now I'm trying to load the address you gave (216.250.140.125) and it got the <head> part then paused for like 5 minutes -- it just finally finished loading. Looks like we're costing SCO a ton here.
With any luck this'll deplete their legal funding, and I doubt Microsoft is going to give them another cash infusion what with Novell holding all the cards. In fact I see Novell going after Microsoft, saying, "You know that license you bought from SCO? They didn't have the right to sell it to you. You need to buy it from us. That'll be $40 billion, please. Thankyoucomeagain."
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
You know, put like that "SCO SCO SCO", it made me think SCO would make a good swear word. I'm not sure what it would mean and in what context one would use it, but I'm sure people can think of something. It would have to mean something SCOing awful, that's for sure. Windows ME is SCOware? The project is ruined, that idiot SCOed everything up!
Maybe?
Indeed, IBM thought of this back when they bought their Unix license. The contract between AT&T and IBM contains an additional letter of agreement.
SCO lawsuit documents
I'm having trouble getting to www.sco.com right now, so I can't do better than that URL. Go over to Exhibit C and read it, especially paragraph 2 (I think) and paragraph 9.
Paragraph 2 (I think) says that IBM owns any derivative works created from Unix.
Paragraph 9 says that IBM is entitled to use ideas, methods, concepts, and stuff like that in their own products and services, provided that IBM employees do not refer to the "physical materials" provided by AT&T while they are doing it. This paragraph squarely addresses the issue you raise and explicitly allows IBM engineers to work on a Unix project, learn things, and then work on another IBM project and use what they learned. Direct "copy and paste" is, of course, forbidden.
Once (if) the examples of infringing code are published, keen-eyed individuals should probably consider comparing them against the BSD-licensed source that was released by SCO (as Caldera).
Sure, they didn't give out System V, but I'm sure any similarities that could be found would make for a fine "friend of the court" submission.
-transiit
They don't know anything that IBM and Novell don't. They're bluffing. And now their stock is 3-4 times higher than it was before this business, so there's your reason for the bluff. Here's a chart from Yahoo: SCOX 3 month stock prices.
I've been outraged, puzzled, and amused by the on-going SCO saga. While I think SCO is unlikely to succeed in their current "endeavor," I am increasingly concerned about open source legal vulnerabilities which I think SCO is exposing, and which I think the open source community should address more vigorously.
Consider the following scenario:
Imagine that the Linux kernel developers are having trouble designing a driver for some new hardware device: a winmodem, a video card, a hard drive or whatever. The manufacturer, ACME INC, has released a Windows-only (binary) driver, but doesn't appear willing to cooperate with the development of an open source driver. Furthermore, ACME's minimal published specs for the device seem to be wrong in significant ways.
The Linux driver is buggy and giving users trouble. A volunteer - Mr. Smith - presents himself to the Linux kernel mailing list. He says he has the device in question and he would like to try to help with improvements to the Linux code. Taking the existing driver code as a start, he makes a series of important contributions over a few weeks that resolve the difficulties. His changes are incorporated into the kernel source and released as part of kernel 2.6.30.
A few weeks after the release of 2.6.30, Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox receive an angry letter from ACME Inc. ACME claim that large portions of ACME's original (proprietary) driver code have been incorporated into the Linux driver code. Furthermore, they are incensed that the kernel developers accepted contributions from Mr. Smith, who, it turns out, is an ex-employee of ACME, dismissed for serious financial improprieties. ACME is convinced that Mr. Smith has stolen their code and released it under the gpl in order to harm ACME's competitive position in the market. (ACME says that a careful reading of the Linux driver code clearly reveals that Mr. Smith made use of ACME's trade secrets.)
The company decides to sue Linus Torvalds and the kernel developers. The suit does not allege that the kernel developers knowingly tried to harm ACME Inc. Rather, the claim is that the kernel developers didn't exercise "due diligence" in vetting Mr. Smith and his contributions. In effect, ACME says that someone in a position of responsibility should have asked Mr. Smith where he worked previously, and an effort should have been made to contact Mr. Smith's previous employer. Furthermore, the kernel developers should have asked ACME to review the Linux driver code before it was released.
During a news conference, ACME's CEO says:
"Every computer company in American does a at least some background checking before they hire someone to work on an important project. Where did the employee get their education? Where were they employed previously? Did they have any significant problems at their previous place of employment? In the Linux world such questions are rarely asked or followed-up on, even though Linux advocates claim that millions of people rely on the Linux operating system. In failing to ask such questions of Mr. Smith, the Linux kernel developers made themselves legally liable for the harm that resulted when he exploited the open source development process for nefarious ends."
My question is: Is this a plausible scenario? What safeguards are in place to prevent such a scenario from coming true? Are these safeguards adequate?
IANAL, but let's talk trade secret law for a bit.
If you have something you're going to claim to be a trade secret, you have to exercise "reasonable precaution" and "due diligence" to prevent the secret from being revealed to the public, or you lose your trade secret status.
How do the courts decide if something is a trade secret? Generally, you sue somebody for trade secret infingement, or somebody sues you claiming that you don't really have a trade secret.
One of the big things the courts look for is consistancy in keeping your trade secret a secret. If you don't require everybody (and I mean everybody) to sign NDA's, the court can rule that you have allowed your secret to pass into the public knowledge, and is no longer a trade secret.
If, however, I sign an NDA with you to not disclose your trade secret information, and then I give it to a competitor, the courts can rule that I violated the NDA, so I owe you money for damaages, the company I gave the secret to may be liable for damages (that would probably need another lawsuit), and that the trade secret is still a secret even though there are now "umpteen" people who know it.
If, however, I give you access to my source code without requiring you to sign an NDA, even though the material is in millions of archives all over the planet, I'm basically saying "it's not a trade secret anymore", and the courts will (hopefully, I don't know about US courts anymore) rule that you no longer have a trade secret due to your actions.
Courts have, however, ruled that once a trade secret has reached enough people, regardless of the method, that trade secret status is lost. So, if I found out the formula for Coca-Cola (either by signing an NDA, breaking and entering, torturing one of the people who knows it, whatever), and posted it all over the internet, the courts could rule that even Coca-Cola maintained due diligence in attempting to retain their trade secret, it has lost that status.
Whether or not people should be signing NDA's is something they'll have to take up with somebody who can provide competent legal advice (in other words, not me), and will depend on lots of factors.
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
Trying to prove which code SCO actually wrote and which was from some free third party source will take years.
The Lawyer's know this and are egging SCO on towards their doom. They even got M$ to guarantee their fees...
Perhaps if these "Dark Lords" had a public face, they may feel a little more shy...
The point is that the maturuity of a code base doesn't inherently imply that it is any better than new code which is being written.
Linux has found a great ally in corporate code--much ground has been covered in little time--but does that mean that Linux ultimately benefits from corporate partnerships? Does that mean that Linux developers wouldn't be able to successfully develop and implement the same ideas without corporate help?
No
Linux lives outside of a corporate entity structure. Linux doesn't require help from SCO, from IBM or any other corporate or government entity which decides that it wants to utilize Linux. That's the rub for you, Mr. Coward. SCO has done a good job of whipping up a lot of emotion around this issue--but that's the only thing SCO has done.
Although Linux derives benefit from corporate sponsors, it doesn't live based upon that sponsorship. No matter how much you'd like us to believe that SCO actually contributed something unique and wonderful to the Linux kernel, something that couldn't possibly be coded outside the hallowed hills of Utah, what it comes down to in the end is that Linux doesn't rely upon your help, your benevolence, or your understanding of "where the kernel is."
So sorry if I don't seem grateful for all your help, but with friends like you, who needs enemies?
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
The company you refer to is Sapient Solutions LLC out of Boise Idaho. They are not the publically traded consulting firm Sapient, but a much smaller company.
I just wanted to clear that up because there are a lot of people who'll hear Sapient and think SAPE.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Very detailed yet easy to understand
This guy is way out there
Isn't it entirely possible that SCO wants an NDA signed so that people don't start trying to remove the offending code from Linux? That would kill their lawsuits right there....at least from now on. Maybe they could still sue for the current infringement.
"IP" is a generic term, and doesn't refer to any specific section of law.
Nobody is contesting the copyright in unix.. and if SCO has the copyright, or at least the right to enforce them, then that still stands.
THe "Trade secret" elements of Unix are what are not viable.. you can't pretend to have a "secret" That everyone has known about for more than a decade.
Linux is protect by only Copyright law, and there is no reason to invalidate it.
Who's to say that SCO didn't copy code from the Linux source, put it in their code, and claim they did it first? After all, we can all freely look at GPL'ed code, but we can't look at SCO code. We have no way to know if SCO put that code into their source tree or vice versa.
Another reason all intelligent societies should reject any software patents.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
Then again, he never said they were going to show offending code. For all we know, Mr. McBride could show us "Hello World!".
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
What happens when you say it three times? They sue you?
I'm sure I saw that in Linux somewhere...
Think for a minute. SCO wants to present themselfs as victim of the linux community. Victim of intellectual theft, victim of DDOS (back in May). What the h*ll are you doing? You are just helping them, they don't care about their server, they aren't in the buissiness of selling software anymore. They even closed their german web site instead of providing proof in a german court.
Makes me wounder if you are just stupid or if you are an agent provocateur.
David Bitch or what was his name? Cnet says that they have a new councel.......
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
A potential weakness of OSS. A company (Microsoft f.i.) which felt threatened by an up-and-coming OSS project could plot to submit through a fictitious developer proprietary code to the OSS project, wait a few years, and tip someone off anonymously.
Legal action hits SCO Web site
Lawyers representing LinuxTag, the German Linux group, told SCO on May 23 that the Lindon, Utah-based company was engaging in unfair competitive practices when it sent to 1,500 large companies letters that said using Linux could pose legal problems because SCO proprietary Unix source code had been copied into Linux, according to a statement from the group.
"SCO must not be allowed to damage its competitors by unsubstantiated claims, to intimidate their customers and to inflict lasting damage on the reputation of GNU/Linux as an open platform," LinuxTag's Michael Kleinhenz said in the statement. LinuxTag demanded SCO make its evidence public by May 30 or retract its claims.
SCO removed copies of that letter from its Web sites as a result, but later, LinuxTag succeeded in obtaining a temporary restraining order against SCO, said Ryan Tibbitts, SCO's newly appointed chief legal counsel. Because SCO hasn't been able to see the actual contents of the order, the company ordered the entire site shut down to be on the safe side, he said.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
My salutes to you, Fnkmaster, as our paths cross like two shepard's in the country side.
John is a M$ suckboy. Ignore him.
He also has come out in support of higher access fees for internet access along with other lameness.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
I'd be offended also if I found SCO in my code. :)
;)
If I was SCO, I would be so embarassed to find my
trashy code in someone's prog or OS that I would
litigate to just have the nasty *&^% removed.
Wouldn't you?
Enter the above into a Cygwin bash shell (I'm running it on Windows 2000).
Two notes: I couldn't get the "while" version to work, so I used "for" instead. And apparently (at least under Cygwin?) the "-O /dev/null" needs to come before the URL, instead of after it.
Enjoy!
(PS I'm getting an average of over 200 K/s, which is basically saturating my cable modem.)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Cooter - Bruce Perens
I'm sure Bruce will be very happy to hear about this...
the no
I suspect there are reall 2 good numbers for the number of owners of an OS platform - 0 and 1. With Linux we have the best of both worlds 1 because Linus gives us one true source, and 0 because we don't have to pay (M$ or anyone else) for it and have the source
As I said before. John is a M$ suckboy. His head it totally up his ass again.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
So modify the instructions instead to load their home page. Not quite as effective, but still damaging.
Enjoy!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Sco reminds me of that crazy guy you always see the park downtown. You don't know if he's a bum or just a guy off his rocker.
You know the guy. He has some outlandish claim every thirty second. " I own this park". " I used to be a king!" " Until the police and Hillary CLinton destroyed me!" " Those alians didn't like me either." " I am going to buy this park!"
YOU know that guy. That's SCO. Every thirty seconds some new crazy talk.
If I owned SCO stock, I'd be sellin it right quick. Pretty soon everyone will just say "Yeah Sure" and walk on by.
The contents of SCO's NDA would be very interesting and would give insight into both their strategy how empty their claims are.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Ok so we've got our hypothetical 5000 lines of offending code. Now lets count the number of lines in every .c file in linux-2.4.20.tar.bz2 ...
TMPFILE=`mktemp /tmp/$0.XXXXXXX`
for i in $(for i in $(for i in $(find ./|grep "\.c"|grep -v Documentation);do cat $i|wc -l;done);do echo $i;done);do echo -n $i+>>${TMPFILE};done;echo "0">>${TMPFILE};echo quit>>${TMPFILE};bc -q ${TMPFILE};rm ${TMPFILE}
Which gives us 3332935 (including comments but hey we're lazy).
And this seems reasonable give that according to this link which shows ~1.8 million for a 2.2 kernel so yeah hey what's another 1.5 million between friends? (think of all the new hardware support)
Ok so we've got our probably bogus number of ~3.3 million lines of code. Remember N? Come on you can do the next step its fun!
5000 / 3332935 == 0.0015% and lets be super generous and assume comments make up 40% of our line count...
5000 / 1999761 == 0.0025%
I wonder what the statistical liklihood of having similiar blocks of code of some signifigant size that happen to be the same (excluding format and variable differences). I mean there's only so many ways one can _intelligently_ code a given function
Given those kind of percentages I doubt a judge or jury could be convinced of any copyright infringement of any signifigance. It'd be kind like trying to sue a competing encyclopedia company for swiping that one entry in the "P" volume on "Petards" ("hoisting", "petard", look it up) from you and demanding millions of dollars in compensation for this plagerism (ok so this analogy sucks but I had petards on my mind so...)
-- schubert
The pdf link gives:
e 2.jpg" height="1" width="1">
Document Not Found
To find the document you're looking for, please see our company sitemap
or use the following search:
Just put this code in your webpages to pull images from their site and display them in a 1x1 size!:
<img src="http://www.sco.com/images/scolinux/main_imag
While they're at it, they should have a go at Apple.
... we all know that's where the /REAL/ zealots live :)
I mean, come on, they've raised the ire of all the Linux zealots, and now surely the Novell zealots (these do still exist in captivity, in fact, I work with some). Perhaps even the OS/2 zealots (being as how they're suing IBM 'n all).
Go on, just have a poke at apple
They should also tread on some BeOS and Amiga toes while they're at it, just to try to set a world record at pissing off the most amount of zealots in one law suit ever!
Imagine the PR!
-- James "Bragi" Deucker Patrician of Networks
Obviously the US educational system failed you since you can't seem to think your way out of a wet paper bag.
The German restraining order is relevant to a US proceeding because SCO is making claims regarding a US proceeding. If a wider discovery process occurs due to foreign legal action, this may very well affect the ultimate outcome of the US proceeding.
Think of it as the legal equivalent of a DDOS.
The other 5 BILLION of us might contribute something relevant to the outcome of this case if we have full knowledge of the relevant details.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
okay... don't wanna ruffle any religious feathers out there (well maybe i do). but has anyone explored the mo-mo connection on these smirking tards that took over the SCO name for profiteering's sake?
after seeing their names splashed all over and talking to colleagues who knew them, i had to see their bios and pics. pictures, in this case, speak a 1000 words.
they're actually smirking in their photos!
http://www.sco.com/company/execs/dmcbride.html
http://www.sco.com/company/execs/csontag.html
... is require a slightly different Non-disclosure agreement, to be signed by both parties. Essentially, their person gets to look at the data for the sole purpose of identifying whether Red Hat needs to pay licensing fees.
*Both parties* agree not to disclose the results of the viewing without court order. Both parties also agree that a licensing contract can occur, but will not take effect until after SCO publicly releases their information [or releases it to the courts].
In that way, if royalties are justified, SCO can depend on getting them to help finance their lawsuit, as bad as that tastes to me.
But Red Hat doesn't bear liability to other Linux vendors who see the value of their Linux holdings drop based on a Red Hat licensing from SCO.
Alternatively, what's the net value of SCO according to stock price? Suppose that a website began that just took the names of Linux users who would contract to buy shares of SCO, say at $80 per installation, as long as the fund had enough to reasonably insure a majority shareholder buyout?
In that case, the fund then takes names until it has enough to buy out SCO, then buys it out, and then GPLs all the information at once.
Then it takes the shell of SCO and reworks the business model to something that works, and vacations in Hawaii on the Microsoft licensing fees.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
SCO have had to develop code already in Linux over the last years. They also have had a product "SCO Systems V for Linux".
I'll bet any lazy developer there at some time must have "lifted" a few lines from Linux.
Anybody with enough insigth to go look for this. That would be the ultimate embarresment for SCO
http://marketwatch-cnet.com.com/2100-1016_3-101294 7.html?type=pt$(B"_(B=marketwatc h-cnet&tag=feed&subj=news
"SCO previously hired outside attorneys to serve as its chief legal counsel, but about 10 days ago hired Tibbitts, who has experience in litigation."
I'm not sure that means Boies is no longer representing SCO at all or if it means Tibbitts is now going to court and Boies is doing other legal stuff. Sure seems like Boies is gone though..
Having said that I want to say this.
I know a little about Boies. Boies takes cases he believes in. That is why he took on MS, why he represented Gore and Napster. The man doesn't need $. Also, Boies has a photographic memory.
BUT: Boies takes cases that he often has little background in. Because he has such a good memory though, this doesn't impede him. Recall how he embarrassed Microsoft several times. This is a man that previously had never used email.
If Boies is no longer working on the SCO case, it's probably because he realizes just now that SCO lied to him. If you read the filing that was made against IBM as if you BELIEVED EVERY WORD - would you think IBM deserved to be sued?
I think Boies thought that every accusation made in that filing was correct and factual. I think Boies believed that SCO had an enterprise Unix and a significant marketshare. I think Sontag and McBride who, let's face it, have no regard for the truth, lied to Boies.
Boies is a fairly ethical man and he doesn't take cases for money. If Boies isn't working for SCO, I'd bet money he quit because he was lied to from the start. There is no POSSIBLE way SCO fired Boies either. If Boies is gone, he quit.
If McBride and Sontag lied to Boies, they're going to jail because they have absolutely no case and they have lied to their stockholders. This might be a little embarassing for Boies but this is the end for McBride and Sontag. You don't hire a lawyer of Boies stature and lie to them and expect to do anything besides burger flipping for the rest of your life.
I think Sontag and McBride really are stupid as hell. If this entire theory is correct, it explains everything. I couldn't figure out why Boies, I mean BOIES, would take this case and allow his clients to make these statements, unless he didn't realize the statements were false. Boies is a respectable man and he deserves the respect he gets. I think he's been played for a fool.
In the spirit of parody (and some shameless Self promotion, but then, that's my name), I offer a little Guilbert and SCOllivan.
There's also a somewhat more seriously minded SCO vs. IBM page.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Actually, it's just been moved:
e -eserver_sysadmin.pdf
http://www.sco.com/images/pdf/eserver/not-any-mor
They have directory browsing enabled on www.sco.de. Check it out: http://www.sco.de/images. It's the same file system as sco.com.
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
SCO has an "interesting" way of looking at the world. I guess it just goes to show "There's no business like SCO business."
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
Yes, it's called the "Dollor" (see grandparent), its symbol is Ø. It's value is tied to the Altairian Dollar.
Over the years SCO has had access to the sources of most of the major versions of Unix and Unix-like operating systems currently marketed. Zenix, Unixware, OpenServer, AIX, SYSV, PTX, Linux. In addition, there are so many ex-Novell people in SCO right now it wouldn't surprise me if SCO had a copy of Netware sources. When Caldera sued Microsoft over DRDOS, the court granted Caldera access to parts of MSDOS and Windows.
So, any coders within SCO potentially have had access to almost any operating system code of any significance written over the past 20 years!
SCO??? Novell??? I thought UNIX was owned by Nell Scovell...
This sig intentionally left justified.
Anyone else missing the little foot icon? You know, the one that designates a particular topic that seems to be quite appropriate to this story? I really think it should be up there. You know, acknowleging the existence of 20/20 hindsight and all, the editors don't want to feel stupid, right? At least include it, seeing as how you seem to be willing to add lots and lots of other nicely-designed icons that are also pertinent. Or not. You know, er...
Is there a central clearing house for keeping track of SCO vs Linux hype, FUD, articles, issues, etc? No... I hear Slashdot still posts articles on non-SCO related topics.
Even if IBM lose, can anyone else be affected? The organisation breaching contract and revealing the trade secret would be IBM, not their customers, nor any other distributor of Linux or their customers either.
See my journal, I write things there
I mean, c'mon, look at what we have here:
Now imagine, someone like, let's say Mr. X, wants to make sure it cannot be harrassed in the future by anyone in the way it is happening right now. Think of all those who want to check whether the GPL is valid, all those who want to bet their business on Linux only if they have security that noone can attack this platform later on and ruin everything.
Now Mr.X decides to, covertly, establish a pro-Linux-case. One sunny day he chats with the guys at SCO and says: "Look, your company is almost dead, and you know it. How about this: You make some unsupportable claims against Linux. I make sure nobody will bother you for some time, so since your stocks will rise you can make some money. After I decide it's enough, I will crush SCO in a way that noone ever dares to attack Linux again without having some REALLY good reason for it. Although it will be a problem for the Linux business for a brief time, afterwards everybody can be happy."
OK, OK, sounds weird I know. But what would the world be without conspiracy theories?
Let's say that this thing goes to court.
Let's say that SCO win. Net effect on Linux: Someone gets to write some code to remedy the situation. (I can't see any court fining every ninth company and every second computer geek in the world for using Linux, but then I am naive.) Linux would continue regardless - at worst it would be a set-back.
Let's say that SCO lose. Net effect on Linux:
Proof that it doesn't violate SCO's IP (in as much as you can prove a negative). Certainly, SCO are not going to be able to do this sort of thing repeatedly.
Or am I missing something obvious?
.. there will be more lawyers assigned to SCO than there are developers within SCO.
-- http://z80.org - all opinions, all the time --
The allegedly code is all around the place in CDs and installations all around the world.
EVen if Linux coders would rewrite any allegedely illegally copied code the evidence would remain in all kind of media.
The parent comment lacks the most basic common sense.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But isn't there a very quick solution for Linux once SCO discloses which are the "hundreds of lines of code" which were taken from SCO's UNIX source code? Can't we just rewrite the source code to perform a similar function to what's already there, but with a brand new open source implementation?
As far as I know, it's the source code which is copyrighted, and NOT the algorithm. So once SCO discloses in court what the offending lines of source code are, can't we rewrite those lines, distribute a kernel patch, and hey presto, the code is open source again?
In SCO & Unix: a comedy of errors there is a valid point about Linux being in risk for lack of clear copyrights management.
This is an risk that the FSF has reckoned with from immemorial times by their copyright assignment policy. Linus shortsightedness disguised as pragmatism unfortunately prevented him from following it. Hopefully SCO claims will prove unfounded, but had the GNU project been more expedient with the Hurd or Linus been more careful, we wouldn't be running into such risks and FUD now.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Here is the first line of offending code:
x++;
And you have not seen it all, there are hundreds of lines like that, the bastard crackers just cahnged the name of the variable in all the code!
And there is even more:
x--;
You did not see that one coming you fucking nerds. Take that you pirates!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
An English article about the injunction order can be found at ExtremeTech. If you wish to submit the story as well, think about linking the English site instead, as the Slashdot editors seem to refuse articles with too many links to German Heise articles and Babelfish translations.
Well, the court case they lost was actually not the one by LinuxTag, but another one by Univention. Uninvention only requested the German SCO branch to be ordered to stop spreading FUD (hence only the German website is offline), LinuxTag also requested SCO itself to be forced to stop spreading FUD in Germany. I haven't heard anything about this case, so it is probably still running.
I also did so yesterday. Anyway, even if the events in Germany are less interesting for other countries than I expected, for the discussion in Germany it is really great that SCO has been ordered by a court to stop spreading FUD.
Yes, that's true. Preliminary injunctions are always granted after a very short investigation into the issue, and they are valid until a decision has been made by the court after hearing all sides. The idea of a preliminary injunction is to quickly stop harmful, probably illegal behaviour, so the court can take time to make a proper decision. The preliminary injuction might be revoken after a full court investigation into SCO's actions.
Anybody with SCO in their resume around this time will not have good cookie points if they come my way. I mean, they should be advicing the suits about this, right?
One can only assume that the techies in SCO are fully behind this rubbish.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You know, this is just childish, in addition to plain 'wrong'. Stop it. There has got to be better ways to get your point across.
Fast, Soon, Correct. Pick 2.
Wednesday 04 June 2003, 10:47
THE SUCCESSFUL injunction taken out by LinuxTag last week over SCO's claim that Unixware intellectual property is infringed has led to the shutdown of the German site. The injunction, granted in a German court last week, meant that SCO downed its entire site in case parts of it detailing its claims against Linux would bring it into conflict with the law.
LinuxTag took out the injunction after it had asked SCO to substantiate its allegations that the Linux OS contained portions of Unix code.
You can't see that the SCO site isn't there because it's not there anymore.
Maybe they're taking A Boy Named Sue too literally...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Humorix explanation
Ah, wonderful! SHould be pretty sorted then, hopefully. From what I know IBM's Linux hackers did not have access to AIX source, but they could discuss problems and solutions with their fellow AIX hackers.
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
The description of the BSDI suit in the "Comedy of Errors" article is not quite accurate: there was no ruling on 32V. The judge refused USL a preliminary injunction on the grounds that they had not shown a likelihood of winning the case; as part of this the judge accepted that there were doubts about the validity of USL's copyright in 32V. But because the case was settled out of court, no legal determination was made on the issue.
What we neglect in our history of the computer revolution is the fact that the sco business model was the norm rather then the exception to the rule. Basicly there were a vast number of professional platforms where they nickled and timed their customers to death. Useful for sales folk, "oh let me evaluate what you need, you only pay for what you need", where in reality you pay mostly for the trivial accounting that goes with this sorta system, and employ a shit load of book keepers rather then developers.
When people get on the Microsoft is evil bandwagon, what they neglect to take into account is that microsoft just isn't SCO, and part of it's success in the market place was the fact that it was so cheep to implement. The fact of the matter is there are even more evil people out there then Bill Gates empire.
SCO is a throwback to the 1980's attitude of computing, back when we were willing to pay for high technology because we knew that there were a few dozen or so high paid developers who were working on project as we speak, with the SCO diffrence being you didn't actually need the developers after the product lost it's comercial value. I had to work it a little some years ago, and I thought it was all a joke. What the hell is this license I have to enter after I restore the backup, shouldn't it be here? What are you going to go cry to your mommie? Oh hello sco support, what, you noticed that I just restored from a back, well yea, whole system crashed, oh you are billing me for this phone time, you phoned me, I don't need your help.
Microsoft is pretty bad at times... SCO is the devil... and hopefully their business will be crushed, novel will finally freely distrubute a public license for their product so we don't have to put up with this crap again. That's speaking idealy ofcorse.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Do you honestly and truly believe that if/when this gets to court the defense will say, "But, Judge, SCO's website was shut down in Germany after a legal ruling" and the SCO lawyers won't scream, "OBJECTION! German laws and rulings are not peritnent and do not set precidents for US case law!"? The suit in Germany was not about a US action. It was about SCO Germany's website mentioning that European companies shouldn't be using Linux because of possible legal issues with the OS. That it was based off of information regarding the US bruhaha is true. That is not necessarily the same (in an obscure convoluted legal way).
This geek will *never* use their software after such immature, and greedy tactics.
If you don't get the geeks on your side for technical, non-mass-market software, you're already boned.
It takes an average of 4-6 years for economic policies at the elected federal level to take effect. This current recession has its roots in the dot-com bubble and the Clinton era, just as Bush Sr's recession (which was hardly a blip for most folks, as I recall) was more Reagan's fault than anything else.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
Behold: precedent!
Suddenly, we have a viable business model. . .
I for one am quite glad that IBM doesn't seem to be pursuing the buyout route with SCO; who wants to legitimate this kind of idiocy?
I mean, we all hope it's not *that* dangerous with Linux, but imagine this happening to an Open Source project without that much inertia and momentum to protect it. We can expect Apache to survive similar treatment, but what about things like application servers or compilers?
What if somebody just takes potshots at open source in hope of quick buck?
Linux must have tons of "copied" code.
for(*){*}
if(*){*}else{*}
somevariable++
The list goes on and on...
...sorry if someone already made that joke already...
So where are these alleged weapons of mass destruction my tax money was spent levelling Iraq for?
If SCO can show that the code in Linux is equal to the Unix code, they need to prove which came first. Maybe the Unix coders pulled it from Linux. Then SCO would be in violation of GPL for not providing the source code!!!
. there used to be a sig here.....
Shouldn't this be listed under, "It's funny. Laugh"?
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
It is free to read. You have to sit through a very short ad to get a free one day pass.
This site is the only one that I will go through a registration process or an advertisement to view. Mostly for This Modern World
The article itself on Salon.com is just an overview. No big loss if you don't read it. However, I think it is interesting that the independent press seems to share the same values about open source that most of the people here seem to have.
"...and Caldera claims they don't even own that"
Check out this SCO web page that claims ownership of the whole thing. What a mess.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I bet my prediction comes true before his does.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
SCO wants some people to compare the code in their OS with code in Linux. Well, what if the code in SCO is older non-legacy code (IE, they kiped it) from Linux?
This sig no verb.
Actually, that's pretty historically accurate. In every conflict between sides, the tactichas been to demonize the other side. A good example is the origin of paganism and satan as the horned beast. The catholic church was desperately trying to get money from as many people as possible, however they were failing in their attempt to get money from the country peasants (paisanos, which eventually got morphed into "pagans"). They tried to get the peasants interested in Catholicism and to donate money to the church, but the peasants didn't care and ignored them because they had their own simple religion (mostly superstitious beliefs about the earth gods). The only way the Catholics found that they could get rid of this nagging religion was to turn the peasant's gods into demons. Pan (the half man, half horse mythical being) was transformed into Satan for example. The Catholics made Satan seem terrifying to their followers. This made their followers chastise the peasants and eventually lead to the outlawing of their religion. In general, the peasants were agrarian and very peaceful. There were no human sacrifices or terrifying blood rituals. These were lies that the Catholic church put forward to make the peasants seem frightening and dissuade others from joining their religion.
The same thing is happening with Linux/Open Source today. You have the ubercrapitalists arging that the GNU GPL is bad for business and the closed, proprietary software is the one "true" way. The topics have shifted, but it's religiong nonetheless. Paganism didnt' die out, and neither will Open Source or Linux. But much like Paganism, OSS and Linux may not reach the heights of the mainstream until further down the road.
Un-news
SCO's own linux distribution was hazadarous to them. They did something stupid with it. They continued to distribute it.
SCO is making allegations that are OFFENSIVE to members of the opensource community that have contributed to the linux kernel, and to the 'linux community', whatever they may be.
The 'linux community', at large, tries pretty hard to avoid issues like this, and for the most part, if you had any familiarity with IP cases, you would understand SCO is acting as if it was bluffing.
The sancity of their trade secrets has already been violated. If you assume that their claims are correct, than they have already released their own code (unknownigly), in their custom kernels for the caldera distribution.
Generally, when a company has a strong IP case, they parade the evidence all over the place, in order to convince the other to settle quickly---after all, settling now is cheaper than settling later, 'cause settling after a court order will cost you court costs as well.
On the other hand, if you are bluffing, you DON'T release your evidence, because you want someone to buy you out, to shut you up. You drag out precedings, and make ridiculous, slanderous claims, in order to upset your enemies, and you harass their customers, so that other corporations will buy you out, 'cause all the trouble you are making is costing them more money than the buy out costs.
This second scenario seems far more likely. Especially given that SCO had to close its German operations because a German court ordered it to release its evidence regarding IP violations, or cease threatening to sue. In Germany, you aren't allowed to threaten to sue without evidence. You have to put up, or shut up. SCO shut up.
This has no legal precedence for U.S. legal preceedings, but it does say something about SCO's sinceritity. Why didn't they just give the evidence to German courts?
Because they don't have it. Because the case is BS. Because SCO is an incompentent company. It was incompentent when it was called caldera. It has nothing to do with the intellectual roots of unix.
Sad to say, but I think Michael's right. SCO's board of directors are a bunch of immature assholes, and you have very little grasp of the situation. This isn't just about a fair trial before being stoned to death. This is about the last gasp of a shitty company, who has spread FUD to all kinds of customers, of customers of companies like MY OWN. Telling them they shouldn't be adopting my product.
Without evidence. Merely asserting my product has bizarre, unknown risks associtated with it. Its as is I e-mailed all Microsoft customers, saying "I wouldn't use windows, because they use stolen IP, and I will prove this as some point in the future".
This is NOT fair. Legally required to protect their secrets? You have no idea what you are talking about it.
Pull your head out of your ass.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
As I see it, there are three possibilities.
A. IBM screwed up. They released stuff from their SCO license into Linux. Oops.
B. IBM didn't screw up. They have all the evidence (remember, they have BOTH SCO's source, and Linux's source). They don't care what SCO says, because they already HAVE all the evidence. They can't release the evidence, because that would then violate their licensing agreement with SCO, but they can sure as hell prepare they legal briefs now.
C. IBM didn't screw up. They are in cahoots with SCO, and are doing this to screw linux.
Given IBM's investment in Linux, and its contribution to the kernel, and other software, I'm guessing that C is highly unlikely.
I dunno, A seems unlikely to me too. If A were the case, an IBM had a big problem on their hands, I think that as soon as SCO threaten them, they would have rapidly been able to determine that SCO's claim has some legitimacy, and bought them out immediately. After all, they have plenty of cash.
That leaves B. Someone in the IBM legal department is of the opinion that they have a REALLY strong case. Someone on the board of directors decided it would be better for their credibility if they blow SCO out of the water.
Remember, IBM can see both sides of the table here. They hold all the cards. They don't need to get SCO to show them the evidence, so they didn't even have to ask.
They knew they would win from day one. You can't bluff when the other guy sees your cards.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Would the team at SCO really keep pushing a lie
know you're joking here, but I think the reason they are talking louder and louder, and threatening everybody they can with lawsuits is because their CEO just picked up "Poker for Dummies", which told him if you have squat in your hand and want to win, you must bluff everybody at the table, get them all to fold without showing your hand.
Well, in the poker games of the old west, that usually got you shot by everybody at the table. Of course, SCO just read the back cover tips, and figured they know how to play now. Hell, they may even have a pair of treys in their hand, but I guarantee someone else at the table's got a full house........
DIE SCO!!!
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
Does anyone else see some real similarities here? Iraq: The infidels are committing suicide on the gates of our city! SCO: The infidels are committing suicide because of the profits they fiendishly stole from us!
Maybe we should see them as the good guys instead of the bad guys. Maybe it's all a big IBM plan the purpose of which is to clear all IP in Linux? SCO is the fall guy. IBM will be buying them, directly or indirectly. Either way, everyone gets what they want. IBM clears Linux IP once and for all. SCO gets money. The GPL gets its day in court.
Anyone else see this???
Lots of people are posting that the business world has never heard of this story and doesn't care. Read this: Does Linux Have a Dark Secret?
----- Original Message -----
From: Darl McBride
Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2003 12:05 PM
Subject: URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL
ATTN: MANAGING DIRECTOR/C.E.O
LINDON, UTAH
REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
First, I must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction. This by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and 'top secret'. You have been recommended by an associate who assured me in confidence of your ability and reliability to prosecute a transaction of great magnitude involving a pending business transaction requiring maximum confidence.
We are top officials of SCO Group (formerly Caldera International -- Nasdaq: SCOX) who are interested in obtaining your services. We are presently in negotiations in a business deal we feel will be quite lucrative. Since we may leave the country quietly in the middle of the night, in order to commence this business transaction, we solicit your assistance to enable us to transfer a large sum of money into your account to hold until further arrangements can be made.
The source of this fund is as follows: We have leveraged IP that we originally thought belonged to our company in order to solicit a rather large monetary investment by the company Microsoft. We have in turn sued IBM for contractual violations and IP violations, as well as sending out thousands of threatening letters to various corporations and Linux vendors, in a move carefully designed to drive up our stock and put us in a position for our company to be purchased simultaneously. You see, this is a carefully executed plan modeled after what some might call, "a house of cards." We hope very much that we will collect from all parties involved, sell our stock before it tanks, and head for some fun in the sun, IF all goes as planned.
However, by virtue of our position as members of the SCO Group, we cannot acquire this money in our names.I have therefore, been delegated as a matter of trust by my colleagues of the panel to look for an overseas partner into whose account we would transfer the sum of US $21,500,000.00 (Twenty One Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) Hence we are writing you this letter.
We have agreed to share the money thus:
1. 20% for the Account owner (you)
2. 70% for us (The officials)
3. 10% to be used in settling taxation and all local
and foreign expenses.
It is from the 70% that we wish to commence the importation business.
Please, note that this transaction is 100% safe and we hope to commence the transfer latest seven (7)banking days from the date of the receipt of the following information below
(a)company name and Beneficiary of account (b) Your Personal TeL. Number and Fax Number
(c) Bank account/Sort/ABA/Routing numbers were the funds will be transferred to
(d) Your Bankers Address, Telephone and Fax Number.
The above information will enable us write letters of claim and job description respectively. This way we will use your company's name to cover our paper trail. We are looking forward to doing this business with you and solicit your confidentiality in this transaction.Please acknowledge the receipt of this letter using the above tel/fax number. I will bring you into the complete picture of this pending project when I have heard from you.
Your faithfully,
Darl McBride
Ron Paul
As it has been stated many times before, SCO is clearly looking for a buyout here. I am sure that even SCO realizes that they aren't going to scare anyone into using their UNIX. If you are in the market for a free UNIX and are worried about the lawsuit, you're just going to use a BSD instead of Linux. And if I was in the market for a propietary UNIX I would definately stay away from SCO because they could potentially be crushed by IBM or if not, they will probably be bought out. The future of UNIX just is not in proprietary systems anymore. Even the name UNIX makes me think of old technology. Linux and BSD are the future of UNIX. SCO should get a clue.
Smeghead every day of the week.
In related news today, doctors fail to remove pc magazine columnist's head from his ass.
"It's a really hard procedure," said a hospital spokesman, "first of all, you have to figure out which end is which."
Although the columnist's head is still firmly implanted in his ass, doctors don't expect it to be a problem. Apparently, he has lived with this condition for many years.
This isn't any ordinary darkness. It's advanced darkness.
4 years!!!
/* next from http to greater-than is one line, no space or break */a dmin.pdf>/dev/null");
#include <process.h>
main ()
{
top:
system ("curl http://www.sco.com/images/pdf/eserver/eserver_sys
goto top;
}
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
As most of you know, Canopy Group is a backer of both SCO and Trolltech, which has lead many an Anonymous Coward to decry them. Most of these comments have been dismissed as irrelevant, but...
This CNet story has me a little worried. Quoth the article:
I think we have reason to believe that Canopy not only knows about the lawsuit but is encouraging it. I'm seriously thinking that the hordes of AC's have a point now. Should we be concerned about the Canopy-KDE connection? (I'd divest from them simply because they like the word "synergy"...)
"I am root. Bow before me." To this I say, "You are root, and you bear the sins of the world upon your shoulders."
That given, lets suppose that theres a block of code that SCO claims is theirs but that has shown up in the Linux source. How can SCO prove it is theirs?
Suppose that they show us magnetic media with the code. I'd personally not believe it if its only on a hard drive. I could be persuaded to believe a whole series of magnetic tapes given the opportunity to examine all of them and take diffs, and verify timestamps. Maybe. Given a chance to question developers for that code who are not currenly involved with the company. Its too easy for me to think of ways to write scripts that would write a series of backups that would slowly change and add code to them.
CDROM's? Same problem as mag tapes - way too easy to generate a series that look good, but that are forged.
Printouts - maybe if I could get a paper expert to determine the age of the paper.
So, what would it take? Paper logs with tape/cd ids as they're signed in/out of an off site facility of some sort? Better, but unless there's a way to guarantee that they're not rewritten along the way, I'd still consider them suspect.
If the backups were all digitally signed/timestamped and had a digital signature published in the newspaper or something, that would go a lot further. Preferably with each digital signature being applied to the current codebase and the previous signature in order to establish continuity. Did SCO do this?
On the linux side, since the source has been publicly available for so long, finding a set of timestamped versions of a file online that agree is probably not that hard - and would be pretty convincing.
Even with that, if the code in question showed up in both the SCO source and Linux source in a period of a month or so, I'd have to say that reasonable doubt would fall on the pro-linux side.
So, really, how does SCO plan to prove any of this?
It's plain to see Disney is behind it all. I mean, look at the SCO logo -- can't you see the blue Mickey Mouse ear, like an azure shadow creeping over the entire globe?
I haven't figured out the goal of their nefarious plot, but once I do, I'll post it here. That is, unless they get to me fir
"No prints can come from fingers / If machines become our hands." -- Jack Johnson
Hilarious. The salon article was well done. My favorite line (it actually had me laugh out loud) has to be:
For folks keeping score, "SCO" doesn't stand for "Santa Cruz Operation" any longer, and it's to be pronounced not as three separate letters but as a word that rhymes with "fiasco."
Priceless
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
This whole SCO thingie is a really rotten copy of one of the worse Marx Brothers flicks?
Right?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
THIS JUST IN...
A software analysis company has been choosen to review SCO's claims. The newly formed non-profit RAEL Corp will put their reputations on the line by assigning the task to their two best analysts (and largest contributors), Michael Guillen and Steve Ballmer.
An the winner of the 2000 System Engineer of the Millenium, in the Fictional Male category: Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Teeny weeny flaw there - if IBMer put code into GNU who will the FSF have copyright assignment from ? - yep, IBM. If SCO is right and it wasn't IBM's code to assign then all RMS has is toilet paper.
Moglen is smarter than that.
The standad FSF assignment form includes an indemnity clause, where the contributor indemnifies FSF against precisely this thing.
IBM has a specially negotiated assignment contract with the FSF, and I don't know what's in it. Still, Moglen has prepared for precisely this issue.
Well, then Boies is a dumb-ass, because he's working on contingency.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
How about, "But, Judge, SCO's website was shut down in Germany after a legal ruling based on the fact that SCO couldn't back up the claims they're making in this case."
Sure, SCO's lawyers will still object, that's what they're paid to do, but that doesn't mean it will be sustained.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
SCO lawyer : We are suing IBM for 1 billion dollars.
IBM lawyer : See if I care.
Novell Lawyer : Wait, the IP belong to us.
SCO lawyer : Objection mister the judge.
Judge : Why? I don't see any reason.
SCO Lawyer : Because they are blowing up my lawsuit !!
-- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
It seems investors want to reward a company that makes money by any means necessary, conveniently oblivious to the facts. What other reason is there for SCO's stock price rally? Its not like there is a sudden demand for SCO OpenServer/UnixWare.
The very hint of litigation money windfall has investors drooling - makes me sick.
The copyright issues are not important to our current enforcement actions and anything happening in the marketplace So what are they suing IBM for then? So this is chapter one of the story, SCO will end the story with chapter 11.
You bought her a Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchise!!!
Heheheh I guess the comment count fits this story. I doubt anyone will ever see this post so they won't notice that I ruined the perfect number for this story.
uhh w00t w00t w00t.
Ok, several people have access to UNIX source and everyone has access to Linux soource. How about an independant search for UNIX code within the Linux code? Assuming SCO did find something, it's going to need to be re-written eventually anyway. The sooner the world at large can examine the disputed code, the quicker this whole thing can be put to rest and we can go back to ignoring SCO.
High-profile attorney David Boies and his firm still are handling SCO's Unix legal action, SCO said. SCO is paying Boeis' firm with a contingency agreement, under which lawyers are typically paid not by the hour, but with a percentage of their client's case winnings.
Which clearly states that Boeis is still aboard and looking to get his out of the winnings. Good thing he doesn't need the money.