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Using Closed Standards To Pay For Open Ones
An anonymous reader points to a story at NewsForge, writing "EGOVOS analyzes the recently passed South African OSS plan and proposes a great way to fund Open Source education and development until companies comply with open standards. Microsoft pays a 10% penalty until their products comply with open standards. That would be billions of dollars to Open Source to compensate for an unlevel playing field until it is leveled. All the policy guidelines for governments are worth reading. This looks like a workable plan from a credible group." Reader johndiii clarifies: "From what I have been able to see, the strategy document is 'proposed,'
not 'recently passed,' and is not yet official policy of the South
African government."
Nope!
What SCO Wants, SCO Gets
Daniel Lyons, 06.18.03, 12:00 PM ET
NEW YORK - Linux vendors are under attack. In March, IBM was sued for $1 billion by The SCO Group, of Lindon, Utah, which claims IBM has put SCO's Unix code into Linux, the open-source software program. SCO also has sent letters to 1,500 large companies warning them that if they are using Linux, they may face legal problems. Though IBM is the only company named in SCO's lawsuit, other Linux vendors, like Red Hat and SuSE Linux, could suffer collateral damage.
So how are the Linux companies fighting back? IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) put out a statement saying it will fight SCO's (nasdaq: SCOX - news - people ) claim and has issued bulletins to its sales force, providing talking points to use with customers. Red Hat (nasdaq: RHAT - news - people ) is posting pro-Linux commentary and analyst reports on its Web site. SuSE Linux, a German company, claims customers aren't scared by the SCO lawsuit. "Everyone has seen through this," a SuSE spokesman says.
In other words, like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will agree.
They should wake up. SCO may not be very good at making a profit by selling software. (Last year the company lost $24.9 million on sales of $64.2 million.) But it is very good at getting what it wants from other companies. And it has a tight circle of friends.
In 1996, SCO's predecessor company, Caldera, bought the rights to a decrepit version of the DOS operating system and used it to sue Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), eventually shaking a settlement out of the Redmond, Wash., software giant. In 1997, Darl McBride, now SCO's chief executive, sued his then employer, IKON Office Solutions (nyse: IKN - news - people ), and won a settlement that he says was worth multiple millions. (IKON acknowledges the settlement but disputes the amount.)
McBride joined Caldera as chief executive in June 2002. Two months later he changed the company's name to The SCO Group, based on the name of an ailing Unix product that Caldera had purchased in 2001 from its creator, The Santa Cruz Operation, of Santa Cruz, Calif. The Santa Cruz Operation now calls itself Tarantella (nasdaq: TTLDC - news - people ).
As with the 1996 DOS lawsuit against Microsoft, in the current lawsuit over Unix and Linux this company aims to take a nearly dead chunk of old code, bought for a song, and parlay it into a windfall. Not only is the strategy the same--so are some of the players.
SCO is basically owned and run by The Canopy Group, a Utah firm with investments in dozens of companies. Canopy's chief executive, Ralph J. Yarro III, is chairman of SCO's board of directors and engineered the suit against Microsoft in 1996. Darcy Mott, Canopy's chief financial officer, is another SCO director, along with Thomas Raimondi, chief executive of a Canopy company called MTI Technology (nasdaq: MTIC - news - people ). In this cozy company, SCO even leases its office space from Canopy--a fact disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings, along with the fact that SCO's chief financial officer, Robert Bench, has a side job as a partner in a Utah consulting firm that last year billed SCO for $71,200.
Canopy companies sometimes share more than a common parent. They form joint ventures and buy and sell one another's stock. Last November SCO formed a joint venture called Volution with Center 7, a Canopy company. In 2000, Caldera sold off part of its business to EBIZ Enterprises (otc: EBIZQ - news - people ), a Texas company in which Canopy holds a controlling interest and whose board boasts three Canopy execs, including Mott, according to SEC filings. Previously, Caldera bought shares in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, and later wrote off the Troll Tech investment but sold the Lineo shares at a profit, according to SEC filings. In 1999, Caldera sold its own sha
Thank you, Dan. I knew someone would make my point for me. ;)
My journal has hot
Rather than being conflicted, I'm just confused. WHat the hell are your trying to say?
Or is this a case of mom having left you alone with the computer again?
South Africa has nearly the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world. I also has one of the highest rates of rape in the world. Coincidentally it also has some of the highest rates of violent crime in the world and the SA government is doing little if anything to solve any of these problems. Maybe Open Source Software should wait untill the people there do not have to fear for their lives from criminals?
And what about rights other than online? Why as crime goes up is the SA government taking away people's rights to self defense and means of self defense? Maybe we should be pressuring them to allow women to carry guns and shoot men who try to rape them before we push for their computers to use OSS? Given the choice, I would rather be locked into Windows and my wife not being raped, and my property not being confiscated by the government.