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SCO Protest And Anti-Protest In Provo
a.ameri writes "On Friday, June 20, the Provo Linux Users Group decided to head on over to SCO's offices and hold a protest; information on the event, including pictures and press coverage, can be found on
the PLUG page. Among other things, the protesters claim that SCO employes came out and joined the event holding pre-prepared signs saying things like 'I love software piracy' and 'Try communism - use Linux.'" There are some funny shots linked here (thanks to reader lucif latum). Daddio64 points to the press covereage in the Deseret News and Provo Daily Herald.
Slashdot - stealing LWN stories for fun and profit since 1998
Userfriendly has modified a Gary Larson (Farside) comic to fit SCO! It's quite funny!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
It this really the image these people want to project?
Too bad I'm not an SCO shareholder. Maybe I could sue SCO management for permitting such stupid childishness on company time.
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
From the LWN page: This is sad... (Posted Jun 22, 2003 20:47 UTC (Sun) by erat) (Post reply) No, not the SCO folks who made the signs... It's the people who don't have a shred of humor left and, more importantly, weren't even there who seem to be take everything SCO employees touch as being an insult. I work across the street from SCO. I was at the protest. At one point, I was one of the people carrying a SCO-produced sign (as a JOKE. At one point I even saw picketters holding SCO signs). If you were there you'd know that the entire event -- albeit serious in its message -- was taken in good spirits by pretty much everyone. I'd be surprised if anyone seriously though the SCO signs were meant to be anything but fun. You remember FUN, don't you?? It's like when you're in a bar watching a football game and there are folks rooting for the other team in the bar with you; friendly "traitor" jabs are tossed back and forth, joking insinuations are made, and in the end you all laugh together and say "bye" when you leave. Here are some facts that some (all?) of you didn't get from the pictures: 1) It was very hot that day so Canopy provided drinks for everyone, including the protesters. And yes, protesters took them up on the drinks, and they even said "thanks". 2) SCO and Canopy employees (including Ralph Yarro and Darl McBride, among others) shared laughs with the picketters. No, I didn't see Chris Sontag or Blake Stowell out there, but I don't know them so I could have just missed them. 3) Darl, on his way home, stopped by the picketting near 1600 N. (he didn't have to; he could have driven by and nobody would have noticed) and chatted with the protesters. There are at least two pictures of him with his arms around a few of the protesters, and all of them are happy. Sorry folks, but other than a reporter who got heat stroke, the people who showed up had a good time. The folks there mixed with SCO, Canopy, etc. employees from around the office complex, had some fun with the "rivalry", and went on their merry way happy. At least that was my observation. The intent of the protest was to bring attention to the opinions of those who oppose SCO's actions, not to threaten, throw things, fight, or yell. In that regard, the protest was more successful than I would have hoped. Nobody walked away with a different opinion of SCO's actions, but people can disagree without hating each other. At least here in Utah they can.
Quite a bit. If you look at the history of SCO, half the time they were working on Linux alongside UNIX. I'm sure a lot of SCO employees developed an affinity for Linux.
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In this pic you can see that Darl McBride has his arms around two of the protestors:
http://mirror.lug-nut.com/mcnabb/med/IMG_0057.JPG
Unless there's been a purge, I'm sure many of them are big GNU/Linux users, since that was one of the company's main products until a month or two ago.
I know you didn't draw any conclusions from Finland being allied with Germany, but before anyone else does, I would like to point out two things:
1) Russia sought to invade Finland
2) No one else would help
My Sig: SEGV
I was at the little "chat" with McBride afterwards. He informed us that home users don't have to worry yet, but that commercial users aren't going to get away with their free lunches anymore. McBride repeatedly (at least 10 times) said that SCO's intentions would become clear in July.
My impression is that in July, SCO is going to send a bill to each of the 1500 companies that they sent the warnings to, and more. I think that they're going to start collecting money before anything has happened in court.
Yes, I was misquoted (yes, I'm that Jason Hall, the one who also made the page). The reporter is the same one who suffered the heat stroke, and had absolutely no clue about computers. It was hard enough trying to get her to understand what linux was, or even 'source code'. I did give a more accurate count of total lines, but that didn't get through apparently.
It's the Valerie Mallinson award, given each year for the best corporate astroturfing campaign. Last year was the first year of the award, won by Microsoft, of course.
I was at the protest. I saw it pre-announced on /. and decided to show up. Sadly, from the world's perspective, it becomes what was reported.
In some of the media, the SCO signs are shown larger than life. In reality, they were 1. devoid of intelligent comment, 2. quite small, 3. sitting off to the side on SCO property for most of the time. They were mostly insignificant except for to those taking pictures. If individual pictures had been taken of the protester signs, there were 10 good protester signs for every stupid SCO sign, and real stakeholders/protesters circulating them.
It WAS obviously a waste of time to protest in front of SCO for any significant amount of time, and after the first hour the protesters went to a very busy nearby intersection and carried on their protest in complete absence of SCO, and brought hundreds to some degree of awareness of the issues surrounding the case, and what a bunch of scum-sucking lawyers in their community with no technical merit were trying to do to community-developed free software.
Maybe Utah is not unique in giving the establishment much better press than they deserve. Maybe we bring it upon ourselves. I could not say. But regardless, I will be there again next week.
My co-workers and I were the ones that took some of the pictures. You can find more of them here (with mirrors):
l
http://www.kuwan.net/scotesters/index.html
http://www.karlrees.com/sco/scotesters/index.html
http://www.normanfam.org/sco/scotesters/index.htm
I should note that Ralph Yarrows, head of the Canopy group which owns 46% of SCO, was the one to organize the anti-protest and was the one who had the posters made.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
One of the comments made by the SCO reps was "Linux users will still be able to use Linux, it just won't be free. Linux users are just upset because they've been getting a free ride for so long and it's coming to an end".
Um, I think I have paid for every distro of Linux that I've used in the past 3 years. RedHat, Club Mandrake, Suse. I've either bought them from CrapUSA or paid for the direct from the company (in the case of Mandrake).
So how have I been getting a free ride? I've paid for an OS that I sometimes use.
The only freedom that I've had has been that which is like speech, not that which is like beer.
where is the "I feel for ya, but that's some funny ass shit" moderation?
That little girl happens to be my daughter, and she does use linux. She is quite good at clicking on the little icons, drawing pictures in Gimp, playing games with GCompris, closing windows, and generally screwing up the KDE setup I have for the rest of my family. She is far more computer literate than my 5 year old, and she is only 3. That is far better than I was doing when I was 3.
My co-workers and I were the ones that took some of the pictures. You can find more of them here (with mirrors):
l
http://www.kuwan.net/scotesters/index.html
http://www.karlrees.com/sco/scotesters/index.html
http://www.normanfam.org/sco/scotesters/index.htm
I should note that Ralph Yarrows, head of the Canopy group which owns 46% of SCO, was the one to organize the anti-protest and was the one who had the posters made.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Stalin refused to allow this. What the world didn't know back then was that Stalin and Hitler already had a secret pact diving Europe between them, and Stalin considered Finland and her resources to be his.
Churchill was pissed when Stalin attacked Finland (having even the nerve to claim at the time that it was Finland who started the war LOL), giving Hitler his cue to start occupying Norway.
In what became known as the miracle of the winter war, an ad-hoc Finnish army with no modern weapons or even rifles for everyone, beat back a massive mechanized Soviet force and managed to sue for peace in spring '40 when even bullets were running out in many sectors of the front.
Until 1941 Churchill was praising Finland as the model for all nations fighting against tyranny but neither Britain nor US were prepared to offer Finland material assistance to keep any imminent threats (i.e. Stalin, who's purges the Finns had helplessly witnessed across the border for a decade) at bay. Out of ammo and any modern gear, Finland is approached by Germany who are prepared to sell them much of what is needed (in preparation of their own Operation Barbarossa, as it turned out).
Let's see what the choices were: 1) Refuse German material aid and subject the Finnish nation to Stalin's mass murder, or 2) Accept the material support (without political alliance), at least have a chance of defending yourself and unfortunately piss off Churchill who was offering no material support anyway.
Soviet bombers began bombing Finnish cities and air fields without declaring a war (nothing new there) a few days after Hitler had betrayed his friend Stalin by invading, and with the red army occupying the homes of some 400,000+ Finns after the winter war, those folks were soon to be back fixing their homes and resuming their lives.
After reaching the old borders, and even invading western parts of Soviet-held Karelia where ethnic Finns and Karelians had been suffering under the totalitarian communist rule and contemplated their own independence, the war became stationary until Stalin (using the latest weaponry Britain and US could provide them) started another massive attack in '44 and under the imminent threat of national extermination and genocide, the Finnish parliament agreed to some very harsh and unjust peace terms dictated by the Dear Leader himself.
In the final peace treaty in Paris '47, just before the Cold War began in full swing, the western allies watched approvingly as the Soviets pushed all their demands through, threatening to throw the Finnish delegation out if they were to as much as speak.
End result for Finland: hundreds of thousands of casualties, second largest city (Vyborg, now decayed beyond recognition) and the homes and lands of over 400,000 people surrendered to Stalin, massive war reparations to Stalin (uniquely paid in full, while many others were receiving Marshall aid) and, bitterly, declaration of accepting guilt for the whole madness. Oh, but Finland was never occupied so the civilian population was spared from the horrors in which tens of millions russians and their occupied neighbors died...
In a sense, therefore, one can argue that Hitler's desire to keep Stalin busy with Finland created the path of history in which Linus was born with appreciation for freedom and yet with ability to freely engage in modern western scientific cooperation that lead to the release of Linux and the subsequent SCaldera scam and yesterday's picketting...
(I was just trying to help you guys back on topic here!)
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Nice copy'n'paste from http://www.livejournal.com/community/linux/397771. html?thread=2531787.
However you forgot to mention it.