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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.
I wonder how many SCO employees are actually pro-linux, but are afraid to say anything, against their own company......
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Just wondering: Since some of those signs seem to imply that Linus is a thief, I wonder if he can now sue SCO for defamation???
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
* "Give Communism A Try - Free Linux"
Hmm.. well is was Caldera riding on high on the capitalistic Linux
IPO craze of the late 90s that allowed them to purchase SCO thus
any usable IP left in SystemV code base. It was the promise of Linux
who bank rolled the whole thing. I think that anyone who bought
into their IPO because they thought they were investing in a Linux
company should get their money back.
Take it from me - I work for a Fortune 500 company (no not microsoft ;-)) that gets protests pretty much *weekly* and the upshot of it is that company email gives logistical directions on where and how to avoid the protests. (ironically, I think that the protesters are *dead on* but believe me, its not going to change the company's practices. Nothing but an act of god is going to do that.)
Anyways, don't get me wrong. I think that SCO is a borderline illegal company, but to *really* hurt them where it counts, we need to organize online. Hurting them where it counts means presenting the SEC with a well-thought out case on why they need to be investigated.
I posted the following proposal to slashdot (it was rejected, probably because it was too controversial) and the gist was that SCO's share price (ticker symbol SCOX) has gone up 1400% on rumors and FUD. Now SCO may have a case, they may not have a case, but the least that should happen is an investigation by the SEC into the facts surrounding this incident.
Here's a SEC link that lets you enter a complaint. Hell, if SCO gets enough heat from this, they may divulge all. We deserve, as a community, to be able to evaluate their gripe objectively, and that requires full disclosure by SCO of what their gripe is. SCO's failure to do so is *hurting our livelihood* - and at the least it is libelous.
Anyways, below is the text of the original submission. I'm hoping to get it on the head Slashdot page, so if you could submit it as a story, I think it would do us all a favor. (Note to slashdot editors - a 'soapbox' icon would be very nice... something which allows users to post controversial stories like this whilst having a disclaimer so slashdot can keep its nose clean)
original submission:
I just read the vaguely demeaning forbes article describing the complacency of the linux community, and believe me, this "crunchie" wasn't pleased, at either a) being called a crunchie for having the ethics to be upset about what SCO is doing, or b) for being labeled as ineffective and powerless. The truth is, the open source community isn't powerless. The whole SCO incident has a very bad smell to it, and what they are doing (and the consequent effect on their stock price) is in my opinion highly unethical if not illegal. I am not a lawyer (or SEC official for that matter) but their stock price has jumped from 60 cents to $11 per share, in dubious circumstances... so in my opinion at the very least the SEC should be notified about the unsavory aspects of it and other pieces of background info so they can do an investigation and find out the facts for themselves. So - I think the open source community should take a stand. If you don't like what SCOX is doing, here is the sec complaint form where you can submit evidence, background facts, personal knowledge, and - if you think so - your opinion about how malfeasant SCOX's actions are and the damages that they are doing. (Any info about how SCOX insiders are capitalizing on the stock price would be especially helpful.. personally, its the element I find most distasteful of all, and if they find manipulation, its information the SEC can directly use.) How many people read slashdot? How would the SEC handle 500,000 complaints? Only time would tell - but I think at the minimum it would warrant an investigation, possibly even a class-action suit. Anyways, if you are going to submit, please be civil about it. The worst thing possible would be for the SEC to get lots of long-winded rants - they want courteous dialog and accurate information they can use, not a vitriolic screed of profan
No, gotta disagree there. It's unclassy. Especially where they started in on the Iraq and France bashing by association. I know it's the in thing now to bag on "those French cowards" but it's still just mindless follow-the-hurd humor (unclassy). I do have a sense of humor but I don't like to have to turn my brain completely off in order to exersize it. The sign might be funny if if there was anything that could tie the two (IBM/Linux/SCO and France/Iraq) concepts together.
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
They went out and picketed with them. They posed for pictures. They came out and `shared laughs'.
The posters themselves were a little unclassy (but still funny.) But they made up for it in the other things they did.
They made a joke. That's more than they've done up to this part.(And I'll bet the SCO lawyers have a field day with this, and the people who did it get yelled at big time. After all, I doubt those signs were approved by legal (even though they were ready beforehand?)...)
If you'll recall, in the past Microsoft has acted this way in reponse to Pro-Linux protestors as well.
Basically it's a not so subtle way of saying, "You're protest is meaningless. It does not matter as it accomplishes nothing more than making you feel better about yourself. Enjoy the discussion on Slashdot, but until then have some milk and cookies on us."
I know that's harsh, but it's the truth of the matter. This protest will not result in any meaningful public outcry, nor will it effect the upcoming legal case in any way. SCO may lose, SCO may win, but this protest won't figure into it, therefore they have nothing to lose by being nice and essentially treating it as a joke.
Linux Users Shut Their Windows
Microsoft officials served refreshments to the demonstrators on the upper deck of their parking lot under an 8 foot banner that read: "Microsoft Welcomes the Linux Community."
They went out and picketed with them. They posed for pictures. They came out and `shared laughs'.
it's called 'coopting' and it's right out of Microsoft's manual.
pretty interesting in all. it seems that SCO's got some rather competent handlers... that and the "steal free music" attempted reference in SCO's signs is a rather fascinating insight to how their PR folks are going to shape this battle in the press.
I smell a Hatch...
*scoove*
Copy of a post to LWN in answer to someone else who applauded the humour:
The Who's down with Other People's Intellectual Property sign is major chutzpah. The IP which TSG (not the original SCO, The SCO Group) is laying claim to is code written by IBM which belongs to IBM according to the terms of the AT&T agreement.
For an example of such code, turn to SMP. TSG's own SMP implementation sucks so badly that all of their licencees, past and present, have written and are using their own implementation instead. TSG is claiming ownership of those implementations.
The short story is that the IP in contention does not belong to TSG even if it was originally developed (by IBM) for use with SCO UNIX or UnixWare sources and is not a part of the BSD codebase or otherwise public domain or copyright (e.g. GPL) by others. To put it in the same terms that TSG are applying to IBM and Linux TSG are using barratry to steal the rights to code that they did not write and do not own.
It's worse than that. If you read what Chris Sontag said in the BYTE article, you will see that TSG are trying to leverage their barratry to steal ownership of every significant OS in the world.
You know how annoying parking meters are? In asserting that everything else descends at least in principle from their UNIX codebase, TSG are trying to install a meter on every CPU in the world, starting with the USA. They are trying to encumber everybody with a licence agreement, but instead of using Microsoft's attrition method, they're aiming for one fell swoop.
To show you how brazen this is, consider the same scenario in another industry. The Canopy Group buys Ford, then claims that since every production-line car in the world was derived in one way or another from Henry Ford's system. They start with General Motors but have an eye on an unexpectedly thriving kit-car industry. Is the analogy clear, and good enough?
While TSG employees might be fine and friendly to deal with, TSG management is trying to stage one of the biggest ripoffs in software history. If they succeed, it will undermine the livelihood implied in tens of thousands of Linux-related job in the USA and greatly slow Linux deployment worldwide. They even have the gall to hint about taxing the BSDs! If they fail, TSG and these guys' jobs, pensions etc will be a scorched memory.
This (to say nothing of much other lying and prevarication) makes those posters a lot less funny than you hope. Ha, ha, and all, but meanwhile they're trying to throw the IT world over a barrel.
And suddenly Boise' actions make sick sense. In the unlikely event of him winning this one, he'll be first in line for the next one, and the next, and the next... and if TSG's licence works out to something of the order of $100 a CPU a year, their income will easily exceed Microsoft's. Are you reading me, Bill?
The penny evidently hasn't yet dropped for Sun. The $100M they've already paid is a drop in the bucket compared with what TSG will get out of them if they win.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Is it just me or are SCO's actions truly surreal? I mean is someone smoking crack over there?
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
The obvious answer to this is to organise a pro-SCO demonstration, lauding all the worst aspects of that company. "Litigation is better than innovation," and so on. Just make it funny for goodness sake. That's the beauty of satire which the SCO posters miss.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Actually, I think you're the one misunderstanding the point of a protest.
Let's face a simple fact right up front: SCO isn't going to kill a lawsuit because 50+ people picketted behind their building for 2 hours. I hope nobody has any confusion over this.
Protests are done to draw public attention to an opinion, be it for or against a certain issue. Judging by the actions of the protesters in Utah I have to say they understood perfectly well what they were doing. They notified the press before the protest, they picketted in back of SCO's building which just so happens to be the only side that fronts on a public road, and not long before 4:00pm the protesters LEFT THE AREA to go protest near the entrance/exit to I-15. If they were there to piss off SCO's upper management, they probably would have figured out a way to protest in front of the building where all the offices were (the front of the building faces a parking lot and is not visible from any public road. It would have been an intimate, easilly swept under the carpet show placed for a few SCO employees and that's it. Talk about a waste of time).
They made themselves and their opinions very visible in very public areas. In doing this, they made their protest successful. They got print coverage in a few local papers (Deseret News is actually fairly big in Utah), and rumor has it that a TV crew got some shots (I didn't see them arrive or leave, but I wasn't there the whole time).
The lawsuit seems to still be moving forward, but is that really a surprise?
Linux = Communism? I think not.. let's work this out...
Linux = Multiparty Democracy to Monarchy at times
Oracle, Sun = Monarchy
Unix = Anarchy with various flavors being multiparty democracies
Windows = Single Party State Authoritarian Regime which occasionally morphs into a Military Junta, and occasionally pretends to be communistic to improve public image