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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
You're a corporation. You're supposed to keep quite and smirk at protesters. You do not allow your employees to come out and hold their own "anti protest", especially when a large percentage of the computing world think you're unbalanced anyway!
Earth to SCO. SCO come in now...I think we lost 'em.
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
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.
SCO still sucks.
For the sake of discussion, let's assume the case has merit. The Linux community will rewrite the improperly used code, redesigning it if need be, craft tools to migrate everyone over to it, and go on. This is open source, utter transparency, no secrets. They can't go after every line of the current kernel, we know that, and there's more than one way to do everything.
SCO will be soon be a shell company. They might as well be making buggy whips. I think this is the ultimate agenda of the leadership, they just hope to cash out with the settlement from IBM.
It was interesting to me how the PR folks tried to associate Linux with software piracy and communism. I don't think this is because of a real misperception on their part, it seems much more likely to be spin-directed FUD. It's more pathetic than enraging to me.
It really all seems like a legal strategy to exploit the fact that our IP laws have not really caught up with the PC revolution. They might get some money from IBM, if they do, they leverage their legal victory and liquid revenues to bump the stock price and sell the company. It won't fool Warren Buffet or Peter Lynch, but there are still plenty of fools with money in the world.
This type of business strategy--utterly bereft of moral values--has not yet entirely faded from view. The real tragedy is not the threat to Linux, but the threat to SCO employees and investors. I don't see this working out well for them in any way. Some lawyers will get rich, though.
So, follow the money. SCO is now a lawsuit machine. IBM will survive this no matter how it turns out. SCO won't.
The best way to do is to be.
And in a few months he (or she, you goddamn PC assholes) will have a lot more time to read /. SCO has not just filed suit against IBM, they have declared war against the rest of the IT world. (Linux = Communism?!?!)
These people better start thinking towards the post-SCO world, much like the concentration camp guards started making nice towards the end of WWII.
You see, even if they win their lawsuit against IBM and everybody else, they will be a pariah in the tech community. Nobody will do business with them, and eventually they'll spend their $3 billion on operating expenses and tacos and go bankrupt.
And most of the OSS community will be saying goodbye good riddance.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
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
That sounded like bullshit to me, until I found the pictures of Darl McBride and a couple of protestors. God knows the Linux community can be, um, a little humorless and self-congratulatory, and SCO has veered into the realm of insanity. The concept of Darl laughing with the pro-Linux people simply doesn't make any sense whatsoever, since he's accused nearly half the tech industry of outright theft. It's hard to think of any of this as "FUN" when you're dealing with a group of corporate raiders who are literally trying to sabotage the future of computing.
I'd reached the conclusion a long time ago that Linux was grossly overrated, but it's also done great things for my workplace and my research field, and it's a shame to see another sleazebag IP holding company try to hijack that. I don't condone IP theft or DDoS attacks on SCO's website, but I also wouldn't speak to the likes of Darl McBride except through a lawyer.
Oh, by the way, the Communism thing isn't funny any more. It's not McCarthyism, but it's pretty fucking stupid and offensive. Most of us in The Real World use and like Linux because it helps us do our jobs and make (and save!) money, not because it fits our half-baked socialist ideals.
"Linux could still be used; it just wouldn't be free," Stowell said. "These people are upset because they've been enjoying a free ride for some time. They're upset their free ride will potentially be gone."
I think that this pretty much puts to rest the question of whether or not SCO wants to own Linux.
Part of the problem is that this wouldn't work. Under the GPL, if you can't distribute it for free, you can't distribute it at all. To relicense Linux as an SCO-0wned product, you'd have to get the agreement of all the contributors. I doubt that that would happen.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
They want Linux users and OSS types to fly off the handle thus creating more negative press, just ignore them. Right now they're only making themselves look bad. Really bad. Man, these are adults?
http://securityportal.com.ar
The protestor's signs were regular protest signs - "SCO AWAY" and whatnot. They were somewhat whitty, but they had a serious point to make. But the SCO signs were downright awful. I don't know about you, but portraying Linus as Hitler and Tux as a Nazi, with the phrase "give communism a try" isn't funny to me. Especially seeing as how Linus is European...you see where I'm going with this.
Whether it was intended for humor or not, SCO owes Linus and the OSS community a formal appology.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
what else would a non-lawyer sco employee be doing all day ?
Everyone is always talking about the fact that SCO wants a buy-out ... I'm thinking that is exactly what they want but they are expecting it from a completely different company than IBM. SCO knows that Linux is becoming a major competitor in the Corporate world and what company is doing everything it can to stop this .... ding ding ding ... that's right Microsoft.
... normally you approach the party that you believe is causing the problem(IBM in this case) and ask for them to resolve the issue, so that both parties can save face if there is a problem ... however SCO began this in the public domain and refuses to show any actual proof. If actual proof was shown the linux community would remove the lines ASAP (contrary to SCO believe there is definatly more than one way to scin a progrm) however at this point that would damage their prospects at a MS buyout (no linux threat = no MS $$$'s).
I have seen tons of comments about how what SCO is doing is very odd
At this point they are only damaging their reputation and making people question the reputation of linux. They have destroyed any semblance of a "corporate image". They company that will potentially benefit the most from this whole scandal is MS. I mean look at how quickly they sent funds to SCO. By paying SCO they were trying to "legitimize" SCO's claims in the public eye. I wouldn't be suprised to see a MS buyout of SCO in the neer future.
We don't need no stinking sig!
...just kidding!
It is official; IBM confirms: SCO is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered SCO community when IDC confirmed that SCO market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent IBM survey which plainly states that SCO has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. SCO is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Microsoft Zealot to predict SCO's future. The hand writing is on the wall: SCO faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for SCO because SCO is dying. Things are looking very bad for SCO. As many of us are already aware, SCO continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
unixware is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time unixware developers only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: unixware is dying.
All major surveys show that SCO has steadily declined in market share. SCO is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If SCO is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. SCO continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, SCO is dead.
Fact: SCO is dying
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
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
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
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
TSG (as distinct from the original SCO, now called (IIRC) Tarantella) seems to be claiming just about everything, probably working on the idea that the worst outcome is the judge saying no. The common-language term for this is "trying it on".
As I read the contract docs, IBM unquestionably retains the rights to any derivatives they wrote, the only thing they can't distribute is the original source. In their last Exhibit, TSG are implicitly including those derivatives in "SOFTWARE PROGRAMS", trying to eliminate a distinction carefully drawn in the original contract.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
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.
Topic in #os: hey guyz, stop pickin on irix. /msg atnt haha. idiot. :~(
<SCO> w00t! i bought unix! im gonna b so rich!
<novell>
<novell> whoops. was that out loud?
<atnt> rotfl
<ibm> lol
<SCO> why r u laffin at me?
<novell> dude, unix is so 10 years ago. linux is in now.
<SCO> wtf?
<SCO> hey guyz, i bought caldera, I have linux now.
<red_hat> haha, your linux sucks.
<novell> lol
<atnt> lol
<ibm> lol
<SCO> no wayz, i will sell more linux than u!
<ibm> your linux sucks, you should look at SuSE
<SuSE> Ja. Wir bilden gutes Linux fr IBM.
<SCO> can we do linux with you?
<SuSE> Ich bin nicht sicher...
<ibm> *cough*
<SuSE> Gut lassen Sie uns vereinigen.
* SuSE is now SuSE[UL]
* SCO is now caldera[UL]
<turbolinux> can we play?
<conectiva> we're bored... we'll go too.
<ibm> sure!
* turbolinux is now turbolinux[UL]
* conectiva is now conectiva[UL]
<ibm> redhat: you should join!
<SuSE[UL]> Ja! Wir sind vereinigtes Linux. Widerstand ist vergeblich.
<red_hat> haha. no.
<red_hat> lamers.
<ibm> what about you debian?
<debian> we'll discuss it and let you know in 5 years.
<caldera[UL]> no one wants my linux!
<turbolinux[UL]> i got owned.
<caldera[UL]> u all tricked me. linux is lame.
* caldera[UL] is now known as SCO
<SCO> i'm going back to unix.
<SGI> yeah! want to do unix with me?
<SCO> haha. no. lamer.
<novell> lol
<ibm> snap!
<SGI>
<SCO> hey, u shut up. im gonna sue u ibm.
<ibm> wtf?
<SCO> yea, you stole all the good stuff from unix.
<red_hat> lol
<SuSE[UL]> heraus laut lachen
<ibm> lol
<SCO> shutup. i'm gonna email all your friends and tell them you suck.
<ibm> go ahead. baby.
<SCO> andandand... i revoke your unix! how do you like that?
<ibm> oh no, you didn't. AIX is forever.
<novell> actually, we still own unix, you can't do that.
<SCO> wtf? we bought it from u.
<novell> whoops. our bad.
<SCO> i own u. haha
<SCO> ibm: give me all your AIX now!
<ibm> whatever. lamer.
* ibm sets mode +b SCO!*@*
* SCO has been kicked from #os (own this.)