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SCO Taking Linux Discussion To Japan

levin writes "EETimes is carrying a new story about our good friend Darl McBride, CEO of SCO. His latest escapades include a trip to Japan in response to the CE Linux Forum initiative undertaken by several big-name Japanese tech firms such as Sony and Toshiba. He's putting his famous tainted code dog-and-pony show on parade, trying to influence some of the major CELF founders."

24 of 463 comments (clear)

  1. Bad idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    McBride will learn to his chagrin that you don't fuck with the Yakuza!

  2. Re:Does anyone out there still use SCO Unix? by Surak · · Score: 4, Informative

    FilePro. We use it for a FilePro database that runs our entire accounting operations. I dunno why. Maybe I should mention to them that FilePro runs on Linux now. (duh).

  3. Explanation by JoeLinux · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's a term borrowed from fark.com meaning someone who is acting stupid/idiotic/moronic/ass-holish.

  4. Re:Too Bad... by PD · · Score: 2, Informative

    Invented on fark.com. They are trying to get the word into common usage, and I think they succeeded. I even heard it on TV.

  5. Re:Just a general question by quantaman · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why is it that articles that mention SCO vs Linux always call Linux" "Linux," but the articles that don't seem to remember to call Linux "GNU/Linux?"

    Is this a coincidence? It's been done what seems like 30 times in the last couple months.

    Linux is just the kernal, GNU/Linux is the entire OS which includes both the kernal and all the GNU tools and stuff. SCO is only talking about the kernal so in that case they are right in just saying Linux.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  6. Does anybody know what Dog and.... by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 0, Informative

    ...Pony show means?

    It reffers to a few 'bands' of women and their 'managers' going around to hick towns and having the women screw and be screwed by dogs and ponies.

    And of course, they took in a bit of money doing so. My pops remembers when 1 such group hit a place in Indiana.

    --
  7. Re:Too Bad... by Trigun · · Score: 5, Informative

    It probably was popularized by Clint Eastwood in 'The Outlaw Josey Wales' when he said, "I'll kick you so hard, you'll be wearing your ass for a hat".

    Although, UrbanDictionary.com says:

    5 definitions found.

    asshat

    One who has their head up their ass. Thus wearing their ass as a hat. Asshat

    asshat

    One who enters into a new environment without taking the time to learn any of the social rules of the place. Then they promptly make pretty much every social gaff you can imagine this side of shitting on the dinner table.

    You know, a moron.

    Scrappy Doo is one of the few existing examples of an animated asshat.

    asshat

    a person who has no common sense or just plain stupid.

    Some of the people on notPopular.com are asshats.

    asshat

    exclamation said when being woken up for the third time by your drunken roomates

    i hope this asshat likes the taste of concrete

    asshat

    1. A hat worn by a drunken fool, or ass.

    2. A foolish person, as one who would wear an asshat.

    1. At the party, Jon made a fool of himself when he donned his asshat, the lampshade.

    2. By bothering everyone at work, that asshat has made a real fool of himself.

    Hope this helps...

  8. Re:Does anyone out there still use SCO Unix? by cdrudge · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes. Over 700 servers mainly on OpenServer 5.0.5 and 5.0.6.

  9. sorry, charlie by SweetAndSourJesus · · Score: 3, Informative

    Asshat was around long before fark.com.

    An interesting etymology of asshat.

    --

    --
    the strongest word is still the word "free"
  10. UNIX Patents by Bigby · · Score: 5, Informative

    "In the past three months, SCO Group, a small software company that owns Unix patents, claimed it had found chunks of its Unix code in Linux."

    I thought it was already concluded that SCO doesn't even claim to own UNIX patents. They just claim that they own the copyrights. The Novell escapade brought all of that out. EE Times needs to get their story right.

  11. Where do you get this shit? by poptones · · Score: 3, Informative
    In the early years of the 20th century, "dog and pony show" was a derisive name for a small circus or carnival. These small-town carnivals, not large or fancy enough to offer elephants and tigers, had to make do with more modest acts, such as dancing dogs and prancing ponies, to draw crowds. By the time of World War I, "dog and pony show" was being used as a metaphor for a big show with very little substance.

    Many "mom and pop and kids" circuses that toured small towns could not afford the expense of maintaining large animals such as camels and elephants, or dangerous and also expensive ones such as lions and tigers. Often, their only menagerie was a few dogs and a pony. The majority of their entertainment consisted of clowning, acrobatics and juggling, with a few acts that involved the dogs and pony. The larger, more sophisticated and better equipped circuses came to refer to these little guys as "dog and pony shows."

    I'm sure there was the occasional carnie who would put on "special" shows for select clients, but so far as I know beastiality has long been illegal in many US states and, therefore, the practice you describe, performed in the US, would present a very real risk of imprisonment to all participants - hence the legends about "pony shows" down in ye olde Tijuana.

  12. Re:Too Bad... by Megane · · Score: 2, Informative
    Ano gaijin wa aho desu ka?

    Iie, oshiri boushi to iimasu ne.

    --
    #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  13. Re:This leaves one big question... by Zathrus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because you'd be a damn fool to do so.

    As it stands, SCO will have to prove that IBM broke its trade secret agreement, which is going to be a damned difficult thing for SCO to do. They're alleging copyright infringement as well but, and this is important, have yet to file a claim in court about any infringement whatsoever. Until they do so what exactly are you going to sue them for? Libel? Good bloody luck. You'd then be on the wrong side of the table -- you'd have to prove that their claims are false without ever seeing any of their documentation. Enjoy! You'll lose that case in a millionth of the amount of time the SCO/IBM case will take. If you even make it to day 2 in court I'll be amazed.

    Here's the deal though -- since SCO is bringing the case against IBM they will have to disclose ALL relevant information on the case to IBM. And presumably to the public, unless they somehow get the record sealed (and SCO does not have the political might that AT&T had in the AT&T/Berkeley case). The claimant is not allowed to spring surprises on the defendant in the US court system -- the defendant, being presumed innocent, is privy to all the claims being brought against them as well as all evidence to support those claims. The same is not true in reverse -- IBM can bring out evidence to counter SCO without SCO's lawyers having ever seen it before (this, however, is generally considered bad form and frowned upon not only by the other lawyer, but also the judge -- judges don't like having their time wasted and any such evidence should be shared with the claimant in order to avoid having the case go to trial in the first place).

    IBM may bring a countersuit against SCO, but in order to do so they'd have to show some substantive damages to their business model... not a very easy thing to do, particularly when you're the size that IBM is. It also complicates matters, and if IBM thinks they have a solid case they may not feel the need to bring a countersuit... easier just to shut them down quickly rather than turn an already long and complicated case into an even longer and more complicated case. Countersuits seem to be used most often when neither side has a particularly strong case.

    It seems to me that some of the players in this game have much more knowledge then they admit openly.

    Welcome to reality.

  14. Re:Does anyone out there still use SCO Unix? by packethead · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apprently some still do. A lot of bricks and mortar type companies run their manufacturing systems on Openserver. They are generally low-tech firms to begin with and have no plans to budget for any upgrades, nor should they - for what they do.

    Now. Any company that requires, HA/failover/performance, etc. Needs to *not* be running OpenServer. Netconfig requires a re-link and reboot anytime you breathe on it. THe package manager is this thing called 'custom', which is anything but customizable. SMP? Gigabit Ethernet? Journalized filesystem? I think not! Maybe the Military can use it, considering that Colonel Panic and Major Re-install are part of the core functionality.

    UnixWare is better, but it ain't Solaris.

    --
    .sig
  15. Re:This leaves one big question... by Twanfox · · Score: 2, Informative
    I know this is a stupid nit to pick, but...

    Until they do so what exactly are you going to sue them for? Libel?

    If SCO is going overseas and telling by word of mouth, it's slander. If they print it in book, or magazine or paper or something, it's libel. A newspaper reporting news on what someone else said isn't exactally libel, as the newspaper isn't saying it, but repeating what's spoken.

  16. Where Darl got his Japanese. by ashitaka · · Score: 4, Informative

    From his bio:

    From 1988 to 1996, he worked at networking leader Novell where he was responsible for growing Novell Japan's growth to more than $100 million in revenue.

    I was in Japan from 1986 to 1996. Novell went absolutely nowhere during that time. Microsoft took over the networking market. I ended up dealing only with Novell U.S. as Novell Japan was absolutely hopeless to work with. Now that I think about it, I seem to recall meeting Darl at a gaijin get-together. Just another expat executive lording over the locals.

    If he knows more Japanese than "o-kane dase" I'll be amazed.

    --
    If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
  17. We already know what it is by autopr0n · · Score: 3, Informative

    Supposedly its the RCU (Read, Copy, Update) code that speeds up threading on super-highend systems. It came from Sequent which was later purchaced by IBM. The AT&T contract signed by sequent didn't have the add-on that IBM had, which said that IBM 'owned' all the software they developed. In other words, all the UNIX stuff developed by sequent before it was purchaced by IBM SCO has a rights on.

    The problem is what Sequent did was come up with the system and patent it, publishing the system in a patent, which applied to any multithreaded OS. In other words, they developed something and stuck it into their unix system, not the other way around.

    Anyway, this is only one part of the story...

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    1. Re:We already know what it is by Ian+Lance+Taylor · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, SCO is alleging that RCU, as well as other code, was contributed by IBM to Linux in violation of IBM's Unix licensing agreement. SCO does not claim that that code was copied from Unix to Linux, because that code was never in Unix; it was only in IBM's version, AIX.

      There is different code which SCO alleges was copied directly from Unix to Linux.

  18. link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Read it here. Shave off the filename to get a list of all documents in this filing.

    [jole]

  19. Re:This leaves one big question... by ccarr.com · · Score: 3, Informative

    the defendant, being presumed innocent, is privy to all the claims being brought against them as well as all evidence to support those claims.

    You mean presumed "not liable". This is a civel case, not a criminal case.

    The same is not true in reverse -- IBM can bring out evidence to counter SCO without SCO's lawyers having ever seen it before...

    No. In a civil case, the discovery rules allow either party to examine the other's records.

    --
    I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. BB
  20. Re:SCO just filed amendments to bylaws to indemnif by Farmer+Jimbo · · Score: 3, Informative

    You are talking about the SEC form 8-A12G/A from SEC's SCO page, correct?

    It's all governed by General Corporation Law, in this case indemnification is limited by section (e)

    All they're really saying is, if we didn't have seperate D&O policies for the directors and officers before, we do now. And some other stuff to try to prevent a hostile stock take over.

  21. Re:More icing on the Cake... by Ian+Lance+Taylor · · Score: 2, Informative

    I saw the code, and I didn't say that their claims aren't FUD. I said it wasn't clear, and that the one piece of allegedly copied code they showed me proved little. See my writeup at the Linux Journal or on my own server.

  22. Re:You are doomed now .. they know who you are ... by Ian+Lance+Taylor · · Score: 2, Informative

    I would very much like to see one of these 1500 letters and this very compelling information.

    I can't help you with the compelling information, but SCO posted a copy of the letter on their web site for a while. I think they've taken it down since, but you can still see it here.

  23. Re:Not gnu/linux, its Linux by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2, Informative

    RIght.

    Also Linus himself calls distributions Linux. Its his OS right? Yes it just the kernel bla bla but last time I checked only debian called itself Gnu/Linux.

    1.)People call it Linux so its Linux.
    2.)Only Debian can offer a truly "gnu" system so its the only distro that calls itself gnu/linux.

    According to the gpl you can not have any proprietary or other freeware that is not gnu in your product and release it under the GPL. Also the license does not require a product to call itself gnu/x if its released under the gpl or does it require the author to assiocate his or her product as part of "gnu". However you can not call something "gnu" if its not released properly under the GPL.

    This is why redhat Linux is linux while Debian is Debian gnu/linux.