Slashdot Mirror
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."
"I saw what appeared to be a word-for-word copy of about every third line of code in the central module of the Linux kernel," said Enderle of Giga Information Group, who viewed the alleged code violations two weeks ago. "The lines of code contained typos, misspellings and even copyright disclaimers. It appeared to constitute a violation of the license."
Where can I get me one of these central modules?Why do we keep posting articles that we know are only to impose FUD on the Linux/Open source community?
Every Super Villan uses Linux.
It can be done as it has been already proven in Germany.
Nobody can make false accusations without giving proof. Any Linux distributer or the EFF or other interest groups can sue them. And if one does this SCO would to have to show the code or STFU.
It also raises the question why IBM doesn't do this.
The only sensible explanation for this strange behavior seems to me that SCO has some (perhaps weak) point and such a countersuit would fail. It seems to me that some of the players in this game have much more knowledge then they admit openly.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
This is just more evidence that SCO has no intent other than to harm Linux. There seems to be nothing to gain, for SCO anyway, from this escapade in Japan.
If this were an attempted murder, the victim would be Linux. The weapon would be SCO and the detective would now be visiting everyone with a motive. Hmmm who could that be?
"The 1,500 companies who received letters from SCO [about potential infringements] should be worried, big time," said Rob Enderle, a research fellow for the Giga Information Group (Santa Clara, Calif.). Based on what he saw, Enderle said, "The evidence appears to be very compelling."
/. viewers in a second (and if you mention WMD or politics here, you should get modded down to obliteration)
Prepare for the leter with very compelling information.
Ahh lets cut the crap right now.
All SCO would need to do is publish one example of where Linux has there source code here to slashdot and it would probably sway 50% of the
I would very much like to see one of these 1500 letters and this very compelling information.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
The EETimes article makes several mentions of SCO's "Unix patents", as if patent infringement were at the core of this controversy. I was under the impression from the other articles I've read that the issues were 1) breach of contract (with respect to IBM) and 2) copyright infringement (with respect to everyone else, including the 1500 recipients of letters from SCO). This is the first mention I've heard of patents. Is it really about patents, or is Charles J. Murray (the article's author) deserving of an AssHat Award too?
I am getting sick of reading this inane and insane quote: How the hell do you copy every third line, without copying the other two? It would be like making a knock-off of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix where I copied every third line, and I got the other two lines from the public domain Moby Dick.
Don't even get me started on the meaningless phrase "central module of the Linux kernel".
It would be much more believable if he just said the whole damn thing was copied. I guess he thinks it sounds more "technical" than saying 33% was copied, because he can show off that he knows "code" is made up of "lines".
Why doesn't he just say every third byte was copied from the Evil Master Control Program, and then scoot off on his little Tron light-cycle?
I am getting sick of hearing that quote from that jackhole of the universe.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as though SCO has absolutely no interest in consumer electronics and embedded devices. (And yet Microsoft certainly does.) So why would SCO waste time specifically targeting an upstart organization aiming to promote Linux for consumer electronics? It's not a threat to their marketshare. Seems fishy, albeit unprovable at this stage. Granted, they may only be making as much fuss as possible.
The thing is that these mom and pop operations dropped a few grand on a 386, a five user Xenix license, and this software package and as long as it works, they'll keep using it. Not to mention it's a minicomputer, they just get to use dumb terminals which are available at garage sales and whatnot, rather than having to have PCs. The package does everything, including financials and such, so why use something else? When the hardware fails and they find out they can't run 386 Xenix on modern hardware and they need a SCO license, then they decide they might as well buy a used Sparc or something, and that's the time to transition. However I do recall assisting one customer on transitioning to SCO Unix on a Pentium 2 instead of going to the other product. Poor bastard.
However the point remains that if it ain't broke, why screw with it? If you're trying to make any kind of customizations, then you would like a much better OS, especially something better-supported. If you're just using something for a turnkey system, then you want something with low overhead and high stability, and while SCO Unix doesn't really fit the bill there in either category, good old SCO Xenix was amazing. Unix on a 286 in 1mb of ram, installed in 20mb of disk is nothing to sneeze at. Of course there are older examples of Unix on even lesser hardware, and there's always Minix but hell, it's almost as restricted as Xenix :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This move just proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this whole SCO escapade is publicity stunt designed to hurt Linux.
The only way to get fluent in Japanese is to live in Japan. If the article is true and McBride is fluent, then we can assume he has spent some time in Japan and knows something about business in Japan. This means he knows, that no matter what he tries in Japan, he will get absolutely nothing accomplished as far as suing the major Japanese players is concerned.
What he will get, however, is many industry leading, powerful corporations agreeing with him publically.
That is the Japanese way, maintain the "wa" (harmony.) Stay in agreement publically, while internally things are very different. McBride will use this "Public agreement" of Sony, Hitachi, Matsushita, Sharp, Phillips, Samsung, NEC, and Toshiba to cast even more FUD about linux. "Hey look, IBM may not think we have a case, but the Japanese giants unanimously agreed with everything we said."
This move is very, very smart for McBride if he plays it right. May he fry in hell.