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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."
....I guess that means he'll have to accept his AssHat Award by proxy.
For what?
I remember we use to use this EMC datamovers on the controller server that was hooked up to the things. Besides that, I knew of only one other company that used them.
ACK
"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.
The headline makes it seem like they are trying to get as many countries to discredit SCO's claims, before they get there.
"McBride, who is fluent in Japanese, will visit with several founding members to show them code samples in which the Linux open-source operating system allegedly violates SCO's Unix patents, said an SCO spokesman."
I wonder if he's dumb enough to think they'll sign a non-disclosure?
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
We had two Compaq Proliant servers at work, running SCO Unix. We reinstalled them with Linux three weeks ago and sent back all SCO CD's, handbooks etc. to SCO with a little note that we dont want to use Software from a Company which can't write good code and sues those who can.
;)
Curious why we didn't receive a response yet
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
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.
(AP) In a related story, SCO took its fight against Linux to Antarctica. Little is known of the results, except that there are rumors of significant reductions in the penguin population."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
end of line
With ... regretted appologies to Yatta!(c)(tm)
(r)(dog)
Nippon-Sue-Sue SCO-wonderful Easy-Rider-Salad-The-Mall! We didn't win so Sue! Sue! Sue! Sue!
Now where are the guys in underwear jumping around talking about how life is good as long as they have leaves and that the economy will recover?
Related Link: Google for Yatta. Trust me.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
When I think about SCO I touch my CELF
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.
Asshat was around long before fark.com.
An interesting etymology of asshat.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Isn't it enough to piss off one 800 pound gorilla?
Now he goes poking another eight of them with a stick.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
top execs.
Something I read on yahoo message board.
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Specifically quoted from their FORM 8-A/A SEC filing. Last sentence of page 3 in the Bylaws section:
"The Bylaws also provide that the Company will indemnify officers and directors against losses that they may incur in investigations and legal proceedings resulting from their services to the Company,"
So as far as I can tell the Company could care less whether or not what they did was legal or ethical.
"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.
IBM has the code to both SCO and Linux, why don't they find out the offending chunks and release a patch to romove them. The Linux community can then rewrite these peices of code and the problem goes away.
Unless ofcourse IBM thinks that would be an admission of guilt and therefore screw them.
In this zdnet article (who else!) from 2002, Darly Baby says:
"And C++ programming languages, we own those, have licensed them out multiple times, obviously"
Watch yer arse Stroustrup! Darls coming to get you!
I got this post from the yahoo message boards, the guy has a good point:
t m
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by: martin_lvnv (41/M/Las Vegas) 07/07/03 04:44 pm
Msg: 18108 of 18112
Has anyone considered how strange it is that Darl is going to Japan to talk to the CE Linux Forum? CE stands for consumer electronics: i.e. very small embedded systems running out of ROM most of the time without a hard drive on a small cheap processor.
SCOs published claims both from press releases, news reports and their own complaint are about IBM putting "enterprise" technology into Linux: NUMA, JFS, RCU, SMP etc. None of these things apply in the least to embedded systems running out of ROM on a consumer electronic device. Whats up with that?
My only guess is that SCOs arrogance knows no bounds and they think anything using a computer chip, even a toaster, has to infringe on SCOs IP.
http://www.celinuxforum.org/PressRelease/pr02.h
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.
I worked on an IP case as a paralegal once that involved the Japenese Patent and Copyright office. It is an amazingly complex system over there and I doubt that SCO would be able to do anything to them even it wanted to. Even if they tried to get a UTC injunction against the importation of the Linux embedded goods, they would still be limited to getting the infringing pieces removed. While I am not a developer, it certainly seems from what I have read that replacing the offending code would not be terribly onerous.
In the end, however, I can see potentially large blows coming to either the Linux community or SCO depending on how the companies respond to the presentation.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Every few lines there was a line that was exactly the same as code in the Linux kernel source tree.
These lines contained one and only one character: '\n'
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.
"It shows how entrenched Linux has become," said Victor Yodaiken, CEO of FSMLabs Inc. (Socorro, N.M.), a maker of real-time software for Linux.
Aah... yes. Last time I checked, FSMLabs was trying to undermine the GPL by offering kernel patches which use FSMLabs proprietary patented technology. The situation has become better due to massive intervention of the FSF since then, but is still somewhat uncertain.
It's scary that this is a time where even the foe of our foe is not necessarily our friend.
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.
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.
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.
At least, he works for clients who want him to say that linux sucks, which can be seen here for instance (thanks to Anon on osnews for that link)
"Linux and other open source projects require too much customization, and doubts about the legitimacy of open source code could get users tangled up in lawsuits. Besides, many Linux supporters are a bunch of potty-mouthed malcontents. Enterprises are better off staying away from Linux and open source -- or at least thinking through the possible liabilities, argues guest columnist Rob Enderle."
Belief is the currency of delusion.
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.
Two things
0 7-03.cfm, Caldera bought DR-DOS $400K, but got from law suit $155,000,000.
e .jhtml?articleID=10818216
0 .html also has a SCO spokesman refering to patents
1. According to http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2003/city_2003-
As far as I know (I guess somebody could check) they didn't purchase the UNIX source, or value it in their SEC reports, for anything like $1bn, or $3bn, let alone $50bn... so how can they claim billions of damages, if they bought it for a few millions, and valued it of the same order?
2. I keep seeing patents in lots of news articles about the case. My understanding is the case is about alleged contractual violations, alleged trade secret issues and alleged unfair competition etc.,
http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticl
"McBride, who is fluent in Japanese, will visit with several founding members to show them code samples in which the Linux open-source operating system allegedly violates SCO's Unix patents, said an SCO spokesman"
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59551,0
So the obvious questions are:
- Is the press getting it wrong?
- If the press is indeed getting it wrong, why are they (and not just one news source) getting it wrong?
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.