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Linux vs. SCO: The Decision Matrix
hexidec writes "Haven't seen this here yet, though I may have missed it. Anyway... A group of Australian techies have put together an analysis matrix of the likelyhood of each SCO Unix claim being true, and what outcome would most likely result if so. Puts a lot of the various recent suppositions in one handy place."
Ahhh... I feel the slashdot effect. Since this doc has tables, I put a mirror up. http://mirrors.tatay.org/lnxsco.html Cheers y'all!
Accentuate the positive, don't waste your mod points on the negative.
It looks like the site is already slashdotted. I have mirrored the page at http://www.sais.nl/linux_vs_sco_matrix.html
-- Cliff Albert
http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:FOhL0ah_AIQJ: www.cyber.com.au/users/conz/linux_vs_sco_matrix.ht ml+Linux+vs.+SCO:+The+Decision+Matrix&hl=en&ie=UTF -8
Slashdot. The fastest crasher on the web.
Why host the page on your own site when google already HAS THE CACHE
Maybe it's not difficult: Linus' wife, Tove, *is* a martial arts expert (Finland's karate champion, IIRC).
Faith can move mountains. I prefer dynamite.
Linux has already been affected by companies who have shown increased sales since beginning to spew FUD about "stolen IP" in Linux.
So true. But companies won't come right out and admit to this -- makes them look foolish.
Case in point: I was all set to introduce our school district (>50,000 students, 9 high schools) to Linux as an economic alternative to Novell. Servers were purchased (ProLiant DLs with dual processors and 6-disk RAIDs), Linux was installed, testing was done, quotas set up, we were ready to roll -- and then SCO dropped their bombshell. A week went by...two weeks...I discovered that due to "security" concerns, the servers were to be converted to Novell servers.
"Security" concerns? Bullshit. I had already worked several weeks with the network gurus to put their security concerns to rest.
This is but one government entity. The damage SCO has caused is quite extensive, and those who deny it are hiding their heads in the sand.
Who would have thought that Linux (and open-source software in general) would be brought to its knees by an indirect blow? Here we were, thinking the battle was to be fought in Redmond, when in fact we were flanked by SCO and didn't even realize it until it was too late.
Such is the price of hubris and arrogance. "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." (Sun Tzu, Art of War)
Based on the way SCO is spending money, I'm fairly sure that the intention is mainly to cause MS to spend money. Yesterday, e.g., I received a "Presorted STD" publication from SCO. I have no idea why, and called them up to ask to be removed from their mailing list (will they? ??).
FWIW, SCO can be reached at:
1-800-726-8649
The editor of the ad was at ptaylor@sco.com
He invites comments. (No particular note on what kind of comment was desired.)
Another mailing address is info@sco.com, but they don't particularlly ask that comments be sent there.
Of note is that they claim that Java 1.3.1 and the Java runtime are Open Source tools. (I suppose that Sun may have changed the license, but the last time I looked the binaries were definitely NOT open source, much less Open Source, though parts of it might have reasonably been called that.)
But sending out a mass mailing to people who aren't even vaguely interested in your product doesn't sound to me like a company interested in conserving it's financial resources.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Hesse Ruderman has a bookmaklet to transpose tables (which would rotate table pi/2 radians, making it tall & narrow & readable), works in mozilla, opera, ie.
g edata.ht ml
look there:
http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/pa
Certain arguments are simply too laughable to be taken seriously. The notion that one should have ample time to continue to be in breach of a contract is fundementally abusurd. One should not reasonably expect ANY judge to accept such argumentation.
Besides, such argumentation would undermind SCO's claims of damages.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
>The notion that one should have ample time to continue to be in breach of a contract is fundementally abusurd.
The keyword here is "Reasonable".
All they have to do is prove to a judge, a human being, that in the complex legal system that they acted "reasonable", then there is a chance that the time elasped is not a valid point.
If a case gets to the courts, anything could happen.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Yeah, right. That's not going to happen. Assuming that there is infringing code, that the code is relatively minor, and that kernel developers can quickly replace it with non-infringing code, there's still the problem of getting users to use that code. Sure, the few thousand crazies that update their kernel on every RC version or Alan Cox patch will be first in line, but they're a very small minority. Even if Linus decides to release a new kernel version just for those changes (probably likely, if it needs to be done), you're still only dealing with a minority of people that stay on top of minor kernel version changes.
Now you're left with two distinct types of users, both much more prevalent than the previous examples. First, you have people running Linux on production machines or machines that otherwise need to remain stable. Not only does updating the kernel mean downtime for a reboot (if you're only allowed ~15 minutes of downtime a year, a reboot can cut into a huge chunk of that budget), but this is new code. Adequate stress testing would need to be performed, pushing deployment back several weeks (assuming that no issues crop up to delay the deployment). The remaining type of user encompasses everything from the greenest newbie to non-zealot power users. They're the people that either don't know (newbies) or don't care (people that want to get work done, rather than spending all of their time compiling and deploying kernels). The latter can be mitigated somewhat with the auto-update tools available now, but those still require user intervention.
What that all boils down to is that SCO may have some leverage even if the kernel developers do quickly remove any infringing code. And that's not even covering issues like the need for distribution makers to release new versions, and potentially the need to pull remaining boxed software stock to avoid continuing infringement by selling software with an old kernel.
Thank you. That is exactly what has happened at my company. My linux servers (which were soon going into production) are being formated with W2K as we speak.
It is the most relevant and insightful material I have seen to date and I highly recommend reading it.
Beware blue cats moving at
Yep, well you are lucky one. It cracks me up to see all these posters talking about how this lawsuit doesn't matter. It is affecting the adoption of Linux. I was bringing these boxes in as low cost alternatives to Solaris and Sparc. Now, they are being converted to W2K. Wish I had decided to force them to spend more money! :)
Funny thing is that legal hasn't said a word about the fact that we are running AIX boxes everywhere. That point really puzzles me, since they are the ones that SCO is going after! Oh well, it is a funny world that we live in.