Slashdot Mirror
Australian Linux User Group Fights Back Against SCO
ashitaka writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that an Open Source group has gone on the offensive in response to SCO's latest demands that Linux users must buy a Unixware license to avoid any possible future unpleasantries. 'Open Source Victoria today filed a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, asking it to investigate SCO's activities in light of 'unsubstantiated claims and extortive legal threats for money' against possibly hundreds of thousands of Australians.' I especially like the last bit: 'One feels that this whole fiasco is the IT industry equivalent of a Nigerian scam or internet extortion ploy.' Oh yeah.."
Aussie Aussie Aussie!! OI OI OI!!
Expect to see more of this in the future! And more publicity these counterlawsuits get, the better...
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
I especially like the last bit: 'One feels that this whole fiasco is the IT industry equivalent of a Nigerian scam or internet extortion ploy.' Oh yeah.."
It would almost be funny if this whole mess were not true. sigh
This is truly welcome news. The community there is actually standing up, which, honestly, is more than I can say for the general LUGs here in the states. I am not referencing IBM, I know that they've got to keep quite until their day in court. But aside from the random ranting, I haven't read very much about Linux standing up against SCO. Understandably, there is little to defend, since SCO has been too vague.
Additionally, I really enjoy Linus' comments in his recent interview.
Good work guys!
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
A dingo ate my license! And, at their LUG meetings, do they serve Bloomin' Onions? Because if so, I'm moving there and joining.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Then I'm all for it! I just collected my $23 million dollars from the Nigerian government last week! I mean, seriously, what is there not to believe about such an offer? Now I'm all in favor of SCO! Maybe they'll give me ANOTHER $23 million! So I can buy some overpriced movie tickets! Boo MPAA ! (+5 Anti-MPAA)
BTW, /. should probably stop posting SCO stories every few hours and have a "Weekly SCO digest" feature (or "SCOback" like slashback) or something like that.
1 you owe us
2 why?
3 ?
4 Profit
These SCO guys are really onto something.
Karma: Bad due to google bombing - Robert Watkins woz 'ere.
When all the trade commissions of the world are done with SCO, it's going to be one guy buried up to his neck and covered in Brazilian army ants marching aimlessly about his body consuming his delectably tasty flesh. Or maybe I'm thinking of someone else.
MR. MCBRIDE. Lads, in the previous weeks, I have made vicious accusations and threats against you! Now, I demand that you pay me a large sum of money! If you do not, I shall make further outlandish threats!
AUSTRALIAN LADS. Sir, this is unacceptable! If you do not desist immediately, we shall take action of our own! So stop, sir, or we shall file a complaint immediately!
[[MR. MCBRIDE makes further outlandish threats.]]
[[AUSTRALIAN LADS file a complaint.]]
- Exeunt -
SCO posts numerous redundant articles about Slashdot.
paintball
More news from the SCO front: Recent revelations that SCO copyrights did not extend to the NUMA, SMP and RCU code in Linux has lead to a new copyright audit by SCO's legal team to investigate the copyright status of Synchronous Queue Utilization Auto Tracking code (SQUAT).
"It appears from our latest audit that we may not have aquired SQUAT when we purchased AT&T's System V code."
When asked how this would effect SCO's plan to license the Linux kernel, "We never really believed that SQUAT had been copied from the UnixWare source code into Linux, so the fact that we don't own SQUAT has little bearing on our plans to sell Linux kernel licensing"
I suggest that those of us that live in the US do the same and file a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
You can file online here.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Open source group files complaint against SCO
By Sam Varghese
July 23 2003
An open source grouping has gone on the offensive against the SCO Group after the latter told companies using Linux to pay up or else face liability for running the open source operating system.
Open Source Victoria today filed a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, asking it to investigate SCO's activities in light of "unsubstantiated claims and extortive legal threats for money" against possibly hundreds of thousands of Australians.
OSV member Con Zymaris said "We take serious issue with The SCO Group's latest ploy, namely that of seeking licence fees from Linux users. As such, we have filed a complaint with the ACCC. We call on any Australian Linux users who feel pressured by SCO's actions to immediately contact the ACCC and file a complaint. You can do this online."
Zymaris said that with its latest move, SCO had crossed the line. "They're basically saying 'you owe use money'. But if someone asks 'why do I owe you money', they reply, "we can't tell you why, but you have to pay us anyway'," he said.
In March, SCO filed a billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM, alleging the latter had included SCO's Unix code in the Linux kernel. SCO also claimed that Linux was an unauthorised derivative of Unix and warned commercial Linux users that they could be legally liable for violation of intellectual copyright. SCO later expanded its claims against IBM to US$3 billion in June when SCO said it had withdrawn IBM's licence for its own Unix, AIX.
Another OSV member Andrew Pam said the organisation believed there may be a case to answer on the issue of "misrepresentation of need", where an organisation was suggesting that people must make payments that they were not obligated to make.
Pam said: "All of the Linux operating system has been released as Open Source software. We want to remind the IT industry that by definition, there are absolutely no licence fees payable on Free and Open Source Software. Anyone who claims that licence fees are required for Linux is deliberately misleading and confusing the public."
Zymaris said SCO's recent registration of copyright to the legacy Unix System V source code, on which SCO already claims copyright, in no way affected Linux. "Copyright registration is a simple filing procedure which merely formally registers a claim and does not in any way constitute proof of ownership," he said.
"SCO has yet to prove its claims of the existence of any disputed source in the Linux codebase. Linux was written from scratch by a global community of free software volunteers and IT corporations.
"We believe that SCO will find it extremely difficult to cement their claims in court, and until they do, they are spreading fear to extract money from innocent users. We believe this is unethical and possibly illegal in Australia."
Zymaris said that even if SCO could show that any Unix System V source code was present in the Linux kernel (and was not intentionally contributed by SCO's own staff) SCO could not absolve itself as for the past few months, it had been publishing all such code publicly under the GNU Public License.
"This releases all supposedly disputed code from any additional encumbrances from SCO, meaning that all users can use Linux with impunity. Through their insistence on withholding public disclosure of any worthwhile evidence in this case, The SCO Group are leaving an impression that they have no such evidence," Zymaris. said. "One feels that this whole fiasco is the IT industry equivalent of a Nigerian scam or internet extortion ploy."
From the website:
"OSV is a marketing, advocacy and focus group, which aims to raise the profile of Open Source Software (OSS) in Victoria."
Ven. Jhanrato
SCO..
Microsoft..
DirecTV..
MPAA/RIAA..
Did I miss something? Is this the Chinese "Year of the Evil Corperation"? Is modern business even legitimate business anymore? When did the underlying ethic behind fair competition become, "Enlist your friends, sue your enemies"?
Maybe if we stuck all SCO/Microsoft/MPAA/RIAA/etc's lawyers in a Monty Python worthy blender, grinding them into a fine red (or black, as some might claim) paste, we'd have enough environmentally friendly biodegradable waste to restore a rainforest somewhere.
Finally, a practical use for lawyers..
They came, they saw, they left, disguisted.
Maybe U.S. users should start taking the same action. Would the FTC listen?
You could be heading for a booting.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
We all recognize that SCO is blowing hot air. Why not just ignore it? You get a nastygram from them, throw it out. There's no reason to prevent SCO from talking if no one is listening in the first place.
If SCO claims copyright infringement in the middle of a deserted forest, does the claim make a press release?
paintball
Whichever one of you fuckies is DOS attacking irc.freenode.net, STOP IT! God damn little fucking cocksuckers!
If you people want to DOS something, take on SCO. They are deserving of such pummelling.
Slashdot should continue to post news about the SCO-affair, but it should be actual news, not the story five posts down but with a new headline.
Give 'Em the Boot!
US : Lots of noise, only 3 sane voices so far. ESR, RMS, Linus. Okay, Bruce.
Germany: LinuxTAG kicks SCO, gets injunction.
Australia: Fightback - no FUD please, we're Aussies.
New Zealand: InstallFest proceeds smoothly despite arm twisting from big gorillas.
Poland: Injunction.
India : Please use OpenSource (President of India)
Japan : Consortium of Electronics firms pledge to adopt Linux. Bride's personal visit futile.
UK : Refer US, above.
France: Do the French use computers?
Please fill up for remaining countries....
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
request for urgent business relationship
first, i must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction. this is by virtue of its non disclosure agreement as being utterly confidential and 'top secret'. i am sure and have confidence of your ability and reliability to prosecute a transaction of this great magnitude involving a pending transaction requiring maxiimum confidence.
we are top official of the sco group executive panel who are interested in imporation of money into our bank account because of intellectual property which are presently trapped in linux. in order to commence this business we solicit your assistance to enable us transfer into our account your said licensing funds.
the source of this intellectual property is as follows; during the last decade here, the ibm officials set up linux and incorporated various technologies which are the property of sco. the present sco executive board set up an intellectual property panel and we have identified a lot of infringing lines of code which are presently floating in the linux kernel.
however, by virtue of our complete and total lack of any evidence or a legal leg to stand on, we cannot acquire this money through the courts. i have therefore, been delegated as a matter of trust by my colleagues of the panel to harass and threaten with lawsuits linux users from whose account we would transfer the sum of us$21,320,000.00(twenty one million, three hundred and twenty thousand u.s dollars) in unixware licensing fees. hence we are writing you this letter. we have agreed to share the money thus; 1. 0% for the licensee 2. 100% for us 3. and maybe we won't sue you later.
please,note that this transaction is 100% safe and we hope to commence the transfer latest seven (7) banking days from the date of the receipt of the following informatiom by tel/fax; 234-1-7740449, your company's signed, and stamped letterhead paper the above information will enable us write letters of claim and job description respectively. this way we will not sue you for using the linux operating system.
we are looking forward to doing this business with you and solicit your confidentiality in this transation. please acknowledge the receipt of this letter using the above tel/fax numbers. i will send you detailed information of this pending project when i have heard from you.
yours faithfully,
ceo daryl mcbride
note; please quote this reference number (ve/s/09/99) in all your responses.
Meanwhile, on Monday the company where I work received two fake "renew your domain" letters. Welcome to the modern business world...
You can file a complaint supporting OSV at http://www.accc.gov.au/about/fs-contact.htm - look for the complaint form.
Dear Sir / Madam
As the representative of a small business (XXXXXX) I am writing to support a recent complaint filed by the Open Source Victoria regarding the actions of the SCO Group.
SCO is making unspecific and unsubstantiated claims that it owns copyright pertaining to the Linux PC operating system. It is asking any companies using Linux to purchase licences or face the threat of legal action.
Would you please investigate the claims that SCO is making so that small businesses and other companies are not pressured into making unwarranted payments.
Sincerely,
:wq
Change of strategy-
SCO's Darl McBride states that Linux users in Australia and Germany are indemnified from potential litigation at this moment. McBride, in his trademark bold manner of speech, continues, "cuz they are all good folks, ya'know."
Anyone know the European equivalent of the competition and consumer office? Is there an online complaint form that I can use?
Thanks,
Karem
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Because this is a battle of credibility at the moment. With no actual evidence on the loose, people will believe what appears to be the most credible information. The more people that fight and the fewer that roll over for SCO, the better it will be for the Linux community.
The more Linux groups fight back, the more the casual and business users will disregard the threats from SCO. The more dignified resistance we put forward, the more credibility the non-computer press will give us. I think this is great news coming in from Australia.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I conclude that SCOs next step will be to write to Microsoft explaining that they have a large amount of IP tied up in a foreign software product but are unable to get it out themselves. In exchange for 15% of their share capital...oh wait, they already did that. I guess it's going to be buying Utah politicians and going round selling "insurance" against your server being ripped out of the rack and thrown out the window next.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
australia was a colony of british criminals and outcasts.
america was a colony of british outcasts and criminals.
China: If you see SCO and SARS, kill SCO first.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
See lazy zdnet press release regurgitation
Anyone else noticed this Vultus company is a Canopy funded company too? They hang out in one of SCO's buildings. Check their website especially this picture!
Question: Who owns/funds ZDnet & the like?
It's about time someone called a spade a spade. Now to do the same thing in the US...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
SCO Seeks Lawsuit Against College of Optometry BY DANIEL BAUMGARTEN (MISINFORMATION, LTD.) MEMPHIS, TN 12:41 AM EDT - Caldera, otherwise known as SCO, has announced today that in addition to filing a lawsuit with IBM/Linux for violating its intellectual property rights, it will now be looking for monetary damages from the Southern College of Optometry for trademark infringement. "I really don't think (SCO) has a well-founded argument," commented William E. Cochran, O.D., president of the Southern College of Optometry, in an interview. "Just because we're both called SCO doesn't make it trademark infringement. I've spoken with my lawyers on this one." SCO, which is a registered trademark of the Lindon, Utah-based computer company, is also in the URL of the Southern College of Optometry's Web site (http://www.sco.edu/). SCO senior vice president Jeff Hunsaker stated in a brief press conference that "this Web address is a legitimate violation of SCO intellectual property rights. The misleading nature of the URL draws potential customers away from our Web site and instead encourages them to enroll in an optometry school." When asked how a school of optometry threatened SCO's business, Hunsaker replied, "We're just looking out in the best interest of our shareholders." Dr. Cochran issued a public announcment shortly thereafter encouraging SCO to challenge the California State Controller's Office (http://www.sco.ca.gov/) in a federal court of law on similar charges to those being pressed on the Southern College of Optometry. Mr. Hunsaker declined to comment in reply to Dr. Cochran's announcment.
"Screw slashdot." -- Linus Torvalds
whoops! Forgot BR tags.
SCO Seeks Lawsuit Against College of Optometry
BY DANIEL BAUMGARTEN (MISINFORMATION, LTD.)
MEMPHIS, TN 12:41 AM EDT - Caldera, otherwise known as SCO, has announced today that in addition to filing a lawsuit with IBM/Linux for violating its intellectual property rights, it will now be looking for monetary damages from the Southern College of Optometry for trademark infringement.
"I really don't think (SCO) has a well-founded argument," commented William E. Cochran, O.D., president of the Southern College of Optometry, in an interview. "Just because we're both called SCO doesn't make it trademark infringement. I've spoken with my lawyers on this one."
SCO, which is a registered trademark of the Lindon, Utah-based computer company, is also in the URL of the Southern College of Optometry's Web site (http://www.sco.edu/). SCO senior vice president Jeff Hunsaker stated in a brief press conference that "this Web address is a legitimate violation of SCO intellectual property rights. The misleading nature of the URL draws potential customers away from our Web site and instead encourages them to enroll in an optometry school."
When asked how a school of optometry threatened SCO's business, Hunsaker replied, "We're just looking out in the best interest of our shareholders."
Dr. Cochran issued a public announcment shortly thereafter encouraging SCO to challenge the California State Controller's Office (http://www.sco.ca.gov/) in a federal court of law on similar charges to those being pressed on the Southern College of Optometry.
Mr. Hunsaker declined to comment in reply to Dr. Cochran's announcment.
"Screw slashdot." -- Linus Torvalds
Vegimite? I'm think that last time I heard they were using it to poison the rats.
All-in-all... I figure if aussies can eat the stuff (concentrated yeast extract, black... not overtly tasty though I found it tolerable) then they are a force to be reckoned with. Just sit on the SCO execs and force-feed them some until they come around...
"Good god, they enjoy this stuff??? They're not human!!! we repent... we repent!!!"
We call a spade a fscking shovel mate.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Japan : Consortium of Electronics firms pledge to adopt Linux.
Not only that, the Japanese government is somewhat in favor of Linux.
In a decade-long recession, they are steadily shifting from costly proprietary to open source. It is amazing as the Japanese bureaucrats are generally the most conservative idiots in the universe.
Does anyone have a followup on that story? It seems only logical to put a restraining order on anyone or anything that tries what appears to be blackmail or extortion.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
SCO SUCKS Button by GeekProdigy
I love Australia. We manage to get organised about insipid and vexacious cases about software but are apathetic about real issues: the copyright amendment act (DMCA), anti-terrorist leglislation (PATRIOT), the continual incarceration of asylum seekers in desert gulags, etc, etc. Maybe it is because we have a chance against SCO whereas our governments (state and federal, both sides of politics) are utterly unresponsive.
FROM: Mr. Darl McBride
A close business friend has given me you electonique address for communication as I have PRESSING CIRCUMSTANCES that require your assistence.
You see, I Mr. Darl McBride Esq. have a sum of US $100,000,000,000,000.00 due to me but can not on my own acquire these outstanding funds. You see I am the PRIME MINSTER OF CALDERA IP and as you may know have been DRIVEN INTO EXILE by IBM and their TYRRANICAL LINUX CONSPIRATORS AGAINST OUR SOVERIEGN NATION. Our matter of greatest importance demands that WE SEEK YOUR HELP. In return for assisting me, I will provide you 30% of the US $100,000,000,000,000.00 (US $30,000,000,000,000.00), all you need to do is provide me with your bank account number, a fascimile of your SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, VALID DRIVERS LICENSE OR ID and CONSENT TO OUR NDA and LICENSING AGREEMENT.
YOU SEE, YOU HAVE MUCH TO GAIN and I trust and pray that you will provide us the assistence we require in this time of need.
Australia may have been a prison colony ... but atleast it was not founded by a bunch of 'wanna be' aristocrats who built there fortunes on the back of African slavery ...
It's actually the year of the sheep (explanation here)
From what I see and hear in computer stores everyone is hedging that Unix, SCO and IBM will self distruct and take Linux and open source with it. Such is the business attitude in Canada, they are all good MS sales people and will not rock the boat even if it sinks. The situation has become so monopolistic that it stinks.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Have you ever watched a colony of penguins under attack from a few seals or bears. Nary a protest, just a little noise, and the hapless prey is simply devoured by the predator.
I think that Penguin Apathy beautifully reflects the feelings of the Linux User Community. The only defence for the penguins is by their sheer numbers. I see your point - we need to stand up to SCO and tell them on their face: Get Lost, We've got Better things To DO!
But then, who exactly is gonna bell the cat? ESR, Linus, Bruce and RMS have spoken, but they aren't directly affected by the SCO extortion gang. Corporates can't stand up as a gang, since most of them use similar tactics that SCO does - hell, I'd bet many Corporates would love to be in the same position as SCO - pay a few million - pick up Copyright - blast everyone else with that weapon! Excellent business strategy, in their eyes.
The only group that can pick up cudgels against SCO would be the Linux User Groups, Firms that promote Linux - IBM, HPaq, Siemens, SGI, RedHat, SuSE etc.; orgs like the FSF EFF etc. None of the above would be directly targeted by SCO - you can be sure.
Sometime back my sig was:
Linux Users are Apathetic.
Windoze Users are Pathetic.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
As someone who works down the hall from the people at the ACCC who will end up handling these complaints, I should probably mention that they generally prefer contact by phone, rather than over the website's complaint form.
The number is 1300 302 502.
They'll want to ask you questions, and in theory they will just call you back if you put a complaint in through the web.
Bruce: Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce a chap from across the pond who's going to be joining us here at the 'Straylian LUG.
Bruces: G'day!
Darl McBride: Hello.
Bruce: Darl McBride, Bruce. Darl McBride, Bruce. Darl McBride, Bruce.
Bruce: Is your name not Bruce?
McBride: No, it's Darl.
Bruce: Mind if we call you Bruce to keep it clear?
Bruce: Gentlemen, I think we better start the LUG meeting. Before we start, though, I'd like to ask the padre for a prayer!
Bruce: Oh Stallman we beseech thee!
Bruces: Amen!
Bruce: Crack tube!
Bruce: Now I call upon Bruce to officially welcome Mr. McBride to the 'Straylian LUG.
Bruce: I'd like to welcome the slimy bastard to God's own OS, and remind him we don't like stuck-up sticky-beaks here.
Bruces: Hear, hear! Well spoken, Bruce!
Bruce: Bruce here is a kernel hacker, Bruce here is a system administrator, and Bruce here checks source code for copyright infringement. And is also in charge of the BitKeeper repository.
Bruce: What's New-Bruce going to do?
Bruce: New-Bruce will attempt to undermine the legality of the linux source code, mislead the public about the nature of SCO's copyrighted code, question the validity of the GPL, and possibly have a secret partnership with Microsoft to reduce the spread of linux in the server and desktop markets by using a smear campaign.
Bruce: But that's a load of bullsh%t!
Bruce: Awwww spit!
Bruce: Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce!
Bruces: Australia, Australia, Australia, Australia, we love ya! Amen!
Bruce: Another tube!
Bruce: Any questions?
Bruce: New-Bruce, Are you a monopolist?
Bruce: Are you a monopolist?
McBride: No!
Bruce: No. Right, I just want to remind you of the LUG member rules:
Rule 1: No monopolists!
Rule 2: No member of the LUG is to use SCO source code in the linux kernel... if there's anybody watching.
Rule 3: No monopolists!
Rule 4: Now this term, I don't want to see any member of the LUG not infringing on SCO's copyright.
Rule 5: No monopolists!
Rule 6: There is no!--- Rule 6!
Rule 7: No monopolists!
Right, that concludes the reading of the rules. Bruce!
Bruce: This here's the penguin, the emblem of our source. You can feed it nasty SCO code, if you don't get caught, of course. Amen!
Liiiiinuus Torvalds was nearly bald and made his own O-S, and linux it was called.
Billy Gates came to take it away, but his server couldn't cut it. Linux was here to stay!
Big Blue, Big Blue was supporting it too, and linux's growth seemed assured.
Then Darl McBride came along and tried to sucker punch linux in the gut.
There's nothing Stallman wouldn't call 'em when it came to G-P-L.
He figured all the naysayers could die and go to hell!
Buuuut linux wasn't taken and linux wasn't shaken. It wouldn't be that easy to kill(1)
The penguin's here to stay, and if McBride won't play he can take his silly lawsuit and go away.
Billy Gates, Billy Gates just stews and waits for the day when his junk is obsolete.
And come that day we'll all go play Doom 3 on our linux boxen. Sweeeeet!
Yes McBride can take his silly lawsuit and just go away.
'Cause the GPL will hold up and open source will save the day!
====
Sincerest apologies to Monty Python. And Australia, too. And linux... And the Australian LUG... And anyone mentioned in the above spoof. I'm truly sorry. Really. (And for the fact that the song meter isn't exactly correct... and that many of the facts mentioned are probably distorted. It's all just a joke, I promise!)
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
SCO has started this bull....
We must end it!
We need to fight them in the courts of every country on Earth.
We also need to target all the associated companies of SCO directors to teach them a lesson!
This is just a draft list ...
... still clinging onto that number one spot due to Microsoft's long term business plan of unrelenting skullduggery and greed
... coming out of nowhere rockets up the charts ... looks like Bill better watch out for his number one spot now appears to be tenuous
1. Bill Gates
2. Daryl McBride
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Are you part of a Linux users group? Now is a great time to hold an installfest. No local Linux group here anymore (small town) but I may try to get an installfest going.
Make sure to have verifiably correct info about SCO and the questionable validity of their claims and plenty of Linux CDs to install.
Lots of people like to join an underdog fight so this could be a great time to enlighten more folks that haven't run Linux before.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
america was a colony of british outcasts and criminals.
Top three countries that incarcerate the most people:
2,071,686 USA
1,428,126 China
977,700 Russia
We're number one! USA! USA! USA!
why we haven't seen such thing happen in US yet. iirc threatening someone with lawsuit without any intention to take legal action, especially when money is involved(licence fee), is illegal in countries under common laws system. This is a serious case of anti-competitive business practise, and in worse scenario it can be regarded as blackmailing. Those FUD letters and 'offers to switch' falls perfectly into both.
I was kinda expecting the massive lawsuits against SCO from those fortune 500 companies whom SCO sent FUD letters to. Those fortune 500 lawyers are either too whimp or too lazy to actually look into the case.
What difference would it make?! Australia is a *prison colony*. What are they trying to accomplish?
./ is not the place to shame countries. Find somewhere else to spam. In Australia, we always take the end-customer seriously
Excuse Me, but I take that as a very offensive statement. Not all of Australia is a prison colony. (i.e South Australia). Even though I am not a descendant of a convict, as an Australian citizen I think
What if SCO musters up some good liars, er lawyers (J. Cochrane) and actually is sucessful with their lawsuit against the masses?
I read somewhere that without said System V code, the Linux kernel would be reverted to v2.2. Is there some group of developer planning for disaster and developing to v2.4 functionality naive of the code that all this fuss is about?
You capitalist pig dog! [those two _are_ chinese years]
No we shouln't ignore it because there are many who really believe SCO ! Why did SCO's stock jump 20 % ? All can't see the bluff of SCO .
You know there's more to nigera then scammers and spammers!? Sheesh.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Where can I find a deck of cards top 52 SCO people?
Here are the first cards:
Ace of Spade: RalphYarro,lll,38 Chairman
Ace of Club: Darl McBride, 43 Pres, CEO
Ace of Diamond: Robert Bench, 53 CFO
Ace of Hart: Opinder Bawa, 39Sr. VP-Technology
King of Spade: Christopher Sontag, 39 VP, Operating Systems Group
King of Club: WILSON, MICHAEL SEAN Senior Vice President
King of Hart: HUNSAKER, JEFF F.Vice President
Who is their attorney??
They have 340 more employees here:
355 South 520 West, Suite 100
Lindon, UT 84042
Phone: (801) 765-4999
Fax: (801) 765-1313
I'll pay $20 for a deck so I can recognize these people on conferences, airports and other places.
I'm not much of a writer for this kind of stuff; but I hope this link will make others interested to the possebilities!
Deck of cards of course
The ACCC has some serious teeth.
:
:
A few tech related things the ACCC has gotten into over the last 18 months
27 June 2003 ACCC Issues New Accounting Separation Rules for Telstra
26 March 2003 Consumers and Small Business Set to Gain from Lower Software Prices
21 February 2003 ACCC to Hold Public Inquiry into Internet Interconnection Services
20 December 2002 Full Federal Court Disapproves of Dell's Earlier Price Advertising
22 November 2002 ACCC Clears But Will Monitor Airline E-Commerce Joint Venture
17 October 2002 Internet Domain Name Resellers Warned Against Misleading, Deceptive Conduct
# 17 September 2002 ACCC Institutes Against Dodo Internet Pty Ltd
4 July 2002 Court Orders Dell to Publish Corrective Advertisements
I like the last three for some reason
29 July 2002 Game Over for Sony Playstation
19 April 2002 ACCC Leans Toward Intervention on Line Sharing, Tells Telstra to Get On With It
6 March 2002 Threats to C.D. Supplies Cost Record Companies $1M
Well , that's my link-whoring for today!
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
We call 'fscking' fucking, mate.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Australia is great. You can hack Xbox and install Linux without worrying about litigation from M$ or SCO, and most importantly the country is free from DMCA. Its IT and hacker culture has evolved very independently with no pressure from Corporate America. Now people are standing up against extortion by American company.
"Visit Installfest in Sydney next week! Bring your Xbox and we'll help ya install Linux on it!" No wonder so many unique creatures have evolved in outback. Maybe it's better place for us to live than the US.
Seeing as how I don't know of any area of the world where pengiuns and bears would interact. . . no. I really suggest you watch more discovery channel before using these comparisons. They're insulting to penguins.
Find out about my new childrens book: SS Death Camp Criminal Batallion Go To Monte Carlo For The Massacre
I don't know of any area of the world where pengiuns and bears would interact. . . no. I really suggest you watch more discovery channel
Huh... I watched a furry white creature attacking penguins on Discovery Channel - I thought it'd be a Polar Bear, am I wrong?
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Professor Fels is my hero. HE stands up for the little guy. To bad he is retiring soon and his replacement will no doubt be a HOward chosen corporate whore!
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
could you tell me what SCO stands for?
i tried asking at k5, but no one seems to want to give me a straight answer. could anyone here tell me? tell me what SCO stands for?
The way SCO is acting reminds more a mob going wild over the street.
They come up with a full set of "services" to its customers. Their Web site just looks a Christmas tree full of that. Meanwhile, when you come up to it, the first thing you see is "Relax, worry free software" which is some sort of double-minded threat.
The court complaint is also pretty interesting. Most people believe that SCO is threatening IBM for some disclosure of trade secrets. In fact SCO is accusing IBM of conspiring against SCO by disclosing Unix code to Linux. All the comaplaint is a mess of distortions where Linux pre-2.4 looks much like a simple hobbiyst OS without any significance for the market. Then came IBM, changed the whole 2.4 kernel by inserting SCO code and started a campaign to drive SCO from the market. Worse than that, it seems that IBM is to blame for Linux being a workable kernel on the Intel platforms, as, in SCO's claims, they were nearly the exclusive producer and distributor of UNIX for Intel architecture!..
Among the claims filled to court one may clearly some foggy statements against the Linux community in the whole:
"This prohibition extends to derivative work products that are modifications of, or based on, UNIX System V source code or technology. IBM and certain other UNIX software distributors are violating this prohibition, en masse, as though no prohibition or proprietary restrictions exist at all with respect to the UNIX technology."
"As such, Linux 2.4.x and Linux 2.5.x are unauthorized derivatives of UNIX System V."
Note that SCO, in its complaint, is eager to generalize. Besides it leaves in the dark certain things as "other UNIX software distributors". And also it seems that BSD does not exist in SCO's Universum at all.
So what we have here? Considering the above, and the situation among the community, we have here a case that surely will take some good time to settle. SCO is clearly distorting reality so well that I fear that the court will have to take some time to digere all the confusion they created. Yes, SCO will loose it. Everyone who have seen the evolution of Linux since its start, knows perfectly that they pushed too far from reality. But courts need facts, and need testimonies, documents and expertise. And SCO seems to know that it will be rather difficult for the Linux community to gather all developers in one court room. That seems the strategy they are trying to play. If all developers gather, then SCO will have nothing to say. All the story will just be a soap bubble without any serious ground. But can IBM gather all the developers they need to counter the oversized history of UNIX, SCO is trying to tell the court? Personally I think it will be a bit difficult... Anyway, it will take time until the court gets into some conclusion. Which may be longer the DoJ vs Microsoft.
Meanwhile, even without court orders, SCO goes further and knocks every door with foggy threats of liability, if one doesn't pay for Linux. Now this clearly reminds mobs that created a FUD climate and then extorted money for "security" and "protection" services. In the whole this seems the main strategy SCO is playing. And, as in old times, commerces seem to bound to the new Capones of the 21th century, stocks are rising and SCOrface is getting richer.
Has there really been a court-case in Germany which stopped SCO from unproven claims about copyright violation in Linux - on the grounds of law against unfair/untruthful marketing?
I cannot find any articles on the internet about it, also not on german sites. Can the previous author provide some hyperlinks to such articles?
Thanks in advance!
Cor
The groups aims sound familiar. Oh yeah, there a lot like my LUG's mission statement:
The Baton Rouge Linux User Group's (BRLUG) mission is to advocate the use of Linux both in the home and the enterprise, to support the existing base of Linux users in the city of Baton Rouge, and to have a great time. In addition, we encourage our members to use the LUG as a platform for forming both non-profit and for-profit organizations to better establish Linux within the community. As such, we welcome both business and hobbyists discussions at our meetings and on our mailing list.
The name is a little fancier than "User's Group", but that's what they are doing. Similar things can be found:
What you have to realize is that all of these groups are fighting SCO everyday. Everyday, millions of free software users voice their opinion of the SCO's ownership of Unix, the Linux kernel and everything. Don't you hear them? Neither do SCO's accountants. Microsoft is about the only company that's bought into this extortion. The people who know, think SCO is full of bull and don't waste much time on it.
Reasonable opinions have been delivered by the Open Software Initiative, the Free Software Foundation, Linus Torvalds and the German court system. The local LUG would be happy to talk to you about this, and their mailing lists are amazingly free of Astroturf. Not even Microsoft can buy enough fake roots to cover all the LUGs in the world. It's nice to hear from this OSV, whether you call it a LUG, marketing, advocacy and focus group, or friend of the court.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Polar bears live in the north pole.
;-)
Penguins live in the south pole.
Might be a polar bear on vacation?
One commentator pointed out that the SCO farce was bad for the U.S. -- true, but more to the point, it is a symptom of a larger problem facing America. The legal system has ceased to function in any sane form, and it is hurting the U.S. bad. The lottery of trial by jury, abolished for good reason in almost all other western democracies, means that SCO could actually win this case in the U.S., while the rest of the world tells them to go jump in a lake. German companies such as SuSE won't be paying those license fees, that's for sure.
American readers should take note that the Constitution doesn't specify the details of how courts should be set up. Congress could overhaul the system any time they choose, and give the U.S. a system that doesn't suck money and talent from American companies and waste it on millionaire lawyers and legal fees. But then, Congress is full of lawyers...
S C O
B E E R
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
SCO stated it's going to demand a Unixware license fee from all >> company's
AFAIK, SCO's trying to get money from the larger company's around wich are getting a monstrous return-on-investment from using kernels wich contain code wich SCO claims has either been derived or copied from their codebase.
free dom(inion) - free energy - free your mind - whee!
Not exactly. Some see it and know that many other don't.
It's funny when the Beafeaters at the Tower of London tell the Australian tourists "Welcome back!" before showing you the dungeons.
Here is another actulay funny example of the theme:
The British prisons are filling up.
Survivor and Big Brother are very popular TV shows.
Why not kill two birds with one stone and do Inmate Survival: Put a bunch of convicts on a desert island and the one who survives get's pardoned?
When I suggested this to my British collegues, they replied: "We tried that. We called it Australia, and now they beat us at cricket!"
For the record, I'm neither Aussie nor Britt...
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
"australia was a colony of british criminals and outcasts.
.
america was a colony of british outcasts and criminals."
Now that Britain cant export them anymore
Britain is a nation full of outcasts and criminals
Well, its 5:30 am EST, so I guess most of us are sleeping. But we seem to be sleeping while this SCO bullshit is going on too. Why can't we get this kind of action going on here? Is it community apathy? Is it that the government won't listen? I know a lot of people are pretty vocal about this, but who's telling anyone in power who cares. Do they care? Honestly, I haven't written my congressmen, so I'm not really helping either, but I think if I did they probably wouldn't read it, or care about the issue, or care what some 20 year old hacker/cracker/slacker thought was the right thing to do about it. Someone or some organization with clout and connections, or a fuck ton of money needs to step forward or I think we're gonna get screwed. Why is it that the biggest and richest nerd of us all has to own Microsoft?
Oh, one last thing. 10 minutes ago, I just finished watching Takedown for the first time and I want to say 'w00t' where someone else will know what I'm talking about. w00t.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
Only in Disney cartoons do polar bears (Arctic) meet penguins (Antarctic). (There are penguin colonies in southern Australia and Africa, but no bears there either.)
Until they became extinct in about 1850, there were Great Auks in the North Atlantic. They might have had problems with bears.
you've never heard of a drop bear?
It would be funny if the disputed code in question was part of BSD-Lites and ended up everywhere.
Because BSD-Lites and it's derivatives are protected by a prior court case.
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
And of course they translated all the meaningful and self-evidently english commands in Linux, such as "ls" and "pwd" to their french equivalents.
Suggestion:
Instead of using Positive/Excelent/etc. for Karma I suggest something like this:
From top to bottom
FreeBSD (higher one)
Linux
WinRAR
Lindows (medium)
BillG
(MP|RI)AA
McBride (Don't ask)
how long until
bah :(
Someone in the UK or the EU? Competition commission? Watchdog? Trading Standards?
Are you in Las Vegas on the 17th-19th August?
Make you feelings known, drop in at the SCO Forum 2003.
I'm sure SCO representatives will be very happy to answer all of your licensing questions or maybe you just want to hand over your cash in person.
God bless the USA and our great military! Shut up or we will send cruise missiles and stealth bombers to your house!
I'm glad to see the term "extortion" is now getting widespread press. The previous common description for SCO's activities has been "FUD" (apparently Linus' preferred term), and this unfortunately implies a semi-respectable strategy that many tech companies employ against competing products.
It's important not to underestimate the effect that labels can have in arguing one's case in a busy, harried world of people marginally familiar with an issue. Calling something "FUD" might not sway an IT manager or politician for whom the SCO issue is not completely clear; calling it "baseless extortion" is much more likely to raise the kind of ire needed to counteract this particular FUD in the mindset of the public and relevant decision-makers.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Here is a link that says not only did this go to court but that SCO may be found in contempt of court for not complying.
Sydney 2000 ... "best Olypics ever"
Look what we do about our, sometimes dodgy media ... and it is shown on the Government owned, national TV station :
Media Watch - top right - real player required unfortunately.
What is even better .. the host is a journo on un-paid leave from the Sydney Morning Herald, one of the newspapers the show gets into if they do something wrong. I hope he doesn't want his job back in the future ...
Sometimes our media tries to do the right thing ... here is the answers, and a number of questions, set to the Australian Recording Industry Associate (Oz RIAA), regarding recent survey results ARIA published about file swapping / stealing music.
ARIA refuses to answer queries about survey
Hello. First of all, I'm not a programmer of any sort (medical registrar in Oz). I've been following this SCO thing with some interest. I was reading in eweek.com that SCO basically wants to draw this thing out (doesn't go to court until 2005) so Linux might die a thousand cuts from drawn out FUD.
./ people it might be possible to create a competition where the first people to find offending code in SCO UNIX wins a prize or the most number of tainted snippets ("yes!!!.. we have found LOTS of offending code... we'll make it public any day now..." etc)wins the most money, just like the XBox and Linux thing. I'm sure the big Linux companies will help out :)
It has been suggested that SCO UNIX might actually contain tainted code from Linux. Surely with all this passion and number of talented
I can't comment on how feasible it will be but if this is handled in the media properly, i.e. in a blaze of publicity just like what SCO did and looked half-way organized and leaked media reports at appropriate times, at least it will create FUD for SCO investors. Just a passing thought.
Um, The Zoo? ;-)
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
That all you have to do in the United States to legally get away with extortion is to incorporate...
Any non corp did the same thing SCaldera is doing, THIS PUBLICALLY, they'd already be under arrest.
Corporatism != Free Market
BBB has anyone filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau since they are a member... if they get enough complaints they can kick the company out.. and that hurts their bottom line..
Instead file a complaint with the
Federal Trade Commission.
http://www.ftc.gov and click on
file a complaint right at the top.
Tell the FTC that SCO is making demands
for license fees based on unsubstantiated
claims. Keep the nastygram as evidence
for the FTC.
While roaming this /. discussion I occasionally fell into US Copyright office... Once there I decided to search SCO's claim on copyright. Found it, but also I found something more interesting:
UNIX system V : release 3.0 INTEL 80286/80386 computer version : programmer's guide.
Searched on the Web for a little more of the book:
Published - February 1988
Copyrighted by AT&T and edited by Prentice Hall and Unix Systems Laboratory.
On its complaint, more specifically on paragraph 35 and 36, SCO lawyers nearly fill the world with tears by claiming that SCO was the sole developer of UNIX for Intel platforms. But they seem to forget that SCO developed its System V Release 3 only a year after USL's work. And that by the time they were releasing their version, USL was already launching Release 4, which 3 years later became Unixware.
It seems they the mind they have to fill new copyrights and patents is not enough to search those same copyrights and patents...
BTW. the book can still be found for sale...
Most Australians are very patriotic, but are pragmatic about it.
:
... it is just a symbol. I'm not even sure if burning it is illegal or not ... I mean, in an emergency, if the barbie is going to go out, and your snags are going to get cold, anything that burns'll do. The only thing that is supposed to be cold at a barbie is the beer.
...)
Some examples
* Most Australians struggle to remember the first verse of the anthem, let alone know the other three verses, or even that three others exist (at least I think there are three others, of course I don't know the words to them).
* A significant number of Australian's probably think "Walzing Matilda" is the anthem, not "Advance Australia Fair".
* We're not sure if we have to stand up or not when the anthem is played. Thankfully, when it is important to stand, there is usually an announcement of "Please stand for the playing of the Australian anthem". Never seen anybody put their hand over their heart while hearing it though.
* Most Australian's wouldn't care if the flag is burnt or not
* One of our national heros - Ned Kelly, a bush ranger - was a criminal and murder !
What makes us different - we _know_ we aren't better than anybody else (well, excepting cricket maybe, running Olympic games, swimming occasionally
We need to fight fire with fire at this point. Please as you speak, write or post about the SCO situation use the following terms. They have stronger meaning, and are "stickier" ideas - that is they are more likely to be reproduced:
* Use the SCO scam to refer to the situation and use extortion letter to refer to correspondence for SCO to a company.
* always use unproven allegation and unsubstantiated claim before the mentioning copyright.
* Describe SCO's letter: a letter that demands payment for a product I simply don't use. or this letter is asking me to pay a lot of money, speculating that they might win a lawsuit one day and then come after me. or this letter demands payment without any basis at all!
* Be quick to point out that Linux was not written by IBM, it was written by individual programmers all over the world.
* Point out that no industry group, supports SCO's unsubstantiated claims.
* On SCO's motivation: SCO is failing and is desperate to make money by any means. And, SCO's core product which is being replaced by a more cost-effective solution Finally: SCO is attemting to hijack Linux because their core product can't compete.
Finally, if you get a letter from SCO, send a copy and a cover letter the situation to your state's attorney general and secretary of state. One state AG or SecState has the budget, resources and clout to pull the plug on the SCO Copyright Scam nationally. Believe me, SCO is not the Tobacco Industry...
-- $G
my father always told me Aussies were good people.
**** For Immediate Release ****
Las Vegas, July 23, 2004
Mr Daryl McBride, form CEO of defunct SCO, announced today the opening of his wedding shoppe Mac Bride. "You can't miss it on the strip," McBride said, "Look for the two Golden Circles." "I own the IP, you know."
McBride wants all his friends, "We'll all easily fit in the chapel, a former MacDonald's location" he said, to come to his grand opening.
Daryl indicated an IPO would soon follow and he hoped to reap billions in license fees from those selling golden rings to brides and grooms. "It's my trademark and intellectual property now", he said.
McBride thinks his IPO will rocket further in value when investors learn he is threatening MacDonald's over their use of "golden half rings" as their trademark. "It's half mine," he said.
"Don't Follow Leaders." Bob Dylan
Don't be pulling that "Real World"(tm) argument out on me. I get my fair share of legal nastygrams unfortunately.
;)
In the "Real World(tm)", someone might put up a discussion-prompting open-ended post on slashdot too.
paintball
This is not a good thing.
Rather than waiting for SCO to take action. The Australians have played their card early. SCO has now been made aware of a countertactic to their actions and can take appropriate countermeasures.
What SCO has been doing is the equivalent of tossing explosives into a mine field to detonate the mines. The linux people have been cheerfully blowing up at SCO.
Let SCO make the mistakes and then hurt them. Believe me if they actually get money from licensing and then are attacked it will cost them a hundred times what they have taken in to defend it.
There is a letter about SCO, it basically tells all that SCO is full of vaporware.
If there really is their code in the kernel ( and they have no legal or good reason to make that "publicaly known"). Then SCO's argument and tactic is very legal in many countries.
Having FreeBSD above Linux could cause flame wars, though. In order to avert any such problems, I'd suggest using something less emotional. Why not have vi as the highest karma entry and emacs as the lowest?
it may be slightly off topic, but the reference to the paintball industry getting squeezed is something that we ought to know about, also.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
You're liable to get a nasty rash in a very sensitive spot from chemicals in the ink and paper!!!!
Bruce: SCO's case is like making love on a manure pile.
McBride: Making love on a manure pile?
Bruce: It's fucking close to shit!
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
The SCO Group has made unsubstantiated allegations about IBM and the GNU/Linux (Linux) operating system concerning alleged intellectual property and copyright issues via a contract between IBM and The SCO Group. In the process they are threatening legal action against companies using the GNU/Linux operating system unless they pay for a license for their software.
My company uses the GNU/Linux operating system and as yet have not been contacted by The SCO Group. However, their actions are disrupting our business flow as we try to ascertain the implications of their threats.
I urge you to investigate their current practice of making legal threats and demanding money from companies based on as yet unsubstantiated allegations concerning an ongoing legal battle of which those companies are not involved nor party to the contract in question.
Thank you.
Because SCO sure is. Evety ounce of FUD SCO can generate, every column inch they can get in the press without clear and credible rebuttal makes their clais more credible in the eyes of the PHB. The Laura Didios and Charles Coopers of this world are making SCO's job easier by lending an air of legitimacy to this farce. The press in general have NOT been doing a good job of presenting the true facts of this case, and often print SCO's assertions about UNIX ownership, among other lies and half-truths, as given. The mainstream press needs to be cahllenged to dig deeper into, for example, the likelihood that this is actually a 'pump-and-dump' scam: Thousands of shares issued at $0.001 in January now being sold en masse at $10. This is easily verified and I've seen it on Slashdot and some other sites, but the story has not broken out to the mainstream press. If the above were to break in, say, Forbes, CNN/Money, Motley Fool, etc., there would be an immediate effect
- SCO stock valuation would implode
- There would be an SEC investigation
- The whole SCO drama would gring to a quick and ugly stop.
So I urge everyone to write letters to the editor, call the paper, do whatever it takes to get the truth out. No screeds, no overblown rhetoric or anti-SCO insults, just clearly, coherently, and as objectively lay out the facts in this case. SCO has been trying this case in the courts of public opinion. So can we.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
He's a resident of the US. He lives and works in the US. It's where he and his family have made their home. :-)
I'd much sooner call RMS an alien
1)
,
Don't write to your senator, either write to your MC Donalds & Co. representatives.
One way to hurt this SCO bastards would be to put public pressure and complaints at there last costumers.
(e.g. MC Donalds should have a high level ov awareness on costumer protest as they are familiar with this.)
2)
A more funny way would be what I readed from fyodor in the nmap changelog.
'o Added a new classification system to nmap-os-fingerprints. In addition to the standard text description,
each entry is now classified by vendor name (e.g. Sun), underlying OS (e.g. Solaris), OS generation (e.g. 7),
and device type ("general purpose", router, switch, game console, etc).
This can be useful if you want to (say) locate and eliminate the SCO systems on a network
or find the wireless access points (WAPs) by scanning from the wired side.'
(empathized by me) nmap changelog
Regards
While I initially felt this matter should simply work itself out in court, it appears to me that recent announcements by The SCO Group have crossed the line from publicity and/or advocacy to something close to extortion.
The FTC is no doubt familiar with The SCO Group's lawsuit with IBM. Although no claims have been proven, and no evidence offered to back their claims, The SCO Group have sent letters to companies warning them of The SCO Group's intent to push these claims, and of the companies' exposure to liability regarding the use of the Linux operating system.
They have also recently announced that they will offer these companies a SCO license to use Linux, for a price, that will absolve them of any present or past wrongdoing with regards to SCO's alleged Linux intellectual property issues.
So, though they've proven nothing in court and have offered no evidence to the public, SCO is telling companies that if they use Linux they are liable to SCO, and that they can remove that liability by purchasing a SCO license.
This seems very close to extortion to me.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
It is funny the Australian group mentioned that it was like a Nigerian net scam. I got this e-mail from SCO quite some time ago:
----- Original Message -----
From: Darl McBride
Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2003 12:05 PM
Subject: URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL
ATTN: MANAGING DIRECTOR/C.E.O
LINDON, UTAH
REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
First, I must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction. This by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and 'top secret'. You have been recommended by an associate who assured me in confidence of your ability and reliability to prosecute a transaction of great magnitude involving a pending business transaction requiring maximum confidence.
We are top officials of SCO Group (formerly Caldera International -- Nasdaq: SCOX) who are interested in obtaining your services. We are presently in negotiations in a business deal we feel will be quite lucrative. Since we may leave the country quietly in the middle of the night, in order to commence this business transaction, we solicit your assistance to enable us to transfer a large sum of money into your account to hold until further arrangements can be made.
The source of this fund is as follows: We have leveraged IP that we originally thought belonged to our company in order to solicit a rather large monetary investment by the company Microsoft. We have in turn sued IBM for contractual violations and IP violations, as well as sending out thousands of threatening letters to various corporations and Linux vendors, in a move carefully designed to drive up our stock and put us in a position for our company to be purchased simultaneously. You see, this is a carefully executed plan modeled after what some might call, "a house of cards." We hope very much that we will collect from all parties involved, sell our stock before it tanks, and head for some fun in the sun, IF all goes as planned.
However, by virtue of our position as members of the SCO Group, we cannot acquire this money in our names.I have therefore, been delegated as a matter of trust by my colleagues of the panel to look for an overseas partner into whose account we would transfer the sum of US $21,500,000.00 (Twenty One Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) Hence we are writing you this letter.
We have agreed to share the money thus:
1. 20% for the Account owner (you)
2. 70% for us (The officials)
3. 10% to be used in settling taxation and all local
and foreign expenses.
It is from the 70% that we wish to commence the importation business.
Please, note that this transaction is 100% safe and we hope to commence the transfer latest seven (7)banking days from the date of the receipt of the following information below
(a)company name and Beneficiary of account (b) Your Personal TeL. Number and Fax Number
(c) Bank account/Sort/ABA/Routing numbers were the funds will be transferred to
(d) Your Bankers Address, Telephone and Fax Number.
The above information will enable us write letters of claim and job description respectively. This way we will use your company's name to cover our paper trail. We are looking forward to doing this business with you and solicit your confidentiality in this transaction.Please acknowledge the receipt of this letter using the above tel/fax number. I will bring you into the complete picture of this pending project when I have heard from you.
Your faithfully,
Ron Paul
It's time to dump SCO. Drop their UseNet news groups. Don't accept email from SCO. Don't accept requests from SCO browsers. Drop support for SCO operating systems in OSS applications..
Given Bush's electoral strategy, he might be more interested in making Utah happy than IBM. I mean, he knows he's got zero chance of winning New York, and he doesn't seem particularly worried about screwing us. Hell, we're still waiting for the post-9/11 money he promised us.
For several months SCO/Caldera has been in litigation with IBM alleging that IBM put misappropriate SCO source code into Linux.
SCO's claims have been unsubstantiated in court, and SCO has not attempted to contact Linux kernel maintainers to have any source code in question removed. In fact, SCO's website still contains the full source code of Linux with the public licence to modify and use (GPL) intact.
SCO has continued to submit unsubstantiated claims to the press in apparent attempt to discredit Linux.
In Germany, SCO received an injunction against it, in which they can no long claim IP rights to the Linux kernel. SCO's web site has been shut down in Germany.
Now SCO, with no proof given, is attempting to extort Linux customers into purchasing UnixWare Licenses as a payment for protection against SCO litigation. Below is the SCO quote from the news release.
"Any business running commercial Linux that buys a UnixWare license would be held harmless against any past copyright violations, and for any future use of Linux in a run-only, binary format"
I believe that this shows that SCO is trying to extort millions of Linux customers into paying for a license, without giving specific proof of the allegation.
I urge the FTC to investigate the extortive behavior of SCO, as this behavior threatens to damage thousands of companies that depend on and develop for Linux.
Now all the companies that uses Linux should add the following to their spam filter.
...
if(email.toString().contins("SCO")) {
sendEmail(email.getRelpyAddress(), myEmailAddress, "RE: "+email.getSubjectLine(),"<h1>fsck off!!</h1>\n<br><br><hr>"+email.getBody());
email = null;
}
...
Good for them! I'm hoping this begins to happen all over the world.
For those who don't know, vegemite is made from beer waste.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Yes, I've often thought the Canadian government should get off its rear end and do something constructive for a change.
I've been emailing some provincial politicians about articles concerning the use of linux in government/education. (I tend to concentrate on liberals, since I think the conservative ilk are as hopeless as Bush et al.)
Specifically,
START QUOTE:
"
Thank you for providing all this information. If there is any more, I would
be pleased to see it.
Tim
Tim Shortill
Office of Gerard Kennedy
Official Opposition Education Critic
(416) 325-2884
Tim_Shortill@ontla.ola.org
"
END OF QUOTE
Feel free to email him any links/articles that delineate benefits of open source, etc.
Aussies sticking it to that little fucker SCO. Hehe
75% of all statistics are made up!
When they Linux User's group held the demo outside of SCO's headquarters and let themselves be shown with Darl's arms around them you got the classic case of what you are referring to.
However, in this case we have the controlled informing of the correct authorities.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
The Latter Saints (Mormons) LDS = Angel Investors = Canopy Group = SCO Are the Juice behind this scam!
Errr...ummm...
I run a network of Linux computers and serveral servers in a Canadian high school. We're part of the government...(Ministry of Education).
Check out case studies of schools around the world (and known Canadian schools) using Linux at:
casestudy.seul.org
Unfortunately it was also ruled that judges don't have to tell juries this and in fact can tell them the exact opposite, that the case has to be decided only on the facts in front of them. Some judges have even taken to jailing juries who acquit in ways they don't like.
Visit FIJA for more info.
U know.. I was wondering.. even if SCO wins againts IBM... if every Linux user filed a lawsuit against SCO.. even if we dont't all win.. SCO would still have to spend a HUGE amount of money to defend it self against every user.. up to a point when the company is either destroyed.. or bankupt.. think about it.. IF every linux home & corporate user files a lawsuite againt SCO they can't possibly have that muchmoney in the bank! besides economically it won't be worth it!
Many hands make light work...
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
One just has to make sure one isn't worth sueing
Ive been sued twice & both times they gave in when they realised I had no income that could be garnished & what they thought were my assets (bar a old unregisted rusty Leyland V8 car cum toolshed/junk accumalator) were all in the name of relatives.
Actually I do have a block of land in northern Tasmania (paid using cash), but there were some mistakes in the paper work, meaning 2 spelling mistakes in my name & my birthdate being 10 years out. Mind you if one bought a block of land today, I someone doubt it would be as easy to get away with have such irregularities in one's paperwork, even in Tasmania.
+1, Funny!
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
I know they lost a few penguins in the early years to bears, and that was pretty unique.
Because one is uncontactable &/or going by a pseudonym
http://www.cb-bc.gc.ca From an article on the site: "Consumers who suspect they have been the victim of deceptive telemarketing practices or who want information on the application of the Competition Act, should contact the Bureau's Information Centre at 1 800 348-5358, or visit our Web site at www.cb-bc.gc.ca. The Competition Bureau is an independent law enforcement agency that ensures all Canadians enjoy the benefits of a competitive economy. It oversees the application of the Competition Act, the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, the Textile Labelling Act and the Precious Metals Marking Act. For media enquiries, please contact: Maureen McGrath Senior Communications Advisor Communications Branch (819) 953-8982, or (613) 296-2187 (cell) For general enquiries, please contact: Information Centre Competition Bureau 1 800 348-5358 "
You can find the online complaint form here.
To fill out the form, here is SCO's information:
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042 USA
801-765-4999 phone
801-765-1313 fax
Anyone who uses Linux is threatened by SCO and should file a complaint. I just filed mine, you should file yours too!
/.: why the hell am I here?
...to help their claim against IBM.
To use an analogy, imagine Kentucky Fried Chicken "licenced" their secret recipe to Chicken Delight. Chicken Delight then gave the secret recipe to a cooking magazine!
Kentucky would argue in court, "we licenced our secret recipe and they misappropriated it, so we have lost money". This might succeed. Did the defendant accept the secret? Yes. Did they agree to keep it secret? Yes. Did it end up published? Yes. All this would be quite straighforward in court.
Next there would be the tricky bit. There would be the question of how much the loss was worth and how much should be the compensation. A good way to make the loss appear bigger would be to set about suing all people using the (formerly) secret recipe, if not actually doing that for practical reasons.
In the real case, this question will probably never be answered because IBM will simply ensure that SCO runs out of legal money first.
They should also use the fact that Rambus used a similar deceptive method and got burned.
As there is an election coming here we would not want to rock the M$ institutionalised gravy boat too much. The business people might not grease the wheels of a polititian that squeaks and grunts about keeping IT spending down!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Shhh! Two weeks is supposed to be longer they you can remember. Don't tell anyone!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Actually, the song is "Am I Ever Gonna See your Face Again", by the Angels. One of the great Aussie pub-rock bands of the late 70s and 80s. Unfortunately, they never achieved the recognition that, say, Australian Crawl or Cold Chisel managed. Weird thing about Aussie pub bands - front men often not Aussies. Doc Neeson from the Angels and Jimmy Barnes from Chisel are both Scots, Colin Hay from Aussie Crawl was a Pom (if I remember right).
Self-censoring (as I assume most of the Yanks and Brits wouldn't understand or like the swearing)...
Absolutely Not!
Please go away.
No really, please go away NOW!
Bloody Kiwis!
Eddie Jones is sending me mad at the moment. WTF is he doing choosing Noriega at Tight-head? Choosing two open-sides for Friday's Bledisloe game is a scary and brave option.
I can but hope that the new, skin-tight All Black jerseys strangle your back line.
Not to mention the fact that you have to choose an Aussie as your backup scrum-half.
Personally I don't think we forget the words to the national anthem. It's more that we are too pissed to be able to pronounce it correctly..... Is Poo-Poo One Word Or Two ? (Homer Simpson)
Isn't today international act like Canada matters day ?
How do cruise missiles find targets in this part of the world without Australian help?
How many US vs Oz casualties per head sent to the Gulf/Vietnam/Korea/Pacific/Europe ? Choke on a bone Rambo
Take a look at the MIT and others / RIAA article. I'd like to see SCO take on a state governent, or a local school system with big friends. Schools, especially higher ed, use linux. Most don't have to turn a profit, and they have lawyers. State schools have lots of lawyers, Atourney Generals, etc. Come on SCO, take on MIT! Go for Florida State! Heck, come on down to my school. I believe I'm covered by the state's legal umbrella, and we've got linux boxes. (At home, I can just go to BSD if I want to. Heck, I'm on a BSD now - OS X.)
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
Enby in Waltham
The EFF needs to start a class action lawsuit against SCO now on the behalf of any of the software engineers who have every contributed to Linux. I've made some ipchains contributions and some libc contributions. I say we drain this puss-filled SCO zit now.
Where can we get a list of all the contributors? Lets get the EFF moving. I've had it with the crap. If we let it go on, the pointy haired middle managers might start believing this BS.
In the beginning, SCO was suing IBM for contract violation about reusing code that was developed for AIX. Linux was mentioned as the beneficiary of the code reuse.
The FUD was when SCO made noise about how Linux violated their copyrights. None of their press releases made sense, but they were designed to make management have doubt about whether Linux was a good thing. This is when MS made their donation. Yes, it caused Uncertainty and Doubt, but mostly it cause Laughter.
Then SCO threatened 1500 big companies that using Linux without paying SCO was naughty. That was the beginning of the Fear stage. We all feared that a couple of those companies were going to sue SCO for unfounded accusations.
Now SCO has forgotten about suing companies that can fight back, and is asking donations from the little companies. You can can call this "baseless extortion", but it is the same process that every charity uses: "Give to us and you'll feel good." It even comes off the taxes (as a "business expense" which is better than a "charitable donation"!)
The downside of this "charity" is that they have administrative costs approaching 100% of donations. None of the money ever goes near someone deserving for contributions to Unix. I would suggest contributing if they had promised to give even 10% of the gross to people like Linus Torvalds.
I mention Mr. Torvalds because his "Linux" has brought Unix into the limelight. Without him, companies would be running Microsoft non-operations systems, or going to IBM, Sun, or HP for the little known Unix operating system. Nobody would even remember SCO if it was not for Mr. Torvalds' contributions to society. SCO owes him a big thank-you, and money is a great way to say thank-you. I am certain Mr. Torvalds would appreciate it.
My point was that it was not extortion when this story started. The names we call SCO have changed as their actions have become more and more unconnected to the world. It is quite possible that the entire management staff of SCO has rabies and will need to be put down. But we live in a great company, I mean country, and you cannot kill a man until you see the slobber and drool, and either take him to court or a doctor. Good luck SCO, I hope you get well soon.
[Funeral arrangements are being handled by IBM. Send flowers care of the McBride estate.]
I spend my life entertaining my brain.