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Gartner Says Delay Linux Deployment Due to SCO
Sridhar writes "SCO's legal threats have prompted Gartner Group to recommend that companies delay deployment of critical Linux applications, determine "whether Unix or Windows will provide functions equivalent to those of Linux deployments", and take a "go-slow" approach to Linux in high-value or mission-critical production systems."
Whether they've been paid off, or are inordinately conservative, Gartner has always been something of an advocate for Microsoft technologies.
Given that Linux is finding more and more of a role in replacing Windows-based servers, it should come as no surprise that Gartner would come up with something like this.
Problem is, this sort of thing gives C*O's, already wondering about SCO & Linux liabilities, reason to delay or reduce Linux adoption in their enterprise.
These guys are shills for Microsoft. What do you expect them to say.
Now then, given that, this could be the most brilliant ploy that MS has ever pulled off if they are indeed behind this whole SCO lawsuit.
They can't fight Lunix like they could a regular company but they can fight it by litigation and things of that nature. Brilliant, just freakin brilliant.
All the best,
--Bob
If you select the proper tools and decide in the future linux isn't for you, just recompile and move on.
SCO will not affect linux at all. Hell my whole company runs on linux and I'm not switching a damn thing till something is proven.
Gartner doesn't do any of these papers without somebody footing the bill. So the big question is who paid for this one? Microsoft? Sun? SCO?
I'm in the process of fighting my way in corporate to make sure that my newest creation will get what it deserves (Oracle on Linux), and this is just the kind of FUD that I am getting from management.
Stuff they hear (mostly from salesman and consultants that are M$ related and fear for their share of the pie once we start getting more Linux in) makes them ignorant, up to the point that I need to "re-evaluate" the OS descision because someone in the high places thinks that Win2K3 can do just as well.
I am just looking for that one great example (big datacenter, lot's of transaction processed, solid Oracle/Linux integration with 0 problems) as a reference to stuff in their faces and finally go out and start installing...
this is giving linux a black eye. but i dont think it will kill linux in the long run. after this is all over linux will win. what doesnt kill you makes you stronger right?
Isnt Gartner the same guys that said windows was so full of hole it shouldnt be used?
This from the same group that declared definitively that IDS is dead.
I think the only thing that should be impacted by this report is gartner's credibility. I'm inclined to look more and more suspiciously at anything they say after this.
The big problem today is that most management decisions are based on "opinions" and "feelings", rather than actual facts. Well, in fact, most of us act the same way.
:-)
Rumors dictate the behavior of stock markets. FUD delays whole company projects. False (or inaccurate) accusations lead nations to war.
This whole SCO thing is just another proof that mankind today is fundamentally returning to its most primitive behavior, and leaving behind methods, concepts and techniques it took so long to develop. The work of thousands of brilliant human minds are going down the drain, forgotten, lost in the recoils of our own passions.
Behold the decay of the human race... perhaps intelligent robots will succeed where we failed.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist (although I have played one in meetings with upper management).
Microsoft funds SCO's lawsuit against IBM to discredit Linux after it makes significant gains in it's marketshare. This is somewhat evident from the recent "contracting of SCO products" by Microsoft. As Dr Evil would say, "Riiiiiiiiiight"
Microsoft then uses it's "contacts" within Gartner to install the idea that Windows will be a better platform while Linux's reputation is on the line. And I'm sure Microsoft does have contacts within Gartner. It would make sense... since Gartner does industry research and M$ would be someone who benefits from such research.
(Now for another cliche)
Things that make you go hrmmmmmmmm......
Now if only we could find out who was ont he grassy nole.
It is very clear that Weiss didn't do his research on this matter. Anyone whose actually spent time reading about the matter, or who's been following it carefully should realize that SCO loses ground every day. As revelations come out about the SCO employees contributing to the kernel, or the old Caldera management discussing their intent to port the SCO code to to Linux, it becomes more and more obvious that SCO has a loosing case.
When SCO begins the process of suing their first victim over licensing, the vendor of that particular system will doubtless fall on SCO like a ton of bricks. FSF and OSI will probably also contribute to the defense in that first case, as will thousands of linux geeks worldwide. Since SCO hasn't yet proved code ownership in court, their first licensing lawsuit will almost certainly fail. Add to that the possibility of an SEC or FTC investigation, the successful anti-SCO injunction in Germany, and the possibility of someone pursuing a business libel lawsuit against SCO and it becomes very obvious that this is going to blow over very quickly.
Weiss is clearly clueless and foolish, and his "research" is useless to any serious reader.
If they don't, every kernel developer should sue them for applying a license to their code without their approval (after all, isn't that the same argument SCO says they have against Linux?).
And if SCO does reveal it... I say it'll be about a week, maybe two, before the code is replaced and this all goes away.
LordBodak's journal.
To be honest, I expected something like this for a long time. When I first read about linux (I had been using SunOs/Solaris a long time before) and noticed the similiarities to unix (in functionality) I expected the copyright-holder of Unix to do something about it. And at that time this would have been a really bad thing, as it could have killed of linux at an early stage.
The situation now is a lot better: Linux is a strong player on the OS market, many companies (even IBM) are depending in one way or another on linux. It is not easy to kill linux now.
SCO as the current copyright-holder is nearly as good as it gets for our side: The company is acting desperately, attacking the big players (IBM) instead of the weak points. In the end SCO will fail and when they do, the possibly dangerous copyright-issue unix vs. linux will be resolved.
The big Linux folks are being way to quiet. Why don't we hear IBM, SuSE, Red Hat et all. Screaming at SCO or at least putting out their own press releases. At least Linus has said something. The only ones screaming are US - the linux users. Some other countries are taking a stand and telling SCO to "Put up or shut up" and wining, Germany, poland and now Austrailia is getting in on it. WTF is wrong with the U.S.A.? Besides our Governemnt being OWNED by big corporations! Isn't there some laywer out there that would take on a class action lawsuit of all linux users and sue SCO for slander, extortion etc..?
What the heck can be done to shut SCO the HELL up!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Bah, it's not a big deal if you are deploying server products.
simply change the OS to BSD and call it good until the whole thing blows over. It shuts up the clueless CTO/CIO/CEO and makes the lawyers happy.
This is your easiest and painless way to keep that non-microsoft project running.
I have a BSD based machine sitting atop the linux dev box that I test each build on.. so switching when my Management team get's the case of the legal-stupids I can simply say, "no problem, It will be switched to BSD tommorow and we will not lose any productivity or have to slip on the timeline."
Another great part of Open Source... I'm not stuck.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Can't he sue SCO for slander? A preemptive move. Yeah, I know: Linus == small beans, SCO == bigger beans. Wouldn't that be where the EFF comes in? Or a community action to make fundage available?
IMO, Linux is taking a beating in the eyes of the PHBs. My own PHB is wondering wtf is up. She knows SCO sucks so bad it bends light, but further up the food chain, the CFO doesn't. And that CFO once had a dictum that `only M$ was to be used in our company.' That dictum has since been ignored, bent and rescinded, but.. ya know. Weak minds and all.
This is exactly the type of person all this FUD is targeted at. The PHBs and above.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
to say sorry to poor Mr Stallman, all those people who've been taking the piss for his insistance at the GNU (Gnu's Not Unix) Tab before Linux ;)
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Two issues. Not everything that runs on Linux runs on BSD, even in the server environment. If you can live with that and work around it, there is still the hazard that SCO has indicated that they do not believe that BSD is necesarily free and clear either.
At the moment this does not seem to be a significant issue, SCO is much more interested in slowing down Linux deployment, or getting money from companies that they believe are violating their intelectual property, and are "bigger fish".
-Rusty
You never know...
I'm wondering when Gartner is going to start recommending everyone stay away from Windows because of InterTrust's patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft.
That would seem to be a lot stronger case than SCO's unproven/unprovable/nonexistent/absurd claims against IBM.
Even if SCO's claims were on the level, wouldn't patent infringements be stronger than copyright infringements? Assuming SCO did have a case, why would they have a case against users of Linux who haven't violated SCO's copyrights (violations of copyright law are, I understand, issues of copying, something that most Linux users are not doing) and InterTrust not have a case against everyone with Microsoft software that is likely to be considered to be patent infringements of InterTrust's patents?
Is it because Gartner is succumbing to SCO's compaign of FUD? Or is Gartner in a position to lose money with the increased use of Linux? Or maybe just make more money if Microsoft dominates?
I wonder how frequently, if ever, a user who bought a legitimate copy of something that turned out to be an inadvertant copyright infringement has been held liable for that copy.
Don't blame the SCO execs for this. Don't even blame the SEC.
This isn't a case of insider trading. There is nothing hidden here. SCO execs, and anyone closely following the case, knows that SCO doesn't have a chance at winning the lawsuits.
Blame the stock traders who think that SCO will win, and gain something financially out of all of this. They are the ones buying this stock the execs are selling.
But isn't there any legal recourse available to a group in the situation we are currently in? SCO is a company that is basically using this *potential* lawsuit to extort money from linux users. This will likely damage Linux's reputation and make people act out of fear and dump the Linux platform.
Aren't there any damages the authors of Linux could claim? A class action suit that the copyright holders of linux code could file?
It seems to me that there is something fundamentally wrong (morally, that is) with using the *possibility* of a damaging lawsuit to get people to buy your product. Is there any law that they could be violating? I am envisioning a sort of "gag order" handed down to SCO. "You aren't allowed to contact linux customers or announce settlement offers until the merits of your case have been shown."
If it takes years for this to get to trial, the effects on the linux platform could potentially be huge. Their statements will simply keep the fear growing among Linux customers and eventually at least some of them willl cave to that fear. Is there any way to shut down the FUD machine???
Again, IANAL, but I'd love to hear the opinion of some lawyers on the feasibility of legal action against SCO by members of the Linux community.
Taft
from google cache ...
...
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:sdItEpGtxZ8 J: www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween6.php+gartne r+group+microsoft&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Mindcraft was just small fry, though - one more tiny company who learned too late that when Microsoft brings you flowers, they're likely to end up decorating your grave one way or another. As the fatal anniversary of Halloween I loomed, Microsoft appears to have rerun the same scam on a much larger scale. This time, its date for the dance was a respected name in IT forecasting, the Gartner Group.
Cue the ominous background music
Sometime before 6 October, the Gartner Group published on its central corporate website, www.gartner.com, a series of five reports slamming Linux and predicting that its appeal would fade once the inevitable Service Pack 1 for Windows 2000 came out. These reports quickly spawned Linux-is-doomed articles like this example from 15 Oct on the IDG Australia website, which promoted them as objective studies by independent Gartner.
The articles, however, included the following small print at the end:
Microsoft Web Letter is published by Microsoft. Additional editorial material supplied by Gartner Group, Inc. © 1999.
suggesting (though not proving) that this "Gartner report" was actually written and published by Microsoft on Gartner's own website.
We can't tell you the exact date of the reports, because they aren't there any more. On 19 October Gartner changed the copyright on the reports to no longer mention Microsoft, while publicly insisting that the research had not been funded by Microsoft. Tellingly, however, the URLs of the reports still began with this prefix:
http://www.gartner.com/webletter/microsoft/
and the same copyright notice, with the same attribution to Microsoft, can still be found on articles in the webletter/microsoft/ directory as this is written. Sometime between 19 and 27 October yanked the reports off its site entirely.
Fortunately, Rick Moen, a well-known Linux activist, managed to recover them from his Netscape cache - and found the copyright notice reproduced above. In view of Gartner's protestations that Microsoft had nothing to do with funding the research, the next lines in the notice are especially interesting:
Editorial supplied by Microsoft is independent of GartnerGroup analysis and in no way should this information be construed as a GartnerGroup endorsement of Microsoft's products and services.
So. At first blush, these "Gartner Group" reports seem to have been a warm personal gesture from Microsoft Corporation to itself. That theory would fit both the copyright and the contents, which exactly repeats Microsoft marketing cant that we've seen before - including such trademarks of the genre as the (unsupported and, according to IDC, false) assertion that Linux is taking seats mainly from other Unix shops.
However, the Gartner Group insists that Microsoft did not write the reports. A spokesman explained through the same compliant IDG Australia reporter responsible for the 15 Oct Linux-is-doomed story. Chase the link to get a load of this spin-doctoring; no paraphrase by us could do justice to the way Microsoft and the reporter deftly weave a fog of soothing confusion around the contradictions in their story. We're supposed to believe that:
* Gartner wrote the reports - even though the copyrights on them explicitly said otherwise;
* A set of URLs on www.gartner.com are "the Microsoft site";
* Microsoft "sponsors" this "site", and paid unspecified fees to Gartner Group related to the content - but nevertheless, in no way did Microsoft fund the reports.
Rick's comment on their explanation is more eloquent than my own:
I'm sure [Gartner's denial] was truthful, if you squint at it the right way: I'm certain that Microsoft Corporation's ongoing series of cheques for
We went to war with Iraq over "he said-she said" evidence - Why should Garter's standard's be any higher?
The nice people at chillingeffects.org have been fighting for quite some time against abuse based on copyright and other intellectual property laws. If you are affected by SCOX's FUD, for example your company received a nastygram from SCOX or your boss comes to you with a copy of the Gartner report you may want to drop them a line describing the situation and they may be able to draft some Q&A and/or template answers.
I believe IBM could ask this same thing (and donating some funds wouldn't hurt)
Actually, I would enjoy seeing an ad based on this that answers Sun's cheap shot. Something like:
Sun seems to think we may have a little license problem
Don't let them chill you, says Chillingeffects.org (*) [appropriate links]
Because the world won't stop for you, we help you move forward. [or some other slogan concocted by the ad-heads]
(*)Chillingeffects.org is a joint project of the Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and University of Maine law school clinics and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Half of the fortune 500 companies board members live and die by Gartner recommendations. Note, that does NOT invalidate your statement about half-brains and such, but I can honestly say THE ONLY reason we have apache as a web server in our organization was the Gartner report on the TCO of IIS. It does not matter what us tech's know, it is the PHB's that make all the decisions....and the further south they get the wierder and more implausable their views get,...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
SCO isn't licensing Linux, they're licensing the UNIX they allege is in linux. The license is to "hold blameless" if they win (A VERY BIG IF), then when they lose, they still hold you blameless(SUCKERS).
Is Windows a "safe" alternative? No way SCO said "solaris is safe" not windows is safe. first they knock down Linux through IBM, then they go after BSD, they'll claim that BSD breached their settlement and that places BSD back as a Sys V dirivative, and therefore MAC OS X and WINDOWS! All modern OSes except Solaris!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Indemnification solves the problem.
If company 'A' wants to distribute some software,
it can ease its customers' IP concerns by imdemnifying the customer against all IP claims.
What that would do would make company 'A' responsible -- not company A's customer -- for any IP violation claims.
The Plan 9 license requires this of a distributor.
Microsoft has recently announced such an addition to its terms.
Does the FSF indemnify its customers/users against such claims? I read something in the GPL about this, but as usual the GPL is fuzzy, with all its
rationale and "freedom" rhetoric, which will probably PO any judge that has to read it.
I know I might catch some flak for this but what if SCO is right and wins the case? It seems as though we are all betting that SCO is full of it and that eventually justice will prevail and Linux will be cleared. Even if SCO is wrong, it doesn't mean that Linux would come out of this unscathed. Has there been any mentioning of plans to deal with the outcomes? I know that Stallman has mentioned that we can easily swap kernels. This is probably the only contingency plan I've heard so far. Anyone care to enlighten me?
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Gee I feel like it's bad acid time and I'm flashing on 1992. Ever since I was a Gartner subscriber over a decade ago I've had to basically discount anything Gartner has ever said that might make MS look good. In other words Gartner has as far as can tell ever said anything (0.8 probability) that could be construed as being vaguely negative of MS. This appears to be more of the same. One Linux vendor suing another and Gartner tells its subscribes to stay away from all Linux. And this just a few days since MS 'admits' it's #1 threat is Linux.
The BSD's legal trouble in the 1990's helped Linux gain popularity at BSD's expense. Now it may be time for the enterprise to remember BSD can do everything Linux can do -- sometimes better!
The BSD zealots need to get a grip. There is absolutely nothing prevento SCO (or anyone else) from accusing BSD of having incorporated their code into the codebase and making precisely the same baseless accusations and FUD against *BSD that they are currently making against Linux.
Nothing.
The earlier court case you cite dealt with AT&T code at that time, which was subsequently removed from the BSD codebase. BSD got off on those minor infractions because AT&T had appropriated huge amounts of BSD code and was guilty of copyright violation in turn.
The cross-licensing that resulted from this legal battle applied to AT&T UNIX at that time, not the subsequent releases of System V which SCO is falsely claiming Linux has infringed upon.
There is therefor nothing at all preventing SCO from making exactly these same sort of accusations against *BSD, and indeed Darl et. al. have already made preliminary noises in that direction.
So those of you zealously screaming "BSD is immune" are not only spewing nonsense, you'd better hope and pray to whatever deieties you believe in (if any) that Linux does not loose on this one, because your favorite platform is almost certainly next on the list.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
As far as I can see, the whole problem is because of the fact that proprietary programs can't be reviewed by anyone. While this may seem totally obvious, the fact remains that if I employ people to write a program, there is no way I can tell whether or not any portions of code are plagiarized until I get a chance to review every ilne of every program written by every company in the world. If a writer steals a paragraph from a book and calls it his own, any literate person can verify whether that is the case or not. But claiming IP theft of closed secret code is stretching credibility when no one can see your closed code.
Apart from that, the liability would naturally fall upon the code bandit himself, not the company who innocently distributed it. For example if Cathy Codequeen stole code from Company X and inserted it into the new version of ssh, her name would be listed on the changelogs and when Company X wanted to sue Company Y for IP infringement, their liability would be zero as would the liability of SuSE or Redhat or whomever was the distributor. They would have to sue the thief, Ms Codequeen.
Point two was also MS FUD, spread by MS to convince venders to not ship OS/2.
And neither point addresses the blatent lies in PC Mag and other sources.
As a former OS/2 user ( since version 1.0, yes I'm that old), I was shocked and amazed by what I saw. I followed OS/2 developments closely. I also had access to technical publications that yould not find on a magazine shelf. I did not just wake up one morning and decide to start distrusting MS. I also did not learn my distrust of MS from /.. As I started disliking MS befor /. or Linux even existed. My dislike was caused by verifiable actions on the part of MS and their demostrably bought mouthpeices.
A little bit of history for thouse who only know what PC Mag said. The easier 'slide' up for customers bit was what MS was telling customers. What MS was trying to sell IBM on befor they pissed IBM off was quite different. MS had developed a plan to squees as much revinue out of their customers by essencialy screwing them over. They tried to get IBM to go along with the plan. This involved targeting OS/2 as a UNIX replacement, while marketing a series of deliberatly constrained OSs to desktop consumers. The idea was to hook the customer into an upgrade path that would require them to purchas a new OS every few years. IBM said "no way". Which is reasonable, as they had burnt themselves in the past doing this sort of thing. The last thing IBM needed during the Eighties was to engage in another plan to deliberatly screw its customers.
I am not making this stuff up. There were articles in industry publications that discused these issues. This included articles that pointed out that MS ramp-up concept was just a marketing ploy to convince consummers to allow themselves to be screwed. IBM and MS also made statements to attest to this. I seem to remember one of the more revieling articles being in EE Times.
Befor you start charctarizing anyone who knows the history of the issue as believers in black heliocpters, you should make sure you actualy know what your talking about. As it is, you have just become part of the MS FUD machine.
Perhaps you are right. No one said take a "go slow" approach to internet explorer or windows just because of some legal proceedings. The fact is that companies will continue doing whatever it was they were doing before and change things afterwards if it really becomes a problem. I for one, do not like the what-if approach. Just do it.
Did anyone expect an organization like the Gartner Group to come out and recommend throwing caution to the wind? I'm not surprised that they made this recommendation (Which I am ignoring, and in fact when I go into work tomorrow I am building a new RH7.3 server for internal webapps). I'm more surprised that this is even something the Gartner Group needs to take a position on?! I work for a multi billion dollar company, which pays close attention to the careful analysis and insightful recommendations that the Gartner Group makes. You don't need to be careful or insightful to come to this conclusion if your sole purpose is to help businesses make decisions.
I must not understand something that's going on here.
With all this SCO-Linux controversy, why not simply remove the disputed code?
Since the 2.6 kernel is on the verge of being formally released (taken out of beta), the 2.6 kernel could form a fresh start, being SCO-free.
I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to clone the disputed code, doing things a slightly different way, to replace whatever functionality would be lost by the removal of all SCO-disputed code.
The hard part would be is if SCO had patents on the disputed code. Then the functionality would have to go "non-US", like MP3 encoders and DVD players already have to do.
Does anybody know for sure why this hasn't been done already?
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
If you really want to help Linux - don't switch to BSD! Keep your Linux plans as they were before all this SCO propaganda.
Nice in theory... bad if you want to eat and keep your home.
I am the Linux Guru, if they eliminate linux in my workplace, then they hand me a box and ask me to clean out my desk.... something that sucks.
I have been changing my image from "linux guy" to "Unix Guy" I have backup plans to foil any of corperate's attempts to remove linux and keepy my projects and job going. They have tried before, and I simply slowly switched them back to linux.
I have a Backup BSD plan.... BSD doesnt sound like linux so it makes lawyers and the really dense executives happy if it comes to that... Otherwise I'll need to look at porting MySQL, PHP and apache to BeOS if they wont pony up for solaris if BSD becomes a bastard.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That's one of the fundamental differences between patent and copyright. You do not need to pay royalties to use a copyrighted work, but you do need to pay them to use a patented device.
I think it's the person making the devide (or code) who is "using" the patent. If my car contains a patented fuel injector it is Ford who violated the patent. If my operating system contains a patented whatever it is Microsoft who violated the patent.
Ugh. I can't belive I just said that. Software patents are an abomination and shouldn't exist. But so long as they do exist I stand by that argument that the end customer isn't the one violating them.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
And lets us fire the next volley. I for one, would like to see the SCO icon changed to reflect their corporate culture and thus better represent them. With that in mind let us use Mr. Goatse as a weapon agains evil.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
If the case had merit could they not get someone to underwrite the bond(Hello LLOYD'S of London)? Not the case here of course, but they are allowed to do that are they not?
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I think the bigger issue here is about code ownership.. SCO is claiming they own code that IBM wrote themselves (JFS, Numa, RCP) for their Operating systems (OS/2 and AIX). IBM's and everone elses "thought" on that is.. "I wrote the code I own it.. yeah I ported it over to AIX so I could use it there".. SCO is claiming that OH it runs on AIX.. AIX is derived from Unix, therefore we own it, and you can't re-port it to Linux.
Then there's the whole SMP thing which thus far proof has been surfaced that shows Alan Cox developed that on a machine donated by Caldera/SCO using information in a publically available book.
SCO already stated which version of Linux is "contaminated" I forgot which version, but not an ancient one.
But won't it be faster if we hire a hacker to rewrite SMP and whatever SCO accused of us from that particular version? As long as we stick to the same API, it should not be too bad to compile it and fix it to merge into other later codes.
If we provide a "100% cleaned/rewritten" version, we won't be weighed down by the legal problems. Believe me, the business world is very concerned about this, since they don't have a clue what is going on.
Think about it, a good hacker will work much faster than the court system.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.