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SCO Wants $699 for Linux Systems
walterbyrd quotes: "'We believe it is necessary for Linux customers to properly license SCO's IP if they are running Linux 2.4 kernel and later versions for commercial purposes. The license insures that customers can continue their use of binary deployments of Linux without violating SCO's intellectual property rights.' SCO will be offering an introductory license price of $699 for a single CPU system through October 15th, 2003." Update: 08/05 18:24 GMT by M : After October 15, SCO says they'll want $1399. Better buy now!
We had Red Hat enter the game yesterday. With SCO requiring money for a Linux license, I think it is time for GNU to enter the game and sue SCO for violating terms of the GPL.
SCO wants money. I want code, and I want proof that they can legally do this. No code? No proof? No money.
It's that simple.
I strongly suspect some major holders of Linux copyrights are about to jump in with Red Hat, demanding that SCO prove it can do this.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I notice how they list the trademarks at the bottom of the press release, except for Linux.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
Because the SCO license authorizes run-time use only, customers also comply with the General Public License, under which Linux is distributed.
sHi
Let me run out and buy some of that SCO stock!!!
/.), you could cash out with about $3,000 today. (enough for the 4 CPU license)!
If you purchased $699 of SCO stock on March 7th (day SCO vs. IBM on
George Soros (top investment guy who once made a billion in a day) has said that the markets represent wishes rather than reality. This is also why that "buy terrorist stock" thing from the DoD was complete rubbish.
Look at SCO, if they were Antartica in PAM the DoD would be saying "BIG terrorist threat at the south pole"
Markets != reality. Lets face it this is a place where analysts say Sun is in trouble and they have $5.5bn in the bank, I wish I was in that much trouble!
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Just goes to show you how much Linux is worth. SCO seems to have it valued about right. Of course, Linux is GPL and FREE! Were one to charge for Linux, based on it's high end features, the price is close.
The SCO stock is so much shorted that is has become diffcult to borrow the stock to short. Datek (Ameritrade now) did not let me short SCO for a long time (it doesn't let me even now, but I stopped trying).
Very funny coincedence -- when NOVL said they own the IP for UNIX, I sold SUN and tried to short SCO. Now, after the shit SUN pulled with SCO, I put that money yesterday into RHAT (small amount of money, so it is more like a fun story)
S
Many of the Wall Street analysts hyping up the SCO stock to their clients have no idea about the ease with which the disputed code can be re-written by capable graduate students of computer science. The analysts are fools, and so are their clients.
Let us keep this secret to ourselves, the Slashdotters. We will make a bundle of money. Some of us need downpayments on a new house.
As a contractor and an consultant, I'm documenting all lost sales and damages. Should SCO lose, and it be shown in court that this was truly BS/FUD, I'll have legal recourse.
The SCO folks are making such GENERAL statements against Linux, Linux Users, and Linux consultants, that it should NOT be hard to prove their negligence/libel/slander in court.
But by the end of the SCO/IBM lawsuit, the SCO bigwhigs will have unloaded all their stock anyway, and there won't be much to collect on.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
At MSN money, SCOX gets a "D" for ownership, meaning that the insiders at SCO are selling their own stock. I'm sure they know things we don't know, and this would seem to indicate that they know they're full of shit (OK, so maybe we all knew that). I'm not exactly Warren Buffet, but this seems like a case of some sleazes hyping their worthless stock, finding some fools to buy it at an inflated price, and counting their money while those same fools find themselves with worthless stock.. A fool and his money are soon parted. BTW the stock is up about %1100 since this thing started so it's working admirably.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
> PS: SCO is going down, and everybody know it (including SCO). The question is: will they drag Linux too....
It's a kamakazi attack. Remember that these people don't have any interest in SCO as a software firm. They're ambulance chasers, jackals who bought a moribund enterprise in hopes of squeezing some cash out of it and discarding the husk. If they can get the most cash by hurling it at other companies as a bomb, then that's exactly what they'll do with it.
And it appears that that is the course they decided on.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
A single CPU license (the first one) costs $699. Any more cost $749. Isn't that backwards?
Doesn't SCO claim that its properties include only SMP and related technologies? If that's the case, then a single CPU license would not be required at all because SCO's technologies apply only to multiple-CPU boxes.
Mind you, their story has changed so often it's hard to know what they actually claim now. Today's claims are probably different than yesterdays. Oh, it's after noon? Then the claims are different than they were this morning.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
I baught CALDera stock at their IPO for $27/share.
Since then, it has gone down to $0.20/share and did a 4x reverse split. Then merged with SCOX
Now at $12.80/share (divide by 4 = $3.20); I've lost..
Good thing I didn't buy too many.
Could I claim I hold copyrights to code in, say, Photoshop or Windows, refuse to substantiate those claims, then extort money from users of those programs? People I don't even have a business relationship with? People who aren't even infringing on my (supposed) copyrights, but are merely using the software under license from a third party.
That has to qualify as racketeering. It just has to.
-Peter
Dear fellow geek,
Consider your future as laughing-stock at your next employer. The shame in working for SCO is fast approaching that of working for Microsoft.
Consider that you will need a job after SCO Enrons (hey, any noun can be verbed), and that I, for one, would be suspicious about taking you on, if I knew you had stayed throughout this outrage.
So for your own good, WALK OUT NOW and make it a public walk-out! Do it while your options are still worth money, at least. Hurry!
WKR,
A concerned fellow geek.
What SCO is doing is called extortion/blackmail.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
As far as I've been able to research (see CBOE) there are no options of any type for SCO.
This is too bad, because although puts have a time limit, they're much more profitable than selling short (max gain is 200%, if you use all of your margin ability which is of course very dangerous). With the right puts (I'd buy one year out), you could easily make 500%.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
And they refuse to provide any information until you give them your phone number and name. Yeah, I don't see them sending me any bills in the mail.
aren't we overdue for a new, less sympathetic SCO icon? i mean, if we borgify M$ surely something similar is way past warranted for these guys?
ed
SCO intends to use force to accomplish their goals, not voluntary association.
Well, I rather expect that rather than SCO as a whole, it's more their board of directors/president.
Regardless if they are eventually successful or not, the sudden stock leap after they started down the litigation path probably made all of the higher-ups in the company a big boatload of money. And they're gonna keep filling that boat as long as possible.
As soon as things starts to turn south, losing lawsuits, frustrated "customers" etc. - I'd imagine that most of the higher-ups in the company will cut the ropes and resign and the boat-o-cash will sail-off into the sunset.
Of course, this would leave the employees and investors of the company high and dry while the CEOs enjoy their money in the bahamas...
But that's how business is supposed to work these days, right?
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
At $699 they very obviously don't expect anyone to pay (except maybe some allies like Microsoft who will very publicly purchase some token seats).
Well, Microsoft uses Linux in their test lab. I wonder how many licenses they'll be purchasing.
// TODO: fix sig
On my system:
Nothing found. The software isn't on my system. I'm not paying SCO a dime.
As to your blender analogy, if you take my blender, I don't have access to it. If I have SCO's IP, they still have access to it.
As to the illegal copy of Photoshop, that's a little closer. However, since I'm not using it, I could just as easily delete it, and therefore not be out of compliance. If, however, I use the software, then yes, I owe Adobe the license fee for the use of the software. The point being, since I'm not using any of SCO's IP, I don't owe them anything.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
He is calling out RMS by name. This is a lot worse than "hey your product infringes on our product". This is a declaration that proprietary source and open source cannot co-exist in the same world.
In his closing remarks, McBride likens SCO's actions against Linux end users to the RIAA's actions against P2P copyright infringers.
This is some lethal FUD here. There is a huge difference between music thieves and open source developers. Music thieves are in fact making using other people's work without their consent, whereas open source developers create their own independent content and distibute it on their own chosen terms. We are indies. We are not warez d00dz.
Back to SCO
Classical company: make products and services, sell them to customers for money, profit.
F/OSS community: make products and services, give them away, self-generating funding, community rewards (but not much profit).
SCO: generate FUD, sell "ScoSource licenses" to Microsoft and Sun, profit.
Classical companies took some time to adjust to the radically different approach of the F/OSS Community. We don't breath the same oxygen that they do, so strategies that worked against, say, Netscape, do not work against, say, Apache.
Similarly, SCO has a radically different model. SCO throws shit like a mad monkey at the Bronx zoo. For a classical corporation, there is huge backlash to this, because customers tend to avoid the products and services of the shit-thrower. But SCO doesn't care, because they don't make their profit from selling products and services
How to fight something like this?
Well, Linuxtag did something effective. Red Hat's lawsuit may or may not be effective, but it sure is good for morale. I asked RMS to boycott SCO -- remove support for SCO operating systems from GNU products -- but he replied that he didn't think it would be effective (because SCO can just maintain their own branch). I disagree with that and I urge more developers to follow Fyodor's lead and remove OpenServer and UnixWare as configuration options in their software.
SCO makes money by throwing shit at Linux -- not indirectly by increasing sales of their products (which does not work very well), but directly, in the form of checks from Microsoft and Sun.
SCO has essentially two assets and is fighting on two levels. They have legal claims and are pursuing those in court. But they also have PR assets. It is deadly for us to reply to their PR attacks with legal defenses. We have to attack SCO's PR assets.
Some ideas for an attack:
. SCO claims they spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing and purchasing the rights to Unix. Well, actually, they probably spent a lot less than that. Check how much they raised in their IPO and how much revenue they've made since then and how much they've actually spent on engineering.
. SCO even bought their name! The SCO Group didn't build a reputation on that name. They used to be Caldera International, but when that didn't work, they bought the name from the Santa Cruz Operation.
. SCO isn't a product and service company. Their revenues are tiny and declining. Their VP of Engineering sold all his stock (and I've heard a rumor that he left the company, haven't tracked it down yet). It's not enough to point out that they are litigious. Point out that they have nil legitimate technology to bring to the table.
Sorry this rambles a bit, I should write an essay instead of just rambling in a comment box.
The amount required to purchase a licence (at the discount rate) for every linux 2.4 machine on Netmar's (my employer) network would set us back about 18% of our yearly gross. At that rate, we'd end up going through and compiling 2.2 kernels for everyone.
But, think about it large scale - think about people who have many many servers, a. la. RackShack.
RackShack claims 14,000 servers online. Do the math.
It would cost RackShack 9.8 Million Dollars ($9,800,000) to come into compliance w/ SCO.
SCO, go fuck yourself.
Sincerely
~Will
sig?
It's actually a fairly well-used method of payment in cases of dispute.
If I live in California and dispute my phone bill, I can put the full payment on deposit with the Public Utilities Commission pending resolution of the dispute. This way my local telephone service provider can't file a negative credit report on me for not paying my bill, but they don't get any of my money until the dispute is resolved. Once it's resolved, the PUC gives the phone company the amount to which they're entitled, and if I've successfully argued my case, I get the disputed portion back.
If SCO is so sure of their claims, they should have no problem with this solution. Your only loss is getting passbook-style interest on the money rather than the interest you could get from more aggressive investments.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
SCO is not distributing any Linux code (source or binary) with this license. They are assuming you've already purchased "infringing" software. So they're not distributing anything. Of course, they've already modified and distributed the Linux code, so they've already agreed to the GPL on that code.
Since the right to use a software program is not specified as a restriction in the Copyright Act, there's really no reason you need to buy a license from SCO to use the Linux code in question. And I'd suspect that their license will put restrictions on your modification and distribution of Linux. Which of course would conflict with the GPL. And they'd probably turn around and sue you for breaching their license. Sounds more risky to accept their license offer than to risk being sued for violating their copyright, for which their case is very weak.
But there is some logic in what SCO is doing, trying to weave their way around the GPL.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Whats the worth of SCO? $200 mill.?
Let's put in $20 for each Linux we have, then:
- buy SCO
- license all their IP/code to GNU
- and if we are in a real evil mood: dissolve the company.
Let me see, I have 3 Linuxes running = $60SCO wants $699 per Linux = $2097
I save $2037 and probably will get an even better Linux
Perhaps it's time for the world to meet Open Capitalism