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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!
Well, it's finally happened.. they have smoked so much crack that now they've really started hallucinating...
Right to use SCO IP in a Linux distribution
Promotional License Fee
with 1 CPU $699
with 2 CPUs $1,149
with 4 CPUs $2,499
with 8 CPUs $4,999
Additional single CPU $749
So this puts Lawrence Livermore National Labs at around $190,751 for a 256CPU system.. of which, they have a few.. heh..
<sarcasm> Let me run out and buy some of that SCO stock!!! </sarcasm>
---
Stupidity is the great constant in this universe.
What is absolutely unbelievable to me is that investors are accepting and banking on SCO's FUD tactic. Check out SCO's stock. And now with this announcement if the trend continues, investors may lean even more towards SCO (although, I am not sure why). Unbelievably insane.
Unique signatures are rare.
Haaaahhhaaaaah haha ha ha ha!
*snort*
HAAAAAhaahahahahaaa!
*tear*
Aahhh...
*wipes eyes*
Gosh, that's funny.
No, seriously, how much do they want?
-Waldo Jaquith
Well, luckily for me I am running Kernel v2.6 so I am free from the chains of SCO! What I plan to do instead is start charging everyone the fee of $6.99/license so that you can all run Linux v2.6 (binary only so that you can be in compliance with the GPL!)
I have 2 lines of code which are completely indentical to 2 lines of code in 2.6. I showed it to a few people and they see that what I am saying is true! Just because they are reporters and not programmers is irrelevant.
I would love to have the ability to show these in court but I am too busy with watching the stock tickers.
If you have any questions, feel free to send a check or money order to the P.O. box below (located in a UPS Store).
Remember, complete use of Linux for only $6.99, and no, I will not cover you if SCO sues you.
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.
I'll give you the finger and you can give me my Linux Kernel.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
...by time spent reading all the /. articles about this frivolous suit by SCO
The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.
-- Molly Ivins
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.
bitemedarl.com
darlmcbridesucks.com
I haven't got enough time but I'll be happy to paypal someone $50 to set up a nice site with a messageboard... c'mon.
I own some IP inside the Linux Kernel, but won't disclose what it is either. I am lot more generous then SCO though and will only charge you $500 for a enterprise wide license for Linux. See that wasn't so hard now was it. Please forward your payments to Hangtime.
Dear SCO,
Thank you for the good laugh this afternoon. Our network administrator actually wet his pants, while the rest of us were in such hysterics and tears that work became all but unmanageable. I don't get all the bad press about you guys... I think you've got a great sense of humor.
Sincerely,
LinuxCorp.
In other words:
'Please help us bankroll our lawsuit against you'.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Easy answer.
If they showed where the alleged code was, then it would take approximately 30 minutes for the contributor(s) to remove the affected code, re-release kernel version(s), etc.
How, then, would SCO be able to charge $699 for a license?
This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
Because the SCO license authorizes run-time use only, customers also comply with the General Public License, under which Linux is distributed.
sHi
"My offer to you is this. Nothing."
There is always FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD.
Unless there is proof, there is no need to pony up to SCO and fork out the dough.
And let's be reminded, that there is NO PROOF whatsoever. Only accusations, NDAs, press releases.
Honestly, I'm not worried one bit and all my half a dozen servers are Linux. If you are worried about this for your business, then by all means, switch. But you've not been served any papers stating you're breaking some law, so screw it.
Go live and do business stuff instead of worrying about all this bs.
Because I commented the infringing lines out, and recompiled.
"Exactly which lines did I comment out?" you ask. That's *my* trade secret.
But I did manage to get all of the infringing lines SCO disclosed."
What they are doing is setting up an enviroment where things look like a done deal. Folks shouldn't underestimate this.
Given the fact that IBM has been relatively silent if a judge looks at a future SCO case they have 600 people licensing software from them, that judge is simply going to have a harder time "giving it away for free" to the linux guys.
Now I hope to GOD people read these licenses with a very fine tooth comb. Their is an adge that you NEVER want to sign a contract with a company like SCO, because a contract gives them real power to make your life miserable. Realize that they initially went after their OWN licensees (AIX etc) and it was because those folks had signed contracts. Be careful!
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
I don't think this sort of badgery and legal abuse falls under "Capitalism."
There a many different definitions and conceptions of capitalism, but they usually involve things like investment in capital, competion, and freedom. Unless you consider investing in lawyers "capital," this is a pretty anti-capitalist, anti-free-market sort of manuever on SCO's part.
Using the courts (read: government) to try to extract money from people, rather than providing goods or services to be purchased on a voluntary basis, is not the ideal profit model for comapnies if you want to maintain a healthy capitalist system.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Actually, another article linked states that the later fee will be $1,399 which is more in-line with their UnixWare licenses, which makes sense since they've been talking about "indemnifying us poor miscreants" with UnixWare licensing. The $699 is just a 50% off type deal.
An interesting link in the other SCO/Caldera article today (i wish I could find the link) stated something along the lines of "whenever anything threatens their stock price, the SCO/Caldera execs release some more bit of news to pump it up." After being hit slightly by the RedHat announcement, well, here you go. Some traders probably will see the number, make a back of the envelope calculation "well, there are millions of Linux boxes, they're gonna get $699 or $1399 for every one, I want a piece of that" and pump up their stock. The more McBride pulls stuff out of his ass like this, the more obvious that it's just a stock ploy becomes.
I'd be interested to know what the percentage of machines out there running Linux are less than the $1400 price point. Granted, SCO/Caldera is (currently) only talking about commercial licenses so it's likely the machines are better than the overall average box, but still likely to be cheaper than the license. If this is the cost of a UnixWare license, no wonder they went into the toilet.
BTW: I call it SCO/Caldera because McBride's company is really just SCO in name and IP rights only. The real SCO people are at Tarantella, where they are soldiering on, doing real work.
Assuming that SCO loses this battle, I doubt there will be much left of the company to go after. Of course, it might be interesting for you to file suit NOW, even if you don't expect to win any substantial monetary damages. (And if you were to win, your subsequent damages could continue to be added to the total later.) The PR for your company would be worth something all by itself, because the news coverage in your local area could let companies see you as something as a leader among Linux consultants.
How can SCO get away with charging $699 for a license to code that they claim is on your computer, when they have offered no proof that it is on your computer?
Then again, if you paid the fee, they'd have to give you their part of the Linux kernel, outlining what you're paying for right? Like on the receipt or something.
Is there any doubt that this was the plan all along? Come on, this is just a large-scale Pump-n-Dump scheme. Let's see - an organization that owns a few companies (let's call it Canopy) buys a down-on-it's-luck company (let's call it Caldera) that has some worthless IP. They decide, wisely, to pay their executives (coincidently, themselves) in options.
Then, they make obscene claims and sue a big-name target (let's call it IBM) for a ton of cash. Then, instead of filing court documents in a timely fashion to win their suit with minimum expenditure, they FUD like crazy. They get interviews wherever they can, especially in the mass media like CNBC, which moron daytraders watch to get "stock tips." This drives up share price, making their options worth a ton of cash. Then, they sell out, literally and figuratively.
This is where we are now. The interesting part is, though, that after they sell out they may not even care about the result of the suit all that much.
Bottom line is this needs to be investigated as the pump-n-dump scheme that it is. Why is it illegal for some morons on a chat board to do it, but perfectly legal for a management team to do it? It's a scheme/scam either way.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Ok. Let's all go back to RH 6.2 and rewrite. Guh.
The problem here is that this is the model for attacked OSS now. Refuse to disclose the "stolen" IP , and claim that IP has been stolen. Wait years for the case to be cleared up in the courts, and by then, the next batch of proprietary software will have FUDded the OSS alternative into oblivion.
People are saying "hey -- just go to BSD". Guess what? That will come under attack, too, as it is developed. A different process for controlling what code goes into OSS and where it comes from may be needed, but that is what SCO and the proprietary software business wants -- they want it to be more difficult to develop software outside of the traditional code it and hide methods.
This suit has nothing to do with the linux kernel. It has everything to do with the entire OSS model. McBride as much as said that community developed software is the target here, referring to RMS in the same breath as the "OSS wants don't ask, don't tell when it comes to the source of code". Again, this is about OSS, not linux.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
$699 for a single CPU system through October 15th
After October 15, SCO says they'll want $1399.
After October 20, SCO says they'll want $49999.
After October 25, SCO says they'll want three billion.
SCO will release October and November prices after they contract a mathematician to construct new super exponential and trans-finite numbering systems.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Dear fellow geek,
Consider your future as laughing-stock at your next employer. The shame in working for SCO is fast approaching that of working for Microsoft.
Consider that you will need a job after SCO Enrons (hey, any noun can be verbed), and that I, for one, would be suspicious about taking you on, if I knew you had stayed throughout this outrage.
So for your own good, WALK OUT NOW and make it a public walk-out! Do it while your options are still worth money, at least. Hurry!
WKR,
A concerned fellow geek.
And they refuse to provide any information until you give them your phone number and name. Yeah, I don't see them sending me any bills in the mail.
aren't we overdue for a new, less sympathetic SCO icon? i mean, if we borgify M$ surely something similar is way past warranted for these guys?
ed
What they heck do they think they own... Boardwalk? That's just crazy.
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.
Haha, way to mod him up rather than respond...thus /.ing him exactly as he didn't ask. Here is the text:
... ...
... viewing center in Linden, Utah.
... new risk factor disclosure in SEC statement ...
... just remove the infringing code.
... important debate ...
... now we're going to t
Notes on SCO Conference Call, 2003-08-05
Michael Elizabeth Chastain
Copyright 2003, Michael Elizabeth Chastain.
Permission granted to copy and reproduce in any medium.
2003-08-05T14:01:59-0400
800-238-9007 / 274040 / The SCO Group
Called in. There is a queue to get to an operator.
2003-08-05T14:06:16-0400
Opening remarks, Blake Stowell.
Stowell: Today, McBride and Sontag.
2003-08-05T14:06:56-0400
McBride:
Yesterday, SCO filed a legal action against the SCO Group
Purpose of this call is to comment on these actions.
Red Hat's lawsuit confirms what we have been saying all along:
Linux developers are unable/unwilling to screen code.
Red Hat is selling Linux that contains verbatim / obfuscated code
from System 5.
Red Hat is selling Linux that contains derivative code
Some of those companies (IBM / Sequent) have had their licenses terminated.
Red Hat claims we have not shown examples of infringing code.
This claim is simply not true
Red Hat is apparently trying to pretend that no problem exists.
Red Hat claims that SCO is at fault for its loss of recent Linux business.
We suggest that Red Hat has adopted a faulty business model.
Quotes from GPL Section 7, distributors may need to stop distributing.
It has no control to prevent infringing code from going into Linux.
If infringing code goes in, then Red Hat must stop shipping.
This is the problem with Red Hat's business model.
Red Hat has established $1 million fund.
SCO is not suing developers, just their employers.
We suggest that Red Hat needs to increase the size of the fund.
Over 2.5 million servers running linux kernel 2.4.
Red Hat thinks that SCO should show them every line of infringing code.
Red Hat thinks that they can
What is at issue is more than SCO and Red Hat.
What is at issue is intellectual property rights in the age of the Internet.
"don't ask, don't tell" policy.
proprietary or communal property according to Richard Stallman's vision.
Rolling out licenses to run SCO IP in binary form only.
Because the SCO license authorizes run-time use only,
customers also comply with the GPL.
2003-08-05T14:15:00-0400
Assemble roster for Q and A.
#1 Lee Gomez, Wall Street Journal
Q: Why don't you release the examples of infringement?
A: Actually, We have been releasing them.
Q: Are they on your web site?
A: NUMA, RCU, are direct violations.
Q: Do you have specific examples?
A: We've been showing?
Q: Publically available, to anyone?
A: Absolutely.
A: The minute we open it up, we can't restrict it in the future.
A: Over 100 people under NDA.
Q: Can you make available a list of people?
A: I have to go back to my PR team?
Q: Linux/open source advocates?
A: I don't remember his name
Chris: I don't remember his name but I can provide that to you.
#2 David Becker, CNET
Q: Terms of the new license?
A: Chris, comment on that?
Chris: single cpu, $699, October 15, after which it will climb to a higher price
Chris: contract their SCO representative
#3 M??? Greenmeyer, e-week
Q: Letter about possible global resolution.
What were you referring to?
A: We had those discussions
SCO:We here you have been adding code to Linux and have even used it in house. We have a large bill for you that you have to pay or we will sue you.
NSA:That is very interesting we will give you our answer in about an hour. CLICK
Mountain Home AFB: Mountian Home Air Force Base how can I help you?
NSA: This is the NSA we have a terrorist take over in Utah.
Mountian Home AFB: Is it SCO?
NSA: Yes have you already heard?
Mountian Home AFB: Yea they have already called the Army to try and bill them. They even called some of the Oil Companies and that got the White House involved.
NSA: So you have already tasked a strike mission?
Mountian Home AFB: No need. They also sent a bill to Disney! They will never know what hit them. Have a nice day.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Great quote, but doesn't anyone site sources anymore? Sheesh! Isn't that just plagiarism?
"Capitalism is the uneven distribution of wealth, and socialism the even distribution of poverty."
Winston S. Churchill
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
those who purchased redhat were not the ones infringing on copyright laws, redhat was infringing on copyright laws, thus SCO is simply undermining its credibility when it chooses to go after the users rather than those who actualy violated copyright laws.
Also:: considering the fact that SCO wont actualy reveal what code in rh they own without a nondisclosure agreement I would say that they may not actualy have code and are simply trying to exploit those companies out there that are using rh and have the money to pay their fees.
my guess is that either SCO will be subpoena'd and unable to reveal the code or they will be taken to court on charges of extortion...and lose.
Red Hat is for people who hate Windows, FreeBSD is for people who love Unix.
www.putertech.net