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SCO Targets US Government, TiVo
An anonymous reader writes "According to SCO, if you have a TiVo set-top box, or those models of Sharp Zaurus which use Linux, someone now owes them $32, since the company wants money 'for each embedded system using Linux.' SCO also says government agencies must pay up to $699 for each copy of Linux that they use."
...and fuck SCO!
"We believe it is necessary for Linux customers to properly license SCO?s [intellectual property] if they are running Linux ? for commercial purposes,?"
Government agencies, commercial? Watch out orphans you're next, Microsoft is gonna getcha.
SCO is demanding 5$ from everyone who has talked about Linux in the past year, and 75 cents from people who have walked by Linux displays in retail stores.
-------------------------------------------------
Trying to piss EVERYONE off, are we, SCO?
Putting the romance back into necromancer.
Perhaps if we ignore them they'll go away?
Hacking the Network
In further news, the US Government replied that, "SCO owes us $2,000 per day of liberty, retroactively to 1789. Failure to pay will result in 'legal action' from our tactical nuclear warhead supply."
I'm sure Linksys/Cisco will really love the idea of having to pay SCO some money to be able to ship some of its more recent wireless routers. SCO is going to be crushed by a big company like Cisco; it's only a matter of time (and how much we let them whine).
*toggles off Caldera news*
Wow imagine a beowulf cluster of these claims! :(
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
Disconnect their narco-drip before they decide that the dyes in the colours of most national flags contain their IP!
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
I think this is all just a way to make us run out of SCO jokes before the trial. McBride is such a clever bastard.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Well one person you don't want to piss off is Uncle Sam. They can legislate SCO out of existence and the judges can be bought a whole lot easier if they have politicians talking into their ears. SCO is going down, no doubt about it, and hopefully McBride and his cronies will head to jail when all is said and done. Oh and First post!
Which, do you suppose, is worse? Posting a FP, or being wrong about it?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Everybody should call SCO now and demand:
1) WHAT you get by paying them
2) WHAT part of linux infringes
3) TO SEE PROOF of infringement
When they don't provide it then it's time for lawsuits out the wazoo!
Call me an idiot, but I can't imagine that they'd go down this path if they knew they were only bluffing. Who would honestly be stupid enough to take on the US government on a money issue like this, just when the electioneering is getting started for '04, without thinking they could win?
Maybe SCO, maybe not.
Okay, this is going too far. One can only hope that pissing off the government will end them up in even more lawsuits. Could the US govt shut them down forcefully somehow?
Before the medication wears off.
$32 for using my tivo? I believe that uses many of the contested server technologies.
PS I am being sarcastic
Slashdot looked deep within my soul and assigned
me a number based on the order in which I joined
Maybe the author *meant* to spell breach as "breech" in the article link:
"SCO is currently suing IBM Corp. for breech of contract for allegedly supplying some of that Unix code as part of the open source development process for Linux. "
From dictionary.com:
breech:
breech ( P ) Pronunciation Key (brch)
n.
The lower rear portion of the human trunk; the buttocks.
breach:
1
a. An opening, a tear, or a rupture.
b. A gap or rift, especially in or as if in a solid structure such as a dike or fortification.
2 A violation or infraction, as of a law, a legal obligation, or a promise.
I think in this case we are all of the opinion that SCO is an arse (or ass if
you prefer the American spelling).
if you could be a fly on the wall at SCO when they are coming up with this crap? I mean they really cannot be serious. This will go down as the biggest troll ever!
OMG what farking balls these guys have....
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
The government owes SCO money? The government's response should be entertaining... :)
Personally I find SCO's management style refreshing.
No wishy-washyness. It's damn the torpedoes, and full speed ahead. Never a moment of doubt that they may be making a huge mistake. No second guessing themselves. We know what we want, and we know where we're going. And we'll be damned if ANYTHING is going to dissuade us. Full court press, lads.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Somebody refresh my memory. Whats the current jail time penalty for slanderous statements?
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
[... snip out boring stuff...]
Sources close to the controversy report hearing SCO CEO Darl McBride screaming and then loud thumps, before noting a non-descript black van leaving the SCO compound.
Administration Spokesperson Dill Franken had this to say, "While we cannot reveal the identity of the individuals for reasons of National Security, we can safely say that we have thwarted a terrorist network in their attempts to threaten the government, and our way of life."
He then went on to check his watch and remarked, "they should be arriving at Camp X-ray, right... about... now!" He then took some questions and concluded the press conference.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
...it's stupid enough pissing on big blue's shoes, but when you start trying to bully the US government, you get called a terrorist, and we all know what happens then.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Flirting with extortion and RICO charges wasn't exciting enough. Now they're trying a shakedown of the US Federal government. What are the odds that someone in Congress calls up the DOJ and wants either evidence or heads on plates?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Hello, I am a single mom running my own business in suburb Los Angeles area. When I heard about the SCO news, I got really worried about the legality, since I consult other people and want to be perfectly legal with my software (I bought a Lindows machine from Wal-Mart).
So this morning I wrote up a check to SCO and sent it to their office (the mailman came and picked it up when he was dropping the correspondence). However, instead of $699 I wrote it up for $799. The question is: how should I approach SCO about the $100 refund? Would it be ok to contact them before the check actually got there? Or would I have to let it slip due to my own inattention?
Thank you,
Melissa Bryant
Is there someone at SCO who got beaten up as a child? I believe the words spoken were, "Someday, I'll make them all pay... Just you watch."
BTW - This post costs $1399 if I spell out more than L-I-...
Its hilarious to see the reaction of everyone once the word "SCO" is mentioned. They(SCO) are just shooting them selves in the foot anyway. I think that the CEO if SCO has a burning need to see SCO burning.
1) Maybe if SCO actually made something linux-based for the mass market worth purchasing they would reap some of those "lost profits" they moan about
2) Linux code should be de-SCOed to prevent this sort of problem from continuing to flair up
3) Would someone please investigate the RIAA to see if they're using any Linux systems? Personally I'd love to see the RIAA and SCO duke it out in court instead of on consumers who have to settle on their terms...
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
I mean really, come one, what's next? Are they going to ally with the mafia and start extorting the money personally?
vi ~/.emacs
How fast can you self destruct? I am curious what the government is going to do?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wrote to the SEC the other day. This lawsuit is frivolous. Basically this is a pump and dump scheme. SCO's executives are hyping up this lawsuit and their company while in the backroom apparently they are selling their own stock.
If they start seriously going after the Federal fuckin' Government , they're going to get there assess kicked .
Can you imagine how much that would cost the Feds and the states? Once you put a pricetag on it (and god, it would be huge), regular people will say "wait a minute... what's that money for!?"
no thanks
Well this sucks. Has anyone hacked the Tivo yet to run Windows?
$699 per license seems rather pricey considering SCO can at best only claim responsibility for a fraction of the code.
Anyone want to crunch the numbers line-by-line to discover how much a boxed linux version should set you back if SCO's per-line cost is translated across the entire code?
FUD
FUD
FUD
wIIIIIse
FUD
wIIIIIse
FUD
wIIIIIse
errrr
FUD!
wIIIIIse
errrrrrr
<high-level position here>
<name of stupid small company here>
I inadvertantly left some source code on my web site, and SCO stole it. I can't show it to you but even the comments are the same.
Therefor, everyone out there using Linux owes me $750.
This is my sig.
piss of linux users wont get much trouble
piss off IBM will cost you your soul
piss off the US Govment and watch out!
what kind of scare tactic is this? extortion of the government? this is just begging for trouble.
...but you saw what both Bush administrations have done to Iraq...SCO is not playing it smart.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Ya know VxWorks, that amazing Real Time O/S? I think it could possibly incorporates a lot of Unix code.. I mean, it's less of a stretch to VxWorks, than it is to Linux. Does anyone have any ideas if SCO *could* go after Vxworks? If they do.. Nortel Networks should run scared, most of those PBX's run VxWorks. Their IP phone stuff also uses VxWorks.
Just to get those wheels turning...
-=-Ze End-=-
Stowell said the company has no immediate plans to file suit against government agencies using Linux, but rather plans to speak with individual offices about buying licenses first. I'm sure the government would like to speak with you about these licenses too.
This space for rent. Contact for our rates.
I think I speak for all of us when I say: FUCK YOU! Again: F U C K Y O U !
Any strategist would tell you that if you want to win, you don't pick fights with everyone you see.
I'm seriously thinking it's time to call in the men in the white suits and get Mc Bride strapped up and thrown into a padded room for his own good.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Read the article. They're demanding $32 a copy from the OEM; in this case, the TiVo company themselves. Individual users are NOT liable for this, they cannot demand this and they won't get it. If TiVo ships code it shouldn't have, then they are liable, not their customers.
A company truly serious about a genuine claim would't be behaving this way, IMO. SCO wouldn't be trying to shake down users in advance of a judgment; rather, they'd get a judgment, and then, armed with that, their shakedown would have MUCH more teeth.
Does that mean I owe them $699 or $32 or $731? Guess I'll keep my money while I wait for clarification.
If it doesn't, SCO's in the money. It's been said over and over that only idiots would buy licences from them, but the government is known for wasting money.
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okSurely there must be some criminal charges that can be laid against SCO in some jurisdiction.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
You can go after the vendors or you can go after the end-users, you can't go after both.
Double dipping like this is a joke. I'm sure SCO's lawyers justify this by saying it's analogous to selling stolen goods and then receiving stolen goods but, assuming for a second that SCO's claims are valid, if a Linux distributor like Red Hat or SuSE settles up shouldn't that settlement cover their existing customers? If not, why do those customers have to license the software twice?
Makes you long for the good old days of instance justice - if this was the Wild West, someone would have put a bullet in SCO's back a long time ago.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I fail to see how SCO can go around demanding fees for something they have proven no leagal right to. If I, or anyone else, went around saying everyone that ows a copy of [insert product] owes me 2 cents [insert company] would force me to put up or shut up. I know that RedHat is trying to fight back now, but something needs to be done to SCO fast. The more and more I think about the more they sound like a pwan for a MS, all they are doing is spreding FUD making casual observers have doubts about linux ... either that or they are just fucktards.
man
No manual entry for
We need to update todays Slashdot poll to include the item:
[x] Angry Tivo user torches SCO offices
SCO will have to pry my TiVo (or the $32 license fee) from my cold dead hands
nuff said...
Editors, please, get a little more accuracy!
AC comments get piped to
I vote for the "wootwoot"
sco.slashdot.org
so much sco stuff has been happening lately and there's no sign of it going away anytime soon. The big shocking ones can make the main page, but I'm willing to bet there's so much sco stuff that you guys are turning away some of it.
You've recently done this with apple and games. I think a sco option would be useful.
Thanks!!!
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Seriously, man it must be some very potent stuff.
These guy must have some huge balls to go after everybody. But the problems with huge balls is that it is easy to be kicked in them.
They used to use a 2.1.24 (plus mods) kernel, so they should fall outside SCO's demands. I don't know if the latest TiVos are using 2.4-based kernels, but I'd be surprised if they are.
SCO wants $13 from anyone who has a shirt or sticker with the word Linux on it.... film at 11:00..
In the past, people have commented that for every report that SCO is full of shit (which drops their stock price a bit), they have to put another outlandish press release out the door to jack it back up.
But I can't understand how THIS is supposed to rally their stock price. Extorting money from the US Government? I thought We the People didn't negotiate with terrorists.
No, the Linux community is just getting mugged by the corporate buccaneers in charge of SCO. And one of them should be walking the plank if he thinks that demanging money from The Law is going to strengthen their case.
should've bought the stock earlier. This is the ultimate bluff, everyone's going to figure they must be right if they're demanding licensing fees from Uncle Sam. Every Post Office scanning station runs linux, No?
They want to play hardball, bring it on. I'll be happy to send laughter card if one of his kids got killed. Anyone that lies as much as they does not deserve to be considered human.
Cheer for McBride's death, I say.
This is my sig.
I'd say it's time for the esteemed Attourney General John Ashcroft to prosecute SCO and its executives for Racketeering. In the 20s, they used guns. In this century, they use unsubstantiated IP claims. But either way, they're demanding 'protection money' they aren't entitled to. Maybe we can re-open Alcatraz and put Darl there as a tourist attraction.
(points at SCO and begins laughing like homer) aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ahhahahahhhahha hahahahahhhhah ahahaha ahahhh AHHH ahhhahhhahhhahahhhahhahhh ahhhahhhahahahhhahahhaa
(wipes tear from eye)
subtle no?
McBride is heading towards a glorious new career when all is said and done with SCO. Check it out here!
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
For charges related to purchasing alcohol based screen wipes due to excessive coffee stains splattered on computer monitor.
damn that companies has balls, they suck.
Ya know, the economy is pretty bad right now, for everyone. But you can't get law-suit happy when your profits go down. I don't know who is worse, the RIAA or SCO. They keep this up, the DOJ will set them straight in time. Meanwhile, The Borg are loving every minute of this, keeps businesses in the Borg Collective for a while longer, that is until people start to THINK for themselves again. Of course, there is always Apple and Mac OS X. The best of both worlds: able to run open-source software with a single recompile for X Windows, able to leap tall Wall Street needs by running M$ Office as the business world requires.
WHACK!
SCO is done with the slow strokes.
Can an orgasm be far behind?
Don't f**k w/Tivo......... I call upon the mighty power of the geek underground to smite thee
No. VM/SP died on its own.
As has MVS, and VMS.
Thank God.
SCO is about to burn out....IMHO. The move on the part of RedHat really spurred them into action. I don't know why they see this as such a threat, but the fact that they are consistently throwing out press releases really seems indicative of something more then damage control.
This is getting really out of hand! Sco is going around spreading all this FUD about linux. If there is UnixWare Code in Linux, how come they haven't removed their version of linux? By not doing so they acknowledge the use of SCO code in the linux kernel, and it's now considered GPL'd code... That is if this code actually exists????
It's like they have a deathwish. They have gone beyond ordinary corporate scum, beyond pump-and-dump parasites and have painted a great big bullseye on their own ass with this one.
This is not selfish. It is not stupid. It is downright crazy. They must be laying the groundwork for an insanity defense for when the SEC picks them up.
can someone tell me exactly would linux be if we used the pre 2.4 kernal? like if SCO says that only the pre 2.4 kernal does not infringe on their IP.. then would it be possible to run linux pre 2.4.. if so.. what comercial capabilites are in the 2.4 kernal?
And they can get right in line behind the ones who want to charge me for watching tv where I skip through the commercials.
honer
SCO Sucks, show your support!
And to think, Chris Sontag said told the world "don't be surprised" if the US government appears with SCO in going after IBM due to IBM going around US export laws with the enterprise features they've contributed to the funky penguin OS. There goes that partnership!
...how come SCO gets away with this? I'm not an particular OSS-fanatic, but SCO gets my blood boiling.
How come this company can spread this much FUD without proving anything?
This stuff is damaging honest (well, sort of..) corporations.
I'm from the Netherlands, and even the daily newspaper reports this shit (of course getting the facts not fitting my opinion..) Is US-law really this fucked up? Why can't this be settled in a short timeframe (like a month, instead of the years we're talking here (april 2004, if I recall correct).
Damn, I almost want to join some anti -DMCA -TIA -MATRIX - related 'terrorist'-faction...and feel good about it
So "used" cases that used "unused" could break, though older compilers in essence used "unused" to mean both "used" and
Those who wish that goverment would step in a legislate SCO out of existance or whatever... be careful what you wish for, it might just come true.
That's one nasty door you don't want to open. Maybe next law will say that everyone who ever spoke against the goverment will be shipped to re-education camps.
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html and tell SCO where they can stick their license fee. i.e. up their a**.
Make sure you select sales or something like that.
Obama = Socialism.
We love them ! Commander Taco is the man. What a website !
Here's some things from their IP FAQ:
Does the SCO IP License for Linux include a media kit?
No. Nothing needs to be installed on the server or embedded device.
Excellent. I just purchased $700 of nothing. That'll be easy to justify to the boss
I have Linux servers deployed in my organization. What options do I have besides purchasing a SCO IP license?
There are 3 options for you to evaluate:
You have the option to do nothing, adopt a "wait and see" attitude, and hope that SCO is not serious about enforcing its intellectual property rights in the end user community.
You can replace all servers, desktop and embedded uses of Linux.
You can obtain a license from SCO to use SCO IP in binary form in Linux distributions
Cover your ass, install Windows, or pay up, bitch!
How are the licenses activated?
Licenses are activated by registering the license with SCO and identifying the system covered by the license. The identification of the system can follow whatever identification conventions you use internally. (i.e., by name, by location, etc.)
See your wallet becoming lighter? Good! Now you are compliant! Get on your knees!
You have to admire the rebellious spirit that is alive and well in Santa Cruz.
First, SCO mercilessly tears down the geek's Bluebird of Happiness, Linux. Now they are butting heads with the biggest authority on the planet, the US Government!
I think we should all join up with SCO and take a moment to yell "Attica!" up at the powers that suppress us, whether they be the GPL or the US Constitution. Next thing you know, they'll be tossing bombs at Archduke Franz Ferdinand!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Get your facts right. TiVo uses kernel 2.2 not, 2.4 which is what SCO is pissed about.
how I could get a job working at SCO?
I want to see how the pointy haired boss looks in real life.
US government could come up with some tasty piece of legislation to handle this...how about a 100% tax on anyone asking for license fees on code they have previously shipped under the GPL? With a 100% tax break for the licensees everyones happy.
/. readers.
Perhaps SCO have been paid by some anonymous rich billionaire to make Microsoft the second most hated company amongst Linux geeks and
$2B OR NOT $2B = $FF
OK - give me half of what they want and I'll make sure its ok with mcbride... i make them an offer they don't refuse...
I'm so sick of SCO's baseless rhetoric. Either put up or shut the fuck up. It's obvious how they came up with this idea. It was stolen from the "6 degrees of seperation from Kevin Bacon" dealy. Isn't it obvious?
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
that the code that SCO is caliming rights to had to do with certain multi cpu and smp features. Even if they rightfully owned this code, would these code snippes even be present in a kernel compiled for an embedded device? This whole 'send us money now or we will sue you' thing seems to me nothing more than a troll free money.
I have a weird uncle who is always going on about how he's going to sue the government about some dumb thing from back in the deep past. Now, SCO is turning into my weird uncle. Maybe I can get my weird uncle in touch with Darl McBride, and they can hang out. I'll have to send along enough medication for both of them.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
If you look at this, you will note that although the data is for last "two" years, it only shows actual insider trading starting (all sales) 6/20/2003. go figure!! http://biz.yahoo.com/t/s/scox.html
According to SCO, if you have a TiVo which uses Linux, you now owe them $32, since the company wants money 'for each embedded system using Linux.' SCO also says government agencies must pay up to $699 for each copy of Linux that they use.
heee heeee heeee heeee. Probably the funniest thing I've read in weeks. No way, no how can any of this happen. Thank you slashdot for making my week. Bye SCO.
The US Government wasn't normally considered a small, innocuous organization either.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
in lieu of prosecution, i can hear DoD closed door proceedings now:
"they want us to pay how much?"
"...the 10th division moves at once."
I'm waiting for an article tomorrow detailing how the slashdot community saved the world from the evils of SCO by jamming up our court system with convoluted, time-consuming cases. It almost makes me want to pursue the idea of being reimbersed for the microsoft tax.
blame me!
Isn't 1789 the French Revolution? 1776 is USA independance.
:-)
March 4th, 1989 was the day set forth that the government would start operating under the Constitution prior to that the government as we know it didn't exist and therefore cannot charge for freedom prior to that date.
Datardly
Is this significant?
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/s/scox.html
Irony is that SCO is antagonizing the very entity that they need for their legal action to succeed.
The self same that incorperated them, so they could be a business, with all the rights, and privilages that means?
The one's who made the rules, that allow SCO to act like an idiot, can just as easily remove them.
Bye, bye SCO. See you in the history books.
Here's my proposal, we get a press pass and put a in there camera the next time SCO holds a press conference. We then add a laugh track and sell it as a sitcom, we'll make enough money to buy SCO out!!
Then again that's probably just what the board of directors wanted in the first place... aww heck if nothing else it will be enough money to put out a hit on them!
I stole this Sig
Government targets YOU.
/. poll.
Seriously, starting shit with the government is an uninhibited BAD IDEA.
Looks like "jail time" will be the likely outcome despite the
Laws are for people with no friends.
Yet another stock pump and dump. They're not hoping for a buy out anymore - this is suicide.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
This link in LWN provides the text of SCO's "Linux license".
Enjoy.
One of the LWN posters raise a very interesting question:
> > SCO WARRANTS THAT IT IS EMPOWERED TO GRANT THE
> > RIGHTS GRANTED HEREIN.
>
> Does this mean that SCO is definitely claiming
> to own some rights over the a GNU/Linux system,
> and that anyone who buys this license can sue
> them when they turn out not to have any such
> "intellectual property"?
Very interesting, indeed.
I wonder how much Microsoft is giving them......
this one is up there with 'I invented teh intarweb'...
I fail to see how SCO can claim lost revenue on an operating system that is free. With all the BSDs available, I really doubt people that are using Linux would have paid a cent for it... they would have started out with Free or Open BSD.
... but they got it from the kernel.org rsync like everybody ;-)
Really, no one wonder if one could find linux GPL'ed code in SCO unix?
-- search the web
The American concept is the exact opposite of this statement. The American ideal is that the government is granted it's rights, not the other way around.
Americans citizens are not granted freedom or rights by the government and do not owe the government for the priviledge of being free or having rights.
So all we're doing is mirroring SCO's continued FUD. If tons of journalists didn't jump at everything SCO says, we'd be much better off. I plan to wait until after SCO is dead, and read a book about it.
Litigious bastards
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html visit their webpage and tell them were they can stick their license fees.
Obama = Socialism.
Then, one day, one of the villagers announced that certain pieces of the pipeline were his, and had been used without his permission. Because of that, he said, the pipeline belonged to him, and anybody who wanted to get water from it had to pay him ten dollars for each bucket of water they took from the pipeline. The villagers offered to replace his stolen pipe sections with their own spare sections, and return the stolen ones to him, but the villager didn't want that -- in fact, he refused to even tell the other villagers which sections were the stolen ones. "Just pay me the money you owe me", he said, "and I'll let you use my pipeline."
The villagers gathered together again, to determine what to do about this new problem. After several minutes of debate, a plan was devised. That night, they went to the villager's house with torches and pitchforks, burned it to the ground, and fed the villager to the stray dogs.
And they all lived happily ever after.
The End.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Bill Gates gets half , and SCO wants the other half.
Alex.
I've found SCO/Linux to be far superior to GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux sucks because its cheap.
SCO has gone way too far in the last couple of days.
They have not proven any claims, have not disclosed to the public what exactly is being infringed nor how it is infringed and have no legal basis for these charges they are putting forth.
IANAL, but in my view this is extortion.
And as such can be considered a felony by law.
Can some one (EFF? DOJ??) please get off your ass and sue these guys back to the TRS80 days their "IP" comes from?
The reactions towards SCO is one of sheer complacency and as far as I can tell, I and many others could be considered a felon by their new licensing terms (5 CPUs running linux = >3k, and "theft" of $2,500 is a felony)
And no disrespect to RedHat, but we need more than a counter suit here, we need SCO under the microscope of a Federal Investigation.
The US DOJ needs to get in here and bitch-slap these guys personally as they are going after US corps and US citizens for manufactured charges that have no legal weight, no basis on actual market pricing, are established purely upon allegation and in my eyes, priced to harm Linux rather than pose any sincere solution towards the Linux community.
Thus SCO is harming US consumers and corporations, is it not the DOJ's mandate to act as our protection? It's high time they weighted in.
SCO's demands have gone well past the point of obsurdity and are now taking on more aggressive and rabid tones that though dismissable, should not have to be tolerated by law abiding citizens and corporations by a company that is taking actions that are highly suspect in legality.
If SCO is successful in establishing its claims, "Linux would die," said Haff. But he doesn't expect that will happen.
Uh, wrong. If SCO proves their IP was misappropriated, it will be immediately removed from the kernel, and replaced with non-infringing code, and linux will go on. Regardless of who they sue for infringement, they'll have to reveal WHAT was infringed to pursue it legally, and if there's ANY merit to their claim, it will be instantly rectified. And let's be honest: SCO knows this. Otherwise they'd release the purported infringement. If it's floating around in the linux kernel, it's not like it can be "covered up" as SCO says. (I nominate the idea of a community of a million users sweeping millions upon millions of copies of kernel source code "under the rug" for completely absurd notion of the decode)
There's a lot of funny stuff that could happen here, but I don't see how in anyone's wildest dreams that the "end of linux" is part of it.
While I don't suggest a head-in-the-sand mentality, I'd strongly suggest we simply let the whole thing play out. It's going to be at a long time before anything actually happens in the lawsuits- and until something happens we are only helping SCO by publicizing who they are going after. The more the industry hears about SCO going after people, the more they will fear SCO.
So let's please just calm down, realize there's little any of US can do about it(unless SCO has claims to OUR intellectual property) except encourage linux IP holders to fight back and contribute to organizations like the FSF which, while they cannot directly act on the behalf of others, can help them fight the legal battle, but only if they actually decide to protect their intellectual property. Read the FSF's mission statement some time- they specifically say they can't fight a legal battle just because a piece of software has the GPL- they don't own the IP. However, if you ASK for help, THEN they can try and help.
In the meantime, it doesn't affect the vast majority of us, it's not news- it's just plain and simple bullying for press(attention), and we're giving them exactly what they want. Anyone remember the whole Raelean(sp?) thing with the 'vaporware' cloned baby? The "church" leaders openly admitted it was a publicity stunt and they did it only to increase membership. One of them was quoted as saying they had received hundreds of millions of dollars in free advertising from one bogus claim.
Please help metamoderate.
Could it really be that an originally university subject to teach systems programming, by ripping off unix, really did rip off unix!
But that would be like microsoft making a copy of someone else's product, and we think that is evil dont we.
They've got big mouths, but the only lawsuit from SCO actually on the table is them suing IBM for breach of contract.
Er.... You go to the house of pain?
;)
(Obscure Oingo Boingo reference)
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Just trying to push up the stock prices. The SCO executives will be selling off all their stocks soon enough.
Did SCO get bought by the guy who bought Pabst, closed all the breweries and leased the Pabst name? Charles Hurwitz, the same guy who bought the logging companies in Northern California, upped the logging, sold his stocks high, and then the logging companies went under when they logged out everything. Maybe it's 2 guys and I'm just thinking (hoping) it's just one evil guy.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
1989? really? wow, I didn't think Papa Bush did anything good during his tenure, but I guess I was wrong.
That means that we're going to have to pay $209,700 for the aprox. 300 nodes in the Space Simulator cluster.
That's nearly 40% of the original entire cost of the cluster! If that isn't a good advertisment to use Linux (at least, as long as it remains free or until SCO's claims actually become founded - hah!), I don't know what is!
I own a number of Zaurii and they all have a license from Caldera/SCO already (via Lineo). How is it that I now owe them money, again?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
If one causes another's death, one can get the death penalty. What if one causes mere annoyance to millions and millions across the globe? Would that not also warrant the death penalty if the equivalent harm is done?
Just asking.
-b
How many people will lose their jobs for championing $699 per processor Linux in their company? ..... and you are up to US$ 2000. So, worse case is 699 vs 2000.
Hummmm. How much does XP Pro cost? add office + hardware upgrade + exchange cal + Virus software + 10 x admins +
Linux still wins. woooo hoooo
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ok, I do not post often.....one other time. I also have not really been following this SCO thing...is this some kind of running, inside joke I do not understand/am not getting?
This whole thing reminds me of elementary school. I was pretty little, but I was a smart-ass and I liked to piss people off. So I would go an taunt the big kids and they would chase me around and then all beat the snot out of me. SCO seems to have taken this (somewhat stupid) idea from me. I should sue, that idea is my intellectual property.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I've had my tivo for several years - I think the kernel in my series 1 tivo predates 2.4... unless they did an upgrade... anybody know?
What is next, anybody seeing the movie Sinbad owes SCO $32 since it was created w/ unlicensed linux systems...
I still can't figure out how their 50 lines of code in the kernel ($699) is worth more than Windows XP professional plus office professional combined - and we all know Microsoft is screwing us!
this moves beyond the threshold of farcical. they are either knee-jerkingly making these bizarre statements in order to deliberatly make waves and jolt the stock price because they know they should "get what they can while they can" (ergo, knowing their days are numbered) or they are arguably completely off their rockers and thinking "well, we made it this far, lets see how much more of reality we can warp" it is just staggering at the level of idiocy inertia this whole thing is gathering...
March 4th, 1989 was the day set forth that the government would start operating under the Constitution prior to that the government as we know it didn't exist and therefore cannot charge for freedom prior to that date.
1989? really? wow, I didn't think Papa Bush did anything good during his tenure, but I guess I was wrong.
DOH!!!!! Drain Bamage...
Dastardly
if ever there was a party with the means, inlcination to protect itself, and resources to crush this SCO thing, wouldn't it be the government? Why take them on so directly? It has to be desparation.
Consider this redundant, but the government has a whole bunch of resources on their end. You know, like the IRS, the SEC, the FTC, that sort of thing. Hell, I bet the USPS can even get involved by means of the Postmaster General.
This sig no verb.
While we're all waiting for plague to descend on good 'ol Darl and his league of flying monkeys (read legal department), what about creating a "clean" kernel that they don't have claims against?
Since 2.2 apparently doesn't infringe, why not create a super 2.2 kernel and swap it in for the (allegedly) infringing newer kernels on as many systems as possible?
Here's what I'm thinking/wondering:
1. How many Linux users actually need/use the components that IBM contributed?
2. How much non-infringing post-2.2 stuff can be back-ported to the 2.2 kernel?
3. If you managed to back-port as much as possible and polish-up a 2.2 kernel as much as it can be polished, will it meet the needs of most users?
A couple of SCO reps knocked on my door this morning demanding I pay them. I just whipped out a Mentos and we all smiled.
"Derp de derp."
One day, it's all about SMP, RCU, etc. The next it's not. The next it is.
One day, it's all about IBM breaching contracts with SCO. The next day, it's SCO wanting to start the BSD vs USL case all over again, wanting to claim that anything built on UNIX is a derivative work. In fact it seems to go beyond that; SCO's insinuated that their true aim is a look-and-feel case that will kill UNIX-a-likes dead. Witness their statements along the lines of 'They think that if they know where the infringing code is, they can remove it and everything's fine. But it's stuff they can't remove'.
..Obviously the board of directors at SCO are jamming some seriously proscribed narcotics into every available orifice. From the outrageous press releases, it looks like 'trafficking quantities' and not recreational quantites. They should get nabbed for trafficking anyway, at the very least they are stuffing tons of the stuff into their attornys orifices.
What's next? Cancel Christmas? Cut off the Widows and Orphans? No more kitchen scraps?
3C
Even if SCO is correct (which I seriously doubt. If there are code similarities, I'm betting it was an obvious solution that any reasonable programmer would come up with), I have to ask....has McBride blown out the motherboard known as his brain?
What SCO is trying to do (extort money from practically everyone) is so completely transparent. Let's see, he panics big accounts who are using Linux so they freak and buy a license, then he's going to point to that in court and say, "See, any reasonable person can see that our IP has been infringed, else they would not be paying us for a license!"
I can't get over the pundits, either, saying that if SCO is right it's the "death of Linux" - What utter BS! The Open Source community will rewrite the offending sections and Linux will roll on (long after SCO breathes its last).
FWIW, I don't have any intention of sending SCO even one of my hard earned dollars. I hope most CEO's have enough sense to wait this thing out and see what happens before they give SCO anything.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
Me oh my.
Howdy Doody's passed the House of Aquarius.
Bring my more whisky and rye.
is a 512 processor SMP monster with ONE BILLION mb RAM. I coudn't resist that little box with all those enterpise features.
Call SCO, request to talk to a salesperson.
"Hi. I have a cluster with several hundred single-CPU linux boxes, and I'd like to make sure that I'm not breaking the law."
"Oh, I've heavily edited the Linux source. I've cut out over %90 of the code, sacrificing functionality for size of code."
"No, I don't have NUMA, RCU, or SMP capabilities."
"Sure, you can see my code. I cannot distribute it to you, because I do not want to license it to you under the GPL. You'll have to sign this NDA. Basic terms. You aren't allowed to show anyone anything you see here, even if you've seen it before, you have to agree to ________"
Where _______ is whatever we want.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
i recompiled my kernel... perhaps it will not even include any part of their 'claimed' code...
;oP... again, no payments...
until they show us anything... no payments...
but what the heck, if they show us... the problem might disappear within a day or two...
so, what is it they are after???
F/OSS & IT Consultant
Now if they thought they were under the SEC's radar they're about to find theirselves sorely mistaken.
They better stay out of my Tvio for damn sure!
Speaking of reported declines, ;-)
I wonder what netcraft says about SCO.
I know we're in the process of removing our caldera mail server. It was a peice of junk anyway
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Microsoft isn't behind SCO's nonsense. It's...
(bum bum bum)
Richard Stallman!
It's all clear now. This high-profile case is part of a plot to undermine the concept of intellectual property and erase what little progress the lawyers have made in getting the general public to respect it. After this, it's going to be a joke; any time someone hears about an IP dispute, they're going to assume the plaintiff is just another extortionist.
1. ?????
2. Profit!
Do embeded systems run the 2.4 kernal? I doubt it. They aren't powerful enough. Why would a PDA need symetrical multiprocessing anyway. Who has the info on this? Sounds like extortion to me.
georgewellian fuddites.
no contest. those fauxking murderous thieving payper liesense execrable are definitely on kode blew alert.
you're the ones who are taking them DOWn, we're just making sure they learn whois really in charge.
don't go getting big heads, most of you are just doing what we're all supposed to do. those WHOaRE not? lookout bullow.
the simple instructions, again?
get more oxygen on yOUR brains. consult with/trust in yOUR creator vote with yOUR wallet. that's the spirit.
murderous greed/fear based aggressors shall be disempowered by your intentions. that's a leap to grep onto, so just do it.
do not concern yourself with the obsolete gottiesque softwar gangsters from the pacific crest annex of wall street of deceit. they are self-deleting. the damage they continue to inflict is on record. they are just more BAD history/hysteria.
the current task is planet/population rescue. pay attention. that's affordable.
The "Linux licenses" SCO is selling are worthless pieces of paper. Additionally, because of the GPL, using SCO licenses is the same as inviting every other contributor to the Linux Kernel to sue the licensee for copyright infringement. This needs to be said loud and clear (even the worst PHBs should be able to grasp that purchasing something that opens you to lawsuits is not a good idea)
If you find somebody who still has doubts, tell them that you also are willing to sell them a license stating that they will be protected from any lawsuit from you for any car accident with a third party. Cheap! Only $699! They'll be "protected" so they can save much more than $699 in car insurance premiums...
...and even I think this is a crock of sh*t....jesus...somebody needs to squash this company like a bug...where is Microsoft when you really need them!!
So where do I send my check for donations for the Red Hat/Debian/IBM/Anybody elses' lawsuit against SCO? $32 Dollars? WTF? I gladly give 10x times that to put SCO out of business.
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
This is starting to just get silly... How far is SCO going to push this?
The Code Ninja is swift with his tool, precise in his delivery, and deadly accurate in his execution.
An article posted on CBS Marketwatch has this to say:
Laura DiDio, an analyst with the Yankee Group, said that a bigger issue than whether SCO prevails in its IBM suit is why IBM and other companies supporting Linux will not indemnify customers against potential claims from SCO.
DiDio argues that IBM's failure to protect its customers sends several signals to the market, including that Linux is not ready to become a mainstream computer operating system, and that there is a chance that SCO's claims against IBM just might have some validity.
"Every other software and hardware vendor provides indemnification for its products," DiDio said. "IBM is saying it doesn't want to take that chance because SCO might win."
Why won't IBM indemnify their customers? And for that matter how about Red Hat offering indemnity as well for users of their products? If SCO wins, Linux is dead, so it's do or die for Red Hat. Why not diffuse this whole mess and let companies battle it out in the courts?
Ruby on Rails Screencast
It's like the business world's version of "suicide by cop"...
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Let's all send them the $699, one penny at a time.
Looks like SCO hired Baghdad Bob Aka Iraqi Information Minister.
"There is no Linux in Baghdad!"
Or what about that modded X-box?... Or the PS2 development kit (it runs on linux IIRC)?
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Even if those pig-fuckers had an airtight case, Debian-Hurd and Debian-BSD are an easy mkfs away. Do you think for one second that the kernel you're running makes a huge difference versus the software on top of it? And I'd go back to fucking CPM much more readily than I'd consider paying SCO's extortion money.
(Yes, I said pig-fuckers. I think they get up on pigs and they fuck them. Squeeeeee! Anyone wanna disagree?)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I just find it hard to beleive that any company, throughout the entire passage of time, is this stupid. It has to be one big joke.
This was in a link from the main article:
"One could argue that developers could write exact or very similar code, but the developers' comments in the code are basically your DNA, or fingerprints, for a particular piece of source code," said Laura DiDio, a senior analyst with the Yankee Group (Boston), who viewed the evidence.
Um, yeah, right ok. My comments are my "fingerprints", just like my "DNA", or a snowflake, no two are exactly alike.
This has got to be one of the most ridiculuous things I've ever heard.
While we're nitpicking, you spelled your name wrong.
Many of the embedded devices aren't on Intel.
SCO has no non-intel offerings.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
I would like to see how SCO can charge for code that are not in the binary image. Embedded system like Tivo have very little probability to compile NUMA or RCU code. This have no sense. Remember that SCO licence is for binary use (to be compilant with the GPL, as there say...).
SCO is crasy if there expect to charge for somthing that don't even exists!
If the government is used to paying 699 for things people put their asses on to take a dump, would they not also be willing to pay 699 for asses who think they own linux?
This is a joke!! This isn't really happening. Where's the "foot" icon for all of these SCO related news bits?
Maybe since they know they're pretty much dead anyway, they'd go out with a bit of chaos and controversy? What does SCO stand for anyway? Stupid, Crazy and Obnoxious?
Story Slashdoted. Copy of text:
... for commercial purposes," said Chris Sontag, who is a senior vice president of SCO. Use of any Linux distribution can cause liability, regardless of vendor, the company claimed.
08/06/03
SCO to government Linux users: Pay up
By Joab Jackson
Staff Writer
Government agencies must pay up to $699 for each copy of the Linux operating system that they use, the SCO Group Inc., Lindon, Utah, announced Tuesday in a new licensing program.
However, SCO's intellectual property claims over Linux remain contested by other parties.
"We believe it is necessary for Linux customers to properly license SCO's [intellectual property] if they are running Linux
"Government agencies shouldn't be too worried about this until they see more evidence," said Tony Stanco, head of the Center for Open Source and Government and associate director of the Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute at George Washington University.
SCO has claimed that the 2.4 and 2.5 versions of the Linux kernel is embedded with code that SCO holds intellectual property rights on.
At least some of the code in question supposedly comes from the Unix Systems V operating system, a proprietary systems that SCO purchased the rights to from Novell Inc., Provo, Utah in 1995.
In March, SCO sued IBM for $1 billion over misuse of the intellectual property rights to the Unix operating system. The company claimed that IBM inappropriately added some of SCO's Unix proprietary code to Linux.
Other parties remain skeptical of the company's legitimacy to the licensing fees.
Stanco said that SCO's licensing fees are unusual in that a court of law hasn't determined that the intellectual property is clearly SCO's yet. "You don't try to get money until the issues are resolved in your favor," he said.
Blake Stowell, director of corporate communications for SCO said that the IBM suit is unrelated to the present licensing initiative. Although some of the overlapping code comes from IBM, there are other parts of the code that leaked into Linux from other sources, Stowell said.
"We'll be happy to show [agencies] proof, providing they sign a nondisclosure agreement," Stowell said.
John Weathersby, chairman of the Open Source Software Institute said the government clients he works with have no immediate plans to pay the fee. The Oxford, Miss.-based nonprofit Open Source Software Institute was founded in 2001 to promote government use of open-source software, or software in which the source code is included with the software package.
IBM would not comment on if it has plans to pay SCO fees on behalf of its customers using Linux-based IBM solutions.
In May, IBM Corp., Amonk, N.Y., reported that it has more than 75 government customers using Linux solutions, including the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Between private and public sector customers, IBM has over 6,300 Linux-based implementations.
"IBM has remains absolutely committed to providing Linux-based solutions to its customers," a spokeswoman said.
In anticipation of lawsuits from SCO, Linux vendor Red Hat Inc., established a $1 million fund to cover legal expenses associated with infringement claims brought against companies from SCO and other companies developing open source software.
"Red Hat has a responsibility to ensure the legal rights of users are protected," said Matthew Szulik, chairman and CEO of Red Hat.
According to the new licensing program, Linux use on a server will cost $699 per central processor unit, or CPU, through Oct. 15. Use on desktop computers cost $199 per copy. Pricing for multiple CPU systems and embedded systems are also available. The pricing structure can be found at www.sco.com/scosource/description.html.
Stowell said the company has no immediate plans to file suit again
Is anyone else waiting for the televised press conference where the CEO or spokesperson or whoever starts banging on the podium with a shoe and screams "WE WILL BURY YOU!!!"? Is it just me?
"Understand you're having a little Jimmy Page trouble."
You know, dude in wife-beater t-shirt and cutoffs starts a loud confrontation, barricades and arms himself, gets armed representatives of The Authorities (tm) sucked in, and then threatens said representatives with his weapon. SWAT dude has to pull the trigger, and then it's goodbye cruel world.
Damn near foolproof way to off yourself once the hardcore tactical team is on scene, and it's technically not suicide!
So, We've got SCO (bad mullet, tank-top, and raggy jeans) waving his 9mm around at everyone, including some folks that just finished getting heavy-handed on some folks between the Euphrates and Tigris. Like I said, suicide-by-cop.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
2. Section 2.0 of their license text, says they don't grant any distribution rights. The whole license say it's a right-to-use, not distribute. So any OEM who signs up presumably should just leave their devices in the warehouse and not actually try to sell them, or use them only internally!
3. From http://www.sco.com/scosource/linuxlicensefaq.html
But they want to offer licenses to embedded OEMs. So they don't offer distribution rights, except, er, on embedded.
To paraphrase SCO: We're not breaking the GPL. Red Hat is breaking the GPL by shipping Linux (McBride in conference call). Our license does break the GPL (FAQ). Even though we're breaking the GPL, we'll license embedded OEMs (Tivo).
What exactly are the improvements RCU, NUMA and JFS bring to the embedded systems market ? Is there a four-way Zaurus that we don't know about ?
At this rate I would not be surprised that tomorrow they will want to charge every site having the kernel source for download, since obviously they are publishing SCO's IP without license.
Damn.
Everytime i see one of these SCO stories (ie. everyday) I imagine SCO as a dumb puppet and somewhere behind the scenes is a an evil puppet master pulling the strings. Of course if I take this train of thought further the puppet master becomes a fat bald bastard with a skinny whinny nerd jerking his chain.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
It's not about the money. The whole idea is to set a precident. The only way that the closed source system can fight back the loosing battle is to muddy the water about licensing.
;)
They can't beat it on performance.
They can't beat it on price.
They can't beat it on stability.
What else do they have?
There were people using SCO unix for low end systems in shops that couldn't afford "The Big Boys". SCO has no market left. There is no point to them doing anything but a last ditch effort to save some small niche market from people afraid of any possibility of license issues. They don't have the support of Open Source development to aid their commercial product (Like some BSD). They don't have any high dollar hardware to bundle with (IBM, Sun, SGI). The only thing they might have is some customer loyalty from those who they treated well with support (I have no idea, never dealt with them). There is nothing left. Either they show enough promise to dump some stock or they bully a few reluctant customers. Its sure that if their customers are happy with their product, they are surely looking towards the free stuff that can at the very least equal what they have been paying top dollar for.
Anyway, They are not long for this world. Even if they muddied the water with Linux, FreeBSD would welcome us with open arms. (Maybe not wide open, they are dying you know.
'All your Linux belong to us'... SCO.
Looks like all you US ppl will have to just call that 1800 number a second time for the rest of us!
I wonder if this is going to end up like the Salem Witch Trials? Supposedly it ended the second they accused the governor's wife of being a witch.
A couple of interesting tidbits from the story:
IOW, the Linux community shouldn't be allowed to correct the infringement, but should instead be forced to pay royalties to SCO until the end of time.
Also, it says that the suit against IBM isn't going to trial until April 2005.
The Salt Lake Tribune takes a more pro-community stance in this story. It quotes Bruce Perens as saying, "Let me make it clear how dangerous the SCO license is to customers. If you buy it, you can be sued by each and every copyright holder of GPL software in a Linux system for infringing upon their copyright and violating the terms of their license. That's tens of thousands of potential plaintiffs."
Oh, and Laura DiDio compares Linux developers to a 60's hippie commune. It's a fun read. Could someone please remind me why this woman is qualified to have an opinion on anything?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
This is one for the MS-SCO conspiracy people. SCO suing the US federal gov is a great for Microsoft, they can now point at this and say "I told you so".
Even if (well more like when) SCO lose, Microsoft can now bring up this case when it comes to any kind of OSS competition with regards to government contracts they will just say:
"Hey remember that whole SCO thing? How do you know it won't happen again but next time with a valid claim?"
Two words: Emminent Domain.
When someone's property is needed by the governement for the public good, the government can appropriate it for pretty much whatever they deem it's worth. (Courts rarely prevent this, no matter how egregious an abuse by a governmental entity.)
Linux is used in National Security situations and powers a good deal of the Internet. Having Linux remain free is of serious national interest. Claim emminent domain over SCO's intellectual property. If they fork over the disputed code, just take that and put it in the public domain. If they resist, raid them and take all of Unixware.
I'll leave it to the bean counters to determine the appropriate worth of a dying piece of software from a dying company.
The theatrics and plain, blatant, obvious abuse of the "little man" by anyone with a fair amount of money is stunning. I compare a number of things:
Today on slashdot, there was an article on the 20 year old left wing loudmouth who gets a year in jail for linking to a website with bombmaking instructions while the despotic bastard CEO of SCO can make claims and threats about a computer operating system while offering no evidence whatsoever and not only get away with it, but also make a fair amount of money at the same time.
Compare the above to an article in the Washington Post about gangland killings in Washington DC, where gang members, who are all armed and are all involved in criminal activities are hardly prosecuted and the case of Germany, where a legal injunction forced SCO to withdraw it's claims in that country, completely.
I personally think that whatever happens to Linux in the USA in terms of SCO being able to legally enforce payment of licences, those will have no effect outside the USA and I will personally piss in my pants laughing when SCO attempts to do some enforcing in the EU.
...are these people serious? SCO is more dumb than I thought.
NEVER tell the govt that they owe you money. They like thier money, and will find a way to keep it. Now just watch as all the judges side against SCO.
Last time I checked, TiVo used one of the 2.1.something kernels.
Isn't 2.1.x a development branch? I thought 2.0.x and 2.2.x were the stable branches... oh well.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A press statement hours later, delivered by phone to CNN from the head of the company, went as follows:
R TS"
"Yes, we plan on enforcing our intellectual property rights against government computers and OHGODSTOPSHOOTINGMEITHURTSITHURTSOHSWEETJESUSITHU
Anyone else hoping SCO's rights get upheld now? Cause intellectual property laws would be off the books in a week and the RIAA would be SOL.
And Mr Clinton did something? Oh, I forgot about the interns.
Never mind.
Not only do I have a hard time believing that SCO isn't well aware that no one owes them money, but I have a hard time believing they are not well aware that their lawsuits and demands don't stand an ice cubes chance in hell. Yet the company is still filing law suits and still making outragous claims that anyone living or who has ever lived owes them money.
Since I feel they are aware that nobody owes them money, and they are also aware that they don't have a chance in getting anything from anyone, my question is, what's the point of all this? The first and obvious response is stock manipulation, which has obviously been going on. Perhaps I'm paranoid, but I feel that there is more to it than that. In my opinion, this seems to be more than just a smear and FUD campaign to manipulate stock.
Besides the obvious stock manipulation, what do you think some motives for this campaign may be and why? I'd especially love to hear from those of you wearing a tin foil helmet. I just have a hard time believing the attempts at completely discrediting OSS is simply a convenient side effect of a smear/FUD campaign to manipulate stock. I think some good conspiracy theories would be intriguing.
Beware blue cats moving at
Hmm... it seems that SCO is in dire need of a checkup from the neck up.
Personally, I would be concerned about a company like SCO which thinks that just because they made a product they thought was good and that the market gave up on, that they deserve something. In this case, they think they deserve alot.
I think people should call in and ask just what it is that SCO is offering and/or has offered or contributed which makes them deserving of any money.
I think people should call, nicely, and ask what IP they think they own.
I think people should call, once again nicely, and ask why they would want to FORCE people to infringe on their rights.
I would urge people to call SCO and maybe.. just maybe... SOMEONE will get to talk to someone there who knows what is going on.
What can be seen:
Someone asks for information and is directed to the "website".
The website doesn't contain any information.
The company is selling licenses to a product which they do not own, only contend that they own some piece of code which that product uses. 99% of the rest of that product was produced by someone else.
Any rational company would have brought up the issue in a forum and asked that people remove the code which is violating their IP.
Instead, they have launched a lawsuit and announced that they own IP and people owes them money.
Very quickly, SCO is becoming a household word. A four letter word.
As far as I'm concerned, SCO can go SCO itself.
Winged Power Photography
I own a couple of TiVos and a Zaurus. Darl better suck pretty good if he expects to get any money from me.
On the one hand you have a writer for a government IT audience covering what the impact of SCO's scheme would be on government agencies (notice [agencies] is in brackets, meaning the SCO employee didn't say the word). On the other hand, you have someone writing about SCO's plans, mentioning embedded devices and using Tivo as an example.
There is nothing presented in either that SCO is "targetting" these two institutions any more than they are targetting every other company.
Move along, nothing to see here. This is all just analysis of yesterday's news.
See SCO
See SCO Sue
See SCO Sue U.S.
See SCO Run
See SCO Crumble
I think it would be worthwhile to send them their just payment...in Monopoly money, as that is what their claims are worth. Just think, if everybody did this, they would be swamped with worthless "payments"...:)
Stop talking about SCO!!!! Please!!!!
I think we ought to do to SCO what the Republican Congressional Staffers did to the Miami-Dade board of elections; Gather in great numbers around their building, banging on the windows, and making them fear for their lives until they back down.
And if that doesn't work, we can break all the glass in their automobiles, and then start to disassemble their building.
Also, we need to have a list of their home addresses in case the bigwigs decide to be brave enough to work at home that day.
And no I'm not serious, yet, but we need to get together those home addresses anyway, just in case.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Of course embedded systems run linux 2.4. Half the home routers out there run linux 2.4, and the other half run vxworks. Someday they might even run CE.
I've been reading everything about this SCO lawsuit against the world and I've finally come to the conclusion that I don't care what SCO does.
I only use Linux at home for personal projects like hosting my family web site, surfing the web, sending e-mail and supporting OSS projects. According to SCO, since all my activity is non-commercial, I don't need a license.
Now if I were supporting a commercial product like a TiVo (which I'm sure is using an older kernel anyway), Zaurus or SELLING a distribution, I'd either sue SCO right back or buy a license. If I didn't have the money for either of those options, then I'd be switching to QNX or FreeBSD.
Anybody who supports OSS software like myself or puts together a non-commercial distribution should not be affected. After all, most of the people are in this for the love of programming. Making gobs of money from a fun side project would be cool, but that's not the point.
Let all the commercial entities like IBM, RedHat, TiVo, Sharp and SCO sue each other over licenses and contracts. Really, how much sympathy do you think I'll have for IBM whether they win or lose. Sure, corporate acceptance of Linux will help push it more into the mainstream, but this doesn't matter to me either. At the end of the day, I'll still be using Linux and I'll never pay a dime for a license.
Harry
DON'T FUCK WITH THE GOVERNMENT
Seriously.....this seems to be the equivelant of buzzing on the SEC's front door and begging to be investigated and tossed in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
SCO claims that enterprise class UNIX would not have been possible without their intellectual property. I had no idea that the TiVO OS was enterprise ready!
How much of a cut do they want for the Sony PS2 Linux kit. Are they going after Sony too? Hell, let's see SCO take on the entire fortune 500! All the more to crank up their legal burn rate.
Anybody who has contributed to the other 99.9% of the kernel should start a class action suit against SCO for attempting to hijack THEIR intellectual property, and sell a binary only kernel image containing GPL code, in clear violation of the GPL. Any sharp lawyers out there want to pick this one up?
My rights don't need management.
"Daryl McJagger, a spokesthing for SCO, summed up SCO's current situation, coining the phrase, 'Can't get no SCOtisfaction.' He further stated today that SCO has received a significant amount of negative feedback regarding the strict requirement of signing an extraordinarily restrictive NDA prior to being shown the proof that SCO intellectual property is present in current Linux code. According to Daryl, 'We impose this requirement because if we simply revealed the proof to the general public, a number of important intelligence sources would be compromised. We simply cannot allow the stockholders' interests to be put into jeopardy by allowing this proof to fall into any unsanctioned hands. The proof is on a need-to-know basis, and so far, no one needs to know."
Mick Jagger was unavailable for comment.
bad SCO you're not even allowed to ask for a donut for the first ~300-400k tivos sold.
for linux user:
Sue SCO instead pay SCO. I'd rather to pay a lawyer than pay SCO. Basically, if Linux become illegal, then SCO instantly become illegal: because current SCO was Caldera System (http://www.caldera.com/company/profile.html), a linux distributor when it purchased former SCO. And at that time, the currently claimed 2.4 kernel had already been released.
Based on above facts, the investors of Caldera, of former SCO or of current SCO and business partner of SCO can also sue SCO.
Also developers can sue SCO for its violate GPL.
It is really fun to see so much parties entitled to sue SCO!
I hope you didn't catch anything, god knows who SCO has been sleeping with.
It has hooves. And no, they're into worse things than bestiality.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Don't try to charge someone more than it'll cost to have you killed.
Sorry, I forget the exact quote or where I heard it.
in the 3 months since they started this whole mess... 6x market cap increase in one quarter is insane, but it's hard to fault them for their tactics because as far as their shareholders are concerned they've raised shareholder value more than any other tech company in recent times, and made more than a few people instant millionaires.
Although the whole this seems bogus by convential wisdom (not legal wisdom) considering SCO (really Caldera/really Novell) was a Linux vendor and sold the code as Linux before aquiring SCO and it's alleged infringed Unix property, it's hard to blame them when their making millions on it.
Maybe Mark Cuban will go on E! and tell us how this is actually good for Linux...
-sk
Now, how are they going to find out what the military is running? Other than the .mil servers, everything's pretty much cut off from the public.
I will tell you one thing. SCO showing up at the gate to base won't work. Security has been pretty damned tight since 9/11. "Surprise inspection? Civilians don't get to do those here."
This guy is way out there
Their lawyers are either crazy or geniuses. We won't find out until after the trial, as if there would be any.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Presidential Aid: "Mr President, SCO are targeting us for attack"
George Dubya: "its pronounced new-cu-lar"
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Which they've lost to Linux...
"For its part, SCO claims it has lost to free Linux distributions substantial revenue it might have gained from Unix sales."
Now they want em back... at the point of a gun made out of soap.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
At my high school, the seniors would offer "elevator passes" to the juniors, during frosh week.
My high school did not have an elevator (-:
This whole thing seems oddly familiar.
*checks to see if BROUGHTON, REGINALD C. went to his high school*
S
Ohh, sure. THAT'LL WORK! If anybody has time on their side, it's Uncle Sam.
This is SCO's death knell.
This guy is way out there
Supposed I backed up the original hard drive and put in a bigger on. Do I own SCO for two copies of Linux?
However, IF the linux you are running is found in a court of law to be infringing on SCO's copyrighted works, THEN they can ask you to cease using it and destroy any infringing copies. As an innocent recipient of infringing material you do not have to pay them a cent.
Trying to hit up end users for license fees in significant advance of any legal judgment is quite a slimy tactic, and IMO shows their lack of faith in winning, or at least their need for short-term cash flow.
They bastards at SCO are actually lucky they happen to be doing this under an out of control Republican administration. The worst that will happen is they could find themselves in Cuba as 'enemy combatants.' I think we all remember how Democrats like to hold kiddie roasts, shoot yer kids (and dog). (Reno vs the Branch Dividians, Reno vs Weaver family, etc.)
Democrat delenda est
You know, the Feds probably wouldn't have cared up until SCO got uppity and wants to charge them even more money. I'm sensing some accounting improprieties might show up in their future.
Don't mess with the SEC, they'll do things to you that'll make the FBI look like girl scouts.
This whole "intellectual property" thing seems to be going a bit too far. The Linux community has got to be one of the largest bodies of collective intellect anywhere, and should be capable of finding a solution to the problem that modern IP law presents, especially now that it is threatening something that is not only an enjoyable hobby but also an exciting and promising social movement. Who else is thinking about this? Where is it being discussed? Where can we donate our time and energy (and maybe money) to such a cause? Where can we protest, and what can we do?
I mean this in all seriousness. I think there are hundreds of thousands of people, if not billions, who will benefit from the Linux movement and the ideas that are associated with it. It is unacceptable that a corporation should be allowed to stop it, and something needs to be done. If it is already being worked on, please point the rest of us there so that we can help. If not, let's start working on it right now.
-dbc
from my cold dead hands!!
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
" I'm sure Linksys/Cisco will really love the idea of having to pay SCO some money to be able to ship some of its more recent wireless routers. SCO is going to be crushed by a big company like Cisco; it's only a matter of time (and how much we let them whine)."
If you think company size means anything, look at how successful Rambus has been at collecting royalties on DRAM Patents.
like SucksCOX
It's audio , so the RIAA needs to be in on this. If you've ever downloaded a RedHat Linux ISO, you've probably downloaded this audio file. This means you owe the RIAA and SCO.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
...SCO invades Russia.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
it seems, according to this story over on the Register that the US Navy is buying 260 Xserve boxes running Yellow Dog Linux for use in nuclear subs. Will SCO take on the Navy?
If you're running MAME, you owe me $32. Pay up! MAME includes some code I wrote, in violation of the GPL license on my code. Unlike SCO, I'm actually willing to publicly identify which lines of code are at issue.
I'm joking about the $32, although they really did violate my license. However, I'm NOT going to sue them. In fact, I think I'll grant the MAME project a license to use the code under the MAME license instead.
So much for my chances of making billions of dollars on it! :-)
Sounds like 2.2 kernel to 2.4 kernel
mod changes are what SCO is claming infringment rights on.
Why not rebuild the 2.2 kernel
adding each new step with opensource sources?
Yep the Navy's just terrified
This guy is way out there
Now it's clear they don't really care if anybody actually pays for a license. The whole thing is an Enron-like ploy to create a huge accumulation of accounts receivable, so as to puff up the apparent value of the company. Whether anybody actually pays is irrelevant.
has anyone noticed that the lawyer for sco it the same lawyer m$ used for the antitrust case?
From the afforementioned link:
-----
The embedded Linux licensing move "is extortion based on fraud. They are out to shake down people for what they can get," said Inder Singh, chairman of the Embedded Linux Consortium and chief executive of embedded Linux and real-time operating system maker LynuxWorks (San Jose). Neither the consortium nor his company has had any communications from SCO on the royalty demand, Singh said.
-----
Time to take the gloves off, and make sure words like "fraud", "extortion" and "racketeering" appear prominently in commentaries, to be picked up in the mainstream press whenever SCO issues press releases like this. Don't worry anymore about being sued for libel by SCO - The way things look, they will have the courts tied up until the end of the century, assuming there is anything left of them.
My rights don't need management.
Or at least drive up their bandwidth bills
ping -f -s 20240 www.sco.com
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
I think someone needs a hug.
And a sense of humor.
Okay, someone tell Donald Rumsfeld how much this will hurt development and engineering at agencies like NSA, and I guarantee you he will pitch a fit. SCO is screwing around with the wrong people now, and this is only adding fuel to the fire. I really hope they burn in hell now.
Faith in government, at this juncture, seems especially misplaced.
To whom it may concern @SCO.
/. originate from, the love of the machines and joy of creating useful things). He comes accross as a slimy opportunistic do nothing. Relying on lawyers, sham lawsuits, and extortion to gain wealth. Creating nothing but loathe in the community against him and his legal machine. Passed over as the article said. Good, passed over for better programmers and better, newer ideas.
I have decided after careful review of the case as presented that I will pay:
Nothing, Nada, zip, goose-eggs, bubkus, rien, SFA.
Further cease showboating. Stop doing what you are doing, you risk grave beak injury.
Actually Darl is a particularily odious character, so slippery in interviews, a clear lack of any foundation in this business (at least the part that we on
I like the term also about a "hail Mary" pass. That is exactly what this is. Put something up and see what happens. Slippery weazel.
No money for you! NONE!
This farce can now be settled by the US Gov't exerting itself through eminent domain and placing the alledged IP into the public domain.
For those who were looking for it... 1-800 726-8649 http://www.sco.com/scosource/description.html
If you're going to lie, might as well make it a REALLY BIG ONE!
and pulled the trigger. This is going to end up in federal court, and trying to extort the feds will make it happen in a big hurry. My prediction: an unamused federal judge will kick SCO's frivilous suit out of court, and SCO will be crushed under the weight of the countersuits.
Come on people. Why is this news? SCO basically
had to do this. If they are going to claim that
private business needs to buy licenses then why
would the government be any different? Think for
an actual second or two.
LINDON, Utah-August 6, 2003-The SCO(R) Group (SCO) (Nasdaq: SCOX), the owner of the UNIX operating system, its derivatives, copies, and work-alikes as well as the methods, standards (de facto or de jure), and paradigms that encompass the UNIX operating system announced today that it has filed legal action against God (NYSE:GOD) in the State Court of Utah, for misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and breach of contract. The complaint alleges that God has directly infringed upon SCO's UNIX intellectual property.
In 1995, SCO purchased the rights and ownership of UNIX and UnixWare that had been originally owned by AT&T. This included source code, source documentation, software development contracts, licenses and other intellectual property that pertained to UNIX-related business. SCO became the successor in interest to the UNIX software licenses originally licensed by AT&T Bell Laboratories to all UNIX distributors, including HP, IBM, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, and many others.
As a result of God's unfair competition and the marketplace injury sustained by SCO, SCO is requesting damages in an amount to be proven at trial, but no less than ownership of all existence, together with additional damages through and after the time of trial.
SCO is also demanding that God cease these anti-competitive practices based on specific requirements sent in a notification letter to God. If these requirements are not met, SCO will have the authority to revoke God's license of creation as well as God's license to keep the cosmos in motion.
SCO's letter and complaint have been filed by the law firm of Boies, Schiller and Flexner. SCO announced in January that the law firm had been retained to research and investigate possible violations of SCO's intellectual property.
"SCO is in the enviable position of owning the UNIX operating system," said Darl McBride, president and CEO, SCO. "It is clear from our stand point that we have an extremely compelling case against God. SCO has more than 30,000 contracts with UNIX licensees and upholding these contracts is as important today as the day they were signed."
A copy of SCO's complaint is on file with the State Court of Utah and can also be found at www.sco.com/scosource.
Teleconference
SCO has scheduled a teleconference regarding this announcement for 11:00 a.m. Eastern time on August 7, 2003.
the no
They'd be violating the GPL by shipping a kernel made of a mix of SCO code and GPL'd code (since they can't pass on the rights to use the SCO code under the GPL). They'd either have to pull every unit currently shipping and pull the Linux or SCO code (their choice) or fight the lawsuit. My guess is they'll fight tooth and nail. What the hell is SCO thinking?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But guess whose ground is gonna get scorched? :-D
English -- gotta love it! / The engineers refuse to refuse the rocket until the refuse is removed from the launch pad.
Now SCO is going after the goverment. When they try to go after the Army, that will be just like
when Joe McCarthy tried to claim there were commies in the Army. They called his bluff, and that destroyed him.
I hope the military notices that they are being extorted by these liars from SCO, and lays some serious legal whoop-ass on them.
Can't wait till the little black vans show up and close up SCO. I work for the government and yes, they use Linux. Going after the private sector is one thing, but holding Uncle Sam hostage is another. No judge on the face of this earth is going to just roll over on the system and the people that vote on it. This is the one sure fire way to close your doors. I'll bet that the song that's playing in their elevators is from the Doors... This is the end, this is the end my friend. In the immortal words of AOL, "Goodbye!"
Not SCO (they are too though), but me. Did they prove to the public or a court that linux has any proprietary piece of code SCO owns? If no judge has declared Linux to be in violation of any copyright, how can SCO demand anything?
Confused
While the lawsuits being defended by IBM and filed by Red Hat are likely to put an end to The SCO Group's menace to the Free Software community, I don't think simply putting the company out of business is likely to prevent us from being threatened this way again by other companies who are enemies to our community. I feel we need to send a stronger message.
If we all work together, we can put the executives of the SCO Group in prison where they belong.
If you live in the U.S., please write a letter to your state Attorney General. If you live elsewhere, please write your national or provincial law enforcement authorities. Please ask that the SCO Group be prosecuted for criminal fraud and extortion.
It makes me very sad to write this, because I lived in Santa Cruz for fifteen years. Sam Sjogren, a close friend from Caltech, was one of SCO's first programmers, and for a little while my only friend in town after I transferred to UCSC. Many of my best friends used to work for SCO either writing code or doing tech support. I even used to sit in the company hot tub with my friends who worked there from time to time. I used to dance to the music of SCO's company band Deth Specula at parties around the town.
Before I ever installed my first Linux distro - remember Yggdrasil Plug-n-Play? - I was a happy user of a fully-licensed copy of SCO Open Desktop on my 386.
You wouldn't think the SCO Group of today is the same company that once had to tell its employees that they shouldn't be naked at work between 9 and 5 because they scared the visiting suits from AT&T. That's because it's not - the SCO Group got its name and intellectual property from SCO through an acquisition. I don't think any of the friends I once knew at the company are likely to still be working there. The SCO Group is in Utah. SCO was originally called The Santa Cruz Operation, a small father-and son consulting firm named for a beautiful small town between the mountains and the ocean in central California. The Santa Cruz Operation was once as much a bunch of freethinking hippies as any Linux hacker of today.
Yes, it makes me sad. But I digress.
It seems that SCO is asking a license fee of $699 for each Linux installation. Take a look at SCO's press release announcing the licensing program. That's just the introductory price - if we don't purchase our licenses before October 15, the price will increase to $1399.
I have three computers that run Linux. That means SCO claims I must pay $2097 today, or $4197 if I wait until after October 15. SCO says their fee applies even to devices running embedded linux, many of which were purchased by their owners for far less than SCO's "license fee".
My response is that SCO is guilty of criminal fraud and extortion. I didn't violate SCO's copyright or acquire their trade secrets through any illegal means, and it is fraud for them to claim that I did. It is extortion for them to tell me I must pay them money to avoid a lawsuit.
Even if SCO's claims are true, it is not a violation of their copyright for me to possess a copy of their code. Instead, any copyright infringement was committed by the vendors who supplied me with the Linux distributions I use.
SCO's license is actually no license at all - if it really is found that the Linux kernel contains any infringing code, the GPL forbids everyone who possesses a copy from using it at all. No one would be allowed to con
Request your free CD of my piano music.
We can always use BSD |-)
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Not to mention the MPAA and the RIAA's tactics, there's a small firm called PanIP LLC that is doing right what SCO is doing wrong: instead of going after big fish immediately, they go for the little guys who settle instead of hire lawyers. They own two rediculous patents that basically give them rights to any system that is used for e-commerce (buying things over the internet.) This is Oct. 21, 2002 InformationWeek's cover story.
Fortunately a group of small businesses that were targeted have gotten together to fight; I wish them luck. I hope that someday people will be technically literate enough to counter the cheap bastard sickness that is spreading through big, dying cooperations.
BTW this is my first post to slashdot, and this site is awesome. It sickens me how long I didn't know about it.
It seems like it's about to reach the Sen. McCarthy accuses Pres. Eisenhower of being a communist level.
Now they've messed with the government... bye bye!
SCO announced that they would be attempting to shut down all network servers allowing users to download Linux patches and updates free of charge. They also mentioned that they would be offering a subscription service where users could download updates for $1 per file, and that they would also be resorting to legal action in order to make university network administrators disclose the names of students running illegal Linux systems on campus.
Indeed, this is too lame for words. I wish they could just take their pieces of code back, or inform the developers, or whatever, but I don't want to deal with those guys. Get the heck out of the free software garden, SCO, you don't belong there. Maybe they're spending their last money on cocaine or something else that could drive them this insane?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Okay, thought this might be a good place to post that the darlmcbridesucks.com site is up. Just a phpBB message board, nothing too fancy, as putting in more than 15 minutes of time in this would be really pathetic.
:)
Everone thank sheddd for the idea.
Thanks sheddd
sad robot making broken music
rpm -qpi linux-2.4.13-21S.src.rpm :
Name : linux
Relocations : (not relocateable)
Version : 2.4.13
Vendor : Caldera International, Inc.
Release : 21S
Build Date : Sat May 3 07:17:07 2003
Install date: (not installed)
Build Host : build311.ps.asia.caldera.com
Group : System/Kernel
Source RPM : (none)
Size : 27986389
License : GPL
Packager : Ashish Kalra
URL : http://www.kernel.org/
Summary : Linux kernel sources and compiled kernel image.
Description
Linux kernel sources and compiled kernel images.
B-
I wait gleefully for my chance to laugh at SCO as I did with Rambus.
It's driving their stock up and they're selling. I wonder if this is all they're really after?
I wouldn't do it better myself, and I love these things.
But the ending...
Waldorf: -- That was cruel!
Statler: -- Yeah! To the dogs!
And McBride has already stated, on numerous occasions, that their problem is with 2.4 and above? And that they claim to own Linux because it is a "dirivative" work?
Oh wait
Maybe they took a bad bong hit or something?
--LordKaT
I'm beginning to suspect Microsoft is hiring SCO to do all this, with the intention to damage the Linux growth and market share.
First of all, I doubt SCO actually believe they have a chance in collecting these $699 license fees.
I also doubt SCO believes they can win the lawsuit against IBM, and now against RedHat as well. This is because they are at a advantage with IBM financially, also they have a weak case.
From all these SCO fiasco, I'm getting one common impression: SCO is trying to scare people off of using Linux. Afterall, if they are sincerely trying to see licenses, they would have taken another approach.
But why would they want to give Linux bad publicity? Why keep customer away from Linux? I think MS is behind all these...
Seems like their feedback form is just a mailer script forwarding to 2 mailboxes, and they've deleted both mailboxes! (Flooding?)
---TRANSCRIPT---
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mail.ut.caldera.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
:
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)
--- Below this line is a copy of the message.
Return-Path:
Received: (qmail 19380 invoked by uid 84); 7 Aug 2003 00:12:32 -0000
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by mail.center7.com (Postfix) with ESMTP
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To: cliao@sco.com, regb@sco.com
Subject: linux licensing
From: scocom@whalan.com
X-originating-ip: 203.27.69.91
Message-Id:
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 18:12:27 -0600 (MDT)
If you can find it on Kazza or something find the Bill Hicks routine about the rodney king trial and 'officer big balls'
"Yeah, that tape... it's all in how you look at it."
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think SCO started off being serious, but they noticed that the more trash they said, the higher their stock went up.
A bit like a naughty 2 year old who is constantly probing how much his parents will endure before he gets punished, SCO is testing how many people they can scare before the music stops.
I think American businesses have lost their way. SCO has turned the legal system into a high school shit talking festival. As such, we should have McBride settle this prison style. I'd like to take my old studded leather belt and wrap it around his neck inside out. The real fun comes when you throttle him like broken down Geo.
You must be careful though. You should NOT kill him. That would be illegal, immoral, and setting a bad example. Plus, it's no fun. If you just take him to the brink of death, and let him recover, you can do it all over again. Keep doing this until he licenses his life from you for a low low fee of $699 per cerebral hemisphere.
and tell them were they can stick their license fees.
Yeah! Just tell them you've signed the, uh, "open" letter to SCO at www.goatse.cx.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Seems like suing the very people who are in charge of making your business model work (the US Federal government is the only body that could possibly enforce their ridiculous claims) would be a rather self-defeating move. Doesn't the law of sovereign immunity apply here? What judge is going to hand over billions of dollars to these scoundrels? What federal judge is going to risk setting a precedent that would give these claims some legitmacy, knowing that they would only use the precedent to go after the judges own paycheck? This is definately beginning to look like the corporate equivalent of a "death-by-cop" suicide.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I think the "raise the stock and sell it" theory is probably dead on. Consider that they filed suite around March 27, 2003, then go look at the stock:
yahoo 6mo quote
It's a gambit to make as much money as possible before going backrupt.
Take them out, SCO is the root of all evil. Let's hunt them down one by one :)
Now, I'm not any kind of expert on US law (other than knowing that the DMCA blows chunks pretty hard), but this latest claim by SCO sounds a lot like racketeering. Since they're throwing claims around all over the place it'd be a federal case, too.
As Singh said in the article, it's extortion based on fraud and that sounds mighty like a corrupt, racketeering effort to me. I think that federal charges would take the wind out of McBribe's sails.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
...the one group stupid enough to pay them licensing fees, the US government. I know of any number of departments that will simply pony the bucks rather then even question the merits of the request. Government department heads make Dilbert's pointy eared boss look like Einstein, Plato, and Budda rolled into one by comparison.
Of course most of them will simply block any further use of Linux and mandate using Window's for everything instead (the "Well we don't need the hassle" syndrome). The 10 million Bill payed SCO at the begining of this may be the smartest 10 million Gates ever payed out.
On the other hand, when this BS finally plays out and SCO is ground to dirt in the courts, it will forever foreclose this attack on Linux again. The question is can this get to litigation fast enough to cut the rising tide of dust and smoke that SCO is putting out.
The funny thing is McBride actualy compared all of us to Mr. Saeed al-Sahaf. I tried googling for the link, but couldn't find it as everyone else was comparing McBride to him.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
SCO has a Market capitalization of $718.5 million right now. IBM and Apple could pull this out of petty cash and finish this once and for all. Buy their shit and put it in the public domain.
SCO had to try and make their claim seem worthwhile by even going after the "government". As we _sure_ Microsoft isn't behind this SCO thing? Are we going to tune in to Jay Leno some nite and see Bill Gates with a "SCO Mask" in some sort of twisted (sorry, Jay) skit?
It's funny because we live in a police state where people just 'disappear'. hahaha.
Oh wait, that's not funny at all...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The SCO Group, Inc., a small-cap growth company in the technology sector, is expected to underperform the market over the next six months with very high risk.
Surely there will be people responding to all that BS...
:). I am just throwing ideas, obviously there must be somethign under all of this, it can't just be pure stupidity, or else it's a revolution of stupidity.
Fortunately, they will lose their money and SCO will be out of buisness after being flodded by lawsuits.
At this point I think this SCO story is more a "test" of the stock market and SEC, you gun against everybody, at some point it doesn't make sense, nobody logical enough (even the people working there) will think they will win this, so what is this REALLY about, modern stocks tactics? stress test the (d)efficiency of the SEC? see where this will end?
I mean, this would be an excellent Thesis for someone graduating in the highest education levels in economics (aside from the downside of losing his reputation)
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
A funny beowulf joke on /.!
" Just trying to push up the stock prices. The SCO executives will be selling off all their stocks soon enough."
You know I thought it was as simple as this, up until yesterday. Yesterday mention was made that McBride had started mentioning targeting Stallman as one of those responsible for infringing on SCO IP. Stallman is certainly well known to most of us here, however to the stock broker and day trader monkeys he and his ideas are way too esoteric (for better or worse) to have any meaning at all in an attempt to manipulate stock price. Indeed Stallman has gone to great lengths to distance himself from the linux kernel (the only part of the GNU/linux package currently under contention by SCO), and is deeply involved in developing the independent HURD kernel - in these ways he is a completely incorrect target for the stock manipulation purpose.
I'm starting to think (with credit to others who have ruminated on the idea as well) there's something more insidious to all this than just a stock manipulation scheme. We've heard it before a dozen times - we'll just switch to a BSD, or we'll just remove the offending lines of code, or we'll just drop in HURD for the kernel instead of linux - our linux "problems" from SCO's perspective are seemingly easily solved, and in the short run you'd probably be right. But the scope of the SCO attack is too broad based (and seemingly getting more broad daily) to be simply focused on corrupting the linux kernel now - that is too easily thwarted - and if we can see it I'm sure someone at SCO sees it too. (Sorry chums we're not the only +5 insightful people on the planet)
I think that this is more about someone (and it has been suggested before on these boards by others, but bears repeating) is trying very hard to cut the legs out from under the entire OSS movement here and now. I think interested parties have come to realize that the time is near when it will no longer to be possible to perpetuate the proprietary program for rent business model of software development due to OSS having gained far too much momentum and widespread adoption. Even despite things like the SCO suits, we get more reports of more and larger businesses, governments and institutions committing firmly to integrating OSS and OSS products into their infrastructures on an almost daily basis. If those who wish to stop this are going to do so, they must do so now. I think this isn't only a last desperate gasp by SCO for some money, I think its a desperate gambit by proprietary software interests to kill OSS before it kills them. The stock manipulation thing is too transparent to be the only goal of the SCO attacks.
Or maybe I'm just giving too much credit and being too conspiracy theory. What the heck, it's interesting to consider.
As an aside, how bitter is the cup of vindication Stallman must be sipping from right now? And those who thought he was a bit too evangelical in his stance must at least be taking a moment to reflect that what he has been warning and working against is now beginning to happen right in front of us. Additionally, had people been more willing to acquiesce to the idea of using GNU/Linux as the name of the package used, it may have been more readily appearant to even laymen that even were SCO's claims valid their "contributions" still represent a ridiculously small amount of the overall package and thus their claim would have been more obviously worthless. I'll leave that for others to debate.
SCOX net earings 2003 -4 million
SCOX net earings 2002 -25 million
SCOX net earings 2001 -131 million
SCOX net earings 2000 -27 million
SCOX net earings 1999 -9 million
Right there that's 196 million dollars of debt that SCO has accumulted in the past 5 years. So when you realize that your business model just ain't working, hey, why not just sue everyone.
> Does this mean that SCO is definitely claiming
> to own some rights over the a GNU/Linux system,
> and that anyone who buys this license can sue
> them when they turn out not to have any such
> "intellectual property"?
Given that the GPL is a redistribution license, can't we already sue for breach of contract?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
SKYNET DEFENSE SYSTEM
;-)
:)
conclusions
SCO is a threat
SCO is runs by humans
Humans are a threat
Destroy all humans
So thats why the machines took over
btw: AH-Nuld is running for Governor
evil selfish executive bastards...
;-) )...
They SHOULD do jail time for this, but they won't.
which, of course, encourages the rest of them to be just as brazen.
I say we strip them naked, tie them to a pole in central park, and flog them with a bamboo cane on live TV.
Well it would make _me_ feel better anyway (watching, not being flogged
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
SEC reports from SCO
... read on.
The insider purchases and sales are "Form 4". Insiders have to file these within 48-72 hours or something like that.
If you wanna learn a little bit about being a stock geek
First, how to find the stuff. Start at www.sec.gov. Look in the second section, "Filings and Forms". You can read the "Quick Edgar Tutorial" if you want, or go straight into "Search for Company Filings".
Click on "Companies & Other Filers" and type in "SCO".
Choose "Sco Group Inc".
Click on all the filings and start reading financialese. Hell, if you know any programming languages or scripting languages, financialese is not that hard to figure out.
Form 4 is "insider sales and purchases".
Form 10-Q is "quarterly report".
Form 10-K is "annual report".
Form PRE 14A and Form DEF 14A are the "proxy statement".
The proxy statement is where you find out how many shares and options the executives and directors get.
The form 4 is where you see many SCO execs selling mucho stock.
An executive can be fined or serve jail time if they lie in these reports, or if they fail to provide required information, so the quality of the information is better than other stuff they say which is NOT under penalty of perjury.
Watch out for the "risk factors". The way that companies get around the "must tell truth" and "must tell whole truth" requirements is to swamp their risk factors with extraneous crap. Like, for instance, the risk factors might say: "1. Martians might invade and disrupt our market. 2. Microsoft sells a product just like ours. 3. Airplanes might fly into our headquarters in Duluth. 4. Our top executives might catch Ebola." Only #2 is a real risk factor but they swamp it.
About 80% of the financial information available on the web is derivative of these reports, so if you read them on sec.gov, you get better info and cut out a lot of crap. Anything news-related takes a good long time to get into an SEC-report so you still have to read the news, but you can dig a lot of information out of the forms.
Have fun!
Although IANAL, it would seem that SCO can't possibly expect to collect royalties from anyone with a backbone. Given that the Open Source community is practically begging SCO to reveal the "infringing" parts of the code, and that SCO is not cooperating, it is very unlikely that any court would find in their favor. In order for a cause to be actionable in a court of law, the plaintiff must show that they did not contribute to their own damages - that is, that they did everything reasonable to prevent injury. This will be impossible for SCO, because they continued to distribute the Linux kernal for free after they knew of the "ip infringements". Furthermore, they refused to cooperate with the Open Source community in removing the infringing files from the Linux kernel.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
That pretty much sums up the SCO situation, doesn't it?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
SCO is not trying to make money from the licences, if they were, the fee would be more like $10 per cpu.
For some reason they are trying to kill linux. The point isn't to ransom money, but to keep users from using Linux. The government is not going to ante up $699 per copy of linux until there is proof that it MUST. HOWEVER, no government purchaser watching this linux/SCO soap opera should approve new linux boxes to be bought (and for that manner, any big business IT department). This happening at a time when linux was just starting to get on a roll and look to be a real force.
The exorbinate fee sure seems to make that agreement with Microsoft seem even more sleezy...
I am living proof of the Peter Principle
I want some too.. this has got to the funniest thing ive heard all week.. thanks!
The are just totally nuts... regardless of any IP rights, they have lost their minds...
What is tomrrows headline: 'SCO sues the world' ?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
No, but they are going after "Santa".
Carthago delenda est!
really smart, now piss off the NSA, FBI, CIA, DOD, DOE, and watch them go after the large linux clusters OIL COMPANIES/Energy Companies have. Holy Shit they've done it now, Georgey Bush will hang'em now.... :-) This is so F'ing entertaining.
Just a thought.
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
http://www.cybersource.com.au/users/conz/linux_vs_ sco_matrix.html
On the contrary.
If taken on an agency, by agency basis, $700 per server is likely to be seen as "not much" by some PHBs anxious to minimise the risk in their lives. What sort of percentage uptake would Darl need to get substantial cashflow?
They are able to do this because the company is worth next to nothing otherwise. That or this is purely about manipulating the share price.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Yet again SCO pulls a stupid one and goes after the wrong target. The users are not responsible. the users did not make the system, the TiVO company is. thus TiVo is responsible, not the user. I see a class action lawsuit coming on.
Red Hat is for people who hate Windows, FreeBSD is for people who love Unix.
www.putertech.net
...the US goverment has told SCO to suck it.
IBM is playing this smart.
Red Hat got spooked and made a mistake, responding to this.
The US Government isn't going to give a shit about what Darl McBride says, except to sic the regulators on them.
Look at this as a giant troll. The moment you take them seriously, they win.
Stop caring about it. They will go away if you will let them. But the sad fact about human nature is that no one will.
Freaking idealist youth...
My second is, what do they have up their sleeves?
Why would they do such a seemingly stupid thing? Is the Fix already in? Do they have the a politician or two in their back pocket? IBM has virtualy said nothing in regards to the merits and it looks like it is really left to the community to get SCO to shut up. (Red Hat Et Al)
Laughs, wouldn't it be funny if the Government simply came out tomorrow and Imunized itself from the whole thing.
Sorry Sco, you can't sue us because we aren't going to let you.
Isn't this illegal? I mean, they haven't proven anything yet, right? It's all still just pending litigation. By that token, I could say that Microsoft ripped off a key piece of code from me and used it in Windows. I could then take Microsoft to court (suicidal) and while doing so, charge everyone using Windows (any version) $699.00.
But I would think that doing so would cause lawsuits to rain down upon me. Why isn't this happening to SCO? The US legal system seems to be failing here. They are employing FALSE advertising since what they have alleged has not been proven.
No?
now we now how much MS gave SCO under the guise of buying a license. 8 million in licensing revenue, and we all know that SCO has only sold one license since this sordid affair started.
Windows XP Pro - $299 at retail, cheaper in volume
Linux - $699 - don't know about volume discounts
So that copy of XP, or that PC preloaded with it, is sounding like a much better deal all of a sudden, isn't it? Let the flames begin!
is getting more and more ridiculous. Why doesn't IBM just stomp them ?
After all these years of shattered dreams...
Who cares about his good. I say throw him into a locked room, and then throw away the room.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Ok now if i remember right Tivo uses the 2.1 kernel, yet SCO has been saying that they are suing over the 2.4/5 kernel, so are they making a mistake, also If they reversed engineer the Tivo code, which is not GPL'ed I believe, then we can use the DMCA against them. Finally put it to some use for good.
Judge: On what grounds do you have for this case?
SCO: Well, thanks to copyright law as set forth in the DMCA, and supported by the RIAA, MPAA and UCITA, it has become exceedingly clear that since we own UNIX and anything that stems from its use, e.g. servers and the internet, we have the right to sue anyone who is abusing our copyright. And under the DMCA everyone who is using a UNIX derived product or service is infringing on our copyright. In other words your honor, "All their bases are belong to us"
Judge: Uh, defense?
IBM Lawyers: Uh, shit. [I call upon the power of ten Deep Blue Mainframes] Your honor, the DMCA is being challenged for its unconstitutional nature along with several other copyright laws because of this very issue. The issue of Intellectual Property is now so clouded and convoluted that one company can claim ownership over everything. We move for a continuance until the issues surrounding the DMCA and other copyright laws are resolved. In other words, "Take off every 'Zig'!!"
Judge: Uh, continuance granted.
NarratorDan"If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
Besides lowest unemployment in years, government surplus, relative peace, and one of the bigges economic booms in the last 50 years... no he didn't do anything.
Now your boy Bush Jr is doing a bang up job. Oh, right he doesn' have sex... ah he's a'right then.
That's a potent mixture they're on and you're starting to see how it makes them act already, so don't fool around with it. You can't sell it either because your customers would sue the hell out of you when they get high on it.
Trust us discordians on this one and stay tuned for some more good laughs, the best is still to come yet.
You better believe Sun is involved in this. They are the second SCO Source licensee, in addition to Microsoft.
More than that: in connection with their license, Sun received a warrant (that is, stock options) to buy 210,000 shares of SCOX at a price of $1.83 per share.
SCO's actions start making more sense when you abandon the "last gasp of dying company" paradigm and use the "paid FUD attackers" model. 40% of SCO's revenue, and all of their profit, come from Microsoft and Sun via the SCO Source licensing program.
the ability of the government to squash them like the bug they are.
Everyone is saying this is the worst thing ever. Try contacting some people, yell at someone other then the slashdot crowd. We arn't going to get anywhere by letting companys do this to us over and over again. Please, call your local officals, screw your heads off till they listen. Send a lot of requests to Bill O'Reilly, I think he'd be one that would love to tear this company a new one. Get them enough bad press that they become laughable by the general public, and not just us Slashdoters.
Do you think they have opted out for some sort of insurance that will pay out in case of government intervention/legal claims/etc? :)
Hyperom.com
..on that gun they're shooting themselves in the foot with.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
These desperate gasps from a dying company were annoying, exasperating.
I'm feeling calm, now, though.
I honestly think this point in time will be viewed as the inflection point at which Linux usage took off for the big time.
I'll bet a six-pack of your favorite beer or ale that on August 6, 2005 most people will agree that the SCO incident was the dark before the dawn.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
eat shit and die!
Just think, before it was just IBM and maybe ReadHat having to battle the idiots, now that the Feds will be involved the whole farce will get squashed - dunno how quickly, but considering the deficit the lawmakers will probably have these guys for lunch. Thank you SCO for making your nasty zit pop faster.
Do you folks remember "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood"? Of course you do.
One of the closest things the 'Land of Make Believe' had to a "bad guy" was this annoying dude who had this book. In the book he would draw pictures of all of the things that were his.
Whenever he would see something he wanted, he would sit down, and draw it in his book, even it it wasn't his.
Then he'd run around yelling, "THAT'S MINE! SEE! IT'S IN MY BOOK! IT BELONGS TO ME! MINE!!!"
SCO, this is what YOU are behaving like.
Just because you have some code in your book that looks like ours, that doesn't mean its yours.
Please, won't you be our neighbor?
s'wut i sed.
In one of the last SCO post I made a joke bout SCO sueing the NSA, the US Army, and Disney! Now they have gone and done it! This is just too scary.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It seems to be recording small snippets of news programs wherein SCO is mentioned. It also automatically puts three "thumbs downs" on each one.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
No, Bush just lies about drunk driving convictions, lies about nuclear weapons, lies about his national guard record, and gets American soldiers killed every day in Iraq. So, yeah, Republicans say he's 'a'right. Gold old boy to the core, as he signed every last one of those 300+ death certificates while "governing" in Texas. Two superlatives come to mind when I think of Bush: holds record for most execution under a U.S. governor and holds records for most vacation days taken by any U.S. president. Great guy, that Bush! Yeah, I see why people support him.
As a Linux user, I was demanded by SCO through mass media to pay for the Linux I use the license fee. Well, SCO claims that my Gentoo Linux I've build by myself from sources has a source code belonging to SCO. It seems to me that means that my Gentoo is not a SCO product, however the piece of SCO code in the kernel *IS* a SCO product. I want to see the code to decide - should I pay for it or should I remove it. That's why I went to product and license information pages at SCO site. And that's why I am so happy to see that email.
From now on I am going to send them email on a daily basis (is it too often)? and demand the information about the product they insist to sell to me. Every message will have a different text (but saying/asking actually the same) so their anti-spam filter won't work.
Now I am thinking about /. effect on poor web-sites. What if we, /.ers, will try our /. effect on their email servers? Can we force them to answer?
Less is more !
You just admitted to Slahsdot, a crowd of largely single male geeks that:
;)
1) You are female.
2) You are a geek.
3) Your boyfriend is NOT a geek.
Better hope your home address isn't easy to find you'll find him dangling from the roof tied up in Cat-5 cable and a line of geeks wating to woo you.
My feeling is that all of SCO's recent claims/demands/etc are nothing more than a huge publicity stunt. They seem to be specifically targetting the biggest names they can think of, just to get their name out there. Any publicity is good publicity and all that. *Sigh* And it seems to be working too.
Under the SCO licensing terms, would that mean that the owner of the Furbeowulf (a cluster of Furby's running Linux) would have to pay for embedded licenses or multiprocessor licenses?
When is the american government going to say that this is too far. I mean come on , for each embedded deviec, what about all those device that run linux that they dont know about? Just a quick secondary question, What happens if you run 1.00, does this mean you have to pay sco as well? if not, then i dont see why someone doesnt take the 1.00 kernel and fork it?
Tragek
The moves you have made are pure extortion and I see jail time in your future. Your company is acting so desperate right now it's not funny.
If you have something to show the community, please do so. Don't show us in the NDA convered, top secret, bullshit, "code-review" sessions!! That doesn't count! Show us the goddamn code, or shut the hell up. If you believe that your tactics will work, I believe you need to think differently.
Now that you're basically suing everyone in site it's curtains for SCO-Caldera.
Thanks for taking the intent of the previous managment of SCO-Caldera and turning them on their head. Also, thanks for showing how dirty and underhanding companies like SCO-Caldera can be. You were once a respected member of the community and now you're just another asshole who believes he owns everything under the sun.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
It seems I come here everyday, and everyday SCO continues to take on more and more people. What's next The planet? Because O is round just like the planet?
What's next?
SCO takes on Earth, warns other planets are next.
SCO takes on _Your God Here_.
SCO takes on the penguin population.
Elvis found alive, SCO to sue.
SCO takes on MiCrOSoft.
SCO to battle RIAA at Wrestlemania.
SCO to drop Linus' kids from hotel window.
Come on, show yourself, show us the code that you took from SCO so that we can replace it...
wow, this is getting really ugly. If SCO loses, or rather, when it loses the lawsuits, I wonder if their customers, like Sun and Microsoft, would want their money. I think they are entitled to it if SCO is found by court to have illegally scammed up their licenses.
SCO may have just picked the wrong fight. The federal government has endless resources for fighting legal battles over SCO's new extortion-based business model.
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
The only thing that separates SCO and a common mafia thug that wants protection money is the color of the suits.
I believe that if SCO loses its case, or has it's case thrown out, then perhaps a good prosecutor could go after SCO's executives under the RICO statutes. Extortion is extortion and it is illegal. There is a big difference between protecting your IP, and trying to extort money. I believe that SCO has crossed that line, now if I can just find a prosecutor that believes the same.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
CNet is running a peice on the Open Source And Industry Alliance an advocacy and lobbying group sponsored by the Computer & Communications Industry Association.
.
This is indeed great news. Now perhaps the OpenSource community can get behind this effort to politicise itself and vigorously advocate where it most counts, the halls of the U.S. Congress.
In its statment of principles and purpose, the OSAIA states:
Business, government and private individuals must be free to choose software and technologies that best suit their needs, independent of the methodologies or licenses used in their development.
The marketplace must be free of prejudice against open source software, whether through law, regulation, defamation or other means. OSAIA will act to achieve this goal."
This is a good start. The CCIA boasts a formidable stable of memebers including AOL, Kodak, Oracle, Fujitsu, Verizon, Yahoo and others.
There are several good resources on the web that are acting as clearinghouses for information that can be drawn upon as resources in this fight. Notably are TWikIWeThey , the Open Source Initiative , the Free Software Foundation.
Numerous weblogs are available as resources most notably Groklaw.
Pam has amassed an incredible wealth of links and facts surrounding the SCO v IBM issue. Another good site for legal info is the Daily Whirl which is a legal blog site index devoted to lawyers for lawyers covering among other subjects, copyright. GrepLaw and A Copy Fighter's Musings are two good places to start.
Finally, for those of you who want to develop good arguments against intellectual monopolies visit Boldrin and Levine's, Intellectual Property Page
This is a link to the SEC web site on all filings (including major stock purchases/sales) by SCO. I found it interesting.
According to SCO, if you're able to read a language, speak a language, comprehend a language (yes, there are differences betwixt speaking and comprehending), write a language or otherwise communicate, you owe them $75.
/. starts a pool on how long it takes SCO to come up with another avenue to try to con people into buying a license for their 'code'.
WTF?
I say
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
What do we lose if we roll back to the version prior to SCO's claim, branch off from there, then continue development? We totally defuse SCO's claim and likely bankrupt them in the process.
I said that I did not feel that $699 was fair with respect to the level of infringement that they allege in the kernel given that they have not yet proven their claims and that I don't even use an SMP kernel. I decided to negotiate, and I offered them "the finger".
In the event that they can show that their SMP code is indeed in the Linux kernel, I offered to remove said code -- since I don't use it anyway -- and I offered "the finger" again, since I have two hands.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I wonder if this is less about winning than it is muddying the waters and trying to make Linux look like "rogue technology" that people could get in trouble for using (a la Napster, Kazaa, Morpheous, etc.). Maybe there is some weird method to this madness? Maybe someone like Microsoft is in the background pulling some strings? In any case, a desperate company often does desperate things so this shouldn't surprise anybody.
Maybe having to answer a few thousand suits would exhaust SCOs legal budget, and they'd have to drop all this nonsense.
This is sad. Why not just die peacefully?
The license does not grant any rights to use SCO IP in source format, nor does it grant any distribution rights. It is therefore inadequate to cure infringements for distributors, or any entity that uses, modifies or distributes Linux source code.
SCO openly admits that it is allowing the existing and future builds of Linux to be released with the said source code, available for download. But, SCO is requiring that people "license" the product after knowingly allowing their code to be distributed under a completely different license (GPL). But, GPL Section 2 explicitely states that when you knowingly distribute "sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."
So, is SCO violating the GPL license by knowingly distributing the source code with the Linux kernel (ie, a "part" of the Kernel), yet is not accepting the GPL license which states that you MUST accept the GPL license for that code which is distributed and that you may not charge a fee other than costs to recoup the transfering of media and/or warrenty?
While the license would allow them to distribute the SCO portions seperately (aka, not as a part of the kernel), and charge for those, it doesn't allow the SCO to knowingly distribute and then charge for that code.
This seems more like a racketeering case every time I read their own rules.
- The license they are selling violates the GPL license in which the software is distributed.
- They havn't attempted or shown attempt at this point to remove their IP as to not be in violation of the GPL license.
- They are allowing the code to continue being distributed under GPL.
- They are demanding money AFTER the fact for protection from their own claims.
By knowingly allowing the code to be distributed, allow somebody to accept that code under GPL, and then under the thread of a lawsuit, extort money to license the code after the fact would fall under Title 18, Chapt 95, Sec 1951.Any views on this?
Ok, let's measure things objectively. If SCO wins, then hundreds of thousands, if not millions of consultants that bet on Open Source will lose their livelihoods and possibly their homes and their marriages and their dreams for their children.
Is it wrong to wish death on McBride? Yes it is. But, by his very act, he's wishing the destruction of many, many, Linux consultants and businesses. He's not offering a better solution, he's not doing anything of any value other than to pervert the legal system.
Maybe your family's good fortune is not worth the life of a complete stranger who is out to see your career destroyed so he can cash in on a lie, but mine is not. I don't believe that anyone should kill him or anything like that, or even engage in violence against him, but I think that, given the social damage this man is causing, all on a lie, then, well, it is entirely reasonable, logical, and rational to cheer any ill that befalls him.
This is my sig.
Does this mean companies that do pay SCO for code they (SCO) has yet to identify can sue SCO to recover licensing fees should SCO's claims turn out be nothing more than figment of McBrides already screwed up imagination?
TSIA
Interesting. In the description of the upcoming SCOForum (which I really hope is a dismal failure) it seems like they may let some of their cats out of the bag so to speak. Look at the "forum movies" on the page referenced below.. A quote from one of the pages: ".. for the first time in a public forum David Boise will explain SCO's Intellectual property claims.." at the SCOForum in Las Vegas Aug 17-19 .. Also claimed is the opportunity to peek at Unix source code -- woohoo !! (no mention if you are then immediately killed afterwards as you are obviously too dangerous to continue to exist)..
http://www.sco.com/2003forum/
I must say that after playing with stocks for a little over 2 years now I have found the SEC reports (especially 10Q's) to be very informative.
If you're even thinking of investing in a company, read a recent 10Q first. This will clue you in on the state of the company, you'll find out if there are any external forces that may jeopardize the business and -- best of all -- it will point you in the direction of their competition.
Look at the competetors. Weed out the weak companies and get the one that is most likely to succeed in a sector (not necessarily the one that your "gut" tells you to go with).
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
This is starting to remind me of those idiots on "Real TV" who tape themselves until they finally end up killing themselves...
SCO: OH! Looky here! A pack of ravenous wolves! Let's see what happens when I pull their hair! *Pulls Hair* Whoa... missed me! That was close.... but look! A group of sexually repressed lions! Let's see what happens when I kick them in the genitals!!! ...
But it all ends up the same. Eventually stupidity will catch up with them and we can all sit back with a beer and have a laugh.
The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dreams is you. - Tom Bradley
Phone or email your local SCO office: http://www.sco.com/worldwide/
Last quarter, The SCO Group reported sales of $21 million.
They sold $13 million in products and services, with a net loss of $2 million.
They sold $8.3 million of SCO Source Licenses to two licensees, Microsoft and Sun, with a net profit of $6 million.
Total revenue, $21 million. Net profit, $4 million.
That's how much Microsoft and Sun are paying The SCO Group. This is SCO's most profitable line of business. Indeed, it is their only profitable line of business.
SCO doesn't need to actually sell any of these ludicrous IP licenses. As long as they piss on Linux hard enough to drive people to Windows and Solaris, Microsoft and Sun will keep paying them.
Microsoft and Sun are committed to paying SCO $5 million over the next three quarters.
Hit sec.gov, crack open a 10-Q. It's tough going at first but the facts are in there.
So. Let's get this straight: SCO is trying to get our government agencies to pay for licences for GPL'ed software with our tax dollars.
...this Linux is free."
Sounds like a justification to write congressmen and women about how questionable their actions are. Aren't there any in the OSI circles who have the ears of a few in congress? Let's whip up some curiosity as to why the government is being asked to pay for something that we've worked so hard to make free-as-in-speech, and in this case, is available for free-as-in-beer.
Perhaps we can get an inquiry or something that will predate the 2005 trial.
PHCongressHead: "Now Mistah McBride...It says heah, in this G-P-L, that is... that this
DMcB: "Well, IBM-"
PHCH: "Now I wasn't done, and I'd oblige you to not interrupt....It seems that your companah has been distributin' this on their [adjusts glasses] F-T-P servahs for quite some time..."
If they strong-arm end users (read:defraud), there's not much recourse unless there is a class-action. If you defraud the US government, things can get more interesting.
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
I think they hold the license to /usr/bin/finger!
heres the message i sent to sco with their feedback (note: i used anonymizer.com so they cant track me =D) Location: Bosnia Email: starvingkid77@hungrypeople.net Subject: license fee dumb Body: why you people have to charge me license fee? i dont have money even buy food! i did want you linux because it good and free but now you stink make it cost!! you people stink and make me pay!! you shove dumb license fee up your expensive butt!!! idiotics!!!!!
--tUrBzY
Maybe file a complaint on the FTC website? Tell them how many Linux systems you have and how much SCO claims you owe them. ($699 / system and $32 / embeded system). Then explain that SCO wont provide proof of their claims and what Linux is. The form for filing complaints is here
there's a rabid dog in front of the store. It's scaring away the customers. Please shoot it!
...when you can say "Ni" to an old woman!
(Yes, I said pig-fuckers. I think they get up on pigs and they fuck them. Squeeeeee! Anyone wanna disagree?)
I was thinking, "uncle-fuckers."
c-hack.com |
Plus the poster owes me $50 for a new keyboard, I just destroyed mine spewing bourbon out my nose!
I know of no other entity that would seriously rip apart SCO and have the legal means to do so other than the government. SCO wants licensing paid by the government. The government will DEMAND proof and get it or else. Trade secrets, copyrights, and patents provide little defense against subpoenas. If SCO still refuses, the US government will authorize raids by the IRS, the SEC, the FTC, the FBI, and a dozen other agencies that may be affected.
Maybe SCO is not learning from MS example. MS went after schools and governments and some of them paid up. But some of them fought back. Others have learned that they can fight back. MS could not pull those tactics again. Neither can SCO.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If I only I had realized sooner that "Linux=Tivo" would convince nongeeks of the severity of SCO's unethical behavior...
But now that SCO has caused the scales to fall from our eyes (and applied the argument to THIS battle for us) we can use that in HUNDREDS of other contexts.
Watch for Linux=Tivo to become a catchphrase.
THANK you, SCO!
And thank YOU, AC, for making the argument explicit. Your boyfriend has no idea what a smart cookie he's hanging out with. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
er, SCO is claiming rights to that bug ridden code. Mind your language.
...but since it will likely be rejected (the gods of karma are always against me), here ya go:
An Austrian Free Software group by the name of FFS has been talking to SCO Austria and SCO Germany, who have assured them SCO's European branches have "nothing to do" with SCO's claims, and there will be no Linux licences available from SCO in Europe. What's perhaps more interesting is that a SCO lawyer has admitted that SCO's copyright claims have little substance. The article is in German, unfortunately. Here's a very rough translation of the title and the first paragraph:
SCO Plays Dead: No License Fees in Europe
As reported by Pro-Linux, representatives of the FFS have been in touch with legal representatives of the Austrian and German branches of SCO, which has in the past few months accused Linux developers and users of intellectual property violations. These accusations, which remain as yet completely unsubstantiated, have recently culminated in SCO demanding license fees for Linux. This would amount to a misappropriation of Linux by the company, which would thus itself be exposed to accusations of software piracy. The FFS has now obtained a letter from SCO's legal counsel literally affirming that SCO's local branch has "nothing to do" with the claims. SCO's counsel, who has also admitted in a phone conversation with the FFS that SCO's copyright claims have little substance, goes on to protest that the company is doing everything to comply with the court decisions barring it from doing further damage to the reputation of Linux or its users.
[The rest of the article then goes into a rant on software patents etc.]
Comments on the linguistic side of my translation are also welcome, but bear in mind this was just a quickie.
And yes, I am karma whoring. But then, isn't everyone?
I find this quite interesting since my TiVos are running Linux 2.1.24. I thought SCO only had a problem with 2.4+?
# uname -a
Linux (none) 2.1.24-TiVo-2.5 #8 Wed May 8 15:38:27 PDT 2002 ppc unknown
They've also started a hotline. 1-800-382-5633. Tell 'em what you think.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Has anyone grepped the source tree to look for SCO copyrights or comments?
What do SCO copyrights look like? Do they say SCO? Or do they go back to ATT or Bell Labs?
Developer names? Function or variable naming conventions?
Without this stuff, how the fsck can SCO id the code? I can't believe that somone who works on the Kernel regularly hasn't posted what some of the code is. My guess is that it's because there's no way to ID it. And if this is true, SCO's got no case. IANAL, but if they can't definitively define 'stolen' code, then how to prove it's stolen?
wbs.
Huh?
I believe it was Churchill who said that "they awakened the sleeping giant" and I know the Axis powers felt it in the rear too.
It's also the same reason why most if not all ppl don't dare mess with the IRS.
Let's hope the "giant" will react and lead SCO to their own demise.
you get called a terrorist, and we all know what happens then.
But judging from Osama bin Laden's experience, you receive training, weapons and money before.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
So how does SCO know that the TiVo's code infringes on their IP? Can't we sick the DMCA on them for reverse-engineering the TiVo?
heh
1) High exposure for an IP led case will hopefully lead to better regulation and legislation around IP management.
2) We need to see the GPL tested in court, we need to see what protection it extends to end users and we need to see what protection it extends to developers.
IP Law is a mess, the GPL is an unknown quantity... until both of these things happen we're just swimming around in an ocean.
Good job SCO.
Think...
SEC's link: Striking resemblance to the SCO filings on their own page. See my journal for the beginnings of drilling into each one and summarizing. Incidentally, almost half were Directors exercising options at .66 to 4.75, not selling. Only one director was clever enough (in my opinion) to sell everything he has immediately.
Next questions: where on SEC filings is a clue pointing to other forms of shifting value off the books. For example, the dillution of shares used to in buying up the other company that SCO was just pilloried for?
And can YOU find anywhere offering prices on Put Options avail for SCOX? I may just have to take the max-risk, low return path of either doing a limited short... but there's just not much joy in locking up $5k and watch it potentially grow before mid-2005 (court date, by my guess) just to see it fall about 90% at best. A staggered-sell short (accumulate shorts if/as the market climbs) improves the win value but could get staggeringly expensive if they push value up with rumors of a buyout (or (Horrors!) get bought out!. Microsoft's eagerness to kill Linux and it's huge warchest is a scary hypothetical to bet against...)
See, lacking a put option source, all I see is a scenario that looks like: Sell $5000 in shares... wait 2 years, buy back $500. Profit, 4500. 90% ROI in 2 years isn't shabby, but it also isn't worth the risk of seeing shares peak at $35 and get absorbed by a stable, large company, leaving me out roughly $13k (a minus of more than 200%). Or, short $1k, with plans to short another block each time the stock grows 60% or so (my so-called staggered-sell short plan... what's this called?)
Yes, if I were serious, I wouldn't do just $5k. Call it a hypothetical, or imagine the conversation I had with my wife... better yet, show me a way to shelter at $30 per share while betting SCOX is going down far and hard... Give me a bearable downside (worst case of $20k on the $5k invested), nothing at all if the change is under 20% either way, and a wicked payoff if and when SCOX tanks. Oh... and a long fuse in case we're still bitching about SCO in 2-3 years? Or am I asking for the sun, moon, stars, and whatever's behind door number three?
You know, I was thinking, there's a lot of people out there using snippets of my code too. I want in on the action. I'll even disclose the offending bits, in no particular order:
;
i++
n = 0
a = []
c-hack.com |
As of April 26, 2003, Cisco has about $3,940,000,000 in cash. As of March 31, 2003, IBM has about $4,195,000,000 in cash. SCO sure knows how to pick a good fight.
I'd bet they're thinking more in terms of "picking a deep pocket". B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
that these idiots havent gotten assfucked by the us govt yet, they are really fucking with people now.. I have come to these conclusions: 1. Sco's president, upset over not being able to get bought, lost his mind. 2. They're trying to prove themselves as a force to be reckoned with 3. trying to impress hotbabygirl20192 on yahoo 4. trying to get jailed and prison-fucked. 5. Destroy linux 6. A stupid attempt to force all *nix users to sco shit. 7. Bill gate's tiny fake dick in their assholes. 8. They are stupid. 9. testing the legal system. 10. all of the above. or some of the above. 1 and 5 seems to be the most logical. but who knows?
...by God Almighty, SysOp of All, who has been using a "UNIX-like" operating system to run "REALITY 1.0", which has substantial hardware requirements.
SCO is prepared to provide an initial licence to every sentient being for $699 this year, and rising asymptotically thereafter.
God, however, is holding out for a "run-time" licence at a more modest cost. Negotiations are proceeding.
Is it better to ignore the rediculousness of SCO or is it better to slam them out of existence so that no reputable company will deal with them? I am leaning towards the slamming which we are doing a good job of, but at some point seems like it would be good to just ignore them and wait till they run out of money to pay their lawyers.
But the bad publicity has to effect their bottom line... Rhambus barely survived their sue happy days, but they actually make product. Either way SCO is going to go out of business rather soon I would think, unless Microsoft decides that SCO needs another infusion of cash and decides to "License" some more Intelectual property from them.
SCO is doing the IP-law equivalent of going on a rampage shooting people to steal their wallets because you think the "world owes you"
Repeal the DMCA!
Not that I beleive that there is any merit to SCO's claims, but why aren't more companies in the legal batting lineup to diffuse the matter. Is everyone wagering on Big Blue and the ultimate Linux momentum (while at the same time trying to preserve anonymity)?
Is this the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in action?
SMP? Nope!
;oP
NUMA? Nope!
JFS? Nope!
TiVo's kernel ain't usin' any of the stuff that could actually be unique* so far, as suggested by the armchair analysts.
They aided the ExtX file systems; they added to the embedded communities the necessary functional code and corrections elsewhere. Did anyone see them ask for a license from SCO? No.
If you ask, "Why," I'll ask, "Do you ever pay attention to anything I write!?" Also, I may severely bludgeon you.
*unique: read ahead isn't all that F*ing unique. Get any two people to implement their own versions without having seen any pre-existing version, and make a comparison! The more restricted the function, the more common the appearance. Additionally...read ahead is owned by...Berkley
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
I'm getting tired of SCO around every corner. Either money is owed to SCO or not, but I sure as heck hope it gets straightened out soon because it's getting boring.
I wish SCO would either prove or disprove their case in court so beyond a shadow of a doubt they can either get paid, or not, depending on which way the verdict goes. The whole thing is getting very stupid.
I guess this is the business version of "suicide by cop".
Some of the most entertaining stuff i've seen in a long time.
Thanks to a runaway dotcom economy. You can thank him for the collapse too. If he's responsible for one, he is for the other too. Personally, I think either attribution is a bit of 20/20 hindsight.
government surplus
See above
relative peace
Appeasement? We can thank him for Osama too. Those 75 cruise missles on impeachment eve seem not to have had much impact. Neville Chaimberlain oversaw a "peaceful" period too. I believe it ended for Britain around 1939.
and one of the biggest economic booms in the last 50 years..
And busts.
Not saying Bush is a great president, but giving Clinton credit for the dot bomb economy is downright stupid, or complete propaganda.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I'm sorry, I can't divulge the location of the $32 at this time. I am willing to provide a set of scavenger hunt clues to selected, disinterested parties who are willing to sign an NDA, though...
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Doesn't this mean that by distirbuting Linux they may have implicitly agreed to the terms of contributing their code? Wouldn't that then mean they have no right to charge for it as it was contributed to the benefit of the open source community? Just a thought. I'm sure it's been said before.
'cause bourbon go burn burn all over you face
It was my understanding that the SCO only claimed IP infringement by the 2.4/2.5 kernels of linux. Wouldn't that exclude earlier tivo models from their claims?
Send a generic letter of complaint to SCO, and CC to all of these:
n elux.comm m o .comc o.comn fo@sco.come vinhsu@sco.com
annm@sco.com
infod@caldera.de
info@caldera-be
gregb@sco.com
fr@sco.com
infod@sco.co
ukinfo@sco.com
maindesk@sco.com
mirekp@sco.co
asirotin@sco.com
infoes@sco.com
africainfo@sc
felixe@sco.com
kierano@sco.com
anz_info@s
jeffjl@163bj.com
Kellyhan@sco.com
indiai
info@jp.caldera.com
shong@sco.com
k
info@sco.com.mx
info@sco.com.ar
What about this guy Have you seen him aroudn recently?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Sort of, but not really.
IBM declines to indemnify. That reveals uncertainty.
There are two factors to uncertainty: the risk that the event will happen times the cost of the event. The risk is low, especially as SCO is acting like a PR firm (and gets paid like one -- check out where their revenues come from). But the cost is huge. So (low risk) * (high cost) == wildly uncertain outcome. Nobody wants to step into that.
Underneath that, though, there is a real issue. Take the FSF's products for instance. With a few months of time, and cooperation from the FSF and its contributors, a small group of engineers could identify the origin of 99.9% of the source code in gcc and correlate it back to copyright assignments with physical signatures and indemnity clauses. RMS and Moglen knew what the fuck they were doing when they set up that system. I am not an expert on copyright protection, but I think it would be feasible for a company to do this and sell indemnified copies of gcc, if there were customer demand to pay for such a thing.
I've heard that IBM provides indemnification for Websphere, which includes Apache.
It helps that the kernel is under source control now. I hope that Torvalds is thinking about how to defend against this sort of attack in the future.
I'm really getting sick of these SCO stories. I know, preferences blah blah blah. Guess I'll just go back to my new mandolin and fuck around with that instead.
they'll have to reveal WHAT was infringed to pursue it legally,
But they'll only have to reveal it to the judge and the lawyers.
Any bets on whether they'll try to keep the information about what code is supposedly infringing "under seal"?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
New RFC Adds "Evil Bit"- ...wait, you guys are serious?
I dunno if this is an original idea... but assuming (and this is a huge assumption) that SCO's claims are in fact true that they have hundreds if not thousands of examples of SCO-owned-IP infringement, then in all likeliness, the IP will never be revealed publicly/anonymously because each viewing is "watermarked".
SCO would only reveal certain portions of code, tell you "you're the only one who has seen this particular code", and send you on your merry way.
So, if this code you've been shown ever makes it to the public domain - whamo!!! - SCO sues you for infringing on their IP.
And in further news, SCO has announced that it is suing all organizations and living creatures on the planet earth, and is considering similar action against the rest of the solar system.
I expect that most slashbots would consider the Clean Air Act of 1990 to be a good thing.
Some have suggested that certain Seattle, WA company are behind this. If that were so then we might conclude that they, struggling to make a case via FUD, argument (and some might say, interesting bargaining with OEMs), are now trying to insert an artificial barrier to entry (ie cost) into the marketplace. Some at this company may be hoping that by artificially adding to the TCO of Linux, then their OS becomes more attractive on the bottom line. Me - I could nt possibly commet.
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.
I am a professor at BYU in the Information Systems department. I've kept a watchful eye on SCO's attempt to receive license fees for the use of Linux.
I respectfully ask that your company please stop with the nonsense. It is making our valley look bad. It is making Utah look bad. I am embarassed for you as a neighbor.
If your IP has been injected into the Linux kernel, all you have to do is tell the maintainers what the offending code is and they'll remove it immediately. I don't understand why you insist on receiving revenue when everyone is willing to correct the code *immediately*.
Again, please stop with the nonsense. It is hurting the future of Linux and embarassing all of us.
Respectfully,
Dr. Conan Albrecht
Shouldn't have wasted my karma points yesterday...
Can anyone think of any free (to me) ways to pay them and then yank the payment so it costs them money to process and deal with it?
Added bonus if they try to take me to court over it.
Yay BSD! We can run it on our old 486s without accelerated 3D, USB-2/firewire support, decent sound, DVD burners or any other recent technology. If you thought finding modern hardware with Linux drivers was hard, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
SCO's code is already in the public domain. According to SCO.
But their actual phone number is 1-800-726-8649, which equates to 1-800-RAM-UNIX (and 1-800-SCO-UNIX but we'll ignore that)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
gayyyyyy...
I think Mr. Torvalds should tell SCO to pay him $699 for every mention of the word 'Linux' on thier web site and press releases or else STFU.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
If this contiunes, they can go on trying to extort licensing fees from every user of an embedded Linux device, including Linksys routers. I think that they can't go on much longer with this because they simply have gone too far. First it was licensing/IP problem with IBM, then its threaten every commercial Linux user, then every device that is equipped with any version of Linux (even though their claims don't even extend that far into 2.2 and earlier, which is what many of these embedded devices use).
Their case is like building a skyscraper on sand without a foundation. Very soon, it will topple.
Funny that they aren't using Unixware for their server. Maybe it isn't so good after all. Maybe they've just liquidated their IT department to the point where nobody can do a switchover. With that thought in mind, here's a movie quote:
-- Jeffrey Wigand, The Insider
The BSD's are free of these SCO claims.
To think...if TiVO and Sharp had been sharp, they would have used BSD and avoided these problems.
I'm gonna say this for the millions of people around the globe that are in the know about this:
What the Fuck?
Doing dumb shit to the federal government is not going to get them out of the doghouse any sooner. What are they thinking? They have IP in embedded linux? Last time I checked, most embedded systems were On the chip. They also have no need of JFS. Lessee... The IP claims that SCO made were on SMP and JFS.
We put two and two together, and we get $39. I just want to give this Darl dude a set of major noogies.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Sharp Zaurus: $200
SCO embedded license: $32
AMD 1900+ Barebones Complete: $225
SCO Linux license: $699
Complete Linux kernel: Priceless!
.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
By buying a license, I suspect they are making corporations admit to some degree that SCO is right in their suit. The more they buy into this, the more the case is bolstered or they feel that it is bolstered. Anyone else seen a suit go like this? It's unprecidented and definitely out of order.
email:
abuse@microsoft.com (fitting, I thought)
message:
With regards to the recent issues with infringing code in the linux kernel:
There's an object of mine in your house. I'm not telling you what it is, or where it is, but it's there, I promise.
I'm not going to identify the object, but I am going to request that you pay me $700 for the continued use of your house.
You may, if you wish, sign an NDA to find out the identification of the object, but under the terms of the agreement, you'll never be allowed inside another house again for the rest of your life.
Alternately, you can agree to waive the licensing fees for the Linux kernel and we can call it even, ok?
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
You know there is a free baysian filter for outlook now. It works very well.
/responding to your jornal which I looked at to try to figure out if you were a chick or gay.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Replay uses VxWorks ..
"And how can this be? For he is the
1) When is the torching of the SCO offices mentioned in the poll going to take pace?
2) Should I bring a few extra torches?
3) Is it a BYOP (Bring Your Own Pitchfork) party?
hey,
Does anyone have the home addresses of Darl McBride, Chris Sontag, and the other SCO execs?
I'd like to sign them up for a couple hundred free catalogs, some subscriptions to Hustler and maybe a couple linux trade rags. Something like the backlash against that infamous spammer...
Anyone? I find two "Chris Sontag" listings in Utah, but I'd hate to point my righteous indignation at the wrong person.
Just google for "free catalog name address city state zip" and see what you turn up.
bring it!
have a new job working for SCO choosing who to target?
McBride, Darl C
1799 Vintage Oak Lane
Holladay, UT 84121
(801) 424-2006
Better hope your home address isn't easy to find you'll find him dangling from the roof tied up in Cat-5 cable and a line of geeks wating to woo you. ;)
That was about the most disturbing comment I've read in a while. Is it any wonder she dates a non-geek?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Hey, how about Oracle or IBM make a hostile takeover to appease SCO's shareholders and then tear them up and spit them out.
I know it's sorta violent, but is anyone taking these A&&H@les seriously?
I don't know any serious companies that use Unixware/Xenix or whatever they produce anymore.
I personally vote for them both being lesbians... hopefully with some Bit Torent links forthcoming for proof... but odds are they are both Cowboy Neal... then the gays would have it!!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
The linux kernel source has well over 1526722 lines of code. See reference here
This means that SCO owes $13,339,034.48 for each copy of linux it distributed.
Get a free ipod.
Wouldnt it be nice if we could find where Darl C. Mcbride lived, and then get directions to his house?
So...before they were doing this they were making money by encouraging people to use (w/o a license) a product for which they are now insisting no one has the right to use (w/o a license)?! Am I missing something here?
full story
Let's wait until the verdict is handed down against SCO.
-cp-
Remember, this is DARPA that scox is going to be dealing with here.
Knowing DARPA, they'll probably spend $6.2 million on developing, procuring, testing, and contracting, followed by months of budget and schedule overruns, only at the end of it all to produce "Hey, did you hear the latest news! SCO says they have a patent on oxygen! They want licensing fees from EVERYBODY!"
Then the spokesperson will burst into flames, as a buffer overflow in the joke is exploited by a script kiddy using a free dial-up ISP in Romania.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I happen to know pjack76.
pjack is short for "Penelope Jequeline".
now all of you can relax.
s'wut i sed.
I call shenanigans! Or for the common or lay folk, bullshit!
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
Yes, but many could argue that SCO/Calder does
not intent to win in court. If the target is
Linux (as per Microsoft instructions), then
all the have to do is raise hell at regular intervals between now
and the court date. It is a lot cheaper than
buying time in TV to counter the Linux threat.
FUD- mouthing does not cost money. It's free.
And besides, the company that owns slashdot
is all too happy to spread the word every 5 hours.
Awww crap!
This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
They make me laugh.
Next we will have Turning's relative claim we all him a fee for any computers.
Only one director was clever enough (in my opinion) to sell everything he has immediately.
Opinder Bawa, VP of Engineering, sold everything he had a couple of months ago.
You have to go back to March for all the sales and probably 12 months for the purchases. It's a lot of slogging.
For example, the dilution of shares used in buying up the other company?
Off the top of my head (might be wrong), those are Form 3's, Form S-1's, and Form 8-K (other events). Also look in the 10-Q's for "total number of shares outstanding" and "fully diluted share counts". The shares have to appear there eventually.
Buying Vultus for shares was a slick move, all right.
And can YOU find anywhere offering prices on Put Options available for SCOX?
I've looked, but not found them.
There would be a couple of problems with options. First, there are people who have material non-public information. Think of everybody who works in the SCO's law offices, and all their friends who trade favors with each other. An options market maker would be trading against people who are doing exactly this, and there will be a lot more of them for SCOX then there are for a normal stock.
Second, this is such a humongous story stock that there is not enough liquidity in the stock. Even if there is no manipulation, it's still possible for news to whipsaw the stock violently. I have already suffered that once.
It's like a dot-com. It is trading on some kind of emotional resonance, not on business prospects. And there is not enough stock to go around -- just like the dot-com.
Think of the most rabid anti-open-source people you've ever met. Software is useless unless it comes from a company, linux developers are dirty hippies and amateurs, all that stuff. These people now have a way to express their emotional revulsion for open source by buying SCOX. And there's not much SCOX to go around so the price can bubble.
I believe the time to short SCOX is when it's going DOWN. I'm not even going to try to call the top. The idea is that the rabid stock owners will be in denial and will not sell immediately, so that the price will take some time to drop -- that it won't go from $12 to $5 overnight, but there will be plenty of time to short in at, say $7.
The denial period for dot-coms lasted three years!
And if I'm wrong and it does go from $12 to $3 overnight? Then I missed out. But everybody who shorts now might get taken to $20 before the bubble bursts.
Soviet Russia in:
1. Profit
2. ???
3. ???
4. Stolen Linux code in the SCO codebase fixes broken SCO code.
someone should sign the nda with SCO then accidently let the linux community hack into their computer...
And then spread FUD upon the rabid TiVo masses? And make concrete monetary demands? That's beyond the pale.
Complete fucking idiots. They jumped the shark. They are totally fucking doomed.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
make a request to:
+ ass
/dev/null 'http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/thanks.html?l ocation=206&category=9&Email=csontag@sco.com&subje ct=SCO+sucks+ass&message=biteme'
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/thanks.html
with some request params:
location=206 (United States)
category=9 (Sales)
Email=csontag@sco.com
subject=SCO+sucks
message=biteme
So:
wget -O
shazam!
SCO Risk Factors
Jesus. Read some of this stuff, it basically outlines exactly what they've been trying. It was Filed on the 13th of June.
Risk Factors
We do not have a history of profitable operations.
The April 30, 2003, quarter was our first quarter of profitability. If we do not receive SCOsource licensing revenue in future quarters and our revenue from the sale of our operating system platform products and services continues to decline, we will need to further reduce operating expenses in order to maintain profitability or generate positive cash flow. If we are unable to generate positive cash flow from operations, we will not be able to implement our business plan without additional funding, which may not be available to us.
Our future SCOsource licensing revenue is uncertain.
We initiated the SCOsource licensing effort in January 2003 to review the status of UNIX licensing and sublicensing agreements and to identify others in the industry that may be currently using our intellectual property without obtaining the necessary licenses. This effort resulted in the execution of two license agreements during the April 30, 2003 quarter. These two license agreements will be typical of those we expect to enter into with developers, manufacturers, and distributors of operating systems in that they are non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, paid up licenses to utilize the UNIX source code, including the right to sublicense that code. Due to a lack of historical experience and the uncertainties related to SCOsource licensing revenue, we are unable to estimate the amount and timing of future licensing revenue, if any. If we do receive revenue from this source, it may be sporadic and fluctuate from quarter to quarter. SCOsource licensing revenue is unlikely to produce stable, predictable revenue for the foreseeable future.
There's so much more...
Pursuit of the litigation against IBM and, potentially, others will be costly, and we expect our costs for legal fees could be substantial. In addition, we may experience a decrease in revenue as a result of the loss of sales of Linux products and initiatives previously undertaken jointly with IBM and others affiliated with IBM. We anticipate that participants in the Linux industry will seek to influence participants in the markets in which we sell our products to reduce or eliminate the amount of our products and services that they purchase. There is also a risk that the assertion of our intellectual property rights will be negatively viewed by participants in our marketplace and we may lose support from such participants. Any of the foregoing could adversely affect our position in the marketplace and our results of operations.
Go read. Now. Jesus christ. They have like 3 pages of this stuff.
I believe it is high time for the DoJ to go after SCO for violating antitrust laws by abusing patent and copyright laws.
For those who don't know, the US Government successfully sued the United Shoe Manufacturing Company in the 1940's because the Feds said United Shoe was abusing patent laws to keep out competitors (United Shoe held several critical patents on machines that help assemble shoes). SCO is trying to act like United Shoe, and the Feds aren't going to stand for such bullying tactics.
they know that by doing this, they will get flamed in all sorts of horrible ways. maybe that is why they are doing it...
is their next move to start a smear campaign against the linux community itself?
hell, it's worth a try!
I don't know what SCO actually sell - certainly if they have a product to offer people it's difficult to discern from the smoke they are pumping out.
Further more, with their involvement in rampant epilectic law suit's, coupled with a large amount of FUD, I would be afraid to get into any legally binding arrangement that may draw me in.
They seem intent on creating the appearance of being a leprous company.
I can't see what they are going to achieve - I don't know what they are worth as a company, but I am beginning to suspect that this is a smoke screen to cover the fact that they have no product, no market, and probably no future in the technology services sector and they are trying to keep their stock portfolio up so that people don's ask Enron style questions of them.
Somebody send the auditor in please !
Liar. He posted just before you, jackass.
He is Gay!
It is obvious that they are smoking some powerful illegal narcotics to be this delusional. Since they're not sharing, call in the Narcs!
Can flash mobs be used for Darl lynchings? This man and his rotten company are out of f*cking control.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Time for the DoD to do a bit of nuclear testing in Utah.
Nuke SCO till they glow!
Dear SCO..
After much soul searching I have decided to pay your asking price for all my dozens of servers... You can expect payment in full to arrive any time now... I'll be dropping canvas sacks filled with $700 in pennies from a height of 10k feet onto various points on and around your main office... If the office is closed I may deliver payment directly to the homes of your CEO and other officers of the company... I wouldn't want to be late in making the payment.
Cheers.. and heads up!
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
Given that SCO slaps their copyright header on every damn thing they ship, these 'hundreds of copyrighted files' may very well be the terminfo source files and /etc/termcap. Doesn't ESR maintain this stuff? If so, they are literally taking what he and many others have created, putting their copyright notice on it, and claiming that it is theirs. I wouldn't think that they would claim the skunkworks (GNU utils for SCO) as theirs, but with this bunch you never know.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
This post deserves to be mod'd up. It has good info and is heartfelt
correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't SCOs claims against embedded systems include PDAs like Sony's CLIE, so on and so forth?
:)
and doesnt this also include AMD and Intel ? for all the embedded stuff they are now into?
And doesn't it also includ the US military which uses linux embedded systems in just about everything?
and doesn't it also include George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), S. Speilburg productions, and Viacom who all use Linux systems (embedded and otherwise) to produce movies, shows, etc etc ?
uhm, isnt Viacom big enough to buy M$ out of petty cash ?
and lets talk real estate, dont they also use Linux? I mean, the largest firms in the world use this stuff, companies whose market caps gross bigger than most countries.
And SCO is going to try and piss them all off?
they're fucking mentally unstable!
you just need one of these big guys to blink (NSA, US DOD/DND), Sony, Viacom, etc and poof, no more SCO...
Darl McBride to US DOD: "Uh, yer aware you now oh us $699 for each and every soldier on the field right?"
US DOD: "Uhm... No.... We're aware that we just saved 90% by lauching one of our cold war nukes that needed testing on your location... There will be a cheque in the mail for $10,000 for complying with this testing, unfortunately you wont be alive to collect. We're sorry for any inconvience... "
yes it was done before, but my *god* SCO is, well, beyond stupid, beyond insane, beyond sad. We need to invent a new word just to describe this new place they're in.... anyone?
I give SCO the finger, and you give me me my phone call.....
Or something like that.
Your pro-Linux stance may win you friends on Slashdot, but facts hold up better ... last time I checked the server version of the Win product supported 4 processors out of the box (and it doesn't include HT procs in the count). In addition, we're talking OS-only. You seem to think people are running productivity apps on their enterprise systems. If you're talking desktop the pro versions support 2 out of the box for far less than $699. You're assumptions about using Open Office and the Linux Exchange client are well-placed, but off target as well. Who are you to assume that any enterprise would be willing to risk their core information infrastructure on open source products? Companies want accountability and there's no one to point the finger at with Open Source. While these products make cute imitations of brand name solutions like Outlook, Exchange and Office ... not many people have been fired for going with the standard. Linux is great for embedded systems and enterprise data warehouses (if it can survive the sco suit for taking SMP tech) ... but TCO is a wash. You can't really say that you've saved $200 on an office license if you spend $1000 on retraining someone to use Linux and Open Office.
Couldn't SCO wait until just before the trial, and then just fold-up? Take what money they can, and avoid the problems of a court battle by going out of business, profits made, risks avoided?
Your pro-Linux stance may win you friends on Slashdot, but facts hold up better ... last time I checked the server version of the Win product supported 4 processors out of the box (and it doesn't include HT procs in the count). In addition, we're talking OS-only. You seem to think people are running productivity apps on their enterprise systems. If you're talking desktop the pro versions support 2 out of the box for far less than $699. You're assumptions about using Open Office and the Linux Exchange client are well-placed, but off target as well. Who are you to assume that any enterprise would be willing to risk their core information infrastructure on open source products? Companies want accountability and there's no one to point the finger at with Open Source. While these products make cute imitations of brand name solutions like Outlook, Exchange and Office ... not many people have been fired for going with the standard. Linux is great for embedded systems and enterprise data warehouses (if it can survive the sco suit for taking SMP tech) ... but TCO is a wash. You can't really say that you've saved $200 on an office license if you spend $1000 on retraining someone to use Linux and Open Office.
SCO will make Linux free as in "not".
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Wonder how much Bill is paying SCO to put Linux out of business...
Is not SCO trying to collect royalties on other developer code in Linux that cannot be charged for under the GPL? Would it not be possible to sue them for violating the GPL on the rest of the code that they do not claim is theirs that they are including in the royalty payments? Do they not have to supply the non-SCO code (assuming there is any SCO code in the first place)in source form if they are trying to sell it (via royalties)? Well, unfortunately I am neither a developer or Laywer, but it would be another interesting twist on things....
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Only God can judge Darl McBride. It's our job to arrange the meeting.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
This is just out SCO is suing 5 year kids who cries a lot. SCO issued a warning to the 5 year old toddlers that their cring is related to System V IP code violation. SCO will not disclose any further info about that till the kids sends SCO 5 LBS of candy by OCT 5 if it is beyond that then SCO owns rights to all their candies for the rest of their life.
You do have to admit they have jumbo coconut balls!
Now die you stinkin' SCO scum! Die! Die! DIE!!!!
(are they dead yet?)
No matter where you go... there you are.
Personaly I'd rather laugh at the hardships of people in countries which I am not in.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Your accounting is off. Let's see, there were what, somewhere near 11 clear handles replying to the original female outing post, plus several ACs. Given a general prevalence of homosekshul-type persons in the broad populace (10% or less), we can conclude that 1 or 2 of you respondants are gay.
...
Unfortunately, you cannot conclude this. There is no evidence that this is a representative sample of the population. It is likely to be otherwise.
Even assuming the 10% in the general popluation is correct (it's disputed result that came from a Kinsey survey, iirc), you cannot extrapolate it to this population segment.
I would assume that the majority of slashdot consists of white educated males, disproportionate to the general population. What the degree of homosexuality in this population is, I cannot tell.
Possibly higher than the norm, I guess
For a story about a famous non-representative sample I suggest you see:
http://www.pbs.org/fmc/segments/progseg7.htm
Could anyone at sco think they have any chance to get away with this crap after threating US government agencies? If anything, shouldn't they want to get the US government on their side. I bet the execs are trying to find all the ways that they can cash out big time before the boat sinks. I hope the SEC gets into this and puts Daryl boy in jail and a big man named bubba makes Daryl his bitch.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
I just cut and pasted the linux kernel sources into their feedback form. I was going to give them back just the infringing parts but since I couldn't find them I figured the whole source tree would be best.
I wonder how big their feedback database can grow.
I've had my TiVo for... er... I think 2 years now. I wonder if it's using the 2.4 or the 2.2 kernel.
Their suit specifically mentions 2.4 (or later I'd guess) kernels but TiVo may use an earlier kernel of course I'd guess they don't want to be TOO specific so they'd grab mad coinage from those who can't find their TiVo kernel version.
Er, okay I'm done.
The Chinese aren't the most respectful nations towards IP anyway. I think they'll just cheerfully point out their Karl Marx, billion+ population, and nukes and ask SCO if they'd like a fortune cookie with that Chow Mein.
Several years earlier SCO instructs an employee to put copyrighted material into Linux kernel. Then sue everyone using Linux but won't tell what pieces of code were introduced into the kernel. Lawsuit brings destruction of one of the serious Unix competitors in the Intel market with the possibility of revenue from the suit.
Which is it, to give advice or to ask for advice?
My dictionaries are unclear on it.
??? Is that supposed to be Satan then?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Not at all. First rule of litigation is to sue everyone. And there pizza delevery guys. And "unnamed plaintifs" as well.
"Okay, I may be down, but I'm going to (attempt to) take all you goddamn Linux users with me! For no particular reason!"
I agree completely. I've said this before. SCO's behavior is irrational from all other perspectives. You want to know what this is about? Take a step back and ask yourself who benefits from all this crap. That's who is behind this.
no text
Some sick fantasies you have.
McBride is a thief. Whether he's shooting for quick stock cash, operating on Microsoft's wishes, or just doing what he thinks is his company's best interest, he's no worse than a common thief.
A thief's arguably better than a sadistic fuck like you.
Gee I hope no one signs Darl up for gay porn or anything...
Darl C McBride
1799 Vintage Oak Ln
Salt Lake City, UT 84121-6539
(801)424-2006
That would suck... so to speak...
We could all just email SCO with our sharp zaruas roms, linux kernel code tars, and linux isos as a form of apology for vililating their ip rights.
... coincidence?
If we give them $32 will they go away?
Rob
when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
"Just because you're a genius doesn't make you a smart guy!" -- Narrator, Powerpuff Girls
bag.cat->out()
I'd say these people are professional crooks, but who work within the bounds of the law. They're basically admitting that they plan to take the money and run.
last time I checked the server version of the Win product supported 4 processors out of the box (and it doesn't include HT procs in the count).
... not many people have been fired for going with the standard
... but TCO is a wash.
Yes,and MS supports XP on 256M of ram, but it does not do it well. The same is true windows on more than 2 cpu. It is a waste of money.
You seem to think people are running productivity apps on their enterprise systems. If you're talking desktop the pro versions support 2 out of the box for far less than $699.
By looking at the above, the grandparent posting was obviously geared towards the desktop, not the server. And yes, it does cost and arm and a leg. And the numbers are worse for the server version.
Who are you to assume that any enterprise would be willing to risk their core information infrastructure on open source products? Companies want accountability and there's no one to point the finger at with Open Source.
Good point. Why would companies like Target, Walmart, Amazon, HP, IBM, American Airlines, most of Wall Street, almost all of the CG industry, etc, etc ever want to trust their data to Open Source? I wouldn't. But I would trust my data to the best low cost solution which just happens to be Linux.
Case in point on that is check netcraft for % of the net running IIS vs Apache. You can correctly assume that Apache is not run often on Windows. I also check any major cracks that I see on-line. In the last 2 years, all stolen cards that make the news are from Windows boxes. The last non-windows box that I saw was Sun on www.playboy.com. That speaks about security.
While these products make cute imitations of brand name solutions like Outlook, Exchange and Office
Then why are you here trolling? You are almost certainly from a MS or SCO background. You know what is here. Yet you are trolling a joke.
Other that companies that are funded by MS, everybody disagrees with that statement. If it were true, we would constantly be hearing about companies that moved from Linux/OSS to Windows. I do read about some cases where it happened, but it always seems to involve some input of cash by MS.
You can't really say that you've saved $200 on an office license if you spend $1000 on retraining someone to use Linux and Open Office.
Actually, you have it backwards. It is saving 1000's of dollars on software and support for about 1 days (or less) worth of training. Well worth.
You people from MS/SCO can keep trolling/FUDing, but you are losing just due to the realities. MS is bound to lose just due to history. Nobody stays on top forever. Particularly when they are a bad company ( in product and ethics).
Get the message to SCO's customers. Inform them about SCO's Unethical Business Practices. When they lose their existing customers, they would learn a lesson - Don't Be Obtrusively Greedy !
You are obviously not an idiot, reconsidering the language you use would do wonders for your future.
Sorry about that. I was just dumbfounded that less than a week before this all began (?) they basically spelled out their entire game plan to the SEC like that.
Currently I am using a copy of Linux that was not purchased from any company. If I buy a Linux license from your company, what protection do I get? Will this money plus interest be returned if it is found in court that you have no legal ownership over the Linux system? What happens if your actions invalidates the GPL terms and I am no longer able to use Linux? Will I get copies of replacement software instead? Since I would be buying a license from you, I assume I will be getting technical support for my system and you are taking full liability for the Linux software that I may use. Is this correct? What upgrade schedule do you commit to offer me for my Linux system? I have several system issues that need immediate addressing. I await for acceptable answers to these questions before I buy your product. Thank you and have a good day.
Worth a shot ... maybe they'll go bankrupt paying their broadband fees. Anyway, here's my submission to their contact page:
---
To whom it may concern (which is probably everyone working in your soon to be a Chapter 11 footnote),
Could you do the world a favour and inform us why on earth you're pursuing licensing fees in the alleged copied code in the Linux 2.4 kernel? Being an ex-Linux shop no less? I realize that you failed miserably in the Linux market, but instead of reevaluating your business model, you chose to pursue the UNIX market. As UNIX loses ground daily to Linux and the BSDs, do you honestly think Linux royalties will increase the demand for UNIX? Which part of how Open Source works don't you understand?
For one thing, the suits are frivolous. Should your claims be found to be valid, how long do you think it will take for the SMP code in the 2.4 kernel to be rewritten and rereleased? This is how the Open Source community works. Having a corporate background, it makes sense that Linux kernel development turnaround times are beyond your comprehension, but rest assured, any offensive code will be removed from 2.4 before you make your first dollar. Users will then simply upgrade to the new kernel, and nobody will owe you anything. The only thing you'll have gained is a bad reputation, and given your current earnings reports, a bad reputation will be the trailing period on that Chapter 11 footnote I mentioned.
The damage to your reputation may already be done, but don't make it worse. Your executives selling their stock isn't helping any either. Either start afresh while you have some semblance of a company left, or you might as well file for bankruptcy now. Don't think you have nothing to lose. You have a name that used to be respected, and you do still have a company. And as such you have leverage. This is not the time to start lawsuits and alienate any friends you may have left in the business.
Sincerely,
the Clue Bat
---
*blinking cursor*
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
Seems like there's been a progression through the first three: We ignored SCO when they were first bringing this up. We laughed at them when they started asking for crazy licensing fees. Now we're fighting them with lawsuits.
It'll be fun to sit back and see whether #4 happens or not.
You know what would really suck though? IBM doing this deliberately in a titanic effort to destroy Linux as a competitor. Imagine the kind of evil that ploy would require; after all--since when did IBM suddenly become our friend? They used to be the big brother-like enemy, remember?
This is just too funny. I'm glad the BSDs have been SCM'd in CVS and Perforce right from the beginning--any foul play is completely recorded and there's no question about who stuffed in a piece of code where. Unfortunately with Linux, it was all patches up until Linux started using BitKeeper--easy to track down, but still a bit of a pain to grok it all.
What part of this bullshit has ever been credible? The whole idea of accusing people who open their code up for public review theives was utter bullshit from day one. Only someone completely imersed in closed source nonsense would have given any of this a second thought. People who write their code from scratch and give it away as free have no need whatsoever to "steal" anyone else's code. That's what losers like Microsoft do. Anything that anyone might have maliciously put into the kernel can be removed and replaced in a mater of days if only SCO had any to point to. SCO's losses from 80 lines of code are as imposible to prove as the code is impossible to point at. It's never been funny, it's always been a huge insult. I'm not laughing about it.
I'm happy Microsoft put these idiots up to this. Anyone in the technical world with the slightest clue hates SCO and Microsoft with a virulent hatred by now. It takes about 2 seconds to explain what free software it to a complete neophyte, and another 2 seconds for them to understand how stupid this SCO shit is. The backlash will have more people than ever bailing out of Microsoft.
Here's a good example of how much resentment exists out there, and something that did make me laugh. Today, I talked to a young lady who was so agrivated by Microsoft's licensing that she cursed out a service representative over the phone from her place of work. She mentioned something about "hacked code". She was amazed to learn that free software was not some kind of backroom conspiracy to steal code, that it was all legal, legitimate and intended to be shared, not some "cracked junk from Cairo that phones home to share porn or God knows what." I cracked up when realized that Microsoft's service department had been cursed out by a young lady studying at a seminary of the same denomination that gave us Mr. Rodgers.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The only thing I can't figure out is why www.sco.com is still reachable.
When the RIAA started making noise, they got fucked over on a regular basis.
May we never see th
sounds like microsoft must be behind SCO on this one
IBM's medium server (RS6000, 390) road map has been solidly Linux for some time. I doubt that after the money they poured into Linux, they would want to cut off it's head.
Evil they may be, stupid too, sometimes, but not that stupid. Let us not forget that some of the big wigs in the large shops are Linux fans, and have ROI to back them up. A dangerous pair that; Passion and the facts.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Check this out: SCO insider trading. Essentially, Senior Vice President Reginald Broughton has made half a million dollars over the last 2 weeks by selling SCO stock. Senior Vice President Michael Wilson has done the same. Now why would they do this with SCOs prospects for lucrative Linux licensing deals just around the corner?
The SEC will probably be looking into SCO very soon. Or what's left of them. They will be the next Enron.
Does anyone know if SCO is successfully collecting on this? Is money being made?
Lets assume that they are. And lets assume they loose the lawsuit, and are proven not to own any Linux code.
What then? Do those people get their money back?
Well...no. It's a pretty safe guess that SCO isn't dumb. They'll be setting you up with a license (note: one may want to be fucking careful signing into licensing agreements with SCO, considering IBM's situation) that says that they won't press charges against you for any claims they have on Linux, or something along those lines. You aren't *buying* anything.
What happens to the SCO execs?
My guess was that originally, they'd just walk way from this, as a pump-n-dump. If so, it's going to happen soon. You don't go after the US government and expect them to just sit there and not examine the legal issues. They'll probably be dumping within a month.
They may have taken this too far, though. They're in so many newspapers that they may get hung out to dry for fraud. Kinda like Enron. You can only screw N people with M media attention before you start getting into hot water.
May we never see th
and it stinks!
"IBM employees are commiting mass suicide. Red Hat workers are taking cyanide. There are no tanks in Baghdad. Movie at 11.
From: billg@microsoft.com Does the easter bunny or santa claus collect for your imaginary license? --end-- enquiring minds want to know
today is spelling optional day.
SCO wants money from everyone using Linux. Because "SCO says" that it's code is in Linux. OK. I get that! But has SCO shown any proof so far that the truth is actually the way it thinks it is?
Why not wait for the courts to decide whether there is any truth in SCO's allegations? And let the court say what is to be done?
Even if, and that's a really big IF, the court finds for SCO, there could be some simple remedy, like replacing the code.
Hell, in most parts of the world, SCO would be a really long time away from collecting
Anyone else out there think there is a chance SCO took code from linux that is obviously readily available and will show it in their version of UNIX in court? since no one outside of SCO has seen all of SCO's UNIX code, how would one know if it was their code to begin with?
SCO is insane. This is pure FUD.
... just wait for RedHat's action ... SCO is as good as gone. The people who are ... so MS can use it to try to scare people in
They will never get a single penny from me, ever.
S.
ps - their methods are not valid
to get heard
trying to pump up the stock will also not be allowed to keep
their earnings. It will be sweet. Of course, the real purpose
of this is FUD
the future ala 'remember when linux was illegal?' or 'Remember
when Linux infringed SCO IP?' even though it was never true.
Can they go aroung asking for money - even without proving themselves in court?
If they lose the court battle - can Linus (and IBM) sue SCO for defamation - and claim damages?
Nandz.
Good one, you're not funny and you're wrong. You must be a Kiwi too. How do you like it in Australia? Is the dole looking after you?
Today's announcements from SCO didn't boost the stock at all; it went down a bit.
Guys, I'm posting anonymously to avoid karma whoring, so mod this up for all to read:
SCO only wants payment from commercial installations of Linux. They are not charging home users.
Yet....
If I wanted to spend every evening in the same stupic PC vs Mac / PHP vs Java argument and all the rest of the bullshit we geeks carry on with I would have married one of the programmers from work.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Now that SCO is going into the 'Linux License' business, may I presume they made a big show and had a large stand at Linux World this week? :-)
/.) enjoy it so much. The huge /. crowd replying to this topic, is IMHO not just because of concern for Linux freedom. It is the same as CNN loving terrorism and war. It's sick!!!
Biggest mistake of the week: NOT inviting them as a keynote speaker. With this summer heat, there must be cases, cases and cases full of tomatoes waiting for a better use than eating or rotting.
On a different note:
Still wondering why Americans are still searching those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It's getting time for UN inspections in US lawyer's offices, jury rooms and court houses. What happens there is real mass destruction. And unfortunately, you are by now exporting these filthy habits. It is all so disruptive, and you all (from CNN to
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
You can happily go to http://www.sec.gov/complaint/cf942sec9570.htm to file a complaint to SEC regarding SCO and see what happens.
Has the IRS offices received any licensing payment demands from sco?
Time to ream out all sco employees, and all the leech lawyers and employees of the law firms involved with sco. And any former sco employees or lawyers who have profited from the stock price runup when all this shit started.
Very thorough audits are needed. Start with the above list, then move on to family members that were teenage dependants on earlier tax returns of the above list.
In my opinion, anyone, whether company suits, company employees, or leech lawyers, or their employees, who employ the tactics that sco and their lawyers are employing, have a propensity to lie, cheat, and steal. Just my opinion. Time for those audits to see if this is accurate or not.
The article was a little light on SCO's dealings with the federal government. But still, if and when they do, it'll be like kicking a cop because you left your door unlocked and your car got broken into.
Someone hates these cans.
And the editors wonder why people hate the lameness filter... It doesn't even work when it's supposed to, like to nuke these duplicate posts.
SCO went about this wrong.
0% of a lot is... nothing (SCO is learning this)
1% of a little is...
well if that little is multiplied by 50 peta devices?
What if...
Embedded linux systems cost $0.20/cpu
Personal license costs $1.00 per person for a lifetime license for all machines owned by that individual.
Corporate licenses cost $50 to cover all machines owned by that corporation for the lifetime of all machines in existance at the company.
Corporate upgrades cost $0.05 for each new machine for 10 year licence.
Yes, this is silly. It's not enough! But wait, there's more! Enough companies will pay at this oddly low price. Do the math. Lawyer = $5k starters, licence = $50. No brainer, right? Can any managers out there shout SAFETY!!!!
Of cource, these prices can be adjusted. You all understand the curve of resistence. Cost that one will pay without thinking .vs. the cost that one would refuse to pay.
So what would this mean? SCO would have had a large war chest to go after people/companies that refused to pay or challenged them. With those resources, they could have manipulated the law to bankrupt challengers prior to trial. With this, they could have established legal prescident. From here, it's a no brainer.
So, what is a no brainer? it is a magical company of 5 people, whom do absolutely nothing, yet reap fantastic amounts of money.
The King is dead, all hail the king! SCO rules us now, as Bill is dead and forgotten.
I leave the ending up to you...
Man, these guys are a piece of work!
I cannot wait to see Darth (uh, Darl), Sontag, etc. that have been spewing all this crap, called on the carpet by a judge and basically told "Shut your fscking pie-holes!"
One or more of them must be certifbly insane, because they are not acting like rational human beings. Yeah, you play hard ball in business, but at the cost of their company, which appears to been their intention all along just to "make money" pumping and dumping their stock, one or more of them have one or more screw loose.
Regards,
Fredrick
My name is Steve, the first letter of which is "S." I have noticed that the name of your company also begins with the letter "S". I have been using "S" as the first letter of my name for over 33 years. In addition, my family name contains the substring "CO".
Obviously your company has copied these letters verbatim in an attempt to pass them off as an original work of art. My counsel agrees that the letters "S", "C", and "O", which your company is using in the acronym "SCO", is an unauthorized derivative work and infringes on my IP rights.
I have recently sent letters to 18,324,102 individuals and companies whose names also contain the letters "S", "C" and "O" and informed them that they may be violating my intellectual property rights. At this time, I am announcing a licensing program for companies and individuals who wish to use the letters "S", "C" and "O". Until October 15, 2003, I am offering an introductory license price of $1 for an individual license and $100 for a cooperate license.
I believe it is necessary for companies and individuals to license my IP if they are using the letters "S", "C" and "O" in their name. The license insures that customers continue their use of the letters "S", "C" and "O" without violating my intellectual property rights.
Doesnt this belong in the Give-me-that-red-hot-poker-so-I-can-shove-it-up-my -own-ass dept?
How are they planning to collect on any of this? It seems to me you have to prove a legal claim before you can collect on it.
OK, so lets say that I'm Brett Person, which is who I am, and I had built a computer in the 1970's and Id called it the "person computer" Could I have sued IBM and gotten a $1.00 for eavh personal computer. I doubt it. Even though if I had done it in the early 60's I could have claimed some right to the name "personal" computer as IP.
I clearly didnt do this and I\m clearly not IBM.
This is just another sign of how crappy the computer industry is becoming.
Linux is being targeted by sco because the name looks like Unix
Lets say I like to drink SCOtch, will I be sued for Infringement? What if my parents had made a poor choice and named me SCOtt?
If there really is a problem gere, lets see what it is.
I could probably have bought the possibility of the IBM sco thing, but sueing people who own Ticos or LinHandhelds is just plain wierd. Its not live these people loaded Linux on the device or even know that it is there.
What will SCO think of next? :-\ :-/ :-\
I can't wait to find out.
The suspense is killing me.
The Linux community needs to start fighting back against this kind of extortion. We can not tolerate this kind of fraud on the part of SCO. I proposethat we start suing Daryl McBride personally. If every Linux user where to pick a SCO executive and sue them personally we could put an end to this hoax right away.
Why the US government doesnt stop SCO from threatening people -before- the suit is settled ?
It sounds more and more like extortion to me and i think they should be stopped until the matter is settled on court.
Thank you. This is what I was thinking. They can't have their cake (get around the GPL) and eat it too (treat it as if all source was compiled).
As of April 26, 2003, Cisco has about $3,940,000,000 in cash. As of March 31, 2003, IBM has about $4,195,000,000 in cash. SCO sure knows how to pick a good fight.
How about as of August 5th (see links below)? If I'm not mistaken, recent data shows the combined cash of IBM and Cisco exceeding 14 billion dollars. Over 100 times that of SCO's paltry 10 million. As others have pointed out, this isn't about picking a good fight, this is more like a desperate bid for survival. As SCO takes on more and more adversaries, spreading their resources ever thinner, it becomes that much more meaningless to compare things like financial clout. Apples and oranges? No. Apples and apple orchards.
Why doesn't a powerful (rich) Linux supporter like IBM buy out SCO and make all this mess go away? SCO's total market cap (the current share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding) is just over $160M, or roughly 3% of IBM's available cash.
Yahoo! Profiles: Cisco, IBM, SCO
In related news, Darl's personal worth is up after announcing a licensing scheme for those desiring to use his mother.
karma: Marianas Trench (mostly blub blub)
I looked at SCO's website and plenty of the board member are from Brigham Young University. Just a result of their location in Utah or an old-boy network? Such localism seems funny for such a large international company.
I disagree. I think that we can view this as a sort of "competition". I didn't say I like it, but there is nothing like competition to make someone work harder. Why we take code that we have already written, or write new code, the duplicates the functionality of everything that SCO can do, and completely marginalize their products. Also, make sure all code is personally signed so that there is no question who wrote what. The outcome of their litigation scheme won't matter if they have no customers at all.
Michael Scanlon
leave my beer out of this!!
It's bad enough to have to be put through the trash (as pretty much everyone sees it) that SCO puts out, but to sully the good name of beer?!
oh the humanity.
One very likely consequence is that kernel developers may soon be sued simply for contributing to "SCO's property" or violating "SCO copyright". Hell, they might even be able to turn it into a DMCA violation somehow.
This is the very same government that let Microsoft off the hook. They may have a completely different vision of the future, one in which the dangerous "free" and "open" Linux is suppressed and everyone can start using the official Microsoft operating systems again (with its undoubted espionage backdoors). In fact, *now* would be a good time for that, before everybody else escapes their control...
that's bad language?
certainly better than a bunch of other posts in this thread -- religious inclinations aside...
and, well, do you need to call people on that? at least this author was nice and did apologise, but honsetly, on the Internet, is that the norm in your experience?
*shrug*
people take offense at far too many things.
Note also this article:t ml?tag=nl
http://news.com.com/2100-7252-5059414.h
which makes the alarmist folks at Gartner Group look like morons again. Does anyone listen to Gartner anymore?
Oi! You there, what's this talk of sitting by fires and carving on stone tablets!? You sould know by now that the RIAA has exlusive rights to the "fire crackling" audio, and that SCO has rights to... erm... one of the words... you'll... erm... probably write down!
;)
Of course I can't say which words since i'm under the NDA
- Ryebean
Why the fuck would you spit on a stamp?
(far too many, I might add -- I'm not a /. regular/fanatic/linux zealot/ad nauseum, do you know what these posts do to us? (; )
To the point:
I got to thinking... (bad thing) what if SCO is right? Let me go further because that's only a small part of my point. What if SCO is right...they have IP in Linux. So they're going on this balls-out, almost comical (it is to me, mind you, but almost for the sake of professionalism?), crusade against Linux.
IBM was the beginning, they're in their own lawsuit.
Red Hat has a lawsuit against them now. SuSE is playing the "how can we help?" game on the outside, at least. TiVo has to have SOME sort of response.
As far as I know, that sums up the corporate side of the anti-SCO side.
Now, SCO did also target the US government? Alright, we've got corporations against SCO, we've got all the Linux geeks in the world against SCO, we've got most of the tech geeks interested in Linux against SCO. Will the US gov't give it a full glance or will they go the popular route or will they just ignore it?
After all is said and done, though, if SCO is right, and they lose due to this public outcry from populace and business, what then?
It's a victory for the GPL, for Open Source, etc, but is it a good one?
I suppose it's truly a democratic process, but if SCO is right, they're screwed in a way none of us would ever want to be screwed -- mind you, with these statements, I question that they don't deserve a good screwing one way or another.
*shrug* just a random, yet interesting thought.
this "sco" sh*t is crazy, just wondering if its a smokescreen
and someone somewhere else is getting up to something.
Seems to me all sco has done is shoot itself in the foot by, shoving the shotgun far down their own throats before pulling the trigger to shoot said foot.
Things are seldom what they seem.
Try This
Bug Report Form
Tell them that the module mcbride has tainted the kernel and performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.
how long until
Now you too can easily pay your expensive $32 license fee, in four easy installments of $10!
I think you need to hack Windows to run on PPC.
That should be very easy, and I don't think Microsoft would come after Tivo next.
Will I pay $32 for an embedded device or $699 (PC licence) for my MythTV box?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Doesn't this whole thing just reek like some sort of horrible plot to kill everyone on the face of the earth? It feels like a fanatical group is trying to blackmail everyone into funding a giant death ray or something. I never thought that something like this would actually happen -- It feels almost like we are in some horrible dream that we can't wake up from. People are being denied their basic rights and freedoms, and some company is suing _everyone_ for some software that we downloaded for free! Honestly, I couldn't think this could get any worse for the state of affairs in the US. Glad I live in Canada.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Because there's an Australian rugby player on it?
I could care less, but not without a lobotomy
A hard-hitting technology summit showcasing the technology and business solutions of The SCO Group and its Strategic Business Partners. Live and Let Die, but don't forget August 17 - 19, 2003 in Las Vegas, NV.
does anyone know if this thing is still going to happen? will anyone show up (besides microsoft)??
If they'd planned enough in advance before bringing these suits, it would make sense to set a preordered sell for just a bit after the suits hit so the stock would be higher.
My hopes are that they just sold without a pre-arranged agreement with their brokers. That won't look good. And from the history you linked to, I don't think they did.
SCO are inhumane money hongry imorrall merciless peeople may there website be taken off line by the millions of linux users pinging them and do they have problems with kernal 2.6
I cannot believe the depths that SCO is plumbing.
They honestly make Microsoft look like the fairy godmother.
For you tinfoil hat types, this looks like a plan 9.
Must be some bad shit they're smoking; that crack-whore McBride has finally snapped, and regular crack won't do it no more. McBride wants to smoke your TiVo! A sledgehammer and a crack-pipe, and he's ready to roll - the machiavellian lizard king is in da house!
. words"
*sigh*. This is just sad. Feel terrible about the thought that my kids shall one day experience this ontology of greed and extortion...
anarchy != chaos (something *they* fear most of all; the state-less society. "Must...manipulate...people's...perception...of..
"The only clear view is from atop the mountain of our dead selves." - Peter Carroll
SCO lawsuit crap--basically equated to this:
I wonder if I can sue people because I once stayed in Salt Lake City and paid sales tax which invaribly went to some city improvement that everyone uses everyday.
Better yet, as soon as I find out what it is? I'm going to waste the money to patent it now years after I've left Salt Lake City so that I can finance my next vacation.
March 4th, 1989 was the day set forth that the government would start operating under the Constitution prior to that the government as we know it didn't exist and therefore cannot charge for freedom prior to that date.
Yet SCO thinks they can charge license fees for a 2.1 fork of the kernel? I figure by their own reasoning our government can charge them for freedom that existed before the government existed. Furthermore, how about charging SCO their portion of the bill for the revolution itself? Normally you pay a huge ton of money for the service, then a small maintenance charge for the rest of your life. SCO also owes LDS for providing them with a hell-free zone in which to operate. Let's see, what else do they owe....
Like what I said? You might like my music
.. for nyse/nasdaq listed companies to burn money for sco
linux licenses?
why is anybody taking this bullshit seriously? Outside of the US, everybody seems to chuckle and shrug that pathetic attempts to catch attention off - and if SCO gets too loud and insulting, they get sued. In the US, things seems to work differently - but how?
Are you trying to say that the joke revolves around the idea that an Australian can't figure out which side has the printed picture on it?
Well I guess it's possible..
Gay male. I reached the wrong conclusion by reading a journal entry which mentioned marriage; since homosexual marriage is not legal in this country, I assumed it referred to heterosexual marriage. Wish I could retract a post...
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
... in any legal case fighting for IP infrigement it's important to have a case on different levels. Any IP lawyer can tell you that.
:)
If you have a patent, your case will be strong if you can show the court that users are paying you or that commercial violators are regulated (often done by giving them a low cost license).
The fact that these users or companies pay the license itself is an argument in court that the IP owner has a case.
So in this case, it's absolutely imperative that you convince your management NOT to buy this license in the remote possibility that they would consider it.
The doubled-license tactic also seems extortion-like and SCO still did NOT substansiate any claims with hard evidence of copyright and/or patent infrigements.
I'm just waiting for the mega Allen Cox patch that gets rid of any possible violated code all together
>>Does anyone know if SCO is successfully collecting on this? Is money being made?
n se+unix
> My guess is not.
http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+sco+lice
Looks like MS did pay SCO for a license.
Hello SCO,
T hese customers unknowingly received illegal copies of SCO property and1 .1/Serv er/current/SRPMS/
I am a Linux user and have several computers running Linux (1 Server, 4
Desktops and 1 embeded Device). I asked allready the German office of
SCO (infod@sco.com), but got no answer, how to get a license for my
Linux network. I don`t want to call a telephone number in the USA, so
how can I get a license here in Germany ? Thanks for your help.
Just another short question:
You write at http://www.sco.com/scosource/linuxlicense.html
"
many are running critical business applications on Linux." I have
downloaded the Linux kernel source here:
ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.
So I don`t think that I need a license, because SCO is distributing
themself "the illegal copies of SCO property". Do you think, that I am
right ?
Yours sincerly,
.. rewrite linux kernel from scratch, i mean really from scratch. then, no more ip infrigment.
Hell ! for that price, I switch to Windows: Cheaper !
Can't they let SCO dissapear entirely ?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Send them One Million Dollars!.
OK I'm stupid enough to be unable to find it. Would you please point me the source of this?
In a less well-publicized part of the company's licensing terms, announced Tuesday (August 5), SCO said it will charge OEMs $32 per unit for each embedded Linux device they own.
The $32 fee applies to any embedded system regardless of whether it is a Tivo set-top box which uses embedded Linux or some models of the Sharp Zaurus which also use that kernel.
My conclusion: SCO want's to get OEMs for embedded devices to pay $32. It was the EE Times that made up the example of Tivo as an embedded Linux device. I don't see any evidence that SCO is either going to target Tivo specifically, or chase end-users rather than manufacturers.
That was the single best article I have ever read on this topic. If any post ever deserved a "6, Informative", this is is.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
How did you manage to type an o where you meant an a when those letters are on opposite ends of the keyboard? :)
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
So Microsoft now has a lap dog to bark and create FUD all over the market.
Brilliant!
...because I said I'd pay their extortion demand the day Hell froze over, or a goatse.cx link was modded +5, whichever came first!
Dell has a press release that shows that they're not afraid of SCO's claims...
Dupe posts are
Call me Mr. Conspiracy Theory, but this just looks so blantantly like Microsoft is calling the shots. Where is Microsoft worried most about losing out to Linux? Embedded systems OSes and governement servers. Who does SCO harrass next? TiVo and the feds. How much do they want to charge? Roughly the same amount as Microsoft licenses for their OSes on each device.
Please, be a little less obvious, guys.
For some reason, I am surprised that nobody has attempted to hack into SCO and kill their servers or something. Not that I encourage anything like that but I figured they are real close to tramping on "hacker ground" and are eventually going to piss-off a very large group of them... Just seems like something that would have happened ... or perhaps they were smart and are running something like Open BSD and are really locked up tight...
-----
Web Hosting @ HostForADollar.com
Let me be the first to coin that phrase.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
That one of the government agencies that are running Linux and receive a 'pay up or else' notice from SCO is the IRS, or FBI. Talk about putting your head up a lions mouth (or maybe his ass).
Could someone with some accounting savvy interpret this one for me? Let's assume it was Microsoft that got granted this warrant to buy common stock. What ownership of the company does 210K shares represent?
SCO is on crack!
First of all, there's been no proof that they own ANY of the code that is in the linux kernel. What they're doing is equivalent to selling a house down the street that they don't own.
This is entirely fraudulent, and I'm surprised IBM hasn't motioned for a dismissal of claims, or at least tried to have the "offending code" subpoenaed.
If the judge has half a brain, they'll dismiss this case with prejudice, and attorneys general should promptly file criminal charges against SCOX for fraud, racketeering, extortion, and illegal trade practices.
I've never seen a more egregious case of these crimes, ever. It's plain as day, and it's completely unfathomable that this is still even an issue, and the SCO is becoming even more garish in their pursuits.
Either they're going out of business next week and are completely desparate, or their claims have merit. It has to be one or the other. This is not a gray issue - either they are lying, or they are not.
On another note, does anyone know if the "offending functions" have been re-written in 2.6 as of yet?
unless.. whoa! I wanna dual processor Zaurus!
No, that's silly. And so is SCO.
Once again, you guys just don't support your arguments with facts and accuse people of trolling when I'm making valid points.
... a Windows-like GUI is not going to go down easily with these people.
... but the source. Unfortunately, companies like IBM and Red Hat have turned the efforts of thousands of people into $$$. In my opinion that's what's wrong with the world and it makes us look like corn in the field.
Where did IIS vulnerabilities come from? What does that have to do with OS costs? When did I even say I'd be running IIS versus a WebSphere/IBM HTTP (Apache variant) server mix? Is Windows the only OS with root violations? The whole issue of vulnerabilities runs from software to networking hardware. Even mature OSes such as the Cisco IOS fall victim to vulnerabilities. This is a fact of life and no OS is going to resolve this as long as innovation continues in both Linux and Windows.
1. I've run Red Hat and XP on the same machine and received far less perceived performance for things such as boot time, browing, application performance between Office/Open Office. Sorry, but perception is everything and there's no comparison between RH and XP Pro in my opinion. You can draw up all the benchmarks you want to support otherwise but as Mark Twain once said, "There are lies, damn lies and benchmarks."
2. The 4 CPU, 5 User server license for Windows 2003 Server can be had for under $699. That's an $1800 discount over a 4 CPU license for Linux according to SCO pricing; and considering where the Linux SMP code came from they just may win this thing.
3. I'm not a SCO or MS troll, I'm perhaps one of the only voices out here being realistic about this. Crying about the GPL, the community and how this just feels wrong doesn't change the fact that IP may have been misappropiated. Since none of us have seen SCO's argument we have no reason to do anything more than hope at this point. The argument that they surrendered their IP by past contributions could very well be negated by them taking a position that those contributions were without approval by their management (e.g. a malicious employee). The head not knowing what the hand doing doesn't mean they've lost their IP.
4. You're telling me Suzy Office Worker who has used Windows and MS Office her whole life is going to absorb the Linux OS and Open Office for her workflow in one day after years of Windows? You haven't worked with these people, supported them or done technical support obviously. Windows benefits from absorbsion in the market, and Wine
5. I believe your statement about nobody staying on top for ever, but it has less to do with the company and more to do with absorbtion. There are becoming less and less reasons to by a new OS or productivity suite because there is less innovation in both. The real paradigm shift will be when PCs truly become appliances with fixed purposes. I think embedded Linux can really win here. I'm not a fan of Win 2K embedded nor Pocket PC 2003.
6. Any enterprise would evaluate a potentially powerful platform such as Linux, but is unlikely to use either Linux or Windows for Enterprise Systems. That market still belongs to the HPs and IBMs of the world and that is unlikely to change anytime soon.
To me open source is a fabulous opportunity for people who could never afford a J2EE platform (JBoss), Office Productivity Suite (Open Office), real OS (Linux) to have access to not only these capabilities
This has to be a way of slowing the Linux Freight Train down.And the Open Source Software Community Tarctor Trailer. Both have been picking up speed the last few years and are finally able to deliver the goods, for the GOOD of ALL. SCO/MS are trying to shoot the tires and derail these vehicles. What better way to slow down OSS/LINUX than to make everybody afraid to implement it. I work for IT of our state gov't and me and a few of my co-workers have been trying to find a legit use for Linux since we've been here... Now we'd be afraid to mention it... The longer this drags out the worse it will be for OSS and the better for MS iunless SCO gets made a real shit covered ass of. I love Linux and nobody's gonna tell me I can't use it or try to charge me for it. FY SCO
I always double bag it when I fuck SCO.
Wow. The form 4's are fascinating. They are dumping their stocks faster than a top fuel dragster doing the 1/4 mile. Well I am glad the SEC publishes this for all to read. I wish there wree more mainstream coverage of this. I'd love to hear Bill O'Reilly or Neil Cavuto on foxnews lay into SCO for being the scum of the earth.
...where as near as I can tell, the town tells you "ok, we dont want you here anymore, so youre gone...you have ten years to recoup any losses, but at the end, you leave and we get your properties." at least thats how I understand it works (Southampton, NY wants to do this to the local clubs...guess they dont understand the clubs are the only reason this place is so "hoppin" in the summer..). Anybody who knows better, feel free to correct me.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
SCO's board are idiots. Let's see:
* Take on the epitome of a blue chip corporation.
* Piss off people who wrote 1/2 of the utilities and software used on unix systems
* Take a dump on Sharp, one of the world's largest consumer electronics companies.
* Finally, attempt to hold up the US Government.
I really hope SCO enjoys the same treatment that other enemies of the government have recieved like, say Afghanastan or Iraq.
-- $G
I don't know about tivo series 2, but I'm pretty sure my tivo runs a 2.0 kernel. Their case is about 2.4.
I think the government should investigate SCO for trying to monopolize Linux. It appears that they are going after any else that makes Linux perhaps they have aspirations to the be the one and only. I'm tired of hearing about who they are suing today. It's become a joke more than anything.
I'd like to give the big FU to SCO and their shitty products can we get RMS to drive out there and kick their asses?
This may be exactly what BSD needs. More users and developers will shift their interest to an operating system which doesn't have all these question marks and controversy surrounding it.
Regardless, the leadership at SCO must be held personally liable for the slander they've perpetrated against Linux. It's hurting the future of the os and endangering the livelihoods of everyone involved with it. It's absolutely disgusting.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
(define (.sig) (cons 'my (list 'other 'car 'is 'a 'cdr)))
...)) to (list 'my ...). of course your method is valid, but (list) alone is undoubtedly clearer.
:)
you could shorten (cons 'my (list
you could implement (list) like so:
(define (list . elts) (list2 elts))
(define (list2 l)
(if (eq? l #f)
#f
(cons (car l) (list2 (cdr l)))))
so you see that (cons 'my (list 'other 'car 'is 'a 'cdr)) is just the first run through (list 'my 'other 'car 'is 'a 'cdr).
of course (list) could be written (define (list . elts) elts) but that's cheating.
"The directors, employees, and stockholders of the Ford Motor Company were arrested for RICO criminal conspiracy to commit felony. Their products have been used in thousands of bank robberies, kidnappings, and other heinous crimes for over 70 years. This history of felonious intent is clear from the long record of criminal praise and adulation for Ford products. No less than the murderous Bonnie and Clyde publicly praised Ford products in the 1930s for their power, speed, and reliability in fleeing the police, and the use of Ford products in criminal activities continue to this day."
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
Does anyone else think that SCO is falling deeper and deeper into their unreality sphere these days?
SCO needs to remember this:
Parasite Rule #1: DONT KILL THE HOST
Because SCO is acting in a way that will destroy their ability to collect future revenues if the courts rule in their favor, this whole thing probably is not about licensing anyway. Their pricing for licenses is about three times higher than their competition (MS)
-- $G
Seems like there's been a progression through the first three: We ignored SCO when they were first bringing this up. We laughed at them when they started asking for crazy licensing fees. Now we're fighting them with lawsuits.
It'll be fun to sit back and see whether #4 happens or not.
Er, that would be SCO winning. Is that what you meant?
Series 1 TiVos do run a 2.1 kernel, however, the series 2 boxes run 2.4. (for native USB support)
Death to SCO.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
"I'll tell ya where...at home, a'washin' its tights!"
As always, where is Batman when you need him?
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
What was this modded Funny? Hell, the way things are going with these asshats at SCO, I wouldn't be surprised if this were their next press release. Yeah, it is a ridiculous statement, but that seems to be their forte.
I really have to wonder if they are being paid to just be embarassing dickheads by some large, Linux-hating corporation. I used to think I was paranoid until the RIAA started extorting money from college kids for writing a search engine, SCO threatens everyone from IBM to Linux users to the government, and Britney Spears is doing PSAs for "artists" rights.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Stop it SCO!... All this laughing is starting to hurt!
chown -R us
try this SCO:
RICO
Isn't what SCO doing (and the RIAA to an extent) fall into the legal catagory of "Racketeering" I dug through the Hamlin law library and this looks like racketeering to me. Any legal types out there care to clarify?
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
In the long run, SCO may be doing a big favor for Linux and GPL. Once other companies see how SCO has alienated themselves from EVERYONE, they will be more hesitant to bring future frivolous lawsuits against Linux..
Not to mention, the GPL will have a publicized verification of its validity.. You can't buy press like that.
Developed and implemented first at NASA. Let's see SCO reconcile that
Is this an old 601/604 model? Or is it a G3?
I would assume that an application like this requires SIMD fp operations.
Is it 32 or 64 bit?
This could be very bad because the US government is notoriously stupid, so they might agree to go ahead and pay the fees which would lend a great deal of credibility to SCO's claims.
However, it might turn out great because the government is also notoriously greedy and they might come out against SCO in full force if SCO attempts to extort a large sum of money from them.
Smeghead every day of the week.
If you are mad at SCO then tell them personally by clicking here and filling out their feed back form.
But when Fidel Castro did that (nationalised a few Mafia bars in Havana), the USA got the hump with him for 50 years.
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030807/tech_ibm_sco_1.html
NEW YORK, Aug 7 (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - News) said on Thursday it filed a counter-claim against SCO Group Inc. (NasdaqSC:SCOX - News), which sued IBM in March over intellectual property rights.
A spokeswoman for Armonk, New York-based IBM, the world's largest computer company, said the counter-claim was filed in a Utah court.
SCO, based in Lindon, Utah, sued IBM for $1 billion in March, charging IBM had taken parts of the Unix code and introduced them into Linux, violating SCO's intellectual property rights.
Linux is an operating system supported by a network of programmers who share software codes and can be obtained for free, making it popular with companies looking to cut costs
Not much detail on it yet....
..what geeks are still working at SCO? What do THEY have to say about all this nonsense? What do they feel is the right or wrong answer? More importantly, WHY THE HELL ARE YOU STILL WORKING THERE?
The easy solution to SCO is for each and every individual working there who has a clue to find a job elsewhere. I think enough of us are managers to help that happen.
This bullshit has to stop, and stop soon. All this is doing to me is demonstrating how ludicrous the entire market is if SCO can get away with this. Imagine if they did this against Microsoft -- Microsoft would smack them down so fast it's not even funny.
My reality check bounced.
According to SCO, if you have a TiVo set-top box, or those models of Sharp Zaurus which use Linux, someone now owes them $32...
Um. Microsoft's WebTV efforts would certainly benefit from any legal or licensing problems Tivo might run into. And Microsoft's arguments against cost of Linux ownership would certainly be helped if Linux cost the same or even more than XP. It really is odd how each of SCO's actions seems to benefit Microsoft so directly.
I can't help thinking that McBride's attack on the GPL yesterday sounds exactly like what Ballmer used to say, before he discovered that such things made people angry... at him.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
This is what I sent:
Do I need a license for using Linux?
Do you have any white papers detailing the licensing issues involved with Linux? We are thinking of deploying a Linux server. Are licenses per server, corporate or per CPU? I've heard only some kernel versions are covered. Would it be possible to remove kernel code to eliminate the SCO property and thus have a Linux version that did not incur additional license fees? If so, what code would be involved? Does or will SCO make similar claims regarding MAC OS X or any of the BSD variants? The whole issue is very murky at the moment, and we're looking for some clarification on the matter.
I'll post any replies I get in my journal.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
How can a company continue unchecked, demanding money from a product they haven't yet established to be theirs! Its like saying that since my name is Max, I want $19.99 for each use of it! Pay up now Nissan!
Free speech is getting expensive...
Okay, at this point I think they are just juicing up the story so they can get a better deal on the made for TV movie movie that will come out of this in a couple of years. I wonder if "Pirates of SCO" would be a good working title...
SCO doggie
IBM has bigger bite
SCO eaten
"a desperate gambit by proprietary software interests to kill OSS before it kills them"
Come to think of it, Microsoft announced that it has a big Linux work center on July 31, and just a few days later, on Aug 5, SCO wants $699 per Linux deployment. Hmmmm.... so, after some reflection and soul-searching, Microsoft announces that it will work to remain compliant by respecting the principles of honorable business practice with regard to IP, and hands SCO 10,000x$699, and a boatload of legitimacy in the eyes of Joe BestBuy. SCO, now flush with cash, starts suing everybody in sight to prevent them from using Linux without paying. As the cases drag on, SCO loudly trumpets that Linux isn't free, that it, in fact will cost you more than WinXP.
And every time they run low on cash to pay the lawyers and the ad agencies, Microsoft "liscences" another 10,000 copies of Linux. MS's hands are clean, as it's SCO that's doing the dirty work. By the time the FTC or Justice Department investigate and try to stop it, Linux will be persona-non-grata in the commercial world; kept alive on the fringes of enterprise computing, not dead, but driven underground with a bad reputation as a legal quagmire.
We need a robot from the future to come back in time to save us from this nightmare.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Ok. Now I'm confused. I thought that SCO was claiming some sort of IP infringement, right? Ok, so what is it? It doesn't seem like it can be trade secrets because they willingly released source code for Linux 2.4. It doesn't seem like it can be copyright because then they'd have to show us the offending code. It's clearly not trademark. So far as I'm aware, TiVo and Sharp are saying that their boxes run Linux something not trademarked to SCO.
So is it patent infringement? Well if it is then how can they possibly sue TiVo *AND* Sharp. What patent are TiVo *AND* Sharp infringing considering how remarkably different those two devices are. How many people do you think will be doing NUMA on either of those devices? Something that SCO has indicated is related to their polymorphic claims.
I just don't get what SCO is claiming. I'm GLAD that Red Hat is sueing them, maybe SCO will be forced to put some things on the table to try and backup their claim.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Excuse me while I wipe away the tears of laughter...
Sorry, I'm back now.
47 Meelion Dollars!?! I'm the cat!
Therefore, IBM cannot indemnify anyone against linux use because it's not their product, they didn't sell it to anyone, they can't legally offer protection for someone else's product!
They've poked too many big fish in the eye to avoid having a whole heap of crap dumped on them.
Hmmmm... Did you mean to say a whole heap of carp dumped on them?
Another thought crossed my mind, but I don't know how effective it would be:
A few score of those going for the next few days might give them something to think about. It might also be interesting to work down a list of sensitive email addresses (e.g. SCO's own internal addresses) and see what eventuated.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
No, 'cause then it would be a DOS slash rather than a Linux slash.
Rick (going back to his good old Republican Windows 2000)
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
From: MAILER-DAEMON@mail.ut.caldera.com
To: despammed
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mail.ut.caldera.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
<cliao@sco.com>:
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)
--- Below this line is a copy of the message.
Return-Path: despammed
Received: (qmail 28797 invoked by uid 84); date
Received: from despammed by clavin.ut.caldera.com
Received: from c7ns3.center7.com (HELO mail.center7.com) by mail.ut.caldera.com
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Received: by alder.center7.com (Postfix)
To: cliao@sco.com, regb@sco.com
Subject: Licence query
From: despammed
X-originating-ip: despammed
Message-Id: despammed
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2003 08:27:04 -0600 (MDT)
This email is from the company feedback form.
COUNTRY: Australia
CONCERNING: Sales
MESSAGE:
Exactly what versions of the Linux kernel do you say I should buy a licence for? Is your IP in any of the 2.3.* kernels leading up to 2.4? If not, which is the earliest version of 2.4 with your IP in it?
regb@sco.com may still work. How many spammer databases d'you think you can get it into in the next two hours? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I agree that this is an attack on the OSS movement but I'm not sure it started as a conscious one. Whatever are Darl's motivations, his actions can be catastrophic to the widespread adoption of open source products.
Corporate execs are starting to realize that, since "anybody" can contribute, open source projects are exposed to IP litigation. This creates uncertainty/risk, which decision makers tend to avoid.
Now the open source community has to adapt (it is good at adaptation). We have to find and implement ways to make sure OSS distributions are truly free.
I also think that our law makers should protect the common good by making IP holders more involved and proactive in protecting their assets. Like setting a relatively short time period after which "published" open source code becomes public. I mean, if I owned some IP regarding a particular technology, I'd spend some time looking at major open source projects working on similar technologies to make sure nobody's stealing from me. I thinks that is a normal behaviour to expect from any "owner" - property a not only a right, it's also a responsability.
I am not in favor of governement intervention, but a clearer legal status and protection for open source code might be necessary for OSS to become mainstream (after the SCO FUD-attack) by limiting the risk for corporations.
SCO must be doing something Very worthwhile!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just wait on this one, let GW get advice to stomp the evil SCO. Hmm, who controls the patent office? Who controls the judicial system? Who can revoke every single patent back to the beginning of time? Who can by some process of emminent domain declare the whole thing null and void. If they thought jousting with IBM was pricking the elephant, wait thill they get some bored civil servant with half-a-brain to cancel the whole basis for the case and probably make them pay to clean-up the mess too.
"I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve"
by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, of the Japanese Imperial Navy.
I don't know who did that translation (presumably the original was in Japanese).
or let them go after this: http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
yahoo's Insider Sales is particularly revealing...
everyone's selling!
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
If I understand things properly, common stock gives you a financial interest in the company, but no control. Common stock can't vote, but can only collect dividends.
So what this means is that if MS figures that the stock will be worth more than $2.00 (or more precisely, that it can sell the stock for more than $2), then it can buy a lot of it and turn around and try to resell it. Or if it figures that the long term profitability will be high enough, it can buy the stock and hold it for financial gain. But this doesn't give it any control (except that it can file stockholder's law suits).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Their stock seems to be heading for the deck as we type.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
But it sure can be fought with it. Face it, there's no logical argument asides from the judicial hammer that is going to get SCO to stop yanking everyone's chain, but it doesn't mean that the public can't cause them some mischief and mayhem in the meantime. Most /.ers aren't going to have anything to do with the final fallout of the ruling, but they can each contribute in their own juvenile, petty and thoroughly satisfying way.
And following normal population deviance, there should be normal number of gays among them. :)
I'm not sure that 'population deviance' means what you think it means
...have to be those that came up with the idea.
I don't use SMP-OR RCU! In fact, I will now stick up my big, meaty, wholesome finger at SCO and ignore their whiny nastynesses!
I think we should change the topic icon for these stories. How about a jack in the box...but the "jack" looks like Darl McBride and has a Redeemer. THAT would kick ass.
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
Yes try to take money from the government. See how that helps you with your litagation.
the hell!?
Shouldnt SCO be forced to PROVE their infringment claims before trying to charge everyone and their grandmother using Linux for a license? They've not even shown a court their code in question yet, have they?
I assume that others find this completely, utterly ridiculous?
I wonder..
If we get one person to license the code, then since they can "sub license" the code.. they give all the code to EVERYONE free.
has to be cheaper and end all this crap once and for all.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
Dave... as in from the Amiga ? I still have teashirts from your networking book!
"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."- Friedrich Nietzsche
lossen up d00d!
teh guyz post pwnzed SCO!
maby ingles isnt his langguge........ its not like most teh ppl on teh web is a ingles speeker neway!!1
-
OK, I've just realized I've been reading forums for MMO games way too much lately. What's depressing is I've seen a lot worse abuses of the English language in those forums than my parody above. =)
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
But an important attribute is missing from the post.
Goodlooking.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5060965.html?tag= fdfeed
BM said that four SCO software packages violate four of IBM's patents. The patents cover a data compression technique, a method of navigating among program menus using options arranged in a graphical tree, a method for verifying that an electronic message was received and a method for monitoring computing systems linked in a cluster.
Ahh.. The mind what a wonderful trap!
I think that we need to specify that when a IP holder makes this sort of claim, they must expose precisely what the "stolen" IP is, so that it can be excised. This is only fair, to allow the users of the target software (in this case) to stop the potential infringement, and to allow their attorneys to assess the risk involved if they don't stop using the alleged IP.
That's what is so unjust about this whole thing.
How good are the SCO claims? We don't know.
What code do they claim is infringing on their IP? We don't know.
That's not fair. This is a situation where the government is uniquely suited to ensuring that IP holders have to play fair. If we can get this codified as law, then Open Source developers and users have a chance to A) deal with future threats like this and B) show that they can deal with threats like this better than closed source can.
Imagine if SCO was making this claim against Windows. Even if they exposed the infringing portions, noone but MS could do anything about it. I don't have the option of recompiling Windows without the offending code.
BTW, That's one thing I would point out to Joe Public when explaining this issue - if this ever happens to Windows, we'll really be hurting, because we must rely on MS to fix the problem.
Say, how CAN SCO go after the end users? If this was about Windows, they would just go after MS for fees, wouldn't they? What says they can go after end users, rather than just the developers?
Really? You do?
hmmm...
mind hookin me up?
Have them email me: boarder@godineedadate.org
Or you can just tell me where they hang out.
IANAL, but I play one on
One calls himself Loser and the other calls hinself Fu$%^@*d.
You guys need to get a better opinion of yourselves.
What ownership of the company does 210K shares represent?
SCO has 12,262,003 shares outstanding as of March 28, 2003. So 210,000 shares is 1.7%.
It was Sun, rather than Microsoft, who got the warrant.
BTW, the guy who was talking about stock that receives dividends but doesn't vote -- that would be preferred stock. Preferred stock doesn't vote, but they are guaranteed to get their dividends paid before common stock gets any dividends paid. They are "preferred" in that sense.
This is a warrant to buy common stock. Common stock does vote, and it is last in line to get paid when the company pays out money. If I recall correctly, the order is: taxes, employees, creditors, senior bonds, junior bonds, preferred stock, common stock. That generally only matters when the company is insolvent and has to choose which people to pay because they can't pay everyone.
Man, if you don't even know what a short is, STFU. Obviously the guy doesn't have shares to sell. Short Selling and Put Options are mechanisms for trying to profit on a stock's future collapse. Like SCOX.
Sign the anti SCO petition http://www.petitiononline.com/yama01/petition.html
If SCO owns parts of Linux that it claims are propritary wouldn't that violate the GPL that SCO and others have been distributing basically "tainted" code?
...
So if SCO actually proved their case, I'm thinking the FSF would have to chase them down for violating the GPL. You can't just make the GPL invalid, everyone really has 3 choices.
1. Cease distribution of all Linux.
2. Remove offending code.
3. Place offending code in GPL.
You cannot just ignore the license that the entire Linux kernel is under and start demanding payment. Or can you?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
A hard-hitting technology summit showcasing the technology and business solutions of The SCO Group and its Strategic Business Partners. August 17 - 19, 2003 in Las Vegas, NV. (MGM Grand Hotel)
--
I'm located in europe, so i will not be able to PROTEST in las vegas, but i ask every american geek to go to las vegas and PROTEST during their 'SCOForum'. Do it, please!
Geeks unite and let your voice be heard! Make this the biggest geek-protest-march ever, unlike the small protest at the SCO offices last month, complaining on /. does _not_ help.
Somebody get a boatload of Knoppix, Debian, etc... cd's over there and hand them out to everybody and there dog! screw their lawsuit, screw sco during their 'forum' with the one thing they're fighting against.
Enough already with this daily ongoing IP-FUD. Time to fight back!
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Sorry, my mistake. I know what a short is, I just didn't clue in that the particular transaction he described was a short. Never heard of a Put Option tho.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Now that you've had your 15 minutes of fame on Slashdot you're destined to be a household name like Wil Weaton or Cowboy Neal.
*BSD. I don't understand what all this hemming and hawing about Linux is all about. There's another free OS out there that's just as good if not better.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
For the sake of completeness here is a snippet of what McBride has said taken from a transcript posted in this slashdot thread involving the SCO conference call of Aug 5: "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. ... important debate ...proprietary or communal property according to Richard Stallman's vision."
I believe I saw a few other mentions of targeting Stallman in some other statements by SCO execs, but I can't find them right now, however the above is more than enough to support my main point.
So how does reallyfuckingsucks.com feel about themselves?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
...bite my shiny plastic peanut.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
SCO is going after the US Government for merely using Linux. When are they going to attempt to go after CHINA, who actually produces, distributes, and modifies their own Distro?? That's what I want to see... The US government has to stop and think of some sort of plausible explaination for their actions (no matter how cracked it may sound), whereas China, with the entire world watching, would just run them over with a tank!!
Go on, SCO, I dare you! Just hop on over there, and try to get your "license" fee from all the Red Flag users and contributors! Otherwise, shut up, fuck off, and kill yourselves now. Either you go after EVERYONE right now, or just suck farts from corpses.
Either way, you've lost everything.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/
All Your Base All Belongs To SCO.
my zig ate my sig
These slimebags remind me of a late-stage rabid animal, snarling and snapping at anything that it can. I also remember that there are very few survivors of this disease once symptoms appear...
No one actually CARES about whether or not we "get" to "keep" the alleged SCO code in the kernel. If the OSS community hears what it actually IS, I guarantee within the day at least 10 patches will be out that work better than the supposed SCO code ever did. You kill two birds with one stone like that.
+++ATH0
1. M$ sees the linux phantom menace
2. M$ talks to SCO - "if you help me with my linux problem, I will license your technology"
3. SCO agrees and starts suing
4. Weeks later good guy M$ publicly announces it is licensing SCO technology
5. Companies start hearing the legal noise, and opt to keep with M$ for a while longer until the SCO case terminates (10 years??).
In the meantime M$ keeps doing business as usual, since big corps are afraid of any legal action and OSS companies loose business and overall OSS interest declines.
Anybody would like to comment on this?
Besides, being on everybody's shit list is a much more elite 'honor' than just being on somebody's shit list.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
you know....that sounds about right. (a history review on /., who'd would've thunk it?)
Either way, I thought Churchill said something similar to that effect, grinning.
It is what I meant. I don't mean fun in a spiteful sense either--purely in a "wow this is damn interesting" sense.
1) First SCO Annoys You.
2) Then they Mock your Business Model.
3) Then they Sue you.
4) Then ???
The first Slashdotter to bark "5) Profit!" gets poked in the eye. The "Profit!" option ownly applies to stealing underwear.
hello i totally agree with you you hit it right on the Head. not conspiracy but fact!
The scofflaw SCO scolds all linux scouts, scoffing the SCOed IBM scope
Scoot, SCO, before we you scorch you, because we scorn you!
Oh jeez. It was Portia who said the "quality of mercy" stuff. This ought to settle it in, ahem, any case. hehehe
You mustn't take life so seriously. It would be a joyless world that punishes someone for day dreaming illegal activities. Who hasn't thought of smacking some deserving fool around? What matters is whether or not people act on them. I bet you're one of those bosses everyone has those day dreams about.
A thief's arguably better than a sadistic fuck like you.
There is a difference between a 'thief and a sadistic fuck like me'. One involves a deserving victim, and the other involves an innocent victim. If someone were mugged in an alley, who would you not feel bad for: Ken Lay or some old lady?