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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."
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.
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.
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
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html visit their webpage and tell them were they can stick their license fees.
Obama = Socialism.
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!
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!
Not to mention the fact that the Series 1 Tivos use a 2.2 kernel, and thus would not be subject to any action even if SCO's claims are true. SCO only alleges copied code in 2.4.x kernels. The article made no mention of Tivo, I guess the submitter made the assumption that Tivo would be subject to this.
Enigma
The original tivo code base was forked from Linux v2.1! Yes, v2.1. The series2 (and maybe everything now) is based from v2.4.4. I seriously doubt Tivo has anything to worry about as they've made numerous changes to the kernel (scheduling and I/O systems.) Plus, they can always tell SCO to kiss their [censored] and return to 2.1.whatever.
As much as I hate to be accountable for inciting violence, I think it's time to call for a jehad. Someone go tell Milton, SCO has his stapler!
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!
From the article:
"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."
It seems strange that TiVo would've gone with 2.1 instead of 2.2, but that's what they did...
bash-2.02# cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.1.24-TiVo-2.5 (build@buildmaster12) (gcc version 2.8.1) #8 Wed May 8 15:38:27 PDT 2002
bash-2.02#
According to this page, TiVo switched to 2.4 for Series 2. They most likely did this for the USB support (plug a USB Ethernet dongle into a Series 2 and it'll "phone home" over your broadband connection).
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Actually, it did: "The $32 fee applies to any embedded system regardless of whether it is a Tivo set-top box which uses embedded Linux or..."
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.
Here's some phone numbers you can call to tell them how you feel: Call John Medved at 1-801-932-5404. Or, you can leave a message at 1-801-932-5800 if you call after 5:30 PM (SCO time - e.g. bogus-time). Finally, call a customer service representative at 1-800-726-8649 and say you want to buy a license for Linux. Give them a fake credit card number or whatever, and a fake name. But call from a payphone if you call the 800 # since they can see your caller ID info even if your phone is blocked if you call an 800 #. Use a dial-around for the long distance #'s or a phone card or do that *72 or whatever it is thing... Have fun!
Er. I really didn't realize the trouble that would cause, apologies. Me? Gay. I just had to say it before slashdot turned into a show on Bravo.
I do know several nice girls at Cal Tech though!
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
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.
According to SCO's 2nd Quarter 10-Q released on June 13, 2003 they have accumulated a deficit of $202,517,000.
Here are some interesting tidbits from the quarterly:
(1)The Company's revenue has historically been from two sources: (i) product license revenue, primarily from product sales to resellers and end users, and royalty revenue from product sales by source code OEMs; and (ii) service and support revenue, primarily from providing software updates, support and education and consulting services to end users. During the quarter ended April30, 2003, the Company recognized its first licensing revenue from its intellectual property initiative, SCOsource.
(2)Pursuit of the litigation against IBM and, potentially, others will be costly, and management expects the costs for legal fees could be substantial. In addition, the Company 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. The Company anticipates 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 the Company's 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 the Company's position in the marketplace and our results of operations. The ultimate outcome or potential effect on the Company's results of operations or financial position is not currently known or determinable.
[..then you get to the 'Oh and by the way we dont make any money' section]
(3)Risk Factors
We do not have a history of profitable operations.
The April30, 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.