Slashdot Mirror
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."
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*
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.
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 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.
SCO's other option is to try and compete with Linux with OpenServer and UnixWare, both of which suck. This will be especially difficult considering the fact that SCO has almost no R&D personnel.
The fact of the matter is that SCO's tactics are actually working. Before the lawsuit SCOX stock hovered around $1.00/share, and now it's at $12.00/share. Canopy Group has already used SCO's high stock price to rid themselves of Vultus. SCO essentially paid top-dollar (then some) for Vultus in stock (mostly to Canopy Group) this stock was then cashed for more than $3 million dollars. The kicker, Canopy Group owns SCO as well. In essence the Canopy Group took $3 million of investor's money and bought out one of their other worthless companies, putting the proceeds in their own pocket. Not to mention all of the SCO executives that have been selling their personal shares while the stock is up.
SCO has years before the case even goes to trial. In the meantime they simply threaten the world and watch their stock price go up. Canopy Group and SCO executives can use the inflated stock price in a myriad of ways, and since the trial won't happen for years there is very little chance of SEC involvement. SCO management simply has to pretend like they believe they have a case.
Not to mention the fact that the government oftentimes loses court cases. Juries apparently don't mind picking the pockets of Uncle Sam. In the meantime, it's good press. Investors love the idea of some company dipping their hands in Uncle Sam's pockets.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
You don't understand the psychology here. (And yes, that's a good thing.)
/. is buying heavily into with all the announcements, but also for good reason). I hope there are now some legal remedies for false boosting on stocks and if you get hosed--maybe illegal announcements of intellectual property could lead to a civil case by stock holders.
SCO *really* thinks they are right or *really* thinks they have nothing to lose. The indication is the rapidity of their announcements--it's gone schoolyard--nah nah, nah nah, nah.
One PR to counter another announcement. The Red Hat announcement got them, SCO responds, SCO throws in some ridiculous licensing terms, SuSE came back with RH support, SCO annouces expanded targets including TiVO.
Look, these people are idiots and still look like idiots even if they manage to win--but they're employing hostile business tactics that work--they're boosting their own stock so their wealth on paper goes up. If they reach settlement with IBM, the stock skyrockets and they're richer. If they don't reach settlement with IBM or anyone else, it goes to court. During the court case, it will become very clear whether they are going to win or lose, and they'll be on the front lines with their cell phones to their brokers telling them whether to short the stock or hold.
If they lose the court case, they lose very little on paper--their initial stock purchases were worth shit to begin with. It's a PR move (which
Damn, SCO's actions are distasteful at best...and I really dislike the GPL and most people involved with it.
My guess is not. The way that theis scam is running, I'd expect that the first time they actually got a cheque from this (at least from a fortune-1000 company) they'd be pushing that out all of the news services. 'cause it would give their claims more credibility.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
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.