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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."
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.
Given the history of SCO in this matter so far did you really think that they were going to stick to only attempting to extort those running Linux for commercial purposes? Everyone knows a software company wants those nice government contracts, so why wouldnt SCO try to claim they already have them and just havent been paid.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
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
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 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.
$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?
Surely 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.
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.
Last time I checked, TiVo used one of the 2.1.something kernels. The underlying hardware (in a Series 1, anyway) is a single PowerPC 403GCX running at (IIRC) 53 MHz...less power than an old PowerMac 6100. Out of the box, it's equipped with 16 megs of RAM (but you can bump that to 32 if you're good with a soldering iron).
I strongly doubt that TiVo used any of the technologies that $CO claims it owns (no SMP, no RCU, etc). Then again, $CO doesn't seem to be constrained too much by the truth.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Has no-one else noticed the SCO exec's dumping their stock over the weekend?
They know they'll now be crushed out of existence by this move - hence the selling of stock.
This is nothing but simple stock fraud.
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
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?
It really does seem like they want to piss the world off. My boyfriend, who would simply roll his eyes when I went on a rant about the evils of SCO and the threat to Linux, is now completely outraged and wanting to give money to lawyers. If I only I had realized sooner that "Linux=Tivo" would convince nongeeks of the severity of SCO's unethical behavior...
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
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.
Just Cisco? Try Sharp, HP, and several other multi-billion dollar companies that are currently shipping Electronics devices based on Linux 2.4... If, as Inder Singh claims, this "is extortion based on fraud" then I think it's about time to start pressing criminal charges against Mr. McBride. If nothing else, he is deliberately attempting to depress the stock valuations of many of the largest companies in the US, through fraudulent claims in the media. Doesn't that subject him to arrest for securities fraud?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html visit their webpage and tell them were they can stick their license fees.
Mod parent up, and this is an easier link. That was cool. They just got a request for Linux licensing requirements from Usama in Afghanistan, and they thanked me for it. Slashdotting their chosen extortion response system seems like a Good Thing. :)
Except for this guy, Kevin Skousen... he's exercising an option at $10, if I read this right. What sort of upside does he see and what color is the sky in his world?!
/. journal here in a few minutes... who had what # of shares when, etc. Otherwise, it's too much work to dig out a macro-trend for most people to waste all this effort tracking individual SEC filings.
Incidentally, can someone point me to a better spot that ir.sco.com to see 'SCO exec's dumping their stock over the weekend'... most edgar-ish sites seem to be a month or more behind in reporting compared to this page? Is the 24th the weekend AC meant?!
Hmm... I despise SCO enough that I'm finally found something journal-worthy... Details for the masses off http://ir.sco.com/edgar.cfm on my
PS: I propose a different kind of DDOS to the sco pages... lots of legalese asking for clarification of license terms for OpenLinux, FreeDos, BSD, or anything else. The tougher the question, the better. I suspect this is a method (overwork) that Shakespeare would feel applied when he said: First thing, let's kill all the Lawyers. (Henry IV or V?)
--
Advaitavedanta, and don't you forget it.
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? Do they get to sue for extortion? What happens to the SCO execs?
Many questions, few answers.
.
" 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.
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
...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
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?
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
I actually took the time to fill this out with proper information. Here is a copy of my question. Hopefully they do respond, but I'm not holding my breath.
To whom it may concern,
I am currently running a non-commercial webserver using linux. It is currently running a vanilla 2.4 kernel with no NUMA, SMP, and/or RCU options compiled. The physical server is located outside of the U.S.
Do I need to purchase a licence for my machine, as I do not have support for the big sticking points as outlined by Mr. Darl McBride? If so, could you please inform me of which portions of the kernel I may not compile, as to avoid infringing upon your intellectual property. I do not need specific source code segments, merely listing which kernel modules infringe upon your property will suffice.
Thank you
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!