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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 $699 for each copy of Linux that they use."
...and fuck SCO!
SCO is demanding 5$ 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...)
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."
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
[... 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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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 $13 from anyone who has a shirt or sticker with the word Linux on it.... film at 11:00..
I'd say it's time for the esteemed Attourney General John Ashcroft to prosecute SCO and its executives for Racketeering. In the 20s, they used guns. In this century, they use unsubstantiated IP claims. But either way, they're demanding 'protection money' they aren't entitled to. Maybe we can re-open Alcatraz and put Darl there as a tourist attraction.
For charges related to purchasing alcohol based screen wipes due to excessive coffee stains splattered on computer monitor.
Ya know, the economy is pretty bad right now, for everyone. But you can't get law-suit happy when your profits go down. I don't know who is worse, the RIAA or SCO. They keep this up, the DOJ will set them straight in time. Meanwhile, The Borg are loving every minute of this, keeps businesses in the Borg Collective for a while longer, that is until people start to THINK for themselves again. Of course, there is always Apple and Mac OS X. The best of both worlds: able to run open-source software with a single recompile for X Windows, able to leap tall Wall Street needs by running M$ Office as the business world requires.
WHACK!
SCO is 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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'...
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.
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.
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.
There isn't any. However, SCO going after the government should negate most of the influence that SCO had via Orrin Hatch who's son is one of their lawyers. Since this is an election year for Senator Hatch, I'm quite sure he'd rather keep a low profile over ties to a company looking to extort public money, especially after allegations of his being "bought" by the pharmaceutical giants.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
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
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."
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!
Or it could backfire on all of us, and they could simply hand over the cash without a thought.
Thus, legitimizing SCO's case even further.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
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.
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.
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.
And Mr Clinton did something? Oh, I forgot about the interns.
Never mind.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
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.
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.
i imagine each idea would start like this:
(...bong-water bubble sounds...)
(...pause...)
(...exhale...)
"Heeheehee... dude, check this one out, you are gonna freak:..."
(...stifled chortling...)
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
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.com? The one running Apache on Linux?
They'll probably sue themselves next. There's not many targets left anyway.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
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! :-)
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.
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.
I think someone needs a hug.
And a sense of humor.
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
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 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.
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
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...
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!
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.
" 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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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
Phone or email your local SCO office: http://www.sco.com/worldwide/
I think they hold the license to /usr/bin/finger!
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
(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 |
...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
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?
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?
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!
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.
Why? I've already seen goatse.cx!
> Very quickly, SCO is becoming a household word. A four letter word.
Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft isn't keeping SCO on life support for any reason other than the fact that Darl McBride gives us someone to hate more than Bill Gates.
> As far as I'm concerned, SCO can go SCO itself.
Preach it, brother. I never thought I'd see a company hated more than Microsoft, but McBride and SCO aren't worthy to lick the sweat from Ballmer's armpits. Every day I read the financial press. And every day I just. don't. get. it.
Microsoft vs. DOJ - we all like to bash Billgatus, but two people could sit down over a beer and debate whether the courts are the right way to deal with monopolies, or which practices of Microsoft's were "illegal" and which were merely "hardball".
RAMBUS vs. Micron, Infineon, Dramurai - hey, at least some of RAMBUS' claims were plausible, and even if they played marginally dirty pool at the IEEE meetings, two people could sit down over a beer and have a legitimate debate over who invented DDR, and if the patent might also legitimately apply to SDRAM.
SCO vs. Whoever They Sued This Hour - closest thing to a debate you can have here is you and your buddy just keep drinking beer after beer, going "What the fuck? What the fucking fuck fuck?!"
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.
They've also started a hotline. 1-800-382-5633. Tell 'em what you think.
Is it a coincidence that their hotline number is 1-800-fuck-off?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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
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.
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.
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"
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?
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.
Awww crap!
This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
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.
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 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.
Obviously MS had an ulterior motive in legitimizing SCO's claims by happily paying those fees. That way everyone can't call them the bad guys if SCO manages to suck the life out of Linux.
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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...
(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.
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....
...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!
"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.
yahoo's Insider Sales is particularly revealing...
everyone's selling!
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer