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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 $699 for each copy of Linux that they use."
SCO is demanding 5$ 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.
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*
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!
...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.
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?
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.
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.
Yep, they're about as refreshing as the Iraqi Information Minister! :)
I think they've eaten too many Mentos. They're way too Fresh(tm). They may have, in fact, overdosed on Mentos. At least, that's what the coronor's report will read about 2 hours after the government actually takes notice of this.
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..
For charges related to purchasing alcohol based screen wipes due to excessive coffee stains splattered on computer monitor.
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.
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.
Is this significant?
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/s/scox.html
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.
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 own a TiVo ... and fuck SCO!
on a regular basis?
I hope you didn't catch anything, god knows who SCO has been sleeping with.
~foooo
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?
SCO's other option is to try and compete with Linux with OpenServer and UnixWare, both of which suck. This will be especially difficult considering the fact that SCO has almost no R&D personnel.
The fact of the matter is that SCO's tactics are actually working. Before the lawsuit SCOX stock hovered around $1.00/share, and now it's at $12.00/share. Canopy Group has already used SCO's high stock price to rid themselves of Vultus. SCO essentially paid top-dollar (then some) for Vultus in stock (mostly to Canopy Group) this stock was then cashed for more than $3 million dollars. The kicker, Canopy Group owns SCO as well. In essence the Canopy Group took $3 million of investor's money and bought out one of their other worthless companies, putting the proceeds in their own pocket. Not to mention all of the SCO executives that have been selling their personal shares while the stock is up.
SCO has years before the case even goes to trial. In the meantime they simply threaten the world and watch their stock price go up. Canopy Group and SCO executives can use the inflated stock price in a myriad of ways, and since the trial won't happen for years there is very little chance of SEC involvement. SCO management simply has to pretend like they believe they have a case.
Not to mention the fact that the government oftentimes loses court cases. Juries apparently don't mind picking the pockets of Uncle Sam. In the meantime, it's good press. Investors love the idea of some company dipping their hands in Uncle Sam's pockets.
Even if those pig-fuckers had an airtight case, Debian-Hurd and Debian-BSD are an easy mkfs away. Do you think for one second that the kernel you're running makes a huge difference versus the software on top of it? And I'd go back to fucking CPM much more readily than I'd consider paying SCO's extortion money.
(Yes, I said pig-fuckers. I think they get up on pigs and they fuck them. Squeeeeee! Anyone wanna disagree?)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I would like to see how SCO can charge for code that are not in the binary image. Embedded system like Tivo have very little probability to compile NUMA or RCU code. This have no sense. Remember that SCO licence is for binary use (to be compilant with the GPL, as there say...).
SCO is crasy if there expect to charge for somthing that don't even exists!
You know, dude in wife-beater t-shirt and cutoffs starts a loud confrontation, barricades and arms himself, gets armed representatives of The Authorities (tm) sucked in, and then threatens said representatives with his weapon. SWAT dude has to pull the trigger, and then it's goodbye cruel world.
Damn near foolproof way to off yourself once the hardcore tactical team is on scene, and it's technically not suicide!
So, We've got SCO (bad mullet, tank-top, and raggy jeans) waving his 9mm around at everyone, including some folks that just finished getting heavy-handed on some folks between the Euphrates and Tigris. Like I said, suicide-by-cop.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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.
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.
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.
" 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.
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
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 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
I think they hold the license to /usr/bin/finger!
...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
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"
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.
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.