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SCO: FSF Reply To GPL Claims, Conference Sponsors Back Off?
bkuhn writes "Last week's Wall Street Journal (and other news outlets) carried statements by SCO's Mark Heise challenging the "legality" of FSF's GPL.
FSF has
issued a response to this baseless claim." Also, mcgroarty points out that Intel and HP seem to be backing swiftly away from their sponsorship of SCO's in-progress Las Vegas conference (a EWeek article suggests that "Intel Corp. was recently billed as one of the lead sponsors of SCO's Forum 2003 conference here this week, but then suddenly disappeared from all marketing and press material for the forum. It appears that Hewlett-Packard Co. also got cold feet. As late as last week, SCO was telling attendees that HP would be giving a partner keynote at the forum on Tuesday morning. But on Sunday the schedule of events given to attendees when they registered makes no mention of an HP keynote...") M adds: Now we've got a few stories from the conference: News.com.com and Eweek. Despite some bad headline writing at News.com, SCO simply continues to employ the Chewbacca defense, showing no code to back up their claims. Amusingly, Darl McBride started his rant about copyright infringement by copying some footage from a James Bond movie. Bravo!
Just like in the movie "Rising Sun": "They're distancing themselves."
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
They are killing themselves and they don't even see it! I can't understand this stupidity. :-/
While I'm really enjoying watching this circus, I think it really is time to put Darl out of his misery. He's obviously suffering some sort of beri-beri brain-eating disease. Let's be humane and compassionate. He has suffered enough.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
according to News.com.
There ought to be a law preventing scumbag corporations like SCO from using free software. Oh well.
Actually, if you read all the articles, you'll notice that the Bond clips were provided by MGM (who owns the hotel SCO is at) for SCO's use.
Thus, no piracy.
I dislike SCO's tactics as much as the next guy (unless the next guy is Gates or Ballmer), but a touch of fairness isn't going to hurt our cause.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
PJ at Groklaw is doing a wonderful job at cutting through the SCO fud. I suggest you check out if you havent recently. The article's comments are quite good too.
Send in the Piracy Gestapo. He pirated material in front of hundreds of people, thus causing billions of dollars of damage to the entire movie industry (using *AA math)
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Actually while I had mentioned that Intel had backed out, when I submitted an article last week, HP was still listed as a premier sponsor of SCO's event. I urged Slashdot readers to write Carly Fiorina and let her know how you felt about HP supporting SCO. The point is moot now as the event has already started and HP has already retreated their support somewhat. Still, you might still write and express how you feel about HP having pulled out: a visible reaction from the Linux community this time around might well shape how they deal with SCO in the future.
I was disturbed enough by Darl McBride's statement last Friday (which he repeated again today in Vegas) that the "silent majority" of companies in the IT industry support SCO's recent actions that I had my company release a public statement of opposition to SCO. It would seem that the latest thing SCO is trying to claim ownership of is the opinion of companies that have been silent on the issue, so I am calling on companies to break the silence. If you have control over such things in your company, please get them to either copy the statement of opposition to SCO that I wrote to your company's website or write and post your own statement of opposition. Let the world know that SCO is strongly opposed within the industry and that they are truly fighting to destroy the intellectual property rights that they claim to be championing.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Aren't there some slashbots in Las Vegas who would like to run a picket line in front of the MGM Grand?
scene: SCO is strapped to a table in IBM's hideout, with a laser creeping ever closer.
SCO: Do you expect me to show the code?
IBM: No Mr. SCO, I expect you to die!
(I know this has the rolls reversed, but it's funnier this way)
from here
>"The company's arguments seemed to hold weight with the SCO faithful. "I think (they've) got a strong case," said SCO reseller John Moore, the president of Moore Computer Consultants, based in Pembroke Pines, Florida."
>Is this company the same as www.mcci.com ? Where at this link it mentions the president of the company is called "Terry Moore" ?? And it seems to be very much a Microsoft shop?!?
Good catch
I got some even better ones for you:
Here is www.mcci.com searched by google for the term "Windows"
tinyurl.com/kf24
Here is www.mcci.com searched by google for "Unix"
tinyurl.com/kf2a
Want something REALLY revealing? Try this: this is www.mcci.com searched by google for "SCO"
tinyurl.com/kf2l
Judge for yourself if they are a Microsoft shop or a Unix shop. I wonder what they were even doing there at SCO Forum? SCO isn't even mentioned on their website ANYWHERE. I don't think they are a reseller of SCO's Unix, with no mention of SCO anywhere on their webpage - how could they be?
"Monday, CEO Darl McBride outlined the company's legal strategy and tried to convince SCO partners and customers that it is fighting the good fight.
``We're fighting for the right in the industry to be able to make a living selling software, McBride told the audience. The fight was for the ability ``to send your children to college and ``to buy a second home, he added." -- story
He's clearly delusional.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
As far as i am concerned there seems to be nothing new here. SCO is just another brick in the wall of lies and control. The FSF must and hopefully will continue to show how false SCO and their foolish claims are. We need to put a stop to this madness now.
"Sontag and Heise also presented some short snippets of source code that they claimed had been directly copied from SCO's Unix to Linux."
Can anyone identify the snippets of code shown?It's a stock selling scheme. Run up the stock price and sell out.
I'd be willing to sign onto or even help organize a boycott of SCO and their products. Is anyone in the process of doing this?
Bowie J. Poag
Seeing Intel and HP walk out does my heart glad.
Hopefully these companies are seeing SCO's actions for what they are; an outright attempt to hijack the work of thousands of developers by fallacious statements, spin, and, at best, a tiny toehold on the body of work Linux constitutes.
Despite SCO's spin to the contrary, this isn't about the GPL model versus the proprietary software model; it's about unethical versus ethical business practices, and SCO is on the wrong side of the fence.
Would any reputable company now risk involvement with SCO on any level? Look at it this way. SCO made, in essence, a business deal. They distributed their software under the GPL, in an attempt to receive the benefits that the GPL approach can offer, much like Red Hat did. Now, they want to renege on the deal because they think they've got something more profitable. For them to now claim that they somehow didn't understand, or were somehow unaware of, their own business decisions is just completely disingenuous. What company would now sign any kind of business deal with them, knowing that given their history, they're likely to try to cry "do-over!" at some point and redefine their contract, making all sorts of legal threats and spurious statements in the process, and perhaps just decide that your IP is theirs by whatever stretch of the contract wording they can muster?
This is what's bad for business, not the GPL.
On a related note, I'd like to suggest that any companies out there contemplating paying SCO's extortion fees, even if the price is not a concern to them, refuse to pay it on principle. One good argument for not paying the Mafia, is that if you do, they are going to get bigger, and "lean" on you even more. And... I really must apologize to the Mafia for the analogy, as most of their profits derive from "consensual-crime" activity, rather than outright attempts to steal the property of individuals, in direct violation of the spirit and letter of the law. The Mafia has a higher percentage of legitimate business activites than SCO does.
SCO's activities are to the benefit of no one, except themselves. HP and Intel, by contrast, benefit themselves largely through developing products and services to benefit their customers, something SCO has apparently lost the capacity to do. Even the companies which have products in direct competition to Linux would have a hollow victory if SCO's legal challenge to the GPL resulted in an invalidation of the fundamental notion of copyright upon which the GPL rests, and the discretion it gives to the work's creator, for-profit, for-humanity, or both. The sooner this is recognized by everyone, as these two companies are taking the lead toward, the better.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Since the FSF website tends to get slashdotted easily, here is the text of the article.
SCO Scuttles Sense, Claiming GPL Invalidity
Eben Moglen
Tuesday 19 August 2003
Now that the tide has turned, and SCO is facing the dissolution of its legal position, claiming to "enforce its intellectual property rights" while actually massively infringing the rights of others, the company and its lawyers have jettisoned even the appearance of legal responsibility. Last week's Wall Street Journal carried statements by Mark Heise, outside counsel for SCO, challenging the "legality" of the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL both protects against the baseless claims made by SCO for license fees to be paid by users of free software, and also prohibits SCO from its ongoing distribution of the Linux kernel, a distribution which infringes the copyrights of thousands of contributors to the kernel throughout the world. As IBM's recently-filed counterclaim for copyright infringement and violation of the GPL shows, the GPL is the bulwark of the community's legal defense against SCO's misbehavior. So naturally, one would expect SCO to bring forward the best possible arguments against the GPL and its application to the current situation. But there aren't any best arguments; there aren't even any good arguments, and what SCO's lawyer actually said was arrant, unprofessional nonsense.
According to the Journal, Mr Heise announced that SCO would challenge the GPL's "legality" on the ground that the GPL permits licensees to make unlimited copies of programs it covers, while copyright law only allows a single copy to be made. The GPL, the Journal quoted Mr Heise as saying, "is preempted by federal copyright law."
This argument is frivolous, by which I mean that it would be a violation of professional obligation for Mr Heise or any other lawyer to submit it to a court. If it were true, no copyright license could permit the licensee to make multiple copies of the licensed program. That would make not just the GPL "illegal." Mr Heise's supposed theory would also invalidate the BSD, Apache, AFL, OSL, LSL, MIT/X11, and all other free software licenses. It would invalidate the Microsoft Shared Source license. It would also eliminate Microsoft's method for the distribution of the Windows operating system, which is pre-loaded by hard drive manufacturers onto disk drives they deliver by the hundreds of thousands to PC manufacturers. The licenses under which the disk drive and PC manufacturers make multiple copies of Microsoft's OS would also, according to Mr Heise, violate the law. Redmond will be surprised.
Of course, Mr Heise's statement is nothing but moonshine, based on an intentional misreading of the Copyright Act that would fail on any law school copyright examination. Mr Heise is referring to section 149 of the US Copyright Act, which is entitled "Limitation on exclusive rights: computer programs," and which provides that:
(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
As the language makes absolutely clear, section 149 says that although the Act generally prohibits making any copy of a copyrighted work without license, in the case of computer programs one can both make and even alter the work for certain purposes without any license at all. The claim that this provision sets a limit on what copyright owners may permit through licensing their exclusive right is utterly bo
If SCO "owns" a small fraction of a widely distributed whole, that whole in its entirety is SCO's property.
If SCO doesn't own any part of a whole that it distributed in violation of copyright law, then copyright law is not applicable, for no specific reason.
If you violate their property, you deserve to go to hell. If they violate much more of your property, tough luck. If they violate it again, tough luck.
These guys have made the situation clear, why can't we just agree that they aren't affected by copyright law?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The SCO Forum crowd applauded when SCO executives announced that an upcoming version of its OpenServer [... will ...] provide better compatibility with Microsoft Windows through version 3 of Samba
I guess not all Open Source is bad in SCOwonderland. Fuckers.
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are huge Star Wars fans. There have been several Chewbacca references on the show.
In the "Chef Aid" episode, Chef is accused of trying to steal the song "Stinky Britches," which he really wrote many years ago. The record company takes Chef to court, and they hire Johnny Cochran to prosecute Chef. The whole town is wondering if he will use his famous "Chewbacca Defense," which he used during the O.J. Simpson trial. Here's a transcript:
Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: (pulling down a diagram of Chewie) this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense! (jury looks shocked)
Why would a Wookiee -- an eight foot tall Wookiee -- want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this case? (calmly) Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.
If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
Later in that same episode, Cochran has a change of heart and defends Chef when Chef sues the record company. Again, he uses the Chewbacca Defense, although with some minor changes:
Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, you must now decided whether to reverse the decision for my client Chef. I know he seems guilty, but ladies and gentlemen... (pulling down a diagram of Chewbacca) This is Chewbacca. Now think about that for one moment -- that does not make sense. Why am I talking about Chewbacca when a man's life is on the line? Why? I'll tell you why: I don't know.
It does not make sense. If Chewbacca does not make sense, you must acquit!
(pulling a monkey out of his pocket) Here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey! (one of the juror's heads explodes)
Eventually, Chef wins the case and all is well.
Stupid is stupid does!
That's a new one on me. Would someone who is wise in the ways of the force explain?
On SCO being deserted by Intel and HP:
Hmm... why do the words "rats" and "sinking ship" spring the mind here?
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
As usual, Eblen was spot-on in his comments. I'm a little disappointed he didn't attack the "only one backup allowed by copyright" urban legend as well, although that's the less pointed of the two reasons why the SCO position was complete, utter, total bushwa.
>We have tripled our cash position over the past four months.
We have made multiple spurrious legal claims over the last four months, dramatically raising our stock prices after a steady decline.
>SCO is actually going into business, not out of it
We've hired more lawyers.
> and we have turned the company around.
We think with and speak through our asses now.
> We are proud of that, and the future going forward is bright.
Shhh! I think we are getting a way with this, the SEC hasn't noticed yet...
> We have no long-term debt, cash balances are improved and we have reduced costs
It's cheaper to litigate than actually produce a product
The unofficial
"to send your children to college" and "to buy a second home"
My second home covers 43 acres in Alaska, my kids eat the same shit as me. But I'm willing to pay Darth $699 to leave me the fuck alone.
Am i the only one to think that a part of this document calls to Redmond (you who is there, don't you?) and says: "Wake up! You could loose too!"?
SCO behaves so ruthlessly and unpredictably (even for evil geniuses) that could make even MS scared. (hel, at least we KNOW what to expect from MS
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
good job moderators
If i were there I would join you.
I think we have reasoned long enough with McBride
Any mafiosi on linux ?
shameless plug: Join The Grapevine
MP3 Search Engine
http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarc
(Soon there will not be any original code left!)
While it was difficult to ascertain the exact code being shown on screen, attorneys pointed to exact copying of some code from Unix to Linux and claimed that IBM improperly donated almost a million lines of Unix System V code to the Linux 2.4x and Linux 2.5x kernel that infringe on its Unix System V contract with SCO -- and SCO's intellectual property.
SCO claimed that much of the core code of Linux including Non-Uniform Memory Access, the Read Copy Update for high-end database scalability, Journaling File System, XFS, Schedulers, Linux PPC 32 and 64-bit support and enterprise volume management is covered by SCO's Unix System V contracts and copyrights.
For example, 110,000 lines of Unix System V code for read copy update, 55,000 lines of NUMA code and more than 750,000 lines of symmetric multi-processing code from Unix System V has made its way into Linux, attorneys and SCO executives claimed.
It looks like SCO is finally dead and this lawsuit is over.
The GPL just spells out under what circumstances the copyright holder is willing to give you that permission.
SCO's argument rests on the fact that since one of these cases outlines how to lawfully make one copy of something, and the other deals with how to make unlimited copies of it, they must somehow be mutually exclusive. This is completely illogical. It is like saying that because it is possible to get a one ride ticket for the bus, it must therefore be illegal to buy an all day pass. Sorry SCO, your reasoning seems just a little bit flawed...
Neither are they, bet I think they're morr serious about not understanding them selves than you about not understanding them and their stupidity.
They will continue until they'll understand themselves and their stupidity
P.S. I hope I wrote this understanding in some form of understandable matter that would be understandable even to SCO:)
By the way, stupidity is just a formal legal expression of SCO claims
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
From the news.com.com article,
"... executives displayed the lines of disputed code..."
Can anybody confirm this? If true, it would mean
at lot of attendees whom I presume didn't sign a
NDA finally got to see the code. I doubt it's
true, but you never know.
This article in Businessweek says that sco has been displaying the code at the conference. The part I thought truly ironic was that they were touting a revision of openserver featuring samba 3.0. The more you look at the tactics and the players behavior the more this appears to be a microsoft move.
We, as an IT community, need to come up with a term appropriate for SCO and McBride's stupidity. Something that the community can use on a large scale that will hopefully become mainstream in our language.
I'm not sure what it should be, anybody have any suggestions? (Mine kinda suck)
Darl You!
Darl it!
Darl you to SCO!
Darlhole!
Darlass!
Darlhead!
Don't pull a Darl McBitch on me!
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Does McBride even live anywhere in Northern California? There are plenty of wage-slaves out here (myself included) that cannot even afford to buy a FIRST HOME, let alone even begin to lust after further real estate like Tom Vu on an infomercial... I guess you could craft an analogy to SCO's profit motives from the following rental unit tale: Mr. McBride is hired by a landlord to squeeze out more profit from an inherited starter-home. The former owners bought the modest home and began making repairs and other improvements to the property. They then were successfully able to find tenants who leased the property. The owners/landlords then mysteriously vanished, presumed deceased. The tenants became the most popular people on the block because they threw great parties, but never rocked-the-boat with the other neighbors. The new owner (who inherited the property) found out from another neighbor the previous owners put in a lot of improvements in the property which caused the tenants so much fanfare in the neighborhood. The owner became jealous because nobody wanted to come over to his own houseparties down the street. The owner found a napkin in another neighbor's trashbin indicating some of the property's improvements, written down based upon observation at the last fondu (sic) party. The notes on the discarded napkin matched some informal notes the deceased owners wrote down on a legal pad. The jealous owner became livid and saw an ad in the Pennysaver from a Mr. McBride claiming he could sell refridgerators to the Inuit and he could bring his expertise to anyone for a nice slice of the pie and a $5 downpayment. Mr. McBride came to town and listened to the whole story. Mr. McBride, a FOB (Friend of Bill) then hires a skilled attorney to figure out a crafty legal strategy out of claiming monies from the tenants based upon the *unjust* enrichment they received from the goodwill of the deceased owners prior to signing their lease agreement. Because the lease agreement was written using a revolutionary new form of compact (ie contract) favored by new-agers, McBride and Company claim it is null and void. The property in question is at the intersection of Caldera Drive and Torvalds Way...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Now I can freely use GNU/Linux again without worrying about legal threats.
The last paragraph of the Rumor Central column of eWeek this week claims that a couple of big unnamed linux shops are considering racketeering charges against SCO because of their recent actions. The clip states that at least four more companies would have to come forward.
One a similar note eWeek is also reporting that members of the open source community have approached SCO with a proposal for viewing the supposed offending code.
Well, at least according to their executives, which I have my doubts. The PHBs could have just show them the whole linux source code, and I doubt most people in the audience would have a clue.
I do wonder if the investors didn't have to sign NDAs and if someone was able to take note of those "stolen" lines of code.
Best quotes from the article:
McBride said pattern-recognition experts SCO hired have ferreted out a slew of infringing code in Linux.
Yeah sure, who are these pattern-recognition experts and are they your executives?
"They have found already a mountain of code," McBride said. "The DNA of Linux is coming from Unix."
Only thing I can say about this is it sure sounds like a good PR FUD line to use to increase investor confidence.
and it will not be considered a conflict of interest because SCOX is just a ubiquitous stock that it's in virtually everyone's portfolio. So what if the avg. volume is a pittance and that only the pump-and-dump crowd is participating in this not-even-an-also-ran company. And of course the final irony will be that Darl will be considered to have major cojones within the corporate world's CEO club and will be asked to join boards of lots of companies and consult for huge sums of money.
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
It seems appropriate that they are holding scoforum at MGM hotels as MGM realty bought the MGM name when MGM was nearly bankrupt decades ago. It invested nothing to create the mystic that is MGM but profits hansomely from it. Just in the same way that SCO is trying to profit from unix and old SCO
t said, for example, that more than 829,000 lines of SMP code had been duplicated in Linux
And there are also 657 communists on this website!
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
My company was going to uninstall Linux and run Windows Server 2003 on all of our servers, but now I think I can convince them to stay with Linux. Hooray!
From one of the (many) articles:
"[SCO] said, for example, that more than 829,000 lines of SMP code had been duplicated in Linux."
829,000 lines for symmetrical multiprocessing code in Linux? I don't have the stats to hand but I seriously doubt that.
Most of the world has been, uh, "boycotting"(not buying) SCO products for years. Hence the publicity/money/attention grab :-)
Please help metamoderate.
Now, if we could get a hold of their evidence we could either expose it as a fraud or, in the unlikely event that there is some truth to their claims, clean up Linux source to be legal. But since they require an NDA to see the evidence, you'd have to break the law to show that Linux isn't breaking any laws.
If only we could see their evidence legally without signing an NDA...
So then I got to thinking. If we knew what compiler and compiler options SCO used when they built their version of unix, we could build linux with that compiler and compiler options and have some pattern matching utility search for potentially duplicate machine code.
Then, we could look at the Linux source for the code in question, and follow the electronic paper trail to find when it was first submitted. If we could have proof that the Linux submitter was the original author, then we have proof that at least some of SCO's alleged pirated code was, in fact, pirated from Linux by SCO. If the code was of questionable origin, then we could clean-room reverse-engineer a replacement.
Anyone know how one might identify the compiler SCO used on a particular release of unix?
The whole time this has been ongoing the people have been saying "show us the code", now they are starting to do just that. As I recall there was a very similar correlation between Unix and BSD a long while back, the end result was some offending code being removed and the case being over with no other real repercussions.
Forget the zealotry of we are right and they are wrong, why not look at the code they now show to be infringing and just get rid of (or change) it?
Legal precedent is on the side of this action being the correct one (from my somewhat foggy memories)
I dont get this. SCO owns copyrights to Sys V Unix. Claims violation of confidentiality provisions in IBM contract, sues IBM for the same. So far, it has some amount of believability. Even their Caldera Linux distro is not necessarily fatal to their case, they are arguing ignorance anyway. So why this totally redundant campaign against the GPL? And how does a tiny company like SCO manage to get this much press attention? The guys who sued MS and won a court judgement certainly got nowhere near this much press. Sure the activism of Linux advocates explains some of it but still.. Could there be more to this than meets the eye?
SCO is saying that the lurkers support them in email.
Please, Mr. McBride. Attempting to draw a parallel between yourself and James Bond is beyond laughable. The only legitimate similarily between your plight and a Bond yarn is that they are both complete works of fiction.
If an analogy must be drawn, it obviously must be to the character of Ernst Blofeld, a crippled has-been defeated early in Bond's career, who now foolishly pursues revenge, thereby relegating himself to little more than a minor, if shrill, annoyance. Even that white cat was more competent than Blofeld...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Sorry but its so wrong, for a long time Plants an animals were put into groups depending on how they looked. When DNA was discovered people started testing and found ALOT of mistakes it seems that the organisms looked similar because that was the right shape for the right job (both trying to fill the same niche). Anyway ALL multi-Cellular life is a derivative work, when the Oxygen content went up on this planet cell found a way to surve by teaming up with another (mytocondrals) which acted as a power house as it could deal with this poisonus gas. Check your Mytrocondral DNA with that of a Fly and you will find it pretty much the same thing, just a few mutations over the many millions of years.
James
"Is SCO going out of business? No, we're going back into business. We will also increase shareholder value over the next year," McBride concluded.
Then why are the execs selling their stocks?
My current copy of 2.4.19 contains 4,404,238 lines of .c and .h files. SCO claims that over 100,000 of those were copied from SCO, which would be a very large percentage of the changes from 2.2 to 2.4 if you leave out stuff like Reiserfs (who knows? Maybe they don't leave out Reiserfs), procfs, usb support, direct rendering, etc.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
http://www.uruguru.com/gpl-sco/
read the story caption again.
It's not stupidity, it's a great way to make some quick money. I mean, it's underhanded, and ultimately futile, but you can't deny that the execs and shareholders are making a quick buck.
In the end, what SCO is doing isn't illegal, and it won't get any of them in hotwater unless somebody can proove that they filed the suit only to get the stock up, knowing full well it was a baseless lawsuit. Their claims hold just enough water to keep them safe even if they won't stand up in court.
This is a great demonstration of what is wrong with the focus on creating short term profits in corporate america. The SCO execs are not only sniking the future of their company, but potentially the future of other companies. They are doing so, blindly, for the quick buck.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Hmm, maybe other companies would jump on the bandwagon and withdraw as well. A few (or a /. horde of) well worded emails to the other major participants might oil the wheels...
(this is offended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I think that it would be more effective to lobby (and by that i dont mean output from the insult generator) any vendors that still have some sort of relationship with SCO.
The easiest would be any company that also has an Open source/ Linux relationship. Make them know how we feel. And how their relationship with SCO may sour the relationship with the linux community
Gordon Staines
"We're fighting for the right in the industry to be able to make a living selling software," McBride told the audience. He compared this right to the ability "to send your children to college" and "to buy a second home."
What??
No, seriously. I don't get it. What the flying fuck does this have to do with anything? Buy a second home? I am honestly flabbergasted at the sheer idiocy of this man.
I've gone speechless.
Seriously, they just keep increasing the ammount all the time.
I wouldn't be surprised if they get to claiming a trillion billion zillion infinity+ lines by the end of the week.
I dunno, it'd be kinda cool if the win. Since they seem to be claiming that the GPL is trumped by federal copyright law, which only allows one copy, and this somehow means that the GPL is not only invalid, but the rest of the code is freely distributable, then it'd mean that pirating any software that comes with a distribution license is now legal.
One of the keynote speakers is Maggie Alexander, "VP Marketing Operations and Planning The Progress Company". AKA Progress Software
Try googling on mysql "progress software" gpl or click this link
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
According to SCO's claims against the GPL, the mere fact that they viewed it would be illegal. From the licence to the gpl itself: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies But, not if SCO has anything to do with it. Furthermore, the IBM-SCO licence would also be illegal (If IBM ever shiped more then one copy of AIX) They sure shoved their foot up their mouth pretty damn good.
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
This is a good idea.
Anyone else seeing that the "Our Sponsors" link on the Caldera/SCO site is broken?
http://www.sco.com/2003forum/agenda.html
All the links on the sidebar are working except for "Our Sponsors" which is not found. I guess the webmaster got tired of updating the page as people were dropping out so he decides to just delete it instead? Haaa haaaa.
Copyright *owners* aren't restricted by the *license*.
I rather suspect that it had a lot more to do with the maggots and stench of decay that hangs around SCO now. Intel aned HP were just avoiding having the smell cling to them when the zombie is finally laid back in its grave.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
All this PR is just to make investors believe that the company is ethical, is running a honest business, and by investing and supporting SCOs actions they are acting in the american way and fighting those no good un-Amerian IP violating linux programers and users.
They even have a web page touting the open source software in their latest server products. How hypocritical!
But the can't even get their spelling correct: check out the title of the page: "OpenServer 507 Open Sourece [sic] Tool Integration"
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I heard through the grape vine that Monday's slide talk by McBride showed codde that supiciously matches code donate by Caldera employees to Linux..ie SCO Group..
Can anyone get copies of the slides to verify this?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
To: All Linux Users
Re: Proprietary Code being used in Linux
I have recently discovered that some of my personal code has found it's way into the most common Linux distributions. I will begin legal preparations immediately, but for the time being, if you are using Linux you are probably using some of my intellectual property.
I am offering a "good will" software license to those who wish to stay within the law: those users who contact me within the next 72 hours can purchase a license to use my code for $299 US (significantly less than some others are asking for access to their code!). I will take legal action against all Linux users who do not contact me within the next 72 hours. I have recieved a number of queries as to which code belongs to me, and unfortunately I cannot reveal this for obvious legal reasons.
I have also found that some of my intellectual property is being used in most automobiles, and my lawyers are preparing lawsuits against some of the larger auto manufacturers. Again, I cannot reveal which parts of the cars I have IP rights to, for obvious legal reasons.
If you are using Linux and do not contact me immediately, I WILL SEE YOU IN COURT!!
I really wonder if another company is driving SCO to do this so they can snatch them up after they have been squashed by other companies.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
They are selling it to "increase shareholder value." Yeah, thats it!
Here's the output of an for Darl Mcbride. Perhaps we can use of these? "Damn, you pulled a 'red limb card' on that one!" Hmm, maybe not.
mcbride lard
cradled brim
climb red dar
climb add err
climb dad err
crib dram del
crib dram led
crab mildred
crab mild red
calm bird red
clam bird red
calm bred rid
clam bred rid
cram bridled
marc bridled
cram bled rid
marc bled rid
cram bird del
marc bird del
marc bird led
cram bird led
cram bred lid
marc bred lid
clad brim red
clad bred rim
carl bred dim
carl bred mid
card limb red
card brim del
card brim led
card bled rim
card bird elm
card bird mel
carr bled dim
carr bled mid
carr bed mild
dec brim lard
dec barr mild
arc bred mild
car bred mild
Sontag said these include NUMA (non uniform memory access), Read Copyright Update (RCU), Journal File System and schedulers.
Is "Read Copyright Update" SCO's new business model then?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
"SCO CEO Darl McBride told eWEEK here on Sunday. While he was "not familiar with all the intricacies of the matter," it appears that SCO took to advertising and promoting Intel as a sponsor even before the deal was signed. As the deal never actually took place, Intel was removed as a lead sponsor of the event, he said."
If he was telling the truth, he's proving that SCO is prone to making free use of the IP of others, without checking to make sure it's OK.
BTW: I know Intel has a long lead time for sponsoring and "showing the flag" at conferences, and they have a limited budget (a BIG budget, but you have to submit requests early or you get turned down). If this SCO Summit started August 17th, the agreements would have been signed months in advance. I can't imagine Intel not reminding SCO that the agreements had not been signed and to please not use Intel's name as bait if there were no agreements.
I think you misunderstand, if the GPL is invalid, it means the software can't be copied at all (except as allowed by copyright law, the whole "one copy" thing). It doesn't magically fall into public domain or anything.
SCO won't win anyway, their claim is ridiculous.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
SCO, to this day, is violating the GPL and has failed to mitigate alleged damages.
The GPL clearly states that they must allow free redistribution of Linux if they so choose to redistribute Linux. Their willful redistribution of Linux, even after they made alleged claims of copyright violation, is a premeditated and willful legal acceptance of the GPL on their part. And because of the continued redistribution, the alleged copyrighted code that SCO is claiming, is covered under the GPL.
Much of the code, if not all, cited by SCO was written by IBM.
...Darl McBride. Shaken, what a turd.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
HP distributes thosands of copies of Linux every day embedded in HP devices. SCO has now put HP on notice that it owes them $32 for every copy of embedded Linux it distributes. Gee, I can't think of any reason HP would be unhappy with SCO... can you?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
"We're fighting for the right in the industry to be able to make a living selling software,"
Nothing wrong with people getting paid to write software.
Right?
Would any reputable company now risk involvement with SCO on any level? Look at it this way. SCO made, in essence, a business deal. They distributed their software under the GPL, in an attempt to receive the benefits that the GPL approach can offer, much like Red Hat did. Now, they want to renege on the deal because they think they've got something more profitable.
. html?
You mean, like http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,6548,00
This is getting ridiculous. I used to think the SCO execs would pump, dump, and hire lawyers to get them out of touble. But they're going to far and may actually not be able to get out of legal trouble.
Oh no, the mods missed the part you pointed out in italicised text that wasn't in the parent.
Sadly maybe the world would be different had the Nasdaq delisted them.
.02 cents and of course SCO will appeal and drag it through the courts. Even then if it is still proved wrong those who paid the license fees will not be able to get a refund becuase by then SCO will have declared bankruptcy.
In a report card update on the company over the past year since he joined, McBride said he had acheived his first mission, which was to increase company value. A year ago the stock was trading around $.66 and the company was capitalized at some $8 million. Days after McBride took the helm at SCO, the Nasdaq sent a delisting notice informing SCO that it needed to get its stock price above $1 again to avoid being delisted. This raised customer concerns about the financial security of the firm and its viability. SCO now has a market capitalization of more than $130 million, McBride said. A year ago the company was sitting on just two quarters of cash and was about "to go out," but a belt tightening effort and aggressive sales campaign had changed that. "We have tripled our cash position over the past four months. SCO is actually going into business, not out of it, and we have turned the company around. We are proud of that, and the future going forward is bright. We have no long-term debt, cash balances are improved and we have reduced costs," he said.
As you can see from the above more proof that the FUD attacks against Linux has only served to increase their bottom line. McBride admits this publicly at a confrence. While at the same time he's dumping the same stock he claims to have turned around. So it seems to me that he does not have much faith in the company. Another sad fact is the silence from the SEC about all this. Clearly this is stock manipulation in the worst light. A small company on the verge of going out of business begins to spread rumors that other companies owe them big bucks and suddenly people jump on the bandwagon becuase they know the stock will shoot up if such a case won in court. In fact the stock has gone up over 1000% in the last 4 months and people have made a profit at the expense of Linux and frankly I dont see how the damage can be reversed at all. Yes more people know aobut Linux but now they're just saying "There's that OS. Looks nice but I'm not going to buy it and have to pay a fee to SCO" Seriously I heard that the other day at a CompUSA when someone was considering a copy of RedHat Pro for 99.00 which I sorely missed by one day cause I misread the label *cry* but back to the topic here. Linux is damaged, the SEC is doing nothing, and McBride and his cronies are raking in the cash. I'm sure the Jailed company Exec's are screaming from their cells to get the SCO crew to join them also. Must be torture to watch someone commit the same crimes you're imprisioned for but nobody's doing anything.
Life will be fun if the court decides that SCO is in error. But if such a decision comes about the stock will be worth
I've been doing a lot of Google News trolling for SCO lately. Sometimes for a good laugh, sometimes to get my blood up to a good boil. Found this article at CRN about SCO bashing IBM and RedHat's counterclaims.
SCO Blasts IBM, RedHat Counterclaims
Best part about it:
"We're fighting for a right in the industry to make a living selling software," McBride said. "The whole notion that software should be free is something SCO doesn't stand for. We have drawn the line. We're supposed to be excited about that and we're not."
Now, if I'm not mistaken, SCO uses the GCC compiler, and Samba (and is using Samba 3 as a big part of their new OS plans) which are both free software. I'm also sure they are using Apache and many other free software packages. It seems free software is just fine and dandy in SCO's eyes as long as it's not infringing on their marketshare.
mewyn dy'ner
Google news proves they shoot babies!
from the article: "and provide better compatibility with Microsoft Windows through version 3 of Samba, which is developed by an open-source group."
Can't the developers of Samba restrict a company that is attacking free software from using it?
The insider trading issue is actually bigger than suspected.
This article demonstrates how SCOs owners have cashed in on the inflated share prices without having to show up on the insider trading lists.
All that talk about buying SCO/Linux licences as an "insurance" sounds more and more like the Godfather. When did racketeering become legal in the USA?
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
I wonder if SCO is realizing yet that they've burnt ALL their bridges?
Ah heck, I'm sure they know. It's just too bad their investors don't know it yet. They ought to be fleeing from SCO like rats from a sinking ship.
scene: An 800-pound gorilla with "IBM" painted on his chest is strapped to the table, with a manic grinning SCO bouncing around with an annoying pen-laser in his hand.
IBM: Do you expect me to die?
SCO: (bounce bounce) No, Mr. IBM, I expect you to, er, um, well, just give me the freakin' money!!! (aims pen-laser at crotch and giggles maniacally)
Kip Hawley is an idiot.
"The company broke out the number of lines of code that had been directly copied from each. It said, for example, that more than 829,000 lines of SMP code had been duplicated in Linux. "
/usr/src/linux-2.4.21 -name "*.c" -o -name "*.h" | while read a; do wc -l "$a"; done | while read c d ; do let b+=c; echo $b $c $d; done
By my counting
export b=0; find
linux has 4467664 lines in it (my kernel does a a coupe of patches from stock) an yes I am being generous and counting all the duplicated arch stuff again, SCO is saying 1/5 th is from UNIX thats alot more than the SMP + the other things they complained about. I am starting to think they are counting a complete file as a "derivative" if just one line matches their comparision. Any sentance with thr typo thr for the is now a derivative work of this message. Becareful were you typo!
Of course they are forgetting that unix may have obtained the same thing from the Public Domain. I know I know its just the SCO FUD gun going.
James
Then he shouldn't be marked as Insightful. It should be humor.
Moderation +4
70% Insightful
30% Interesting
It's neither, and the mods should be shot again.
What do they have to sell? Aside from Linux licenses, what is there to not buy?
of course that's off topic, as the hobbyists are the total opposite of the phonIE payper liesense corepirate nazis.
you gnu/software folks are to be commended. we'd be nearly doomed by now without y'all. the check's in the mail again.
meanwhile... for those yet to see the light.
don't come crying to us when there's only won channel/os left.
nothing has changed since the last phonIE ?pr? ?firm? generated 'news' brIEf. if anything the situations are continuing to deteriorate. you already know that.
the posterbouys for grand larcenIE/deception would include any & all of the walking dead who peddle phonIE stock markup payper to millions of hardworking conservative folks, & then after stealing/spending/disappearing the real dough, pretend that nothing ever happened. sound familiar robbIE? these fauxking corepirate nazi larcens, want us to pretend along with them, whilst they continue to squander yOUR "investmeNTs", on their soul DOWt craving for excess/ego gratification. yuk
no matter their ceaseless efforts to block the truth from you, the tasks (planet/population rescue) will be completed.
the lights are coming up now.
you can pretend all you want. our advise is to be as far away from the walking dead contingent as possible, when the big flash occurs. you wouldn't want to get any of that evile on you.
as to the free unlimited energy plan, as the lights come up, more&more folks will stop being misled into sucking up more&more of the infant killing barrolls of crudeness, & learn that it's more than ok to use newclear power generated by natural (hydro, solar, etc...) methods. of course more information about not wasting anything/behaving less frivolously is bound to show up, here&there.
cyphering how many babies it costs for a barroll of crudeness, we've decided to cut back, a lot, on wasteful things like giving monIE to felons, to help them destroy the planet/population.
no matter. the #1 task is planet/population rescue. the lights are coming up. we're in crisis mode. you can help.
the unlimited power (such as has never been seen before) is freely available to all, with the possible exception of the aforementioned walking dead.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. more breathing. vote with yOUR wallet. seek others of non-aggressive intentions/behaviours. that's the spirit, moving you.
pay no heed/monIE to the greed/fear based walking dead.
each harmed innocent carries with it a bad toll. it will be repaid by you/us. the Godless felons will not be available to make reparations.
pay attention. that's definitely affordable, plus you might develop skills which could prevent you from being misled any further by phonIE ?pr? ?firm? generated misinformation.
good work so far. there's still much to be done. see you there. tell 'em robbIE.
How many people are buying x86 hardware instead of Macs for Linux? If the only choices were Mac and Windows most of those *nix folks who despise MS would be using a CLI on OSX. Intel needs to make sure they stay with Linux and x86, therefore they need to help Lin come through this unscathed.
to be non-denominational.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
No Moore Computer Consultants or MCCI in Florida:
l
l
http://www.sunbiz.org/corpweb/inquiry/corinam.htm
Search for "MCCI" or "Moore Computer". Also no "John Moore" as a corporate officer in a computer business:
http://www.sunbiz.org/corpweb/inquiry/corioff.htm
If you claim you are operating an incorporated business in Florida and are not registered, you just got a ticket to jail. Sounds like someone is lying about something...
DIE SCO, DIE!!!
My God! It's full of Voids!
From SCO attorneys' presentation today...
The cameras flashed when SCO attorneys briefly highlighted on screen alleged examples of "literal" copyright infringement and improper use of derivative works of Unix System V code that appear in Linux 2.4X and Linux 2.5X.
While it was difficult to ascertain the exact code being shown on screen, attorneys pointed to exact copying of some code from Unix to Linux and claimed that IBM improperly donated almost a million lines of Unix System V code to the Linux 2.4x and Linux 2.5x kernel that infringe on its Unix System V contract with SCO -- and SCO's intellectual property.
Okay, so can we start seeing some photos or filenames or something now? Let's put this story to rest. Either SCO is wrong in their claims and we all get on with life, or they are correct and those of us with 2.4+ kernels might consider applying patches. Photos! Filenames! Output from a 'diff'! Anything dammit!
I think that what this has taught us is that even our best intentions may not go far enough to insure free software stays free and gets better as time goes by. I just thought of a simple funding method for the FSF. Makes sense and is a win-win-win for developers, end users and open source software in general.
The SFS which could be called the "father" of the GNU should broker open source development between developers and the ever growing corporate adopters of OSS. Contracts for functionality in opensource software could be made and the code released to the GNU upon approval from the corporate entity. The FSF could take commission from these deals and developers get the rest. Heck maybe cut the project lead in on some dough.
At the end of the day, we tould all win. We and the FSF wouldn't have to worry quite so much about a$$holes like SCO.
my $.02
A week? Month? Year?
I'd say someone is having a decade or two of bad luck. This time, it's this SCO "soap comedy-opera". Instead of sinking Linux, they're promoting it in a big way.
They might be doing this in cumplicity with interested parties and yet getting money from Microsoft & Sun!
All this exposure in media and otherwise unknown territory for Linux is looking like a huge slingshot... the minute SCO loses, we might see Linux' installed based jumpstart like a bullet. Though I want Linux to rule, I think this is lame tactics...
It's hard to compete with indian programmers who make 2$/day.
It's not a matter of technical competition; that's on an individual basis.
It's a matter of us not being able to live on 2$/day.
It's RCU, it's NUMA, it's SMP, it's a whole bunch of code that SCO didn't write, didn't buy, and doesn't own, but that they believe they have total control over because of their interpretation of a contract that supposedly reassigns to them any code that ever gets linked with a line of System V.
If you want to see their evidence, you'll need to start reading their contracts, not their source code. Any attempt to compare binaries will be hampered by the fact that SCO thinks they own code that they've never even seen, much less compiled.
LOL.. it was more interesting to read how all this publicity is making SCO execs who are selling their stocks more money... I'd say they're a terminally ill brain cancer patient with less than a year to live, but that's just me...
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Businesses needs to learn that if they support SCO they wil be treated like pariahs.
Help fight continental drift.
It is all too clear now, the SCO must be using RIAA math.
If you get CRN, do as I cancel your freeCRN subscription as they sponsored this POS-forum
Help fight continental drift.
The fscking fix it in meta-mod... that's what it's for. Don't complain about bad moderating unless you bother to do something about it.
I touch computers in naughty places
Amusingly, Darl McBride started his rant about copyright infringement by copying some footage from a James Bond movie. Bravo!
At the bottom of their forum webpage you will see that "*The James Bond theme is used by permission of MGM."
You gotta admire Darl and Mark and Chris. No, really, think about this...
Without presenting any evidence, or even quasi-evidence, just claims and lawsuits and a magical waving of the arms, they have managed to bring SCO from the verge of being de-listed by NASDAQ (share price under $1.00) to becoming a Wall Street darling, because the share price is now over $10.00.
I'll bet the actual IP of RCU, etc. has already been covered in Operating Systems Courses at dozens of Universities.
He was talking about software, not movies!
The logical inference would be that any BSD code Microsoft ship is illegal (since the agument against the GPL holds for BSDL), and that most of Microsoft's enterprise licenses are potentially illegal (since they involve more than the 1+1 scheme SCO are asserting).
Darl McBride: "Our friends at the Nasdaq told us that with the recent blackout in the North East[ern United States], SCO's servers had "popped right back up," he said.
Guess that's in contrast to all the other servers that needed electricity, eh?
Then move to India, buy cheap products, start forming unions, make the standard of living rise, make salaries and prices go up until it's on par with the G7, then move home. Contrary to what dubya tells you, you have no God-given right to make more money, buy more stuff, etc. than the rest of the world. When the WORLD'S minimum wage problem is sorted out, then you can start whining about fair.
And don't give me any of that America innovates bullshit. The lionshre of America's innovation is coming from all the foreign grad students it hasn't labeled terrorists, who then start businesses, etc.
I suggest a new strategy, Artoo: let the Wookie win.
-- C3P0
Sorry. Had to.
I think this would be a great time for the Samba team to serve SCO a C&D. I'm sure someone will be willing to step up and handle the legal fees? IBM? Redhat? Anyone else?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
. . . if they send me a ticket to Las Vegas and provide some nice hotel accommodations for a few weeks. Sure, I'll help out poor SCO.
Agree! Have anyone a list of the fiaSCO company supporters?. I will add them to the black list of futures projects in my company.
In one of the articles he explicitly states that he (McBride) has not sold a single share since this all began.
Since when has SCO been at all consistent? This is marbles next to their continued distribution of Linux for a month after launching their suit. I've even heard that it's still available on their FTP server!
SCO stopped needing to be consistent right around the time McBride decided to just pump the industry for lawsuit money and then run for hills with it. All that matters to SCO now is to seem sufficiently credible that they can dupe a judge.
SCO CEO Darl McBride met Monday with CRN senior editor Paula Rooney to talk about the company's Unix crusade and product plans. The interview took place at the SCO Forum 2003 in Las Vegas. CRN is a sponsor of the conference.
CRN: SCO attorneys say if there is no settlement, a trial would begin in April 2005 and last roughly five weeks. Following that, there could be appeals. Is there any chance SCO can expedite this case to free up customers, partners and vendors so that the Linux industry doesn't get hurt?
McBride: We tried to move this along, but IBM kept asking for delays. Now with the counterclaim and patent infringement, it could go even longer. IBM can put this on a slow track [with additional legal moves]. But IBM might be throwing hard balls to [get ready] for the soft pitch [to settle].
CRN: Why do you say that? What's happening behind the scenes? Might this case be resolved quietly, rather than become the intellectual property [IP] case of the century?
McBride: They're putting this on a [slow, legal] path. But customers have been putting pressure on IBM to get this resolved. This is not a case IBM can get knocked out on -they'd be filing motions to dismiss the case [if they thought they could win]. Our case is up to $3 billion- they'd have to come up from a few hundred million dollars to settle. Every month, we keep finding more and more [Linux code that violates out Unix System contract]. We'd want a settlement and royalty [on Linux] going forward.
CRN: Have you met with Linus Torvalds yet, especially since he has become an OSDL fellow? What is your assessment of the open source community activities?
McBride: I've talked to him via e-mail. He's very pragmatic and tends to be a racehorse with blinders on ..he doesn't want to know about IP or
[commercial issues] He readily admits that IBM has put a lot of code in
Linux and says if you want to pursue it ]legally], go ahead. But I said
to him, 'I appreciate you didn't create the problem, but you have
inherited it. But he won't sign an NDA. There's a lot of discussion
going on at the OSDL, IBM and open source community they're working
though.
CRN: Many in the open source community are upset about the impact of this case on the Linux industry. Open source guru Eric Raymond-among many others - say they are respectful about IP issues but they are challenging SCO to specify exactly which code it believes to be infringing, by file and by line number, and on what ground it is infringing.
Raymund says the open source community is not willing to sit idly by while SCO asserts proprietary control, and the right to collect license fees, over the entirety of Linux. What do you say to that? Why doesn't SCO just leave Linux customers, partners and developers alone and out of its dispute with IBM?
McBride: That's like if someone comes into your house while you're sleeping, takes your jewels, and as you start chasing them down [to retrieve your property], and now they want to say you're the one doing the bad thing. I have to read [Eric Raymond's letter] and am meeting with [The Linux Show's]Jeff Gerhardt on it later.
CRN: SCO shares, as you mentioned during your keynote, have soared from less than a $1 to over $10 since you took the reigns and since the case began. There have been some reports of SCO executives recently trading shares. This casts some doubt in the minds of some about the integrity of SCO's allegations against IBM.
McBride: I personally haven't sold any shares. [laughter]Look, Red Hat executives have sold over 500,000 shares just since January. [Other SCO execs sold shares to offset tax losses but does not know more than that.
Help fight continental drift.
The "Hulk" was made on Linux boxes.
So the Hulk is a derivitive of Linux.
I guess that means that SCO get's a cut of all the top hollywood movies that use Linux systems to produce special effects.
Let's see Darl talk shit to Hollywood.
They smack his ass back into the womb where he can be born again and his momma can get a postnatal abortion..
Actually, Darl had a dream about some footage just like that, back in 1962. Therefore, the entire Bond series is one big derivitive work based on that one dream, which makes SCO the rightful owner of all Bond IP.
As soon as this Linux thing blows over, they'll be charging anyone who ever watched any Bond movies $500 to be in compliance. Next year, the price goes up to $1500 per viewing, per retina.
And tomorrow, I'm going to load up on SCO stock so I'll be ready for the phat profits!
Man, I hope SCO gets financially pumbled... I'm waiting for the 'happily ever after' ending where SCO is by themselves with no sponsors over the dumb shit they have done and started.
Pull out before it's too late... Good job Intel, HP,
super_ogg
Black cat, searing pain, flames...? I must be in Heaven! - Homer Simpson
If SCO rejects the GPL, where do they get the rights to distribute/use programs like SAMBA 3.0 which is licensed under the GPL.
Joe
A comparison between SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 with UnixWare 7.1.3 revealed some suspicious similarities between the two, particularly, but not only, between many new drivers which suddenly appeared in the SCO's closed-source Unixware, but previously existed in SuSE Linux.
SCO recently licensed several hundred drivers to Sun. Nobody knows for sure, but could they be the same ones?
While it might be premature to allege copying without access to Unixware source code, the investigators do say "I feel these issues need to be investigated further."
I wonder if Martin Rimm is the guy conducting SCO's "analysis" to locate plagiarized code?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Just curious ..
Copyright (C) Eben Moglen, 2003. Verbatim copying of this article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
But only once!
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
You're just oozing with brownness aren't you?
Why you go pray to an elephant or monkey or something.
This was the most amusing and amazing thing to me, as simple as it was:
"Got Unix in your Linux?"
Doesn't this seem a bit absurd for them to be parading around wearing slogans such as this? I mean, what exactly is the point of this convention? From an innocent bystander it appears to be a propaganda vehicle... which, as it appears, they were having trouble even getting people to accept free passes to ride.
Well, at least the head count was low. Not too many people looking like complete idiots.
My $0.02
MadPenguin out >:)
Linux with kernel panic...
MadPenguin.org
The smart shall profit from the stupid.
Look, no one is making anyone buy SCO stock. If you buy SCO stock, it's because you believe it will go up from the current price. If you're wrong, tough shit for you. If it pitfalls before you sell it, tough shit for you.
There are a lot of people out there playing a high-stakes betting game over SCO stock. If a bunch of people lose their shirts, it's THEIR fault for betting on an OBVIOUS stock-hyping scheme and not knowing when to walk away from the table.
Let's keep in mind that McBride didn't just make money for himself with this, he made money for everyone who was holding the stock when it was at $0.66. That's his job. If he makes a killing, it's only because he made sure the stockholders made a killing, and THAT IS HIS JOB.
Blame McBride if you want, but it's not his fault there are suckers out there willing to pay the current price for SCO stock.
paintball
The parent post brings up some very important points, and touches some very important issues. It does not deserve a Flamebait mod. At best, it is offtopic to the SCO/GPL/FSF discussion.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Mod as funny, perhaps? Insightful? No!
The clause in the copyright law to which SCO refers and upon which they base their refutation of the GPL is only relevant to software: not to books, not to movies, not to music, not to phonorecordings. In fact, not to any damned thing except software, of which the licensee is by law permitted one copy for use of the program and one copy for archival purpose. What SCO misses is that this is the floor of copies allowed and that certainly the copyright holder may establish any ceiling they like, but a copyright holder may not take away the single allowed copy. Let's not be like SCO and extend the law to places it wasn't meant to go such as media other than software. Sheesh
"believe they have total control over because of their interpretation of a contract that supposedly reassigns to them any code that ever gets linked with a line of System V"
Funny, the GPL is the same dam way...
The GPL, whether you agree to it or not, does not reassign any copyrights on any code you link to GPLed code or remove your right to do anything you wish with code you wrote.
Also, despite popular Slashdot urban legend, the GPL does not automatically turn your code into GPLed code if you release it linked to GPLed code. It offers you that option (as well as the option of releasing your code under any other GPL-compatible license) as one way to allow you to redistribute works derived from GPLed code without having to negotiate a new license with the author or violate copyright law. If you ignore these options and release an amalgam of your own code and GPLed code, it means that you're violating copyright law, not that you've accidentally relicensed your code or relinquished your copyright to it.
And the fact that you don't relinquish rights to anything you write is the most important distinction between the GPL license and the contracts that SCO claim to have with Sequent and IBM: code that you write and link to GPL'ed code is still your code. If you want to legally distribute this code linked with the GPL'ed code, then you have to distribute it under a GPL-compatible license, but while that license does grant additional rights to others it does not remove any rights from you. If, say, you write a new feature for Emacs, you cannot legally redistribute your modified Emacs except under a mixed GPL+compatible license, but you can then take your new code and tack it on to your own text editor which you may distribute under any license you want.
According to SCO's claims, as soon as someone linked NUMA code with System V code, somehow SCO gained the right not just to use that NUMA code themselves, but to prevent the original authors from using the code how they wish! Under that theory SCO could have sued IBM for distributing "their" code in AIX even if IBM had never touched Linux. It's of course theoretically possible that Sequent or IBM signed such a contract, or even that at some point IBM signed a contract which transfers ownership of the whole damn company to SCO, but I wouldn't take SCO's lawyers' (much less their executives') word for it after reading about their ludicrous ideas about copyright law "invalidating" the GPL.
AFAIK, SCO is only violating copyright on the Linux kernel, not on Samba or any other free software. If that's the case, then only kernel copyright owners (like Red Hat and IBM, both of which have already filed their countersuits) could go after SCO for copyright infringement.
how do we know that either intel or hp was really involved to begin with?
Check out Interview with McBride on crn.com
First of all, McBride seems to think that IBM's counterclaims may be a sign that IBM is trying to get into a better position to capitulate to SCO:
Hahahahahahahaha!
I think he's rather confused. Even if IBM did settle, that would not necessarily give SCO any right to receive royalties on Linux from now on.
Could IBM retroactively assign the copyrights and patents to SCO? I doubt it. And it is far less likely that they would.
Even if IBM did improperly contribute their own code to Linux in violation of their contract, it doesn't follow that there is anything improper about using that code. It is, after all, IBM's code, not SCO's.
And I, for one, think IBM is highly unlikely to have done anything to violate that contract. There are other companies that I might believe it, but not IBM.
And then there's this:
And later on, CRN asked about the number of resellers being reduced from 16,000 to 11,000. McBride answered:
Hmmm.
Hundreds of customers and 11,000 resellers?
Just how many resellers does it take to convince anyone to purchase anything from SCO?
If this is dumping, what are we to make of the fact that 24.8% of insider shares of Red Hat have been sold in the same time period?
Now, I realize just how much of a raving nut the guy is, who made that claim. I mean, as near as I can figure, he's claiming that a copyright holder cannot make a contract with someone to grant them additional rights, because .. um .. somehow copyright law requires that the holder can't trade away rights...? ("It's a fishing license, and it's mandatory!")
McBride's charge, even though I don't have any evidence that it did or didn't happen, has about as much credibility as the Weekly World News' claim that Bat Boy is terrorizing some small town. I can't disprove it, and that's about the most I can say for them.
Man, it's just my luck to get Darl'd out in the middle of nowhere.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Wow! 3 million lines of UNIX copied into linux, and nobody noticed until now.
. as p
>>At that Q&A session, SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1224839,00
The entire linux kernel has been constructed from SCO's IP, by judicious copying and pasting of the individual ASCII symbols that form SCO UNIX' source.
In related news, SCO will also be suing Logitech, Cherry and Microsoft under the DMCA: the keyboards made by these leading manufacturers, among others, are in fact blatant copy-prevention mechanism circumvention devices designed to allow 'programmers', or pirates as we like to call them, to re-use SCO's valuable ASCII IP one character at a time. "It's just so easy," said McBride. "You just press the buttons, and tiny fragments of the SCO UNIX source appear. People making devices like this are worse than baby-murderers."
SCO refused to comment on speculation that they may ask for a retroactive injunction against distribution of the Bible, which can also be represented in ASCII.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
There used to be a thing in hustler magazine, asshole of the month, where someone's head was shown emerging from a jackasses' asshole.
That would be so appropriate for this turdsucker.
I hope someone takes out the gimp and does a great job on this darryl mcbride moron.
BTW: SCO's phone number is 800-726-8649.
/.
Press '5' to speak to a representative, or just
hang out in the menu system on their dime.
If Alan Ralsky was able to be spanked by the
then I know y'all can do some damage here. Think
*mail order catalogs*... happy ordering!
SCO: 800-726-8649
Verisign: 800-361-8319, 888-642-9675
Diebold: 800-433-VOTE (8683)
McBride showed 60-100 lines of code. They were precise including the comments. However its possible that the duplicate code was from RCU from sequent so the verdict is still out. I am not a coder and McBride did not say which file it was.
Anyway he showed more examples in the linux kernel including the SysV initialization code. THe Unixware version was similiar accept it had break/switch statements while the linux version did not. McBride went on saying that 829,000 lines of code were way too similiar and I could view them if I sign a NDA. I refused.
For more info look here.
IBM may have including code from sequent and the courts have to find out which license IBM was bound by. I personally think its evil that SCO can claim ownership of something they do not even own because of a piece of paper 15 years ago. Its rediculous.
http://saveie6.com/
Looks like HP is sponsoring after all.
There's no choice as to what to metamod. So if that post doesn't come up in his 10 daily metamods, he can't metamod it.
Duh.
Chris
Darl "The Man Who Couldn't Spell Daryl" McBride was quoted as saying "The very DNA of Linux is coming from Unix". Later that day Tler McBride, the father of Darl, moved for an injunction in federal court to prevent Darl from living. "His DNA is unfairly derived from mine," Tler said, "and unless he's willing to pony up $699 per cell for a license I just can't allow him to continue stealing from me like this."
Darl replied with a lawsuit of his own. "Copyright law specifies that you're allowed to make one, and only one, copy of your DNA, for archival purposes only. We've convinced people who have signed our NDA, and we will prove in court that Tler McBride created billions of copies of his DNA over the course of several years, and distributed those copies to the public using the GPL (Governmental Public Lavatories) as a cover." McBride added, "Free as in beer may have brought him and my mother together, and may have brought Bill and I together, but if you pinko commies think you can stop us from exploiting the marketplace for personal gain, you've got another thing cumming! Except for the DNA, of course, which is constitutionally protected."
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
SCO: So, it is down to you, and it is down to me...if you wish Linux dead, by all means keep moving forward. ...where was I?
IBM: Let me explain...
SCO: There's nothing to explain. You're trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen.
IBM: Perhaps an arrangement can be reached?
SCO: There will be no arrangements...and you're killing Linux.
IBM: But if there can be no arrangement, then we are at an impasse.
SCO: I'm afraid so. I can't compete with you physically, and you're no match for my brains.
IBM: You're that smart?
SCO: Let me put it this way: Have you ever heard or Kernighan, Ritchie, Torvalds?
IBM: Yes.
SCO: Morons!
IBM: Really! In that case, I challenge you to a battle of wits.
SCO: For the kernel? To the death? I accept!
IBM: Good, then untar the source code. [SCO# tar -xvfz code] Inhale this but do not touch.
SCO: [taking a vial from IBM] I smell nothing.
IBM: What you do not smell is our patent portfolio. It is odorless, tasteless, and dissolves instantly in source code and is among the more deadly portfolios known to man.
SCO: [shrugs with laughter] Hmmm.
IBM: [turning his back, and adding the patents to one of the code trees] Alright, where are the patents? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both compile - and find out who is right, and who is dead.
SCO: But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine it from what I know of you. Are you the sort of company who would put the patents into his own source code or his enemies? Now, a clever man would put the patents into his own goblet because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool so I can clearly not choose the code in front of you...But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the code in front of me.
IBM: You've made your decision then?
SCO: [happily] Not remotely! Because Linux's SMP code originally came from England(1). As everyone knows, England is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me. So, I can clearly not choose the code in front of you.
IBM: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
SCO: Wait 'till I get going!!
IBM: England.
SCO: Yes! AH! And you must have suspected I would have known the source code's origin,so I can clearly not choose the code in front of me.
IBM: You're just stalling now.
SCO: You'd like to think that, wouldn't you! You've beaten my giant, which means you're exceptionally strong...so you could have put the patents in your own code trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the code in front of you. But, you've also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied...and in studying you must have learned that Man is mortal so you would have put the patents as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the code in front of me!
IBM: You're trying to trick me into giving away something. It won't work.
SCO: It has worked! You've given everything away! I know where the patents are!
IBM: Then make your choice.
SCO: I will, and I choose...[pointing behind IBM] What in the world can that be?
IBM: [turning around, while SCO switches goblets] What?! Where?! I don't see anything.
SCO: Oh, well, I...I could have sworn I saw something. No matter. [SCO laughs]
IBM: What's so funny?
SCO: I...I'll tell you in a minute. First, lets compile, me from my code and you from yours. [They both compile]
IBM: You guessed wrong.
SCO: You only think I guessed wrong! That's what's so funny! I switched branches when your back was turned! Ha ha, you fool!!
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
sco.com is running Apache / OpenSSL / PHP on Linux.
www.sco.com is running Apache, OpenSSL, PHP, and Linux...
(so does www.canopy.com)...
But who is really behind this:
Oh, look at the hosting company: nft.com
That also hosts canopy.com, next to the sco.coma and caldera.com domains.
But guess what nft.com stands for... Noorda Family Trust. Ray Noorda that is. Research his history and you'll see that he is the type of person to hold a resentment (click 'Post Anonymously'. oof this guy is way too powerful for me). Here is his bio... "Even in the early days" he kept busy with things like "combat IBM". Just a quote from his BIO...
Then here it comes from that same page "Many analysts claim Noorda overreached when he bought DR-DOS, WordPerfect Corp. and Unix in a series of costly acquisitions in the early 1990s.".
Ah... and that Unix purchase is still bothering him till this day eh?
"Noorda was pressured to retire by Novell's board after he revealed some short-term memory problems in 1993."
Yeah, like details about where Linux comes from...
"In fact, the 73-year-old still reports to work each day as head of the Noorda Family Trust"
Noorda Family trust, which owns the Canopy Group, which owns SCO.
And Darl McBride worked at Novell from 1988-1996 , and I wouldn't be surprised if he and Ray were buddies.
Nuf said.
I know Bryan. A few days ago we talked about how it used to be at Caldera when he was running the show. You can see the SCO building out his office window. After reminiscing about it together for a while, he gestured over his shoulder with his thumb to point in SCO's direction, and said "Now I'm ashamed of what they've become."
The ethics of criminal defense are clear: Everyone accused of a crime deserves good representation. So there's nothing wrong with a lawyer willing to defend those accused of the worst crimes; indeed, something to commend.
But the ethics of civil offense are quite different: There is no inherent right to abuse our legal system and attack the innocent through it on false charges. Judges can - and we hope they will in this case - sanction the lawyers who enable such actions. But even beyond that, the lawyers working with SCO deserve complete sanction by civil society, and particularly by the tech industry they are trying to carve a niche out for themselves in. We must make it very clear that any company which hires them in the future will be subject to boycott. Any news organization which hires them for commentary - on anything - will be subject to boycott. Anyone who invites them to attend their party or join their club will be subject to boycott. We must learn to see them as tainted by their association with SCO in a way which in which a criminal defense attorney should not be seen as tainted. We must treat them as the moral equals of child abusers and meth manufacturers, and give them the same cold welcome in our neighborhoods.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I'll tell the planet what I see.
/.
I could give a rat's ass about SCO and any NDA shit. What can they do to me??
Not a damn thing in the world. I don't use banks so they can't take my money. ALL of my possessions are fully paid for so they can't take them. Texas is a homestead state so they can't take my house.
If they sue me, I'll wipe my ass with the papers and mail them back.
If you have the $$$ to drive me (I do *not* fly) to Utah, I'll sign the NDA, view the code and post the results here on
SCREW SCO..
http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/Tril
Dr. Stefan Hildemann claims to have had a chance to see SCO's code show without having to sign the NDA; he has posted his impressions (in German).& t=1716
Well, one of the core SCO developer responsible for the development of the SCO Groups current Unix Intel port, also contributed to the Linux kernel. Compare this post of Jun's including the commentshttp://forum.golem.de/phorum/read.php?f=44&i=1774
Thanks to Robert Taylor this English translation of the posting
http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/5312/2001/1/
To this actual part of the Linux 2.4 kernel
http://lxr.linux.no/source/kernel/sched.c?v=2.4.1
and consider the comment of Dr.Stefan Hildemann.
This raises more interesting questions. Since the SMP scheduler in question was specifically written directly for Linux kernel, and both Caldera/SCO employees only added patches, does it not seem more likely that if there is common source and comment then it is likely that the source in question was copied from GPL'ed Linux source to The SCO Groups own Unix?
HP's MO is now to plan stuff then decide not to do it. It's been that way for a few years now that I've seen.
>Somewhere in Texas, there's a village missing its idiot. We in Europe think, there must also be a bar missing its idiot [GWB].
So you think that maybe SCO is taking their buzzwords from Linux documentation. That they saw NUMA, RCU, SMP, JFS, and just grabbed the words.
Maybe we should make sure that Linux 2.6 has awesome enterprise features such as GOAT.SE and YHBT. And make sure those are featured prominently in the documentation. I'd like to see Darl taking about that!
Hey, Apple did it to Carl Sagan with the BHA project.
over in this eweek article SCO claims there are 'millions' of lines of offending code. They also claim that they were talking to red hat before RH's suit and they were 'communicating'
. as p
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1224877,00
It is amazing how unintentionally accurate he is with this statement.
At last count the Human-Chimp shared DNA component was greater than 99%.
Those bastard chimps must have been violating our DNA license agreement...
Q. (Captain Logical Fallacy)
Insert Signature Here
It wasn't the Open Source movement that carefully wrote the GNU General Public License and made it so likely to withstand legal attack by only leveraging the powers under copyright law (in fact part of the problem with other so-called "open source licenses" is that they aren't like the GPL because they try to place terms on powers not granted to licensors in copyright law). It's not the Open Source movement that champions the freedom to share and modify software. The Open Source movement added the license to a list of approved licenses and in so doing helped draw more people to using the GPL. But that movement did not exist when the GPL was written and the GPL was already in wide use in the Free Software community before the Open Source movement began. Let's give credit where credit is due and credit the GPL as a Free Software license so we properly understand what is at stake--the software freedom we've collectively enjoyed as a community.
Digital Citizen
I AM MR. DARL MCBRIDE CURRENTLY SERVING AS THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE SCO GROUP, FORMERLY KNOWN AS CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, IN LINDON, UTAH, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I KNOW THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOUR BECAUSE WE HAVE HAD NO PREVIOUS COMMUNICATIONS OR BUSINESS DEALINGS BEFORE NOW.
MY ASSOCIATES HAVE RECENTLY MADE CLAIM TO COMPUTER SOFTWARES WORTH AN ESTIMATED $1 BILLION U.S. DOLLARS. I AM WRITING TO YOU IN CONFIDENCE BECAUSE WE URGENTLY REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE TO OBTAIN THESE FUNDS.
IN THE EARLY 1970S THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CORPORATION DEVELOPED AT GREAT EXPENSE THE COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE KNOWN AS UNIX. UNFORTUNATELY THE LAWS OF MY COUNTRY PROHIBITED THEM FROM SELLING THESE SOFTWARES AND SO THEIR VALUABLE SOURCE CODES REMAINED PRIVATELY HELD. UNDER A SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT SOME PROGRAMMERS FROM THE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY DID ADD MORE CODES TO THIS OPERATING SYSTEM, INCREASING ITS VALUE, BUT NOT IN ANY WAY TO DILUTE OR DISPARAGE OUR FULL AND RIGHTFUL OWNERSHIP OF THESE CODES, DESPITE ANY AGREEMENT BETWEEN AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH AND THE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY, WHICH AGREEMENT WE DENY AND DISAVOW.
IN THE YEAR 1984 A CHANGE OF REGIME IN MY COUNTRY ALLOWED THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CORPORATION TO MAKE PROFITS FROM THESE SOFTWARES. IN THE YEAR 1990 OWNERSHIP OF THESE SOFTWARES WAS TRANSFERRED TO THE CORPORATION UNIX SYSTEM LABORATORIES. IN THE YEAR 1993 THIS CORPORATION WAS SOLD TO THE CORPORATION NOVELL. IN THE YEAR 1994 SOME EMPLOYEES OF NOVELL FORMED THE CORPORATION CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, WHICH BEGAN TO DISTRIBUTE AN UPSTART OPERATING SYSTEM KNOWN AS LINUX. IN THE YEAR 1995 NOVELL SOLD THE UNIX SOFTWARE CODES TO SCO. IN THE YEAR 2001 OCCURRED A SEPARATION OF SCO, AND THE SCO BRAND NAME AND UNIX CODES WERE ACQUIRED BY THE CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, AND IN THE FOLLOWING YEAR THE CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL WAS RENAMED SCO GROUP, OF WHICH I CURRENTLY SERVE AS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER.
MY ASSOCIATES AND I OF THE SCO GROUP ARE THEREFORE THE FULL AND RIGHTFUL OWNERS OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARES KNOWN AS UNIX. OUR ENGINEERS HAVE DISCOVERED THAT NO FEWER THAN SEVENTY (70) LINES OF OUR VALUABLE AND PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODES HAVE APPEARED IN THE UPSTART OPERATING SYSTEM LINUX. AS YOU CAN PLAINLY SEE, THIS GIVES US A CLAIM ON THE MILLIONS OF LINES OF VALUABLE SOFTWARE CODES WHICH COMPRISE THIS LINUX AND WHICH HAS BEEN SOLD AT GREAT PROFIT TO VERY MANY BUSINESS ENTERPRISES. OUR LEGAL EXPERTS HAVE ADVISED US THAT OUR CONTRIBUTION TO THESE CODES IS WORTH AN ESTIMATED ONE (1) BILLION U.S. DOLLARS.
UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE HAVING DIFFICULTY EXTRACTING OUR FUNDS FROM THESE COMPUTER SOFTWARES. TO THIS EFFECT I HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE MANDATE BY MY COLLEAGUES TO CONTACT YOU AND ASK FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE. WE ARE PREPARED TO SELL YOU A SHARE IN THIS ENTERPRISE, WHICH WILL SOON BE VERY PROFITABLE, THAT WILL GRANT YOU THE RIGHTS TO USE THESE VALUABLE SOFTWARES IN YOUR BUSINESS ENTERPRISE. UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE NOT ABLE AT THIS TIME TO SET A PRICE ON THESE RIGHTS. THEREFORE IT IS OUR RESPECTFUL SUGGESTION, THAT YOU MAY BE IMMEDIATELY A PARTY TO THIS ENTERPRISE, BEFORE OTHERS ACCEPT THESE LUCRATIVE TERMS, THAT YOU SEND US THE NUMBER OF A BANKING ACCOUNT WHERE WE CAN WITHDRAW FUNDS OF A SUITABLE AMOUNT TO GUARANTEE YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THIS ENTERPRISE. AS AN ALTERNATIVE YOU MAY SEND US THE NUMBER AND EXPIRATION DATE OF YOUR MAJOR CREDIT CARD, OR YOU MAY SEND TO US A SIGNED CHECK FROM YOUR BANKING ACCOUNT PAYABLE TO "SCO GROUP" AND WITH THE AMOUNT LEFT BLANK FOR US TO CONVENIENTLY SUPPLY.
KINDLY TREAT THIS REQUEST AS VERY IMPORTANT AND STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. I HONESTLY ASSURE YOU THAT THIS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL AND RISK-FREE.
I am not a programmer, but Im a geek, I live in vegas, and i will have free time for the next few dayz. So what exactly do you want me to write on the card i will hold? i am open to suggestions.
This is NOT a joke, I am being serious
Progress Software is in a way like SCO - their product (db & devel tools) is crap, and the only reason people keep using it is because they have a lot of code written in their proprietary 4GL that can't be ported to something like Oracle. I was kinda happy that they managed to stay afloat - and even released their product on Linux. But I assume most of their licenses are used to run legacy applications on legacy OSen like Unixwarez.
However, a piece of good news for all who are trapped in the Progress 4GL world: it runs just fine with Linux, and you have absolutely no reason to use something apart from Linux. Let alone Unixwarez, which will be dead Any Day Now.
BTW, was anyone else annoyed by the way the crowd applaused for McBrides antics in the conference? Would you really like to support such a crowd by providing them with your OSS product? Samba team could do a cunning stunt by dropping Unixware support, now that SCO advertises how great they run in Windows networks, thanks to Samba.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Talk about a troll. It pretty much screamed out "click here! they told people what the code is!" Of course, they didn't. CNET must really be hurting for clickthroughs.
Nah... God will just countersue, because in making UNIX, SCO incorporates works derivative of "creation". ;)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
RIt would invalidate the Microsoft Shared Source license. It would also eliminate Microsoft's method for the distribution of the Windows operating system, which is pre-loaded by hard drive manufacturers onto disk drives they deliver by the hundreds of thousands to PC manufacturers.
Looks clean to me...
I know I'm going to sound like RMS here but the fact is, Free software really is free for EVERYONE - even those we happen to hate today.
You know, there was a time, not too long ago many of us disliked IBM and their tactics. In fact, that may one day happen again. If we set a precident now where you can revoke a GPL'd license just because you don't like someone, where does it stop?
Free software is FREE. SCO is hanging themselves by it and here's why:
Let them use GCC. Let them use Samba. LET THEM! ANY market acceptance of these free products is good PR for these projects on ANY platform - free or otherwise. This is because any platform in competition can then say, "Our version of Linux running Samba 3.x offers the same benefits as SCO's Openserver, except ours costs half the price."
I know we're all in agreement here about how we feel about Darl(ing) McBride and his band of merry lawyers. But they will get what is coming to them if we stick to the GPL. It's worked so far and this long because there's no fighting it when the playfield is even. SCO can't say they didn't agree to the terms of the GPL when they, to this day, continue to release code under it. Sometimes the best offense is a good defense.
And RMS, if you're listening out there, you can tell all your detractors for me to STFU. At least there's still someone alive that sticks to their principles and I respect that.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
"McBride said pattern-recognition experts SCO hired have ferreted out a slew of infringing code in Linux."
Hey, they've got one's and zero's all through their code just like ours. They must have copied it! $$$
To know that you know what you know, and that you do not know what you do not know, that is true wisdom. --Scooby Doo
This SCO story will come to a head when M$ releases Server 2003!
Mostly, as far as I can tell, those other countries include Norway, Holland, France, Germany, and occasionally other ex-Soviet Satellites like the Czech Republic or Ukraine.
This is not the Russian mafia doing this: the Russian mafia has been kept out of Lithuania by other mafias. But, according to an article I read back in 1999, the Russian mafia *does* operate rings that offer nominally legitimate employment to young Russian women. Then they start charging all kinds of new "fees", and threatening to beat/kill their families back home, to force them into prostitution. They are operating in New York. Young women can't go to the police, because the police are on the Russian mafia's payroll. That, according to the article. I cannot say for sure if it is true or not.
Nonetheless, these are not consensual crimes. Young women do not normally, voluntarily, go into abusive multiple-partner AIDS-transmitting sexual relationships willingly.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
(rant)
Now, let me also throw out one other major source of blame: the governments. I do not say "the governments you elect". If you are in the government, you know that your job really doesn't depend on the will of the people. It might depend on the will of some "elected" representative somewhere. Or if you're elected, it might depend on your membership in a civic club; or it might depend on which advertising agents you hire. But it doesn't depend on the will of the poeople. So you bear your own responsibility.
Here goes: the opening for these mafias comes directly out of your laws that violate natural law. Natural law is the natural rights, which cannot effectively be taken away from people. The right to speech (who controls your mouth?); the right to work to better your condition; the right to travel. There are other rights, granted rights, but
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
2 ?!?
3 Profit
http://www.sco.com/2003forum/sponsors.html
It seems that SCO has really big problems with sponsors. The sponsor page is done.
Introspection is the key to understanding
n/t
In his keynote address, McBride explained that there are striking similarities between SCO over the past year and a Bond movie. "The past year had been much like a Bond movie, with attacks and counter attacks, but in the end Bond never dies," he said to applause.
from the above Darl "Walter Mitty" Mcbride seems to have a little problem telling Reality from Fantasy.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
See my journal, I write things there
If SCO claim that the GPL is invalid, how can they then distribute samba? What license gives them the right to distribute samba if the GPL is invalid?
Any company that uses precious company resources to fund the most stupid lawsuits like this deserves bankruptcy. I recommend that investors pull out of SCO until they can get a CEO whose brain is not in his ass.
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
From the eweek.com article:
;)
"We have rocket scientists who have applied their spectral recognition and pattern analysis to software, which has yielded amazing results. We have found needles in the Mount Everest-sized haystack," Sontag said.
It's good to see how they see it as very few lines amongst a great heap many that infringe
I am the Barber of Seville.
A long time ago, when Microsoft was but a small software company selling a variation of BASIC to OS developpers, UNIX vendors were already fighting each others with copyrights, patents and other IP stuff. I bet SCO is the only UNIX vendor (left?) still stuck in the eighties, that's all.
That makes them sort of the Austin Powers of UNIX, not James Bond.
Has anyone else noticed the number of anonymous SCO fanboys that seem to have popped up in this thread?
A german computer magazine has now screenshots online from SCO "The World is not enough" forum.1 9.08.03-00 0/d ata/jk-19.08.03-00 0/imh0.jpgk -19.08.03-00 0/imh1.jpg
Online article:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-
Screenshots:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/j
How can they make statements such as:
./abi/sco/mmap.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./abi/sco/stat.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./abi/sco/statvfs.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./abi/svr4/misc.c: * Copyright (C) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH
./abi/svr4/socksys.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH
./abi/svr4/stat.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./abi/svr4/statvfs.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./arch/i386/kernel/lcall7.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./arch/i386/kernel/smpboot.c: * Original development of Linux SMP code supported by Caldera.
./drivers/net/tlan.c: * (C) 1997-1998 Caldera, Inc.
./drivers/net/tlan.h: * (C) 1997-1998 Caldera, Inc.
./drivers/scsi/advansys.c: AdvanSys driver in the Caldera releases.
./include/abi/sco/mman.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./include/abi/sco/types.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./include/abi/svr4/sockio.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./include/abi/svr4/types.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./include/abi/ioctl.h: * Copyright (C) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH
./include/asm-i386/abi_machdep.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./net/ipx/af_ipx.c: * Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc. <greg@caldera.com>
./net/ipx/af_ipx.c: * Neither Greg Page nor Caldera, Inc. admit liability nor provide
./net/ipx/af_ipx.c: KERN_INFO "IPX Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc.\n" \
By selling Linux itself, SCO has not assigned all of its copyright ownership to the GNU General Public License. "SCO did not put a copyright into the GPL and authorized the usage of that code in Linux," Heise said.
when a quick search through the kernel reveals this:
$ find -name *.[ch] | xargs grep Caldera
$
Now what was your argument? SCO!=Caldera?
It was origionally found at Ars Technica
#include "sig.h"
Checking out the head lines on CNet, and after reading some of the article, one might start to think SCO "might" have a case. But again, still no one has seen this code. But the more intersting thing I realized was this: SCO is now poo-pooing the GPL and questioning the "legality" of teh GPL. Then I got to the end of this CNet article and how the talked about the next release of OpenServer. It states that OpenServer would "provide better compatibility with Microsoft Windows through version 3 of Samba". I had to double check, but Samba is most definately GPL'd. Npw lets have a look at whats in Open Server 5, you'll see a good portion of it includes GLP software. So is this a "do as we say, not as we do" sort of thing?
They would have no right to distribute anything GPL. Which is why their claims are so stupid.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Why is the identity of the Fortune 500 company that allegedly bought a SCO Linux license still unknown? Seems to me that the Slashdot community could figure this out:
1) Set up a website to host the project
2) Get the list of Fortune 500 companies
Slashdotters in the closest city then...
3) Find the contact info for the CTO
4) Call him/her
5) Ask "Did your company buy a Linux license from SCO?"
6) Track the info on the website from step 1:
- who did the calling, when, who did you speak to, etc.
Eventually, we'll either know who the company is... or perhaps we'll discover that the claim is false. Interesting either way.
Doesn't Darl sound a little like Bill back in the day?
From the CNET Article:
"We're fighting for the right in the industry to be able to make a living selling software," McBride told the audience. He compared this right to the ability "to send your children to college" and "to buy a second home."
And From Gates' letter to computer hobbyists:
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
Actually, it is going to be relatively easy for IBM to put the big slap-down on SCO. The Lanham Act specifically goes towards finding against companies that make knowingly false statements that injure another company.
In IBM's case you have SCO's press release claiming that they pulled the AIX license when in fact Novell contractually forbade SCO from doing any such thing.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
...would have been better.
Anyone have the script to the "To The Pain" section? That sounds more like what IBM is going to be doing to SCO.
I can see it now...
IBM: First, I'll drive down the value of your stock. Then, I'll raid your entire patent portfolio...
SCO: Yes, then you'll drive us into bankruptcy...
IBM: No, your company I shall leave intact so that every business who worked with you can stare upon your hideousness and say, "My god, what a hideous company"...
Or something like that.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
In the heise.de screenshots from the SCO Forum: First screenshot, second screenshot.
A simple google search reveals that these comments are from malloc.c and/or ate_utils.c
The copyright at the tops says Silicon Graphics et al. WTF?
Question is about the SGI code's Unix licence.
Answer is the answer that caldera itself put the questionable code under a BSD licence in 2002.
This was pointed out by someone else so I'm just passing it along.
If SCO's argument against GPL is the ability to make more than one copy than ANY site/OEM license would be null and void. Think about how MS sends Dell one CD that they then use to load all the PC's that they sell and also to create that oh-so-obnoxious Recovery CD. Wouldn't this fall under the same issue?
How about the ol' MS Select License and their current Licensing 6.0 scheme where a company gets one set of install CD's and installs the software on every machine? Wouldn't this fall under the same issue?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I posted as an AC further above the code links found by google as discussed in the Linux kernel mailing list. Caldera placed the code under a BSD style licence itself in 2002.
Fuck SCO!
Read Copywrong Update?!?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
According to the copyright law, if I am reading it right, allows me to copy a DVD disk, after all a DVD disk is computer software. A DVD player being a mini computer with limited functions, programmed by software that runs the chipset inside. WOW I'm excited about this.....
Code like this?
and this?
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The "hundreds of satisfied customers" is especially fun compared with the 11.000 resellers. That is approximately 100 resellers per satisfied customer.
I know I'm going to sound like RMS here but the fact is, Free software really is free for EVERYONE - even those we happen to hate today.
Yes, BUT SCO has stated explicitly that they deam the GPL to be invalid and not to apply to them. So which is it?
It would not be inappropriate, in that context, for the Samba developers to request written assurances that SCO will abide by the GPL with respect to their distribution of Samba. SCO's unwillingness to comply would certainly be telling if they were to violate the GPL down the road, and if they did comply, it would be public refutation of their absurd notion that the GPL is invalid because it is more liberal than default copy restrictions under US copyright law (as is every single license ever granted).
Vis-a-vis the linux kernel, that particular free software is no longer free to SCO. Indeed, SCO's right to distribute the linux kernel under the GPL is invalid, as they have violated the GPL and continue to do so. They are, under the law, now out of business when it comes to distributing linux. I suspect when the numerous copyright violations within SCO's code (the Linux compatability layer, for example) come to light, that SCO will be out of the UNIX business altogether. Which will serve the neandrathalic throwback still supporting that company by buying licenses to their outdated product right.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Yes, but... So what? It's like SCO 'revoking' IBM's license to AIX. Well? Has it stopped IBM from selling it? Of course not! The GPL's strengths are in it's defensability not in the offensive. It's about giving rights, not taking someone else's away. Think of it as a really big tank with great armor but no gun.
Just because SCO blows more out their ass by declaring something invalid doesn't mean anything. They've said a LOT in the last two weeks. Everyone calm down out there. It hasn't yet stopped you from compiling a kernel. Their 'position' - whatever it is today - is hardly defensible considering that they're willing to pick and choose between what parts (and products) they like of the GPL. For instance, they seem to like GCC and SAMBA. Well, that's terrific. It's great evidence for the courts, and another example of how they (and their developers) support the GPL after all.
No court of law is going to believe that SCO agreed to the GPL in all of these contexts without adequate knowledge. To quote Airplane, "They bought their tickets, they KNEW what they were getting into!"
I still think it would be unwise to proclaim special exemptions for any reason here regardless of violation because:
a) Enforceability of the GPL is suspect to begin with. i.e., You and what army (of lawyers)?
b) It could come back to bite you in the ass later.
So SCO's out of compliance with the GPL. So apparently is China. ENFORCEABILITY. This is exactly what I mean. What ya gonna do?
Don't let your hate of this organization get ahead of the true goal here. I'm telling you, these scumbags will get theirs if we do not compromise.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Bravo.
It also implies that if I create a copyrighted work, it is the government that gets to decide how I can distribute it, and what kind of permission I can grant. I'd like to think that absent any other agreement, the one-copy clause holds true, thereby permitting the me protection by default, but also the ability to specify any alternate terms I might find more to my liking. In the case of the GPL, those alternate terms are clearly spelled out.
Why ANYONE would obtain software from a company headed by a dufus with the name DARL is beyond me....
(of course, IANAL, so that doesn't mean a judge wouldn't buy it)
That clause refers to "this License", which seems to me to be referring to the particular GPL license on a particular piece of software, not to the GPL license on every piece of software.
SCO's board of directors appears to include two accountants and a graphic artist... truly enlightened leadership for a software company. What creative accounting picture would you like them to paint for you today?
The Linux community is outraged but that alone is not a reason for SCO to reveal the code that is infringed PUBLICLY. If SCO reveals the code, publicly then they lose the protections that they are seeking to enforce. Hence, they ask for NDA's to keep that protection in force and refuse to reveal the detailed code publicly. It is what any IPR lawyer would tell them to do. Ask IBM to publish DB2 code, just because you want to see it and see what response you get.
SCO will have to reveal the materials, when this gets to court. They may be right or they may be wrong. We all have the uncertainty and SCO is clearly trying to gain advantage from that uncertainty. But if they are correct, they have the right to gain that advantage. If they are wrong and are making the claim without any merit, I am certain they will be sued out of existence.
The only way to relieve the uncertainty requires SCO's cooperation. They would need to allow a this party, who the community would trust (and hence, probably NOT someone in the Open Source community) to see the code and report to the community *NOT* whether SCO is right or wrong, but if SCO has a reasonable claim / suspicion. The Courts/juries will determine the winner. The real question is is their suspicion and claim reasonable?
Slashdotters, who would such a third party be? The person needs to be pretty technical, know UNIX and/or Linux, not be related to SCO, Linux or a company that benefits from the outcome, and someone both SCO and the Linux community can trust. Nominations anyone? It will be a thankless job, because *if* the person believes that SCO has a reasonable, even if unproved and ultimately losing claim, the person will be vilified by many in the Linux community who simply don't like the UNIX license, licenses in general, etc.
You are only granted rights to the extent that those rights help make a profit.
Allow me to recount a simple tale about cattle ranching on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land.
In a dry area where I lived, there'd been a drought for four or five years. Things were normally dry and the drought made things very dry. Cattle grazing on BLM land had the grass cropped down to the point where there was almost no grass left. Water holes that once had water were mud at best, dry often.
One rancher complained that his cattle were dying because of the drought. So he petitioned the BML to grant him the right to graze twice the number of cattle that he'd had previously. The BML granted him that right.
It made no sense to me - grazing more cattle on already overgrazed land seemed a bit futile. Till I discovered that he was also getting government subsidized insurance on his cattle and that subsidy had been increased because of the drought. Every animal that died meant money in his pocket.
Letting land lie fallow to allow grasses to grow back, to allow precipitation to soak into the ground and help the water table, to allow local species of vegetation and animal life to regain a foothold on that land that "belonged to the people" seems to me to be a good investment in the land - more so than continuing a practice of overgrazing. I'd also note that if you look at lands held by private owners who graze cattle, the land is cared for far more carefully and overgrazing is nowhere near as bad. Similarly, it can be instructive to compare forest lands held by private landowners who harvest and public lands harvested - even when the harvesting is done by the same groups.
the parent post is claiming that somehow indian programmers are more technically apt then other races; that is NOT the case. i'm sure there are some indian programmers that are better than british or american programmers, however, inversely, there are some british/american programmers that are better than thier indian counter parts - the real root of the problem is that british/american programmers are not legally allowed to work for the wages indian programmers earn - there are minimum wage laws in our countries.
I was claiming no such thing. You're right on target, and I agree with you completely. What my POINT was, is that if all this programming is going on in India, and that's where all the jobs are moving, they all of a sudden have the leverage to unionize, demand fair wage, etc., etc. Howerver, in actuality their wages are probably actually pretty good for them, considering the lower cost of living there. But inflation will march on.
This is how developing economies develop. Just because you got there first doesn't make it fair for Anglos to keep all the good jobs for ourselves. As they get better jobs they get better educated, and their country as a whole will become better off, more interested in human rights, etc., etc. It's not going to happen overnight, but it'll never happen if you try to deny them any sort of progression.
Keep in mind how the US didn't respect UK copyrights for about a hundred years, to kickstart their economy. And we all know how that turned out....
I read in this article at IT World that SCO is now claiming that the XFS filesystem was improperly contributed to Linux. Does anyone else know about this? Did I miss their announcement targeting SGI? Are they next?
No, he can't fix that particular thing. But he complaining about it doesn't help, M2 is there for a reason and he should use it instead of posting, it'd be a better use of his time.
I touch computers in naughty places
Thank you. That was very well done.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
It seems fairly straightforward why SCO isn't showing the code. They've already said that the code in the kernel isn't affected. That leaves what: superfluous drivers (maybe, depending on how one defines code), and all of the 'gnu-ish' utils that make up a linux distro.
They don't want to show the code, since we'd probably see that it's something in the 'bc' program (for example) that is trespassing and it would be a trivial exercise to rewrite or remove the offending speck of code (a bit like gif was replaced by jpg and compress was replaced by gzip). They don't want to tell people what it is -- just that they are violating SCO's copyright. The whole purpose of not showing the code is the hope that whatever the technology is, it will become more embedded in actual use and become more difficult and painful to remove it as time goes on. So they stall for time to allow as much integration as possible before they have to produce the code.
I'd say ignore it until they state exactly what lines of code or what driver or utility infringes, then we excise it. I'm just guessing that maybe they have a case, but it's too easy to excise the offending code that if they showed the code, the case would be moot by every vendor's next release or prior with a patch.
It seems the only logical explanation for their actions.
-l