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Embarrassing Dispatches From The SCO Front
An anonymous reader writes "Dennis Ritchie has acknowledged he with Ken Thompson wrote the code cited as 'proof' by SCO. This seems to fit perfectly with Bruce Perens' Analysis of SCO's Las Vegas Slide Show, and undermine Blake Stowell's claim 'At this point it's going to be his word against ours." Andreas Spengler writes "In the ongoing battle between SCO and the Linux community, German publisher Heise has shown that not only was the Linux implementation of the Berkeley Packet filter written outside of Caldera (now SCO), but that it was common practice there and at other companies to remove the BSD copyright notices from the internally used source code. In effect, SCO has proven publicly that they violated the BSD license." (Warning, article is in German.) Finally, a semi-anonymous reader writes "Learn all about how IBM's stomach will be roasted on a pyre of CDs at WeLovetheSCOInformationMinister."
Something must be going on... I haven't been able to get there in the last 4 or 5 hours...
Who wants to be a Darl Mc Bride?
:
- Question 1 -
Your best friend kindly lent you his new Toyota, but you have literally destroyed it in a accident you were entirely responsible.
What do you do?
[ ] a) You apologize.
[ ] b) You buy him a new car.
[ ] c) You sue him.
[ ] d) You sue him AND General Motors.
Answer
If you choose D, congratulations! You could be SCO's CEO!
I already had the welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com bookmarked. This one is going right next to it.
Now if only he sold t-shirts and playing cards to go with it. Or perhaps diapers with the name McBride stamped on them. Honey, I think he needs a new McBride, this one is all poopy.
Well, it's getting to be that time...
As soon as they have to publish their 10Q everyone is going to see that SCO has little future revenue and that the execs have been engaged in wash-trades to pump and dump the stock. I'm mildly amused that the SEC and FTC haven't stepped in to prevent all the stock-holders from being royally screwed over. Nope... Nope... the government will step in only after everyone has been fucked and the execs are kicking it in Bermuda on everyone else's retirements.
common practice there and at other companies to remove the BSD copyright notices from the internally used source code
That's a large part of what cost AT&T in the ATT/USL vs BSD case -- AT&T had incorporated BSD code without the BSD copyright notices, violating the BSD license and thus BSD's copyrights. IIRC, AT&T ended up paying BSD's legal costs in that trial.
Hey SCO, how do you feel about paying IBM's (and anyone else you were thinking of suing) legal costs?
-- Alastair
Dennis got into the act after Linus called his code ugly: damn, them be fightin' words!
Ah SCO. The Microsoft of Germany. Can we get a borg-like icon for them instead of the company logo?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
...for some software developers whose code was misappropriated by a certain publicly traded company to start filing cease-and-desists against that company for violation of copyright. I wonder how much of SCO's products would be unsellable under such conditions.
This isn't to say that everyone else is perfect, but then again, everyone else hasn't tried to benefit from open source licenses only to turn around and bash the concept while still using the technology that they gained from such licensing.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's starting to become painfully obvious that indeed SCO is completely full of shit, and will stop at no ends to destroy Linux's image.
I think at this point it would be a good idea for the slashdot community as well as everyone else in open source to start contacting the FTC
Going to sell a deck of cards showing the faces of SCO management and lawyers?
Will they be able to get *BSD out of it's deathbed to battle SCO?
Not sure the exact quote, but when people pointed out the fallacious examples, SCO said, "We think we know our own code."
However, their claims contradict this. Crucial to their suit is the fact that they did not know that there was UNIX code in Linux prior to all this litigation. If they did know that, then they willingly released their code under the GPL.
Perhaps they've learned a bunch about their code in the past few months, but if their developers did stuff like ripping out BSD advertising clauses many years ago, I don't see how the new management would be privy to it.
Just unbelievable. Career/industrial suicide. Not pretty...
Dawn of the Dead
I meant to link to this comment
Personally I'm rather surprised about the naivity of US developers. Do they really don't notice what it's all about. This is not just about Linux and OSS any longer. If SCO succeeds with their far reaching definition of derivative works than this would crush all US based software develoment.
Any jerk could argue that by just using a interface/library you created a "derivative work". Device drivers will be owned by OS producers useless you got special contracts. This will blow up OOP - because when you create a child class from a class in a library you create a "derivate work" of this kind. This applies to most programs using the java gui.
You might say know: Well, that's because SCO's claims are fucked and rubbish. Therefore these strange implications. But remember that this is a lawsuit in the US. You can get several millions of dollars for being too stupid to open a McDonalds coffee cup there.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
that's what they get for buying SCO stock
SCO vs. Linux: The time of the conspiracy theories In history around SCO and the source code from SCO existence, rich at idioms and twists, possibly transferred after Linux, new turns are to be reported. With the conspiracy theory that Microsoft behind SCO stands, it associates the theory that the refusal of the requirements of SCO is a only one, well camouflaged campaign of IBM. Thus the InfoWorld reported that SCO boss sees Darl McBride IBM as an author of the dirt campaign. IBM caused Novell to place itself against SCO meant McBride, employed long years with Novell as a director/conductor of the Netware Embedded division (NEST). IBM has talks floated to complain against SCO means it in addition. Also Eric Raymond of the open SOURCE initiative would stand on the pay roll IBMs, which would finance besides the Free software Foundation and thus the lawyer evenly Moglen, continued to implement Darl McBride. While IBM as talk has the accusations lapidary for nonsense explained and about Novell none came, Eric Raymond raffte itself up to send an open letter at Darl McBride. In it answered in the negative Raymond by IBM to be paid did not deny however IBM to have helped. Altogether Raymond appealed to the reason of the SCO upper one with an allusion to the insight ability of Darth Vader : "you have the choice. Remove the dark helmet and converse with us like a human nature, or you continue your way, which lets bad times fear for us, however you and the entire SCO Topmanagement into the ruin will completely surely float." Off the roaring star Wars Rhetorik Eric Raymond used the open letter, in order to make attentive on a Petition of the Linux Community, which were read out on the SCOForum. In their the SCO Group is requested to give up and all inkriminierten places in the SOURCE code call the confrontation course. In response the Linux programmers want to assure to revise all questionable places: "if right right-hurt-hurting that code in the Linux Kernel to be present should become, we it remove, because our community would not like to have a part of this Kernels." The polite request will possibly remain without answer, because SCO with first, on which SCOForum published proofs could not convince. Apart from the problem of the "Greek" code is in the meantime the Berkeley presented by SCO pack filter (BPF) into the center of the interest moved. The SCO example originates from the file/sys/net/bpf.c, which is available here. In the cutout shown by SCO is missing the BSD Lizenzbedigungen, which is to be always called in accordance with BSD license: "Redistributions OF SOURCE code must retain the above copyright notice, this cunning OF conditions and the following more disclaimer." Because they are missing, code experts go such as Bruce Perens and Greg Lehey of the fact out that SCO with the example proved that the license conditions were removed agreement-adversely. Thus a classical self-gate could be present, particularly since other possibilities are impossible. Like that the programmer of the version used in Linux was employed by BPF, Jay trainingist, with Caldera, wrote however the Clean Room variant of BPF before its time with Caldera. From the circles of former Caldera developers several persons can remember that in the SCO Trees in many places with the BSD code the copyright notes were missing. The procedure to cut "redundant" licenses off seems to have practiced also at other companies. Thus heise on-line developers to, that experienced the "technology" at Siemens Nixdorf, announced themselves. If the proof situation in the case SCO should confirm itself, then the code Hunter of this company excavated a proof, which occupies the exact opposite of the accusations by SCO. At least in the case of BPF SCO the power POINT presentation would not only have ( when ppt , when pdf ) separate the whole code make public, in order to weaken the suspicion.
...and IN SOVIET RUSSIA, beowulf clusters imagine 1, 2, 3 profit!!!! jokes made out of YOU!!!
Here's the
babelfish translation of the German article.
Now, can somebody please post a link that translates from babelfish English to real English?
-- Alastair
The whole SCO mess is really pretty simple when you think about it.
Through the IPO and such a bunch of lawyers ended up with a large interest in Caldera/SCO. When they realized they didn't have any revenue from product sales they decided to: A) Find another possible source of revenue. B) Increase the value of their near worthless stock holdings.
So, SCO needed to find a company that A) had a Unix license with them. B) Was a large player in the Linux space. C) (most importantly) Wouldn't blink at the cost of buying them. IBM looked like an attractive target.
Unfortuantely for SCO, IBM didn't blink. They just laughed, gave them a lollipop and told them to run along. Since the stock was ticking up the SCO execs/lawyers (same people) are playing it to the hilt and trying to create an impression that they might be gaining some huge revenues soon. Look what its done to their stock. Also, look at who is suddenly selling stock in SCO.
Pretty soon IBM will give them the bitch-slap they so truly deserve and likely buy their assets pennies on the dollar at a bankruptcy sale.
Until then, lets just recognize this whole fiasco for what it is. Its a pump-and-dump on the stock. Nothing more, nothing less.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
You may recall that recently SCO declared the GPL invalid. I believe the real reason why they did that is not, as many believe, because they continued to distribute Linux after they announced their lawsuit, but instead because they have actual Linux code inside their own SCO Unix. So far, this is just a hypothesis, but I think it best explains their action.
If in fact they have copied BSD code in violation of the BSD, then it's very plausible that they have copied GNU/Linux code in violation of the GPL.
Not Found
The requested URL
Continuing to cover this is not particularly useful. SCO won't be bothered by anything so trivial as facts. They are out for blood and maximum damage, and no possible response from anyone is going to stop them now. They will have to be defeated, but no action we take or not take will do anything significant. They know they aren't popular and don't care in the slightest. They may even know they are wrong, but that won't stop them from trying to use the system to get $$.
If we want to do something interesting, let's look ahead to how we might lobby and/or structure the GPL 3.0 to fight this kind of crap. Maybe create an auditing trail software package people can use to know not just the origin of a piece of code, but how it is used and what code is based off of it. Also give more press to the idea of mutual defense clauses in licenses - kind of the counterweight to the cross licensing of IP between companies. Let's think of some positive steps we might take in the future to make our position so obviously strong that anyone short of an SCO type wouldn't waste their time. I think someone who earlier said SCO really believes it is actually impossible for open source to produce what it has was right on the money, and with that settled in their own minds SCO goes into attack mode. There is nothing that can be done about such attitudes but fight. For the rest of the (semi) sane world however, making our position more obviously strong might be good. Let's focus there, and wait until SCO does something that we can actually respond to before rewarding any more of their tantrums.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
SCO vs. Linux: The time of the conspiracy theories
In history around SCO and the source code from SCO existence, rich at idioms and twists, possibly transferred after Linux, new turns are to be reported. With the conspiracy theory that Microsoft behind SCO stands, it associates the theory that the refusal of the requirements of SCO is a only one, well camouflaged campaign of IBM. Thus the InfoWorld reported that SCO boss sees Darl McBride IBM as an author of the dirt campaign. IBM caused Novell to place itself against SCO meant McBride, employed long years with Novell as a director/conductor of the Netware Embedded division (NEST). IBM has talks floated to complain against SCO means it in addition. Also Eric Raymond of the open SOURCE initiative would stand on the pay roll IBMs, which would finance besides the Free software Foundation and thus the lawyer evenly Moglen, continued to implement Darl McBride.
While IBM as talk has the accusations lapidary for nonsense explained and about Novell none came, Eric Raymond raffte itself up to send an open letter at Darl McBride. In it answered in the negative Raymond by IBM to be paid did not deny however IBM to have helped. Altogether Raymond appealed to the reason of the SCO upper one with an allusion to the insight ability of Darth Vader : "you have the choice. Remove the dark helmet and converse with us like a human nature, or you continue your way, which lets bad times fear for us, however you and the entire SCO Topmanagement into the ruin will completely surely float."
Off the roaring star Wars Rhetorik Eric Raymond used the open letter, in order to make attentive on a Petition of the Linux Community, which were read out on the SCOForum. In their the SCO Group is requested to give up and all inkriminierten places in the SOURCE code call the confrontation course. In response the Linux programmers want to assure to revise all questionable places: "if right right-hurt-hurting that code in the Linux Kernel to be present should become, we it remove, because our community would not like to have a part of this Kernels."
The polite request will possibly remain without answer, because SCO with first, on which SCOForum published proofs could not convince. Apart from the problem of the "Greek" code is in the meantime the Berkeley presented by SCO pack filter (BPF) into the center of the interest moved. The SCO example originates from the file/sys/net/bpf.c, which is available here. In the cutout shown by SCO is missing the BSD Lizenzbedigungen, which is to be always called in accordance with BSD license: "Redistributions OF SOURCE code must retain the above copyright notice, this cunning OF conditions and the following more disclaimer." Because they are missing, code experts go such as Bruce Perens and Greg Lehey of the fact out that SCO with the example proved that the license conditions were removed agreement-adversely.
Thus a classical self-gate could be present, particularly since other possibilities are impossible. Like that the programmer of the version used in Linux was employed by BPF, Jay trainingist, with Caldera, wrote however the Clean Room variant of BPF before its time with Caldera. From the circles of former Caldera developers several persons can remember that in the SCO Trees in many places with the BSD code the copyright notes were missing. The procedure to cut "redundant" licenses off seems to have practiced also at other companies. Thus heise on-line developers to, that experienced the "technology" at Siemens Nixdorf, announced themselves. If the proof situation in the case SCO should confirm itself, then the code Hunter of this company excavated a proof, which occupies the exact opposite of the accusations by SCO. At least in the case of BPF SCO the power POINT presentation would not only have ( when ppt , when pdf ) separate the whole code make public, in order to weaken the suspicion.
...and IN SOVIET RUSSIA, beowulf clusters imagine 1, 2, 3 profit!!!! jokes made out of YOU!!!
A little off-topic but
Am I the only one who can't reach SCO's website today ?
You were almost two hours late with my daily noon SCO bashing story! I was trapped here for TWO whole hours clicking refresh furiously as I awaited my noon story!
Oh the horror...
MontaVista swats back at SCO.
Bush is on fire and its not good for my lungs.
"Building your company on a GPL license is like building your enterprise software on quicksand. Everybody is scared to death that their own IP is going to get sucked into this GPL machine and get destroyed."
::slack-jawed, agape stare::
-Carl McBride
Let me get this straight. He made an analogy about building a company on a LICENSE, to writing software in quicksand.
I think what he meant to say was "Building your enterprise software using a GPL license is like building your company on quicksand" or something like that but he is so full of shit he can't get a coherent analogy to the reporter. Didn't the copy editor of that story pick that up, or do they want him to look like a fool.
I'm not going to even address the drawn out, oft-repeated FUD of the second part of his statement.
I'll post more comments about some of the quotes on http://www.anerispress.com/wltsim/ as I get a chance.
Carl, you're comedic gold. Let's keep the hits coming.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
SCO will lose, and be bankrupt because of it.
IBM will win.
SCO will have nothing left to complain about. After they are done with IBM, (or IBM is done with them), one of two things will happen.
SCO will be gone.
SCO will start suing other linux companies, at which point a whole pile of BSD and Linux developers will, for the first time in history, join together in one of the largest class action software lawsuits ever, and accuse SCO of stealing code from both of them.
At this point I guess we can assume we aren't going to hear from SGI or Marcelo. I can't blame them this is a legal issue and they aren't trying to pump up any stock prices so there is no reason to speak publicly from their points of view.
What we have is code that is definitely not "line-by-line copying". It is either New Unix code modified to fit into Linux or Old Unix code that was updated to work in Linux in a way similar (but not the same) as how the same thing was done in New Unix.
Cutting Unix code and pasting it into Linux would be a violation of copyright but that isn't what happened here. Is using Unix code as a model to make a Linux function a violation of copyright?
Another point is that given two 5 million line collections of code that do the same things, written by people trained the same ways and potentially building from the same base, our common sense ideas of what can be a coincidence and what can't may not apply.
Buy anyway, SCO has repeatedly asserted that there is line-by-line copying from New Unix into Linux. They gave two examples that clearly are not that. They have also shown that they can show examples of disputed Linux code without violating their "contracts". The question for SCO is "You keep saying you have line-by-line copying. Where is it?"
It seems that IBM has access to the source code of both UNIX SysV (for its AIX product) and Linux. I would think that by now IBM has performed an analysis of both codes to determine what possible infringements, if any, exist. I wonder if IBM will either state that there are no infringements prior to trial or begin submitting patches to rid the Linux source of potential infringements that they have discovered.
mr. bill says to sco that they get money
if they make linux look bad. this has been
just a bad publicity trick. if sco goes
down it's worth it.
I'm just busy laughing my ass off...
But seriously, all this talk of "Let's sue SCO! Issue them C&D letters!" will bring us nowhere. Let them appear like the rabid dogs that they are and let IBM and Redhat smack them down...
Then after they're done, we can hunt them like ducks and spammers.
In the meantime, we should focus on raising the profile of Linux. In a calm, Zen-like manner, unlike SCO's behaviour. This is a hearts-and-minds campaign, people...let's get to work...
Never underestimate the predictability of human stupidity...
[ ] e) After taking possession, it became your car anyway; he owes you a new car.
-Hope
I love babelfish:
Altogether Raymond appealed to the reason of the SCO upper one with an allusion to the insight ability of Darth Vader: "you have the choice. Remove the dark helmet and converse with us like a human nature, or you continue your way, which lets bad times fear for us, however you and the entire SCO Topmanagement into the ruin will completely surely float."
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Anyone have any idea what ESR really said?
So what is SCO liable for now, is anyone keeping track? I count fraud, quite possibly extortion, and also slander and libel, especially regarding the ridiculous conspiracy theory statements regarding IBM controlling the IT industry's response to this.
Don't you think that if IBM could have controlled the IT industry's response to *anything*, we'd all be running OS/2 now?
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
"You want fries with that?"
You should simply replace Darth Vader with Yoga and eveyrthing fits perfectly!!!!!
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
I don't know who this Dennis Ritchie guy is, but he obviously has no respect for SCO IP. As soon as my crack legal team locates him, he will be sorry!
Yours Truly,
Darl
Oh yeah, we are also implementing a new SCO trademark, "SCO owner of all IP post Genesis". What do you think?
> In effect, SCO has proven publicly that they violated the BSD license.
Actually, this would be a criminal violation of copyright law.
To knowingly remove the mark from a work prior to distribution expressly demonstrates "intent to infringe". Bizerkly should sue SCO for statutory, per copy, infringement.
The event happened in Germany, so the rules may be different there. But, intent is intent, and it doesn't matter where that intent was first formed. Just 'cus you cut the illegal DVDs in Malaysia doesn't mean you're untouchable in the US for copies you've distributed there.
They say CA has a budget problem. We'll maybe SCO can fund the University for a few years. That's gotta help, a little.
The first comment thread explains why sco.com is down.
The Television Wiki
Does anyone else find it amusing that lately a lot of the high-ranking posts on SCO topics have been "Funny" ones? Is it just because there's nothing left to talk about except SCO mockery? :P
I got a kick out of seeing 80's ghetto slang co-existing with dry white-bread terms like "10Q".
Mamma said knock you out! Momma said claim yourself as a dependant!
I'm sure many people, not just Moglen, would like to "implement" McBride. farm and other sharp implements
One could say that SCO has been busted, and that it is only a matter of time before they are investigated. So who does one file a complaint with about a company?? Better Business Bureau or Federal Trade Commision or both? Or is there a better place?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Just because I felt like it, I've babelfished the text of the Slashdot story. As for the anonymous reader "being recognized in Ritchie, Thomson SCO ' as an evidence ' Dennis who has him of which writes the cord/code which is quoted you write. This in order to be agreeable with the analysis of blues Perens of the sliding show of SCO's Las Vegas completely, request of break Stowell ' has done the fact that it is that word that vis-a-vis our ones at this you dig under point in time. "Andreas Spengler when SCO you write, in the fight which is the under way between the community of Linux", only Heise the caldera (now SCO) was the execution of Linux of the Berkeley package filter which is written at outside, but that and as for the German publisher who is the general method of removing the copyright notice of BSD from the source code which is used for the other company inside showed there. In fact, SCO in BSD license. That "you violated, it proved publicly (warning, as for the article in German. As for a certain) finally, semi- anonymous reader the stomach of IBM CDs of WeLovetheSCOInformationMinister with pyre. "How concerning it burns?" everything which is learned is written
First and foremost, it dents their credibility. Either they don't know what they own, or they are guilty of intellectual theft. Either way, would you subcontract to a company with serious IP issues? No, this isn't going to do SCO any good at all. It would raise way too many questions with those with the money. Such as "are they going to steal anything from us?"
Second, it raises the issue of liability. If SCO have been open to doing a bit of IP theft of their own, in the past, then will SCO customers be subject to unexpected license fees themselves? Since SCO clearly thinks they can demand fees from Linux users, it would logically follow that SCO UnixWare users may be subject to fees from other companies, if SCO has incorporated IP without authorization.
The US Navy is a big SCO UnixWare user, and it has plenty of cash. That makes it a nice, juicy target for corporations who have even a halfway decent case of SCO misusing their IP. The Navy is more likely to pay than not - Governments tend to be wary of bad publicity in the run-up to a major election, and virtually anything asked for is going to be loose change to the DoD.
But let's say that happens. Is the DoD likely to stick with SCO? After getting bitten, even if the bite is relatively mild? Probably not. SCO isn't strictly approved for the sort of use it gets. Quietly shifting to a "trusted" OS may well prove cheaper both financially and politically.
Government spending dwarfs spending by virtually all companies in the US, combined. The loss of Government orders would devastate a company like SCO, which probably gets much of its income that way. It is also likely to turn the fortunes of whoever the Government turned to. (Likely HP or Sun, as those tend to be favourites with the US Government.)
Neither of these companies has been doing well, of late, but a major contract shift - or even the suspicion of one - could change that in a big way.
This is not just a consequence of these statements, but is a consequence of the ramifications of all aspects of this case. If you follow the chain far enough, one thing is very clear. Whether SCO wins or (more probably) loses, there's going to be a reckoning, and the tech landscape will shift.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...its the only way to be sure.
Now it's not enough to block the "Caldera" category, we gotta blocks the "Courts" category as well?
Jeez.
Black shirt, white text:
"Uh, SCO sucks! (Score:5, Insightful)"
I'm trying to cut down on my SCO story habit by reading at +5. Not that it helps much...
In A.D. 2003
.... ....
IP War was beginning
IBM: What happen?
RedHat: Somebody set up us the bomb.
RedHat: We get signal.
IBM: What!
RedHat: Main screen turn on.
IBM: It's You!!
SCO: How are you gentlemen!!
SCO: All your code are belong to us.
SCO: You are on the way to destruction.
IBM: What you say!! (trying stop laughing)
SCO: You have no chance to survive make your time.
IBM: Ha Ha Ha Ha
IBM: Take off every "lawyer."
IBM: You no know what you doing.
IBM: Move "lawyers".
IBM: For great justice. We fight for Linux.
((((time passes))))
"In the beginning, there was a Caldera, and for a time it was good....Next, SCO/Caldera tried to make Linux in it's own likeness....Thus did SCO become the architect of his own demise."
Because we'll all be so flexable, we can fit into anything, right?
OH NOES!!! IT APPEARS YUO DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR DIS HERE PIZZA! WAHT EVER ARE YOU GOING TO DO!?!?
I dunno...but my buddy and I have discussed this whole charade, and we agreed that this is all one big sham.
Consider this: SCO execs supposedly started selling off their stock a few weeks ago. Perhaps all this B.S. is just an attempt to jack up their stock so that they can sell it all off, cash in, and fold the company...
All this hoopla is just a ploy.
Thanks to LordKat for the link.
But, in his reality, the machine that is sucking IP in is the Unix licensing agreement and SCO's theory of derivative works. It's hard to believe that these guys even listen to themselves.
Darl: so, um. Ya. So we didn't try googling our code before we showed it in las vegas?
Blake: ya, no.
Lawyer#1: ya, um, we, ah. Ya.
Lawyer#2: dropped the ball on that one!
Darl: so, ya, and, um, it's, ah, in a book from 1977? Huh. Didn't know that.
Blake: ya, a book! Who knew.
Lawyer#1: didn't think to look in a book.
Lawyer#2: ya, hm, ya, book.
Darl: hmm, book. And, ya. Umm, it was released under the BSD license?
Lawyer#1: ya, BSD. Hmm.
Blake: so. That was, um. Ya.
Lawyer#2: BSD. Uh hu.
Darl: so... Dennis Ritchie? Really? He's famous and stuff.
Blake: um, ya. Dennis Ritchie.
Lawyer#1: Dennis Ritchie, uh hu. Famous.
Lawyer#2: Hmm. Ya.
Darl: um, Linda, if you could get my stockbroker on the phone that would be great, thanks.
Looks like Dennis' check from IBM finally cleared...
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
The important detail in your link is that this person a) had trouble removing the coffee cup lid and b) held the fresh cup of coffeee between her legs to try to pry the lid off.
I wouldn't even try to hold a cup of room temperature liquid between my legs to try to get the lid off because obviously it will end up in my lap... a large part of the cup's rigidity comes from the lid; the amount of pressure required to "hold" a cup between your legs while you conjure with the lid will obviously collapse the cup if the lid is removed.
I hate large corporations as much as the next man (and probably about a hundred times more, for anyone who has seen my slashdot posts), but sometimes stupidity is just stupidity.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Fact is Linus didn't call Ritchie's code ugly. He called SGI's patch ugly, that's a big difference. Yes, the patch included some of Ritchie's code, but the ugly part was the rest of it - having a separate malloc implementation just for their code in particular.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
We can still use the laser pointer and cat example of a ludicrous patent, right?
Especially since I got prior art on that. (Ashley and a Mag-Lite flashlight, 1991!)
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I saw it, and I couldn't resist. So sue me.
The truth is near.
Personally I find this one the most commical:
"The silent majority is behind SCO, and they're hoping that SCO prevails in the end."
Seriously, if you heard him say that in an Iraqi/middle eastern accent, you would swear he was the Iraqi Information Minister's brother...
Remember when Caldara waxed poetic about Linux and an ultimate merging with Unix V?
Well, there was that needly AT&T license thing in the way. If Caldera released any of the code it would be undermining the licensee's rights. SCO says so, so it must be true.
So, here's the theory...
This is all a clever setup to get Unix V into the public domain! They've created a situation where damned near EVERYBODY has a cause of action against them. GPL, BSD, Red Hat, IBM, end-users.
Heck, Berkely's is practically proceedural.
Would somebody please step up already and accept the Unix V copyright as damages? Seems SCO can't give it away, for trying!
because its illustrative of just how stupid a law it is. if major companies were as routinely screwed by this law as the little guy, the DMCA would be a memory.
Oh bite me.
I'm so sick of people trying to portray this nonsense as reasonable. Yes the coffee was hot. It was advertised that way. Everyone knew it was hot. I and many many others bought that same hot coffee day after day for years. We wanted it that hot, so it would still be a good temperature after we finished driving to work and had time to drink it. It came with a little cardboard holder and a cover that, when you were ready to drink, you could open in a controlled way so that it stayed mostly covered even then.
Then one idiot clenched it between her legs to wrestle the lid of and sued McDonalds when she, predictably, burned herself. And because of her, you can't buy coffee hot enough to still be drinkable when you finish your commute anymore.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
SCO can have the GPL or BSD licenses declared invalid all they want--the code is still copyrighted. With the GPL or BSD in place, at least they have the excuse that "it's free anyway, we just got sloppy about satisfying a few conditions". But if they actually argue that they believe the GPL and BSD license are invalid, then they are committing willful copyright infringement of code they have no license at all for.
But... let's say it was something else.. like you pried it off on a table using your hands.. and it spilled by accident because your 90 pound rottweiler decided to tackle-hug you at the same time. And it spilled, and caused 3rd degree burns over most of your lower left arm and hand, instantly burning away the skin and doing severe muscle damage. Let's say you had to go to the hospital and have a series of skin grafts, and were basically in excruciating pain for weeks, and disfigured for life.
Now, let's say you find out that that coffee was considerably hotter than every other restaurant would serve coffee, perhaps that's why you didn't treat it with as much respect.
ie: People know coffee is hot, yes.. but they do not treat coffee the same way they would treat boiling hot water. We know there is a distinct difference in the level of danger to our persons.
She didnt' sue cause she got a little burn, she sued cause she was burned extremely severely..
"There is no infidel BSD code in our source. Never!" "My feelings - as usual - we will sue them all" "Our initial assessment is that they will all pay $699" "I blame the media and IBM for beating up on us - they are marketing for the Linux Community!" "God will roast the Linux users stomachs in hell at the hands of SCO." "They're coming to buy us out or be burned in court." "No I am not scared, and neither should you be!" "Be assured. SCO stock is safe, protected"
TT
Personally I'm rather surprised about the naivity of US developers.
*clears throat*
Welcome to Slashdot, You must be new here...
(Please don't mode me _too_ badly)
*hides in corner*
-B
SCOX had a surprise profit and has lots of press. That's enough to alert the "day traders". Check out the volume chart on SCOX. The profit is probably an infusion of cash from Microsoft. Technically SCOX's suit is against Microsoft, but it's really Microsoft vs. the GPL. This is a FUD attack planned and paid for by Redmond.
The day traders don't know that SCO's evidence is bogus; all they know is that there's a lot of interest in the the story. The bubble will, of course, burst as soon as enough people realize that SCO is going down.
My question is, how do you "short" SCOX ??? Does anybody have some cookbook instructions? I've bough stock but never shorted, how do you do it?
Sco's website is dark at this time. Hmmm. Traceroute stops at an Alter.net router, probably in Denver or Salt Lake City. Could some naughty child have been doing something nasty to the nice people at SCO? Shame on them!
"Everything works if you let it" - The Flying Mouse
At first it looked quite innocent, like a genuine interest in the story, but then, it got worse and worse. The story just had everything: Crime, Comedy (Linus: they are smoking crack. SCO: IBM is staging everything. Haaa, that's hillatrious!), bad guys, good guys, all the good stuff!
Soon I've found out I cannot pass the day without reading the daily SCO item on slashdot. But it wasn't enough. Just like any other addiction, I found out I need an increasing dosage every day. When slashdot didn't provide it, I turned on to google news search and started refreshing the "SCO" search every hour and so, but even this wasn't sufficient. There just wasn't enough SCO news to provide my ever growing thirst, so I started making my own SCO stories.
Help! I think I'm an addict. Is there a remedy?
Eric S. Raymond gets mad SCO - and his rant sounds like that of a drunken, militant gun-nut.
BOO! TERRO
You do know that Sobig doesn't exploit any security holes, don't you?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I know, but I like the wording. I'll change it as soon as I think of something else I like.
And you aren't seriously proposing that there aren't many gaping holes, are you?
Darl and his other brother Darl hardly ever spoke. Boy, do I miss those days.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
Isn't the user a security hole?
don't forget about microsoft. follow the money
into SCO. it explains all of the irrationality.
Part of the problem is, coffee has to be brewed with really hot water (90-95 celsius is the recommended temperature). This is in order to get proper flavor extraction. So, coffee-wise, mcdonalds was right in brewing it that hot. Now, if you really want them to use colder water, you might as well order a frozen cappuccino or something like that!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In the grand spirit of the Gopher Twins, Mac and Tosh:
"No, I insist thank you!"
After all you searched for it!
McDonalds offered way less, so they went to court. She only wanted medical. It was the jury after being presented with evidence of prior poor settlements and knowledge that the coffee could burn people that went punitive with the amount.
I don't blame McDonald's completely - if they are known to settle, people would just start dumping coffee or other things on themselves. And the women involved only wanted medical and related bills, so I don't blame her. It's the ability of the jury to go nuts with the punitive that made this case such a shining example, yet they are almost never mentioned.
Two points:
The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages. This amount was reduced to $160,000 because the jury found Liebeck 20 percent at fault in the spill. The jury also awarded Liebeck $2.7 million in punitive damages, which equals about two days of McDonalds' coffee sales.
...
The trial court subsequently reduced the punitive award to $480,000.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
She's cute. Kudos to Rob for catching a cutiepie like her.
Heck, before the lawsuit started I just know there was somebody out there who owned the trademark UNIX, but I didn't even know it referred to specific code anymore.
Honestly this whole thing mystifies me. After reading about it every day on Slashdot, I still don't really understand what SCO thinks they own and who SCO is upset with. Is it 30 lines of code or 2e6? Is it a contract dispute or a holy war against the GPL? Are they suing Big Blue or anybody and everybody with a Slackware install?
If this is as big as it *could* be, we are talking about an unrelenting, sustained attack that may be completely overlooked by the tons of people infected with SoBig.... Could be something of a permanant DoS.
BSD is dying. or (Linux, look elsewhere)
Not sure the exact quote, but when people pointed out the fallacious examples, SCO said, "We think we know our own code."
Darl will be giving out lots of fellatious examples in his new second home.
Norm McDonald section: Because his new second home will be prison.
It's just not funny when it has to be explained. Oh well.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I thought there was something fishy about all of this. I just figured it out, and my suspicions were correct all along, the Iraqi Information Minister went to work for SCO!!! It all makes sense now. Without this case, he would have been bored out of his mind!
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
...will assume the position.
Don't forget about the employees, resellers, and users (yes, there still are some). The poor employees have been duped into believing that 'Hey yeah! They HAVE stolen our stuff!' But the sad truth is, they're not the ones holding the platinum ripcord on the golden parachute. They'll be joining all the others looking for work - trying to compete with India and China.
The resellers are going to have a tough time because support is gonna be tough to come by. No open sourcer is going to want to touch SCO with a 10 foot pole now, and since so much of it is based on a curious combination of open source projects like GCC and SAMBA and closed source, it will be 'teh suck' for all involved.
Lastly, the users get the shaft most of all because they 'just want to LIVE!' And damnit, you can't blame them for that.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
So Ritchie and company can end this SCO issue by convincing IBM to pay for the lawyer's fees necessary to sue SCO for copyright violation, asking for damages of $100 per sold SCO license of Ritchie's code.
die Darl McBride & Bill Gates
Once more thing. Is there perchance any BSD code in that "cleanroom" Berkeley Packet Filter code?
Well, given that Darth McBride has blown all the company's money on really crappy lawyers, the only equipment they can afford to run their website is a Commodore 64 running a custom stripped down version of OpenServer.
Give it time, it takes a while for a web page to stream from an audio cassette.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
Think of it as SCO running around and saying they have some cool piece of legal reasoning, and somebody points out hat it was actually first formulated by Moses. Or some mathematician comes along and says he discovered something really neat about triangles and lines and then somebody points out Pythagoras did it first. Or a pharmaceutical company is claiming the invented a certain drug, just to be told that it was first used by Paracelsus.
Yeah, it's that big. And even if this turns out to mean jack in the legal world, having SCO claiming they created something that goes back to the inventor of the C language itself is something that even the propular press can understand is bull. From a PR point of view, this is not shooting yourself in the foot anymore, it is taking your legs of with a BFG9000.
Personally I think this has gone too far. Isn't it time for the top GPL teams to publish a joint declaration they will no longer be supporting SCO in their next releases? GNUtools, SAMBA, KDE, GNOME, BIND... If they do it together, they will have all SCO users scrambling for the fire-escape. I know it's not nice to the users and blahblahblah, but lets get serious: this shit has to stop, and it has to stop now!
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I dont know about you but the fact that ken's code is still being used all this time, is what is most impressive about today's SCO news
Sigs are dangerous coy things
Once more, a manual translation rather than the fishy fish stuff ... I hope it is more readable than the machine-generated semi-sense.
/sys/net/bpf.c, which is available here (link removed). In the part shown by SCO, the BSD terms of license are missing, which should always be named here: "Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer." Because they are absent, code experts like Bruce Perens and Greg Lehey assume that SCO has shown with this example that the license terms have been removed against the agreements.
SCO vs. Linux: The era of conspiracy theories
In the twisted and contorted story about SCO and the source code that possibly has been transferred to Linux from SCO's assets, new turns can be announced. The conspiracy theory that Microsoft is behind SCO is joined by a theory that the denial of SCO's claims is a single, well masked campaign by IBM. Infoworld reported that SCO's CEO Darl McBride sees IBM as the author of the smear campaign. IBM has instigated Novell to turn against SCO, said McBride, who has been working at Novell for many years as head of NEST, the Netware Embedded Division. IBM has made Red Hat to sue against SCO, he said moreover. In addition, Eric Raimond of the Open Source Initiative is alleged to be on IBM's payroll, who moreover finance the Free Software Foundation and with that the lawyer Eben Moglen, according to Darl McBride.
While IBM and Red Hat succinctly called the accusation ludicrous, and Novell issued no comment, Eric Raymond found the energy to send an open letter to Darl McBride. In the letter, he denied being paid by IBM, but did not dispute to have helped IBM. All in all, Raymond appealed to the common sense of the head of SCO with an allusion to Darth Vader's capacity to understand: "The choice is yours. Take off the dark helmet and talk with us like a human being or continue on the path that makes us fear bad times, but which will certainly bring ruin to you and to the whole top management of SCO."
Apart from the booming Star-Wars rhetoric, Eric Raymond used the open letter to draw attention to a petition of the Linux community, which was read on the SCOForum. In it, the SCO group is asked to give up the confrontational course and to name all incriminating parts of the source code. In return, the Linux programmers affirm that they will revise all questionable parts: "If there is code in the Linux kernel that breaches rights, we will remove it, since our community doesn't want to have any part of that kernel."
The polite request may remain unanswered, because SCO's first evidence shown on the SCOForum was not convincing. Apart from the problem of "greek" code, the Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) that was presented by SCO is now in the center of interest. SCO's example is from the file
This could constitute a classical own goal, since other possibilities are ruled out. While Jay Schulist, the programmer of the BSF version used in Linux, was employed by Caldera, he wrote the clean room variant of BSF before his time with Caldera. Among former Caldera employees, several remember that in the SCO trees, the copyright notice were missing in many places in the BSD code. The practice of cutting "redundant" licenses seems to have been in use in other companies as well. For instance, Heise Online was contacted by developers who had seen the same "technique" in use at Siemens-Nixdorf. If worst comes to worst, the code hunters have found evidence that proves the exact inverse of what SCO claims. At least in the case of BPF, SCO would have to present not only the powerpoint presentation, but the whole code to allay suspicions.
The good thing is the more Mcbribe spouts off his mouth before engaging his brain, by the time this "case" does get into court, the judge will throw it out with prejudice against SCO.
It is clear SCO legal beagles are either clueless about how to handle law suits or Mcbribe has his head so far up his ass that he ignores what his lawyers are telling him. That's fine with me. Let the knuckle heads spew whatever garbage they like. In the end SCO will barely be a foot note in history and Mcbribe will be known the world round as a buffon, carpetbagger, liar and schister.
Finally, just for you Mcbribe....no I do not work for IBM nor has said company coerced or in any other way urged me to state the above opinoins.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
... a class action suit should be made against SCO where the damages requested to be that of making SCOs code base GPL. Once and for all putting Unix questions about ownership to rest.
" because its illustrative of just how stupid a law it is. if major companies were as routinely screwed by this law as the little guy, the DMCA would be a memory."
Just how often is the little guy "screwed" by the DMCA? In the larger picture, how often? Or are we seeing the "Media mirror effect"? You know, if it's in the media then it must be bigger than we can possibly imagine..e.g. GM foods.
Heise has shown that not only was the Linux implementation of the Berkeley Packet filter written outside of Caldera (now SCO), but that it was common practice there and at other companies to remove the BSD copyright notices from the internally used source code.
The Linux kernel and userspace in the past has had BSD licence violations, USL had violations, and now SCO might have violated the BSD copyright.
Is Apple under Jobs the only honest people out there?
That Darl guy... He sure looks French to me.
Water -- which I'm told McDonald's coffee is mostly made out of -- does not get much hotter than 100 deg C, because that is where it has its so-called "boiling point". After that, it is called "steam" and can't be packaged in cups, because it is what we call a "gas". So the liquid in question was most certainly not hot enough to be "capable of almost instantaneous destruction of skin, flesh and muscle", as you claim, though you probably could get second degree burns. Liquid lead will go through you like, well, hot lead, but water-based beverages? Nah.
The basic legal problem is a different one anyway (and this is where we get back on topic): The U.S. legal system assumes you are a moron, where every other legal system on the planet assumes you are of normal intelligence. So you get to sue people for stuff in the U.S. that would be laughed out of a lawyer's office in the rest of the world, let alone out of court. The anger people feel with this example is not how hot the coffee really was, but that this case made it to court at all.
This is the same situation as with SCO: The German courts have already told SCO to put up or shut up (and boy, did they shut up quick), whereas the U.S. legal system still has its finger up their past the second knuckle.
The U.S. has an 18th Century anachronistic legal system that just doesn't work anymore, and in a country where every politician is a lawyer (or an actor), that isn't going to change. The rest of the world have every right to make fun of us.
More coffee, anyone?
"In the ongoing battle between SCO and the Linux community, German publisher Heise has shown that not only was the Linux implementation of the Berkeley Packet filter written outside of Caldera (now SCO), but that it was common practice there and at other companies to remove the BSD copyright notices from the internally used source code. In effect, SCO has proven publicly that they violated the BSD license."
Not only SCO proved that they violated the BSD license, every Linux distro does.
Now, reading the replies on this article, I find it remarkable no-one has noted this. No offence, but even when code is licensed under the BSD license, that license has to be obeyed. You can't remove copyright claims because you think that's necessary. When someone violates the GPL, hordes of people think they have to say something bad about the possible violator. However, it seems the Linux kernel as well violates an OSS license, which is IMHO as bad as violating a GPL license or any license.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
This is not to say that the victory will be easy, nor that there won't be casualties. One thing I think we can say for sure is that with this conflict the community of Linux and open source advocates, users and developers has lost the innocence with which we started, and we'll never be the same. The world of cut-throat business law and politics into which we've been thrust is all too familiar to the leaders of major corporate playsers such as Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, IBM and the like. The fact that we've been assulted by a street thug rather than a giant corporate syndicate may make some difference in the way this shakes out, but either way, it's a solid indication that Linux has come of age.
The GPL has never yet had its day in court. It may be that, as it exists, it can't stand against a legal challenge, in which case a new and better GPL will be the result. If corporate IT managers distrust the legal implications of using Linux, this fight will end up laying it on the line for them, and the victory over SCO will end up defining open source's limits and advantages for them in a way which words and reassurances could never do. In many ways, we'll see the open source philosophy and its ideals refined and developed in ways which will make it practical, resiliant and competitive in the very real world.
If we believe that the open source development concept is relevant and real for the rest of the world, then we should welcome this fight. It's a seminal event in the coming of age of Linux in very real world of competitive ideas and enterprises.
Wake up, my friends! The day is dawning. It is a good day to do battle.
"Everything works if you let it" - The Flying Mouse
If anything, this is going to backfire hard on Microsoft. Proprietary code is being revealed as sloppy, theiving, derivative and obnoxious. Caldera and SCO used to be reputable companies, yet the best that can be said of their BSD theft is that they were careless.. Just think of what a real audit of M$ code would turn up. The main proponents of "IP rights" are being shown up for what they are, people who have no respect for the IP rights of others and never have. Hopefully, the press will maintian it's interest and publish all the nasty details for everyone to see.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This article with an interview with Mr. Heise makes him sound a little like that Mr. Subliminal.
.
Why show off the code?
MH: [aka Mr. Subliminal]: Why show the code? [snakeoil] Why show the contracts? [nda] Why show anything? [cracksmoke] Because SCO is committed [asylum] to educating [extorting] people about their rights to ownership [sublicense] and allowing people, with their own eyes [greeks], to see what code [bsd] is out there [mulder] because I think [scully] you've seen throughout a lot of the open-source media [msnbc]: "There's nothing to this litigation [jailtime]. There are no lines of code out there [pump]. They keep claiming there (are), but we don't believe that [dump]." We are addressing [ignoring] that. We're educating
[praying] the public in general [stockholders] that, well, there is [believe] in fact infringing code, both direct line for line and obfuscated [us] code, derivative works, nonliteral--it's there[cracksmoke].(We) just don't want the rest of the world to believe that it's not (there)[doublenegative] , that this is some sort of [crack] smoke and mirrors. It's not [snakeoil]
from the babblefished Heise:
With the conspiracy theory that Microsoft behind SCO stands,
I can just see Gates saying it:
"Around the [SCO] survivors, a perimeter create!"
realityshunt
Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate.
I'm inclined to believe in the "true believer" theory.
...
Look, I think that SCOX is worth $0.50 to $1.00 per share. I'm sure for the Slashdot crowd, that's a high estimate, and I'll get a bunch of replies saying "no! $0.01 per share! $0.000001 per share! Negative $699 per share!" But face it, reality says that there are people, right now, who are actually paying $13 per share for SCOX.
I have to try to get inside these people's heads, and I have to do it without taking cheap shots, which means that everyone else will take cheap shots at ME, the messenger.
But if you really want to understand
McBride gets up on stage with "Slide A" and "Slide B". McBride says that Slide A is from SCO Unix. McBride says that Slide B is from Linux. It's obvious to everybody that Slide B looks like Slide A.
Then the Linux community replies and says "We admit that Slide B is from Linux 2.4 Yes, but that code is properly licensed. Yes, but that code doesn't run on desktops or embedded systems. Yes, but that code has already been removed from the 2.6 series".
All of these things are true, and they are all important in a court of law. Especially the bit about proper licensing.
But the SCO-lovers and the Linux-haters aren't interested in "Yes, But". So our message doesn't make it through their filter. They put a lot of weight on "Slide B equals Slide A", and are not listening to an argument that Slide B has every legal right to look like Slide A.
Human beings are like that. They discount arguments and evidence that disagree with them. And once a human being "flips the bozo bit" on another person, or another group of people, it stays flipped.
That's what I think is happening with the stock.
As far as "marketplace efficiency" goes -- whole new topic. I agree that this kind of bubble is inefficient for capital formation. However, it does satisfy the psychological need of people to identify with something that embodies their ideals, just like a sports team. Some people buy SCOX because it fulfills their desire to hate Linux.
Please, stop reading /. and go back to msn becasue you're really pissing us off....
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
2nd Editor's note: If, as Mr. McBride claims, the amount of attention SCO has gotten from the computer press is a rational measure of the company's relevance, then -- at for least this week -- the authors of the sobig.f virus are far more relevant than SCO. /end quote
realityshunt
Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate.
haha
!unixware
This case is really the end of proprietary software. McBride thought he was going to ride over the world of free software and be able to tie it all up in "derivative works" arguments. The case was designed to hard me credibility of free software, but it's going to have exactly the opposite effect. It is being shown, in the show trial atmosphere SCO has created, that free software is squeaky clean while proprietary software has issues. They stole BSD code and did not even know it. How's that for sloppy, irresponsible, unauditable and all those things? SCO is going to go down in flames and no one is going to be dumb enough to accuse publically published software of theft again. If SCO and Caldera are not really clean, what comercial software vendor is? Could Microsoft's code stand up to such an inspection? The whole weight of SCO and Microsoft FUD has been transfered where it always belonged, to people who have code to hide. The whole basis of proprietary software has been broken - they don't have anything others don't and they have to steal from public software to get what they need. It is impossible for them to continue their charrade about "innovation" and "theft". Good riddance.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
TOUCH DOWN!
NOTRE DAME!
The fact that Dennis Ritchie wrote the code (the malloc implementation) doesn't undermine SCO's statements at all. Ritchie wrote the code as an employee of AT&T, and unless he had a very unusual contract, AT&T owned the code he wrote. AT&T held a copyright on the code which, thanks to Congress, will last until we are all dead. AT&T sold that copyright to Novell, which sold it to the old SCO, which sold it to the current SCO. So although Ritchie wrote it, SCO still holds the copyright, which is all they have ever claimed.
For that matter, it's worth noting that the fact that the code appeared in versions of BSD before 4.4 doesn't undermine SCO's claims either, because those versions of BSD require a Unix source code license, which Linux does not have. The fact that the code appeared in the Lions' book is also irrelevant, since the book carries a clear statement that the code is presented for educational value only, and that nobody is permitted to run it or base their own code on it.
SCO's claims are undermined by the fact that they released the code under a Berkeley style license back when they were named Caldera. That shows that the code has no significant value, and that Linux users would not be liable for damages even if SCO sued them. However, it's also worth noting that including the code in Linux violated the terms of SCO's license, because it did not credit Caldera as the license required.
So as far as I can see SCO still does have a tenuous claim on some versions of Linux on the basis of this code, although there is no way that any court would award them any damages for it.
It's all somewhat moot in any case since the code has been removed from current versions of Linux. Anybody bothered by SCO just needs to upgrade to kernel versions 2.4.22 or 2.5.75 or later.
If SGI's UNIX license allowed them to relicense the code, it would be no problem. So, time to dig out those contracts SGI.
- The license under which the "historical" versions of Unix are released is a BSD style license with the advertising clause. The advertising clause makes it incompatible with the GPL, according to the license comparison at the FSF site. So, it is not legal to pull code from the historical Unix versions into the Linux kernel, unless the historical Unix code in question was licensed from UCB under the BSD license (UCB retroactively removed the advertising clause from their code).
- DMR worked for AT&T on the code is now owned by SCO. So SCO does have legal ownership of that code and is allowed to control how it is released. Much of it (including the code in question) was released under the license mentioned above, but that license conflicts with the GPL as used by the Linux kernel.
So, if DMR's old Unix code was used verbatim in the Linux kernel AND it is not available under a license different than the historical Unix license, then the kernel is violating SCO's license terms.$500,000 to $1,000,000 per quarter in legal fees (source: Darl McBride, on the quarterly earnings calls).
$8 million per quarter in SCO Source revenues from Microsoft and Sun (source: 10-Q's).
SCO will not run out of money for their lawyers, because Microsoft and Sun are fronting the money.
A number of people have requested a borg-ish SCO icon for SCO stories. It's not my best work, but here ya go.
I sent a copy to Michael and CmdrTaco, though I wonder if they'll see it buried in the huge piles of spam they must receive.
MigraineMan
"Everything works if you let it" - The Flying Mouse
First, it is very clear that if any license was violated by Linux it was an accident. It was not willful and deliberate. In contrast to SCO, which has been willfully and deliberately removing BSD copyright notices from their code right, left, and center.
... this is indeed a horse of an entirely different color.
... well, I'd just like to say "Thank you for Playing, SCO. You do not pass go, you do not collect $200, you go directly to jail, and you do not even get a lousy copy of our home game." I don't think SGI has a lot to worry about (particularly if they correct it now)...SCO on the other hand is absolute, complete, and total toast.
On the contrary, the way the BSD attribution of the malloc code was removed from Linux is exactly the same as the way the BSD attribution of the BPF code was removed from SCO Unix
I am a little skeptical that that is true. The examples provided are text book examples (literally), and may not have been copied from BSD at all (though I suspect they were in fact cribbed, based upon comments embedded in them). Even if they were, they may (I do not know this to be true, but it is certainly plausible) licensed under the current BSD license, which would get both SCO and SGI off the hook for this particular infraction. However, SCO has apparently is alleged to have been copying other code rather profusely and without regard to license, including GPLed code (according to one former employee)
This is in contrast to SGI, as far as I know, and certainly in direct opposition to Linux, BSD, and other free software projects, which have been very conscientious in avoiding copyright violations wherever it is even suspected.
However, you are correct that SGI could, concievably, also be in trouble if they inappropriately removed copyright notices and attribution. That is, if the BSD folks chose to prosecute them, which seems unlikely as SGI has been a pretty good 'citizens' of the free software community. In contrast to SCO, who has been anything but. And since copyright, unlike trademark, can be selectively enforced
SGI might get into trouble over it. Linux developers and distributors who accepted the code from SGI in good faith, and removed it as soon as they noticed it was old Unix code (before it was revealed by SCO), would not be any trouble.
Absolutely. That was my point. The use of any infringing code within Linux (if there ever was any infringement) was entirely accidental and, based upon what has been revealed thus far, has long since been removed.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
McBride: "IBM and Red Hat have painted a Linux liability target on the backs of their customers."
backstab, tr.v.: To attack (someone) unfairly, especially in an underhand, deceitful manner: "Some backstab each other and threaten to settle their differences with a punch" (Thomas Boswell).
Where am I gonna download my legally licensed linux kernel source RPMS now?
I don't use mirrors like ftp.kernel.org, I like to get my code from the original copyright holder.
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- Two
- Three
So slashdot doesn't want me to post this unless i have a higher actual-text-to-html ratio, so i have to add junk text at the end. Hey, If an echo filter adds echo, what does a lameness filter do?Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Read your link again. The code was not released into the public domain. It was released under a Berkeley style license, which specifically says ``Redistributions of source code and documentation must retain the above copyright notice...'' and so forth. That is what I said in the grandparent post--Linux does not include the required copyright notice.
2efw ew ger bewb rwn wrswesr rgnw5r e eymn5 ty n
Look at this instead
SCO: Linux contains Unix code.
RMS: It is GNU/Linux if you please.
Judge: What's this GNU thing?
RMS: Gnu's Not Unix.
Judge: So Linux is really GNU/Linux
and Gnu's not unix?
RMS: Correct.
Judge: So what are SCO on about? Case dismissed.
Actually, it's wonderful. It will keep the Bush-appointed judges so busy hurling court orders at each other that they won't have time to mess with civil liberties. Hooray for the American legal system.
Let's build the deck now but there aren't enough people in SCO, so let's include other Anti-Open-Source Terrorists:
Joker - Daryl McBride
King of Spades - Daryl McBride (He deserves to be dealt with twice....)
Queen of Spades - Chris Sontag
Jack of Spades - David Boies
10 of Spades - Blake Stowell
Ass of Spades - Ransom Love
King of Clubs - Bill Gates
Queen of Clubs - Steve Balmer
Jack of Clubs - Jim Allchin
Ass of Clubs - Ed Muth
Can anyone else help complete the deck?
NFT (norda family trust)
...
own the netblock which SCO uses
NFT Netblock owner
(see above netcraft link.)
according to this article
NFT are boycotting SCO products and services..
This is probably what is going on here
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Does SCO still have 52 employees?
The SCO web site has been down since 3:45 PM yesterday - not just this morning, and www.caldera.de is down as well. Anyone know whats up? A DOS attack could easily have been avoided by now.
Corrects inaccuracies in original.
Can the BSD ppl nail SCO for Copyright removal? of course, the real question is will they? I would love for them to file a major one against them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Seriously, McDonalds serves it's coffee at 185 degrees Fahrenheit (85 degrees Celsius).
I'm not a coffee drinker, but I do drink tea and green tea at restaurants, and they're served at about this temperature. It's too hot to drink, but since you drink *at the end* of your meal, it usually cools down to a more reasonable 60 degrees Celsius which is just right for tea. If they had served 60 degrees Celsius tea, it would be cold by the time we drink.
When you ask for re-fills, you can adjust the temperature of the coffee using a sophisticated patent-pending technique called "BLOWING and STIRRING" or "adding code water or ice".
I'm surprised that she didn't know about these advanced cooling techniques, but then again, I'd never dream of intentially putting a cup of scalding hot coffee between my legs.
To be honest, I don't believe that the burns came from the coffee. (She probably accidentally dropped a curling iron or hot oil on her lap.)
I've personally had boiling hot water fall on my entire hand. It hurt like hell and it was very red and sore for a week and took another week to completely disappear, but it most definitely did *not* leave third degree burns or any permanent marks.
The way you've got it now sounds very Aristotlian. And wrong.
Female Prison Rape in NY
"if major companies were as routinely screwed by this law as the little guy, the DMCA would be a memory."
*cough* SCO? *cough*
I think you'd better pick up an english dictionary and check the definiton for the word major.
But seriously thinking, true.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Basicly, people are listening to the SCO claim of "code x looks like code y" and not to the claim of "yes but it was never SCOs in the first place/it was released under a free licence" simply because right now those claims havent been legally proven. For example, the claim of "the code was released under a free licence", its not possible for the unwashed masses to know for sure that the copy of the code in the kernel started out as the "under a free licence" version and not some other "SCO copyright" version. Also, its not yet possible to prove the claim "it wasnt SCOs in the first place" since its not possible to be 100% legally binding sure yet that the code SCO is showing isnt SCOs
Anyhow, I just wish the court case would begin so that SCO is forced to show everything it has and we can begin in ernest looking for reasons why SCOs claims are garbage
I missed a point. While the 32V version that esr suggests the malloc code was copied from was released by Caldera in 2002 under a BSD-like license, it was also distributed by AT&T before 1996 without a copyright notice, and therefore entered the public domain. Therefore, under esr's theory, even its pasting into Linux by SGI without attribution is OK.
would love to each personally deliver $700 to my front doorstep as well.
And they'll do your taxes. They're so handy!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Stepping back, it looks like SCO is using this for PR purposes (the code count for the two routines in my copy of Lions' book is about 80 lines, so it sounds like this is the piece they showed analysts back in June). As you say, the claimable damages are probably nil. But the bulk of their case centers around their legal theory of ownership of derivative works of UNIX and how that applies to NUMA, SMP, JFS, etc. The fact that they are advertising this seemingly irrelevant sideshow makes you wonder how much confidence SCO and Boies have in their real case.
(Or something like that)
So, that's where they must be hiding. Someone drop the g-men a line.
How else does something like that get sold.
In the US, we have found already a mountain of code.
In soviet russia, mountain of code finds you!
I remember reading that the linux version of the BSD packet filter is NOT a direct code lift. It was rather a complete rewrite and therefore did not need the bsd copyright included.
The code was different enough that SCO was using it as an example of linux people stealing their code and "obfuscating" it.
The SCO code is a direct lift, however.
1) SCO believes that volating a Unix source code license should cost the guilty part 3 billion 2) It seems SCO managed to do the only thing possible to vioate the BSD license (they removed the copyright) 3) You, Arnold, seem to be the leading candidate for Gov. of California 4) Therefore, if you become governor, your sadly underfuned schools look like they have a 3 billion dollar opportunity to SUE SCO FOR COPYRIGHT VIOATIONS 5) Hey look we got to MAKE LOTS OF MONEY without the pesky ????? step.
Think global, act loco
Man, the vapours coming from the cup would give you second degree burns to your face -- you're going to pour 90C coffee down your throat?
The water vapour that pours out of my kettle just after it's finished boiling is 90C.
So congratulations; thanks to this "reasonable" lawsuit, you can't get a really well-made cup of coffee in the US anymore.
A cup of coffee in a styrofoam cup is by no means "really well-made".
Does my bum look big in this?
That's not very good. The Borg are powerful, efficient, and capable. Obviously, this is not a very good metaphor for SCO.
I see SCO as being more akin to the Pakleds from the Star Trek TNG episode "Samaritan Snare." They're slow, stupid, and bumble about without a clue. They manage to fuck a few things up here and there, but are ultimately beaten because of their own stupidity. It's perfect.
"We look for things. Things to make us go."
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
original post
As an employee of a company in the same office buildings as SCO and partly funded by Canopy Group, I strongly encourage a boycott of all companies funded by the Canopy Group.
Taking money from Ralph Yarrow (Canopy) made all of us sick to our stomachs but we held our noses and moved into their offices in the hope their stake would stay small. And we were out of business if we didn't.
There was a lot of buzz about mergers a few weeks ago. It seemed that everyone was going to join into one large company called, you know it: SCO! That buzz ended yesterday. Now the talk, all over the group, is how to distance ourselves from SCO and Canopy. The mention of our company on Slashdot resulted in very negative feedback and two potential customers walking away. Other's got it even worse. I hear Trolltech spent most of the day on the phone smoothing things over with their customers. Upper management meetings were held all afternoon among the group's companies (I'm not privvy to those, but can guess the subject matter). Companies that were considering a merger with SCO (some as close as 5 days away) are now backpedalling as fast as they can.
Canopy Group is the key to pressuring SCO. Thats where they get their money and their actions could harm the whole group and Canopy's plans. Pressure on the Canopy Group's members will result in pressure on SCO.
Save me from SCO! Boycott Canopy Group. If they want to point a gun at their own head, I'd rather they do it away from me. Write letters to the all the Canopy Group companies. We are all very small and even a few letters would have a major effect. The three we received yesterday sent management into a tizzy. Oh, yeah. And start at the bottom of the alphabetical list of companies, please.
Thanks for listening...
People are *fucking morons*. Anyone investing in SCO right now is obviously a total idiot who does not do any significant research, and who should NOT be investing in stocks at all. If you can't even do enough research to look past mindless headlines and find the real truth behind something like this (and, let's face it, the real truth about this is all over the web), then you are too stupid to be investing in the stock-market anyways. But thank god for these kinds of morons, for they create the stock-market inefficiency that Vanguard says doesn't exist, which allows intelligent investors to profit.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Since today is an odd-numbered day of the month, messages in SCO threads should extol the virtues of Linux and Free Software and the GPL and NOT attack SCO. You were specifically told that attacks on SCO are supposed to take place on even-numbered days of the month.
Remember, if you fail to follow these rules, you don't get paid.
Cmon. Admit it. You thought about doing this but decided to be mature. I can't believe I got this name.
A new parody at theinformationminister.com Yes, the Iraqi one! :)
He now works for SCO.
Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen
SCO is attempting to be the Borg. (Don't get me wrong, I have lots of respect for the Borg, and I wish that the Star Trek creative staff hadn't written them off so easily.)
SCO wants to own anything that's come in contact with their operating system. "We consider that a derivative work" they'll say. They're trying to assimilate other people's work into their collective. That's Borg-ish behavior, though I doubt there are any Borg named "Darl-of-Seven."
I hadn't used the graphics tools in a while, and I saw this as an opportunity to revisit the skills I've let get rusty. You're more than welcome to make your own Pakled icon and post it for comparison. I'd be interested to see what you come up with.
Right, you mention two of the big valuation models for stocks. First there's the model that a stock worth is the current value of its expected future dividend stream -- or som e flavor of that, depending on your philosophy of accounting. According to that model, I think the whole company is worth maybe $10 million to $50 million for its conventional products and services, and perhaps $50 million to $100 million (being generous) as an option on a lawsuit.
The next model is that you try to figure out why other people are buying stock. You try to figure out what is going to be fashionable next month and buy it this month (or figure out what will be disgusting next month and short-sell it this month).
People using the first model are like retail buyers -- end users of stock, almost. People using the second model are like merchants or wholesalers -- they buy the stock because they think someone else will want it a little bit later.
I sorta think that bubbles happen when a lot of people become wholesalers and think they are going to sell to other wholesalers with no clear idea of where the end of the value chain is. Warren Buffett says that he asks this question: "would I buy this stock if the stock market was open only once a year?"
Also, some people are momentum traders -- they buy whatever is going up. The ordinary laws of supply and demand do not apply, because the demand curve actually turns UP with increasing price, and the supply curve turns a little bit DOWN. So the curves do not cross in that beautiful Econ 1 diagram, and the usual negative-feedback loops of micro-economics become damaging positive-feedback loops.
I think that's what's happening to SCOX. Lots of momentum buyers, not enough fundamental buyers (where "fundamental" includes "chances of winning IBM suit" * "value of suit" of course).
That still leaves the question: why were Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday flat, and then big price increases on heavy volume on Thursday, Friday.
I posted this at Groklaw, and I'm reposting it here since it seems pretty relevant to the current thread:
I ran some traceroutes to see where the problem is, and the results are quite interesting.
First, let's start with www.canopy.com. I am listing the traceroute output from step 12, since that's just two steps before where things get revealing:
Tracing route to www.canopy.com [216.250.142.120] over a maximum of 30 hops:
12 77 ms 77 ms 76 ms 66.62.3.56
13 74 ms 77 ms 74 ms den1-core-01.tamerica.net [66.62.3.45]
14 77 ms 77 ms 76 ms den1-edge-01.tamerica.net [66.62.4.3]
15 77 ms 77 ms 77 ms vi-001.brdr01.den05.viawest.net [66.62.160.22]
16 75 ms 77 ms 76 ms gige-01-m00-00.crrt02.den05.viawest.net [64.78.230.210]
17 87 ms 87 ms 89 ms pos-03-01.crrt01.slc03.viawest.net [64.78.227.10]
18 89 ms 89 ms 89 ms c7pub-216-250-136-70.center7.com [216.250.136.70]
19 91 ms 88 ms 87 ms c7pub-216-250-142-126.center7.com [216.250.142.126]
20 88 ms 89 ms 90 ms c7pub-216-250-142-120.center7.com [216.250.142.120]
Trace complete.
Now, let's traceroute www.caldera.com
Tracing route to www.caldera.com [216.250.140.125] over a maximum of 30 hops:
12 74 ms 77 ms 77 ms dal1-core-01.tamerica.net [66.62.6.193]
13 76 ms 77 ms 74 ms den1-core-01.tamerica.net [66.62.3.45]
14 77 ms 74 ms 74 ms den1-edge-01.tamerica.net [66.62.4.3]
15 * * * Request timed out.
And finally, www.sco.com:
Tracing route to www.sco.com [216.250.140.112] over a maximum of 30 hops:
12 76 ms 77 ms 76 ms dal1-core-01.tamerica.net [66.62.6.193]
13 75 ms 77 ms 76 ms den1-core-01.tamerica.net [66.62.3.45]
14 77 ms 76 ms 75 ms den1-edge-01.tamerica.net [66.62.4.67]
15 * * * Request timed out.
Canopy, Caldera, and SCO, all have addresses that are within the same class C addressing range, respectively: 216.250.140.120, 216.250.140.125, 216.250.140.112. While this makes it very possible that all three sites are served by the same machine, we can't prove that from this information. It is however, likely that they are served from the same router.
The next thing to note is that the route to SCO and Caldera both fail at the 14th step in the tracert. The last router that responds for each of them, at the 13th step, is den1-edge-01.tamerica.net (albeit from different ports). Canopy also passes through den1-edge-01.tamerica.net at the 13th step, but continues on to a router at viawest.com. From there, it passes through 2 more routers at ViaWest, and 3 routers at Center7.
ViaWest and Center7 are both Canopy companies.
On initial analysis, for any other company, a network manager/sys admin/networking consultant (such as me) would simply assume that SCO/Caldera was having a problem with its ISP. The weird thing, though, is the presence of Canopy's IP address right *between* SCO's and Caldera's addresses.
Assume that all 3 segments are served by the same router (no, we can't prove it from this data, but it's extremely likely). Canopy, in that case, should be experiencing problems too if the site were under a DOS attack.
In fact, anyone planning a DDOS attack would find it easier to just take out the whole address range, thereby including all 3 sites, rather than focus on just the SCO/Caldera sites -- and for technical reasons alone. Never mind that they would *want* to target Canopy as well.
Given all this, it is a pretty safe bet that SCO/Caldera has taken its websites down itself.
Why? To protect themselves from a DDOS attack? No. Any decent firewall could take care of that for them. That's why I suspected that it was not DoS attack: they've simply been down too long.
I don't know *why* they're still down. I wonder if they're about to collapse.
Just go to www.darlmcbride.com
OK - all you *chuckleheads* out there in Internet-LANd / you can say what you want, but here's what I see.
:^). I am sad that it took someone getting injured and a highly visible lawsuit for this to get addressed, but lawsuits seem to be the only way to get some big companies here to do things that are in their customer's or the country's best interest. And anyone that thinks this safety stuff is trivial ought to look into other examples, like why those impressive chromed hood ornaments on 50's cars are a thing of the past also (hint - think: "Mmmmm .... Pedestrian at 12 o'clock!!").
.NET?? So there might be more than one reason for MS to back SCO's lawsuit.
...
Most times now when I get tea (can't drink coffee) from (a) Starbucks, (b) Tim Horton's, or (c) most any other place serving hot coffee and tea in North America (basically anywhere I have been the past few years, north of the Mexican border), there has been a marked change in the cups. Either I get two cups, or there is a plastic or paper heat sleeve around the cup, or there is some focus paid to my not being burned when I get my cup of hot liquid.
To me this is the whole point. I am not saying that all lawsuits make sense or are worthwhile. I am saying that anybody selling coffee in North America today at least gives some thought about the safety of the customer, and not just about their profits (obviously lots of that in coffee
The same kind of discussion can be had regarding Linux and/or the GPL. Clearly MS has stongly implied for some time (at least since the first "Halloween" emails) that Linux and "free software" was very nearly a "Commie Plot", capable of killing our/their vaunted supremacy in making piles o'cash from source code. So given the recent major rate of Linux success in the marketplace, it seems to me that WE SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED A LAWSUIT RIGHT ABOUT NOW - from someone, just not Redmond (but a "Redmond lackey", **no doubt**).
Thus the key benefits of this SCO lawsuit may be *much better* vigilance in the OSS community around sources of code for inclusion in Linux releases, as well as a significant test of the GPL in court, so that we have some legal precedents for future lawsuits. For me, all the better to do all this *now*, rather than years from now when it might have been more disruptive. As well, it is beginning to look like SCO either has to bluff better, show better code examples, or face the music - so I can't think about a better set of people to try this path of attack (MS wouldn't directly, and SUN / IBM / HP / Dell can't).
The other interesting bit here is the sub-thread about: "All your source code belongs to us!" Seems to me the big beneficiary of such an arrangement (if it ever proved to be legal) would not be SCO, but the main developer of both the dominant OS and OO-development toolset - say, perhaps the creators of
Give it some thought
--Mr. AC--
PS - for those that haven't thought it through, when you get coffee or tea at a MickeyDee's drive-thru window, the cream and sugar are usually not in the cup but in separate packets. So the first thing a customer would likely do is --- open the top to put in the cream and sugar!! Thus "taking off the lid" is something MacDonalds' customers should be able to do w/o getting injured, right? RIGHT??
NEVER use their underhanded techniques against them, Grasshopper; it validates them.
Upholding the GPL license is ALL this fight is about, pure and simple.
That being said, it is NOT time to become radical about it; if the GPL is BY the people and FOR the people, then it must be used in that honorable sense.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
On the off chance that someone wants to follow through with this idea, here's a traceroute that identifies their ISP: ...
12 p4-1-0-0.a00.dnvrco02.us.ra.verio.net (129.250.16.52) 127.103 ms 127.464 ms 131.445 ms
13 p1-0-2-0.a00.dnvrco02.us.ce.verio.net (198.173.159.254) 120.930 ms 117.026 ms 118.175 ms
14 *
That should be sufficient information to contact verio.net.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Maybe their site choked and died upon switching back to SCO UNIX from "GNU/Linux & Apache"....
Check out their OS History
I don't think SCO wants people to know that they are running on Linux. And the hipocracy grows deeper......
Nobody pays any attention to AC posts, but pay attention to this and mod the parent up - insightful!
I agree with this message and the points made need to be heard by the widest possible audience.
Blake Stowell, the Director of Public Relations for The SCO Group, told Newsforge in an email:
I think his comment should have been more like this:"I just wanna clarify what's goin' on over here. Over in the casino, after I had those nine beers, I showed this crumpled piece of paper that read:
The three lines above are source code in our very own UNIX System V. Here are three lines from the Linux kernel: As you can plainly see, these portions of the Linux source code are exactly identical to our UNIX System V code. All of our programmers, Bob and Jim, told me so themselves, and both of them are highly trained MCSE's. We don't appreciate that the community rejects this as evidence of wrongdoing on their part. Linus is obviously an idiot because his coding skills don't match what Bob and Jim can do in VisualBASIC 2003."In other news, SCO sues Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson for helping to create software which could be used to violate SCO's intellectual property rights. A spokesperson for SCO said, "By leveraging innovative litigation procedures, SCO streamlines compelling shareholder value."
That's pretty hot...
"Ultimately, since it's illegal and rather immature"
That people who call each other "immature" are usually under 20?
Interesting, isn't it?
...but can't find any old enough hardware.
Either that or the recievers got there early and the racks are now vacant. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"and unless he had a very unusual contract, AT&T owned the code he wrote"
Yes, but when this code was written, there was no such thing as software patents; aside from copyright law, there was no protection for this code, except as a trade secret; and it seems difficult to believe that a trade secret can have the source code released with a BSD-style license and still remain a trade secret.
Honestly, I don't see where SCO is going with any of this. It doesn't make any sense.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Next they'll be including copies of UnixWare in the writs they send out ("Is that really grey paper? It looks like very, very fine print to me... my goodness, they've taken almost all of the whitespace out... but it does look like a winner from the Obfuscated C competition...") so they can be sure that all recipients have unlicenced copies of their code.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...will be called SCObig?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
How the name of fuck, did this AC get modded +2 informative?
5468652047616D65
I am sorry if their reality is different than
yours. The question is not who is rational
according to your reality, but who makes money and who loses money.
Who told you the they have to follow reality?
hey follow thatever makes them money, which is
a much more usefull measure than your view
view of who you think the game should be played.
The stock market is essentially a scam, and
the sheep usually are the ones who follow "the reality".
You are at the wrong business if you think
the market is irratioanl. By definition: the
market is always rational -- this is
what determines who wins and loses. Tis is the biggest
reality of all.
This website does little to discredit SCO, i think it makes IBM look like cronies. If you look at thescoinformationministers reasoning, it was, initially, an attack on IBM. IBM was quiet but the whole open source community then dug their knives in and SCO went after them.
Lets just imagine that IBM really were feeding SCO source code into Linux - wouldnt you feel ripped off and go after them?
Sure it does. One of Darl's statements was that this had "nothing to do with old UNIX" and clearly this example was from a very old UNIX. I'd say that particular statement is 100% undermined.
This is what a lot of us have been waiting for: inside info on the crapsuit.
The code may very well be considered "public domain", due to its appearance as sample code in the Kernigan & Ritchie book. Material is often put into the public domain not by people who contributed it that way, but by courts deciding that usage and common knowledge of the material has taken it out of protection.
Since the code in question was certainly presented in educational environments since at least the late '70's, we can probably assume that it is considered public domain at this point in time.
Did anyone else notice the 66.6 in the trace route. Maybe Darl's more evil than we thought...
shut ya batty hole... nah good pork chopity buoy... babylon be keppin kemps fa i an i... ya be a pinky maga dog....
Rev 22:2 NKJV) In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
true dat
"At this point it's going to be his word against ours," he said of Perens.
OK, so their arguement is going to be..." 'Cuz we said so your honor! It's true! It's true! They're all a bunch of mean nasty liars" ??
Next thing you know, they'll try to launch a land war in southeast Asia.
"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone."
~Epictetus
SCO spends more effort their fud campaing than
they do with the trial, using Microsoft's funding of
$8 million for 2003. The purpose of their
business is to cause as much harm as possible
to IBM, to Linux, and to GPL. That is what
they are paid to do, and that is is what everyone
observes they are doing. If they can produce
good results, maybe Microsoft will fund them
for the year 2004. This is how SCO generates its revenue.
Who spoke about trial?
If SCO was in the litigation business, one
would assume that they would spend money to
read their own legal contracts (and not find
the important Novel addendum misplaced *after* they filed the IBM lawsuit). And
if they were into the litication business, SCO
should at least have bothered to (at least) google
for ten minutes to verify if they actually own
the "proof" they displayed at their conference.
SCO does not seem to be spending time to build
a case agaist IBM. But they do seem to spend most
of their day reviewing the next press release
and giving interviews every other day.
SCO is not in the litigation business. Their
reveniew model places them in the fud and public relations
business.
Ken and Dennis wrote the code that SCO owns before they owned it? Wait, I thought they were IBM employees like ESR!
This sig no verb.
Do you know that people first started making chocolate chip cookies about the same time as other people started drawing pictures of Mickey Mouse. Somehow, one of these creative acts is now practiced widely without worry of legal consequences, but the other is restricted severely by IP laws. Since it's clear that chocolate chip cookies are a much more original and complex creation than a picture of a mouse, someone ought to go figure. I figure that calling America a banana republic would be an affront to the countries that grow bananas.
216.250.142.120 (canopy.com) is reachable
216.250.140.112 (sco.com) 216.250.140.125 (caldera.com) are on a different class C which is unreachable.
I followed your url, but it goes to Bruce's
homepage. Seems like McBride is DoSing Bruce.
Look, you really don't have to care. And if you don't, why are you even reading this story? Of course, you really *should* care, because this case has a lot to do with the future of tech, and our ability to create, share, and use it. That ability could be taken away from us. I'm glad there are plenty of people who do care, because without them, this can only get worse. BTW, if someone does buy SCO, then Darl McBride will have shown a surefire way to make about $200 million in market cap by attacking open source. Others will follow. Is that what you want? Oh, I forgot, you were bored.
Shouldn't that be Some or Most
Whatever. It's basically a headline, like in a newspaper. It's supposed to grab your attention so you read the rest of the story. The headline is not supposed to be the story.
-a
It is not legal combine my GPL code into your
BSD code. But it is legal, for me to combine
your BSD code into *my* GPL code. In fact,
I can even take your BSD code and change its
license into GPL anytime I want.
if the GPL is BY the people and FOR the people,
I think you're thinking of the wrong document. The GPL is BY Richard Stallman (and his lawyers), and FOR GNU. We just happen to have permission to use it, so long as we don't change it, because it's copyrighted, too.
Like what I said? You might like my music
I thought you had misspelt fallacious accicentally at first. :D
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Sunday, 24 August 2003 7:36am EDT.
In a way, you could say, that that kind of cleans up one of the messiest things on the Intenet, er... sort of.
Regards,
Fredrick
The Original NarrowLog SCO Skit
From the second series of "NarrowLog"
Scene: A website. One thread is occupied by a group of slashdotters with horned helmets on. A man and his wife enter.
Man: You sit here, dear. ...SCO SCO SCO IBM and SCO; SCO SCO SCO SCO SCO SCO BSD alloc() SCO SCO SCO... ...or Free as in Freedom Softwarre with Open Sauce served in a Provencale manner with Debian GNU/Linux and gcc garnished with GNOME Desktop, brandy and with a UnixWare on top and SCO.
Wife: All right.
Man: Morning!
Waitress: Morning!
Man: Well, what've you got?
Waitress: Well, there's IBM and SCO; SCO SUN and MS; MS and SCO; IBM Linux and SCO; IBM Linux Unix and SCO; SCO GPL systemV and SCO; SCO Linus SCO SCO IBM and SCO; SCO bacon IBM SCO SCO RMS SCO Redhat and SCO;
Slashdot posters (starting to chant): SCO SCO SCO SCO...
Waitress:
Slashdot posters (singing): SCO! Incompetent SCO! Horrible SCO!
Waitress:
Wife: Have you got anything without SCO?
Waitress: Well, there's SCO IBM sausage and SCO, that's not got much SCO in it.
Wife: I don't want any SCO!
Man: Why can't she have IBM bacon SCO and RedHat?
Wife: That's got SCO in it!
Man: Hasn't got as much SCO in it as SCO IBM sausage and SCO, has it?
Slashdot posters: SCO SCO SCO SCO (crescendo through next few lines)
Wife: Could you do the IBM Redhat SCO and Linux without the SCO then?
Waitress: Eewwww!
Wife: What do you mean 'Eewwww'? I don't like SCO!
Slashdot posters: Stupid SCO! Horrible SCO!
Waitress: Shut up!
Slashdot posters: Stupid SCO! Ignorant SCO!
Waitress: Shut up! (Slashdot posters don't stop) Bloody Slashdotters! You can't
have IBM Redhat SCO and Linux without the SCO.
Wife (shrieks): I don't like SCO!
Man: Sshh, dear, don't cause a fuss. I'll pay your SCO license. I love it. I'm having SCO SCO SCO SCO SCO SCO SCO SystemV-unixware SCO SCO SCO and SCO!
Slashdot posters (singing): SCO SCO SCO SCO. Stupid SCO! Ignorant SCO!
Waitress: Shut up!! SytemV is obsolete.
Man: Well could I have her SCO instead of the SystemV then?
Waitress: You mean SCO SCO SCO SCO SCO SCO... (but it is too late and the Slashdotters drown her words)
Slashdot posters (singing elaborately): SCO SCO SCO SCO. Stpuid SCO! Incompetent SCO! SCO sc-o-o-o-o-o-o SCO sc-o-o-o-o-o-o SCO. Stupid SCO! Stuid SCO! Ignorant SCO! Stupid SCO! Horrible SCO! SCO SCO SCO SCO!
> The US Navy is a big SCO UnixWare user, and it has plenty of cash. That makes it a nice, juicy target for corporations who have even a halfway decent case of SCO misusing their IP. The Navy is more likely to pay than not - Governments tend to be wary of bad publicity in the run-up to a major election, and virtually anything asked for is going to be loose change to the DoD.
t ml
Just the FAQS/FACTS, Please !
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/32211.h
"Terra Soft Solutions has announced that Lockheed Martin will buy 260 Xserve servers running its Yellow Dog Linux, with the eventual destination being the US Navy's submarines. On board clusters of the Apple rack server will be used for real-time image processing. ("Captain - it looks like a giant octopus")"
"We're the only Apple reseller on the planet with a licence to install a non-Apple operating system."
Be Sure You're Right, Then Go Ahead - Davy Crockett
I'm referring to the spirit of the document, not the author.
It's prety clear that Richard Stallman wanted to create something FOR the people.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
http://myword.bounceme.net/scoatse/says/myword.jpg
That's not as eighties-archaic as "they'd be maxing in Bermuda on everyone else's retirements." Now that's eighties.
===== Previous Post Below ======
First, I'll start by saying that this is my personal opinion. I only wish I had facts to back it up, although I suspect they exist.
We, the Linux community, are spending a great deal of time attacking SCO for their actions, but I personally don't think they are the source of the problem. (Not to say they don't deserve all they get for being willing pawns.) I really think this whol thing is orchestrated by (drum roll please) Microsoft.
Sure, they are a favorite target and everyone in the Linux community loves to take a shot at them, but lets look at what we know.
1) Microsoft is a master of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) as a marketing approach to fight competition.
2) Just before (or maybe just after, I don't recall the exact timing) SCO started their assault, Microsoft signed an agreement with SCO for Unix technology (considered by many as something of little use to them).
3) Shortly after the assault by SCO began, Microsoft releases Windows Server 2003 with a large and still on-going campaign.
Every day that the SCO circus continues is another day of Microsoft spreading FUD about the competition. It has already been suggested (I think by SCO) that it could be well into 2005 before the case even reaches court. That's got to be worth a lot to Microsoft in marketing Server 2003. By getting SCO, a dying company by most accounts, to throw itself of the sword for a price, Microsoft apears to have its hands clean. (Similar to the way organized crime works, huh?)
I suspect there is a money trail or, even though they should know better by now, an e-mail or memo trail.
For the purposes of Microsoft, it doesn't matter how much of a circus SCO turns this into or if they even make it to court. I would suspect it never goes to court and SCO backs down. That way SCO execs walk away with their pockets full of M$ and Microsoft gets the marketing they wanted.
Again, PersonalOpinion
NEVER use their underhanded techniques against them, Grasshopper; it validates them.
Upholding the GPL license is ALL this fight is about, pure and simple.
That being said, it is NOT time to become radical about it; if the GPL is BY the people and FOR the people, then it must be used in that honorable sense.
SCO is infringing on the copyright, ie: violating the GPL. This is too obvious. Inforcing the law is not underhanded, its required. If the DMCA applies, then it should be used, no matter that it is a stupid law. If you REALLY care about the GPL, then you would want to use every legal method at your disposal to insure those that attack it are brought to justice.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It's prety clear that Richard Stallman wanted to create something FOR the people.
Yes, it's pretty clear that the thing he wanted to create FOR the people is called GNU, and it's a free operating system. He created the GPL to protect GNU, and to be applied to 3rd party software written for GNU and other OSs. He didn't set out to create the GPL, he only created it when it became necessary to have a more general license that could be applied more easily.
Like what I said? You might like my music
This is something we give to first-years. The answer is "rm -- --help". Hope this --helps.
YLFI
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
I sure hope nobody is launching an attack on SCO. Far better to let them stay online, especially since SCO is it's own worst enemy. There is much to be learned from their behavior, even if that behavior is bad.
Retaliation should be reserved for the top executives, after SCO is dead. The challenge will be to ensure that these people are treated like toxic waste wherever they go.
...I notice that all of the "PR Newswire" press releases listed under the SCOX symbol at Yahoo are sourced by - tahdaah! - The SCO Group.
If you were a potential investor and didn't notice that, you might be decieved by the river of positive "press", not noticing that it was 95% masturbatory; so... do any of you happen to have contact with a company possessing write access to PR Newsire, Dow, Reuters, PrimeZone or any of the other news sources listed?
I'd be delighted to see an item appear there occasionally with a headline like "SuperMegaCorp laughs collective ass off at SCOX evidence blunder", "IBM respects, defends GPL; SCOX tramples BSD licence" or "Is MSFT preparing to disown SCOX?".
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Not quite. You're referring to a hole in the kernel and/or that subset of userland tools written by or assigned to the FSF such as the C compiler and awk interpreter. You're not referring to holes in Apache, SendMail, PHP, PostFix, Mozilla, KDE, SaMBa, OpenSSH, SquirrelMail, AMaViS, ProFTPd, OpenLDAP, bzflag, The GIMP or any one of (literally) thousands of other packages.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You could also use wildcards, as in rm ??help, providing you weren't too fond of files called "myhelp" or "xxhelp" in the same directory. Use the -i option if there's a few matches, and say yea/nay to zapping each.
You could move everything else out of the directory then rm -rf it.
You could tell an app that didn't accept long options to use it as a temp file.
echo -e '#include <stdio.h>\nmain(){unlink("--help");}\n' >zaphelp.c; make zaphelp; ./zaphelp; rm zaphelp zaphelp.c
...and so on. Welcome to Unix. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Keep upgrading your tagline, one day you'll find one that is both witty and worthwhile.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If Ritchie wrote it, then it's AT&T Unix code; SCO is claiming all Unix rights belong to them, so it would be SCO code, provided you regard the results of the BSD lawsuit as invalid. There is a line of reasoning that you can follow by which SCO's claims seem reasonible; unfortunately, the number of hoops they need to jump through to prove these claims seems more and more tenuous.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney