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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."
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.
...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.
Just a wild conspiracy theory.
Someone who holds a copyright to some part of the linux kernel has invoked the DMCA with SCO's upstream provider. Since SCO has been distributing the linux kernel in voilation of the GPL, thus violating this person's copyright.
Doesn't the DMCA give the power to turn off access to the Internet and ask questions later?
What's more intriguing to me is a surge of their stock for the last two days. How could this be possible, after they revealed their own stupidity by showing BSD-lisenced code as smoking guns for IBM/IP case? Who'd buy a pile of shit?
Maybe hundreds of millions of retarded private investors are visiting SCO.com and that's causing their servers down. hehe
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)
There is a site around which purports to look at this from a legal standpoint as opposed to our 'IANAL' standpoints. The author there has been making it clear for a while now that SCO's lawyers are making one ludicrous and unsustainable claim after another. David Boies (sp?) has taken this case on a 'percent if we win' basis but has also been making claims that led the author to wonder if he knew anything about law at all. A couple of weeks ago, the author commented that SCO's behaviour was so obviously suicidal that the only explanation was: they are running this for a third party. The third party in question being a large monopoly based in the northern Seattle area.
Leaving that site's analysis now: When SCO folds - as it soon will - this presumably means that they will be unable to meet the legal bills of the (for example) IBM and RedHat lawyers. SCO's strategy has to be to exist for as long as possible so that their company can be milked for all it is not even worth, and then run.
That is the SCO directors, their lawyers have made a very eloquent case for the adoption of Gowachin Law in real life. (sorry about that link, it was the best I could find).
Gowachin Law was a creation of the 'Dune' author, Frank Herbert, and appeared in several of his ConSentiency books. The losing lawyer is killed by the winning one. There are ill-defined rules where other participants - including judges who do not meet standards - can also be killed.
The whole idea is that the participants are personally responsible for their misdeeds. Gowachin law is not going to be adopted any time soon, but the current system has obviously failed in that this turkey has been allowed to run for so long.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
They may even know they are wrong, but that won't stop them from trying to use the system to get $$.
This is what so many slashdot readers and posters on other forums don't understand... It's not about the legal details. SCO is of the ilk that believes "if it's legal, it's moral" and will use that logic to extract $$$ from whomever they can using whatever components of "the system" they can. They will have no qualms about destroying anyone's livelihood, anyone's hard work or indeed half the software industry to line their own pockets.
And if all of this mass destruction does occur, in the post-mortem interview as they are lining their pockets they will happily answer press questions with "Obviously it's ethical! Everything we've done is according to the letter of the law."
Recklessly self-serving corporate logic of this type is a bigger evil than "the terrorists" who are at least fighting for something that they believe; in the long run and big picture, this type of profiteering is probably more dangerous as well. The world can sustain a lot more 9/11 attacks than it can Exxon Valdez disasters, Bhopal disasters or Papel Cataguazes disasters, all of which were about profits and nothing else.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I believe it was a short squeeze.
When a stock is borrowed to short, it has to be returned upon demand. The short seller will have to buy replacement shares at the current price. More sellers are willing to sell at this price, which causes more shorted shares to be called for return. This becomes a cycle that can rapidly bump up the price for a day or two.
Shorting a stock is definitely a short term gamble. It would be better to use options, but they are not offered on SCOX.
Yes ... but the person you got shut down merely has to file a "put up or shut up" reply with the ISP, and the person who made the DMCA complaint MUST proceed to filing a formal infringement court case within 10 days or shut up for all time. It's not something you should do lightly.
Some eBay users were being hassled by a fabric manufacturer, because they mentioned their name and showed the fabric made into various objects, or were reselling vintage fabric. The manufactuer accused them of violating their design copyrights by showing the pictures. It was VERY easy to get them to back off, just by firing back a "sez who?" and teelling them that they had 10 days to file something sreoius. The harassment stopped.
"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.
- 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.Why Friday?
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Well, actually, the run-up started Thursday morning. Here is a five-day graph. Look at the price and the volume starting on Thursday morning.
I don't know. But here are some guesses:
Somebody is trading on news that hasn't become public yet. Like maybe, Monday, we'll hear that some huge company bought a Linux license for a lot of money. I am disinclined to believe this because news like that generally comes out within 24 hours, and it's been longer than that since Thursday morning. But it could happen.
Or
Somebody is trading on a really effective rumor that hasn't become public yet. It's hard to prove or disprove this either way.
Or
Somebody had a big short position and they capitulated (bought a lot of stock back). This happens on Friday afternoons because short-sellers are wary about holding big short positions over the weekend. But this move started Thursday morning!
Or
Somebody is intentionally buying a lot of stock in order to squeeze the short-sellers. There is no need to invoke an anti-Linux motive here; if they can buy at $11, and sell at $13, that's good money. And it does not take much to set off a stampede in a stock shorted as heavily as this.
Or
After McBride said "Slide A equals Slide B", the pro-SCO people waited to see if the Linux people would say anything really devastating, such as "Slide B does not appear anywhere in our code, McBride pulled that out of his ass!"
McBride did his show on Monday, and we got all our responses into the media by Tuesday night. So this hypothesis is that the SCOX-ers were waiting to see what we had before they committed, and then it took another day (Wednesday) for the SCOX-ers to convince themselves that we didn't have a crushing reply to McBride.
The trouble with this hypothesis is that a whole day (Wednesday) is too much time for a volatile stock like SCOX. With that hypothesis, I'd expect more of a rally Monday, followed by a dip on Tuesday and Wednesday, with big volume. But that didn't happen. The volume numbers say that McBride's announcement on Monday and the Linux'ers reaction on Tuesday were both not important.
Summary
I don't like any of these explanations very much.
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.