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Further Selections From the Mixed-Up SCO Files
An anonymous reader writes "SCO have made much of how their claims about UNIX code being improperly copied into Linux were verified by 3 teams including 'MIT Mathematicians.' However, MIT can't seem to find the mathematicians concerned!"
(SCO's explanation is that the company is talking about a team made up of people who formerly worked at MIT, rather than a group still associated with the school, but "due to contractual obligations, we cannot specifically name the individuals.")
kuwan writes "SCO has responded to the massive debunking of their 'evidence' last week. Chris Sontag claims that the BPF code was 'not intended to be an example of stolen code, but rather a demonstration of how SCO was able to detect "obfuscated" code.' That, however is a flat-out lie. If you look at their Obfuscated Copying slide (#15), it clearly states 'Obfuscated System V Code Has Been Copied Into Linux Kernel Releases 2.4x and 2.5x,' and then the slide labels the BPF code on the left as 'System V Code.'
At this point I think they realized that their case has been severly weakened and they need to spin it any way they can. And in their case this means more lying."
Captain Beefheart writes "According to this story over at The Inquirer (crediting a special edition of Terry Shannon's Shannon Knows HPC newsletter), SCO has officially announced that HP is safe from their infringement lawsuit brigade ... This leads one to suspect that HP is the Fortune 500 company that SCO claimed recently had paid for a license."
Maybe HP just wants to avoid Microsoft/BSA-style hassles: FatRatBastard writes "According to an article on Commentwire.com SCO has started sending invoices to Linux users. If a company signs up for SCO's 'Intellectual Property License for Linux,' they allow the possibility of being audited at SCO's expense to ensure that the user has been truthful about the number of Linux installations it has. Should the audit reveal that the user has underpaid SCO by 5% or $5,000, whichever is highest, the user also agrees to pay the price for the audit."
Blacklantern writes "The SCO lawsuit has made it into "Halloween Documents" gallery. Eric Raymond takes on the contents of the lawsuit point-by-point. "
Over at Computerworld, they have an article which outlines SCO's plans to revitalize their Unix offering, and market it as a competitor to Linux. The best part, of course, is Darl's insight:
Sure, a little paint and some nifty accents from Pottery Barn, and SCO will be swimming in cash, right??? Thanks again, Darl, for making my day just a little funnier...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Since they own the underlying IP in Linux, they can use it for whatever they want. In fact ONLY they can. Why won't you people undertand this? Why does everyone think I'm joking??!??
Why wouldn't they use Linux? They own it, don't they?
It seems to me that SCO is just trying to get a "free" updated version of their old code. Which from the sounds of things has been vastly improved since they have had any updates done to it.
You've got a Mac /., and a games /., so why not a SCO /. and just save the rest of us (who aren't interested) the trouble?
Thanks.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
who is been invoiced? that link contains no useful info. big companies? random users? anyone have any more info?
Hewlett-Packard 1938-1999
Take care of your old HP calculators!
So, could this be the reason why the successful DoS attack on SCO by an overly zealous open source advocate was so successful?
BOO! TERRO
'do as we say, not as we do'
This doesn't apply. SCO doesn't want you to stop using Linux, they just want you to pay a licensing fee. One would take for granted that SCO does not need to pay themselves a licensing fee to run their webserver.
I guess they think that if....
1) IBM looses their safe
2) IBM wins, HP sues SCO for selling the license under false pretenses.
Finally! An SCO story. I've been going into depressive withdrawal...
Why would any company pay their license fees to SCO right now? They haven't proven anything yet, so it would stand to reason that _after_ SCO proves its case in court then companies can begin paying SCO license fees. As long as the issue is disputed, I see no reason any company would decide to pay a license fee to a company that just claims to own some IP without actually proving it.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
More specifically, Steve Jobs's Reality Distortion Field(TM), except that he crossed the wires wrong and only he is affected. W00t!
If Linux has a million lines of SCO code, why shouldn't they host their own web site with it? :)
Ya know, my life has been so much richer since I've been able to tune in to the daily episode of "As the SCO Turns", my favorite soap opera! Although, I almost think this almost qualifies as comedy! In any case, thanks, Darl!
OK, this is just a crazy thought I suppose, but why in the world would a company the size of SCO take on a company the size of IBM if they knew their claims were bull? Is it that their claims are "just arguable enough" in a court of law, and they think somehow that choosing the right jurisdiction with the right judge will net them a win? I.e. Choose a really clueless judge in a really backwards jurisdiction or some such crap like that? Or maybe they already have a judge up their sleeve? Or some other MAJOR leverage point that will make this worth their while?
I just don't see how any person could act so completely ridiculously in a business setting. Then again, the boom of the '90's gave us such wonder-boys as the Enron exec's, so maybe it's not so far fetched that Darl really is a "moron."
Why are so many companies who are doing Linux business (SuSE, for example) complaining, but not unleashing their lawyers. The last thing SCO needs right now are more countersuits, which in turn makes it for us the first thing we should do right now.
Paul Hatch, a SCO spokesman, wrote in a statement to The Tech, "To clarify, the individuals reviewing the code had been involved with MIT labs in the past, but are not currently at MIT. Unfortunately, due to contractual obligations, we cannot specifically name the individuals."
I get the sudden impression of a trio who tried out for the role of the Lone Gunmen on the X-Files and failed miserably, crawling through MIT's underground tunnels.
"Quick, it's the campus cops! Run!"
"But we haven't finished copying UNIX code into /src/kernel!"
"That's okay, we'll just grep some BSD code and put it in Symbol font. They'll never know the difference!"
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
For more information, remember that Microsoft did the same thing not too long ago.
---
I can feel my sanity, beyond my reach and slipping...
How many of you would do business with a company who would buy a license from SCO?
I think buying a license, and then allowing it to be public knowlege that you did so would be corporate suicide. Unless you didn't want Linux (or to an extent, Unix) to succeed.
Vip
Actually that doesn't make it a "flat-out lie" - it could easily be interpreted as Sontag says. Think of it as a explanatory diagram rather than an example of alledged infringing code.
Doesn't matter whether you or I would interpret it that way, but whether a judge or jury can be made to. And that might even be what it really was - since they apparently don't want to release the code, they might have just picked something similar in style or lineage to illustrate their point without revealing the actual sources of their claim.
To keep stock prices high, SCO need to keep the press releases going. Nothing they say will surprise me now. If they said that the Linux kernel was actually given Darl by grey-green aliens with full distribution rights (and rights on derivative works), I wouldn't be surprised...
SCO can kiss my ass
I'm sorry about that. *Bows head in shame*Um, as a mathematician I can understand why I might be hired to sell hotdogs, but to justify undefined claims? Naaaa.
Most likely the #1 Unfunny Meta/Moderator on
They're starting to look like real Bozos to me. Hitting the bong one time too many causes one to forget your true stance.
Or something.
My mother would tap her foot impatiently, say, "She doesn't have your stuff, stop being so mean to your sister," and promptly ground him for being a dork.
So, using this logic, IBM should say, "Linux doesn't have your code, stop being so mean to the open source community," and promptly sue them for being dorks.
+5, Female
Am I the only one who believes there has got to be more to this claim? I know that all their actions seem to be designed and timed to boost their stock price every time it seems to be flagging a little from its already inflated position but surely BPF and similar code is not all they have?
Those AT&T contracts IBM signed were pretty damn restrictive and having read the responses from Perens and Raymond I can understand how someone "reasonable" with an understanding of the issues involved can see that this is not the same as a derivative work but we are talking about something coming from a legal point of view which doesn't always look at things reasonably especially when it comes to U.S. copyright law. Even though this is a contract dispute it still looks like it could become another copyright mess so I don't really understand the seemingly overwhelming confidence of the OSS community.
SCO's web site has been served by Apache on Linux. Your humble author suggests that SCO found themselves requiring a multithreaded web server, and as SCO UNIX is based on an ancient version of The UNIX spec it just couldn't cope
If SCO needed a multithreaded web server, why would they use Apache 1.3.14?
cpeterso
Don't use the full name, you insensative clod!
;)
Seriously, being a Santa Cruz geek, I'm ticked that this blasted company is ruining the good name of my home town. Back when SCO was really SCO, they may not have produced good software, but at least they employed local geeks to produce bad software
So, how do they go about getting licensee information? I mean, other companies might have that contact information, if someone bought a CD set. But how do they track all those downloads? They must have some pretty amazing products to do that. I wonder how expensive that is?
Most likely the #1 Unfunny Meta/Moderator on
Should the audit reveal that the user has underpaid SCO by 5% or $5,000, whichever is highest, the user also agrees to pay the price for the audit.
So, not only am I being extorted, but I'm agreeing to be extorted at a future date as well!?!
Please, SCO spare us the bandwidth. Shut Up!
-B
I'd much rather see a FUD section. SCO will go away (how long is anyone's guess) but the FUD is going to be a long term problem.
If not FUD maybe a *nix section, but I think FUD would be more interesting.
Quack, quack.
wow, it's 4:30. i'd almost given up on my daily SCO story.
!(^((ri)|(mp))aa$)
Anyone here works at a place that actually got one of these "invoices" from SCO?
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Is there a graphing calculator like a TI-89 for free on Linux/BSD? With the same functions and also a GUI?
If you're attached to you're HP calculator, there are rumors circulating that HP will reenter the calculator business. Details can be found here.
If, however, they do not, there is always the Power48 PalmOS based emulator you can rely on if you original calculator decides to die.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
"Your humble author suggests that SCO found themselves requiring a multithreaded web server, and as SCO UNIX is based on an ancient version of The UNIX spec it just couldn't cope ;-)."
Noooooooo, that isn't it. Maybe that would have been the case if SCO had customers, heck they could run MS Personal Web Server and do just fine.
Blender And Linux Fan
...but that stuff about the mathematicians had me imagining a SCO representative doing a Maxwell Smart impersonation.
"Yes, we hired a team of crack mathematicians from MIT to scour the code...."
"Would you believe we hired an accountant who's heard of MIT to scour the code..."
"How about we cornered a kid coming out of his remedial math class and offered him free pizza if he could find two words that matched?"
Doesn't Microsoft help fund KDE development? I think many of KDE's Visual Basic reject programmers work at Microsoft.
cpeterso
IBM looses their safe
IBM will never loose their safe. A safe that isn't tight is quite useless.
Dear SCO,
I have already paid for your Linux license, yet I have erroniously received another invoice.
After some investigation, I think I figured out the mix up. Due to contractual obligations, I had to send the payment secretly. It's in a white unmarked envelope with no return address. Due to the circumstances, I was forced to send cash against the advice of the US postal service. Still I trust that it arrived safely. If you have any doubts, my accountant, whose name I cannot reveal, will vouch for me. He used to teach at MIT so his credibility is obviously impeccable.
Now that we've straightened out this matter, I will discard this invoice.
Thank you,
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
The company disputes this analysis. "We're the owners of the Unix (AT&T) System V code, and so we would know what it would look like," the company told McMillan and the IDG News Service. "Until it comes to court, it's going to be our word against theirs."
The weird thing is, if they knew what it looked like, then why did they release it under the GPL? Off-hand statements like this from the company's CEOs do a lot to discredit the whole mess....
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
Well, sure, if I was working for SCO, I wouldn't want me name known publicly either!
"We're the owners of the Unix (AT&T) System V code, and so we would know what it would look like,"
Yeah, sure, having recently purchased rights to the code, they would definately have a better idea what it looks like than, say, the guys that wrote the code!!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The latest SCO acquisition is Vultus, which even sounds evil. The SCO stockholders are the eventual losers, but I find it difficult to develop sympathy for someone who buys into a shakedown racket.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I know, I know, I should really RTFA before posting, but unfortunately where I am working they are severely watching all of our net access. Due to quite a few die-hard Linux fans, we are allowed to view /. but our non-relevant-to-coding sites are being restricted. As such, my subject:
Why mathematicians?
After recently completing my BSc in Computer Science with an extensive math background, why would SCO hire mathematicians to peruse software code? OK, maybe they are mathematicians who are proficient in computer software, but most of the mathematicians that I have been exposed to in university can use a computer to surf, but cannot write a line of code to save their lives. And then SCO wants us to believe that these mathematicians not only read the UNIX source code, but were somehow able to.. what? Identify that line 397 in UNIX is the same as line 397 in Linux? Any trained individual can do that. So why the big deal about (supposed) MIT mathematicians?
According to Australian LinuxWorld is reporting that Novell's CTO has issued an ultimatum to SCO: put up or shut up.
me too
I've been following the SCO case, and other IP-related cases, with great iterest -- collecting as many articles as I can about everything related. One thing I've noticed is that SCO's grandiose claims were plastered over all the business-related media pretty quickly, but all the rebuttal arguments (that make SCO's case looks like Swiss chesse) aren't showing up in the same outlets.
/., it's quite possible they would still believe SCO has a good case on their hands.
Unless some IT manager also read sites such as
The whole thing is damning to Linux specifically, and open source as well. I cannot help but see a media bias against OSS. Anyone else notice this?
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Displaying documents 1-20 of total 2825 found.
1. SCO | Company | History of SCO
Plans for the next weekly Pot-Party
Displaying documents 1-20 of total 2951 found.
We think we rock big time
Displaying documents 1-20 of total 1116 found.
nya nya nya nya take that suckers
Displaying documents 1-20 of total 1586 found.
Why shit and waste it when you can burp and taste it.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
But Sontag said the BPF routines were not intended to be an example of stolen code, but rather a demonstration of how SCO was able to detect "obfuscated" code, or code that had been altered slightly to disguise its origins. The slide displaying the code should have been written differently to reflect that intention, he said.
But that slide said "one example of many", didn't it? I wonder how far Sontag can fit his foot in his mouth.
Wow, a girl!!!
So, do you like....stuff?
In the Inquirer article, I don't see where SCO claims HP is clear. HP claims that they don't infringe on SCO's IP. And they don't.
Then topped off with removal of most of the decent hardware HP had with Compaq crap, including their servers.
I haven't seen one yet, but I'd like to. Go ahead, SCO. Bill me for something I didn't purchase from you. My lawyer will have a field day.
There are perfectly good - and fast - multithreaded web servers that will run on SCO, at least as fast or faster than Apache.
Xitami (which I admit I wrote huge chunks of) is one such beast.
SCO are stupider than I thought.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
According to this story over at The Inquirer [...], SCO has officially announced that HP is safe from their infringement lawsuit brigade ...
No.
Of course what will likely happen is that one of the other kernels will be used, and the GNU/OS supporting tools will be shown to be OK.
If people have to pay the $2K fees per proccesor, the MS can better compete.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Just seperate (although intertwining) issues. Rights pretty much touches on everything.
Quack, quack.
Caldera bought SCO, remember? That's probably when and why it changed over.
Why, I remember when Caldera was trying to be a Linux company, and SCO was just a defunct Unix. Now all we have is Caldera/SCO trying hard to be a defunct company!
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Ralph Yarro is the real enemy. SCO is just the means to his evil. Ralph sits on the board and controls many of the the Canopy Groups companies. Look here for the various companies he controls/subsidizes/owns/sits on the board of . If you do business with them, let them know that this lawsuit is a bad idea. The way to get to Ralph is to hurt him in the pocket book. He just doesn't seem to understand logic. The way to make him understand is by showing him that we mean business.
Some of these subsidiary companies, by the way, are Linux/Open source whatever companies. He'll get the message real fast and call of the dogs if we just turn up the fire on his flank side.
So, using this logic, IBM should say, "Linux doesn't have your code, stop being so mean to the open source community," and promptly sue them for being dorks.
From the movie:
Everything was going fine until Dickless here turned off the grid.
Is that true?
Yes, your honor, this man has no dick.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
You get what you pay for. -- Gabriel Biel
By the way make sure you call FBI and claim MailFraud if you get an Invoice from SCO.
Help fight continental drift.
then that's a lousy way to protect us (yes, my company is a client of HP's). We don't need HP financing and supporting SCO's bogus claims. I want my solutions provider to SUE SCO. That's the indemnification I want.
As of now, any of my renewals for HP equipment (ePC's, etc.) are on hold until this is clarified. If they did acquire a license from SCO, they just lost some business.
* million was MS's payment SUn deal was an offer to pick up more stock
Don't Tread on OpenSource
If not FUD maybe a *nix section, but I think FUD would be more interesting.
New here? Slashdot is the *nix section.
Maybe.......
CHAPTER 17. DECEPTIVE TRADE PRACTICES
SUBCHAPTER E. DECEPTIVE TRADE PRACTICES AND CONSUMER PROTECTION
17.46. Deceptive Trade Practices Unlawful
Text of subd. (24), as amended by Acts 2001, 77th Leg., ch. 962, 1, effective Sept. 1, 2001.
(24) failing to disclose information concerning goods or services which was known at the time of the transaction if such failure to disclose such information was intended to induce the consumer into a transaction into which the consumer would not have entered had the information been disclosed;
It would seem by not divulging exactly what they are trying to license they are breaking the above law. If they said gimme $699 for GPL code would you buy it?
So what is the possible reason for this?
/sarc
Whats the problem? SCO owns Linux. They are using SCO
Unix.
Will someone PLEASE make an SCO section so those of us who don't care to have hourly updates can filter them out!
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Is SCO at the behest of a MAJOR investor located in Redmond WA, is being told to point an empty gun at its biggest competitor while the big investor holds a loaded gun to their heads with the full intention of pulling the trigger once the battle is over. And they think it was their idea. So far, all SCO has done is show how totally incompetent their management is, how totally pathetic and transparent their claims are, and don't seem willing to try and take stock in their position. They are a catspaw, and their target is unworried because everyone with half a brain can see SCO has no leg to stand on. Seems to me the real target of all this is SCO itself, after all, the Big Investor already has mutual and exclusive production contracts with the big DB and Enterprise Resource Management and Planning concerns. And that Big Investor has nothing to lose by forcing its major commercial competitor to immolate itself in the fires of litigation, and it just may win the fight if the SEC gets involved. Seems to me the only one left standing in all this is Linux, and that big Investor in Redmond WA.
I should switch to Macintosh.
Stupid Humans.....
Except that this article was filed under "the courts" and some other department links, but none of them are Caldera, either.
The filter only works if the editors properly tag the stories, but few of the recent SCO stories actually were filed under Caldera. The editors have a cavalier attitude to fact-checking, grammar, and spelling, so I doubt they'll suddenly start enforcing strict filing rules.
Get off my launchpad!
"It's like a house that hasn't been maintained in a few years," McBride said. "We're going to come back and spruce the place up."
Should be: "It's like a crack house that hasn't been maintained in a few years," McBride said. "We're going to come back and spruce the place up."
Come on, guys.
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. dissolved several years ago, and no longer exists. The company that has been in the headlines recently is SCO Group, formerly Caldera, based out of Utah.
There's no such operating system as "SCO UNIX". There's OpenServer (which is based on an old non-threading version of the UNIX kernel...SVR3) and OpenUNIX, formerly UnixWare, which is about as modern as UNIXes get.
Of course, Caldera/SCO Group was originally a pure Linux company, so it's not surprising they use Linux to host their web server. However, thanks to the LKP (Linux Kernel Personality) feature in OpenUNIX, that "Linux" web server may actually have a UNIX SVR5 kernel inside it with a GNU+Apache filesystem on top, making it indistinguishable from Linux from the outside.
parts of their web site are wrtten in CF which is not available for SCO unix. only for Sun, Linux, OS X, and HP-Unix.
I wonder why Macromedia has not released a cf for SCO unix. you'd almost think it didnt have the market share to make it worth while....hrmmmmm
Yup, SCO hired a crew who "worked" at MIT, stealing laptops and selling drugs.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
More to it, even if SCO does collect damages from IBM, there's no reason to believe that this money wouldn't be used for similar acquisitions. I'd be surprised if the folks buying into the SCOX stock lottery saw any real dividend.
Hmm, does anyone know of any former MIT janitors working over at SCO these days?
AC comments get piped to
That does not necessarily mean they paid up. HP already had a perpetual license from SCO to use Unix IP (in HP-UX), and they may just consider this existing license to apply to that IP (if any) existing in the Linux installations they're running.
SCO has officially announced that HP is safe from their infringement lawsuit brigade
By my reading of the story, HP has announced that HP doesn't beleive it infringes on SCO code... not SCO.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Well, I think they've just spelled out part 2 of their business plan.
Step 1: Declare the GPL invalid, and claim ownership of Linux.
Step 2: Steal liberally from Linux source code in order to reinvigorate their nearly-dead OS.
Step 3: Profit.
Granted, step 1 is a long shot, now 'm starting to see other ways they could benefit from this lawsuit besides a hefty settlement from IBM.
-j
OK, even assuming Chris Sontag (who's rapidly replacing McBride as "Biggest Idiot I've Ever Seen In Charge Of Something He Has No Idea About") honestly intended the BPF code to be an 'example', he missed the point.
It's not obfuscated code. Not at all. It's a clean room implementation, and if he doubts it, he can go to the door of the person who wrote it, and kiss his ass.
Second, they argue that the malloc() implementation is still valid, even after Linus says "well, it was removed" - ignoring the screams by the damned authors of the code saying "Screw off, SCO, it's OUR code, we wrote it, go the hell away."
For everyone out there that thinks there might be something to their claims, there isn't. They're idiots. There's absolutely nothing intelligent that they've pointed out at all, and they've simply proved that they're really attempting a shell game. No, no, look in the other hand. That's where we've got the infringing code!
What are the chances that Paul is Orin's son?
The three have very different laws, and IP is a bad umbrella term for this reason. Part of SCO's rationale for this ludicrous public campaign seems to be an attempt to further blur the distinction:
SCO have a copyright case against IBM, nothing more. But by making more and more lofty "IP" claims, they are trying (and succeeding) at convincing press and investors that the few lines which some company allegedly contributed to SCO before IBM bought them somehow "taint" the surrounding code and concepts.
There was an article a week or two ago suggesting this, that any company that receives an invoice should file mail fraud charges against SCO! They are trying to bill companies for something that they have no right to bill for (fraud), and they are doing it through the mail (I presume).
Besides getting postal investigators in on the action, in the worst case scenario, i.e., SCO wins everything, companies can claim that they were waiting on the outcome of the mail fraud investigation and so shouldn't be liable for any extra damages due to failure to pay in a timely manner.
In summary, please publicise the suggestion that any company who receives an invoice for Linux from SCO file mail fraud charges!
Is this legal? I mean, can they get away with this once the courts decide that they're full of shit? If a person buys an IP license fee and then the courts decide that no such IP license exists, wouldn't he or she be legally entitled to a refund?
This is all pretty amusing stuff, but I can't believe they left this story out:
I just wish the slashdot editors would check the submitted blurbs against the content of the articles, even superficially.
HP Doesn't appear to claim or remotely imply they might have bought licenses from SCO, or that they recognize SCO's outrageous claims in any sense whatsoever. Indeed, this article seems to indicate that they are ignoring SCO, as everyone else ought to as well (the trial will determine this, and the judgement, while virtually a foregone conclusion -- SCO loses, will determine what, if any, licensing fees anyone should pay.
HP LAST WEEK claimed that it doesn't infringe on the copyrights SCO claims it owns on Linux, according to a special edition of Terry Shannon's Shannon knows HPC newsletter.
The newsletter quoted Linux business strategist Mike Balma as saying at HP World that while HP didn't comment on law suits, HP "has found no infringement issues" using Linux.
The same newsletter claimed that HP has 3.2K Linux boxes installed throughout HP.
It seems rather clear that management at SCO talked to legal, who probably advised them that SCO's claims are frivolous and will not hold up in court, and not to pay. Ergo, HP claims it does not infringe on SCO's copyrights.
Or SCO looked at the Heise images, realized that they do not use the hardware platform the alleged infringing code is in, but rather Intel. (As an aside, since almost everyone uses Intel, Power PC, Alpha, or ARM architectures, that includes HP and 99.999% or more of all GNU/Linux deployments everywhere.)
HP certainly would have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by going along with SCO, so in light of this article it seems the blurb's innuendo is more than a little misplaced (hardly a first for slashdot, but still...). Indeed, quite the opposite is happening here: HP evaluated SCOs claims and likely filed their "invoice" right where it belonged, either under "pending litigation against litigious thugs trying to shake us down" or the more general Circular File.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Your humble author suggests that SCO found themselves requiring a multithreaded web server, and as SCO UNIX is based on an ancient version of The UNIX spec it just couldn't cope ;-).
Well, there's a smiley so I know you're kidding.
But there are also some inaccurate facts and presuppositions buried in those comments.
First, your comment appears to ignore SCO's ability to use SCO UnixWare. SCO has two UNIX products, SCO UnixWare, and SCO OpenServer. SCO OpenServer is a Xenix descendent that is singlethreaded and probably as you suggest, couldn't cope. This is what most of SCO's installed base uses, and yeah it's old cruddy technology. SCO UnixWare uses pretty-sophisticated SVR5 technology that is really the core SVR kernel descended from AT&T & Novell days. It's pretty slick functionally (imho), is quite multithreaded running on 8-way (and NUMA I believe) systems, and conforms to UNIX 95 (although not UNIX 98 or the new UNIX 03 tweaks.) SCO is really suing over technology and rights allegedly derived from UnixWare/SVR4-5, not the older OpenServer technology you'd find in 90% of SCO installations.
Second, having a multithreaded webserver that can cope has little or nothing to do with whether one conforms to the latest UNIX specs from the Open Group. But I know you probably know that and are just trying to toss that in there, right?
--LP, not a UnixWare fan, just trying to reduce misinformation on the subject of SCO UNIXes
SCO didn't say before they were "associated with MIT". SCO actually said they were at the MIT math department.
e rnment/legalissues/story/0,10801,81973,00.html
Quoting from http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/gov
SCO was able to uncover the alleged violations by hiring three teams of experts, including a group from the MIT math department, to analyze the Linux and Unix source code for similarities. "All three found several instances where our Unix source code had been found in Linux," said a SCO spokesman.
And this is what MIT said http://www-tech.mit.edu/V123/N33/33sco.33n.html
nice to see a tribute to one of my favorite child-hood books. just re-read it not long ago actually, in translation to italian no less. for those who have never heard of this, it's a book called 'From the mixed-up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler' about a girl and her brother who run away from home to hide in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. highly recommended.
I know... this is a radical idea...
/me sits to watch his karma disappear
Why don't you try... NOT CLICKING THE FUCKING LINK if you don't want to read the story? If you don't want to read stories about SCO... the DON'T READ THE STORIES ABOUT SCO!
or is that too simple? Is it better to click the link, read the story, find a good spot to bitch, and then bitch and bitch about how much you don't want to read the story? FINE, don't read it! Bye!
you know that insipid means "dull", right?
after some initial 'wtf' and worry, there's only one thing left for me to do...
/me lays back with a nice martini (with an olive, for without an olive, a martini isn't _really_ a martini) and awaits the fireworks as SCO prepares to enter the atmosphere and burst into flames.
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
Ah, anonymous experts. Of course they are the most believable type of experts possible!
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Seems the MIT verified SCO claim is about as reliable as a "factual" statement from Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly.
"Chris Sontag told me that [they] had a group of mathemeticians 'who were at MIT' working on this,"
"To clarify, the individuals reviewing the code had been involved with MIT labs in the past, but are not currently at MIT. Unfortunately, due to contractual obligations, we cannot specifically name the individuals."
"at least one of the groups was a link to MIT"
What's next? "Well, all humans are decended from 'Eve', this has been scientifically verified, and there are thousands of living MIT mathemeticians, so therefore our team has thousands of links to MIT."
Or perhaps "Well, one of our team members attended a conference at MIT once, so clearly there is a link. Okay, so it was open-mic night at the student union and he played acoustic guitar, but still, there's a clear link!"
Schmedley
I've said this before and I'll say it again. It's time for we the people who have had our reputations tarnished by SCO's actions to take them to court. It takes years to build a resume of Linux qualifications, experience, certifications, etc. And it's damn hard enough to find a job in this economy.
SCO's executives come along with what can only be described as a scheme to enrich themselves by inflating stock, and they run our reputations into the mud. As a result of SCO's executives' actions it is now more difficult for me to get a job.
I believe that a case can be made that the executives of SCO knew from the outset that their allegations didn't hold water. I believe that a case can be made that their actions were motivated by personal greed - the evidence for this is the pattern of press releases correlating with dips in stock prices and the sale of stock by those executives.
As a result, I believe that the SCO executives should be held personally responsible in a court a law. They made decisions that have cost me potential income, and I think they should be the made to defend those decisions in a class action suit.
This would make a great new reality show on Discovery Channel.
Perhaps they can bring in 4 developers and give them 5 days to bring the OS up to a new flashier state.
If they suceed they get a prize pack worth over $699 of Linux licenses.
but it would go like...
"You might not realize this, IBM, but standing on the other side of that door is a team of MIT ninja mathematicians with top-of-the-line pattern-matching supercomputers!"
No one comes in the door. IBM stares blankly.
"Uh...wouldja believe a team of highly-paid CPAs with a beowulf cluster?"
No dice.
"How 'bout an advanced algebra class and 'diff'?"
Nope.
"Two monkeys and an abacus?"
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
We all appreciate what you guys are doing to help stop the madness.
/. to let us know about this story, too. :)
And thanks for stopping by
Kurt
Most of that $8,250,000 was paid by Microsoft.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Astoundingly, Slashdot people know a stock scam when they see it, but the SEC who's job is, presumably , to investigate this kind of thing is doing nothing. Someone should check to see how much cash Canopy/SCO donated to the Bush administration.
And if they wanted a multithreaded webserver, why would they be using Apache 1.3.x?
You see, people who dont know what they're talking about say all kinds of silly shit. Just look at michael's editorial history.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You can call them losers, but they don't care -- their stock value has gone up ten-fold!!
Me, I'm shorting it and am in the red now. Soon, soon...
*That's* what that "preview" button is for! :)
between sco and a bucket of shit? the bucket!
All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss. -Douglas Adams
The latest SCO acquisition is Vultus, which even sounds evil. The SCO stockholders are the eventual losers, but I find it difficult to develop sympathy for someone who buys into a shakedown racket.
Worse, Vultus runs on Windows not Unix.
SCO even had a deal with a web services company called Vista.com that does run under unix and had the option to buy it, but they choose instead to go for the windows company Vultus. Presumably, this is because Vultus is also owned and controlled by the same parent company that owns SCO.
Those ancestral versions are BSD, the Unix that Caldera released, and such, right? So...doesn't this statement (if true) make their "refined" code a derivative work of the open Unix sources (according to their definition of derivative work)?
Such irE
I kept a dial up account with them from early 1994 until 2000... IBM sold it to AT&T.
.com suffix. The IBM Global Network was ibm.net.
That is an internal IBM nameserver as evidenced by the
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Earlier this year I finally tossed out an LCD TI calculator that I bought in approximately 1978. It had the original batteries in it. The case was cracked, but the thing still worked, 25 years later. On more than one occasion I had discovered the thing in a drawer with the power accidentally left on, but the batteries still managed to survive. Throwing it out was painful after 25 years; it was like shooting my dog. :-(
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
"Indeed, it's been more than a year since the site was ever served from a SCO Unix machine. So what is the possible reason for this? Your humble author suggests that SCO found themselves requiring a multithreaded web server, and as SCO UNIX is based on an ancient version of The UNIX spec it just couldn't cope ;-)."
Given the fact that until recently, SCO was Caldera and trying to sell linux solutions, I don't find it surprising at all that they run a linux web server. Your explanation is much more far-fetched. Try thinking a little bit and lose the bias before posting next time
good job getting your story posted on slashdot despite the editors rejecting it...
P.S. that was sarcasm.
It would seem that Darl shares. He obviously passes around his crack pipe at executive meetings. He probably even brings the good crack just to impress his peers. Nice guy.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
More to it, even if SCO does collect damages from IBM, there's no reason to believe that this money wouldn't be used for similar acquisitions. I'd be surprised if the folks buying into the SCOX stock lottery saw any real dividend.
If this anonymous post is to be believed, SCO has already tried to buy up more Canopy companies in July but was thwarted because of the spotlight thrown on it by places like Slashdot.
Ok, people, this whole thing is starting to press a little to far. What exactly is going on in the U.S. that makes and let's SCO America raise all this stink?
If this were in Germany, they'd by sued blind by now and nickeld and dimed to death by temporal decrees and acompanied non-compliance-fees. Two of which are set allready (summing up to 500 000 Euro) and have shut SCO Germany up for good. Along with that would be something like a bazillion trials for 'commerce obstruction', 'copyright infringement' and whatnot cueing up on an hourly basis.
As I gather there is something like the 'Boersenaufsicht' called 'SEC' in the US, no? Correct me if I'm wrong with that. Anyway, by now the Boersenaufsicht would be all over SCO like a polyester safary suit giving them a good 'up you'rs' from behind. Without Vaseline.
Isn't there something 'The Land of the Free', 'God's own Country' or whatever you prefer to call it can do about this sorry excuse of a scandal? Momentarily you're giving of a sad picture, I'm sorry to say that.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
"The linux community is splitting hairs"
For the love of god, please, somebody give him a solid-gold 5-iron and point him towards a lightning-prone golf course.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Most business articles speak about SCOs claims as if they are absolutely true, and rather non-chalantly at that. It's really amazing, because like you said, this is what the PHBs hear, not the sensible and factual statements.
SCO is starting to remind me of the kid on the playground who tells the other kids that he can fly. They ask him to show them, and he says he doesn't want to right now.
If that is the case then SCO should be able to walk away with a win.
Bit of a question for the 'IANAL but...' types of people really. I find it highly unlikely either myself or the college I work for are going to recieve one of these SCO invoices. Invoices for what.. I mean, its hardly like they have provided a service.. well, other than a good example of how NOT to run a business :)
Anyway.. so what exactly should those who recieve one of these do? Just ignore it? Throw it away? Talk to a lawyer?
It drives me insane that they are STILL getting away with this whilst everyone just seems to be standing and watching them.. they have no right to do this, yet nothing is happening to prevent them.
Oh, and the obligatory - FUCK YOU SCO.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
And McBride's disapperance will be brought to you by the letters A and K, as well as the numbers 4 and 7.
i don't mean to over-simplify this notion, but:
has anyone yet gone back to the linux 2.3 kernel and re-engineered the changes made between 2.3 and 2.4/2.5 with hand written, clearly original, code? regardless of who wins in this whole IP thing, i'm pretty sure most folks would be keen on knowing that they've done their part to help SCO go fuck themselves. just one teeny-weeny kernel update and... bye-bye IP story, hello chapter11 story.
(p.s.
help me fix this "Terrible" karma, please!
Doesn't matter whether you or I would interpret it that way, but whether a judge or jury can be made to. And that might even be what it really was - since they apparently don't want to release the code, they might have just picked something similar in style or lineage to illustrate their point without revealing the actual sources of their claim.
Last I heard they were claiming a million lines of code. Could they show 20 on a slide without compromising *anything* at all? Yes. It's like claiming Stephen King copied my still unreleased book, but when asked to point to two identical sentences I can't even show that.
SCO is doing their utmost to *maximize* damage caused by any code, should it exist at all. At this point a judge is likely to rule that the code has been officially released by SCO into the public domain, since they make absolutely no effort to have it removed or even able its removal. At which point SCOs licence is worth nothing anyway, even if SCO should win.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, that's what I heard!
(Followup Murray line)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
How do you know they aren't/won't? They don't publically announce everything they are doing. And they won't announce charges based solely on an article in a trade rag. It takes time to build a case.
The Martha Stewart investigation took almost a year
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
This seems like a grand idea if SCO is actually billing people through the mail. Although it seems from the other messages in this thread that they are all talk and no action.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
If I was a company using Linux I might just pay up (it's easier than dealing with lawyers) and then ask for my money back later. Of course SCO will not be in any financial position to refund...
The more you look at this it looks more like a stock pumping exercise. This is the only explanation that makes any sense at all.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Care to explain why you believe the courts in Utah will favor insanity over reason, whereas the courts everywhere else will favor truth, justice, and the American way?
I'm really hoping that your explanation doesn't include the idea that it's those nefarious Mormon scoundrels at work on a vast conspiracy to own all intellectual property and thus enslave humanity...
get serious. SCO is pulling a corporate stock scam, nothing more. They are trying to win the case in the media, puff up their stock price, sell out and run for Brazil before the FTC and SEC catch up with them.
Period. End of story.
Now Slashdot can get back to covering Georgy Russell's campaign for governor of California - preferably with pictures.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Just what the fuck are you putting up with over there in the US? If a two-bit scheister company sent me a letter like that, they'd get a gimme-evidence-or-fuck you-reply from my lawyer plus an invoice from hum and me for wasting my time.
Oh, yeah?
Well, my dad could beat up your dad! /sticks tongue out
Regards,
Fredrick
Yes, nice story that. And look how much you can make in just two months as a senior VP by taking stock options and dumping at 5000 shares a pop. Looks like over US$1 million to me.
Sure beats working for a living.
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
Someone posted funny search stuff on sco search page
here
I discovert when you place a qoute (') behind the
&t= in the URL you get a 'sql error' message.
So the sco site has a sql injection safty problem.
well, actually one would be correct, they don't have to pay, but they can't use Linux. Why, because the GPL forbids inserting royalty generating code. Any linux distro in which SCO code resides cannot be used, the GPL does not apply and copyright prohibits it's use. SCO can use their own IP, but not the GPLed IP of others.
SCO say copyright "trumps" the GPL, as if they conflict, when in reality, of course copyright "trumps", copyright is the right upon which the GPL is entirely based!
-pyrrho
This diagram appears to be hosted on an SCO server. In the diagram, there are no arrows going from unixware to Linux, but there is an arrow from Linux to Unixware, suggesting Linux code has been copied into SCO's non-GPL product...
... they ARE asking a high price. $700 for linux? That's insane!
-pyrrho
they don't actually own the code they say they do and (a linux user) has actually paid them for the license? And can we get damages?
I know that it is essentially mathematics for everything in Computer Science. But, as I said, I was unable to read the article while here at work and was interested in gaining some insight as to why the mathematicians were used and not computer scientists, who would be quite familiar with both the coding styles and could understand the code as well as the mathematical background that supported the code.
This is an information theory/pattern recognition problem. Something that mathematicians would be very good at. In a lot of ways, this is a lot like a cryptography problem.
These lines answer my question perfectly as to why mathematicians may have been called in by SCO (although, as of yet, I believe there is no concrete proof of this but their own word).
For just analysis of the ideas that are being used, this is fine; however, is not the basis of a chunk of the SCO complaint being that identical code was used and not just the theory supporting the code? Many of the ideals of an operating system are taught to most/all computer science students in their OS class... would that information (for example, how to implement in I/O queue) then be considered the property of SCO due to that function/theory being implemented in Linux, as opposed to the exact code being utilized? If their supporting basis is that "Since UNIX uses I/O queue A, and Linux also uses I/O queue A, Linux is infringing on our copyright." But what if the standard for most OSs out there, including OS X, Windows, what remaind of BeOS, etc. use the same standard to implement the same type of queue? Would SCO then also own all of the same rights with those companies?
Perhaps I am just not completely informed, as the news stories from one source to another tend to make different accusations, points, etc. This was my understanding: SCO claims that code - not the theory, not the idea, but exact code - was taken from UNIX which they own and placed into Linux, and as such they own a copyright of that code, correct? If this is the case, then pattern recognition does not fall into play as the basis of the suit would then be the exact lines of code. If it is the theoretical basis of how something is done, then would not all university students taking an OS class, other operating systems, etc. be violating the same copyright protections without using the same code? (Although I believe students may be exempt from prosecution due to the "educational use" clause.)
If (just hypothetically) SCO did win the court case and everyone's supposed to pay for their Linux distros, the source is closed, and the GPL is declared invalid, I don't see users going down without a fight. Even though Linux is now a reputable commercial product, most users are hackers, coders, geeks, cyperbunks, nerds, you get the picture. We aren't your average authority obeying idiot consumers. I mean, how would you like to be the cop who has to go to good old gun totin' libertarian Eric Raymond's house to confiscate his Linux box? You'll have to pry it from his cold dead hands! And what about RMS? For all the feds know, he could be the next Abbie Hoffman. America doesn't want to further radicalize the geeks.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
lose
they're
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
my understanding is the license you get says that SCO will not sue you over their IP in linux. And they won't. If they have no IP in linux, they still won't sue you.
And that shows they at least admit they might be selling thin air (that's the capitalist's dream!)
-pyrrho
Film at eleven.
This sig no verb.
You presuppose that SCO is operating as a valid business with a goal of continuing good will and success. A company like that would have a valid case. But they would not be operating as SCO has.
On the other hand, a company which was operating solely to raise their stock price, to both cash out and also so that the parent company could use the raised price to pull off various shell games to siphon off more money, would act exactly as SCO has. And they wouldn't need a case.
Everything I've seen (not supposed, but actually seen) points to the second situation. Nothing I've seen even hints to the first.
And I hope for your sake that you can't imagine that people would set them selves up for this type of "abuse" just to make money. Because I'm sure that Darl and the other top people at SCO are weeping all the way to the bank.
An anonymous reader writes "SCO have made much of how their claims about UNIX code being improperly copied into Linux were verified by 3 teams including 'MIT Mathematicians.' However, MIT can't seem to find the mathematicians concerned!"
I hear from reliable sources that SCO's next triumphant contribution to humanity (perhaps even greater than the contribution of owning the code to Unix) will be to clone a human being. Who does this remind me of?
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
I thought insanity was the american way.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I was baffled by the following entry in my http log yesterday, it seems that the actually DO eat their own dog food:
/~marcelk/ HTTP/1.0" 200 5506 "[...]" "Mozilla/4.77C-CCK-MCD Caldera Systems OpenLinux [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.0 i686)"
132.147.67.17 - - [26/Aug/2003:21:45:52 +0200] "GET
The IP (the Internet address thing, not their other `business'..) resolves to somewhere in caldera.com
Had you been in your brothers room?
Did you have some of his stuff?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
All these comments back and forth, articles, comments, talk shows, it's all b-s, if you ask me. Either SCO is looking for a buy-out, or it's totally insane. If it's a buy-out, will someone please buy them out to shut them up? If not, get the trial on. It's not like the two sides aren't ready. Enough dead trees/pixels have been wasted already.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE REQUIRED Dogfood
DEAR SIR/MADAM:
I AM MR DARL MCBRIDE CURRENTLY SERVING AS THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE SCO GROUP, FORMERLY KNOWN AS CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, IN LINDON, UTAH, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I KNOW THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE HAD NO PREVIOUS COMMUNICATIONS OR BUSINESS DEALINGS BEFORE NOW.
MY ASSOCIATES HAVE RECENTLY MADE CLAIM TO COMPUTER SOFTWARES WORTH AN ESTIMATED $1 BILLION U.S. DOLLARS. I AM WRITING TO YOU IN CONFIDENCE BECAUSE WE URGENTLY REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE TO OBTAIN THESE FUNDS.
IN THE EARLY 1970S THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CORPORATION DEVELOPED AT GREAT EXPENSE THE COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE KNOWN AS UNIX. UNFORTUNATELY THE LAWS OF MY COUNTRY PROHIBITED THEM FROM SELLING THESE SOFTWARES AND SO THEIR VALUABLE SOURCE CODES REMAINED PRIVATELY HELD. UNDER A SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT SOME PROGRAMMERS FROM THE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY DID ADD MORE CODES TO THIS OPERATING SYSTEM, INCREASING ITS VALUE, BUT NOT IN ANY WAY TO DILUTE OR DISPARAGE OUR FULL AND RIGHTFUL OWNERSHIP OF THESE CODES, DESPITE ANY AGREEMENT BETWEEN AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH AND THE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY, WHICH AGREEMENT WE DENY AND DISAVOW.
IN THE YEAR 1984 A CHANGE OF REGIME IN MY COUNTRY ALLOWED THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CORPORATION TO MAKE PROFITS FROM THESE SOFTWARES. IN THE YEAR 1990 OWNERSHIP OF THESE SOFTWARES WAS TRANSFERRED TO THE CORPORATION UNIX SYSTEM LABORATORIES. IN THE YEAR 1993 THIS CORPORATION WAS SOLD TO THE CORPORATION NOVELL. IN THE YEAR 1994 SOME EMPLOYEES OF NOVELL FORMED THE CORPORATION CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, WHICH BEGAN TO DISTRIBUTE AN UPSTART OPERATING SYSTEM KNOWN AS LINUX. IN THE YEAR 1995 NOVELL SOLD THE UNIX SOFTWARE CODES TO SCO. IN THE YEAR 2001 OCCURRED A SEPARATION OF SCO, AND THE SCO BRAND NAME AND UNIX CODES WERE ACQUIRED BY THE CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, AND IN THE FOLLOWING YEAR THE CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL WAS RENAMED SCO GROUP, OF WHICH I CURRENTLY SERVE AS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER.
MY ASSOCIATES AND I OF THE SCO GROUP ARE THEREFORE THE FULL AND RIGHTFUL OWNERS OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARES KNOWN AS UNIX. OUR ENGINEERS HAVE DISCOVERED THAT NO FEWER THAN SEVENTY (70) LINES OF OUR VALUABLE AND PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODES HAVE APPEARED IN THE UPSTART OPERATING SYSTEM LINUX. AS YOU CAN PLAINLY SEE, THIS GIVES US A CLAIM ON THE MILLIONS OF LINES OF VALUABLE SOFTWARE CODES WHICH COMPRISE THIS LINUX AND WHICH HAS BEEN SOLD AT GREAT PROFIT TO VERY MANY BUSINESS ENTERPRISES. OUR LEGAL EXPERTS HAVE ADVISED US THAT OUR CONTRIBUTION TO THESE CODES IS WORTH AN ESTIMATED ONE (1) BILLION U.S. DOLLARS.
UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE HAVING DIFFICULTY EXTRACTING OUR FUNDS FROM THESE COMPUTER SOFTWARES. TO THIS EFFECT I HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE MANDATE BY MY COLLEAGUES TO CONTACT YOU AND ASK FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE. WE ARE PREPARED TO SELL YOU A SHARE IN THIS ENTERPRISE, WHICH WILL SOON BE VERY PROFITABLE, THAT WILL GRANT YOU THE RIGHTS TO USE THESE VALUABLE SOFTWARES IN YOUR BUSINESS ENTERPRIS
E. UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE NOT ABLE AT THIS TIME TO SET A PRICE ON THESE RIGHTS. THEREFORE IT IS OUR RESPECTFUL SUGGESTION, THATYOU MAY BE IMMEDIATELY A PARTY TO THIS ENTERPRISE,BEFORE OTHERS ACCEPT THESE LUCRATIVE TERMS, THAT YOU SEND US THE NUMBER OF A BANKING ACCOUNT WHERE WE CAN WITHDRAW FUNDS OF A SUITABLE AMOUNT TO GUARANTEE YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THIS ENTERPRISE. AS AN ALTERNATIVE YOU MAY SEND US THE NUMBER AND EXPIRATION DATE OF YOUR MAJOR CREDIT CARD, OR YOU MAY SEND TO US A SIGNED CHECK FROM YOUR BANKING ACCOUNT PAYABLE TO "SCO GROUP" AND WITH THE AMOUNT LEFT BLANK FOR US TO CONVENIENTLY SUPPLY.
KINDLY TREAT THIS REQUEST AS VERY IMPORTANT AND STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. I HONESTLY ASSURE YOU THAT THIS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL AND RISK-FREE.
with credit to rec.humor.funny
Posted by mhp at August 23, 2003 09:06 AM
IBM is migrating customers from Unix to Linux. SCO's wild assertions about IBM performing entirely unmotivated intellectual property violations continue to be unfounded. Even if SCO had something IBM wanted, which it didn't, IBM could easily reproduce it by in-house development using virgin programmers, which it has in abundance.
I didn't realize that there were so many slashdotters working for IBM.
do you know that sig quote is Nietzsche?
-pyrrho
if you purchase a license from SCO, you are directly violating your license from Linus. Given a choice between the two, I'd assume that Linus has a few more lines of code in the kernel than SCO does.
SCO is also violating the Linux copyright by distributing it outside of the GPL, I see another trillion dollar lawsuit on the horizon. I bet Linus's "look at me, I'm rich enough to own all of you" house will crash a lot less than Bill's.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
What is Ray Noordas association with the original sale of Unix? Something smells, and its not my sons bedroom.
I don't understand. How can SCO buy a company that belongs to the same company it does? If $MEGACORPORATION already owns both companies how does one buying the other affect anything? Who does the money go to?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
until their's is spruced up! then they'll move right back. it'll be wonderful!
Microsoft is using Linux for Microsoft.com!
So rather than go long on SCO, we must all sell any remaining holdings and short sell the stock as much as possible. Those who already shorted, get ready to cover soon. I wonder if any SCO insiders already have this strategy in mind. I also wonder who is involved in the latest run-up in SCO stock. Institutional buyers? Hopefully not -- mutual fund holders should check with their manager. Daytraders? Probable. Individual investors? Not likely, unless they have privvy information.
Linux at home
Even if SCO had something IBM wanted, which it didn't, IBM could easily reproduce it by in-house development using virgin programmers, which it has in abundance.
Is there any proof of this? Or is it merely an educated guess?
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
The attorney on the losing side was none other than Brent Hatch, who is representing SCO. Hatch probably knew enough to advise SCO that covering up the "infringement" was a bad move. Assuming SCO had a legal case that they were hoping to win that is...
Of course, Hatch got Kimabll's ruling overturned on appeal, so he may have learned nothing.
Basically, SCO printed more stock, and gave it to Canopy which then sold it to speculators at an inflated price.
They gave the stock to canopy in return for equity in Vultus.
Thus, Canopy reduced their stake in SCO slightly (while making SCO slightly more valuable equitywise), which is pretty much a null action, while selling shares to speculators at a very inflated price.
The money is coming from people who buy SCO stock in hopes of getting rich if SCO gets bought out or wins its lawsuit, and people looking to short SCO stock.
Though thinking about this, I am reminded of a great bit of imagery in Bujold's "Shards of Honor"
"'Put all the bad eggs in one basket,' she muttered. 'And--drop the basket?'"
Ok this is mail fraud plain and simple.
So report any invoices you get from SCO to your Postmaster Inspectors at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
Report it and get these guys in jail, 5 years per Invoice.
This will not cost you a dime and it is up to the postmaster to go after them. SCO must prove it to the postmaster.
The more people the better to quote the webpage:
Postal Inspectors base their investigations of mail fraud on the number, pattern and substance of complaints received from the public. The Postal Inspection Service is interested in your concerns and will carefully review the information you provide.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so I'm more than ready for a custom icon set, South Park style, so I can get through this SCO stuff faster. I'd prefer the anatomically correct NC17 set, thank you very much, but, I'm easy to please.
The SCO Group ANZ can't even give me a price, even though it'll fairly obviously be around AUD$1100 for a server. I'm looking at spitting the legal dummy at them for keeping my customers in limbo.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The money goes to the holding company. In real terms, it isn't SCO that is behind this. The Canopy Group is using SCO as a tool to extract FUD money from Linux and spread it amongst their various properties. Once SCO has served it's purpose, they can shed themselves of it.
I would like to pointout another bold face lie from the Internet Week article: Chrish "Douche bag" Sontag: "t requires an overt action. SCO has not contributed its code, and as soon as we became aware of the copyright violation we suspended our distribution" However, the kernel in question 2.4 was not taken down until two months after suit was filed against IBM. In facr the 2.4 Kernel is Still available.
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
Do not obstruct an army retreating homeward.
If you besiege an army you must leave an outlet.
Do not press an exausted invader.
SCO is backed into a corner, The IBM counter-suit has cripled SCO, so that the SCO execs are fighting for any way to survive. When this goes to court SCO will not have ANY product left to sell, no one knows this better than the SCO management. They will bluster and roar to the end, hoping someone will give them cash for their doomed company.
I also beleive SCO knew that it was only a matter of time, until everyone switched over to Linux,killing SCO slowly.
Maybe D McBride decided not to go with a wimper but in a big Enron style bang.....
Maybe now that they have lied their way into jailtime, we should ask SCO to just cease and desist, maybe we won't press charges.
The excuse "We thought we owned it" will not fly when the time comes to pay the open source piper.
(or a criminal court) As they stated, They should know Unix code, but also they should know what is NOT Unix code.
Before this goes to court, I hope they will reconsider the extortion and lies, and if they do, I hope Linux can forgive, giving them an out, without fighting to the death of SCO/Caldera/Canopy.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Go ahead and shoot the bunny.
That's the thing about them, they keep making so many more.
Really? When?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
One thing I'm wondering is why they would use mathmeticians at all? I mean, perhaps an alghorythm could be used to match code, but really I still think this is more the realm of programmers than mathmeticians...?
The links between Canopy and a certain not elected leader raise eyebrows. If we can expect the legal equivalent of a Florida election, Linux has no chance at all. Not all that is legal is fair, or even correct.
I expect SCO/Canopy/Caldera/? will contribute millions to the re-election campain, in return for a favorable legal judgement.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
OK, Mr McBride, you have two choices. Either pay me extensive damages for distributing my copyrighted code without a licence, or start paying me a licence fee for it. USD$698 per CPU should do fine.
If you're reading this and you're a kernel developer, a letter to The SCO Group along these lines, CC'ed to a good many media outlets, should be quite entertaining.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
hmmm....
1. Produce crap.
2. Hope enough suckers buy it before it's categorized as crap.
3. Profit!!!
I'd have to say that this is their old (an future business plan.) "It's like a house that hasn't been maintained in a few years," McBride said. "We're going to come back and spruce the place [Unix] up."
And to stop being one...? Where does one go to hand in one's sheepskin apron?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...of former MIT "mass-morticians" that did the work for them.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
It's not been for lack of effort. I have sent them 5 messages so far asking about licenses and offering to perhaps purchase. In one email I asked them for a cost breakdown of Linux (If their contributed code is worth $699 then how much is the remainder, the bulk of the code worth).
SCO hasn't even given me the courtesy of a reply.
In my last attempt to contact them I offered to purchase a license if they could prove the necessity. But I also mentioned that this was my fifth attempt at it and that if I did not hear back in 72 hours then I would consider them not to be serious about the license issue and proceed with business as usual.
SCO still hasn't given me the courtesy of a reply.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
I was just thinking; MS is a large SW development house, and it stands to reason that they would have a smattering of Linux boxes for R&D/Competitive analysis purposes. Is it possible that MS is one of the 'large companies' that bought a linux license from SCO? If SCO wins, they come out looking compliant, if SCO loses, they sue SCO, or just write off the loss. For a company with 40 billion in the bank, a couple hundred K might be worth it...
Trolltech is a Canopy Group company. Ralph J. Yarro sits on the board of directors. Canopy Group is the organization behind SCO's attack on Linux.
I haven't looked at Netcraft in a while but did anyone notice www.windowsupdate.com running Linux with IIS? Is this a hack?
SCO's business appears to be simply based on litigation and stock manipulation...
We are here because Intellectual Property has become a legal plaything, occasionally yielding enormous profits through litigation. This is so on purpose. Who's purpose?
Look here.
Note to whom the contributions tend to go. How does this square with your notions?
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
From the first post's linked Computer World article, we learn that dear old Darl has decided to call their brand new, ground breaking product OpenServer Legend. Huh? What the fuck are they smoking over there in Utah? And they reckon IBM is giving out the happy Kool Aid... This makes no sense at all. They've got two products, one even more useless than the other and they put their weight behind the useless one! OpenServer is the worst possible OS one could install on an x86 machine these days! I'd sooner install Windows (or Microsoft's flagship OS, DOS 2.11) than OpenServer. The person quoted in the linked story saying that they've been testing their apps on NT machines due to worries about having to move away from OpenServer should be shot repeatedly in the groin with a nailgun for both moving from a former UNIX to NT and for saying that SCO have good things coming. Has this "person" not heard of Solaris? Or Linux? Or FreeBSD? Or OpenBSD? Or NetBSD? Or DOS 2.11??? All of the mentioned OSes have one thing in common - they are infinitely better UNIXes than that crap pile called OpenServer. Having to support it still causes me nightmares. So, what's the next UnixWare release going to be called? How about "UnixWare puncture repair kit shitfaced cockmaster"?
"To clarify, the individuals reviewing the code had been involved with MIT labs in the past, but are not currently at MIT.
Translation: one of the individuals' brother in law was a part-time undergraduate at MIT before dropping out.
Unfortunately, due to contractual obligations, we cannot specifically name the individuals."
Translation: their expert said "as long as I don't have to defend this opinion in court or to the press and as long as you guarantee that you won't leak my name, sure, I'll take your consulting money and you can put out whatever you like in your press release".
not quite. insiders hold more than 40% of SCO stock. Even though they stock exchange technically reduces investor value, it does not happen till the stock crosses the market.
As soon as they try and off load 500,000 shares into the actual NASDAQ, the price is going to start a nose dive. So they have to sneak it out in maybe 10,000-50,000 share lots per day. Tough job.
in other words, turning that stock into cash is an equally tough job.
From the commentwire.com article:
While the amount of evidence revealed by SCO is not great, it does appear that it may have a case against IBM and other Unix licensees, particularly given the strength of the Unix licensing agreements passed down to SCO from AT&T [T].
Given that virtually all the evidence revealed by SCO so far only underscores how weak their case truely is, this writer clearly has its head burried in the sand. The only license agreement that is questionable is the one with Sequent, but if SCO can't definitively show that there is SCO owned (derivitive) code in linux, their case falls apart and they're not off to a good start.
Putting pressure/negative publicity on the group is bound to create problems for McBride, and hell, he has it coming in truckloads. Just call it Karma
Also LinuxNetwrox has a cluster of linux boxes listed as an example on its website: with 2,304 Intel Xeon processors
http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/6.23.2003.43-Linu x_Networx_C.html
I wonder if they are paying the license fees? And if they arnt and they are part of the group, why should you?
Gordon Staines
An SCO story? An...as in you are pronouncing it as Esse See Oh? Please, refrain from doing this in the future, as it's impolite to the letters of the alphabet. It's pronounced skoe rhymes with hoe.
No.
so what exactly should those who recieve one of these do? Just ignore it? Throw it away? Talk to a lawyer?
If you are lucky enough to get one of these, do these things:
Call them back and try to get ALL the information possible from them about what they are selling you, why, and what is the proof. Document where possible. Do this so later you can say you made a good faith effort to try to ask what code you are recieving a license to and on what grounds.
Call up your state attourney general IMMEDIATELY and complain, say you think they are running a scam, note they're demanding money for something they didn't create and won't even provide proof that is in infringement, etc.
CONSIDER a small claims court case for deceptive trade practices. Even if you have no basis for this and lose, it will air SCO's dirty laundry in public, which is all that needs to happen to trash their stock price.
The last two steps here are MUCH easier if you've recieved one of these mythical invoices.
The part I find interesting is that 61% of their revenue came from something other this little adventure. Maybe they caught a windfall in SCOForum cancellation fees.
I emailed my real name and address to SCO and informed them of the number of Linux boxes in my home/business. I also informed them of the number of Linux boxes I've installed for other people.
IF SCO sends me a letter I intend to wipe my ass with it and send it back to them, postage due..
There is no collusion. You're just being anal about a figure of speech.
To steal something implies obtaining without giving something in return, in most cases money. To obtain it illegally.
You're probably one of those anal "hacker" vs. "cracker" definition types too, aren't you?
"Sufferin' succotash."
This exact post was in the last SCO story, word for word. Let's pay a little attention, huh, guys?
"Sufferin' succotash."
if you look at the SCO executive profiles they all look like nice enough guys... except darl... he kind of has that... evil glint in his eyes. I bet he's POSSESSED THEM! Take a look at them yourselves: http://www.sco.com/company/execs/ (Foreword: I don't need any critical words OR acts of violence/terrorism committed against my person for my use of the web-based email provider named below. I began my account with the unsaid provider before they were owned by the unnamed current owner of unsaid provider so everyone has this address. If you can't contain yourself then read no further.) Also... an interesting side note. Did anyone know that hotmail's junkmail filter regards mail sent from slashdot as junkmail? I thought that was hilarious. I was trying to get my password emailed to me and it would never come. Finally I turned off the filter and sent it again and it came :).
Ben
What i am trying to address is the potential "fraud" or mis-representation of the ownership of the IP. If i am pressured into buying a license under false claims of a violation of copyright that doesn't exist, then it seems like i have given up something of value (money) for something that is not worth anything to me.
I can see that there might be only partial mis-representation (to feed my lawyer with, yes), but it would be a satisfying result to see SCO bitten by the legal dog they seem to be feeding.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
IF, and IF they are the ones to pay the license, and it is proven that SCO owns nothing then HP can probably sue SCO for fraud and end up putting it out of business for good.
That might be the aim.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
this is SCO's official history: http://www.sco.com/company/history.html
scroll down to 1999, just before caldera's purchase of old SCO's unix busines and you'll find this:
1999 SCO launches numerous Open Source initiatives: 1) Offers free Open Source applications and tools to SCO customers; 2) Extends Professional Services to include audits and deployment consultation for customers interested in installing Linux and Open Source technologies; 3) Invests in LinuxMall.com, the leading portal for Linux-related products and services; 4) Enters strategic agreement with TurboLinux to develop services for TurboLinux's TurboCluster Server and provide Linux Professional Services for TurboLinux customers.
not only caldera was a linux company before the purchase, old SCO was also moving ahead to become one. go figure...
What ? Me, worry ?
2 sales, 2500 each, sale price 14.3 and 14.26 for a total of $71375. He only has 15,494 more shares to go.
they have no grouds to sue you. If you buy
a "license" from SCO, you risk being sued for
breach of contract.
SCO cannot touch you when you don't do business
with them.
so what exactly should those who recieve one of these do? Take it to the state Attorney General, fill them in on the background, and ask them to investigate the blatant extortion attempt.
That's quite true. I was probably being overtheoretical.
:-): It strikes me as a scheme to part fools from their money. It depends, like most cons, on the gullibility & greed of the victim.
I haven't researched exactly what's going on with SCO's stock because I do not care
Hello. I'm a moderator. I see it, and I have chosen not to moderate it down. It's still relevant because apparently people didn't read it the first time.
be in deep sleep if you don't realize who
benefits from the funding of Linux and the GPL.
The SCO vs IBM case is just a destruction. Follow
the money, follow who benefits, follow what SCO
is fuding.
The person who pays their bills, and the person
who benefits most from all this is Microsoft
It is a Microsft vs. IBM case, without Microsft
being exposed to potential damages to IBM or Red Hat.
I mean, this HAS to be good for at least a few good digs at SCO's expence...
Filing agains IBM does not mean jack if
SCO will not show up in court. It is common
practice to sue big corporations mainly
for other reason. In this case, SCO has refused
to provide evidence during discovery (see Znet
articl of Aug. 8) and did not even ask IBM to
provide any documents during discovery that
will support its own case (see same article).
In addition, SCO's claim is (essentially) that
the Sun will rise from the West, and the only
effort they are doing is fuding of Linux and GPL
which benefits Microsoft (the ones who are
paying the bills.) I don't care what you read
in the media, but it is not unreasoble to
think that this case has little to do with litigation
and more to do with fud. Just observer their
actions, and were they spend their effort. It
is a better guide!
SCO's press releases within hours. But but
in June, it took 20 days to publish the now
famous FSF rebutal by Moglen.
Slashdot is not in the clear just yet. I hope
they will be receiving less Microsft ads in
the future in order to speed things up a little.
The 10-Q itself identifies the second licensee as Microsoft.
The first licensee is Sun.
Sun also got options to buy SCOX stock: 210,000 options at $1.83 per share, as part of their deal.
Obviously Microsoft benefits from Linux FUD. So does Sun. They're not licensing because they are stupid. Sun and Microsoft are using SCO as a sock puppet.
Did anybody else read that as "... a team of made-up people ..."?
It's Peice Of Shit you fool
Who voted this up?
SCOsource has NOTHING to do with Linux, it's more like Microsofts shared source initiative and concernces part of SCO's source.
If the SCO wasn't down *again*, I could tell you what exactly is covered by this licence, but I know for shure that it is NOT Linux but SCO's own products.
As other posters already pointed out, the Linux licence is much too new.
BTW, any guess why SCO's down again? Maybe they've realiced that they are using Linux, therefor violating the GPL (that they dont accept, therefor they havent the right to use it) and are now working hard to switch to IIS. Or it's just another DoS.
http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/web sitemgmt/story/0,10801,84405,00.html
AUGUST 26, 2003 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - The Web site of Unix vendor The SCO Group Inc. was down from Aug. 22 through Aug. 25, apparently the victim of a possible distributed denial-of-service attack.
A spokesman for Lindon, Utah-based SCO today confirmed the site outage and said the incident is being investigated by the FBI. The site was back up and operating late yesterday.
The incident is apparently the second time this year that the company's Web site has been disrupted by attackers, according to SCO.
SCO has been the target of wide-ranging hostility, especially among members of the the open-source community, since it filed a $1 billion lawsuit in March against IBM that could threaten the future of Linux. SCO alleges that IBM illegally added some of SCO's System V Unix into Linux for its own economic benefit. The suit was later amended and now seeks at least $3 billion in damages. IBM countersued SCO earlier this month.
SCO declined further comment on the incident.
come comment on the madness at http://slashdot.org/~phreak03/journal/
It's a matter of simple accounting. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or an accountant, which I am not) to figure this out: Under accrual basis, the invoices you write go into "accounts receivable" which are considered an asset before you actually receive the currency. In English, that means that by sending out invoices, SCO makes itself look more successful, on its financial statements, than it really is.
CRIMINAL CHARGES were just filed against some of the Worldcom folks. I can't wait until the evening news announces that criminal charges are filed against Darl McBluff, alias Darl Helmet, alias Baghdad McBride, alias Bubba's Bitch.
SCO better have one HELL of a court case....
BTW, SCO...I can still download Linux from your FTP site. Asshats.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I think "is beginning to invoice Linux users" in the first sentence of the article was intended merely as a pithy paraphrase of "has announced prices that it says all linux users must pay".
The other possibility is that the article broke a major story in the first sentence and then neglected to provide any facts about it.
Either way, the author should be shot.
So SCO used to run their webserver on UnixWare, and Caldera ran theirs on Caldera linux.
What you see now at www.sco.com is the Caldera website. The SCO group probably don't have enough people who know how to set up a UnixWare system.
By the way, UnixWare has Posix threads, since 7 or 7.1 (can't remember offhand).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
There are a lot more SCO Group company sites running Linux than just sco.com:
1 internetworld.com 433 461 461 Linux Apache/1.3.11 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.1.2 mod_perl/1.21 PHP/4.2.3
2 www.nft.com 427 462 461 Linux Apache/1.3.11 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.1.2 mod_perl/1.21 PHP/4.2.3
3 www.canopy.com 422 462 461 Linux Apache/1.3.11 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.1.2 mod_perl/1.21 PHP/4.2.3
4 www.in2m.com 408 453 453 Solaris 8 Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) mod_jk/1.2.0 mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6h PHP/4.2.2
5 www.caldera.com 235 490 283 Linux Apache
6 www.sco.de 235 490 283 Linux Apache
7 it.sco.com 234 283 283 Linux unknown
8 au.caldera.com 234 489 283 Linux Apache
9 www.sco.com 234 489 266 Linux Apache
10 sco.com 234 489 266 Linux Apache
11 www.caldera.de 233 489 283 Linux Apache
12 www.za.caldera.com 232 489 283 Linux Apache
13 caldera.com 231 490 283 Linux Apache
14 www.sco.at 231 283 283 Linux unknown
15 doc.sco.com 230 283 283 Linux unknown
16 uw7doc.sco.com 230 489 283 Linux Apache
17 osr5doc.sco.com 229 490 280 Linux Apache
18 uk.sco.com 227 279 280 Linux unknown
19 www.calderasystems.com 227 489 283 Linux Apache
20 www.emeia.sco.com 227 491 283 Linux Apache
21 www.sco.it 226 489 260 Linux Apache
22 au.sco.com 223 283 283 Linux unknown
23 www.smilereminder.com 178 180 180 Linux Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/1.3.23 (Mandrake Linux/4mdk) mod_ssl/2.8.7 OpenSSL/0.9.6c
24 www.bushfam.com 89 129 129 Linux Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_python/2.7.8 Python/1.5.2 mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6b DAV/1.0.2 PHP/4.1.2 mod_perl/1.26 mod_throttle/3.1.2
25 www.vultus.com 34 305 43 Linux Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_jk/1.2.2 mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6g
26 shop.sco.com 17 43 0 Linux unknown
27 canopy.com 15 287 1 Linux Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/1.3.23 (Mandrake Linux/4.2mdk) mod_ssl/2.8.7 OpenSSL/0.9.6c PHP/4.1.2
28 www.centershift.com 4 27 12 Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0
29 www.helius.com - 44 18 Linux Apache/1.3.27 (Unix)
30 www.homepipeline.com - 28 5 Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0
31 wdb1.sco.com - 17 0 Linux Oracle9iAS/9.0.2 Oracle HTTP Server Oracle9iAS-Web-Cache/Oracl
32 wdb1.caldera.com - 17 0 Linux Oracle9iAS/9.0.2 Oracle HTTP Server Oracle9iAS-Web-Cache/Oracl
33 www.communitect.com - 174 174 Linux Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/1.3.23 (Mandrake Linux/4.1mdk) mod_ssl/2.8.7 OpenSSL/0.9.6c
34 www.power-innovations.com - 133 134 Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0
35 ruckus.clan-nua.com - 31 6 Windows 2000 Abyss/1.1.6 (Win32) AbyssLib/1.0.7
36 nft.com - 25 1 Linux Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/1.3.23 (Mandrake Linux/4.2mdk) mod_ssl/2.8.7 OpenSSL/0.9.6c PHP/4.1.2
37 www2.skwire.net - 25 6 Windows 2000 Abyss/1.1.6 (Win32) AbyssLib/1.0.7
38 demo.vultus.com - 41 42 Linux Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_jk/1.2.2 mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6g
39 locutus3.calderasystems.com - 4 0 Linux Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 ApacheJServ/1.1 PHP/3.0.15
40 zeus.ut.sco.com - 17 0 Linux Oracle9iAS/9.0.2 Oracle HTTP Server Oracle9iAS-Web-Cache/Oracl
What we're looking at here is a bunch of receivables. Ever tried to collect on a bill? (or have someone try to collect from you!)
Some of it may be from MSFT and Sun, the only two known licence holders, and some may be paper shuffling with other Canopy group shell firms. "Three Card Monte" comes to tech.
Damn! I can't wait to buy this new Improved SCO Unix. It was great 22 years ago, so it must be good in a historical way today.
I'm tired of this free Linux stuff with stolen IP.
I want to pay as much as possible and change ALL myh Linux servers to the new competition without comparing performance and reliability.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
s/kernal/kernel
s/reguarding/regarding
s/distributer/distributor
s/sitsuation/situation
s/comunity/community
s/comercial/commercial
You can file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission even without receiving a mailed invoice. Use this form.
IBM collects virgin programmers and sacrifices them each year by throwing them into a volcano to appease the gods. If the gods look with favor upoin IBM's gifts, then they will win the suit against SCO.
Everyone knows this. Where you been, dude?
Maybe HP just wants to avoid Microsoft/BSA-style hassles: FatRatBastard writes "According to an article on Commentwire.com SCO has started sending invoices to Linux users. If a company signs up for SCO's 'Intellectual Property License for Linux,' they allow the possibility of being audited at SCO's expense to ensure that the user has been truthful about the number of Linux installations it has. Should the audit reveal that the user has underpaid SCO by 5% or $5,000, whichever is highest, the user also agrees to pay the price for the audit."
So, anyone here who happens to have no linux boxen, but a very large setup of other machines want to install one linux box, offer to pay for the license and then try to get SCO to spend a bunch of money auditing your entire network?
Cheers & God bless
Sam "SammyTheSnake" Penny
Fellow slashdot readers, I pose the following for your comments/suggestions: We know how SCO is claming damages for the suspsed Linux stealing Unix code, imagine the uproar if Xerox sued SCO for the unlicenced use of a GUI interface withough authorisation. Maybe we should approach Xerox about this.... . No wait that has the potential to kill off all of the major operating systems out there. But is it worth considering?
"It may be a case of 'do as we say, not as we do' over at the Santa Cruz Operation. The Netcraft statistics meter says that for the last year, SCO's web site has been served by Apache on Linux."
Has anyone noticed that if you check NetCraft for microsoft.com, it says that they are running IIS on Linux? I realize that a previous article here indicated that Windows Update was running on Linux for a time, but I'm talking about the main Microsoft site here!
The original SCO still exists.
bacchusrx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
SCO's going to get pounded into the ground, and until there is a motion of actual litigation on their part against someone for infringing code in linux, there's not much to get riled up about. Until then, it's just a contract dispute between sco and IBM.
Not quite true, actually. SCO doesn't need to sue anyone else to get into deep legal poo; they're already rolling in it. Their very public behavior in trying to scare off potential Linux users has had a deliberate, calculated negative effect on the Linux community, and specifically has damaged the business of RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, et al. This sort of thing is called "Tortious interference with business", and it is a major reason some Linux distributors are suing SCO. If SCO cannot substantiate their public claims, RedHat et al will ultimately get to dance on SCO's collective grave -- though this may already be well-flattened by IBM when that happens.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Finally a reply. It looks as if someone at SCO has been reading things here.
Here it is, make your own comments on spelling, grammer, etc.
"Thank you for your interest in SCO's Linux licensing program. Due to
the logistical challenges of licensing such a broadly installed
operating system, SCO's customer care team is currently collecting
contact information for all legitimate inquiries and then forwarding
these leads onto our sales representatives for follow up. If you would
like an SCO sales representative to contact you within the next 14 days,
please reply back with your company name, address and phone number. Or
you can visit our website at http://www.sco.com/scosource/ to find the
answers to most of your questions regarding the Linux licensing program.
Thank you again for your interest in SCO.
We apologies for not responding to your right away.
Kind Regards,
The SCO Customer Care Team"
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Hmm... If they just dismiss inquiries that they don't consider legitimate, how can you be held responsible for failing to purchase a license?
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
OpenServer is not a Xenix descendant. OSR5 is Unix SVR3.2 derived.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Thank you. I believe actually you are right and SCO sold Xenix separately as a different (third) product line.
--LP