Further Selections From the Mixed-Up SCO Files

grahamlee writes "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. 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 ;-)." Read on for one of the strangest-yet turns to the SCO story, and several merely insipid ones.

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. "

Comments

HP supporting SCO?

[mr.henry]

Honestly, it does not surprise me. Carly Fiorina, HP CEO and stupid bitch, has basically ruined Hewlett-Packard. After the HP-Compaq merger, I remember reading that one of the founder's sons made a plaque that said "HP, 1938-2001." Really, though, I think it would more accurate if the sign indicated HP's death when Carly started.

Hewlett-Packard 1938-1999

Take care of your old HP calculators!

KDE Myths

[Anonymous Coward]

The KDE project is famous for its funded and organised trolling of weblogs and message board associated with Linux and Free software/open source. Outrageous newbie impressing claims are made for the software and huge quanities of FUD are spread to destroy competitors. If this sounds familiar, then you are correct, most of these tactics were lifted straight from Microsoft's arsenal of dirty tricks. The Windows look and feel is not the only thing the KDE project has copied! In this short article I will address some of the lies and FUD spread by the KDE trolling teams. It is my hope that this, in some small way, will redress the balance and re-introduce two things almost eradicated by the KDE project: Honesty and facts.

Myth #1 - KDE is more integrated than GNOME

The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given, the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It is nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" actually means.

Myth #2 - KDE is easier to use

Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (all systems do), but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME, and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet by Ximian, which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations. KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.

Myth #3 - KDE is more popular

In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE, but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots use the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when *both* GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. The systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.

One of the few solid measures of popularity is commercial use of a desktop, and here, GNOME is far ahead with both Hewlett Packard and Sun committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use. Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.

Myth #4 - Konqueror is

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU FAIL IT!
It really doesn't matter though, because everyone will take it up the poop chute from SCO, whether they fail it or not.

Re:Can /. do me a favour?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not free if you're a subscriber with the faggot-ass little '*'. What should THEY do, huh? Mr. smarty-pants...

KDE and Microsoft

[cpeterso]

Doesn't Microsoft help fund KDE development? I think many of KDE's Visual Basic reject programmers work at Microsoft.

SHUT THE FUCK UP

[stratjakt]

all of you

now

JESUS CHRIST

bunch of whining lunix teabaggers

Oh no! SCO is right

[6079_Smith]

I know this will shock most of you, but I found out that SCO is actually right. See for yourselves:

/usr/src/linux$ for i in `find -iname '*.c'`; do grep SCO $i; done | wc -l
1538

Re:How'd they miss this???

[Edd]

telnet: www.permits.gov: Name or service not known
www.permits.gov: Unknown host

I don't get it

Spelling troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Complaints seem much more professional if they're spelt and punctuated correctly. Try:

To whom it may concern at SCO:
This short note is to inform you that, on Aug 18 2003, I downloaded the RPM package for the OpenLinux kernel version 2.4.19 under the provisions of the Free Software Organization's General Public License, as distributed by you through your FTP site.
If you have any questions regarding your rights, duties and obligations as a distributor of GPL'ed software, I'd advise you to go to the Free Software Foundation website for general information and, of course, seek competent legal advice regarding your specific situation.

And, again, let me welcome you to the community of commercial companies who have donated their copyrighted code for distribution via the GPL.

Sorry, try again

[Overly Critical Guy]

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?