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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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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
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.
> 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?
Go here. Click "Homepage".
Under topics, search for "Caldera". Check the box next to it.
While you are at it, search for "michael" on the left, under "authors". Check the box next to him
Scroll down. Click Save.
The unofficial
...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?"
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.
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.
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?
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
You mean back in the good ol' days, when the founder of SCO had to quit 'cause he kept getting sued for sexually harrasing female employees? And the marketing department used to store their dope in the company freezer? And they were the only company in town with a hottub in their office? Oh yeah, they had a much better reputation in those days!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
According to this story over at The Inquirer [...], SCO has officially announced that HP is safe from their infringement lawsuit brigade ...
No.
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.
* million was MS's payment SUn deal was an offer to pick up more stock
Don't Tread on OpenSource
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?
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!
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.
Yup, SCO hired a crew who "worked" at MIT, stealing laptops and selling drugs.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
And now you know, the rest of the story.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Hmm, does anyone know of any former MIT janitors working over at SCO these days?
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!
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
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!
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.
Most of that $8,250,000 was paid by Microsoft.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
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.
"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.
No. The BSD license is not viral. You can take BSD licensed code and incorporate the changes into your own code without having to put those changes under the BSDL.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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'm one of those who called SCO's bluff and both called and e-mailed them, requesting "licensing" info. That was the first week in August, and I received the usual form message telling me I'd be "contacted."
/. Poll asking, "Has SCO called you back yet about taking your (protection) money?"
I'm still waiting for a real call back.
How about a
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 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 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
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.
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.
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
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 haven't looked at Netcraft in a while but did anyone notice www.windowsupdate.com running Linux with IIS? Is this a hack?
Oh, but I forgot, /. is "digital" and on that een-tyr-neyt thingie so obviously my example really isn't applicable.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
"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.
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
This exact post was in the last SCO story, word for word. Let's pay a little attention, huh, guys?
"Sufferin' succotash."
Nope. Not at all. I'm anal about it because it's being used by our legislatures and courts, who should know better. This is our lives they're screwing with, and we deserve people who at least can understand the legal differentiation.
The courts ruled in the 50's that copyright infringement is not stealing.
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.
Did anybody else read that as "... a team of made-up people ..."?
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.
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.
"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!