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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?
More specifically, Steve Jobs's Reality Distortion Field(TM), except that he crossed the wires wrong and only he is affected. W00t!
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.
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.
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
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
> 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
they mention
"During the quarter ended April 30, 2003, we recognized $8,250,000, or 39 percent of our quarterly revenue, from our intellectual property licensing initiative, SCOsource, launched in January 2003."
Obviously some people are stupid enough to license.
...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.
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'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
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We think we rock big time
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nya nya nya nya take that suckers
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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
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.
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?
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.
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!
The effect of the "Big Lie", as Hitler put it, is to suggest to reasonable minds that they must be in err. The claims are so preposterous, so fantastic, that we suppose we must have overlooked some critical piece of evidence. Therefore, we question ourselves and our conclusions. We say things like "I don't understand how we can be so confident about this."
This was a Nazi propaganda tool, and it was very effective. I see a lot of similarities today in the SCO case.
Part of our responsibility as reasonable thinkers, is to remove any bias we might have, and evaluate assertions on their factual merits. By removing our bias, we seek to give each side of the argument equal footing.
Many people believe that, if they are unbiased, then they are thinking reasonably. What we fail to realize is how facts and evidence can prove the truth of any assertion beyond reasonable doubt. People have a hard time with facts because facts tend to restore bias in favor of the truth. Reasonable people are uncomfortable being biased, and are therefore more susceptible to the Big Lie.
There are two sides of the SCO issue. The SCO side is supported entirely with allegations, without a single shred of factual evidence that has been disclosed to the public.
The other side has a mountain of facts to refute every allegation that SCO has made.
I suggest that it is unfair to give SCO an unbiased benefit of the doubt when all of the facts clearly contradict everything they have said. That would be like presenting a Suicide Cult as a reasonable doctrine for society to consider.
We have no reason to not be confident in our position. SCO has no proof of their claims, not a single bit.
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
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.
Groklaw has very extensive research on Kimball's history, which is nicely summarized and easy to read. Every case has links to much more detail. The overall appearance is that Kimball will probably do the right thing.
Probably most important is the Jacobsen vs Hughes copyright case. Apart from considering much of the material uncopyrightable historical facts, Judge Kimball was quite unimpressed by the plaintif's failure to act in a timely manner to mitigate damages. Quoting from that article:
Obviously this bodes quite well for IBM and all Linux users. SCO of course will claim they stopped distribution of linux, but this ruling at least shows that Judge Kimball isn't likely to be be charmed with the deplorable way SCO has conducted itself. Kimball's willingness to consider the writing a separate work, even though a part of it was loosely based on Jacobsen's also casts quite a shadow over SCO's chances (assuming the unlikely worst case scenario that SCO has an ace up its sleeve, rather than the bogus examples we've seen so far). It's certainly a good sign that Kimball is unlikely to buy SCO expansive theories about what constitutes a derivitive work.
The groklaw page has examples where Kimball has ruled against big business, where he's shown competence at handling software intellectual property disputes (eg, Altiris vs Symantec), and where he's handled very complex cases.
While nothing is 100% certain going into the courtroom, it is a fact that the Judge Kimball has been selected to hear this case. His history shows he's competent, fair, and at least in Jacobsen vs Hughes, he doesn't tollerate the sort of shenanigans SCO has been pulling!
(yes, -1 redundant... I posted this on the last SCO story.... but the "idiot judge" comments never seem to stop either!)
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
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.