SCO Roundup

Time to clear out the bin of the taint of SCO, hopefully we haven't posted these already... The Economist has a piece titled Face Value -- Of Monkeys and Penguins. The EFF is pushing an email campaign about SCO. An anonymous reader submits this completely unverified claim that SCO needs to change the password on their mail server: sco.txt. And another reader presents a theory about SCO's stock performance.

Comments

sco.txt

[Jailbrekr]

If you feel like lowering yourself to their level, keep that sco.txt link there.

I thought the whole point was to take the high road?

Re:sco.txt

[miknight]

I agree, we all know that we can beat them using ethical and legal means - we shouldn't give them (more?) anti-linux-community firepower.

Re:sco.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are arguing for ethics on a site where at least half the visitors think downloading music on the internet is justified because the recording companies charge too much.

Well, it is nice to know that Slashdot gets some new blood now and again...

Perception of linux crowd at issue possibly

[gaber1187]

What this tells me is that maybe business folks/investors think the Linux/open source community is sort of just a group of whiners and will always be dogging SCO no matter what. Although SCO seems to be clearly just looking for a buyout offer and the execs, a runup in stock price, I think this tells me that maybe we need to start trying to be a little more objective so that we can get more respect from the people with lotsa money... I'll believe it when I see a posting on Slashdot that says, "newest version of redhat sucks" or something to that effect... :-)

Adapt and Succeeed

[Farley Mullet]

I never thought I would see IBM on the right side of IT, but there we have it.

IBM is crafty, eh? The most charitable way of putting it is to say that they know how to adapt to changing business environments (although it might be more accurate to say that they have an almost supernatural sense which way the wind is blowing). Think about it: old alliances, like IBM-MS, are a thing of the past, with IBM being perhaps linux's greatest corporate benefactor, while old oppositions, like IBM-Apple, have evaporated, starting with the old AIM partnership, and now with IBM-made CPU's in the latest Macintoshes.

Who cares???

[Mrs. Grundy]

"We're absolutely not going away, and they're not giving up, so we got a big problem," says Mr McBride.

I imagine he is using 'we' in the royal sense meaning 'he.' It's a little shocking to me that so many people are devoting so much time to this. Wouldn't we be better off to just ignore him and let IBM squash him and his claim unnoticed as a something as unsubstantiated as his is should be.

Instead we spend an awful lot of time and energy talking and reading...and making SCO a household word. And worse, making people nervous about linux and open source software in general for (so far) no reason at all. This seems to be a guy who likes to make his money suing people and is getting some free publicity at everyone's expense. Until they are willing to pony up with some real evidence let them slither back to the obscurity more fitting companies that have nothing good to offer.

Re:Who cares???

[DASHSL0T]

If you don't fight back against them, who is there to counter their FUD? It is bad enough the "trade media" isn't giving their claims a critical look, you want the people (us geeks) to shut up and ignore them too?

Then nobody will be speaking out against their frivilous claims. Surely that is a Bad Thing (tm).

it was interesting at some point...

[infonick]

but after months of this SCO bullplop... I wonder why i am up at 12:57 in the morning reading this stuff. is it just me, or has development on this story slowing down?

Re:Quick question.

[burnin1965]

Bad idea.

When reading all available information from both sides it appears that SCO has a weak case against linux (I am biased, but com'on, non-sensicle statements, back pedaling, inconsistencies, the only evidence shown has been refuted with facts not with "our word against theirs").

With that in mind you might think that shorting their stock would be a good way to make some quick bucks. But beware.

If these people are as deceitful as they appear then there is a high likelihood that they are manipulating the stock price by any means possible.

And if that is the case normal logic will not hold. If you short and they start to play some of their manipulation tricks you will lose big time.

IANAFA but that is my financial opinion.

burnin

Free Lunch!

[phauxfinnish]

At a more general level ... he found the entire free-software trend "communistic", he says: "We don't get the whole free-lunch thing."

It's not about "free-lunch" and he knows it! This more appropriately equates to "We don't get the whole free-speech thing." This happens to fit with a quote in this story:

Darl McBride, current CEO, says the last straw for SCO was at Linux World this year. "An IBM executive stood up and basically announced, 'We're moving our AIX (Unix) expertise into Linux, and we're going to destroy the value of Unix,' " says McBride, who contends that the statement alone was a violation of IBM's AIX contract. (emphasis added)

He wants a closed system, where any advancements made are the sole property of a central organization who can there-by control the market, and we're the communists? Alright, maybe in a classical sense of communism, the Open Source movement does share some traits. However, in the derogatory fashion he implies, SCOs recent actions much closer resemble the totalitarian regimes of applied communism.

Re:Free Lunch!

[neillewis]

OSS is only communistic in the same way that barn raising was communistic, or Adam Smith was a comunist for wanting a free market.

Calling linux communistic is like Sara Lee calling the local church ladies communist for holding a bake sale.

McBride and capitalism

[penguin7of9]

Darl McBride, capitalist crusader against the commie horde of Linux users

There is nothing "capitalist" or "fundamentalist" about McBride--his is a campaign of lies and stock manipulation, and McBride's company is apparently engaging in intellectual property theft. Like so many other dishonest people before him, he is hiding his misdeeds by accusing his opponents of being un-American and communists.

There is nothing "communist" about Linux. Linux has thrived in free market economies because it's a highly efficient way for commercial entities to develop software. Linux is about free markets at their best: goods being produced at marginal costs, which, in the case of software, happens to be zero.

Re:McBride and capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

The Economist is a British publication. The British have a concept called "irony", which American readers often don't understand.

Nice! Now along with commies we'll be HACKERS

[Gregg M]

SCO needs to change the password on their mail server: sco.txt.

Please.. Do you know what that will look like to the rest of the world? Maybe Michael should read the Linux Advocacy FAQ, or at least what not to do!

Re:business -- Do not threaten

[screenrc]

Threatening lawsuits is dangerous! Don't threaten them, just do it.

If you decide to sue SCO for extortion, go to
the courthouse and ask the judge to issue
declerative judgment saying that SCO cannot
require payment since you are just an end-user
(and not a Linux distributor) and you have
never shown proof why SCO should demand money
from someone they have never had a prior business relationship.

If a few hundred/thousant linux users win
a declarative judgment just like that, then
we should be in a better shape.

(As for me, I am still waiting for SCO to sure me. SCO,
if you are listening, and I have posted it at least
5 time on slashdot already, please contact me
via ntro at earthlin dot [NET] . Let's get started!)

Re:You know you're in deep water...

[smallpaul]

The EFF is not light-handed on the legal representation side, and if they're coming down on the side of Linux against SCO, then SCO has problems.

Would you rather go up against the EFF's lawyers or IBM's lawyers?

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

No, only distribution becomes copyright infringement. This still means that SCO is in trouble, but it has absolutely nothing to do with their running Linux, but distributing it.

Just as a reminder:

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are
prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by
modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the
Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and
all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying
the Program or works based on it.

Re:You know you're in deep water...

[AftanGustur]

Would you rather go up against the EFF's lawyers or IBM's lawyers?

IBM lawyers will hit you with the legal system.

EFF lawyers will hit you with the justice system.

Being hurt by loads of lawyers and financial punishment hurts, but being defeated by justice, is something very painful and difficult to recover form.

Not the VESA bus, the EISA bus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right story, wrong consortium product. VESA is not a bus, it's a standard for a Super VGA BIOS. The EISA bus was defined by IBM's rivals.

Dear Comrade McBride....

[mormop]

At a more general level (and surprisingly for a Linux distributor), he (McBride) found the entire free-software trend "communistic", he says: "We don't get the whole free-lunch thing."

I still don't get the constant references from Gates, McBride et al about Linux being communist.

In Soviet Russia which was communist in name if not nature, the provision of all goods an services was centralised in the hands of a few, huge agencies. These agencies excercised a vast amount of power over those it "served" and generally with property being theft and all that no-one could truly be said to own their their property, e.g. house, car etc. This basically constitutes the large organisations licencing the use of "their" property to the members of the society and as many dissedents found, these licences could be revoked along with the issue of a new one way licence to Siberia.

The free enterprise west on the other hand, benefitted from competition between many decentralised comapanies, organisations and individuals that in some cases formed alliances and co-operated when it would benefit.

If anything, the behaviour of the vast corporations bears more resemblance to the overpowering Soviet interpretation of communism than Open Source. On the other hand, open source follows the free market evolutionary pattern with projects popping into existence all the time with the weaker pointless ones falling by the wayside and the stronger useful ones maturing.

The open source system negates the need for money as developers receive the kudos of a job well done ,a notch on their CV for them to earn bread with and the support of users who pay their way by submitting feedback, bug reports etc.

In the meantime, please stop giving us this shit about open source and communism. The one thing it offers is freedom of choice and action. I don't remember the Russian people having much of that before the wall came down and I don't see that in any EULA from Microsoft, SCO or any other proprietry software company for that matter.

Re:Dear Comrade McBride....

[mormop]

Absolutely.

Soviet Russia never resembled anything from Marx's communist ideal and to date, no "communist" country in the world has. Marx, like all political theorists was a dreamer who ignored the one wildcard i.e. human nature.

At the end of the day, open source serves it's users and developers equally and I think this is what Uncle Darl and his type can't deal with. Like Stalin, Mao and all they are just power junkies who can't deal with not being in total control.

I confess to being an enemy of the proprietry state. I confess to using Linux and Open Source software. I confess to having subversive thoughts that contradict the ideals of Chairman Gates. Now the show trials over can I go now pleae?

Re:Dear Comrade McBride....

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Corruption. When you put all the power into the hands of a few [trying hard *not* to think of microsoft and copyright law], they become corrupt. They begin to view the entire system as a vehicle for their own success.

You might argue that this happens in the USA. Well, we do have corruption and power, but eventually the messes are cleaned up. Take a look at Enron, etc., it took a while, but finally the American people realized what was going on and demanded that the mess be cleaned up. That leads us to point #2:

2) Democracy.. in America, the voice of the people can move the government. Sure it's not perfect but if the people want the government to change, it will change. That's designed into the system. Communism depends on people doing what the government wants, rather than the other way around. This leads to discontent and revolution.

3) Inefficient allocation of goods. When it comes to distribution of tangible goods, Communism is a complete flop. Since people are working for "others" rather than themselves, even if they don't want to, they have no incentive to create or improve.

Note that this differs from Free software, because in Free software, once you "bake a loaf of bread" (write a program), you can eat it yourself (meet your own needs) AND give it away (put it up on the net), without any cost to yourself. Then someone else can eat it too (solve their problem), and add a nice green salad (add a feature you didn't think of), and then everyone has salad and bread (merge the improvements). Or they are free to keep the salad to themselves (don't distribute changes).

4) Crushes the human spirit. Ayn Rand and all that. Human beings have an individualist nature which is crushed and demeaned by Communism. Yes we have a "collective" nature as well, but freedom means you can *choose* how collectivist you want to be without government force. *Forcing* collectivism on people leads to problems as mentioned above.

So Communism sucks, big time, and it's a shame that folks like McBride and Gates and GPL-haters bring it up as FUD. Communism is nothing like freedom, it is absence of freedom. Microsoft and SCO look more like communist leaders that Linus Torvalds and RMS.

Re:sco.txt - Security

[coldnight]

Well, given that they are quoting code from 1979 and earlier as infringing, how many good techs do you think still work there?

I wonder how many people are removing thier time at SCO from thier employment history at this moment?

Captured not so well.

[phriedom]

I can't agree that The Economist captured the issue all that well. I am glad that they were clear that SCO refuses to detail the violations because then Linux would quickly be rewritten around it because Linux people WANT to fix it. However, I found the heavy editorializing, like calling Mr. Perens an evangelist, to be clouding the issue.

I was also disappointed by this:"Roughly as apes and humans allegedly have common ancestors, several operating systems can trace their lineage to UNIX, including Linux."

That is just plain incorrect, isn't it? Linux was written cleanly, it doesn't have any parents, right? More like it sprung whole from Mr. Torvold's head, like Athena out of Zeus, if one has to have an analogy. It is a workalike to Unix, but that is a different thing.

I'm glad the economist at least covered the fact that SCO distributes Linux and in being sued for copyright violation on that account, but I still hope that the mainstream press will get it right, and not resort to generalizations or incorrect simplifications.