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Linus to SCO: 'Please Grow Up'
brakk writes "From this article at Infoworld, Linus responds to SCO's open letter in a manner reminiscent of patting a child on the head." chrisd notes that his company is making SCO employees unhireable.
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Another relatively uninteresting open letter, however this part of the submission caught my eye:
chrisd notes that his company is making SCO employees unhireable.
[from that link]:
Any resumes which include the Santa Cruz Operation after May of 2003 will be immediately deleted as well.
That is truly childish. The real assholes at SCO are the suits and money-grubbing lawyers responsible for this charade. A code monkey in the trenches who needs a job to pay the bills isn't necessarily an enemy of open source.
Guilt by association is a slippery slope, remember Joe McCarthy?
Trolling is a art,
Linus to SCO: "Please Grow Up"
SCO to Linus: "My OS can beat up your OS. Nyah nyah nyah!"
All of our source code is out in the open, and we welcome you point to any particular piece you might disagree with.
Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission
Haha.. thanks LINUS!! now i got dr. pepper all over my purty flat screen!!!!
SCO scratch off tickets? Now there's an idea!
Come one people only the current top management of SCOX and Canopy are responsible and should be held accountable..
However, with the laying off of most of the r&d coders is there any one left that is accoutnable in nature?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
IP problem: How could you said that this letter was created by Linus?
Some reference to the original e-mail of Linus?
Hmmm, maybe they're not Smoking Crack, Obviously as I suggested yesterday...instead, they're Spoiled Children, Obviously. :-)
How To Get Humans To Mars
Post-trial Justice
Ian
I'd complain about how immature the policy is except that if you read the page, you see that they are not hiring, so SCO employees are ineligible for all zero of the openings they have available.
They must really believe this. Soon we'll hear zillion infinities lines plus their dads being bigger than our dads. It's *spelled* S C O, but it's pronouned "ass hats". Lawyers have pulses? This Comment was generated with the Comment-O-Matic for SCO Stories.
Dear Linus,
You were a hero of mine, until this letter. Now, you are a SuperHero! The SuperBestFriends had an opening, but I would say it is now taken.
-Spack
That's capricious and sick. It is not the rank and file who is responsible, it is the brass. To punish people who have done nothing wrong, guilt by association, is cruel and unfair. This would be like throwing an Enron middle-level mananger in prison simply because he/she worked for Enron. SCO isn't Nazi Germany, people!
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I suspect that the reason that Damage is refusing to hire ex-SCO employees is to prevent any possible legal action on SCO's part - I would not put it past SCO to sue a new employer for misappropriation of trade secrets or any number of other things, given their track record. I really don't think it's a political statement at all.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Hey Chrisd,
You can't seriously claim to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and at the same time reject applicants based on where they used to work. I know there's not a law but come on, that's the spirit of EOE.
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
Refusing to hire someone who happened to work at SCO when this whole fiasco started is stupid. How can a software engineer or similar employee in a company of that size help what management says?
chrisd is the real loser here as he can't even spell "received" correctly on his corporate hiring page!
Oh, I get it, SCO employee's opportunity to get hired there is equal to their opportunity to get hired elsewhere... poor schmucks.
I actually do feel sorry for them. I'm sure it's the executives making the decisions.
What they didn't do was use it to make good products or a functional business. "Squander" implies they ever intended to try to do either of these.
By the way, am I the only one who always thinks about Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation every time he hears the name Canopy?
and now seems to play the U.S. legal system like a lottery
Not quite my friend. Somehow I think my Mega Millions ticket has a better chance of winning that SCO getting anything from the community.
Dissenter
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
Alright, Linus. The gloves are off.
We'll now show the most damning evidence yet. There we have it, we've presented the basis for not hundreds, not thousands, not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of derivative code in the Linux kernel.
Let's see you dig yourself out of this one, wunderkind.
sometimes you gotta hold your nose and keep working. codemonkeys are hard at work over in redmond, too, after all. if you're a developer in this market, are you sure you wanna leave a paying gig on somebody else's timetable rather than your own? i'm not a developer, but i certainly wouldn't.
i agree that this is probably not the wisest HR policy, but it's their company.
ed
that the open source community should stop responging the SCO period. If you ignore them, maybe they will go away.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
I've always had respect for Linus, the respect that I don't have for other OSS "advocates" like Stallman, Raymond or Perens.
Simply because Linus is the guy who just practices what the rest preach. He just keeps his mouth shut for the most part and works on the code. Instead of pontificating, he produces something that proved that the OSS model can work.
He doesn't spout off into diatribes about free vs Free, he doesn't rant and rave about technologies like the TCPA, just comments on how they can be implemented in Linux.
Please, Linus, don't drag yourself down to the level of the foaming mouthed nut. There's no shortage of zealots to badmouth SCO, and you're merely preaching to the choir.
Ultimately all you'll do is damage your image, when someone mentions Stallman or Raymond, do you immediately think of code they've written, or an image of them jumping up and down on a soapbox?
Stick to the tech, keep being an inspiration to true geeks, and not anti-gumment nutjobs.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
who just happen to be smoking massive quantities of crack. Bagfuls of rock. Hooked to the pipe.
Mr. Codemonkey has been submitting resumes without success?
If they're applying for a job at a Linux company, shouldn't it be painfully fucking obvious that they're TRYING TO JUMP SHIP?
Why benefit SCO by making it *HARDER* for their employees to jump ship?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
chrisd notes that his company is making SCO employees unhireable.
.. oh, they don't actually have any open positions right now.
So they're refusing to consider SCO employees for any of the open positions that they
Wow, that'll teach them a lesson.
This blather added to get past the lameness filter.
Sjeesh, it's gettin' really annoying all this talk about SCO. Thanks to mr. Thorvalds we have yet another SCO newsday.
:). His way of communicating should be an example for all the OSS developers :).
But anyway, I think Linus is right. He gave the right answer, be polite, and say fsck off at the same time
Its still irritating anyhow.
Linus' letter reminds me of a good example of a flame: biting, yet so intelligently written that you might miss it.
The real shocker here, of course, is that a Linux advocate spelled "bated breath" correctly for the first time in recorded history.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The article mentions response letters from Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens. Does anyone have links to these stories?
.. to have been reading a lot of Nigerian spam lately.
SCO doesn't seem to have any employees other than lawyers and mouthpieces at present.
I doubt that anybody looking for a job in the software field would have SCO from May, 2003 on their resume.
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
If I am hiring someone I may well include in my hiring criteria that having worked for SCO (or Microsoft or Starbuck or the US Government or Pizza Hut) is a liability. And I think I may even consider that anyone who has worked for those companies are unfit to work in my company. How can this be illegal?
To paraphrase Kelso from That 70's Show:
"BUUUUUURRRRRRRNNN!"
Sorry, I just got caught up in the wicked burn. Linus is awesome, what can I say? He certainly has a way with words. I laughed so hard after reading that.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
And their first task will be going through the SCO customer list in my geographic area and whacking each and every SCO system they can locate.
You have to view it from their perspective - years, some times decades of hard work, stock in the company trapped by trading rules, and scam artists from Canopy making it all just a sick joke.
If you really want to jab SCO, find a job for *every* person there who does real work, and do it quick.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Preventing an SCO employee from jumping ship by denying them a job opportunity *benefits SCO*.
Although a poster below made a good point - This could be intentional to avoid intellectual property problems. SCO noncompete agreements might likely make their employees ineligible to apply for employment at ChrisD's company in the first place.
That said, the wording of the statement on ChrisD's website is immature and vengeful.
More proper wording which I would accept is, "Due to intellectual property issues and conflicts of interest, we regret that we cannot hire former employees of the Santa Cruz Operation at this time."
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
If we were in the height of the dotcom bubble sure. You could put out a resume on monday and have a new job by wednesday. Thats not the case now. ALOT of techical folks out there have been out of work for months or even years (1+ to 2+). If you have a family to support you can't just quit because your company does something you don't like. Now if they are doing something illegal, just up and quitting might be an option.
Not hiring some programmer because they work at SCO is plain stupid. To be quite honest this guys website sucked and working for his company probably sucks too if they have this mentality.
Certainly I could see not hiring someone like a Darl McBride from SCO, but dumping on some poor C++ programmer trying to make a living. Give me a physcial break.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Just the Torvald's letter ... hilarious !
---
Dear Darl,
Thank you so much for your letter.
We are happy that you agree that customers need to know that Open Source is legal and stable, and we heartily agree with that sentence of your letter. The others don't seem to make as much sense, but we find the dialogue refreshing.
However, we have to sadly decline taking business model advice from a company that seems to have squandered all its money (that it made off a Linux IPO, I might add, since there's a nice bit of irony there), and now seems to play the US legal system as a lottery. We in the Open Source group continue to believe in technology as a way of driving customer interest and demand.
Also, we find your references to a negotiating table somewhat confusing, since there doesn't seem to be anything to negotiate about. SCO has yet to show any infringing IP in the Open Source domain, but we wait with bated breath for when you will actually care to inform us about what you are blathering about.
All of our source code is out in the open, and we welcome you point to any particular piece you might disagree with.
Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission,
Yours truly,
Linus Torvalds
:wq
That it's condescending and funny is great, too. Here's hoping it gets some play in the outside of /. world...
Which one is worse, the fool or the fool that follows him?
I find the attention/flames that everybody is giving to SCO highly surprising, as a result it is hard for bystanders to differentiate between the opponents. It would be much more mature of Linus and Co to either ignore the whole matter or respond professionally, instead of playing the same game.
When men used to be men
Lol, I'm sooooo evil. You cannot smoke and work for me.
Linus to SCO: 'Please Grow Up'
;)
Oh yeah, that will show them...I can see them shiver already...
"I'd complain about how immature the policy is except..."
You finally figured out that adults never use the word "immature" when describing anything other than parts of plants.
I mean, emotionally stable adults, anyway.
It seems like there has been a long time since slashdot didn't have at least one story about SCO, its starting to get annoying!! :)
.
Please send all resumes in text or pdf format. We do not open word documents sent from outside the company. We will immediately delete them, and the mail they came attached to, if recieved.
Good idea, security-wise.
Now, if only they would immediately delete any resumes which were obviously not checked for spelling errors...
<rant>
When reviewing resumes, my eye is immediately drawn to typos like this, and resumes containing things like this are put into the "consider them only if nothing else better shows up" pile. It's important, folks -- you only have one chance to make a first impression. Do you really want the boss to see that you can't be troubled to hit F7 (in Word)?
</rant>
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
"...forever!!!"
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1997/Nov9 7/scopr.asp
REDMOND, Wash.-November 24, 1997 - Microsoft Corporation today applauded the decision of the European Commission to close the file and take no further action on a dispute between Microsoft and Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) involving a 1987 contract. The Commission's decision follows progress by Microsoft and SCO to resolve a number of commercial issues related to the contract, and upholds Microsoft's right to receive royalty payments from SCO if software code developed by Microsoft is used in SCO's UNIX products.
If that were true, he wouldn't have a date of May 2003 as the cut-off date for SCO employment, they'd reject ALL former SCO employees regardless of date of employment..
However, you choose who you work for. By working for a company, you support its actions. You may not believe these actions are correct, but if you do nothing to change it, you are as guilty as those driving that bus. We each much take responsibility for who and what we support.
In this case, we have a company preying on innocent companies and individuals. This may change if SCO ever gets around to showing any evidence for the claims they have made. Similarily, if these claim turn out to be true (doubtful), I'm sure Damage Studio will change their policy.
I wouldn't work for Microsoft. Even though MS has some fantastic emgineers and great benefits. I simply don't agree with their business practices. Now...if they changed and perhaps opened a department to port their applications to linux or decided to open source their operating system, I might change my mind.
Look, the IT market is going to shit so fast it seems like diareah (sp?) and you're pissed at folks not wanting to abandon their already shrinking job market because of some stupid political stand?
Try explaining to your kids why you can't buy them food or pay for their school or why the lights just got shut off. An answer of "Oh well I had to make sure my stance on ensuring the freedom of Linux and GPL software everywhere was loud and clear. Sorry you feel faint from hunger but hey at least my startling irrelevant opinions on the computer industry's morality remain untarnished!"
I mean are you on 100% Genetically Enhanced Columbian Crack Cocaine? Janitors and receptionists? WTF would they care about Linux at all for? Its just a job for them. Most likely they aren't even AWARE of anything other than windows (I'll bet you $5 the receptionists at SCO or even Red Hat have Windows based PC's on their desks). This isn't the civil rights movement were talking about here. A LITTLE bit of perspective would do you a world of good.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I find it interesting that the mainstream news outlets seem to pick and choose what stories to run.
for example, yahoo news on SCOX
in the latest there is the comment " Leading Linux experts or advocates were not immediately available for comment."
w-w-wha-WHAT?? The open source commuinity has been doing nothing *but* commenting- take the latest extremely well written open leter from Bruce Perens, for example.
Meanwhile SCOX stock price continues to inexplicably rise.. All the harder to fall.
I Think there is a law that a company has to keep a resume for a period of time and that throwing them away is a violation of it.
...clever comebacks and snide remarks make little difference for corporate execs and lawyers keeping an eye on this case.
While Torvalds is a Linux-figurehead, he's still a techie - which means his commentary will be drowned out by the SCO lawyers, CEO and PR drones babbling on. While /. won't listen to them, I fear the ignorant public (investors, analysts, lawyers, execs) will get a one-sided view as long as only SCO official representatives and Linux techies exchange rounds with these statements in front of the press. IBM won't comment since they're in legal proceedings, but where are all the rest?
If that were true, ALL SCO employees, regardless of date of employment should be rejected out of hand. It's very clearly a sophmoric reaction to the current SCO situation.
but we wait with bated breath for when you will actually care to inform us about what you are blathering about.
Now, I don't use a whole heck of a lot of OSS software, but isn't there an OSS spellchecker in there somewhere? If you're going to use "childish" in a business letter, I'd think you'd at least run spell check on it before you fired it out into the open. Linux and other OSS projects are looking more and more, well, childish by the day.
Same concept spammers work with. Money takes priority over everything else and the end justifies the means, right ?
Your excessive display of poor grammar can only hurt the mainstream opinion of the Open Source community.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Your company is writing a game that is going to run on MS Windows, I don't agree with some of MS tactics, so I'm not going to buy your game.
Pretty poor logic wouldn't you say? Sadly, it isn't any different than your hiring policy.
It takes a special kind of genius to be able to tell someone to go to hell in such a way as they end up thinking you wished them a pleasant journey. Linus has done well to keep his cool while all this has been going down. I wonder what pills he's been taking?
As for Damage Studios' policy, I think it is mostly just for show. But they have got every right to refuse ex-SCO employees, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. There are things I, personally, would far rather be on the dole than do. As long as you have a head on your shoulders, a hand on each arm {and, absit omen you should ever have to use it, a hole in your arse}, there is no reason why you should be going short.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
considering the crap that SCO has put out, a resume at SCO isn't a good thing. Also, no-one need mentioned that they worked at SCO. Furthermore, employers have the right to hire or not hire anyone for any reason -- backwards or not -- they want.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Contrary to common opinion, Equal Opportunity only covers protected classes under the Civil Rights Act of 1963. The Civil Rights Act does not protect people based on where they worked before and it never will. There are many justified reasons not hire an employee from a certain company. A company could decide to not accept applications from a competitor that has been involved in corporate espionage to protect trade secrets.
Before judging Damage Studios, one must know whether they have a reason to fear SCO. Do they fear being sued by SCO for stealing their human resources? Do they do in house programming and contribute to the GNU/Linux source code? Any company that does contribute code to GNU/Linux should not hire ex-SCO employees because that will give reason for SCO to accuse them of adding illegal code.
I think the responses should continue for two reasons:
1) While some people have become bored of the rhetoric, I am still enjoying the responses from the OSS leaders and representatives.
2) There are many people out there who on occasion happen to read an article about the SCO debate. If the response from the community is to stay silent then the masses will presume that all McBride says is true. Granted you may not care what the rest of the world thinks of you, however, as an OSS advocate I for one become angry when I'm portrayed as a commie, thief, drug addict, etc, etc.
I say keep the rebuttals coming.
burnin
By the way, it seems from SCOs website that they want to grow our business.
"They want to grow our business?!"
"Quick, DDoS them!"
Letter about the whole recent DDoS is here Open letter to open source community. Hum.
This whole charade might benefit Linux greatly. One of Linux's shortcomings is a lack of perception as to value. SCO, by demanding a license fee, has given a dollar amount for the value of a Linux installation. After SCO loses their case, their appraisal of Linux will remain. This could make it easier to convince clients and management to use Linux, by letting them see how much the software is worth ($700), and how much it costs ($0).
SCO wants to talk to Open Source developers about monetizing the software? By placing a dollar amount on the worth of Linux, they have just monetized it.
Too bad the credibility of SCO is next to worthless now.
If i owned a company, i would do the same exact thing. If their programmers had any ethics at all they would at least contact the authorities about their illegal actions. This is their responsibility. Where are Enron's accountants right now. Could they just say "we signed an NDA". No, they're screwed (or being screwed) right now. Rotting in jail where they belong. Contract law states that nobody can sign a contract that forces them to do something illegal. Something illegal is not "guilty by association" but "_aiding and abbeding_". Since we know sco is doing something illegal, and it would be impossable for their programmers not to know what is going on, we can deduce that they are themselves breaking the law and unethical to boot. No i would never hire such people. Personally i hope they are all held responsibility. I want to visit them in jail and pay their cellmates to make sure they get extra "companionship". Screw em all. Somewhat unrelated: My resume online states that i will not work for SCO, with any SCO products, or for any company that has paid SCO for a "linux license". The reason being that i do not want to encourage companies to support SCO. I suggest anybody looking for employment do the same thing, in a polite an diplomatic disclaimer. Offer explanation on inquiry.
Bill Gates is tired of being the most despised human being in IT, so he put up Darl as the new "Whipping Boy." It seems to be working! :-P
Buzzing the information Superhighway at Warp speed
and we heartily agree with that sentence of your letter. The others don't seem to make as much sense, but we find the dialogue refreshing.
other dialogue that has been refreshing:
The sky is a nice shade of purple grape
sure, the movie legally blonde 2 was a very heart wrenching drama
we WILL pay $700 per liscence
Windows ME was the bets version of....
Linux: Helping nerds look smarter since the late 90s.
Principles are unimportant. So, let's all just shut the fuck up about them and work without thinking about what we're doing. After all, the guys who assembled the H-bomb and Neutron-bomb were "just doing their job" without "foaming" right?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
If you can't look at yourself in the mirror and say "i did the right thing" you have to live with guilt. This hurts more than hunger. Never compromise. You slowly kill yourself and a part of you dies with every inch you give.
Is one I have mixed feelings on. Do I think it's right or wrong? Sadly, I'm not sure, so I toss this out for discussion.
First, I feel bad for the average employee in the trenches. Imagine SCO collapsing and someone looking for work having had nothing to do with this.
At the same time, if they want to work for a company doing something so reprehensible, they also made a choice. They can live with the results. Yes, the economy is tough, but life's not a series of easy choices.
There is of course the concern that SCO employees are "poison" now, which I have to admit seems completely rational. Gods only know what legal issues they may (innocently) drag in with them.
So, largely in the end I see an anti-SCO policy being rational as a cover-my-legal-rear action. It's not fair, sadly, but it is one involving survival.
I wonder if this could also be the beginning of a trend, as we seem to see more and more legal acrobatics in software and IT.
Any thoughts?
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
foreign minister Anna Lindh was found dead in the NK department store in Stockholm this morning
No she wasn't, she was found dead on an operating theatre table this morning. She was stabbed in the NK department store in Stockholm, but it took her 24 hours (near enough) to die.
You can't even get a simple Cut & Paste troll right. You suck!
Fact: Scandinavian style Socialism is dying
.. I'm getting flashbacks to the 'engineers on the Death Star being innocents' bit of Clerks?
For a non-native English speaker, Linus needs to be given credit for the subtle zinger at the end: "Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission,". Nice double meaning on that last word there!
If you really want to kill a company, hire away all of its people. Refusing to hire SCO people seems counterproductive.
Instead, whittle them down to Daryl and a fax machine.
Blacklisting is wrong.
Good grief, don't fuck with people.
These people, the SCO guys, the RIAA, the MPAA - they are all going to Hell. Aren't they worried about the boiling lava, the pitchforks, the torture and pain?
If I wanted to damage SCO, I'd make it as attractive for their employees to leave the company as possible. On the other hand, if I wanted to help SCO, I'd make sure that any people who left the company would find it very hard to find another job. Maybe an idea for Microsoft.
chrisd, you may want to blacklist people who were hired after May to discourage new people from filling vacant positions, but if anyhting you should suggest all their old employees to seek positions at your place (if you have any), and look at them favorably.
there are plenty of legitimate reasons for not hiring former employees of a particular company. Discrimination claims generally require that you discriminate against a protected class such as minorities or women. There are different levels and at the bottom, nearly any reasonable justification suffices.
If I had the points, i'd mod you back into the positive...
I guess you guys can go jerk off because your God Linus has spoken...
Too funny:D
He worked and continues to work hard on Linux, and then along comes a company claiming to own his work and the work of every other Linux developer. They won't show any proof, are obviously completely full of it, and yet still get reported as straight news in supposedly tech-savvy media sources.
Hell, I'd be in Utah trying to strangle board members with their own neckties, not just writing snarky open letters.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
small is beutifull.
But I would had have added:
"Until showing any evidence, the supposed copy of code from IBM has the same trustworthiness than thouse rumours that asume that SCO or Microsoft had obtained ilegal code from
Linux and/or BSD"
Think about it - would you want SCO coming after a product you developed because you "might" have some infringing code from a code-monkey formerly employed by SCO? After al, it's not like they can claim they never saw any of the code if they helped write/maintain it.
If I remember the story correctly, many Caldera and presumably now SCO employees have been contributors to linux. If we take this to the extreme, does this mean that Damage wouldn't hire SCO's old janior?
Because that's what you sound like - a geek Limbaugh.
Given SCO's legal tactics to date, is it any surprise that a Linux company would avoid hiring someone who'd worked at SCO? That employee would have first-hand knowledge of SCO's alleged IP, and I would suspect that Mr. McBride would file suit before the ink had dried on the new employee's contract.
This isn't an FU move, this is plain and simple CYA.
I am totally on-side that there is no real technical merit in the SCO claims, and that they are being litigious bastards.
However I think that the tone being adopted by the Linux community is possibly hurting our cause.
All of the open letters I've read from Linux "leaders", including the latest one from Linus, have been by turns condescending, sanctimonious, and needlessly insulting at times.
These things are being read by business leaders who are quite interested in how this whole thing will play out, and if they get the impression that Open Source is being led by a bunch of smug, whiny, business-insensitive geeks, they will stay away.
Al I'm hoping for is that the public responses written by the Linux champions are clear, confident, and professional, and not geeky bitch-slaps. We have the high ground here, there's no need to get personal or insulting.
And the brats who launched the DoS's against SCO, you're not helping.
Torvalds also had a few sarcastic words for the Lindon, Utah-based SCO, noting that it is ironic that SCO acquired much of its capital from an initial public offering based on a Linux business model.
Lets see:
150 mil settlement of Caldera with Microsoft of DR-DOS.
71 mil raised for Caldera IPO.
Sure, 71 mil is 'much' money. But the bulk came from Microsoft.
"... The fragrance of Afghanistan, rewards a long day's toil..."
:)
Doesn't the fragrance of Afghanistan comes from a long day's toil, or a few months of toil? Just checking!
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I can't help but be reminded of a similar exchange in a cinematic venue:
... Uh, they've already got a license, you see?
Darl: Halt! Hallo! Hallo!
Linus: 'Allo! Who is zis?
Darl: It is Darl McBride, CEO of SCO, and this is the Unix copyright. Who's source is this?
Linux: This is the Linux - it's open source.
Darl: Go and tell your users that we have be charged by our board of directors with a sacred quest. If you will admit you have violated our copyright, you can pay money for a license to use the infringing software.
Linux: Um, I'll ask them, but I don't think they'll be very keen
Darl: What?
Chris Sontag: He says he's already go one!
Darl: Are you sure they've got one?
Linus: Oh, yes - the GNU public license - it's very nice.
Darl: Well, um, we know you copied our code, so you need to purchase a license. Will you buy one?
Linus: Of course not! You are corporate types with no proof!
...
Darl: Now look here, my good man!
Linus: I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough water! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
Chris Sontag: Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
Linus: No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
Now that Godwin's law has killed this thread, can we PLEASE go back to RIAA?
And when do we get to start bashing Microsoft again?
" We will immediately delete them, and the mail they came attached to, if recieved."
Violation of federal law, dumbass.
If I had Santa Cruz I would send you my resume, just so I can sue you and your little company.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This might not be (just) about being against SCOs ethics - given Darl's track record, there might be a very real possibility that if someone hires one of "his" people, he could come after that company and somehow claim that they have stolen "his" property (the intellectual property inside that person's head).
Problem with SCO is that since nothing they're doing makes sense, predicting future moves is equally difficult.
What Damage Studios is doing makes sense in a way. Any developers that have worked for SCO will have an NDA which prevents them from working for any competitors. Its hard to say what their client and server ends of their games will run on. However, I bet their server runs on a Linux or BSD box, and they probably don't want any trouble from any SCO lawyers...
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
If you hire an SCO employee at this time, you have to consider that your company will be sued by SCO. "That ex-employee contributed code that was under our copyright." When a company is behaving that irrationally, you don't want to deal with any of their ex-employees because it's too much risk to you.
That distinguishes some people from others. It's what creates heroes. Of course, I'm ready to admit there is a sordid side to this--some people sacrifice their relationships and families and martyr themselves to prove a point--nothing wonderful about that. But at the core of making a statement about what you believe is sometimes the necessity of making a sacrifice. Like I suggested, it's not always going to be an easy sacrifice or a fair one, but that's what it takes. This is always the case, whether the economy is wonderful or not. If people were only ready to make a sacrifice when it was convenient to do so, it wouldn't be that meaningful then, would it?
This is not out of touch with reality; actually this is the nature of reality. It seems like you are actually just not acknowledging this.
The decline of America is coming from within, not without. I am more worried about bad laws perpetrated by my own government than I am about some stranger whom vaguely wishes me dead. Live Free or Die.
Wow, that must really concern management at SCO, that they don't have to wory about employees leaving and going somewhere else because no one will hire them. Even is this were true, it actually would be great news for top management. Between that and Linus's response being a lame "grow up" while they watch company stock go through the roof and some chumps actually paying them and they must really be having a good day today.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I wouldn't put Bruce Perens in the same category as ESR and Stallman... Bruce doesn't have nearly the same wide-eyed factor as the latter two (both of whom I respect, BTW, not only for their respective intellects, but for standing up and saying what many of us are thinking).
There's room for the strong, silent type (Linus), as well as the vocal type. Who's to say which is better, or more valuable? I'd say it depends on the situation.
Linus is a man of few words, and when he does speak he generally makes them count... but sometimes that's not what's required.
Big tent, plenty of room for everyone.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
or more effective to never hire suits or lawyers who have ever been associated with SCO and to make this fact plain to them,...... but then.... there's probably a law against this.
SCO Corporation Cow Joke
You have one cow, which is dying.
You borrow a second cow, genetically engineered under the GPL.
You try to join the GPL herd, then leave, claiming they stole parts of your dead cow.
Eric Raymond hires the Cows with Guns.
=googol=
From a legal standpoint they're tainted. Anyone who works for SCO might have had access to the source code at any point - which means if you are developing your own code, since SCO (Well Canopy group anyways) has proven to sue at the drop of a hat without any real evidence, you CAN'T hire any kind of technical staff who recently worked at SCO without potentially exposing yourself to a frivilous lawsuit.
They might well launch the suit just to punish someone jumping ship for that matter - they haven't exactly proven themselves to have much of an ethical track record as a company after all.
Until the suits are settled and the legal issues over with (and SCO buried likely), you're opening yourself up for some potential liability hiring ANY technical staff who worked for SCO.
(Management is a moot point - I mean who would want to work with them anyways? Well possibly certain mafia shell companies.... no... even the mafia has limits....)
if a worker bee at SCO is in disagreement with how the queen bee is leading the hive, then that worker bee has a few options:
1) leave the hive - which many of you have pointed out is difficult to do in this economy.
2) disable the queen bee or hive from within - which is illegal.
3) continue working, but also aid the open source bees by anonymously posting useful information on SCO to outlets such as slashdot.org, f_ckedcompany.com, stock forums - which may be illegal.
4) continue working as a complacent worker bee and live with the guilt that that which you once helped build is now being destroyed by the non-worker queen bee.
i'm analyzing options for worker bees at SCO, not recommending or asking that they follow my analysis.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Maybe they don't want the fomer SCO employees leaking SCO's suposed IP into their products.
We in the Open Source group continue to believe in technology as a way of driving customer interest and demand.
Open Source Group ... it may just be coincidence, but Open Source Group has the same number of syllables as Canopy Group. Further, both have the word 'Group' in there. And if you rearrange the letters of the Open Source Group anagram, you get SGO.
I bet SCO are playing both sides of the war in some twisted plot to wrangle the reigns of righteousness away from the ... err ... righteousness-doers. With lightsabres. Much like that nasty Palpatine fellow.
He's obviously suffering some sort of beri-beri brain-eating disease. Looks like the court of public opinion is speaking loud and clear. Now that I've seen those words, my time at Slashdot is done. I can move on.
This Comment was generated with the Comment-O-Matic for SCO Stories.
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
"Some things gnaw at a man worse than dying."
If so many lines of code are already in Linux, which is freely available to view. What's the hold up for SCO to disclose their Source without a NDA?
If it's true verbatim, then secret is out right!?
Wow, so I can't get hired by a bunch of GenX slackers who are living off of the money they got from their dotcom era options? C'mon, have you SEEN their pictures? I give them six months until they go under.
ISTR there are some laws that say something to the effect of "using a blacklist in your hiring procedures is illegal".
There might be something positive coming out of Damage Studios publically stated hiring position with respect to SCO employees. For one, it might be a wakeup call to rank-and-file SCO'ers that 1. when their company goes bankrupt next year, they won't find anyone particularly sorry for them in the IT sector. They probably couldn't even get an outsourced job in India because of SCO's actions. 2. This will motivate them into distinguishing themselves from their foolhardy management team - this could create a whistleblower atmosphere at SCO where employees start saving legally-challenged memos and such and bring them into the spotlight for a government inquiry. 3. Mass exodus (no pun intended with the Utah connection) of employees willing to leave Utah. SCO could be embarassed from having no real programming staff left... So in retrospect, thank you Damage Studios...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Quit feeding the troll.
Let's find out for certain that SCO's lawyers are nitwits, slap them across the face for wasting our time, then call it a day. If SCO is so confident in their accusation, they would have nothing to fear by letting someone *actually compare* the code bases. How do they expect to win a lawsuit if they won't present evidence to support their case?
Why don't they just publish their source code and let us all do diff's on it? If we've all already seen it before anyway (in Linux), then it can't harm them any further!
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
However, we have to sadly decline taking business model advice from a company that seems to have squandered all its money (that it made off a Linux IPO, I might add, since there's a nice bit of irony there), and now seems to play the US legal system as a lottery.
I can just see McBride howling in agony, curled in fetal position around a pool of vomit, cradling what remains of his nuts.
I say support SCO employees! They all deserve huge raises!
GODDAMNIT! Every schoolkid knows that it's "i" before "e" EXCEPT AFTER "C"!
What SCO has done is play a legal game, and from what I have heard that is what SCO's management is good at doing. They are also playing the stock game, where what they are currently claiming is driving their stock up, so management can sell off their stock and make a profit.
They stil have not shown one single peice of evidance that shows that this code was in UNIX first and not open source / BSD or Linux. Yeah there are code fragments that do exist, but who owns the copyright?
Guess we shall all have to wait and see who wins he lawsuit and who is left in the end. Their lawsuit almost remids me of the RIAA, only the RIAA has shown that they own the songs, whereas SCO hasn't shown squat. So until SCo can prove that they own the code in Linux I'm not paying them a dime, and when they do prove it I'll switch my Linux box to BSD before I give them a f***** dime!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Linus: 1 SCO: 0
Hmm...if SCO employees are unhirable because of SCO's actions, aren't those employees damaged? If so, should they file suit against SCO for defamation damages?
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
Any resumes which include the Santa Cruz Operation after May of 2003 will be immediately deleted as well.
Er... What does the Santa Cruz Operation have to do with any of this? The SCO Group is the former Caldera. They bought SCO Unix from the Santa Cruz Operation, but they did not buy the Santa Cruz Operation itself. Thus current employees of Tarantella (formerly known as the Santa Cruz Operation) have nothing to with the SCO Group's mess.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
It does seem pretty dangerous to hire ex-SCO teccies, given the company's strong likelihood to later claim that alleged SCO IP was passed to the new employers illegally. However, the teccies in SCO aren't really involved in this issue as it's all purely legal nonsense.
For safety then, it's unfortunate yet necessary to not employ the teccies, but for retribution, blacklist the lawyers for gross incompetence in the advice that they have given their employer, since it is really they that have destroyed SCO.
As for SCO managers, they're clearly beyond all salvation and frankly I can't think of a suitable punishment given the magnitude of their misdeed. None of the usual options seem appropriate, although it's clear that extreme poverty for the rest of their days must form part of it, since greed is the root of their problem.
I know you are, but what am I?
Given the childish tactics of SCO so far, I wouldn't put it past them to attempt to insert a mole, get someone close to kernel developers to see which way they can push development (insert view of Jon Lovitz as the devil. poised over Salman Rushdie's shoulder, suggesting that a line could be made "more blasphemous" on the SNL skit "Iran's most wanted").
So, no, it's not painfully fucking obvious that such a person would be trying to jump ship.
That said, though, the statement by Mr. Torvalds is over the top.
It could be that someone is manipulating the stock. A "short squeeze" to drive all the current shorters busted, followed by a massive sell-off.
Sir:
You having principles was completely unacceptable.
You should have accepted your paycheck and a lifetime of servitude and humilliation. In the economic situation in which you lived of unemployment and no working rights, you should had been grateful of having achieved an education as a lawyer, obviously your dubious moral agenda damaged gravely the people that most needed you your wife and children, which due to your stuborness suffered a life of depravation.
Mr Mandela, sir, you should be thorhougly ashamed of yourself.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Do you all remember when Windows 95 came out? It was ground-breaking. It was astounding. It was grand.
Ok, so, according to you, RMS hasn't backed up his philosophy with action? Dedicating his whole life to encouraging the production of FS, releasing everything he's written under the GPL, doesn't constitute action? What strange world are you from. Some people focus more on the larger picture; that doesn't mean that they aren't committing actions.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Any resumes which include the Santa Cruz Operation after May of 2003 will be immediately deleted as well.
That is truly childish. The real assholes at SCO are the suits and money-grubbing lawyers responsible for this charade.
Don't forget the upper management who hired and direct them.
It's also counterproductive. You WANT any remaining workers to desert - in protest if nothing else.
Something like:
Any resumes for upper management which includes the Santa Cruz Operation after May of 2003, or other positions with start dates after September of 2003 [...]
would set up a "touch it and die" situation for new hires without blocking the desertion.
But the other childish aspect is adding this to a "jobs" web page that also says they have no openings but will file your resume. No credibility there. Let's see if it's still up when they have positions that need filling and are begging for talent to consider them.
Guilt by association is a slippery slope, remember Joe McCarthy?
Interestingly, the opening of the KGB archive after the fall of the Soviet Union shows that quite a few of McCarthy's accusations were true, (especially about the infiltration of the state department).
The problem is he didn't get his ducks in a row and light a fire under the administrators who hired them and the security agencies to ferret them out. Instead he tried to go after them directly by misusing a different legal process (congressional investigation), and set up a situation where mere accusation would destroy a life, used it on a couple hundred personally, and kicked off a bunch of witch hunters using him as a figurehead who used it on thousands of others. (Fortunately he got swatted before his reign of terror became institutionalized.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"So where do you draw the line? someone stuck their tongue out at you in the playground? What if they murdered you?"
Damage studio had any job openings.
Lets face it, the working stiffs at SCO are just happy to have a pay check in todays world. I can see not letting Darl interview for you CEO possition but are going to hold it against a programer who sits in a cube and writes code all day because his CEO is sue happy? If so, you should be the one not given a job.
as has been previously noted I typed to fast, my fingers went faster than my brain. For me that must mean I was typing at over 2WPM
Little Brother, watching the watchers
I almost forgot about that shit. That was a fucked up time.
Look at you, all principled and what-not. It's easy to talk big. When you're looking down the barrell of sudden unemployment in a tight market at your own hand it's a potentially harmful tipping point for your career and those you love. See if your wife cares about your principles when you're missing your second mortgage payment in a row and you can't look your son in the eye because you can't afford your new eyeglasses prescription...
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
Am I the only one who sees this submission by chrisd as just a lame attempt to expose the job position that his company is offering?
Incite the anti-SCO rhetoric among zealots, and then post to slashdot. Instant exposure to thousands!
Talk about questionalbe ethics.....
We are talking about the freedom of people to write software and share it among themselves.
That is one of the most fundamental stands that any person related to the IT industry can take.
Given the fact that everything in a way or another relies on computers, it is clear that this issue is not a small matter that will affect a few derided technophiles. How the SCO fiasco pans out could affect the whole society in its use of one of the most important technologies available today.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I got laid off in early 2002 and it took eight months to find a job, and the job was clear across the country, so yes, folks could lose thier house, and end up homeless or living in a shelter. If you have children, you can't just say 'son I don't agree with my companies polices, so we will be living under a bridge for awhile'.
If SCO employees started looking for a job in April or May, chances are they won't find a new one somewhere else for a while. 422000 jobs were cut last month.
In fact all idiots like damage studios are doing is making it harder for folks from SCO to leave.
Yes when people don't make money they starve.
Damage needs to change thier name to Brain damage studios. because doing crap like this shows me they won't be around very long.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Ideas and solidarity improve full societies and civilizations.
Noooo Mr Mandela, please don't fight apartheid! You have got to feed your children!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Maybe they should be offering jobs to existing, qualified SCO employees. Such a brain drain could have a devastating effect on SCO as a whole.
In light of France's refusal to go along with US action in Iraq, there was a public and governmental outcry against all things French. We had "freedom fries" and French wine and cheese was thrown out. Many people here directly criticized these actions as stupid, even the Slashdot editors voiced their opinions through commentary and "department" titles for articles. The sentiment was that it was stupid to blame the rank and file French citizen or French business for the actions of its government.
The same thing should apply here. Why blame the rank-and-file employee of a company whose management is doing something unpopular? Does Joe Programmer have any influence on the legal machinations of his company? No, he just churns out code for a paycheck. And saying "Well, he should quit his job because his employer is doing those things" is just plain ridiculous and doesn't take reality into consideration. The need to eat and possibly support a family generall trumps most personal beliefs.
Just as you can't expect someone to renounce French citizenship because their government does something you don't like, you can't expect an employee to quit because their company does something you don't like. We are putting the burden on the people who can't do anything about the problem. Blacklisting SCO employees does nothing to the people who actually matter in this case, if they don't give a crap about 90% of the IT industry, I bet they don't care about their own employees.
If you worked for a University and some group was doing research that was highly controversial and that you disagreed with on moral or ethical reasons, would you quit because the organization you also happen to work for allows that sort of thing to go on? Should a math professor quit in protest of some experiment going on in the biology department? Should the actions of the company or larger employer actually be held against the little people who work for them?
It's like blaming the White House janitorial staff for the bad policy decisions made by the President and refusing to hire them because they happened to previously work there.
It's stuff like this that makes me realize that for all the screaming about morals and ethics and fair-play that many people do here, that it's mostly an act, one that they discard as soon as it goes against what they like.
How would ChrisD and the rest of the slashdot editors react if a company posted that they would not hire any programmers connected with X Y or Z open source projects?
-Z
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
This is so beautiful because it so totally destroys SCO's "reason" for not disclosing the infringing code: the argument that they can't disclose it becauses it's proprietary (even though, by their own statements, it's already in the publicly available kernel source code).
Characteristically, Linus curts stright to the crux of the matter.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Hey, my company has new hiring policies which I'll gladly debate on /., the publicity will be cool:
- no-ex SCO employees (POSIX hiring standard)
- no-ex Microsoft employees (non-SCO compatible)
- no-one with a Slashdot karma less than "Excellent"
- no-one who has a personal website (so tacky)
This could start a new fashion in transparent discrimination!
Seriously: the whole idea that you can hire or select people based on such criteria is nonsense and bullshit, but excellent marketing from Damage Studios, who until today were an unknown company working on an unknown game. Today, they have gracefully leapt onto the SCO bandwaggon, and gotten a Slashdot headline. EXCELLENT MARKETING!!
Jeez.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
He's the accused, what would you expect him to say? He's the guilty (alledged) party so it's in his best interest to make the accursor look like the
When someone mentions Stallman I think EMACS and then coherent and measured arguments regarding the freedom to write, dhare, and modify software.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'd suggest thought, that it's too early to start blacklisting SCO employees - the job market is tough, and many people at SCO who may want to leave might not have much option (not everyone have enough savings to take the chance of quitting in this job climate). So instead, I'd think it would be more productive to ENCOURAGE disgruntled SCO people that don't agree with their management to apply. Make it easy for the remaining good guys at SCO to jump ship before they're overrun by the rats...
I can't remember the last piece of software they actually made....so I doubt there are very many code monkeys left at SCO. I always picture it as 20 suits and 20 lawyers running around discussing who to sue next. I could be wrong, they could have millions of coders working for their thousands of customers to keep hundreds of them happy....it would make sense by McBride logic
Last time I checked, SCO only have lawyers left. And nobody likes lawyers. :)
Why isn't there a mod for "Loudmouthed Flaming Retard"?
Writing something does not give you the right to be an annyoying prick. I'd rather do without Emacs and the GCC and ESPECIALLY the FSF clowns entirely than taint my hands with something the likes of stallman wrote. Wait... I DO!
Stallman is a turd. If he handn't written a compiler, someone else, with a 99% chance of being far less annoying about it, would have.
Stallman, his compiler, his editor and his little communist regime can go to fucking hell.
(Did I emulate your retarded flaming well enough there for you? Just wanted to make sure it would sink in.)
hands down, definitely the best flame I've ever read. work of art.
It isn't the "Santa Cruz Operation" anymore.
I live in Santa Cruz. I know (and currently work with) a few people from the Santa Cruz Operation, prior to it being sold to Caldera.
This new entity is called The SCO Group. "SCO" doesn't stand for "Santa Cruz Operation" anymore; it's an acronym without a meaning. This is similar to SGI. They are "SGI" now, not "Silicon Graphics, Inc.".
So, Mr. Damage, Inc., please review your hiring practices. SCO is bad, Santa Cruz Operation is not.
(oh yah, open letter to McBride: You blood sucking fuckwit, get the cypress tree out of your logo - there aren't any cypress trees in Utah and you're defaming one of the more beautiful aspects of the cental coast of California)
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Bottom of chrisd's link:
(C) Copyright 2002-2403 Damage Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The policy of not hiring SCO employees is actually somewhat inteligent, and I would be surprised if other companies did not follow suit....
Bear with me for a moment....
By hiring a SCO employee, and knowing SCO's current mindset (sue for money), I would not be surprised if you got a knock on the door six months down the road from SCO counsel asking for a code audit, thinking that the former employee must have given your company some IP knowledge due to past experience at SCO....
So by not hiring an ex-SCOer, you would be keeping yourself from being exposed to such risks.... not at all unfair.... and good thinking
Who is the master of foxhounds, and who says the hunt has begun? -Pink Floyd
Not necessarily. If you worked at SCO and you're now contributing to another company's codebase, well, SCO has already shown how eager they are to sue anyone who might possibly have infinged on their IP, real or imagined. I wouldn't be eager to give SCO a reason to sue my company at this point.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
the fool who quotes star wars. ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
MoFoQ engraves "Linus Rules" in his pitchfork and flaming torch
People are not 'found dead' in hospitals, goofball.
This might not be (just) about being against SCOs ethics - given Darl's track record, there might be a very real possibility that if someone hires one of "his" people, he could come after that company and somehow claim that they have stolen "his" property (the intellectual property inside that person's head).
But the hiring ban only relates to people employed after May 2003. People who may have quit on April 30 2003 are just as likely to be contaminated with SCO "IP"...
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
Some have morals, and I would only choose to employ those that were at least in the same ballpark as my own.
While unemployed a few years ago (post dot-com burn-off), I personally turned down several job offers that had anything involving Microsoft in the job description (even though I have the unfortunate requisite experience - I, unlike many others, don't choose to fight my "Pavlovian reaction" to such work). I was willing to face the very real possibility of having to pack my things into a U-Haul and move back in with my parents (at 27 having been independent since 18). I have worked for bad employers before - silly, worthless products; bad business plans; inane "teambuilding" - but at least I can settle in and enjoy my work, not fight my OS.
You might have to narrow your search to jobs that might pay a little less or might not buy your alcoholic ass free booze on fridays, but some things are worth fighting for.
Oh, and P.S. - "its" means "thing that is owned by 'it'". "it's" means "it is". Each has it's appropriate time and place.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
From the article: "Since then, SCO has alleged that Linux contains a number of copyright and other intellectual property violations, and it has demanded that Linux users pay it a $700 per processor licensing fee to bring their systems in compliance."
So if I run Linux on a dual processor, does that mean I "owe" SCO $1400? I thought it was $700 per machine...
Be careful! Bears shouldn't consume large furry dogs.
If you figure out where it _actually_ came from, you can double your money!!!
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
in this case. I wasn't specifically addressing the issue at hand. I might even agree that it is not worth it, I'd have to think harder on it to decide.
Thanks for the harsh insults, by the way. Remember, you are posting on Slashdot as well.
Anonymous Coward notes that he should probably create an account to be taken more seriously, and wants to know if chrisd wants a cookie.
I loved Edie Brickel!
This Comment was generated with the Comment-O-Matic for SCO Stories.
Shouldn't we rather help those programmers that want to leave SCO? Why not offer them alternative jobs, so they can quit working for Darl? By making the developers feel even more alienated we might leave them no choice. In the end they might turn against Linux personally, because Linux programmers turned against them.
This might not be a good example, but if you want to release a competing browser, you must make it simple for users of the old one to use yours. You include additional guides for them, allow them to switch to alternate interface, that is similar to the old one etc. You do not tell them they are wrong, because they used the old one!
If you must punish people working at SCO - punish those that *started* working there *after may*
If Damage were located where I live, it would be _illegal_. Is discrimination not treated the same in California?
That is truly childish. The real assholes at SCO are the suits and money-grubbing lawyers responsible for this charade. A code monkey in the trenches who needs a job to pay the bills isn't necessarily an enemy of open source.
... frankly, I don't think it is beneath Microsoft either, though for now they seem to be content to fight their battles by proxy.
We do not know for a fact that the "real" assholes are solely SCO's money-grubbing suits and lawyers. It has been speculated before on what the possible ramifications would be if a SCO or a Microsoft were to deliberately seed the community with Trojan programmers who deliberately lace the kernel with illegal code. While pretty much everyone with an understanding of the free software and open source approach agrees that the very openness of the process, and the traceability of every line of code through historical archives provides a high level of protection and auditability of most free software projects (including the Linux kernel), a private company such as Red Hat, Mandrake, or Joe's proprietary Linux Apps might not enjoy the same level of robustness when faced with that particular kind of denial of service attack.
That being the case, not hiring anyone who has ever worked at SCO (either since X date, as these folks have chosen to do, or ever in their career), does provide some level of protection against such a racket. I think we all know that this scenerio isn't beneath SCO
I certainly wouldn't risk hiring someone who had continued to work at SCO since Darl McBride took over. And that ignores the risk of gratiuitious litigation, which is another SCO characteristic that could very justifiably lead one to believe that hiring anyone who had ever worked at SCO, nee Caldera, puts the company at an unacceptable level of risk.
You may disapprove of their caution, or spin it as "childish," but IMHO I think the caution here is quite warranted, for at least the two reasons cited above, and probably others as well.
Guilt by association is a slippery slope, remember Joe McCarthy?
Yes it is, as we are being painfully reminded of beneath the heels of Baby Bush's administration. But, lest we forget, ignoring the reality of associated people often sharing similiar agendas is tantamount to living in denial and yields terrible consiquences as well. Keeping potential SCO trojan workers, or innocents who become a pretext for litigation because they once worked at SCO, at arms length is arguably both wise and called for. And while that wisdom, or its effectiveness, may be debated, such caution is certainly not "childish."
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Daryl to Linus: All your code are belong to us
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
SCO still using those same debunked slides as the basis of their argument. What's more they've gone back on the BPF thing is only a demo of their code searching capability.
c le .jhtml?articleID=13900143 http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle .jhtml?articleID=13900143&pgno=2
s /9 1398.asp
1. Aug 19 - paraphrase - These are damning examples of copying.
http://news.com.com/2100-1016-5065286.html
Sontag then showed, in a series of slides, Linux code that he claimed has been literally copied from Unix. He said numerous comments, unusual spellings and typographical errors had also been copied directly into Linux.
2. Aug 20 - paraphrase - The criticism of these example slide are incorrect. This is our code.
SCO, though, was steadfast. ''Their assertions are incorrect. The source code is absolutely owned by SCO,'' said Chris Sontag, a company spokesman.
3. Aug 26 - paraphrase - One of the examples (BPF) is just to show our technique for searching. It's not meant to be a damning example. It's not meant to show copying. We won't use it in court. Ignore the wording on the slide that says it's about our damning "proof" of copying.
http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArti
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.
"It was an example of our ability to find moderately changed or obfuscated code, it was not an example we are using in court," Sontag said. "If they want to go off and make a big defense on that, they are welcome to it."
4. Sep 11 - paraphrase - The examples that we showed, are damning.
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Sep/09112003/busines
SCO acknowledges it has not, because of pending litigation, completely revealed its evidence of purloined code showing up in Linux. However, Stowell argues his company has revealed -- through a mix of private screenings where viewers signed nondisclosure pacts and in a public slide show three weeks ago at SCO's trade show in Las Vegas -- sufficiently damning examples backing its claims.
"They keep saying we are not showing the code, that we are being deceptive," Stowell said. "But we have shown it, literally, to hundreds of people now. . . . We have been very forthcoming. The programs we have identified make up about 20 percent of Linux."
Its FREE SOFTWARE. Do you understand what that means? Do you think the silly GPL license stops EVERY company from stealing open source code and using it in their products without telling anyone about it?
If morons decide to labor and produce code for free and place it on the internet for anyone to use then they can't bitch when someone does just exactly that. No damn license is going to stop some company or some person from doing what they want to do. The best you can do is protect yourself and your own work by NOT releasing it to the world willy nilly but if you don't even respect yourself enough to protect your own code then why should anyone else?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
The real reason why anyone shouldn't hire former SCO programmers is not as an emotional knee-jerk reaction against SCO (mis)manangement. It's because those programmers now carry a tremendous amount of legal liability baggage with them wherever they go. They now possess in their brains the internal trade secrets that are the IP of SCO and hence, their knowledge is now "polluted" by SCO's IP and any code they produce from now on for subsequent employers, could possibly bring litigation from SCO against their new employers. SCO has already displayed substantial evidence that they are of a highly litiguous nature, and anyone who hires former SCO programmers suddenly may find themselves the target of litigation, so it makes good business sense for them to not consider any former SCO people for hire due to this hazard.
The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model.
This debate about Open Source software is healthy and beneficial. It offers long-term benefits to the industry by addressing a new business model in advance of wide-scale adoption by customers. But in the last week of August two developments occurred that adversely affect the long-term credibility of the Open Source community, with the general public and with customers.
The first development followed another series of Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on SCO, which took place two weeks ago. These were the second and third such attacks in four months and have prevented Web users from accessing our web site and doing business with SCO. There is no question about the affiliation of the attacker - Open Source leader Eric Raymond was quoted as saying that he was contacted by the perpetrator and that "he's one of us." To Mr Raymond's partial credit, he asked the attacker to stop. However, he has yet to disclose the identity of the perpetrator so that justice can be done.
No one can tolerate DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks in this Information Age economy that relies so heavily on the Internet. Mr Raymond and the entire Open Source community need to aggressively help the industry police these types of crimes. If they fail to do so it casts a shadow over the entire Open Source movement and raises questions about whether Open Source is ready to take a central role in business computing. We cannot have a situation in which companies fear they may be next to suffer computer attacks if they take a business or legal position that angers the Open Source community. Until these illegal attacks are brought under control, enterprise customers and mainstream society will become increasingly alienated from anyone associated with this type of behavior.
The second development was an admission by Open Source leader Bruce Perens that UNIX System V code (owned by SCO) is, in fact, in Linux, and it shouldn't be there. Mr Perens stated that there is "an error in the Linux developer's process" which allowed Unix System V code that "didn't belong in Linux" to end up in the Linux kernel (source: ComputerWire, August 25, 2003). Mr Perens continued with a string of arguments to justify the "error in the Linux developer's process." However, nothing can change the fact that a Linux developer on the payroll of Silicon Graphics stripped copyright attributions from copyrighted System V code that was licensed to Silicon Graphics under strict conditions of use, and then contributed that source code to Linux as though it was clean code owned and controlled by SGI. This is a clear violation of SGI's contract and copyright obligations to SCO. We are currently working to try and resolve these issues with SGI.
This improper contribution of Unix code by SGI into Linux is one small example that reveals fundamental structural flaws in the Linux development process. In fact, this issue goes to the very heart of whether Open Source can be trusted as a development model for enterprise computing software. The intellectual property roots of Linux are obviously flawed at a systemic level under the current model. To date, we claim that more than one million lines of Unix System V protected code have been contributed to Linux through this model. The flaws inherent in the Linux process must be openly addressed and fixed.
At a minimum, IP sources should be checked to assure that copyri
It's absolutely critical that the Open Source Community counter one-sided stories like the one written by Reuters yesterday.
. ht ml
/.'ers to write Reuters to get their editors to take a second look at their story:
. ht ml
- 09 -10-016-26-OS-CD-CYl _eben_moglen_position _paper.pdfw .htmla ckgroun der.htmm l
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030909/tech_sco_linux_1
I would encourage all
Here's what I wrote them. Please feel free to send my letter verbatim, or something similar. The more feedback they get, the less likely they will be to do a one-sided treatment of this in the future.
To: editors@reuters.com
I am writing in reference to the September 9 article on SCO's current lawsuit and critique of the Open Source community.
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030909/tech_sco_linux_1
Your article failed to provide any response from members of the Open Source community, or to articulate the views of the community, and as such was an entirely one-sided treatment of the topic.
The author lamely suggested that Open Source leaders were "unavailable for comment" either unaware of, or deliberately ignoring the mountains of responses generated in recent days, weeks, and months regarding the lawsuit, and in particular, and McBride's letters. Given the lopsided nature of the article, I suspect that the author did not try very hard to find responses from the Open Source community regarding SCO's claims.
In the interest of balance, I would strongly encourage you to write another story articulating the Open Source movement's response to McBride's letter.
For references in which the Open Source, and other communities, notably the Open Group which holds the UNIX trademark, have responded to SCO's claims in general, and to the particular letter being reported on in yesterday's article please review the following references:
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2003
http://www.osdl.org/docs/osd
http://www.perens.com/SCO/SCOSlideSho
http://www.opengroup.org/comm/press/unix-b
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sco/sco.ht
Please give the following email addresses to authors doing future research on SCO's claims regarding the Open Source community.
moglen [at] columbia [dot] edu Eben Moglen
esr [at] thyrsus [dot] com Eric Raymond
bruce [at] perens [dot] com Bruce Perens
rms [at] stallman [dot] org Richard Stallman
torvalds [at] transmeta [dot] com Linus Torvalds
if the code in the kernel is anything like Linus' letter, I think I'll start reading the kernel.
Nice going, Linus - treat them for what they are. (whatever that might be)
Any company that has a former SCO or Caldera programmer on staff has an open vulnerability on all projects those employees work on, in that SCO just might decide to sue them on the basis that the former employee may have tainted their code with SCO IP...
Linus copied my open source program and based on it made another one. But gave me no credits. thank you good linus.
Do you (plural) have any idea how many people work in the weapons industry (WI) or are in some way paid, funded or whatever you want to call it by the WI?
People rationalize.
In the case of working for the WI I don't sympathize, but that's just personal. In the case of SCO I think one shouldn't be too judgemental and look at this case by case.
Maybe people think good jobs for nice people who make the world a better place are for grabs. I don't think so, and I don't see many people making an effort to ensure their employer is ethically sound. I don't like that, but it's only human. We think about ourselves, spouses, children first.
IMO there are far worse people to work for than SCO (from an ethical point of view)
And from the other side of things:
I can see why a company wouldn't hire people with certain backgrounds, but I fail to see any ethics being involved.
IMO it's - apart from maybe prudent policy - a pointless gesture aimed at the wrong people.
And I'm sure SCO management couldn't care less.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
*Begin ominous music . . . *
McBride: Good evening gentlemen. It appears that your pieces of your planet's core have belong to us. We demand complete control of your planet or else we will destroy you.
Linus: Where is your proof!
McBride: *Hands over bag of rocks and an arrowhead* Here 'ya go. Now hand it over!
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
Just tell me what I need to remove from my linux machine so that I don't have to pay $199 for this, and be done with it.
Obama = Socialism.
"... and now seems to play the U.S. legal system like a lottery."
SCO's forum 2003 took place in vegas...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
That SCO is so full of bullshit that by repeating and denying any particular version of their fantasy-land claims, we only give credence to them. This is the letter than ESM and Bruce should have written. Short, to the point, and utterly dismissive.
But it could be even better. I hope that from now on, if open/free advocates decide to bite Darl's trolling, that they restrain themselves to just saying "Identify the infringing source," and not one word more. Unless it's "fuckwad".
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Note: I am NOT saying this is what is occuring in this particular instance. I have no particular insight on why Damage Studios would take this position, only that it's not necessarily a childish one. If I had to, though, I'd bet that their rationale is, in fact, childish, and not rational. *GRYNN*
...anactofgod...
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
Making the choice of an OS a determining factor in whether or not you take a job you need to sustain yourself and or your family is like deciding not to work for a company because they print their forms in black ink instead of blue ink. Its utterly fuckign retarded and displays a startling lack of maturity in someone in their late 20's early 30's.
If I were your parents I wouldn't let you move back home for something that childish. If you quit your job to protest worker abuse, fraud, discrimination or other criminal instances then yes your action would be noble. But because you couldn't use Linux on your workstation? Boo fucking hoo.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
"So when do you draw the line? What if your company was making dangerous chemicals and not disposing of them properly? What if they were making chemical weapons? What if they were selling chemical weapons to terrorists?"
The point some of the above posters have made is that you can't draw the line, if people like chrisd will find you guilty by association. If more companies did what chrisd did, then SCO employees CAN'T jump ship, even if they want to.
Why help SCO? What you SHOULD be doing is giving SCO employees INCENTIVES to leave!!!!
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
(*Long Painful Sigh*)o ws_server_2003_doubles_active_sites_since_july_5_w ere_previosuly_running_linux.html
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/09/10/wind
Seriously, though, a fairly new company which hasn't released any products and won't for at least another year and a half decides it's running short of publicity and investor capital, so somebody there comes up with the halfbrained idea of making a meaningless hiring policy revision (what are the chances somebody from SCO would have applied to Damage anyway? Just about zero) in order to get mentioned at a popular tech news site. Slashdot editors need to stop catering to people like this.
Guilt by association is a slippery slope, remember Joe McCarthy?
SCO has been stating to the world that they are a healthy company, etc., etc., etc. Check here for a list of SCO insiders who are selling SCO stock. According to the official disclosures, there has been no insider buying in the last six months.
Let's not forget that SCO is trying to hijack the work of thousands.
It's volunteer work. Get over it. Nobody is hurting over this. If all those thousands were making a living doing this, that'd be a different beast entirely. Even so, the point is moot because it's ridiculous to expect people to quit because of some silly Linux battle.
You people are so out of touch. You have no perspective. Months of daily SCO articles has affected you to the point of foaming-at-the-mouth fanatics who think this is the biggest epic corporate battle there ever was. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but very, very few people even give much of a shit about this. It's not that legendary, it won't have major consequences (if SCO wins, people will just change the infringing code and go on), and it's not that big a deal.
They are trying to collect from all Linux users. That's rather disturbing. It's a little different than a smear campaign against Linux.
It's still no reason to have your kids starve. You do realize that jobs are scarce, right? I bet you're not married, don't have children, and probably haven't even gotten out of college yet, or at the least have had only a few jobs. Sorry, but you're being ignorant.
Also, let's not forget that Chrisd is not required to hire you just because you worked at SCO.
Nobody said he was. What's your point? It's still childish for him to not hire if you've worked at SCO.
His note doesn't say whether he has actually had any SCO applicants either. No one at SCO is going to go hungry because Chris isn't hiring.
Doesn't change the point made that it is childish.
Next.
"Sufferin' succotash."
> Give me a clue to your identity and we'll see how much rejection YOU can handle.
If you don't know who Chrisd is now, you can't give out too much "rejection."
The SCO situation exists now and is a problem now.
The 09/11/2001 terrorist attacks were 2 years ago. Get over it.
Are you so stupid as to compare apartheid to the SCO/Linux debacle? You truly are ignorant. Leave you parents' basement and get some perspective please.
Seriously, I read through the letter and have to concur with everything you've written. Unfortunately, neither my opinion nor yours is going to even elicit a response from SCO, never mind a change of heart.
If SCO were sincere on any point, they'd be replying to letters written in genuine sincerity, where genuine, non-hostile questions are posed.
So far, letters like yours have typically been met with a deathly silence. We don't have dialogue, we have two asynchronous monologoues in opposite directions. (Us responding has no meaning if our output is sent to
If this is to depart the Twilight Zone and enter the real world, we need more than merely good arguments. We need to make it impossible for this non-resolution state of being to continue.
SCO distribute a lot of GNU software with SCO UnixWare, for example. If SCO are in violation of the GPL, then the FSF could probably fire off a "Cease and Desist" letter. This wouldn't "hurt" SCO, but might get their shareholders to push for a faster resolution. And, in the end, the shareholders are the ones who can make or break SCO.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
SCO is hardly any different. Put the corporate officers' pictures on playing cards, capture them and ship them to Guantanimo Bay (starting with the Information Minister). The rest of the evil SCO empire is just a bunch of geeks like us.
Actually, we refuse to do business with the Boies lawfirm as well...
... Okay, Damage Studios... You refuse to do business with us. Okay. And you are? ... and we care, why?"
...
"Hello, this is the Boies law firm. Can I help you?
It isn't really Guilt by association if you are part of the problem...I think this is a measured, appropriate response to SCOs attack on free software. Note the date is well after they launched the lawsuit, giving employees time enough to go find new jobs.
Sure, especially these days. That'll show em!
What if you owned their stock at one point?
Never mind. It's so silly
AFAIK, transmeta, when in the secretive startup mode, did background checks on potential employees candidates.
If they worked in intel, they were rejected.
That's an easy question to answer, if you are like me and not independently wealthy and work because you want too..
The 'line' is where it does harm to me. Simple as that.
If what is taking place at my company doesn't harm me, then I wont be leaving with out someplace to go first.
That doesn't mean I wont LOOK for another place, but I'm not stupid enough to jump with out a place to go.
Eating is a nice thing to do. You cant eat morals.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
get them shutdown at last.
thank you.
One statement in the article posting had nothing to do with the other! Who gives a rat's heiney if some non-company won't hire SCO employees?!
THAT'S NOT NEWS! IT'S AN ADVERTISING PLUG!!
Not hiring SCO employees? This BS with SCO is most likely the VPs and legal staff doing. Don't blame the regular employees for any of this. It's like saying you are not going to hire MS employees because of what their leadership has done to the software world.
You might say that the SCO employees should go find other jobs in response to what their company is doing but lets not forget the economic reality right now. There aren't a million jobs out there for them to get.
Actually, truth be told, I am absolutely sure that the janitors at Red Hat are thoroughly familiar with Windows(TM). They must clean the Windows(TM) so that the Office(TM) looks tidy.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Disregarding the IP reasons, etc. mentioned in other posts and concentrating on the "moral" reasons:
1) SCO is doing in itself. They went after the one company (IBM) that they didn't have a snowball's chance in hell at winning against. This is pump and dump. Nobody sues IBM for three billion on a weak foundation and expects to walk away. You want to stay on board this ship whose captain and officers are leaving you for dead?
2) The human body is not just a brain. The brain is carried around and supported by many other organs, and a company is no different. A company is a team. Without programmers, their tech support folks can't get bugs resolved. Without receptionists, SCO has no local PR. Without marking/sales, SCO can't make money. Without PR, SCO can't speak to the public. All of these people are SCO. The folks who think that a programmer is not related to what SCO does are the ones who are disconnected from reality. A company is a group effort, and as long as you have a way out and don't take it, you're consenting to the group's actions.
"Business is business" is absolute bullshit. Business is people affecting people, often screwing them for all they're worth. Just because you join a company doesn't make you an blameless droid.
IP/legal issues aside (which for me are enough), if you can't prove to me that you tried hard to get away from SCO, hell no I wouldn't hire you. If you're so detached from the company you work for that you don't care about what they do, why would I want a detached droid like you working in my company anyway?
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
It's like saying gential warts is sexy. Obviously some people are stupid enough to license. I'm afraid I can't pay your license fee as I do not use your SCO Unix product. Ok, I'll stop now.
This Comment was generated with the Comment-O-Matic for SCO Stories.
Talk about side-tracking the gist of the headline, you toss in that reference to "Not Hiring SCO Employees" to insure nobody actually talks about the actual response?
What editorial concept does that fall under?
This sig is the express property of someone.
I mean- if they're leaving the company, maybe it's because they realize that what SCO is doing is baseless, and they want no part of it.
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
- Write a song about Linux, and include some source code in the lyrics.
- Build up enough interest in it so that some record label offers a deal. Major labels only, please.
- Play the hell out of the song. Get all of Slashdot to buy multiple copies, get it preinstalled on Linux distros, etc.
- Profit!!! (but we're not done yet)
- Tell SCO that the second verse contains System V code.
Things will just, well, work themselves out. On there own. Easy.I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
And PDF is worse than Word in that editors aside from Adobe's own for-cost Acrobat are much harder to come by (anybody know of any? I see Open Office 1.1 can save in PDF, but nothing about editing it - half-way there).
;-). Seems like they would want more generic formats besides text, such as RTF, or HTML. Oh well...
Also, PDF files are geared to viewing in printed format, not on-screen without self-abusive font/scrolling manipulation. Actually, if I was running that site, I would also immediately trash PDF, too (my pet peeve - I HATE PDF
What is this "EEO" you're going on about? s/EEO/EOE/g
Furry cows moo and decompress.
BSD is a license, GPL is a philosophy.
... BSD isnt dying, but it is loosing.
Most coders dont really buy into the Stallman philosophy, but they like the GPL because it is reciprocal
Sorry, kids, we have to give up the house and move into an apartment. We'll have to sell a bunch of stuff at a yerd sale to make the squeeze, but that's ok, because we need the cash. Your mom won't be able to look after you all day, so it's off to daycare while she's being underpaid at a 9 to 5 job. We were hoping to put some cash away so you could go to the college of your dreams, but when that time comes, you'll have a couple semi-local mediocre state schools to choose from.
You see, daddy got offered a job at SCO, but he didn't take it, and there's not much else out there at the moment. We have daddy's health, self-esteem and career to worry about.
The company that is not hiring SCO people IS NOT HIRING ANYBODY :"We do not have any openings at this time."
You will all be shot.
so that SCO and M$ can fight each other.
The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sand the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model. This debate about Open Source software is healthy and beneficial. It offers long-term benefits to the industry by addressing a new business model in advance of wide-scale adoption by customers. But in the last week of August two developments occurred that adversely affect the long-term credibility of the Open Source community, with the general public and with customers. The first ell proprietary software, development followed another series of Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on SCO, which took place two weeks ago. These were the second and third such attacks in four months and have prevented Web users from accessing our web site and doing business with SCO. There is no question about the affiliation of the attacker - Open Source leader Eric Raymond was quoted as saying that he was contacted by the perpetrator and that "he's one of us." To Mr Raymond's partial credit, he asked the attac legal position that angers the Open Source community. Until these illegal attacks are brought under control, enterprise customers and mainstream society will become increasingly alienated from anyone associated with this type of behavior. The second development was an admission by Open Source leader Bruce Perens that UNIX System V ker to stop. However, he has yet to disclose the identity of the perpetrator so that justice can be done. No one can tolerate DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks in this Information Age economy that relies so heavily on the Internet. Mr Raymond and the entire Open Source community need to aggressively help the industry police these types of crimes. If they fail to do so it casts a shadow over the entire Open Source movement and raises questions about whether Open Source is ready to take a central role in business computing. We cannot have a situation in which companies fear they may be next to suffer computer attacks if they take a business orcode (owned by SCO) is, in fact, in Linux, and it shouldn't be there. Mr Perens stated that there is "an error in the Linux developer's process" which allowed Unix System V code that "didn't belong in Linux" to end up in the Linux kernel (source: ComputerWire, August 25, 2003). Mr Perens continued with a string of arguments to justify the "error in the Linux developer's process." However, nothing can change the fact that a Linux developer on the payroll of Silicon Graphics stripped copyright attributions from copyrighted System V code that was licensed to Silicon Graphics under strict conditions of use, and then contributed that source code to Linux as though it was clean code owned and controlled by SGI. This is a clear violation of SGI's contract and copyright obligations to SCO. We are currently working to try and resolve these issues with SGSource software model is at a critical stage of development. The Open Source community has its roots in counter-cultural ideals - the notion of "Hackers" against Big Business - but because of recent advances in Linux, the community now has the opportunity to develop software for mainstream I. This improper contribution of Unix code by SGI into Linux is one small example that reveals fundamental structural flaws in the Linux development process. In fact, this issue goes to the very heart of whether Open Source can be trusted as a development model for enterprise computing software. The intellectual property roots of Linux are obviously flawed at a systemic level under the current model. To date, we claim that more tha
I have one small, but perhaps important point to make regarding your question:
"Surely, you don't dispute that IBM owns the relevant copyrights and patents to NUMA, JFS, and RCU? Or do you dispute Section 2 of Exhibit C on your web site, the ATT-IBM sideletter agreement, which states in part, "we (ATT) agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you (IBM) are owned by you"?
The ATT-IBM sideletter agreement does not apply to code that Sequent developed. The Sequent code is goverened by whatever license agreement that Sequent had. We have not seen that agreement, so it is impossible to know for sure if IBM still owns the Sequent-written code that it contributed Linux.
Of course there is still an arguement to be made that the Sequent written code is not derivitive or addition to System V and therefore is not bound by those license conditions, but we can't rely on IBM's sideletter to resolve it.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Ah, the United States of America. The richest country in the world. In which people are genuinely and reasonably afraid that if they lose their job they will be out in the street begging for quarters.
What does this society spend its money on, if not looking after each other? Surely they wouldn't want to spend, say, $87 billion on some other project this year while Sarah begs for change?
Kicking the coolies in the trenches in the teeth like this is very disgusting.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
chrisd notes that his company is making SCO employees unhireable.
given the current job market, it is asinine to bar people from consideration for keeping a job at a place like SCO rather than go unemployed. i'm surprised they aren't turning down people from amazon over one-click and people from M$FT while they're at it.
most anybody who would be applying to a job at that place would have had NOTHING to do with the decisions that led to the bogus SCO lawsuits.
why not make a real statement against something more meaningful? for example, people who chose to work for companies that have a bad environmental record or displace native populations in south america, and so on.
Pro bono work by an attorney is work done for free (usually considered to be providing legal help to the poor, disadvantaged, or others unable to secure access to legal resources), what you mean is work done on contingency (contingent upon the attorney winning).
Yeah, I posted this about 2.5 minutes ago elsewhere. This quote again comes to mind, from American Beauty:
Lester Burnham: You don't think it's kinda weird & fascist?
Caroyln Burnham: Possibly, but you don't want to be unemployed.
Lester Burnham: Oh well, alright, let's all sell our souls and work for Satan because it's more convenient that way.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
You fucked up. Next life, keep your dick in your pants and lay off the pot until you can save 12 months of living expenses. If you have children and you don't have at least that much in the bank you are living way beyond your means. Stop posting to slashdot and start making something of yourself, because as of today daddy aint a man.
What you are truly worth comes not from what you do when times are easy and everyone is on your side. Your true worth comes from what you do when the chips are down. It's easy to be on the bandwagon.
When you feel that all of your choices are already made because of the circumstances, then so they are, and you can decisively label yourself a tool; for you no longer make decisions about where you go or what you do, you are a pawn being moved by someone else's hand.
theed
Sir, you have a dizzying intellect....
Bill Gates : Suck my dick McBridge
McBride : Yes sir, ur windozes sucks too
He's a foreigner to us Americans, so he obviously knows the language better than we do!
Homer: What do I need to learn English for? I'm never going to England!
I'm often a Grammar Nazi myself, but the inflexible demand that no one use a preposition with which to end a clause (heh) forces a difficult construction, then it's a dumb rule.
A young man from the South did well in school and earned a scholarship to Harvard. His first day on campus, he was walking across the quad, and came upon a cluster of preppies. He stopped to ask directions:
to which one of them replied: to which the Southerner replied:[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
"Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission,"
This can be taken in at least three ways. First is the obvious - submission of hte letter. Second (and hilarious to me) would be a submission of code for the kernel. Third is, as the parent poster said, submissing (if that's a word).
Any other meanings out there?
It's EEO in Australia, more often paired as EEO/AA (Affirmative Action).
i don't read slashdot anymore.
I think that was just a press release. Real news stories are generally not centered around a single person's quotes to that degree.
Hey, dipshit, why don't you go read the regulations. Protection is offered to everyone _regardless_ of age, sex, religion, etc.. That means the EEOC protects _everyone_. A law student who fell off the truck yesterday could successfully argue this case.
Sec. 1607.3 Discrimination defined: Relationship between use of selection procedures and discrimination.
A. Procedure having adverse impact constitutes discrimination unless justified. The use of any selection procedure which has an adverse impact on the hiring, promotion, or other employment or membership
opportunities of members of any race, sex, or ethnic group will be considered to be discriminatory and inconsistent with these guidelines, unless the procedure has been validated in accordance with these guidelines, or the provisions of section 6 below are satisfied.
And this is exactly why Sun (for example) are so *paranoid* about gettng a complete and verified employment record when you apply for work. They don't want to take the risk.
..safely kept in /dev/null.
Seriously, if Damage developed software with someone who worked at SCO conceivably SCO if it got even a little bit crazier might see that as a potential revenue source, based either on ancient code, gpl code, the employee's (probably secret) nda, patents, trademarks, pending lawsuits against various companies, etc. I feel for the code monkeys but even when that company dies it probably will still be one of the undead, liable to walk the graveyard at midnight from time to time. It is a bit of fear nobody needs. Maybe the employees should sue SCO?
To "discriminate" simply means to selectively choose something or somethings from a set, based on some selection criteria. The problem is that it is a word that became more widely used in association with unfair types of discrimination, as the civil rights movement caught on. Thus some people now think that connotation is actually part of the definition, when it is not.
If you pick one programming language to use in your next project, you are discriminating. If you pick the big, ripe orange from the bin at the supermarket, passing over the green ones, you are discriminating. And if you choose an new employee from the set of available applicatants using race as a criteria, you are discriminating - NOT because of the fact that it's unfair, but because you are selecting from a set based on some criteria. Discrimination can be fair or unfair depending on whether the criteria should be relevant or not. If hiring for a job as an IT manager, then race, sex, and appearance are not relevant factors and it is unfair to discriminate based on them. But, if hiring for a job as an actor to play the role of Winston Churchil in a movie, then race, sex, and appearance are very relevant factors, and it is perfectly fair to discriminate based on them. If a skinny black woman wanted to play Winston Churchil, it would be perfectly fair to discriminate against her because of race, sex, and appearance.
It's not the act of discrimination that's unfair, or illegal. It's the act of doing it based on criteria that are not relevant to the task that's unfair and illegal.
(In summary, I'm not really arguing one way or the other about your point with regard to ex SCO employees, just saying you're using the terms wrong.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
"The ATT-IBM sideletter agreement does not apply to code that Sequent developed. The Sequent code is goverened by whatever license agreement that Sequent had."
This detail is *extremely* debatable, to the point of being moot for the purposes of my response.
A little comparison is in order here: when IBM took over Lotus, they maintained a corporate identity for it as a subsidiary company; when IBM took over Sequent, Sequent's corporate identity was dissolved into the IBM organizational structure.
One could quite reasonably argue that, even if SCO owns "derivative" control rights over Sequent's original work associated with Unix System V, those rights were *contractual*, did not *cede* ownership of the code base to SCO, and that those rights either dissolved with Sequent's corporate structure, or, having been purchased and now therefore "owned" by IBM, fall under IBM's contracts with SCO.
In other words, I doubt SCO's attempts to treat the Sequent obligations as separate and more restricted that IBM's will succeed.
France said they wouldn't invade Iraq because they had not been convinced the evidence presented confirmed Iraq was immediate threat to use weapons of mass destruction against other groups/nations. Now we know that France was correct. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. France has been proven correct that weapons inspections were all that was necessary to remaove WoMD from Iraq. SCO is attempting to STEAL the linux operating system through slight of hand and abuse of legal loopholes. People that work for SCO are co-conspirators. The connection between SCO employees and the SCO management fits RICO requirements to establish an organized criminal conspiracy. Damage doesn't want thieves working for them. I don't blame them.
Maybe they should hire con artists too. Especially guys who ran countless payroll scams where they didn't even show up to work, but still managed to get paid. When they hire these guys, why even check up on them? After all they're honest, they'll show up to work every day, so you can just mail the check to their house. If they show up on payroll several times, that just means they're doing more work.
Who needs ethics? I'm a little short on cash today. Maybe I'll just start a construction company and blow up a few buildings to drum up some business. I should really start living the "capitalist" way(tm). [1]
SCO is not a company who just released a few chemicals into a river and gave a few locals diarrhea for a day. If I were hiring someone to work in a factory which used dagerous chemicals, and a prospective employee had misused chemicals in such a way as to get people killed, I probably wouldn't hire them. SCO's actions are the "IP" equivalent of dumping radioactive waste directly into a town's drinking water, and hundreds (if not thousands) die from it.
Even if they had some shred of legitimacy to their claims, they are still obviously dishonest by any reasonable account, and they mishandled the situation big time. I wouldn't trust them to hold my shit. In fact, hiring an ex-employee of SCO is like putting a bomb in your office, you never know when it might go off. Someday SCO may come knocking at your door, saying because of some absurd contract they have with their ex-employee, they now own all your "IP."
[1] Note: this is not the way free markets are supposed to work. This is the Soviet interpetation of capitalism, not the way any reasonable country would implement it.
This has probably been said already, but after reading your post I have no patience to read the follow-ups.
You say out of one side of your mouth that SCO employees are lacking ethics by continuing to work at SCO. You say out of the other side of your mouth that nobody should hire any present or former SCO employees.
So which is it? They're screwed if they stay at SCO, they're screwed if they leave. At least if they stay they can get a paycheck and keep their kids fed and mortgages paid.
Based on comments from people like you, I'd say SCO employees ARE "conscripted". Folks like you and Chris DiBona are endorsing screwing folks whose only fault is that their management decided to wage a legal war. In case you don't understand how these things work, employees have no say whatsoever in such actions.
I seem to recall a certain large Linux company going public -- the first one to do so, actually -- and having its stock price shoot up something like 600% in the first day. I also seem to recall that said IPO has been investigated by the SEC for alleged improper manipulation of the price of its stock, the main effort being extended through the bank that said Linux company chose and worked closely with to handle its IPO. Unless I'm mistaken, said bank had to pony up some cash to get the SEC off its back. I don't recall where the legal battles and/or accusations against the Linux company's execs (at the time) stand, but does it really matter? That company became one of the poster children of the dot-bomb era, it helped cast a pall over NASDAQ, and just generally stank up the place to the point where many folks wished the company had never gone public. I'm indifferent as I dumped the stock at $130/share (bought 'em at $30/share), but that's beside the point.
If the company is questionable and employees are considered "part of the problem" just by working there, what does that say about you, Chris? Can I blame you for alleged sleaziness and contributing to the downfall of tech stocks? And what about Damage Studios: was it funded from money made off of this sleazy IPO?
u kno- $CO has dealings with M$, and it is my belief that good ol' Billy Boy is either behind the whole thing or at least laughing hysterically from the sidelines.
Esoteric reference.
Along with everyone else she's probably cashed out her stock already.
So are you saying that rights Sequent did not have were transferred to IBM when Sequent was purchased? I'm not willing to concede the point that SCO only had contractual rights and not ownership, since as I said before the details of Sequent's contract are not known publicly, yet.
Until you know what that contract says, you would be foolish to dismiss this issue as moot.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Phreidom,
My apologies, I thought I was discussing the issue with someone who had already done the research.
The Sequent contracts are available at SCO's website as Exhibits F & G. the URLS are
http://www.sco.com/ibmlawsuit/exhibitf.pdf
and
http://www.sco.com/ibmlawsuit/exhibitg.pdf
"...the details of Sequent's contract are not known publicly, yet"
Well, they are actually, as referenced above. At the least they are known as far as the courts know them and these are the documents SCO intends to rest its case on.
They are basically identical to the first two licenses that IBM signed with ATT, Exhibits A & B, at the same site. Sequent did not have an additional license such as IBM's sideletter agreement, but as part of a clarification request from Berkely, ATT sent out letters to all the System V licensees, in the mid-late 80's I believe, granting them all "ownership of derivative works created by or for them". Essentially the same wording as section 2 of IBM's sideletter agreement.
Sequent signed it's license with ATT in '85 and would have been one of the recipients of this letter, which SCO interestingly enough, has not included amongst its submitted evidentiary exhibits.
So, Sequent had the same rights to its own derivative work as IBM, despite not having a sideletter agreement.
"Until you know what that contract says, you would be foolish to dismiss this issue as moot."
Well, seeing as SCO has submitted two contracts with Sequent to the courts, and that I've read them, I think that the conditions you've set for me being foolish to regard the issue as moot have been over-ridden. You may argue that we don't know yet whether SCO has other contracts to refute these points, and my response would be that neither do the courts, since they evidently haven't been submitted as exhibits.
"So are you saying that rights Sequent did not have were transferred to IBM when Sequent was purchased?"
Ah. Now I get it: you're a troll. That's a really twisted way of interpreting my argument. What I am saying is that even if Sequent hadn't already rec'd those rights from ATT, Sequent would have inherited the IBM's rights when it was incorporated int IBM's corporate structure.
Please don't bother us again with you're "insights" until you've actually read the contracts.
You got me: I had not yet seen that contract. However your evidence supports my position: Exhibit F says Sequent can prepare derivative works "provided the resulting materials are treated hereunder as part of the original SOFTWARE PRODUCT."
Now you say that Sequent would have received a clarification letter from AT&T in the mid-late 80's granting them ownership of derivative works, and as soon as I see that I will consider the issue closed, and I will be very happy. But that letter is the kind of thing that I say we have not seen in the public yet, and like any other contracts SCO might have, it has not been submitted to the courts. I may have had a fact wrong, but my overall point is still true. SCO's claim to ownership of Sequent's derivative works has not yet been refuted with legal documents.
I will stand by my statement that IF Sequent wrote RCU, etc. under a contractual agreement that granted ownership of that work to the Licensor (AT&T->Novell->SCO) THEN Sequent can't sell it to IBM. The idea that Sequent could inherit contract rights from IBM that would retroactively take ownership away from AT&T/Novell/SCO is nonsense to me. IBM's agreement with AT&T was for code IBM wrote, not for code Sequent wrote.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
As near as I can tell from their claims, they're really only asserting ownership over kernel versions above 2.4.13 (which they distribute on their FTP site, at least as of a week or so ago), though they are trying to promote widespread FUD about owning everything from malloc() on.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks