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SCO's Plan Examined
kevin@ank.com writes "In the best expose I've read since the original Halloween documents, Groklaw has links and analysis of Renaissance Ventures' rationale for investing in The SCO Group. Among other misrepresentations, SCO convinced Ren that SCO owned the root of the entire UNIX tree, and that Linux was just one branch of that tree. Linux gets a SCO tax... forever; or worst case, if Linux gets killed in the process, then so be it. Renaissance also estimated that IBM would have settled with SCO last April under the strength of SCO's claims, and the threat of terminating their UNIX license. Oops."
We have a vested interest to ensure that SCO does not win in its attempts of litigation. We have created a shadow company that hosts our Linux servers. So if someone gets sued by SCO it will be the newly-formed company which will simply fold and we as the customer will be able to get to our data and purchase UNIX or Windows servers to continue the work.
Which is nice.
So, according to that BS, Apple now owes SCO money too?
It's a gamble, with a potential return of 100/1. What the hype is leaving out is that most people/businesses will simply switch, if that happens sell at a peak and still expect a potential 20/1 return.
...when the SCO buble finally "bursts" and angry investors go back to institutions like Ren, Ren can say "we were deceived", and maybe we will yet get the fraud trial that the executives of SCO deserve to live through.
OK, I am confused. This chart seems to indicate that there is a direct link from Unix to Xenix to Minix to Linux. Now, based on Linus Torvalds own writing, the original codebase had no Minix in it. The only relation to Unix was in its look and feel. He wrote Linux because he thought Minix sucked. I am trying to figure out how they rationalized this one out! BTW, a history of Linux can be found here.
I see two lines running from Linux to Unixware, but none in the other direction.
If Ren says "we were deceived", then Stimpy can just say "We sure were, Ren!", and... wait, somebody's already done that one.
Where does accountability for gross incompetence come into the equation though? Since IANAL, I can't begin to address this in a legal sense, but if I tell you "kicking your little brother's head in will make him smarter and transform him into Megatron" (which has a lot more backing it than SCO's claims, from what I hear), then you do it and he dies, obviously I'm a bad person for filling your mind with utter lies. When do you become liable, though? You either have to be lying when you say that you didn't expect the kid to die, or a complete idiot to have believed me. Well, Ren is kicking their kid brother (by telling investors that SCO is a good investment option, really!) and when the kid (the investor collective) dies a horrible death, it seems like the same thing to me.
If they honestly say that they were deceived, they're much too dim to be in business. If they can't say that honestly, they're crooks. Would you like to be a thief or a mouth-breathing moron today, sir?
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
From the mind-boggling link:
:). Why did Eric give SCO permission? I thought he actually liked UNIX.
Original UNIX history chart created by Eric Levenez. Copyright (C) 1996-2003, Eric Levenez. January 2, 2003. Used with permission.
I've seen this tree before, printed it out and put it on my office walls (yeah, its that big
I won't lie and say I've completely kept up with this SCO thing, but I was always under the impression it was a handful of lines of code in question - like maybe IBM put them there by accident. SCO is telling Renaissance that all of Linux is a branch of UNIX. So is SCO really alleging that there's tons and tons of lines of UNIX code? Or was that just a lie for Renaissance, and they're giving a different story as to why they need $699 from everyone?
Schnapple
doesnt look like it worked.p ort.html? compid=2007676&national=Y
http://www.saltlakecity.bbb.org/commonre
BBB Membership
This company has been a member of this Better Business Bureau since April 2003. This means it supports the Bureau's services to the public and meets our membership standards.
Program Participation
This company participates in BBBOnLine, and the Membership Identification Program. This means the company has agreed to use special procedures including mediation and arbitration if necessary to resolve complaints.
Nature of Business
This company sells and distributes unix and Linux software.
Customer Experience
Based on BBB files, this company has a satisfactory record with the Bureau. The Bureau has processed no customer complaints on this company in its three-year reporting period.
SO, by this argument, companies that want a "normal business plan" are going to switch leased vehicles, package carriers, trash haulers, office suppliers and all other things each time there's only a press release about legal action. Not a suit, and nowhere close to a judgement.
You, sir, are completely deluded to the merit of SCO's claims. They have none. IBM, Groklaw, FSF, Torvalds, HP and countless editorials concur.
SCO's ideals don't feed your employees. Money does, and the Linux OS is still free last time I checked. Say it with me sir, F-R-E-E.
Since anyone can sue anyone in a civil suit, it's likely you could still be sued and held accountable. Think about it: you've formed a shadow company after SCO makes claims about linux, it's wholly owned or controlled by you and has no other customers.
It would demonstrate that you knew you were vulnerable and you engaged in a conspiracy to mask your vulnerability.
IANAL, but I don't think you can shirk that easily. Perhaps if the shadow company had other customers unrelated to yours *and* there were no ownership links between you and the shadow company this might be a viable idea.
Again, I can't see how MS could legally make a EULA that would affect competitors in such an obvious way and not get pulled back into court for anti-trust violations.
Two words: Bush Administration
(This is coming from an ex-conservative, no less)
Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen
While it's all easy to sit back and call Renaissance dumbasses, they probably bought SCOX at < $1, and now own a ~ $20/share stock. I know, I know, it's ill-gotten and short-term gains, but if they were to sell now and make ~$19/share they have made a HUGE profit that is fair-and-square according to the laws of this country - after all, they honestly (if stupidly) believed SCO was a good investment. That's a little different than the pump 'n dump scheme many of us suspected.
I'm not standing up for SCO or Ren. But the louder we screech how stupid they are, the harder they laugh on the way to the bank.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
The American dream is very much alive. The American dreams does not remove the fact that there are assholes on this planet, nor does it try to hide this fact like a lot of other social methodologies do. The American dream is a system of checks and balances that work to prevent a minority from forcing their opinion on the majority. It works. It takes time, but it works.
Despite what you may think about Bush, or Clinton, or any other group that has held power in different ways over the years (whether they be companies like Microsoft or social organizations like M.A.D.D.) that system is alive and and doing very well.
Nearly everything is a multidimensional issue that involves finding a concensus from a group of people who have drastically diverging opionions. Democracy is a slow process, it doesn't happen over night (and thank God, because if it did it wouldn't be democracy). I would not trade this system for anything else. Quite frankly, NOTHING else in the history of the world has shown itself to be up to snuff.
SCO's graph asserts that the Linux codebase evolved out of Minix. That's where the dotted green line becomes a solid green line.
Unfortunately for SCO, that's not correct. Linus used Minix as his operating system during some of the early work on Linux and he even used some of their file structures, but none of the Minix codebase was incorporated into Linux.
The UNIX History graph that's based on does not show a strict flow of property nor even a comprehensive flow of ideas. It merely shows the general direction that the development of unix-related systems took.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Assuming this anecdote is true:
-- It will expose them for what they are and it's going to end in a PR disaster.
-- They won't be able to use apache or sendmail and such in SCO's Unix which would make it worthless. So it would imply an MS only environment. If anything, it would be the ultimate argument to go fully non MS instead.
So I'd say, good, let 'em bring it on.
This means that for SCO this diagram is irrelevant, since it doesn't refer to IP, but ofcourse that doesn't stop them from using it anyway.
(They do imply the diagram is about "intellectual property" so they seem to be misrepresenting the facts a bit... *shudder* who would have thought they'd do such a thing! ;-)
- Too much white space
- abuse of the allowed HTML elements
- short, ALL CAPS subjects, or high percentage of post in caps
- odd punctuation (too many exclamation points, for example)
- very short posts (such as "First Post!")
- posting too quickly (/. has a 2-minute manditory delay between posts)
- filters for known bad sources / known bad phrases
- filters for unknown symbols (including the Euro and other currencies, which is a frequent complaint)
slashcode has even more customizablity for filtering, butfrob
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Funny to find out that the last question in SCO's teleconference (August 5, 2003) came from the same Herbert Jackson at Renaissance Ventures who had fabricated that "Strong Buy" investment thesis in March 2003 and that "Handicapping SCO - vs. - IBM Lawsuit" paper where they allotted the fur of the IBM bear in advance (April 2003) as Groklaw had published some days ago.
The laughter of those two pals might now be seen in a special light.
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"Sontag: OK, the last question.
"UF: Thank you. And that will come from Herbert Jackson at Renaissance Ventures.
"Jackson: Hi, guys, you've been busy.
"McB: (laughs) Yes, it's been a busy few months.
"Jackson: (laughs) Can you comment on any discussions with other software vendors that might produce a (inaudible) legal version of Linux going forward?
"McB: We have a variety of discussions going on and I'm not at libertyto go into detail of all the various discussions that are out there. I can say there are companies we're dealing with that have seen the code, have seen the problem, they're stepping up There are others that are taking the approach to really come after us, and to try and take our legal rights that we have and just squash these rights.
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For a transcript of the teleconference see here and here.