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ACCC Asks SCO To Explain Themselves
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) governmental organization has issued a request to SCO to provide information regarding complaints filed with it, according to The Age. This deals with issues regarding SCO's IP claims, and statements regarding the need for commercial Linux users to obtain a Unix licence. With any luck, that'll be Slashdot's daily dose of SCO news..."
isn't gonna explain themselves. That part is pretty clear already...
First post.......... Oh the power
here
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
ACCC seeks details from SCO over Vic group's complaint
By Sam Varghese
October 8, 2003
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has asked the SCO Group to provide information regarding complaints filed with it, about SCO's IP claims and statements regarding the need for commercial Linux users to obtain a Unix licence, according to the company's latest quarterly filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The complaint was filed in July by Open Source Victoria, a marketing, advocacy and focus group.
It asked the ACCC to investigate SCO's activities in light of "unsubstantiated claims and extortive legal threats for money" against possibly hundreds of thousands of Australians.
SCO's latest SEC filing said the company intended to respond to the ACCC's inquiry.
"The ACCC has notified us that it has not made any decision to pursue the complaints it has received or determined what, if any, action it will take," it said.
In March, SCO filed a billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM, for "misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and breach of contract."
SCO also claimed that Linux was an unauthorised derivative of Unix and warned commercial Linux users that they could be legally liable for violation of intellectual copyright. SCO later expanded its claims against IBM to US$3 billion in June when it said it was withdrawing IBM's licence for its own Unix, AIX.
IBM has counter-sued SCO over the claims and then expanded its claims. Red Hat has filed a case against SCO.
We hear about it in October. Do I get the impression this is not being treated witha great deal of seriousness?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Mc Bribe must be send to the Jail with 3 Rapers Kangaroos.
> With any luck, that'll be Slashdot's daily dose of SCO news...
No, with any luck there will be another story today about the SEC suspending trading of SCOX and the FBI carting Canopy Group's board and execs off to jail.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Something tells me they still won't release any actual code and provide proof that it was/is theirs. Nothing new from SCO...
A blog like any other.
This is one small step for mankind, and hopefully one giant leap into the inferno for SCO.
This is a major Australian newspaper, it isn't going to get slashdotted, he's just blatant karma-whoring.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
...Beowulf Overlords Imagine Bowing Down To You!
Let's see how many /.-isms I can throw into a single sentence:
The SCOmbag behind this fiaSCO, $CO is SCOspiciously silent when people say, "show me the SCOurce"!
How's that? What did I miss?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
... has got a lotta 'splainen to do.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
...has about as much power as the ukrainian boy scout association.
What's Australia?
I guess they should get a form letter back... "Thank you for taking interest in our Linux license program. Please visit our website for further details and be sure to sign up for our mailing list".
SCO will just tell them exactly what we've already heard them say: that Linux is a derivative of Unix and therefore the property of SCO blah blah blah blah blah.
While that bullshit may qualify as an explanation, it certainly doesn't qualify as any sort of justification, which is what I think they should *REALLY* be asking SCO to do.
Oh, unfortunately for SCO, justifying their actions would require them to reveal the code.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Well you see Mr. Crocodile Hunter, Sir, the problem
all started when developers started using the
following snippets of code:
main()
{alarm(10);sleep(5);write(1," something",12);exit(0);}
As you can clearly see, the way () is used, is an
obviously blatant rip-off of the way our patents
are written. Sure there are open source zealots
and we love them all, but realistically speaking
Mr. Dundee your honor, your aboriginee, we feel
it is unfair for anyone to use main() without a
brand new SCO license.
Thank you your boomerang tossing mate.
MoFscker
Huh what kind of a strange form of government is this. Whoever heard of a govt telling a software company what to do.
War is necrophilia.
SCO: "what the fuck is it with all these other countries? we forgot that little detail... damn, morethanonecountry, morethanonecountry, morethanonecountry. I should have thought of that.
Ok, ok, do they have a legal system? they do. then they have lawyers no doubt. ok, well hire the best lawyers around, but don't actually pay them... no arrang fee arrangment where you can mention them in your press releases but whatever you do don't fucking bill any of their time, well, other than the lunches... shit, you need to remember that because those guys'll drink 10 million dollars in fees in no time, which does us no good.
All right... get cracking! Just head north till you get there, call me when you arrive.
No surprise there. The only time I've ever seen a goverment 'watchdog' group do anything was when they took the franchise away from a region rail operator in the UK. By and large all they seem to do is go 'Stoppit. Or we'll cry.'
With luck, high profile cases like this will actually make the Americans realise that they're being screwed with and make them start demanding to get back their rights.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This is actually better than a lawsuit. The ACCC has real teeth in Australia and can demand and enforce instant compliance. The fact that they use these powers for somewhat dubious outcomes is a point of contention here, but a referral their way has to be at least investigated.
These guys love publicity and this is win/win for them. They get to flex some muscle and no Aussie company(read Packer or Murdoch) will be asked to do anything.
Explaining stuff is definitely not in SCO's plan:
1. Take some drugs. (even Linus said they sounded like they were on drugs)
2. Claim that all Linux users must cough up some money because of [insert some insane reason as a result of #1 here]
3. ???
4. Profit!
As you can see above, if #3 would mean "explain why they did the stuff in #2", to stay to the truth, they'd need to tell the world that they're on drugs, which they don't want to. So, the only possible plan must be:
1. Take some drugs.
2. Claim that all Linux users must cough up some money because of [insert some random reason as a result of #1 here]
3. Lie about why they're doing what they are, and hope the ACCC will be stupid enough to believe them. Then proceed with the usual Linux license demands.
4. Profit!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Prof. Alan Fels may have retired, but the ACCC still don't take any prisoners ... hammer the bastards I say!
Now that it something that I would pay to see on PPV.
Maybe it's just because Darl mcBride is a buttsmoking bukkake loving queer fuck SCO user. Try a real OS and use Amiga OS you fuck!!! God I hate worthless cocks like you who brag about how stupid you are that you are using SCO. You really need to get a fucking life!!! Fucking SCO using faggot asses. Why don't you all just gather tohether in QueerVegas and butt fuck each other until you die of AIDS and rid the planet of your repulsive presence! That goes for you card carrying NAMBLA belonging Windows users. You think Windows XP is hot shit? You got one thing right, it's shit that smells like it's been festering in a hotbox for a week. The big nasty dump that Fat bastard would drop if he was confronted with Bill Grates and Steve Ball-me. That's what you Windows fucks call Steve Ballmer because you all want his flabby, flaccid man meat in your geekholes. You all suck cock! You hear that people! EVERY WINDOWS USER on /. SUCKS COCK!!!! Linux is POEWR FOR THE PEOPLE! Yah! JeffK!!!1stylee
And how is your "working legal system" going to affect a US corporation? Australia... Isn't that where the term "Kangaroo Court" originated from?
You see, we SCO execs were rich, but not filthy rich
So Darl, and a bunch of the guys decided to go around making absurd claims about how everyone and their grandmother who had access to the System V code dumped said code (which we will claim we own (yes, even the public domain parts) for the purposes of said absurd claims) into Linux.
Thus, with promises of massive payoffs from those hapless users who unkowingly used what we claim is our property, the uniformed MBA's over on wall street will want to buy our otherwise worhtless stock. And then; 3. Profit!.
I LOVE TO EAT MY WIFE'S SHIT (Score:5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23, @08:43PM (#7039414) About once a week I give my wife a rim job. From time to time, she's just taken a shit and hasn't wiped well before I do it. I've taken a liking to this and don't know if I should tell her. What do you think? Starting Score: 0 points Moderation 4 60% Insightful 40% Interesting Extra 'Karma Bonus' Modifier 1 (Edit) Total Score: 5 Re:I LOVE TO EAT MY WIFE'S SHIT (Score:3 Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24, @03:04AM (#7041361) I concur. Eating your significant other's feces is very exciting and can bring you deep into a submissive state. You might want to introduce the subject of a FemDom relationship to your wife. I did this with my girlfriend and life has never been better. I've signed the slave contract with her and now she owns everything including me. Brown showers happen once a week and golden showers are nightly. There is nothing more satisfying than my girlfriend's sweet golden nectar in my mouth and on my face. For more info on the whole FemDom relationship angle of brown showers, visit this site and read some of the true stories and the Q and A section. Elise Sutton discusses the topic quite nicely and allows for lots of approaches. This is the way that the world is shaping up. Women are more in charge every passing year and their superiority over men will eventually be the mainstream way. I can't tell you how much more sexual pleasure I get from orgasm denial and cuckolding. My girlfriend hasn't had sex with me in two months, but she fucks her new lover every week. Sometimes I am present, and other times she locks me in my cage in the basement leaving only an intercom on so that I can hear her moan with pleasure as she gets fucked. I know a lot of this probably sounds odd to most folks here, but this really is an awesome way of life. Check it out and comment folks!
I work for dell in the servers division and we get a monthly newsletter. When the SCO news broke, the blurb was something like "IBM got sued by sco", anything bad for IBM is good for us
In Later weeks it was more like "they are threatening us" but Redhat will fight for us, we need not worry
This weeks newsletter is the best. It actually uses the word FUD against sco, also pretty much rooting for IBM.The blurb was something like, IBM has a great amount of IP and SCO stands no chance. We wont indemnify customers yet, but we are thinking about it.
It looks like old enemies are being pushed to the same side of the table, united against a common enemy.
SCO, Game Over! Hasta la vista, Darl!
Not here in the southern hemisphere it isn't; July is a winter month; right now it's springtime.
Unless, of course, you were talking about SCO?!?
The liver is evil and must be punished.
This photo of Darl McBride after Microsoft agreed to help in protecting SCO's IP explains a lot about the whole SCO lawsuit and where it's coming from. The vortex in the bottom center (no pun intended) of the photo is where most of the legal documents were culled. I hope the moderators will find this insightful and informative.
Replace software company with 'Jews'.
USA does whatever the jews say, that is why they support the jewish terrorism in Israel against palestinians.
The article is from down under, therefore it must be mirrored upside-down.
.smialc sti dednapxe neht dna smialc eht revo OCS deus-retnuoc sah MBI
,xinU nwo sti rof ecnecil s'MBI gniwardhtiw saw ti dias ti nehw enuJ ni noillib 3$SU ot MBI tsniaga smialc sti dednapxe retal OCS .thgirypoc lautcelletni fo noitaloiv rof elbail yllagel eb dluoc yeht taht sresu xuniL laicremmoc denraw dna xinU fo evitavired desirohtuanu na saw xuniL taht demialc osla OCS
,ecnerefretni suoitrot ,sterces edart fo noitairporppasim" rof ,MBI tsniaga tiuswal rallod-noillib a delif OCS ,hcraM nI
,yna fi ,tahw denimreted ro deviecer sah ti stnialpmoc eht eusrup ot noisiced yna edam ton sah ti taht su deifiton sah CCCA ehT"
,gnitekram a ,airotciV ecruoS nepO yb yluJ ni delif saw tnialpmoc ehT
,ecnecil xinU a niatbo ot sresu xuniL laicremmoc rof deen eht gnidrager stnemetats dna smialc PI s'OCS tuoba ,ti htiw delif stnialpmoc gnidrager noitamrofni edivorp ot puorG OCS eht deksa sah noissimmoC remusnoC dna noititepmoC nailartsuA ehT
,8 rebotcO
----
.OCS tsniaga esac a delif sah taH deR
.XIA
".tcartnoc fo hcaerb dna noititepmoc riafnu
.dias ti ",ekat lliw ti noitca
.yriuqni s'CCCA eht ot dnopser ot dednetni ynapmoc eht dias gnilif CES tsetal s'OCS
.snailartsuA fo sdnasuoht fo sderdnuh ylbissop tsniaga "yenom rof staerht lagel evitrotxe dna smialc detaitnatsbusnu" fo thgil ni seitivitca s'OCS etagitsevni ot CCCA eht deksa tI
.puorg sucof dna ycacovda
.noissimmoC egnahcxE dna seitiruceS SU eht htiw gnilif ylretrauq tsetal s'ynapmoc eht ot gnidrocca
3002
esehgraV maS yB
tnialpmoc s'puorg ciV revo OCS morf sliated skees CCCA
You see SCO have a great point, they may exaurate it a bit, but they have to or nobody would take them seriously. SCO had lots of code leaked into the kernel, and they cant prove it without saying what code was leaked. No Linux guy seems willing to sign an NDA, and SGI are saying that there is no SCO code there just to get back at them for threating. SGI are biased, and so are all other people willing to check it. We need someone nonbiased like Microsoft to help SCO and Linux by settleing it once and for all. Microsoft dont seem to have anything against SCO or Linux.
There are to many trolls on this site that say SCO and Microsoft are working together to stop Linux, but what does Microsoft have against Linux? Microsoft have bigger things to worry about, like the console wars. They may provide server products, but for Windows compatability not to take the Linux marketshare, Microsoft would give windows NFS and other features, and POSIX if that were the case.
I spanked my wife hard with a leather belt last night and she loved it! I dealt her 20 lashes of the very best all told but on the 17th she invoked our safeword because the pain was exquisite and I was really trying very very hard to hit her naked thighs, buns and back as hard as I can. I gave her a couple of minutes and then I told her "Honey... we're not done yet" and she smiled because she knows I don't let up until all the lashes have been dealt I had made up my mind about giving her. After she received lash #20 she cringed very intensely and to my surprise asked me for "one more lash"... I immediately told her I wasn't going to give her a single lash, if she wanted one she would have to accept three very hard and painful lashes. She agreed to that immediately and I enjoyed her writhing in pain as I really did my very best to make those remaining three lashes count.
I don't know about you, but I couldn't give a shit about M$, $CO, the latest PDA with Linux on it. Whipping my wife with a leather belt is really "stuff that matters" to me!
...before these idiots go out of business given that their big revenue plan is litigation based.
Personally I can't wait, first I won't have my blood pressure spike every time I read slashdot and second I can get back to hating someone (i.e. M$) slightly less deserving who despite their unholy aliance with Satan and low quality products, ACTUALLY PRODUCE SOMETHING. Get a clue SCO, you're a bunch of freaking looters waiting for the electricity to go out so you can break windows and steal shit.
Arafat is a big fan of Darl's didn't you know? The PLO has alot of money tied up in Canopy, SCO and Microsoft. To bad Arafat ain't feeling to good. He hasn't been able to look at much pr0n lately do the the "flu." But as soon as Darl gets done with IBM Yassar says he will be ok.
I think that refers to a British rump court in having nothing to do with Australians except they might be on the end of ones actions.
The earliest recorded usage was in the US in 1853. There's absolutely no indication the term originated in Australia, though there is apparently some evidence linking it to the California goldrush, where it may have been used as early as 1849. Many Australian prospectors took place, and one explanation for the term is that it was coined by Australian prospectors referring to the way claim-jumpers were prosecuted outside the legal system. In other words: It was likely a termed coined by Australians to refer to the (lack of) justice in the US.
Actually, I think you'll find it's probably a US-originated term.
http://www.wordorigins.org/wordork.htm
A very long one!
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability. -- Oscar Wilde
I really hate to be the one to point this out, but you could replace
"[insert some insane reason as a result of #1 here]"
with
"we hope everyone will be stupid enough to believe us."
and I think that the thing would still work in the same circumstances, except on #3 SCO could just tell the truth.
"I believe this code forms some sort of argument in this debate, but I'm not sure whether it's for or against." -- Duff
Apparently in the same way that US law affects non-US corporations and individuals.
The term may have come from Australia but boy do the Americans like theirs!
You've said that the offending code cannot be 'cleaned' from Linux. Why not?
Sontag: I'm not sure that it can't be. The question becomes, will it? Beyond the 80 or so lines of code that we show under nondisclosure to interested parties, we have identified some examples of more than a million lines of code that have gone into Linux in the form of programs and files such as NUMA (non-uniform memory access), RCU (read, copy, update), and the JFS (the Journal File System from AIX).
So all they got is just 80 lines of code, don't they? That's the whole story ... after all, even in the unlikely event that the court decides adding RCU,NUMA etc. to linux is a breach of contract, they clearly don't have any IP claims over this code.
In other words: if you follow closely what SCO are saying, you realise that all the IP claims they may (and then again, may not) have is not more than 80 lines of code. Isn't it lovely?
With any luck, that'll be Slashdot's daily dose of SCO news...
Accompanying any news that might pose a threat to share price, we can expect even more outrageous claims from SCO today in response.
And thanks to the ACCC the poor sods Down Under have no idea what it's like to get 1mbps at home. The US, Korea, Japan and even Europe are way ahead. Or am I misinformed?
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
And went into a big music shop and I swear there was more music there from aussies (kylie, inxs, men at work, midnight oil) than austrians (falco, dj otzi). WTF?
1) He wants all of us to be naked and petrified
2) Runing his own company with a clueless commercial
strategy is like he is pouring hot grits in his
pants
The SCO Group ANZ seem to be pretty reasonable compared to D'ohl, but I really do hope they get shut down in Oz, or at least fined into submission. It might lead the producers of some of the vertical market apps that I occasionally bandage up to port their product to a UNIX platform in which gormlessness features less strikingly.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
SEC: Pay them the money!
IBM: Why?
SEC: They have sources...?
IBM: That's not source!
SCOX: Uh...?
IBM: This is source.
SCOX: Aiiiieeee! <runs away>
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Without hearing critically important news like this, I can't imagine what I would do without it!
The "80" they showed weren't owned by SCOX, in fact they may get into breach-of-copyright trouble if certain BSD developers complain about SCOX filing off the copyrights and BSD licence banners. Which might explain why they're - to quote Linus - "playing it like the Raelians".
SCOX's claim, if you can believe this, is that because IBM, SGI et al created JFS (which I don't use), NUMA (which I don't use) etc while they were licencees for the UnixWare sources, SCOX controls the rights to those technologies. This despite at least IBM's contract explicitly leaving the rights to such works in IBM's hands even if they had been derived from the UnixWare sources (which they weren't).
I'm sort of wondering if/how SCOX got any rights to even use any of the listed technologies, since they don't hold any of the patents on them, but IBM do.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Does this mean we can look forward to Darl McBride releasing a cover of an early Who song?
This is a test
(Just trying to kill my accidental down-moderation)
(Picture of Darl breaking rocks in a chain gang.)
Aerobics.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
McBride: It's my first day...
ACCC: Very well, carry on!
But since they're not telling use what is the code in Linux they claim they own, and we don't have access to their code, we're just speculating. I agree the poor examples they displayed at the SCOforum is a good indication the number of lines may very well be zero, but we couldn't be 100% sure.
Now at least we have an upper-bound for the number of lines of code they're talking about, and even this upper-bound is not very impressive.
Maybe they will be forced to show the supposed "rogue code!"
When the real person to blame is Paul Keating pulled out of the openskys agreement between New Zealand and Australia. Air New Zealand tried to enter into the Australian market, they were told that they had to purchase Ansett or otherwise sod off.
Air New Zealand bought Ansett thinking that they could run it properly, what they found out is that the company had already been run into the ground, Australia is over run by militant unions meaning that ANY resutructuring they tried in the 12 months or so they owned it basically was stopped by the union.
Btw, the assertion by Unions that Air New Zealand had invested no money into Ansett, incorrect. I know of atleast 7 programmers who were working on a completely news, integrated system to replace the old one. There was also browsing done by Air New Zealand for new planes to replace the aging Ansett fleet.
If you want someone to blame for Ansetts collapse, blame the Unions and the Australian government. UNLIKE Australia, the New Zealand government DOESN'T give hand outs to companies, Air New Zealand UNLIKE QUANTAS, actually HAVE TO COMPETE for public service contracts.
Australia on the other hand simply hand out contracts to QUANTAS with out ANY competitive bids and worse still, its the public who is paying for this via higher taxes. Can any of you say, "corporate welfare"?
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
Unix is like the trunk of a car. We own that car. Everything that gets put into that trunk automatically becomes ours. Therefore, everything you put into Unix becomes ours. Got a Unix box? It's ours. Put another piece of software into it, then that becomes ours too. See, it's that simple. Don't you get it?
It's not the "blimey" department, that's England.
:)
Australia is the "struth" or "crikey" department.
Insert Company 1 is suing Insert Company 2 for using Insert Code without permission.
However, this code has been found in prior works, specifically Insert Product.
Naturally the slashdot community is Insert Emotion.
Attempt 1:
Company 1: SCO
Company 2: RedHat
Code: Unix V code
Product: BSD
Emotion: outraged
Attempt 1:
Company 1: Eolas
Company 2: Microsoft
Code: ActiveX code
Product: Viola Browser
Emotion: overjoyed
Hypocrites.
gd23ka wrote:
Hey! Our U.S. legal system deeply resembles your remark!
Look at the bright side: there's always seppuku.
Can be found here:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/loche/rogue/
No sig
There are two points in it.
0 90 42543818
1) SCO is doing nothing but delay delay delay.
2) RedHat's discovery requests make it clear - they are going for the juggular. They are requesting Linux Kernel Personality code.. oh, and all of their other code. The reason why is clear - to determine if SCO has violated the GPL by putting Linux code in SCO UNIX products....
which would explain why SCO is so interested in seeing the GPL be voided in court in the IBM case - the most likely scenarios is that SCO has been stealing GPL code for their software, esp the Linux Kernel Personality - while claming that Linux has stolen SCO code in it.
Let me say that again....
SCO has every reason in the world to see the GPL killed. That reason is that they have (most likely) been using GPL'd code in their proprietary code. They want to see the GPL nulled and voided so that when "they win their case", they can, at a later date, keep right on using Linux code in their shitty products.
They are stalling and filing frivolous motions (like to dismiss) to get them to the point where the dumping can really rake in some money. But Red Hat is obviously onto this - by their discovery requests.
I wonder if they'll just Koresh themselves into their little SCO compound when it becomes obvious that they can no longer prevent the world from finding out that this was all a house of cards pump-and-dump, and that the only ones who've been truly in violation of "stealing IP" was them.
http://www.groklaw.com/article.php?story=200310
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
They'll explain they don't have any intention to go after the end user and close their australian branch...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
point them to the famous Linus interview where he said "SCO is smoking crack"?
I think that explains it best.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
... plead insanity! Come on, you know it's true.
Bitter and proud of it.
You've said that the offending code cannot be 'cleaned' from Linux. Why not?
Chris Sontag, SCO:
I'm not sure that it can't be. The question becomes, will it? Beyond the 80 or so lines of code that we show under nondisclosure to interested parties, we have identified some examples of more than a million lines of code that have gone into Linux in the form of programs and files such as NUMA (non-uniform memory access), RCU (read, copy, update), and the JFS (the Journal File System from AIX). I haven't seen anyone in the Linux community racing to remove these million lines of code from Linux yet. And even if this code were to be removed, should not SCO receive some kind of compensation from those commercial users whose businesses benefited from using it? It's much more than an issue of cleaning.
I sure wish we could get a lead on what they're smokin'. I still say it surpasses anything that's ever been discovered anywhere else on the planet.
Go ahead and explain away. SCO stock is traded in New York and regulated by the SEC. Austrailia has no role in any of this.
Their government can demand explanations all they want. They may even get them. What's the expression they use there....it doesn't matter a pair of dingos kidneys.
Keep your eye on the bouncing ball. This isn't about software, OS, licenses or patents. This is all about a sucking sound in the bank vault.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.