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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...
here
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
> 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?
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.
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".
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.
They made it legal to chip PS2's and XBoxes... They have teeth in Oz and we like them. They are on the side of good.
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.'
So why do Australia's biggest companies campaign so strongly against it?
Having the ability to deny companies that want to merge with or buy out each other doesn't seem to correlate with having very little power.
Only a month ago, they refused to allow Qantas and Air New Zealand to merge. Today they won in the high court against Visy Paper for anti-competitive practices.
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.
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!.
"Lard McGroom"
That's gotta be a fake name. It's like what someone would fill in on a NYT registration or phone into Moe's Bar.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
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.
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.
...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.
dream on...
Dear Mr. Anonymous Coward. What cave have you been residing in? No troll intended but in all honesty are you really that out of touch? Microsoft has nothing against Linux? Microsoft named Linux #2 on its list of potential threats to its revenue stream and market plan in their 10Q report. Number 1 was the down economy and it's effects on IT spending.
How can you say with a straight face that Microsoft has nothing against Linux. After calling Linux and the GPL a cancer, unAmerican, and just short of out and out a socialist product bent on destroying all things proprietary.
Please, for your sake and others please think about what your posting so as not to embarrass yourself.
Much of the complaining was about publicity. For example, when the ACCC (under Alan Fels) investigated fuel price fixing, they made a big deal in the media about it and announced the raids they performed to find documentary evidence. Nothing came out of it. Big business complained that this amounted to a trial by media, and that they were entitled to some kind of privacy if there was no concrete proof of wrong-doing. I haven't heard quite as much complaining since Graeme Samuels took over. There are a few particular medium sized businesses that are particularly vocal in their complaints.
I think there are also plenty of examples to show where the ACCC doesn't seem to achieve their goals. If they were so powerful and effective, would we really have the outrageous banking costs that we have? Would Telstra get away with half the stuff it does?
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
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.
Yeah, it's legal to chip the machines. Just a pity it's illegal to buy the chips. (As the law stands, owning a chipped machine isn't illegal, and chipping a machine isn't legal, but buying or importing a mod chip is. If you had a chip before the law was passed, you're sitting sweet, but if you didn't, tough luck)
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
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
The ACCC is the organisation established to administer the Trade Practices Act (and the prices surveillance act). The TPA is a remarkable piece of legislation conceived by one of the great legislators, a guy called Lionel Murphy, whose life was an extraordinary one. Amongst other things, Attorney General, High Court Judge, convicted criminal? He was responsible for ushering in the Family Law Act and the TPA in Australia in the 70's. Both of which were revolutionary.
The TPA was one of the first codifications of the rights of consumers anywhere and the powers established enable the ACCC to pierce through all the crap that anti-competitives put in the way of a realistic investigation into their behaviour. The power of the ACCC derives from the legislation and the rule of law not from the arbitrary exercise of power by the organisation itself.
The important thing is to remember that the power is in the law and not just the ACCC
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Woah...time for a "I for one welcome ... them to manage stuff elsewhere as well" ;)
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
Best /. ID number ever.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
Uh, but it worked in germany, SCO germany _did_ get a fine (and paid), albeit a smallish one.
Now SCO germany just STFU about linux, until the courts do their job, and this is how it ought to be.
Can't understand why this is not possible in the usa.
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?
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.
After calling Linux and the GPL a cancer
If SCO are right in any of their claims, closed source is a lot worse in that respect than any GPL code could ever be.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Maybe they will be forced to show the supposed "rogue code!"
Ahh, Mr. McBride... Your "Anonymous Coward" facade isn't fooling any of us.
south-east of California.:-)
Actually it's south-west of California.
And remember, it is the BIG island, not the two little ones you come to first, populated mainly by sheep.
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.
Ah, the irony. The mods mod down someone praising them. If logic applies to them, this should get me some karma: MODS SUCK DIE MODS DIE. There, I insulted them. If praising them gets modded down, it's karma rtime!!!
Molog
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
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.
The important thing is to remember that the power is in the law and not just the ACCC
The distinction is meaningless in the real world.
We say "police powers" not "the power of the law exercised by the police", for example.
Obviously the power of any such institution is derived from the law - corporations don't do what you ask them to just because you say please.
Much of the complaining was about publicity.
That's true.
However, complaining isn't what I was referring to, I said "campaigning". I was referring to their attempts to get the Government to reduce the powers of the ACCC.
I think there are also plenty of examples to show where the ACCC doesn't seem to achieve their goals. If they were so powerful and effective, would we really have the outrageous banking costs that we have? Would Telstra get away with half the stuff it does?
Of course they don't succeed at everything they set out to do. Sometimes the companies are actually in the right and there was no infringement of regulation. Sometimes the law isn't "strong" enough and makes it virtually impossible to convict (having to . Sometimes the evidence just can't be found.
They aren't all powerful.
Do you also think the police aren't "effective" because there are some unsolved crimes.
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.
The distinction is meaningless in the real world.
I disagree, the distinction is important because a failure of the ACCC to act according to the law has a remedy in Australian Law and a citizen can take such failures to variously, Ombudsman, Administrative Appeals Tribunals or perhaps even the judiciary.
What is important is that it is the application of the laws rather than the arbitrary action of the officials mandated with the power that separates "rule of law" societies from tyrranies. It is too easy to forget that if one lives in such a "rule of law" state, then we ought not to accept institutions where such arbitrary largess is possible and my point was just a reminder of this and the fact that capturing of regulators by the regulated is less of a problem when the law is the source of the power
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Seems like not many noticed this was done with tongue-in-cheek... :-P Oh well :-)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!