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SCO to Take On Hollywood
An anonymous reader writes "Daniel Lyons, the man you may remember for calling the FSF 'Linux's Hit Men' is now reporting that SCO is 'Holding Up Hollywood.'
Their reasoning? It's because 'They're using a ton of Linux in Hollywood, so they've become a lightning rod for us,' says Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive.
As usual, Groklaw provides insightful commentary concerning rehash SCO has planted to remain in the news, saying 'Maybe they should fulfill prior threats before they throw out new ones? Otherwise, it could lead some of us to doubt their sincerity.'" At least it's smarter than trying to sell a license to every home user of Linux.
As a Free Software developer this SCO news bothers me more and more as the story unfolds.
From GPL violations to this gangster type activity you would think that someone would put SCO to task here. I still own one share of SCO stock and am holding on to it for no other purpose than to help bring suit to them for these type of actions. What can they be nailed on and how can I as a stockholder help?
Note: I sold the rest of my SCO stock when this mess first started and purchased Novell.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
Right when I am getting ready to start work in the entertaiment industry again (in a week) SCO has to pull this stunt. I sure hope this doesn't scare people into dropping linux on the desktop or the renderfarm, the industry has just really started embracing it. The cost of swtiching to linux wasn't cheap, the cost switching back, that would be way way too expensive. Compaines with 1000+ box render farms would probably fight SCO on this (I can only hope) because the non linux solution would be going back to Solaris or IRIX, neither of which are cheap OS's or cheap hardware.
This could be the last stupid move that SCO makes. Maybe they are wanting to be bought out. HP has to hate this too, because they are really, really heavy in the CG industry as a Linux solutions provider.
-Tim
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
anonymous coward us and tell us what the hell is going on up there? Someone get their hands on a little too much nose candy?
First they try to take on the open-source community, then IBM, then corporate america, and now hollywood?
For SURE with the arrangement they've taken with their lawyers; that they'll be paid handsomely no matter what, it becomes quite evident that the only people who are rich enough to take on all the avenues and still only spend pocket change is
Microsoft.
But as usual, they've come to the premature conclusion that they are smarter and more able to defend themselves against the whole world than everyone else, and I expect that like usual, it'll backfire on them.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
It's just insane. I can't find any cohesive thread tying all this together.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
First question I have is this:
Are SCO/Sontag/McBride digging their own financial graves should the suit get thrown out as being baseless?
Whats the likely effect on Hollywood? Are they going to be scared of the SCO monster and back down, or will SCO have made another enemy that mobilises its army of lawyers?
Can the investment firms named also be sued? Like in class action lawsuit?
StarTux
- SCO Takes on IBM, that is bad from many people's perspectives, but the media doesn't take notice, so many others don't care.
- SCO takes on Sun, SGI, and the like, and no one really cares beyond the computer enthusiasts.
- RedHat files against SCO. No one who isn't a computer enthusiast seems to really notice.
- IBM counterfiles against SCO, which is slightly noticed in SCO stock, but probably more because it's IBM suing, rather than what the suit is about.
What's going to happen when SCO starts actively taking on the very media that has publicized it's side but not publicized the other side of the argument? Remember, many media conglomerations own movie studios, television networks, newspapers, internet sites, and radio stations, or if they don't own them outright, they have a significant financial interest and a certain level of control. If the media feels that it's being attacked, it's in a great position to do two things: show the stories in a positive light for others that are also being attacked, and to villianize the attacker. This has the potential to be the single largest screwup that Caldera International d/b/a SCO Inc has committed.This one I'm actually interested to see play out. This is going to be fun to watch.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
And it all ties in nicely with an earlier story on Groklaw which pointed out that what SCO are doing is the very thing which the RI AA describes as 'stealing'.
Anyone for a quick round of Celebrity Lobby Group Deathmatch?
tomV
where do they get their material? i've been reading a lot about how television viewership is on the decline of late. umm, mr. television programming director... this one's for you.
This article was mostly good, but I wish they had picked apart McBride's "'Boy, this free stuff is sure cool!'" lie - the difference is that the creators of movies don't want them to be free, while the creators of Linux do, and McBride's the one usurping our copyrights. Also, the author slipped up and called Linux freeware, but that's a minor distinction to everyone but us. And there was quite a bit of emphasis on people investing in SCO, but hey, this is Forbes, so what a company does is secondary to how its stock will react.
As for SCO itself, it's difficult to understand why they are so suicidal. They've ruined their defense against RedHat by explicitly threatening to sue their customers (assuming RedHat has at least one customer in Hollywood.) They're extorting from companies even bigger than IBM, companies which might have more to lose, companies that exert some control on the media, which SCO desperately needs. Everyone assumes Microsoft, but one would think Microsoft could buy higher-quality FUD, and hide its ties better. Pump-n-dump doesn't quite fit either - McBride isn't making any attempt to appear like he has a case anymore. Anyone who can't tell he's a raving lunatic isn't looking hard enough. I remain frustrated at our incredibly slow legal system, which won't do anything about this for at least two more years.
Litigious bastards
Bruce as head of the Federal Trade Commission?? There must be laws against anti-competitive behaviour in the US! In Germany Sco had to shut up because of competition law. Whoever spills false rumors about competitors has to be punished.
Maybe SCO hopes Hollywood is more likely to buy it out.
Unlike IBM, Hollywood is unfamiliar with the legal underpinnings of the GPL and more vulnerable to smoke and mirrors.
Yet, like IBM, Hollywood also has deep pockets.
Let's see what they dig up.
You forgot "and cover up." Remember that MPAA studios own all major commercial television news media in the United States (except for MSNBC until NBC merges with Universal). They'll dig up a lot of dirt on SCO and cover up their own faults.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This seems to be exactly the tact. I commented on this yesterday:
2 172
m l
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=85084&cid=742
Hopefully, Hollywood will recognize the "mob" (ie. organized crime) when they see it.
--- Posting from Yesterday follows ---
Paul Murphy at E Commerce Times
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/31932.ht
has an absolutely insane article about this whole mess. Mind you, 98% of the article is completely nuts as it basically blames IBM, or anyone else, for not paying off SCO already. He does not understand that paying off the mob is bad social policy and that Linux is about social policy, but I digress.
Here is one interesting part:
- - -
# SCO is attacking the entire Linux community.
It is not. Responses from SuSE Latest News about SuSE and Red Hat to the contrary, the SCO demand for license fees from Linux users was classic legal fiction. Both key SCO executives -- Darl McBride and Chris Sontag -- have said repeatedly that they are trying to work through issues to achieve justice without putting "a hole in the head of the penguin."
Most people find these license claims outrageous, but think about the drivers behind the demand and you might yet see SCO as a victim of its own lawyers and the way the courts operate.
Fundamentally, the court eventually will require SCO to show a quantitative, market-based derivation for the value of damages claimed. Demanding license fees is one way of establishing that basis -- and one likely to appeal to lawyers acting on contingency because a few successful sales would suffice to establish an enormous fair-market value.
- - -
Terrifyingly, this almost makes sense. If SCO can set a "high" license value on their property, they can then multiply this by the number of Linux systems to get their damages. It only takes a couple of bozos (or co-conspirators) to create "license sales" that can then be multiplied out. This is not too disimilar from the RIAA / WebCasting royalty calculations. Take what Yahoo will pay during the bubble, and then try to get everyone else to empty their pockets. It is very likely that they are not trying to actually get licenses, but that they are trying to establish a "market value" that is to their favor.
If this is actually their plan, then it is not only SCO that needs taken down, but their lawyers as well.
This page says that "SCO Clears Linux Kernel but Implicates Red Hat and SuSE"... so why is it g oing after linux users in general?
If you piss off enough people, you'll eventually piss off somebody that realizes hit men are cheaper than lawyers. Doesn't Hollywood have ties to organized crime? (Just try getting a movie made without paying off Union heavies.) Can the SCO lawyers really be so naive as to not realize there are some people you just shouldn't fuck with?
I find this move particularly convincing as proof that a relationship between Microsoft and SCO exists.
Consider:
1. clustering is one technology that Microsoft has not had much success with. Part of it is the structure of Windows itself that leads to technical hurdles. But, even if they had efficient clustering built into Windows right now, the licensing terms that Microsoft has held dear for so long (i.e. one computer, one license) would kill them in the clustering marketplace.
2. Bill Gates, in an interview that I can't find right now (I'm sure someone out there can provide a link), claimed that one of the features of the new Longhorn product would be the ability to share computing power over the network and allow anyone on the network to take advantage of idle computers on the network. Most of the analysts took this to be a reference to Grid computing, but I saw it as a direct shot at the clustering capabilities of Linux.
3. Notice that SCO's claims from the beginning (specifically the suit against IBM that this all started with) named multi-processor capability as one of the technologies stolen by IBM and imported into Linux. Notice also that SCO's licensing for Linux has always discussed a "per-CPU" license, not a "per-computer" license. As far as I know, Microsoft's licensing, other than the fact that the version of their OS that runs 2 CPUs costs a little more (not double) than that which runs on a single CPU and the version that supports more than 2 costs more than that (still not linear cost increments with the # of CPUs), does not exact a fixed cost "per CPU".
Make no mistake about it. This has all been carefully orchestrated by Microsoft to make Windows look more attractive in a market that traditionally has belonged to Linux and Unix variants. When Longhorn is finally released, I predict that it (or atleast one version of it) will have:
1. clustering capability built-in (can you say "my cluster neighborhood"?).
2. the ability to remove (or disable) the GUI, whose overhead is not needed or desired in clustering situations. Isn't a CLI something they have been touting lately?
3. a pricing structure that will look ery attractive when compared to SCO's $699 per-CPU cost. Where did SCO come up with that price anyway? I suggest it was fed to them by Microsoft.
I think this is a "good thing"[tm] for at least one reason: people are going to start saying, "Hey, even Hollywood uses Linux? This must be something pretty cool. Let's take a look at it."
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go