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Forbes Examines SCO Subpoenas
z4ce writes "It seems that Daniel Lyons of Forbes just wrote yet another article on the IBM vs. SCO law suit. Now, Daniel seems to seeing SCO for the liars they are. One of the choice quotes include, "What's the point of hassling people who make chips and set-top boxes? Don't ask SCO's top execs. They don't know anything about this stuff, remember?""
They clearly stole the idea of chips from SCO! Unix ran on chips before Linux!
Man, this SCO crap is getting as bad as when Napster first went under attack. How about we just hear about it once a day until either its settled, one of the parties backs out, or the trial starts.
Enough speculation, lets quit getting our panties in a bunch until the real meat of the lawsuit comes to life.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Excellent - it seems I'm reading more and more critical-of-SCO stuff these days. Just desserts, and all that
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Stallman's GNU/Linux operating system is not the target of SCO's suit. Linux, the program SCO is targeting, is not an operating system, but only the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system, which could run using a different kernel.
It's refreshing to see mainstream media getting it right.
Trolling is a art,
Stallman says the Boston-based Free Software Foundation, which he founded in 1985, has nothing to do with SCO's lawsuit. "SCO is suing IBM for violating a contract. We don't even know what the contract said. In terms of the resolution of that lawsuit, the Free Software Foundation is entirely uninvolved," he says.
... how come Caldera, a former distributor, can't?
Stallman's GNU/Linux operating system is not the target of SCO's suit. Linux, the program SCO is targeting, is not an operating system, but only the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system, which could run using a different kernel.
This sums it up. SCO is suing IBM for breach of contract, nothing more, nothing less. What dows Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman et al have to do with this contract? did they sign it?
Even that Forbes reporter could (kind of) tell the difference between GNU/Linux the OS and Linux the kernel
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
has been so low lately, i havent had a good laugh in weeks.
whats wrong daryl? did that iraqi defense minister stop feeding you tips?
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Jeese I'm tired of hearing about SCO.
I wish Moore's law applied to the speed of lawsuits as well.
Pretty Pictures!
Stallman says the Boston-based Free Software Foundation, which he founded in 1985, has nothing to do with SCO's lawsuit. "SCO is suing IBM for violating a contract. We don't even know what the contract said. In terms of the resolution of that lawsuit, the Free Software Foundation is entirely uninvolved," he says.
Holy shit! RMS talked to a member of the press and DIDN'T come off looking like a smug, reality-disconnected jackass!
Truly amazing.
You actually mean Daniel "FSF-are-hitmen and Linux-users-are-religious-fanatics" Lyons ?
Quite a change in tone ! Oh, well, maybe he's grown as tired of the SCO-IBM case as I am...
Maybe we deserve this world ?
It would seem to an outside observer that SCO is getting desperate and seeking discovery from anyone they can get their hands on(this is alluded to in the article). Im not sure thats how they are thinking. SCOs logic trail seems to follow two basic paths:
1. We know there is UNIX code in linux, and we need to bring in as many people as possible to show how fragmented and uncontrolled Linux Development is. This will make the court favor us, as we can show a lack of true orginization on the defendants part (the defendant being Linux, not the legal defendant e.g. IBM).
2. We have gone on record disclosing that our revenue model is largely based around SCOSource, which is largely based around people paying us for our IP. Ergo, we have to show people that we can win(otherwise we have no IP to charge people for), and to do this we must undermine Linux's Credibility.
The practical upshot is that the 'buckshot' discovery model is aimed partially at garnering as much information possible (relevant or not) and partially to illustrate to the court that there is no one authoritative 'source' to the problem (thereby undermining the general credibility of linux with the court, making the court more inclined to see it as a dangerous conglomeration of not-necessarily-IP-abiding individuals.)
I know this is supposition, but like many of the other theories about why SCO is doing what they are doing it fits well in the facts.
This thought occurred to me:
SCO goes after Linux as a marketing/gain money tool.
They get hated.
Opposing SCO becomes popular.
SCO has just handed people a new marketing tool - oppose/stand up to SCO, get attention, customers, etc.
Though in reflection, their egregeous approach to an unsubstantiated claim was bound to provoke a backlash. And it was bound to be something that people would take advantage of.
Did SCO even see this? My guess, no. They're up their in their own little world.
IMHO this is a delaying tactic. IBM is asking SCO to put up or shutup. Now SCO can say "wait until our latest round of discovery; then we'll show you." It's consistent with the theory that SCO doesn't want this thing in court.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
It seems that SCO is in reality just a service to provide news stories. A really nice written story-generator though, since everybody keeps talking about them. Maybe they have a excellent business consultants...
greetings,
Al
His previous article was called the Linux Hitmen and painted the EFF in a really ugly light almost like they were the extortionists not SCO. So its quite a aturn around. or maybe he just hates everyone.
The article is written in a very casual almost unbussiness-like tone of voice--odd for forbes. I bet it does not make it into the dead-tree edition of forbes read by real bussiness types, so it wont have much impact
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Ought to be good for some laughs. Reporters who get pissed off by disinformation tend not to be kind
The clearly stole the idea of unix from chips. Chips weren't running linux before SCO!
Blogzine
Fortress of Insanity TM
clifgriffin > blog
Mr Lyons is now sounding like a reporting instead of a puppet (or perhaps a SCO investor).
The best cut is:
Oddly enough, on Nov. 11, SCO Executive Vice President Christopher Sontag complained to Forbes about IBM's decision to send subpoenas to investors and analysts who supported SCO. Sontag called the move "an attempt to bully and intimidate" and said IBM was engaged in "legal gamesmanship."
So why didn't Sontag mention that, uh, SCO itself was about to target Torvalds and Stallman with subpoenas? SCO's spokesman says Sontag and Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive, did not know that SCO's lawyers were planning the move.
The CEO and Vice-President did not know what their lawyers were up to!? Well I guess it is a clue to who is running the show.
"I am concerned about long-term entrenched confusions such as referring to a version of our GNU OS as 'Linux' and thinking that our work on free software was motivated by the ideas associated with 'open source.' These confusions lead users away from the basic issue: their freedom. By comparison, the events involving SCO are transitory and almost trivial," Stallman says.
I think RMS is making an excellent point here. Though the Linux kernel itself is not trivial, these issues surrounding SCO will in the long run become trivial. I have no doubt that the GPL and therefore software freedom will be upheld in court, even if worse comes to worst with the Linux kernel (however unlikely that is). Yes, SCO is crazy/dangerous, but in the long run they can't really hurt free and open source software.
we need to bring in as many people as possible to show how fragmented and uncontrolled Linux Development is .. and to that end, we are going to subpoena people who have nothing to do with Linux kernel development.
Of course, if you look at it crosseyed enough, it starts to make a little sense.. by bringing to the stand people who have nothing to do with it, you make them seem even more fragmented and uncontrolled...
"Mr Stallman, let's talk about the Linux kernel code you contributed.."
"I've never made any contributions to the Linux kernel."
"Ahh - so then let's talk about the code that you didn't contribute, then."
"What?!?!"
"Your Honor, see how fragmented and uncontrolled they are!"
If you'll kindly notice, everything SCO has been posted under the "Caldera" icon. So here's how to turn that off, for those that don't want to see any SCO stories anymore.
You're done! Now shut the hell up.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
...SCO is now suing Forbes.
You can have it your way. Just go to your preferences and select to exclude Caldera stories.
More or less dead on. The true target here was never IBM, the target was Linux, and the only way to start targeting Linux as a whole is to target the kernel. Then you move on from there to the GPL (which they've already done). Id be willing to bet most of the discovery targeted at stallman and other G/L people will deal with undermining the GPL, not the kernel itself. This, if successful serves to blow linux as a whole out of the water.
I'm not sure David gets it, yet.
Groklaw.net (IBM's Subpoenas to Analysts and Investors: Why? Why? Why?) points out that IBM's going after the network of analyists and investors, possibly because this whole SCO/Linux thing looks strikingly similar to a pump and dump scheme the Feds have already found.
Does Lyons need to appear balanced to avoid getting entangled with IBM Subpoenas?
Notice that this article spends more time than necessary on the differences between Free and Open software. If I was a SCO lawyer with MS interests at heart, I play RMS to really divide the community. It won't work, but will generate useful FUD.
Press Relaese
Help fight continental drift.
"I am concerned about long-term entrenched confusions such as referring to a version of our GNU OS as 'Linux' and thinking that our work on free software was motivated by the ideas associated with 'open source.' These confusions lead users away from the basic issue: their freedom. By comparison, the events involving SCO are transitory and almost trivial," Stallman says.
:)
Way to get your priorities straight, Richard -- putting your pet semantics above the users' ability to use your software legally. For the love of god, someone call in ESR!
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
He also realized that if he writes articles about SCO, he gets tons of traffic to his column. Job Security at it's best for him. From here on out, he could simply write "SCO SCO SCO SCO... IBM IBM IBM IBM. Utah, Darl McBribe visited by aliens. Darl McBribe charges abducters $699," and embed an mp3 of Linus pronouncing Linux, which loops over and over again.
Quote from the article: "Stallman's GNU/Linux operating system is not the target of SCO's suit. Linux, the program SCO is targeting, is not an operating system, but only the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system, which could run using a different kernel".
Sounds like Daniel Lyons sold his SCO stock yesterday...
Think for just a minute about how SCO claims IBM breached the contract. Remember, they took SCO's code and put it into Linux? Well, whether they actually did or not, or whether the code in question really "belongs" to SCO (under "derived work") is in debate. But Linus, as the person in charge of changes to the kernel, would be in a unique position to comment on whether IBM actually did this.
As for calling Stallman, it's clearly to deal with the counter-claims re: the GPL, which IBM brought to the table. Certainly Stallman is worth questioning if the GPL is being challenged or used as a point of attack.
-Dan
Dear SCO & Friends,
I understand what you're going through. As an individual, I went through this back in 2001, when the market tanked and I lost my cushy dot-com gig. A lot of companies went through what you're going through, but most of them had the common decency to go quietly and with dignity, rather than hiring lawyers and trying to take a Scorched Earth approach in a last valiant effort to save themselves. Here's a hint: you're not the Soviet Army and Utah isn't Stalingrad.
Let's face it -- your goose is cooked. In an attempt to fill your coffers, you have succeeded in the most perfect execution of Operation: Footbullet since the dying gasps of the dot-coms in 2000-2001. Even if you win, you lose -- you have alienated the one group that you needed to hold on to any sort of market share: the geeks. If, by some stroke of magical luck, bought judge, planetary alignment, or guiding hand of Microsoft, you manage to actually pull this off and have the GPL declared null-and-void and you and your puppeteer, Bill Gates (no doubt, elbow deep in your asses, playing ventriloquist), manage to clean house registering patents and copyrights on works you didn't create, you will have only succeeded in enraging those who are responsible for creating those works. Those creators are people who have a say in what gets purchased at their offices, and I'd be willing to bet that it wouldn't be SCO or M$ (should their complicity in this fiasco be shown to be true and not just educated guesswork).
That said, I'd encourage you to call off the attack dogs. We'll all have a good laugh at your "clever ruse" and share a beer together. Twenty years from now, SCO will be long-gone and irrelevant. God willing, M$ will be gone then, too. And you'll wonder to yourself: what the fuck was I thinking back then?
Think it over. There's more of us than there are of you, ultimately, we, the consumers, control the future of your business. Do you really want to taunt that 800-lb. gorilla? Do you?
blog |
Quite possibly, Novell will not be amused. The next logical move by SCO would be to terminate Novell's unix licence. Oh wait...
The target is money. Plain and simple. SCO will do whatever it can to make money with this sharpened scheme. Originally, the idea was to get bought out by IBM hence the agreement with Boies' law firm granting them ownership in the event of sale. Then the idea was to force IBM to idemnify its customers so it could get a settlement from IBM's insurance company. Now the idea is to avoid actually complying with disclosure and revealing that they don't actually know what code has supposedly been misappropriated. To stall they are sending subpoenas to everyone remotely connected to Linux so they can supply large amounts of useless information to IBM and claim to the court that they are complying with disclosure requests. IANAL but I know one from TV and his name is Matlock.
Frylock: That's not a toy!
Master Shake: You say that about everything you own. You should own toys. They're fun.
Here are some links to images of subpoena's found in a Google Image Search. As you can see, there isn't much to it other than "be in court". Unless SCO tells us we won't know until the date of the summons why they've been served.
The only problem I see with this is that Torvalds and Stallman, regardless of what people think of them as personalities, are extremely intelligent individuals, not to mention highly methodical. These types rarely "put their foot in it" so to speak. SCO's lawyers, regardless of how intelligent they think they are, are dealing with 2 people that are way above their league in terms of "knowing what they're talking about".
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
LinuxWorld today notes that one of its editors, Brian E. Ferguson, features prominently in the Forbes story. Ferguson authored the savvy analytical article SCO's IP Gamble in the current issue, which, as Forbes notes, concludes that "SCO's case a long shot."
The SCO Group Closes $50 Million Equity Financing
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO(R) Group (SCO) (Nasdaq: SCOX - News), the owner of the UNIX operating system, today announced it has received a $50 million private investment led by BayStar Capital, an investment fund that is a leader in providing negotiated private equity placements in publicly traded companies. The investment in SCO was structured as a private placement of non-voting Series A Convertible Preferred Shares, convertible into common equity at a fixed conversion price of $16.93 per share, which was the average closing bid price for the Company's common stock for the five previous trading days prior to the date of closing. Upon conversion, the investors will own an aggregate of approximately 2,953,000 shares of SCO common stock representing 17.5% of the company's outstanding shares.
Thursday October 16, 5:16 pm ET
$50 Million Private Investment Transaction Led by BayStar Capital Provides SCO With Funding for Future Software Development, SCOx Web Services Partnerships And Acquisitions, Future Licensing Opportunities and the Protection of the Company's Intellectual Property Assets
LINDON, Utah, Oct. 16
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990421/SCOLO GO )
The net proceeds from the private placement, combined with the Company's cash balance reported for its third quarter ended July 31, 2003, will provide the Company with a cash position of approximately $61.0 million. The increase in cash will significantly enhance the overall financial strength of SCO while providing substantial additional funding for business objectives including future UNIX and SCOx Web Services software development, new strategic partnerships, and protection of the Company's UNIX intellectual property and related programs.
"The momentum in the marketplace continues to shift in SCO's direction," said Darl McBride, president and CEO, The SCO Group. "Over recent months, we have made significant strides forward in our on-going effort to protect and enforce the Company's intellectual property rights through SCOsource. During the same period, we have been steadily strengthening our core operating business, and in the coming weeks, we look forward to providing the industry and Wall Street with additional details on our plans and initiatives. Now, with a $50 million investment from BayStar, we believe we have secured the capital necessary to fund all aspects of the long term growth of this Company."
"BayStar Capital looks to invest in growth-oriented firms with strong management, substantial market opportunity and solid, comprehensive business plans, and we believe that all of those fundamentals are in place for SCO to succeed," said Lawrence Goldfarb, General Partner, BayStar Capital. "SCO owns the most predominant UNIX software assets in the I.T. industry, has a 20 year history of providing trusted software solutions to end users around the globe, and an aggressive and seasoned management team focused on generating profitable growth."
SCO will hold a teleconference to address this investment on Friday, October 17 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time. Participants should dial in 10 minutes prior to the start of the call and dial toll-free 1-800-811-8824 and use the confirmation code 690025. International callers should use the toll number +1-913-981-4903.
The securities sold in this private placement have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933 and may not be offered or sold in the United State in the absence of an effective registration statement or exemption from registration requirements. The Company has agreed to file a resale registration statement on Form S-3 within 30 days after the closing of the transaction for the purposes of registering the shares of common stock underlying the shares of Series A preferred stock acquired by BayStar.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward looking statements related to our business plans and objectives and spec
Nope, they're going after Andrew Morton, assigned maintainer of the 2.6 kernel and former(?) Digeo employee.
He's with OSDL now. I'm actually not sure about the "former" part of that statement, as he may be on sabbatical from Digeo.
Notice how they're not going after Alan Cox or Red Hat in the subpoenas? Looks like Red Hat's suit has given them some protection from SCO predation.
Don't ask SCO's top execs. They don't know anything about this stuff, remember?
Classic, definitely classic. The mass media is finally catching one. SCO is really going to be backed into a corner now.
Although, I question if that's a good thing. The Chinese general Sun Tzu once said that you should always leave your enemy a way out, so he does not become desperate and do some lasting damage. Like a animal, it must be shown that it has been defeated fairly, and let go to nurse it's wounds.
Slightly OT, I know, but would anyone be interested in building an open-source website mocking SCO? I already regged two good domain names, registrations lasting for two years (Which should coincide with the end of this case). What stuff should I put on it?
Check it out. If you go to forbes.com, this is the story at the top of the page, as opposed to being burried in some tech news link.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
It's nice to see that a magazine as well-regarded as Forbes takes such pride in objective reporting.
-----http://www.forbes.com/2003/08/04/cz_dl_080
Is this about right? --A taste of reality--.
At the bottom is a list of 345 programs, scripts, libraries, and software suites of an average Linux install (minus KDE-sorry). The inux kernel is one suites in what is primary coined linux. Linux is 'just' layer of software between the user and her/his computer. Also many software suites can be added to or subtracted from the kernel giving speed and functionality to drivers, applications and features.
Most are just as compatible with little to no modification with the Bsd kernels This represents hundreds of thousands of man hours, from a great many men and women from around the world and america is the biggest contributor right now. Most are licenced under the GPL licence which means the orignal authors gave you the right to learn from, to modify alter or change and yes even make money off of their work; if you can. The only condition, release your modifications under the same terms you recieved the code. Many of the authors claim this is a better way to write programs and this just represents the beginning of open source development.
Microsoft hates this simply because their not (and can't be) the main contributor and like any competitor they can't control it. They hate this because the author's desire was for you to use the code at no cost to yourself. They hate this because it dispells much of the 'magic' which the take so much credit for and gain an extraordinary income from.
Many of these programs are used by enterprise every day and the number is growing at an exponent. The microsoft myth of linux is a marketing campaign of misinformation designed to coerce an income from you. If you use a computer or any technological device chances are you've depended on some of these suits at one point or another. Proprietary and closed source software can and does exist within the linux environment including for pay desktops and standalone executable movies (more on that later).
If linux or another supplants Microsofts' operating system, microsoft the software company will go on, but it's monopoly hold on the software industry will come to an end; and with it inappropriate acquistions, the bullying customers and developers alike, and a very long list of wrongs in what this problem child has done within the tech industry as a whole.
Sco does sell a majority of these suits and continues to do so. Sco has and does derived an income from many of these suites. Their challenge to GPL'ed software is a slap in the face to every contributor and sadly a last resort to substantiate claims of legitimacy over these software package (some of which they helped develop and create).
Manpages, Glibc, Binutils, GCC, Coreutils, Zlib, Findutils, Gawk, Ncurses, Vim, Bison, Less, Groff, Sed, Flexa, Gettext, Nettools, InetutilsPerl, TexinfoAutoconf, Automake, Bash, File, Libtool, Bzip, Diffutils, Ed, Kbd, Efsprogs, Grep, Grub, Gzip, Manm, Make, Modutils, Patch, Procinfo, Procps, Psmisc, Shadow, Sysklogd, Sysvinit, Tar, Utillinux, LinuxPAM, Shadow, iptables, GnuPG, Tripwire, Vim, Emacs, nano, JOE, ASH, Tcsh, ZSH, OpenSSLc, pcre, popt, slang, FAM, libxml, libxml, libxslt, readline, GMP, GDBM, GLib, GLib, expat, libesmtp, aspell, ispellepa, Guile, slibd, GWrap, LZO, lcms, libjpegb, libpng, libtiff, libungifb, libmng, Imlib, AAlibrc, SVGAlib, DirectFB, Imlib, bc, repgtk, Compface, GPM, Fcron, hdparm, whichandalternatives, UnZip, Zip, PCIUtilities, pkgconfig, cpio, MC, Python, Perlmodules, librep, JSDK, Ruby, GCC, Tcl, Tk, GCC, NASM, PPP, WvDial, DHCPpl, dhcpcdpl, RPPPPoE, cURL, WvStreams, GNet, libsoup, Linkspre, Lynx, wm, NcFTP,OpenSSHpclient, rsyncclient, CVS, Wget, tcpwrappers, portmapbeta, Inetutils, NCPFS, NTP, Traceroutea, Nmap, Whois, BINDUtilities, Nail, Procmail, Fetchmail, Mutti, Pine, slrn, daemontools, ucspitcp, Postfix, qmail, Sendmail, Exim, Qpopper, Courier, BIND, RunningaCVSserver, DHCPpl, Leafnode, OpenSSHprsync, OpenLDAP, Samba, xinetd, BerkeleyDB, BerkeleyDB, MySQLa, PostgreSQL, Apache, PHP, ProFTPDp, XFree, XFreeComponents, FreeType, Fontconfig
Stallman says the Boston-based Free Software Foundation, which he founded in 1985, has nothing to do with SCO's lawsuit. "SCO is suing IBM for violating a contract. We don't even know what the contract said. In terms of the resolution of that lawsuit, the Free Software Foundation is entirely uninvolved," he says.
i don't know if that's a good position or situation for them to take or if that'd help the case. I mean, i guess it's important that SCO loses the case but then if it's a matter of a contract and what the contract says then maybe IBM might be in trouble if it proves that they've violated a contract regardless of what else. Of course, i think the keyword here is *violated* 'cos i think that what people are angry about is that SCO has not been forthcoming about what violation has happened.
There's nothing that frustrates me more than arguing over semantics than people who define their lives by it!
RMS, RMS, RMS, damn that man to the darkest reaches of hell. Hell as in a place of sufferring, not Hell in the Judeo/Christian sense of the word.
If I have to hear, hear as in read, one more person explain the difference between free beer and liberated software, or one more time how it should appropriately called GNU/Linux, I swear to god someone is going to pay.
Seriously, does this guy go OUT OF HIS WAY to frustrate people? How many times does he want to explain his definition of free software? Wouldn't it be simpler to simply come up with a less ambigious term? But OHHH NOOOOOO, why should he compromise?
I can only imagine the poor people that have to live with this man.
Wife: Richard! I told you to take out the garbage two hours ago!
RMS: Dear, that's not <i>garbage</i>, that's.. Uh.. Let's see.. Used Tissues, some coffee grounds, and my old porno rags. Now if you had simply used the proper terms in the first place..
Wife: Would you just take it out!
RMS: Look, I'm not even going to speak to you further unless you speak to me in the correct syntax.
Wife: GODDAMNIT!!!!
So GREAT. I can't wait to get this guy and a lawyer in the same room. It will be poetic.
For the sake of arguement, let's say the transcript runs 100 pages.
* 1 page, Richard Stallman providing his name, address, current occupation, other identifying material.
* 18 pages of Stallman explaining what "Free Software" means.
* 18 pages of Stallman explaining the GNU Public License.
* 20 pages of Stallman ``correcting" the interlocutor that they are talking about `GNU/linux'"
* 10 pages of Stallman being shown snippets of Linux kernel code & responding, ``I have no idea; I've never seen this code before."
* 33 pages of Stallman repeating, ``I don't know; I've never contributed any code to Torvalds' project."
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Umm, hello...FK didn't say he wanted to stop hearing about SCO. He said he wainted one story per day until something happens. That won't solve his problems at all.
I guess this should be to the original post... but it seems to me, if he only wants to hear about SCO once a day, he could,
1. Quit hitting refresh every few minutes, or
2. Don't read more than one article about SCO per day!!!
Jumpin' Jiminy, that's why there is a list of articles with (good or bad) summaries. If you don't want to hear about something more than once, look at the article title, figure out if you want to read it, then, either read it, or don't....
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
a courtroom, sometime in the *hopefully* near future, where the prosectuor representing SCO is liquored up from Hell to Christmas. (Even his lawyer stench can't disguise the foul odor of a lawsuit so frivolous, so he's been getting as legless as possible to face the jury.) He's calling random defendants to the stand, just so he can laugh at the fact that he got anyone to do something just by telling them to.
Prosecutor (speech slurred): Yyurr AAh-ner, I-I woo' like ta call... ummm... Roy Jones, Jr. to th'stand. After that, I wanna bring in my ex-wife, that cheatin bitch... and the POPE! Less'see what he has to say for HIM-se'f, hmm? And get MC Hammer in 'ere, too! Anybuddy, who-who wears pants like that has *ss-sumthin'* ta hide. And Bond! James Bond. He owes me a dollar. And for that matter...*voice trailing off as he slumps to the floor*
Judge: Bailiff, please have this man removed from my courtroom.
Prosecutor: HEEEeeEEYY! You take yer filthy Linux using fingers offa my suit! Th-This is... is my favorite suit! My wife bought this for me... on my birrrthday!! I'll see you in court, you dirty software pirating, coppee-rite infringin' mother....
(sounds of a man being dragged away against his will...)
Sure Bill Gates' hair is fugly, but give his barber some credit! At least he managed to cover the horns on his forehead.
Read this statement by Ulrich Drepper, glibc maintainer. Among other things, he says:
So the bottom line is that GNU, like Microsoft, takes credit for a lot of people's work, sometimes with their complete approval, sometimes against their will. In reality, most of the energy in free software came from Linux and people's desire to get Unixy things working on Linux.
Oh, and log in so more people see your posts.
SCO
Linden, UT
Re: subpoenas in re Linux and/or GNU software
Dear SCO-folks,
All Linux and GNU code, including comments, is freely available to you and anyone else who wishes to see it, and always has been. Every release and every tiny change is there. Likewise, our communications with our fellow developers with respect to these programs has been freely available for years.
So, what is it you want? You already have access to everything we have on the subject. Just download it like everybody else does.
And then show us exactly what you claim has been misapproprated from your code.
Now, go away so we can write some more first class programs.
Sincerely,
Tux and The Gnu
First of all without GNU, there wouldn't have been a GCC and I haven't exactly seen a lot of other choices floating around. There were a *lot* of really crap compilers (every other CS student's undergraduate project) that then seemed to be sold.
GCC worked because of the GPL. Cygnus did a lot of work on it, but they didn't write it. Drepper, if anything, is only talking about the C library which has changed in major ways over the years. RH are doing a lot of work on GCC, but so are very many other people. Without Stallman's development model and his emphasis on portability in the original design, it wouldn't have happened.
I did some hacks on GCC many years ago (early 2.x) to fix some issues with a port and whilst a lot of people had contributed - it was clear that structure came from Stallman.
See my journal, I write things there
All this in a magazine like Forbes!
Holy crap and WOW! This might now be adopted by others in the press, and I love the "Linux Operating System Kernel" naming convention as a trade-off.
Wonderful. Now if only the Nobel committee would consider him and Torvalds for a Nobel Prize for sacrificing much of their lives for the sake of computing humanity's freedom, THEN we'll be getting somewhere.