Slashdot Mirror
SCO News Roundup
Bootsy Collins managed to combine all of today's SCO stories. He writes "The firm of David Boies, SCO's attorney in charge of their Linux IP cases, has
announced their compensation
(so far) from SCO: $1 million USD in cash, and $8 million in SCO stock. Keeping that stock price high until they can sell is clearly of some importance to
Boies, Schiller and Flexner LLP. Given the cost of
selling a $50 million convertible note to fund their legal actions, the actual cost to SCO is more like $17 million USD. Meanwhile, SCO CEO Darl McBride is saying that Novell's purchase of SuSE
violates a non-competition agreement reached when SCO bought the Unix source, and thus is legally actionable by SCO. Over at the Register, they've noticed that SCO's latest SEC filings indicate how firmly they're putting all their eggs in the legal basket: the filings effectively say that
'SCO has already lost business from its loyal customer base, and it expects to lose more.'
And finally, in response to a poor response to SCO's attempts to get Fortune 1000 companies to pay $699/server for 'Linux licenses' before the fee jumped to $1399, SCO has announced
that the $699 discount rate will apply to the end of 2003. Hurry before time runs out again."
Great to see a small company like SCO stand up to huge billion-dollar Goliath as Novell is, and remind them that an agreement is an agreement, and if you sign it, you better stick to it.
Hope the lawsuit is successful and mormons from Novell are not allowed to outsource programming job to that German outfit.
If SCO gets Novell to cash out, that's great news for Caldera Linux users and at least one vendor found a sustainable business model.
Does anyone else have a Beavis 'n Butthead moment whn seeing the ticker symbol "SCOX"?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Well 17 million $ / $699 = 24,321 (rounding up remainders), can SCO find 24,321 users to pay for the Linux license? Chances are that there are 24,321 corporate workstations that will be paid for should SCO win, so unfortunately SCO wins at this point.
But really, their image? Their likelihood of getting future products bought that they offer? Anyone in the Linux community buying SCO after this? Tangibly this much money still makes sense, but intangibly I'd be concerned about the long term effect on SCO.
...in bed
I just took a break from coding, and thought, "Gee, I haven't checked /. in a while. I wonder what's new with SCO today."
THANKS for being my source of SCO drama!
Attention all SCO jokes posters, get ready to update your jokes by the end of the year, thank you.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
Holy crap! Funkalicious bass lines and journalistic know-how? Bootsy, I hardly knew ye...
Now that you can purchase the license until the end of '03, we have the perfect x-mas/kwanza/Chanukah/XXXXX-holiday gift for that linux nerd in your family Get one for mom, dad, the dog... Great stocking stuffer! plaque it up next to that resume before its too late and costs $1400!
Down, down, down. The Red knight's goin' down.
This must be one of the most long-running Slashdot stories I've ever seen, and one of the most vehement :-) I wonder what a plot of stories/posts over time would look like...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
The non-compete agreement prohibits Novell from directly competing with SCO's Unix-on-Intel business, McBride said.
Linux Is Not UniX, any more so than BSD, BeOS, or MacOSX. Better double check the wording of that contract Darl.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Authored by: radicimo on Tuesday, November 18 2003 @ 12:40 PM EST
Conference call just ended. I had a *1 for questions, but they just cut off the conference before things got too hairy, with a "We have no more callers". LIARS. Also, interesting how Dion Cornett was unable to ask his question. Makes me wonder out loud.
1. They referred to SCOsource licensing as one of the contingencies that created the payment for Boies (really cagey about it too). However they also said that Microsoft in no way was funding the lawsuit. That is a patently untrue then, as MSFT has funded the SCOsource licensing.
I think this one is really important to note. IF there ever is a securities fraud investigation of TSG, some of their comments in the call are patently self-contradictory, and if I was "allowed" to ask my questions these would have come out.
2. Still seems that there are no other licensees besides MSFT and SUNW. I was going to force them to get specific about this and find out when Sun payment will be recorded, and if there were any future contingencies which would lead to additional payments by either.
3. I wanted Boies to explain how the USL v. BSDI lawsuit gave them any legal standing. It doesn't, and seems to weaken it (IANAL).
4. Compete versus non-compete wrt Novell. First UNIX is not Linux, so how are they competing with the letter of the agreement? Second, SCO legacy revenue is decreasing whereas this new partnership (word they used again and again) with a law firm suggests that their core business is now lawsuits. How is Novell competing with that (tongue in cheek)?
5. Has OSDL contacted them about their use of the trademark UNIX, and why do they continue to use this trademark without proper attribution?
The reason why SCO is able to perpetrate the FUD they do is because the press and financial community are not doing their research and asking the hardball questions. Things only got a bit tight when they got called to task on the issue of Boies payment and whether it was a contingency based on past or future actions."
Should be interesting. After all, Novell could argue simply that "Since we are buying a GNU/Linux company, and GNU means 'Gnu's Not Unix', blah, blah, blah".
The burden of proof should (notice the "should", because the law may say different) be on SCO to prove that Linux *is* UNIX.
If it is according to the law, then there could be problems. If it is not, then Novell's scott free.
Just my $0.02.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
The legal action is also causing them to have problems hiring. I was called up by one recuriter/pimp and asked if I would be intrested in working in their call center. To this I gave a firm but polite no. HE then let slip that everyone he had spoken to had said pretty much the same thing.
Oh well
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
IANAL, but I suspect now might be a good time to join in RedHat's suit against Darl and his crack smoking band of pirates.
Put it this way: SCOX stock had been in free-fall for days (opened today around $13.5); after a phone-in, that was announced at 10:30pm last night, they declare that they will sue Novell; stock rises (now over $14.5).
And this has been going on for months.
Strange.
The attractive feature of this software product is that it is bundled with a blue-suited lawyer-in-a-box.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Depending on how broadly the no-compete clause was written, if it covers linux, there's a chance the same would apply to NetWare as well, cause NetWare isn't Unix either.
On the other hand, hasn't SCO changed their core products to litigation and (trying) to sell licenses for other company's software?
CRN in a grand exhibition of both lack of research and insight has Darl McBride listed as one of the top 25 CEOs this year. My favorite quote is about us Open Source Communists:
"It's like back on the farm where we had to break a new colt and try and tame them," McBride says.
Now you know why Wall Street loves this guy. This is a glowing review of the man and his mission for Team Capitalism.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
"Gotta get me somma that SCOX!!" (tm) :)
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I don't see how SuSE competes with SCO's core business. As far as I know, SuSE has never sued anyone.
It seems to me that the only ones currently competing with SCO's business model are ambulance-chasing lawyers.
Next round of news:
1. SCO patents litigation as a business model; changes name to Tort, Inc.
2. Tort, Inc. (formerly SCO) files suit on over 4000 law firms specializing in personal injury and workers' compensation cases, claiming patent infringement.
3. Tort, Inc. sues US Senate and House of Representatives, claiming tort reform bills designed to threaten innovation and excellence in their product line.
...is the status of IBM's filings to compel discovery not just from SCO, but with companies investing in SCO.
This could get particularly sticky if SCO's legal team has a strong financial stake in SCO and the outcome.
Attorney/client privilege is pretty strong, but can it be pried apart if there is evidence of, oh, say fraud?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Probably not. It should be enough to show that it DOES compete - which would be trivial.
IANAL, but I don't think that's the only thing it has to show. I believe that it would also have to show that by distributing linux, Suse/Novell are having a direct impact upon SCO's business.
Given that Linux is freely distributed by a range of companies, it's hard to see how they can make that case. Also, I wonder how confusing it will be for the courts when they learn that SCO is actually a company that was established to try to profit from distributing someone else's intellectual property, which they had a right to freely distribute, but by using the funds from their IPO to purchase an older technology, they believe they can then prevent the company that originally sold the older technology from distributing the same free operating system that led to their successful IPO in the first place.
Now it may just be me, but I've got a very strong suspicion that any judge or jury who was exposed to the arguments would actually laugh this out of court.
"Nice try fellas, do you really think we are that stupid?"
No, I think there are some very twitchy sphincters in Utah at the moment, so it's time to crank the FUD again and bring out the smoke and mirrors for another quick performance.
The operative principle is a well understood one, that once you lose a customer (for any reason) it is very difficult to get them back. I don't think the folks over at SCO will change their tune, since it is apparent that they've put all their eggs in the legal basket. But, I really don't think I want to support SCO's customers with my money either.
Incidentally, I'm also pushing at my work to discontinue supporting older versions of our application which run on SCO, and provide those customers a free upgrade path to the Linux based versions. This may be successful, for more than purely ideological reasons as well. I don't think it is a coincidence that when we ported the original SCO version to Linux over 80% of our support issues disappeared overnight on those deployments. This certainly helps my case, and is a non-scientific indicator of what garbage their product actually is, source owner or not,
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
The first time my parents care about my real hobbies and what do I get? A SCO license for $699.
What can I do to reverse this? I don't wan't to hurt my parents.
What will happen now since SCO knows my address? I don't wan't to get sued either.
Guys,
You are watching history in the making. SCO might look like an annoying pest, a cynical manipulator of the stock market, a bucket of shit without the bucket, but think about how future generations will view this.
First, this is the first serious industry-wide debate about the legitimacy of Linux, as an open source concept, as a child of the GPL, and as an operating system. The simple fact that people are prepared to go to war (and this is war) over Linux raises it from a curiosity to a treasure.
Second, this is of course about much more than SCO vs. The World, and future generations will place it in its correct context. Mainly, this is about Microsoft trying to ward off the oncoming Linux mammoth, unable to attack Linux head-on for many reasons, but unable to watch as it demolishes their market with an apparently unstoppable force.
Thirdly, this is about the Old versus the New, on the one side the forces of "software is a product" and on the other, the forces of "software is a commodity technology". The period 1998-2003 saw software evolve from a rare and precious thing to something that is so cheap we simply can't build harddisks large enough any more. SCO and Microsoft are firmly in the "Old" camp, IBM and most of the rest of the world are in the "New" camp. You don't need to be a genius to see the inexorable grip that the technology cycle has on software, and the consequences of this.
SCO lost before they started, that is clear. But this battle defines the line that must be crossed to move into the future. Stick with proprietary platforms, die. Move to commodity platforms, live and prosper.
It would be a good time to sell your Microsoft shares too: $51 billion can disappear remarkably quickly when the money stops rolling in.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
It doesn't cover either. The relevant line in the contract (as posted on Groklaw if anyone wants to read the whole thing) is:
In other words, SCO doesn't just have to prove that Linux competes with their Unices (which is probably true, at least on those computers which don't rely on new-fangled things like "USB" that SCO is still working on support for), they have to prove that the source code they bought from Novell constitutes a primary portion of the value of SuSE Linux!
This is just more BS intended to prop up their stock price; don't bother paying attention until they actually start trying to pull this stuff on a judge, instead of their current backpedaling official stance of "We only have a contract dispute with IBM, and we've never threatened Red Hat with anything more."
Rollin', Rolling', Rollin',
Rollin', Rolling', Rollin',
Rollin', Rolling', Rollin',
SCOhide!
Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'
Keep the stock price swollen,
Keep them lawsuits rollin',
SCOhide!
Ignorance and Hubris together, Hell bent for treasure, Wishin' IBM was on my side.
All the things I'm missin, Source code, money and lawsuit dissmissin', Are waitin at the end of my ride.
Move em' on, Head em' up, Move em' on,SCOhide!
Cut em' out, Paste em' in, Greek em' out, Show em' off, SCOhide!
Keep movin', movin', movin'
Though their dissaprovin', Keep them Unix users groanin', SCOhide!
Don't try to understand them, Just Subpoena, sue and charge em', Soon we'll be livin' high and wide. My heart's calculatin', My new Rolls Royce will be waitin', Be waitin' at the end of my ride.
Move em' on, Sue em' up, Move em' on, SCOhide!
Cut em' out, Paste em' in, Greek em' out, Show em' off, SCOhide!
Move em' on, Sue em' up, Move em' on, SCOhide!
Drown em' out, Subpoena em' in, Cash em' out, Sue em' ALLLLLLL!!!, SCOhide!
Rollin', Rolling', Rollin', Rollin', Rolling', Rollin', SCOhide!
SCOhide!
Taking stock in the company you are representing as payment? Is it just me, or does that seem wrong?
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Yes, IBM's lawyers are doing a great job so far in this litigation, but remember that it is NOT a foregone conclusion that SCO will lose. This is not the kind of issue I would want to be ignorant of and I feel it is our responsibility to keep reporting SCO's tripe and to consistently call it out for what it is, if only for a solid counterpoint to the analysts who continue to push SCO as a 'buy.'
This is an important case because it is one that we MUST win. Suppose we lose, and a new Open Source operating system gets written to replace the IP'd linux. How long will it take SCO et al to pursue it with similar litigation? How ready will coders be to place themselves in the line of legal-fire? We have companies like IBM and Red Hat doing the heavy lifting for us now - how likely are they to continue down this path should they lose this case?
Pretty bleak, and admittedly unlikely outcome. Yet pretty important stuff to most of us here. Hell, I know people who would walk away from computers in disgust should SCO win. Of course this is news, and of course it is reported on Slashdot! THIS is news that matters.
If you remember back to the 1500's there used to be stock markets where pirate ships could get funding to go out and plunder other countries' merchant ships. The risks were high, but the payoff was huge. Is this any different? The only difference is that instead of the stocks being taken out for biker gangs that take on big rigs, you've got one corperation trying to exercise it's ability to legally wrangle other corperations for money through an entirely different system much like a bully, but at this point it's at the pirate. SCO is the first legal-pirate (tempting to call them lepirates, ;) ) corperation; a corperation that adds nothing to society that uses strongarm tactics, extortion, blackmail, ect all given a hint of legality by their lawers lies and a couple patents and copyrights that are getting old.
Microsoft will turn into one when they start going downhill, so will the RIAA, etc. If the RIAA can't make money by competition they'll just go back through the past 100 years of copyrights they have and start releasing them. Microsoft will pull all kinds of BS on the linux community if htey have to. Same with the MPAA, and any other monopoly that has sufficient stake in the legal system of the country they are located in that they can effectivly control it and a market.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
And what about Netware? I'm no expert on Novell products, but hasn't Netware been running on x86 for ages? It certainly competes with "Unix-on-Intel".
Given that Netware is Novell's core product, I very much doubt that Darl's claim has any basis in fact.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Novell sold UnixWare to real SCO. Sales Contract stated that Novell and real SCO compete and that Novell would not use retained SysV rights to complete with real SCO. Novell was expected to compete with other products as long as they are not primarily based on SysV. SCOX is again blowing smoke, but what do you expect from Smoking Crack Outfit.
Richard Painter, a Professor at the University of Illinois who was an early proponent of the legal reforms now included in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, wrote to the SEC recently. He stated that they should examine "conflicts created by unorthodox methods of compensating lawyers (particularly receipt of stock in lieu of legal fees and contingent fee arrangements such as the fee of over $30 million reported to have been earned by Time Warner's counsel in that company's merger with AOL)."
Hopefully these types of arrangements will be put to an end soon. While I don't see an end to contingency fees (because that's how many people are able to afford lawyers), I can certainly see practice of using stock options as payment coming to an end.
Frylock: That's not a toy!
Master Shake: You say that about everything you own. You should own toys. They're fun.
Hurry before time runs out again.
I'm holding out for the "Buy 1 licence get 9 free - Noncompliance Blowout Sale"
-Karma neutral, but you'd better stop looking at me..
You must've typed that up on a Windows box.. you, uh, cock-smoking uh teabagger.. whatever that means.
If you liked licking my balls, add me to your foes list!
We don't know enough facts about the non-compete agreement to make a real judgement about the validity of this claim. Here are some factors that we need to consider.
First, Novell continued to sell its NetWare product, so we know right off the bat that the non-compete did not apply to any OS on x86.
Second, control of the definition of UNIX was transferred to the Open Group at around the same time. We do need to take into account that Linux is not UNIX. It is a system based on extremely similar principles and conventions, but does not conform to the UNIX standard.
Third, Linux was just starting to make an impact beyond the dorm room in 1995. BSD was already established. It was probably forseeable that BSD and/or Linux would impact the market for SysV on x86.
Lacking further information, we are left with impression that the agreement was likely ambiguous. Typically, when an ambiguity is discovered in a contract, that ambiguity is interpretted against the side that drafted the ambiguous clause. I would guess that SCO drafted that clause. Novell has no interest in it being there, so that would mean the clause would be interpretted as narrowly as possible.
There are a lot of leaps here. We'll see how this actually works out.
A first step toward a boycott would be to contact those distributors and let them know how you feel -- that you will not be doing business with them and will encourage your business associates to avoid them as well.
To that end SCO provides a list of their distributors. Here are their US distributors:
Avnet (formely Savoir)
(Offices located in Phoenix, Az; Campbell, CA; and Atlanta, GA area)
3950 Johns Creek Court, Suite 200
Suwanee, GA 30024
Phone: (800) 541-9801
URL: www.avnet.com
Email: Anne.Skelton@avnet.com
All SCO Lines Available
DTR Business Systems
1160 Centre Drive, Suite A
Walnut, CA 91789
Phone: 800-598-5721 or 909-598-5721
URL: www.dtrbus.com
Email: sales@dtrbus.com
All SCO Lines Available
Seneca Data
7401 Round Pond Road
North Syracuse, NY 13212
Phone: (800) 227-3432
URL: www.senecadata.com
Sales Contact: sales@senecadata.com
All SCO Lines Available
Tech Data
5350 Tech Data Drive
Clearwater, FL 33760
800-237-8931, 75289 option 1
URL: www.techdata.com
Email:eengel@techdata.com
All SCO Lines Available
Terian Solutions
7040 Empire Central Dr.
Houston, TX 77040-3214
Phone: 800-876-8649
URL: www.terian.com
Email:sales@terian.com
All SCO Lines Available
For those of you outside the US, you may find the distributors in your area by using SCO's list.
Go get em!
Actually SuSE successfully sued SCO.
You may be right in general -- but in this case, I believe that you're misinformed. The wording in the Novell/SCO agreement is very specific. It did not specify that Novell could not compete with SCO in the x86 market. They already do -- if Novell agreed to do so, they'd put themselves out of business.
Read the text of the agreement at Groklaw.net. Essentially, the agreement stated that they could not use SysV Unix (the IP that Novell sold to SCO) to compete with SCO. Darl's argument is based on his contention that Linux contains enough stolen code from SysV Unix to warrant it being called Unix. Essentially, his non-compete claim is completely based on the outcome of the SCO Vs. IBM case (which, IMO is all bullshit). If SCO loses the IBM case, then they won't have a leg to stand on against Novell since the courts will have affirmed that Linux!=UNIX.
-Turkey