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Gartner Recommends Holding Onto The SCO Money

benploni writes "George Weiss of Gartner has published a paper with some interesting recommendations regarding SCO. They include 1) Keep a low profile and do not divulge details on Linux deployments. 2) Until a judgment in a case would unequivocally warrant it, Linux users should not pay SCO the license fees it has asked for to settle its allegations of infringement of intellectual property rights. 3) Do not permit SCO to audit your premises without legal authorization. 4) For customers of SCO Open Server and UnixWare, an unfavorable judgment could cause SCO to cease operations or sell itself. That could harm future support and maintenance. Just in case, prepare a plan for migrating to another platform within two years. There's more, but are the analysts finally catching on?"

12 of 455 comments (clear)

  1. How do I apply? by Chewie · · Score: 5, Funny

    Man, I want a job at the Gartner group. It seems their methods go something like:

    1) Something happens
    2) Side with big business and release a paper
    3) Wait until popular tide changes
    4) Release new paper contradicting old one.

    Shit, I could do that all day. Sign me up!

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    1. Re:How do I apply? by chill · · Score: 5, Funny

      Man, I want a job at the Gartner group. It seems their methods go something like:

      1) Something happens
      2) Side with big business and release a paper
      3) Wait until popular tide changes
      4) Release new paper contradicting old one.

      Shit, I could do that all day. Sign me up!


      It wouldn't surprise me if you were now sued for a DMCA violation -- reverse engineering their business practice!

      --
      Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  2. Shhh..... by DaRat · · Score: 4, Funny

    Elmer Fudd: "Be vary vary quiet. We're deploying Linux!"

  3. That's exactly why many call them anal-ysts by melted · · Score: 4, Funny

    'cause they don't know jack shit! We once had Gartner do market analysis for us, and when the guy came over to present it, a couple of his pie charts showed wrong percentages. The percentages he had on his slides were adding up to something like 112%, not 100. Of course he got caught and laughed at. We haven't used their services since then. :0) Our management can pull better numbers out of their ass.

  4. Re:Change your TCP/IP fingerprint by silentbozo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Anyone have any details on how to do this? I've got some systems that I'd like to cloak as classic MacOS machines to discourage script kiddies from poking at them. They're already locked down, but I figure the more indirection I can throw out, the more likely that they'll go off and bother some other poor sod.

  5. Tomorrow's headline... by The+Wookie · · Score: 5, Funny

    "SCO sues Gartner Group"

  6. For those of you with SCO Unix products.... by overbyj · · Score: 4, Funny

    I also recommend that you run out to CompUSA quickly because I saw a copy of "SCO Unix in a Nutshell" on the discount shelf for only $5. You will need this after SCO goes out of business and you no longer have support.

    --
    No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
  7. Thank you Mr. Obvious by orthogonal · · Score: 5, Funny
    3) Do not permit SCO to audit your premises without legal authorization.

    Huh? Are there actually companies stupid enough to say,
    "Sure, Darl, come right on over. Nah, a week of disruption as your people trample through our offices and server rooms is no problem!"

    "And you're looking to bill us $699 for each unix, linux, minix, or *bsd box, and for any microwave with an embedded controller? Hey, that's cool, you're the rightful owners after all!"
  8. Re:Red Herrings Eat Profits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    overextending yourself is a bad business model. They're like Rome!

    The crucial difference here is that Rome was, at one time during its history, feared and respected.

  9. Darl McBride is Toad from X Men by usurper_ii · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was watching X men and it hit me that the whole movie was a SCO analogy. Stay with me here. Bill Gates is Magneto and Darl McBride is Toad. Now I haven't figured out who Mystique is yet, but since she is the closest thing to a nude woman most Slashdotters are ever going to see, we all need to at least get a mental image of her at this point. Anyway, Magneto has all the important people rounded up at this big party -- these people are IBM, Novell, Red Hat big wigs, etc. -- and he has this huge electrical storm heading toward them (I have seen the movie three times now and I'm still not exactly sure what that electrical-storm thing is supposed to do?). Now here is where it gets good because Linus is Wolverine (Logan) and off on the side, as this big storm comes, he is battling Toad. First, Wolverine makes it look like he killed himself by starting to talk about incorporating DRM into Linux, but this is all blowing smoke up everyone's ass, 'cause Toad, thinking Wolverine is dead, goes up to him and starts looking through his pockets for some code to steal, but Wolverine shoots his knives out of his fingers and rams them right through Toad...you can see them sticking out of his back, and as the camera zooms in, you see blood stained, cool-looking shiny metal glistening in the moonlight. Now with Toad out of the way Wolverine turns his sights toward stopping Magneto and his electrical storm-cloud thing speeding towards everyone. Wolverine quickly finds the computer controlling the storm and starts to do some hacking on it to stop the storm, but when he brings up a DOS window to run a script in, the damn thing gets a BSOD...forcing Logan to do a crtl-alt-delete on the computer...three times. Luckily, the reboot stops the electrical storm-cloud thing, but Logan does feel a little robbed that it was Magneto's own poor software that really did him in!

    To be continued....

  10. Re:Slow learners by BigRedFish · · Score: 5, Funny

    In summary:

    • Don't pay invoices presented by companies with whom you have no business, unless/until legally compelled to do so by a court.
    • Do not consent to a search of your home/business, especially by a private entity, unless/until compelled to do so by court order.

    Thanks, Gartner. That's the kind of hard-hitting, insightful business advice we need in this management-by-Ziff-Davis world. Maybe next month they can do a helpful piece on not paying a parking ticket until you've been issued one, and then only if it was issued by a real Dept. of Traffic officer, and not some homeless guy who wrote the citation on a napkin.

  11. Re:Red Herrings Eat Profits by gnu-generation-one · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Just in case, prepare a plan for migrating to another platform within two years."

    Why do they need top publish this advice on a website? Can't they just email SCO's last remaining customer directly?