Slashdot Mirror
New Survey Finds No Linux 'Chill' From SCO Suit
daddywonka writes "According to this article at internetnews.com, an upcoming survey from the Robert Frances Group shows that 'cost-savings and the General Public License, or GPL, are trumping any concerns about SCO Group's claim of copyright infringement within parts of Linux.' The survey only covers 15 companies. That doesn't seem very reassuring to me. Do any slashdotters have experience with their companies pulling the plug on Linux projects due to the SCO trial or is it business as usual?"
OK this SCO stuff is not just being thrown about in the courtroom, it's being played in the media.
Is this legal, for a company to go about talking crap that's as yet unproven?
For a year now they've been throwing around allegations of suing anyone who uses Linux, claiming ownership of parts of Linux, and only involved in ONE court case so far. It seems awfully crap, to be honest. They're claiming the IP that may or may not be there is in another product and providing no proof. It's a year of this now!
Is what they're doing legal, or pushing the boundaries of legality yet?
Seriously. We run at least 10 mission-critical Linux boxes (Mostly Debian - DNS, E-Mail, FileServing, Backup, etc.) and I don't even think my boss knows about the SCO lawsuit. The people who don't read Slashdot don't have that much exposure to it. To the (smart) businesspeople, it just looks like some dying company is trying to salvage itself using bullying techniques. So, you always think of smart business people simplifying the details to get a bigger, better picture, right? Well... There ya go.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
About 60 or so servers used for firewalls/mailservers.
Management don't even seem aware of the situation, or that the platform of choice (RedHat 7.3) has limited support life.
I guess those that would not understand the claims are not even aware of SCO's case.
...is currently running its primary business application on a Compaq Proliant 800 server box -- Pentium III 500 Mhz, 512MB RAM, and a 36GB SCSI drive. It's running SCO Unix, as well.
The decision was made to upgrade that machine (before I was hired) since we're well over 60 employees strong. If they run a general ledger report, it brings the machine down to its knees.
It was originally proposed to put the business application on a Linux machine. But, my manager, (the VP of IT) said that with all of the hoo-hah going on about Linux, he suggested against it. Instead, he bought a brand-spankin'-new HP 9000 box, running 11i.
I'm a huge Linux proponent. I've been a Linux consultant for the past four years, and do EVERYTHING Linux. I was disappointed to hear that the whole SCO/Linux thing changed my VP's mind about Linux. The good news is that after I started with the company, I impressed upon the VP the importance of Linux, and what a crap-case SCO has.
Our new mail server (slated to be built Q1 2004) will be running RHEL. I told him not to worry about the SCO business, they'll crawl under the carpet and die soon enough.
I just take great satisfaction in knowing that we're replacing a SCO server with an HP 11i server! HA! Eat dirt, Darl.
We're building an embedded device to be used by many of our troops -- think tens of thousands if not way more than that.
We're just laughing at the SCO license as it will take our per unit cost from $0 to $699. Something about how they'll change their minds when 4ID shows up at their door.
On the otherhand, this device was originally intended to run W2K on dual processors, so $699 may be cheap....
I work for a Fortune 100 company and my boss ordered me to switch all my servers away from Linux because the legal department was afraid of law suits.
Naturally, I chose FreeBSD. Now that I think about it, I wish I ran FreeBSD from the start, as it's an awsome OS.
I've always wondered if SCO Employees read slashdot, and if any are geek enough and annoyed enough at their employer's actions to comment. Anyone? Anyone who was or is employed there since this has all blown up in the last year? Any thoughts on what your employer is doing? Are you happy with them? agree with them? leaving them as damned soon as you find another job?
I'm curious
One project that we just worked on, the knowledgable CIO was leaning toward Linux for a web application, and decided at the last minute to go Microsoft due to the lawsuit. (he has both Linux and MS Web Servers, and it was pretty much a toss-up in his mind, prior to the lawsuit.) This guy's a SHARP CIO in most every one of his decisions.
But I agree with other comments; most people don't even know about it. I'll tell you, though, selling Microsoft projects is MUCH easier than selling Linux projects. The average non-technical business person has some exposure to MS and Windows. "Linux.. isn't that software that was written by a bunch of non-professional hobbists and Chinese Hackers in their spare time, and there's no support for it? What if something goes wrong? We're trying to run a mission critical application here, not some hobby system!"
Oh well!
I've actually managed to convince my boss to (slowly) phase out our (dozen-odd) OpenServer machines. We haven't decided what to replace them with yet (most likely RHEL AS or possibly Solaris - it has to be certified for Progress), but I'm happy to be moving away from OpenServer, which is not at all nice to admin.
Well from a few friends who use to work at SCO in the Dublin call center is that quite a few people have walked out over the Linux/SCO fiasco. So it looks like its hurting sco as well
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Among other things, I manage the servers for two different companies - both with existing Linux servers. Both are continuing to advance their Linux deployments without any major concerns.
I'm the sysadmin at an mid-sized ag company whose owner is the local Republican Committee chair. He saw an article in one of the business magazines and asked me if we were running "Linus" on any of our equipment. I told him we were using it for our web and email server and he looked a bit worried. I then told him that the SCO deal was probably a pump and dump scheme at which point he got really interested. I explained how "Linus" came about and then said that it was inevitable that given its success, someone who wasn't around in the early days would claim ownership. "Sort of like Gore claiming to have invented the Internet..." at which point he started laughing and told me to look into other ways to use "Linus" in the company. So for one company at least, SCO's strategy of intimidation has backfired.
The company I work for uses custom software programmed in Business BASIC. They have used this software running exclusively on SCO for around 20 years now. The MIS Director decided that McBrides attitudes on business, customer service and innovation are surely SCOs doom. I have spent the last month preparing my Red Hat server to take over in production I will implement it in Jan 04. No more SCO....ever. That was my guidance from above.
In a perverse sort of way, that SCO is having little effect on Linux deployment is NOT necessarily good news for Red Hat, as far as the declaratory judgement case in Delaware is concerned. That is because several of Red Hat's counts (false advertising, deceptive trade practices, unfair competition, tortious interference with prospective business opportunities, and trade libel and disparagement) appear to require Red Hat to prove actual damages.
For example, paragraph 82 of the complaint reads:
"SCO's statements are material and affect the decision as to whether a customer would purchase LINUX software or services."
Paragraphs 93 and 94 read:
"93. SCO's actions have caused and are causing irreparable harm to Red Hat, and unless permanently restrained and enjoined by this Court, such irreparable harm will continue.
"94. Red Hat is entitled to actual damages for injuries sustained as a result of SCO's violations of the common law prohibiting unfair competition."
If everyone is ignoring SCO's threats, and they have *no* effect on Linux deployment, then how could Red Hat show actual damages?
I could envision Drew Carey saying in an episode of the American version of the TV show Who's Line Is It, Anyway: "The show where everything's made up and the points don't matter. That's right, the points don't matter. Just like SCO claiming copyright to Linux."
So if you are on Red Hat's side in the Red Hat v. SCO lawsuit, articles like this are not necessarily good news.
AFAIK there are no SCO-related news on computer or business sites. Just Slashdot and few other linux-related sites constantly put these boring "news". Usually I skip them (both stories and comments), because there is really nothing interesting in it. SCO has nothing to offer, SCO will destroy nothing. SCO will change nothing. These "news" are worthless, just like soap opera.
The company I work at recently switched an in-progress web application from Redhat Linux to FreeBSD soley because of the SCO thing. All the developers wanted to use Linux, but the project manager chose FreeBSD because he thought we might have to pay SCO money at some point.
Stupid SCO...
And yet no one seems too concerned about the possibility of Windows' market share being too severely affected by this.
So I'd think it's only logical that there wouldn't be too much concern about Linux' future either.
Please God, let me find my blue hat with the red trim. (Frances Farmer)
... and I'm not bothered in the slightest by this SCO FUD-festival.
...
What's the worst case? We switch to FreeBSD or one of the other countless POSIX/C/C++/assembly-friendly kernels out there.
The cat is out of the bag. Operating Systems are no longer so difficult to write that companies should expect to profit from them
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Previous coverage on slashdot, groklaw, and many other web sites have delved way deeper into this than you. In fact, I am somewhat suspicious you are actually a troll, since I can't believe a Fortune 500's legal department can't crank out a more sophisticated analysis than "the files sure look identical". Even us non-legally-trained bozos know that a show of identical looking files is light years away from a case that SCO owns any copyright whatsoever that is being infringed in any way by Linux users. And, in fact, all the facts most of us have seen point the other direction.
When SCO is gone and your IT department points out to your bosses the ungodly amount of time and money you cost the company due to jumping the gun (especially when your competitors didn't take the same silly steps), I'm sure part of those costs will be recouped from the legal department's payroll!
Just a word to those SCO employees lurking/posting here. Keep in your mind that, at least for me, I despise what your management is doing but hold the poor laboring schlub actually doing work in only the highest regard. I hope for your sake that cooler heads prevail, your owner/boss/tyrant gets the ax, and you can go back to doing useful work for a class company.
Hang in.
Dogu
ps - if you ARE a manager/owner/tyrant, move along, there's nothing here for you.
What I'd like to know is, are there any companies who were planning Linux projects that are holding until after an SCO resolution?
In conversation we came down to the basic idea that IBM knows what is going on. If IBM was in wrong they would have bought SCO. (like Intel bought DEC Alpha)
So if IBM is fighting this then IBM is safe.
If SCO was right they would be buying there stock not selling it.
Follow the money.
Charles Puffer
Where I work I'm pretty much the only person that knows anything, or even cares about whats going on. Occasionally someone will ask about it and I will simply say there is no proof and SCO has been fighting giving any as hard as they can. Any time they have released what they call proof it turned out to be a complete farse that even a half wit could see. Then I email them a list of investment firms that deal in SCO stock and advise them to take their money and run.
Sorry for being an AC.
My company is a recognizable international Bank, we currently so not have Linux deployed but the writing is in the wall:
-Colleagues of mine are going to RH certification training.
-We have an internal distribution that takes care of internal audit issues 9mostly security concerns) that is being tested an will be ready fro deployment soon.
-The big heads that design this stuff have all Linux under their desks and some even in their laptops.
-It seems (this is a rumour) like the company is evaluating Linux for the desktop. Yup, if we go that way it will be front page history on this site, thousend of Windows machines could go the way of the dodo.
Nevertheless the company is holding on a bit just in case, but I guess it will not be for too long, and in any case part of the deployments will be using Suns's Linux offerings, nothing SCO can do about those.
"most Linux admins are knowledgeable enough to gather that it's only a matter of time before the entire SCO thing blows over."
Probably true, but what about similar lawsuits in the future? MS or whoever is behind the SCO trouble probably has plans to involve a never-ending series of them.
It seems very likely that not only the kernel will be affected by bogus IP claims, but other packages as well, the aim of which would be to put a semi-permanent damper on linux development and adoption.
We need a way out, which is why I suggest putting a disclaimer on Linux distributions regarding the possibility of inadvertent proprietary code inclusion, and some time limit that would allow recalcitrant IP holders to find and withdraw their code if they wish to. Failing to notify the code maintainers would then be an implied grant of permission to use the code.
Yes, it could result in a lot more work for developers and would probably delay new releases until the proprietary code is replaced, but in the end, there would be fewer legal problems.
This would be something like a "Lost and found" advertisement saying "Found article, it's yours if you can identify it, otherwise it's mine."
The next big problem for Linux to overcome will be a series of frivolous lawsuits based on frivolously awarded patents.
IANAL, ADWBO (I am not a lawyer, and don't wanna be one.)
AC
I work at an ISR/Software house. We are both a SCO Partner and an advocate of Linux. Our software was hosted on AIX, Motorola's and SCO for many years. Four years ago we began shifting all our new business (and existing customers) over to RedHat and haven't had a SCO sale for what seems like a couple of years.
Our existing customers have had little/no interest in the entire SCO/Linux debarcle, especially once we read them the gospel of Groklaw, and new customers don't seem that interested either - more the same old NT (Server 2003) vs. Unix question.
Quite frankly we all agree with the general concensus that SCO have dropped some really bad acid although I'd say their paranoia was now justified - we are ALL out to get them now!
We just placed an order for 24 copies of RHAS and are about to plunk down some serious coin on IBM Blade frames... we're ripping out a Sun 6800 used for QM analysis, so the net will be to save tons o' cash... ;)
I wouldn't say our company isn't concerned about the lawsuit, but our lawyers, er, Corporate Counsel, basically ripped up SCOs claims for our management's benefit.
If this project is a success, we're looking to leverage Linux at every opportunity we get.
The fact that IBM and other Big Name companies are telling SCO to go pound salt is a big help when making the Linux case to suits. Plus there is not real investment, if SCO succeeds and we end up with our back against the wall we can put something else on those boxes and carry on.
If the likes of IBM were to cave in to SCO the landscape would change dramatically. Headlines in the WSJ and NYT about IBM giving up Linux or big companies having the shell out big payouts after being sued would catch management's attention, and darkness would descend.
-- Sigs are for losers
Here, in Argentina, only thing that matter is "costs", I think nobody knows about the SCO problem here and if they know, they don't care...
We're installing linux for our servers, and we're planning to install it on every desktop too.
ajf
That was good enough for him.
OTOH, I'm a bit wary of officially experimenting with kernel 2.6 here, simply because of the Sequent code in 2.6. Anyone have any insights into that?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
ps - as much as I hate to admit it, we've been switching most everything over to Win2000 and/or XP Pro and the overall reliability of workstations and servers has improved - we don't crash and burn nearly as often as we used to.
Wow, you crash much less than you used to. That's really nice. I've been running Linux on my home machine for nearly 10 years at this point. Except for two times when I misconfigured X back in the old days, my only crashes have been because of bad hardware. That's it. The Linux kernel has never crashed on me except when the underlying metal is bad.
I'll admit that Windows has gotten better over the years. However, crashing at all during normal use is unacceptable. I can't understand why anyone would put up with it.
OK. I work as a consultant for serveral State agencies. I can tell you first hand that SCO is killing themselves Here is what's happening.
IBM is triking back by discontinuing any DB2 or Informix support on SCO. So we are migrating those boxes to Linux/Oracle. The State Agencies I consult
for use HPUX, AIX, Linux, and SCO. No new SCO boxes are going to be implemented, and we are migrating away from SCO. Most small hosts are going to be migrated to the Z series maingframe on a Linux partition.
SCO will be dead in about a year.
Funny this should come up. I have a friend sells specialized unix-type systems to businesses. Before the SCO thing, his choice was FreeBSD. He has since switched to Linux for these systems because he thinks that the SCO claim to BSD has a more solid basis in fact than the linux claims.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
I recently applied to SCO a few weeks ago for a software engineer position. Now with the current state of the economy, I have been unemployed for almost a year now. I have only had 2 interviews and most companies don't even bother to reply to my resume. So, for the fun of it, I applied to a position at SCO. A few hours later I got an email from the hiring department asking me if I was willing to relocate to UT from MA. If so I can immediately come in for an interview.
Of course I turned it down. I'd rather live off my savings account than truely scar my resume by saying I was employed by SCO on it.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I have. I quit a company because the head of the company (small company) was using company profits to buy drugs. I quit without a another job. On the spot. Unequivocally and without remorse I left. I felt really really good about it.
You would be surprised at potential employers reactions when I gave a brief synopsis without being specific. They were impressed.
I work for myself now and would wish any of my employees quit if they have a moral issue with what the company is doing.
The only place I have seen any impact in the SCO garbage has been isolated individuals, such as a certain nameless contract officer in my state government, who use it to further reinforce their own existing prejudices or bias against using fs/os solutions in general. However, in the larger view, these are people that probably will never really change their bias regardless of if there had been a SCO or not, and the best one can hope for is that they are retired or replaced over time.
Seriously, if this goes bad, how in the hell is SCO going to find Linux users to chase? I can only think of those that use enterpise solutions from Red Hat/SUSE and the like who have customer databases to suponea. If a company has some talented admins and stick to free distros from the net how will SCO or anyone else for that matter find them to collect from?, NetCraft? That is just one box, or a farm of boxes, either way... for that box load BSD or like the parent says, make it look like something else.
I believe SCO is fuckered no matter how this things turns out. Even if they win, once the code is revealed it will be fixed and everyone will cut over to the non-SCO code. I don't think the courts will enforce a grandfather rule since the companies using Linux didn't intentionally use tainted code (my thought here is the business lobby will influence politicians and courts to make sure any ruling gives current users a couple months to clean up any boxes affected).
We were one of the 1500 companies that received the original letter.
Needless to say, not being an IP company, there was a lot of wrangling over how to proceed. Originally, the decision was made to cool off on Linux deployments until Legal could evaluate things. In an ironic little twist of fate, that meant that for a couple of projects we purchased IBM P-series boxes and AIX rather than deploying on Linux. I guess the thought was that IBM had a legal team and would protect AIX long after it bailed on Linux, or something along those lines.
Lately, however, it's become a non-concern. The case has become so ridiculous that it's not treated seriously anymore.
My suggestion to people who are having trouble in the office is to point the bosses to groklaw.net. Pamela has done such a fantastic job there. Her analyses are useful for lawyers, suits, and geeks all together. That's an amazing feat.
Way to go Pamela!
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
sPh
Now I, like most people here, have little regard for SCO (the board), but its employees (outside the board) deserve better consideration than this. If it was a simple matter of plain criminality (theft), then (assuming the US is like the UK), we could get the police involved! The police aren't involved (at the moment, AFAIK!) If they should be (but aren't), that is hardly a matter to pin on SCO employees. Complain to the police (who other law enforcement agency) as it would be them not doing their job! If the actions of the SCO board aren't criminal (but should be), then again, that is hardly something to abuse ordinary SCO employees with. Look to your law makers, as it would be them not doing their job! The concern of ordinary SCO employees should be recognised. We should not be expecting sacrifice and martyrdom from them for the actions of their borad. Actions that will, I'm sure, be adequately dealt with by the civil courts (and no, I'm not a SCO employee). (Incidentally, I aklways thought that the Millgram experiments performed in the US in the 1950 showed that the "I was only obeying orders" defence used during the Nuremburg trials was less hollow than originally thought!)
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
However, I am slowly starting to bring it back in. Mostly, in the appliance market. Not good, but it is a start.
Yes, but MS flew several of our execs (mostly technical execs) to Redmond to highlight their products, particularly aiming at the low-cost computing model. It was basically an attempt to take a whack at Linux since we were 4 months into a company-wide effort to adopt Linux at the expense of commercial UNIX and Windows.
The sales/marketing people made quite a large mention about the SCO suit making it sound like a forgone conclusion that Linux would be dead in a matter of months.
We're the largest business unit in my company and others looked to us for guidance on it. The presentation backfired and our CIO came back pretty hardened against MS.
Basically he felt it was "Use our stuff b/c Linux will be gone and then you won't have a choice anyway".
It's just the flip side of the coin...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
I own a small consulting and development Linux company in Brazil (although I live in Colorado). None of our 100+ consulting clients has asked us about the SCO case and we don't feel any slowing in Linux deployments in all those clients. We're even expanding our client base. Our biggest development customer has asked me personally if they should be worried about it (they're betting the company's future in a new product that has Linux as an embedded OS). After I explained what the whole think is about (with no little help from /. and groklaw) they went back to business as usual and haven't questioned the decision to use Linux again.
Maybe not management, but my client got an invoice from SCO for their RedHat Linux installation. They called me (their consultant) and asked me what to do with it. I told them to ignore it and keep it for evidence in case it's needed when it's time to send Darl and friends to the slammer. He was surprised at this answer at first, but pointing him to the IBM and RedHat countersuits was very reassuring. Thanks, IBM and RedHat!
In short the answer is yes. SCOs lawsuit is slowing the deployment of Linux and other OSS in at least my enterprise
/. for the last few months. I haven't really seen anyone point out the challenge that OSS puts into the corporate world in terms of how using software, particular mission critical software, is different now with OSS model then in the old traditional enterprise license model. The biggest area of concern as noted before is the IP infringement and that is what the SCO case fundamentally is about regardless of its particular merits (or lack there of).
The longer answer is below:
I've read a bunch of these SCO Bad vs. Linux Good threads on
When a large enterprise goes down the road of building a critical business application (read as revenue producing) many times there is a contract negotiation that has an Indemnity clause to protect the company licensing the software from claims against intellectual property asserted by another party. The greatest risk for the mission critical application is that there could be an attempt at an injunctive action against the infringing parties (Not common, but it does happen anyone remember Amazon's one click and bn.com???). This then could mean the company licensing the software that infringes might have to shutdown their application. Not such a big deal if now I can't load those spiffy web applets in my browser to download MP3s or have to make two clicks to buy a book, but a real bummer if Im a bank and I cannot run my funds transfer system.
In the case that a traditional software application infringes on the IP of another the indemnity clause gives the end user some protection. [Of course an indemnity clause from Joe & Bob development, Inc. doesnt really mean that much to Mucho-Huge-Bank-Corp, Inc., but one from Mega-PC-Soft, Inc. might.) In either case it also places a burden, because of the indemnity clause, on the original software developer to do a search of intellectual property to see if the is an infringement and seek to license from the IP owner that intellectual property or re-build the infringing model. If I am a software development shop and know my industry my legal consul can perform that task, as I know the internal mechanisms of the software applications I developed. You see this happen all the time in standards bodies when new specifications are being developed its called "identification of necessary claims" by the parties to the standard.
The trick is this is very hard to do for an enterprise that is the end customer of an application. As such, all new software that use OSS either in the app layer or as the base OS is still being viewed with a hairy eye-ball and needs to have a "how do I move to something else" plan developed before it is deployed in my shop. This is manageable for something like Apache where I can replace it with another web server with a modest amount of trauma, but a whole different story when I need to rebuild from the ground up because I have to toss the operating system.
My $0.02
One of our clients recently replaced a SCO server with a Linux one. when told about the lawsuit by me, they shrugged it off and said
"they're greedy bastards anyways"
Send a copy to your state's attorney general and the FTC, along with the information that you have never done business with or received a product from this company. Sending someone an invoice (assuming this is an invoice, not just one of SCO's dubious letters) for a product they purchased from someone else is illegal under federal and state laws - see Groklaw's "Open Letter to Darl McBride" for some references.
I didn't think SCO had actually sent any invoices out - it hasn't made the news, and all the legal types I've seen comment have been pretty confident that SCO wouldn't send anything out without lots of "This is not an invoice" fine print to try and avoid legal consequences.
Yeah, if that's one area that microsoft could take a good lesson from, it's the use of partitional swap space instead of relying on the filesystem to provide swap space.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Who things it the Admins that matter here ? I mean really ? The reason why Linux continues to do well is perceived cost, and by that I mean be a real enterprise looking for decent support and get a "free" version of Linux... err no.
The other reason is that the OS is a commodity item and the applications for the most part are running on application servers, probably running Java. So if SCO wins you either sign-up to Microsoft or pay the cash for Windows or Solaris x86.
One interesting thing for Linux next year is that buying an off-the-shelf server with Linux is no-longer cheaper than buying it with Solaris.
I bought Linux because it was cheap... if I can get Solaris at the same price I'll buy Solaris.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Nah, numbers work with management. Explaining to them that deploying linux will save them more money over the next 5yrs than SCO has will help quite a bit. Further explaining that even if SCO did have a case, they don't have the funds to keep the case running on the multiple legal fronts they are getting hit on will also help.
If the case is settled quickly it will only be because SCO doesn't have one. If the case is dragged out, SCO can't afford to keep it up and will bankrupt itself trying to drop the suit... even then they are still stuck with the Redhat suit which they can't just drop and don't have the money to settle.
At this point, SCO's loss doesn't depend on the legal system, it depends on the financial system, and they don't have the money to win no matter what else happens.
That's one of the major reasons I tell everyone: go to Gentoo. Do it now. Gentoo doesn't just mean having a legal kernel: what happens if, say, Intel sues AMD and you need to migrate to PowerPC? Gentoo will compile specifically for Gentoo and, most of the time, you'll not even have to change anything else - Gentoo will do it for you automatically. And because Gentoo compiles using the optimal flags for your architecture, your programs will run 1-2% more efficiently than they would if you just got the generic ix86 binaries.
How is Gentoo able to do it? Well, Gentoo is written in Python of course! Python is probably the world's best programming language. You can program anything in it, and it comes with over a gigabyte in libraries so for the most part, writing immensely complicated programs can be done in a couple of lines. For example:
is a typical example. It's an entire web browser, and it's less than 100 bytes, yet it supports all modern web standards, even frames. You just can't do this kind of thing in other languages. Gentoo is able to harness the power of this language, that really everything should be written in, to make every application you use optimal for your environment. Even those applications that aren't written in Python. And Python itself runs a good 2-3% faster under Gentoo than under Redhat, given identical hardware, because Gentoo ensures it's optimal for the system it's running under. Amazing.
We have a saying in America - that in order to achieve great things, one must not only act, but dream. Gentoo is the Nyquil that helps us dream.
What you did could be best described as enlightened self-interest. When someone is stealing from the company to buy drugs they're obviously on their way to rock bottom. They no longer have control over their habit and, since this guy is the head, he's going to take the company with him.
If you are smart and motivated, you'll keep yourself in the loop and try to pick up whatever is salvageable (IP, staff, contacts) to pick up the pieces after this guy hits the pavement.
I'm recycling old PC's and sending them out with Linux on them. Fsck Darl and his voodoo scare tactics. Let him come after me. Nothing would make me happier. Hey Darl, I make money from selling Linux boxes, wanna make something of it??
:) clean them up like new, install Linux on them and resell them for a very cheap price as a SAFE Internet appliance for browsing and email, and maybe other basic functions depending on the box and thier needs.
I put up ads in all the stores (a sheet with tear off phone # strips) asking people to call me to pick their old computers rather than throw them in the trash piles.
I pick them up for free
People throw away 20 million computers each year I'm trying to keep a few out of the landfills and make a few HONEST dollars for myself...
I push Linux every chance I get. SCO can go blow off....
"The sales/marketing people made quite a large mention about the SCO suit making it sound like a forgone conclusion that Linux would be dead in a matter of months."
that's pretty typical MS FUD mongering. According to them Novell, Apple, and Borland etc have all been 6 months away from death for years now.
I wonder how anybody takes anything MS says seriously anymore.
War is necrophilia.
I don't know, there's just something odd about someone bragging about the strength of their moral fiber by justifying looking down at people. Just a bit odd.
sic transit gloria mundi
"Linux is going to be crushed due to SCO IP issues, and Microsoft isn't? Then why do you cough up however much money SCO wants for licensing fees whenever they ask, while Linux companies are sufficiently confident to countersue SCO? Don't you know that SCO extorts and sues their licensees and nobody else? Hasn't SCO beaten you in court before?"
If everything were legitimate between SCO and Microsoft, as Microsoft has to pretend, Microsoft seems to have arbitrary licensing obligations to SCO which they admit to. Surely this is a far more dangerous situation to buy into than Linux. (Maybe Microsoft thinks that SCO really does own the errno values, and recognizes that it would be impossible to change them.)
I disagree. Migrating will not be so easy.
I agree with you. We have less than 10 servers, and could get by with 6, but are looking at migrating some over to FreeBSD for two reasons: insurance policy in case the judicial system looses its mind and 2. BSD tends to be a better platform than Linux for some tasks at least from my limited experience. We hope to gain a little performance on these "insurance" machines, mainly web servers.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!