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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?"
The reason the SCO heat is not affecting Linux deployments all that much is simple - most Linux admins are knowledgeable enough to gather that it's only a matter of time before the entire SCO thing blows over. Armed with this knowledge, they are able to make a convincing argument to management that there is nothing to worry about, and any Linux projects on the table are able to move forward as planned.
I am sure there are exceptions, but my guess is that this is the overall trend.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
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?
If this ever comes up at work, I'll give my legal team a copy of SCO's motion to dismiss the Redhat case where they state in a legal filing that Redhat has not violated their copyrights (hence, so how could we?) and then follow it up with the slam dunk of pointing out how Novell owns those same copyrights, so the entire matter is in dispute. Finally top it off with a "linux is not unix" and hasn't been proven in a court of law to be anyway.
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.
I work as sysadmin in a webhosting company and while we had some initial concerns it soon became obvious that this is a pump 'n dump scam - nothing else. We're deploying new Linux servers all the time and has actually increased the deployment rate since the lawsuit was made.
you insensitive clod! Yeah, I know SCO are talking about BSD now, thus proving they really are crazy.
A memo was sent by a manager (non techy) to my team leader (very techy) about the possibility of us having to pay linux license fees on our servers....his reaction "They can shove it" and "Im not f*cking paying anything to SCO".
Three AIX servers, thirty six Linux servers in two clusters, one happy team of system admins. If SCO ever come calling here they will be escorted from the building to the sound of our laughter.
Ed
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
...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....
We use and sell SCO to run progress db apps.
We have made plans to switch away from it.
"/Dread"
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
I can't speak for other companies, but FWIW the SCO FUD hasn't had one ounce of affect on the company I work for. Since the SCO BS began, we've actually increased our use of Linux and continued to look into where else it is a good fit in our enterprise. We've even added an additional AIX server. Maybe our plans will change once SCO has some actual legal settlements behind them, but until then we arn't buying into their Brooklyn Bridge offer.
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.
Aside from corporations , lets say SCO by some weird alignment of the stars, actually freakin won their case !! .. Would all linux lovers pay??
albeit, that happening are slim, but would the linux community embrace this or would everyone turn their back on linux and find an alternative??
What would you do ??
When I first saw that headline, I thought "What the hell is a Linux Chili?"
This space intentionally left blank.
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.
Who's afraid of the big bad SCO
Big bad SCO, big bad SCO?
Who's afraid of the big bad SCO?
Mother F-ing Darl
Who's afraid of the big bad SCO
Big bad SCO, big bad SCO?
Who's afraid of the big bad SCO?
Mother F-ing Darl
Darl is the windy wolf, the three little pigs are IBM, Redhat and Novell. Unfortunately, there were no straw or twigs used in this story, and the three little piggies are all laughing their asses off as Darl stands outside the door of the brick house, huffing and puffing about the validity of the GPL, the mysterious stolen code and Darl's hurt feelings because he tried a working relationship with IBM and it went sour.
C'mon, Darl, let's see you huff and puff and blow the door down. I don't think you can do it!
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)
I had the owner of the company i work for ask me about it, but he did so with a chuckle. i think most halfway-intelligent people will understand that without proof and without trial, SCO is just trying to make a buck before they go out of business. I think in (american) football, they call that a hail mary. They have nothing to lose by talking the talk, and walking the walk, and they have everything to gain. Their product is still stuck in the 80's and they have no money to bring it up to date.
money (or lack of) does strange things to people.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Since they have plans to decommission a few hundred servers in the upcoming year it looks like their decision will grow the Linux footprint there.
There were two more articles on SCO yesterday (Tuesday Dec 23, 2003) in Investor's Business Daily - one an interview (http://www.investors.com/editorial/tech01.asp?v=1 2/23) and one a new article (http://www.investors.com/editorial/tech.asp?v=12/ 23) are in Investor's Business Daily today. The interview has some interesting quotations from McBride, including "we don't deny that right [to give away their work through the GPL-he mentions it] at all. Anybody that wants to develop their work and give it away, God bless them." The interesting part about that is it seems at odds with previous statements he has made/implied regarding the GPL.
The follow-up question *should* have been:
"Given that you support the right to give away software under the GPL, once someone has done so, thereby accepting the terms of the GPL, how can one take the opposing position, after all, the terms don't allow one to 'un-release' under the GPL?"
I had submitted this yesterday, and no doubt 3 or 4 copies of it will show up in the next week, but it is relevant now!
... 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!
I kind of guessed it may be something like that. Hey you're employed, you're doing better than many and I figure there are employers who've done far worse things in the world than take what look like big risks, to save the company.
While there are companies that have hired slave labor (BWM, Bayer), and those that continue to employ near-slave labor (Nike), and even those that have killed en masse (Union Carbide, Monsanto), trying to steal the hard work of tens of thousands of people and claim it as your own, then force the creators to buy their own work back at extortionate prices (or any price, for that matter) is still pretty damn low. About as low as one can get without doing actual, direct physical harm to others.
Frankly, anyone willingly working at SCO, recession or no, deserves the low self esteem they undoubtably enjoy and the difficult job prospects their current employment on their Resume post-law-suit will almost certainly bring. This notion that earning a living justifies doing what is unequivocably wrong is complete and utter bullshit. Evil isn't defined by the difficulty of doing good, it is defined by the harm it causes others. The fact that doing the right thing would be difficult for those foolish enough to be working at Caldera/SCO has absolutely no bearing on the fact that what they are doing all those long hours they put in each day is wrong both morally and ethically, nor does it absolve them of one iota of their part in it all.
I'm sick to death of "my employer made me do it" or "I fear unemployment so I have no ethics" crap this formerly great nation seems to have instilled in so many of its drones. It rings a hollow as the famed defenses of the Nuremburg trials, or the death-bed repentences of dying Christians. (cue Godwin-Law pundits)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Geez, I'm not even sure our IT department can spell Linux...We just loooooovvvvve filling Bill's pockets with money.
Oh wait, gotta reboot....
Dogu
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think the courts would be particularly impressed with this suggestion. It is somewhat analagous to the idea that if I distribute a dictionary with a remarkable similarity to the Oxford English Dictionary but with a little disclaimer stating that it is up to the copyright owners to notify me within a set timeframe, then I get an implicit right to distribute their work. Ain't gonna happen. Copyright holders get until the copyright expires to protect their work, which is as it should be. (The question of how long the protection should last is a different matter.)
The simple solution if any packages are found to contain unauthorized copied code is just to remove those packages from distributions until they are fixed. One of the great benefits of the "duplication of effort" that goes into GNU/Linux, and which is often criticized on in this forum, is that there is no shortage of packages if alternatives need to be found quickly.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
I work for a large, fairly conservative insurance company. We got "the letter" from SCO back in (March?), and legal had us draw up a list of mission-critical servers running Linux, so we'd know our level of exposure.
While legal and management seem to understand that it's a frivolous claim, they also correctly understand that being frivolous has never stopped the legal system from making dumb rulings. For reasons which are quite annoying, we are currently "on hold until this gets worked out" for several very interesting projects. This is real, folks. You know that SCO's claims are bullshit. I know that they're bullshit. Legal and management know they're bullshit, but one bad ruling and the waters get muddier for that much longer.
Remember - if SCO gets bought out without being legally slapped down first, they still win in their mission to spread FUD about Linux and the GPL. I firmly believe this is their real goal, because Linux and the GPL threaten certain people who stand to lose a whole lot because of it.
Bottom line, until SCO gets slapped down, my large employer isn't doing any more Linux projects. Solaris is an easy choice here, since we're using it widely already, but the cost savings to be realized are huge, if only we could put aside SCO's asinine behavior and get on with business.
If anything is found in Linux that doesn't belong there, swarms of Penguin lovers will remove it and replace it with working original code. Darl has already said that's what he's afraid of. Probably weeks, at most a few months.
That's how it's always been.
That's how it always will be.
If even the tiniest shred of improper software is found, Linux will be fixed faster than Microsoft can fight an anti-trust suit.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
"The more he talked about his honor the faster we counted the spoons..."
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.
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!
One of my customers is the third largest Ford dealership in the U.S. and the two that are bigger are in Dearborn and cater to Ford employees.
This dealership has five FreeBSD boxes doing a variety of things, one Redhat box which snuck by me because of the better java support, and one lonely, fearful Open Server system that runs a single application provided by an outside vendor. I'm not allowed to dismantle that one, but I'm certain the vendor has strategic plans to move to some Linux distribution once SCO's stock collapses and they lose all their employees.
I showed the in house admin OpenOffice.org a while back; M$ will be getting no more Office extortion dollars from those guys
We're going to roll out Knoppix to a couple of hundred desktops in 2004. They're just desktops, and I'm kind of a wimp, so I'll make sure it'll all run on a 2.2 kernel and we'll just keep on truckin'.
Screw SCO. If you're really, really, really pissed about it, realize they got their money from M$ and start talking to anyone who will listen about OpenOffice.org - don't abuse the ground troops in a proxy war, get into their homeland and start burning crops and blowing up bridges
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
...and those of us who have chosen ethically in the past, even to our own financial disadvantage, quite rightly look down on those who do not.
Nice view, from way up there on your high horse, but put yourself in the same situation. The economy is in the shitter. You quitting wouldn't change a damn thing.
"Yeah, I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway. If I hadn't, someone else would have." I cannot believe that an adult would even field such an answer in public, much less accept its veracity.
It's not like they're committing genocide - it's a fucking law suit.
No one ever suggested it was genocide. However, what so is doing is much more than a lawsuit. Indeed, it is a lawsuit in name only.
Were it merely a lawsuit, it would not entail the vast amount of public FUD, misdirection, deception, and outright lies (including lies that contradict one another) that has come from SCO's management. Indeed, attorney's strongly discourage such statements, as they are destructive to their client's case. The fact that SCO shows no such restraint (and that SCO's lawyers apparently feel no need to reign them in or insist upon such restraint) demonstrates prima facia that this isn't so much a lawsuit as something very, very different.
At its heart it is an attempt to defraud thousands of free software out of their hard work, to defraud third parties by charging licensing fees for things that do not belong to them, and to defraud their investors by pumping up their stock value through deceit and market manipulation.
They may be within the limits of the law in the United States (or they may not). They certainly are not within the limits of the law in Australia, Germany, and numerous other countries.
Either way, they, and those who support them, are unethical, and I for one would never hire an HR person who would knowingly hire unethical people and open my company up to the potential of such behavior within my own ranks. Nor would I hire an HR who would staff my company with weak-minded people who put a paycheck ahead of any ethical considerations, or who cannot recognize a lost cause when they see one.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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
It's a shame that you need to equate SCO employees trying to feed their families to Nazis, seeing as I don't remember anyone at SCO killing 12 million people in concentration camps, or did I miss a history lesson?
Nope. You missed a logic lesson.
I did not compare SCO employees trying to feed their families with Nazis trying to feed their fmailies. I did compare the justification "I am only doing my job" used by an alleged SCO employee with the justification "I was only following orders" used by famed war criminals in years past.
The crimes being justified couldn't be more radically different from each other, indeed they utterly unrelated. However, the justifications used by both parties are virtually identical. The latter ("I was only folling order", ie. "I was only doing my job") has been formally and resoundingly debunked; the former ("I am only doing my job"), being semantically identical to the latter, is likewise nonesense.
The only similiarity between this troll posing as a SCO employee and war criminals of centuries past is that they use exactly the same justification to defend their immoral and unethical behavior, and that justification holds absolutely no water.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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.