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?"
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
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.
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
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.
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!
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 think all of a sudden, *BSD won't be dying :)
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
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 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.
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!
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.