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SCO Lobbying Congress Against Open Code
An anonymous reader writes "Along with suing Novell - it was announced today that SCO has been lobbying Congress about the horrifying ways that Linux and the rest of open source software saves users money, allows others to use the software anyway they see fit and 'gasp' causes SCO to not make as much money as they would like. Along with all of the usual FUD. OSAIA has the details (as well as a rebuke)." Darl's words will seem pretty transparent, even funny, to anyone aware of the widespread acceptance and use of Free / Open Source software (by individuals, governments, non-profits, and even companies like SCO) -- but you might have to point this out to your servants in Congress.
So when will SCO be lobbying God to stop all these bad things? Seems like the next logical step in that fantasy world Darl lives in.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
I wonder when Microsoft is going to come out behind SCO's curtain?
SCO will have a major impact I'm sure. They can make their political contributions in stock options.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
IBM's lobbyists are a helluva lot better paid and effective than SCO's will be...that's a place where SCO will lose in the FUD war. Can't bullshit a bullshiter..
Hi, I cannot compete against this, a better product that costs less. Please outlaw it as soon as possible. Competition is just so un-american!
Is that what he is saying?
SCO lobbies Congress against the First Amendment...
...when SCO could absolutely surprise me with their lunacy.
To this act of SCO I dare to say for the first time in months:
WHAT THE FUCK?
1. Open source software is free, leading management and general users to believe that no one ever should pay for anything software-related.
2. Open-source products are available to anyone, which led to outflux of jobs out of United States, since a developer in Tanzania knows Apache or MySQL just as well, but is willing to work for 2 kilos of rice a day, unlike their greedy American counterparts.
3. Open-source projects have never been tested and approved by Microsoft or other reliable software vendors with market cap over 100 billion and public trust behind them.
4. All open source companies are either bankrupt, or litigating, or in the process of bankruptcy/litigation process.
5. Open source companies contributed more to the job losses in the software industry than any other company sector. Microsoft had always been hiring and so have other closed-source companies.
6. Open source does not have a vital business model.
7. There are many software shops that write little Access-thingies and make thousands of dollars per month. Microsoft had made thousand of millionaires in the software business. Linux so far only earned money for IBM and HP.
8. As Linus himself shamefully admitted, errno.h was shamelessly copied from SCO Software Development Labs. Thus the terrorist organizations around the world know the error codes for any Linux system and potentially coudl disrupt nuclear reactors and spaceships.
I personally applaud SCO for not only pulling the biggest stunt in the opensource community this far, but executing it so badly it comes off as nothing but a joke.
SCO is soooo not even relavent anymore.
I think we should launch them into space. W wants to send folks to Mars, I vote that they should get the first ticket, so long as we don't send any food.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
Run. RUN!!! Run to your local lawmaker and have them change the rules. A play right out of Darl's CEO 101 Handbook.
Its too late, Darl. You can't preserve your house of cards by hoping someone will change the laws of physics for you.
sPh
SCO doesn't mind using Samba.
i don't like style guides
"You can lead a man to congress, but you can't make him think."
- Milton Berle
I'm melting...I'm melting.
We are witnessing the death-throws. Come Friday, we'll all see the end.
The end of Robert Patrick in T2 (in the furnace) also comes to mind.
Folks, it's easy to dismiss this as a non-issue but it's a scary thing, this Congress...stuff that doesn't make sense gets passed as law...because corporations LOBBY for it. (not to mention throw around campaign contribution money)
Also, SCO isn't the only company out there lobbying against Linux. This is something Redmond has been actively pursuing long before, and we know how much of a pull those guys have in American government.
We may think it's a stupid threat, but folks, I've seen stupider things happen in politics.
I'm just wondering. It'd be awfully funny if it is.
SCO has been lobbying Congress about the horrifying ways that Linux and the rest of open source software saves users money, allows others to use the software anyway they see fit and 'gasp' causes SCO to not make as much money as they would like.
...
It's akin to saying people who donate their time to help newbies understand computers hurt the bottom line of universities offering CS course. That's silly, people do what they want with what they produce. How can they force people to stop donating what they make?
Then again, at least regarding the Linux kernel, they argue that part of it is theirs, and therefore can't be "donated", so it makes sense in their perpective, in an odd acid trip sort of way
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
They claim that Open Source threatens "[The US] continued ability to lead the world in technological innovation/[The US] international competitive position in the global software industry".
Well, yes, it does. That is only because up until now we have been talking about what amounts to a closed protectionist system via closed formats, software patents etc. Welcome to the free market. That's not to say that the US position in the software industry won't be very competitive, merely that they'll actually have to compete with everyone else on a level playing field.
Is he arguing that free markets are against US ideology? Interesting take - might even be true from the point of view of some elements of congress.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Now they want me to pay for the air in the tires?
at the Hatch family reunion!
Lasers Controlled Games!
This is a sign that SCO believes they might not win in the courts with existing laws, and so must lobby to change the laws to their benefit.
How they can hope to do this in the face of much better funded and more experienced lobbyists who are opposed to them is a mystery.
I think it's also a sign that their whole strategy is running out of steam.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
there is a point where you start ignoring stuff like this. :)
....unless you want to ad a humor section
Hahahahahaha, this story just made my day.
Better than the Simpsons... SCO vs The World.
If technology can make knowledge and information free, is it acceptable to keep poor people ignorant and uninformed through artifical pricing and supression of knowledge? If Darl McBride were in charge it sure would be...
...if any Congressmen agrees with Darl, and if so, their names. Why? So I can campaign for whoever's running against them, and if they're in Texas, I'll vote for one of their opponents too.
Not only is supporting SCO's actions unethical, but agreeing with Darl's statements re: open source (regardless of who says them, Darl or not) is just plain anti-freedom. And the idea of someone who hates freedom being in Congress scares me.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
It amazes me that SCO thinks they will be taken seriously by any policymakers when you have the likes of IBM, HP and Apple using Open Source every day.
Darl, you're an idiot who just doesn't get it. You've got enough lawsuits going (what are we up to now: IBM, HP, Google, ???) might as well add another front to your war.
Good riddance SCO, you're bound to loose. And you, Darl, will go down in history as the sorriest idiot ever to run a company. You got in and you let the lawyers take over. And to think that SCO was once a decent player in the GNU/Linux arena. Sour grapes, huh? Asshole.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
(Image on background : hand of God... restrainint itself from shooting McBride to the skies - LITERALY.)
This is my opinion. Everyone has a right to my opinion.
I think the Linux advocates in the crowd should form their own lobby. Then lobby the same people SCO is lobbying.
But wait -- don't say anything about Open-Source, software, UNIX, Linux, etc.
Just re-hash the same arguments SCO is making, but in a parody. We should argue that it should be illegal to fix your car in your driveway, since it robs tax-paying mechanics of their livelihood.
With enough access to the drivel coming out of the SCO lobbyist's mouth, it could make for some pretty hilarious (and pointed) commentary.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
# $version 0.01$
my $funds = get_money('src'=>'microsoft');
$funds += get_money('src'=>'sun');
$funds += get_money('src'=>'baystar');
$funds += get_money('src'=>'hapless_investors');
while ( $funds > 0 )
{
$funds -= pay_legal();
sue_someone('target'=>rand);
public_release('threat'=>rand);
}
die;
  ;
Seeing as how SCO has to pay their lawyers in stock, thankfully they wont have the cash to buy themselves any new laws.
Apparently the only tactic left to them is whining. Hopefully their end is in sight.
Noooo, Microsoft isn't behind this at all! Not even a little bit! :P
SIGFEH
1. The threat to the U.S information technology industry
"Please legislate to save our industry so we can send it to offshore sweatshops and make gazillions (and those election campaigns ain't cheap hey Mr Congresscritter )."
2. The threat to our international competitive position.
"Forget anthrax - Linux is the real WMD!"
3. The threat to our national security.
"Forget Saddam - Linus is the real enemy of humanity, and you can add Finland to the axis of evil! Those Finns, what have they done for us recently, with their weird language and dinky little phones."
Darl, I'm not thinking nice thoughts about you. To start replace everything that says "some believe" with "SCO". Also, I think Darl is the only one that's worried.
It's a licencing agreement. Read it. Nothing in it is illegal. To have the privilage to build onto Linux, you agree to let others build onto what you added.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
You do not, in our capitalist republic, have the right to make money. You instead have the right to attempt to make money.
What's the difference? Simple.
Right to try to make money: "I'm going to make a product, offer it for sale. What I make from selling it, minus any taxes, expenses in making the product, and employee salaries is mine to keep."
Right to make money: "If I don't make $x in profits, it's all open sources fault! So I'll sue everyone who makes it, everyone who defends it, and everyone who even thinks about it, because it's my right to make $x, and no one can take that away from me, no matter how unsellable my product is!"
The first argument is capitalism.
The second is fascism.
Santa Cruz uber alles, Darl?
Does anyone have or know where we can obtain a list of Congressmen/women who have received this letter from SCO? It would be helpful to know who we as a community need to direct our concise, well-written, polite, and factual rebuttals...
What the hell were the UNIX companies doing during that time? They could have remained competitive. They could have kept up with the times. They could have written the GUI apps that their users wanted. They could have incorporated new coding techniques into their code bases. They could have kept the desktop market. If an unpaid rabble of amateurs could do it, why couldn't these companies, collectively worth billions of dollars? Nevermind Apple, merrily rubbing their faces in how easy it is for a for-profit company to do exactly the same thing.
If I were a shareholder of the big UNIX companies, upper management would have a lot of 'splaining to do.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The fact remains that Congress may just very well try and pass this. Anyone remember the CDA from about ten years ago? Get on the word processor and WRITE YOUR FSCKING CONGRESSCRITTER NOW.
This sig no verb.
They are lobbying the same people who gave their blessing to the DMCA. It is obvious that FUD works on politicians, because when it comes to technical issues they don't know shit from shinola.
Send it to your favorite congressman, err woman, err entity. Point at the words Linux and GPL.
It might be worth its bucks after all.
I've got to hand it to McBride, he's finally pushed my buttons. Up until I read his letter, I'd been watching this SCO fiasco from the sidelines. I hadn't been too worried, because I'd been convinced that IBM would prevail in court.
I have a bit less faith in the average politician's grasp of these issues, though, particularly with McBride going out of his way to spout about "national security" and suchlike. Like any good showman, he knows his audience.
I'll need to spend a day or two getting the tone and wording just right (polite, reasoned, and respectful), but my Senators and Representatives will be receiving an alternative viewpoint by next week.
Well, maybe more than one...
Hey we are now down to a few thousands of lines of code.
"Linux software contains thousands of lines of [sco's] propriety Unix code"
Can't they make their minds up. Big diff between millions of lines to thousands of lines.
Here is an interesting article that is in the Salt Lake Weekly:
4 -0 1-22.cfm
http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2004/feat_200
In this article, which is really above average, Darl McBride is quoted making the following interesting statement:
"McBride says SCO revealed the offending code last August at its Las Vegas SCOForum. "Truly, and then they just ignored it," he said."
Now, I must point out Bruce Perens put his analysis of the Las Vegas SCOforum with hours of it ending last August 18th.
Link to Perens analysis:
http://www.perens.org/SCO/SCOSlideShow.html
Also, Darl misquoted Perens' website so Darl knows it exists. Therefore, for Darl McBride to say that the Las Vegas SCOforum's showing of code "was ignored" is to make a lie that can be documented quite easily.
Darl McBride: documented liar
That giant sucking sound that was in the news a few years ago (about NAFTA) would be back, but this time, it would be real and it would be all the software and services jobs going to India, China, etc., maybe even Europe. Anywhere that was not so stupid as to ban FOSS.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
"But a computer expert in North Korea who has a number of personal computers and an internet connection can download the latest version of Linux, complete with multi-processing capabilities misappropriated from UNIX..."
It's a free market. If you get things just right, you are free to make tons of money and get filthy rich. (Microsoft) And if you get it wrong, you are free to go the way of the dodo bird and free up capital for those who have a better idea.
Slashdot is known for its far-right pro-corporate pro-Bush leadership.
Go flame somewhere else.
They should lobby Congress for something realistic, like adding an amendment to the constitution outlawing the use of open source.
I really do hope that they send this man to jail for fraud, but I doubt that will happen.
Next, the Oil companies try to outlaw bicycles?
Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
n/t
Does anyone know what's the status of Groklaw? They've been down at least a couple of days now.
Could it be any more obvious that SCO has become Microsoft's PR department? They're basically Darth Maul to Emperor Bill.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
then, a bunch of interviews,
and now, this ridiculous tripe lobbying congress to ban open source software, when SCO itself still distributes it to this day!
SCO must be trying to distract attention from something. Could it be the hearing scheduled for this Friday?
...we are firm in our belief that the unchecked spread of Open Source Software, under the GPL, is a much more serious threat to our capitalist system than US corporations realise.
I dunno, I think the huge US corporations pose a greater threat.
If it's free the Red's must be involved! It's a communist plot to destroy our economy and overthrow everything the American people hold dear. Darl that saint, should be praised for bringing the red scourge to our attention.
TOTAL AND UTTER BULLSHIT.
What's sad is that Congress will buy this word for word, and then we will be fucked royally. The Administration will start to rule the GPL as the about 4 words and that will be the end of this once fine movement.
And, would someone like Apple please step in? They're open sourcers. So are IBM. And they can most likely kick ass and take names.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
I believe in Open Source, and I will not allow any government to keep me from using it and contributing to it.
And I'd like to know how Open Source would be defined by a law prohibiting it. If I made a program and asked for suggestions on how to make it run better, have I broken the law? Or is it just that after a group of people make a program, they can't sell it? And what's the difference between a group of people working in a company and a group of people working by themselves? What's wrong with sharing information?
I guess SCO's view of a perfect world is one where corporations control both the people and the government. They would like nothing better than to force us to buy their products and handcuff us to our computers while flogging us with Cat5 UTP.
Esoteric reference.
Gah, where is this rat-backed-into-a-corner routine going to end???
`SCO takes out hits on prominent open-source developers'?
`SCO threatens to use biological warfare if demands not met'?
`SCO produces evidence!'? (nah...)
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Mod parent up, it's funny!
Been modded interesting, insightful and funny. Why does real life have to be so different?
I mean, seriously. You can scoff at it all you like, but this is *the most* likely way that SCO will win.
I think it is very important for each and everyone to take 10 minutes to write your congressman/woman about why Open Source is important and why you feel strongly that they do *not* vote for any bills limiting open licensing.
Frankly, money talks, especially in Congress. And although SCO isn't wealthy by any stretch, they do have more money than you.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
There's a serious sense of the desparate and pathetic in that letter from McBride.
I don't think it's worth getting a worked up over - it's really kind of sad to see how low he's sunk. Just call him Ahab McDumbass.
Is that their tactics, as mafia like as they may be, could work. Our CIO just got a letter from a regional SCO VP and is setting up a meeting to discuss "generous" licensing of SCO for our rather large Linux installation. My suggestion was to just ignore the SCO thugs. But the threat of litigation is real and paying a "fair" fee may seem like a reasonable alternative. I suggested bringing our IBM rep to the meeting!
SCO: we hate those damned linux users stealing profits from us! those damned terrorists! please US gov't, Help us fight terrorism!
But... SCO is a Linux user!
Too bad SCO, the fud is really getting boring now.
I cant WAIT to see the day when SCOX PLUMMETS. I will actually enjoy watching that.
Then the claim could be made that it is faith based and since that is the thing that the administration likes best (after wars, oil and Profit!) it might serve as some level of protection.
Sadly, a full text search of the King James Bible fails to turn up either the term "copyleft" or "gnu". Though there is the "Gnu Testament", but I don't think that will convince anyone. (Though there may be a connection. Amazon.com tells me that : "Customers interested in The Linux Bible: The Gnu Testament may also be interested in: Free for Christians " Everything is for Christians. Everything is free. . Though that web page seems lacking in much in the way of "Free" software. )
Remember folks, the NSA is all about building a reference version of Secure Linux
I'd love to see Darl and crew send nasty-grams to the NSA...
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
up to a point. Open source is going to drive down the value of software. It prevents lock-in while allowing practically anyone to enter the market for a relatively low capital investment. Perhaps worst of all (from a shareholder's perspective) it allows people to bypass the market entirely, getting the software to run their computers for free.
Companies based on Open source software are just not going to be as profitable as proprietary software companies with a lock on the market. If they try to be, someone will come along and do it cheaper and just as well.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I wonder who constitutes "Congress" for SCO -- remember that a SCO lawyer is the son of Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah...
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
If somebody has a better or cheaper product than you, something (in this case GPL software) that people will buy instead of your product (proprietary software), then, tough luck, you're out of the market. This is capitalism, and this is how the market works. If you don't like it, don't complain to the Congress, make a new (communist) party and try to get votes. ... Damn Fuckers.
Along with suing Novell - it was announced today that SCO has been lobbying Congress about the horrifying ways that Linux and the rest of open source software saves users money, allows others to use the software anyway they see fit and 'gasp' causes SCO to not make as much money as they would like.
And if Congress even thinks about complying with SCO's requests, I will drop my American citizenship like a brick.
I wish I could feel confident that these guys will be laughed out of the building, but they have some $ that the Congressmen are probably interested in.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
How can you tell an SCO is lying? His lips are moving!
How many SCOs does it take to change a light bulb? One. He holds the bulb and the world revolves around him.
Did you hear about the SCO that patented his own DNA, then sued his parents for infringing? The court held that he didn't have a case, since everybody knew he was a real bastard...
Ok, I'm sure some of you guys can do better!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If SCO gets anywhere with Congress on their closed-source campaign, it will discredit Congress even more than it is already. Their success will prove the failure of the corporate lackeys in office, the failure of those who elected them, and the failure of the badly broken system that keeps us electing them. Ironically, open-source software offers exactly the communications transparency and community processes that American government revolutionized centuries ago.
/usr/bin/fortune
We're probably looking at an echo of the confrontation between proprietary vs. open property comparable to the management/fascist vs. labor/socialist civil war of the mid-20th Century. No surprise that as the country's politics swings to the right, past the centrist balance achieved through unions, the same fights are fought by the new labor class. Just as management has learned from the past, so too must today's whitecollar labor learn.
"Opposite of PROgress?" -
--
make install -not war
"Red Hat has agressively lobbied Congress to eliminate software patents and copyrights. (see http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html)."
is demonstrably a lie. If you follow the link Darl provides, you find no mention of copyright (ok, except the copyright notice at the bottom of the page =p).But! In the interest of fairness I hit Google to see if I could find any statement from RH that'd support Darl's quote. I found nothing, but maybe you can turn something up? If not, it's a pretty good weakness to point out...
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
This is the same type of anti-Linux FUD that Microsoft was pandering a couple of years ago. Microsoft was, at least, smart enough to realize that the FUD wasn't working and decided to switch tactics.
SCO has the same mis-interpretations of the GPL, where the term free, to them, means no money. Their whole arguement appears to be based on the incorrect interpretation.
The GPL, to the best of my knowledge, allows for source code to be freed, and all subsequent products based on that source code be freed as well. It does not, however, preclude any company from using that code in a product, charging for said product, and, God forbid, make a profit from that product.
Heck, it doesn't forbid private companies from writing add-ons and charging for those, and they aren't required to license the new code with the GPL.
Darl's logic is so flawed and full of holes that you could drive a truck through it. I have to give him credit though, he uses all of the right FUD-words on our congressman. This is the saddest part, as most legislators, like equity traders, don't do enough research on the issues and pass bad laws.
It's 11PM, do you know where your pants are?
Oh, I get it now! "We don't like free software, except on our terms - i.e. when we're using it exclusively, it's O.K., but otherwise, get rid of it already!"
Geez. They must really, really want to be disliked...
And when my representatives get this letter they are going to say, SCO who? At least SCO doesn't have enough money to actually LOBBY them....
Although some slashdotters may diagree with the underlying premise, the way to fight this is by making a private property argument.
A developer who writes a piece of software, like any author, "owns" his work. It is the fundamental right of every American to dispose of their own property however they wish. This includes the right to give it away.
McBride argues that congress should essentially sieze any property that is not being used for "conventional" economic gain. This is quite a socialist agenda, and regardless would be prohibited by the fifth amendment of the Constitution.
Property arguments are very persuasive in the halls of power, and given this argument no congressmen would give Darl the time of day.
... the nefarious infiltration [puffs cigar] and undermining of our capitalist system by communists, [puffs cigar] and [puffs cigar], the international communist conspiracy, [puffs cigar] through the poisoning and unseen pollution [puffs cigar] of our precious bodily fluids.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The open source movement simply doesn't appear as a potential source of campaign cash to congressmen, so the likelihood of these dolts being convinced to side with SCO and go against open source software is high.
I spent far, far too long studying politics before I realized how much it absolutely drove me insane, and it's these sorts of things -- complete ineptitude on behalf of this nation's leaders -- that drove me back to compsci. The fact of the matter is that SCO looks like dollar-bills to politicians, and open source looks like some strange threat to democracy (the same way they view 3rd parties).
I fully expect, and will be very pissed off when/if it happens, Congress to side with SCO's lobbying and proposals.
Its very interesting to me that someone from a New Zealand domain is so concerned about American politics. Its doubly interesting when that person claims that without US IP law (blah blah I just don't feel like typing it all out everytime), American entities cannot compete in the "free market".
My question is, how does what American entities do affect you, and why do you care? Can entities from your country (not just NZ but any other) not compete against the American entities in your local markets?
If they cannot I would say that is a testimony in favor of the American IP system. If the American IP system leads to such innovation that the only way to compete with it is to tear it down and sell it to the lowest bidder, that actually says alot.
Is this a comment on this SCO issue? Not really, just my thoughts on your currently +4 comment. In summary, if other entities cannot compete with American entities, maybe those peoples should be looking within instead of without for reasons and solutions rather than attacking a system that actually gets results.
The only way to bind all software by U.S. export controls is to prevent foreign developers from creating software. "Perhaps SCO believes that only U.S. developers have the 'right' to develop software," OSAIA's Black said. "They should understand that it is a big world, and developers outside the U.S. have helped make the tech industry what it is today."
Remember when encryption came to browsers, and you had to certify that you were in the U.S. before you could download Netscape?
I'm thinking that there must be a fair number of software companies that are watching the U.S. government today and are thinking that similar export restrictions could once again become a significant problem.
I can see a day - say after Al Quaida manages an actual attack via the Internet - when Dick Cheney's mob makes it illegal to sell American software to Foreigners.
Perhaps some forward looking companies are moving significant parts of their programming offshore just to avoid this possibility.
As in "American software? No this is INDIAN software, so the American export rules don't apply!".
Three Squirrels
Darl sez:
3. The threat to our national security. I assert that Open Source Software - available widely through the internet - has the potential to provide our nation's enemies, or potential enemies, with computing capabilities that are restricted by U.S. law. He goes on to complain that terrorists can set up a cheap cluster using off the shelf parts and Linux.
Darl adds, for the good of the economy, we would prefer that terrorists buy MS Bomb for UNIX.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
pardon my ignorance, but isn't Lobbying supposed to be done less openly? or is Lobbyist some kind of profession in USA?
I don't see why Free Software Markets and Commercial Software Markets should even be remotely connected. They are entirely different playing fields!
1a. If you want to make money, fine, compete in the commercial software market.
1b. If you want to offer your services to the world, for free, fine, compete in the free software market (while fighting to pay the bills).
The latter promotes true development, something that seems to be overshadowed by the commercialization of the world.
Different rules should apply. The law is built to protect commercial interests, it never expected people to actually GIVE something for FREE.
Companies such as SCO will, in my opinion, accelerate this kind of thought.
It pisses me off that we have to wait a few hundred years before this gets through, though.
And China.
And India.
And Germany.
It won't just be jobs that disappear from the US: it'll be business, trade, and a lot of skilled people.
If the lobby succeeds, it will show just how bad and shortsighted the political system in this country has become.
Give this man a gold star. Couldn't agree more.
Campaign finance reform is national security.
This is a serious question. That document, if it represents the way McBride really thinks, should be considered prima facie evidence that McBride is completely insane. Loopy. Out to fucking lunch. He's one Beagle short of a lander. Asserting the GPL violates the Constitution? I'm no fan of the GPL myself, but holy shit, I wonder what the hell McBride is smoking.
Hey! Want a job? Just send an email to these guys, and ask about their cool new jobs!!
Heck, let's all send them emails!
I like litigious bastards.
appears to read "Demon".
How long before we can expect various rebuttals of this from Bruce Perens, Linus, the FSF, Maddog et al?
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
The salvation army is similar threat to our economy, values and way of life.
The salvation army frequently uses volunteer labor to help out with social problems and in doing so competes with the US governments established social services programs. These services our designed by our professional in Washington. The Salvation Army is essentially "dumping" their product for free and it will create an unstable situation that could cause our entire social services to collapse.
Also, I hear that the Salvation Army exports these services to foriegn countries and let me inform you that not all these counties that the Salvation Army deals with are those we classify as our friends.
We believe that you should be informed of these issues and the impact they have on the institutions we hold dear.
I had no trouble getting to them today, yesterday, or the day before. Perhaps you are having routing trouble?
How do insane laws like the DMCA go into effect? Big money lobbies for it. Folks, if you are inclined against SCO at all, it is very important to get a letter off to your representatives in Congress. The EFF has a good page to help you write a letter. If no voice opposes SCO in this then they (and Microsoft) just might get their way. And if they do, what then?
An outcry then would be too late. OSS would be ghettoized. IBM's business model would shift to fit the new environment and OSS's colossus of an ally would vanish.
This must end now. I am writing my congresspeople. They're OUR civil servants. WE are their bosses. They really ought to know what we want them to do with this.
Perhaps we need a prequisite in the law-making process to cure this malaise?
Jobs have moved offshore, because the tax cuts freed up alot of money for re-tooling.
Of course we save money by moving mfg offshore. But I prefer to support companies that have a commitment to US jobs, like Vishay.
Campaign finance reform is national security.
Who are OSAIA and how do the owners of a domain registered last April become an association?
Who is Mr Black?
Why should I believe any of this?
This is obviously just the tip of the iceburg. Anyone have more?
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
NASA chimmed in on the issue to report that the Mars rover found what appears to be a fossilized brain about the size of a pea. Analysts believe it to be the one missing from SCO's current in-house lunatic CEO. Satan also came clean today, commenting on a contract several years ago where one Darl McBride sold a total of one soul for complete supremecy of all open source code. News to follow as it becomes available.
The SCO you're referring to is now out of the OS market, and doing business as "Tarantella". This SCO (the one suing IBM and Novell) is a Novell spin-off (irony of ironies) formerly known as Caldera which was formed to market a proprietary desktop system on top of Red Hat Linux. They later switched to making their own distro, struggled, teamed up with Suse and Connectiva to create "UnitedLinux", struggled some more, bought Unixware, the UNIX/SysV licensing business and the name from old SCO, announced they were going to incorporate the best of SysV in Linux, struggled some more, then had a change of heart and name and started suing everyone in sight.
M$ invested a very lare amount of cash in SCO, right before the legal assault. Some more cynical people think that this was the impetus... Who benefits the most from *nix being outlawed?? I think M$. (cough)
Campaign finance reform is national security.
Kind of surprised the lawyers have not muzzled that moron yet.
I would have agreed with you, back when SCO was pretending it's lawyers were just working on contingency. In that case, the lawyers would be paid only if SCO won the IBM case, and so it would make sense for them to do everything possible (including shutting up Darl) to ensure a victory.
Now that we know that SCO's lawyers are getting paid even if they lose, we can no longer be certain that they're expecting (or even hoping) to win. In fact, it's possible that SCO's lawyers are quite aware of how they're getting paid and understand that Darl's media circus is more likely to extend those paychecks than to curtail them.
This is like saying that women should not be able to give sex out for free because it competes with the rights of hookers to rent what they got at exhorbitant prices.
Way to go SCO!!!!
Ok...from the comments... "What is OSAIA?"
What?
I'm impressed with the level of lobying in the US. Any corporation, from Disney, to MS even SCO can lobby it's way in businness through a law... doesn't matter it hurts consumers (I was about to say citizens, but corporations see the people as consumers only - get used, you are a consumer with some citizenry rights that will be eroded little by little until you become just a CONSUMER)
Copyrights for 75 years? No, Mickey is already 75... let's make 120... Music sales is down? A new tax for CDR, tell people that downloading is thief... who cares if the music is shit? You are a consumer... the new hollywood blockbuster failed? the fucking consumers sending SMS messages and talking to friends that the movie is garbage, destroying a very well planned (and expensive) marketing plan... how dare you have an oppinion? shut up and buy, or else you are a communist, a terrorist or some other "ist"
Due the trail left by others I don't think that SCO is doomed to failure... I can see even a chance of victory...
scary...
The RIAA has a decent point... their product IS being illegally bootlegged. No matter how "illegal" you feel this action is, you cannot deny that it is.
You've missed the whole point of the RIAA's panic. They have no objection to people hearing music from bands they control for free--heck, they even pay to get them played on radio stations, in movies, etc. That whole line is sham/FUD--even they know that file sharing actually promotes CD sales.
The reason file sharing scares them so is that it lets people hear music from bands that they don't control. It's exactly the same problem MS/SCO has: their market share is being threatened by outsiders who can survive on much less than they can (see "The Innovator's Dilema" for a detailed explanation of the problem) by cutting them out of the equation.
And they have hit upon the same solution: Take advantage of the market's ignorance to claim that they are only trying to protect "their" property when in fact they are trying to destroy someone else's.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. I have a toddler and it is amazing how much the corporate world's view of "Market Rights" resembles a toddler's view of "Toy Rights"--e.g., I want it, I was playting with it, it's mine, and I will hurt anyone who tries to say otherwise.
Darl McBride says: "The damage this has inflicted on SCO's UNIX business is an example of what could happen to the entire software industry if the current Open Source model continues." IF???? I think he is saying that he can't compete against people that cooperate to develope software they need. I think he's saying that it's cooperation that's bad!
If one decides they wish to write a letter to their representative they should also include how voting against open source software can negatively affect their campaign. If you take a look at the current job openings for say the Dean campaign you will see they are looking for people with experience using Firebird, Mozilla and many other non-Microsoft open source products. Voting against Open Source means the politician will have to spend precious dollars on software than on campaigning next time they need to be re-elected.
Remember, find ways Open Source directly effects the politician and they will be more likely to listen, or tell them how voting against it will cause people to be out of work. They hate that just as much.
---- Fight to protect your right to keep and arm bears! ummmm... ya I think that's right....
This is simply not going to work. Many open-source projects are funded by US government. Need I point out Precedents for Government Funding of Open Source Projects? They clearly believe in open source, or they would not allow for the code to be revealed.
If Darl really beleives what he has written here that there really is no hope for him, he's lost touch with reality, poor guy. I don't know where to start... ..Open Source software that has gained many of its capabilities through the illegal incorporation of code "borrowed" from the rightful owners...
Those who designed the GPL readily admit that they created this licence to have the effect of "freeing" software - taking it out of the realm of copyright protection by placing it in the public domain...
WRONG: The GPL asserts the right of the creator's ownership by restricting the use of the code - it just gives permission for others to read, modify and distribute the code under strict provisions. GPL software is not public domain at all.
The GPL is carefully designed to have a viral effect - it "frees" the software that is proprietary, licenceable and a source of income from the companies that developed it
WRONG! - GPL'ing someone else's software is theft as much as giving it away. GPL'd software is licenced as such by the companies and individuals that created it and it is their right to allow their work to be used in whatever way they wish.
The second problem with Open Source software is that it is not all original
PROVE IT - If someone has stolen your code, then prove it! To assert it without offering any evidence is dishonest. You may have "taken legal action against those who have misappropriated their corporate assets but they don't seem to have succeeded in even raising a case, other than threats and misinformation.
Free, or low cost Open Source software, full of proprietary code, is grabbing an increasing portion of the software market
UNPROVEN! - Darl, you're asserting something you've not proven then said it's unfair. If it where true, then it would be scandalous. But, it's not true. The problem is you can't cope with low cost competition. But free newspapers compete with regular papers that cost, because they offer more, which is what SCO should be trying to do rather than throwing it's toy's out the pram.
Why should a software company invest to develop exciting new capabilities when their software coud end up "freed" as part of Linux under the GPL?
MISLEADING! - GPL software is not propriatary software that's been freed - it's been developed by the people that chose to releas it under the GPL - it's not been "freed" or "stolen". This is just scare words to make the GPL feel illegal.
Instead of UNIX from any number of U.S.companies or Windows from Microsoft, governments throughout Europe and Asia are using Linux, often downloaded free from the internet. I find this particularly galling because that Linux software contains thousands of lines of my company's proprietary UNIX code - for which we recieve no revenue. SCO has a strong, involuntary presence in certain non-U.S. government markets - but this is only through the unauthrised use of our code in Linux software
BALONEY Once again you assert something you have not even been able to illustrate let alone prove!!!
WRONG! - if I was going to steal code, I would hardly publish under the GPL where it's owners lawyesr would have unhindered access to proof of my crime! No, if I had stolen code I might choose to fail to show my code to anyone, even if I was accusing others of stealing mine in an attempt to divert attention from my crime....
The threat to our national security...
WRONG and ALARMIST! - If Open Software didn't exist I don't see that would stop a Libian Terrorist popping into CIrcuit City and buying a PC with Windows XP or SCO unix on. ANd if I was trying to overthrow the US government I would think my budget would stretch to a few hundred pounds for a SCO unix licence...
I'm not going to comment on the rest of this pile of detrietus because I may lose the will to live in the process.. I do hope the SCO board and shareholders realise what complete idiots Darl is making them look like. I hope Congress send him off with a flea in his ear, but somehow I fear they will not.
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
...to do absolutely EVERYTHING they possibly could do in order to make enemies with the open source community. Groundless lawsuits about copyright are one thing, but now they're actually lobbying congress.
I'm amazed -- at how horrible SCO has become and also at the fact that they were actually able to do something at this point to amaze me (I'd thought I'd seen it all by now). What could they do next? They know no bounds.
There's a very important part of the document that everybody needs to be aware of.
SCO argues that the authority of Congress under the U.S. Constitution to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful arts..." inherently includes a profit motive, and that protection for this profit motive includes a Constitutional dimension.
There it is, in writing. SCO is claiming the Constitution implies a right to profit. One twist of bad logic later, and you get the concept that only those making profit have a right to intellectual property. This idea, even more than the attack on FOSS, is extremely dangerous.
Payment to Novel: 95 billion
Payment to McBride: 20 billion
Payment to SCO: -15 billion
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Damm commie countries have it easy these days when was i spy for mother russia I had to steal secrets using russian microcamera, then walk 15 blocks in the snow.
The real truth is Linux empowers people. I've been using Linux since 1994. I honed my System Admin/programming and Oracle skills with my Linux box. I'm earning 92k/year now. Linux helped me achieve this.
You know what sleeping dogs I'm referring to don't you? No? Well, let me refresh your memory. Hackers! That's right, Hackers, Geeks, Software Engineers, G-P-Lers! Oh, now you remember. Well, do you also remember a few years ago when we all talked about how the Hackers were going to take over the world and how every household would be run by Hackers and their filthy free software? Oh, yeah, we feared the Hackers back in them days and for good reason too. Now, all I hear is poor little Geeks, they've got no money. Poor little Hackers, they've been arrested. Poor little Nerdies this and poor little Coders that.
Don't you get it? Am I the only one that gets it? It's a trick! Free software never dies. Free software is a cancer. A cancer that is sleeping, waiting to devour our freedom. Devour democracy.
Oh, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "This guy's just some money-grubbing, lawsuit-filing wannabe-attorney who had a horrible upbringing and whose father beat him every day with a bible." Well, that may be true, but it never did me any harm!
All I'm saying is, a few years ago, people listened to what I had to say. I fit in. Well, listen to me now. The Hackers, they're going to try to take over the world again. Don't you forget that for one second, friend, or else you'll be lining up for source code in a God-less world.
There's one more thing I'd like to say. Linux! You forgot about it, didncha? Well, that's just what they want us to do, that's right. The Hacker GPLers, the Linux Geeks, they're like this!
So when people say to me, 'Let sleeping dogs lye." I say, to them, 'Friend, sleeping dogs, they eventually wake up and chew out the throat of democracy! Don't think I don't know what you're up to, Hackers. Don't think I'm unaware that Sam Palmisano or should I say, l33t5killz is one of you! (pulls up Sam from behind the desk)
Sam: (tied up with a gag in his mouth) He's crazy!
Crazy like a fanatic -- FOX, I mean! (pushes Sam back down behind his desk) Down you fanatic geek! (starts beating Sam with a stack of legal briefs) One man, one consumer! One man, one consumer!
-----------------------
You are what you think.
If he thinks the Linux kernel is a threat then he hasn't been watching FreeBSD for the past 10 years.
Linux is used on a small percentage of web servers: Apache is the king here and it runs on anything. He's trying to talk up Linux ! Thanks but no Thanks.
Only SCO believes that GPL contradicts US Copyright law. I'd trust EFF here.
GPL keeps code IN COPYRIGHT and not the public domain. Public Domain is near impossible to achieve as an individual under US law as far as I know. I think some goverment stuff can be public domain but its quite rare (IANAL)
Free beer verses free freedom: usual misunderstandings ! Typical Lindows or Mandrake boxed set is quite a lot more expensive than free !.
I think of GPL not facing a court case like many would like other laws to also not be tested in court e.g. murder, rape, embezzlement, Dangerous Driving, Kidnap and so on. If I reword GPL for SCO: GPL is a social contract and it says: if you steal the code then you have certain obligations.
McBride: We've said this time and time again and yet you refuse to prove that Linux contains significant Unix code. Anyone who says that yet fails to prove it has something to hide.
The US a capitalist system ? Bullshit: its Federal Socialism when you cry to government because you can't get your way in the market. Open Source is the product of raw capitalism as it ruthlessly uses the economic might of many companies to remove all competition. Microsoft know this and will probably adapt but they have $40 billion to play with across many product lines, whereas SCO has one product that few are wanting.
Linux is not full of proprietary code. This is lie.
McBride: Open Source allows more money to be spent on value-added services. Its better for the economy not worse. Services are on-site not offshore whereas line of code can easily be created off-shore.
North Korea supercomputer !: McBride, you ignoramus: Personal Computer do not need multi-processor capabilities. Personal computers are (generally) UNI-PROCESSOR. This means One processor you jerk. A cluster is many PCs and its useless with just Linux. It MUST also use Beowulf code or Mosix to be a cluster. If you thnk Beowulf or Mosix have got stolen Unix code then then say so. Linux on its own doesn't make a supercomputer.
It explains a lot about SCO press releases. I thought that there may just be some possiblity of Unix code leaking into Linux accidently and sincerely wish this was removed (I don't need JFS or NUMA anyway even if JFS was IMHO all from IBM and NUMA was from Dynix/Sequent).
Looks like it is simply an emotional breakdown by the CEO. It happens and its sad both for Mr McBride and for the employees and shareholders of SCO.
... is right there in the document, waiting to be slammed.
It's just Darl chating his mantra
must sue..., must talk stupid,... must sue..., must talk stupid,... must sue..., must talk stupid,... must sue..., must talk stupid,... must sue..., must talk stupid,...
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
In the grand scheme of things GPL'd software is better for the world. This is obvious.
However I cannot stop myself from thinking about MYSELF. Be selfish for a moment. Proprietary software makes more money, which puts programmers into jobs with good salaries. With the tech industry doing pretty crappy right now, we need all the jobs we can get. A world with only propreitary software is a world where us programmers have jobs, and decent pay.
I don't like having to say that, but I'm afriad it's a truth I have to acknowledge. If anybody can give me a good counter-argument (besides 'hey buddy you're an idiot') I'd be glad to hear it.
Otherwise, lying to Congress is illegal. If you received sexual favors and lied to Congress about it, then it's like double-secret illegal.
It's far simpler than that.
If you are a Republican and you lie to a Democratic congress, you are breaking the law (c.f "Iran-Contra").
If you are a Democrat and you lie to a Republican congress, you are breaking the law (c.f. "I did not have sex with that woman").
If you are a Republican and you lie to a Republican congress, you get a standing ovation (c.f. the "State of the Union" address 2002, 2003, 2004).
If you are a Democrat and you lie to a Democratic congress, you may or may not get a standing ovation, but you certainly won't get into trouble.
You will note that this is orthogonal to what precisely it is you are lying about. Arms supplied to Pro-US Central American terrorists in order to arm and pay off Anti-US Middle-Eastern Terrorists got Reagan into trouble with a Democratic congress, but lying about weapon's of mass destruction as a pretense to launching a preemptive war, contravening two centuries of US policy and philosophy, was of no concern to a Republican congress (while Clinton's picadellies in the Oval Office earned him an impeachment).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
to outlaw something that has been deemed by the courts to be free speach? Outlawing Open Source Software would be like outlawing a book on how to fix a car or be a carpenter because it takes away money from mechanics and real carpenters.
So when are they switching their webserver from apache and linux? Don't they know they're costing jobs in Redmond? F*ing hypocrites.
There are more than a few. If you want to find a computer salesman, just look in Staples, Best Buy, Future Shop etc...
I have read enough SCO stories to last a lifetime! but I have basically come to the conclusion that nothing is going to come of this bollocks.
about the *horrible* overuse of stars.
Mr. Bush will be re-elected, but he won't work for the adoption of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman. Instead, he will push through an amendment defining F/OSS software as an al-Qaeda plot to corrupt the value of the American software industry, thereby exposing all GPL licensors to the risk of being deemed enemy combatants. Get ready, Linus. Guantanamo Bay beckons.
He mentions that offshore outsourcing is hurting the technology sector.
Does anyone know if SCO is offshoring themselves?
Opera? State level? What isn't right here? State legislators don't go to the opera perhaps? How do you call only wives? This sounds like BS/lies, IMHO.
Rep. Pallone: A company by the name of SCO has been contacting members of Congress in regards to its ongoing litigation and campaign of slander against free software. Its most visible target is the free operating system Linux. While I support anyone's rights to state their views, the copy of the letter that I read contains much that is yet to be proven in court. While SCO has continually widened their attacks, they have yet to prove even one of their assertions in a court of law. Not one. In addition, the letter contains numerous misstatements of fact about free software, and the people who support and contribute to it. I would urge you and your fellow members of Congress to wait until this has been settled by the court system, which is the proper place for this kind of dispute. If at any time you or your staff would like more information about free software, please feel free to contact me. Of course, there are also many excellent web sites on this subject also. Regards, D---- Z-----
Isn't the GPL older than the DMCA?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I can see a day - say after Al Quaida manages an actual attack via the Internet - when Dick Cheney's mob makes it illegal to sell American software to Foreigners.
Perhaps some forward looking companies are moving significant parts of their programming offshore just to avoid this possibility.
As in "American software? No this is INDIAN software, so the American export rules don't apply!".
I predicted something like this pre-DMCA, where American laws (like the DMCA) and American litigiousness would drive most of the software industry overseas. This was at least five years ago (and posted here on slashdot as well as USENET), and if I recall correctly I said something along the lines of "in five or ten years we will be decrying the loss of high-tech jobs to those overseas, bashing whatever up-and-coming country has usurped our technical lead, and wondering why all the money and jobs had left the US economy.
I didn't know it would be India (though I speculated India, China, or even Europe would be possibilities), and I didn't know it would happen via outsourcing, but I am unsurprised at the result.
And yes, I do think the actions of monopolists such as Microsoft and their litigious hired thugs, such as SCO, will drive the remnants of US software innovation overseas, just as the DMCA has already done to some degree (DVD player software and video encoding technologies developed in Europe) and just as the idiotic encryption policies did (gnupg and others are still developed overseas).
It is a very short step from being an "outsourcing" company for HP to becoming a foreign competitor of HP (perhaps using insider info garnered through previous outsourcing, but more likely simply exploiting the natural expertise gained from doing someone elses work for them and learning to do it better and cheaper than they can).
This is the decline of the American technology sector, and it is almost a picture perfect imitation of what happened to the American automobile industry. Instead of Shoddy Ford Pintos blowing up we have Shoddy Microsoft Windows contracting every bug and virus under the sun, and instead of Detroit protectionism we have the likes of SCO and Microsoft creating a ripe environment for a competitor.
That competitor is Free Software, and banning it in America will not make it go away at all. It will simply mean that America has no competative product, while every other nation on the planet does. Sianara American preeminence in software engineering.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
SCO is soooo not even relavent anymore.
The scary thing is that SCO, no matter how wrong thier case may be, is more relevant now than they've been in years. The fact that SCO's execs know the language of finance, marketing and business makes them relevant, as that is the language that most of our representatives in Congress speak every day. The fact that thier parent company (The Canopy Group) is a well known investment house owned by a board of influential, respected, and well connected investors makes them relevant. And the fact that we live in a culture where very few people can see worth in something that has not been paid for makes SCO relevant.
Not everyone yet understands what Open Source is about, and not everyone who does understand Open Source views it as a "Good Thing(tm)". There are several reasons that the Open Source community should not be lulled into taking SCO's actions lightly, as the bigger picture that is being presented by this lobbying effort is that this dispute is not simply about a "breach of contract", nor is it simply a licensing dispute, but is more about a group of people that extends far beyond SCO and Microsoft that view the GPL and other Free Software licensing as a threat to thier way of life and thier controll over sections of the ecconomy.
To those of us who learned on Linux, and to those of us who have been using Linux for a very long time, Linux seems like an innocuous part of the computing landscape. But to the established software industry, (and to the publishing, media distribution, and entertainment industries) Linux and other Free and Open Source technologies are considered to be "Disruptive Technologies" that have the potential to change the landscape of "thier" portion of the economy.
Read, L
Well said.
It seems to me that SCO is essentially a shell company used as a puppet for a hidden agenda. I have my suspicions that another company is behind the whole thing. I don't think their agenda is winning court cases, but instead muddying the water and spreading FUD for Linux and open source in general. They're just trying to poison the well so to speak.
Their lobbying arguements bare a striking similarity to another company's rhetoric, both in terms or content and keywords.
Like to guess who?
Are we talking about MS outsourcing jobs to India? Or Ford Model-T being built in Mexico? Or Walmart selling your underware made in China?
Obviously Darl's letter is distorting facts, as it has always been, to redirect your thoughts. Darl once told me Linus has WMD in his backyard. Let's send UN to Linus house.
If there are politicians that take Darl's voice seriously, they don't deserve to be in congress.
Hi, Since this is the most recent SCO thread I thought I'd ask this in here since someone might now. I'd like to show my support of what SCO is doing, so does anyone know how I might go about donating some money to SCO? I can't see anything on their website about accepting donations & I'm pretty sure they don't have a paypal account! Is there another channel I should take? Thanks.
bucks or fuc... ? ;) considering they are behind the gay CEO himself ;)
First off, we have the standard "some believe the GPL is in violation of the Constitution". W00t. Way to get as vague as possible and to point out that really only SCO (and perhaps Microsoft) believe this (oddly enough, to their benefit as a company).
Second, SCO's constant misrepresentation of the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source community in general is very disturbing.
Funny that the FSF itself defines proprietary as software whose use, redistribution, or modification is restricted or prohibited. I believe what Darl was trying to refer to was commercial software, which can easily derive profit and still be free. Damn, shot yourself in the foot there, eh Darl?
In reality, again, GPL'd software can derive profit from support contracts, installations, and the like. But nowhere in the GPL does it say that you should link in or otherwise include proprietary code; that's not the goal, the goal is to create BETTER code that does the same thing, and also happens to be free. Yes, perhaps it can "free" a source of income from a company which developed a proprietary alternative, but THAT'S BUSINESS, Darl. There's nothing in the constitution that can get you out of the fact that we live in a capitalist society and if you can't find a way to compete, get out of the business.
And then, of course, we get to SCO's main point of business, or "proof" that Open Source software is evil; code has been stolen from them and imported into Linux without authorization. For the last time, everyone is asking, WHAT code, and WHERE is it? We will replace it! There's a whole community ready to fix any wrongdoings inside Linux in the blink of an eye. Oh, but wait, telling that would be "freeing" you of your litigation profit stream. I apologize.
Free or low-cost [ed. contradicted yourself there] Open Source software, full of proprietary code
And a second contradiction to round out that paragraph.
Because of a number of reasons. First and foremost, if they have the superior software, they will continue to own the market. You think Adobe and Photoshop are suffering a lot due to The GIMP? Secondly, because "freeing" software doesn't mean stealing it, even though you blatantly infer that. If any new software is put into Linux, it's either already been released free by its ORIGINAL developer, or it's code that volunteers have created, all their own. There are no bad-faith copyright violations in Linux because nobody knew about SCO's IP "rights" in the first place, and we still don't!
Hehe... coming from SCO... hehehe.
The rest of it is BS, mostly (national security?), so I'll leave it at that. Really though, SCO should present something a bit more substantial if they want us to think they're anything more than moneygrubbing lawyers.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Apparently SCO sent letters to our congressmen, now we should also do the same. Our side of the story shoud be heard too! On the Electronic Frontier Foundation web page they have an anti-SCO form letter that can be used. It does not specifically refer to the SCO lobbying. But, it does talk about the SCO litigation and their plan to sue Linux users even before the validity of their claims has been established.
t em =2775
The form letter is automatically sent to the the appropriate senator and representatives who represent you in your district. You do not need to bother looking up their e-mail addresses. You can add your own comments before the letter is sent. Here is the link to the anti-SCO form letter:
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&i
Let congress now we care about our legal rights as Linux users.
...seriously, I've seen someone on FreeRepublic who rails against Linux specifically because it's open-source nature allows governments that we don't like (his primary concern is the ChiComs) to access the code. I asked how my usage of Linux aids the Chinese government. His exact words:
"Simple. You install the software. You (or any of a thousand others) encounter minor issues and seek help online. Bugs are discovered, are fixed, which in turn benefits the ChiComs. You are a link in the chain. It's just like voting for the Democratic Party. You don't like their position on abortion but you cover your eyes and vote for them, anyway. "It's not me who's performing abortions. My vote isn't responsible for an abortion." But you're still enabling it to happen."
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Dear Senator/Representative:
While I have not read the letter from SCO disparaging the GPL (after all, this is Slashdot), let's discuss for a moment what the proprietary software market has done.
When you purchase Microsoft Office, your check for $350 goes to Redmond, Washington. Ditto for everyone else in your state who buys a Microsoft product.
When you pay a consultant to install OpenOffice for you, your money (probably) stays in your state.
If you would like your constituents' money to remain in your state, then you should support the GPL.
If you are a Senator/Representative from the state of Washington, well, tough luck.
I believe in Open Source, and I will not allow any government to keep me from using it and contributing to it.
Not much could turn me into a revolutionary, but something like this just might.
I am generally quite content, living a comfortable lifestyle in a reasonably comfortable country, with a decent paying job, my toys, a nice home in a nice city, a woman I love, and just about anything else contentment requires (including that one important prerequisite, a measure of freedom). Any anger or annoyance I feel toward the world is easilly vented here or elsewhere online and purged from my system, after which I continue on just as reasonably content as before.
However, banning free software could seriously make me reconsider that (scratch the job, and with it likely the home and the plane. Take away the freedom and no amount of toys or perks will bring contentment again). Whether I would become a true scorched-earth revolutionary I doubt, but I would certainly sell the condo and the airplane, emigrate from this country, renounce my citizenship, and use my talents to enrich a nation more deserving than the United State's will have become if our leaders even seriously consider doing something like this.
And I mean it.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It just amazes me how theres always a comment about how Republicans are all for helping out SCO.
In reality, if you asked George Bush who SCO is, he probably wouldn't know. But I'm pretty sure he knows who IBM is.
And IBM has lobbyists too, plus they could easily donate the entire value of SCO to political campaigns if they wanted to.
Get a brain guys, Start calling it like it is.
The sooner you realize who is behind this FUD campaign the better.
If you can't be a abusive monopolist cause of some judge watching your ever move then just hire some troll company to do the abusing for you.
The American way. Problem is the Abusive Monopolist has almost unlimited funds and unlimited troll companies to do it's bidding for it.
Linus himself said he'd be glad when this SCO thing was over. Oh really? Sorry to tell you this but this is only the very beginning. Hasn't even started yet. Wait two years and look back at the calmer 2004 when there was only one Microscoft company in court.
The only way to slow down the inevitable is to start using one very big software's companies name in every sentence when describing companies like SCO. They bought in and it's there direction that SCO is pursuing.
This is still peace time, The war hasn't even started yet.
"When a fellow Mormon is mentioned in the media I usually feel excitement for the accomplishments of that person. However Darl McBride's behavior is hardly something to feel pride over. I feel his business ethics are questionable and embarrassing to his religious community. I hope no further reference in the media will be made to Darl McBride and his religion for the sake of all Mormons."
Actually he's not an embarrasement. He's a joke. There is something called "ex-communication" in the Mormon church. By going against the church teachings he is basically pushing himself into a position of facing this.
Oh and there are Temple recommends. Basically one of the questions for a church Temple recommend asks "Have you been honest with your fellow man?". This is just one of many questions that Daryl will face as he is grilled by his Bishop (original or extra crispy?). Since this is very public, I doubt he could lie and get away with it. I feel sorry for the guy. He basically proves that some people will do anything for money. Even sell his own soul
(Sorry for the OT.. read the article refered and couldn't let it alone)
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Daryl let me explain one simple point to you! The following is a description of the word profit from my dictionary
:make a profit; gain money or materially
Profit:
1) v
Now let me explain that your use of the word profit relates to the first portion of this descritption to gain money. Myself on the other hand, Mr Open Source Developer could care less about that first portion but I value the second portion "materially". It is by my choice as a copyright owner to release my code under the GPL. Through this agreement I gain materially (your changes) to my copyrighted code.
Just taking a look at the definition and looking at it from both motives one can easily see we both love to profit from our software.
Got Code?
I will help and any sort of direction will be beneficial!
slashdotuser at yahoo
.... tell us something Linux has that any of the major UNIXes don't....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Come on, SCO. We know, we know. Here's a blanket, you poor, poor man. Have some hot coffee, and a nice warm plate of turkey and gravy. You remember Linus? Your social worker? We were all worried about you. We heard you yelling and carrying on. Linus is glad to see you.
"He's full of... LIES! He's one of them!"
There, there. Linus is your friend, remember? He gave you all that nice Open Source medication--
"Tried to POISON me, he DID! He, he stole those magic pills from ME! You hear me? ARF ARF! Call the guards! Guards! Help me, this man POISONED ME!"
I understand. You're cold and confused. Off your medication. There, there... we'll make it all better. Now, hand me that butter knife, put poor Mrs. User down, and we'll have a nice chat..."
"LIES! ALL LIES! I'LL SUE YOU ALL!!!"
Oh dear. Well, he'll go to sleep eventually. Just keep an eye on him so he doesn't hurt any of the the others, and he'll be fine. Mrs. User, can you just be patient and humor him for a while? He's had a bad business deal, and he's all out of sorts.
That's odd, I didn't know that "cynical" and "brutally retarded" were synonyms.
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
> It amazes me that SCO thinks they will be taken seriously by any policymakers when you have the likes of IBM, HP and Apple using Open Source every day.
Are they fighting open source, or are they fighting the GPL? Does Apple license under the GPL?
So, I should write a letter to my congress critters, saying I'm worried that SCO is trying to take away my right to innovate, and remove my right to create intellectual property of my own invention? This sounds like a threat to our intellectual capital as a nation, which is one of our greatest strategic advantages.
"SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code."
yet in this letter, Darl is only claiming *thousands*: "I find this particularly galling because that Linux software contains thousands of lines of my company's proprietary UNIX code..."
Gee, I guess the magnitude of the issue has just be cranked down by 3 orders of magnitude -- the claimed infraction is now just 0.1% of the original claim. Do you think we will see SCO adjusting the $3B claim on IBM down to $3M ?
It just amazes me how theres always a comment about how Republicans are all for helping out SCO.
Republicans are actually well-known for decrying what they see as abuses of the civil courts by money-grubbing trial lawyers; this is one of their favorite slams on John Edwards. One wouldn't expect them to be sympathetic towards a company that has shifted their entire business model towards filing lawsuits against nearly every successful tech company in the country.
Frankly, I think IBM, RedHat, and the rest should counter with an aggressive pro-capitalism endorsement of the GPL. They should emphasize how collaborative software development and open standards are improving technology for both industry and consumer. Basically, just copy Microsoft's "Freedom to Innovate" campaign, applied to Linux instead.
(And above all, keep RMS muzzled.)
Novell guys form a Linux company called "Caldera" to compete against Microsoft.
...
Caldera offers modified RedHat Linux called "OpenLinux".
Novell sells rights to old Unix software to SCO.
Caldera makes money from Linux.
SCO looses money.
Caldera uses money to buy failing UNIX company called SCO.
Caldera makes deal with Microsoft and drops litigation.
Caldera renames itself SCO Group, and rebrands itself as a UNIX company.
Caldera/SCO, with the help of Microsoft, threaten with UNIX rights to fight against Linux.
Novell buys Linux company, SuSe.
What in the fucking hell is Darl McBride smoking? He gets dumber by the minute.
This is obviously more than a political stunt, or an attempt to gain corporate welfare from Congress. This is hatred, deep-seeded passionate hatred of OpenSource and hatred of the GPL. The language of the letter is hateful, vengeful, vidicitive and furious.
Does this intense, unrelenting hatred come from SCO or Darl McBride? No, I don't believe it does. SCO hasn't been especially hurt by OpenSource, and has even contributed signficiantly to the movement during their Caldera days. SCO Unix may compete directly with Linux, but so does HP-UX, AIX and Solaris, yet those OS's respective companies are embracing the OpenSource operating system, just as SCO once did. Obviously, SCO doesn't have a great deal to gain directly from eliminating OpenSource, not enough to make them so emotional about it.
I believe this hatred eminates from the only company with the means, the motive and the opportunity to disseminate this hatred (through SCO). I belive this hatred eminates from the fact that Linux and OpenSource is the only force standing in the way of this company's objective to dominate the world by owning everyone's data and controlling their computing experience. This raw ambition cannot be fulfilled successfully unless the only real computing alternative in the age of decline of propriety unixes is eliminated. This is a war not just about dominance of the computing world, but about infinitely diverging philosophies of building information technology. It is a war of almost religious overtones.
That hateful, vengeful entity can be none other than Microsoft. Microsoft is the only company in the world with the means (billions of dollars), the motive (absolute dominance of computing) and the opportunity (rapid convergence of computers and the entertainment, finance and other industries) to be guilty of this initiative.
tar ... | compress ,but tar is not part of Linux.
/dev/random.
The compiler is not part of Linux.
ssh is not part of Linux.
The only point you may have is
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
SCO claims Linux is a threat to national security because it is freely available to any dictator. But the plain fact is, all U.S. software developers are bound by the same export controls that restrict licensing of SCO's products.
You can see the scene in Darl Land.
Well Youseff, have you installed "Jihad on the Infidels XP" on my Global Terror PC yet?
No Boss. It turned up form Amazon this morning but the EULA said that no one outside of the US was allowed to use it under fear of prosecution.
Yeah right, The FBI, CIA, MI5 and MI6 haven't been able to find us but we daren't attract the attention of US Customs and Excise AND the BSA!
Wake up Darl you pig ignorant twat! US export controls mean nothing to terrorists. I hate to shatter your illusions but a trip to PC World and the diplomatic bag of a corrupt embassy official is one of many (thousands) of ways that rich terrorists could pick up a copy of any OS.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Figured I'd look up a picture of Darl because I hate the guy so much and I don't know what he looks like. Instead I found a picture of a stuffed tux at the SCO office.
http://www.levenez.com/wall/ChristophHaas.jpg
Kilka
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. -Chomsky
First, Darl McFuckhead, the GPL relies on copyright as it derives its licensing authority from copyright law. Nothing in the GPL requires software under the GPL license to be in the public domain; if it were, it would not be covered by copyright and therefore not licensed.
Second, when OSS advocates talk of "free software" they talk in terms of free as in speech, not necessarily free as in beer. One thing Darl needs to wrap his head around is the fact that there is a community of computer enthusiasts who see OSS and the GPL as a way to improve their own software and the sotware of others; there is no expectation in this community that someone cannot profit from this experience. The fact that much of the software in this community is free to others is an expression of the freedom to be found here, not a soul crushing display of anti-capitalism.
Darl goes on to proselytize that because of open source software, software values have plummeted, and much of this is due to the existence of proprietary code in open source projects. This is an outrageous, over-reaching statement as any in his letter. In one fell swoop he has besmirched anyone even remotely connected to open source as pirates. If open source was as rotten to the core as Darl suggests, lawsuits would have been flying years ago and the evidence of wrong-doing so readily apparent that Darl should not be having as difficult a time as he is proving this in court.
One thing becomes immediately clear reading Darl's letter; his ideas about the economy, copyright and patents are rooted in the past. He cannot envision a future where the value of certain types of software lay in the support and service behind the software, not the software itself. We have already seen a large shift in employment from manufacturing based to service based. I am not advocating the shift, simply pointing it out and if Darl wants to move his company forward he should drop the posturing and lawsuits and embrace the opportunities that exist today because open source is not going away.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/12058.html
According to reports - well, one anyway - Caldera Systems and the Santa Cruz Operation are in discussions which could see the Linux company acquire SCO's OpenServer and UnixWare operating systems. SCO also owns the rights to the Unix trademark, and sits atop a pile of ye originale AT&T Unix code, some of which it's been judiciously leaking as open source over the past year.
Go to TheLinuxShowwebcast from LinuxWorld today and listen to segment 2 (Interview with IBM).
Then ask yourselves if IBM will let the little Piss Ant SCO put this in peril.
Not a chance
PS Use MPlayer in Lieu of the horrid RealPlayer
Help fight continental drift.
OK, all bwah!! lmfao comments aside, but doesn't their arguments go against my basic human rights that I'm allowed to choose what the hell i do?
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." -Robert Heinlein "Life-Line"
Normally, I'd just laugh this off, but this IS the United States and nothing surprises me about our Congress. Money talks.
"Iran-Contra"
"I did not have sex with that woman"
Yes, but compare the amount of money spent investigating matters related to the latter quote, and the congressional response to it, with the former quote. The reactions to each seem to have been inversely related to their importance, because Americans seem to care more about blowjobs than national security. (Heh.).
(Actually, for a while I thought Clinton should resign, because I thought the whole mess was generally indicative of mental instability and inability to be trusted - not the personality type I wanted controlling our nuclear arsenal. However, Oliver North, Caspar Weinberger, and others should still be in prison. Bush. . . wouldn't have even made it to Texas governor if he didn't have a famous name.)
Congress will never pass a law that censors computer code. It is a classic case of prior restraint if ever there was one.
Dawn of the Dead
If Darl does not go to jail, his next gig will be a lobbyst for MS. Trying to ban, what? Charitable software work?
Head hurts, honestly, even a paranoid schizophrenic makes more sense that this insane "company"...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Wait a second, this guy is openly advocating violating Microsoft's IP for the purpose of helping Linux. Can wholesale copying of code be far behind?
=P
Before anyone wastes their time pointing things out to our "servants" in congress, be sure to read this article first. They don't care about your opinon. And note that SCO is now doing the lobbying dirty work for Microsoft. Such a surprise. Not. I'll say it one more time: better burn cd-roms of your favorite Open Source products, because the end of their legality in the US is coming soon and there's nothing you can do to stop it. The resources of IBM, Red Hat, and the OSDL are nothing compared to Microsoft's >$9 billion cash reserves, and they will continue to manage to slip it to SCO and our government "servants" as needed.
Since the Bush administration was all too eager to throw the Microsoft case, it's not such a big leap.
Sure G.W.B. doesn't know who SCO is today, but you never know, once the lobyists start calling in favors...
Still, your point about IBM is well taken.
But no-one seems to question its authenticity?
The least you'd expect from a news item ANYWHERE would be to quote the source.
.sig
So is IBM
but SCO doesn't have a lot. Especially not compared to IBM...
"...because I believe that Open Source, as it is currently constituted, is a slippery slope."
I wonder if Darl knows that "Slippery Slope" is the name of a common logical fallacy. Might be a freudian slip way of admitting he's full of it.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Sentinel,
Are not many officers of Novell also LDS (i.e. Mormon)?
If Novell officers or concerned LDS brethren complained to Darl's elders, when would the Bishop get envolved.
And how public is the process?
I've really been thinking about why this situation is so frustrating to me, personally. I think at the bottom of the whole thing is how I feel about Linux, Open Source, and the whole Gnu project. They are each examples of the power of the little guy. I mean this not in the sense of "little guy vs. big corporation," but rather the ability of one person to have a literal positive impact on the whole world. I don't make my OS a religion, but I'm definitely proud to be a Linux and open source user. I feel as though I'm supporting those who are driven to make the world a better place by using their skills. I remember reading an interview with Don Knuth several years ago. He said (paraphrasing from memory), "we had a sense in those days that we were advancing civilization with our work. Money wasn't a part of it." That sentiment had a profound impact on me, and I like to think that's the prevailing sentiment in the world of open source. When viewed from that perspective, SCO and its arguments seem less than petty. So there it is, for me anyway: it's SCO (who want to save themselves and their bank accounts) vs. people who are making the world better.
Ya know I was just telling someone today, never get the government involved, they're sure to screw it up and you'll never get the intended outcome.
Indeed. Imagine some company, called XYZ, lobbying congress that all volunteerism in the U.S. should be stopped because it allows the beneficiaries to get something for free, instead of paying XYZ it.
The fact is, Linux may be harming some OS vendors, but Linux is helping many many companies to make money. I, for one, work for a company that switched to Linux from some proprietary OS, and it is saving us a bundle, and helping us to make a lot more money, with a lot less hassle.
So instead of SCO whining about it, they should try to *benefit* from it. They should try to make something somebody actually wants to buy, instead of their lame Unix passe distros. And if Linux helps them, so much the better.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
- It ties the "problem" to all the issues that either party is trying to make the focus of the presidential campaign.
- It truthfully identifies open-source software as "controversial"... which is true, but only because they (and Microsoft and a few others) are making it so.
- It describes the movement (OSS), identifies an I've-heard-of-that example to establish that it's real (Linux), and links them together as "Open Source Linux". (Like Communism and Russia became "Communist Russia".)
- It then ties the entire thing to one of the fathers of the movement (Stallman) and equates the whole of it with his ideology, which - as is typically the case of founding ideologues - is a bit more radical than bulk of those who (vaugely) follow in his wake. Like connecting any Communist state or Socialist party to Marx, or to Lenin.)
- Likewise, it disparages the GPL by referring to "copyleft", associating it with "leftists" and implying to those without a grasp of geek irony that it seeks to annihilate copyright rather than (in the minds of many advocates) balance it.
- It uses words like "abetted" and "scheme" with their sinister, criminal overtones.
- It even uses the "some believe" construct, which passes something that should be tagged "IMHO" as if it were a commonly-held viewpoint. "Some believe that the moon is made of cheese," is true... but so what?
- And for good measure, it tosses in SCO's unproven allegations about theft of code as if they were admissable evidence.
Joe McCarthy would have been proud to read this from the Senate floor.**That's my own bit of demagoguery.
When you appeal to their paranoias ( loss of taxes, homeland security, etc ) you set things up for another DMCA type of bill, but with a goal to effectively ban OSS projects.
Don't laugh.. they can do it.. Regardless of how stupid it might be, or how impractical it would be to enforce.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What a load.
"Smith and his horse breeders are trying to put Ford and GM out of business! What's more, is that somebody could strap a BOMB on one of those horses and use it for a terrorist attack!"
Here's an idea: try competing. Produce software that people WANT, and sell it.
BTW, I'd love to know what other types of "vicious attacks" SCO has experienced (other than that fake DOS attack a few weeks ago).
Chicks dig my good /. karma.
Gee. Thanks... :-[
A child of six could rebut evey single point made in this pathetic dross.
I sincerely hope the recipient reads it, checks up on it and tears the author a new arsehole for wasting his time.
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
They're well known for complaining when trial lawyers help individuals sue large corporations. When corporations sue over lost revenue from people giving away "their" IP, even if they're only imagining that it's theirs, that's another story altogether.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
I read Darl's screed and had to laugh. Its so dumb that even a congressman can see through the stupidity.
I mean, its *really* dumb.
The US needs to be on the bus ASAP IMHO. If anything threatens the US economy its guys like this who use money, influence and dirty tricks to maintain the status quo. It didnt work for the British Empire did it?
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Note the phrase "petition the Government..."
Yes, SCO is still full of shit, but they have the right to advertise to Congress that they're full of shit.
From Darl's letter to the congressmen:
> Those who designed the GPL readily admit that they created this license to have the effect of "freeing" software -- taking it out of the realm of copyright protection and placing it in the public domain. -- http://www.osaia.org/letters/sco_hill.pdf
This is an amateurish mistake. The GPL actually depends on strong copyright protection in order to work. The GPL does not modify any copyrights -- it simply declares the copyright-holder's conditions for the use of the work.
If you violate the GPL, then the copyright-holder can fully claim their copyrights and file suit against you. That's the exact opposite of "taking it out of the realm of copyright protection", as Darl claims.
It's pretty sobering to see SCO send a letter to congressmen that contains such a whopping mistake in the law. It brings Darl's incompetency into sharp relief.
Points of fact:
Items 1 & 2, I agree.
Item 3 is false. IBM and Linux, need I say more? Aparently I must... Nobody is more "trusted" than IBM in the computer business, they have a market cap of more than a billion dollars. They are selling Linux.
Item four (4) is false. "all open source companies" are by no means in bankrupt or in litigation. Lots of "companies" dot-bombed because they didn't have a business model. Plenty more are doing nicely. Many of both were involved in open-source. Red Hat is in litegation only because someone (SCO) is lying their asses off in public. That litigation can only be seen as an indictment of the Open Source Software Company if you are completely incapable of understanding business.
To a large extent the percentage of open source companies that failed is quite comprable to the percentage of restraunts that fail each year. That doesn't mean that there is no money to be made in making a restraunt. The only real problem with the dot-bomb was the huge amount of venture capital *SQUANDERED* *BLINDLY* by idiots. That, in turn, trashed the economy. But that wasn't open source's fault per se, it was the "bad business" of mistaking "name recognition and market penetration" for "business models that a four year old would find reasonable."
Item five (5) is false, or at least wildly misleading. While Microsoft might have "always" been hiring, if you look at the job market in the DC area in 2001 (the depths of the dot-bomb) there was an essentially region-wide hiring freze.
Defense contractors are probably the largest single group of producers of closed source software and they were in shrinkage like a hula-boy in an arctic fijord.
So "closed-source companies have not 'always been hiring'". Far from it.
Item six (6) is a misleading oversimplification. "Selling" open source is a road to ruin. Selling support for open source software can be quite lucrative. Money is being made and the business models are quite "vital" when they are not just dashed together by infomercial-watching morons the way they were in the late ninties. I'll skip the long proof, but it is reasonably demonstrable that software alone and for software's sake, is not a sustainable business model unless you have someone by the short-hairs.
As for item seven (7), Open Source *obviously* is not about making money selling software. Open source is about making software in the hopes of solving problems. The money to be made is in then having software that will let you do the things that let you make money. This is not double speak, but it is the vital spark that all the dot-bombs totally failed to understand.
For the most part, and with the exception of games programs, there really hasn't been a means in the market to make money by selling software. The "real money" is to be had "selling support contracts" or "providing the software that lets our steeply-priced hardware do something". No really! Microsoft has made a nut selling Windows, that is true enough, and the rev it and make the new stuff imcompatable with the old so that they approximate the same model as an ongoing support. This relies on people being willing to spend $250 every four years to replace something "new" instead of paying $50 a year to have it replaced peicemeal as it evolves. (Wizzard's first rule: "people are stupid"...)
The real Microsoft model relies on the leverage that if your office mate updates to Word YP (whY Pay 8-) you have to also if you want to read their documents. This model is unique to their current market penetration, and OS is nibbling at the edges of that. If Word for Windows is ever forced to "naturally" use an open format for saving documents then Microsoft's "repurchace income" will plumet.
Game software isn't about selling you code, it's about selling you entertainment.
Getting paid for open source isn't aobut putting a disk on someones shelf, it is about being paid to let your customer get some work done. The open
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Every time I think Darl has hit the low point, he makes a bigger fool of himself than I thought possible. I honestly have to wonder where it's going to end.
Do you have ESP?
All I have ever heard about canopy was how they are able to manipulate stock and pull other backroom deals. All I have ever heard or read about canopy group was that they are shady and not to be trusted with or without sco.
Now they may have the money to lobby(Bribe) Congress and the rest of the bunch in D.C. .
Competion is good until you/your company/your industry
takes it in the shorts. Then it is "unfair".
If you have the political muscle you can get some
import quotas/tarrifs to "protect your industry".
Take a look a steel or sugar. Import quotas keep the US sugar price about 2-3 times the world price. All to protect the "family sugar farmer". This is the reason sodas have
corn syrup now rather than the previously used sugar. Also accounts for some of the movement of candy manufacturing to Canada.
The steel tarrifs were removed when the political damage to Bush exceeded the political gain.
Softwood lumber imports are currently a conflict
between US and Canada. The may actualy be some
"unfair" competion in this area. (I am however;
in Oregon , a softwood producing area)
SCO's argument could receive a very receptive hearing in congress, unlikely in my opinion, but possible.
Ha... the best part about this article is that I don't use linux! The second best part about the article is that I am going to go get it right now and install it because those wankers at SCO deserve anything they get. The acrobat file was so argumentatively lame that it has inspired me to don the red hat... as it were.
And IBM has lobbyists too, plus they could easily donate the entire value of SCO to political campaigns if they wanted to.
But what would anyone really want with 47 cents worth of stock options?
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
...cause it sounds like their getting/smoking some of the finest shit money can buy, I mean you'd have to to write that kinda stuff. As soon as they can get that stuff on the streets, we'll all be better off. /cheek/tongue
rm
...because everyone knows that the worst problem facing the world today is people giving their time voluntarily to build things and then give them away for the common good, and allowing the benefits of technology to come within the grasp of everyone from barely-funded libraries to multimillion-dollar corporations.
We must stop this and ensure that people with little money are not allowed access to the same quality of software that the priviledged enjoy!
Or something...
according to netcraft, http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=sco.com
sco is running Apache on Linux.
They're making these allegations and it turns out they utilize the very software they claim is so evil?
-- Does anybody know where the 'any' key is on the keyboard?
sometime back there was a senator who fought tirelessly for suspension of funds to pure math research because he had received some money from the publisher of discrete math textbooks. so what if th epolitician knew nothing of math? he had some pretty good arguments why ONLY discrete math should be researched in this world..
US politicians are no different from the rest of the world.
No, it's USSR (given: United StateS of Republicans)
Since this is very public...
I hope you're referring to his outrageous statements, not the interview with the Bishop. Those interviews are entirely confidential
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
If SCO _really_ cared about the American economy, they'd be thrilled that Linux was free and reducing the amount of "Below The Line" expenses that Linux allows. Any company that uses Linux can take the money that they save and pass it along to consumers, plow it into R&D, etc, as software licenses are effectively just a tax on business.
I've seen the following passage attributed to Heinlein, and quoted in various blogs and pages, and I thought it fit perfectly here:
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Appropriate, I think, as it sounds like SCO is trying to get the government to mandate profitability for SCO.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Who is giving SCO the funding to launch all these bullshit lawsuits? Granted it doesn't take a fortune to merely file suit against someone in this tort-filled country (the USA), but after watching some of the folks SCO has been going against (not to mention the "evidence" they've stated so far) it definitely bears the reek of a certain Washington-based manipulator.
"No sir, I don't like it!"
The problem is W also knows Microsoft. Remember it was W and Ashcroft who cancelled the anti-trust break-up. W is a total big business puppet and Microsoft has the upper hand here.
t ml
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/09/06/157258.sh
Frederic Bastiat put it rather well in his satirical Candlemakers' Petition. And SCO is essentially arguing here that is good for Americans to pay higher prices for software that has not been commoditized. They are saying that their jobs are more important than mine or yours. Also well worth reading is his That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen. Regrettably, his argument about the invisibility of widely dispersed costs and benefits is an economic one that is at odds with the political strategy of aiding a small group in a large way at a small expense to everyone else.
Either Darl McBride is ignorant of basic economics, which is entirely possible, or he is aware of exactly what he is doing. Either he is incompetent to run a corporation or knows he is lying.
I suppose SCO has just shown their hand. They are not going to make code anymore, they are going to just claim that everyone stole it from them, and sue people for it. What the fuck kind of business model is that?
I hate sigs.
The original post was a joke, you moron.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
is Darrel McDork gonna go after Habitat for Humanity next? Geez, is this guys a complete blood sucking ass or what? He has to win the 2003, 2004 and 2005 greediest asswipe award.
Are not many officers of Novell also LDS (i.e. Mormon)?
If Novell officers or concerned LDS brethren complained to Darl's elders, when would the Bishop get envolved.
It's unlikely they would unless McBride is convicted of a serious crime. In which case his church membership would in fact come under review. I've had friends and acquaintances who've had this happen for embezzlement, tax evasion & securities fraud.
And how public is the process?
Usually not at all, though it somewhat depends on how public the crime was. The church generally treats those issues pretty sensitively.
Tweet, tweet.
What, just what will it take (seriously now) to get Darl to come clean with his unfounded accusations and allegations of IP infringement? What will it take on our part to completely unravel this charletan (sic) for what he really is? I have read comments here that state this kind of lobbying is too much of a non-issue or too little of a common mans issue to swing legistlatives opinions -- that is while job #1 (getting re-elected of course) is in full swing.
I seriously doubt this kind of rant from the "tech nerd sector" is going to make a tinkers damn bit of difference to Senator So-and-so this year.
Therefore back to the original question: What is it going to take to shut this son'ov'a bitch up?
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
Canada is to cold and potentially to "under the thumb" of the US government.
A little distance and a friendlier climate might be in order. I think I'd head for Brazil.
The US government has been wiping their nether regions with the Bill of Rights for years anyway.
If you can learn C++, what would be so hard about Portugese? And the beaches...
Otherwise, you've got three boxes to fight with -- the soapbox, the jury box and the cartridge box.
This was inevitable. Don't forget that Sen. Hatch's son is an attorney for SCO and that Orin Hatch is about as far removed as a defender of true liberty as one can get. SCO owns a strong lobby in Sen. Orin Hatch.
This strategy WILL eventually succeed. All of us have seen the intelligence of Congress and this should erase all doubt in our minds as to what is *eventually* going to happen next. Open Source will become illegal, coding will become a "licensed discipline" and freedom as we know it is about to be murdered.
If you honestly believe you have any power to change this - think again. A flurry of activity will flutter across Slashdot and maybe Groklaw - then our rape of liberty and freedom. We can count on the news media to spew the lies of SCO in such a way that will soon have Linux being in league with child porn, terrorists and God only knows what else.
The only thing that matters in this world is power and they have it and we do not.
this man as a lot of nerve to be claiming such things to be true before his growing number of court cases have been concluded. It's not over till the fat lady sings mc bride.. but reading this i think you realise your fat lady just hummed a few bars.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
If they thought the law was on their side they wouldn't have to go to Congress to try to change it.
Fat chance Congress will cut you guys a break, fellas. Looks like the endgame to me.
Dose this amounts to slander?
SCOs entire argument is that Linux stold code from them yet they refuse to provide anything remotely resembling proof.
At some point someone should sue SCO for slander plain and simple.
I don't actually exist.
I just got finished reading Darl McBride's letter to Congress about the evils of Open Source software and would like to provide an alternative view. I've been working with different flavors of UNIX since the early 80s. I graduated from my first computer school while serving in the U.S. Army in the early 70s.
Darl McBride's assertions are the most outlandish use of "national security" claims I have ever seen.
SCO (formerly Caldera Linux) has become a litigation company starting with their purchase of DR-DOS, which they sued Microsoft over immediately. Now they have purchased SCO's UNIX assets and again filed law suits to make a profit.
The President says we need tort reform because run-away litigation is hurting the economy, and SCO would be a perfect example to make that case.
Addressing his assertion that "free software" hurts the economy and companies that publish commercial software I suggest the following. There is another popular free software license called BSD, which doesn't restrict commercial vendors like SCO and Microsoft from integrating code into their products without "giving back to the free software community", which both MS and SCO have done repeatedly. What Darl McBride really doesn't like about the GNU GPL license is it doesn't allow him to tap this large resource of free programmers.
SCO still distributes free software (SAMBA, SENDMAIL, etc) with it's commercial flavors of UNIX, which brings into question his assertions about the dangers of free software.
Sun Microsystems realized this and manages to stay in business giving away copies of Solaris knowing that people calling in for "paid support" and/or buying their hardware will be the real cash cow. Also they will gain new customers and software developers that they would otherwise not have with pricing like SCO has on it's products.
Now to explain how free software has had a positive effect on my computer career. As a UNIX devotee I found it a bit frustrating that I could not make a decent living writing software for UNIX because my customer base (small to medium size businesses) could not afford my software and an expensive copy of commercial UNIX (often $1000 to $2000). This left me writing my applications for Microsoft Operating Systems because they are low priced in comparison.
Since "available applications" is a selling point for any Operating System commercial UNIX has often been hurt by it's own pricing.
Once free flavors of UNIX became available I was finally able to work on my OS of choice, and give my customers a superior product in the process (anyone who has used Windows knows about how it likes to crash).
In my humble opinion Free Software has created many more jobs that it may have displaced, so PLEASE don't let one company that loves to litigate it's profits ruin the fastest growing software market in the USA today.
Note: Since 1987 (and currently) I have made part of my living supporting SCO based commercial applications (Lightspeed, medical management apps, etc) written by other programmers, so assuming I'm just anti-SCO would be reaching. However, I am NOT happy with their current business model of suing for profit.
I don't know about the officers of Novell however if there is a legitimate complaint then it goes to the High Council for the local stake in which the person lives (generally). It's called a "Bishops Court" in which his Bishop presides. It's very much like our legal process (minus the liers .... errrr lawyers I mean). Evidence is presented (should be easy in this case to come up with some) and testimony is taken.
Once all this is completed, the High Council deliberates and renders a decision. Disfellowship, excommunication or some other punishment.
I was involved with helping a bishop years ago as ward clerk and had some involvement in this once. The process is VERY private. The person IMO needs help and this is the beginning of that process. Once this goes to court and when SCO loses, Daryl could end up with a lot more trouble than he bargened for.
Again, this is a private process not designed to freak anyone out. It's designed to put someone on the path of healing.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
The US Army doesn't seem to have the same take as SCO on the threat to US security posed by FOSS. According to The Register, it has abandoned MSWindows and shifted to Linux for the Commander's Digital Assistant component of its Land Warrior program.
If you are a Democrat and you lie to a Republican congress, you are breaking the law (c.f. "I did not have sex with that woman").
You are yet another one of millions of people who just don't get it. IN COURT they defined 'sexual relations' as COITUS, Bill Clinton DID NOT HAVE COITUS with that women, so he had to say "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" when in court - otherwise he would have actually been commiting perjury.
Right now i'm twenty.. this issue happened in what.. 1997? I would have been what was it... 13 and I understood this at that time.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Yes. The interviews with the Bishop are not for public disclosure. Daryl's comments however are very public and should make it easy to provide evidence.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Actually, it's USSR--> United Socialist States Republic or something similar... He wasn't making a referral to the USA in any way shape or form. :D
Communism==USSR
GPL != USSR
SCO == Communism :P
? ? ? The Open Software Movement? All other software kinda is apart of the movement known as business. The "Linux Bigots" normally have nothing to do with the software development itself. Many people live in their own world. Why worry about those living in their own Linux-fantasy? Remember, when you read anything posted on SlashDot (or anything else written in the world) know your biases and don't get upset over things.
Okay, I'll bite. How will the "Linux Bigots" destroy the software movment?
Now you are just lumping everyone into a single group and saying they can't market or code well. That's just wrong and makes you as bad as the "Linux Bigots." I have yet to meet anyone who did not value their own code. Value is how much one thinks something is worth. Cost is how much a product/service is sold for. Volunteering one's time to accomplish something with no monetary reward can be very rewarding. (Some OpenSource projects are actually financed so some people are paid for the work.) Hi, I am the Holier-than-thou MrNybbles. I enjoy pointing out when people are way out there and are just as bad as the people on the other side of the extream. Who are you oh anonymous one? The story is entitled "Your Rights Online: SCO Lobbying Congress Against Open Code". If you don't want to hear that SCO sucks then why did you post? Anyway nothing should make sence to any of use since at the heart of the hole thing are licenses, and such.Losing faith in humanity one person at a time.
"Some readers, at this point, may be somewhat surprised that I am talking about legaleze and lawsuits regarding a humble churchy program. I have to do this in order to protect my freedom and your freedom. There are a lot of greedy people out there who would take the community's hard work, which they have made free, and make their work non-free in order to make money and/or to take power. The GPL is designed to keep that from happening, by leveraging existing copyright law to protect the code."
Amen to that.
I wonder if Darl is on their mailing list?
In this article
Blake Stowell is quoted as saying:
Stowell said IBM's attorneys have requested for a postponement of a hearing scheduled Jan. 23 on evidence of the infringing code IBM had requested from SCO. No new court date has been set, and IBM could not be reached for comment.
Is this true? or is Stowell just blowing more smoke.
And just for the quote index Stowell is also quoted as saying (in reference to Novell):
"The company believes it's time to put a stop to the misleading statements that have gone on long enough and is causing confusion in the marketplace."
I think we should treat Darl as an enemy combatant and imprison him near cuba. Then carpet bomb SCO.
If the Austrailians don't do it first.
I think that SCO could certainly prove ownership of that code, better watch it. :p
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
http://www.osaia.org/letters/sco_hill.pdf
Does anyone know if someone from the Linux community sent in rebuttals to this pdf? If not... please do. Quite a bit of Congress is not Tech savvy. I think the more that respond to it in a good way, the more they will listen. I just hope Congress doesn't fall for this BS.
It may very well be private as far as the church is concerned, but once the press gets ahold of it, game over. And we all know how voracious the press is for juicy news (this would qualify, I would think, at least within the IT community).
Its always funny when people take others' sarcasm seriously.
He didn't seem to have any problem with us using open source software at Pointserve when he was there.
Hey, long time no see!
'nuff said, Darrel.
If you asked George Bush where Utah is he probably wouldn't know either. Unfair example.
"... servants in congress..."
Er, so, my congressman even has his own goddamn servant? So that's where the tax dollars are going!
Or were you refering to the antiquated ideal that congressmen are supposed to serve US?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
This SCO thing more often than not has amused me. At times I've even believed it to be a great thing for Linux ( who'd sue for something that wasn't a great product ) as the free publicity just couldn't be bought for any amount of money but this is going way to far.
Darl IS a dangerous loon and I don't think he's on a mission from God.
Good point. By that logic everyone NOT in America should write an American Senator telling them they SHOULD support SCO. That way all the non-American countries econmies would start to be more powerful than the American one and could start dictating terms to them. Starting with dropping that stupid DMCA law.
:)
I feel a lot better now about this whole SCO mess now
I understand. I wouldn't be surprised if some linux user happened to let it out of the bag. It's frowned upon because it helps nobody. If this ever happened and got out I doubt it would help him to overcome whatever his problem really is.
Personally I pity the man. I believe everyone has the ability to change. It's the desire that I believe Daryl is lacking. I find it hard believe he's sincere but you never know.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I went into a software store today, and priced out XP Pro, and Office 2003 Pro. Combined, they were over $1100. Quicken would cost an extra $100. Add in antivirus software, and maybe some basic game software, and you're into the $1500. That's enough to buy another computer. I have no problem with the idea of buying software, but sheesh! I can download open source equivalents for nothing.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
It isn't Open source that threatens the US continued ability to compete, it's the internet, combined with US immigration policy combined with the unequal distribution of wealth in the world.
If Open Source didn't exist, all the big corporations would still be outsourcing to India, China, etc. They just would be used to develop proprietary code. Even with open source in existence, non-Open companies like Microsoft, HP and EDS still do it.
The jobs are leaving now because of the difference in wages and because they CAN leave now. Before the spread of the internet and free trade, the barriers to offshore program development were prohibitive.
We are the 198 proof..
-the fact sco has made wild accusations and has yet to produce evidence, but wants the company they're suing to produce it for them.
-china, a communist country supports freedom of choice in technology, moreso than the US
-most of the world, and a close us ally have chosen linux
-linux/opensource creates more jobs than it destroys, it'll destroy legacy companies that are stuck on old ideals which end up giving rich corporations more power than the government has, which equals a dictatorship
-linux is the neutralizer of monopolies, keeps them in check.
-banning a freedom of choicel ike this would give microsoft more power, and will abuse the consumer, and when the voter (use voter, makes them flinch) inds out their government allowed something so unconstitutional and american in the first place, you all will be voted out, violence will ensue or worse.
-immigrants (future taxpayers) will go elsewhere for more freedoms once they see the US isnt as free as another country.
-opensource is the last barrier from a repeat of what happened over 100 years ago before the clayton anti-trust act (the events almost brought forth anarchy.)
-banning a form of freedom like this is an act of dictatorship and communism the soviets only wished they had.
-crime and piracy will rise.
-opensource makes it less expensive on government offices nationwide
I could go on.
I know some points arent good, but hey, I was throwing out random ideas.
Pronunciation: 'di[ng]-g&l-"ber-E
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1955
: a piece of dried fecal matter clinging to the hair around the anus
Source: Merriam Webster
Some things are just not worth knowing.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Why does it say the GPL spreads like a virus and frees proprietary software?, can actually GPL do that? I thought there where GPL software around competing with proprietary software and sometimes it won ...
...
Those guys on the congress will imagine the software companies CEOs screaming
HO NO! HERE COMES GPL, RUN!
Like in a bad UFOs movie
I am late to this discussion...in middle of a recovery...
Look, this is areally starting to come together for me. Now I am not the tinfoil hat type, but this is really starting look like a MS ploy. SCO is sueing anyone that moves, making noises to politicos, and basically, it seems to me, laying the groundwork for the real assult later.
This will be in the form of another IP landgrab, this time by MS. They will use all laws available to have Linux transfered to them in the name of "national security."
Think that is nuts? So do I, but look closely.
We have a government in place that loves to do interdiction in the name of PR. What better PR then grabbing the Os used by terrorists, nukers and evil-doers and handing it to the largest, most stable tech firm in the US, thereby solidifying it the concrete of control. The US will use it's influence to get all US bound patents in Linux recognized globally, leaving those who try to work on Linux behind the pale to be classified and America's enimies.
Maybe this is a bit extreame, but...really, the laws are currently in place and political will is there for something like this to occur.
Lie often. Big lies. Continue to lie and people will start believing you. Note that, besides the IBM and Novell suits, nothing has happened besides the lies. Nothing. Nothing except threats, more lies, and more press coverage.
Beware. Don't forget that everytime you read or hear about Darl, think Microsoft.
Darl blaiming Linux, FSF, and the GPL is like Hitler blaming the Jews.
Darl, have you no shame?
If I ran Slashdot I'd hold off accepting submissions consisting solely of Darl's lies.
When Linux is outlawed, only outlaws will run Linux!
They'll take my copy of Linux when they pry it from my cold, dead flippers!
. . aw nuts, it's tired and I'm late, I can't think of any more right now.
Someone you trust is one of us.
A few years back NSI and ICANN were at loggerheads. NSI wouldn't sign the contract that gave ICANN aegis over them; there was talk of them "going rogue".
A meeting was called, no, demanded, where NSI, ICANN and 2 guys each side got to pick were required to attend.
Evenrybody signed an NDA. ICANN picked Dave Farber and Vint Cerf.
For 3 days they hashed it out, then came to terms.
Who called this meeting? The US department of commerce? No. Anybody in the US Government? No.
IBM did.
And when they were done, IBM bragged they'd spent two years of their USD $60 million dollar a year Washington lobbying budget to prevent the creation of new top level domains.
And this is just what we know about. Literally countless millions and spent lobbying Washington for various things. You'll never hear about them.
How Verf and Farber can keep a straight face knowing what they know, especially in the roles they have in all this is utterly beyond me.
Need Mercedes parts ?
His immediate response was: "Has he done any harm to you personally?"
That pretty much ended the discussion.
Unless Darl does something to harm someone personally or commits a felony offense, it would be inapropriate to make a church case against him.
No use working on Linux anymore guys, or any GPL'ed project for that matter. These projects are not driven by profit and are therefore not innovative.
Sorry to bring you the bad news.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
Actually Bill Clinton reasoned it was COITUS. So in his mind he felt he was being truthful (well sorta-kinda) The courts did not make that distinction. When congress failed to convict, Ken Starr lost interest and decided the low pay wasn't worth the hassles.
Ironically enough, Hillary Clinton, back during Watergate/Nixon said that lying to Congress was enough to impeach and convict a president. Bill never did that, he just lied when he gave testimony in his sexual harrasment lawsuit. If it was you or I, we would have been slammed. Slick Willey essentially got away with it.TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
I expected this long ago. At this point it only shows that SCO is getting really desperate.
Ok, mark cubin or somebody.. Buy SCO and then fire everyone and abolish the company, case solved.
10-100
Oh yes because God know there are no democrats on the take, was it not just a few years agor Fritz Hollings (D-SC) helped push through all the legislation that people here are always crying about..
March is around the corner and IBM will have all of them for breakfast. I think SCO is a downer and I think it is immoral to continue to milk it.
In reality, if you asked George Bush who SCO is, he probably wouldn't know.
Considering that Ray Norda hosted GWB at his place (before presdency) and contributed to his campaign, I suspect highly that GWB knows who SCO is.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Darling McGroom has declared Habitat for Humanity an evil, unconstitutional plot to destroy the United States homebuilding industry. S/He/It has said that building houses using unpaid labor and donated materials to give to someone will take the United States under and should be banned. S/He/It has proposed that the minimum standard for housing in the country should be 3500 square feet (325 square meters) with many other luxuries situated on 1 acre (.4 hectare) of land. Additionally those that cannot afford this will just have to rough it.
In further discussion, DM indicated that s/he/it would like to have all charity outlawed as a detriment to business. In closing s/he/it said "Let them eat cake!".
I am a Republican who thinks SCO is reprehensible!
So the employees of SCO run around proclaiming the bullshit that Darl McBride makes up while trying to convert the dumb and naive?
Sounds like Darl is following the teachings of Joseph Smith to the letter.
A speech...
Open source is going to drive down the value of software.
Nope. It will drive down the price while increasing the value.
It prevents lock-in while allowing practically anyone to enter the market for a relatively low capital investment.
This is why it will increase the value.
Besides, who said all companies who adopt Linux will do so to make and give away software? Most will be doing the same thing they do with Windows -- paying in-house coders to write software for company use that will never be distributed to the outside world. They will just be paying less for the platform they write it to run on.
Someone you trust is one of us.
This "Linux" and "Open Source" stuff sounds dangerous. Thank God I use GNU/Linux, which is free software.
Badass Resumes
Most non-technical articles I have read about the SCO affair seem to emphasise his Mormon connection and making big of the "Hard-working and Independence" traditions. As this seems to be a regular part of the articles, I doubt this is a coincidence, and he may be trying to play the religious angle.
Actually, when he should have resigned is when he was debating the meaning of the word "is". That starts to look a little ridiculous.
I was always a little disappointed he didn't stand up at the beginning and go "yeah, I did it. So what?". If anyone could have done that and gotten away with it, it would have been him.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
and to a lesser degree illustrating a point I was trying to (but in all fairness failed to) make. When I wrote 'value' it's pretty clear I meant market value. i.e. what you can charge in the open market (again, I'm probably misusing terms, and to a real economist market value probably has a much more specialized meaning I couldn't care less about right now).
As for my point, to many congressmen and shareholders, the price of software is its 'value' in the sense your talking about. For a congressman, expensive software means more taxes, jobs, kickbacks from the companies and all the other benefits that that go with more money changing hands (you can argue whether this is actually true or not, it's still a view many hold). For shareholders the value of expensive proprietary software is obvious: Higher dividends and stock prices, plus lockin tends to create stable markets once a clear market leader is identified (i.e. you worry less that some start up will come along and devalue your stock in the old players overnight). Yeah, these views are dangerously short term, but so what. The Congressmen and shareholders in question will be rich and retired by the time the ill effects of their choices are felt (or so they believe).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm a Linux user who is firmly opposed to SCO's actions. But because I oppose gun control and welfare, I'm to burn in hell.
Great.
BTW, I worked at Microsoft. I think it would be safe to say that most Microsofties are Democrats. There was even this one guy with a huge "Clinton/Gore" banner in his office, even during the DOJ attacks on MS. He may have been an even bigger idiot than you.
Customers like it when prices go down and quality goes up. That's the way a market is supposed to work.
Software sellers won't make as much money in a marketplace with open source software, but software buyers will get better products at lower prices. Even the software buyers who don't choose open source software will benefit from the increased competition among sellers.
Up with free hookers!
Dipshits.
My school sucked so bad, a piece of the engineering building fell off and hit someone. Did they fix it? No, they set up a barricade for the remainder of the year.
None of this is really good advertising for SCO [major understatement]. Open source, love it or hate it, is everywhere. SCO won't be making any much-needed friends any time soon.
The official court status listing doesn't show any change. The calendar for that judge is up for Thursday, but Friday's calendar isn't online yet. It looks like the court only posts the calendar a day ahead. So we'll know tomorrow, around the end of the day.
>>In reality, if you asked George Bush who SCO is, he probably wouldn't know
George Bush doesn't know anything. But the people who controll him knows EVERYTHING. And thats what matters.
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
Take your non-tech political bullshit somewhere else. Oh, get over it or go live in IRAN.
But what would anyone really want with a company with annual revenue greater than the GDP of most countries?
"Republicans are actually well-known for decrying what they see as abuses of the civil courts by money-grubbing trial lawyers;"
Nonsense. They are against ordinary people suing corporations but I have never ever heard any republican complain about corporations suing each other or corporations suing individuals.
War is necrophilia.
The case is pretty interesting. I'll summerize...
Dowling published previously unreleased recordings of Elvis Presley. He neither owned the copyright, nor did he have an appropriate license. He shipped a shipment of the LPs across state lines. He was criminally convicted under a federal law for transporting stolen goods across state lines. He appealed this part of the conviction, but did not appeal counts of copyright infringement.
A earlier 9th Circuit decision, United States v. Belmont held that interstate transportation of videotape cassettes containing unauthorized copies of copyrighted motion pictures involved stolen goods within the meaning of the statute. The court reasoned that the rights of copyright owners in their protected property were indistinguishable from ownership interests in other types of property and were equally deserving of protection under the statute.
Here are some pertinent excerpts directly from the decision...I've added some important emphasis.
Republicans are actually well-known for decrying what they see as abuses
As of late, republicans have also been well-known for enthuisiastically engaging in the very same conduct they have been loudly decrying in others. Oh, and at the same time sayng they have the moral high ground. So forgive me if I'm still worried while the current flaming moron is still in charge.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
For fuck's sake, if you asked George Bush where his asshole was, he wouldn't know straight off -- he'd just stall you till he farted.
'nuff said.
I love all this. Circus SCO is sure to keep me :)
smiling for a long time! Is there an online betting
site where you can guess what hilarious new things
SCO will do next?
Well, the government is now firmly into regulating what happens in the tech industry, and doing what they do best- making uninformed decisions which no intelligent person would make. An making sure you comply with those decisions.
This is the future! Hope you like it.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Here is one of many counterexamples to your SCO and Microsoft, et al own the media: Boise joins SCO Shakedown. Is "shakedown" a word you would expect to find in an article bought and paid for from Forbes, a business news organization. I've read many media accounts of this; they do not just parrot lies for SCO.
We have a great ally in IBM. Even if they are only our ally by neccessity, fine. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least for now.
Many organizations have strong lobbies in Congress. However, it is unfortunate that this will probably not come to affect the way most of us will vote. There are too many other issues.
Also, as I continue my rant, let me link this jerk who we not long ago considered to be a puppet for some organization interested in limiting our freedom to do what we want with our computers.
I'm going to post this rant again next time something dumb like this comes up early in the discussion. We have not lost the battle before it began. SCO's lawyer is clearly nowhere near perfect and IBM has an army of lawyers and a big stake in this.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Well,
I think that, when SCO started the lawsuits and everything, some (most, I hope) programmers got upset and left the company.
Now, with no good programmers left, the company has no choice but to continue litigation in order to sustain itself.
It's a death spiral thingy.
Regards,
You don't need to see my
I think I feel comfortable with most claims that the open source community is making against the claims from the sco group (including security concerns, hacks, etc. that mcbride completely ignores in his letter to congress), but one thing keeps coming to mind, and i'm sure that there's an easy answer to this: why do linux and unix appear so identical and interchangable, at least to an amateur like myself? all commands in linux exist in unix, and vice versa. or at least, almost all commands... and even if it is the case that linus has written all the basic linux stuff from scratch, isn't the fact that all the commands have the same names and function some sort of copyright infringement against the "product" that was first released, which in this case would be unix?
... might be to point out to congress how much SCO themselves have profited from the GPL and Open-Source-Software in the past, and how much value it adds to their products even now. The best example is probably gcc and other development tools for UnixWare, even SCO admits that gcc is the compiler of choice if you want portability.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
... in a few years when this clown is in prison for securities fraud and getting raped on a daily basis.
Ok. In reading the letter from SCO I noticed one thing: He is crying for the right to have his profits protected through an antiquated patent system that gives exclusivity to technology that is mainstream in less than six months, and yet in almost the same paragraph he proclaims Red Hat, a company dealing exclusively in open source is lobbying for the opposite- software being exempt from the patent process, so to speak. So now how on earth does Red Hat make money exactly, (according to SCOs logic GPL is fine for innovation but eats at the heart of capitalism)? Seems they they make enough money to realize that its in their best interest to continue down the GPL road. Face it SCO and Corporate America. The old ways of making software and controlling information are practically broke. Its up to you as a profit generator to learn how to drive future profits. I'll tell you one thing: its definately not up to the Government forcing consumers to consume your product. the only message I get from this letter is: ph33r teh c0mmun15m I think moussoulini said Facism is actually corporatism. Day by day this is becoming "patently" obvious.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Last fN try:
Ok. In reading the letter from SCO I noticed one thing: He is crying for the right to have his profits protected through an antiquated patent system that gives exclusivity to technology that is mainstream in less than six months, and yet in almost the same paragraph he proclaims Red Hat, a company dealing exclusively in open source is lobbying for the opposite- software being exempt from the patent process, so to speak. So now how on earth does Red Hat make money exactly, if by SCOs assertion, GPL is fine for innovation but eats at the heart of capitalism? Seems they they make enough money to realize that its in their best interest to continue down the GPL road.
Face it SCO and Corporate America. The old ways of making software and controlling information are practically broke. Its up to you as a profit generator to learn how to drive future profits.
I'll tell you one thing: its definately not up to the Government forcing consumers to consume your product.
The only message I get from this letter is: ph33r teh c0mmun15m I think moussoulini said Facism is actually corporatism. Day by day this is becoming "patently" obvious.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
If the congres would outlaw open source software,
the following things would happen in the next 24 hour
- space shutles would fall down.
- super computer grids would be shutdown.
- Hughe amounts of data will get lost
- ISP's will shutdown.
- somewhere a power grid will fail and putting SCO and microsoft without power.
The last e-mail of Darl mcBride to announce his victory you ever see, would be something like this:
FW: SCO Victor#"aa)")))))"
A Mad Max scenario comes to my mind.
The outside world will watch. China will be the new superpower.
1. Open source software is free, leading management and general users to believe that no one ever should pay for anything software-related.
This is incorrect. [A]nything software related is too strong of a position. RMS sold copies of the manuals for the GNU operating system and suggested other ways to make money from free software products:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/ stallman.html
A close read of RMS suggests that he has a strong resistance to the use of proprietary software, but he is not necessarily against the profit motive. The money that one can earn from free software is less per individual but more evenly dispersed among talented individuals.
2. Open-source products are available to anyone, which led to outflux of jobs out of United States, since a developer in Tanzania knows Apache or MySQL just as well, but is willing to work for 2 kilos of rice a day, unlike their greedy American counterparts.
The outflux of jobs from the United States to overseas locations may be for the reasons that you describe, but it may be for other reasons as well. See the following letter from Alan Cox and Linus Torvalds:
http://www.effi.org/patentit/patents_torvalds_co x.html
They suggest that the outsourcing that we are seeing is actually related to the problem of patents and litigation surrounding patents. Small to medium-sized companies cannot survive in such a litigious environment, and larger companies are willing to shift their R&D overseas to avoid litigation in the Homeland.
3. Open-source projects have never been tested and approved by Microsoft or other reliable software vendors with market cap over 100 billion and public trust behind them.
The situation is changing:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5144199.html
The technology is new and lacks the big marketing dollars that push other software products. But this situation is also changing as companies such as IBM get up to the plate. I also fail to see why Microsoft or other proprietary software vendors would be rushing out to test and approve of a competing product (e.g., Apache Server vs. Windows Server 2003 or whatever MS has).
4. All open source companies are either bankrupt, or litigating, or in the process of bankruptcy/litigation process.
I'm not familiar with business trends, although it would be interesting to know if companies that use free software are more susceptible than those that aren't. At least one nice counterpoint is presented by Ernie Ball:
http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html?tag =lh
This is a small company that survived because they dumped proprietary software and avoided strong-arm tactics. I would call them an open source company that is not bankrupt or in litigation. It's safe to assume that there are others.
5. Open source companies contributed more to the job losses in the software industry than any other company sector. Microsoft had always been hiring and so have other closed-source companies.
This may depend on what you define as a job. Logically, you can't effectively compete against a company that gives it's product away for free; only an idiot would argue that no jobs were lost due to the mainstream acceptance of free software. But many, many, other less high-profile jobs were created. There is an army of consultants, found in our local computer user groups and so forth, who have been able to make it through these hard times (created by .com spending sprees that resembled manic euphoria) by
providing services as programmers. Free software and its culture has
kept families off of welfare, folks.
6. O
"We the People..." is the start of the Preamble to the US Constitition, not the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Indepedence begins with "When in the Course of human events..."
Just a clarification.
Look no further than the second law of thermodynamics, as applied to social dynamics. Hatred and vengeance, and fear, are inherently entropic; they cause more-highly-organized social sytems to break down. Love & inspiration are inherently "negentropic" (that's the accepted term, but it's an awkward construction, so I prefer the term "syntropic"); they lead to the evolution of social systems to higher levels of organization and complexity.
It's always easier (in a thermodynamic sense or a sociodynamic sense) to create entropy, than it is to create syntropy. How long did it take to build the World Trade Center, vs. how long to knock it down? How long to build a library vs. how long to burn the books in it?
It takes relatively little effort to convene a lynch-mob and get them whipped into a hateful frenzy to go out and kill someone. It takes far more effort to convene a group of people to thoughtfully consider a scientific or philosophical issue and then do the hard work of experiments and writing to test their theories or prove their points. It takes much less intelligence to rule by fear than to lead by love.
Engineers build stuff: our work is inherently syntropic. We build stuff because we love what we're doing, and we want to contribute something useful and good to the world-at-large. Threats and fear do little to motivate us or even scare us off, but a good idea will have us working late nights for months.
One of SCO's biggest screw-ups (sco-ups?) is that they mis-read our culture. They thought they could use fear to dominate us. But we'll keep building stuff long after SCO is a footnote in legal history.
Dear Congress,
Be wise, listen to SCO, and make Open Source illegal in the USA.
The First and Third world will probably not be so insightful and will continue to allow Open Source and its products, such as Linux.
Our businesses will suffer because we can't make any money anymore from programming commercial software for billions of users. Instead we'll have to rely on (admittedly cheap and trustworthy) software to drive our businesses and get money from building dedicated software and more tangible products. OK, we may get rich, even filthy rich, but we will never get disgustingly rich.
In the meantime, in the USA you will be safe from the Open Source evil and can trust in your home-produced, expensive (and therefore obviously excellent) Microsoft products. We are very sorry that the export of those same products will come to a halt, but such is life.
You can be sure that we will examine the papers of any Open Source geeks that want to emigrate from the USA closely. We wouldn't want the USA to lose their tech potential. Of course, we can't guarantee anything, since many countries would welcome them, but be ensured that you have our sympathies.
And anyway, litigation is much more lucrative than producing actual goods. Too bad here we have not yet been able to latch on to the litigation bubble, but it is certainly the way of the future.
Regards,
When I was consulting for a large international defence organisation, I got a lot of questions on open source software, open source software security, open source legal aspects, but no questions about the current SCO misery. Apparently people (in that specific organisation) just don't care.
As I said somewhere else around here, we should turn "sco"into a generic noun and verb.
The noun form would be synonymous with "scumbag" and "scam," as in "Don't trust that guy, he's a real sco," and "Don't invest in that company, their offering is a nothing but a sco."
The verb form would be synonymous with "to screw," as in, "He tried to sco me, but we fought hard and won."
I suppose we could then say that a screw-up was a "sco-up." That's also a useful expression for what happens when you get sick to your stomach ("Aw hell, I knew that food smelled funny, I think I'm going to sco-up!")
Let McBride try to get license fees from us (or sue us) for using their name as a generic! Ha! Poetic justice!
Anyone else have ideas for generic words based on a clearly identifyable use of "sco"..?
But surely, Selling your soul is the American way?
Maybe it's time for their office staff, admins, etc. to start leaving too! Best part is, we can help them, and in a more orderly way than if they all get fired after SCO loses the lawsuit and puts all four paws up in the air.
Every company is absolutely dependent upon its admin staff. The office workers are the mortar that holds the bricks of business together so the rest of us geeks can have interesting jobs. If the admins & clericals leave, the company grinds to a halt as surely as if the power went off.
What's needed here is, a bunch of people to go to SCO's offices, morning and evening, and hand leaflets to everyone coming or going, telling them in effect that they'd better jump off the sinking ship before they drown when it goes under.
Talk to the people who work there, educate them about the risk of working for SCO or waiting to find another job. Help get them job leads and find new jobs. It's the least we can do, especially since most of the folks who still work there may not be fully aware of both sides of the issue.
Is it just me, or is the quality of the articles published by Newsforge and other tech-only papers very poor?
When I read these articles, I get the feeling that I'm listening to a kid complaining about something. They are scant on details and very one sided. The articles remind me in style and structure of high school essays, written on the break befor class.
A prime example is the article I just read from the link. It sounds like "SCO is using FUD! SCO is using FUD, I tell you! Look at all these corporations that use linux, it can't be bad. And foreginers use it too; they should be compensated for their work by being given access to US software." This is really no argument.
What should the article sound like? It should give an objectiv account of what SCO says.. not a link to the whole frickin document. It should report what the opposing view states without crying foul and let the reader decide what is right. That would be an article. What I just read is garbage.
I'm against SCO claims, but honestly I could not recommend my father (MS fan) reading that piece. He would just read it and say, "so?" And based on the "facts" presented in the article all I could say would be, "SCO is using FUD..."
I haven't seen a much better article on what SCO is doing to date. If I was to bet which magazine was to have the first reasonable sounding article on the issue, I would guess The Economist. But they're not a tech paper, and tech papers should be saying what The Economist will say months ahead!
Here's a joke my Dad told me when I was just a little Mad Scientist:
A guy goes into this old-time diner where they yell out the orders back to the grunting cook in the back, has a meal and the waitress is snotty to him. He decides to embarass the waitress, so he orders a piece of dingleberry pie. The waitress, to the amusement of everone eating there, yells out "1 slice, Dingleberry Pie!". The old cook, unperturbed, poked his head out the order window, and says "If he thinks I'm gonna drop 'em for just 1 slice, he's got another think coming!".
Thank, you. Try the Veal.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
As an Atheist I'm surprised that you couldn't have just ignored the discussion and just shut the hell up. Do you get stabing pains behind your eyes or something whenever someone discusses a religion you do not personally ascribe to?
Love thy neighbor indeed.
And follows the same industry wide standards.
People that worked with one flavour or other of UNIX wanted to have similar functionality on a system for which they did not have to pay their first newborn child.
Then what you do is look at the input of a utility, the output and you build from scratch waht is in the middle, a process that is perfectly legitimate.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You have got in this comment a very insightful view about why people feel so pasionetely about OSS.
Please I urge you to use this as the foundation for a letter for your representative in goverment in the US. Companies can looby politicians, but politicians will also listen if big amounts of commited people put forward their side of the argument (don't worry about unmasking SCO, that will be taken care of by others in the community, what I like about your comment is that it makes it personal and put the issue in the right light).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And IBM has lobbyists too, plus they could easily donate the entire value of SCO to political campaigns if they wanted to.
I tried to donate the entire value of SCO but no one wanted my two cents.
turn "sco" into generic noun & verb (Score:0) by Anonymous Reader on 2004.01.22 3:40 (#84637) Here's a fightback that SCO can't stop: Turn their name into a generic noun and verb. Noun definition: a loser who resorts to deceit or coercion because they lack imagination or principles. Synonymous with "scumbag." For example, "That sco tried to rip me off, but he didn't get away with it." Also: a deceptive or coercive scheme. Synonymous with "scam." For example, "Don't invest in that company, their offering is a sco." Verb definition: to obtain something by deceit or coersion due to a lack of imagination or principles. Synonymous with "to screw." Example, "He tried to sco me but he didn't get away with it." The poetic justice here is, SCO is trying to take something that belongs to *everyone* and make it *theirs.* Turning their name into a generic turns something that is/was "theirs" into something that belongs to *everyone.* And there's nothing they can do to stop it! -gg510
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
SCO says open source software is the root of all economic evil so whats the deal with
f
;-)
ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/
Hmm...looks like a lot of OpenSource software compiled for SCO platforms.
just shows the Hypocrisy of the letter.
http://www.osaia.org/letters/sco_hill.pd
Then again it was a good laugh with my Coffee this morning
I'd rather phrase that intro without resorting to Proper-Noun-isms that might degrade the critical, academic nature of my thesis, but I think it's quite true. The open development model is an analog of the principals that informed modern-era democratic government and free market economies. (It's strange that some
Both of those apple pie "Isms" involve taking a monolithic entity and breaking it down into smaller parts that work autonomously on smaller problems. The emphasis in on segregation of function, atomicity, and individual volition. Centralized fiat is deemphasized. Pragmatism trumps idealism. Think ants and their anthills vs spiders and their webs. Somewhere in this vague rant there should be a reference to the 18th Century, the Clockwork Universe, and the Scientific Method, but I'm too drunk, tired, and pressed for time so I hope someone else here will pick up the ball on this one.
Long story short: Yeah, IBM and Rehat should go ballistic with GPL-Capitalism PR. It only makes sense.
I only wish you were correct.
The congress, with the help of the supreme court has shown that they disregard the constitution and what it dictates. That its of little value, other then toilet paper to them.
Just look at "campaign finance" if you don't believe me. Or hundreds of other less obvious infractions that have been enacted, and upheld.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Most religions weren't actually started by conmen. Madmen maybe, but at least they honestly believed they had a hotline to the supreme being. Mormonism and Scientology were started by conmen who saw religion as a way to make money and control vulnerable people, which is why so many people hate them.
After the initial frustration and perplexity I thought "this can't be true".
/.er also noted) it sounded as a plausible thing for Dear SCO's Leader Darl to put in writing (indeed I recollect he has said more or same the same stuff in diverse occassions, he is nuts) as anything else he has ejaculated before.
I remembered reading the alleged letter and the first thing that surpirsed me is that it was not addressed to any person in particular. Strange in my book.
Although I did not read the full thing (it made me physically sick, as other
But this morning I thought, who are these OSAIA guys? I went to their website and apart from their grandiose home page statement (" The Open Source & Industry Alliance (OSAIA) represents the interests of the broad array of companies, organizations, and individuals that comprise the open source community. We are our members' eyes, ears and voice in legislative, executive and judicial forums throughout the world") I could find very precious little.
Well, then where is a membership list? Nowhere to be found.
The forums? All empty.
The topics? All empty.
Explanation about the source of the fax? Nowhere to be found.
Then I decided to dig a bit more:
Part of the WHOIS search:
Domain ID:D96754855-LROR
Domain Name:OSAIA.ORG
Created On:23-Apr-2003 19:31:13 UTC
Last Updated On:17-Sep-2003 20:17:44 UTC
Expiration Date:23-Apr-2005 19:31:13 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R91-LROR
Status:OK
Registrant ID:GODA-02937029
Registrant Name:Edward Black
Registrant Organization:CCIA
Registrant Street1:666 11th St., NW
Registrant Street2:Suite 600
Registrant City:Washington
Registrant State/Province:District of Columbia
Registrant Postal Code:20001
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.2027830070
Registrant Email:eblack@ccianet.org
Now go to ccianet.org and look at the membership: Read Hat, Sun, Oracle, Kodak, Yahoo and somehow mistifyingly Time Warner
So I googled for OSAIA and found this. Vapourware organization?
I will email them later on tonight in order to try to confirm where did they get the letter, but this certainly looks very interesting. If these people are in the side of OSS it is good news, but I wish they will be more careful about how they go about debunking SCO. Publicizing letters out of thin air without proper attribution or explanation is not a good tactic IMHO.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And when a DEMOCRAT was in the White House, he and the leaders of the DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS said all the same things about Saddam Hussein and his WMD that the REPUBLICANS are saying now. It would seem that EVERYONE was wrong about that, but it doesn't change the fact that BOTH sides have called for the removal of Hussein BEFORE there was a "smoking gun" to deal with. It would appear that you're simply not paying attention. The difference is that one side had the balls to actually do something about it. In any case, Bush never staked the war on the basis of WMD's alone. Again, if you think that, you're not really paying attention to the debate. You're just trying to twist this issue to attempt to persuade uneducated people to your cause: Bush is teh Evil. I'm sorry, but there's no way that you can defend the regime that was ousted, WMD's or no.
And, maybe, after two centuries, our policies and philosophy are due for a reconsideration?
Next on the block: North Korea. Again, I would really hope that no one would honestly condone that regime's actions, starving out the entire country in favor of political despotism.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
They are getting more and more insane with their claims. And they're shouting quite a bit at a lot of different sources.
I still think their main focus is hoping to be bought out by IBM or other large Open Source corporation...just to shut them up.
Why else would they be acting so bizzare? Do they REALLY think they're going to gain back the Unix market this way? They're making public every little thing they do...including this little lobbying thing...for the world to see.
It's like they're screaming "stop us before we do more harm! we want to be caught! buy us out to end our insanity!"
I kinda wish that IBM would buy them out now, to make this all go away. I'm sick of it.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Our last P.M. came out with a good saying when his leadership position was challenged from within his own politcal party.
"Put up or shut up"
I think this applies equally as much to SCO. All this ranting and raving and not a scrap of actual proof that has survived scrutiny.
The government involvement you mention concerns anti-trust/monopoly busting. The shit with SCO involves protecting the copyright of GPL'd software. Honestly now, just what the fuck are you talking about?
"Linux and the rest of open source software saves users money" That is just horible! We MUST put a stop to it! Who do those linux people think they are anyway...
That's simply not true, of course, assuming you're referring to the same MS that still holds 85-90% of the browser market.
Microsoft are, at present, outcompeting free very successfully in all their major markets. Compare Windows sales with potential sales lost to Linux. Compare Microsoft Office sales with potential sales lost to OpenOffice.org. Those two markets make up the vast majority of Microsoft's business, and there's no doubt at all about who's winning.
What's worrying them, of course, is the speed at which the open source alternatives are catching up on features as well. There's no doubt today about who's winning, but next year? By 2010? This is what's worrying the big software companies: you can outcompete free, but you can't outcompete free and better.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Like the right not to be imprisoned without charge, for instance. Outdated and obsolete.
"Linux software contains significant Unix software code..." This has not been proven afaik. It should read "I believe that Linux software..."
"Why would someone license UNIX...?" its called competition. Linux costs something -- generally time. For example, I may have more time than budget at work. That makes Linux a considerably better value than some proprietary solutions that might run out of the box. If I didn't have the knowledge or the time, it might be a better deal to buy a package from someone else. If SCO cant offer some form of value over Linux, then "Why would someone license UNIX" becomes a very good question, but for SCO's stockholders, not congress.
"The threat to the US IT industry..."
This reminds me of whip makers crying about cars coming on the market. Personally, I believe that OSS is a success because it's the only thing that can compete with certain monopolies.
Jobs moving over seas due to OSS -- this seems more like cashing in on other fears. Entire papers/articles would have to be written on this one.
"Threat to National Security"
How hard could it be to get a copy of Unix in North Korea? That seems like banning drugs. It might make it more difficult, but not a lot. Hey, drugs come in, why wouldn't software and hardware go out?
This all comes down to whether there is UNIX code in Linux that should not be there, and if so, what should be done about it? The first part of that has not even been proven. By trying to cover all the bases to such an extreme, SCO makes themselves and their claims look even worse imo.
A surprice party at a S/M parlour where he is treated with some fine thrashing until he obeys us.
I'm sure most if not all of them are. There are few if any that are not on the take.
This partisan crap is killing us. You call yourself a Republican. I call myself a Democrat. From what I can gather we're actually very close in the beliefs of what government should offer. Those os us in the middle (most of the country) should infiltrate the parties and push our beliefs. Get active in the republican party, God knows we could use some honest people there. Let them know not everyone is a terrorist, that if you offshore your "headquarters" then you aren't an American company anymore. Things like this are getting a blind eye becuase it's profitable to screw us. Money is more important than people right now, that needs to change.
Just toss out that whole 1st amendment
and 2nd amendment thing...
Then Force children to recite the SCO license agreement
every morning in school...
'One Platform, Under SCO,
with liberty and justice for none.'
I less Identify myself as a Republican than as a Conservative and while that leads me to vote republican more often than democrat the policies of bush cause me to vote third party usually (during the state of the union I heard ka-ching every time he said something that I know will mean federal dollars.
What gets me is the hatred of the person that the left has, I did not hate Bill Clinton I hated his policies and that never translated into "I hope he dies" or painted my view of what he did do right. Bush says he wants the US to go to the moon and mars and people here rant about him when in their heart they like the idea.
And here we have SCO in the lobby and everyone hits bush when DRM$ money went to Fritz Hoillings..
Perhaps its just me, but is it now SCO's belief that if they repeat their lies often enough that somehow their lies will magically become the truth? If so, why don't they replace McBride with a parrot? It would have to be cheaper than McBride's salary.
Exchange Poly want a cracker...Poly want a cracker
With Linux has our code...Linux has our code
I've never trained a parrot, but that can't be too difficult. I guess the only thing we should expect from the biggest horse's ass in the IT industry is crap.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
It's hard to turn on a televised major sporting event without bumping into an IBM Linux commercial. Our political leadership while not, in my humble opinion, collectively all that bright are certainly smart enough to understand the difference between some loser little software company from podunk Utah that's not going to be around in six months and IBM.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Now if SCO was pumping oil ......
I am currently working my way through Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. When reading this pdf of the letter to congress, I could have sworn I was reading a somewhat backward excerpt from the book. True that Darl is promoting capitalism instead of the other way around, but the fact that he attempting to get congress to place restrictions on this free software simply as a means to further his business is a rather interesting parallel. Also interesting is that when a better and more widely accepted product becomes available he litigates instead of innovates. I believe in the terms of AS he would be a looter.
Don't you think that at least one person (maybe a GNU/Linux user in his ward) hasn't already complained to their bishop? I suspect that the complaints have been made, quickly investigated and dismissed. Any future complaints concerning this will been dismissed without any review. There is a quid pro quo between big dollar tithe payers and the quiet forgiveness of "white collar" crimes.
Here's the darker side: what happens if his actions are privately "blessed" from the head office? Kinda like the whole Mark Hoffman thing. Private, backroom meetings, plans are made and one member maintains contact. If it works then downtown takes the credit and if there's major blowback let the member hang, in which he will take the fall because "God wants it that way". Similar to al Qaeda tactics. I'm not saying this happened but if you've dealt with the LDS church you know it's very possible.
Remember the LDS church is not a fan of the Internet or free speech. They sued a private group claiming copyright theft over the address of a site (but not in link form) in a newsletter over a handbook they give away to LDS bishops for free (but refuse to sell to anyone else). They are also known for their ruthlessness in protecting their copyrights.
There are some serious, bad ass ghosts in their closet (i.e.: "church strengthening committee") and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find their stink all over this mess. I have no doubt that McBride and downtown have already had multiple discussions about this whole thing.
Let the mod wars begin ...
I contend that the ultimate predatory price is "free"
Well, let's see, people pay $1.50 for a bottle of water and there was the bizarre fad in the 90's called "Oxygen bars". Hmmm, guess people are willing to pay for stuff they can get for free. Guess SCO's just going to have to *gasp* rethink their business model. Maybe Daryl can get a job opening up a lemonade stand.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Darl to US Polition:
Ummmm, guys, I know this is America where everyone is free and all and I know that we have not proven a thing in a court of law, but can you please get rid of this Open Source thing. Its making it much too challenging for us to do our business. Here are a few lies and sound bits I came up with to help you at your next press conference. BTW... let me know if you are interested, I have some great SCOX stock you can buy and I'm pretty sure I know the next time it will go up!!
Darl, you and your business ways make me sick!! Get a conscience and make your money like other honest people.
When the war in Iraq was fresh and new, all you read was decapitation this and decapitation that.
Now that Darl and SCO are in the news, when was the last time anyone heard decapitaton mentioned?
Now, when we need decapitation the most, you don't ever hear it mentioned. This is a ominous trend, if ya ask me.
This sort of stuipid protectionism has been around for a while.
Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) wrote a similar (satirical) one, "The Candlemaker's Petition" www.mises.org
Bastiat was a genius at explaining all these economic principles and outcomes by the use of satire and parables, the most famous of which is "The Candlemaker's Petition," which "requested" a law to mandate "the covering of all windows and skylights and other openings, holes, and cracks through which the light of the sun is able to enter houses. This free sunlight is hurting the business of us deserving manufacturers of candles."
Dear Sir,
Thank you for taking the time to read this note. This is the first time I've written to an elected official.
It is my understanding that congress is being lobbied to in some way hinder or even destroy the Open Source Software movement. You are perhaps familiar with or have heard of Linux, one of the world's most prominent examples of open source software. While I don't believe such a movement can truly be stopped (telling programmers to stop programming is like telling artists to stop painting) I still think it worthwhile to send you a note. I believe my feelings are representative of many in the open source community, though I don't speak for anyone in particular besides myself.
Many of us in the open source community feel a deep sense of passion and are highly protective of open source software. From the outside it might be easy to scoff at such a statement. It's software, for goodness sake; there are things in the world more deserving of passion, you might say. But what open source software really represents is the Power of the Little Guy. I mean this not in the sense of "little guy vs. big corporation," but rather the ability of an individual to have a literal positive impact on the whole world. When I use open source software I feel as though I'm supporting those who are driven to make the world a better place by using their skills. Don Knuth, a world-renowned computer scientist at Stanford, once spoke of the pioneering work he and others did in computers: "we had a sense in those days that we were advancing civilization with our work. Money wasn't a part of it." That sentiment had a profound impact on me, and I like to think that's the prevailing sentiment in the world of open source.
I don't know if letters such as this have any real impact. If they do, I hope this one conveys that this topic is important to a great many technically-savvy voters in the US and that you'll consider supporting the OSS movement before entertaining notions to hinder it.
Thank you for your time.
# # #
The assumption (I call it that rather than a conclusion due to the total lack of supporting evidence) that Microsoft creates jobs is based, I can only presume, on the fact that they employ lots of people.
;-)
It is probably much, much more important that they have also completely destroyed dozens of other domestic software companies. In fact, there are so few major non-game software companies now that you could probably count them on your fingers.
Microsoft has *not* created jobs...it has caused many more people to lose jobs than it ever hired.
Now, there is one thing I agree with you on....the Rethugs will *definately* be suckers for it. But then, they bought the Laffer curve too
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
And they have FAR MORE money to spread around congressional coffers than SCO. With all these lawsuits I don't see how SCO can continue to pay thier lawyers, let alone congress.
What SCO will DO is keep screwing off util they push companies like IBM to start lobbying for IP and copy right reform.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
You know, it is quite ironic that the founder of the Mormon cult was hung for stealing horses. Maybe history will repeat itself and Darl will steal something of equal contemporary value.
"Sounds like Darl is following the teachings of Joseph Smith to the letter."
^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^
This is called innuendo. I do not ascribe to 99.99% of the religions on the planet and yet I refuse to engage in any attempts to belittle any of them. Show some character if you would Sir.
Besides, we are not discussing LDS teachings. This was a discussion regarding Daryl's harming the OSS community and how this might affect him when it's over. Personally I believe he has harmed me personally and the OSS community. He has committed fraud and will be punished.
I'm ending now. This conversation has gone way beyond where it was intended.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I grew up in his ward. Very interesting characater to say the least...
As a non-Mormon, the first time I read the Book of Mormon, Lehi and Nephi kept morphing in my head to "Nehi", a brand of sodas whose grape flavor was a fave of Radar on M*A*S*H.
At least now he has some lies on paper... So where's that defamation suit?!
In reality, if you asked George Bush who SCO is, he probably wouldn't know. But I'm pretty sure he knows who IBM is. But in reality, if you asked George Bush if he's ever smoked pot, he probably wouldn't know. You can ask him all kinds of questions, but he only knows if he's cronies have told him.
Hear, hear! As a fellow canuck, I may be remiss in quoting this line, but it certainly applies to my lab of 25 workstations/servers running linux for the past couple of years...
"...you can have my Linux when you pry it from my cold, dead hands..."
And for you American patriots:
"...give me linux or give me death!..."
(Well, I guess that's a little too much, but the feeling is there...:-))
This is a well written letter. And if you take all they say as fact it makes a good case. The problem is that it all hangs on 2 things First that Linux and other GPLed code was stolen from them. Second that the legal system at the moment will not stop others from stealing code and inserting it into GPLed products.
SCO has provided no real evidence to indicate the truth of their claims. They themselves claim that it will take more then 18months to fight this in court. But if they can convince the US government of their claims while they fight the case then get the government to issue laws that prevent free software distribution they never need to prove they had code stolen.
Their letter makes it clear that they feel the GPL is against US copyright law. But they do not explain how. Instead just claiming that it is stealing code copyrighted to them.
Well if there is any truth in the stolen code then the person who placed the GPL license on it has broken the law and should be arrested. This is no more a fault with the GPL then a bridge is at fault when someone drives over it with a stolen car.
If I steal software and place standard copyrights notice on it. Then manage to sell that software for n years before anyone realizes are we going to then abolish the current copyright laws because they did not protect the original owner.
Of course not you prosecute me under those very laws.
What SCO seems to be trying to do is circumvent that process. By suggesting that the case they have not yet brought is true and the current legal structure will not help them they can then try to convince the government to attempt to make GPL like licensees illegal.
So what dose SCO envision in the world. A US license structure that actually bans me from writing code and allowing people to use it without paying for it. That is my choice. Not the governments.
So the question is do you think congress is stupid enough to fall for this..
If so then please take this seriously and point out the errors in SCOs letter.
Weather you believe their claims or not. The legal system is working for their cause if they cannot convince that legal system of there claims then they should not be able to convince government to make them redundant.
Whatever "principles" you may see your preferred party as supporting, egregious examples can be cited of party actions violating those principles. A great example is drug war sentencing laws. Most people opposed to harsh drug law sentences would identify the Democratic party as closer to their ideology. Yet many of the most arbitrary and draconian mandatory minimum sentencing laws were rushed through by a Democratic congress - in a bid to prove themselves "tough on drugs."
Representing either party as being under the influence of corporate and private wealth, or swayed by the dictates of "special interests" or accusing them of swelling big government further is another good example. Both parties are entirely guilty. Anybody who acts like Democrats aren't catering to their corporate constituents, or like Republicans are doing anything about making Government smaller or less intrusive in the average person's life, is just deluding themselves on the basis of partisan rhetoric.
A quick review of how both these parties have worked to thwart minor parties from being able to participate significantly in the democratic process, and of how campaign finance reform is consistently blocked and emasculated in legislation (isn't great how we got that campaign finance legislation passed, and now money isn't a big deal in the upcoming presidential election? Representative democracy rocks!), will quickly reveal that Democrats and Republicans are truly bipartisan and at least one respect - their total commitment to preserving their manopoly on defining the issues in the national dialog.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I did a few checks and can't find anything to substantiate this.
This organization (of which I have never heard anything before) seems to have influential backers, (please look at on of my other comments to this thread), it paints very badly if this group of big boys do not document properly how did they get this letter in the first place.
Basically this is a lobby group backed by Sun, Red Hat, Yahoo, Kodak, TimeWarner and several others claiming that SCO is lobbying the US congress against OSS. It is not a sin to let the people know, thus they should come clean and explain how they got hold of this document.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'm surprised The Register got this one wrong.
You're a jackass! what the hell does Open Source, or any of this SCO Group brew ha ha have to do with the mormon church? so what if darl mcbride is a mormon, he's a jackass too. I have my own opinions about mormons and most other (for lack of a better term) christian fanatics. Just because I practice a certain religion doesn't mean I gotta tell everyone about it, nor do I have to get my religion involved with my business dealings. It's unethical.
jackass.
I want to know what linus has to say about this.
/. . Real phisical protest. I wonder what the future candidates for pres think of this. I have no clue who to vote for. None of them are in any way apealing. I feel like when i vote i am just going to pick the least of many evels. Who are we to vote for if we want to atleast cut down on the number of stupid bills that get passed like DMCA?
I cant imagine how it must make him feel to have worked so hard with so many other people on making a free peace of Art like linux and then large corperations try to take it away from him. I call it art because to people like linus it must be an art to benifit mankind as a whole. He did not write it for personal profit, unlike some other people that i can think of that are motivated by profit only (Darl, Gates... etc).
Companies that do this make me so mad because they are so wrong and the government actually takes their side in many cases because they are the ones with money. Thank god we have some really large companies on our side to defend what is right.
If congress really makes some law that atempts to limit peoples wright to fair competition and to decide what they wish to do with who they allow to use their software. I will fight it till the day i die.
The whole mp3 thing is bad but at least i can see both sides to a small extent. This is just rediculous. I wish that there were some where that the open source comunity could get togather and protest. I mean something other then just signing online pols and complaining on
I am willing to protest this b4 another stupid bill is passed like DMCA. Any one know of something that I can do to help stop this from happening. What are we geeks to do. I feer that soon we will be designated criminals for stupid crap like running an os that was made by a man who intended it to be free for any one to use.
I HATE SCO!!!!!
MS buys SCO out and changes its own name to:
r rrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.... ... ... ...
(Drum-rolls please:
Drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Bang!:)
Micro$COft
You can't handle the truth.
#include
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
int life_the_universe_and_everything = 42;
fprintf(stdout, "We apologise for the inconvenience");
}
Do you make shit like this up all the time, or is this a special case?
Joseph Smith was shot (not hanged) for being the head of the Mormon church that no one in the area liked, and possibly because he slept with the wrong woman.
None of it had anything to do with stealing horses.
> Daryl is lacking
FYI, it's "Darl." Easy mistake, as it's a pretty stupid name.
I'm transcribing it here for those of you who may not read the document. It is awesome.
1. The threat to the U.S. information technology industry. Our economic recovery appears to be well underway, but it is still fragile and could be thrown off track. Just as technology and innovation have led the U.S. economy during previous boom periods, many assume that this will happen again. But imagine a major new technology buying cycle in which revenue from software sales shrinks. Free or low-cost Open Source software, full of proprietary code, is grabbing an increasing portion of the software market. Each Open Source installation displaces or pre-empts a sale of proprietary, licensable and copyright-protected software. This means fewer jobs, less software revenue and reduced incentives for software companies to innovate. Why should a software company invest to develop exciting new capabilities when their software could end up "freed" as part of Linux under the GPL?
It goes on, but I find it hard to continue reading through my huge guffaws of laughter...
I constantly see three assertions about Open Source Code and Linux
It's anti profit
It will lead to Job Losses in the USA
GPL undermines our system of Intelectual property rights.
The bizarre thing is that I have never seen any hard evidence for the first two and I have never read a reasoned legal opinion that supports the third assertion. Ironically many of the readers of slashdot agree with some of these assertions despite supporting Open Source.
ANTI PROFIT
For OS to be anti-profit it would mean that total capital employed resulted in a lower return as a result of OS. Well I have never seen such a study. Common sense may indicate that the employment of capital may move out of Redmond into garages dotted over the US and the world but that does not mean returns will be lower. The guys in the garages will make a living and aggregated may provide a higher return on capital than a single corporation developing proprietary software.
JOB LOSSES IN THE US
The argument is absurd. Any US corporation can outsource it's production and this applies to software. Windows 200X could be written in Bombay. And if cost benefit criteria dictate it then you can be sure that it will be. On the other hand it is far easier to argue that while a large corporation has the resources to contemplate switching production sites "The guys in garages" for all sorts of non financially accountable reasons may choose to stay at home. Hell they may want to stay close to Mom !
UNDERMINING PROPERTY RIGHTS
The notion that the GPL threatens intellectual property rights is the strangest of all notions. The GPL is based upon law. Law that protects intellectual property and allows it's owner to use or dispose of it as he sees fit. This includes vesting it in the public domain and donating it to charity. The position that you should be forbidden to do this is in my view a fundamental attack on property rights.
My own view is that OS should be viewed merely as a new business model where for example in the case of Linux, software providers and installers are forced to consider customer satisfaction to remain competitive not merely a discount on a canned package. In my own experience you don't pay less for a linux installation on a server as opposed to any proprietary OS, what you get is something similarly priced but you know it works. As for the old chestnut about Open source providing no economic incentive for innovation this equally fallacious. Any hardware innovator with a new architecture will have a tremendous incentive to see the open source code is tweaked to optimise his machine. Again this is merely a change of business model.
It may gall those socialist readers of slashdot but there is a strong case to be put that Open source is "The American Way". The Sherman Act was introduced for trust busting but a vibrant software industry has come up with away to challenge oligopoly with no government intervention. If you want to defeat the arguments of SCO better tell your congressmen that Open Source leads to jobs,profits,innovation and the protection of property rights then he just might listen.
Or does he know who Novell is? That is actually the bigger, more prominent, company of the two that have Norda's name attached to it.
And to top it off SCO's suing them too!
Apparently Ray had GWB over to spend the evening. And Ray is the ex-CEO of Novell, but the dominant owner of SCO as he is canopy group.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Write your own letter to your Congress Folks... but read this first!
The old fortune program is always wise. This morning it sent this to my cell phone:
Pro is to progress as Con is to congress
I thought it was pretty funny.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I think public confession is essential to overcome his problems.
But I do think the LDS Church has a duty to keep it as confidential as possible. This is in keeping with Confession and Dr./client privilege.
I could go on...
In summary it is a troll but not a very good one as it is such a classic by-the-book troll no one would think it was not a troll (which after all is part of the point of trolling)
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
More like bank fraud.
...for excommunication. Mormons are only allowed one wife; take another and you're out (at least for the last hundred years or so - things were a bit different back in the days of the Wild West).
Read this
Calm down, Darl... and put the pipe down...
SCO Logo
January 8, 2004
The Honorable
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Honorable
I am writing to you to draw your attention to an important controversy that has become one of the dominant issues in the software industry. The way in which this issue is resolved will have very important ramifications for
our nation's economy
our continued ability to lead the world in techological innovation
out international competivive position in the global software industry, and even for
out national security.
The source of this controversy is the rapid spread of a form of software called "Open Source software." The most widely used Open Source product is a software enviroment called Linux. Open Source Linux software is developed and enhanced by a loose, worldwide group of volunteers usually called "the Open Source community." Through the work of this companies, Linux software has become a popular way to run computer server systems, Web site, networks and many applications.
First, Linux and Open Source software are developed and distributed (often at no cost) under a scheme called the GNU General Public License (GPL) which, some believe, is in direct contradiction to U.S. Copyritght law, to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and to the recent Supreme Court decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft. I have attached a document that describes in detail the problems of the GPL and the ways in which it violates current U.S. statutes.
Those who designed the GPL readily admit that they created this license to have the effect of "freeing" software - taking it out of the realm of copyright protection by placing it in the public domain. The author of the GPL is well-known for his view that proprietary software (meaning software as an intellectual asset from which the designer can derive profit) is unacceptable.
The GPL to commoditize software by reducing its monetary value to zero and making it freely available to anyone. The GPL is carefully designed to have a viral effect - it "frees" the software that is proprietary, licensable, and a source of income from the companies that developed it. Until now it has been generally agreed that the GPL has never faced a legal test. SCO is involved in a major software intellectual property case through which the GPL will face such a test.
The second problem with Open Source software is that is not all orginal. Linux software contains significant UNIX software code that has been inappropriately, and without authorization, placed in Linux. I know this because my company, The SCO Group, owns the rights to that UNIX code originally developed by AT&T. SCO holds licenses to this valuable asset with more than 6,000 companies, universities, goverment agencies and other organizations. But as the use of Linux has grown, license revenue from UNIX has shrunk. Why wouldn't it? Why would someone license UNIX code from SCO and other legitimate providers when they can get much of that same code, for free, in Linux? The damage this has inflicted on SCO's UNIX business is an example of what could happen to the entire software industry if the current Open Source model continues. For this reason, SCO has taken legal action against those who, we believe, have misappropriated our most important corporate asset. By taking action, our company has become a target for sometimes vicious attacks - including online attacks that have repeatedly shut down our company Web site. Despite this, we are determined to see these legal cases through to the end because we are firm in our belief that the unchecked spread of Open Source software, under the GPL, is a much more serious threat to our capitalist system than U.S. corporations realize.
I believe that this threat is manifest in these important areas:
1. The threat to the U.S. information technology industy. Our economic recovery appears to be well underway, but it is still fragile and could be thrown off track. Just as technolo
Presenting humor as "Fact" in any media where sub-text is not effectively communicated (e.g. in writing) *ISN'T* *FUNNY*.
For all that a well versed person may see that the post is "ironic" all the people who are *NOT* "well versed" in the issue are going to miss the "funny" and be misled.
That is why the textual "smily" (8-) was invented.
Call me a moron all you want, but how many of the people we need most to inform might be misled by that "humor" into beleiving things we no to be false?
Quite frankly this is the kind of "help" that sinks ships.
It needed rebut, and it has gotten it.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
It lasted long enough to create the mosbters of the 20's. And almost wreck the country.
Just beacuse its stupid and cant be enforced doesnt mean they wont try...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sometimes, the human brain has enough cognitive ability to appropriately deduce the contextual (or non-contextual) humor in a passage.
There are entire literary genres based on this fundamental characteristic of written language and how it relates to human communication and situational context.
Perhaps you've heard (or even read!) a satire? Read a passage with irony? Sarcasm? Wit?
Or, maybe you have, but just DIDN'T FUCKING REALIZE IT.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Where did this (pdf file) come from. It could be a hoax, or just more FUD to stir up the Slashdot crowd. The first page of refers to the GPL as a 'Public Domain License'. This is so off the wall as to invalidate reading further. SCO whats to invalidate the GPL license by having software using it declared Public Domain. If SCO does not succeed then thay are in violation of the GPL license, which does respect copyright.
greg
They have an itch to be rich they won't be able to scratch. Maybe some special shampoo would help...
Someone should have warned them not to be so promiscuous and try to fsck *everyone*.
At least that confirms that I am not crazy and I am not imagining this full chapter of madness.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
...not to the court, but to the public.
Two issues were deliberately obfuscated by the Republicans in their constitutionally-dubious attempt to impeach Clinton:
1) Clinton, as you correctly point out, told the factual truth in court (he did not have sex with that woman, where sex is defined as intercourse).
2) Clinton most assuredly lied to the American people (who wouldn't when confronted with an illicit affair, and since when would it have been anyone's business anyway, but that is a rant for another day) when he told them on television he had not had sex with that woman, knowing full well that "sex" in the common parlence he was using to address the nation most certainly did include oral sex.
Clinton should never have been impeached. He most certainly did not break the law, and even if he had, its breakage would be on par with that of a speeding ticket, not a "high crime" for which a president should be impeached. And before someone cites "and misdemeanors" I should point out the absurdity of impeaching for a misdemeanor: we could get Dubya on jay walking, speeding, cocain use, and what not if we were to apply the same standards, and as much as I want the warmongering usurper out of office, impeachment on that basis would be highly inappropriate, and something I would personally raise my voice against.
Clinton lied. If that makes him unfit for office (and one can make a reasonable argument that it does), then clearly Dubya, his father, Reagan before him, Nixon and Ford before them, etc. ad nausuem are even more unfit for office, for they lie not just about their private affairs, they lie about public policy, creating fabrications to start wars that cost people lives and sap the military strength of the nation and, in the latest episode, burn up alliances and diminish our diplomatic strength as well.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Question to all you programers.
What country will you expatriate to when the GPL is declared illegal?
Obviously the winner of this fight will be whoever buys the most lobbyists. Big money colluding with backroom politicians will decide the fate of the GPL in America.
Anyone with any sense can see this spells doom for the GPL.
So my question to you is what country will you restart your lives in, so that you can continue to express your creative energies as freely available Linux code?
Consolodation of wealth >> Consolodation of power >> Fascism >> Brain Drain >> Imperial Decline.
Here is the text of the first letter in the PDF. Feel free to tear it apart and take Darl's lies and half-truths to task! Also, try and check if I made any mistakes in the transcription.
Letter follows:
January 8, 2004
The Honorable
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Honorable
I am writing to you to draw your attention to an important controversy that has become of of the dominant issues in the software industry. The way in which this issue is resolved will have very important ramifications for
The source of this controversy is the rapid spread of a form of software called "Open Source software." The most widely used Open Source product is a software environment called Linux. Open source Linux software is developed and enhanced by a loose, worldwide group of volunteers usually called "the Open Source community." Through the work of this community of volunteers, lately abetted by the efforts of several major computing companies, Linux software has become a popular was to run computer server systems, Web sites, networks and many applications.
Innovation in software in itself is not a problem -- new computing technologies have long been an engine of growth for our nation. But there are two serious problems associated with the spread of Linux and the Open Source approach to software development and distribution.
First, Linux and Open Source software are developed and distributed (often at no cost) under a scheme called the GNU General Public License (GPL) which, some believe, is in direct contradiction to U.S. Copyright law, to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMXCA), and to the recent Supreme Court decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft. I have attached a document that describes in detail the problems of the GPL and the ways in which it violates current U.S. statutes.
Those who designed the GPL readily admit that they created this license to have the effect of "freeing" software - taking it out of the realm of copyright protection by placing it in the public domain. The author of the GPL is well-known for his view that proprietary software (meaning software as an intellectual asset from which the designer can derive profit) is unacceptable.
The GPL seeks to commoditize software by reducing its monetary value to zero and making it freely available to anyone. The GPL is carefully designed to have a viral effect - it "frees" the software that proprietary, licensable, and a source of income from the companies that developed it. Until now it has been generally agreed that the GPL has never faced a legal test. SCO is involved in a major software intellectual property case through with the GPL will face such a test.
The second problem with Open Source software is that it is not all original. Linux software contains significant UNIX software code that has been inappropriately, and without authorization, placed in Linux. I know this because my company, The XCO Group, owns the rights to UNIX code originally developed by AT&T. SCO holds licenses to this valuable asset with more that 6,000 companies, universities, government agencies and other organization. But as the use of Linux has grown, license revenue from UNIX has shrunk. Why wouldn't it? Why would someone license UNIX code from SCO and other legitimate providers when they can get much of that same doe, for free, in Linux? The damage this has inflicted on SCO's UNIX business is an example of what could happen to the entire software industry if the current Open Source model continues. For this reason, SCO has taken legal action against those who, we believe, have misappropriated our most important corporate asset. By taking action, our company h
All data is speech. All speech is Free.