Slashdot Mirror
One Company's Response to SCO
Great_Jehovah writes "The CIO of Just Sports USA received an extortion letter from SCO, started a thread about it on the pgsql-general and then posted his response letter after weighing the various pieces of advice and info he received. Here's hoping that most of SCO's intended victims do the same." An anonymous reader submits a story in a Utah paper about SCO: "The Salt Lake City Weekly paper is running a front page article on the SCO shenanigans. The reporter interviewed Darl, Linus, Bruce Perens and others for the article with new choice quotes from them all." Also, IBM at Linuxworld claims it will win against SCO (miscellaneous plug: CmdrTaco will be speaking at Linuxworld later today).
The entire letter was "acceptable" until his closing paragraph where he told them to stop wasting his time and their time... If you want to sound professional you do not tell someone to stop wasting your time in a letter. Find another way to put it.
.02,
I personally feel that ignoring them is a far better approach... Let them waste their time and effort mailing these things out to get no response. It's more frustrating that way.
Just my worthless
...is going the right way so far today.
The Army reading list
Dear SCO: FUCK OFF.
My concern with all of this crap, is the fact that someone hasn't forced SCO to shut the hell up. It reminds me of the Bully in grade school. He would consistantly beat up on kids every day. Some even to the point of actual damage, and he was NEVER suspended. Never. Ever. I think that is what needs to be really focused on. Not so much as "When will all of this madness end?", but rather "How can we prevent this from ever getting this far, if history repeats itself?"
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
ha.
Haha.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Heh.
GWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
SCO.
*sniff*
What was the question again?
Sent from your iPad.
From the article: "I've been pounding the table here for a year or so saying there's no free lunch, and there is going to be a day of reckoning for every company that thinks they are going to try and sell a free model."
What is with this messianic attitude? Perhaps what Darl does not realize is that folks contribute to Linux and other open source projects through a variety of reasons. Notably, some contributions to open source have happened via tax-payer funded projects from a variety of nations throughout the world. Other contributions are made from the generous and charitable contributions of others who simply want to make a difference. Darl wants to exploit those contributions and leverage his band of merry lawyers to "liberate" Linux from the rest of us. Only his liberation is not for anything other than selfish desires (like any criminal who sees nothing wrong with theft) with no respect to the common good.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
SCO is just trying to get the attention of everyone in an attempt to get people to gain knowledge of their product so they can make money and as we all know they have been lobying congress to get them to ban open-source because they aren't making any money. So if we all just ignore them maybe they will go away. Talk to you all later Joel
SCO==Full of shit?
Does this sound familar to anyone else?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Why is it that no one has taken SCO to court to get an injunction filed against them, barring them from collecting money or sending 'extortion' letters until their case is proved in court? It makes no sense to me that they can send out these letters, making threats, on a legal matter that is nowhere close to being decided. How about if SCO loses? Do they have to refund everyone who was coerced into buying licenses? It's ridiculous that no one has tried to prevent them from talking out their asses yet. It makes sense to me, am I missing something?
'nuff said.
I wish we'd stop having a daily SCO story every time they do something despicable. All of this self-righteous indignation is completely irrelevent. SCO doesn't care if they're wrong. Considering how smart their lawyers are, they probably know they're wrong. What they are trying to achieve is progress based solely on the ponderosity of their own momentum, which we are helping to propagate with all this nonsensical rambling.
~Tirinal
That has to be the best damned article I've read on the "SCO" case. Granted, it was slanted against SCO - but it provided logical, point-by-point facts about the history of the case. No new arguments for the geek crowd - but that's one I'll print out and show to the non-geeks I work with who haven't understood what the big deal is.
While we're at it, Mr. Johnson's article should be printed out and mailed to every member of Congress, the Senate, and to Mr. Bush to stop any of the "anti-Open Source" lobbyists dead in their tracks.
I used to live in Salt Lake and remember how good the "City Weekly" was, but I had forgotten that every so often, those bastards could really write.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I have to agree...it wasn't very professional to end the letter that way. Of course he was justified in saying so.
What has me curious is if everyone were to follow suit, will this actually stop the SCO, or will it be more like a "Verizon vs. the RIAA" kind of thing? The SCO may stop picking on these guys temporarily, but that doesn't mean they'll stop altogether. Chances are they'll simply find another route. Folks with homebrew servers, beware!
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
Darlness... nice.
Don't get any on you heh.
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
Such reponses have always to be made by laywers for obvious reasons. Even if the original threat if fraudulent.
If a CIO is responding to them on his own account then he is endangering the whole company. Usually such people get another letter - the pink slip from his boss. And the boss will be right.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Owned.
"He's no geek," says Benjamin Choate, a self-trained Linux user living in Logan. "His tan's too good."....
... I don't want for that 'Darlness' to rub off on me."
In June 2002, the copper-toned McBride took over the reigns of Caldera, a Linux and UNIX distributor desperately trying to find its place in the Information Technology world.
Gotta love the journalist for poking fun at Darly.
And Linus:
When asked if he had any questions to pass along to McBride, Linus Torvalds chose to err on the side of caution. "The less I have to do with Darl McBride, the better off I am
If you want to sound professional you do not tell someone to stop wasting your time in a letter.
Since when is calling a spade a spade unprofessional?
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
He also used the phrase "to indeed exist" when he should have said "do indeed exist.
I would suggest that response was far more 'acceptable' than the extortion threat that was the letter from SCO.
SCO *is* wasting a valuable person's time... he had to spend time treating that letter seriously, and if I were him, I'd be keeping a log of all time spent on the SCO issue in the hope that it could be used to sue them in small claims court for expenses after SCO loses in court. Of course, I expect that SCO won't have much left at that point, but it would be fun to kick them in the nuts when they're down.
I'm just glad to see someone bringing the threats to a public forum, and responding in a reasonable manner.
Too many of the public responses seem to be nothing more than namecalling and puffed up catfights.
I, personally(not that anyone cares), can forgive one bad line in an otherwise excellent letter.
-
"Vengeance is fine," sayeth the Lord.
$699 is not that much to pay for a great OS.
I would have replaced "Sincerely" with "Kiss My Hairy White Ass." But that's just me...
Anybody have an answer to this?
January 21, 2004
Mr. Philip Langer
Regional Director, Intellectual Property Licensing
SCO Group
355 South 520 West Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Dear Mr. Langer:
I am writing you in response to your letter dated January 19th, 2004 in which you advised that you would
consider legal action if we failed to respond to your efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement. To date, I
have yet to receive any information concerning our systems and what you allege violates your intellectual
property rights. You have sent me letters that conflict with other statements made by representatives of the
SCO Group concerning SCO's ownership of UNIX ABI's and their supposed (re)distribution under the
GPL in the Linux kernel.
If you would like to detail directly which of our systems allegedly violate your copyrights, and specifically
which code on said systems allegedly violates said copyrights, we will be happy to do an internal audit to
verify your claims. Once the results of said audit are complete, we will be more than willing discuss any
pending licensing issues with you.
Our current understanding of your legal situation is that your organization has yet to prove your claims of
SCO intellectual property being included in the GPL based Linux kernel software that SCO itself has
distributed under the GPL. While I understand your concerns regarding intellectual property and your
desire to protect SCO's property, at this time, the legality and claims concerning SCO's ownership of code
that exists in the 2.4 Linux kernel has yet to be determined by a court of law. I, speaking for myself, follow
with interest SCO Group's contortions in its lawsuits against Novell and IBM, and its defense against the
lawsuit brought by Red Hat. In my study of the events that have transpired, it's my understanding that
SCO Group has yet to produce any substantive evidence as to the claims regarding code misappropriation
by IBM. I am requesting the SCO Group to provide to my organization substantive evidence of alleged
copyright violations so that we may compare the alleged violations for the purpose of internal audit to
determine if any licensing needs to indeed exist. I do, however, intend to publicly document the results of
said audit and any communication with the SCO Group regarding this matter.
Before you waste any more of my time or yours, please detail exact information such as the offending lines
of code and the kernel versions you contend this code is in. Alternatively if your organization agrees, we
can re-address these issues after your current lawsuits regarding these issues are finalized.
Sincerely,
Gavin M. Roy
Chief Information Officer
Just Sports USA
Informative? Did the moderators even bother reading the PDF?
Its got a picture of Goatse. Sheesh!
Freakin' hell.
Please note that parent is a troll. The PDF contains goatse material. (Although the GIF is genuine.)
How did this get moderated up? Did ANYONE actualy click on the links to see if they are real?
The GIF is real, but goatse warning in that PDF.
"...silence is a dangerous sound."
It's hardly that unprofessional. It comes across as a personal opinion, rather than a "purely factual" representation, but it is in no way insulting or offensive, any more so than asking someone to move out of your way in a supermarket aisle. Besides, when has SCO acted purely according to professional business standards anyway?
Personally, I think the mildly-annoyed personal flair indicates that he's seriously considered the issue and is weighing in on it, rather than simply having his lawyers whip up some legalese response. But then, that's just me.
who said that you had to be as infantile as they were? "Kicking them in the nuts when they are down?" Oh give me a break.
Let's make ourselves look even better in the face of the law when it comes time for that. Sending back threatening letters doesn't make anyone any better than SCO.
"That's Darl McBride, president and CEO of the SCO Group, a perennial loser at selling UNIX"
:-)
Nice
I have mixed feelings about your opinion of the letter's last paragraph. Maybe it does tarnish a great letter - maybe it is a fitting 'cherry on top.'
I'm sure this has been brought up before (though I can't find it right off), but isn't this type of arm-twisting by SCO illegal?
For example, and any input from you legal beagles out there would be greatly appreciated, couldn't a company such as Just Sports use the RICO act as a means of seeking relief?
--- have you healed your church website?
Now when I think about it, isn't the greatest vaporware of 2003 the "millions" or "thousands" lines of SCO code in Linux?
And they didn't put it on presale order to get money from users, they started right away with licensing. New heights in vaporware competition.
What I see from McBride looks more like the little man syndrome.
Dear [Insert foo&bar SCO lawyer's name here]
After careful consideration, and based on recent media coverage of the events involving the SCO group claiming ownership of code in the Linux 2.4 kernels, plus the fact that to this date no tangible evidence has been presented in a court of law, we understand that SCO's upper management has been under the influence of recreational drugs for a considerable amount of time and thus, should not be taken seriously.
Under these premises, we'll transfer further threatening letters to our security experts, Corleone & Corleone inc for further appreciation and action.
Kind Regards,
[Insert your name here]
Obligatory Mis-Quote here:
The only thing needed for SCO to spread is for good people to do nothing...
Lame I know but it gets the point across.
They are big enough to have the ears of the Dubyament so we have to take at least the possibility of them succeeding seriously if not their actual outpourings of insanity.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
When the spade obviously doesnt think itself to be a spade.
Meaning, there's such a thing as professionalism. Being frank is for engineers, and thats why people dont like them.
I know I didnt actually answer your question, but if I did, I'd have to charge.
miscellaneous plug: CmdrTaco will be speaking at Linuxworld later today
If he doesn't announce a new $99 mini Slashdot I am going to be really angry.
You can't spell fiasco without SCO
Remember that some of the code the SCO has tried to pass off as theirs was from the BSD branch. So if SCO ( in a parallel universe ) would manage to win, and that BSD code is ruled property of SCO, then what are the chances FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD have even more SCO code in it.
Linux is the front lines right now, if it falls FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and even Mac OSX could be next.
"My telephone number is or email". Nice to know SCO's crack defense team proofreads their extortion letters.
Is there any of you on here other than me that gives one ounce of possibility to the idea that maybe SCO might be right?
How hard would it be to believe some idiot used code are violated a patent?
I have done it myself on accident, and had to go back and redesign to get around the patent.
As for the assertion they made to congress, what if it's not entirely wrong? Programmers giving away their work for humanity is only profitable for companies that resell it. Especially since development is free. It's not exactly profitable for more than a handful of programmers, with the exception of support and addons.
Food for thought.
The Evil Man
Here's the way I see it:
SCO can't find any code from SysV in Linux. If there were any SysV code in Linux, they would have been able to find it, since they have the source code to both. There would have been no need to ask IBM for Sequent/Dynix code, since they would have found 'their' (SCO's) code in both SysV and Linux.
In other words, no SysV code in Linux
So they asked IBM for all the code that IBM has written, trying to find out exactly what code from IBM made it into both Unix and Linux. This leads me to the conclusion that they consider all code written by IBM for Unix to belong to SCO as a 'derivative work'. However, they (and we) don't know whether IBM developed the code specifically for Unix (and later contributed it to Linux), or whether IBM wrote it for both Unix and Linux at the same time.
If IBM originally wrote the code for both, I can't see how SCO can claim ownership/copyright/patent/IP rights/whatever. However, even if IBM did write it for Unix and later contributed it to Linux, SCO still have to prove that the code IBM wrote belongs to them(SCO). I find that doubtful at best.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
That newspaper article is one of the most approachable versions of this saga I've seen in a long time. Hopefully, with more mainstream press, we can see the FUD factor affecting the rank-n-file investors. We need this to be picked up in the WSJ.
"'Listen real clearly to what's happening here,' McBride said by telephone from his Lindon office in early January. 'The situation is that we used to be the leader ... we were where Red Hat [the No. 1 Linux distributor] is now. Linux then comes in, with Red Hat being the ringleader, and really attacks our [UNIX] market share and our marketplace..."
self-explanatory
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Bruce Perens, a Linux cheerleader and open-source advocate
The thought of Bruce in a short skirt and waving pompoms just made me shudder. "Give me an L!"
Ahhhhh Noooo
The response letter is perfect...... a joy to read
I call computer-illiteracy job security
How did this get moderated up? Did ANYONE actualy click on the links to see if his accusations are real?
In this case it's because the only thing you achieve with this behaviour is to lose. You should not let SCO drag you down to their own low level. They are much more experienced at that level and will beat you.
The people have spoken! But I will speak LOUDER --- I SAID --- LOUDER than ANYONE!!! EEEEYAHHH!!
I think some groups have accomplished this in Europe (Germany?).
I thought Redhat was trying to do this now in the US.
It's about as much use as a pair of binoculars is to a cyclops...
sPh
If we all put in $1 we'll easily enough have enough to just have Darl blown away.
turning the entire matter over to the RIAA.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Jolly good show. And I'm not even British.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Pardon my ignorance, but what's an ABI? Specifically, I mean. I know what an API is, and Google can find usenet postings from programmers referring to ABIs going back as far as ten years at least (so I know their lawyers didn't make it up), but it's an obscure enough term that whatis.com and webopedia.com don't list it in their uberglossaries.
So, can someone explain/define "Application Binary Interface" as SCO is using the term?
TIA!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
The funny thing is, fully 3/4 of the letter is underlined. Maybe they think if they shout and emphasise it they think people will just agree without even taking it in.
"WE BELIEVE WE CAN PROPOSE SOLUTIONS THAT WOULD WASTE YOUR MONEY AND TIME AND WE OWNZ YOU"
Lord knows, I wouldn't waste my time jerking off to her unless I was sure she supported *BSD!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Slashdot will launch five new versions (burgundy, teal, magenta, cyan and aqua) that will be sold in stores nationwide.
Users will be able to download Slashdot stories for 99c per story, copy them to a CD, store them on the hard drive, etc.
Slashdot code will be re-written in .NET, as CmdrTaco found it more reliable and forward-looking than current implementation.
All Slashdot servers are SCO-compliant as of today. McBride and CmdrTaco are shaking hands on stage.
Tune in at 11 for video.
What about former (and current?) customers who got their linux from Caldera?
Executive Summary of the response letter:
"F*ck off, SCO"
Perhaps notifying them that they are wasting his time can open the doors for a countersuit? If he shows they have no claim and they keep harrasing him...
It provides a detailed description of what the supposed 'problem' is, and clearly shows each sides claims.
An excellent article to show to the hestitant boss..
From reading the comments, it sounds like whoever's running the mirror site is switching it back and forth between goatse and non-goatse. Thus, we have this "parent is a troll, no you're a troll, no YOU'RE a troll..." thread. I can't check it myself though because I'm at work.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
SCO *is* wasting a valuable person's time...
Not quite the phrase I've heard before.
I personally feel that ignoring them is a far better approach... Let them waste their time and effort mailing these things out to get no response.
Why not respond to them with registered mail. Address it to Darl McBride so that he personally would have to sign for each piece of mail that is sent in reply to these extortion letters. Maybe we could make it so that he doesn't have time to send out these letters because he's busy signing registered letters from users who are being extorted.
It's more frustrating that way.
Given those things, the quote you cited is not surprising. It doesn't carry nearly the weight it would if say, the NYTimes printed it.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Being /. readers, it's unfortunate that we will never get the chance to give business to Just Sports...
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
Yes, Darl, there IS NO free lunch . . . get over it and shut the hell up.
How many levels of irony must this guy go through before his head explodes?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
So what would my options be in said case? Believe it or not, I actually have the unopened Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 disk in a mint condition "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux Second Edition" (C) 2000 (Actually I never bothered to read the book or install the distro, but it is ironic that the "Idiots Guide" came with Caldera.) Are they forcing people who are using Caldera to pay up and sign a satanic contract in blood? Should I switch back to using MS Windows 98? (GOD NO! NO! NEVER AGAIN! NO!) Should I immediately sign up for my free 25 megs of space on Tripod? Or better: Use the free 5 megs that comes with my ISP service and use the URL Forwarding? Is Stallman and the FSF and Linus and the whole Slashdot community going to lend me kind sage advice and hold my hand through trying times? What oh what should I do if the EVIL DARYL MCBRIDE should come after my computer?
In all seriousness, if SCO ever did come after my "amatuer" homebrew server, what should I do? (Besides fold like a wet napkin...)
Hurd anyone?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Where else will you find a corporation (i.e., SCO) run by a Monty Python troupe! (Today, the part of Darryl will be played by John Cleese)
This is great stuff! Better than television (er... that doesn't take much, though, does it?).
They can't say a damn thing about any of this in Germany- or face nasty fines and jail time for the regional execs if they DO say anything of the sort.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I disagree. Having read SCO's vaguely worded letter I agree that it was a waste of time.
I personally feel that ignoring them is a far better approach.
I feel that not responding is unprofessional.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
I was like, "where have I seen this guy before?" Computer guy...wearing a blue work shirt exposing bare forearms. Cocked a bit to the site with his arms folded across his chest.
And then I realized, it's Peter Norton.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Regarding the "wasting my time" and being "unprofessional", who cares. I use it, and its very effective in dealing with people that are, well, wasting my time.
I recently told this to a salesman, and now he gets all of his info together before he thinks of calling or mailing me. In a nutshell, he's not wasting as much of my time anymore. Give it a try sometime, trust me its very powerful.
Yeah, sure Dick (or whatever your name is - Shirley?)
miscellaneous plug: CmdrTaco will be speaking at Linuxworld later today
/. fashion, the same presentation will be made by Timothy some time tomorrow.
Don't worry if you miss CmrdTaco's presentation today. In typical
jason
jason
Have a good day?! Impossible! I'm at work!
Yeah, but a girl with a non-existent boyish ass just doesn't get a real man hard in the first place regardless of the face and the titties.
It looks like the SCO war chest for all of this litigation is running low, and they're going after companies that might be stupid enough to pay them off! What a novel idea! If they put as much energy into displaying what they think is wrong, as opposed to thinly-veiled threats and extortion, this would have been settled a long, LONG time ago. But then again, this IS SCO we're talking about here. Common sense went on vacation quite some time ago and hasn't been seen or heard from since in that location.
One of the 187.
hahahahahahahahaha. Like that'll ever happen.
OMGWTFLOL!!!11
Ya know, Darl's done as much as or perhaps even more than anyone else to propel Linux into the spotlight.
Thank you, SCO!
Mark
"Only in a free country can you screw people over for free software." - Darl McBride
Is there someone who's got SCO's Linux distro available for download? I'd like to get a copy. The fact that it was officially distributed by SCO under the GPL makes a wonderful defense against their IP claims, whether I'm using SCO's product or its "derivative works" in another OS.
"Dear SCO: This may be your intellectual property, but you've given it away via the GPL. Yes, I know you're arguing the GPL is invalid, but that's the contract you issued it under, and you can't just change a contract after the fact. Go ahead and sack your due diligence department, but if you sue me, I'll charge you with barratry."
> If you want to sound professional you do not tell someone to stop wasting your time in a letter
1) It's his damn letter, he can say what he wants, as long as he speaks for himself or as the sole voice of the company.
2) If SCO doesn't want to be told to stop wasting time, they should stop wasting his time
3) SCO wasn't exactly "professional" in this whole thing from the start.
Laymen shouldn't try to respond to letters from attornies. He should have just passed the threat letter to his lawyer, and have him type up a response similar to what was written. It could be he's left himself open to legal action doing it this way.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Sending back threatening letters doesn't make anyone any better than SCO.
/. readers should write SCO and give them a piece of their mind. :D
Yeah but it wastes the time of the lawyers at SCO, which in turn makes SCO waste more money on this lame ass lawsuit. They are most likely not going to let letters like this go without a response. I personally think all the
I want to walk the Court through enough of our complaint to help the Court understand that IBM clearly did contribute a lot of the Unix-related information into Linux. We just don't know what it is...
This comment was made by McBride's lawyer/brother (birds of a feather?) with during pre-discovery, and sums up the whole mess in its entirety. If a court order were issued to "Figure out what it is or shut up," I think it's quite likely that we'd never hear from SCO again. SCO would still die, only quietly.
And that's just it - how the hell would SCO know just who's running what? How would they know that any given company is running Linux servers, to be able to claim their Linux Tax? How would they know who's got a Linux desktop at work or personal server at home? They certainly won't be allowed to issue fishing expedition subpoenas to the hundreds of thousands of various sized companies in this country who might have Linux, let alone to the millions of home users that could possibly ever have bought a PC capable of running Linux.
And then there's the rest of the world... Anyone want to bet that any non-US company will submit to the Linux Tax SCO is trying to levy on them?
So far, SCO has only threatened people who they know have any kind of Unix at all, and the reason they know about those people is that SCO sold them the product. In the article, it says that a "few companies have moved away from SCO's Unix", and those are the ones SCO is chasing. Well, that's a sure and certain way to win them back, eh Darl? And to keep the few remaining customers who haven't defected yet...
> DARYL MCBRIDE
It's DARL, not Daryl, Darrel, or Dry-El.
> if SCO ever did come after my "amatuer" homebrew server, what should I do?
Ignore them.
I wonder if we can't sink the SCO coffers a little. How about responding to the letter with "Sure, I'll meet with you."? After SCO reps and/or lawyers spend SCO money to travel to your place of business, you then ask them to document for you the offending code, how exactly they've come to the conclusion that your company is running said code and on what computers.
If they cannot, tell them to return when they can. If and when they return, notify them that their claims are currently being weighed in a court case that you are following closely and that they should return once a verdict has been given.
I dunno. Perhaps by stating that his time is wasted, he's lining himself up for future class action suits.
I mean, it's clear the Just Sports had to spend time researching the claims, the associated news and perhaps some very expensive lawyer time.
If the case by SCO is indeed baseless, then indeed, Just Sports' time was wasted and should be compensated for it by SCO.
At least that's this geek's take on what's right, wrong and legal. I'm sure a lawyer out there will slap me back into reality
--- have you healed your church website?
I would have waited to see what the Judge has to say tomorrow before responding.
I so wish I could be there to hear them explain why they haven't complied with the order. With any luck what SCO did manage to coble together has already been refuted (WITH EVIDENCE!) and submitted to the court by IBM.
I am not fond of SCO's evil scheme, but I just wonder whether there is code overlap between UNIX and other software systems, and why it would have chosen the elusive Linux population as its target rather than a more well-delimited commercial product. (I'm guessing that most OS products might have the same sort of accidental overlap that Linux might have.)
I got into a pres conference held by Bruce Perens yesterday (actually held by his book publisher, but whatever). He had some pretty hard-hitting words to say about SCO and their motives. More so than usual, and no legalese fudging any more.
Basically, he said that SCO are committing fraud, with the objective of hiking their stock price.
I wrote this earlier today -- well, ok, very late last night -- in response to SCO's apparent Capitol Hill diatribe.
Anyone interested in reading it can find it here, complete with the minor grammatical/typing errors that I failed to catch when reading it the first 20 times.
I encourage all of you to do the same thing. No one is quite sure how wide a distribution Darl's letter has gotten, but we can certainly counter them.
That's the funniest thing I'm likely to see all day.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
the Linux kernel--the core chunk of code underlying most distributions of the Linux operating system.
I used to use Linux-Linux, but I've become a big fan of the Linux distributions that don't use Linux.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Right. Just like the FedEx man has to get *your* signature instead of the next-door neighbours or just leaving it your door with the FedEx logo proudly shining to the street.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
To SCO's surprise, with shares down from an all-time high
Lawyers getting loose now, getting down on the proof
I tell ya', Slashdotters wuz screaming, they was, they was outta control,
It was so entertaining when the courtroom started to explode
I heard somebody say
(burn Darl burn) SCO inferno,
(burn Darl burn) burn that mother down (yeah)
(burn Darl burn) SCO inferno,
(burn Darl burn) burn that mother down.
Satisfaction, it came in a chain reaction
Kevin couldn't prove enough, so SCO had to self-destruct
I tell ya', i tell ya' now, now...
The heat was on, it was a rising under Red Hat
Well now, Linux' going strong, yeah that's when Darls' ass got hot
I heard somebody say
(burn Darl burn) SCO inferno,
(burn Darl burn) burn that mother down (yeah)
(burn Darl burn) SCO inferno,
(burn Darl burn) burn that mother down.
Up above my head
I see McBride ashes in the air
That makes me know
There's a party somewhere...
Satisfaction, it came in a chain reaction
They failed to pump'n'dump, so SCO got to self-destruct
I tell ya', i tell ya' now, now...
The heat was on, it was a-rising to the top
Well now, Linux' going strong, yeah that's when Darls' ass got hot
I heard somebody say
(burn Darl burn) SCO inferno,
(burn Darl burn) burn that mother down (yeah)
(burn Darl burn) SCO inferno,
(burn Darl burn) burn that mother down.
Just don't stop...
(sorry, it's a desperately slow day)
Judging by your relatively low slashdot ID number I'm guessing you to be the legit Gavin Roy and not some last minute sign-up pretending to be such. So let me ask you a question: Why was it that you first asked the thread in pgSQL and not here in slashdot? I'm sure you would have been given a story. Just curious...
this is my sig, be amazed.
So basically they are targetting former customers? Are they seriously trying to keep their few remaining licensees in line with these kind of scare tactics? It seems like they are saying 'stay with us or we'll sue'.
Unbeleivable.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
I've followed most of the SCO nonsense over the past year, but somehow in all of that I missed something....
In SCO's letter it is talking about the Unix ABIs. I had always assumed the issue involved actual code (e.g., the buffer management code). But they're talking about ABIs here.
For those that haven't dealt directly with ABIs, here's the skinny...
When you want to open a file you issue a command like:
The ABI defines the value of O_RDONLY (0) and the value of ENOENT (2). Without an ABI, one vendor (vendorA) might use the values 0 and 2 while another (vendorB) might use the values 1 and 3. Thus while you would have source compatability (code using the macros O_RDONLY and ENOENT will compile anywhere), you would not have binary compatability (code compiled with vendorA's headers will not run in vendorB's environment).
What all this means is: SCO is basing their case on the values of #defines!
Nobody said I had to be as infantile as they have been - I decided on that all by myself without your help.
As a matter of fact, I don't believe that punishing people for malicious acts beyond merely stopping them from continuing is a bad idea. I believe in whacking them hard enough that they not only stop what they're doing, but never even think of doing it again.
Notice the sharp plunge on Tuesday? Anyone care to make some guess as to why?
Causing Chaos Everywhere,
Nik J.
The strange world of a loner, in a populous city, drowning in society
I think you mean when the claims are found incorrect?
Get your own free personal location tracker
If you go read his posting he says he wants to switch to BSD. IMHO this will not address the problem,
I think BSD is a fine OS as well, BUT if SCO is successful with thier attack on linux, they've already said they will go after BSD as well.
If this guy is really worried about it, then he needs to fight SCO, not just switch to BSD and HOPE they will leave him alone.
SCO is a bully and speaking from alot of experience, the only way to get rid of a bully is to stand up to them and kick thier teeth in if necessary. Once they see you will fight them, they'll go look for easier prey.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Dear SCO:
After reviewing your claims with our legal department and system administrators in extreme detail, we have come to the following conclusion.
Bite me.
Sincerely,
Some Random Company
Now FUCK OFF!!!
OTOH(!), at this point I think it would be exceptionally difficult to argue that there is anything in SysV that could be considered a trade-secret today anyway. The way it looks to me, SCO owns nothing but a license to SysV and a license to sub-license it, if Novell does still indeed own it as they claim.
SCO is indeed on shaky ground and it looks like they will not survive the counter-suits.
Good riddance!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
"Since when is calling a spade a spade unprofessional?"
STFU, Spade.
"Derp de derp."
Yes, you are correct, but it's still pronounce ARSE.
Linux has crept up on Microsoft, challenging its stranglehold on the server market...
Oh, it's a humor article! (On the front page?)
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Popped the .gif in Gimp and typed it out:
...Certain copyrighted application binary interfaces ("ABI Code") have been copied verbatim from our copyrighted UNIX code base and contributed to Linux for distribution, under the General Public License ("GPL") without proper authorization and without copyright attribution. While some application programming interfaces ("API Code") have been made available over the years through POSIX and other open standards, the
UNIX ABI Code has only been made available under copyright restrictions. AT&T made these binary interfaces available in order to support application development to UNIX operating systems and to assist UNIX licensees in the development process.[End Underline] [Italicized]The UNIX ABIs were never intended or authorized for
unrestricted use or distribution under the GPL in Linux.[End Italics]
January 19, 2004
Gavin Roy
CIO
Just Sports USA
6261C Variel Ave.
Woodland Hills, CA 91367-2587
Dear Mr. Roy;
I am following up on the SCO letter dated December 19th, regarding the use of SCO copyright protected code that has been incorporated into Linux without our authorization. As statin in the letter:
[Underlined]"No one may use our copyrighted code except as authorized by us.
[Underlined]...Use in Linux of any ABI Code or other UNIX Derived Files identified above constitutes a violation of the United States Copyright Act. Distribution of the copyrighted ABI Code, or binary code compiled using the ABI code, with copyright management information deleted or altered, violates the Digital Milennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") codified by Congress at 17 U.S.C. [Section Symbol]1202. DMCA liability extends to those who have reasonable grounds to know that a distribution (or re-distribution as required by the GPL) of the altered code of copyright information will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement of any right under the DMCA. In addition, neither SCO nor any predecessor in interest has ever placed an affirmative notice in Linux that the copyrighted code in question could be used or distributed under the GPL. As a result, any distribution of Linux by a software vendor or a re-distribution of Linux by an end user that contains any of the identified UNIX code violates SCO's rights under the DMCA, insofar as the distributor knows of these violations."[End Underline]
I am requesting a meeting so that we may discuss the alternatives that are available to your firm. WE BELIEVE WE CAN PROPOSE SOLUTIONS THAT WILL BE AGREEABLE AND ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE FOR YOU. I look forward to hearing from you. If you fail to respond to our efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement, WE WILL TURN YOUR NAME OVER TO OUR OUTSIDE COUNSEL FOR CONSIDERATION OF LEGAL ACTION.
Please contact me immediately so we may schedule a meeting. My telephone number is [Blank Line]
or email [Blank Line]
Yours truly,
[Signature]
Philip Langer
Regional Director, Intellectual Property Licensing
SCO
Encl: Letter December 19, 2003
Cc: Ryan E. Tibbits, SCO General Counsel
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
It would seem in Microsoft's best interest to fund SCO's seemingly misguided legal battle with IBM et al. Perhaps they are...
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
"determine if any licensing needs to indeed exist."
(miscellaneous plug: CmdrTaco will be speaking at Linuxworld later today).
Why?!
Other than running his website on Linux, what the hell does Rob Malda have to do with Linux?!
I scanned one for you, but this damned web browser refuses to send it to you. Sorry...
I think I'll let the C*Os of the world decide what's professional and what's not. It's the glaring typo that got me chuckling. As for how to handle SCO, I think that sending back a nastygram is the calmest, sanest, cheapest response there is. Personally I'd be tempted to file a complaint with the FTC (or whichever agency really ought to receive the complaint) and possibly a lawsuit with a local district court.
If a company like SCO sends a letter, it is definitely worthwhile to send a letter back, this establishes that you are acting in good faith on your beliefs rather than ignoring them in hopes that your misdeeds will simply go unpunished for a while. And just because it's a business communication doesn't mean it can't be worded strongly. In this case the "wasting time" comment adds emphasis to the point the CIO was making about the level of detail he expects from SCO should SCO want to insist in pursuing their demands (i.e. don't just send the names of some kernel header files and expect us to cave).
I do not have a signature
Text from the .pdf of the reply letter:
January 21, 2004
Mr. Philip Langer
Regional Director, Intellectual Property Licensing
SCO Group
355 South 520 West Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Dear Mr. Langer:
I am writing you in response to your letter dated January 19th, 2004 in which you advised that you would
consider legal action if we failed to respond to your efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement. To date, I
have yet to receive any information concerning our systems and what you allege violates your intellectual
property rights. You have sent me letters that conflict with other statements made by representatives of the
SCO Group concerning SCO's ownership of UNIX ABI's and their supposed (re)distribution under the
GPL in the Linux kernel.
If you would like to detail directly which of our systems allegedly violate your copyrights, and specifically
which code on said systems allegedly violates said copyrights, we will be happy to do an internal audit to
verify your claims. Once the results of said audit are complete, we will be more than willing discuss any
pending licensing issues with you.
Our current understanding of your legal situation is that your organization has yet to prove your claims of
SCO intellectual property being included in the GPL based Linux kernel software that SCO itself has
distributed under the GPL. While I understand your concerns regarding intellectual property and your
desire to protect SCO's property, at this time, the legality and claims concerning SCO's ownership of code
that exists in the 2.4 Linux kernel has yet to be determined by a court of law. I, speaking for myself,
follow with interest SCO Group's contortions in its lawsuits against Novell and IBM, and its defense against the lawsuit brought by Red Hat. In my study of the events that have transpired, it's my understanding that
SCO Group has yet to produce any substantive evidence as to the claims regarding code misappropriation
by IBM. I am requesting the SCO Group to provide to my organization substantive evidence of alleged
copyright violations so that we may compare the alleged violations for the purpose of internal audit to
determine if any licensing needs to indeed exist. I do, however, intend to publicly document the results of
said audit and any communication with the SCO Group regarding this matter.
Before you waste any more of my time or yours, please detail exact information such as the offending lines
of code and the kernel versions you contend this code is in. Alternatively if your organization agrees, we
can re-address these issues after your current lawsuits regarding these issues are finalized.
Sincerely,
Gavin M. Roy
Chief Information Officer
Just Sports USA
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
I'm sure that lots of people think that the idea is possible. The real problem, though, is that SCO isn't telling anyone what the supposedly infringing code is, so that even if they are right, and even if we wanted to do the right thing and remove the infringing code, we can't.
... unless the buy a SCO license (thereby violating the GPL). In which case a far graver risk than being sued for GPL violations (which could well happen) has been taken, namely establishing a contractual relationship with a company whose CEO has publicly stated that the sole purpose of Caldera/SCO contracts is to give SCO ammunition with which to sue its customers.
Which, based upon 220+ years of copyright law in the United States, makes the Linux-using world liable for exactly $0.00 in damages.
Zero.
It's called having "dirty hands" and is fundamental to copyright law and enforcement, and regardless of the merits of SCO's case (which I think every informed reader agrees are negligable at best) that particular aspect of the law WILL NOT BE OVERTURNED or ignored.
Linux users have nothing to fear
Only an absolute fool, with a corporate suicide bent, would enter into any kind of business relationship with the rabid, barrotrious company that Darl McBride has transformed Caldera into.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
No mod points today, but if every Slashdot reader in the US posted (not faxed/emailed) a letter like that to their congressman/woman, I think it would be a good thing.
Well written.
Get your own free personal location tracker
You know what? I disagree with your "just ignore SCO" policy.
It seems to me that Just Sports CALLED SCO'S BLUFF
And that's exactly the best way to get rid of the posturing buffoon SCO is.
Anything else lends them an air of credibility and permits Darl or whoever to issue more press releases stating that their claim is being addressed by their victims.
Remember silence is consent.
Stand to arms, FIRE! (at SCO's retreating backside)
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Oh boy, that just sent diet coke out my nose...
It's called Netcraft, and they're very big on knowing who runs what.
As a sporting goods operation, they are undoubtedly sports fans. Some of the employees may even have some athletic ability. Even to the point of having participated in teams during high school!
These people are as bad as SCO, I say. Any other good slashdotter would agree.
unless someone wants to drug me, ship me to New York by then, provide a room and nutrition, and agree to ship me back to the Left Coast ...
Probably not worth it.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
How the FUCK is this a troll you freakin' moderators on crack?
The damn PDF contained a Goatse pic initially and was then changed.
Freakin' hell, Slashdot is crawling with morons whose IQs are less than that of my shoelaces put together.
Sheesh! Asshats. See you in metamod hell.
Yes, Darl McBride, we know. Now will you please stop wasting everybody's time!
I note in the rather excelent salt lake article that Linus was asked if he wanted to pass on a message to Darl, which he declined.
I would of loved that oportunity. I'd ask Darl a question. Sorta like this;-
I'd ask "Darl, Are you happy? I mean *REALLY* happy?. Are you happy that you have made one of the most well loved unix brands into an almost universal object of loathing amongst IT professionals. Happy you are planning to capture and destroy the work of thousands of passionate individuals worth millions of manhours. Happy you are building an enterprise on a foundation of litigation of lies."
I'd ask "Darl. If indeed you are happy then, tell me, would you in all conscience recomend to your children that they act as you do?"
And finally I'd ask "Darl. Men live in this world only a short time. When your day of reckoning comes, just what *WILL* you say to your creator when he asks you if your prescence on this planet has made the world a better place."
Cos sure as heck, I'd like to know.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Okay, now they're sending letters lobbying congress. This is getting so out of hand. But, here's where you and I can actually fight back. If you're involved in open source (or even if you just support it) and you're a U.S. citizen, write your congressperson in support of Open Source. Be polite and be professional. Explain your understanding of the facts and why what SCO is doing is extortion and ask your congressperson to consider the facts before passing legislation.
In particular, point out to said congressperson that to date, no evidence has provided by SCO has survived more than a day's scrutiny by the community. That no court has yet supported any of SCO's allegations, and so on.
Please send snail mail instead of e-mail, if possible. Snail mail is more likely to be read. The great thing about congress is, if you send a lot of letters, they sometimes get the point (though not always, as evidenced by the DMCA among other things).
I think the letter is perfect. The last paragraph takes the gloves off, is all.
That response is a professional response.
Politesse is important when conversing with a company that possesses some measure of value to your own, or to individuals who can provide services that can get things done.
This case, he was responding to an extortion threat from a company that has nothing to offer him. It's not necessary to be polite, because the company has already proven that 1: They have nothing of value to him, and 2: They cannot even get the suit over with, much less get anything done!
As such, he used an appropriate economy of words, and spoke as, in my opinion, a true professional.
The Penguin Producer
The site www.linuxworldexpo.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.
High time too. I reckon a few more companies ought to do this - it would force SCO to actually start talking a little sense rather than just spouting FUD.
Okay, that's it, I've had it!!
I putting ALL my SCO Memorabilia up for sale on ebay this weekend.
Including my SCO instructors Golf Shirt
do an ebay search for "SCO instructor Golf Shirt""
I've had enough and I'm not going to take it anymore
(...and besides, my SCO junk is probably worth as much as its ever going to be worth...)
The site justsportsusa.com is running Apache/1.3.28 (Unix) (Gentoo/Linux) PHP/4.3.2 mod_ssl/2.8.15 OpenSSL/0.9.6j on Linux.
Last changed 22-Jan-2004
IP address 208.29.195.70
Netblock Owner Sprint
There's the answer, they should of sent the letter to Sprint instead. Of course they don't want Sprint's legal team on their ass...
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
>I personally feel that ignoring them is a far better approach...
Bravo! Make them find your phone number. When they call, tell them you are running NT with a linux banner to fool hackers.
Take a screenshot of your "desktop" with IIS MMC open to "prove it" by having the config open with your IP and domain name displayed (from a machine in a lab: )
Darl will ask "The OS fingerprint matches linux too, how is that possible?"
Answer: "We wrote a proprietary algorithm to make it look like NT to fingerprinting tools, sorry bud, we can't show it to you, it's proprietary."
Get his panties up in a bunch by using his own argument against him.
Make them get a warrant, which they won't be able to do because they haven't proven anything yet.
Can't believe no one has thought of this. Darl is trying to use the law to sue people, you should use the law too.
l8,
AC
linux hack
...do you suppose that one side effect of this could be a fork?
One of the claims that SCO makes is that the 2.4 kernel and above are the ones with "SCO's IP". So... is there any possibility that a small band of hackers would go back to the 2.2 trees and develop them further or base something new off of those? It could be detrimental, but interesting. This is, of course, assuming that SCO wins which seems highly unlikely at the moment.
I also read Darl's letter to the congress. It's totally insane. He seems to be operating under the delusion that the United States was built on the idea that profit motive is a good thing. While it *can* be useful, it's far from the only motivation. After all, if one has the ability to make something from nothing, why not do it and profit motive be damned? The guy who can mill his own wood and make his own furniture at home shouldn't be chased after by furniture makers because he didn't make them any money. That's just plain stupid, but it's exactly what Darl is trying to do. I think he has a mental illness that revolves around profit motive. In fact, I would say profit motive to the nth power IS the #1 mental illness in the United States. Get over it Darl. Money is not the reason we are here. Neither is personal gain or wealth. We are here to help each other and better our society through the sharing and exchange of knowledge. If you can't get with the program, then do us all a favor and drop out. Permanently.
Un-news
This is what was actually sent to SCO and quite honestly I don't see anything wrong with it. The first clause is dismissive but the demands are reasonable. Unprofessional would have been something like "Blow me."
So it got to the point without using a bunch of $1.50 words or couched in a slew of legalese cliches. Whatever. It most certainly doesn't merit the criticism it's currently receiving.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
It was a bit unprofessional but far from what everyone wants to make it. Telling them they are wasting thier time suing you is a valid reply. But maybe he should have said "we will not expend any more resources on SCO's concern until and if you win your lawsuit and can tell us how and what we are doing wrong".Telling them you'll post the info about infringing lines of code is only going to make them send you the non-disclosure which you have to sign to see the "infringing" code. Chicken and the egg.
Did sombody say Shenanigans!?
SCO has released some of the code it claims to own. Is there some website which tracks this code and has information on it, some place developers can post to with counter-claims?
eg: "SCO Claims to own this peice of code. bob@scuz.net has also claimed to have authored this code. Here is a history of bob@scuz.net's development regaurding this code, and a link to a document regaurding standard system calls (in the public domin since 1987, see link here for explanation) apon which bob@scuz.net claims his code was based"
Something really thorough for every line of code- you know, it's entirely possible that at least some of the code, if only by coincidence, actually does infringe on somebody's IP. It would be worth having such a site to track such things both now and in the future.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
He should have asked for:
The product, filenames, and line numbers containing copyrighted code.
A statement of whether SCO's ownership of these copyrights is in any unresolved legal dispute
A statement that SCO has not licensed these copyrighted materials to any third party under the GNU General Public License, because that is the license under which I received them (and redistribution is explicitly permitted under this license)
That should take care of it. Asking for just the first one is just asking for errno.h again.
Daryl and Kevin McBride are just out to make money. This is how they do it, by (ab)using the legal system. They make outrageous claims, pump up the stock price (investors buy the stock like a lottery ticket - hey maybe SCO can do it, who knows?) and Microsoft pays their salary.
They will keep milking this cow until one day in court a judge will say "So, thousands of programmers from around the world help build this Linux system on their own time, or on their company's time, and they specifically state that this work does not belong to you by including the GPL, and yet you claim that you own this property? Next."
At this point Daryl will turn to Kevin and say "Well bro, that was a cool adventure, what do you want to do next? Hey maybe we can sell licenses to people who use smiley emoticons in their email - let's check out a copyright for that!"
And SCO will be a rapidly fading stain on the highway of the history of UNIX.
...energy, resources, money, and more. These people should be run out on a rail - big time. Every corp that got a letter like this should be asking (demanding) for the same proof. As the old Wendy's spokesperson used to yell, "WHERE'S THE BEEF?!"
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
No, being frank is for everyone. It is sickening that people have to pussyfoot and sugarcoat things. If something sucks, I'll say it sucks, not that "It is moderately deficient in numerous ways." Just say the fucking truth. It Sucks.
Political Correctness belongs in the trash, along with any letters from SCO.
Feh.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Bruce Perens, a Linux cheerleader... Why does that make me laugh?
yvan eht nioj
"I want to walk the Court through enough of our complaint to help the Court understand that IBM clearly did contribute a lot of the Unix-related information into Linux. We just don't know what it is," Kevin McBride told the court
Surely this points out that:
1) they have no clue and
2) they think any IBM addition to AIX belongs to SCO - i.e. they have no clue.
From the Salt Lake City Weekly Column:
In my experience, companies with a legitimate claim send out subpoenas, not threatening letters.
If I received a similar letter from SCO, it would be in the shredder before I finished reading it.
IMO that reply letter was a waste of paper and ink, but I can understand why some feel the need to 'fire back'.
Having a bookmark to Google does not make you an expert on everything.
"He's no geek," says Benjamin Choate, a self-trained Linux user living in Logan. "His tan's too good."....
;)
What stunning elegance in his words... truly an icon to the linux community!
The gABI (generic ABI) document, in the prologue, explicitly states that the target audience is developers of SVR4-based and _other unix_ operating systems. This implies to me, anyway, that they have no leg to stand on vis-a-vis the ABI issues either.
Couldn't we respond to SCO in much the same way we respond to telemarketers (well, pre-DNC telemarketers...) ?
SCO: You're using our IP, we want money.
Consumer: Oh really? Perhaps you'd care to talk to the head of the household?
[gives phone to baby]
SCO: You're using our IP, we want money.
Consumer: Oh really? Here's my response.
[holds phone up to airhorn, fires]
SCO: You're using our IP, we want money.
Consumer: Oh really? Is that so? Tell me more...
SCO: UNIX, blah, blah, blah, Linux, blah, blah, blah.
Consumer: Uh huh, go on.
SCO: Stolen IP, blah, blah, blah...
Consumer: Really? Could you elaborate further?
[sets phone down, makes cheese sandwich, watches two hours of TV, plays video game, comes back...]
SCO: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.....
Consumer: I think I'll need some materials on your plan. Could you send me your prospectus and the details of the alleged infringement?
[pause...click]
Consumer: Hello? Hello?
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Finally! This is exactly what needs to happen. If the law is too slow to shut these clowns up then the tech community must collectively gang up on them in this manner. Be civil, logical, but confrontational and specific, and document it all in the Internet. Bullies always fold under group pressure. Bravo!!
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
But ever since determining it owns the "ark and the covenant to the enterprise software industry," says McBride, SCO's bad fortune is on the upswing
Someone has not seen "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
Attributed to Bruce Perens:
"If Darl McBride had his way, he would have banned marriage too, because it obviously is against the remunerative interests of prostitutes"
I wonder if my wife will accept that argument?
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't
SCO's circus is better entertainment because most of us aren't paying quite as much for it...
-----------------------
You are what you think.
IMHO, Mr. Roy's letter succinctly sums up what everyone who receives one of SCO's extortion letters should say. It won't stop SCO from pursuing this line by any means. However, if enough people respond this way, SCO may soon realize they've poked their head into the badger's den.
Perhaps Mr. Roy would allow others to use his words in thier letters to SCO?
Seppuku: Your solution to my problems!
This is what was actually sent to SCO and quite honestly I don't see anything wrong with it. The first clause is dismissive but the demands are reasonable. Unprofessional would have been something like "Blow me."
/. thinks is acceptable in regards to this matter... What he said is not professional and should have been either reworded or dropped all together. You don't sling mud back because Bob the Bully slung mud in your eye.
Saying "Blow me." would be not only infantile and not professional it would be completely inappropriate and pointless.
I don't personally care what the
Grow up.
RICO.
Now being that IANAL, and I am a Brit as well, i'm in no position to really understand whether RICO is applicable in this case, but doesn't the US have an anti-racketeering law that includes attempts to extort cash under legal threats?
That lot is usually able to get warrants to enter places.
I believe 'the rest of the world' will follow the German way and let a court tell them to either put up or shut up.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
What SCO CEOs are really interested in is getting rich. They are doing very well so far.
Whether they'll win in court or not is irrelevant. Whether they'll collect on those Linux licenses is irrelevant. All that matters is the movement of the stock. This is a wag the dog situation. They have started a bullshit war and winning or losing it is not the point. The point is having the war and make it look as real as possible, for long enough.
This they are very successful at. I guess that's what they teach you in Management School.
What I want is them to be accountable for their actions as individuals, no more able to hide behind the "Corporation".
What I see is the history repeating: Very powerful people use power to create an environment where they are no longer accountable for their actions. Reminds me of "noble" families in the past - owning the land and the lives of others just because they are noble. Able to steal, rape and kill without consequences.
My feeling is, King of England is back.
I am not amused.
The entire letter was "acceptable" until his closing paragraph where he told them to stop wasting his time and their time... If you want to sound professional you do not tell someone to stop wasting your time in a letter. Find another way to put it.
I don't see what was unprofessional about his closing paragraph. He didn't insult them or call them names. The fact that he responded with a thoughtful, detailed and unambiguous letter addressing their points was professional.
He also has a duty to see to it that his company's time and money is not wasted on vague (and almost assuredly baseless) legal claims. Sometimes being professional means giving direct and unambiguous communication priority over 'professional sounding' ear candy.
You post to slashdot about someone wasting your time?! slashdot?!
Joe
Well, did he?
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
On second thought, I hope he's not using a slide deck.
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
Now that you have an actual Letter from SCO Please contact the SEC with this letter, inform them that SCO is attemting to extort money from you, send them a copy of this letter and also report this to the DA in your state This should be covered under the RICO act.
If any other company has recieved a letter like this plese report this to the SEC the DA and consider a class action suit against SCO for Extortion and Defamation.
What this means to you.
IF you win against SCO you can MAKE money from the law suit. a class action suit for 100M$ would not be too much for this kind of offence.
IANAL
Ohhhh
If you want to be possesive, it's just 'i-t-s', but if you want it to be a contraction, then it's 'i-t-apostrophe-s'. Scallywag.
What I noticed was the use of SHOUTING in SCO's letter. Did anyone else find themselves thinking "this sounds just like a newbie on Usenet" ??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
It hasn't fallen far enough. This past year is the year of lying about Linux. It's made them lots of money.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Will slashdot ever drag itself into the year 2004 and provide the ability to edit posts?
You already have the ability to edit posts: you hit the "Reply to This" link, and type any corrections into the text box. This lets normal posters correct themselves or change their minds without letting trolls remove the context from people who reply to them.
I was like, "where have I seen this guy before?" Computer guy...wearing a blue work shirt exposing bare forearms. Cocked a bit to the site with his arms folded across his chest.
And then I realized, it's Peter Norton.
As played by the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer!
Seriously, doesn't this guy look like every dumbass jock you knew from high school? Maybe he could get a part in "Varsity Blues II: Mox's MBA!"
Reading your letter just now, sofar it seems very well written, very good!. But I do have to disagree with one of your points:
[...] the fact that publically distributed GPL'ed software must [...] Be distributed free of charge, excluding any applicable distribution, transferral and/or warranty fees.
I don't think the GPL says any such thing, you can charge whatever you like, as long as you give whoever you sell your software the same rights. In the end it doesn't matter much, since not many are going to pay a lot of money for software that will (ultimately) be available free elsewhere. But I don't think the GPL forbids charging as much as you want.
What a rotten party, have we run out of beer or something?
Right, but it doesn't matter. The only person to read his response will be just above intern, and the responses will come in two forms: those that have/promise payment, and those that don't. Those that don't probably get filed away regardless of the response.
Remember silence is consent.
Tell that to Kobe. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Until everyone's favorite site in the Christmas Island domain went down, a single URL would suffice.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
This is one article that is definitely worth reading. I had my reservations, thinking an article in a Salt Lake paper would be backing SCO, but no. Just a very well laid out, easy to follow description of the entire sordid affair that clearly shows just how ridiculously SCO are acting. My favourite part:
"I want to walk the Court through enough of our complaint to help the Court understand that IBM clearly did contribute a lot of the Unix-related information into Linux. We just don't know what it is," Kevin McBride told the court, according to a transcript of the proceedings.
So, imagine your car is stolen, and you go to the police. "What kind of car was it?", they ask. "I don't know, but tell me what cars have been stolen recently and I'll tell you if any of them are mine", would apparently be SCO's response.
Anyway, this article can be highly recommended for lay people wanting to understand what this is all about, or worried if SCO might have a case. They won't be worried after reading this.
#define DARL "idiotic litigious bastard"
(oops - I guess I goofed on that).
But I did notice the thing about the ABI's. Does this now mean that if we were to change all the #define's in linux to be different values everything would be ok? So perhaps :
#define O_RDONLY 00
(which I find on my system) is violating SCO's right to Profit!, but
#define O_RDONLY 0x100
would not be?
I"m still not sure what these DARL s (see above) are claiming and now I'm more confused than ever.
And if you had taken into consideration the tone of my original response you would have realized that yes I am grown up - even if I did commit the faux pas of not folowing the proper decorum you appear to need in this conversation. You need to quit being so sensitive.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
What is the proper etiquette for responding to an extortion attempt?
Where is Emily Post when you really need her?
Does anyone think Darl realizes that SCO is running evil free Qmail as their MTA?
They could find me: Registered Linux Owner #324965
Still waiting for my letter, Darl!
The entire state of Utah is a mormom enclave; if you doubt it, note the proximity of the State House to the mormon church.
That's no accident.
As you go into the surrounding states, they're all largely mormon as well.
Keep in mind, I don't care if somebody's a mormon or not, but I think any area that is that monotheistic (perhaps inappropriate use of that word) is a bit scary in that if you are not-of-that-religion, things will not go easily for you.
I don't personally care what the /. thinks is acceptable in regards to this matter... What he said is not professional and should have been either reworded or dropped all together.
And you say this based on what? Is there some guide to business letter ettiquette that I missed?
What he said is not professional and should have been either reworded or dropped all together.
And when you pay his wages, you'll be able to impose your high standards of business ettiquette on him. Until then though, I imagine he'd tell you to write your own fucking letter and you too can get to choose the wording.
You don't sling mud back because Bob the Bully slung mud in your eye.
Here I do agree. Much better to headbutt Bob squarely between the eyes, and then drop-kick him in the nuts as he's going down.
Do you get to sue Tiger Woods if you buy it? :)
What a rotten party, have we run out of beer or something?
Given SCO's antics and out-and-out dishonestly, this letter was more than adequately professional. It was certainly better than SCO deserves. By using blunt language, he let's SCO know he is not going to roll for them, and they should look for weaker prey.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
"I told you not to be so stupid, you moron".
No, seriously, if you think that is an acceptable workaround to lack of ability to edit posts, then I'll be you see a GUI as unacceptable fluff on an otherwise perfect CLI.
Unprofessional would have been something like "Blow me".
I think it's kinda catchy.
Indecision is the key to flexibility.
In all seriousness, if SCO ever did come after my "amatuer" homebrew server, what should I do? (Besides fold like a wet napkin...)
Roll up a newspaper, and swat them on the nose with it. Say, in a firm, commanding voice, "bad Darl". Then rub their nose in a pile of something appropriate.
That is cool sounding, and all, but I don't think it's the way to go.
Just like we have manners at the dinner table, we should have manners when in a business enviroment. Following such standards will help one out immensely come review time.
fwiw, this came up on Groklaw and the answer was no. I personally didn't verify it myself. HTH
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
You goddamn bastards are wasting our time.
Fuck off until you can prove that we're stealing your code.
Pieces of shit.
You're nothing; like me.
Come on.... we're talking about a company that is saying "We haven't proven a damn thing yet, but nonetheless, we want you to give us money." This is a corporate version of a schoolyard bully. Being polite has it's place, but quite frankly, the statement is not, IMAO, infantile.
Now, "Fuck you. Strong letter to follow.", that's infantile.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
+1 Underrated --> +1 Linus
-1 Overrated --> -1 Darlness
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
"My time is worth $17 a second. I want an explanation and I want it to cost me less than $1500."
After reading the SCO letter and Gavin's response, I just couldn't sit around any longer and do nothing. Below is the text of the FAX I just sent Gavin:
Dear Mr. Roy,
I just read the article on slashdot.org about you receiving a demand letter from SCO regarding their yet-to-be-proven claims of IP infringement in linux. I also read your reply letter to Mr. Langer and would like to congratulate you for handling this matter in what I feel is the most appropriate response to these scoundrels.
Please consider this FAX to be a legally binding pledge in the amount of $1,000 to help defray any litigation costs should SCO file any sort of legal action against Just Sports. I sincerely hope you will resist any and all efforts by them to extract payment from linux users until such time as they have proven their claims in court.
Arrogant prick. We don't personally care what your opinion is regarding this thread.
It appears you do not work in an environment where tact matters. There are ways to say things without being unprofessional and get the exact same point across - and have a supportive audience. There is a saying that goes "Diplomacy is telling someone to go to hell and making them look forward to the trip". It is always important to be truthful, but as a person that supports many users, I have found you MUST sugar coat it. You can't tell a user (as an example) the problem with their computer is a glitch between the keyboard and chair - not if you expect to keep your job. Coarse language in a professional environment encourages people to ignore and discredit you.
By the same token, if someone is able to point out errors you have made yourself in a tactful way, you are likely to take less offense and actually learn something - but not if they say "Dude, you're fucking up, fix your shit".
I do agree that we have taken political correctness too far, although it is a separate issue from being tactful.
ymmv
I would have waited to see what the Judge has to say tomorrow before responding.
The judge won't have anything to say tomorrow, at least not about SCO v IBM. It's been postponed until 6 February.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
I usually don't responded to trolls since I'm the one usually doing the trolling, but at least we got a few feet across the land scape and didn't become apart of it.
I'm pretty sure I should stuck more punctuation in there but fuck it.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Bout a day late, and way too messy. No points for you!
You're nothing; like me.
Dude it was a posting from some guy saying he got a letter, and a follow up posting saying that BSD ports rock.
Second, my friend (female geek linux user!) who is a black-belt, works out quite often, and can give good advice on how to keep onself fit.
:)
Do you have pictures?
It's repellant that you try to turn this into a partisan political matter.
Many people who vote Republican are strongly on the side of Linux, and consider the SCO matter more of the same litigiousness that big-government types seem to relish.
---
I'm calling for a class action lawsuit against SCO. Their slander (FUD) has cost Open Source business MILLIONS of dollars. Large Corporations that were on the verge of moving to Open Source have been frightened away. Darl McBride would have the Joe Bloggs, the uniformed, of the world believing that it was Linux programmers who guided those planes into the World Trade Center on 9/11. We need to stop SCO's FUD dead in its tracks by launching a class action lawsuit. We need every Linux, BSD, OpenOffice, etc... user, programmer, business, author... to join a class action lawsuit against SCO. But we need some sort of organization. We need lawyers, as much as some of us hate them. And we need funds to pay for the lawyers. Join the SCO Class Action Lawsuit today!
Website Comming Soon.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
on the SCO shenanigans
I was wondering when it would finally be called!
It would be interesting if SCO just fired up a copy of NMAP and slowly did a ping sweep with OS detection on the internet to try to locate Linux hosts. It would certainly get some people's attention.
The tone of the letter was refreshingly clear and to-the-point. Quite nice compared to the more frequent passive-aggressive weasel words that pass for prefessional communications.
Brought tears to my eyes...it really did. Kudos to the journalist, Bruce, Linus and the Choate guy for telling it like it really is.
Some may say this article is biased in favor of Linux, but I guess it IS hard to be unbiased against the devil.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The point is moot anyway because Caldera, having acquired the rights to UNIX from old SCO, released Unix V32 under a BSD-Style license. This includes the ABI of course, download it yourself and see. The most SCO could require is that their copyright be recognized in the header files and that mention be made that they fall under a different license and not the GPL. Here's the signature on the email about it:
How did Caldera go from "open source enthusiasts" to decrying open source as communist? In your next letter to SCO I would politely offer to change the copyright attribution to Caldera and make note of the license if they would point to the files in question and the author listed in those files in Linux couldn't be contacted to dispute their claims.And you say this based on what? Is there some guide to business letter ettiquette that I missed?
You're joking right?
What if IBM simply says: "We cannot tell a lie... yes we did copy that code from Linux to Unix! Er, I guess you can't use that code for Unix then, because it's GPLed!"
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Actually not, it was exactly the right thing to do. What he said was don't waste your time and mine with any future letters unless you can state the specific code items that you claim ownership of.
This has a legal significance. Daryl has been put on notice that SCO's claims are in dispute and are not believed. What SCO want to do at this point is to get to a point where they could claim the infringement to be willful.
It is very clear that SCO have to state their claim with specificity if they want any further action. What the last paragraph does is in effect say 'I won't consider myself as having been put on notice until you address this issue'. The case history of SCO vs IBM shows this is an reasonable point of view.
In summary I don't think SCO would be sucessful in a claim of willful infringement and I don't think any further correspondence will have that effect either unless that point is met.
Rudeness can have a useful legal effect.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Totally off-topic (and I wish Mr. Benjamin Choate had been a SCO lawyer or some such scum so this post would have more universal appeal).
But I hope Benjamin goes by "Benjamin", not Ben. Either that, or I hope he doesn't have any Indian employees where he works, because "Ben Choate" sounds a lot like the phrase for "sister fucker" in Hindi.
One of the few phrases I know, actually. Heh. I'll post AC anyway since this could be offensive to Ben.
Many people who vote Republican are strongly on the side of Linux, and consider the SCO matter more of the same litigiousness that big-government types seem to relish.
The Republicans *are* the big government ones, or hadn't you been paying attention lately?
How you ask? Well, SCO provides nothing more than broadbased and unsubstantiated allegations. The SCO letter says, in essence, "You are using our code." Mr. Roy responded with, "Show me were." Further, SCO threatened to litigate the matter if Just Sports did not respond. The SCO letter tells Mr. Roy that if he wishes to avoid litigation then HE HAS to initiate a buisness relation. You'll notice this idea is proposed via:
This whole discussion as to whether the letter was unprofessional or not is stupid. When you look at Mr. Roy's response letter, you will notice that is actually more mature and professional that SCO's. SCO ordered Just Sports to initiate a buisness relationship or face the posiability of legal action. Notice that Just Sports was not given the opportunity to stop using Linux and switch to a "clean" system, SCO said that they have to do buisness.
All Mr. Roy's letter did was say, "We don't believe you," and provide the evidence to substantiate the claim. Furthr, Mr. Roy said that Just Sports and SCO will not talk until the court cases are settled.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Sorry, but SCO has always been reviled by the industry as being a bunch of arrogant assholes.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
It's not just an "apparent" diatribe. Stowell confirmed it.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Darl quote from the article:
.Hey Darl. That's the "Ark of the Covenant". OF. Not "and".
:)
"the ark and the covenant"
Pssst...
**************
The "AotC" contained the two tablets upon which the Ten Commandments were written, the staff of Aaron, and a pot of manna. It was where God manifested His earthly presence.
The Ark of the Covenant could only be approached once a year by the high priest on "Yum Kippur"- the Jewish Day of Atonement. On this day, the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies with the blood of a sacrificed lamb. It was also only on this day that God's presence manifested between the two Cherubs. The high priest would sprinkle the blood of the sacrificed lamb on the Mercy Seat. Once received by God, the blood of the lamb atoned (covered) for the sins of the high priest and the entire nation of Israel. This ritual was performed continuously, year after year. The Ark of the Covenant played a key role in the forgiveness of sins.
***************
Does this mean that Darl and Co are forgiving us of our alledged copyright/license/"whatever they're accusing us of today" sins? Thanks guys!
--Insert catchy
It's repellant that you try to turn this into a partisan political matter.
Many people who vote Republican are strongly on the side of Linux, and consider the SCO matter more of the same litigiousness that big-government types seem to relish.
My reference to the Dubyament was a reference to the fact that the president is using his power actively to help big business more than anyone else. A good portion of the government is following his lead.
If you feel this is partisan I think you need to look a little closer at what your government is doing.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
In the meantime, treat the SCO complaint as seriously as you'd treat a drunk cop who's just pulled you over and is trying to charge you with posession of drugs. He has no case, you just have to survive the immediate encounter. Don't sign anything, don't hand over any money, make no representation that you intend to agree with their demands, just keep them talking until you have enough evidence to hurt them with.
Gekido's Lair
Excuse me for not knowing enough about this, but it seems I read somewhere that SCO sells (or whatever) to its clients some GPL software (samba?)
It is clear the company did not accept the GPL, since they claim it is invalid. But as the GPL points out, nothing else gives them permission to redistribute it.
If I were the Samba team, I would sue SCO for selling my intellectual property to others without my consent. Isn't there some law against that kind of thing?
as an old, burned-up, has-been reporter and not a lawyer, this is a nicely done version of what is known around the courthouse as a "shit or get off the pot" letter. quite well done.
much better done than the version I sent to the Nebraska Attorney General's office thirty years ago after they tried to dun me instead of my insurance company after a little traffic accident munged up a guard rail.
they preserve your rights, show willingness to negotiate specific questions of interest, and give nothing away, including any further time and effort without specific facts being raised.
Mr. Roy deserves some sort of award for excellence in handling seekers of deep pockets.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I was hoping someone would do this. I recommended someone call their bluff weeks ago:
i d= 7893291
:)
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=91696&c
He was free to use my writing, but he could have at least included me in the footnotes.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Blow me
Fuck you
Eat shit
Suck cock
Lick ass
etc... etc...
Well, since Linux stands for Linux Is Not UniX, I don't think this holds much merit :) They could be talking about authorized derivatives by Unix licensees. Read my other post however on why the header files are probably public domain and that Caldera released them under a BSD-Style license after aquiring the Unix rights from old SCO.
if the Salt Lake City Weekly article quotes him correctly. It's "Ark of the Covenant", not "ark and the covenant".
I wonder if anyone has considered looking into filing charges of Mail Fraud with the United States Postal Service. If they are using the USPS to deliver these extortion letters, couldn't that be considered utilizing the federal mail service to perpitrate fraud? Especially when the courts rule against SCO. Does anyone know enough about this to comment?
IANAL, but this may also be laying the groundwork for possible legal action against SCO if SCO continues to send letters or makes other threats, harrassment, etc. For example, it establishes communication (and a paper trail for it) that defines the beginning of losses (of valuable time) could lead to libel, slander, harrassment, etc. It could even become an initial paper trail for criminal charges (I don't know, could racketeering, extortion, etc. apply to what SCO is doing? A lot of similarities to a Mafia protection scam). An interesting angle would be in proceedings of disbarment of their legal counsel and/or law firms' attornies.
a couple hundred years ago some dumbfuck lawyers agreed that to meet a legal standard of "emphasized" or "clear", something had to be in ALL CAPS, and now our generation suffers for it.
I am not sure how they could tie dynamic IP addresses that may be running Linux to the actual user (name, address, etc.), but I am sure if we looked, we could find a way. I would think static IP's would not be much of a challenge, especially if it were tied to a domain name (it would then be a 'no brainer').
But perhaps there is not enough money in the small fry to warrant SCO doing this. And if they try an 'RIAA', maybe if the various defence funds set up by IBM, Redhat, etc. were opened up to help the little guys, then I would think the return on investment (cost of lawyers versus the money they could get from a home user) would be so low as to not be worth while.
Mind you, given that IBM and Redhat, etc. are not likely to expand their net to back home users of Linux, and also given SCO's history, this could happen. Given SCO's history: that unless there is something we are not seeing, they are already going after something with a negative return on their investment: suing IBM without seemingly a leg to stand on.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Does this mean we can blame AOL on a previous generation of lawyers??!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Dry-El? That's Superman's brother, right?
Be careful! Bears shouldn't consume large furry dogs.
I probably would have gone with...
"Dear Mr Langer,
Go fuck yourself."
Straight and to the point.
Novell is in Provo....used to be in orem, but now it's in Provo.
Also... the Deseret News is the absolute worst place to get real news. I
delivered that paper when i was 14, and I happened to know some of the writers.
They are BARELY literate people in some cases. Of course the problem
here will be that the Judge is most likely a reader of the Deseret
News when he goes home at night to his wife(ves)and 6 children.
this sig is deprecated
Damn straight.
Lines like that will only aid to pissing off the team at SCO, at which point they'll have to follow etiquette rules and bite their tongue.
Slashdot sucks
That would be stupid. Those people have no money.
This is capitalism. Not communism. If you want to live in a magic land with happy people dancing around giving hugs and kisses then by all means go move to Finland. This is America, and here CAPITALISM is what we practice. It is capitalism, not communism, that gave you the computer you are typing your posts on. Capitalism, not communism, that made Linux possible in the first place. Darl is only doing what all good capitalists do, and that is make money by whatever means necessary. GOD will welcome him with open arms into heaven, because god favors capitalism, not communism.
The burgers are Ronalds, but the lawsuits are Darl's
Hell Yes. Thank You. The entire notion of what's acceptable as "professional" has gone too far. Hell, if it wouldn't earn me a trip to Guantanimo for bio-terror, my reply would have been to shit in an envelope and send it right back. Then again, I'm kind of a pain in the ass.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Yeah, but in this case, the standards are like having to eat with toothpicks in a dinner table... Changing the expected manners to "using knife and fork", ie somewhat normal language, would benefit everybody (except lawyers of course).
wouldn't this mean the direction as a company simply sucks? I mean look at mandrake, redhat, slackware! Even they have made money. Something tells me it's more than his opinion of open source/free software than he even grasps!
Why can't I log on?? I tried and couldn't.
Gavin Roy is my hero, (maybe I'll buy something from "Just Sports USA"). I consider the letter well written, concise, to the point and effective.
Maybe SCO can hide the information when dealing with the courts and IBM, but if every one that hears from SCO takes this tact, this is the way to get it all out in the open and fix the situation for once and for all.
Hey! I have a Pentium 60 running an indistinguishable, heavily patched Redhat 5.1 for email, web, and general tinkering... and I've got heaps of money.
your saying about diplomacy was intended as derisive of diplomacy.
Political correctness and indirect language is only necessary when you don't want to offend someone who would take direct language as offense.
In this case the author was civil and direct, if not particularly polite (which is certainly not required).
Actually, the only thing that I saw that was unprofessional were the typos. We all harp on those in /. comments, but in business letters of this sort, they are extremely unprofessional.
(e.g., "...more than willing discuss...", "...licensing needs to indeed exist...").
May I suggest that companies given letters by SCO consider filing charges and append to their response letters:
Additionally, if SCO fails to provide the aforementioned documents of proof and continues to try to extract purchases of licenses from us, we will have no recourse but to have our lawyers file charges of extortion and racketeering against your company.
Sincerely,
What would Jesus do? One word: SMITE!
In this house we obey the laws of Thermodynamics!
Unprofessional would have been something like "Blow me."
...SCOGROUPSUCKSBLOWMESCOGROUPSUCKSBLOWMESCOGROUPS UCKSBLOWME...
I'd have had some letterhead made up with something to that effect micro-printed around the edges.
I assume many others noticed the following odd retort from Darl: {quote} Another gripe Torvalds has with McBride is that the Linux community has pleaded all along, 'tell us what the code is, and if it doesn't belong there, we'll remove it.' McBride says SCO has shown plenty. "They're disingenuous on that or they would be ripping out the million lines of code we've already pointed to," he said, adding that the violations are too far-reaching to simply rip out anyway. One million lines amounts to roughly 20 percent of the entire Linux kernel. McBride says SCO revealed the offending code last August at its Las Vegas SCOForum. "Truly, and then they just ignored it," he said.{end} I beg your pardon, Darl, but... 1) "million lines of code"?!? How many lines of code were even present when the alleged borrowing occurred? 2) "we've already pointed to"?!? That's rich. This is precisely the heart of the issue: which are the offending lines of code, Darl?!? Show them! SCO consistently refuses, although the article suggests that 60 pages of... something... was provided IBM. You cannot blame Linux programmers for not fixing lines that you refuse to point out! Wright's First Observation states: "Whenever someone is in error, they will, at some point, in word or deed, not merely refute but contradict themselves. They will do this not because it is logically necessary but because this is how human beings have been observed to behave." This Observation is subject to Wright's First and Second Laws. McBride's arguments are not merely wrong - they are internally incoherent and self-contradictory.
Yes, it was. The point wasn't to say that I enjoy diplomacy, but that you get further by being diplomatic. It is a painful exercise, but one that is neccessary.
ymmv
Dear Mr. Darl McBride,
It has come to my attention that something in your house may belong to me.
You are breaking the law by having my possession. I am willing to rent it to you for $200 a year, or $700 if you use it commercially.
Obviously, I cannot identify the item because you would give it back to me. I am willing to prove that the item is there, however. Send me a list of every single possession in your house, and I will tell you whether it is somewhere in the list.
Please contact me about payment or I will send this case to my contigency counsel, who will litigate you until you pay.
In the meantime, be aware that I will be spreading lies about you, your family, and anything else you happen to care about.
Sincerely,
--alteran
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
Manners at the dinner table? Like, lying about property you own that you really don't? Attempting to extort money from companies that are operating legitimately, forcing them to waste time (and money) with this nonsense?
I'll have a second helping of tactful directness, please.
I had a sucky sig.
Another woman (Cindy) came on the line and was helpful. I explained that I currently use Linux at home and that my company was looking at potentially using Linux. She asked how big the company was and I said it was we were a small consulting firm with about five people. I told her I was worried about potential liablity for using Linux and I was worried about getting sued. She said that I had nothing to worry about at home. She also said that my company really had nothing to worry about as they are just targetting larger companies right now. I explained that it didn't make me feel much better. Since my company currently doesn't use Linux and are looking at using it in the future, I was worried about potential liablity down the road. She said we really had nothing to worry about, but we should send a letter to Ryan Tibbits stating what I told her and how we were going to use Linux. They would then keep that letter "on file". I said that didn't make me feel much better that they would have my name and address should they decide to go after small businesses in the future. She made it sound like the letter would be some kind of indemnification, like if we contacted them requesting licenses and they didn't give them to us but had our letter on file that we would be ok in the future too. I thanked her and said I would do that.
After hanging up I realized that since we are a consulting firm and we provide services and install software for clients that they may be liable as well. I called her back and explained that we provide services for a larger company and are looking to expand into more companies in the near future as well and that I was worried about their potential liablity. She gave me the name and phone number of a sales rep to talk about licensing.
If we cannot use Linux without paying SCO a license, we will definitely not go that route. Our system currently runs on Windows and one of primary reasons to switch to Linux would be cost if we start distributing our application and providing services to many more companies, expecially small ones. I got the voicemail of the sales rep, when he calls back I will ask to get a letter saying it is ok to use Linux for free for our purposes. If he can't give me that I'll ask that he give me evidence that they have code in Linux. If there's affringing code there, I could probably replace it with something from BSD or Unix V32 that Caldera released under a free license. Failing that, I will ask if alternatives such as BSD would be ok to use by themselves. Failing that, I will contact my state attorney general.
seven U.S. Supreme Court justices who believe that 'the motive of profit is the engine that ensures the progress of science,'"
Last I checked, there were 9. Is he being stupid, or is there some Supreme Court decision he's talking about where the justices ruled 7-2?
Actually, from my non-lawyer perspective RICO might be a very good way to go. Companies can sue in civil (RICO does have civil provisions) court and receive treble (3x) damages. I wonder if the SCO shakedown letters qualify and what damage threshold one would have to prove? Any lawyers?
> Will slashdot ever drag itself into the year 2004 and provide the ability to edit posts?
Yah, about the same time you learn to start using the Preview button...
Why pgsql? Why not some linux kernel mail-lists? First of all, linux mail-lists will be more aporpriate to discuss linux related issues.
Besides, pgsql community is historically negative about Linux - they have roots back in Berkley and keep that love to BSD still.
Also, PostgreSQL is BSD-licensed and their leaders are fanatically against GNU. They actually think that GNU is evil, and they bring MySQL name as a demonstration of it.
With all my love to PostgreSQL as to very well designed DBMS, I don't understant why issues related only to Linux and GNU should be discussed in pgsql mail-lists?
Less is more !
I think it gets the point across that what they are requesting is a waste of time (in his and most of our opinions anyway) until the other legal matters are sorted out and SCO produces proof to their claim. He clearly laid out his demands for proof and doesn't want a "because we said so letter".
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Manners at the dinner table?
You mean, trying to steal everyone else's food? Letting go with a bad pass of gas? Telling your host you have a patent on eating food with anything except your fingers, and now he must pay you $699 for the meal he fed you? What manners.
Wiggity-Word!
The phrase "waste my time" just does not fit the rest of the document. In previous paragraphs, his words are flowing and elegant. Then you read that last bit and it looks like a sloppy forum post.
What did this do for my image of the writer? He went from sounding like a professional businessman to someone who can't maintain a steady writing style through a single page document.
It simply took away from the letter, regardless of whether it's civil.
Much better to headbutt Bob squarely between the eyes, and then drop-kick him in the nuts as he's going down.
You, sir, are truly a poet. Seriously, you should be an attorney. Summations like that are guaranteed to sway jurors in your favor and ensure a career of successful cases.
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
The value of SCO would be destroyed if a very large number of application code developers, code maintainers, and installers declared that they would have nothing to do with any SCO products. Getting the message out to the small investors and proprietors that the product was 'black' would pull the rug out from under Mr. Darl McBride and the rest of the associated SCOundrels. There is no point in dealing or trafficking in any product, software or otherwise, which is, in effect, unsupported, because nobody is going to buy it. Bye Bye SCO you've had your day in the sun. Somebody else's turn now.
Heh. Off topic here, but I remember a kid in school who repeatedly picked on kids. Even put one in a cast. He was never punished, because he always did it between classes or at other times that teachers were not directly watching.
Well, one day he picked on a kid who fought back. Smashed the bully's head into the wall and broke one of his teeth. The kid that fought back was suspended for two weeks and treated like a pariah from that point on.
Interesting how the bully got away with it for years but the one time someone fought back, it was the person who was defending themselves that got in trouble with the teachers.
I saw this type of thing happen constantly in public schools.
SCO *is* wasting a valuable person's time... he had to spend time treating that letter seriously, and if I were him, I'd be keeping a log of all time spent on the SCO issue in the hope that it could be used to sue them in small claims court for expenses after SCO loses in court.
/.
Now lets see.. at $4/hour thats three billion dollars and counting.
Yes you guessed it - I'm keeping a log of all the time I've spent reading SCO stories on
while sco {
wget -O
}
I think he is refering to the source code in that statement. For instance, Red Hat inc. can and does indeed charge for its distribution of linux, however they can not charge for the software its self, on the distribution of said software. Section one of the GNU General Public License Terms And Conditions For Copying, Distribution And Modification state: " 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee." So, when Red Hat charges a fee for their Linux distrobution they aren't charging for the work of the authors but the work of the people burning the cd's and putting them into nifty boxes with those stickers we love and admire. That is why Linux is considered to be a free operating system, because the GPL only grants permission to charge a fee for the distribution of the software. Also, from the preamble, "Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, ..."
This is why Linux is next to free if you purchase it from a distribution company, because as soon as you pay the fee for the CD's or the bandwidth to download it and any fee's for a waranty the distributor might offer, you are licensed under the GPL to distribute the linux software as you wish. This is why Microsoft hates it so, with their license you can not distribute, not even within your own home.
Now it might seem that I have gotten off topic from this mini-thread. However, while the GPL does not mandate that the software be universaly distributed free of charge as the author of the letter states, it does mandate that you may only charge for the distribution of the software and not the software itself, thus once the first copy's distrobution fee is paid (if there is one) it never needs to be paid again.
So the spirit of the GPL is free software distribution but it does not require free distribution.
I apologise if I was too verbose.
they are just waiting to get the precise GPS cooridinates
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
I wish people would start forwarding these letters that come from SCO without any proof of infringement to the various States' Attorneys General for investigation of fraud and extortion. You'd think 50 criminal investigations would bring SCO to it's knees.
RedHat is no longer an Open Source company in the sense that most people here mean. In time, RedHat will enter into a contract with SCO, and go on their merry way.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
WOW, dude. You must be like the terror of the local McDonalds...
You're not sounding very professional. Everyone knows it's a "manually operated excavation implement." If we call it a spade like everyone else, it's like we just wasted all that time and money in business school!
Yeah, the Democrats are the just-slightly-smaller-than-big government ones. I've been paying attention!
"Insightful" was the mod you really wanted.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I'm replying to this because I accidentally modded it wrong.
meh
The difference is that he is wasting his own time on slashdot, instead of other people wasting it for him.
...to see someone diplomatically tell SCO to go to hell. I hope the court system and the judges don't let these folks down.
Catherine
5.1--nice.....that os must look like a pair of 15 year-old overalls.
Don't Panic!
Wow, I've never seen such an egregious overuse of underlining. And caps, for that matter. And bold and italics, too! Geez, there's only five lines of text that are not emphasized in some hysterical fashion. Oh, God, pray they don't discover WordArt.
I think they should have written it like this:
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
"I want to walk the Court through enough of our complaint to help the Court understand that IBM clearly did contribute a lot of the Unix-related information into Linux. We just don't know what it is."
*cough*
I am requesting a meeting so that we may discuss the alternatives that are available to your firm. W3 B3L13V3 W3 C4N 9R09053 50LU710N5 7H47 W1LL B3 4GR334BL3 4ND 3C0N0M1C4LLY F3451BL3 F0R J00. If you fail to respond to our effors to pursue a licensing arrangement, W3 W1LL 7URN Y0UR N4M3 0V3R 70 0UR 0U7S1D3 C0UN53L F0R C0N51D3R4710N 0F L3G4L 4C710N.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I was in this guys shoes i would tell SCO where exactly to place their license. After the whole IBM thing spanks darl and co. i would start suing SCO for extortion. some good can come from this if this gentleman would stand his ground.
There is one simple solution.
Look at firms you are doing business with. Do they have a (semi)direct link to SCO ?
Stop using them and make sure to tell them why.
If the revenue is getting down, there will be questions asked.
Does your company use SCOftware ? Talk to the IT guys. Make it stop.
Anyone who thinks professionalism consists of euphemism and hiding unpleasant things should learn from the comment above.
Roy did not mince words, nor should he have. You could smell the seasoned businessman in his letter.
and the choir says "Amen"
$sco = 'loser'; =)
SCO, possibly backed by Micro$oft, in a desperate proxy war (much like the Korean War) to destroy the lower-cost competitor will destroy itself under a mountain of litigation and debt. (Before flaming: Not implying that America was wrong to go to war, just a good example.) Is there any anti-trust / RICO laws being violated if it was provably instigated by Microsoft?
Interesting, isnt this an analog to the rBST / Monsanto vs organic "there's no difference BS" ? Monsanto sued an organic farmer for false advertisement because the organic farming claims merely *IMPLY* (!!!) that non-organic milk is less safe/wholesome/etc. So, the organic processors are forced to include the same disclaimer that non-organic mik includes ("there is no scientific evidence..." blah blah, of course there isnt if you dont do an unbiased double-blind study and chemical analysis)
In conclusion, SCO/Microsoft should not cry over spilled milk.
"This just in, Micro$oft buys the world and all intellectual property. Everyone must report to approved processing centers to purchase thought licenses. All creativity henceforth shall be automatically the property of Micro$oft, licensed back to the creator for a small fee."
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
You'll immediately have 95% of the people in your workplace under your thumb...
Whatever. If you worked for me, I doubt you'd last 5 words into your first sentence.
Didn't Mommy and Daddy show you enough attention when you were a child?
Actually, they taught me that resorting to profanity every other word makes me sound juvenile and stupid. You've reinforced that life lesson.
Having manners does not require one to obscure or ignore the truth or any facts. Tact means to try to communicate with others in the least hurtful manner possible but communicating whatever may be at issue (if there is no point in doing so or doing so would only cause harm, tact might dictate that one say nothing).
In this case, SCO has attempted to threaten and bully others into ignoring the obvious - that they have not proven their assertions on contract or copyright law in any forum more meaningful than a weekend bong party involving LSD while inhaling Cheetos and watching QVC.
Stating the obvious in this case is both tactful (there is no point in addressing licensing until you prove your point in a court of law) and reasonable (it puts SCO on notice that their targets are less likely to be intimidated by claims without evidence to back them up). It prevents the issue from wasting any more time than it already has. Companies won't give SCO money until they have a legal claim (and the enforcement behind it). Until SCO has legal backing, the letters are a waste of time.
In a more base counter, when has SCO adhered to any standard of manners for the corporate environment (other than that championed by companies such as Bre-X and Enron)? SCO has illustrated with their words and actions that they will not adhere to standards applied to others; they are unworthy of either respect nor gentleness aimed at preserving their feelings. In fact, their misperception of their status indicates that they need to have their feelings (or their logic) altered in some fundamental way.
Don't confuse professional and polite, they are not the same. All definitions of professional point to your ability to understand and carry out your job in a proficient manner.
This is a very impolite letter, very few people are paid to be polite.
How politely would you respond to extortion?
I'm curious: Who has the copyright to that letter?
I imagine printing it on t-shirts and selling these at a Linux Convention and via the web is a good business idea.
Remember my shares when you go public.
As a "professional" (whatever that means) I might hesitate to tell a customer or client to stop wasting my time, but I certainly wouldn't hesitate to say it to some random jackass who walked in off the street and tried to extort money out of me using vague and wildly implausible claims.
Maybe he enjoys posting on Slashdot, but doesn't enjoy listening some salesman blather on and on about some half-baked nonsense? Doing what you enjoy is not a waste of time.
I disagree, this is perfectly professional. SCO are wasting his time, he would like them to stop doing that so "Please stop wasting my time" is a perfectly reasonable request to make.
The guy has obviously received 2 letters from SCO already, neither of which offer any reasons why the guy should take any notice of them at all so they are obviously intent on bombarding him with pointless timewasting letters, it's right that he asks them to stop doing this.
Actually, that's not where the name comes from, though it's an interesting interpretation that I hadn't heard before. Recursive acronyms started (as far as I know) with GNU, though, and Linus didn't write Linux with the original intent of using it with the GNU system -- that came later, when the Hurd kernel wasn't progressing fast enough and people needed another kernel to use with GNU.
Linus's explanation
Finally, a business leader who tells it as it is - it is extortion and SCO is wasting everyones time and resources. Hopefully the judge will say so tomorrow.
But this exec has his head screwed on tight! He was a clear thinker in stating he didn't want to be bothered with petty extortion from fraudsters like SCO.
Now it is too bad the FBI and SEC are on their buts with this...
HEAR HEAR!
you running for president anytime soon?
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
That said, there have been times when I remember listening to someone and almost being sick hearing it, even though it was put rather ... diplomatically. Sugar-coated poison, as it were. Gives a rather nasty chill, primaily because you understand it ...
So it's okay to waste your own time but when someone else wastes your time it turns somehow bad? Oh the hypocrisy!
That reponse letter is damn wonderful, to the point. I wonder if Gavin would allow us to use it when we receive our Licensing Fee threat.
What do you say Gavin?
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
Take your Nazi ideology and shove it up your ass. You think we would feel sorry for you? Biggotry should carry a death penalty.
I don't know what Just Sports USA does or what they sell -- but I'm buying from them. Support those who stand up to SCOtortion!
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
Actually, he looks more like Biff from 'Back to the Future' in that shot. When timelines are once more righted expect to find him putting that second coat of wax on McFly's Bimmer.
Unfortunately, I'm on the horns of a dilemma, living in Seattle. Both my Senators and my district's Representative are liberal Democrats, and I certainly don't want to see them replaced by more shills for the present junta-er, I mean administration. One of said Senators, Patty Murray, is up for re-election this year. She's facing the fight of her politcal life, with the Republicans putting tremendous resources, not to mention every dirty trick Karl Rove can think up, into defeating her.
On the other hand, this being Chairman Bill's home town, the above-mentioned Representative and Senators very likely had their copies of Darl's letter hand-delivered by a Microsoft lobbyist along with a hefty campaign contribution.
Seems there are some days you can't safely tie your shoes...
Cool, now I know (and knowing is 1/2 the battle).
Why wouldn't someone get a binary copy of the Unix V code that was supposedly lifted from SCO if they signed up for a license or at least a detailed description of the property they were buying? Otherwise they are requiring a license, but not providing a product they are licensing.
For example: Eolas goes to end users demanding a license fee for a specific product found in a Internet Explorer version distributed by Microsoft under an existing license. Eolas doesn't have the right to change the existing EULA between Microsoft and the end user, they can only tell the end user to stop using the product. But if Eolas were to send out a CD or piece of paper describing the patent they owned and a piece of paper saying they could use that patent under blah blah terms, then the end user would not need to be re-negotiating the Internet Explorer agreement, he would be buying the rights to use a patent directly from Eolas.
Now enter SCO, they would have to say EXACTLY what rights they were selling. For example, they would have to say "we are selling you the rights to use this portion of Unix V which performs 'blank' function, this is our patent/copyright we are letting you use". They can't sell you the 'right not to be sued'. They can't sell you the right to use SMP or any other IBM developed code because they don't have a copyright or patent to it.
We need to change the question. It should be changed from 'why should we buy your license?' to 'what are you selling and is the procuct you are selling going to give us the right to use the Linux code you dispute?'. I would wager that a careful examination of the license would indicate that they are not selling a product which would solve any legal issues for anyone, that it is merely an assurance that SCO will not sue them over unspecified violations. Conveniently, the license is not available on the SCO web site that I could find. I cannot read the text of the license.
SCO source license page
Besides a few industry analysts who attribute some merit to SCO's claims, the undercurrent of SCO supporters has yet to take up arms alongside McBride. "The reason they're silent is because if they stick their head up, they tend to get shot by a bunch of Linux people," McBride said
I suppose that the silent majority of polka fans didn't speak up when Adrian Cronauer was playing rock music back in Vietnam either, despite protests from 2nd Lt. Steven Hauk claiming that most GI's really preffered a rousing polka to Jimi Hendrix.
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
Wow, you all thought this was serious? I'll give you a hint. The "Every time you DO_BAD_THING, God kills CUTE_LITTLE_THING" is supposed to be sarcastic. I guess all that's left to say is "Every time you post subtle sarcasm on Slashdot, clueless idiots kill your karma." And I expect this will get modded offtopic, as well.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
There is a saying that goes "Diplomacy is telling someone to go to hell and making them look forward to the trip".
Wrong!!
SALES is telling someone to go to hell and making them look forward to the trip.
DIPLOMACY is convincing someone that doesn't want to go to hell that they need to go anyway.
And, "telling it like it is" is NEVER wrong.
What IS wrong is communicating in language that is ambiguous and can possibly give a wrong impression.
--- skorpion_of_ranax
"A computer without a Microsoft OS is like a dog without a brick tied to its head"
The Boy Scouts of America serve warrants? Who knew...
Eat recycled food - it's good for the environment, and OK for you.
Dear Mr. Roy,
Thank you for sharing your response to SCO with the world.
If you would be so kind, other people receiving similar letters would be able to respond in identical terms if you attach a permission to copy (probably it is a good idea to indicate that such permission excludes your name and company identification)
<polite>
Give those B&st4rd5 what they deserve!
i don't really agree - doing the research necessary to refute claims like sco are making, especially if your primary business is NOT linux-oriented (ie a sports store that happens to use linux), takes a lot of time and energy. ignoring sco does no one any good, if you can force sco to be the ones 'ignoring' your questions, then your case is bolstered considerably if/when sco inevitably tries to push the situation via legal maneuvers. otherwise you are seen as 'uncooperative' in the court. anyone that's tried to ignore a creditor for example, and then tried to argue otherwise later on is well aware of the difficulties in 'ignoring' someone and how it may bite you later on. his respose was entirely reasonable and justified. sco IS wasting everyone's time, trying to push through these types of threats before they have even resolved the issue of whether they truly 'own' the IP rights they are trying to threaten us based on.
Gekido's Lair
Losers and their fairy tales please die and go meet your pretend friend.
Gavin Roy is my hero, (I'll probably buy something from "Just Sports USA"). I consider the letter well written, concise, to the point and effective.
Don't knock him guys, he's on the firing line and he "did good" for us.
Maybe SCO can hide the information when dealing with the courts and IBM, but if every one that hears from SCO takes this tact, this is the way to get it all out in the open and fix the situation for once and for all.
Maybe it's not professional, but I for one was pleased that someone told these twits off. Sometimes, "professional" ways of saying something just don't have the right impact.
i am a soviet space shuttle
So... do you think we tripled their daily readership numbers? It was a very well-written article, will probably get linked to hither-n-yon.
I'm just wondering what the feedback effect would be... "Hey, we posted an article about SCO and our readership went through the roof!"
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
That's what Flower said. Why are you brining it up as if he thinks otherwise? His point was quite clear in the matter.
As far as the possible offence the phrase, "Before you waste any more of my time or yours..." could cause I don't think it's any more blunt than, "I don't personally care what the /. thinks is acceptable", or, "Grow Up".
Either you really misread Flower's post or something even stranger is going on here.
I thought BSD was monolithic like Linux.
There will be three critical legal tests as a result of SCOs actions. I'm douptful Darl is aware of the ground breaking he is making or what is truely at stake now that he has chosen to go down this path.
1. Obveously SCO is trying to clame unilateral legal ownership of Unix.
There are countless smaller tests in this but it boils down to this.
If SCO dose not have full and unrestricted control over the Unix source the rest of the case crumbles.
2. The legal enforcability of the GPL.
SCO wishes to contend the GPL is not a legal or binding contract.
3. Suing before establishing ownership.
SCO is asking companys to pay a liccens fee for using Linux prior to establishing ownership of the Linux code.
As SCO has yet to establish any legal clame to Linux it seams to me suing the users is legally questionable at best.
Should any one of the three tests pass the computer world would be thrown into legal chaos.
I don't actually exist.
they're so funny!!
I guess they're going to sue ANSI or ISO, or maybe IEEE for stealing "their" error code numbers!
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
I'm self employed actually. Didn't you read the article? Anyway, my friends call me Ben, but while working I go by Benjamin. Though I wonder if you're pronouncing my name right. Practically no one does. It's just a ch with a hard O sound. Like ch + oat.
I guess either no one caught the fact that I was posting about my own quote or no one thought it was funny.
No. All other professionals, and most non-professionals can be frank, and will be, occasionally. It's just that there's time and place for frankness, sugar-coating, and many other approaches in-between. All-around good engineers (ie. ones with normal or good social skills) know the distinction as well as, say, business people. And whether one likes frankness or not depends on person (and situation to some degree) more than profession of person(s) involved.
There are of course occupations where frankness for all but limited partners and special occasions is strongly frowned upon. Lawyers are extreme examples where act of trying to be frank seems to cause extreme distress; it's like they were physically ill or something :-)
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Are they maybe a menber of the BSA?
That lot is usually able to get warrants to enter places.
The BSA gets those warrants because the software they "defend" is under licensing agreements that say they can audit their customers. The customer's have agreed to that, or they wouldn't be running the software.
There is no such clause in the GPL.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I'd laugh in their faces. Going after individual users for a company level infringement is simply unprecidented. They'd be the ones to fold the moment they actually had to defend the claim.
It's been a long time.
If you want to sound professional, you don't write thousands of companies demanding payment for a product that you didn't even sell the person in question.
It's been a long time.
Umm... it is one thing to say, "dude, you're fucking up. Fix your shit", and quite another to say, "you're a fucking idiot for writing this shit".
One thing addresses what one is doing, the other addresses only the person.
I don't like what I'm doing being identified as "wrong", but it is far different than being told I'm a fuckup.
If someone you know is walking into a major meeting and you notice that their pants are unzipped, do you say, "dude, your pants are unzipped", or "dude, 'check six'", or whatever, or do you let him walk into the meeting with his pants unzipped?
For more information, see here (last paragraph).
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Agreed. "Professional" does not mean wearing a suit or writing letters that sound like the Queen of bloody England.
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
First off, what is 'professional'? Providing a quality service and caring about your customers. This doesn't extend to suppliers IMO.
Just to make it clear though. It's important to have good relationships with your suppliers. But it's a very different relationship to the one with your customers. I'd never use the phrase "wasting my time" to a customer. I'd expect them to walk if I did.
He also did the right thing with a supplier - being very clear about what he wants. OK, he could have said something like "I will not be addressing any further comments on this issue until the resolution of the IBM case", but saying in effect "stop wasting my time", drives the message home.
I imaging they are probably considering their options for moving elsewhere anyway.
Just to pick one word out "user"... or an alternative word "customer".
Suppliers are completely different. Firstly, you can often replace a supplier much quicker than a customer. Suppliers don't pay your bills, you pay theirs.
That's not to underestimate the importance of professional practise and good manners, but if one of my suppliers sent me a threatening letter like this without at least sending someone to see me and talk it over a beer, I'd be off to see my IT guy to ask about the feasibility of removing them as a supplier.
Suppliers are important to businesses and good ones should be nurtured. When they slip up once, some companies just drop them, which is stupid short-termism. But in this case, it's a company not respecting their customers, and they expect to lose them.
i disagree. i may have agreed with you if SCO's letter to him didnt end with a threat in caps to the effect of 'if you dont cooperate WE WILL SIC OUR LAWYERS ON YOUR ASS'
sure it may be standard in circumstances where copyright infringement is 'supposed' to have occured, but if the sco guy hadn't ended his letter with a lawsuit threat then maybe the guy may have worded his letter differently.
you get what you give
Ahhhh... Darl will feel the pain of eternal burnination!
I think his ending is what one might say to someone not professionally competent but just plain stupid, and was therefore quite OK in that context. McFraud is just a puppet, we all know who is pulling his strings, and I would not give him the credence of the slightest trace of professional competence (except in the field of creating Illegal Monopolies) either.
> Dry-El? That's Superman's brother, right?
:)
I don't know whether to laugh because it's damn funny, or to kill myself because I understood.
And then there's the IP-Personality module that some bright spark produced for Linux-2.4.18 (I think). With that installed, you can make your Linux box look like a Sega Dreamcast, if you feel so inclined.
Someone else suggested that Netcraft could tell - so, does Netcraft just use the server ID string for that? If so, I'm sure it won't be long before there's a "what do you want your OS to be today" module for Apache, if there isn't already.
The mode of thinking you describe (Speaking My Mind Is My Right) is very much part of American culture. Tact , inference, and social courtesy are not Political Correctness; I caution you against throwing out the baby with the bathwater, lest the people you deal with consider you a blunt-speaking, churlish oaf. If you stay in America (or away from foreigners), then nevermind.
==============
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
He is bad history.
According to the Mormons, it means "honey bee". Comes from their "Book of Mormon". That's why the Utah state flag is a beehive.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I hope you don't design user interfaces for a living.