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Linus Speaks Out, Calls SCO 'Cornered Rat'
dexterpexter writes "In an interview with Business Week, Linux founder and guardian Linus Torvalds had, in his usual brand of blunt humor, the following to say about SCO: 'They're a cornered rat, and quite frankly, I think they have rabies to boot. I'd rather not get too close to them,' and 'There are literally several levels of SCO being wrong. And even if we were to live in that alternate universe where SCO would be right, they'd still be wrong.'" In the same issue, there's also an interview with Darl McBride where he admits that the company was failing and the Linux-related lawsuits were a last-ditch effort to prevent bankruptcy.
Should I leave this MyDoom worm on my machine for a few days... Sure.
I can't see this whole thing lasting very long, I mean, hopefully someone will realize the SCO has absolutly no case, and are just full of malarky. I want to see how this will turn out though, And what will happen to SCO and it's silly licenses....
Setec Astronomy
...for all this SCO vs. Linux. Horray!
To celebrate this first stone of truth, I hereby name this day, January the 27th, Linux independensday.
Back me up! >:)
I just can't imagine what it must be like to be constantly having to explain the same damn thing over and over again.
Hang on, my first job here was helpdesk. Nevermind.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I bet you the rabies virus has some SCO coding in it.
SCO were a few quarters away from running out of cash so...they decided to utilise their Unix IP rights, except looking at the quality of their argiument so far this looks like staggering desperation.
How unfortunate that the ethical bankruptcy is tied so closely to the fiscal one. Where was it written that this *had* to be so painful?
C|N>K
In the end, I think we'll all look back on this as the time where Linux went from sort of a fringe software in the minds of a lot of people to a mainstream player, where corporations learned they shouldn't mess with the OSS community and when the idea of open-source really started to make people ask "Why *am* I paying for this software?"
After all, that which doesn't kill us, etc. etc.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Which one is worse, the fool or the fool that follows him?
I find the attention/flames that everybody is giving to SCO highly surprising, as a result it is hard for bystanders to differentiate between the opponents. It would be much more mature of Linus and Co to either ignore the whole matter or respond professionally, instead of playing the same game.
I'd say right now the open source community might look like the bigger rat with the new worm spreading and DDoSing SCO. It's not funny, it's not justice, and it just makes the open source community look like the cornered rat in the eyes of the masses. The first thing Linus should've done was to speak out and condemn this sort of behavior.
While it may be humorous to some of the immature individuals on this site, a worm to DDoS SCO is a terrible blunder. It just strengthens SCO's arguments that the open source community is made up of troublemakers that need to be stopped.
The lawsuit and linux licensing program did not cause SCO to start making a profit for the first time ever because they were profitable or making money. Neither are or will.
The lawsuit and linux "licensing" program caused SCO to start making a profit for the first time ever because as soon as they did so, they recieved an absolutely huge monetary donation from Microsoft. And it was a donation, not a "license" Microsoft has no use for a license even if one were legally required of them. It was never anything other than a donation, and this is practically the only reason SCO has survived to the new year. This is the reason SCO can go on.
No, Microsoft isn't standing behind the scenes pulling SCO's strings. They don't have to.
When all is said and done with this case I think Darl McBride will be making a fast exit... to South America.
Other people have said it and I agree with it... those attempted extortion, excuse me, licensing letters they sent out are should be pursued as federal mail fraud, and the SEC should take a long hard look at Mr. McBride and his lawyers, and how they're playing their own company's stock.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
..is unfairly demeaning both rats and corners with such a comparison.
The question is...do they really have any claws? I can completely understand the analogy, except that rats can do something to attack. I'm not sure how much SCO can really do, apart from annoy people with nuisance lawsuits.
-1, "1337" speak
Blood-sucking lawyers are claws enough.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Ding! Dong! The witch is dead! The witch is dead! Ding! Dong! The wicked witch is dead!
Anonymous Cowards suck.
what will we talk about on Slashdot?
We need two RIAA stories, stat!
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
ok"In the same issue, there's also an interview with Darl McBride where he admits that the company was failing and the Linux-related lawsuits were a last-ditch effort to prevent bankruptcy."
Way to make it sound very sordid. The company was falling towards bankruptcy, yes. It was a last ditch effort, yes. But.....oh.....
Hahaha! This story made my day. It pissed me off so much to see M$/SCO teaming up on Linux! Take that!
For those who don't know what this whole SCO deal is about, go here.
"I said my goal was to get a return on the initial Caldera IPO, when it was trading at $56 per share...."
I'm sure everyone would like their money back from the tech-bust, but there's this little thing called reality. Unless you're Darl, of course.
|>
Here be Dragons
Where do they get the money for all their laywers?
I, for one, welcome our new SCO rat overlords. All hail our new master, Darl McBen!
Why is Linus feeding Darl, the ultimate troll?
The owls are not what they seem
I love blunt humor. Like Friday, that shit be funnay.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
Only if they find purchase, and dig in. "You swing! You miss! The Justice System hits! You are feeling faint!"
-1, "1337" speak
You may remember my attempt at starting a GoogleBombing where "litigious bastards" links to SCO as the first hit. (see this
Way to go! It's a good day for slashdot and the net as a whole.
Trolling is a art,
Hopefully and finally SCOX will now start showing the true worth of the company. BTW, does anyone know what the top execs have cleared thus far from this scam? Was it worth it and is this going to be an unforunate part of doing business like SPAM?
CNN is reporting that the latest Novarg worm is launching a DOS attack against SCO websites. There is justice in the world after all.
signature pending slashdot approval
Well, and in the financial sector, which seems to cling to the stubborn belief that there might be something to their tactics and/or allegations.
It's quite likely that "truth will out", as they say, but if public opinion has any bearing on the outcome of this struggle IBM and Linus need to get better visibility in the more widely consumed (and moronic) news channels. I haven't seen anything but negativeish stuff there, but it's what gets out to the masses.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
In the same issue, there's also an interview with Darl McBride where he admits that the company was failing and the Linux-related lawsuits were a last-ditch effort to prevent bankruptcy
...
Please, go get me yesterdays newspaper and read me the headlines
You gotta love that guy's way of making a point.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And how much money does a unemployed ex-sco employee have?
The BusinessWeek/Information Technology/Online Extra is pretty slick. As I read it, it appears that if McBribe is a cornered rat, then it's by his own devices.
Within 30 days he leaps into action. He then sandbags IBM after he sends out a Shareholder's letter
Then he get's all pissy, claming IBM goes ballistic when Big Blue flexes it's muscles.
The more I read about this the more and more it's clear to me that McBribe isn't leading this company into profitability, but a death march
Sounds to me like SCO has no one to blame but themselves here.
--- have you healed your church website?
Search results.
Someone set them up the Google bomb.
"They say if you want to get into an argument at the dinner table, start a conversation about religion or politics. I would argue that Linux is a cross between religion and politics."
This is the first intelligent thing I have heard Darl say throughout this process.
We must all send soap-on-a-rope gift packs to the SCO execs!
This guy actually believes in a blanket statement like that?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Darl:
In concept it was great, it wasn't until December when we came out and said here's where the problems are with Linux, and we have a program where you can deal with that.
Q: What was the reception to that?
A: It seemed everyone in the industry was either positive or neutral to that, except for IBM. IBM had a violent reaction to it, even though it wasn't targeted directly at them.
Everyone was either positive or neutral to it? What are you smoking today Darl? Give me an f'en break.
Casual Games/Downloads
from the article...
.. But they are, in that case, Fortune 500 companies.
: Have you had direct talks with customers yet?
A: Very carefully over the last quarter, instead of sending out mass invoices, we stepped very carefully and really had a lot of direct one-on-one meetings with 15 or so companies. In the process of doing that, we learned a lot. We listened. We talked. And we went back and forth. About 20% of those companies signed licenses with us.
Q: Can you name any of them?
A: We have taken the stance not to,
let's see 20% of 15, that's what.. ~2. so let's see, Microsoft and Sun perhaps?
SCO can do absolutely anything they want. Lie, steal, commit slander and fraud. There are no repercussions.
The linux community, meanwhile, has to be absolutely perfect and saintlike and have not a single user do anything that could be interpreted as unethical, or they get blasted as scary anarchists.
This is even more funny when you consider SCO is a singular organization which can enforce ethical standards, whereas "the linux community" is an open ended, uncontrollable group of people that basically means everyone who downloads a certain program.
We need a media that knows how to do more than reprint press releases.
Wow! They were down to their last 75 cents and they were able to come back this far!
That's quite an accomplishment indeed.
Calling them just "rats" transmit the whole concept we all have about them.
go check it out. Is this article legit or some phish?
From the McBride Article: "it becomes a question of whether you're going to protect your rights or back down from a set of folks you believe are going to come after you with pitchforks." Why didn't we think of this earlier? These DDoS attacks are far too nerdy to scare Darl. Pitchforks... sweeeeettt!!!
Like Gollum in LOTR, I almost feel sorry for the litigious bastards. Almost.
Concievably, if everyone steps up and buys a license, we don't need to.
This is absolutely hilarious when you consider that if you are one of the hypothetical companies that actually bought a license, SCO's response has been to threaten you with more litigation.
SCO is basically treating "UNIXWare Licensees" as "people we can stomp all over". Recently they sent a letter to all of their licensees stating that they have to prove they aren't using a version of linux that contains SCO code-- thus opening themselves up to a lawsuit if this can be shown to be wrong-- or lose their license.
Now, think about this-- SCO is saying publicly that if you buy a UNIXWare License, you get to use the linux infected with hypothetical SCO code without fear of lawsuit. Then when they buy one, you demand you stop using the linux infected with hypothetical SCO code or face a lawsuit!
WTF?
The whole SCO case really is just one level of lies built onto another, just as Linus claims. My wife is in law school specializing in intellectual property law, and even she couldn't make any sense out of what I told her about the case. Bascially my explination went something like this, "Even if this were true, which it isn't, that would imply this, which isn't true, but even if that was true, ...."
They've dug such a web of lies and confusion, and I think that is actually helping them keep their garbage claims going for so long!
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
(Disclaimer: SCO is smoking crack. I believe none of what I am about to say...)
Actually, SCO has a point. They claim ownership of the code in UNIX derivatives, of which AIX and the rest are examples. The fact that SCO has never seen or handled that code in any way is irrelevant. It is perfectly possible that IBM has infringed on SCO's property by copying code that IBM wrote for AIX/others into Linux. In which case, the only copy that SCO currently has access to is the Linux copy. After all SCO didn't write the code. IBM did. SCO just owns the rights.
Does that mean the SCO stocks are close to collapsing? Okay, slashdotters lets sell our stocks the next hour (everybody should have realized by now that we bought all the SCO stocks), we really need to find another toy...
Darl, it was nice to play with you.
Note to my self: Write a book about open source business plan envolving indirect stock market funds.
'Even if x were true, it'd still be false.'
:-P
I don't care who is he is, that offends me as a programmer.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
"Q: There has been a rumor in Silicon Valley that you're going to sue Google. A: Yeah, Google gets brought up a lot. They're high-profile, and they're one of the largest users of Linux. They have nearly 10,000 boxes, from what we can tell. They're a poster child. I think what's interesting about them is they have been able to develop a low-cost operating model because of Linux. If your model is going to hold up, you better make sure you don't have any infringing code in there. Otherwise, you need to adjust your financials based on how much you pay for your servers. "
The emphasis is mine. This is SCO's trump card for going after google. You see, any lawsuits based on IP would look VERY bad for potential investors when google wants to go public. I mean, licensing all of their 10k boxes would cost $6,990,000, but any amount looks bad to shareholders, especially since if SCO were to win (yeah yeah I know) they could basically say " we don't care how much you offer, we're not letting you use our IP" and google would be in a tight spot, and probably have to spend a LOT more than 7 mil to fix it.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
The question is...do they really have any claws? I can completely understand the analogy, except that rats can do something to attack.
Rat claws are not good for much. Rat teeth, however, are sharp and nasty.
I think the Itchy and Scratchy theme says it all --
Fight Fight Fight, Bite Bite Bite --!
-kgj
-kgj
Linus Torvalds: SCO Is "Just Too Wrong"
The originator of the Linux OS has sharp words for SCO's "cornered rat" claims of intellectual-property infringement
If anyone knows what's in Linux, it's Linus Torvalds. He did the first work on the open-source operating system while a student at the University of Helsinki, and he managed the often chaotic process of building it with other programmers. Now, SCO Group (SCOX ), a small Utah software company, claims Linux is trampling on intellectual property rights it inherited from Novell (NOVL ), which got them from AT&T (T ). In an e-mail interview with BusinessWeek Correspondent Jim Kerstetter, Torvalds explains why he thinks SCO is wrong. The following are edited excerpts from that interview:
Q: SCO claims that old Unix files it says it owns are now in Linux. Can you explain to me why you think that's wrong?
A: [A number of files SCO claims to own] were written from scratch for Linux.... SCO also doesn't hold any copyrights to the BSD code [software developed at the University of California at Berkeley that SCO says contained copyrighted material that was passed on to Linux], nor is it actually in [SCO's version of Unix]. So SCO is wrong.
Also, SCO has apparently several times mentioned how copyright notices have been removed. Just for the record: Original Unix doesn't have any copyright notices to remove. They were added after a lawsuit [between the Berkeley developers and AT&T, which was settled]. So SCO would be wrong again.
So basically SCO's arguments are just too wrong to even discuss rationally. SCO doesn't own the copyright on the files they are talking about -- the University of California at Berkeley does. But even if they did, the Linux files weren't even copied in the first place. And even if they had been copied, no copyright notices would have been removed, since they didn't exist in the original. There are literally several levels of SCO being wrong. And even if we were to live in that alternate universe where SCO would be right, they'd still be wrong.
Q: In fact, I saw in a recent interview that you chided yourself for the quality of some of those files. Why so?
A: Hey, for some of the files they claim copyright ownership on I went back 12 years in the archives to see their original form, and the fact is, I was a young guy at university in '91, and I [made] mistakes that I simply wouldn't [make] anymore, and that are clear signs of beginner [programming].
And those mistakes show how the code wasn't copied -- it's a bit like how map makers used to introduce small errors in maps on purpose, so that if somebody copied them but claimed to have made their own, the original map maker could point to the error and say, "Well, how did you have exactly the same error, too?"
Except I can definitely state that I didn't make those mistakes on purpose. As a young student at the University of Helsinki, I definitely didn't have the kind of forethought required to foresee a company claiming my code as theirs 12 years later. If I had those kinds of powers, I'd never have gone into programming, I'd just play the stock market.
Q: Do you think that any copyright or patent-protected Unix code has actually found its way into Linux?
A: Unlikely. There are now a number of people who have access to both Unix sources and Linux code, and literally written automated tools to find similarities. They found something like 30 lines from [Silicon Graphics, SGI ] that were dubious and that had been removed already. SGI wrote an open letter about their mistake. You can find it if you look for it.
As to patented algorithms, yes, there are a few examples of that -- IBM (IBM ) actually explicitly licensed some to Linux. That was a requirement on our side for even accepting the code in the first place. SCO doesn't own any patents, so they certainly can't be claiming ownership.
Q: If there is protected code in Linux, is there a solution?
A: Oh, the solution to any patent/copyright dispute is licensing
It'll be published in print next monday.
Fuckin DUH
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Q: Then who are you going to sue?
.. six billion people in the world, $699/license, that means they'll stop suing once they get $4,194,000,000,000.
...
A: The honest answer is we don't know. Conceivably, if everyone steps up and buys a license, we don't need to.
Let's see
You can never accuse Darl of lacking a grand vision
In a way SCO has already won, because the debate is no longer about if copyrights are right or usefull in the information age, but rather is Linux in violation of copyrights.
It's sorta like arguing if a speech I wrote violates the Kings laws, rather than asking if the king should have the right to restrict peoples speech at all to begin with.
What an [interesting interview]! The [subject of the interview] was [interesting].
[Several paragraphs of, more or less, praise for BW Online's work]
[This post edited by BW Online.]
Ryan Fenton
Lots and lots of people said that about the Muslim community.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
If you literally wrote a tool, that means you took a pen and deposited ink on some paper. And the person who says "I'm an hour late for lunch---I'm literally starving to death" needs to be walled up alive so they appreciate the difference.
This literally pisses me off.
This is not my sandwich.
And here I was thinking that "myDoom" was just the personalization page for the Doom3 web portal...
"...he admits that the company was failing and the Linux-related lawsuits were a last-ditch effort to prevent bankruptcy."
I'm sorry, I just don't see that. Nowhere in that article did I see an admission that it was a last-ditch effort to prevent bankruptcy. I see him talking about "protecting UNIX IP rights"...I'm not even touching that part.
Let's let people read the article and draw their own conclusions instead of making some up to make Darl sound worse. He can do that all on his own.
Jeremy Baumgartner
If their right... And there is indeed some code in the kernel that doesn't belong there, than I'd agree with them. As it would undermine the 'GPL'-ness of the kernel. So in this case I feel there should come a 'clean' kernel. There would be nothing wrong with asking a licence for the 'contaminated' kernel.
But, because it is Open Source, the should just be able to say: "look guys, starting from line xx to line yy the code in the linux file is exactly the same as line zz in our file...". However it looks like they can't.
So I'm going with the else part.
Hoping they go bancrupt soon, so this will all go away...
And what spells does a level 7 cleric have to clear it up?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Tell'em Steve'Dave!!
There's no Freedom like UFP-dom
You forgot the "Bababoui! Baboui! Howard Stern's penis!!" part.
it's almost like a poker bluff - they're betting like they have a great hand, hoping the others will fold, cut their losses and just let SCO have what's in the pot. However, they didn't realize there's some old timers at the table with deep pockets willing to see their bet and call them on it. Eventually SCO is going to have to show their hand.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I'd say right now the open source community might look like the bigger rat with the new worm spreading and DDoSing SCO
I find it hard to believe that the "open source community" could be responsible for this DDOS against SCO.
My guess is that the SCO attack is a red herring -- what better way for the spammers to divert your attention from the fact that this virus enables remote access of infected computers than to get people all in a huff about the supposed "baddies" in the open source community.
If anyone knows what's in Linux, it's Linus Torvalds. He did the first work on the open-source operating system
;).
My god, RMS will be breathing fire at this I bet.. but for god sakes can we just understand that the opensource movement was a derivative of the Freesource movement.. its not allot to ask really.. stop and learn the facts.
1, Linus developed a kernel, a good one.
2, His followers use FREESOURCE apps to make it into what we know as "Linux" but really is GNU+Linux.
3, MOD me down and you prove just how little you know
moo
Way to go, you 14-year-old jackoff. Now I have to field queries from PHBs on why Linux isn't a liability since it is responsible for the MyDoom worm. D'oh.
I would love to think this is a frame up of the OSS community, but most likely it is some pimply faced virgin cocksucker who thinks that bullshit like this helps. You do realize we are winning, don't you, asshole? Rant over....
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Abstract it a bit - it's not just an assignment or truth test: Darl could be making some casts and assignments that, while they'll compile, are still the most blecherous, egregious stinkfests ever entered on a keyboard. Capital T truth.
"...SCO has been less than forthcoming about what the contested code would be -- and when they do mention code, we can prove they are [wrong]."
Translation:
"SCO has been less than forthcoming about what the contested code would be -- and when they do mention code, we can prove they are full of sh*t."
'They're a cornered rat, and quite frankly, I think they have rabies to boot. I'd rather not get too close to them,'
Linus, you're overestimating them. Rabbies only occurs in warm-blooded animals.
Did anybody else notice how Linus never uses the term "intellectual property"? Everytime it appears in the interview it is in square brackets, meaning the editor replaced such coneceptually hard words as "source code" by "intellectual property". Darl OTOH employs this stupid term several times throughout his interview. Maybe he and the editors should try to understand this.
And what spells does a level 7 cleric have to clear it up?
Turn undead?
Do you Gentoo!?
As Daniel Ellsberg states, We Need Some Rats To Expose The Lies and Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Regards,
Kilgore Trout
It is just me or almost every text between [] on Linus interview could be changed by some variation of the f word?
In the end, I think we'll all look back on this as the time where Linux went from sort of a fringe software in the minds of a lot of people to a mainstream player, where corporations learned they shouldn't mess with the OSS community and when the idea of open-source really started to make people ask "Why *am* I paying for this software?"
/. much, they read the Times and CNN.
The problem with this is sometimes a few bad apples make the OSS community look like a bunch of crazy lunatics. Take the nice worm that is going around now... CNN already has an article which pretty much blames the OSS community for the worm. In fact, a quote like this: "Virus experts suggested MyDoom's author was a fan of the Linux open source community..." can be damaging to getting Linux and OSS recognized in a good light.
It is too bad that this has to happen because PHBs do not read message boards or surf
You don't go all in in Texas Hold'em when your cards suck and your opponent is obligated to call your bluff.
Is Darl really bluffing, or is there something we're missing? Linus did not code the entire kernel all by himself - what if someone slipped some copied code in there and passed it off as orginal? Possible?
What if, to use Linus' map maker example against him, SCO has found a code bug that in Linux that matches a code bug they own?
As someone said in previous Slashdot comment, Darl is betting the bank. As a CEO, you only do that when it's your only option, when your case is rock solid, or when you intend to defraud the public. Which is it, Darl?
Has there ever been a case whwere one company sued the other over IP rights or anything else, then REFUSED to give the "infringing" company enough information to resolve the problem?
Seems it's funny that SCO won't go the Cease and Desist route, because it would have to offer up dome specific proof. Any problems they identify would be resolved in a short amount of time in the next releases...
post. But as to the being surprised, you should read his biography. Linus is much more quirky person then I'd have imagined. Possibly on an evil genius level. Definitely a good mix attention dodging super star and good old fashioned black humor. God bless Europe!
Quack, quack.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Like Gollum in LOTR, I almost feel sorry for the litigious bastards.
:p
I don't remember Gollum expressing any sympathy for litigious bastards...
Tells Linus to "STFU" and to "take a shower".
Film at 11.
Darl McBride speaks:
We came out last summer and put out some code that the Linux community on one hand said, preposterous, that's [Berkeley software]. On the other hand, some people in the Linux community said, hold on, you may have some copyright issues there.... There are 2.5 million servers out there today that have this code in it. When are Linux customers going to clean that stuff up? So that's one issue, Linux is tainted, even by their own admission.
Amazing. "some people in the Linux community said... you may have some copyright issues there..." Um, who, exactly, said this? And he leaps from that to "Linux is tainted, even by their own admission."
"When are Linux customers going to clean that stuff up?" Well, given that this code had already been removed from the Linux 2.5 kernel before SCO showed it in obfuscated form, and given that even the 2.4 kernels have had it removed now too, I'd say it has already been cleaned up.
"There are 2.5 million servers out there today that have this code in it." This code only ever existed in Itanium kernels; are there even 2.5 million Linux Itanium servers in the world? Of the Linux Itanium servers, how many are still running an old kernel with this code in it? (Not many, I should think, since there are some security holes that have been fixed in newer kernels.)
It's like studying a fractal. The more you look at the details of what he's saying, the more wrong stuff you find.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
and a copy of LoTR. Boromir was the *brother* of Faramir, both sons of Denethor, *Steward* of Gondor. You must be thinking of Aragorn, son of Arathorn, King of Gondor.
I think we all know this hasn't been a last-ditch effort to prevent the corporate bankruptcy of SCO. It's more like a last-ditch effort to prevent the personal bankruptcy of Darl &co.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
Why does business week always crash mozilla. I'm running 1.2 on win '98.
evanchik.net
I love it!
When I brought up the Darl interview, smack dab in the middle was an IBM ad promoting Linux.
Way to go, guys!
Horrors. Besides the slick-meister tan, this creature actually talks like this?
Remember, cubicals are for closers:
"We're going to go out and shine this company up."
Quick Martha, order me a set of those fancy word talking tapes:
significant asset base...Unix intellectual property...wasn't being optimized.
As if switches came in decimal or octal:
it wasn't like a binary switch
Complete mastery for metaphors:
that's like beachfront property...that's still on the beach. An elephant on a table...
Looks like those mail order degrees are good for something after all.
The crucial logical flaw in what you are saying is that as you have said, this makes the virus author look like the rat in the eyes of a logical and reasonable individual. However, we are not discussing a logical and reasonable individual here. We are discussing the masses.
From the interview with Darl: "I was prepared for some sort of battle, but I didn't realize that it was going to be on a world war stage.... What's odd to people is you have SCO against the world on one level".
:-)
Yep, just like Germany in WWII. Very smart association that Darl is drawing there
I say no, we should track it down like any other virus and get whoever is responsible. We should have nothing whatsoever to do with virus writers, even if they target someone who has waged war on us.
Who knew. Some guy who wrote some buggy code to run his own OS more than a decade ago and sent it around to a few people would start this kinda crap... and that we'd be hanging on every article waiting for the latest news... hoping it says something reminiscent of black friday with the words "Darl McBride" and "fell five stories" mixed in there.
I can appreciate that Linus is a figurehead, and a development manager but there's no way a normal human being could take this kind of criticism the way he has publicly anyways.
So in conclusion Linus must be a lizard person.
[I] [wonder], [did] [Business Week] [paraphrase] [Linus's] [responses] [enough] ?
I'd sure like to see an unedited version of the interview... as published it is damn near unreadable.
The unofficial
Who cares, just because the person who does something bad has some sort of link to me, doesn't mean I'm bad, or our shared group is bad.
Not all former members of the US military are terrorists even if one was (ie McVeigh).
The act of making this virus is not acceptable to the open source community or the anti SCO lawsuit crowd in general.
(Yes I chose an obvious example to emphasize my point)
Why settle for trillions when you can have... [pinky to mouth] MILLIONS?
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
THE MICROSOFT FACTOR
But who stands to gain the most from an SCO win? Microsoft. Linux is the primary force standing between Microsoft and domination of the computer world. The software giant is happily fanning customers' fears with an anti-Linux campaign while pumping money into SCO. Even though neither company has disclosed a dollar figure, sources close to SCO say Microsoft has spent more than $12 million on SCO licenses. Microsoft says it needs the licenses because it sells technology that allows its customers to run applications that were designed for Unix, the operating system Linux was modeled on. Critics believe it is just helping SCO finance its lawsuit.
Darl: "They say if you want to get into an argument at the dinner table, start a conversation about religion or politics. I would argue that Linux is a cross between religion and politics. "
[A number of files SCO claims to own] were written from scratch for Linux.... SCO also doesn't hold any copyrights to the BSD code [software developed at the University of California at Berkeley that SCO says contained copyrighted material that was passed on to Linux], nor is it actually in [SCO's version of Unix]. So SCO is wrong.
The [use of brackets to indicate editorial summary] throughout the [BusinessWeek interview with Linus] is a little [excessive]... I [really wonder] what the [uneditted transcript] looked like. For all we know, [Linus] could have said [bite me Darl you little weasel].
Gerald Holmes, yes that Gerald Holmes, has provided yet another lucid and in depth analysis of the SCO situation at this excellent site.
I highly recommend it.
Me too. I laughed and I cried.
When I heard about this virus, the first thing I thought was "ha ha!" and then .02 microseconds later I thought, "wow. that's really not a good way to get ANY point across."
Using some windows worm to try to make a point just demeans the whole open source community as a bunch of problem-causers, rather than problem-solvers.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
McBr*de will - after this is all said and done - get a huge bonus and actually get a good job somewhere in the Windows development community.
Farging Icehole
When was the last time you heard a Republican leader defending the ideologies he shares with the shrieking madman that calls into news radio every day? Or priests defending the beliefs they share with the antiabortionists that hurl bricks at traumatized women?
Think about it.
=========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
The two best things about the article: First, it immediately points out that shortly after Darl came on board, his primary focus was to start up the litigation machine. Second, it spends a good chuck of time making a persuasive case for the M$-SCO connection. Very good article in a well-respected forum for those who have not paid close attention to this fiasco.
That ain't liver; that's beef kidney!
This [is] a [very] informative article [that] was
published by Business [Week] [Online.]
WTF?
>>They're going to attack you. You're going to be >>sorry you ever did this. From our standpoint, >>it becomes a question of whether you're going >>to protect your rights or back down from a set >>of folks you believe are going to come after >>you with pitchforks. Wow This guy is good. He went from villification to implying that the open source community was going to make threats against him. Pitchforks? A wonderful reference to a disorganized mob with no real legal power. Not a reference made by accident. >>the Unix intellectual property that wasn't >>being optimized. Isn't this an admission that they hadn't been previously enforcing their property rights? Isn't there some law about continually defending your property, rather than waiting until it's so entrenched it can't be removed, THEN going after it? >>In concept it was great, it wasn't until >>December when we came out and said here's where >>the problems are with Linux, and we have a >>program where you can deal with that. Am I being obtuse here? Have they (SCO) EVER clearly stated where the problems are? In point of fact, they told IBM to provide all the evidence of how IBM infringed. >>A: It seemed everyone in the industry was >>either positive or neutral to that, except for So - the open source community is NOT part of the industry. Neither are the other companies that have spoken account against this. Linus Torvalds is NOT part of the industry. And all those letters that weren't returned or responded to... that folks, is called a neutral response. >>IBM. IBM had a violent reaction to it, even >>though it wasn't targeted directly at them. Wait. They're sueing IBM. Then in the same breath, saying it isn't targetted at them. I'm confused. >>Their whole issue was, "We don't want you out >>there implicating there are IP issues Go figure. SCO has never shown or proven any issues exist! >>could work together, and that didn't get >>anywhere. Then we started looking into the So "Pay me or I'll litigate" is called working together. I'll have to remember that. So all the customers who won in the Firestone cases were working WITH Firestone and Ford. >>of 2003, and we went ahead and announced our >>libraries program [design to license SCO We haven't proven anything. We've pissed off alot of people. Now we're going to announce a licensing program centering on what we haven't proven. >>[An IBM spokesman said in a written statement >>that IBM will not debate through the media a >>matter that's in litigation. He added that as My god. An intelligent response from a company not trying to play up to the press. Imagine. >>A: When I returned home, I found that IBM had >>withdrawn its support of our Unix business.... So SCO threatens litigation, tries to extort money, and is suprised when they lose the business. >>called Messman that night and dropped the news >>on him.... When we had those copyrights in >>hand, that's what made the whole case on the >>Linux side much stronger. An mysterious amendment that Novell claims they never saw proves all of SCO's case. Priceless. >>Q: Where do you go next? >>A: Where we go next is down the end user side >>of enforcing our copyrights. We came out last >>summer and put out some code that the Linux >>community on one hand said, preposterous, >>that's [Berkeley software]. On the other hand, >>some people in the Linux community said, hold >>on, you may have some copyright issues >>there.... Ahahahaha. WHO in the linux community, Mr. Mcbridge? If you are going to implicate a community in potentially incriminating themselves, let us know who. >>There are 2.5 million servers out >>there today that have this code in it. When are >>Linux customers going to clean that stuff up? >>So that's one issue, Linux is tainted, even by >>their own adm
Delirium Cordia came out today!
I dont see any open source to the worm, where is the sourceforge page?
"Linus Torvalds had, in his usual brand of blunt humor, the following to say about SCO: 'They're a cornered rat, and quite frankly, I think they have rabies to boot." Wow. That's the biggest insult to rabied-infested rats I've ever seen.
I've been wondering why they have 1/2 of mickey's head on their logo.
Even searching for SCO returns only one actual hit to www.sco.com (not counting the www.caldera.com alias).
A search for site:www.sco.com returns a single entry: the main SCO page.
Compare this with a search for site:www.linux.com. Looks like Google is quietly boycotting SCO.
-Mark
I don't think anyone has purchased an SCO license with the intention of really using it, certainly no one big enough that SCO couldn't just return their money. If (when) SCO loses the case, the company is just going to fold. They've pissed off too many people to ever do business again. Look at how they destroyed United Linux. Who in their right mind would have anything to do with a company that does crap like that? When a company folds like that, it just about impossible to get your money back. It'd probably cost more in lawyers than it's worth. Going after Darl's not going to happen. He's too well shielded by corporate law (you'd have to prove he knew his claims where bogus, which is very hard). So you're not gonna get your money that way.
Besides, right now lawyers are running the show over at SCO. You really think they're gonna let the licensees get paid before they do? Once that company folds, the lawyers get paid first, probably creditors next and then anyone who threatens to sue last.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
BSD forces you to serve some pimply faced developer's vanity if you want to use the code ... that is not freedom.
Bought and paid for through OSDL.
This whole thing is a huge quagmire. I think that SCO will go under when they run out of arguments and threats and cannot delay showing proof any longer, and I think it is very unfortunate that the GNU/Linux community has to try so hard to keep their nose clean and take so much bad PR when some wacko goes off and makes DDoS worms and such, but all that aside...
I just had to mention the last Q&A in the McBride interview it.. It is amazing that these words of truth came out of the mouth of that forked tongue beast (emphasis mine):
However it may have started, many Linux activists today seem to be a volatile mixture of their political ideas regarding OSS vs. Proprietary Software and a religious fervor that gives them the belief that there could be nothing wrong with Linux and that nothing can be better than it.
All I wanted was a rock to wind a piece of string around, and I ended up with the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota
Well when the con requires honesty even the lowest scum will do whatever it takes.
SCO should'a gone after someone licensee other than IBM. They could have lost that case and lived, maybe ending up with BayStar's, Microsoft's, and Sun's money.
No, Daryl's con was never about keeping SCO aflot. Daryl's game is too obviously designed to bring SCO to a horrible and absolute death, cause as much damage to as many people as possible (including outside investors), while extracting as much as he could.
That reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer starts his 'Mr. Plow' business, and then tells Barney he should start his own business too, so Barney starts 'Plow King' and begins attacking Homer directly to beat him with his own idea.
Apparently, Darl watches The Simpsons too.
----- sXe
Q: You've received bomb threats, death threats and plenty of hate mail because of what you're doing. ...
Let's see some proof.
WTF the article is dated
February 2, 2004!
Did notice how the interview tried to pin down McBribe on discussion with Google and he was very evasive.
Q: Have you talked with Google?
A: Some discussions have been initiated there.
Q: Which would mean?
A: We don't know where that goes yet. It's very premature to say what's going to happen there.
Q: So your lawyers are talking to their lawyers?
A: We've got a team that's engaged in going back and forth. We do have legal counsel on our side. We have marketplace experts that we've kind of trained.... We're not targeting just Google per se. But anybody who is using 10,000 boxes, that's an elephant on a table. There's a lot of reasons you wouldn't [go after Google]. But to say we're going to ignore them doesn't make any sense either. I think it's going to be a function of what happens over the next few weeks.
[A Google spokesman says the search giant has not discussed with SCO its demands.]
ah slippery bastard he is! So they probably sent Google a letter requesting a meeting to discuss IP issues and Google's legal team advised upper manegement to not go near them they are "cornered rats and probably have rabies too" and promptly ignored them.
So after Google's IPO could they sue SCO for making false public statements? If SCO cannot produce a single e-mail, letter, or correspondence with SCO and Google could easily show harm seems like a slam dunk case.
I've looked all over the web, and I just can't find the source files for myDoom. The project isn't hosted at SourceForge, the GPL isn't included in the distribution, and Stallman isn't ranting about how it should be renamed GNUDoom. MyDoom doesn't even start with a K or a G. Is it from Mozilla? It's spelled correctly... That's creepy.
I've got some crazy ideas that would make this worm even slower / more bloated / more error-prone, and would love to try and split the community with a fork. It would be so much better if it was recoded in obfuscated Perl on an XML base with full x86, Sparc, NeXT, and Amiga source compatibility. Besides, the current maintainer is a power hungry jerk. When I find out who he is and where his sources are hosted, his project will be obsolete.
Where did you hear that this worm is part of the open source community again?
The ______ Agenda
The timing of SCO's dealings with Google has to be very suspect. It comes a couple of months after the breakdown of some negotiation between Google and Microsoft. Forget the logistic/technological implications of having to switch 10K boxes to BSD or something, think *business* here. Filing suit against Google in the middle of due diligence would most likely derail their IPO, or at least delay it for months.
Granted, it might be hard to prove that such was SCO's intent, rather than just a smokescreen to distract the press and Wall Street from the disintegration of their case against IBM. With that in mind, maybe there's something even more sinister in Darl's granting an interview where he drops hints about desperation.
Don't sell the S.O.B. short, even though he sounds at times like he's on crack--it's like thinking a great white shark isn't as smart as you are until he's biting off your legs.
From the article:
Emphasis mine. Uhh.. how about when you prove to us that it, in fact, exists by SHOWING US WHERE THE FUCK IT IS!
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Q: Have you had direct talks with customers yet?
A: Very carefully over the last quarter, instead of sending out mass invoices, we stepped very carefully and really had a lot of direct one-on-one meetings with 15 or so companies. In the process of doing that, we learned a lot. We listened. We talked. And we went back and forth. About 20% of those companies signed licenses with us.
15 companies x 20% = 3
So, ABOUT 3 companies have signed the licenses. I'm inspired. I'm going to throw money at SCO and drive up their stock even further.
Jeez Daryl! Those Linux guys are walkovers compared to the hardcore GNU people.
Just wait until you start sueing Richard Stallman - it won't be pretty , and you'll be begging for your mama!!
They say if you want to get into an argument at the dinner table, start a conversation about religion or politics. I would argue that Linux is a cross between religion and politics.
What a pompous asshole.
Regarding the CNN.com article: "Experts: Vicious worm 'Linux war' weapon" found here:
o om .spread/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/01/27/myd
The author, Jeordan Legon, stated that 'virus experts' suggested that a 'Linux fan' was responsible for the creation of the myDoom worm. The title of the article clearly implies both that a 'linux war' exists, and that the worm is somehow a direct weapon of that war. Yet the only attributed quote to back up this assertion is from Chris Belthoff, who says, "The MyDoom worm takes the Linux Wars to a new intensity" and "It appears that the author of MyDoom may have taken the war of words from the courtrooms and Internet message boards to a new level by unleashing this worm which attacks SCO's Web site."
Unless Mr. Belthoff is a witness to the crime, or has other direct knowledge of the criminal and his/her activities, his 'expert opinion' on this matter is no more informative than what any random person taken off the street might have to say - which is. not informative at all.
No one knows who wrote the worm, what his or her intentions were, nor what relationship - if any - the worm author has with Linux or the Open Source community. Of course, Mr. Legon doesn't assert such a relationship in his article, he only implies it, leaving factual statements about the worm and how it works several paragraphs down from the top.
Mr Legon, may I ask you: Just what is the job of a reporter? Is it to report facts or spread gossip in the form of irrelevant and nonfactual 'expert opinion'? Because, if your job is to report facts, than may I say that in my 'non-expert opinion' you badly missed the mark with this article.
Thank You,
J. Maynard Gelinas
I take your point, but it's irresponsible of you to make it without including the caveat: "from a public relations standpoint." It's important to remind people when you're talking about wool being pulled over the dumbest common denominator.
Go after Google and they will counter sue. One thing they will ask the courts is to put a lien on any damages award from IBM.
Remember the IBM suit is contract not Copyright so they could get something from IBM and still have zip against Linux.
Help fight continental drift.
What Linus means is "even if they were correct in their case, their actions are morally wrong".
>>They're going to attack you. You're going to be sorry you ever did this. From our standpoint, it becomes a
>>question of whether you're going to protect your rights or back down from a set of folks you believe are going
>>to come after you with pitchforks.
Wow This guy is good. He went from villification to implying that the open source community was going to make
threats against him. Pitchforks? A wonderful reference to a disorganized mob with no real legal power. Not a
reference made by accident.
>>the Unix intellectual property that wasn't being optimized.
Isn't this an admission that they hadn't been previously enforcing their property rights? Isn't there some law
about continually defending your property, rather than waiting until it's so entrenched it can't be removed,
THEN going after it?
>>In concept it was great, it wasn't until December when we came out and said here's where the problems are with
>>Linux, and we have a program where you can deal with that.
Am I being obtuse here? Have they (SCO) EVER clearly stated where the problems are? In point of fact, they told
IBM to provide all the evidence of how IBM infringed.
>>A: It seemed everyone in the industry was either positive or neutral to that, except for
So - the open source community is NOT part of the industry. Neither are the other companies that have spoken account
against this. Linus Torvalds is NOT part of the industry. And all those letters that weren't returned or responded
to... that folks, is called a neutral response.
>>IBM. IBM had a violent reaction to it, even though it wasn't targeted directly at them.
Wait. They're sueing IBM. Then in the same breath, saying it isn't targetted at them. I'm confused.
>>Their whole issue was, "We don't want you out there implicating there are IP issues
Go figure. SCO has never shown or proven any issues exist!
>>could work together, and that didn't get anywhere. Then we started looking into the
So "Pay me or I'll litigate" is called working together. I'll have to remember that. So all the customers who won
in the Firestone cases were working WITH Firestone and Ford.
>>of 2003, and we went ahead and announced our libraries program [design to license SCO
We haven't proven anything. We've pissed off alot of people. Now we're going to announce a licensing program
centering on what we haven't proven.
>>[An IBM spokesman said in a written statement that IBM will not debate through the media a matter that's in
>>litigation. He added that as
My god. An intelligent response from a company not trying to play up to the press. Imagine.
>>A: When I returned home, I found that IBM had withdrawn its support of our Unix business....
So SCO threatens litigation, tries to extort money, and is suprised when they lose the business.
>>called Messman that night and dropped the news on him.... When we had those copyrights in hand, that's what made
>>the whole case on the Linux side much stronger.
An mysterious amendment that Novell claims they never saw proves all of SCO's case. Priceless.
>>Q: Where do you go next?
>>A: Where we go next is down the end user side of enforcing our copyrights. We came out last summer and put out
>>some code that the Linux community on one hand said, preposterous, that's [Berkeley software]. On the other hand,
>>some people in the Linux community said, hold on, you may have some copyright issues there....
Ahahahaha. WHO in the linux community, Mr. Mcbridge? If you are going to implicate a community in potentially
incriminating themselves, let us know who.
>>There are 2.5 million servers out there today that have this code in it. When are Linux customers going to clean
>>that stuff up? So that's one issue, Linux is tai
Linus, don't hold back, let us know how you really feel about those litigious bastards?
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Like the username!... Hobbit-botherer baiting is turning into one of the more amusing pastimes here on /.
Look, we know that worm isn't from the open source community.
It's obvious - it doesn't even come with a copy of the BSD license, let alone the GPL!
Not funny. Because some of the people writing DDoS tools and the like already DO put a GPL or other open-source license notice on 'em. B-(
And you can bet that there will be more of that now that the subject has been discussed.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's $699 per server. If it comes down to it, I'd recommend Google buy a bunch of cheap monitors (volume purchase) to plug into their boxes, rendering them all "desktops". Then they could pay $199 instead of $699. Anyone disputes that they're not servers, they can just claim they have a "grid computing" project on their "desktops". :)
...is because the author and those he quotes equivicate by saying nothing specific. He writes that "virus experts suggest", "it appears", and the author "may have", and in so doing the "expert" says nothing at all. The author implies that a "linux war" exists, that a "linux fan" is likely responsible for the worm, and that the worm is a "weapon" used to wage that war. This is in the title and the first four paragraphs. The rest of the article is concerned with factual statements about the worm, how it works, how many hosts are infected, etc etc etc. I have no complaint with the factual portion of the article. But the lead paragraphs and title present a completely biased view of what's happening, and all without offering any facts or making any assertions whatsoever. Is that really "news"? --M
My god, RMS will be breathing fire at this I bet.. but for god sakes can we just understand that the opensource movement was a derivative of the Freesource movement.. its not allot to ask really.. stop and learn the facts.
Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Stallman was breathing fire - after all, when he started the GNU project he intended to build a system, not just an editor and a compiler. It must really tick him off that Torvalds beat him to his primary target.
1, Linus developed a kernel, a good one.
Right, so the "first work on the open source operating system" statement is absolutely correct. Glad we all agree on that.
2, His followers use FREESOURCE apps to make it into what we know as "Linux" but really is GNU+Linux.
You can call it whatever you want. Both projects - Linux and GNU - are licensed under the GPL, and the GPL doesn't require you to give anybody else credit, just to keep their copyright and license notices intact. If Stallman wanted to force future re-distributors to credit him and his project, they should have released their programs under the BSD license.
3, MOD me down and you prove just how little you know ;).
Yeah, I agree with you there too. Hey mods! Do what he asks!
So speaketh Linus:
And even if we were to live in that alternate universe where SCO would be right, they'd still be wrong.
Let's just acknowledge one thing. If there was anyone on the other side of the SCO issue spewing such an obviously contradictory and illogical statement, the Open Source world would cry "You're smoking crack." "Ha ha, what an idiot." "Stupid corporate rhetoric." etc. But this is Linus. So the statement is considered brave and clever.
Eric Raymond has mentioned on a number of occasions, here and elsewhere, that he has legitimate copies of several historic Unix source trees and that he's compared them to Linux. He's also developed an automated comparison process for just such applications. See this NWFusion article for example.
"Q: Have you had direct talks with customers yet?
A: Very carefully over the last quarter, instead of sending out mass invoices, we stepped very carefully and really had a lot of direct one-on-one meetings with 15 or so companies. In the process of doing that, we learned a lot. We listened. We talked. And we went back and forth. About 20% of those companies signed licenses with us."
20% of 15 = 3.0
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Am I the only the only one who sees similarities between Darl McBride and the former Iraqi Information Minister ? just wondering .......
Regards,
TheChromedAccountant
nothing personal, just business.
This isn't the code you are looking for...
They might still be around, and I really hope that there can be a need for a $450 word processor when there are 50 that can be downloaded and used for free.
That means that the $450 package will be either; supported, robust, proprietary, or niche. I'd pay $750 for Photoshop if it ran on Linux, rather than the warez'd copy I'm using right now.
The point is right now they are the norm, rather than the exception, when it need not be that way any more.
Even if x were true, it'd still be false.
No, it makes sense in logic, though it's an awful way to put it. He's just stating the final step before the introduction of an inverse proof rule in proving the SCO is wrong. "If you assume that SCO is right then one can still demonstrate that they are wrong."
Remember that if SCO is right about its claims (which include Linux not being legal to distribute and them being able to legally distribute Linux), then they themselves are in violation of many copyrights?
So, let SCORight represent the truth of all of SCO's claims. Then:
1. SCORight => SCOViolatesCopyright. Given
2. SCOViolatesCopyright => ~SCORight. Given
3. SCORight. Assumed.
4. SCOViolatesCopyright. Transitivity(1, 3) | 3
5. ~SCORight. Transitivity(2, 4) | 3
6. ~SCORight. Inverse Proof (3, 5)
He's just talking about step 5. Even if SCO was right, they'd still be wrong. All this means is that the truth of "SCORight" is self-inconconsistent -- Darl has made self-inconsistent claims.
May we never see th
said [in response to "Where do you go next?]"
A: Where we go next is down the end user side of enforcing our copyrights.
Stopping after the first 6 words would've sounded profoundly prophetic... Some [fcukheads] just dont know [when] to stop [talking] to make more [sense].
All I see is DAE. Not AE.
That is no Thorn character.
Turn Undead might take care of the lawyer. But as soon as litigation starts scavengers come out of the cracks.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
This may seem a little off topic, but why bring Religion into this.
The main article that these interviews are attached to tries to make make Darl seem more human by pointing out that he's a "devout Mormon". I would like to discuss this for a moment.
There has been a LOT of FUD spread in regards to "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" (aka the mormon church). Even though this doesn't look like an intentional attack, there will be some reading the article that will connect their bad feelings of SCO to the Church. If you fall into that trap, you need to know that in order to be a "member in good standing" with the church you literaly have to answer the following question: Are you honest in your dealings with your fellow man?
I'm not going to judge Darl personally (though I do think he knows better). I'll leave it to the Lord, Jesus Christ, to deturmine where the sin is in the SCO case.
I say let everyone that gots the virus to let it run for a while... take your time in cleaning it up.
Meh.
He has been using this reply to every story today.
My favorite quote from that has to be this one:
Q: You've received bomb threats, death threats and plenty of hate mail because of what you're doing. Have you ever wanted to say to your detractors, "Hey folks, this is just software here?"
A: They say if you want to get into an argument at the dinner table, start a conversation about religion or politics. I would argue that Linux is a cross between religion and politics.
Since when does talking about religion or politics start an argument? All I have to do is say, "Hey dickhead, fuck you!" and I get plenty of arguments! =D
Which is of course a class special, not a spell. =)
....just make do with an earlier kernel (pre 2.4).
That way you have no reason to be worried.
Or whatever MS offering for web server is.
It would be a waste of my time and obviously yours.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
and the freesource movement came from ideas of the 60s. and ideas of the 60s came from LSD. and LSD came from berkley. also unix came from berkley.
therefor linux is a combonation of LSD + LSD.
woot!
that i would be taking anything from cnn. they aren't a news source, they are a propeganda factory. if all PHB's read is cnn/Times then they are going to be clueless and ignorant, period. there is no length the oss community can go to to make your record clean when they wish to slander you.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
POOFF
Will code a sig generator for food
SCO deserves all of the criticism and more because they are using the legal system to abuse other businesses. They have not supported their copyright claims and yet they continue to press their financial claims against Linux users in a manner just short of outright fraud.
On a side note, I'm just amazed by IBM's social conscience. It's plain how few companies there are that recognize opportunities to invest in community for the benefit of the company and the community.
IBM doesn't necessarily (well, as a company) have a social conscience. IBM, however, is smart enough to realize that dealing with the OSS community can be phenomenally profitable -- that acting as if it *does* have one is marvelously beneficial. There are, very many differences in dealing with OSS versus traditional software. Here are some of my guesses as to what to do differently:
* A feeling of good will matters. Goodwill only matters normally as far as wining and dining a negotiator to try and get him to sell out his company a little. The OSS community is *extremely* sensitive to companies, treating them like people, whom are either friendly or unfriendly to OSS. A cohesive positive-sounding OSS company policy does a tremendous amount to keep a company in the good graces of the OSS folks. Press releases about how said company uses OSS, and thinks it's a good idea. Periodically releasing some code as OSS is a nice icing. (Take OpenAFS -- IBM only benefits from having that around, and it generates lots of good will.)
* Legal issues need to be minimized. Dealing with a company, you have lawyers who can hammer things out. The OSS community likes things pretty simple and clear.
* The OSS community doesn't demand masses of money. It's appreciated, like IBM's ongoing investment in open source development (which was probably done for strategic reasons, improving software that they needed worked on, as much as PR value), but a positive attitude toward OSS can count more than donating masses of money toward OSS.
* You don't need to worry about getting screwed over legally, in general. OSS folks are not generally out to shaft people over licenses. Legally, things are simple and nice.
* The OSS community can jump to conclusions quickly, and needs to be spoken to publically when misconceptions start going around. You have a lot of people with individual opinions. If a major Linux Ethernet player, like Donald Becker, writes a letter to, LKML saying that some chipset made by a company is lousy, said company needs an official, public response quickly. If there's a Slashdot story out about how your company is discontinuing production of Mindstorms (and the story is wrong), you should probably have a press release out within the day.
* The OSS community values specs. Take a page from Matrox, who decided what they could and couldn't release (couldn't release source to some on-card microcode, which had to be distributed in binary, but *could* release specs to much of the rest of the card.) Matrox's older G200-G450 series are still among the best supported of video cards under Linux and X.
* Maintain an official presence on relevant public forums, since so much OSS-related stuff takes place in the open. You might just have a mail filter that drops any email on major mailing lists containing your company name or product names into your PR department's inbox.
* Little of the OSS community accepts legal liability. This should be noted -- however, problems like illegal code copying do not seem to be prevalant, simply because of the high visibility of doing so. There are times when you may want indemnification of code you use -- the OSS community doesn't do that.
* Giving gifts can be inexpensive and valuable. In healthy Linux tradition, if someone runs out and implements a driver for your chipset, send 'em something nice in the mail. In rich Linux tradition, a case of beer seems to work well. It also costs you about a ten thousandth of what it would to implement the thing commercially, and ensures future good will. For driver writers, it's frequently a really, really good idea to just send along a few other products that you make (ones without drivers). This encourages people who have already demonstrated willingness to produce, wi
May we never see th
More than $7 million to install FreeBSD on 10,000 boxes using something like cfengine? Seriously?
Nice try. This hot off of groklaw.net
Attention PJ: Blake Stowell asserts that linux 2.2 also infringes!
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 27 2004 @ 06:50 PM EST
I just got off the phone with Blake Stowell, and responding to questions about
the "new" linux abi claims that SCO is throwing around, that they
are also considering Linux 2.2 to be in violation of their IP.
Give him a call or e-mail if you want confirmation-- his number can be found on
the SCO site.
No, but he sure is going to look like him after Novel, IBM and the others gang bang him with litigation.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
...not in media trials.
Last post!
Linus, you're overestimating them. Rabies only occurs in warm-blooded animals.
...to have a desperate need to stay in the (spot)light, so I assume they're actually cold-blooded. Though their ramblings are starting to sound so much like random noise, I'm starting to question that whole 'sentient' part...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They say if you want to get into an argument at the dinner table, start a conversation about religion or politics. I would argue that Linux is a cross between religion and politics.
That quote should be added to fortune mod.
Have you checked if this script is part of SCOX's intellectual property before releasing it to the public domain?
At what point should we all write to the SEC and request an investigation? Maybe Darl and Martha can share a cell. (Yes, for the purposes of humor I am assuming Martha is guilty; I have no questions about Darl.)
I run a 100% Linux household, and know of several others doiung the same, but the vast majority of my customers are 100% MS-Windows on the workstation, and often disparate versions of it, and sometimes because some apps won't work on one version, and other apps won't work on another.
I even have one site with mixed 98/ME workstations because the AutoCAD printer drivers work under ME on one machine, 98 on another, but not the other way around (ie, it won't work under the same OS on different machines), and this is with a network-enabled printer/plotter so it's not like one's driving the plotter through the LAN and the other directly or anything.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I found a site that put a nice little twist on this whole SCO vs. Linux thing. The site is http://www.linuxstolescocode.com, it is very new and the site is not completely up yet, but the first page is hilarious! You have to look at the first page very carefully and don't be to quick to hit the back button on your browser! (hint) Read carefully!
So who's the solitary sucker? The Canopy Group?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Put your money where your mouth is. Here is PhotoShop 7.0 running on Mandrake 9.2. The picture being edited is a photo of my wife's dual-headed (MergedFB) machine being set up (playing the lion-sleeps-tonight video as a test, video streams go weird if you try to split them across monitors). You nead to install msttfonts as well as a recent WINE (I pulled 20040121 from Cooker and used that, but the December one works too).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Just before the SCO suit is about to be thrown out of court, Microsoft buys SCO and releases all their UNIX IP under the GPL -
1. Making the question of the suit's validity moot forever.
2. Convincing the World they are committed to open standards and deflecting all suspicion.
3. Forcing Sun to release all their derivative Solaris code under the GPL and "Cutting off their air supply".
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Managed to take out the main supports with a car-bomb parked across the plaza while doing insignificant structural damage to buildings across the street (ie, closer to the van when it blew up). And everyone in the BATF office in that building was elsewhere on the day... what a coincidence... they just kind of forgot to take the children in the creche and everyone else with them.
The local seismo place also reported two separate blasts, then changed their minds a few hours later. Funny, those traces don't seem to be available.
Call me a tinfoil hatter, but I suspect that Tim did set off a bomb, and it wasn't the one which killed the kids.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Hmmm...
Wonder if a clove of garlic would be a good defense. After all, we're talking about vampiric here. Or, ther's always the blessed +7 fixed greased Werebane. But my favorite would be the Longbow of Diana and a good quiver of silver arrows.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
...has just made its last mistake? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Excellent post!
BTW, did you know that DEC started lines with 0x0a (\n) and ended them with 0x0d (\r) so (amongst other things) that the last line on a 24-line CRT could be used for other than typing stuff in?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
AKA Jefferson Davis Hogg?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I'm going to throw money at SCO and drive up their stock even further.
Please let me know when you do, so I can short it afterwards.
"Have you checked if this script is part of SCOX's intellectual property before releasing it to the public domain?"
:;
/dev/null ;
I just checked, the problem with this code is in the first line:
#!/bin/sh
If you do a grep between this file and the Unix code base, you'll find numerous instances....
while
Same here.
do
Same here.
wget -r -l10 http://www.sco.com -O
This is very similar to some of the things I found in my grep....
done
Blatant rip. Hella these in the Unix code base...
exit 0; # really unnecessary
If the exit 0; is really unnecessary, I'd just toss it. Found hella those in the code base too...
See, more proof that slashdotters are just linux pirates out to still code! Damn, can't you guys come up with your own shit!?
I read the Linus interview and enjoyed it. Linus always has a couple of cool things to say.
Then I started reading the McBribe interview. I got about half way down and all I was hearing was "Blah blah blah I'm I dirty tramp"[1]
Cheers
Stor
[1] From the Alan Sandler movie "Mr Deeds"
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
"SCO group, owner of the UNIX operating system."
Yeah, right.
1000 SlashDot sigs
I do
Karma whoring
But how do you know it isn't just linux users eager to take advantage of their $699 limited offer?? The /. effect is pretty powerful you know.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Linus should be careful about his recent claims that kernel modules may have GPL requirements. If he is correct in saying that a kernel module developed under Linux becomes a derived work and is controlled by the kernel copyright, then SCO is correct in saying that JFS, XFS and other things developed first under proprietary unix are controlled by the copyright of the parent unix. Both claims are pretty far-fetched but it would be good to see Linus re-state his position on third party kernel modules with this relationship clearly in mind.
this should prove to be really helpful
Someone check this, but....
IF SCO can prove that Linux has code which violates it's contracts we can be pretty confidant that the code can be replaced quickly. Quicker than in a commercial venture with limited development racecourses (never underestimate a bunch of volunteer developers with a chip on their shoulder!) and it would set a precedent.....
That of companies being able to protect their IP in other development trees through the courts.
That kind of precedent is IMPORTANT TO OPEN SOURCE since it seems that it's mostly closed source development houses that do the stealing. An we are left with volunteer projects to chase down companies and work very hard to prove that any code had been stolen (or in the case of the GPL) or used in bad faith.
AJ
You're talking about the guy that essentially WROTE THE GPL. Who's next on your most wanted list? Linus?
Unfortunately, to most home users, having a virus affect an "unpriviledged" user is equivalent to having a rooted box.
'rm -rf $HOME/*' maliciously placed in some shell startup script would probably result in the user reformatting their Linux box just as they now format their Windows boxes.
Its only where you want to keep one user from harming another user's files that permissions really shine. Yes, file permissions may stop malicious software from easily poisoning the base system, but they do nothing to protect the actual user. For that, all users (Windows or Linux) must rely on safe practices (especially backups).
Besides, in the home setting, the user *is* the admin and can easily override sanity to install the cool (spyware) rpm's he just found. Just like how Windows users install so much spyware.
This should work even better. It was in some thread up there, but it seems like it got lost. Look for the &-sign :)
#!/bin/shwhile
do
wget -r -l10 http://www.sco.com -O
done
exit 0; # really unnecessary
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Sorry. I know this is really off-topic, but still... People need to know goatse lives on, for whatever trolling or shocking needs :)
Goatse-takedown notice and the real deal
So now you know :)
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
And to get this infection to stick properly you'd have to open the attachment as root.
Yes. We all do that all the time.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
QUOTE
/QUOTE
There's a chunk of companies who said, "We're not going to use Linux. So move on." And there's a large chunk that said, "Before we pay for a license agreement, we want to see a settlement or a court decision out of the IBM case. Or if you have some other settlement or court decision out there that we can rely on, we'll consider doing that."
And that concludes's Darl McBride's advice on what your reply should be if you get the dreaded letter.
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.
I believe this interview with Mr. Torvalds was made just prior to the discovery of the MyDoom worm.
I read it a couple of days ago when it was linked to from Groklaw.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
I should have specified that I want a *native* version.
The warezd copy I have used is running through cxoffice. Running Windows programs on Linux with WINE, etc., is not much better than "pretending".
I thought people like you were banned from /. long time ago.
(This is regarding the second link, the interview with Darl)
> you have intellectual-property people who think operating systems shouldn't be free in our camp, and you have people over there who think operating systems should be free in IBM's camp
Wow. It's not a question of one or the other, the point is to have options. No one (seriously) claims that all OSes should be free. Only a troll (or an extreme socialist: not meant in a bad way) would suggest such a thing. He mentioned earlier that the lawsuit decision wasn't a "bit flip" (immediate change of ideas), so obviously he has a concept of gradient/grey areas, so why does he assume that we do not?
It's a big neighborhood, everyone is invited to the block party, but don't threaten other peoples' guests because they weren't forced to pay for the keg.
You only need WINE now, not Crossover.
However, yes, a native version would be much smoother. And the WM would allow you to do more creative things with those annoying windows.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Mind you, D'ohl's figures have been pretty bizarre elsewhere. I wouldn't go betting the family farm on these numbers. Or even a buck. I suppose I could bet someone that D'ohl's wrong, that seems to be pretty dependable so far.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
See, though, all the Windows Zealots do is post of Slashdot that all people who use Linux are zealots. And then the Linux Zealots come in and give facts to back up their arguments that Linux Is Better. Then the Windows Zealots start mentioning playing Counterstrike or something on Linux. Then the Linux Zealots mention WineX. Then the Windows Zealots mention that it doesn't handle everything, then the BSD Zealots start laughing at them, and then the Windows Zealots and Linux Zealots shout "SHUT UP! NOBODY USES BSD ANYMORE!" and then SCO sues them all.
In the end, Linux has always proven to be a more stable system (I have yet to hear of ANY windows system with a single uptime of more than a month) and the current state of the exploits IE is churning out is a good indicator of that. I remember hearing about the last Samba exploit about 5 hours after I had already patched it. In the end, all operating systems have their advantages and disadvantages. My personal experience states I prefer Linux just on the basis that:
a) I like the CLI (bash is my friend)
2) Price can't be beat.
iii) Open source = nice. I like the philosophy as a developer-in-training and as such will support OSS as much as I can. Linux just happens to be the best open-source OS I can find.
Four) SSH is also my friend.
Karma: Non-Heinous
SCO Raided
Wish it was true!
Even if he wins, no one would do business with him. His $3 billion would run out in a short time.
And why would anybody take a job for a company that went from $1 billion to $5 million?
Sounds like it was slim pickins for good ol' boy Darl. He'll pick up some loose change and skedaddle.
Linus was admirably eloquent, as always. Not bad for a Finland Swede.
This worm is being used to make the open source community look bad just when SCO's copyright claim is crumbling and they're being counter-sued like there's no tomorrow. And a certain other company most definitely wanted them to succeed...
I guess I'm just paranoid.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Come on! They say Linux has code from their Unix in it, but refuse to proove it. Everybody's just supposed to take their word for it and give them money?! It don't work that way, baby.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.