Groklaw Traces Contribution of ABIs back to SCO.

Ptraci writes "Over at Groklaw they have been doing some digging and have found evidence that old SCO and Caldera did in fact contribute those files that they now want to charge us for."

Comments

In other news...

[JoeBaldwin]

Sky reported to be blue after extensive research.

Re:In other news...

[wild_pointer]

you never been to iceland? ;)

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

They say 20% of caucasians are somewhat color blind...*thinking pose*...I wonder how they see blue.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's butterscotch.

Re:In other news...

[TykeClone]

Cool - northern lights!

Re:In other news...

[Anarke_Incarnate]

they would have to be male or have some SERIOUSLY bad X chromosomes if they were female. Color blindness is almost 100% exclusive to men.

Re:In other news...

[3Suns]

And SCO issued a press release stating "I'm going to hold my breath until I get bought out. And ice cream before dinner!"

Re:In other news...

[c1ay]

Does this mean SCO will be suing Caldera next?

Hoping and praying Darl doesn't come to his senses before he sues himself...

Re:In other news...

[nuclear305]

Apparently you don't live in LA...

Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ObviousGuy]

Can we trust them to be fair and unbiased in their "research"?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[acehole]

Does fox have "fair and balanced" reporting?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

echo "Does slashdot have fair and balanced reporting?"

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the parent moded as flamebait?
Isnt that the truth that Groklaw are probably biased against SCO?
Groklaw has probably uncovered quite a lot of dirt on SCO that is correct, and I doubt that they lie about anything.
But if one has taken sides on an issue, can we trust that the person wont turn a blind eye on some facts? Will he present facts that might not go down to well with his own version and side?
I think it is only a fair comment.
SCO are probably a bunch of liars, but underestimating and brushing aside an opponent as "nothing" WILL in most cases come back and bite you in the *ss.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[stevew]

Two points - don't confuse the ObviousGuy with facts - he wouldn't know one when it stood in front of him, uhm, then again, neither would SCO.

Point two - fox is fair and balanced.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Zebra_X]

Does it matter? Evidence either proves something, or it doesn't.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ObviousGuy]

A prosecutor knows it is not in the best interest of his case to present exonerating evidence.

Can you trust a prosecutor to be fair to the defendant with all the evidence?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously doubt it, but then again /. is not trying to claim that it is.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it would suffice to say that Groklaw is more interested in finding information that would benefit SCO.

In fact, the entire Linux community is more concerned with finding facts that could help SCO.

Well, alteast they WERE. The simple fact is, SCO has lied and been caught soooo many times over the last few months... all we can do now is wait for them to lie again so we can disprove it.

It's simple, SCO has lied and it's a known fact. They've lied a LOT, made a LOT of false allegations, etc al..

If you bite into a terd, it's going to taste like shit. No amount of suger and spice is going to make it otherwise.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[DAldredge]

I know you are a troll but I can not resist.

Got Proof?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[azaris]

Can we trust them to be fair and unbiased in their "research"?

*boggle*

Someone on Slashdot is worried about whether Groklaw is being fair against SCO.

What next, FoxNews worried about the humane treatment of Saddam Hussein?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

A fox may be fair and balanced, but we all know that fox news is not.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we trust SCO to be fait and unbiased in what they present to the press, public and the court system?

Perhaps a dissenting view is a neccessity. If you want to worry about fair and unbiased, leave that to a judge in a courtroom. Beyond that, people are biased by nature.

Jeez, we're on /. and someone is talking about bias.. We go through this every fourth article for pete's sake ;-)

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy brings up a great point. I'm an IT manager at a Fortune 500, and we are considering the ramifications of this case everyday at work.

Techies - if you want to convince your manager that SCO has no case, stop being so emotional about it. We in management have a hard time trusting your opinion when you seem to have so much invested in this emotionally.

This is not some battle of good v. evil - you aren't Bilbo fighting that evil eye at the top of the tower (forgot his name, evil wizard guy).

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[jrumney]

Since when was PJ being so emotional about it? (She's not a techie anyway, she's a paralegal). You clearly have never read groklaw or you would not state so positively that this guy brings up a great point. PJ has stated on numerous occasions that she would welcome contributions from a pro-SCO point of view, but so far SCO has come up with zero genuine evidence that has not been thoroughly refuted by Linus, Perens and others before PJ gets a chance to post it to her site.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they apparently weren't lying about the SGI code...

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[kfg]

Legal advocates are never fair and unbiased. They are not supposed to be. That is the function of a judge.

However, if legal research finds a picture of Darl wearing a pair of shoes he says he never owned, well, than that's what they did. Bias doesn't even come into it.

Then it would be up to Darl to try to explain away the picture by saying it was Christmas and his cat DDOSed his regular shoes so he demanded that IBM loan him those, or some such nonesense.

And if it goes to trial Darl will have to try to put the glove on IBM.

KFG

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ahooton]

He wasn't talking about PJ, he was talking about ObviousGuy, who wrote the parent to his post. Look at the parent thread...

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[leerpm]

Examine their research, then make up your mind for yourself whether or not you believe it constitutes good evidence of SCO wrongdoing.

Groklaw is not a brokerage &research firm. Just because they have a bias, doesn't mean clear factual evidence that supports their position is to be ignored.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we trust them to be fair and unbiased in their "research"?

Not likely, if that's what you're looking for. They attempted to directly blame SCO for "faking" the last DOS attack, which last I heard were confirmed by security firms as a legitimate DOS attack, although seperate from the one Eric Raymond admitted to knowing about.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[AlterTick]

Groklaw is biased against SCO already. Can we trust them to be fair and unbiased in their "research"?

Bias doesn't automatically indicate dishonesty. Are they biased against SCO? Sure. Does this mean they're looking primarily at SCO rather than the OSS community for evidence of malfeasance? Sure does. Does this mean that evidence they find is worthless? Nope (it's PGP signed by Caldera fer gosh sakes). Just because Groklaw isn't also out looking for "the real killers" deosn't mean they're lying about SCO. You have to judge the honesty of an organization separately. Just because some people lie to support their biases doesn't mean all biased people are liars.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

PJ has stated on numerous occasions that she would welcome contributions from a pro-SCO point of view, but so far SCO has come up with zero genuine evidence that has not been thoroughly refuted by Linus, Perens and others before PJ gets a chance to post it to her site.

Sure she's willing to post pro-SCO threads on Groklaw, I'll believe that the day I see it!

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[dewdrops]

They're biased against SCO because every one of SCO's claim which they research turns out to be false.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Billly Gates]

Agreed about Fox.

Look at all the hundreds of tons of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons recovered that FOX had proof existed before the war even began.

Also they reported WMD's FOUND when infact the questionable site contained pesticides.

Fair and ballanced my ass. Too bad conservatives actually believe the media is liberally biased except fox when the opposite is true.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Crispy Critters]

Can we trust them to be fair and unbiased in their "research"?

When a mistake is made in an article, is it analyzed and corrected? (Yes.)
Are the sources for background facts reliable? (Yes. Most of it comes from court documents and SEC filings, and an occasional question posed to directly to Linus or another expert.)

If anyone, even one of SCOG's lawyers, can come up with a single fact supporting their allegations or a consistent legal argument for their highly original interpretation of copyright law, Groklaw would happily publish it. The truth is that the only way to discuss the current and potential lawsuits is either 1) live in a fantasy world where the law and the facts have no effect or 2) talk badly about SCO. There is no third choice.

What can be done is to try to always tie arguments and opinions to the proveable facts as closely as possible, and this is what the Groklaw stories do.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Why do you think they are biased - because they keep finding evidence that doesn't bode well for SCO?

2. We don't have to trust them. It's not like they are saying "trust us on our say so, we won't tell you why we think so". They present their research itself, not just the findings.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the "SGI Code" was discovered independently by someone here on slashdot. It was then reported to the linux-kernel guys who quickly found technical reasons to remove the infringing code.

Which reinforces the point that people really did want to "help SCO" by identifying and remedying any violations as quickly as possible.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[jofny]

She seems genuinely after the truth. This sort of reduces the probability that you'll see pro-SCO posts. It's not like Groklaw is accessing information that isn't publicly available for the most part. If there were references to "Hey, we were there behind closed doors with no witnesses and they said blah blah" then it would be fair to question Groklaw's fairness. When everything said can be double checked with comparative ease, would anyone (other than SCO) ignore or distort evidence? The readers there have proven they're willing to dig up every bit of arcane fact - I'm sure distortion would be discovered rather quickly. Note, for example, the "This couldnt be a DOS against SCO!" thread. Plenty of posts were spent contradicting that...

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[bratgrrl]

Piffle. What's wrong with emotion? You would discount facts, because they are presented with emotion? That makes you look like the wrong person for your alleged job.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

The other 3 networks NOT biased?

Hell, for over a year after he was sworn in they refered to him as Mr. Bush, not President Bush.

And you call that unbiased?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[aceat64]

Fox News is fair and balanced, it just that your use to watching left slanted news like CNN. It's kind of like wearing blue tinted glasses and saying that the colors aren't right when you take the glasses off. This will probably get moded as Troll, Offtopic, or Flamebait, but I really don't care. At least I have the guts to post logged in.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[TimoP]

Anonymous Coward wrote:
I'm an IT manager at a Fortune 500,...

No, you are an Anonymous Coward. An IT manager at a Fortune 500 company has a name. And if an IT Manager of a Forbes 500 company had something of worth to say at Slashdot, he would not be hiding behind an "Anonymous Coward" nomiker

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[jrumney]

He was responding to ObviousGuy, saying that he brings up a good point. ObviousGuy's point was about Groklaw, so yes he was talking about PJ.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[aceat64]

It's ok my AC buddy, he's probably also the type of person who didn't think it odd that Sadam had a general in charge of a soap/chemical factory.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Casualposter]

Actually, I think that Groklaw is much more reliable than many of the people that are paid to be "objective." I've been following the whole case for a while now and Groklaw, while having a decidely biased flavor, is very objective in its reasoning. Much better than the regular media and even /.

Groklaw has been very interested in finding the truth of the allegations that SCO has made. the truth is very biased in that the preponderance of evidence shows that SCO is (at best) deluded or (at worst) fraudulent.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[_Sprocket_]

Techies - if you want to convince your manager that SCO has no case, stop being so emotional about it. We in management have a hard time trusting your opinion when you seem to have so much invested in this emotionally.

As if business, and especially IT, is not peppered with emotional aspects. Ever hear of phrases like "nobody has ever been fired for buying IBM?"

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[sphealey]

I will have to call "troll" on this one. Any person in technical management who knows enough to make an analogy to LotR would know the work well enough to get the analogy correct. Heck, LotR is on the reading list in most high schools these days (contrary to Tolkien's wishes) so I doubt anyone who has gone to school since 1975 would get that analogy that far wrong. Your statement seems to have been written explicitly to inflame.

sPh

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

There's some good information over at groklaw, but the Groupthink Level is off the charts -- those folks even manage to make slashdotters look level-headed. (For example, your comment referring to Bruce Perens as an authority.) Even PJ herself will engage in the occasional off-the-cuff dig.

Plus, it's blatantly obvious that PJ's whole rationale for spending dozens of hours a week doing Groklaw is to defeat SCO in the public relations war. Chip on her shoulder?

Not that there's anything wrong with all that, but you aren't going to convince any outsiders of Groklaw's 'level headed objectivity'. Looks like any bunch of Linux kooks from here.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[bangular]

It's slashdot. Anything that questions the linux community is modded flamebait/troll.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[iamwahoo2]

Groklaw is not really intended to be a news site. It is not there intent to be "fair and unbiased". They are out to prove that SCO does not have a case and to make the opensource community stronger by providing legal insight. Can you trust them not to lie? Probably, If their research leads to them getting involved in a court case, lying could get them in a lot of trouble. Would groklaw reveal information supporting SCOs claims if they found it? Who knows. It's highly doubtful that they could find anything supporting SCOs claims as SCO themselves haven't managed to do that. I am reasonably certain that you can probably take what Groklaw has revealed as true, they do not want to get caught in lie.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to go back to geography class, my friend. Iraq is not _ALL_ desert, in fact it contains swamps and marshes which harbor malaryia carrying mosquitos, thus the need for pesticides. Get a job so you can buy yourself a clue.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[MonkeyDluffy]

found technical reasons to remove the infringing code.

Actually, they couldn't find any reason to keep the code, since it was poorly written and not very useful.

-MDL

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[HBI]

I went to high school 1983-87 and LotR was not to be found within either of the two high schools.

Revise your numbers - LotR was not considered serious literature till the 90s

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Some Dumbass...]

Can we trust them to be fair and unbiased in their "research"?

Does it matter?

In any legal situation (a trial, contract dispute, or whatever) both sides try to find evidence which supports their case. Neither side is "fair" or "unbiased". Yet legal disputes get resolved all the time. What's the magical secret? The judge and jury get to see all of the evidence, then they make up their minds based on all of the evidence which they have seen.

Groklaw may well be biased against SCO, but all they're doing is presenting more evidence. That's exactly what both sides are supposed to do (and what SCO has been criticized for not doing).

See, you seem to want us to ignore "biased" sources of evidence. "Groklaw is biased, so they can't be trusted" is a decent summary of what you wrote. You've got to think about this on a higher level. Very few unbiased groups will ever get involved in a legal dispute. That's the nature of legal disputes, or even disputes in general -- if you don't care, you don't get involved! So the trick is to focus on evidence and solid, logical arguments rather than rhetoric. Focus on what each side can prove rather than merely what they say. That's the way to deal with situations in which interested parties are involves (which includes almost all legal disputes, and many other situations as well). Simply ignoring any biased opinion (is there any other kind of opinion?) will leave you ignorant.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

A military government in a country with martial law under a permanent state of emergency having a military officer in charge of a factory? No, I don't think that's surprising.

Why do you consider it surprising? Did you think Iraq was just like America with a moustachioed President?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you need pesticides in the desert were nothing grows anyway?

Why do you believe nothing grows in Iraq? How do you think they feed themselves? See the June 2003 Iraq Crop Condition Update for example.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[shyster]

According to the CIA World Factbook, Iraq has about 12% arable land. That's roughly the same as Japan's, who I don't think anybody would be surprised if they had pesticides.

For comparison, it is a bit lower than the United States' 19%.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[sphealey]

Can we trust them to be fair and unbiased in their "research"?

Groklaw, the intelligent posters on the Yahoo Finance SCOX message board, IBM, Novell, and Linus Torvalds have all been asking (in some cases begging) SCO to provide solid legal evidence of their claims for the last 9 months. SCO has failed to do so, and in fact has on numerous occasions provided material which turned out to show the opposite of what they claimed. Perhaps the team of MIT scientists has the real information, I don't know, but at some point open-mindedness turns to skepticism, and disbelief follows fairly quickly after that. IMHO at this point the burden of proof lies on SCO, and they aren't delivering.

sPh

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[mcc]

Questioning of credentials is only valid sometimes.

If someone is making claims which they do not directly back up-- for example saying, say, "Iraq has 20,000 tons of chemical weapons" but not giving a direct explanation of where that number came from-- then saying something like "well, this person's biased, so we can't necessarily trust their words." is a totally fair thing to argue.

If someone is giving evidence or research-- for example saying "Iraq has 20,000 tons of chemical weapons, here is our exact evidence of what they've been doing with it and how we know they have them"-- this no longer works, and claims of "bias" become merely a distraction tactic, an invalid ad hominem attack. Once someone presents actual, hard evidence, you can no longer attack them to discredit their argument, you must attack the actual evidence, by either disproving it or showing why it is not important or showing why its veracity cannnot be trusted.

Which has groklaw done? Well, to be brutally honest I can't get their site to load right now (probably because, say, slashdot's linking to them?) but in the past they have consistently presented reasoned, well-researched and backed up statements just about every time, and clearly labelled and demarcated off any opinions, conjecture or op-ed. So I'm going to guess they're presenting facts and evidence, meaning speaking of groklaw's "bias" doesn't matter; the facts will be doing the speaking, not groklaw.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ir0b0t]

but it will be the fact-finder's (judge or jury) job to weigh the evidence. As long as the research/investigation is sound, it could be valuable.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Oliver Defacszio]

That's a great try, but no.

I am 28, a nerd for the last 15 years and I've never read any Tolkien, nor have I seen any of the movies. I'm just not interested in fantasy or sci-fi, so I've naturally avoided it (and it was never required through school).

Don't assume that all nerds are the same -- some of us like football, women and beer in our non-nerd 'downtime' and wouldn't watch Star Trek on a bet. I've also never seen Star Wars. Holy smokes, obviously I'm trying to 'inflame'.

Thanks for the laugh, though.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[midav]

Your point is valid but irrelevant.

Screaming that SCO are fscking liars will help much less then calm explanation what the ABI is and why SCO will have hard time to assert its copyrightability.

It is also irrelevant, if management itself becomes emotional sometimes, what is relevant, is that how they perceive you, and here the AC is right - flaming geek is hardly a source of trustworthy opinion for them (do not ask me how I know it.)

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Crashmarik]

Thats like saying you are biased against painfull personal dismemberment, can we trust you ?

Bias as a concept in reporting is B.S.. The whole concept was invented by people that didn't believe in objective reality, and wanted the freedom to do whatever they wanted with the truth. Theyre the same people that will trot out Kiplings quote that there are 60 and 9 ways to make tribal law all of them correct, without pointing out while there are many correct ways to do things, theres even more completely wrong ways to do things.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Plus, it's blatantly obvious that PJ's whole rationale for spending dozens of hours a week doing Groklaw is to defeat SCO in the public relations war. Chip on her shoulder?"

Not at all. Groklaw is stated to be an anti-FUD site. That is what PJ does, she fights FUD. Guess where most of the FUD has been coming from in this case? So what else would you WANT her to do? Just ignore it?

'Not that there's anything wrong with all that, but you aren't going to convince any outsiders of Groklaw's 'level headed objectivity'. Looks like any bunch of Linux kooks from here."

No it doesn't. Groklaw has been cited in many news articles, is read by CEOs and lawyers and reporters, and has been included in the court case by being cited by IBM. You don't get that level of respect by authorities if you are viewed as "a bunch of Linux kooks." Sorry, go spread your FUD elsewhere, it doesn't apply to Groklaw.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[bonch]

All the channels I saw reported weapons found over those pesticides. Wasn't just Fox.

There IS a liberal bias in the media. Even one of BBC's top guys recently left over a probe stating that they misreported the war. I think people call FoxNews right-wing when really they just happen to actually report right-wing things along with left-wing, unlike CNN and the other channels that ONLY do left-wing. So, suddenly, FoxNews is biased because they have Dennis Miller on now and then!!! OMG!!!

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[jrumney]

those folks even manage to make slashdotters look level-headed. (For example, your comment referring to Bruce Perens as an authority.)

I'm not quite sure which comment you mean (on slashdot, or on groklaw which has been slashdotted for the last half hour?), but I can assure you that Bruce Perens has a lot more authority on this subject than you, Mr Anonymous Coward.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[robpoe]

You get women? How?

Oh I bow before you!

And just what the hell is football??

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

ahooton, I'm glad you looked at the parent post.
That's somewhat of and advanced skill for someone your age. Since you're such an eager student, I think you could try to take it to the next level--after looking at the parent post, see if you can try to actually read it. If you become confused, you can always pull out your dictionary and grammar book. As a last resort, diagram the sentence and trace antecedents.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[sphealey]

OP #1: I went to high school 1983-87 and LotR was not to be found within either of the two high schools.

Wow - sorry about that, dude. I am sadly quite a bit older than you, and my high school might have been dragged right out of the 1950s, but even our cranky old spinster/bachelor English teachers assigned some Tolkien.

OP #2: I am 28, a nerd for the last 15 years and I've never read any Tolkien, nor have I seen any of the movies. I'm just not interested in fantasy or sci-fi, so I've naturally avoided it (and it was never required through school).

Ah, but I bet you don't go around making half-baked analogies to LotR either, particularly ones which self-referentially draw attention to how half-baked they are.

sPh

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ComputerSlicer23]

Your kidding right? Tolkein's stories have been widely read, and been considered with high reguard for 40 years (they we're written and published between 1940-1955 if I remember correctly). Tolkein did one of the original translations of Beowulf, and is the one who published papers showing that it should be considered one of the great stories.

Tolkein's one of the most widely published books, and one of the more widely read books world wide. Tolkein wrote it to be a mythology for the British. That is to say, a mythology that the British could say was originally their own. Tolkein from what I've read was always searching for old original stories from Britain. That's how he turned up Beowulf. He wrote a child's story in "The Hobbit", and so many people requested more information about that world, about the time, that he expanded it to be one of the largest and most comprehensive stories of the time. Tolkein is the bench mark that any author would be happy to match.

I've got my original copy of LoTR's. It was one my brother read, that my sister read, that my other sister read. The one that I read, the one that I've loaned to lots of other people. My copy is from the mid 1970's, it's one my brother stole from the High School library, and it sure isn't a first printing. LoTR's was a major book the day it was published. If you didn't know about it in High School, that doesn't well known, or serious literature. Next I suppose you'll tell me about Quantum Mechanics and the Theory of relativity are "new theories", because they didn't teach them to you in your High School science class.

They don't make you read it in High School, but possibly that has something to do with the fact that it's 1500 pages long, and takes a great deal of time to read? Ever notice that most schools never require you to read novels longer then about 250 pages? It's a time commitment issue. No high school I know makes you read "Ulyesses" either (the book that is well over a thousand pages, that covers a single days events during the Civil War era). That doesn't mean it's not considered "serious literature" (as crappy as I hear it is to read).

Kirby

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[TomV]

OTOH, an IT manager at a Fortune 500 company would very probably have terms in his or her contract which would make it inappropriate to express a view on a case like this one in a public forum without first consulting the legal department, and could very well face disciplinary proceedings for breaching such conditions.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[strider]

Argh!

It's not a problem that Groklaw might or might not be biased in their research. EVERYONE IS BIASED! Why is it that so many people, whether critizing slashdot's "anti-microsoft bias" or now Groklaw's "anti-sco bias" seem to be scouring the world searching for someone to write an article or produce a site on a topic totally neutral on every possible opinion on the subject. Groklaw thinks SCO is full of shit. Therefore they are biased. Groklaw's arguments and evidence seem to substantiate their claims. Therefore they are also probably CORRECT.

Dealing with bias is why you have a brain. Read the articles, judge their evidence, and come to your own conclusion. If you disagree provide a detailed analysis, and prove your point. Enough with the goddamned bias mania.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you hiding behind a "TimoP" moniker, Mr. Pot?

(Different AC)

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

in that case, why was did Linus allow it in the first place?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

most of their swamps and marshes were drained decades ago.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[larry bagina]

if the prosecutor doesn't turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense, assuming it's later discovered, there's a good chance the conviction will be overturned.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[HBI]

LotR was a hippy dippy novel in the 1960's and early 1970's - all the Zeppelin songs that refer to it and the foreword to the Houghton Mifflin edition should be enough to communicate that. Pot smokers and college dreamers were the main target audience for many years. When RPG gaming started around 1975 or so, it got to the kids, and that's how I got to read it.

It wasn't taken seriously till the 90's. Trust me. I was alive - I read it for the first time in the 70s, and it wasn't taken seriously until much much later.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[number11]

All the channels I saw reported weapons found over those pesticides. Wasn't just Fox.

There IS a liberal bias in the media.

No, that would indicate that there was a rightwing bias in the media, if all the channels you saw were swallowing the rightwing line.

Liberal/conservative, right/left being relative matters, we can probably agree that Fox is way on one end of the spectrum, though.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

None of tolkein's work was required reading when I was in high school (1991-1995). The closest thing in the AP English classes was Beowulf and Grendel.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[the_flatlander]

On Groklaw, were it not now /.'ed you could read the article for yourself and follow the links. No *trust* required.

Sure, the truth looks slanted against the SCOundrels, but that is hardly Groklaw's fault; Darl's the one who chose to tie *himself* the the railroad tracks of history.

The Flatlander

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[crisco]

Thats pathetic, LOTR was in my elementary school library around the same time frame. Granted, it probably didnt belong there, I tried reading it after I read the hobbit and got bogged down somewhere in The Two Towers but at least it was there.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[exhilaration]

Isn't that what this article is about? Turning over exculpatory evidence?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[retromingent]

My copy is from the mid 1970's, it's one my brother stole from the High School library, and it sure isn't a first printing.

Maybe the parent poster went to your high school and couldn't find the book because your asshole brother stole it?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

It was for IA64 and Linus only gives a crap about x86.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[wcdw]

So what? So am I! Anyone with the intelligence to rub two nickles together should be, by now....

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

The bloodbath at the BBC is over a report (Hutton) that ignored its own evidence and the evidence of events in Iraq to clear the government of lying. It is such an obvious whitewash that public opinion surveys in the right wing press indicate that more people believe and support the BBC than the Government. Up to three times as many...

As for the completely neutral Fox, see "Lies and The Lying Liars Who Tell them".

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa -- looks like jrumney is getting pissy because someone's not showing proper hero worship. Calm down, dickhead.

Perens has zero influence or authority outside of your little Linux Advocate Clubhouse. Nobody's heard of the guy, nobody cares what he thinks, he doesn't have the ability to "thoroughly refute" anything. That's a fact.

Hey a few days ago, Perens compared the MyDoom virus to the Reichstag Fire. If you want your self-proclaimed spokesmen to be Slashbot Extraordinaire, go right ahead, but I'd pick someone a little more professional.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[happyEverGeek]

It doesn't matter what a researcher believes, as long as they test their hypothesis scientifically. Two things are required for success in the search for the truth: One - you can recognize the truth when you find it; and Two - someone else can verify it.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[slipgun]

As your post has just demonstrated.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry mate but if you were in school during those years you didn't know a damned thing about the 60's, let alone the years prior to that when Tolkiens work was also quite popular with drug users (ask your mom about that)

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[HiThere]

I see it didn't exist for you until ACE ripped it off into a paperback. But this wasn't the start of it.

P.S.: did you know that during the same period there was a large revival or Eddison's "The Worm Orouboros"? But you never hear about it anymore, for good reason. And there was one of the periodic revivals of "Jurgen" and the rest of the James Branch Cabel series...well, he's a better writer than Eddison, or perhaps just tells a better story. But it wasn't *that* good, so it was forgotten.

P.P.S.: did you know that Shapespear has been frequently forgotten as literature? But he keeps being "rediscovered". And this isn't happenstance.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

LotR was a hippy dippy novel in the 1960's and early 1970's -

The books were first published in the States around that time and appealed to the Hippy community if that's what you mean. How you get from that fact however, to the assertion that it was "not considered serious literature till the 90s" is beyond me. Are Hippies famous for not reading "serious literature" or something?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[slashname3]

You are partially correct. No one is unbiased. However when you state that the judge and jury get to see all of the evidence you are incorrect. The judge and jury get to see what evidence is allowed. In addition they get to see a lot of chaff that both sides throw out in order to obscure what facts are actually presented.

Remember, in a court of law, no one is there to find the facts, the truth, or to dispense justice. They are there so the two sides can tell their story to a jury in a bid to convince them that their story is the right one to vote for. Neither the defense or the prosecution really care if the people they represent are guilty or inoccent. They just want to win the case. The funny part is the lawyers get paid regardless of the outcome.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[aceat64]

Actually, I can understand a military officer in charge of a factory in an military state, BUT not a general. Soap factories are hardly considered to be high priority so it would be much more likely to have a lower ranking officer in charge of it. Generals are usualy put in charge of high priority targets such as airports, military bases, weapons caches and weapons plants. Hmm, weapons plants...

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent poster didn't say that the books weren't widely read or that Tolkien himself wasn't well respected. He simply stated that LotR wasn't considered "serious literature" until the 90s. Which is kind of true; and depending on who you ask it still isn't considered serious literature. It makes no odds for how long it's been around or how well loved it is by the likes of you or I, the plain truth is that it'll probably never be considered equal to "War and Peace", "Crime and Punishment" or any number of other classics. Which is a shame but it hardly matters what the self appointed intelligentsia who decide these things, think.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Frater 219]

It's misleading to say that Groklaw is "biased" against SCO. Bias, or prejudice, occurs when someone pre-judges a matter -- when pre-existing opinions lead one to a conclusion that does not respect the evidence at hand, or miscolor one's experience of a situation. It does not occur when someone draws an unpleasant conclusion, or one you don't like, on the basis of actual evidence at hand.

It is not biased to dislike something on the basis of experience, or to distrust someone who has been proven to lie. To accuse someone of bias in this regard is to suggest that having discovered unpleasant truths somehow worsens rather than improves one's ability to draw true conclusions about the world. It is to praise ignorance and naivete' over experience, on the grounds that unpleasant experiences can cause you to think ill of those responsible for the unpleasantness.

Ms. Jones and the others at Groklaw are not biased against SCO. They have come to their conclusions about SCO's dishonesty on the basis of facts, not merely prejudices. People do not simply call SCO liars and scoundrels because they want SCO's claims to be false and self-contradictory, but because SCO's claims have been demonstrated publicly to be false and self-contradictory. That's not bias; it's reasoning.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[TheWanderingHermit]

Fox News is fair and balanced, it just that your use to watching left slanted news like CNN.

Why is it conservatives call everything they don't like liberal or leftist? It seems to me that any news source that presents any info conservatives don't like is "leftist", even if all they are doing is presenting the truth that conservatives don't want to hear.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[spacecowboy420]

Your logic is flawed.
Because I watch CNN, Fox seems biased | Because you watch Fox, CNN seems biased.

All you have to do is watch Bill O'Reilly once to realized that the guy is out of touch with reality. Thursday I heard him touting the Patriot Act, saying the liberals hate it because it gives the government more weapons to fight terrorism.
Now if that is not biased, I don't know what is. Let us ignore the value of our privacy, let us ignore the damage to our freedom when the gov can track every move you make. Of course, when it's found unconstitutional by the courts, it is called, in the words of Mr. Oreilly, legislating from the bench. I understand that it is easier to have someone feed you ideas than to think for yourself - fine, just find someone else to be a ditto-head for - one with a fact checker.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Tolkein' stories
Tolkein wrote
Tolkein's one

Tolkein from what I've read

I am sure these are only typos, nobody here doubts you read all Tolkein's books at least once a year. As I see you have read Ulyesses, (written by Joamesse Jyoce?) too...

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

> Are Hippies famous for not reading "serious literature" or something

A lot of "hippie" books haven't aged all that well. Allen Ginsburg, Ken Kesey, Hermen Hesse.

And I dunno about "first published in the states" -- my father read LOTR when he was a kid in the 40s. I always got the impresssion it was seen as a kids book and "not serious literature".

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[gandy909]

Surely you jest. I was in high school 77-80, and it was required reading in one of the classes.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[mullein]

No high school I know makes you read "Ulyesses" either (the book that is well over a thousand pages, that covers a single days events during the Civil War era). That doesn't mean it's not considered "serious literature" (as crappy as I hear it is to read).

What civil war was that? The events in Ulysses take place on June 16, 1904 (apparently chosen because it was the day James Joyce's girlfriend gave him a hand job.)

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[TheFlamingoKing]

Does the phrase "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" ring a bell?

It works both ways, my friend.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Awptimus Prime]

But I thought LoRD was writtin in 1987??

I was so happy when I got to level 12 and killed the dragon. It was a long journey, as I kept being assulted in my sleep because I was too cheap to get a hotel room, thus slept in the fields.

Oh.. LoTR. Nevermind.

Re: Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Black Parrot]

> All the channels I saw reported weapons found over those pesticides. Wasn't just Fox.

ABC reported the discovery, but clearly stated that some in the US military suspected that they were disguised WMD, and an investigation was being mounted. But they never misrepresented the discovery as a vindication of the Administration's pre-war claims about WMD.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not some battle of good v. evil

Actually, yes it is. SCO is attempting theft. How would your company respond to a huge embezzlement, particularly if ignorant people persisted in saying the well proven case against the embezzler hadn't been proven yet?

If you can't grasp that, after all of the information that has come out on this ridiculous controversy, then regardless of any other qualifications -- you have no business being an IT manager.

I mean, really...

There's a reason Dilbert comic strips are so popular -- so many companies are run into the ground by clueless suits when the actual productivity comes from the techies.

Shut up, parasite.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[mefus]

asshat64 said: I can understand a military officer in charge of a factory in an military state, BUT not a general.

I'd LOVE to comment on this but since I've never either run a militant government OR a chemical factory, I'm COMPLETELY unqualified to make ANY value statements about your otherwise INSIGHTFUL comment. Not any whatsoever.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[DoraLives]

My my my, but aren't the mods in a pissy mood today!

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[frost22]

you aren't Bilbo fighting that evil eye at the top of the tower (forgot his name, evil wizard guy).

You actually think us techies would listen to the advice of a suit who doesn't even remember the name of dark lord Sauron from reading Lord of the Rings ?

Strange...

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[oldgeezer1954]

It amuses me that people think fox is fair and balanced. Perhaps they're right and I'm wrong. If you search for something along the lines of fox bht scandal right to lie you may change your mind. You should find a lawsuit the general gist of which is a couple of reporters investigated implications of using bht in the food chain. Before the report was aired monsanto, a good fox advertiser, raised objections about the report and fox ordered the reporters to modify and provide false information in their coverage. The reporters refused and were fired resulting in the dismissal lawsuit. Neither the dismissal, the lawsuit nor the health impacts are relevant. What is relevant is that the reporters were ordered to lie. Fox did not dispute this. What they did argue is that they have a right to order their reporters to lie in their news coverage and that they (fox) have a constitutional right to lie. Fair and balanced? I doubt it. I might change my mind if anyone can ever show me other major news sources that have done this and argued this 'right'. No one ever has been able to though.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Heggsy]

This is getting way off-topic, but never mind. :)

Tolkien's work was not considered serious literature by the people who (sadly) matter, until the late 80's at least. This is not to say that it isn't serious literature; 'The Lord of the Rings', for example, is considered by many - including me - to be one of the finest pieces of English literature ever written.

The literati of the 50's did not like Tolkien or his work, because it did not fit what they considered to be the One True Literary Model. Unfortunately, these people were in positions of influence, and so their opinion became the prevailing opinion of the time. That opinion lasted for decades. In fact, there are still many literary luminaries who consider Tolkien's work to be ridiculous, inferior and not to be recommended.

There was a recent BBC poll of the greatest books of the 20th Century, which was won by 'The Lord of the Rings'. It made some of people who think that they have a monopoly on what is considered 'acceptable' in the the literary canon, to become very cross indeed. I thought that was rather funny.

You're right about the length of the book, though. Even if it had been 'acceptable', the chances of it becoming required reading for the agerage school are very slim. Then again, if it had been 'acceptable', it wouldn't have been half as good as it is.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Reziac]

Montana State Univ's Architecture course requires students to read Atlas Shrugged. Considering their existing time constraints (a 6 year degree shoveled into a 5 year course schedule), yet another reason why everyone calls it "architorture" instead :)

As to groklaw being biased against SCO -- well, that's to be expected -- everyone is biased toward the side they believe should win. After all, IBM is biased *for* IBM and against SCO, just as SCO is biased *for* SCO and against IBM. As well SCO should be, unless SCO wants to be their own worst enemy.

Oh, wait....

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[WarMonkey]

Mod parent up!

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Guido von Guido]

Nah. What you have neglected to point out is that Groklaw has provided evidence to support its claims. SCO, on the other hand, has seemingly gone out of its way to avoid presenting any.

I suspect any bias on the part of Groklaw stems from the fact that PJ has done a lot of research about the case. You know, because she knows what she's talking about.

Evidence suggesting that you don't know what you're talking about is provided by the suggestion that "the whole point of the site" is to provide FUD about SCO. Clearly she's devoted a lot of energy to this prior to the SCO case, but Groklaw was around long before it.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[fermion]

This gets to the question of what a defense is responsible for. Groklaw, as it can be viewed as site for the defense against the SCO scourge, is not going to be fair and unbiased. No one should expect it to be.

In fact, no one is unbiased or fair. Fairness is for elementary students, mentally undeveloped high school and college students, and extremely stunted adults. The rest of us know that the world is not fair, and get really concern when a person in leadership requires things to be fair. In fact the fairness thing has come out lately because we are often subject to a single monolithic media which claims to deliver fair and unbiased news and views. Of course, since there is no such thing, such media is lying. Intelligent people gather information from a number of biased sources and then integrate them into personal opinions.

What can be said about groklaw is that they appear to be very professional. As such, it is unlikely that they would make statements that are indefensible. Also, because I assume they do not have a quid pro quo situation against SCO, they would have little reason to actively formulate misleading opinions. If anyone is looking for truth, go ask what you consider a deity.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

This was discussed on Odyssey a few days ago. I haven't listened to this yet. However, in my opinion media objectivity is tied to the massive size that modern media corporations have grown into. If you are presenting news in a clearly biased manner, then you are going to limit your core audience. So objectivity has become a desirable trait used to sell news to the largest group of consumers possible.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[antiMStroll]

I think it is only a fair comment.

I think it isn't until it's proven Groklaw withheld damaging information. Until then it's negative supposition and therefore bias.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[zerblat]

Is Fox "News for nerds, stuff that matters"?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Guido von Guido]

I think it would be more accurate to say that the facts are biased against SCO, which explains why they're unwilling to reveal them.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[KWAD66]

It appears you are a M$/SCO troll. RTFA. Facts are stubborn things.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Darl?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

in soviet russia, matters stuff the nerds for news!

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[MyHair]

Tolkein did one of the original translations of Beowulf, and is the one who published papers showing that it should be considered one of the great stories.

Okay, now I hate Tolkein. Or at least his writing. Wake me up when Peter Jackson's Beowulf is released. :-)

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

As for the completely neutral Fox, see "Lies and The Lying Liars Who Tell them".

As for the completely qualified and insightful Al Franken, see Al Franken Is a Buck-Toothed Moron.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[DAldredge]

Funny, seeing that Bush isn't conservative and seing how Fox pushed the Bush line on everything I can't see how you think Fox is conservative.

They are not. They are pro Bush and that is quite a bit different than being conservative.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[TheWanderingHermit]

Does the phrase "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" ring a bell?

I guess that, or a left wing one, would ring a bell if I were paranoid, or couldn't accept what I learned as a child (that there are always at least 2 sides), or wasn't mature enough to understand that just because people disagree with me, that doesn't mean they're wrong or out to get me.

Extremists and unthinking people on both sides just want someone to point a finger at, so they create one. It's a classic straw man argument -- you can't prove something wrong, so invent an antagonist whom you can prove is wrong.

And the "right wing conspiracy" has never noticed that many of the media outlets (except maybe Turner Broadcasting and PBS) are owned by mega-conglomerates who have shown a conservative agenda overall.

Oh, and while I'm at it, two other examples I've noticed: I have had the chance to watch "The News Hour" on PBS with both liberal and conservative groups. This show does a good job of having guests involved in their discussions who can represent different points of view. There are always at least two contrasting viewpoints. I've seen both conservative and liberal viewers be rude and accusatory when a guest is presenting a view opposing theirs. Neither side seems to be able to reationally listen to an opposing point of view. However, at the end of the show I noticed the conservative groups are more likely to call a show biast for airing an opposing point of view even if it was balanced with their own viewpoint. I've seen this, not just once, but many times.

The other point, which is only one small example: Bush's former Treasury Secretary O'Neil was recently on 60 minutes and had quite a few negative things to say about Bush. A few days later I heard him on an NPR show (Fresh Air), and it was the NPR show (which is often accused of being libaral) where he had more of a chance to present a balanced point of view and present positive points about Bush. The 60 minutes piece was basically a hatchet job. The interview on NPR presented good and bad. (Length of time on air is no excuse, either. 60 minutes may have only had him on for 20 minutes, but there's no reason the whole interview had to focus only on the negative.)

People just like to see conspiracies because they want to blame someone for the things they disagree with. They can't accept that the world is complex and that other reasoning people (and groups) can arrive at viewpoints that differ from their own.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[mac586]

Groklaw has a definite bias for the truth, and McBride is a certified liar. Therefore,

Bias for the truth = antiSCO bias

What's not to trust? If you read the articles, you'll find that they clearly point to supporting data from reputable sources and do not offer conjecture nor rumor as fact. It's difficult to find better research on the web or in the traditional press.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You have not been reading the site. Remember back when SCO claimed they were DDOSed and nobody believed them because their website was down and they ftp site was up? Groklaw published opinions by respected professional network engineers that said, "Looks like SCO is lying."

But when CAIDA (a theoretically unbiased 3rd party) said that their logs showed indications that SCO was telling the truth, Groklaw included that information in an update to their first article - despite the fact that CAIDA did not release the actual details that lead them to that conclusion.

Security Experts Doubt SCO Was Attacked as Claimed -- Groklaw

If Groklaw was all about presenting a one-sided view, they wouldn't have bothered to mention CAIDA at all.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, this is a pretty accurate timeline. I'm not sure why this other guy is insisting that LOTR was taken seriously by anyone other than a cult following of Tolkien's until recently - it just wasn't.

Coincidentally and appropriately like director Peter Jackson, LOTR was only taken seriously because of popularity coming from a long existing cult following. Tolkien was no Shakespeare.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[mAineAc]

sorry guys it was just a bad joke

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[BoneFlower]

Or that it was Frodo that was fighting Sauron. Bilbo was a critical figure in the eventual defeat of Sauron, but only in getting the Ring to someone who could do something about it(being completely unaware of its significance at the time)

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

So they are lying to /. or lying to their boss.

Either way...

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[BoneFlower]

To the leadership of a company, virtually nothing is about good vs evil, only profit vs loss.

The case against SCO when it comes to a companies IT decisions must be made on that basis. Either show why SCO is wrong and Linux is not a potential loss, or that the potential profit from using Linux is greater than the potential loss if SCO is right. If you *must* involve moral issues, do so in the framework of how much goodwill(and therefore, new customers) making a pro linux stand will gain them.

If you work for a company that has the courage to make a moral stand apart from the balance sheet, great. But most companies only care about maximizing profits, therefore arguments to them must be presented from that point of view.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[slipgun]

They certainly are, but never mind - I've got karma to burn.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[fanatic]

t's simple, SCO has lied and it's a known fact. They've lied a LOT,

Actually the real question is, have they *ever* said anything regarding Linux, Unix, "IP", or the GPL that was true?

Other than the single instance Perens noted of a tiny bit of SysV code being in a developement kernel (and on it's way out), I can't think of anything SCO has said that wasn't pure Bullshit.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[bman08]

That book's reviews on Amazon provide either more evidence of a vast Leftwing conspiracy, or to quote one review it's "not worth the paper it's printed on."

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Bromrrrrr]

Ok, since you didn't leave us with any proof I'm just gonna assume you are right. So what WAS he doing then?? Since no WMD's have been found whatsoever....is a general leading a soap factory (assuming you are right) enough evidence of WMD's for you??

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Crazy Eight]

If you bite into a terd, it's going to taste like shit. No amount of suger and spice is going to make it otherwise.

Uhh...
Iff yew byte intoo ah turd, itss gowing tue tayst lyck schitt. Know ahmownt uf sugar aynd spise iz gowyng tew mayck itt uhthorwize.

I'm sorry.
Really.
I know it shouldn't have been done...
But I did it anyway.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we trust them to be fair and unbiased in their "research"?

There are references. Use them. Study the evidence, and draw your own conclusions.

Oh. You want someone to do the work for you, put the conclusions on a silver platter, and hand you the results? ah, a PHB.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Doomdark]

Well, in (military) dictatures it's hardly THAT strange, actually... in Africa feudal-like system leads to generals running lots of state-owned companies.

Point, though, was just that news organizations probably should be bit more careful about running breaking news; Fox would have done well to verify facts from other (independent) sources instead of just relaying official statement of the organization that has lots of pressure to get "we FOUND them" news through.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Larry, did you know your last name rhymes with a part of the female anatomy?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Doomdark]

Even one of BBC's top guys recently left over a probe stating that they misreported the war.

If you are claiming BBC has significant "liberal" bias you are making multiple mistakes. First of all, since BBC is a british media, you should call it "leftist"; outside of USA word "liberal" has well-defined meaning that's probably what you meant by using that term. Secondly, such claim is laughable in itself. BBC is fiercely independent from british government (independent of its composition leftist, rightist), and widely regarded as being a decent example of journalistic objectivity. They call it as they see it. And more importantly, they try to get balanced view -- US govt statements were at one end of spectrum of statements; they were small part of the puzzle of reporting the war, and couldn't be used as more than just input from one of parties involved.

That BBC reported events other than ones US army and govt wanted to show -- in addition to ones those sources provided, after verifying them -- just proves their integrity, as compared to most all US big broadcasting co's... who thought their main "duty" was to serve as relays for US government during war. To me that's repulsive -- it's almost like taking time warp back to WW2. Except that this time there was no need for state-initiated censorship: corporations chose to self-censor their content instead.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ealar dlanvuli]

I think people call FoxNews right-wing when really they just happen to actually report right-wing things along with left-wing, unlike CNN and the other channels that ONLY do left-wing

You have to be so right wing that you think the earth is flat to call any of our current popular media sources left wing.

Please provide examples, I'm very interested in hearing them.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't that be "Matters that Stuff Nerds for News"?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

iWhy do you believe nothing grows in Iraq?

Because its a fucking desert?

How do you think they feed themselves?

THey sell oil, buy food. Duh.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[tralfamador]

oh man, a tolkein fag like you is going to looooove this:

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/film/50reaso ns .html

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Artifakt]

"Montana State Univ's Architecture course requires students to read Atlas Shrugged."

Why on Earth? Ayn Rand wrote a novel about architecture, but it wasn't shrugged, it was "The Fountainhead". That might even make sense.
Still Atlas Shrugged is only about as long as the latest Harry Potter. If you can't squeeze that in sometime in those 5 years, you're going to have lots of other problems with the courseload.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ahknight]

More like "News for turds and stuff that splatters."

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Artifakt]

Groklaw is quite possibly biased towards the idea that the legal system will actually create justice if given all the facts - some lawyers actually believe that sort of thing, even in this cynical world. So if they have a bias against SCO, they just might also have a bias towards examining all the facts, or a bias towards reserving final judgements until the court has finished its work.
Rather than having to trust them to be able to resist all emotional influences, why not judge whether their past record says they have done the right thing despite emotional influences, or not.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ahknight]

They call it as they see it.

The problem is the blood-colored glasses they view America with.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ahknight]

When you so casually relate being "right-winged" to being stupid/backward it's quite obvious that trying to remedy the situation with examples or facts will be a useless endeavor.

In fact, trying to convince anyone of anything over, of all places, Slashdot is an exercise in futility even Hitler[*] couldn't appreciate.

* This post qualifies for discussion failure under Godwin's law.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ealar dlanvuli]

No, I relate right wing to being conservative. Do you relate it to something different?

If so I'd love to hear it.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Doomdark]

The problem is the blood-colored glasses they view America with.

Or perhaps it's rosy glasses through which some americans (including the president) see their nation? Can't blame the mirror if your face looks ugly.

Seriously, BBC hardly qualifies as anti-american broadcasting corp. Any nation doing the same as US (waging an ill-founded war of aggression) would have been reported similarly, or, more likely, much much worse.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ahknight]

It's clear how little BBC you pay attention to if you think their bad view of America is just concerning the war. It's been there for twenty years or more.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you're in a country which is unfucked enough to not have "nickles".

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Trailer Trash]

This is not some battle of good v. evil

Actually, it is. We have a rogue company claiming to own the collective work of thousands of programmers, sending threat letters, tarnishing the reputation of open source software, and causing any trouble that they can. All this at a crucial time in the adoption of open source software.

Sorry if we come off as emotional, but many of us have a lot of time, effort, and even money invested in making open source software a viable alternative to companies like SCO. I served for 3 years as president of a LUG, run my own business, and rely on people adopting OSS to make a living. Darl is, even if in a small way for some of us, affecting our livelihood. All to line his own pockets.

The love of money is the root of all evil. That was true 2000 years ago when Paul wrote it, and it's true today. SCO is evil. You might not see it, but we do.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's the way to deal with situations in which interested parties are involves (which includes almost all legal disputes, and many other situations as well)."

You forget trial by combat. I wager 100 quatloos on the Finn.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[wcdw]

Dunno - having a physical nickel and having the intelligence to rub two of them together are _completely_ separate issues. :-(

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[bratgrrl]

Bless you for spelling 'rogue' correctly. Unless all those 'rouge' companies out there really do have nice red cheeks.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Ptraci]

I would think that management would pay some attantion to the odds of SCO being able to make their case, and weight the potential profit vs. loss accordingly. But then, I'm a rational being, and so uunqualified for management.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

The Tigris and the Euphrates provide for some of the most fertile farmlands in that entire region. They supported one of the first urban civilizations on this planet. But if you watch fox, you wouldn't know that.

Too many uninformed morons who don't know, and don't know that they don't know.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the problem with management. They (frequenty) don't truly trust or listen to their expert employees. Get a clue: if the experts at your company are actually getting EMOTIONAL about an issue, it probably means something about that issue is extremely f*cked up. That's when you should REALLY start to listen, and try your hardest to understand what they're talking about. Otherwise, you are just shooting yourself (and your company) in the foot by ignoring a really important viewpoint, based on false assumptions that nobody should ever get emotional about anything, as well as building alienation between management and these "emotional" employees. (And it's YOUR job, as a manager, to deal with complex issues and emotional employees and make rational sense out of them; your IT professionals are presumably hired for their technical skills, maybe even for their passion; you are hired for your management skills. So don't expect THEM to live up to the standards of YOUR job.) If you take the time to understand, then champion, your employees' most emotional issues, they will adore you.

And yes, this is as much about good vs. evil as just about anything in our society, at least anything that affects a fortune 500 business. (Nearly all evil in our world is what I would call common evil, and is based on either fear or greed, or both; the truly scary, sadistic, psychopathic, Silence-of-the-Lambs type of evil is, fortunately, exceedingly rare, depsite what movies like LoTR and Star Wars, and the Bush administration, might lead one to believe.) LoTR is a fantasy. This is the real world. And in the real world, this IS one of the good vs. evil issues. Not as sexy as Sauron and Balrogs and dragons, I know, but hey, that's the world we live in.

When corporations can lie and cheat and extort, and posibly get away with it, people and other companies get hurt. Regardless of whether this case is ultimately thrown out in court (and who knows? Rambus is still free to file patent infringement lawsuits, which it could possibly win - a ridiculously distorted result when a jury originally found them guilty of fraud) it's already doing significant damage - some companies have paid licensing fees that SCO almost certainly has no right in the first place to demand, others may possibly avoid Linux purchases out of fear, and in general it is taking up a vast amount of time and resources to examine this issue.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Reziac]

Equally true. After all, they're not required to incriminate themselves :)

Which one suspects may actually be the case -- that the facts not only won't do anything for SCO's case, but rather will prove SCO to be in the wrong in more ways than just making spurious "all your code are belong to us" claims. Which might in turn open SCO up to lawsuits. Awww, so sad. :)

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Doomdark]

All I'm saying is that perhaps you (assuming you are an american) tend to be more sensitive to news regarding US to objectively know if it's slanted compared to how they report actions of other countries. News organization are generally critical (like, IMO, they should be) to all governments. So if you said they are anti-US, anti-UK, anti-European, as in "critical towards actions of governments", that'd make more sense.

At the same time there is certainly some bias by news organizations against "foreign" countries; this includes BBC... just observe how ABC. NBC, Fox et al cover actions by other countries. I just don't see BBC as being more anti-American than, say, anti-French or anti-China.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Reziac]

In that case, likely it was The Fountainhead; I didn't have to read it, so I am not motivated to remember the title :)

And they didn't have five years to read it; they had a few weeks plus had to do a heavy review paper, and the courseload is a 26 hour a day, 8 day a week job already. A lot of architorture students ended up living in the design studio, because they're never home anyway -- no time!

Burnout was a big problem. It really should be a 6 year Masters degree, but that's not how it was designed. May be different by now, this was 20 years ago. Man, I feel old. :)

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[aceat64]

Well, right before US troops arivied the "soap" factory was cleaned out (no pun intended). Now why would the general in charge of a soap factory take his time to get rid of all that soap before he ran?

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

You've certainly got a chip on your shoulder about the BBC. If the BBC have hated the USA (I assume you are talking about the USA and not all of America) for twenty years, how about giving some examples? The war doesn't count, as there was widespread criticism of the coalition for that, including within the USA, and the coalition wasn't just the USA.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

bwahahaha. Because, yeah, I need to prove myself on Slashdot. Go read a few back articles for yourself. I don't need to do your hunting for you, twerp.

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes OBVIOUSly, Groklaw is biased against SCO. That's why he posted it. Because it's obvious.

He's ObviousGuy..

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[fm6]

Besides, they cancelled Firefly!! No geek can watch Fox with a clear conscience!

Their contribution...

[Mod Me God]

...was under GPL. They will have to disprove that first, which IMHO is he kernel of the case (other than a last-ditch effort to get bought out which seems to have failed).

Re:Their contribution...

[themightythor]

which IMHO is he (sic) kernel of the case

*rimshot. He'll be here all week folks.

Re:Their contribution...

[jrumney]

The brilliant thing is that Caldera PGP signed the files that they released. So it is going to be extremely hard for SCO to argue that someone else released them, or that they were released by a rogue employee without permission.

Re:Their contribution...

[macdaddy]

Those folks that are footing SCO's bill (a small little company in Redmond) want the GPL destroyed. This is the best that they can hope for.

Re:Their contribution...

[77Punker]

You can't really expect some PGP thing to hold up in court. Your average judge or juror won't even know what PGP is.

Re:Their contribution...

[Rick the Red]

To what end? The GPL is just the permission slip Linus gives you to use and copy Linux, not ownership of Linux (for example - this applies to all GPL'd code). If the GPL is ruled invalid by a court, all that means is that the license you hold for Linux is invalid. It doesn't invalidate Linus' copyright on the Linux code. Linus would remain free to re-license his code as he sees fit -- this would not grant Microsoft or anyone else the right to use Linus' code without his permission.

Re:Their contribution...

[Naikrovek]

that's what experts are for. the "average" judge doesn't know ballistics either but ballistics is still a science that judges use daily to convict murderers. because a judge doesn't know about a certain type of proof doesn't make it invalid.

Re:Their contribution...

[beekr]

Yes, and your average judge or juror don't know a whole lot about how genetic evidence works, either.

That's why expert witnesses are called to testify - to explain complicated things in layman's terms.

Re:Their contribution...

[finkployd]

Which is why expert witnesses exist. The average Judge and jury doesn't understand how MOST evidence works.

Finkployd

Re:Their contribution...

[beekr]

Ya got yerself a quick draw there, pard'ner.

Re:Their contribution...

[saden1]

It is the old chicken and the egg problem. It goes something like this I think...

A chicken had an egg, it ate it. Did the chicken eat the egg or did the egg eat the chicken?

Re:Their contribution...

[_|()|\|]

which IMHO is he kernel of the case

While Groklaw's research in this matter is comendable, the comparatively recent allegation of purloined header files was never central to the dispute. It started with RCU and JFS.

Most of the drama has been behind the scenes, as Novell has revealed how little of Unix SCO may actually own. Indeed, Novell may be entitled to 95% of the money from Microsoft and Sun that has funded this suit thusfar.

Re:Their contribution...

[Zocalo]

But SCO wants the GPL declared invalid by virtue of being unconstitutional and all works currently released under the GPL places in the public domain does it not? Turning that around a bit and SCO is basically saying something along the lines of "We now believe that the GPL is and was inappropriate for us. We therefore would prefer that the code we previously released under that license be placed under a totally free license instead." Surely for a court to accept that argument, then SCO is going to have to stand by that line of thought first, and rerelease their GPL contributions (including the files at the crux of their case) under a totally unrestrictive license. And that *still* leaves the matter of whether the GPL is "unconsitutional" or not to be decided in a court.

It sure looks like SCO is damned if they do and damned if they don't to me, but I think we all knew that already.

Re:Their contribution...

[macdaddy]

True but I could see Microsoft using the code regardless. If the license is found to be invalid I predict MS would argue that the code has been put into the public domain (right or wrong). Who's got deep enough pockets to fight them? Think about it from another angle: who has a legal right to fight them at that point? Only those that have contributed to the kernel without giving up their copyright on their code. I don't know if any of those folks have deep enough pockets to take on MS in our bastardized legal system and win. It's a scary notion.

Re:Their contribution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite; you can use Linux even if the GPL were to be invalidated. The GPL is not a licence to use (and it says so in it), only to copy and distribute.

Re:Their contribution...

[Greyfox]

Maybe that's why Darl's campaigning so hard to get the GPL declared unconstitutional...

Speaking of SCO, they recently filed their 10-K Report. Maybe that's why their stock prices is depressed. Go and read for the sweet, sweet death throes.

Re:Their contribution...

[Archie Steel]

There would be quite a few lawyers ready to fill out a class action suit against MS on contingency. At some point, having lots of money makes you as much a tempting target as a fearsome opponent. In such a clear case of copyright infringement, MS would be hard-pressed to win, no matter how much money they threw at the thing.

The legal system may be defective in some areas, but it's nottotally broken. If money was all it took to win a case, then SCO (or Eolas, for that matter) would never have won against Microsoft...

Re:Their contribution...

[radixvir]

remember the judge wont be deciding anything. its the jury

Re:Their contribution...

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

"Distributing code under the GPL under those circumstances is like losing your virginity."

Hmmm.... not quite the same

Re:Their contribution...

[sjames]

You can't really expect some PGP thing to hold up in court. Your average judge or juror won't even know what PGP is.

If you can clicking 'agree' is enough to enter into a license, surely a PGP signature will do. Equate the two in court and watch MS legal's heads explode as they side with Linux against SCO :-)

Re:Their contribution...

[midav]

:%s/judge/juror/g

Re:Their contribution...

[gmhowell]

There would be quite a few lawyers ready to fill out a class action suit against MS on contingency. At some point, having lots of money makes you as much a tempting target as a fearsome opponent.

Case in point: Disney. Who would think that anyone with an ounce of sense would sue Disney? Well, the holders of the copyright on Winnie the Pooh are doing just that. With Johnny Cochran getting a big fat contingency payment if things work out.

Similarly, why would some pissant company like SCO sue IBM? Contingency. Sure, the payout to Boies, et al. isn't exactly a contingency, but the payment (SCO stock, IIRC) is worth just about zero if they don't win.

Re:Their contribution...

[Sarcasmooo!]

IANAL, or an open source guru, or a techie of any kind, but I find it hard to believe SCO could enter into deal under the GPL and then have any chance of convincing the courts that it's invalid. Did they not READ it the first time? And considering the kinds of lincenses that ARE easily enforced, it seems rediculous to think something like the GPL could be genuinely challenged. I've read it, and it basically says, "Use this however you like, do whatever you want with it, just be sure that once you're done with whatever you're doing you let others see what you've done and do whatever they want to do with what you've done. And yes, you can make money from your unique alterations to what we've done."

Re:Their contribution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then in layman's terms: "company A 'digitally signed' some computer code, and then added that certified code to another program. Company B bought company A, and then claimed that the added code was in fact stolen from company A"

Re:Their contribution...

[Rick Zeman]

It is the old chicken and the egg problem. It goes something like this I think...

Ahh, but that age old conundrum has finally been answered:

A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is leaning against the headboard smoking a cigarette, with a satisfied smile on its face. The egg, looking a bit pissed off, grabs the sheet, rolls over, and says, "Well, I guess we finally answered THAT question! "

Re:Their contribution...

[midav]

the comparatively recent allegation of purloined header files was never central to the dispute

And would have never been, but the judge ordered SCO to comply with IBM's motions to compell, demanding to present proofs they based their allegations on with satisfactory specificity, before the judge even considers SCO's motions to compell.

So, SCO really scraps the bottom of the barrel.

Re:Their contribution...

[Tablizer]

that's what experts are for. the "average" judge doesn't know ballistics either but ballistics is still a science that judges use daily to convict murderers. because a judge doesn't know about a certain type of proof doesn't make it invalid.

Just because they *use* such evidence does not necessarily mean they also understand it. The legal system makes WAG's all the time for issues beyond their understanding, without penalty.

Re:Their contribution...

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Actually you can. Quick google will bring up US makes digital signatures legally binding from Silicon.com in November 1999. Even assuming that the judge is an utter bonehead over four years behind the law, this would be brought up in court.

Re:Their contribution...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah. More like "taking a shit in a truckstop bathroom and getting herpes".

Re:Their contribution...

[midav]

Use this however you like, do whatever you want with it, just be sure that once you're done with whatever you're doing you let others see what you've done and do whatever they want to do with what you've done.

The latest argument which was disscussed on Groklaw, was that you can not set forth in the license any conditions under which derivative work is distributed, since such conditions normally require separate contract to be signed between copyright holders of the original and derivative parts of the work.

The 'elegance' of the GPL is that if you want this contract to be signed, then good luck, you a free to contact every copyright holder of the original work and license their parts under any conditions you want (even non-GPL.) However, before you do this you just can not distribute GPLed work.

GPL also gives you an 'easy way out' saying that you might want just to skip signing contract stuff if you do this and that. So, legality of the last statement is what is challenged.

Re:Their contribution...

[macdaddy]

That's very true too. The bigger they are the harder they fall. I wonder though if a copyright violation case can actually be made into a class-action lawsuit. I don't know what the requirements are but I wouldn't have though a copyright case was qualified though. IANAL either so I don't really know. It's interesting to think about it though.

Re:Their contribution...

[Crispy Critters]

"While Groklaw's research in this matter is comendable, the comparatively recent allegation of purloined header files was never central to the dispute."

I think you are missing something here. SCO's case against IBM is based on use of RCU, JFS, and so on in violation of a contract. (It almost certainly isn't, but that is not the point here.) This matter is between SCO and IBM.

SCO is claiming that the header files are copyrighted by them. This (in theory) involves anyone who makes a copy of the Linux kernel. If SCO tells some random company not to use Linux because of the RCU dispute, they can answer that that issue is between SCO and IBM. But if SCO tells a company to stop installing copies of Linux because doing so violates SCO's copyrights, then the company has to have someone with enough wits to know that SCO is not correct.

SCO has in effect threatened to sue Linux users. Saying "You need to buy a license from us" implicitly includes "or we will take you to court." The issue of the header files is central to these potential suits against users.

Re:Their contribution...

[Anonymous Coward]

So it is going to be extremely hard for SCO to argue that someone else released them, or that they were released by a rogue employee without permission.

From what I've seen, being wrong doesn't make it hard for SCO to argue anything they want.

Re:Their contribution...

[nmos]

The judge hasn't gone so far as ordering SCO to provide proof, just to specify in detail exactly what they are claiming to own (and some other things, but not proof yet).

Re:Their contribution...

[Tokerat]

Your average judge or juror won't even know what PGP is.

Of course, however, they will have a firm grip on the concepts of Linux, GNU, C, operating system design and the politics surrounding the GPL and Free Software, as well as how it applies to copyright law.

They'll either choose people who know what they're talking about to serve, or teach them what they need to know.

+1 Insightful? Meh.

Re:Their contribution...

[op00to]

Expert witnesses are not there to merely explain complicated things in layman's terms. They are there in the same way you would refer to a dictionary. An expert witness is so learned and well-versed in his field that his testimony is assumed to be truth. Most expert witnesses, in fact, do not dumb their testimony down, but use the lawyer to do so. Since your testimony is assumed to be truth, you don't want to take any chances with generalizations. If you blow any seemingly insignificant part of your testimony, you're suddenly in a lot of trobule.

Re:Their contribution...

[acroyear]

..doesn't really matter anymore? Who *REALLY* needs SCO compatibility with the LAMP webapp systems Linux is mostly used for these days (and hell, there are so many other good apps with direct linux support, too).

SCO binary compatibility was done at a time when getting people to write for Linux was next to impossible. That is no longer the case as today, I'd say more companies and people write for Linux, or write code that's 100% source-portable, that it simply doesn't matter.

Get rid of SCO ABI support. Nobody uses it so its just bloat.

Re:Their contribution...

[macdaddy]

There is nothing worse than a troll with moderator points. Flamebait my ass.

Re:Their contribution...

[TheMysteriousFuture]

Quote added as #220288. Thanks for participating. :-)

Re:Their contribution...

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Even if it was done by a rogue employee, doesn't matter. They're still responsible for his actions while he's working for them.

but of course

[peragrin]

TSCOG (The SCO Group, not to be confused with (SCO Santa cruise Org.) is nothing but a lying pack of bastard's, then again Most here knew that a long time ago. Not one of TSCOG claims has ever been proven, and when they go down, I hope their "golden parachutes" catch on fire. Darl and Company won't ever work again. They won't be allowed near anything, because, any one who hires them will be sued by them. They are litigatus bastards all the way.

yea I know i speeled a word or too wrong, but this is slashdot.

h

Re:but of course

[WindBourne]

Not one of TSCOG claims has ever been proven

In fact, just about everything that they have claimed gets disproved rather quickly via groklaw. While there are a few things left, it only requires for SCO to submit the evidence so that groklaw can look at it.

Slashdot effect.

[subk]

It's good to see that the slashdot effect still happens early saturday morning!

Re:Slashdot effect.

[subk]

My original post in no way implies that I do not know that. Grow some skin.

Re:Slashdot effect.

[Anonymous Coward]

We know they are there, we just don't give 2 fucks about those who are lower then us. The world revolves around the US, end of story.

Re:Slashdot effect.

[Anonymous Coward]

And that misplaced ego has cost you about 600 soldiers. Explain that to their mothers, asshole.

Re:Slashdot effect.

[Anonymous Coward]

...And lack of air conditioners and compassion for the elderly cost thousands of Grannies their lives in France.

Imagine a beowulf cluster...

[grayshade]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of... er... I for one welcome our new... uhm... All of your ABI belong... Sh*t!

Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster...

[bwalling]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of... er... I for one welcome our new... uhm... All of your ABI belong... Sh*t!

Someone needs to get GrokLaw a Beowulf cluster...

Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster...

[forkazoo]

don't worry -- I've got it! Imagine Darl, petrified, and with hit grits down his pants!

Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ur an idiot

Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster...

[eclectro]

Someone needs to get GrokLaw a Beowulf cluster...

Nah, a kick in the pants is healthy for them. Spare the rod, spoil the child, you know.

Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster...

[sjflory]

Just as long as he's not naked and petrified!!! ;-)

Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster...

[putaro]

In Soviet Russia, SCO is owned by ABIs!

Mirror please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone post a mirror?

Re:Mirror please.

[inode_buddha]

I've put copies in html here, postscript here, and PDF is here.

Re:Mirror please.

[Anonymous Coward]

ty

Re:Mirror please.

[Anonymous Coward]

PDF copy here, 204 Ko, ZH, Switzerland.

Re:Mirror please.

[Anonymous Coward]

PDF copy here, now 76 Ko and clickable links, ZH, Switzerland.

Re:Mirror please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here ya go.

So, which do you work for

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox News, The White House, or MS?

some advice

[trb]

hey sco. go sue yourself.

Re:some advice

[Anonymous Coward]

LOLZ!!!!!!!!! ROFL!!!!!!!!!

Future SCO's

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair question:
What's to prevent any other contributor from pulling a future SCO? Especially when you have a codebse that has such a large number of contributors. And a large variety of licenses.

Re:Future SCO's

[Anonymous Coward]

an open development process, which we already have.

Re:Future SCO's

[Anonymous Coward]

There is only one license for Linux -- the GPL. All copyright holders agree to license their code under the GPL, or the code doesn't go in to Linux.

If it turns out that a person lied about being a copyright holder, the false copyright holder is liable. The Linux kernel custodians were acting in good faith.

Re:Future SCO's

[rhu]

"If you'll look out the left side of the bus you'll see the smoking Caldera that used to be SCO Group...remember this sight well if ever you contemplate screwing with Open Source..."

Re:Future SCO's

[Anonymous Coward]

What's to prevent any other contributor from pulling a future SCO?

Tort reform (which means if you're a registered Democrat, you either need to get the message through to your party to halt their protection for trial attorneys, or leave the party for another - green, libertarian, etc. Since trial attorneys fund much of the party, reform is somewhat unlikely, but you can always try.).

The news of the potential for SCO's own origin of this mess complicates the exit strategy for SCO executive management and their attorney. Boies would now be known as a twice-verified ambulance chaser (though is unlikely to face disbarment or any penalty - interesting how the attorneys are today's untouchables) and the prognosis for jail time for SCO execs is a possibility.

Simply put, suing a party for alleged theft, when you planted the evidence and knew the charges were false is fraud in itself. Dumping tens of millions of dollars of stock in a pump and dump scheme based upon this mechanism earns you a cell with Bernie Ebbers.

Re:Future SCO's

[mod_parent_down]

I think that's exactly the point Microsoft is trying to make by funding SCO in their pursuit of this lawsuit.

Re:Future SCO's

[zhenlin]

Better contribution auditing. That is the only thing we can do.

Be cautious of code you recieve. Ask for papers to show copyright ownership. Ask for papers to confirm licensing. etc.

Either that, or don't allow contributed code. Which is about as bad as Shared Source.

Re:Future SCO's

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you'll look out the left side of the bus you'll see the smoking Caldera that used to be SCO Group...remember this sight well if ever you contemplate screwing with IBM..."

fixed it for you...

Re:Future SCO's

[mobby_6kl]

Oh come on, SCO was dead before it started suing, not because it screwed with OS.

Re:Future SCO's

[n6mod]

Since nobody else seems to have acknowledged the pun, I will:

*GROAN* ;)

-Z

Re:Future SCO's

[Seanasy]

What's to prevent any other contributor from pulling a future SCO?

Scruples?

Re:Future SCO's

[Tablizer]

Either that, or don't allow contributed code. Which is about as bad as Shared Source.

What is "non-contributed" code? Some place that Linus once worked for could start claiming that Linus stole code from them.

Re:Future SCO's

[iamwahoo2]

How can you prevent anyone from dropping an unfair lawsuit on anyone else? You can not. Sadly, our legal system strongly encourages litigation. The only thing that will prevent future lawsuits is other companies fear of doing so. SCO came after Linux because

a) they are on the fast track to bankruptcy and have nothing to lose

b) They are dumb underestimated the legal strength of opensource, much like many companies underestimate the development strengths of opensource (many folks have this problem and cannot imagine anything ever being accomplished without a huge corporate beureacracy getting involved).

The Linux community is embarassing SCO because they are tenacious and quickly debunk any SCOs claims, they have shown how willing they are to assist in finding evidence. They are out publicly bashing SCO everyday, making them look like the bad guy (which is an accurate portrayal). This case is going to show how stupid it is to challenge opensource. SCO is going to go bankrupt and any other company that ever considers getting into legal battles with opensource developers is going to think twice and make sure that they have a decent argument to stand on.

Re:Future SCO's

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

SCO was dead before it started suing

Strange - suddenly "Darl McBride, Reanimator" sounds like a GREAT title for a comedy/horror movie...

Re:Future SCO's

[Anonymous Coward]

christ on a breadstick, what fuckin' planet are you posting from. Stop sharing your fucked up randian hallucinations, would you?

Sheesh.

Re:Future SCO's

[Exiler]

CEOs got scrupples?! With apologies to Johnny Hart

I knew it.

[pair-a-noyd]

And all I can say is that a certain Nancy Sinatra song comes to mind when I think of SCO..

This is going to be FUN...

Re:I knew it.

[AndroidCat]

Did you mean Boots or her cover of The Beatle's Run For Your Life? (Very very un-PC lyrics these days.)

Re:I knew it.

[falzer]

I'm reminded of this one myself...

Where will Groklaw head...

[4lex]

when this SCO thing gets to an end?

I appreciate they are doing a very worthy work (and getting the slashdot crowd to a more informed talk about SCO, something necessary because the old jokes are starting to become _really_ old).

I sure would like them to go on when this SCO fiasto bluffs down. The free software world really needs an army of lawyers and paralawyers, if we want to stay long. I only can say "Kudos to you, groklawyers! Go on!"

Re:Where will Groklaw head...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't they go on? SCO didn't make GL, they were here long before this all started.

Most things *exist* long before they are noted on /.

Re:Where will Groklaw head...

[Anonymous Coward]

The free software world really needs an army of lawyers and paralawyers, if we want to stay long.

You do realise the Free Software world has been around a hell of a lot longer than when Linux got popular in the late 90s, don't you?

Re:Where will Groklaw head...

[Zocalo]

The SCO thing is just the case du jour - a new legal issue worthy of such attention will no doubt be coming to a courtroom near you, real soon. Covering SCO is obviously a lot of work, so until things quieten down I doubt we will see much coverage of the Eolas issue for example, but the site could well become *the* clearing house for all IT related law suits.

In any event With the sterling work that Pamela Jones has done on Groklaw in the matter I'm sure she could now walk into any law firm in the US and say "Hi, I run Groklaw. Can I have a job?" and not have her feet touch the floor until she signs on the bottom line.

Re:Where will Groklaw head...

[jhines]

There is no lack of technical and IP law cases in tech's immediate future.

Re:Where will Groklaw head...

[Our Man In Redmond]

There's the IBM vs. SCO countersuit, the Redhat vs. SCO suit, and the SCO vs. Novell suit, for starters. After SCO turns into a smoking caldera there's still Microsoft, and there will probably be other interesting cases to cover. Groklaw will never be short for material.

What I wonder is what will happen when Groklaw starts to follow a case where the issues don't appear to be as overwhelmingly in favor of one side as this one. That could get very interesting.

Re:Where will Groklaw head...

[4lex]

You do realise the Free Software world has been around a hell of a lot longer than when Linux got popular in the late 90s, don't you?

Yes, I do. However, back then it had no enemies of the size of this one. It was a small world, by hackers, for hackers ("Join us now..."). Now we are seeing a big world, where our aunts and uncles are using Free software, where IBM is running commercials on linux, and where Microsoft is realizing where it's biggest threat of this decade resides (hopefully, it's _last_ threat ;)

Re:Where will Groklaw head...

[Anonymous Coward]

The general gut feeling is that someone will attempt to take on a major Open Source project with a barrage of patent claims. SCO, thankfully, cannot do that since they don't have any, but there may be others lurking in the shadows. Microsoft has even alluded to this (see esp. the Halloween documents)

Re:Where will Groklaw head...

[DA-MAN]

In any event With the sterling work that Pamela Jones has done on Groklaw in the matter I'm sure she could now walk into any law firm in the US and say "Hi, I run Groklaw. Can I have a job?" and not have her feet touch the floor until she signs on the bottom line.

Jesus that woman not only runs Groklaw, researches the hell out of issues concerning us geeks....but she can levitate too. That's COOL!

SCO just wants a buyout while they sellout...

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO knows it's cases are bogus, and built on lies.

They know it. Simple as that.

They're just trying to step on as many toes and piss as many people off as possible to keep their stock up while execs and 'preferred' investors sell out their stock at a 'premium' price.

I'll bet somewhere in that tiny little piece of [explative] brain of Darl McBride -- he still thinks someone is going to buy up his pathetic little company.

By the time all the lies and scandles are made public via mainstream media - I suspect Darl will be sitting in a dark little room all alone contemplating suicide.

When that happens, I'll send him a copy of Linux - Linux cheers everyone up!

We love you Darl! *smooch*

*gag* *spit* *blah* *cough*

Re:SCO just wants a buyout while they sellout...

[Badanov]

I'll bet somewhere in that tiny little piece of [explative] brain of Darl McBride -- he still thinks someone is going to buy up his pathetic little company.

I'll buy up his company, but can they wait 'til I get paid next friday?

A couple of changes soon to be added to webster

[cluge]

Webster now says: Extort: to obtain from a person by force, intimidation, or undue or illegal power Scam: a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation Liar: one that tells lies Indian giver: a person who gives something to another and then takes it back or expects an equivalent in return Revised: Extort: What SCO is trying to do to the Linux community through questionable and possible illegal acts. Scam: SCO press releases Liar: Daryl McBride Indian giver: = SCO + Caldera

Re:A couple of changes soon to be added to webster

[Colonel Cholling]

SCO: A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.

Re:A couple of changes soon to be added to webster

[Anonymous Coward]

His name is not Daryl; it's DARL, you clueless shithead.

Re:A couple of changes soon to be added to webster

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet he has more of a clue about good manners than you, you insignificant little oik.

A new SCO Linux distribution

[$calar]

Darlux: A sophisticated distro run by derelicts.

Re:A new SCO Linux distribution

[Neop2Lemus]

OMGosh!

I read that as Darleks!

Re:A new SCO Linux distribution

[Cloud K]

LOL Darlux...

EXTERMINATE!!

SCO vs RIAA

[pjwhite]

I heard that the RIAA stole a lot of proprietary code from SCO, and that people at SCO have been illegally downloading a bunch of Metallica MP3s.

Re:SCO vs RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the first time I've ever wanted to mod something +1 flamebait

From the Groklaw website:

[vorwerk]

"error selecting database"

Funny, I think even this error describes SCO in numerous, subtle, and surprisingly accurate ways. :)

FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!!!

[Cronopios]

According to this article, the FBI has visited SCO, seized a server and several workstations, and arrested several programmers and bosses.

Can anybody confirm this?

Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

There's more trash that could be find on MS in a day then SCO could ever hope to dish out.

MS just tries to hide it, while SCO flaunts it.

How to make money off of a failing company

[cunninghammer]

Step 1: Contribute to Opensource.
Step 2: Forget you did it.
Step 3: Sue everyone else in hopes that one of the companies will decide it's cheaper to buy you then to fight.
Step 4: Watch the stock price go through the roof.
Step 5: Profit!

Looks like at least a few figured it out.

But didn't Linus say he wrote those?

[ccarr.com]

I can't RTFA since it's /.ed, but aren't we talking about the same files that Linus previously claimed to have written himself?

Re:But didn't Linus say he wrote those?

[Dogun]

you mean signal.h and it's buddies?

I think the ABI stuff is something else entirely.
When it's back up, rta; you'll get the impression they're talking about different stuff, not 1991 first-realease-of-linux stuff.

Re:But didn't Linus say he wrote those?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read it some hours ago, while the site still worked...

In a very short summary, they showed, as always with plenty of links and examples, that those files tehy previously claimed was infringing, was released by Caldera/SCO, signed with their PGP key.
They provides links to their webpage, where you can download the rpms, they show you how to verify for yourself, that the packages, containing errno.h and other files, was signed by Caldera, which therefore means that those packages was intentionally released and signed by someone with access to the private keys of Caldera.

They also show that those files, errno.h and others, contain NO copyright text, which was one of the points that SCO was bitching about.

So even if Linus wrote the files, used in Linux, himself, Caldera also released similar files, under the GPL.

All in all, I think it was a pretty good article, that refuted, or whatever the word is, the claims made by SCO.

Score:
Groklaw +2
SCO still 0

Re:But didn't Linus say he wrote those?

[theonlyholle]

you are absolutely right. The article examines the issues surrounding the ABI files regardless of whether Linus wrote them or not. Hey, SCO also claim that *they* wrote them... even though they've been caught lying far more often than Linus, it's still worth examining that "what if" question, which is what the article does in a marvellous way.

Re:But didn't Linus say he wrote those?

[Anonymous Coward]

If so this is the 99th time that Groklaw has run basically the same story.

Yes, SCO/Caldera used to be a Linux company. It was never a big secret, so stop pretending it's "news".

Re:But didn't Linus say he wrote those?

[spitzak]

No this is not errno.h and so on.

The ABI files being discussed here are some files that it was considered quite likely SCO owns, and were never included in Linux although they were added by some third parties to installations to port their software from SCO to Linux. They duplicate the SCO ABI which is different than the Linux ABI. It is a lot like Wine being used to run Windows programs, though a lot easier.

In fact these files probably contain code to patch over the differences between the Linux errno.h and the Unix one, so it certainly is not the Linus header files.

The header file stuff is a joke anyways, as Daryl clearly said many times that only Linux after 2.4 is infringing. The header files did not change between 2.2 and 2.4.

Re:But didn't Linus say he wrote those?

[inode_buddha]

True. I remember both SuSE and RH had separate RPM's called "iBCS" back in the 6.x days. My understanding at the time was that Caldera willingly contributed them; after the Caldera-to-SCO switch, the iBCS started being included in the mainline kernels, hence there were no separate packages after that. Instead, its a config option now.

If true

[firstadopter.com]

If this is true, SCO is the lamest of the lame.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, but that site looks legit, why not submit this story to Slashdot?

Thank you, Pamela

[matlock151]

That is all.

Regarding Groklaw's Slashdotting

[santiag0]

There is a paypal link for those that wish to contribute a little something on the home page (once you can get it to load).

Maybe a few $ here and there from slashdot readers, and they can get a more robust setup, and survive the next slashdot link.

No pressure. Just a thought. I've given a little twice. Groklaw is a tremendous resource for those following the SCO/IBM/Redhat/Novell saga. PJ rocks!

Re:Regarding Groklaw's Slashdotting

[CvD]

Yep... a while back I contributed some $$s, and I got a nice thank you note from Pamela herself.

You don't have to feel guilty about Slashdotting... Groklaw is hosted by ibiblio.org, who have enough bandwidth. But its nice to contribute to their other costs.

Re:Regarding Groklaw's Slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, paypal link slashdoted. Can I publish my paypal link on slashdot as well? Under a new section "Your money online" with logo of Washongton (not Dubya one - brrr) on nice green background...

Article Text

[Monkelectric]

Could some kind gentlemen reply to this post with the article text? Groklaw is lost and gone forever :)

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Forever? Groklaw down and gone forever? Ha!

We are back up again.

Come on by.

PJ

Re:Groklaw

[pocketfullofshells]

combination hooka and Coffee-maker!

Buy now and we will only sue you once!!

all your linux are belong to SCO!!

move all *nix, for great profits!

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's gotta be a lie. We know SCO doesn't employ programmers anymore, just lawyers and executives.

netcraft article

[elvesRgay]

This is OT but Netcraft has an amusing article about what options SCO, the litigious bastards, are not using to avoid being DOSed by Mydoom tomarrow.

Re:netcraft article

[Jim Hall]

I liked option #5 in the article you linked to:

Solution 5: SCO Execs point www.sco.com at the loopback address 127.0.0.1, end lawsuits, dismiss lawyers, and invest remaining corporate cash reserves in call options in Dell & Microsoft stock.

Consequences: No denial of service traffic whatsoever seen on the Internet. Millions of Windows users notice that their computer is running extremely slowly. Many buy new machines, which fixes the problem. Dell & Microsoft stock rises. Everyone lives happily ever after.

:-)

Seriously, I find it interesting that more news hasn't been made of the apology buried in the MyDoom.B virus: The creator of what anti-virus experts say is the fastest spreading virus ever on the Internet signed Mydoom and Mydoom.B with "andy," and left the following message in the latter version: "I'm just doing my job, nothing personal, sorry."

I really, really wonder if a programmer out there will develop a burning conscience, quit his job and leak his story to the press. Man, I'd really like to know what company was responsible for this.

Re:netcraft article

[elvesRgay]

Yea, I found that interesting as well. I find it likely that the virus writter's name is not Andy and they put that message in there for kicks or misdirection. If the message was not for misdirection then the guy was most likely hired by a spammer to write the virus for him and that was his employer rather than some company that we would know about.

Re:netcraft article

[oliphaunt]

That's HI-larious. I like option 4. But then I'm in a blow-up-Utah kind of mood lately.

Who would this "New Linux Thought Leader" be? I nominate CowboyNeal.

Re:netcraft article

[Reziac]

Or maybe he's an out-of-work programmer with kids to feed, and needed the money. When your kids are hungry, ethics get mighty expensive.

Hmm

[starseeker]

Good news, yes. Helpful, not really.

Look at the SCO pattern. They have made claims ranging from contract dispute with IBM to every OS in existance owing SCO IP money. They have nothing whatsoever to lose. They will merely pursue any interpretation of events which results in people owing them money. I don't know how they'll twist this yet, but since logic doesn't seem to have much to do with it they might say they were an unauthorized release and try to make some specific employee the goat, claim that the ABIs are an insignificant part of their total IP in Linux, or other things I'm not warped enough to think of. They aren't going to shut up for anything.

Even if after everything we've heard from them to date falls through, they may try to make the claim in court that every OS in existance is derived from SCO IP, and that being the case Linux users STILL owe SCO money, regardless of code. Nonsense yes, but when has that ever stopped them before?

Folks, the individual details of this don't matter at all. That's not what this is about. This is about SCO looking for a way - any way - to get Linux users to pay them. Knocking down a given specific detail won't phase them in the least. Until SCO in its current form is gone, we will never hear the end of this. Remember, they apparently even sent that letter to Congress saying open/free software was a threat to the US software industry! Their only concern is to come out on top, period. How is of no consequence.

Yes, this news could be useful to the likes of IBM (I can't see Groklaw so it's hard to say ;-) But remember this isn't a war about details. This is about defining a goal, and getting there any way possible. We are in the way of SCO's using our code for commercial purposes. Therefore we are the enemy to be destroyed, and trying to reason with them has thus far been about as effective as talking a laser guided missle out of striking the target. I don't expect that trend to change any time soon, wherever the ABIs came from.

Re:Hmm

[c]

...since logic doesn't seem to have much to do with it they might say they were an unauthorized release and try to make some specific employee the goat, claim that the ABIs are an insignificant part of their total IP in Linux, or other things I'm not warped enough to think of. They aren't going to shut up for anything.

Most of those arguments would be shot to shit if IBM could just arrange for Ransom Love as a witness for the defense.

"Yes, while I was running Caldera I ordered employees to contribute the ABI's and a whole bunch of other stuff under the GPL to the Open Source community. Yes, IBM was contributing stuff with our approval."

By the sounds of it, Love's pissed off enough that he might go along with it.

c.

Re:Hmm

[bkaster]

But remember this isn't a war about details. This is about defining a goal, and getting there any way possible.

How do you propose to fight them, if not by showing their claims to be incorrect?

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

they might say they were an unauthorized release

Don't forget these were cryptographically signed. Since when does a a person unauthorised to make software releases have access to the private key used to sign software releases?

Re:Hmm

[starseeker]

"How do you propose to fight them, if not by showing their claims to be incorrect?"

Essentially, in the specific case of SCO, starvation. SCO can't survive indefinitely if they don't get any revenue from anywhere, while paying their lawyers.

I'm not entirely convinced we will ever be rid of SCO, at least in spirit. The use of the legal system as a club against free products is something I have long dreaded, and I don't know any effective countermeasures short of changing the law itself.

I guess that would be my proposed way to fight - lobby for protection of free products against abuse of the legal system. I rather doubt a technical solution to a legal problem exists, so I suggest we look for legal solutions and defenses.

The letter to Congress from SCO a while back was the ultimate illustration of my concerns - there is nothing fundamentally that prevents Congress from saying open source software is illegal, because of security risk|unfair competition|what have you. When politically powerful corporations finally find out they can't FUD us to death or out compete us, they will try to use their political clout to get that accomplished. Never doubt it. And since open source folk don't mean much to re-election minded officials, I'd say our position is not the best.

SCO may be just the tip of the iceberg, a harbringer of the real war. We need to keep that in mind, so if that day comes we are mentally ready to meet it.

Re:Hmm

[starseeker]

They might confess to past bad internal security in the interest of pursuing current licensing revenue. I'm not a legal person, so I don't know what all the various possibilities and ramifications are. My point is they aren't going to shut up just because they are in the wrong.

Re:Hmm

[jrumney]

I suspect SCO will try to argue for unauthorized use of the private key, because that seems to be the only option left open to them. But it needs to be pointed out that not many organizations were cryptographically signing their releases at that time, so those that did do were clued up about crypto issues. I would be very surprised if Caldera were lax in securing their private key, though it wouldn't surprise me so much if a small company made that mistake today, now that the practice is more widespread.

Re:Hmm

[Our Man In Redmond]

Fine, except this isn't entirely directly about the court case. Last month SCOX sent out a raft of letters telling Linux users that their use of the ABIs was a violation of SCO's intellectual property rights, whatever that phrase means, so expect to hear from SCO's lawyers or license salesmen in the near future.

This analysis shows that whatever else is going on, and independent of whether the files are copyrightable at all (a separate question also covered recently on Groklaw), Caldera willingly and knowingly released those files under the GPL. Therefore their letter is so much donkey doo. No one has to pay them a red cent for the use of the ABIs, and if SCOX tries to get money out of anyone for that purpose it is fraud and extortion, and the companies involved should contact their lawyers and the FBI.

This is my opinion, and I am not a lawyer. If you find yourself in this situation, of course, contact your own lawyer before you do anything else and get specific advice.

Re:Hmm

[bkaster]

Essentially, in the specific case of SCO, starvation.

Since I am sure you don't mean not to give them bread and butter, you are talking about financial starvation. Does this not mean to debunk every one of their claims until they run out of money? Certainly since the nondetails, are not a priori incorrect; that is claims about IP can in principle be reasonable. Showing their claims are not, requires detailed work as done by Growklaw.

I do see the bigger danger, but it's solution (whatever it may be, I don't know) will probably not help here (i.e. come too late).

Re:Hmm

[dreamword]

Oh, have no fear, if this ever gets into real, juicy discovery (rather than this "give us some shred of an idea of what you might be accusing us of" phase we're in now), Ransom Love will be deposed, as will all of the developers at Caldera who contributed code to the kernel. It's not a matter of being pissed off enough to go along with it; they won't have any choice. They'll be subpoenaed and under oath.

(as usual, IANAL; IAALS)

Re:Hmm

[c]

Of course. But there's a world of difference between a subpoenaed witness and someone who's actively cooperating. And then there's the PR and jury influencing aspects of having the ex-CEO of Caldera testifying against Caldera's interpretation of events that happened while he was in charge.

Boies might be good (although he sure hasn't been showing it lately), but I can't see him filling a jury full of people dumb enough to buy the ABI argument.

Hmmm... I guess he could feed them some of Darl's crack.

c.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't eat crack. You vapourize it and inhale.

Re:Technology is Politics

[timeOday]

Their contribution was under GPL. They will have to disprove that first, which IMHO is he kernel of the case

After all these months and hot air, I'm *still* unclear on that point. Some days the case is just a contract dispute between IBM and SCO, other days Daryl is ranting about how the GPL is unconstitutional and we're all commies bent on wrecking capitalism.

Personally I think SCO's ownership and their backers believe the latter, but could only trump up a quasi-case for the former.

babelfish translation

[Anonymous Coward]

babelfish translation for those of us who are not fluent in reading Spanish:

Captured the culprit of the Mydoom? 30-01-2004
According to some agencies inform into the news, the FBI would have made some haltings that could be related to the presumed author of the worm of greater propagation of history, and for the surprise of all, it would be in the offices of one of his "victims".

The information, says that the FBI stopped several programmers and in charge of the company SCO, at the same time which other searches and investigations were made in the central offices of the same one, retiring of them a servant and several workstations.

The details of the operations of the special services were not revealed officially, nevertheless, are known by mouth of a representative of company IBM. According to its words, the operation would be connected directly with the judicial lawsuits between IBM and SCO by the code of Linux.

But most surprising, and in agreement with the existing information, it is that all the haltings also would be connected with the investigation lead by the FBI, in relation to the epidemic carried out by the new worm of Internet, Mydoom (also known like Novarg).

Supposedly, on the basis of the analysis of the map of expansion and the speed of the same one, the FBI would suspect that the origin of the infection has been the own SCO.

This is paradoxical, since the company was the target of the anticipated attacks of refusal on watch of the worm in its two versions. The other white one was Microsoft. Possibly, if this is confirmed, somebody of the personnel of the company would have thought (or it would have done it by indication of some superior one), that the action was a form ready to the public opinion in favor of the judgment of the company against Linux.

SCO takes ahead a irreconciliable legal war on the use of licenses of parts of the code of UNIX in Linux, which means thousands of million dollars.

The own SCO and Microsoft, have offered you compensate of 250,000 dollars each one, by information that take to the capture of the author of the Mydoom.

Re:what is so funny ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Running Gag
Oh well, imagine a beowulf cluster of these!

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Translation

I particularly like this paragraph:

SCO takes ahead a irreconciliable legal war on the use of licenses of parts of the code of UNIX in Linux, which means thousands of million dollars.

-drinkypoo

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[bkhl]

I can't, but I can imagine a lot of SCO employees may be a bit disgruntled over the fact that their owners are destroying the company, putting the employees jobs at risk, possibly damaging their street cred at the same time.

Related Story

[ByteSlicer]

MozillaQuest is running a related story here

Re:Related Story

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'related story' is nearly a year old....

Groklaw is presenting all of the information

[TrentC]

Considering they covered both sides of the Novell's original "Wait, we own those Unix copyrights", SCO's "No you don't, here's an amendment to our agreement" response, and Novell's "Hmm, we don't have a copy of that, but it looks legitimate..." reply with equal weight, I have no worries about Groklaw's ability to give both sides fair treatment.

Remember, Groklaw (and everyone else watching the lawsuit) wants SCO to give us the evidence they claim(ed) to have. If there's an appearance of anti-SCO bias, then it's because SCO is giving information that can be quickly (and thoroughly) disproven.

Jay (=

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD UP!

FUNNY!

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[deadmongrel]

click here for english translation

Code and Cookies

[limekiller4]

SCO claims that if they distributed Linux with their own proprietary code included inadvertently and without their knowledge, then they are not culpable for that inclusion because they never agreed to the license.

I guess a simple analogy would be someone buying a container in a grocery store but before getting to the checkout, stuffs in a box of cookies. If the clerk sells the person that box without knowing there were cookies inside, then it is still theft. If the clerk then happens to notice the box post-sale and says, "Hey, I didn't sell you those cookies!" then the thief cannot rightfully say that they were sold to him.

I should add in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS that I do not necessarily buy SCO's argument as being legitimate, but only that the theory the claim rests upon seems rational.

Re:Code and Cookies

[t_allardyce]

Actually is more like the sales clerk stuffing the cookies in there themselves when the shopper isnt looking and then shouting "thief"

Re:Code and Cookies

[One Louder]

It's closer to a store clerk inadvertantly putting cookies in boxes, and passing out the boxes for free, then accusing the recipients of stealing the cookies.

Re:Code and Cookies

[limekiller4]

t_allardyce writes:
Actually is more like the sales clerk stuffing the cookies in there themselves when the shopper isnt looking and then shouting "thief"

Wrong.

I was very clear that I was not attempting to make a statement about the truthfulness of SCO's claim but merely what it was, precisely, that they claimed.

What they are claiming is that whoever included certain bits of code into Linux did so without their knowledge and therefore even if they did distribute their own code under the GPL, they did so without knowing they were doing so. Since they were not aware -- again, so goes their logic -- then they cannot have agreed to including their proprietary software into the code base.

Your analogy is therefore incorrect and clearly so.

If you want to argue the merits of their argument, go nuts, but I'm not arguing that point.

Re:Code and Cookies

[gregm]

No..

It's more like someone (SCO) takes a box of stuff to the Goodwill. (Goodwill is a charitable organization that sells donated stuff) Then they wait 6 months and say "Goodwill stole our stuff and we want a cut from everything Goodwill has sold from the time we made our donation for all eternity."

Once the truth comes out they did they did indeed make a donation they backpedal and say "well we didn't mean to donate all that stuff but we're not going to tell you which items we want back and we still want a cut of Goodwill's sales for all time."

Re:Code and Cookies

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

No, it's more like the store owner gives you a cookie gratis, after which the store is bought out, and the new owners claim that you stole the cookie. And the recipie.

Or something..

Re:Code and Cookies

[enosys]

What was known before would be more like: A random person stuffs boxes of cookies into containers. The checkout clerks fail to notice boxes of cookies in containers and many people buy the containers with boxes of cookies in them but only pay for the container. The supermarket then tries to track down anyone who bought these and make them pay for the cookies.

Now things seem even worse for SCO. It seems they contributed the code. That's like some supermarket employee is told by their boss to stick the boxes of cookies into the containers and then label the items as "container with free box of cookies included". Surely they can't make people pay for the cookies now.

Re:Code and Cookies

[limekiller4]

One Louder writes:
"It's closer to a store clerk inadvertantly putting cookies in boxes, and passing out the boxes for free, then accusing the recipients of stealing the cookies."

What I find amazing about Slashdotters is their willingness to make a situation something it isn't, even if the situation that is is plenty enough to make their case.

I am presenting to you what SCO claims. Do you think that's a concept you can get your head around? Because if you can, you can probably stop trying to drag the veracity issue into it if you try really really hard. It's outside the scope of my post.

And they CLAIM that the code was included without their knowledge. This is analagous to the cookies being placed into the boxes without the knowledge of the clerk.

Do you see how your analogy, if we discard the truthfulness of the claim, doesn't seem to fucking work since they are claiming a lack of knowledge of the code being put in there in the first place? Do you see how your revision with the clerk knowingly putting the cookies into the containers ...seems to break down just a little?

Get it? One has knowledge? The other one doesn't? Get it?

I'm asking a couple of times because it was obvious in the first post but you seemed to miss it in your rage to flame SCO by proxy.

Now, see if you can stay with me on this one...

I AM NOT SAYING THEIR POSITION IS HONEST.

If the above sentence doesn't make sense, please keep reading it until it does.

Re:Code and Cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you all seem to be idiots who can't get your head around the concept of a lack of knowledge in principle, I'll just paste my last reply.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=95010&cid=81 44 334

Re:Code and Cookies

[iamwahoo2]

The guy was an employee of Caldera!!! Caldera was a distributer of linux. Much like Redhat and every other linux distrubution, they contributed their changes and other software under the GNU. Whether it was against their companies policy to release that code holds absolutely no weight in court. He acted on behalf of his company, and it seems that he was even authorized to do so. If I make a business decision when writing up a contract with a sub-contractor, my company cannot come back and sue me or the sub-contractor because in hindsight that desicion turned out to be a bad decision. Your analogy is a terrible analogy.

Re:Code and Cookies

[One Louder]

Do you see how your revision with the clerk knowingly putting the cookies into the containers ...seems to break down just a little?

Did you see where I said "inadvertantly", not "knowingly"? In you don't know the word, you can find it in any dictionary.

In the start of this thread, the customer was the one inadvertantly putting the cookies in the box, which could be argued to be shoplifting even if accidental, and a similar position by SCO might have some merit. According to Groklaw, in the actual case, SCO put the code in, therefore my use of the clerk.

I'm well aware this is all just claims.

Re:Code and Cookies

[gl4ss]

what they claim in the cookieworld is that they sold/gave the container without knowing that the cookies(and extra candy) were inside and neither did the guy who they were giving the container(and the cookies) knew anything about the cookies(in fact, thought that the store owner wanted him to give the cookies to all of his friends).

now you really think that they would have a legimate claim in that the guy they gave the cookies(and candy) to should pay some amount of money without knowing what the money even is for, the candy or the cookies? or that it would be somewhat in their rights to do that? or how would you react if a coffee shop billed your visa 12 months afterwards some more because they gave you extra cream and didn't notice it then?

this cookie nonsense is totally needless of course. they did something as a company and are trying to 'take it back'(hell, they're implying more than that but all it seems to be at this point is just pr fluff as the real actions beside the ibm suit are missing from the picture).

Re:Code and Cookies

[limekiller4]

Yay, the first intelligent reply!!

iamwahoo2 writes:
"The guy was an employee of Caldera!!!"

Hm. While I can't claim you're wrong, because this is semi-new information to me, I'm still not entirely convinced.

AFAIK, SCO claims that they purchased proprietary code from ...hell, I can't remember. They then claim that parts of this code were released into Linux without their knowledge.

Just bear with me for a moment on that one, we can come back to it.

SCO then claims they distributed Linux (under the Caldera name) without knowing that their purchased, proprietary code was included in the codebase.

What you're telling me, if I understand you correctly, is that the offending code (do we even know what code this is yet?) was taken by an employee of the company that owned the proprietary code, put into Linux, and that this was done with the full knowledge and consent of the company that owned the proprietary software?

Re:Code and Cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to re-read the article. Short answer: yes, and with management's knowledge and approval, in public documentation.

Re:Code and Cookies

[spitzak]

You might want to look up the word "inadvertantly" in a dictionary.

Re:Code and Cookies

[David Byers]

Just one point in response to that.

The iBCS RPMs containing a number of the files they claim were "stolen" were available from SCOs FTP site yesterday and are signed with a SCO key. I know that for a fact. The "we didn't know we were distributing our own IP under that licence" argument sounds kind of weak when you continue to distribute the files in question long after you've identified which ones they are.

Put that in your analogy and smoke it! :-)

Re:Code and Cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, but no dice.

You've intricatily compared two examples that have no connection to each other.

In your example the customer filled the box, effectivily hiding stuf out-of-sight for the shop-owner who does not know better than he's selling a box, not it's contents. Yes, that's stealing.

The other example is that a customer picks up a box filled with goodies, put in there by the shop-owner of someone in it's employment. That the shop-owner does not know or is forgotten that the box contains goodies does not matter, as that cannot be tagged to the customer. That's no stealing, but stupidity of the shop-owner. (ofcourse, the customer could mention it, *if* he's aware of the difference)

Ofcourse, there is also a possibility that the shop-owner wants to rip-off a customer by claiming that the box that was picked up by the customer,filled and all, was actually empty and, without his knowledge, filled by that same customer, just to rip him off.

But both are moot, as in this case the shop-owner (or someone in it's employment !) has filled the retrieved the box, eventually filled it with stuf, and has handed it to the customer.

It actually reverses the examples, and only enables the shop-owner to cheat.

But, to come back to the point : "they [actually one of it's predecessors !] distributed Linux with their own proprietary code included inadvertently".

Well, that's too bad. For SCO that is. If I'm buying a simple TV, and I'm getting one with an improved receiver instead they can't, after years of the TV being produced & used, demand that I or anyone else pay up the difference. They're just too late for that.

But hey, that's what I think. Wat the Law thinks can be something quite different :-)

Re:Code and Cookies

[One Louder]

OK, now I understand the source of your confusion - the rest of us actually read the article, and you didn't. In fact, it doesn't even look like you read the summary.

Summary: SCO claimed others stole SCO IP and put it in Linux without their permission is threatening to sue end users and companies. Groklaw claims to have evidence that SCO put the IP in there themselves, the management changed hands, and the new management is claiming theft.

Re:Code and Cookies

[limekiller4]

I read the article.

But I clearly stated that I was presenting SCO's version of the facts, not my personal assessment of the facts. So to be faulted for being wrong -- yet not for mis-stating SCO's position -- seems kind of foolish ...don't you think?

I'm not replying to you again on this subject. If this hasn't gotten through to you, more typing isn't going to help.

Re:Code and Cookies

[PolR]

We can't make such comparisons because we don't really know what they claims are. We can't argue their claims are defensible or make some sort of sense because the claims are unknown.

The story they tell the media is different from the story they tell in court documents and both stories are different from the threat letters they write to the users. To further complicate matters, all their stories change over time. Figuring out what their arguments are is not only a difficult task, it is also a major source of cconfusion.

IBM have asked SCO to state with specificity all their claims to Linux (no exception) and they were ordered by the judge to comply. From what we can tell based on SCO's general counsel affidavit, they did not seem to comply. They filed some incomplete response but it is covered by a protective order and we have no access to it.

I can't provide links because Groklaw is slashdotted now, but the information is all there.

Re:Code and Cookies

[BoneFlower]

SCO is right on that actually. If they inadvertently distributed their own code, or an SCO programmer intentionally put it in without getting the proper approvals from his supervisor, then the code is not under the GPL.

However, the proper response would be to notify Linus(in his capacity as head kernel guy) about the mistake and tell him what he needs to remove. The fact that they have not done that, might be taken as permission for it to be there, in which case they damn well better hope that a judge declares the GPL invalid and all the kernel belongs to SCO as a derivative work or they are, in a word, FUCKED.

Re:Code and Cookies

[Artifakt]

I am not a lawyer (Damn, but I'm writing that a lot lately).
You're showing a very good grasp of this overall (IMHO), but there's one point you made that needs to be stressed. ".. it seems he was even authorized to do so". If some employee acted on behalf of SCO without authorization, it could make a claim for punitive damages impossible (for example), but not necessarily impact the base claim. (A lot of times, this results in a "reasonable man" test - If that guy at the loading dock just "sold" you the company car, is it reasonable for you to have assumed he really had the authority?)
If that person was authorized, it has a lot more impact. Employees can be shown to be authorized by such things as job titles (comptroller, sales representitive and the like, including most management titles) and decriptions found in employee evaluations, ads for hiring to that job, and by other factors such as company printed business cards that have both the person's name and the corporate logo. (If I was a lawyer, maybe I could remember about 10 other such things from an article I saw over a year ago, but I'm not and I can't).
One of the good things here, is that if Mr. X was authorized, there are inevitably public documents that will clearly show it, and they are usually easy to research. (Like finding an ad SCO ran in a trade journal before hiring that person for that job). The law on who is an authorized agent of a company is well established and doesn't rest on any speculative areas like IP law does. This is a point a judge can probably research and deal with in a few minutes if it is raised.

Re:Code and Cookies

[limekiller4]

I received eleven replies to my post. Two of those were intelligent. One of those actually seemed to grasp that I was presenting, uncritically, SCO's version and nothing more.

So thanks. =)

But I agree with you 100%. I think that SCO is utterly full of sh*t and acting in obvious bad faith, as you mentioned.

Assignment of copyrights and carefull vetting

[JohnQPublic]

This is exactly the reason why the FSF requires you to assign your copyright to them when you contribute code to GNU projects. Likewise the Apache Software Foundation and their projects. Someone should always have clear legal title to the entire project. Otherwise nobody may have legal status to defend it in court or to file suit against infringers.

The other side of this is that the ownership of all contributions need to be vetted by the person/group that receives ownership. Some groups ask new contributors for a written document asserting that they own what they're contributing, especially if the contributor works for a software company. That changes the legal situation - if The TDP Group sues the XYZ Foundation for stealing their code, the XYZ Foundation has a clear defense:

"Your Honor, we were told by Joe Coder that he had legal ownership of the code in question and he assigned that ownership to us. Naturally, if you determine otherwise, we'll comply with your order to remove it. However we believe that any damages etc. are a matter between the plaintiff and Mr. Coder"

Now the last thing I want is for The TDP Group to sue me for code I put into XYZ, but if they find out I did it what will likely happen anyway.

Re:Assignment of copyrights and carefull vetting

[k98sven]

Now this is all correct and good, but there are some points to be made..

If you contribute code to a project, it is quite natural to assume that you the contributor has the right to do so, unless there's some obvious reason to be suspicious.

If someone sells you something, you generally assume the seller has the right do do so as well.
If it turns out they didn't, they can be liable for fraud.

Naturally a written guarantee is better, but for the majority of F/OSS projects out there, which are mostly small hobby-projects with little threat of being the target of litigation, it may be a waste of time to ironclad things out of a legal standpoint.

Re:Assignment of copyrights and carefull vetting

[JohnQPublic]

If you contribute code to a project, it is quite natural to assume that you the contributor has the right to do so, unless there's some obvious reason to be suspicious.

Sure, it's natural. But we're talking about the law here, not assumptions of good will.

Naturally a written guarantee is better, but for the majority of F/OSS projects out there, which are mostly small hobby-projects with little threat of being the target of litigation, it may be a waste of time to ironclad things out of a legal standpoint.

Quite correct. But the question was "What's to stop some other contributor from pulling a future SCO?". Torvalds never expected his little hobby project to turn into what Linux is today. Tommorow's world-buster is today's hobby. If you can at all manage it, keep your legal standing clean at all times.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anthony Boyd]

I don't buy it. The site says they got their information from IBM. That runs totally counter to IMB's don't-talk-to-the-press rule. It looks to me like an attempt to spread bad information, pin the blame on IBM, and tarnish them.

I'd love to be wrong, though. The idea of SCO writing a virus against itself for PR purposes is almost too funny. I'd imagine a company or two might sue SCO to cover wages spent doing MyDoom cleanup. Ha ha. That would make my heart feel soooo good.

Good off-topic tangent here

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that it is more important to present evidence so as to win in the court of public opinion, or do you think that the judiciary is where the decisions like this need to be made?

Isn't Slashdot's zeitgeist more akin to lynchmobs in the 19th century than to an ideal conception of justice?

ARTICLE TEXT, ripped from the fish

[macdaddy]

> Captured the culprit of the Mydoom? 30-01-2004
According to some agencies inform into the news, the FBI would have made some haltings that could be related to the presumed author of the worm of greater propagation of history, and for the surprise of all, it would be in the offices of one of his "victims".

The information, says that the FBI stopped several programmers and in charge of the company SCO, at the same time which other searches and investigations were made in the central offices of the same one, retiring of them a servant and several workstations.

The details of the operations of the special services were not revealed officially, nevertheless, are known by mouth of a representative of company IBM. According to its words, the operation would be connected directly with the judicial lawsuits between IBM and SCO by the code of Linux.

But most surprising, and in agreement with the existing information, it is that all the haltings also would be connected with the investigation lead by the FBI, in relation to the epidemic carried out by the new worm of Internet, Mydoom (also known like Novarg).

Supposedly, on the basis of the analysis of the map of expansion and the speed of the same one, the FBI would suspect that the origin of the infection has been the own SCO.

This is paradoxical, since the company was the target of the anticipated attacks of refusal on watch of the worm in its two versions. The other white one was Microsoft. Possibly, if this is confirmed, somebody of the personnel of the company would have thought (or it would have done it by indication of some superior one), that the action was a form ready to the public opinion in favor of the judgment of the company against Linux.

SCO takes ahead a irreconciliable legal war on the use of licenses of parts of the code of UNIX in Linux, which means thousands of million dollars.

The own SCO and Microsoft, have offered you compensate of 250,000 dollars each one, by information that take to the capture of the author of the Mydoom.

Re:ARTICLE TEXT, ripped from the fish

[jCaT]

I call BS based on this translation. Unless babelfish has gotten a lot better, this is article text written in english and automatically translated into spanish. The only thing "wrong" with this translation is the literal translation of some of the words- the sentence structure is quite english.

Re:ARTICLE TEXT, ripped from the fish

[Bromrrrrr]

Well the same article was babled and posted by an AC further up and doing a quick scan they seemed to be the same.

That said, I don't know any Spanish but I do know a little Italian (which I gather is structuraly quit the same) and babelfish does do some 'rough' parsing ie rearanging verbs accomodating the language translated to.

Usually it still doesn't make sense though :)

Re:ARTICLE TEXT, ripped from the fish

[macdaddy]

Sorry pal but this is what the fish spit out. Try it for yourself; it's not difficult.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anonymous Coward]

And a report of this raid from Russia, dated 28th Jan.

http://www.securitylab.ru/42464.html

Simple Question

[WindBourne]

• MS is working with SCO.
• They have seen what SCO has to offer.
• They have invested a small amount of money and a lot of PR.
• They have literally billions in the bank so THEY can afford to buy SCO.

So why have they not simply bought SCO and used it to their advantage?

Re:Simple Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, perhpas because they are a Monopoly ???

Re:Simple Question

[Billly Gates]

Because teh SCO case is baseless and IBM has billion too in the bank.

Steve Balmer would take the rap if fraud which looks likely took place with this whole lawsuit.

Also Novell owns Unix and not SCO. So they are not buying anything besides ancient Unixware and Openserver.

AN investment is better since it avoids legal liability and its also worth staying out of the courts from the IBM countersuit. IBM could drag it for years and cost MS bilions in legal fee's.

Let sco crumble or pay them barely enough to stay afloat so they can spread fud for years on end.

Re:Simple Question

[SpaceLifeForm]

Simple answer: To stay clean legally.

Microsoft can funnel money to SCO via 'licenses' to fuel the SCO FUD machine. But in the end, Microsoft won't be liable for any counter-suits. At some point (likely when Intel and MS are ready with Longhorn), SCO will be allowed to die, making the countersuits moot.

SCO is just a soldier in the war, totally expendable.

Re:Simple Question

[Anonymous Coward]

As I recall, they were contractually obliged to not market a UNIX after they sold off Xenix.

Re:Simple Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. The were obliged to not compete against the original SCO, that is all. That company is gone, and the contract did not go forward.

Re:Simple Question

[eggboard]

If they buy SCO, then they're using their monopoly power, which could be used against them in a court of law. if they fund SCO's fight, then SCO gets to take the blame.

Re:Simple Question

[nijhof]

So why have they not simply bought SCO and used it to their advantage?

Because then they would have to pay out on IBM's, RedHat's and everyone else's counter suits?

Re:Simple Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Their monopoly has never stopped them from trying to buy somebody that they think will help them if they own something that nobody else has. Remember intuit?

Re:Simple Question

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like strapping a bomb onto the guy who's going to blow the plane. He's perfectly willing to strap the bomb on, and step onto the plane, so why not supply said bomb?

If Microsoft had more willing suicide-bombers what kind of open-source world would it be?

Re:Simple Question

[Tony Hammitt]

The last thing M$ wants to do is buy a bunch of pending lawsuits, especially with IBM. It's fairly likely that M$ is violating a few patents of IBM's (everyone else is, why not them) so why should M$ want to take the risk?

What would M$ have to gain by buying SCO? They don't really have to do anything right now, the world's attention is focused on SCO's fallacious claims, all M$ has to do is sit back and laugh with the rest of us. If there's anything to buy in a couple of years, M$ could pick them up for a song. Until the current suits are settled, they'd just be overpaying for SCO and they know it. They have to answer to their stockholders, you know. Spending money on an overvalued company would be stupid.

Re:Simple Question

[jms]

Simple answer: To stay clean legally.

Don't forget that IBM is suing SCO for patent infringement on SCOs entire product line. If Microsoft were to purchase SCO, and IBM were to prevail in their patent suit, Microsoft would be facing millions of dollars in potential damages.

Re:Simple Question

[vorwerk]

So why have they not simply bought SCO and used it to their advantage?

You've seen Star Wars, right? Same thing here. The Emperor only reveals himself as the evil mastermind behind everything after some time has passed. :)

Soooo...

[starseeker]

If it's true, can all the /. folk who raised this possibility when the news broke claim part of the reward from SCO?

Re:Soooo...

[Ryan Amos]

No, I doubt you could collect the $250,000 from SCO, but Microsoft is offering the same amount. Kind of like selling one enemy to the other.

Dissenting

[bstadil]

In a Spirited scientific debate a set of twins took the Opportunity to dissent.

The Rover's was of the opinion that the sky had a brownish tint.

Re:Dissenting

[Alsee]

Ah! So someone has finally figured out where SCO's legal case is coming from!

-

Re:CmdrTick-Oh XOR Linux

[grub]

Steve "I only stole BSD twice" Jobs'

I know I'm replying to a troll but...
You can hardly call it "stealing" when the code is being used within the scope of the license as drafted. The BSD license specifically allows the use of code in a case like this with no strings about having to give back. Apple, in fact, has given back a lot to the community when they didn't need to.

Darl McBride authored MyDoom

[macdaddy]

There he is officer. Darl McBride authored MyDoom. May I please have my $250,000.00 USD now? Thank you very much.

Re:Darl McBride authored MyDoom

[jack_csk]

But... you might have to pay $699 first

Re:Darl McBride authored MyDoom

[macdaddy]

Let me break out my check book from Funny Money Bank and Trust. :-)

How about *this

[danalien]

*this? "the 'EC investigates Microsoft'-thingie" (or any other '<someone> vs Microsoft' case...)

...I know, EU, not US matter, but, doesn't it *kinda* fall under groklaws 'field of goal'?
like slashdot isn't all US-only....

Re:How about *this

[4lex]

It surely would be helpful, if we want to avoid that next case ends like the previous one...

Maybe there are even other fields where we can get some useful help...

It's so obvious you are a manager...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't remember the name Sauron? He is not the evil wizard.

God I hate managers.

Re:It's so obvious you are a manager...

[BoneFlower]

Umm, a case could be made that Sauron was an evil wizard, in fact THE evil wizard, Saruman merely being an assistant.

Sauron, the balrog, the Dragons, and the Istari(aka the Wizards- Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast ad the other two) were all the same sort of being(Maia- think standard Christian Angel). Sauron was in the past the right hand of Morgoth(might be remembering name wrong- but think fallen Archangel ie Satan). While in that position, he functioned in a manner similar to the later Istari(Wizards), though for the side of evil rather than good.

Also, there are references in LOTR to the Istari taking down a Necromancer near Mirkwood Forest. That necromancer is clearly stated to have been Sauron. While "necromancer" technically means just "speaker with the dead", the word is often used in fantasy literature to denote a generic evil wizard.

So yes, Sauron was an evil wizard. Both by the way 'wizard' was used in the context of Middle Earth and the way 'necromancer' is used in fantasy literature in general.

babelfish translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Epidemic Mydoom - the guilty is found?

As it became known today, THE FBI produced the detention of several colleagues (programmers and managers) of company SCO, and also were carried out search in the head office and withdrawal of one of the servers and several working stations. The details of the operation of special services separately are not revealed; however, known (from the words of the representative of company IBM according to the connections with the community) that operation is connected directly with the judicial lawsuit between companies IBM and SCO.

According to the existing information, all detentions are connected with the investigation, which is led BY THE FBI in connection with the epidemic of new Internet- worm. Supposedly, for special services it was possible to analyze geography and velocity of propagation of worm, and so to reveal very source of infection - however it is paradoxical, company herself SCO. Possibly, by this unexpected motion someone of the colleagues of company planned (on the personal initiative or on the indication of management) to dispose public opinion against Linux- association, with which it wages irreconcilable juridical war SCO, attempting to tear away for the licenses in the sections of code Linux/Unix "bank" into tens of billions of dollars.

Groklaw's bias is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

It's irrelevant. Evidence is not opinion, it's fact. Evidence speaks for itself and has nothing to do with opinion. Of course their opinion of SCO determines how hard they will search for facts, but after they present the fact, it's there for you to check for yourself. Not trust is required.

Any lawyer is biased for or against someone in a lawsuit. That doesn't mean they can't dig facts and truths about anything.

Slashdotted Case

[Anonymous Coward]

Groklaw says:

Warning: mysql_connect(): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'mysql2.ibiblio.org' (110) in /public/private/groklaw/system/databases/mysql.cla ss.php on line 108
Cannnot connect to DB server

Which oddly enough sums up SCO's case and business model.

sco changes to netbsd/openbsd?

[endx7]

This is only vaguely on-topic, but SCO seems to have changed their webserver to openbsd or netbsd. At least, Netcraft says so. Although, that could mean more than one thing (such as they stuck another box in front to take the blunt of the impending attack).

Or wait, does that mean they really plan on going after the *BSDs now?

Re:sco changes to netbsd/openbsd?

[dvNull]

It probably is just a testament to the stability of their OpenServer and Unixware products. I mean, if they dont use their own products, why the hell should anyone else pay to use them ?

- dvnull

Text from this link, as translated by Babel Fish

[Anonymous Coward]

As it became known today, THE FBI produced the detention of several colleagues (programmers and managers) of company SCO, and also were carried out search in the head office and withdrawal of one of the servers and several working stations. The details of the operation of special services separately are not revealed; however, known (from the words of the representative of company IBM according to the connections with the community) that operation is connected directly with the judicial lawsuit between companies IBM and SCO. According to the existing information, all detentions are connected with the investigation, which is led BY THE FBI in connection with the epidemic of new Internet- worm. But supposedly, for special services it did be possible to analyze geography and velocity of propagation of worm, and so to reveal very source of infection? however it is paradoxical, company herself SCO. Possibly, by this unexpected motion someone of the colleagues of company did plan (on the personal initiative or on the indication of management) to dispose public opinion against Linux- association, with which it does wage irreconcilable juridical war SCO, attempting to tear away for the licenses in the sections of code Linux/Unix of?bank? in tens of billions of dollars.

You Bastards!

[Anonymous Coward]

You Bastards .. you've killed Kenny !

oops

You Bastards, you've slashdotted Groklaw !

All I get is:

Warning: mysql_connect(): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'mysql2.ibiblio.org' (110) in /public/private/groklaw/system/databases/mysql.cla ss.php on line 108 Cannnot connect to DB server

Re:You Bastards!

[Anonymous Coward]

/public/private/groklaw/system/databases/mysql.cla ss.php
Sure you cannot connect to /public/private. They should fire their schizophrenic programmer...

MOD UP PLEASE

[macdaddy]

This article was quite funny. I vote this guy gets another mod point.

No way

[JohnQPublic]

The FBI only announced launching a probe into Mydoom two days ago. Unless it's signed with SCO's PGP key ( :-) ), they can't have done anything that quickly.

Re:No way

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe but the Russians are saying it too.

Full Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is the result of a group research project, compiled and primarily written by Frank Sorenson with Pamela Jones. The special footnoted article explaining some of the terms for nonprogrammers was written by Nick Richards. The research group was primarily composed of Frank Sorenson, Dr. Stupid, Harlan Wilkerson, Rand McNatt, Roland Buresund, and Pamela Jones, all of whom contributed both research and writing, with input from some Linux kernel contributors. Everyone worked on editing, including an invited group of Groklaw regulars. However, Frank carried the load more than anyone else, so his name is on the finished article.

We are now publishing the article and welcome Groklaw readers' further contributions, corrections, improvements, and comments. This is an ongoing project. This article is the first in a series where we'll discuss the System V UNIX ABI, or Application Binary Interface. We approached the research as, What if Linus Torvalds had not already claimed paternity of most of the header files? Then what?

The article will first explain what the ABI is and what it does, then discuss whether the code was released under the GPL and if so whether management at SCO knew and approved, and finally show how the Linux files that pertain to this do not appear to be infringing files that SCO can claim.

For those who are not programmers, such as myself, there is a footnoted section to explain in greater detail and in plain English what ABIs and APIs and shared libraries are and how they work. If you read it first, it will clarify the terminology for you and you will be able to follow the thread in the article more easily. At least, it helped me tremendously.

I think you will see from this article alone that if SCO is planning to sue anyone over the ABI files, unless there are facts we haven't unearthed, they seem to be leaning on a rickety bamboo reed.

GROKLAW TAKES A CLOSER LOOK AT THE ABI FILES
~by Frank Sorenson et al

Back in January 2003, word leaked out that SCO was planning to charge Linux users for "System V Intellectual Property" in Linux. SCO created a new business division called SCOSource to come up with new ways to make money from this "intellectual property". The original SCOSource Presentation (PowerPoint version) talks of licensing SCO's shared UNIX Libraries from OpenServer and UnixWare for use in Linux.

A Little Background: What Are ABI Files? [1]

As background information, shared libraries are files containing information to be loaded when an application is run. They usually implement common routines, and their inclusion simplifies programming, reduces file size, and standardizes interfaces. A simple example of this would be the "copy file" and "move file" commands: both commands check file permissions and manipulate the file system. When applications have a great deal of functionality in common, this functionality is often placed into shared libraries.

Shared libraries are architecture, operating-system, and version specific. Executables for different systems follow various standard formats, such as a.out, ELF, and COFF. To load an application, the system must do several things: the system interprets the format of the executable (or binary), loads any shared libraries referenced, and begins executing the code found in the binary.

If the executable is in a different format from those the system supports, or if the library files are for the wrong architecture or operating system version, the binary normally will not run. In 1991, Intel announced the availability of the iBCS-2 (Intel Binary Compatibility

Re:Full Article Text

[hammock]

Why can't they take this evidence to court first thing Monday morning and have the case thrown out?

Is the American justice system so fucking retarded that this is not possible?

Re:Full Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why can't they take this evidence to court first thing Monday morning and have the case thrown out?

Because it's completely irrelevant to SCO's lawsuit, which is about IBM's UNIX contract.

Much do about nothing -- it's a response to something Mcbride said in an interview and doesn't really prove anything that people didn't already know (SCO used to be a major Linux company).

Re:Full Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't they take this evidence to court first thing Monday morning and have the case thrown out?

This doesn't have anything to do with the IBM-SCO case, so no, it wouldn't work. This is about SCO's claim about their IP in Linux. IBM's side of things is about breaking a contract and releasing 'derivative works' into Linux, eg. JFS.

Is the American justice system so fucking retarded that this is not possible?

If this were possible, I would be horrified by such a possiblity. There are reasons for proceedures and protocols. They deal with what isn't apparent in the light of day, or what isn't apparent in common sense. Trust the system at least a little, there are far smarter people than you or I who look at it everyday (kinda like opensource software), and point out problems and try to present solutions.

And if you are not a US citizen, watch what you say, cause I could easily point to something in your county, something that is known to you to be reasonable and prudent, but to me would look absurd and frivalious and say the same or similar things.

Re:Full Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm suppose to take an article seriously that's
written in part by Dr. Stupid?

Re:Full Article Text

[hammock]

Let's pretend that IBM is indeed guilty of breaching whatever contract they had with SCO.

Why is SCO trying to bill users for using Linux? If IBM breached the contract, then it's 100% IBM's fault, not mine or yours. It shouldn't/doesn't matter if IBM has "indemnified" linux user or not - they are the sole guilty party. The code in Linux does not belong to SCO. Users should not have to pay for IBM's mistake.

Of course it is up to a court of law to determine what has happened with regards to the contract breach, which again, has nothing to do with anyone outside SCO or IBM, including you and I.

Money Trail

[Zazi]

Anyone wanna guess where the money trail on THIS one is?

Bullying!

[110010001000]

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?" Also, from the article: "[Darl]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.

Re:Bullying!

[c4Ff3In3 4ddiC]

Why don't you stop copying other's comments? You're not the first to say it.

Re:Bullying!

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't his first time either.

Re:Bullying!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you stop copying other's comments? You're not the first to say it.

Why don't you stop copying other's comments? You're not the first to say it.

Seems pretty unlikely to me

[spitzak]

It would mean SCO is stupid enough to launch the virus from their machines and in such a clear way that the FBI could find it in a few days. I doubt it. Some joker typed up something that sounded official enough that this site (which looks legit) posted the article without checking anything.

There are also rumors that the virus "doesn't work" in that it never calls the DDOS code. This sounds like it is trivial to confirm or disprove, so does anybody know what's up with that?

Simple Answer

[TheRealFixer]

Because it would put them directly in the hot seat. The SEC would come sniffing around again if they bought SCO, because it would be an obvious attempt to destroy competition and illegally extend their monopoly. But, by quietly purchasing "licences" to fund SCO's warchest, they can fight a proxy war against Linux, and keep their hands clean from any anti-trust investigations. After all, they were just in good faith paying fair licencing costs to SCO, like any good corporate citizen should do, right? Never mind the vagueness of what exactly Microsoft is "licencing".

Re:Simple Answer

[vidarh]

It would be the FTC or the DOJ that would be looking at Microsoft, not the SEC. The SEC would be involved only if there were concerns about the reporting of either of the companies, or share price manipulation.

Anyway...

[marcello_dl]

In Soviet Russia code contributes YOU!

OT: you never been to iceland?

[flossie]

you never been to iceland?

Not yet! I really wanted to go last year, but Iceland have resumed whaling :o(

I'll go when they stop.

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet! I really wanted to go last year, but Iceland have resumed whaling :o(
And why is that a problem?
You eat meat don't you?

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[flossie]

And why is that a problem? You eat meat don't you?

No, I don't. I am vegetarian.

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[wild_pointer]

I just can't see what that is different from eating fish or meat.

You come from one of the biggest fishing countries in the world (I'm guessing your from uk)

It's not like they are anywhere close to exstinction and the whaling is very limited here in Iceland and their population is followed closely.

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, and I'm sure that the losses in tourist trade from you not visiting them is going to change their mind. Especially since you plan on staying in a hippie commune instead of a hotel...

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[flossie]

You come from one of the biggest fishing countries in the world

I do. Along with the rest of Europe, we are driving many fish to extinction out of sheer greed. To quote from a recent report by the EU on the new fisheries policy (which is a half-baked measure and will do little to solve the problem):

The reason [for the introduction of a new fisheries policy was] that far too many fish had been taken from the sea by fishing, leaving too few adult fish to reproduce and rebuild the stocks. Today, several important fish stocks, such as cod, are on the verge of collapse

It's not like they are anywhere close to exstinction

On the contrary, whale populations have been decimated in the last 150 years. That's why the IWC moratorium on whaling came into force in the 1980s.

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[mad.frog]

I just can't see what that is different from eating fish or meat.

You have a point. Still, whales seem a bit too intelligent for me to feel good about eating 'em. Same with horses.

Cows and chickens, on the other hand, are about as intelligent as the average plant, as far as I can tell. So I figure I'm doing them a favor :-)

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[spacecowboy420]

[embarrassed] I guess when you put it that way, we have all been whaling....

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[Pharmboy]

Just to ruin your lunch: pigs are smarter than dogs. Still want that BLT? ;)

Personally, I don't worry about intellegence of the critters I eat. Everyone knows that if given a chance, a cow will kill and eat you...

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm a whale, you insensitive clod!

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

> It's not like they are anywhere close to exstinction
>
> On the contrary, whale populations have been decimated in the last 150 years.
> That's why the IWC moratorium on whaling came into force in the 1980s.

You have not refuted the original poster's point, you've just made a generalization. The actual FACTS are that Iceland hunts Minke whales. Minke whales are not only not endangered, but are considered abundant the world around (as oppossed to being abundant only in certain waters like Bryde's and fin whales). We are talking 43,000 Minke whales in just the waters around Iceland (another 100,000+ in the waters around Norway and hundreds of thousands more in the rest of the world) with a population growth rate of 2-3% per year. Iceland killed 38 Minke whales last year.

I don't want to give the impression that SOME great whales are in fact severely endangered, like the blue whale and bowhead. But even the 11 or so nations that do hunt whales specifically avoid the endangered species (I wouldn't be surprised if there was some poaching, just because that is human nature, but it is not sanctioned by the governments that do allow hunting of some whales).

What does the have to SCO? I think groklaw is SCO's Moby Dick.

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Just to ruin your lunch: pigs are smarter than dogs. Still want that BLT? ;)

No, but you've me feel better about the black-dog I had for dinner last night.

PS - Anyone who has been around horses knows that most are dumb as rocks. I have eaten horse steak and it was damn good, better than almost every cut of beef that I've tried. But it was prepared in Italy where horse is considered good eatin.

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[haystor]

OT from the current OT.

I'm currently learning to read Icelandic. Anyone know of any resources for learning Icelandic, starting with English? The stuff on the net seems sparse.

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[Pharmboy]

Haven't eating horse, myself. Worked with them once, and yea they are not the smartest, but something about eating horse doesn't sound right. I have eaten squirrel, rabbit, deer, turtle, frog, among others, but passed on horse, armadilla, possum, and housepets. Just a cultural thing I guess.

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am vegetarian.

You know, I recently switched to a vegetarian diet. But it turns out vegetarians are hard to catch, and their meat doesn't taste very good. </badjoke>

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they do kill all the whales, that way that flying cigar thingy will come and destroy the human race and I will finally be free of SCO FUD.

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[DrSkwid]

it only counts if you are vegan

Drinking milk means baby cows will die because male cows aren't needed in large numbers.

You will find many herds only have one live male.
European farming uses widespread artificial insemination.

Lacto vegetarians who cite compassion for animals as their reasoning are deluding themselves if they think that not killing is better than a life long suffering.

The swollen udders of drugged up cows is testament to that.

On top of that wearing leather and wool and other animal products for clothes is part of the animal abusing process. Widespread use of leather in modern times goes a long way to support the cow rearing profits.

I have more respect for a man that says he kills but doesn't care than a man that says he cares but still kills.

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[flossie]

Well to start with, I don't wear leather. Thanks for your reply, I do respect your views and if I was convinced that being vegan was the only way to be compassionate towards animals, I would be vegan. However, do not think that being (ovo-)lacto-vegetarian is necessarily incompatible with caring for animals. The problems that you cite with milk, and that the milksucks.com site in your sig mention, are related primarily to the means of production. I don't know where you come from, but in the UK it is very easy to get organic foods which do not treat food production as just another industrial process. For milk. there is some information about this at the Organic Milk Suppliers Co-operative.

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[TechniMyoko]

That wasnt really that bad a joke. It got a giggle out of me

Re:OT: you never been to iceland?

[DrSkwid]

organic milk, okay, that *might* lead to slightly better welfare.

So how does your Mars Bar figure?
The skimmed milk in your crisps?
That cafe latte down at the corner shop?

I find it strange that you won't go to Iceland because some of the people who live there killed 30 whales when you live in a country that slaughters millions of animals annually and mandates animal testing for a wide range of products and needs quotas on fish catching because the fishermen can't be trusted to manage their own industry to not kill every living thing in the sea.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[deadmongrel]

putting the employees jobs at risk, possibly damaging their street cred at the same time
I guess the damage is already done. The only reason some companies are buying their rediculous licences for running Linux binaries is because they are afraid of their lawsuits. once this thing is over I don't think anyone would be willing to do business with sco. But what I think would happen is that SCO would rename itself and would try to get back to the game. The only people who are would be really affected by any of this would be the sco employees esp the programmers.

Thank God!

[Karzz1]

Thank God! A SCO story. I was going through withdrawals -- it has been something like four days since the last one!

"being so emotional about it"?

[mcc]

Have you seen one single quote that Darl McBride has put out on this entire subject?

If so, I do not think you would necessarily be accusing the linux side of being the "emotional" ones.

Re:"being so emotional about it"?

[Anonymous Coward]

mod this parent down. brain dead fuck.

This is important to stop SCO's current attack

[Thagg]

SCO has recently sent a series of increasingly threatening letters to various Unix and Linux customers. In these letters, SCO approaches, and perhaps puts its toe over the line, between legal browbeating and illegal extortion.

These letters threaten the companies over exactly this ABI issue. In the days before the internet and sites like Groklaw, people had to decide on their own, or with their lawyers, what to do about these letters. Each of the victims might attempt to do the kind of research done by Frank Sorenson and Pamely Jones here, but as the victims are probably not intellectual property experts and have their own businesses to run, they might be tempted to pay off the extortionists.

But, now they each one of the victims has the benefit of this research, and can make a much more informed decision. The Groklaw article also provides links to the original source for each of their assertions, so that the recipients of the letters can look at the actual underlying data.

All that said, the article is reminds me of the opening to Get Smart, where Maxwell Smart goes through an almost interminable series of doors to get to his destination. Sorenson and Jones, and their helpers, have found any number of different ways that the code in question is available for use. SCO is screwed on the basis of any one of those.

Thad Beier

SCO pissing upwind into the ocean...

[s13g3]

An effort to get bought out seem to have been entirely the idea, although after the way their stock rocketed up, you'd think they'd have shut their mouths, seeing as how I believe their stock hit it's highest point in their company's history this last year. How can they ever really expect to "get" *anything* from the open source community? Why not just quit'cherbitchin', realize that, even if those bits of code were theirs, they're as long gone as Xerox's or Kleenex's trademark (lost to common usage... Hence few people ask for a "tissue", they ask for a Kleenex, not matter the brand. Having become a widespread, household name due to market saturation, the courts rules these trademarks unenforceable), and get on with their lives... Yanno... Maybe PRODUCE A PRODUCT, and just be happy with the notoriety (good or bad) that all this has brought them and the rise in their stock it's created... *Ride* the wave, don't build a cofferdam around the beach to insulate yourself that's just going to collapse as soon as the real storm hits (and it'll be an awfully fecund typhoon, methinks). As another reader started to comment, "All your source belongs to Us", us being the world in general who took it when we decided that we didn't want to deal with your lousy marketing schemes and pay ridiculous amounts of money for the software that the world needs to stay in touch with itself. SCO/Caldera, blame only yourselves for not having seen long ago that it would have been wiser to work WITH the open source community, or maybe just make your software a little more reasonably priced. In the P2P age, monolithic profits for monolithic companies selling monolithic software is pretty much over, and no matter what you think about who owns which bits of code, we will do almost anything to take you AND Microsoft out of the picture. So quit spinning your wheels and wasting your time on money on something fruitless, and stop wasting my bandwidth on a moot point.

Oh... And on the other hand...? You have different fingers. Use them to do some coding, not for writing empty legal threats, and you might actually produce something worthwhile. Your graphics editing software damn sure isn't it.

That'll stop the stupid crooks

[roystgnr]

The smart ones will realize that it doesn't matter what happens to the corporate name, as long as all the corporate insiders can make millions of dollars along the way. The only way future would-be SCO's will be deterred is if all the people who have been lying and dissembling to pump up their stock are fined well in excess of their profits and/or do prison time for their fraud. You can bet this won't happen.

Re:That'll stop the stupid crooks

[pjrc]

No. It doesn't matter if the insiders laugh all the way to the bank (presumably in the Cayman Islands). What matters is SCOX investors losing money and the company utterly ruined.

The only reason Darl and crew are able to take this stupid strategy is they've managed to convince some investors there is a chance they can pull it off. When it turns out to be a dismal, money losing failure for all investors, future greedy unscrupulous CEOs just won't have the backing to persue such a folly.

Re:That'll stop the stupid crooks

[roystgnr]

The only reason Darl and crew are able to take this stupid strategy is they've managed to convince some investors there is a chance they can pull it off. When it turns out to be a dismal, money losing failure for all investors, future greedy unscrupulous CEOs just won't have the backing to persue such a folly.

If AT&T's failed anti-open-source lawsuit didn't convince investors that the SCO lawsuit (which is far more clear cut) is unwinnable, what makes you think the SCO lawsuit will convince anyone that the next desperate company's threats are bunk? There's a potential SCO investor born every minute, you know.

Bandwidth would be better

[jhines]

Knowing absolutely nothing about GrokLaw's setup, I'd make a SWAG that they need bandwidth more than CPU power.

Even a cheap PC these days can move a lot of data. My guess is their pipe is overloaded before the CPU is.

Now what is needed is a catchy term for a whole lot of bandwith terminating in a single place.

Re:Bandwidth would be better

[inode_buddha]

I doubt it; they're hosted at ibiblio. Prolly one of the biggest pipes on the east coast AFAICT.

Re:Bandwidth would be better

[Alsee]

Now what is needed is a catchy term for a whole lot of bandwith terminating in a single place.

I think that's called a Slashdotting :)
Yup, somebody's bandwith is terminating there every time a page comes up blank.

-

Re:Bandwidth would be better

[ZenShadow]

Given that they are running Apache 1.3.x, they're probably fine on CPU. They're probably either (a) running out of connection slots due to keepalives, or (b) running out of memory. That's assuming that they have their connection limits set high enough to get to that point, and that they haven't discovered already just how nasty keepalives can be...

--ZS

Re:Technology is Politics

[Our Man In Redmond]

Forget what they say in public. Watch what they say to the court. They can get in big trouble if they lie to the court.

They are probably also in big trouble if their public statements get brought into court, but that's another story.

You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are saying is that SCO is being savaged in the court of public opinion and hasn't defended itself there.

Should it have to defend itself there if it can get legal remedy by presenting its evidence in court before a judge?

Re:You mean...

[sphealey]

What you are saying is that SCO is being savaged in the court of public opinion and hasn't defended itself there.

Should it have to defend itself there if it can get legal remedy by presenting its evidence in court before a judge?

To the best of anyone's knowledge, SCO has no patents that would bear on Linux, so patent lawsuits are out.

By definition, if SCO's trade secrets have been revealed in Linux, they are no longer trade secrets. While they might collect from an entity that revealed those trade secrets, they would have no grounds to sue end users or other Linux developers.

That leaves copyright violations. And in order to collect for damages from copyright violations, you must make an attempt to mitigate the damages you have suffered. SCO has been asked by IBM and Linus to specify the copyright infringements so that they can remove them from Linux. SCO has refused, failing to mitigate the harm suffered (if any exists). I will leave the conclusion to you...

sPh

Re:You mean...

[ealar dlanvuli]

Yes, they brought it into the court of public opinion to pump their stock price.

It is crucial that they follow through with something that isn't a lie after doing that.

The Emperor Has No Clothes!

[11223]

I find it amazing that a story like this can garner over 100 posts about SCO, yet as far as I can determine nobody is able to view the story. What are you all blathering about?

Re:The Emperor Has No Clothes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you didn't RTFA. People posted mirrors long before (50 minutes) before you posted your rant.

Just because you wait an hour after a slashdotting, and don't even bother to check the mirrors doesn't mean noone else did.

Re:The Emperor Has No Clothes!

[nathanh]

I find it amazing that a story like this can garner over 100 posts about SCO, yet as far as I can determine nobody is able to view the story. What are you all blathering about?

I read the Groklaw story when it was published yesterday.

Given the popularity of Groklaw I imagine many Slashdotters also read the story yesterday.

Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[mark-t]

It gives further credibility to the perception that the "GPL is viral, contaminating everything it touches". Although this view is moot when one realizes that they shouldn't be copying and distributing other people's copyrighted works in the first place without permission (which in the case of the GPL is fairly easy to obtain), it's pretty much a given that SCO's own rendering of this code as GPL was inadvertent will be brought up as grounds for why the GPL should be considered legally invalid.

IMO, of course, a company inadvertently putting its own proprietary code into a GPL'd work is pretty much the same as if a company had inadvertently divulged its own trade secrets, which in every case is the company's own damn fault for being careless.

This could, however, dissuade companies that perceive they may have something to lose from participating in open source projects in the future for fear of accidentially letting something out they didn't want.

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[ljavelin]

Funny, I bought a new house a couple years ago. But now the original owner claims that the garage was not included.

Was the agreement was viral? I guess so!

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[jrumney]

it's pretty much a given that SCO's own rendering of this code as GPL was inadvertent

Since groklaw has been well and truly slashdotted since this article appeared, I can't blame you for not RTFA, but the evidence they have collected pretty much destroys any claim that SCO might make about the release of this code being inadvertent. The evidence includes code released by Caldera under the GPL and PGP signed by Caldera's release key. It includes public statements by the former CEO of Caldera concerning their intentions in releasing the code. The last shaky fragment of SCO's case against Linux users has gone.

Why the last, you ask? Aside from the fact that this amounts to the bulk of "evidence" that SCO has publically produced, the documents SCO have released as part of their case against Novell show that the System V ABI is the only source code they could conceivably claim as theirs, and even that was an extremely shaky claim, as "System V ABI" appeared amongst a list of what was clearly documentation, and was in an appendix listing the copyrights that Novell owned, which may or may not have been transfered to SCO (my interpretation, and that of many others with more legal knowledge is that without an explicit copyright transfer agreement, none of those copyrights have been transfered).

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[mark-t]

I know they released the code intentionally, what they did _NOT_ do intentionally was forfeit their rights to keep their code proprietary. This is due solely to carelessness on SCO's part and is not the fault of the license, but it nevertheless is almost certain to induce further antagonism about the requirements of the license from anti-GPL camps.

What really concerns me is that in the future, companies may want to avoid participating in GPL projects to avoid this sort of phuckup [sic] from happening entirely.

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[jrumney]

Huh? You must be smoking the same crack as SCO if you think Caldera did not understand that explicitly releasing software under the GPL and making lots of press releases about the fact that they were doing so would forfeit their rights to keep that code proprietary.

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[nmos]

It gives further credibility to the perception that the "GPL is viral, contaminating everything it touches". Although this view is moot when one realizes that they shouldn't be copying and distributing other people's copyrighted works in the first place without permission (which in the case of the GPL is fairly easy to obtain), it's pretty much a given that SCO's own rendering of this code as GPL was inadvertent will be brought up as grounds for why the GPL should be considered legally invalid.

Actually a good portion of this article is about showing that SCO knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they distributed this code under the GPL.

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

It gives further credibility to the perception that the "GPL is viral, contaminating everything it touches". Although this view is moot when one realizes that they shouldn't be copying and distributing other people's copyrighted works in the first place without permission (which in the case of the GPL is fairly easy to obtain), it's pretty much a given that SCO's own rendering of this code as GPL was inadvertent will be brought up as grounds for why the GPL should be considered legally invalid.

What are you talking about? Have you read the article? Caldera has a PGP digitally signed distribution of their own software containing the very files and ABI that they claim are infringing. There were under no pressure to release this code, but they chose, on their own, to do so, AND they choose to release it under the GPL. The only thing viral about GPL is the misperceptions that spread from person to person, starting out of Microsoft's lips. Now you're their puppet too, spreading misinformation farther. Do your own thinking, instead of merely repeating wht Microsoft says.

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[Crispy Critters]

"IMO, of course, a company inadvertently putting its own proprietary code into a GPL'd work is pretty much the same as if a company had inadvertently divulged its own trade secrets, which in every case is the company's own damn fault for being careless."

Don't spread FUD about "viral"-ness of the GPL.

Imagine a janitor somewhere takes a bunch of secret documents and sets them out on the curb as trash, and someone else finds them and reads them. If there were any trade secrets in there, they are not trade secrets any longer.

The next night, the same janitor sits down at a terminal, takes the company's proprietary code, slaps the GPL on the front of it, and puts it on a public web site. Is this code now GPLed? No. The janitor had no authority to license the code, so he cannot release it under the GPL.

Programmers generally don't have the authority to relicense the code they are working on, and, if they do not, they can never cause proprietary code to become GPLed. They can violate copyright, though.

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[mark-t]

It's evident from the sheer number and nature of responses to my post above that I was not very clear about what I meant.

Virtually every response seems to think that I was advocating the "GPL is viral" premise in my post, but in fact nothing could be further from the truth. For the record, I am actually an almost fanatical GPL advocate that doesn't believe this "viral" bullshit for even a second.

The real point of my previous post is that I recognize that there is a profound amount of ignorance out there about the GPL, and some of these ignorant people have loud voices and deep wallets. I expressed concern that this situation may only further fuel their misconceptions, not objectively give credibility to them, and that if they raise enough of a ruckus about it, other companies which might have otherwise participated in GPL projects might be dissuaded from it even before they have a chance to learn the truth.

I think what pisses me off the most about this "GPL is viral" crap is that it doesn't consider the simple fact that the GPL doesn't stop you from copying _ideas_ and licensing that however you want, it only stops you from doing that to the _content_. So the only excuse that a person might _REALLY_ have for complaining about the so-called "viral" nature of the GPL is if they wanted to incorporate someone else's idea that happened to be in a GPL'd work into their own proprietary work, but they are too lazy to write their own code or are too unethical or uneducated to bother paying attention to copyright law.

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[close_wait]

It gives further credibility to the perception that the "GPL is viral, contaminating everything it touches". Although this view is moot when one realizes that they shouldn't be copying and distributing other people's copyrighted works in the first place without permission (which in the case of the GPL is fairly easy to obtain), it's pretty much a given that SCO's own rendering of this code as GPL was inadvertent will be brought up as grounds for why the GPL should be considered legally invalid.

The whole point about the groklaw article is that is shows that SCO willingly released errno.h et al under the GPL. They were actively involved in a project to allow SCO binaries to run under Linux, and specifically released some "lite" versions of some of their shared libraries to facilitate this. This release was done under the GPL, and the RPMs were signed by SCO. The release includes errno.h etc, and did not contain copyright attributions.

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[mark-t]

The whole point about the groklaw article is that is shows that SCO willingly released errno.h et al under the GPL.

Right... and now it's pretty obvious that they've changed their mind about the whole deal, so as far as they are presently concerned, they believe that it was a mistake for them to have ever put their code into a GPL'd work in the first place.

Can you see where I'm going with this? Their inclination will be to blame the license itself, since they will claim that if the requirement to make the code freely available hadn't been given, they never would have done so, and that the requirements that the GPL places can lock a corporation into it, preventing them from changing their mind later, as this fiasco illustrates.

Yes, it's FUD. But do you really think they won't scream exactly what I've just described? And do you really think that there aren't people out there that are naive enough to take them seriously?

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[Crispy Critters]

"The real point of my previous post is that I recognize that there is a profound amount of ignorance out there about the GPL, and some of these ignorant people have loud voices and deep wallets. I expressed concern that this situation may only further fuel their misconceptions, not objectively give credibility to them, and that if they raise enough of a ruckus about it, other companies which might have otherwise participated in GPL projects might be dissuaded from it even before they have a chance to learn the truth."

This is true. But I think what you are saying can be reduced to "wealthy individuals and large corporations don't like following the law, and they will use their influence to try to get what they want regardless." If we let companies violate the copyrights on GPLed code so that they won't attack the GPL, there is no point in having the GPL at all.

Education is our best weapon. Anyone who reads Groklaw will learn that the GPL is easy to understand, easy to follow, does not pose a danger to them, and the free software community is not interested in appropriating proprietary code. (There are a small number of tricky cases in the GPL, but they are easy to avoid.)

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[Xtifr]

it's pretty much a given that SCO's own rendering of this code as GPL was inadvertent will be brought up as grounds for why the GPL should be considered legally invalid.

You obviously didn't read the article (reasonable, given that it was slashdotted into oblivion), but it addresses the "inadvertent" angle in great depth. It contains public statements and press releases from Caldera bragging about the work they were doing to help provide common APIs/ABIs between Linux and Unix, and proudly proclaiming their use of the GPL for their contributions.

Re:Uhm... this could be a bad thing.

[mark-t]

Clearly they didn't understand it, or else they wouldn't be making such a stink about it now.

Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster... puke

[Anonymous Coward]

Warning: mysql_connect(): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'mysql2.ibiblio.org' (110) in /public/private/groklaw/system/databases/mysql.cla ss.php on line 108
Cannnot connect to DB server

Re:Technology is Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

After all these months and hot air, I'm *still* unclear on that point.

Perhaps you're assuming there is only one issue here, in fact there are five:

• SCO/IBM lawsuit
  
• IBM/SCO countersuit
  
• Redhat/SCO lawsuit
  
• SCO's public claims of SCO copyrighted material in Linux
  
• SCO/Novell lawsuit
  

Notice that, so far, SCO has been very careful not to claim copyright infringement as part of their IBM lawsuit, but IBM has charged SCO with copyright infringement (of distributing IBM code in violation of the GPL).

So whenever you read an SCO story on /., now you can associate it with the correct issue.

Glad I could help. ;-)

RE: limekiller4

[Anonymous Coward]

You have issues. Lay of the anger, it's going to kill you.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Our Man In Redmond]

This was apparently reported by the Moscow Times and is generally considered to be, shall we say, of doubtful veracity. If the FBI had raided SCO's offices, we'd have heard, Groklaw would have been all over it and McBride and Sontag would have cancelled their dog and pony show at Harvard on Monday.

Bad analogy!

[El]

It is more like the clerk slips in a box of cookies unbeknownst to the customer, then has the customer arrested as they are walking out the door for shoplifting.

Groklaw /.'ed - Mirror of article here

[DDumitru]

This is an HTML w/o style tags mirror of the article itself (no posted comments).
Thanks Pamela et.al. Great Article
http://sd-mirror.dumitru.com/gl.htm

Re:Groklaw /.'ed - Mirror of article here

[fltsimbuff]

<SCO-vision Goggles>This HAD to be SCO, after all, that article was potentially damaging to SCO's case. It HAD to be DDoS'd... Everyone knows that is how we settle grievences on the net these days anyway...</SCO-vision Goggles>

Hmmm... that sounds familiar. Oh, yeah.. I remember. <sarcasm>SCO gets DDoS'd by Linuxers because of the case, so this attack on Groklaw HAS to be SCO attacking Linuxers because of the case!</sarcasm>

OT: Desktops (was Re:In other news...)

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

OT:

Most of those would make some great desktop backgrounds. You wouldn't happen to know anywhere that has much larger versions of things like that, would you"?

Thanx.

Re:OT: Desktops (was Re:In other news...)

[wild_pointer]

google it :-)

Re:OT: Desktops (was Re:In other news...)

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

/me slaps his forehead.

duh...

Thank you, man. :-)

Mod parent up: it's the full text.

[LouisvilleDebugger]

Mod parent up: it's the full text.

It's your that is scantly dressed

[bstadil]

as far as I can determine nobody is able to view the story. What are you all blathering about?

I for one read the story at Groklaw last night when it was posted, second the is Mirrors posted, Third site with text in Html, Txt and Pdf, fourthly some AC posted the whole article as a comment.

Now go read it and make an intelligent comment

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Zocalo]

My gut feeling is that someone has put two and two together with some wishful thinking and got five. This thing has been a trail of confusion since the start; it was a Unix hacker, it originated in Russia (but has English comments), it was written by spammers... This could simply be another layer of deception.

On the otherhand, the copies of MyDoom that have been pummelling my mail server since the start ceased entirely just after 01:00 GMT this morning, yet normal email continues to flow... Coincidence, or is there more to this story than just a hoax or confusion?

Groklaw ./ Please someone post the article

[bangular]

Groklaw has been slashdotted and I really want to read this so would someone be nice enough to post the article?

Re: limekiller4

[limekiller4]

An Anonymous Coward (aren't they all?) writes:
"You have issues. Lay of the anger, it's going to kill you."

First, don't confuse annoyance with anger. If you think Slashdot is something worth getting angry about...

Second, you don't know me. If you think that you do by reading one of my posts on Slashdot, you're either a fool or trying to get a reaction. Who is more in need of help -- someone who gets annoyed by stupidity or someone who gets their kicks trying to goad people into flamefests on a geek/tech site?

Not Nancy; rather Roy and Dale

[BigFootApe]

http://www.royrogers.com/happy_trails-index.html

Good-bye SCO. Enjoy the fires of Hell.

Re:Groklaw ./ Please someone post the article

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

wget -m http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200401302 35310123 --12:56:24--
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200401302 35310123 =>
`www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200401302353101 23'
Resolving www.groklaw.net... 152.2.210.81
Connecting to www.groklaw.net[152.2.210.81]:80...
connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
...
...
...
...

Re:Technology is Politics

[Krow10]

Their contribution was under GPL. They will have to disprove that first, which IMHO is he kernel of the case

After all these months and hot air, I'm *still* unclear on that point.

This particular point goes specifically to the claims made in this letter to Unix Licensees that SCOX sent out a little over a month ago. If SCOX released those into linux under the GPL (and they did,) then they cannot go after *anyone* (including Unix licensees) for using a version of linux with those files without violating the GPL. Additionally, if *they* distribute a version of linux which contains those files (and they do) they are in violation of the copyright of every other contributer to any such linux distribution that they are distributing. Thus, pretty much any recipient of the above linked letter has a pretty good case for telling SCOX to pound sand (after consulting a lawyer to be sure) and IBM has a damned good case in their copyright countersuit. By pointing to the letter, and to the GPL ABI release by SCOX and then pointing to any linux distribution from SCOX's site in the recent past (and there have been plenty right up until 1/25 -- but oddly various locations keep disappearing with each DDoS) IBM can show good evidence that SCOX tried to sublicense linux (the letter) for containing something that they themselves released as GPL into linux (PGP signed files) and that, since they are in violation of the GPL terms, they do not have permission to distribute linux, which they are doing (get someone who's recently downloaded the kernel from the SCOX site to testify.) SCOX is SCOrewed. Cheers, Craig

Re:Groklaw ./ Please someone post the article

[Shakrai]

Warning: mysql_connect(): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'mysql2.ibiblio.org' (110) in /public/private/groklaw/system/databases/mysql.cla ss.php on line 108
Cannnot connect to DB server

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[jellomizer]

Well I don't know French or is it Spanish and I don't trust babel fish for a really clear translation. So it is possible that what they are saying is true but the translation is loss.

Chill pill dude

[bogie]

Come on now.

"Even if after everything we've heard from them to date falls through, they may try to make the claim in court that every OS in existence is derived from SCO IP, and that being the case Linux users STILL owe SCO money, regardless of code."

Not gonna happen.

"Folks, the individual details of this don't matter at all. That's not what this is about."

No actually the details do matter. They matter in the court of law. Contrary to popular belief you can't just buy your way into winning every lawsuit.

"We are in the way of SCO's using our code for commercial purposes. Therefore we are the enemy to be destroyed, "

Yea, so what? MS wants linux destroyed as well and you how well that's worked for them.

Look, your just acting a bit hysterical here. Facts and law do matter. And contrary to your sky is falling ideas Linux isn't going to be destroyed by anyone. If it turns out that Caldera released the code under the GPL 5 years ago or whatever then this is hugely damaging to the case. This IS helpful. You can't just dismiss that and say "well SCO will just think of some angle to spin this." My advice to you is relax a bit and ease off the coffee. This case will resolve itself and there is no indication from any repudiable legal counsel or expert that SCO will be the end of Linux.

Re:Chill pill dude

[starseeker]

"Even if after everything we've heard from them
to date falls through, they may try to make
the claim in court that every OS in existence
is derived from SCO IP, and that being the
case Linux users STILL owe SCO money,
regardless of code."

Not gonna happen.

Yes. That's what I thought about some small company with silly claims suing IBM straight off for $3 billion, instead of picking a smaller fish to start with. Or about them taking the bluff to the point where they appear ready to sue on a scale the RIAA would envy. I'm hoping you're right, but nothing I have seen thus far indicates to me they wouldn't try it.

"No actually the details do matter. They matter in the court of law. Contrary to popular belief you can't just buy your way into winning every lawsuit."

The court of law isn't the battle SCO is worried about winning. They are trying to win the stock market game, get their name in front of the world, and hurt Linux/open source. The motivations for the latter are a matter of speculation, but clearly their actions and statements have that overtone. Their legal action is a long shot, and they must know that (barring incredible stupidity, which I suppose I can't rule out). So if they know that, what are their motivations? They aren't doing this for nothing.

"Yea, so what? MS wants linux destroyed as well and you how well that's worked for them."

Microsoft hasn't made ANY serious overt moves to destroy Linux. Not yet. They're still fighting regulatory stuff across the pond, and while in a practical sense the antitrust case in the US is dead they were ruled a monopoly. That's why so many people wonder if they are pulling SCO's puppet strings - they don't have to get down and dirty themselves, and thus avoid extra trouble. We're too complacient about Microsoft. SCO is the current issue, but once they're gone Microsoft won't just concede ground to Linux. They will fight, and do whatever it takes to win. If they can't win technically, they'll try to get the laws changed. The only thing I'm sure the WON'T do is nothing.

"Look, your just acting a bit hysterical here. Facts and law do matter. And contrary to your sky is falling ideas Linux isn't going to be destroyed by anyone."

Facts only matter in certain kinds of fights. Law matters, but it is slow and big money interests can lobby for new laws. I don't think SCO can stop Linux. But confining the analysis of this situation to SCO is using tunnel vision. Linux has and will have enemies, and they will learn from what SCO does. I don't have enough faith in the US political system to trust the lawmakers not to pass legislation that heavily favors commercial software, and if THAT happens SCO will be the least of our worries.

"You can't just dismiss that and say "well SCO will just think of some angle to spin this." My advice to you is relax a bit and ease off the coffee. "

I never said it wasn't important to the legal case. But the PR war may be lost by the time the courts get done with appeals processes. The legal system is slow - the software world moves at warp speed. DR-DOS won a decision against Microsoft, but by the time it did it was irrelevant.

"This case will resolve itself and there is no indication from any repudiable legal counsel or expert that SCO will be the end of Linux."

SCO may just be the beginning. Money and power defend themselves. Linux and open source threaten both. Ergo, we can expect trouble. It's as simple as that.

Boots are made for walking

[Anonymous Coward]

and walking's what they'll do:
One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over SCO!

Are you ready, boots?
Start walkin'

and then that horny orchestra takes it away ;-)

Re:How to make money off of a failing company

[Frambooz]

Woah, a !!!PROFIT!!! scheme without the ???

And it works, too :/

Not a GPL-only problem

[spitzak]

Obviously the same problem applies to putting code in the public domain, or the BSD license, or even giving closed source under NDA to another party, and every other method of releasing copyrighted information. You can always claim it was inadvertent and try to retrieve the rights you gave away.

Trying to say this is a "problem with the GPL" is pure FUD. It is like saying auto accidents are proof that there is a problem with the Lincoln Continental.

Re:Not a GPL-only problem

[mark-t]

Of course it's FUD, but do you think that's going to stop the sentiment from arising?

Re:Not a GPL-only problem

[sik0fewl]

... auto accidents are proof that there is a problem with the Lincoln Continental.

Yes! I've been saying this for years!

bias and crying wolf

[moojin]

i read some of the posts on bias against sco and must say that of course we should be biased against sco. if their lawsuit against ibm and charges of copyright infringment against linux using abi files had any merit, then we could believe them. since sco has used all of its energy threatening to sue 1000s of linux customers and have not done so already, SCO can be compared to kid who cried wolf. if we were to have no bias against SCO then we would continue to believe every single press release they have released.

Validation of the open source model

[El]

It appears that in addition to all bugs being shallow with enough eyes, that all complicated legal problems are also shallow with enough eyes. How many people have helped Pamela Jones in this by locating references? It appears that open source methodology may be an advantage in legal cases as well as software development!

Re:Technology is Politics

[zoloto]

So what's so bad about wrecking capitalism again? Last I heard it did more greed than good. But then again, that's my own immediate knee-jerk reaction to it.

Anyone else with a different point of view?

All they are doing is establishing Prior Art for

[Anonymous Coward]

their upcoming patent and copyright infringement lawsuit against all virus writers for having used SCO's VirusSource IP.

Give SCO a break, a company's gotta feed their lawyers somehow...

But the judge WILL decide if it's admissable.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

remember the judge wont be deciding anything. its the jury

But the judge WILL decide if it's admissable, and the jury is instructed to ignore it (or shielded from even hearing about it) if it's not.

Fortunately, digital signatures were explicitly designed for proving authorship in the digital world of generally untracable bits, and governments, including both the executive (by regs) and legislative (by law) branches of the Fed, are moving to make them legal proof. (See SEAL, E-SIGN, Millennium Digital Commerce Act, etc.) They're already recognized by Utah (not that it matters in a federal court...)

Since this is a civil case, where the standard is a "preponderance of evidence", and the signatures are being introduced by the defense, I'd be surprised if the judge excludes such evidence. (Think about it - what non-digital evidence is there of ANYTHING related to the case?)

If there is no direction from law or precedent, I'd expect him to let it in and let the experts from both sides argue the difficulties of forgery.

(IANAL, your mileage may vary, take this with a grain of salt, etc.)

Re:But the judge WILL decide if it's admissable.

[Anonymous Coward]

The standard is "on the balance of probabilities." (e.g. whether or not it is more likely that A's assertions are true(r) than B's)

Re:Technology is Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

My name is Mr Paragraph. Nice to meet you.

Not really

[bstadil]

This can be avoided if they buy the assets not the company per se.

Issues surrounding the transferability of licenses aside, this is what is normally done to avoid something coming back and bite you.

Paypal donation link

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the site is slashdotted... it's sort of hard to donate money to them without a link

--
Questions?
Call 1-888-633-3446

Quite right

[FunWithHeadlines]

When the facts are on one side, the other side can't do much except resort to innuendo and FUD. Thus the rise in 'Groklaw is biased' whispers I've seen over the past few months. Well, against SCO, who could NOT be biased at this point unless you are ignorant of the facts of the case? The more you learn about SCO's claims, the more you realize they have nothing. That is why the mainstream press has been slowly but steadily turning against SCO too. They have realized what Groklaw saw early on.

If a guy wants to mug you, guess what? You are biased against his claims against your money.

Re:Quite right

[wytcld]

'Groklaw is biased' whispers

The word 'biased' is biased! Another way of saying the same thing is "Groklaw has an orientation." The opposite of having an orientation is to be disoriented. So, for instance, in the recent history of American politics the Republicans have had an orientation. The Democrates, more concerned with not being "biased," have been disoriented - until Dean came along and rubbed their nose in the mess they were complicit in making.

If your orientation is towards good things, and you maintain your orientation, you're going to take a strong stand against wicked shit that gets in the way. This is not "biased" or "unfair." It's the only alternative to "Lie down and take it." (And if you don't think anything is good, and worthy of orienting towards, you have a serious psychiatric problem which should be treated ASAP - not a good philosophical point.)

Mirror of the article

[Newsome]

http://sco.tuxrocks.com/ABI-Article.html

Yes, we trust them to be fair

[walterbyrd]

>>Can we trust them to be fair and unbiased in their "research"?

Groklaw tries to publish all revelent legal documents and the like. When Groklaw published the transcripts for the Dec 5th hearing, do you consider it "biases" because Kevin McBride was so thoroghly out-classed?

Clarification

[spitzak]

Researched this a bit more, having now been able to see the article.

The "errno.h" file here is a different one than the Linux one. You must compile with this errno.h if you want to use the SCO-style ABI, since the error numbers are different. If you want to use the Linux ABI (which all Linux programs you have probably seen do) you use the one in /usr/src/linux, which Linus wrote.

There is also an errno.h distributed with Microsoft Windows, and Microsoft can rightly claim copyright on this, and it does not have anything to do with Linus's file or with the one SCO is claiming.

It does seem likely that SCO was talking about these files when they listed the "infringing header files" so it was rather stupid of everybody to fall into their trap and waste time discussing the history of the Linux header files.

Re:Clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

> It does seem likely that SCO was talking about these files when they listed the "infringing header
> files" so it was rather stupid of everybody to fall into their trap and waste time discussing the
> history of the Linux header files.

"It does seem likely" -- obviously they didn't specify it precisely. Who knows? They have been extremely vague about everything. Naturally when they say "Linux" and "headers", people checked the Linux headers. In any case, it wasn't a waste of time, as Linus himself got some good press demonstrating that he wrote those files. I didn't see any counter-articles claiming Linus was talking about the wrong headers -- then they would have had to specify the right ones, and they don't want to be specific in any of their claims.

Blasphemy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Most things *exist* long before they are noted on /.

Public thanks for Groklaw

[3Suns]

I'm not sure if it's been done, or if plans are in the works, but Groklaw has been a tremendous boon to the Open Source community. Everybody involved with making that site, especially Pamela Jones, has done an enormous amount of expensive work, pro bono, on our (the Open Source community's) behalf. The evidence is out there, and thanks to Groklaw it is being found and the world is being informed.

I'd like to point everybody to the little paypal button on the groklaw sidebar. They deserve credit for their work. Are there any plans for some kind of big party at a linux conference for Pam Jones et al.? Maybe after the case is settled.

Mirror of the article

[Newsome]

Link to mirror

Slashdot should just redirect to Groklaw re SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

Groklaw actually breaks news, PJ reports faster and more accurately then most major news outlets, and, unlike the Slashdot editors she doesn't publicize and push her own political agenda.

Re:How to make money off of a failing company

[iamwahoo2]

It really does not look like there was very much insider trading and I doubt you will see McBride cash out. If he does, he is going to pound-me-in-the-ass prison and he knows it. He will go down with the ship.

(An FYI aside re: indian giver.)

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Indian giver: a person who gives something to another and then takes it back or expects an equivalent in return.

The term "indian giver" is the result of a misunderstanding of the property law of an east-coast tribe, early in the settlement of former Europeans in North America.

Short form: The colonists thought they were buying the land. The Indians thought they were leasing it, with anual rent payments and lease renewals.

Needless to say, this led to considerable confusion and indignation when the indians came back for the next year's lease negotiations.

The colonists won. The winners get to write the history. The authors of the history get to embed their propaganda from the conflict (such as the term "indian giver") in future generation's language.

Re:(An FYI aside re: indian giver.)

[Bromrrrrr]

I thought the term was meant as 'a giver to Indians' alluding to how native Americans were treated and 'given' land and treaties.

Groklaw now owned by NYT?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd RTFA, but it looks like PJ's changed things so that you need to be registered to read the articles now. I was halfway through this one this morning, went out to run some errands, and find that I can't get back in to read the rest.
Now I gotta go hunting for it in my browser cache.

Thanks, PJ, it's been fun, but I generally DON'T register just to read a news site or blog. I can understand wanting registration for comments, but just to read the content, it doesn't make sense in a public forum.

Moscow Times?

[rollie_tyler]

I can't find it on their Web site. Was it there, or in print? Can anyone provide a link? Thanks.

Microsoft bought time.

[LouisvilleDebugger]

It occurs to me that Microsoft may be well aware the suit is doomed and that SCO will crater. But
if you integrate under the declining curve of FUD against Linux, the area under the curve looks like XP and Windows 2003 license fees to Microsoft while they get ready for their next big thing. At the same time, Microsoft knows well how agonizingly close Linux is to breaking in big to the desktop market.

The growth of Linux on the desktop is inevitable. So the best Microsoft can hope for is to slow it down and bank the profits while they last. Buying SCO would be pointless precisely because it has no future besides this doomed litigation. By simply chucking money SCO's way, it's a lot cleaner for Microsoft: plus they distance themselves from the liability of being seen to have anticompetitive practices or any damages from countersuits by IBM, Novell, RedHat, or any of the other players.

PJ of GrokLaw should get the Hopper Award once the dust has settled. She's Marvel Superhero sized to me. We hackers should get together and make her a cool amphibious superhero vehicle or something.

Re:Microsoft bought time.

[pjrc]

... the best Microsoft can hope for is to slow it down and bank the profits while they last.

No. The best case scenario Microsoft could hope for it a greatly tighten their proprietary lock-in, perhaps using DRM and patented protocols and file formats to legally inhibit competitors from offering interoperable alternatives.

I learnt all I know from Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Pot smokers and college dreamers were the main target audience for many years.

How can that be? The books were written in the 30s I think, and Timothy Leary didn't invent pot until 1969. Trust me :P

You do NOT have to register to read OR comment

[FunWithHeadlines]

"PM (#8144889) I'd RTFA, but it looks like PJ's changed things so that you need to be registered to read the articles now."

Absolutely not true. You do not have to register to read articles. If you had problems earlier, it was probably due to the temporary /.ing.

Uhm... you could be wrong

[John Harrison]

Have you considered the possibility that before Slash and Burn McBride was brought aboard that Caldera/SCO was actually a willfully contributing member of the Linux community? The company willfully contributed this code to improve Linux. Now that those people are most likely gone the idiots that have taken over want to put the cat back in the bag.

All this proves is that companies should be careful about what they release under the GPL and that projects that accept contributions should keep careful track of who they come from.

If nothing else this whole SCO fiasco shows that Linux needs a disciplined approach to keeping track of where things are coming from in order to avoid future problems. I am sure that once this is over things will be run a bit differently.

Re:Uhm... you could be wrong

[moncyb]

If nothing else this whole SCO fiasco shows that Linux needs a disciplined approach to keeping track of where things are coming from in order to avoid future problems.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I am quite sure the Linux kernel developers keep good track of who commits what. They use a revision control system called BitKeeper. I haven't used it myself, but from what I hear, it is a great tool for keeping track of changes (and who contributed them). The kernel developers certainly seem to have a good grasp of who contributes a specific patch--from what I've seen anyway.

SCO was being deliberatly vague about what was in dispute. They said it was because they wanted to keep "trade secrets", but one has to wonder if they knew their claims were crap--especially considering how absurd they were. No amount of contribution tracking will be able to defend against parasite con-artists who just want to fleece a bunch of victims. They will say anything they can think of to obscure the truth so their "case" may have some sort of chance in court, and unfortunately the US court system doesn't seem to pay much attention to the truth these days.

spin spin spin (the sco spin)

[sparkeyjames]

Lets see SCO spin their way out of this one.
Great research by PJ and the gang.

I also had some free time on my hands with nothing better to do than
rewrite this song to fit the times. I also took a wee little
bit of artistic license with it (so sue me). Enjoy.

Apolgies to the Byrds, Pete Seeger
and Christians everywhere.

--------

Spin Spin Spin (The SCO Spin)
(sung to the tune of Turn Turn Turn by The Byrds)

Our stock price is down (Spin, Spin, Spin)
Even if there's is no reason (Spin, Spin, Spin)
And all hope's gone for profits, this quarter.

A time to buy, a time to sell
A time to deal, a time to steal
A time to evade, a time to deceive
A time to conceal, No time to reveal

We're getting bad press (Spin, Spin, Spin)
The law suit's the reason (Spin, Spin, Spin)
And all hope's gone for profits, this quarter.

A time to build up, a time to shake down
A time to rant, a time to accuse
A time to cast away truth, a time to lie altogether

Linux is kicking our butt (Spin, Spin, Spin)
Our old code is the reason (Spin, Spin, Spin)
And all hope's gone for profits, this quarter.

A time of lies, a time of proof
A time of threats, no time for regret
A time you may extort, a time to refrain from extortion

Darl's raveing again (Spin, Spin, Spin)
IBM is the reason (Spin, Spin, Spin)
And all hope's gone for profits, this quarter.

A time to gain, a time to spend
A time to lose, a time to cash in
A time to tan, a time to smoke crack
A time for peace?, Darl, I swear it's just too late
-
sparkeyjames
If sense were common everyone would have it!

Re: limekiller4

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll clear up what I said then...

You have issues. Lay of the annoyance, it's going to kill you.

Is that better?

"Who is more in need of help -- someone who gets annoyed by stupidity or someone who gets their kicks trying to goad people into flamefests on a geek/tech site?"

How bout option 3, taking this, and yourself too seriously. Others weren't trying to bring you down with what they offered, they were just saying what if this and it more like that.

You, sir, are a control freak. You didn't like the way the thread was going so you came down on the others like a ton of bricks. Totally uncalled for.

If you have a problem, try looking in the mirror first.

Open Source vs. Closed in the legal Arena

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it very interesting to see that now that the Open source movement is finally being taken to court that they are able to muster the same kind of distributed support en masse as they have in the creation of Linux and other projects. While closed source proprietary porjects can only muster lawyers that they hire, IBM has free legal aid in the form of Groklaw and the support of many thousands of people trying hard to prove SCO wrong to the best of their ability. Here's to a smashing SCO defeat.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I don't buy it.

Same here, for a different reason:

The claim is (if I read the fish babble correctly) that they were turned on to SCO by tracking the initial spread of the virus to SCO as an early focus.

Others are already suggesting that the DoS on SCO is a red herring by the spammers - playing a game of "let's you and him fight" between two of their enemies: The anti-virus people (mainly commercial and law enforcement) and the anti-spammers (expert users and sysadmins, high cross-membership with the open source community).

The worm's structure is consistent with this. It is a spam-forwarder and backdoor installer, of a similar form to earlier spam tools (including function shutdown dates). And the DoS is relatively low-intensity (one ding per second per zombie), which is consistent with not screwing up the spam forwarder by consuming too many of its resources in a DoS attack.

If the DoS on SCO IS a red-herring, doing an initial release by mailing a few copies to SCO and maybe Microsoft (so it spreads from there and gets them blamed) is also consistent: Further social engineering to escalate the distraction.

If this is true, you'd have to examine SCO's mail logs to find the next step closer to the real source. (And infecting SCO would even let you use the backdoor to plant more inciminating evidence on them.)

Nevertheless, it IS in SCO's interest to be perceived as a target. And it can also give them an excuse to take down systems with evidence weakening their case. So taking a known spam virus and hacking it into this form is also consistent with the "attack yourself and blame your opponent" model. So it will be ineteresting to see if there's anything behind the rumor. B-)

Re:Groklaw ./ Please someone post the article

[dtfinch]

Yeah, it seems we've slashdotted our friends at groklaw again.

Re:CmdrTick-Oh XOR Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm. What, exactly? Darwin? What impact, outside of the proprietary OSX, does Darwin have on computing anywhere in the world?

Spread shutdown date.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

On the otherhand, the copies of MyDoom that have been pummelling my mail server since the start ceased entirely just after 01:00 GMT this morning, yet normal email continues to flow... Coincidence, or is there more to this story than just a hoax or confusion?

Mydoom, like several previous spam-forwarder viruses and/or worms, is reported to have a spread-shutdown date.

Re:Spread shutdown date.

[Zocalo]

Yeah, I know about the shutdown, but all the news I'd seem to date seem to imply the shutdown date is the 12th of February. However, it looks like the AV companies are *still* trying to understand the thing, because while trying to find out whether this is a fluke or intentional MyDoom behaviour I found this at NAI:

If the worm is run after February 1st 16:09:18 (UTC), it changes its behavior from mass mailing to initiating a denial of service attack against www.sco.com. This denial of service attack will stop on the first system startup after February 12th 02:28:57 (UTC) , and thereafter the worm's only behavior is to continue listening on TCP port 3127 (or up to 3198). Due to a bug in the code, the DoS attack will fail to start more often than not.

Obviously it's not an exact correlation in timing since that still lies in the future, but it's more plausible than the worm being shutdown because of an FBI raid on SCO.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[wkitchen]

If that proved true, it would warm the cockles of my heart. But I'd have to see very credible confirmation before I'd believe it.

Just what the hell are "cockles", anyway?

You are assuming the GPL is valid

[Anonymous Coward]

You are assuming the GPL is valid

http://www.linuxworld.com/story/43495.htm

Re:You are assuming the GPL is valid

[sik0fewl]

I'm not sure that even matters. If the GPL is invalid then there are lots of other SCO/Caldera contributions in addition to this one.

And besides, since the lawsuit is against IBM (which is hard to remember sometimes after reading so much FUD from Darl) they can't say that IBM put that code in Linux since there is a record of SCO/Caldera contributing it.

interesting experiment

[Xtifr]

same problem applies to putting code in the public domain, or the BSD license

(I'd call it an "issue," not a "problem." It's only a problem if you're planning to sue everyone in the world for using the code you released openly.)

And if you want to see someone's head explode, go find a BSD fanatic, and explain to them that the BSD license is viral. Then stand back. Way, way back! :)

If Microsoft bought SCO

[mh123083]

wouldn't they own unix and be able to completely squash all the competition?

Or is there something is U.S. law that prohibits this, similar to the UKs Monopolies & Mergers Commision?

Re:If Microsoft bought SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

yes but then they would be open to further anti-trust actions

Re:If Microsoft bought SCO

[vidarh]

No, they would own licenses to resell and sublicense certain specific versions of the original Unix that is to a large extent irellevant outside SCO's fantasy world.

Re:If Microsoft bought SCO

[Xtifr]

No, because SCOldera doesn't have a clear, uncontested title to "Unix". First of all, the Open Group owns the trademark "UNIX(tm)," secondly, Novell has a competing claim to the code, and finally, large parts of the code are owned by others - most notably the Regents of the University of California.

Caldera/SCO is also the target of more lawsuits than they've filed. They've already lost a suit in Germany, and been additionally fined for violating a court order, and they're under investigation by the Australian government. Doesn't make them look like a very tempting aquisition.

But most of all, yes, MS in particular (who might otherwise be willing to overlook some of these obvious problems) would be in a world of trouble due to their monopoly position. The SEC could and probably would forbid such an aquisition. And remember, US law isn't the only thing they have to worry about. MS also does business in the UK and EU, and would have to deal with major repercussions there as well.

And finally, there are change-of-ownership issues in the contract between Novell and oldSCO. NewSCO seems to think they can sidestep this by claiming that they merged with oldSCO's OS division, and thus the ownership didn't actually didn't change. MS would have a much harder time making such an argument.

Re:If Microsoft bought SCO

[SEE]

Well, the DoJ Antitrust division could stop it. But it wouldn't be necessary.

Microsoft would still be, as the succeeding party, bound to the Unix license agreements entered into by AT&T, USL, Novell, Tarantella/SCO, and Caldera/SCO. These licenses are, for the most part, perpetual licenses, and thus would require that Microsoft prove the licensee is in violation of the terms in a court of law in order to successfully terminate them.

Then they'd have to prove that Linux stole code, much like SCO is trying to, or else Linux would still be there competing with them

Even then, it wouldn't touch 4.4 BSD Lite derivatives (Free, Net and Open BSD); Microsoft would have to find a pretext to challenge the AT&T-UCB settlement agreement and win the case, and not have AT&T's theft of UCB IP come back and bite it on its ass.

And after all those improbable victories, there would be quite a bit of the GNU, Linux, BSD, Minix, and other Unix-workalike codebases (both Open Source and not) out there that wouldn't violate any possible Microsoft rights, and the Open Group would still own the Unix trademark.

The result is that a free *nix, eligible for certification as a genuine Unix, would still be around no matter what Microsoft did.

Re:Technology is Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

GOD DAMMIT.

You imbecile, his fucking name is DARL.

Re: SCO might never win but neither will they stop

[Anonymous Coward]

"We are in the way of SCO's using our code for commercial purposes. Therefore we are the enemy to be destroyed, "
Yea, so what? MS wants linux destroyed as well and you how well that's worked for them.
Look, your just acting a bit hysterical here. Facts and law do matter. And contrary to your sky is falling ideas Linux isn't going to be destroyed by anyone.

The point wasn't (as far as I can tell) that SCO's arguments were valid, or that SCO's claims have enough merit to pose a legal risk, but simply that SCO will never quit its litigious behavior. SCO has essentially given up on selling software, and instead is trying to scare companies with copyright infringement claims. Microsoft might also like Linux to go away, but one *huge* difference between Microsoft and SCO is that Microsoft is still successful in creating and selling software, and its market valuation is still strong.

I don't think SCO is attacking Linux because the GPL stands in their way of using Linux for their commercial purposes; they're attacking Linux because SCO (correctly) decided that by claiming they were due something for their alleged IP in Linux, they could boost their stock price. As long as their tactics can keep the stock price up, they'll continue their attacks. (I don't know how long that'll be: take away SCO's licensing revenue, and they're losing money. If SCO has trouble convincing Sun an Microsoft to give it more $ "for licensing", they'll have no cash left for the lawyers and will burn out.)

easier targets

[Xtifr]

But what this case is likely to prove (and may well have already proven) is that FLOSS is not an easy target. There are plenty of low-hanging fruit available for corporate fraud and intimidation. If SCOldera's claims are proven to be utterly without merit (which seems a given at this point), I doubt if we'll see another such case anytime soon. Lies that people (investors) might believe are much more likely to be effective.

CNN? Left?

[a whoabot]

Yeah, I was chilling with Ted Turner last night, we were smoking some dope and talking about how corporations suck and discussing Baudrillard's "The Gulf War Didn't Happen". That guy really hates the big multi-nationals(you should have heard the things that came out of his mouth about Wal-mart). And he agreed with Mr. Baudrillard: I guess that's why CNN was really critical, and never hyped the Gulf War or anything.

Cut'n'paste of the article

[GavK]

Groklaw Takes A Closer Look at the ABI Files, by Frank Sorenson et al Friday, January 30 2004 @ 11:53 PM EST
This article is the result of a group research project, compiled and primarily written by Frank Sorenson with Pamela Jones. The special footnoted article explaining some of the terms for nonprogrammers was written by Nick Richards. The research group was primarily composed of Frank Sorenson, Dr. Stupid, Harlan Wilkerson, Rand McNatt, Roland Buresund, and Pamela Jones, all of whom contributed both research and writing, with input from some Linux kernel contributors. Everyone worked on editing, including an invited group of Groklaw regulars. However, Frank carried the load more than anyone else, so his name is on the finished article.

We are now publishing the article and welcome Groklaw readers' further contributions, corrections, improvements, and comments. This is an ongoing project. This article is the first in a series where we'll discuss the System V UNIX ABI, or Application Binary Interface. We approached the research as, What if Linus Torvalds had not already claimed paternity of most of the header files? Then what?

The article will first explain what the ABI is and what it does, then discuss whether the code was released under the GPL and if so whether management at SCO knew and approved, and finally show how the Linux files that pertain to this do not appear to be infringing files that SCO can claim.

For those who are not programmers, such as myself, there is a footnoted section to explain in greater detail and in plain English what ABIs and APIs and shared libraries are and how they work. If you read it first, it will clarify the terminology for you and you will be able to follow the thread in the article more easily. At least, it helped me tremendously.

I think you will see from this article alone that if SCO is planning to sue anyone over the ABI files, unless there are facts we haven't unearthed, they seem to be leaning on a rickety bamboo reed.

GROKLAW TAKES A CLOSER LOOK AT THE ABI FILES
~by Frank Sorenson et al

Back in January 2003, word leaked out that SCO was planning to charge Linux users for "System V Intellectual Property" in Linux. SCO created a new business division called SCOSource to come up with new ways to make money from this "intellectual property". The original SCOSource Presentation (PowerPoint version) talks of licensing SCO's shared UNIX Libraries from OpenServer and UnixWare for use in Linux.

A Little Background: What Are ABI Files? [1]

As background information, shared libraries are files containing information to be loaded when an application is run. They usually implement common routines, and their inclusion simplifies programming, reduces file size, and standardizes interfaces. A simple example of this would be the "copy file" and "move file" commands: both commands check file permissions and manipulate the file system. When applications have a great deal of functionality in common, this functionality is often placed into shared libraries.

Shared libraries are architecture, operating-system, and version specific. Executables for different systems follow various standard formats, such as a.out, ELF, and COFF. To load an application, the system must do several things: the system interprets the format of the executable (or binary), loads any shared libraries referenced, and begins executing the code found in the binary.

If the executable is in a different format from those the system supports, or if the library files are for the wrong architecture or operating system version, the binary normally will not run. In 1991, Intel announced the availability of the iBCS-2 (Intel Binary Compatibility Specification), a specification designed by Intel, SCO, and Unix System Laboratories (USL) to enable binary compatibility and migration capabilities between systems. SCO's Tim Ruckle said this to encourage support:

'The goal of 'shrink wrap' software for the open systems marketplace will not be

Re:Technology is Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes AC, thank you for correcting him. I am so outragged that he misspelled Darls name. Nothing is worse than misspelling someones name on slashdot, seriously.

I mean, I don't mind if Saddam kills 100s of thousands of people, or if people are still suffering under slavery in Africa, or even if women are forced into subservience in the Middle East, but god dammit, we don't need unnecessary fucking "y"s inserted into Darl's name. That is just going too far.

Now, please go slit your wrists you anal retentive, self loathing, impotent fucking spell nazi. Everyone else have a nice day.

The FSF does not require that!

[Sterling Christensen]

Here is a link to the GPL in html format. Find me where it says you are REQUIRED to assign to the FSF your copyright.

In reality, you keep the copyright and have every right to distribute your work under another license - even a commercial/proprietary/closed-source one. But you can't take back all the copies you gave out under the GPL, nor deny the rights of those who accepted those copies.

After all, your own master copy isn't under the GPL, it's not licensed to you at all - it's just yours! You can distribute it under any license you want.

Show me where the FSF says otherwise!

Re:The FSF does not require that!

[jrumney]

The requirement is not part of the GPL, and other authors are free to decide their own policy, but in projects administered by the FSF, they do ask that you either assign copyright to them or disclaim all rights over your code (effectively making it public domain) so that the FSF has clear ownership of the code it is distributing.

Re:The FSF does not require that!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/gnu/GNU/maintain_3.html

I like this one too.

[dmaxwell]

A kiss tune works great too. SCO's sorry mush is going to fubared when the courts and Linux plaintiffs get through with them.

More like Paul Williams

[Reziac]

Specifically, this little sendoff party

You are totally wrong

[FunWithHeadlines]

" I can tell right away that you are type of person who defines "FUD" as anything he/she disagrees with."

Completely wrong. I define FUD as anything that is designed to steer somebody away from or toward something the FUDster wants, all without resorting to facts. When you use verifiable facts, it's not FUD. When you use unverifiable innuendo, it's FUD.

"Fairly common attitude among operating system advocates."

I don't run Linux. Totally wrong there too.

"What you are unable to 'grok' is that the whole point of Groklaw is to provide "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" that SCO has solid legal case. It's not "anti-FUD" at all -- it's "Fight FUD with FUD".

Completely wrong. Groklaw provides facts and the links to back them up. Let's see Darl try that for a change. If you think Groklaw is just FUDding, go on the site and provide your own facts. But since you are hiding your identity here, perhaps you have no facts.

"And they are very successful at it, and there's some very solid information there. However, they have zero interest in being objective (as they say, lawyers are "fierce advocates"), and their over-willingness to counter every statement Darl farts out with a 2000 word essay just underscores that point."

There is a legal case going on here, and legal cases take time to explain so that you or I can understand what is happening. I'm grateful that a site like Groklaw came along to show that what Darl says is wrong and why it is wrong legally.

" (For example, what's the point of today's story? That SCO used to sell Linux? Everyone knows that.)"

ROFL! I think you should re-read the story if that is what you think the point is.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[mAineAc]

Hmm, I had mentioned this on Slashdot and got put down as a troll. It was an honest opinion I wasn't trolling. Would be funny if it turns out true.

How does that really change something?

[Kjella]

Someone should always have clear legal title to the entire project. Otherwise nobody may have legal status to defend it in court or to file suit against infringers.

That doesn't make any sense. You still have every right to sue over your code, and will have to defend the ownership of your code. The only difference is that it's extremely unlikely you'll have the money nor the interest about this small component you wrote. But legally, there's no difference.

"Your Honor, we were told by Joe Coder that he had legal ownership of the code in question and he assigned that ownership to us. (...)"

How exactly is that any different from "Your Honor, we were told by Joe Coder that he had legal ownership of the code in question and he granted us a licence under the GPL. (...)" Both things are exclusively the right of the copyright holder.

I would never sign away my code to someone else, simply because the FSF could then do whatever they want with it, including selling it or releasing it under a licence I didn't like. Maybe you trust them but I don't, at the most I'd sign a legal release allowing them to pursue GPL violations on my behalf. That's it though.

What you're arguing makes no difference. If SCO is claiming the licence is invalid, or the transfer of ownership is invalid, it doesn't matter. Because they dispute the ownership empowering you to do both. So I don't see your point. They can make just as much FUD about all subsequent licences by the FSF being invalid as well.

Kjella

Re:How does that really change something?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The only difference is that it's extremely unlikely you'll have the money nor the interest about this small component you wrote. But legally, there's no difference."

That is the point exactly. You probably can't defend your code, from a financial point of view. So why not turn it over to an organization that can? The entire SCO case would be very different if everyone had done that.

Re:How does that really change something?

[JohnQPublic]

That doesn't make any sense. You still have every right to sue over your code, and will have to defend the ownership of your code.

Ownership when there's a long history and a lot of hands can be a very dicey matter. Here's an excercise to try. Randomly pick a source module in /usr/src/linux* (really randomly, not one you know anything about). Look at it and decide who "owns" it. Then go read the update history (this would be a lot easier if their was from-day-one kernel CVS repository). Who has contributed "enough" code to also have an ownership stake? With all that info in hand, try contacting the entire set of owners to report someone having misused the module's code, or claiming that their intellectual property is infringed by the module. Then post to the Linux Kernel list and see how many more "owners" come out of the woodwork.

I would never sign away my code to someone else, simply because the FSF could then do whatever they want with it, including selling it or releasing it under a licence I didn't like. Maybe you trust them but I don't,

I never said I trust the FSF - Stallman's a genuine nut case, he just happens to have a few good ideas. And besides - all it would take is one good copyright-infringement lawsuit loss and the FSF's property - www.fsf.org and all those copyrights we all assigned to it - get turned over to some Evil Proprietary Software Company. Think it couldn't happen? The Church of Scientology has taken over some of their critics exactly this way and replaced their anti-Scientology websites with pro-Scientology messages. What the CoS can do, Microsoft or Oracle or Computer Associates or ... can do.

Better joke from Groklaw posters

[urulokion]

Darleks

"Litigate. Litigate! LITIGATE!"

Re:CmdrTick-Oh XOR Linux

[macinrack]

I might have said the same thing before I took a little time to poke around the data center and talk to people. You might be surprised how many people are running Darwin without the OS X GUI.

FSF does require that for *official GNU projects*

[TimMann]

Of course the FSF doesn't require you to assign copyright to them in order to use the GPL on your own programs.

The FSF *does* require you to assign copyright to them (or to formally disclaim copyright, putting your work in the public domain) if you want to contribute code to an official GNU project.

See http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain_5.html#SEC5

SCO Lost their Virginity!!!!!!! Linux Scores Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Best part of the whole article..

Distributing code under the GPL under those circumstances is like losing your virginity. Even if you regret it later, there is no turning back to the way things were and no way to undo the consequences.

So Darl has had his cherry popped!!!

Re:Technology is Politics

[daviddennis]

Capitalism is nothing but exchange through money.

I don't think it's possible to wreck capitalism. You could destroy the value of money, but substitutes would be rapidly found. For example, in World War II prison camps, cigarettes were used as money.

I don't think there's any circumstance where society would be so degraded that people would not want to exchange goods in one form or another. Money is just a medium that makes that more flexible. If I offer my labor in exchange for a new PowerMac, it might be a long time before I could find someone who would want to make a direct exchange. But if I exchange my labor for money, and use that to buy the PowerMac, then everyone's a lot happier than they would have been without money.

I think your main complaint about money is simply that you don't have enough of it. Unfortunately, the only non-capitalist economic systems I know of solve the money problem by instituting rationing, so everyone gets the same pathetic set of lousy goods, which make them worse off than the American ghetto-dweller.

If you want to destroy capitalism, first think about what you want to put in its place. So far, I haven't seen anything better.

D

Yes the FSF does require assignment

[JohnQPublic]

You're right - the GPL does not require any kind of copyright assignment, but I never said it did. I said the FSF requires copyright assignment on contributions to GNU projects. Let me say that again: "GNU projects", not "GPL-licensed software" - there's a big difference. For example, GCC is a GNU project, and the Contributing to GCC page says:

Before we can incorporate significant contributions, certain legal requirements must be met.

The FSF prefers that a contributor files a copyright assignment for large contributions. See some documentation by the FSF for details and contact us (either via the gcc@gcc.gnu.org list or the GCC maintainer that is taking care of your contributions) to obtain the relevant forms. It's a good idea to send assignments@gnu.org a copy of your request.

If a contributor is reluctant to sign a copyright assignment for a large change, a disclaimer is acceptable as well. However, a copyright assignment is more convenient if a contributor plans to make several separate contributions.

Small changes can be accepted without a copyright disclaimer or a copyright assignment on file.

And it's not just the GCC project. Check out http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain_5.html#SEC5, where the FSF's "Information For Maintainers of GNU Software" explains the mechanics of copyright on GNU projects.

why did sco become moderators

[peragrin]

what I post a piece bashing SCO and I gett modded as a troll, what the fsck is going on. did the world come to an end I slept through it???

In a different sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if it was a cluster of actual paralegals, working syncroniously, then that would do wonders...

Re:CmdrTick-Oh XOR Linux

[eddy]

BSDs compiler is GCC. Apple have engineers working on GCC. GCC is a very important Free Software project.

Sell SCO Stock. Buy Linux Stock.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who bought SCO stock should sell them and buy Linux stock.

It is my opinion that SCO has no case and it is only a mater of time before their deception is put to a stop and their house of cards comes tumbling down.

Missing the point!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help thinking that the majority are missing the point.

When engaged in a campaign surely the best way to blindside your opponent is to create a diversion.

What better diversion than Darl?

Since this is only a contract dispute between SCO and IBM what if they have a case and there is code that IBM released that SCO has rights to. (say perhaps between 2.2 and 2.4 kernel release!)

And if they do have rights ...

Perhaps Groklaw (PJ) might be better focusing on the history of IBM's contributions and not at what Darl quotes in the press which may be just a smoke screen.

I'm feeling sig.

ABI vs API

[Anonymous Coward]

For this I'll remain an Anonymous Coward... ;)

Some years ago I worked at a telecom wonder. We had several API:s which I have worked against, but strangely we never had an ABI. Whoa, reading the article, I know realise that we called both the API and the ABI for API. Duh!

Is this common elsewhere too, to refer to ABI:s as API:s?

Re:ABI vs API

[Spinality]

In my experience, ABI is a relatively recent term.

In 'the olden days' the single term 'API' was used, and it covered the entire range of entry points, calling parameters, communication protocols, error handlers, return codes, and anything else a programmer would need to use the interface in question. This usage dates at least back to the early '70's and probably earlier.

While I like the precision of ABI and other neologisms, this does lead to confusion when we recast an old term like 'API' under a more restrictive definition.

Re:ABI vs API

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the clarification!

AC

Doesn't get any better than this.

[Performer Guy]

This is yet another nail in SCO's coffin. This has gone from being a worrying annoiance to being pure entertainment. Grab the popcorn and enjoy the show.

This really is a comedy of errors. What's SCO going to say to get out of this one? The dog ate my source code tood a dump under the Linux tree?

It's just fantastic, this case is now sure to become a legendary example of litigious managerial incompetence. Is anyone writing the book on this one yet? It should be a hoot.

One quote from the article sums it up nicely

[Performer Guy]

"
According to Ransom Love, Caldera Systems' CEO and soon to be CEO of the combined SCO divisions and Caldera Systems, 'Caldera has a proven track record of releasing the most important stuff to the open community. We haven't decided on which license to use yet. For standards, GPL makes a lot of sense and every product we'll ship with source code.' Some code, however, can't be open sourced because other companies own it.
"

In other words the CEO gave all the code they owned away deliberately and with full knowledge.

SCO Lies!

[Anonymous Coward]

Film at 11!

Re:CmdrTick-Oh XOR Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, surprise me. How many?

Re:Technology is Politics

[Sanction]

Capitalism is nothing but exchange through money.

Ahh, you might want to read up a bit on that. Exchange through money is not even a major point of capitalism. Exchange through money is called currency, and is the same in systems whether Capitalist, Socialist, or Communist. The defining feature of capitalism is a peculiar notion of property based on government enforcement of paper instead of posession and allowing the private ownership of capital/the means of production.

Huh?

[RasputinAXP]

Nancy Sinatra had more than one song?

Re:CmdrTick-Oh XOR Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, you're going to have to provide proof of this. I have NEVER heard this before. I'm not saying it isn't true, mind you. But can you point to something one of the Red Hat/Cygnus people have said to ACKNOWLEDGE Apple's significant contributions to gcc?

Remember, submitting a few bug fixes to CVS does not qualify as a huge contribution. Being one or more of the core developers is what counts. For example, the case of KDE's KHTML additions arising from development of the just-as-proprietary-as-we-can-get-away-with Safari does NOT qualify.

Mail fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

Last month SCOX sent out a raft of letters telling Linux users that their use of the ABIs was a violation of SCO's intellectual property rights

Has anyone looked into filing a mail fraud complaint against SCO upon receiving one of these works of fiction? "Pay us money for a bogus violation we've made up or else..."

The postmasters are normally pretty interested in stopping the fictious invoice schemes - where a party sends bills to countless businesses attempting to pass them off as legitimate invoices. A good handful probably do get paid as well.

Re:Mail fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

So far they have not actually asked for money in these letters, nor sold any licenses. I'm not sure where the line is when the Feds can step in to prosecute them, but I'm sure that as soon as they start taking money for stuff they haven't proved they own, they've crossed it.

Suing SCO is worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have any money!

Hell, they are a negative value now - in a year or so they'll be tied with the national debt.

It's like getting robbed by a crackhead. You KNOW the court is going to give a judgement in your favor - but you also know you're more likely to get stuck in the butt by a lightning bolt while taking a leak on the whitehouse lawn on the fifth saturday of the 12th month of the 23rd year of Bush's presidency then you are to get any money from the crackhead.

In fact, he'll probably rob you again when he gets out!

Re:Technology is Politics

[zurab]

If SCOX released those into linux under the GPL (and they did,) then they cannot go after *anyone* (including Unix licensees) for using a version of linux with those files without violating the GPL. Additionally, if *they* distribute a version of linux which contains those files (and they do) they are in violation of the copyright of every other contributer to any such linux distribution that they are distributing.

That's what I have been saying for some time now. Two further points:

First, even if it's true that the code in dispute got into Linux "by accident," and given that SCO is not willing to license them under GPL, SCO still has no right to distribute the rest of Linux and derivative works that it is not disputing the ownership of. i.e., if SCO has a dispute and it cannot comply with the GPL, it does not have any other permission to distribute Linux; so it should have ceased right away.

Second, if SCO finds IBM, SGI, or anybody else that has violated their contracts and copyrights, it's an issue between SCO and those parties. A judge could determine the amount of damages to award to SCO and issue a further injunction to remove the disputed part from all future Linux releases after a reasonable date. When I buy a book containing a collection of short stories I am not worried whether the publisher has violated copyrights of some or all of the stories, and that I would have to pay additional fees to original copyright owners. That's just not how copyright works. That's how SCO's FUD engine works though.

Outstanding Work

[salesgeek]

I've always enjoyed the material Groklaw provides. It may really help though if they put a press/business friendly bullet point summary of the article. The open source position is very easy to understand:

* SCO claims Linux infringes on their UNIX copyrights.

* Linux was written by thousands of programmers all over the world led by Linus Torvalds.

* SCO has not disclosed all of the parts of UNIX that they beleive are being infringed.

* SCO has disclosed some of the alleged infringements. In each of these cases, it was found that the parts in question were already in the public domain or had been released to the public as free GPL software.

Care should be taken to avoid terms like "code" "ABI" and "header files" they are too technical. This is a Brooklyn Bridge scam. Call it that.

Claiming rape

[jms]

SCO's claims are a little like a woman falsely claiming rape after she willingly consented to sexual relations. Worse, from their standpoint. The evidence of the GPL distribution is there for the world to see, so it's not a He Said, She Said situation where you might have at least a 50% chance of being believed.

SCO's claims are more like if Paris Hilton had claimed rape after the videotape emerged.

Um, Ransom, you seemed to be enjoying yourself with Linux ...

Follow the Italian example

[dbIII]

fined well in excess of their profits and/or do prison time for their fraud

If you can jail execs for fraud in Italy, why not do it in Utah? The legal systems are different, but the priciples are the same - fraud or theft on a grand scale by dodgy corporations hurt the state, and the state can do something about it. The real problem is the state needs to know that these things hurt it.

If a company exec says "nice linux box you have here - it would be a pity if someone sued you over it" that differs in not a lot more than scale from a guy with a tin of kerosene selling you fire insurance. Who's going to sue us anyway - Darl's brother? Sadly, while their credibility has diminished in the eyes of those that have heard of this case, news reports about the virus list them as "the owner of unix".

Darl wins either way

[dbIII]

By the time all the lies and scandles are made public via mainstream media - I suspect Darl will be sitting in a dark little room all alone contemplating suicide.

Doubtful - Darl has won himself a highly paid future in another organistation, since he has taken the share price up, and in a lot of places the ends justify an enormous range of means. When SCO folds he can just say "If it wasn't for those darn kids ..."

In a land where even Poindexter can stay out of jail and be given another position of authority, Darl can just move on to another CEO position.

Their own worst enemies

[chickenwing]

It seems like the most damning evidence and contradictions about SCO comes from their own website. Perhaps this is why they want to appear to be DOS'd.

Acronym of the week

[dbIII]

In my experience, ABI is a relatively recent term.

The difference is, it is an API that was written using abiword as a text editor :)

Computer science became IT, then IS and probably a dozen local variants in under a decade. IP alone can mean a dozen things - when I first heard it's use for Intellectual Property I was writing a report on an intermediate pressure turbine, but I assumed that people were talking about the internet protocol.

Having an acronym of the week really does make us all look like pathetic geeks with our own made up language. No wonder people think that computer types can read klingon. If DNA can be kept as the same name for an organic acid in biology for decades, why do we have to rename things in the field of computing?

Broaden your horizons.

[Anonymous Coward]

You say "The free software world really needs an army of lawyers and paralawyers, if we want to stay long."

I say "The free world really needs an army of lawyers and paralawyers, if we want to stay long."

Go, groklaw! Don't sell out!!

Today the SCO, tomorrow the world!!!

Note: Further hints, tips and suggestions can be bought for a fee.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Camel Pilot]

just lawyers and executives.

I think you are too kind... should read

just barratist and con men.

Totally agree

[Spinality]

I love Groklaw and can't wait for each new installment. But I wish some of the heavyweight contributors there could get the hang of putting an "Executive Summary" at the beginning of the long detailed rants. Not just a short list of the conclusions (equally important), but a summary of the key facts as well.

This article is a perfect example. I understood it just fine, but, as much as I like minutiae, I stopped reading in detail and started skimming after about 75% through -- it became much-of-a-muchness. There were a bunch of really important points in there, but they were buried, so that only the geeks would read them. And the geeks already understand the situation!

Oh well. As I said, Groklaw rules, and they're doing such fine work...so I mustn't complain, and I don't have the time or the specialized knowledge to step up to the plate myself.

But I keep wishing that somebody active there would grasp The Big Picture a little more vividly -- The Big Picture as seen by an outsider. Many of the postings there seem just to be preaching to the choir.

Well, back to my hymnal.

Re:Technology is Politics

[daviddennis]

If you don't allow private ownership of capital/the means of production, then obviously I can't buy my PowerMac through the exchange of money.

It is, after all, a means of production, and so it has to be owned by the State. And you know what kind of access I'd actually get to it if it was owned by the State.

D

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Artifakt]

Cockles are a kind of small shellfish, as in the old English folk song that goes "Crying "Cockles and Mussels, alive, alive Oh!""
In your heart, some of the valves somewhat resemble shells and flutter opeen and closed with each beat, hence the derivation. Why it is a good thing to warm those valves is less certain.
Now someone will probably come back with a completely different derivation.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Beautiful.

That brought a tear to my eye.

The stuff that media tells us

[Anonymous Coward]

Checkout this study.

Quoting from the study:
Frequency of misrepresentation re. Iraq war
(Al Qaeda links, WMDs found, World reaction favourable.)
Respondants with one or more misconception:
FOX = 80%
CBS = 71%
ABC = 61 %
NBC =55%
CNN = 55%
Print media = 47%
PBS/NPR = 23%

Lots of other interesting stats. Left wing/right wing? Who cares! We are just a highly uninformed populance. And judging by the reactions here, proud of it.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Puto sudaca de los cojones!

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Supongo que el es ESPANOL. Como yo. Asi que no te confundas, gilipollas.

/. effect?

[Tokerat]

Most things *exist* long before they are noted on /.

...and not too long afterwards!

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Te pasa algo, machote ?

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Vuelve a barrapunto con tus amiguitos los espanolo pordioseros comechorizo.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Vuelve a barrapunto con tus amiguitos los espanolo pordioseros comechorizo.

Jodido pordiosero comechorizo de los cojones.

Re:Technology is Politics

[Sanction]

No, a laptop is merely the tool of a laborer. Real capital consists of things that go beyond the use of an individual artisan, usually factories and land. This is why it is so difficult to try to do economic philosopy in a nutshell. The main difference is that if you have productive means used by a large number of workers, the capital must be owned by the workers, not an owner who collects the lions share of the profits due to a government backed piece of paper asserting ownership.

Also, groups advocating the means of production being owned by the state are not particularly common, except when used as a thin veil to try to obscure their desire to establish a dictatorship. Under anarchism, for example, you can freely buy and sell the product of your labor, individual tools are owned by individuals, and large capital-intensive productive means are owned by the workers, who recieve all the profits of their own labor. It really comes down to the choice of whether workers are owners or serfs.

Re:Technology is Politics

[daviddennis]

So I guess I shouldn't be allowed to own my house (which I just bought, by the way).

Who owns it then, if it is not the State?

If I am one of these workers, and I work and slave for years and years so I can own my own factory, should I not have the freedom to buy it?

The way I see it is that capitalism is the freeest economic system around, because in time anyone can become a capitalist, owning their own show. I don't want to give up that freedom in exchange for being a "worker" for the rest of my life, with no possibility of escape.

D

Even More-so (the true nature of bias)

[IBitOBear]

There is *also* nothing wrong with being biased for/against a position if that bias is justified. We have manufactured a world where "opinion" and "bias" are somehow bad words. That is sad, and unsustainable.

Also, facts produce bias *despite* prejudice. It is natural for a report to display "bias" if the available facts legitimately engender that position.

It is a problem only when the search for the facts is biased in a way that excludes facts that would refute the bias.

You have to understand bias as related to "ethos" and "discriminates". It is not the end product of the ethics, biases and discriminations but the seed reasoning that is found to be either valid or invalid.

Remember, there is nothing wrong with descrimination, and discrimination isn't even always negative. "I dislike icecream" and "chocolate is the ultimate flavor" are discriminations. It is only descrimination based on facts not in evidence, that is descrimination without valid discriminates (as in the classic "I dislike black people because all black people are lazy" etc.) that is problematic.

When the newspapers report on some idiot who got himself killed trying to mug someone's grandmother, they are naturally and rightfully biased. Ibid for reporting financial misconduct or larceny.

So "we looked at all this stuff and SCO are lying idiots" is not a "baseless" bias, it is simply "the facts as discovered."