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SCOoby Snacks
A day with SCO is like a day without sunshine, I know that's what you're thinking. Novell is asking the court to dismiss SCO's lawsuit against them. Groklaw has taken a look at what is necessary to prove a 'slander of title' claim. And finally, reader loonix_gangsta wrote in and pointed to SCO's humorous 5 reasons to choose UNIX over Linux webpage.
> SCO company are perfectly justified in demanding recompense for their stolen butter.
You are a moron and/or a troll since the whole point is about the fact that the butter is stolen (SCO's point of view) or not (reality)...
That is, if it was their own butter to begin with!
What I find humorous is that SCO consistently trumps up their services as the "good" side in a war of good vs. evil. Do hardened capatalists actually succeed when they try to convince the public that something free and welcoming to public scrutiny is a bad thing? Linux sure violates that Constitution... how dare they be kind to the public! This will be the end of America as we know it, surely!
Ah but the fact that they never owned the butter in the first place is the problem. It is like buying butter from the store and then claiming that all other butters sold from that store are theirs as well. Your theory and theirs does not hold water or a cake.
One by one, the penguins steal my sanity
If someone gave you the butter for the cake, and said "Here, use my butter" and then later, while everyone was eating the cake said "Hey, everyone likes this cake, so you owe me a $1 for my butter" wouldn't you be a bit upset? If they wanted money for the butter, they should've gotten it before the cake was baked and everyone was eating it.
It has been my experience justified lawusits happen quickly and those that drag out are a corruption of the legal system to either drain finances or encumber someone with the legal "albatross" around his neck
Your butter analogy is true, except the fact of the matter is SCO has not provided evidence that the butter in the cake is theirs.
IANAL, the contract between Novell and SCO seems pretty iron-clad as far as allowing Novell to direct SCO to waive any rights that Novell sees fit for them to waive. So, it seems that regardless of whether or not "SCO's [man]butter" was used to "bake the cake," (per your analogy) SCO doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Argue all you want about derivative works or stolen code, it appears that SCO is little more than a middleman, and Novell holds all the power. Now we just have to pray that Novell doesn't abuse it.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
They missed the obvious 6th reason, SCO UNIX(R) will be a valuable piece of memorabilia in a few years time after the company itself has long since buried itself both commercially and perceptually.
Assuming they did provide the butter (a huge assumption)...
If you steal butter from the grocery store to bake your cake, is the grocery store entitled to be compensated for the value of the entire cake? There are a lot of other ingredients (cake mix, eggs, chocolate, milk...) properly paid for or made from scratch in that cake.
And you can always bake that same cake using margarine or crisco to grease the pan.
since when is being "backed by a single... vendor" a good thing?
also, does anyone else read the slogan "SCO Grows Your Business" and immediately associate them with the "G3n3r1c Vi 4g ara!!!"-type of business?
it appears Novell has just torpedoed SCO's newest acusations against IBM. here's the letter they sent SCO waiving the claim to any Sequent developed code that touched SysV. Since Novell already waived the claim to IBM code, there's not a lot left for SCO to stand on.
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
It's more like SCO gave away the butter (SCO distributed Linux) and then wants to claim ownership of the whole cake.
They also want ownership of all future cakes and refuse to identify the butter so that it can be replaced with margarine.
The problem with that is the company has not shown any evidence that they have anything even close to resembling butter. Everything that they have shown has been in the interfaces which are well known standards or drivers such as in the case of JFS. All of their claims execpt for RCU have been outside of the kernel proper. Not even remotely close to being essential.
SCO is merely complaining about what technologies IBM has developed itself (RCU through Sequent), added to AIX, and then later added the same technologies to the Linux kernel.
This is merely a contract dispute between IBM and SCO. Everything else that has spouted out of their CEO's mouth is just FUD. Don't listen to him. Read what claims they have actually made in the case.
Small but important point - SCO doesn't appear able to prove with specifity what has been misappropriated into Linux.
:-) . Some of the churning wasn't great, and has his own unique idioms in it showing its true origin...
From the "millions of lines of code" that are apparently SCO's IPR that are in Linux, they're now down to disputing the contents of 17 files in AIX.
To continue your analogy, SCO are claiming that they provided the butter used. They originally tried to claim that the majority of the cake was theirs.
However, they do not own the rights to all butter and butter making mechanisms. They may not even own any - ask Novell.
It is also conceivable that another hard working independent dairy churned its own butter. Let's call the maid at that dairy "Linus" shall we?
SCO in my opinion do not have any basis to their legal claim, and will probably disappear up their own behind, perhaps with some players facing criminal charges. They no longer appear to have any product but are a litigation factory. They're making a grab for cash which may turn out to be illegal...
You are a troll, and I claim my $5.
Cheers,
Nick.
Funny, Redhat, IBM and others make lots of money making free cake.
The money comes from adding icing, decorations, delivery, setup and serving up that free cake..
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
SCO's reasons to use list is very strange, SCO while presenting themselves as the legally safe option is actually a very risky prospect. They are currently the target of a massive countersuit by IBM, Red Hat is suing them and they're also in a legal tussle with Novel. They're running out of cash obtained from their initial shakedown and it looks like other attempts at intimidation won't work because people are learning more about the facts. It is doubtful they'd actually sue anyone else purely on the basis of their legal bills and the OSDN defense fund that would eliminate any chance of an early settlement even if they weren't laughed out of court on day one. So there are serious doubts about the medium term viability of SCO as a company.
You simply cannot risk using SCO UNIX(TM) as a solution if you're serious about your IT strategy. They represent a huge risk.
Current SCO management are old-school; they simply want traditional Unix technlogy to die under a mound of legal paperwork. They don't care who loses as long as the lawyers get paid.
Linux is Unix is Linux. As far as joe-user or joe-admin is concerned the GUI or shell is identical in that its not Microsoft Windows.
All they simply seem to be upset about is some ABI headers !. The joke being that they then seem to go on about the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) in Unixware. So they quite happily take but don't want to give back.
Their Unix is chocka full of juicy Open Source contributions which they have merrily grabbed and then they try and deflect interest in what they are doing by pointing fingers at others and calling these other Operating System developers pirates.
Pre-2.6 everyone knows what deficiencies there where in the Linux scheduler. This wasn't a cut+paste from Unix but was a paragmatic easy-to-understand scheduler that evolved over many years by many developers. Along comes 2.6 and it has fixes for the main known deficiencies. SCO have seen this happen. Why is it that both kernel 2.6 and 2.4 are priced the same from SCO's point of view ?. If the technology in 2.4 was top-of-the range Unix Intellectual Property then why was it so poor that it needed fixing for 2.6 to get 2.6. to scale ?. Something tells me 2.4 did not have any Unix SMP technolgy else it would not have been able to scale better in 2.6 !
And #5... wasn't Linux legally unencumbered until SCO filed the lawsuits?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Especially when the guy next to him then says "Hey, wait, did you just give them my butter?"...
I like this one. SCO UNIX(R) is backed by a single, experienced vendor. They were a Linux vendor, how well are they "backing" what they have sold in the past?
I can't BELIEVE the hypocracy of this site. All *nix bigots, but now I see insults on how SCO UNIX isn't stable or isn't secure? Yeah, we all hate SCO and their frivolous lawsuits, but does that mean UNIX isn't stable and secure anymore?
And an insult at a top 5 list which is EXACTLY what PHB's and executives want to hear. I think its time some linux companies made similar top 5 lists. This is a PR gimmic that linux needs if it intends to market with the big-boys.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
And since nobody actually wants the pile of bland, raw cake batter that you actually get for free, but instead the results after baking, icing, decorations, delivery, setup, and serving, the whole notion of calling it "free cake" is just a cheesy marketing scam to get your attention. In reality, it's pretty expensive cake if you actually buy and eat one. Claiming that it's "free" is like the bait-n-switch car dealers use in their newspaper ads with low, low, low prices.
Backed by one vendor? And what if they go out of business, which is very likely, considering the desperate flailing legal moves they're trying?
Better to go to a solution that has MULTIPLE vendors so you're not screwed if one of them goes out of business.
- The derivitive work, AIX or DYNIX (containing SysV and IBM code), is to be treated as the original work per 2.01(OK by US copyright).
- AIX or DYNIX contain RCU, NUMA, JFS, etc. Linux also contains these.
- Here is source code (in C) from AIX, DYNIX, and Linux. See how they are similar in implementing these functions.
- Since AIX and DYNIX are to be treated as the original work (No. 1), see Judge, how they have stolen OUR code.
My butter anology:Quite frankly, it doesn't really matter if SCO wins or loses this. Do you think Darl will ever have to work again with the money he's currently making selling grossly inflated stock? People only look at the side of SCO desperately trying to prove they're right, but the longer they keep this up the harder their stock will probably rise. If they keep a solid marketing campaign around the case, they'll soon have the wealth of kings. Or queens, your pick.
I like how they say 'one single vendor' just above where the feature set of the next edition is openLDAP, tomcat, PHP and Mozilla. I guess that makes them the single vendor of all these products :)
I guess in the way they'd have to be: who is going to field a support call related to SCO problems? The first response would be 'have you tried a nightly build of the app and debian unstable yet'
Ya know that one really bothers me. It feels like it almost borders on fraud. I mean since SCO is the one who caused this problem saying that their product is better because SCO isnt suing themselves feels like fraud.
Its kinda like they poisoning the well and then pulling into town with your cart and mule selling 'brother Darl's olde tyme health tonic'
mod my posting offtopic....
but i really got a problem here with moderation. I really had a hard time deciding if i just use my mod points here or better go for a posting myself. The parent has some controversial (or in some eyes misled, excentric, you-name-the-crime) view on the sco issue. He expresses this view in a more or less sensible fashion and really, really did not deserve getting moderated as troll. Modding someone down as troll simply because you dislike his views isnt good, mkay?
sick of sigs... *sigh*
And #5... wasn't Linux legally unencumbered until SCO filed the lawsuits?
I scanned through the messages to see if anyone else was focusing on #5.
SCO is very legally encumbered.
Novell has legal control over IP shared between Novell and SCO, which Novell is now taking action aginst SCO over.
IBM has already in forced SCO to drop their claims of owernship over some of what just a month ago SCO was threatening to sue every Linux user over.
And finally, SCO claims the GPL is invalid yet has distributed GPLed code. So either they are claiming that they have distributed code illegally (since they claim to have no valid license to do so), or the distribution was legal (because they accepted the GPL as valid) and are now attempting to illegally extort money.
It's hard to get more legally encumbered than SCO. Though Darl might find a way.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
Less is more !
... "Anything you add to SCO appears to become a part of SCO's IP if their claims are correct.
..."
But wait, doesn't that make SCO just as bad as the GPL, even from SCO's own perspective?"
No, because SCO profits. If you're not making money, it just isn't fair and SCO wants mommy.
You see, Little SCO has a lemonade stand. Little SCO buys crap lemonade-sugar powder from the super market and mixes it with water from the kitchen tap. Little SCO only does this when nobody's home, as little SCO considers the technique a closely guarded secret. The sign on Little SCO's lemonade stand reads: "Lemonade(TM), only $6.99 per ounce"
Across the street, another kid has a lemonade stand. He grows his own lemons from his own lemon trees, which he cultivates with utmost care. He has developed a really cool way to sqeeze them, getting just the right amount of pulp and juice. He uses water, purified to his taste with a purifier he built himself. The sugar? It grows next to the lemon trees. And he has a workbench set up right next to the lemonade stand, so everybody can see what he's doing. The sign on this kid's lemon stand reads: "Lemonade. Have some. It's tasty."
In better times, when they were younger, little SCO would hang out with the kid across the street. They had great fun, and even made lemonade together. But one day Little SCO's mom remarried, and his new stepdad demanded that he not talk to the kid across the street anymore. Little SCO's new papa won't stand for any damn commie pinkos under his roof, you see. Little SCO complied, and soon after, with the encouragement of new papa, opened up his own lemonade stand.
When cars drive by on the street between the two stands, little SCO climbs up into his treehouse and shouts at the drivers. "Little SCO's Amerrrrr-ican Lemonade! Only SIX dollars and ninety-niiiiiine cents for a limited time!
At first, his former friend's antics made the kid across the street a bit sad. But then you know what happened? He began laughing it off. That poor, Little, SCO. Poor Little Bastard SCO.
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
"The motive of profit is the engine that ensures the progress of science."
If that was true your OS would be better then Linux
The Unix that is better than Linux
AIX - when you need to use 64-bit IBM hardware for DB2 databases or custom IBM software to run a website like Ebay.com. Very robust OS/Hardware combo with rock solid reliability, hot-swappable hardware, and scalability to run on huge systems.
Solaris - When you would like the 64-bit capability and scalability of Sun Hardware and all in one enterprise resource management. Solaris runs huge applications on 128 processor servers with terabytes of disk space capable and 64+ GB of RAM capabilities.
IRIX - If you are running graphics apps on an Silicon Graphis system, there is excellent software written for this OS and the hardware defined what you could do with computers for CGI.
HP-UX - I don't know why anyone wants to use HP-UX unless they have custom software that won't port to another UNIX.
SCO UNIX - If you want to run a 10-15 year old cash register software that already has a superior Linux or Windows counterpart, money is no option, or you were recently made retarded SCO Unix is the only viable option.
Linux - Use Linux anytime you want a low cost, reliable Unix-like workhorse for applications like as Network Server (Web, Email, DNS, News, et...), database server, development machine, low cost UNIX workstation, the list goes on.
Just my $0.02
- Kill Yourself, spare us all! -
"so you owe me a $1 for my butter"
Not quite - they are saying, in effect, "you all owe me the $6.99 retail value for the whole cake, even though there is only $.05 of butter in it."
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Where were all these businesses years ago when Linux started? Didn't Linux start pretty much underground, by a bunch of nerds and geeks? Who cares of any of the FUD sticks?
Y'know, it's all well and great to be an underground Linux hacker. I learned alot about it that way, but didn't start all that early (RedHat 4.something was my first). However, to roll over and let McBride and company (or more likely, the people pulling his strings) succeed in driving it underground don't do me a bit of good, or you a bit of good.
Linux won't go away, but if the doubts linger, I will continue to not be able to use it as much as I want to, and people like this AC who don't care as long as it doesn't affect them are not helping. It's a damn fine tool; not the best, perhaps, but I'm not willing to let some litigious bastard and people who are too cowardly to even put their names with their opinions deprive me of it.
If you want to keep using it, but aren't even willing to say who you are, then your opionion is worse than useless.
Actually, this is much too simplistic. It's more like this :
SCO says, "Here, we have a cake recipe, this is our cake, we'll have it and eat it too". They then licensed this recipe to IBM. IBM then used this recipe to make another cake, changing out bits and parts that they took from other recipes. Like for instance the butter. IBM used a different butter than they used in a pie crust recipe before. Now their cake is SCO's recipe + their special pie crust butter.
Comes along Linux's cake recipe. IBM thinks it's a good recipe, but says "Hey Linux, try your cake recipe with our special pie crust butter that we use in our cake". But now SCO is mad. They say "Since you used your pie crust butter in our cake recipe to make your cake, it is now our pie crust butter, and you can't give it out to anyone, like the license for the cake recipe we gave you says, but the Linux folks cake recipe is now our cake recipe too since it uses your pie crust butter that's now an integral part of our cake recipe. And it costs 699$ to have the right to use the Linux cake recipe".
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
man.. you killed the joke : [
What if he was joking? This made me lol:
:)
"Open your mind.
Think about the butter."
mod him funny