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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.
I like how of the five reasons, only one of them even mentions Linux, and that's a questionable claim at best!
And finally, reader loonix_gangsta wrote in and pointed to SCO's humorous 5 reasons to choose UNIX over Linux webpage.
Yeah, this is exactly why their web server runs Linux.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
5) SCO UNIX(R) is Legally Unencumbered
Shouldn't this read "SCO UNIX (R) is Unencumbered by adherence to the law"?
Seriously though, looking at what SCO is attempting to do to IBM, how can one call this "unencumbered"? The only company that is unencumbered in SCO's vision of the world is SCO. Any of their partners are legaly encumbered by adhering to SCO's license arangement. 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?
-Matt
All of the dates mentioned in the case studies are early 90s and back. Zenez started with SCO in 1983! Gee, I wonder why they didn't consider Linux? Hmm...
====
Crudely Drawn Games
their webservis isnt running sco unix anyway....
Linux is a proven, stable, and reliable platform.
2. SCO UNIX(R) is backed by a single, experienced vendor
Linux is backed by multiple, experienced vendors
3. SCO UNIX(R) has a Committed, Well-Defined Roadmap
Linux has a Committed development team and is actually going somewhere
4. SCO UNIX(R) is Secure
Linux is Secure.
5. SCO UNIX(R) is Legally Unencumbered
Linux is Legally Unencumbered and Open
well, no
Think of it as if you were making a cake...
and you go to the farm where the butter is produced and churn it yourself.
You've got your butter, now let's go home and make cake.
You make a cake and set it on the windowsill to cool off (you want to eat said cake)
then SCO comes along and claims your cake has their butter in it. you then say "what are you talking about, I churned that butter myself"
they slap you with a subpoena and you are left with the delicious cake and assholes trying to charge you for it.
now just think of the butter.
(P.S. OMG! slashbots, letz mod teh n00b down!!!! we will pwn joo?)
ROTFLMAO
First, butter is probably a bad analogy, because it loses its independent identity when it is mixed into the cake and cooked.
Contributions to Linux are discreet and each component can be uniquely identified and its heritage proved.
Second, stipulating that SCO did indeed own certain discreet elements which have gotten incorporated into Linux, then I agree.
Components that are provably owned by SCO can be removed.
The actual argument in court is about whether SCO did, in fact, own these things that got incorporated into Linux. SCO claims they do, IBM claims they don't.
Currently, IBM and the court are waiting for SCO to show what they owned, so that the ownership claim can be evaluated properly.
SCO hasn't shown it yet, and the little they have shown outside court has been proved not to be owned by them. But since that occurred outside court, it doesn't matter to the case.
I think SCO's basic problem is that they are pursuing this case under some presuppositions that are clearly false, and will be proved to be false in court. But that day is still a long way off, since the case is still in the discovery phase.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
As others have pointed out, their webserver runs Linux, so technically, SCO Unix wasn't hit by the DoS attack.
Oh, wait, they claim Linux is a derivative of SCO Unix... Never mind...
Novell can't. A comment was made over at Groklaw that based on the way they're filing the paperwork, they're setting it up so that even THEY can't poison the well if they get their way in this. It's a truly grand gesture from Novell and worthy of real respect.
So the DOS attack that took out their website last week was normal business operation?
Not at all, as I pointed out in this post they claim that SCO UNIX is immune to DOS attacks and has better security features than the competition, yet they run their website on linux. That tells me that they consider linux to be a better option than their own product.
"The road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think." - Picard
And as far as applications - let's face it - there's more then enough room for many, many similar applications that people can choose from. For example - web browsers. Some people (like myself) prefer Opera, others Mozilla, some Konqueror, some Galeon, some Firefox, some people still use Lynx, Mac folks seem to like Safari... and yes, there's some poor, poor fools still using Internet Exploder.
Take Word Processing - go back to the early days of Dos / Windows - some people wanted to use WordPerfect, others Wordstar, some people PFS Professional Write, and there was more then enough room for all those applications - it was which one you liked best, and most of them could write files to various formats for sharing information. Now, we have OpenOffice, KOffice, AbiWord, etc, and again - these all write to multiple file formats - just pick the one you like best. Competition and Capitalism at it's finest, if you ask me.. which is the opposite route SCO is going with their money grab and frivolous lawsuit.
Undoubtedly this is the intellectual property that SCO put into Unix.
When the heck will SCO learn that they are fighting and already lose the game.
You think that their goal is to win a lawsuit. I disagree; I think their goal is to cast FUD on the GPL specifically, and open-source in general.
I mean they are sueing over Code similarities.... It's the Same thing as bill gates patent of binary Numbers (0,1) it's not going to happen.
Exactly. They're not stupid, they know that they have no case. Therefore, winning isn't their goal. Even if they lose, the FUD that they've spread is going to stick, even if it's just a little bit. I can't even propose linux-based projects because my employer (a fortune-50 insurance company) doesn't want the hassle. The FUD is working already.
IMO - I think they should just give up, and distribute what $ they have left, and go away from the world of computing.
If they just go away, the FUD sticks. If they get bought out, the FUD sticks. If they get shot down legally in no uncertain terms, some of the FUD will _still_ stick. Their goal isn't to win money, their goal is to try to destroy or cripple the Open Source Software community.
When one's enemies' actions are illogical, it makes sense to re-evaluate what that enemy's goals might be.
Apparently, some guy posting at Yahoo Finance has done some digging:
t ml s ec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1259429/0000947871 03002580/xslF345X02/form3_112603cohenex.xml
e .html c .gov/Archives/edgar/data/1259429/0000947871 03002585/xslF345X02/form3_112603royceex.xml
t the same time Cohen stopped talking about SCOX and Deutsche Bank takes over the PR duties, initiating coverage with highly suspect rationale and rating:p hp/309220 1
0 0950136 03002896/file001.txt
2 09.gtscodec9/BNStory/Technology/
The SEC will be *VERY* interested in this. The SCO debacle is a big story, but SCO may simply be a pawn in a bigger scandal. The big story is about market manipulation and insider trading. It isn't just about pump and dump. It is about buy, then pump, then short, then dump, then cover using the money of Royce clients and some assistance from the Royal Bank of Canada. SCOX investors are being played for fools.
Here we go...
Jonathan Cohen is the CEO of JHC Capital and is an investment advisor to Royce & Associates. Cohen is the fund manager for the Royce Technology Value fund.
www.roycefunds.com/funds/technologyValue.h
Under Cohen's direction, this fund has acquired 430,000 shares of SCOX.
www.roycefunds.com/funds/holdings_rtv.html
He is also the CEO and Director of Technology Investment Capital Corporation (TICC) and owns 139,100 shares:
www.ticc.com/management.html#cohen
www.
Charles M. Royce is President, Chief Investment Officer of Royce & Associates.
www.roycefunds.com/about/inside_royc
The Royce Low-Priced Stock Fund owns 943,600 shares of SCOX:
www.roycefunds.com/funds/holdings_rlp.html
However, Charles Royce is also a Director of TICC and personally owns 69,500 shares of TICC.
www.ticc.com/management.html#royce
www.se
Royce & Associates owns a total of 1.4M shares of SCOX.
Cohen went on a whirlwind publicity tour the second half of last year to pump SCO for the Royce Technology Value fund that he manages for Royce & Associates.
www.threenorth.com/sco/cohen.html
A
siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.
RBC Dain Rauscher is the U.S. wealth management subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada.
www.rbcdain.com
RBC Dain Rauscher Inc. was an underwriter for the IPO of Technology Investment Capital Corporation (TICC), underwriting an initial share allotment of 1,304,348 shares of TICC.
www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1259429/00
Of course RBC initiates coverage of TICC with an "Outperform" rating.
10:22am 01/15/04 Tech Investment Capital started at 'outperform' by RBC - CBS MarketWatch.com
RBC also participated in the private placement for SCOX, accounting for 2.3M of the Series A shares. www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031
"An RBC spokesman was reluctant to comment, saying the SEC filing was about how SCO operates its business. He said that RBC's "investment in SCO is passive, made to hedge an economic exposure resulting from client transactions."
Your support staff become more knowledgeable trying to install common programs (such as Python 2.3) because they have to trouble shoot *everything* that is built on SCO due to non-shared libraries, problems with random number generation, and libraries that are not compatible with Linux libraries.
Of course, the fact that their German stores use SuSE, and now Novell owns that, probably have SCO a little concerned with future cashflow... SCO delenda est!!
From reason number 5 on their own site:" The SCO source division will continue to offer traditional UNIX(R) System licenses to preserve, protect, and enhance shareholder value."
Translation: We will sell you something that is distributed for free so we can make ourselves (and our stockholders) richer.
This must be the only true thing that SCO has ever stated...
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Not because of this at least. A great post to usenet made in the early 90's sometime. I didn't find the original post, only a repost from 95.
Still, it is funny to see how their enterprise unix compared to linux back then.
Notice on SCO's 5 reasons page here, the Image is the same as on Novell's support site here. Conspiracy maybe?
SCO had been using Linux in their Web Servers!
And still using Linux in their Web Servers!
Compare the image on SCO's Top 5 reason's page to http://support.novell.com Novell has been using the image for at least a couple of years.
Part of their roadmap is more use of open source tools!!! They specifically mention OpenLDAP, Tomcat, PHP, and Mozilla. Uh, isn't that what they are saying is a bad thing????
Cardkey's in particular. Note that the testimonial mentions choosing "SCO and Compaq". I know about this one because I work at an airport, and we're phasing out our old Cardkey access control system right now (which runs on the aformentioned SCO and Compaq platform).
First off, Cardkey doesn't exist anymore, really. They were bought out by Johnson Controls years ago. Secondly, Compaq became HP years ago. Thirdly, most vendors are moving to Windows 2000 based ACS, so I'd be very surprised if Johnson Controls was still using SCO for new installs. They have to support their older Pegasys systems, but I'd be willing to bet they've gone Wintel along with everyone else.
All this raises a good question: how many NEW installs is SCO doing? Who's buying OpenServer and UnixWare NOW?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Those arguments are called "job " in Germany. (of course the Germans actually use the equivalent german words).
The interesting thing is: Those arguments "If you do X, we will loose Y jobs" never ask, how many jobs will be slashed if the governement won't do X. Take steel tariffs for instance: How many jobs suffered because steel tariffs increased the steel prices for american companies? There was a calculation for the effect of steel tariffs back in the Reagen era to job count. Even though those tariffs saved about 55,000 jobs at the steel companies, the steel consuming industries like car makers slashed 130,000 jobs at the same time because of the increased costs for steel.
So if you are confronted with a similar argument in a dispute, just ask your opponent, how many jobs would be hurt by the increased costs for the following parts of the economy chain.
Did anybody else notice that the picture on the SCO page at www.thescogroup.com/5reasons is the same as the one at Novell's support.novell.com? Did they just steal this from Novell or did somebody give it too them? There's probably alot more stolen code where that picture came from...
The Safeco Field "study" is whack. The Micros 8700 only runs on SCO UNIX. It's not like the customer chose SCO at all, it was "we need a point of sale system, let's get a Micros 8700". The 8700 is a very widely deployed system that is very reliable. It's also been around since christ was a pup, which is probably why it uses SCO.
The way SCO presents the Safeco Field study, as if the customer chose SCO, is deceptive at best, in my opinion.
I was just checking out the Novell support
t .j pg
/ 5_ long.jpg
website and noticed the exact same image on
the sco website.
Compare:
http://support.novell.com/img/n_t2_image-suppor
and
http://www.thescogroup.com/images/landing_pages
Hmmmmmmmm. Is this right?
- Don Brearley
Linux is not certainly making money. Sometimes it seems a near thing. But it's certainly creating wealth. And that's even better, though harder to measure.
Consider:
Counterfeiters make money, but not wealth.
Someone who preforms a public service makes wealth, but not necessarily money (it may be a volunteer effort).
Also, let's get really counter intuitive, and consider taxes:
Everyone hates taxes, but I assert that taxes (in the correct amount) create wealth.
It works like this: Society benefits from having a generally accepted bookkeeping system that tracks socially useful contributions. Money is the closest we have come to such a system, so causing money to have value is creating wealth. The government give value to money by threatening to confiscate property if you don't give money (that it printed) back to it.
Now any individual person benefits from other people needing money, and them holding it. And other people need money, because the government demands it of them. So taxes create a general need for money, which causes the accounting system to work.
Therefore taxes create wealth.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
> correct me if I am wrong, but an ABI definition tells you what to put in which registers and how
:)
> to make the system call.
More or less right, yes...
> BSD and Linux use different mechanisms for this, including how the registers and stack are used,
> and which interrupt. Because of that, and in particular the use of a different interrupt, it is
> conceptually simple to run BSD code on Linux or vice versa, by adding a handler for the
> alternative interrupt which shifts the call
parameters to where they should be, on the stack
Hmm, for as far as I know on *BSD, this is done entirely differently.
Based on a value in the elf header of a binary (which can be set with the brandelf utility) a different ABI is used for a binary. This is set at execv time (ie, when the binary is started)
As a result, it is pretty easy to hack a *BSD kernel a little bit to differentiate between different linux distributions and kernel versions etc as well.
How this works on Linux I do not know, but I'd imagine it works in a rather similar way. There is no need for runtime interpretation of what kind of binary you may be running, all you need is setup the correct interface when the binary is started really, a lot cheaper
Interupts play no role other then that they happen to be an easy way to transfer control between different spaces, ie user space vs kernel space.
They also happen to be an easy way to make user code independent of where in memory a library or such might be, but in a world of cpus with mmu, there are way better and less obscure means of achieving that
That said, the ABIs of linux and SCO unix are similar but not identical, but even if they were, it would still be possibel to distinguish the 2 and giev them their own native environment (emulated if need be) on a single kernel.
"We take these actions... knowing that those who believe 'software should be free' cannot prevail against the U.S. Congress and voices of seven U.S. Supreme Court justices who believe that 'the motive of profit is the engine that ensures the progress of science.'"
This is utterly rediculous. Just because SCO is greedy doesn't mean everyone is. Where in the Constitution does it say "All science must be done in the name of capitalism and greed"?!
ninja monkeys are meeting as we speak, plotting my demise
I'm an engineer at one of the "case studies" in the 5reasons page. I've never SEEN a sco box here. Most of our deployments are either windows or solaris, actually.
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but an ABI definition tells you what to put in which registers and how to make the system call
You're not wrong, however all Darl's talking about here is the value of the symbolic constants in headers like "errno.h". i.e. #define EPERM 1. That's his highly secret ABI IP. His conclusion is that because linux and SVRX use the exact same values for those errors (they don't), Linux violates their ABI copyright.
Now Linus says that he took the specific values from minix, and I believe that he'd know. So SCO's entire ABI argument comes down to the fact that 'some' of the values of 'some' symbolic constants are the same. Therefore we're gonna sue you.
Dunno about you, but I'm not losing any sleep
Cheers Koz
This ia actually quite odd, I just got back from lunch with a person who works at Microsoft Canada, who coincidently used to work in McDonalds HO in Canada (Don Mills/Eglinton area on Toronto).
He said over conversation that McD's uses about 27 backend Microsoft 2000 servers (up to last year)for various tasks incl. data collection from the corporate stores and franchisees, as well as food order processing, intranet, email, etc. He said they don't have a *nix box to speak of.
And I can testify that after working at 4 different McD's in Canada as Management that the systems DO NOT use SCO linux. They use a DOS 6.22 network (those touch screen Siroc 3 POS systems) connected to a Windows box in the management office - all data is trandsferred to HO via dialup on demand. The older POS systems (Siroc 1's and 2's) were an ancient network (ArcNet maybe?), which in turn connected to a DOS box in the back room, which connected via dial-up on demand to HO.
So they may be talking about the States, but for sure, NOT the rest of the world.
Party?!? What kind of party is this? Where's the damn keg?
Virtus Junxit Mors Non Separabit
Legally unencumbered = we won't sue you if you pay us!
SCO: Let us build a solution for you or we'll sue you for using someone else.
Wow. Back in the day, we used to call that extortion. Now they call it "intellectual property." Nice to see that "the family" has moved away from old school "protection" to the high tech world. *cue theme to The Godfather*
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
ask novell
well you know Novell and SCO do share a lot of stuff. For example look at the five reasons link on thescogroup.com and then look at
this
shared corporate clip art it would seem.
this sig is deprecated