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ZDNet Examines SCO Indemnity Options
Ursus Maximus writes "David Berlind of ZD NET has posted a major opinion/research piece. What do you all think? I don't like the story at all, but he does seem to have made more of an effort to try to find reasons to back up SCO's claims than any of their other supporters have."
Argh, has the legality of SCO asking for that money even been established? Yeah sure I'll skip the corp-lawyers and take the advice of a fucking net-journalist and fork over the dough. Is it even to get SCO to accept the money?
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
It is very telling that Sun was pushing the indemnification angle in this timeframe. This really sheds some light on their funding of SCO as a means to further their own hidden adgenda. Like Microsoft they appear to have used SCO to attack Linux by proxy and advance their own business. In SUN's case it is particularly mendacious as they pose as a Linux ally while working against our interests.
Yup. More to the point, he's saying "Just because the opposition to SCO is bigger, louder, and carries the most-respected voices, doesn't mean they're right." He's technically right in that regard; just because Torvalds says they're on crack doesn't mean they can't win.
On the other hand:
1. The fact that the very rights they claim to have are in dispute,
2. The fact that it took them MONTHS to produce, even for the court, any evidence supporting their claims -- and even admitted that they didn't have all of the evidence they'd claimed to have,
3. The fact that their high-priced lawyer hasn't shown up to court in a while,
4. Other facts related to the case,
those DO suggest that this is bullshit, and that there's nothing to fear.
So yeah. Don't believe us because we're loud. Believe us because the evidence supports us.
Given the current state of our collective PHBs, the kind that aren't technical, and both fear and resent their more technical employees, this article attempts to soothe their fears. Just pay up, and you won't have to worry. Don't bother asking your developers and/or legal staff for pesky details and long-winded explanations. Just sweep the cost under the rug, as it were. Don't worry, Mr. Manager, you can sleep soundly at night, knowing that through your failed initiative, Darl McBride is a richer man. Heck, your own stock portfolio might event perform better now.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I found an interesting contradiction in this article... In one line he speaks of the defense fund for developers, and mentions they aren't likely to get sued. And in another he mentions Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton by name as likely to get sued... Just who did he think they are? Another case of someone WAYYYYYYYYY out of their depth...
What he probably meant to say was "my intended audience of (frightful?) enterprise users of Linux are NOT developers, so they don't want to know who is gonna get sued, they only care if they are gonna get sued..."
I also found it odd(in the sense that it indicates his research was skewed as not to sound alarmist) that he spent so little time speaking about how vital a part of a proper support contract indemnity used to be (in Mainframe and Minicomputer environments, which aren't as plentiful now) and are now being forgotten because people think anyone MCSE can run what they call "a departmental server" on 2000$ hardware with no backup or redudancy... As for indemnification I always thought a good rule of thumb was if your computers systems total 50000$ of book value, or handle more than a million a year in money value, you should either get indemnification, or negotiate an equivalent value out of your support contract(equivalent to the indemnification, not the 50000)
If anything, we live in interesting times...
For many, the answer to these questions has to do with the likelihood that SCO might succeed in its legal endeavors. It's like basing the decision to get collision insurance for your car on the likelihood that you're going to get into a fender bender while traveling down a desolate stretch of highway.
That is to say, he doesn't sound like he thinks SCO might succeed (it's a "desolate stretch of highway"), but that perhaps you should get indemnification *before* more "traffic" (somebody with a legit claim... say, somebody with a "defensive" patent...) comes along.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
As someone with more familiarity with Ziff-Davis than the average person (hint: in my time I've done more than just read what they've got to say), I can honestly tell you that the overwhelming majority of ZD staffers are less than enamoured by Microsoft and its business practices.
However, living in the real world, it's a bit difficult to run a series of IT publications without writing about Microsoft and its products given their dominance in both the enterprise and the consumer markets. ZD (or CNet, IDG, VNU, etc) ignoring Microsoft would be about as sensible as a mainstream movie magazine ignoring any Hollywood productions.
Frankly, I'm fed up with this "Ziff-Davis is a Microsoft shill" line. ZD has spent the last two decades writing about Microsoft (and other) products that run on Microsoft operating systems because that's what sells magazines. If Joe Average had wanted magazines about Unix instead then they would have written about Unix instead, but they didn't, so get over it.
And, finally, why you would be surprised that the editor of a publication called Windows Sources would "push for exclusive coverage of Windows NT for business users" is a mystery to me - would it make more sense to you to devote large chunks of coverage to other OSes in a magazine that's devoted purely to Windows? I guess you'll be demanding that Apple magazines now cover Linux too.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Frankly, I'm fed up with this "Ziff-Davis is a Microsoft shill" line.
... but they didn't. That's
Okay. You're fed up with it. Regardless,
it's true. I got fed up with Ziff-Davis
and stopped subscribing to PC Magazine.
ZD has spent the last two decades writing about Microsoft (and other) products that run on Microsoft operating systems because that's what sells magazines.
Used to sell magazines. ZD is in a big hurt
these days. You're also ignoring the other
side of equation : ad sales. ZD was notorious
for kow-towing the Redmond. IMHO ZD went out
of their way to attack Linux in the early days.
They tried to bury the baby in the cradle.
They're sill trying to kill it. ZD could have
had some balance and pemitted some criticism
of the advertizers
the big reason ZD is irrelevant now.
If Joe Average had wanted magazines about Unix instead then they would have written about Unix instead, but they didn't, so get over it.
Oh beleive me, I am over it. Who subscribes
to PC mag. anymore? Or Computer Shopper ?
Or Network Week? or whatever fad bandwagon
ZD tried to domesticate?
ZD would have been better of hedging their bets.
The ruined their credibility.
Any infringement (if it even exists) is still SCO's fault. SCO has still not given us exact line numbers or snippets of code. They have made statements without backing them up and claim that Linux is still hurting their IP.
The only thing we've seen are claims that are nothing short of saying anything IBM has touched is stolen from SCO...It's obvious that SCO has no plans to actually cooperate with the kernel dvelopers, as there has really been no attempt at contacting the developers directly...
There's really no reason for this type of speculation until the courts actually make their decision...this article seems to assume that SCO's claims are as good as gold...To be honest, SCO doesn't look to be moving on their end...
Another clueless hack with a word processor.
I guess most people realize this guy knows little about computers, and nothing about law, so his main claim to fame is...that he is a journalism major writing for Ziff-Davis? That means his rant is just a nicely worded Slashdot troll.
He writes like he knows something when in fact he's being completely uncritical of not only *fact* but recent events. Particularly how SCO's lawsuit has completely changec character and is now down to 60 lines of code that they claim were copied.
SCO's case is on its last legs, but he talks as if SCO is an aggrieved party looking for a little love.
Lets do some digging on this chump and see what other jems he is pushing on an unsuspecting public.
I'll post any response I get
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
This could open an avalanche for copyleft. It would mean any code which has ever been *near* any copylefted code would be owned by copyleft. Removing the copylefted code would be no remedy. The FSF would have field day chasing down all past GPL violators and any company which has even looked at GPL code (the majority, even if they won't admit it or actually used it?). The opportunity for retribution against the Darl McBrides of this world would be fantastic, and make others wish the SCO case had never happened.
It's an easy game to play until you notice that you have to include the quality of the evidence somewhere in the equation. At which point TSG's case goes all wahoonie-shaped.
I can just about imagine the IBM legal office examining TSG's amendmended complaint (I'm pretty sure they want to nail TSG's hide to the shed, if possible, no quarter asked or given): "Amendment fourteen!" <pause> <raucous laughter> "No! Wait! Wait! Amendment eighteen! Amendment eighteen! Unnnnn-believable! <bwaaaaah-hah-har!> Get a load a'tha' second sentence! Whoooe!" <more raucous laughter> ...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This piece completely forgets that SCO just removed all of the Unix is in Linux parts of their case, and now it is only that AIX and Dynix are in Linux, which SCO has no reason to believe they actually own, and if a judge finds that code developed by IBM and Sequent is actually owned by SCO well, I'll have to move to a different country, based on that ruling code developed using Microsofts MFC is owned by microsoft, code developed using Qt is owned by trolltech, and so on and so on...
Tell us about the connection between size of ad budget and e.g. results on reviews...
I lost my innocence when Word 6 was released on the Mac and got good reviews in the trade rags -- while all Mac users hated it because it was both buggy and really slow. Word 6 was faster if you ran the Windows-version in VirtualPC (or what the emulator of the day was called; I talked to people that had tried but never tried).
The interesting thing was that the columnists in the Mac magazines hated it -- they had some deal wich didn't sign away their souls. If you're in the business, please inform me:
Can you still more or less trust the columnists in trade magazines or are they just supporting the ad sales team, too?
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
How much do ad budgets influence reviews (and other content)? No, I don't believe zero -- or 10 percent, for that matter.
I explicitly used software as an example and the previous discussion was about Mirosoft/SCO. There was no need to waste your time discussing hardware. (And, yes, obviously there are influencing factors from reviews of beta versions. Etc, etc. Not an answer.)
This when I gave an example (from middle of the '90s!!) when reviews and articles where totally different from both user experiences and columnists that could write freely... (I even started it with "I lost my innocence when"!) Search Oct-94 to Mar-95 on groups.google.com for "word 6" and "macintosh".
You are joking and/or condescending. Or just not answering a simple question with the tried and true method of starting a large discussion of other matters.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
he does seem to have made more of an effort to try to find reasons to back up SCO's claims than any of their other supporters have.
... and that license allows them to redistribute it without fee, to anybody.
He ignores the fact (admitted by SCO) that SCO distributed Linux under the GPL. That's one very good reason why his article is hogwash. Many people already have an SCO license
So despite the author's attempt to sound serious, balanced, objective, responsible, etc: he's just another FUD merchant.
I note something that didn't seem to get mentioned it in the article about indemnification. That is, Novell has dredged up an official AT&T interpretation of a particular paragraph-in-the-contract.
I think that this disputed paragraph is the foundation upon which SCO is basing 99% of its claims. What I most seriously wonder is, "OK, suppose the judge gives SCO full rights to Unix. But most of the Unix contracts out there are based on an AT&T contract, and AT&T has provided a specific interpretation of a critical paragraph. Can SCO change the interpretation of this particular paragraph, JUST because they now own Unix?"
What I think is that those who obtained those AT&T-type contracts will argue that they are operating under the AT&T interpretation, which they were contractually allowed to do when they signed those contracts!
I do not think that the judge will grant SCO the right to arbitrarily alter the interpretation of the disputed paragraph in those contracts without some sort of advance notice -- and no such notice was given (just lawsuits). The net result is that, for example, IBM may have to STOP moving AIX and Dynamix code into Linux, but that all previously-moved code will be "grandfathered".
For Linux, that net result means that SCO can be ignored, and no indemnification nor insurance need be paid to anyone.