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SCO Identifies EV1Servers as Linux Licensee
jasonhamilton writes "EV1Servers.net has been identified as a Linux licensee, giving them the dubious title of being the first dedicated hosting company to have a licence agreement with SCO. Rather than 'eliminating uncertainty from our clients' hosting infrastructure', as Robert Marsh (CEO of EV1Servers) claims, some users of EV1 appear to be somewhat upset."
paying $699 per license
699x12000=$13,980,000.
So they're paying almost 14 million dollars for nothing. Nice.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
goto Rackshack.net and you'll get the 'official' word (and a redirect to EV1Servers.net)
For some reason there seems to be a lot of confusion about this.
I was thinking about EV1Servers but went with Server Matrix instead. The prices are comparable and they give you more bandwidth.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
This was the first thing I grabbed from google, no idea if it's fair or not, at least it's a better choice : Top ten. Host by others that do not support SCO's case (ask, so you can move again if they lie)
I don't think there'll be much left to claim against by the time IBM have finished with them.
The site www.ev1servers.net is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.
The site forums.ev1servers.net is running Apache/1.3.28 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a PHP/4.3.2 on Linux.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
OT: Robert Marsh (CEO of E1servers.net) interview Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 01 2004 @ 01:08 PM EST
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/02/03/inter view_ev1servers_ceo_robert_mar
sh.html
Q. You recently made a long-term commitment to Red Hat Enterprise as EV1Servers' standard Linux OS going forward, and have also begun offering FreeBSD. What factors guided your decisions on the "OS road map" for EV1Servers for 2004 and beyond?
A.Our number one consideration was long-term stability. For the majority of our users, web servers are business tools, not unlike phone systems or copy machines. They expect the equipment to work smoothly, and have no interest in devoting significant time and attention to frequent updates. We felt that RHE's 12-18 month release cycle and 5-year support timeframe would best meet their needs.
We also took into account our customers' feedback. While most were strongly supportive of our selection of RHE, we also received a significant number of requests for FreeBSD as an alternative. And that's what we now offer.
C|N>K
Couldn't they take SCO to the cleaners if/when SCO loses and this "license" is proven not to be a requirement?
The text of the contract says pretty clearly that you don't have much recourse if/when it turns out to be worthless.
Being Not A Lawyer, I can't really comment on how enforceable this clause is.
And nobody should even bother to try to DDOS EV1Servers... They're swimming in bandwidth over there, and that doesn't even show the new datacenter that goes live later this week.
EV1servers is basically the same "type" of company as www.serverbeach.com (just competing with them).
They offer dedicated servers with no support (beyond basic setup of the machine) in either linux or windows.
That article is just saying that initially they offered ONLY linux b/c it took too long to deploy windows servers, but now they can deploy windows servers even faster than they can deploy linux servers.
The hosting company didn't get Slashdotted. The main website is up and it's just the one-server fourm that went down. (vBulletin can only get you so far...) I can ping my server that I have there just like nothing's going on.
Doubt it. EV1 paid for a site license covering both of their datacenters in a one-shot payment. I'm a customer, and I haven't seen anything about it being rolled into my fees...
I have the felling they paid closer to $6.99 a server than $699 a server.
From http://www.ev1servers.net/english/support/index.as p:
(800) 504-7873
Unfortunately I'm a real dedicated server customer. I called and asked them to look into it and threatened to end my relationship with them if the situation is not rectified!!!
Microsoft claims here that they considered Linux, but came back to Microsoft products in the end.
That's a bad summary of the article. EV1 has a great high-volume system for selling Linux dedicated servers in real time. They knew from their own web boards that some people wanted a hosting place as good as EV1 for Windows servers, but EV1 stalled forever because it just wasn't that easy to work with Windows.
Microsoft came in and gave them a great deal of support in setting up their existing order system to work with deploying Windows servers. They didn't throw any Linux servers out, and in fact they're still setting more up... they just were able to add Windows servers to their product lines and were actually able to make it work. Nobody's been able to match their $89/mo. price point on a true dedicated server that runs Windows yet.
EV1's the best in the business. They're not zealots towards any particular OS... they just have a reputation of keeping a large datacenter humming, and now they're about to have two.
but in reality I doubt there will be any meat left on them bones by the time IBM is done with them.
Don't forget that SCO has a PIPE deal with BayStar Capital and the Royal Bank of Canada that gives them priority over most claimants in any liquidation deal. Plus, The Canopy Group has a promissory note to SCO which also gives them priority.
So, I don't really know what kind of priority a court judgement gets in a bankrupcy, but I'd almost bet that IBM is third in line after BS/RBC and then Canopy. Even if they end up before them, there will certainly be nothing left for the licensees or the common shareholders.
In addition to the fact EV1Servers is supporting SCO, it has just been neatly demonstrated EV1Servers is incapable of standing up to a slashdotting.
Not so. Look at EV1's MRTG graphs -- there isn't even a blip from the slashdot effect.
All that has been demonstrated here is that the server which runs EV1's forum isn't capable of handling the load... as long as you're not hosting your web site on that server, there is no problem.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Many other providers sell true dedicated with many OS at that price point (or better).
Start with www.servermatrix.com. RHES, Redhat 9, FreeBSD, and, yes, Windows.
And "best in business" is an opinion not shared by many. Go to www.webhostingtalk.com to see comparisons.
Hosting companies such as EV1 are probably the easiest targets for SCO because,
1.) They have thousands of servers.
2.) They operate on razor thin margins making money on volumes.
The legal costs of a suit with SCO would for sure shut them down.
EV1 was offered a cheap site license not $699 per server at a cost probably heavily negotiated with a carrot and stick approach by SCO.
Finally it's interesting to note that EV1 advertises Red Hat Enterprise and Windows as their selling point. Infact I don't see any server with SCO Linux on offer at all.
Best in the business my arse. You get what you pay for when you pick out a host with some of the cheapest server prices in the industry. Their customer service record has always been fragile, and you don't have to throw the stone far to find disastisfied customer reports.
Since my time with them I've found several other much more reputable hosts in a similar to slightly more expensive price range. EV1 (formerly Rackshack) are gutter hosting, and I'd strongly advise all to avoid them.
Given that SCO has yet to prove anything at all in court, their current efforts are about legal extortion.
It is important to remember that extortion succeeds because it often makes good business sense to pay the fee, rather than fighting a huge fight at some risk against the person extorting the money.
This means a company might make what it perceives as a good "business decision" which involves paying the extortionists rather than fighting them. You see this with all these types of rackets (DDOS, old fashioned thugs on the street, kidnappers, SCO etc).
It is important to stop the payments to these guys. If no one paid kidnappers, they would stop finding it lucrative to kidnap. Paying SCO just funds their business model, just as paying a kidnapper funds the kidnappers (in some contries kidnappers dive the fancy cars and have full out well oiled operations based on the revanue they realize).
There should be a two prong attack on these SCO extortionsts.
One is to insure that their claims are shot down clearly in a court of law. This IBM is well suited to accomplish, with armies of lawyers who can slowly grind through the millions of pages of documents a $5 billion case can generate.
The second is to make extortion payments a bad business decision for the companies that make them. That is where the vast majority of users come in.
When a company partners with SCO, and SCO starts issuing their press releases, users MUST indicate to the company (EV1) that the partners they do business with say a lot about the company, and MOVE THEIR BUSINESS elsewhere.
It is as simple as that. These companies have often built an entire business on open source, and are now paying cash money to groups who are claiming the GPL is invalid and that the software is like a toy car.
Let's see business move from EV1.
Yes, Windows (XP and 2003, possibly 2000 as well) can be installed via PXE using Remote Installation Services. Microsoft even provides a PXE boot floppy for use with systems that don't provide it in the BIOS.
RIS requires a specially-configured NTFS partition (you can't put things other than installation images on it), and uses hard-linking to save space on duplicate files between similar installation images.
Of course, this doesn't address the question of why they don't image the Linux systems. It's certainly not very hard to do.
dude, they host over 2% of the net.
try going to http://php.net for example
> an ISP nobody ever heard of
Nobody ever heard of?! EVERYONE in the hosting industry knows of EV1Servers (aka Rackshack). They are one of the biggest providers of discounted rack servers on the planet. NetCraft apparently knows about them too, and had an interview with Marsh. The host a LOT of boxes.
They are likely the biggest provider of startup web hosting servers around. Although they aren't the cheapest around, they are probably the cheapest that still offers any level of service. I'd say anyone who hasn't heard of them probably isn't in the industry.
First of all, we're talking about a company that hires helpdesk/technicians by interviewing hundreds of people for a job that pays only slightly over minimum wage. At the height of the unemployment boom EV1 preyed on the unemployed for $5.00 an hour and are still only paying those persons $5.00 an hour. If your dumb enough applies I guess. And, they do drug testing........a no-no in my book, cause if you're gonna hire someone at $5.00 an hour you better realize you get what you pay for. EV1.....The Walmart of the Internet.
An EV1 Admin named Isabel posted this to the ev1 user forum as an explanation for why they bought a license:
--- quote ----
Why? Here's why.
Our primary consideration is the stability of our customers' operations. Many of you rely 100% on your servers to do business. Any risk to your uninterrupted use of Linux could have very serious financial impact.
Instead of waiting to see what develops, we decided to acquire a SCO site license in order to preemptively eliminate this issue from your list of possible worries. Regardless of your position on SCO's claims, we feel it is our responsibility to provide a hosting environment that is not dependent on the outcome of future legal proceedings.
--- end quote ----
I'm beginning to think that EV1 really had no idea what they were doing. Maybe they really are that clueless.
First, this is the email I sent to their sales team...
"I've been trying to decide which hosting company to use for my business. I've been looking long and hard at a few, ev1servers being one of them. Your purchase of licences from SCO has helped me narrow down the pack by eliminating hosting by ev1servers from consideration. Bravo, and thank you."
(my name with-held(sp))
Their response...
"If you do not want to host with the best in the business, that is definitely your choice, but I would not recommend it.
Thank you,
Aaron Conklin
Sales Supervisor
1-800-504-7873
www.ev1servers.net"
The best in the business? My ass, more like the most clueless in the business. More like run by the clueless.
I only deal with smart persons and smart entities, ev1 is not one of them.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
from what little I know (IANAL - I just read those on /.), the SCO licences open EV1 to potential lawsuits and diminish EV1's ability to have such lawsuits dismissed. This doesn't preemptively eliminate the threat to EV1 Linux hosting, but instead amplifies it.
By buying SCO's licenses (and their FUD), EV1 effectively is providing a hosting environment dependent on the outcome of court proceedings; if SCO wins, they could try to milk EV1 for more money, while if they lose, they could also sue EV1 for money (unless IBM and RedHat grind SCO into asphalt like a good steel-toed boot squishing a cockroach),
Am I missing something, or is EV1 not smart enough to hire good lawyers?