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SCO Says They'll Sue A Linux User Tomorrow
Xenographic writes "InfoWorld is reporting that SCO intends to sue a Linux using company. Ordinarily, this would not be newsworthy, as they have not followed through on past threats. However, this time, they have given themselves a concrete deadline--tomorrow. While they claim that it will be one of the "top 1,000" companies, they apparently have yet to decide which company to actually sue. Perhaps they need more practice playing darts?" Reader Fished links to CNET's coverage.
I have three words for Darl McBride: Bring It On!
Peace and love, y'all
Sorry Google, your free ride is over. And in other news, the Miami Dolphins actually won a superbowl!
"But I'm still right here, giving blood and keeping faith. And I'm still right here."
I pick Starbucks, for it is the hub of Dr. Evil's empire - and Scott (aka McBride) wants to get back at his father's transgression.
Either that or RedHat.
This space for rent.
Aaaaaah, fuck it, who am I kidding.
It's like shoveling jelly beans into your mouth at the candy store - sure, it rots your teeth out and you end up with diabetes, but it tastes so damned good you can't help yourself.
this whole SCO mess is really out of hand and absurd. They will be suing a Linux user for what? Using software legally? They haven't won their case with IBM. This is all just absolutely outrageous! They're suing someone based on what someone else did (and they haven't even proved that much in court). I hope the "victim" of SCO's suit couter-sues their asses into tomorrow.
Bored? Why not join a decent mess
Since when has anything SCO said made sense?
I can just see the headlines: "12 year old girl sued by SCO for using Linux!"
...this is why Google delayed it's IPO?
DISCLAIMER: Complete and total speculation.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Dear Mr. McBride,
This is March, not April. Please refrain from wasting all of our good material until that time.
Thank you,
-Slashdot
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
Did he fire six court briefs, or only five? Tell 'ya the truth, in all of this excitement I've sort of lost track myself. But given that this is Free and Open Source Software community, the most powerful group of advocates, coders, and corporate lawyers on the planet, and would blow your company's revenue clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well do 'ya, punk?
As other have pointed out, EV1 can't comply with SCO's linux license and still get Redhat patches, so there is actually a case that SCO can win against them now.
actually DOING it instead of saying...
And tomorrow we find out...
They are suing IBM! The company they are already in a lawsuit with!
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Gosh, I'm sure they're all broken up about the fact that this will distract from their quarterly earnings announcement the day after tomorrow.
OK now let me make sure I have all of this straight. Wednesday is the day the SCO quarterly non-earnings report will be released, which most likely won't be good news. So, on Tuesday, the day before the report is released, SCO makes a stock, I mean lawsuit announcement. Do I detect a pattern here?
They are going to sue the corporation, the legal entity that has person like status.
And the corporation's lawyers will respond, "Sorry, we bought our Linux from (insert distributor here). You have take your claim to them, and you will receive any compensation you might be due directly from them for selling SCO IP without a valid license. Piss off."
KFG
The SCO Group on Tuesday will launch its first lawsuit against a Linux user for alleged violations of SCO's intellectual property, SCO Chief Executive Officer Darl McBride said Monday.
I didn't see anywhere where they said it involved SCO IP in Linux. Just a Linux user misusing SCO IP. Might be a minor distinction. Might not.
"They're just asking for trouble (as the article points out) if they sue someone in a Fortune 1000 company."
I don't know if you can really get much worse than IBM. IBM's been around the block, they've been the bad dog, have more US patents than most nations have in their patent registry, and probably have more elite, fire-breathing IP layers than SCO has employees.
And SCO is suing for three billion.
Of course, more straw on the camel's back won't do them any good, but I fail to see how they could have picked a harder target than what they already have.
Cheers
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
But by this point their goal isn't necessarily to win, or at least I wouldn't think. They know that they're going down, and they want to go down tearing Linux off its high perch along with them. Sueing a Fortune 1000 company is a good way to make a high profile case against Linux very popular, thus spreading further FUD everywhere.
Fortune 25 company, sells Linux on PCs (Lindows, Lycoris, Mandrake). Isn't an ISP or a tech company.
That's my best guess.
If it happens.
Hasn't yet.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Someone needs to charge SCO with raqueteering and extortion. SCO has made several claims, but has yet to offer proof, and it's own case has changed so much that it barely resembles the original case presented almost a year ago.
By suing a Linux end users, SCO is in effect trying to use courts to extort money. The definition of extort is "to obtain from a person by force, intimidation, or undue or illegal power". I cannot see the difference between SCO's actions, press releases and the running a criminal enterprise.
If they (SCO) truly wished to protect their IP, they would proceed with their case and quit stalling. The Linux community would respond, in defference to and in respect to an IP rights. I think that is the crux of SCO's problem, Linux would respond by respectfully removing any proven IP content. If they can extort money from people instead of actually proving their case, then the profit margin goes up. So what if extortion is illegal.
AngryPeoplePeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
heh, good luck passing that off on the /. crowd. You and I might know that distribution, not use, of unlicensed IP is a crime, but its like banging your head against the wall to try to explain that to anyone.
Hey, the Pope lives in Vatican City, and BTW they use Tru64, i.e. Alpha!!! wow! I knew this pope was cool!
Yes, it would have made more sense to sue someone like you if SCO was actually trying to win the lawsuit. However, you can't trick investors into thinking that you can extract $3 billion from "Skyshadow," but it is at least theoretically possible to extract $3 billion from IBM. With a little help from Microsoft and Sun (to add a bit of legitimacy to the claims), SCO had all the tools it needed to extract millions of dollars from the stock market.
The trick, of course, is to promise investors the moon to drive up the stock price, and then use the high stock price to either cash out or to purchase (at inflated prices) other companies that SCO backers have an interest in (like Vultus).
The reason that SCO is going to sue someone tomorrow is that on the 3rd they are supposed to post their quarterly earnings. My guess is that the financial reports are going to be very very bad and the new law suit is designed to draw attention away from the bottom line.
ooo.
This is so exciting! I wonder if Dick Clark will come to my house to tell me if I win!
Who ever does win this honor will be lavished with attention, job offers, pro bono lawyers and scads of cash from the counter suit.
Where do I sign up?
--
Mike
-- Mike wildcard@illuminatus.org
>Since when has anything SCO said made sense?
hey, it's a valid question! the concept of end user isn't objective, it depends on who you are:
of course if you just piss away your valuable dev time posting on slashdot, the end user is whoever has mod points...
2 1337 4 u!
The company, Houston-based EV1Servers.Net has purchased site licenses from SCO for its two data centers for an undisclosed seven figure sum, according to SCO.
This has to be bullshit. There's no way that EV1 is going to pay 7 figures for a license from these pricks. They operate on a razor thin margin at $99 bucks per month per server. This is a bargin basement hosting facility. I call bullshit on this this statement. The price was probably:
$1,000,000 - License Fee
- $999,900 - Early Bird license discount.
___________
I want to see the additional 7 figures in the quarterly report. 7 figures my ass.
I'm waiting for someone to post that goddamn redundant Chewbacca defense again.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Oh, I think it makes perfect sense in a kind of stupid way. Since SCO's just riding on fumes, they need to throw something like this out every few weeks. It's the only way for them to keep up the pretense that they're anything more than a paper tapeworm.. er.. tiger. Reliably, and gullibly, the tech press eats it up giving them a few more days of pseudo-credibility.
Really, the old on-line adage "don't feed the trolls" seems somehow appropriate.
SCO is either:
a) Going to pass this by, probably with a lot of angry geeks and scared company CEOs. Watch as their target "bought a license at the last minute" and they don't even disclose who it is.
b) Sue someone, get laughed out of court while trying to hold it as long as they can, and die anyway. Stealing people's money in the process for their license fees. Hopefully, the SEC will get off their ass and stop them.
Hmmm, and EV1's largest competitor would be? From SCO's perspective, it would mean hitting a few thousand birds with one stone. EV1 then swoops in, and tells potential clients that they are safe with them. Before the dust settles, EV1 might make a good return on their investment. Sleezy, but since when did that have anything to do with business?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
What will happen first? A lawsuit from SCO or a DDos against SCO?
Thoughts anyone?
Seriously. Their stock is dropping.
http://financyahoo.e.com/q?s=SCOX
SCO is not a software company. It's a publicly traded lawsuit. They've delayed and delayed and delayed too long with IBM and the truth is getting out. If they don't start another lawsuit their entire business model is threatened.
The 7-figure sum was bothering me for a while. What idiot would give SCO more than a million dollars for a worthless license? It could just be a lie, of course, but one way for it to be "true" is if EV1 signed a long-term contract that's worth a total of $1 million over the life of the contract. After all, that's how football players' contracts are publicized -- it makes them sound bigger and more exciting.
EV1 might have agreed to pay SCO $1/year for the next million years, for all we know.
Interviewer begins to droop.
<monotone>...and of course, President Bush has not shown the, uhhhhhhhhh, leadership that we expect from a Commander-In-Chief on this issue...</monotone>
Interviewer nods off.
<monotone>...and, uhhhhhhhh, obviously, SCO has not shown that they have a case and I think they're clearly wrong... </monotone>
Audience nods off.
<monotone>...but SCO has clearly shown the leadership to...</monotone>
Both audience and interviewer have dangerously weak heartbeats.
<monotone>...my record is clear in that I believe in the SCO case and, uhhhhhhh...</monotone>
Most members of the audience are clinically dead. The interviewer is sprawled on the floor.
<monotone>...those who would question my patriotism by implying that my position has changed on this matter...</monotone>
Temperature reaches absolute zero as all atomic motion stops.
<monotone>...which is, uhhhhhhh, why I think I will be your next President. My Vietnam war heroism makes it clear that, uhhhhhh...</monotone>
There's even a term for persistent incitement of litigation. It's called 'barratry'. In most jurisdictions, it's illegal. Check it out: barratry
Suing a group that stands to gain by losing the lawsuit would be a shrewd move. It would give SCO greater ability to set the stage for a setting a precedent favorable to SCO.
However, the shrewdest move would be to sue a company holding the "information wants to be free" line religiously. It is often easy to win the court's favor when your opponent is holding an absurd ideal with religiour fervor. The worst thing would be to sue a well respected company with shrewd leadership, as they are likely to punch real legitimate holes in the SCO case.
Where are they going to find impartial jurors?
*Everyone* with enough technical background to fully understand the issue ...
... would of course be immediately disqualified from the jury.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Maybe. All depends on the judge. If it's a moron behind the bench, who somehow equates downloading Linux with downloading mp3s, then it's bad. If the judge has a lick of common sense, then it's good.
Actually, the better response would be "Your honour, the actual ownership of the IP in question has not been resolved yet, therefore we believe that this suit is premature, and ask for it to be held in abeyance until such time as SCO actually proves it owns what it is suing us for."
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I don't think the SCO vs IBM case have much to do with this. The only copyright stuff in that case is about IBM continued to distribute AIX after SCO revoked their licence. The rest is breach of contract stuff, and unless the end user isn't a SCO customer there would be no such things for SCO to sue over. So once again the lesson to learn, don't do business with SCO.
The Novell case is much more interesting here as it deals with wether SCO really have any copyrights to Linux.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Which Linux user is SCO going to sue next?
Google
Yahoo
WalMart
EV1Servers.net
Microsoft (oh the irony)
State of California
U.S. Government
A 12 yr old girl
Cowboyneal
Zehn kleine UNIX Zeilen
Reicht man ein zur Klage.
Die eine die auf griechisch war,
War leider viel zu vage.
Neun kleine UNIX Zeilen
Sollten es begrunden.
Die eine war trotz groBter Muh'
In LINUX nicht zu finden.
Acht kleine UNIX Zeilen
Dienten zum Beweise.
Die eine war aus BSD,
Pech fur Anwalt Heise.
Sieben kleine UNIX Zeilen,
Kamen vor Gericht.
Die eine war 'ne Fehlernummer,
Die taugte dazu nicht.
Sechs kleine UNIX Zeilen,
Sollten es belegen.
Doch eine kam zur GPL
Durch SCO Kollegen.
Funf kleine UNIX Zeilen
Waren noch dabei.
Die eine kam von einem Band
Mit Aufschrift System Drei.
Vier kleine UNIX Zeilen,
Doch eine, sonderbar,
Gehorte nicht zum dem Programm,
Sie war ein Kommentar.
Drei Kleine UNIX Zeilen,
Waren das Problem.
Eine war zwar System Five,
Doch kam von IBM.
Zwei kleine UNIX Zeilen,
Waren noch geblieben.
Die eine war schon reichlich alt
Und kam von System Sieben.
Eine kleine UNIX Zeile
Wurde angefuhrt.
Die hatte Linus Torvalds selbst
Am Anfang programmiert.
Ohne eine UNIX Zeile
Kann SCO nichts machen.
Doch eines muss man zugestehn:
Wir hatten was zu lachen.
Schlussbemerkung:
Hier zeigt sehr schon ein Kinderlied,
Warum McBride die Wahrheit mied.
stolen from Heise forum
(now some foo to exploit the lameness filter - damn you slashcode!) # Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. # Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. # Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 14.1).
It will definately be either Google, or a firewall manufacturer.
Why ?
Microsoft has made big noises lately about moving into the search engine space, and also made noises about an impending firewall product.
SCO, taking orders from above, will target the competion in these areas, hoping to tie them up in court for ages, so that Microsoft can enter these markets with reduced competition.
You dont even need a tinfoil hat to see that one coming.