EV1 Servers CEO Responds To Customers

Retalin writes "EV1 CEO Robert Marsh gave his customer base a written explanation for the purchase of his decision to purchase a SCO License late last night. The most interesting quote was this: "It has been argued by a Linux Journal reporter that I have essentially called the various GPL Linux developers plaugerists. This is false as I would never make such a claim against them. They are some of the brightest minds for whom I hold a great deal of respect.""

Comments

Still looking for facts on..

[superhoe]

.. how big percentage of the 20000 servers is actually Linux

Re:Still looking for facts on..

[Forge]

Too bad he brought up the OJ case. That case was a perfect example of media gone bad.

At the time I was basically on sabbatical or "between schools". I spent all day watching the trial and the spent the nights watching the various pundits; Jeraldo Riviera changed his format to "The OJ Show" during the trial.

What was the difference? Watching the raw unedited trial coverage I got a "Juror's Eye View" and quite frankly, I was ready to acquit before the defense started presenting it's case. They established pretty early on that OJ was framed and under American law, if you are found to be framing a guilty man he goes free.

Slow and expensive yes, but not stupid enough to give SCO a victory in this suite. So don't worry too much about the press release war. What matters is what is brought to court. IBM Could have settled the case or bought SCO before anything went public. They have no incentive to fight a lousing battle. SCO on the other hand will win even if it looses. The stock went up and managers sold. End of story.

Full Text

[CuriousGeorge113]

After Yesterdays /.'ing of their forums, here's the full text of the commnet before the whole thing bork's out

Additional Headsurfer Comments Regarding SCO Contract

By now, many of you have heard of oru agreement with SCO. What you have probably heard, though, is misinformation about the arrangement.

We license Linux through Red Hat. They provide our distribution and support/updates for the Enterprise distribution. Plus, they do an awesome job at delivering. Their support and dedication is second to none. Our agreement with SCO is in no way any kind of indictment on Red Hat.

We did not license a linux distribution or any software covered by a referenced EULA from SCO. We did, however, license certain IP from SCO.

We fullly support the GPL and the open source movement.

It has been argued by a Linux Journal reporter that I have essentially called the various GPL Linux developers plaugerists. This is false as I would never make such a claim against them. They are some of the brightest minds for whom I hold a great deal of respect.

Other have claimed that we're essentially funding SCOs various lawsuits. This is not true. SCO already has like $60 million on hand and our small fee would not go very far defending an action such as this, much less prosecuting one.

We make no endorsement of SCO nor do we make any admission as to their claims.

HOWEVER, what we did do was make a prudent business decision based upon our circumstances and our customers needs and the need to bring certainty to their businesses.

Whatever your position on the various suits, which SCO has said will increase. These suits have a very real and significant cost, even if proven unsuccessful. These are costs we were prepared to bear as we did in the Free Speech case with CI Host. the vast majority of smaller hosts using our services do not have our resources to defend/prosecute such an action. While our decision may not be popular, it does ensure that our customers (to the extent that they operate servers in our data centers) are protected from action by SCO with respect to those servers.

No legal action is certain. The outcome of every legal action is subject to risk. (Just look at the OJ Simpson case .. who would have figured that one) There is significcant risk on both sides of this equation.

In every step building the EV1 business, I've had to make decisions that I believed in my heart were in the best interests of my clients and my shareholders. My team and I have worked to bring the best possible service at the best possible price to our customers. In this case, the same decision making tools were employed and only after significant thought and analysis, an action taken.

As a result of this action, our customers can be assured that as these cases work their way through the legal system, that thay have no worry that SCO will take action against them for servers in our data centers.

I do appreciate the positive comments and emails that many of you have sent as I also understand the negative positions that others have taken. We are fortunate to live in a country where it is possible to speak your mind freely.

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer

DC2 Opens on Wednesday with limited server availability. Initial deployments are likely to be dual drive/1 GB configurations. Additional configurations will follow as time and space allow.

Re:Full Text

[Anonymous Coward]

The simple fact stands that they have been the only people who have chosen to support what appears to be a SCO, an apparently criminal organisation. They have been the people who have sent people to be in a press conference with SCO.

On Zdnet we can find that their CEO, "Marsh was in San Francisco on Monday with SCO Group CEO Darl McBride".

Do not just boycott EV1. Boycott anybody who remains their customer after next month. Contact anyone you know who works with EV1 and tell them you do not believe in supporting SCO extortion.

Knowingly supporting such activities is in its self bad. Buying from thieves causes theft.

Re:Full Text

[Anonymous Coward]

We did not license a linux distribution or any software covered by a referenced EULA from SCO. We did, however, license certain IP from SCO.

Does anyone here understand that SCO has IP other than the UNIX(tm) IP that is the current hot topic?

Perhaps what EVServers licenced was some of the very interesting technology that SCO developed in the early 90s before Caldera drove the company into the ground. You know, the UnixWare Non-Stop Cluster code (developed with Compaq) and/or the Java-based Tarantella thin-client-everywhere code. I can see how both of these would fit into their business.

Re:Full Text

[Anonymous Coward]

See also about Robert Marsh http://www.internet-hosting-report.com/rackshack.p hp

Just one man's opinion ...

Robert Marsh

The bottom line is, a company will reflect the personality of the man in charge. When one customer expressed disappointment with my customer service, I refunded the hosting fees in full, offered lifetime free hosting, and apologized profusely for my staff's lack respose to her support questions. That has nothing to do with the company. It has nothing to do with PR. It has to do with integrity, honesty, and self-respect. Robert Marsh, on the other hand, throws honor and integrity to the wind. He'd rather be known as a scam artist and scum, than retain his honor. He'd rather keep your money, than provide quality support. With Robert Marsh, the bottom line really is the bottom line. If that means overbilling, then that's A-okay for him. If that means overbilling a customer whose hard drive they have lost, that's okay too. If it means billing a customer several months after the account was terminated, that's okay with Robert. In short, Robert has no sense of ethics - his underpaid and under-educated staff will lose your hard drive, reclaim your hard drive, deleting millions of files of hundreds of websites, and he'll still be billing your credit card 6 months down the road. The only thing that will stop Robert Marsh, in my opinion, is jailtime. And that's exactly where he belongs - in jail.

Re:Full Text

[Mirk]

Do not just boycott EV1. Boycott anybody who remains their customer after next month. Contact anyone you know who works with EV1 and tell them you do not believe in supporting SCO extortion.

I can see where this is coming from, but isn't it just a tad extreme? Boycotting SCO is one thing. Boycotting EV1 because they paid their protection money is another. But boycotting a third party because they host with people who paid protection money to the criminals ... well, I think that's enough levels of indirection for even the most rabid C++ programmer.

I mean, what next? Boycott the office services companies that do the cleaning for the companies that host with people who paid protection money to the criminals? How many more levels will it take before you have to boycott yourself?

Re:Full Text

[parliboy]

Regrettibly, I find myself and my people in the crosshairs of your anger (no criticism on the .asp, please -- it's not my site build.)

Will it influence what we do in future decisions, if we need to expand our server ops? Yes. Will we pick up tomorrow and move on? No. We have dozens of websites (not a lot, but given who they are, we have some measure of pride) who are in the middle of the most important periods of their calendar year. It would be suicidal to say to them, "Hi, you may see some issues over the next couple of days as we change providers; sorry if this impacts you right in the middle of your online conference registration and your members can't access your site."

Also, don't suggest we figure take the extra time to make the transition smooth for our clients -- many of us are still students ourselves; I'm in my last semster of an education degree and typing this from the "big honkin' desk" at my student teaching post right now. I barely have time to keep my shoes tied -- hell, I switched back to velcro just to be safe!

For those who have the resources, be it in time, manpower, or money, to leave EV1 on your timetable, good for them. For the rest of us, please show some patience. Not everyone who is staying is happy about this, but unless you're volunteering your personal time to help out EV1 clients who want to leave, what you're asking is unfair and unreasonable.

Re:Full Text

[Anonymous Coward]

This statement can only be said from a psychotic linux zealot. Who else would go off the wall so far to boycott the customers using their service immediately after EV1 makes this deciscion. They had NOTHING to do with it. Give me a fucking break.

Re:Full Text

[akahige]

There is nothing in the story that you link which even remotely implies that Robert Marsh was in SF on Monday -- to support McBride, or for any other reason.

Re:Full Text

[Anonymous Coward]

So you think businesses who outsource to college students are honestly concerned with stability?

Re:Full Text

[stephenisu]

While your purpose is noble, please remember some businesses have these things called multi-year contracts.

Re:Full Text

[jsdkl]

The point of a boycott is to reduce a company's income by not buying its products. The people providing income to EV1 are those purchasing hosting from them. Boycott those companies and they'll be forced to stop providing income to EV1.

Re:Full Text

[rjamestaylor]

• In every step building the EV1 business, I've had to make decisions that I believed in my heart were in the best interests...[blah blah blah]

Of course, he is free to do as he wishes for his business. Of course, I am free to take my business elsewhere.

Re:Full Text

[lspd]

It'll take a while to get rid of my server with EV1 as well.
I'll just have to host a copy of the 2.4.25 kernel
in protest for the time being.

Re:Full Text

[EzInKy]

On the face of it, some of his arguments make sense.

I wonder though if he knows that so far SCO has only sued people with whom they have done business? Mr. Marsh have been better off if he consulted with some of SCOG's previous partners and customers before he made such a rash decision.

Re:Full Text

[ncc74656]

I mean, what next? Boycott the office services companies that do the cleaning for the companies that host with people who paid protection money to the criminals? How many more levels will it take before you have to boycott yourself?

Two.

Re:Full Text

[Anonymous Coward]

from original AC: yes; I for one will give you extra time. Just because you clearly rejected EV1's stance here; because you have said that you will avoid them in future. In the same way, people who have continued working for SCO whilst looking (probably desparately) for jobs elsewhere should still be accepted up to some point.

If you are a volunteer organisation looking to move from EV1 then please post here. There are many of us who have web space (I have bandwidth, but not much disk space) and will be willing to help out.

If you are a commercial organisation, just say that you are planning to move; give time schedules. We will be more than happy.

The danger is those that silently accept. EV1 is looking to frighten people over from other web hosting companies. If they get away with this then there is a benefit from working SCO. That would be terrible.

(consider that AC is volunteering his some of his time, a bit of his money, alot of his patience and some of his web space... EV1 customers, post your needs in this thread.. we are many, some can help.)

Re:Full Text

[Reziac]

You are right, it is not your fault and you should not be unduly penalised for it -- IF you don't *support* EV1's decision to get in bed with SCO. And inability to quickly move your business elsewhere should not be held against you, either (whether for technical/manpower/resources reasons, or for having already paid for a package deal that you can't afford to blow off).

But I think this points out a business opportunity for EV1's competitors: offer to engineer a seamless transistion from EV1 to another hosting service, with no loss of site uptime, as a sort of bonus for signing on with another company. This can be done with judicious use of mirrors and redirects, yes??

Of course, businesses who DO support EV1's decision (whether they're stuck with the effects or not) may no longer deserve OUR patronage.

Re:Full Text

[Reziac]

Could EV1's deal with SCO constitute breach of contract on their end? You're not obligated to stay in a breached contract, right?

Some have pointed out that paying SCO's protection money actually opens one up to lawsuits, thus to the probability of disrupted service. This wasn't what you signed up for, so perhaps could be used to get out of the remainder of a long-term contract.

Thoughts from the IAALs hereabouts?

Re:Full Text

[SphericalCrusher]

"In every step building the EV1 business, I've had to make decisions that I believed in my heart were in the best interests of my clients and my shareholders."

To me, that quote is a lot like religion. Some people can feel it in their hearts that there is a God, while others, like me, do not. In this type of situation, I do not feel that it is right to purchase a license from SCO, simply because they do not own Linux. If I DID want to pay for Linux for one reason or another, I'd pay Linus Torvalds or Novell.

Re:Full Text

[16K Ram Pack]

I think his arguments make no sense at all. I've read material on Groklaw and slashdot, and I can't even see any risk now. It seems to now be down to a contract dispute with IBM over derivative works, not copyright of people using it.

I hope everyone ditches EV1 on the principal of not paying some wretched SCO tax. If my ISPs did, I'd drop them immediately.

Re:Full Text

[parliboy]

Given that many of these are education-oriented, they won't care so much about stability in late summer. Right now, during what for them is conference season and last-minute membership drives, yes, it's important.

As to the quip about college students, the business was started when the owner was in high school. It's nearly fifteen years old now. Many of our team members are culled from the ranks of our clients' memberships as they move from high school into college.

Re:Full Text

[delzy]

The most interesting point to this which has been alluded to by some is whether there was a quip pro quo for the thousands of licenses that EV1 has and will buy from Microsoft. If this is happening, it is certainly a violation of anti-trust and could jeopardize the clients Marsh is trying to "protect". I hope this gets some real attention even though I dropped rackshack as a vendor some time ago. I hope the DOJ looks into it more. I recommend the disolution of business with this company for a number of reasons, not the least of which is their ethics.

Eh

[FuzzzyLogik]

It's not a big deal, if it turns out he wasted his money, then so be it. it was more of a way to protect his business, if something happens and the tables turn, he's not going to be sued and have to pay that, in other words, the cost of being sued would be way more than having to buy these licenses. it was just simply more cost affective to buy the licenses and if they turn out to be trash, so what, the customers who had doubts had peace of mind at this point.

Re:Eh

[root-kun]

Rackshack/EV1 is notably one of the worst companies out there. They heavily oversell their bandwidth producing very low quality network solutions, they have awful tech support, misleading staff. This is just another nail in their coffin. Boycott rackshack/ev1 and their anti-opensource and their shotty business traffics. I'm sorry guys but you cant sell terabits of aggregate bandwidth when you only have gigabits, no wonder half your routes are SLOW AS FUCK.

Re:Eh

[Anonymous Coward]

It IS a big deal - the money goes right to SCO to help them fight other Linux users.

Re:Eh

[jejones]

It is a big deal. SCO is basically now running a protection racket, and these folks knuckled under. That is fundamentally wrong.

"Then they came up with what they called the Other Other Operation, in which they would threaten to sue a Linux user if he did not buy a license. This, for the Piran^H^H^H^H^HMcBride brothers, was the turning point."

Re:Eh

[Hieronymus Howard]

It's not a big deal, if it turns out he wasted his money, then so be it. it was more of a way to protect his business, if something happens and the tables turn, he's not going to have his restaurant burned down and have to pay that, in other words, the cost of an arson attack would be way more than having to pay the protection money. it was just simply more cost affective to pay off the mob and if they get arrested, so what, the customers who had doubts had peace of mind at this point.

Re:Eh

[Kevitt]

It is a big deal. Why? Because EV1 buying into SCO's FUD lends said FUD credibility. Now in court SCO can point to EV1 specifically as an example of one of the largest DC's agreeing to their terms. It may not lend any credibility to those of us with a clue, but who knows how the demented minds of our courts will interpret this? I'm afraid the interpretation will be one of lending credence to SCO's claims. Dunno if I'm making my frustration/worry clear here, but I hope you get my drift. I view this as a fairly dark day in the Linux/SCO battle.

Re:Eh

[dbcowboy]

It is a big deal. Your either for Linux or Against it. This money is used against Linux... I would rather see this company pack its bags and load up on Windows 2003.

Re:Eh

[cpjackso]

FuzzzyLogik - you are using my IP - the word "the" - I invented it. I haven't proven my ownership yet - but I DO own it. If you don't pay I will sue you.

Pay up $10 now - or face the consequences.

Will you pay me? Thought so.

It's extortion - plain and simple, and this guy fell over himself to pay it. What an idiot - I just hope he notices it in the number of people moving away from his ISP.

Re:Eh

[tanveer1979]

From the article:
No legal action is certain. The outcome of every legal action is subject to risk. (Just look at the OJ Simpson case .. who would have figured that one) There is significcant risk on both sides of this equation.

He is right. Absolutely right. Law does not mean that what is right will win. Law means what the judge/jury feels right will win. And about the justice system, the less said the better. Still think SCO will lose? There are innumerable precedents on slashdot itself
here, here and many other places too. Infact this place is a good place to look for such things.
So he just covers his customers. Unless SCO loses, more such instances will come forward. So this case needs to be wrapped up, for good or bad, soon.

Re:Eh

[zippyRRB]

According to EV1, they use and are very happy with RedHat. Too bad they didn't take a page from Lehman Brothers. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200402172 31311568 Then again, according to SCO, they aren't the first company to buy a license. They are the first company to buy a license *and* permit their name to be used. Who benefits from this publicity? And what did it cost them?

Re:Eh

[gaijin99]

More to the point, management at EV1 did not inform its customers if this decision. Instead it kept everything nice and secret so its customers operated on the assumption that their money wasn't being used to destroy Linux. If EV1's intent was to "protect its customers" than they should have been touting this as a fantastic new feature: "Now when you rent a Linux server from EV1 you can be secure in the knowledge that we've paid for SCO's IP in the Linux immunizing *you* our valued customer from any potential lawsuits for IP theft! Just one more reason to use EV1, the best possible choice for your hosting needs!!" Instead they hid their decision, made no anouncements, and willfully lied (through the omission of information) to their customers.

We can only assume they did this because they knew their customers wouldn't like the idea of their money being used against Linux. That their customers wouldn't like the idea of EV1 lending credibility to SCO's case. That their customers would recognize this for the cheap scam it is and doubt the sanity of EV1's management.

Robert Marsh is either an idiot, a tool for SCO/MS, or insane, there is no other rational explination. His "explination" of his action omits several important facts (including, but not limited to, the reason why he lied to his customers by not informing them of his decision) and the rest has a null semantic value. In other words his explanation is pure, government grade, BS.

Re:Eh

[Anonymous Coward]

Question:

Is this traceroute idicative of wheather or not my provider is on an EV1 server? ...
6 168.215.172.45 (168.215.172.45) 22.674 ms 14.398 ms 23.223 ms
7 216.54.253.2 (216.54.253.2) 12.168 ms 22.992 ms 11.968 ms
8 ivhou-207-218-245-42.ev1.net (207.218.245.42) 17.081 ms 11.713 ms 13.799 ms
9 server100.penguinhost.net (69.57.146.24) 14.960 ms 11.706 ms 11.865 ms

Re:Eh

[Anonymous Coward]

if something happens and the tables turn, he's not going to be sued

Oh, that's a stretch. Did you read the EULA?

SCO may terminate this Agreement, upon reasonable notice and without judicial or administrative resolution, if You or any of Your employees or consultants breach any term or condition hereof.

That's their get-out-of-jail-free card. They can terminate you "upon reasonable notice" and you may not ask for judicial (file for an injunction), nor ask for administrative (arbritration) relief.

Also note that TSG does not provide you with the software they claim to license you. You have to get it from somewhere else -- someone who is not licensed to give you that software.

All EV1 has done is make it easier for the McBride Brothers to sue them. And they've paid for the privilege, no less!

Re:Eh

[Citizen of Earth]

It's not a big deal, if it turns out he wasted his money, then so be it.

What are the odds that the company that SCO announces it is going to sue today is EV1? Ha Ha HA, Suckers! SCO would be in hot water if they sue anyone with whom they don't have a contract.

Re:Eh

[GreatDrok]

Hold on one minute. This is a license for IP right? Doesn't that mean 95% of it should go to Novell? I could see how they could spin the MS money as being a loan or some such thing, but this has to be for UNIX related IP and that means Novell gets 95% of it regardless of who owns the copyright (which I believe is Novell anyway).

Re:Eh

[Daytona955i]

They basically just spit on the GPL...

If SCO should win (ok, stop laughing... hypothetically) Linux kernel development would stop. You cannot place the kind of restrictions on the kernel that says SCO get any money per license. Linux would cease to be... does anyone not get that? What would your license be worth then?

I imagine that they would go back and remove the infringing code and start over with whatever is left but then we now have the new Linux and SCO's "linux." Which are you going to use?

Ok, that's the worst case senario. What's most likely to happen even if infringing code is found? The kernel developers will probably be ordered to take out the code and remove kernel versions with infringing code from places like kernel.org.

What I think will happen, the judge will tell SCO that there is no basis to their claims. IBM will countersue and if there is anything left I would hope some open source people (like linux himself) sue SCO to finish them off.

There is absolutely NO way that paying sco's "fee" is beneficial unless you really want to get rid of some money... if that's the case, I have a bridge to sell you...

Companies that pay SCO's extortion fees do not have faith in the GPL, do not have faith in the linux developers and really only care about news and sensationalism. Just like SCO. I for one will never use EV1 after this fiasco. It's a shame too because I'm in the market for some web space right now.

Re:Eh

[Anonymous Coward]

He is right. Absolutely right. Law does not mean that what is right will win.

Law in the United States usually means: the side with more money wins. By paying money to SCO, EV1 has slightly increased SCO's ability to do damage.

Re:Eh

[BigFire]

No, SCOX is quite clever about not telling you what you've just bought. As far as I'm concern, the only IP you've bought is the letter I & P on that piece of paper. As such, they don't have to turn any of that over to Novell.

Re:Eh

[HiThere]

It's probably wise for them to keep the details of their contract secret. Otherwise they would be prohibited from distributing Linux kernels.

This I'm saying despite my certainty that they didn't agree to the publically posted license. I can't see SCO agreeing that ELI has the right to distibute the Linux kernel under the GPL... but it might be an interesting thing to do discovery on, if someone could think of a lever.

Re:Eh

[HiThere]

Why are you assuming that EVI is buying SCO's credibility?

Many businesses will lie like a rug for even a small advantage. This is more particularlly true for those that have gotten hooked up with MS, as their positions tend to become desperate. (Sometimes in ways that are hidden from outside observers...until a sudden collapse.) Secret contracts with hidden penalties are one way of doing business that a monopoly can arrange, but which other businesses wouldn't be able to get anyone to agree to.

OTOH, the terms of the contract are also secret. So is what was licensed. Any assumption about what's being announced here is ... ungrounded.

We're being too hard on the guy

[Unregistered]

He is just being conservative and figures that it's worth paying for liscenses (he peobobly got a better deal the $699 as well) instead of risk a lawsuit. While i (and many /.ers) feel that SCO will not live long enough to go after someone as small as this company, if they for some reason did, it would cost more than whatever they paid for liscenses to defend.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[gl4ss]

except that now they're just opened the door for getting sued. the 'license' doesn't protect you from being sued, in fact it does just the opposite.

he probably just paid diddly on the licenses which brings an intresting point to taken into consideration: what is the REAL price of sco IP license, 6.99? or 0.699? since nobody is going to buy it at 699$ per cpu...

(however they might think of it as an insurance AND extra publicity and leading some customers into thinking it's an insurance)

and point b: THEY'RE NOT SMALL! THEY'RE NOT A SMALL STARTUP! THEY COULD HAVE DEFENDED THEMSELFS EASILY IF THEY EVER HAD GOTTEN SUED(besides, rhat would have been the one to sue!)!

point c: of this bs-graph is that they've been willing to do some poster childing before and maybe thought this time too that free pr couldn't hurt.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[BorgDrone]

He is just being conservative and figures that it's worth paying for liscenses (...) instead of risk a lawsuit.

And that's exactly the problem, it's the same thing as paying 'protection' money to the mafia.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[abhisarda]

Bullshit. EV1 is not a small company.
This is like daylight robbery..

And he mentions that sco has 60 million.. that money can last for a while yet because quite a bit of sco's resources are directed at lawsuits.
But last I heard sco had 10-20 million. Where did the remaining come from? Short selling of its own stock?

The sco saga may not be over anytime soon.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Anonymous Coward]

He is just being conservative and figures that it's worth paying for liscenses (he peobobly got a better deal the $699 as well) instead of risk a lawsuit.

He was already indemnified by Redhat. The only way this would make sense from a business perspective is if a) he thought Redhat were going to go out of business, or b) there's another side to this deal that we don't know about (e.g. kickbacks from SCO).

Personally, I think neither are true, and he's just stupid. That's reason enough to switch hosting companies.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Bystander]

Except that SCO has shown a propensity to make companies with which it has existing business relationships the primary targets of its legal attacks. Rather than mitigating risk, buying a license from SCO increases exposure to further efforts by SCO to monetize their IP in the future, while voluntarily waiving a number of rights that could have been used in self defense. How is this a wise business decision?

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Anonymous Coward]

More like c)

Microsoft gives a sweetheart deal on Win2k3 licenses to offset the cost of SCO licenses... and they get a great "low TCO" study too. You might have noticed that their windows hosting is cheaper, hrmmmmm.....

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[inc_x]

I think the guy is in the market for some new fire-extinguishers as well. If his server-room was to burn down that would be mightily inconvenient for him and his customers. It would be a smart business decision to buy a few extra fire-extinguishers instead of running the risk of having an accidental fire burning the place down.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Endive4Ever]

Well, the free P.R. might not be hurting.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point, He threw in the towel before it was over, SCOG has no right until they prove ownership.
This guy has no back bone. Once SCOG proves onwnership(not), He could simply buy his licence then. His little customers know this too.
He is a weak man.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[phrostie]

no, he has discharged the fire-extinguishers(resources) that he already owned when there was no fire. apparently he did not talk to all his customers. they all do not seem to agree with him. i would be interested if he discussed this with RedHat.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Pac]

And that's exactly the problem, it's the same thing as paying 'protection' money to the mafia.

Which is a pretty sound decision if you are a small business in a mob dominated neighbourhood without hope for 24/7 police protection. You may not like it because it sets an example others might follow, but your company or your job are not at stake...

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[RoLi]

He is just being conservative

If he is "just conservative", he's a complete moron because now EV1servers can be sued for GPL infringement and can be more easily sued by SCO as well because they now have contracts with many many clauses that could be violated.

I personally think Microsoft gave EV1servers the money with the order to pay it to SCO because it wouldn't look that good if Microsoft would buy yet another SCO license.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Anonymous Coward]

That falls under b) there's another side of this we don't know about.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is a pretty sound decision if you are a small business in a mob dominated neighbourhood without hope for 24/7 police protection.

True, but it's very wrong if you are the first one on the block to pay the money. That's how these things get started.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Anonymous Coward]

THEY'RE NOT SMALL! THEY'RE NOT A SMALL STARTUP! THEY COULD HAVE DEFENDED THEMSELFS EASILY IF THEY EVER HAD GOTTEN SUED

So you aren't limited to lower case letters, now how about trying to spread them around a little?

Great, and I get the lameness filter for flaming someone for being so lame. Fine, I can write more and I'll even start my sentances with capital letters.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Reservoir Penguin]

Than would you rather be the first on the block to have your shop burnt and your bones broken? Sadly I live in Russia where paying monthly protrction money is almost a requirement for any small business so I completely understand this guy.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Anonymous Coward]

A Slashdot user calling a businessman stupid. Hahaha. That's funny.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Unregistered]

EV1servers can be sued for GPL infringement
No they can't. The GPL is a distrobution liscense. Since EV1 doesn't distribute linux they can do whtever they want with linux including paying SCO to use it.

Re:We're being too hard on the guy

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are saying that all Slashdot users are stupid? Including yourself?

What they did

[millahtime]

What they did is called CYA.

Are they one of the top companies that SCO might end up sueing? If so, then it might be cheaper to buy the licenses than to fight a law suit.

Re:What they did

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, but what if the shareholders believe that is money wasted and take them to task for spending *their* money on a bad deal?

Re:What they did

[bigfatwill]

CYA???

Re:What they did

[Total_Wimp]

Yeah, people do this all the time. They weigh the cost of a lawsuit with the cost of buckeling under.

We'd all prefer it if eveyone were to fight the good fight, but most of us buckle at some point or another because we can't all fight every fight that comes our way. We'd be too bloody to go on.

This guy is a business man. He wants to keep his customers in business too. He's paid his protection money so his store and his customers' stores don't get firebombed. We should pitty him instead of vilifying him.

TW

Re:What they did

[twbecker]

Cover Your Ass.

Re:What they did

[MicktheMech]

CYA: Cover Your Ass.

Re:What they did

[op00to]

Wrong.

What they did was acknowledge barratry. SCO couldn't even begin to sucessfully sue them for anything until their other lawsuits are decided.

Re:What they did

[blinkylights]

What they did is called CYA.

CowardlY Acquiescence?
Capitulate to Yammering Assholes?

Re:What they did

[malchus842]

No, more like paying the mob for protection. "Hey, that's a nice little datacenter you have there. Be a real shame if anything happened to it."

Re:What they did

[FatRatBastard]

Remember this though, they could have kept the whole thing confidential, just like the "other" companies SCO brags about. EV1 apparently have had no problem letting SCO use their name, which makes you wonder how sincere they are in their "gee, we really didn't want to do this but we needed to protect ourselves" plea.

Re:What they did

[daviddennis]

Does it make sense to pay protection money if they're sitting in front of you with an unloaded gun?

Frankly, I don't think he was smart to do this. Unless he really thinks SCO will prevail in the suit, the proper course is a holding action. If he gets sued, he prepares a brief citing the various cases and tells the judge that case resolution must be pending the results of said cases.

I'll bet there are a lot of people who (on Groklaw and elsewhere) would be more than happy to prepare that for free, or for a nominal cost. It's trivial to find those people.

In any event, he may be breaking his SCO license agreement. He should check his Linux deployments to make sure nobody's monkeyed with the kernel source, or has copies of the kernel source on the machines involved. If they do, the licenses won't protect him.

Oops.

D

Re:What they did

[Mirk]

Are they one of the top companies that SCO might end up sueing? If so, then it might be cheaper to buy the licenses than to fight a law suit.

I never understand this. Why must it be expensive to fight a stupid lawsuit? Why should a company that's clearly in the right need to hire Expensive Lawyers at all? Why can't they just turn up in court and say ``Your honour, this is bollocks'' and have done?

Really.

Re:What they did

[shawn(at)fsu]

In a perfect world you could do that, but a perfect world and the American judical system are not one in the same. SCO has high priced lawyers, so if you go in there with Lionel Hutz from the Simpsons, well you know how it will turn out.

Court seems to be much like an Arms race it's not who is right it's about who can keep spending the big bucks until the other side calls it quites.

Just my humble oppinion

Re:What they did

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me just repeat what a million people has brought up already:

RedHat was already covering EV1's a$$ with indemnity.

What kind of CYA is it when you piss off your Linux-using customers in order to pay a fee to a company that hasn't even proven its right to your money, when you're already indemnified by your Linux vendor anyway?

Does that sound reasonable to anyone here? If not, then what does it sound like to you?

Re:What they did

[shawn(at)fsu]

Couldn't agree more.

He has pressure from all sides. The customer, the shareholders (if it's public), the higherups in the company, and SCO. In his case it's better safe than sorry. You and I know that this SCO thing is foolish, but that's not a gurantee that it wont play out in SCO's favor...

Re:What they did

[Lost Race]

Oh sure, they're "protected" from TSG now (except that they aren't, but we won't mention that). But what about everyone else? Anyone could sue them at any time, with just as much credibility as TSG. "Our unspecified Intellectual Property was added to Linux without our permission." Anyone could say that! If I threaten the possibility of a lawsuit someday will they pay me $1,000,000+ to go away? If not, why not?

No, there's more to it than "protection". EV1 got Win2003 for free, and megabucks to TSG is how they're paying Microsoft back.

Re:What they did

[Mirk]

In a perfect world you could do that, but a perfect world and the American judical system are not one in the same. SCO has high priced lawyers, so if you go in there with Lionel Hutz from the Simpsons, well you know how it will turn out.

But WHY? Are judges and juries really that stupid that they are more influenced by Lawyer Flashiness Coefficient than by the self-evident facts of a case?

What's the limit? What if Darl McBribe brings a lawsuit against me for murdering him? Do I have to hire Expensive Lawyers then? Can't I just point to him in court and say, ``But your Honour, he's alive, hence I can't have murdered him''? And if so, how is the SCO IPR case any different?

Bollocks is still bollocks, even when spoken by someone in a sharp Italian suit. Surely the law respects that fact?

Re:What they did

[silicon not in the v]

Oh, beauty. That's why I dislike the "Redundant" mod. The guy asked what CYA stood for. He got answers at:
8:31 AM
8:31 AM (modded redundant)
8:33 AM (modded redundant)
I want to set up my moderating view like this guy, to include seconds in the posted time. That way I can know which post at 8:31 was really the redundant one!

I feel your pain because that was my first mod when I signed up for my account. I answered someone's question a little too late, and got put in a mod hole right at the beginning.

Re:What they did

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to set up my moderating view like this guy, to include seconds in the posted time. That way I can know which post at 8:31 was really the redundant one!

You can help out by marking all "redundant" moderations as "unfair" when you metamoderate.

Re:What they did

[Anonymous Coward]

But WHY? Are judges and juries really that stupid that they are more influenced by Lawyer Flashiness Coefficient than by the self-evident facts of a case?

It's just the nature of the human beast to pick the glitziest object over the more reliable one. MS rules the desktop for the same reason.

Re:What they did

[Krow10]

This guy is a business man. He wants to keep his customers in business too. He's paid his protection money so his store and his customers' stores don't get firebombed. We should pitty him instead of vilifying him.

In paying protection, Marsh has established a contractual relationship with a company whose executives say things like "Contracts are what you use against people you have a relationship with." With a company who stated explicitly that the first end user suit will be with a Unix customer. So by paying protection, he made himself and his company more vulnerable to a lawsuit by SCOX, not less so. He can only hope they go bankrupt before they have a chance to sue him.

Cheers,
Craig

Re:What they did

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you don't grasp the point of the moderation system -- it's about the readers, not the posters.

Moderation is indeed fucked, but having to read the same thing 3 times in a row really is redundant, no matter how quickly they were posted.

Re:What they did

[silicon not in the v]

Apparently you don't grasp the point of the moderation system -- it's about the readers, not the posters.

Moderation is indeed fucked, but having to read the same thing 3 times in a row really is redundant, no matter how quickly they were posted.

I think it can be about both. The moderating instructions request to focus on modding up, rather than modding down. That way, one answer gets brought up with a mod point instead of having to use two or more mod points to push the other ones down. People can then browse at a threthhold of 2 or more, and see the good stuff. Let the unuseful stuff stay at 0 or 1 and just pull up the good ones.

Re:What they did

[shawn(at)fsu]

Go down the street and start asking random poeple compare sourcecode...

It is a simple problem to the /. but I do not think the general public knows or cares to know about code.

If they picked a Judge and a jury of /. reader this case probably would be open and shut but it wont be it will be with a Judge who probably has never coded anything, ever. Same for a jury. So thats why your going to need a good legal defence team, you'll need to explain to the jury about this stuff and hope they understand it.

Marsh is happy as a clam..

[Motherfucking Shit]

Because sometime later today, SCO is going to sue one of his competitors...

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[AKnightCowboy]

Because sometime later today, SCO is going to sue one of his competitors...

SCO really reminds me of the mafia. Pay me an IP license fee and we won't sue you out of business. Are MBAs like Darl McBride the new organized crime figures? I'm suprised no one has tried using the RICO laws against SCO.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point. SCO is filled with evil bastards, and now that they got him in a contract, they're likely going to sue him.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[Motherfucking Shit]

SCO is filled with evil bastards, and now that they got him in a contract, they're likely going to sue him.

No. Even discounting the hallucinogens which seem to permeate SCO's headquarters these days, I don't think they'd be anywhere near that stupid. To come out on Monday saying "one of our biggest licensees is EV1" and then come out on Tuesday saying "We're suing EV1" would be so ridiculous, no one would buy into it, not even the people who have sided with SCO thus far.

To my knowledge, SCO has already said that whoever they're going to sue already has a license for other products from SCO. My bet is on a colo farm with some (possibly ancient, and harmless at the time) Unixware or OpenServer licenses.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[Motherfucking Shit]

I'm suprised no one has tried using the RICO laws against SCO.

Everyone's too afraid of being countersued for infringing use of the letters "CO" in succession.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case I think we should sue AKnightCowboy, for being a wanker.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[gaijin99]

Are MBAs like Darl McBride the new organized crime figures?

New?? Business has always been more profitable and less ethical than the Mafia. There's a reason why the "successfull businessmen" of the 1880s-1920s were called Robber Barrons. Smaller corporations can't get away with this sort of thing, but as a corporation merges and eleminates competition it tends to get the idea that its invulnerable. Renting several Senators, Representatives, and/or a President can give people that idea pretty easily (remember, politicians aren't for sale, but they can be rented quite easily! Just like prostitutes, but with fewer ethics and more harm to society.) Then they start using tactics that would make a Mafia Don blush. There's no need to actually hire Vito to break people's fingers, instead you hire a few expensive lawyers to break people's bank accounts. They are completely insulated from any contact with people affected by their policies, and surrounded by hoards of yes men who will do *anything* except tell them that they've had a bad idea.

Eventually this does so much damage to capitalism that the economy collapses ( Black Monday anyone?) and the government finally has to break up a few of the bigger Oligarchies (technically they aren't monopolies, but financial oligarchies). Theodore Rosevelt and (of all people) William Howard Taft are the big "trust busters" from the last time this happened. Its set to happen again, doubtless in just a few more decades. Gad, history makes you depressing...

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[Threni]

> SCO really reminds me of the mafia. Pay me an IP license fee and we won't sue
> you out of business.

Business is like that. So is the government. You can sell stuff like heroin, guns and instruments of torture legally...as long as you cross the palms of the relevant governmental bodies with enough silver. Same in the US as here in the UK.

Ditto for generally legal stuff like alcohol, CDs, cars etc. You need to pay your dues to the guys with guns if you know what's good for you.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[muckdog]

Maybe we will see this soon. I recall someone sueing the RIAA under rackettering laws recently

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[djh101010]

Gee, that's a nice data center full of penguins you got dere. It'd be a shame if anything would, y'know, happen to it.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[douthat]

What happens when the (Vice) President is not the rented, but is the robber baron himself?

Oligopoly

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[ratamacue]

Business has always been more profitable and less ethical than the Mafia.

More profitable, sure. Less ethical? Give me a break. Are you actually claiming that a business operating by the principle of voluntary association (a law-abiding one) is less ethical than a business operating by the principle of force (the mafia)? How is that logically possible?

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[ratamacue]

You say:

There's a reason why the "successfull businessmen" of the 1880s-1920s were called Robber Barrons.

The very article you referenced says:

The term Robber Baron was used to describe a (usually) 19th century American businessman who used unscrupulous tactics on the stock market to amass a huge personal fortune at the cost of others.

What exactly led you to equate "businessmen who used unscrupulous tactics" with "all successful businessmen"? Again, give me a break.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[Grishnakh]

Because business will do anything at all to make more money, with no ethical limits whatsoever. Their only limits are the risk/reward evaluation; i.e., if they break the law too much, they could get in trouble, but they'll get a huge reward if they do.

The mafia actually has other moral considerations in their dealings; for instance, they don't like to get involved in drugs because it's harmful to children. Even though they already operate outside the law, they have their own internal morality. Whereas if it were legal, businessmen like Marsh and McBride would have no trouble selling children into slavery.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[Anonymous Coward]

You know McBride doesn't have an MBA, right?

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[gaijin99]

More profitable, sure. Less ethical? Give me a break. Are you actually claiming that a business operating by the principle of voluntary association (a law-abiding one) is less ethical than a business operating by the principle of force (the mafia)? How is that logically possible?

There are very few law abiding megacorporations. A startling number of them have been found to be in violation of law on several counts. Most got a slap on the wrist fine followed by huge government contracts (curtosy of their rented politicians). A Clinton era recomendation that the government preferentially give contracts to non-criminal corporations has been smashed down. Thus my first question is: What law abiding corporations? [note: megacorporations that is, mom and pop companies are usually less criminal] Given the evidence it appears that the only difference, in terms of law abiding-ness, between the Mafia and a typical megacorporation is that the typical megacorp has a much lower chance of even getting a slap on the wrist. This includes incidents where the megacorporation's violation of law leads to the death of an actual human.

As for force, I will argue that the typical megacorporation uses force quite frequently. Take SCO, for example, offering no proof they are demanding money from users of Linux. They are using their superior lawyers to force people with inferior lawyers (or no lawyers at all) to give them money. How, exactly, is it different for a corporation to say "If you don't give us $699 Jones, Smith, Brown & Jones will sue you until you bleed from the eyeballs" than it is for a mobster to say "If you don't give us $699, Vinnie here is going to break your kneecaps"?
I have no more chance of standing off SCO's lawyers than I would have a chance of stopping Vinnie. In terms of legal power I'm completely helpless and they exploit that helplessness ruthlessly. Force is force, getting your life broken in court is really no different from getting your kneecaps broken in a back alley somewhere. Our US legal system offers very little help to the victim in either case... Again, thanks to rented politicians carefully removing all the legal protection they can from the average (non-billionare) citizen.

I would like you to expand on the "voluntary association" point you made earlier, I'm afraid I can't follow your meaning there.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[ratamacue]

Talk about speculation!

Because business will do anything at all to make more money, with no ethical limits whatsoever.

Huh? Which business? Are you actually trying to claim that voluntary trade is inherently evil?

The mafia actually has other moral considerations in their dealings; for instance, they don't like to get involved in drugs because it's harmful to children

Come on, you must be aware that the mafia's roots are in the black market. For christ's sake, alcohol prohibition is what gave birth to the mafia!

Whereas if it were legal, businessmen like Marsh and McBride would have no trouble selling children into slavery.

Thank you, Miss Cleo.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. This century is going to be a carbon copy of the last century (and the next will be a carbon copy of this ad nauseum). Why? because the human race is done, finished, we have done everything we can, there is nothing left for us. Please move along. Of course I would love for someone to prove me wrong on this but I just dont see anyone who cares enough to try.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[gaijin99]

What exactly led you to equate "businessmen who used unscrupulous tactics" with "all successful businessmen"? Again, give me a break.

Because, during the period referenced, the most successful businessmen were the Robber Barons. Look at the list of ultra-wealthy people from the referenced period and you will find that every single one of them was a criminal. JP Morgan, Rockerfeller, etc, were all criminals (the phrase "unscrupulous tactics" strikes me as being far too gentle on these lionized crooks).

And, today it seems that the situation is not really different. The "Top 100" companies are all guilty of using offshore incorporation to comit tax evasion, leaving you and me stuck with the bill. Bill Gates is as rich as he is because he used his near monopoly power to illegally crush any competition. Amway rented a few politicians long enough to get the tax code specifically changed to exempt them. Success, in the financial sense at least, is limited to those who break the law, apparently. As Leona Helmsley once said "Taxes are for the little people" (that would be you and me).

Or take the great success story of Sam Walton. Everyone knows he's a good guy. The little fact that his stores use illegal tactics to crush unions, fire people who don't work overtime for free, and shave hours off their employee's time sheets, shouldn't mean he's a criminal, right?

I'm not going to claim that all successful corporations and people are criminal. But, I will admit that I can't think of any non-criminal Fortune 500 companies off the top of my head. Proove I'm wrong instead of demanding breaks (which Wal-Mart employees are routinely denied), show me examples of ultra rich companies and individuals which *aren't* criminal.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[Grishnakh]

Huh? Which business? Are you actually trying to claim that voluntary trade is inherently evil?

Are you trolling or what? I'm claiming that many "businessmen" are far less ethical than people in the mafia. The way MS and SCO behave should be proof enough, but for more why don't you ask all the thousands of Enron employees and retirees who were sold up the river by their management? I've never heard of the Mafia treating their employees badly. The word "loyalty" still means something to them.

Come on, you must be aware that the mafia's roots are in the black market. For christ's sake, alcohol prohibition is what gave birth to the mafia!

And now you're trying to tell me the're something wrong with dealing in alcohol? So all the restaurants and bars around are doing something really horrible, on the level of drug-dealing?
The mafia got involved in alcohol because they could make a lot of money at it (since it was stupidly banned). It also didn't offend their morals, and probably not those of most people these days; most people I know consume alcohol at least occassionally. When the drug trade came along, many (most?) of them didn't want to get involved because they knew it was much worse than alcohol and gambling, which are really victimless crimes that only hurt the adults that choose to abuse them, whereas they saw that drugs were harming children.

I'm sorry, I'd trust a Mafia don to have far more ethical character than Darl McBride.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[modecx]

Huh? Which business? Are you actually trying to claim that voluntary trade is inherently evil?

How about all of the companies that dumped chemicals in the rivers in the 1800's-1950's, toxic dump sites, mine tailings, and other bullshit that companies could have done (ethically) right, had they spent the money and time to do so?

Check out the EPA's superfund EnviroMapper No doubt, some of those are sincere accidents, but most of those are there because of corporate neglect.

I live around 10 SuperFund cleanup sites that I could name--within 30 miles of my home. One's just down the way: a big arsenic (and other heavy metal) contamination site. The corporation is long gone, but we're still here to clean it up, and our great-great-grand children will be dealing with it too.

Some other examples: a big pile of radioactive uranium tailings spewing out Radon like you can't belive, a tunnel through a mountian that lets out about 100,000 gallons of highly acidic water (also containing huge amounts of heavy metals) a day, numerous smelting operations, mines, and even government operations (Military bases and weapons facilities). It's a hundred times worse back east.

The idealogoy back then was "Let's do anything in the name of progress. We'll progress so fast that our grandchildren will learn to clean up our mess in less time than it caused us to make it, and it'll cost less for our grandchildren down the line than for us to do it correctly right now."

Corporations are not our friends.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[ratamacue]

I'm claiming that many "businessmen" are far less ethical than people in the mafia.

Many? Way to backtrack. What you said was:

business will do anything at all to make more money, with no ethical limits whatsoever.

Seems pretty clear to me you tried to blanket your statement on all possible instances of business.

And now you're trying to tell me the're something wrong with dealing in alcohol?

Hell no, what's wrong is prohibition itself. My point was that the mafia was empowered by the illegal drug trade (i.e. alcohol) which you claim it was "too ethical" to engage in.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[Grishnakh]

Now you're just arguing semantics. They were empowered by the ALCOHOL trade, not the DRUG trade. Of course, now you're going to give me "alcohol is a drug!" crap, so I'm just not listening to you anymore.

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[HiThere]

Who was it that said "Contracts are something you use against your business associates."?

Wouldn't if be interesting if ELI was the company that SCO sued? They didn't announce the date until after ELI announced the agreement...

Re:Marsh is happy as a clam..

[SurgeonGeneral]

They were empowered by the ALCOHOL trade, not the DRUG trade. Of course, now you're going to give me "alcohol is a drug!" crap, so I'm just not listening to you anymore.

Yeah... ok... the only problem with that statement is that ALCOHOL IS A DRUG.

To say that Alcohol is not a drug is to fall into a classical fallacy. Let me explain it to you so that you dont do it again.

Just because a = b does not mean that only a = b. Get this : c can = b, and even d!

So, the government has told you that marijuana, cocaine and heroin are drugs. What did they tell you about alcohol? Drink Responsibly? lol. Lets get a definition. I'll go with wikipedia.

"A drug is any substance that can be used to treat an illness, relieve a symptom or modify a chemical process in the body for a specific purpose. The term is necessarily a vague one, being defined by intent: for example, foods consumed for normal metabolism are not generally considered "drugs", but the same foods consumed for a more specific purpose (such as the use of alcohol as a depressant or caffeine as a stimulant) may be."

Well, what do we have here? Someone who looks really stupid who uses the handle Grishnakh.

Now, if you need more proof, go talk to the thousands of people who have relatives dying from alcohol addiction, or who have died from alcohol poisening, or whose minds are destroyed because drinking more than a few days in a row causes irrepairable brain damage.

From the article:

[ImaNumber]

"DC2 Opens on Wednesday with limited server availability. Initial deployments are likely to be dual drive/1 GB configurations. Additional configurations will follow as time and space allow." Yep...its a publicity stunt...

Re:From the article:

[Anonymous Coward]

I found that amusing in a letter to the customers explaining, spinning, their view he just throws out oh we're opening our new DC wednesday to current customers.

The purchase of his decision

[Temporal]

... a written explanation for the purchase of his decision to purchase a SCO License...

Ah hah! So it's true! SCO bribed him into doing it!

What? Just a typo? Oh... uh... right. I knew that.

Re:The purchase of his decision

[tclark]

Freudian slip, perhaps? Marsh must have been paid in some way for this. Either that, or he's an idiot.

Let's assume he's not an idiot. That means he knows that a SCO license is worthless, and he's not going to pay money for something that is worthless. So somehow, SCO must have done something to make this deal worthwhile to him. Maybe EV1 is going to get a big check from SCO. Maybe they already did. Or maybe they just became eligible for a hefty discount from Microsoft.

I think Stowell said that this deal was worth 1 million dollars. That doesn't mean that EV1 paid anything at all. It's more likely that they were paid, or promised some sort of payment, in return for this.

Who you callin' a plaugerist?

[Snart Barfunz]

What an itiod! It's people like him who give snodware delevellers a bad mane.

Re:Who you callin' a plaugerist?

[Anonymous Coward]

A pox on all plaguerists!

Re:Who you callin' a plaugerist?

[jfengel]

I've actually been a devoted Kernighanist my whole life, but I have nothing against the Plaugerists. We might join together in our fight against the Ritchieists!

Well...

[No_Weak_Heart]

Can't speak for you, but I would be most upset if someone called me a plaugerist. Not sure what that is but it just sounds dirty.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come on now! You mean you don't know?

A "Plaugerist" is one who plays the very rare musical instrument known as the plaug, or plauger. As everyone knows this is a cross between the bagpipes, the harmonica and the old english crumhorn.

Old statutes, still on the books, prohibit the playing of the plaug at or near the full moon, or anywhere within 1 mile of a breeding colony of horseshoe bats. Audiences generally contend that it sounds best when either played, or listened to, underwater. Some extremists advocate it's use only in all helium (or other inert gas) atmosphere for the best effect.

It led, via a very convoluted path, to the expression "plaug and play", now I believe, claimed as part of the IP license which you can buy from SCO.

Re:Well...

[FatAlb3rt]

no kidding. i don't know how many other grammar nazis are out there, but whoever proofread his letter for him needs to be beaten very loudly. he's a ceo?

Re:Well...

[fuck_this_shit]

At least it doesn't look like some slick statement written by their lawyers.

Re:Well...

[jejones]

I think it's a fan of P.J. Plauger, who writes some good SF and respectable C libraries.

Re:Well...

[n0ano]

No, no, no. A plaugerist is a person who steals from the writings of P. J. Plauger, Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs and author of many software books.

Don't kick me but....

[millahtime]

Wouldn't a cheaper solution than buying the licenses have been so switch from linux to freebsd? With the cost of those licenses being so high. Then no fear of law suit. This seems like it could be the more cost effective solution.

mods: Don't mod me troll for asking a question

Re:Don't kick me but....

[Cred]

So all this mambo jambo has been about freebsd? They set the whole thing of just to get Linux servers change to freebsd.. Interesting theory.

Re:Don't kick me but....

[Xpilot]

Wouldn't a cheaper solution than buying the licenses have been so switch from linux to freebsd?

And what makes you certain that SCO won't come after *BSD too? Don't say "because they have no case" because they have no case with Linux users either, but that hasn't stopped them. Must everyone have to switch OS's (On production systems? That would be expensive) everytime some lawsuit-happy moron starts making idiotic claim? It's more prudent to ignore them till they go away.

Re:Don't kick me but....

[moartea]

They are currently using RHEL and they are depending on the RedHat support. Switching to FreeBSD is surely not an option for them, since they already have many RHEL servers that would need very expensive conversion.

Re:Don't kick me but....

[nagora]

Wouldn't a cheaper solution than buying the licenses have been so switch from linux to freebsd?

They've already said they'll be coming after BSD once they've got Linux so it would be a lot of hassle for a short term gain. If they can win on Linux (which I doubt) they can win against *BSD.

TWW

Re:Don't kick me but....

[richy freeway]

Probably not, you're talking about thousands of computers, all of which are basically in use in a production environment. This would have meant killing their customers machines to change to freebsd, yadda yadda yadda...

Re:Don't kick me but....

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they? Or is there a "we're all in this together" frantic drumbeat going on in the Linux community?

Re:Don't kick me but....

[Snowmit]

Wouldn't a cheaper solution than buying the licenses have been so switch from linux to freebsd? With the cost of those licenses being so high. Then no fear of law suit. This seems like it could be the more cost effective solution.


TCO (Total cost of Ownership). While BSD itself might be free, the cost to the company in terms of installing and configuring the new system, training staff on it, providing customers with support for it (and for the inevitable errors that happen during the install and set-up phase) and generally bringing everyone involved up to a level of expertise comparable to the one that they have now with Linux would probably cost more than buying off SCO.

Re:Don't kick me but....

[Anonymous Coward]

So your telling me I need to come up with a FreeBSD to Linux 'Upgrade' CD to sell to all the folks out there that f33r SCO litigation? I'll get RIGHT ON IT!

Re:Don't kick me but....

[hendridm]

> Wouldn't a cheaper solution than buying the licenses have been so switch from linux to freebsd?

Ummm, perhaps because a large sum of their customers don't want BSD. Perhaps because many of their customers already have legions of RedHat machines and want to remain consistent. Perhaps because Ensim isn't supported on supported on BSD (AFAIK), one of their three supported control panels?

Adding BSD servers is a fine idea, but replacing Linux with them is not. People still want Linux servers. What an enormous victory it would be anyway for MS-SCO if they could get a company with as many boxes as EV1 to ditch all their Linux servers.

Re:Don't kick me but....

[RdsArts]

There are only two options in the SCO trial.

A) SCO is laughed out of court. Well, less 'laugh' and more 'forcibly removed by court officers before the judge strangles.'
B) IBM keeps this in court so long that Darl's children's children's children.... 's children are still fighting it.

Either way, I don't think you'll see anyone all to scared about them going after any BSD. ;)

Well..

[lukewarmfusion]

He certainly has a point.
Civil disobedience is not a good business model. On the other hand, that's an awfully hefty fee to shell out. $1 Million? That could probably help to line some lawyers' pockets.

Consider this, though: They care enough about their customers and their own business that they're willing to take this "voluntary" hit of over a million bucks just to protect themselves and their customers. Even if SCO isn't right (preaching to the choir, I know) then they've still made a major step in the direction of "we'd take a bullet for you."

Re:Well..

[jrumney]

Civil disobedience is not a good business model.

Civil Disobedience? Where did that come from. I know what isn't a good business model - rolling over and paying up to the first moron who threatens you with baseless legal action. How many other morons are waiting to join the queue and get free money out of EV1 (and ultimately out of the pockets of EV1's customers)?

Re:Well..

[eddy]

Consider this, though: They care enough about their customers and their own business that they're willing to take this "voluntary" hit of over a million bucks

Oh my, you really bought that PR spinn hook line and sinker, didn't you?

Re:Well..

[Colonel Cholling]

Civil disobedience is not a good business model.

"Civil disobedience" would be refusing to comply with a law or government order on principle, such as Henry David Thoreau's refusal to pay taxes to a country which practiced slavery. Refusing to pay protection money to a private company whose claims have yet to be justified is not civil disobedience, it is just good sense.

Re:Well..

[lukewarmfusion]

I used the term civil disobedience because, in the unlikely event that SCO wins out, they would certainly be required to pay for licenses. Their refusal (and everyone else's) would be an act of civil disobedience.

I'm not entirely convinced that a judge will rule against SCO. They don't have a good enough case to convince us, but the judge (or jurors, even) might not have the same perspective and could be swayed.

I'm not trying to troll, or even play Devil's advocate. I'm just pointing out that the case hasn't been decided yet - and in their business, they're simply playing it safe.

Re:Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

(Posted AC just in case ;-)

Tin foil hat... ON!

What if someone else, say another software supplier, chatted to EV1 beforehand and arranged a $1 million discount on a bunch of software licenses to 'balance the books'?

EV1 would end up square, and the cash gets injected into SCO along with a helping of priceless publicity.

I sense a cold, dead hand on the tiller...

Re:Well..

[iserlohn]

Rackshack/ev1 is the Wal-mart of the web hsoting business. What more can I say?

Btw, there is nothing "Civil disobedience" about refusing to give in to what amounts to extortion.

If SCO has credible proof of improper code in Linux, then yeah sure, they should consider licensing as a legitimate option.

Re:Well..

[daviddennis]

Your tinfoil hat may actually have a point.

One might note that:

• Their home page runs on a Windows server
• They highlight a "Windows Server Package" (on unknown hardware) for $89 a month on the top of their home page.
• All their other packages are more expensive. For instance, "Intel Celeron 1.7ghz" is $89/month for Windows Server 2003. It's $99 a month for a Celeron 1.3ghz and Red Hat.

Looks like someone got a pretty generous discount on Windows Server 2003 licenses, doesn't it?

So much for being a friend of Linux!

D

Re:Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is: Why? I don't know much about the company, but after all I read they offer servers to their customers with root-access to a linux-installation.

Therefore I would conclude their customers are technical experienced wich makes them most likely SCO-haters.

--> bad publicity.

The license (if it is the version SCO published on their server) forbids the use of any sourcecode. How will they guaratee any bugfixes for the server-os? Rely on SCO-support?

--> technical disadvantage, less options for customers, less security

They have a contract now with SCO, before SCO didn't have any chance to win a case with them. Now they granted SCO some rights and they might have problems to step back.

--> the future of this company is on jeopardy

Is there *any* andvantage for them?

Re:Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

You're making assumptions. Who's to say MS didn't give them windows 2003 liscences for free, with the stipulation that the money must go to SCO when it reaches $1,000,000?

Remember that EV1 sells windows servers for LESS than servers with FREE operating systems. How the heck does that happen?

Re:Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

Others have mentioned this:

EV1 is not participating in any sort of civil disobedience. Linux does not violate any laws, and has not been proven to contain any of SCO's IP.

Others have also mentioned this:

Linux indemnification is easily had. What of OSDN? What of RedHat? Why not go first to your Linux vendor and say, listen, I'm worried about SCO? Why pay SCO without first talking to RedHat, who provides the OS for their Linux servers?

Why risk the ire of your Linux customers?

Why, why, why?

It is not as you say. This is no "voluntary hit." They are not protecting their customers; they are driving them away.

Re:Well..

[jrumney]

in the unlikely event that SCO wins out, they would certainly be required to pay for licenses. Their refusal (and everyone else's) would be an act of civil disobedience.

But until that is not true until said unlikely event occurs. So refusing now is not civil disobedience by any stretch of the imagination. The choice that faced EV1 was not between civil disobedience and paying SCO.

Re:Well..

[Error27]

>>Civil disobedience is not a good business model.

The only company breaking the law is SCO.

Stowell didn't say that EV1 paid $1 million, he said the deal was "worth at least $1 million". That means that 699 * number_of_servers > 1,000,000.

What probably happenned was that Microsoft and EV1 worked out an advertising deal and SCO charged EV1 90% off the regular price.

What needs to happen now is that EV1 needs to donate to the OSDL defense fund or the Linux community needs to boycott EV1.

Re:Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

> I used the term civil disobedience because, in the unlikely event that SCO wins out, they would certainly be required to pay for licenses. Their refusal (and everyone else's) would be an act of civil disobedience.

Then you use the term incorrectly. "Civil disobedience" is acts such as Thoreau or Ghandi being arrested and jailed, or the civil rights protesters being arrested and jailed - knowing all the while that they would be arrested and jailed. Do a little Googling before redefining history.

The public acceptance of the unjust penalties, with the resulting eventual public backlash, was the whole point. Refusing to pay the license fees isn't civil disobedience by an stretch.

Re:Well..

[swv3752]

Actually, the Linux Kernel Developers could start lining up demanding that EV1 start buying dual licenses. Seeing how EV1 bought the SCO License, the GPL has been invalidated for EV1 so they can no longer offer Linux boxes for sale. To be able to continue to distribute the Linux kernel, they need to obtain a valid licence from every copyright holder of the Linux Kernel.

Re:Well..

[SurgeonGeneral]

To everyone that responded to this : Its called a troll.

When will you people learn?

Re:Well..

[justins]

Civil disobedience is not a good business model.

Defying SCO is not "civil disobedience." Civil disobedience refers to breaking a governmental law or policy for a political end. Often the end is having the law changed.

Defying SCO is a matter of simple contract law, and it would not be meant to serve a political end.

Consider this, though: They care enough about their customers and their own business that they're willing to take this "voluntary" hit of over a million bucks just to protect themselves and their customers. Even if SCO isn't right (preaching to the choir, I know) then they've still made a major step in the direction of "we'd take a bullet for you."

Since the customers will ultimately pay for the SCO agreement, and since the customers would never have been liable to SCO in the first place (EV1 owns the servers, not the end user), this can't possibly be true.

Re:No articles. No server. Just slashdot.

[TheDigitalRaven]

What's the use of a hosting company that crumbles at the first sight of a slashdotting anyway?

You said it yourself. Karma-whoring.

Rampant Plaugerism

[kahei]

'Plaugerists'? Now, if he'd accused them of plagiarism he might have had a point, but to accuse them of supporting Dinkumware is a bizarre move indeed!

Curse those plaugerists, with their Standard Template Libraries and their cheery Australian charm...

Re:Rampant Plaugerism

[lukewarmfusion]

That is unbelievably obscure.

Re:Rampant Plaugerism

[Endive4Ever]

What's unbelievably obscure about it?

Dinkumware isn't that obscure. Unless you're not involved with C or coding.

Re:Rampant Plaugerism

[lukewarmfusion]

I'm not involved in C on a professional level, so I've never been exposed to them. But I've been coding for eleven years now, so maybe we just never crossed paths.

Re:Rampant Plaugerism

[boudie]

I think if I was making a press release up to announce giving a million to a large corporation which probably will be picked up by all the news organizations and used to quote me by, I'd run it through the spell-checker. Twice to be safe (Use the Preview Button!). That's just me.

Whose side is he on?

[Vexler]

Isn't the gist of what he said pretty much the same thing that Darl says about Linux and its suppporters? i.e. We have to do what is right for our business and circumstances.

Now, it is interesting that he did voice support for open-source projects like Linux. But then he also affirms that his license is one of IP from SCO. Just sounds like he is trying to be a crowd pleaser and ended up with the wrong crowd.

Re:Whose side is he on?

[grommit]

He's on the side of EV1. The business world isn't about "the good guys" and "the bad guys" and which side you chose. It's about getting a product out the door that you can make money with.

Re:Whose side is he on?

[inode_buddha]

"The business world isn't about "the good guys" and "the bad guys"...

You could have fooled me. After all, every employer I've ever had was "the good guy". After about 20 years of this bullshit I said to myself "Wait a munute, they can't all be the good guy, especially not in the exact same field!"

Keeping that in mind if you want to get *really* hairy with that thought, what about the idea that one's ethics are relative to the culture one is in? The corporate culture, even? What's perfectly OK for me might not be OK for you.

Re:Whose side is he on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Business isn't about "good" and "bad", it's about "us" and "them"...

His own choice

[Underholdning]

My first reaction was "WHY YOU LITTLE!!!111" but now I've thought about it, it's okay. After all, he's just buying a little peace of mind. Surely, we all know that SCO is wrong in their claims, but that obviously hasn't stopped them from continuing their quest, and no one can tell for sure that they wont win the battle. The court moves in mysterious way.

Re:His own choice

[Anonymous Coward]

He has, however, pissed off pretty much his entire Linux customer base - the protest on their discussion forum is of the scale. I think he made a bad decision - he may well lose a significant proportion of his customers.

Re:His own choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Another spelling error!

What he really intended to buy was a little piece of mind, since he is obviously working with none whatsoever, now.

Re:His own choice

[Fnkmaster]

It's not "OK". That million dollars goes directly to fueling SCO's flagrantly factually and morally wrong hostile legal campaign. It's like buying "blood diamonds" from rebel-controlled areas of African nations - you are directly financing things you really don't want to be associated with.

CYA

[hookedup]

Cover Your Ass.

It strikes me that it's all he is really trying to accomplish. For himself, and his customers.

Re:CYA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, I'll CYA Later

Re:CYA

[nuffle]

There's a big difference between covering your ass and folding in the face of remote, unfounded threats. Has CEO "HeadSurfer" paid off the mafia? Has he given the protection money to the Yakuza contacts? Giving money to SCO is just as inane and reckless.

As long this guy is so willing to shell out big money to people brandishing idiotic threats, I may as well take a stab at it: Headsurfer! I have intellectual property in the linux kernel. Pay me $100,000 (I'm reasonable) and I promise not to sue.

Re:CYA

[op00to]

For his customers? Who is SCO going to sue? Users of a web hosting company, or the company that OWNS, OPERATES, and GENERATES PROFITS from these computers?

Your argument is a little like this situation:
You're riding on a train. The train hits me. I sue you, because, well, you were on the train!

In any case, he was only doing it to save his OWN ass, not his customers, and definately not the open source community.

Re:CYA

[theLOUDroom]

Cover Your Ass. It strikes me that it's all he is really trying to accomplish. For himself, and his customers.

Except he's actually made the situation worse.

Even if one had no concern for the positive PR and the pile of cash this gives SCO, (And its resulting effect on the rest of linux users) one needs to consider the legal ramifications of what the have just done.

1. The have established a contract with SCO. One which gives SCO a basis to sue them later. (The IBM case is about contract, not copyright.)
2. They have (basically) accepted a license for Linux other than the GPL. This opens them up to lawsuits from Linux kernel developers.
3. The agreement with SCO (supposedly) has all sorts of nasty clauses which could leave them worse off than before.
4. They have established a precedent of caving under threats of frivolous lawsuits.

I find the last item to be extremely important because these are the people who would be (possibly) hosting your website. This means that it's quite likely I could threaten these guys with a baseless lawsuit about your webpage, and the would rip the sucker right down. What good is reliable hardware, when the people behind it cave under the slightest threat?

Re:CYA

[Anonymous Coward]

- Remember they sell win2003 servers for less than the free OS's. They may have a deal with MS where the money that would have went to MS goes to SCO. - They never said what IP they paid SCO for. Everything is extremely vague. - They already do tell people to take down pages immediately. For example, someone who has the shareware version of Doom on their ftp server... you know the one, it's the version that says SHAREWARE when you start it. I've read reports on ev1 forums where they've gotten SPA people requesting a site take down the files, and EV1 then demands the customer do so, even when it's clear the SPA has no claim. - EV1 immediately drops any site that gets dos attacked. What good is hardware when it immediately fails under any abnormal stress?

Re:CYA

[Anonymous Coward]

Until they disribute code licensed under the GPL they haven't made use of the GPL's distribution conditions, and can do anything they want.

Re:CYA

[autopr0n]

They have (basically) accepted a license for Linux other than the GPL. This opens them up to lawsuits from Linux kernel developers.

The GPL is not the same kind of License as, for example, a windows License. The biggest difference is that it's only a redistribution license, rather then a Use license.

In other words, Kernel developers could not sue EV1 unless they redistribute Linux without source. (Which the SCO license requires, btw). Anyone can still use it for any purpose, however, without agreeing to the GPL. This right is explicitly granted to everyone by the GPL itself.

OTOH, you could make an argument that renting a server with Linux installed is equivalent to receiving a copy of Linux from them. When SCO loses their suit with IBM (assuming they don't immediately go bankrupt), this could put them in a bad place.

Because the GPL requires redistribution with source, and SCO's contract forbids it, kernel developers could sue them for one, and SCO could sue them for another. This could put them out of the Linux business. In fact, it might be a good idea for a Linux Kernel developer to sue them now if they are not willing to give out source to people who rent servers from them.

The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[gentlemoose]

For God's sake. While I realize the bulk of you asshats can't spell your way out of a paper bag, one might expect that the CEO of nearly any corporation would care enough about his company's public image to run a public statement by *somebody* with an eye for grammar and spelling before publishing it on the net.

The 10-second perusal:
oru
indictment on Red Hat
fullly
plaugerists (I can't work out how to pronounce this one...)
SCOs ...
I give up. Once I hit "SCO already has like $60 million on hand ", I couldn't take it any longer.

By all means, everyone, give your money to EV1 Servers, the company with a flair for... damn. I can't think of anything relevant to rhyme with "flair".

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[torpor]

"care"?

(Well, when I first saw the word "plaugerist" I instantly thought that all Linux developers are disease spreaders. Ew. We're a plague everybody, a PLAGUE!)

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[Raven42rac]

"play-grr-ists" maybe? Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Nair, air, hair, snare, care, or bear.

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[gentlemoose]

Yeah, I was going to go in that direction with it initially, but he didn't so much as have the decency to misspell it correctly. *sigh*

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[cmang]

If you've ever seen Robert Marsh in live chat or in web forums, you'd know that typos are his trademark of sorts.

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[Motherfucking Shit]

damn. I can't think of anything relevant to rhyme with "flair".

Plauger?

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, do not welcome our typo-creating overlords.

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[blinkylights]

Maybe EV1 should invest in a good Administrative Assistant:

"Actually, Mr. Marsh, it's spelled 'p-l-a-g-i-a-r-i-s-m.'"
"Perhaps, Mr. Marsh, we should wait and see whether SCO survives their suit with IBM."
"No, Mr. Marsh, I don't think this email is from a real exiled Nigerian Prince."

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[Marsala]

By all means, everyone, give your money to EV1 Servers, the company with a flair for... damn. I can't think of anything relevant to rhyme with "flair".

How about "snare"? :)

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[skinny.net]

... on hand ", I couldn't ...

... with "flair".

While I realize the bulk of you asshats can't spell your way out of a paper bag, one might expect that the CEO of nearly any corporation would care enough about his company's public image to run a public statement by *somebody* with an eye for grammar and spelling before publishing it on the net.

I would like to suggest that most of us asshats know not to put a space before quotes and not to put punctuation outside quotes. I also suspect most of us would try to put three different concepts in more than one sentence. You may call us asshats as you like.

I agree with your point, however; communications, especially corporate communications, should reflect professionalism. Misspellings and poor grammar (like yours and this CEO's) belong in grade school.

How can you insult and accuse the majority of us, fail the gentlemoose-knows-best test, and get moderated +5, Informative?

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[Jerf]

I would like to suggest that most of us asshats know not to put a space before quotes and not to put punctuation outside quotes.

The first one is still legit. The second criticism is out-of-date. That is called "logical quoting" as explained by the Jargon Dictionary, and I have indeed started to see it in significant and serious use outside of the Hacker community as well.

Remember the rule wasn't grammatical but typographical in the first place, and logical quoting is more expressive.

Lately I've taken it to the logical conclusion, and if quoting somebody's exclamation, I will do it like this: He said, "Oh my gosh that hurts!". That's right, I don't allow the quote's punctuation to terminate my sentence, because I'm not exclaiming. Your English teacher may not like it, but by the metrics of "range of expression" and "logical consistency", my way is better, and I think in the end as the typographical issues fade this is how it's going to be.

(Remember the Rule of Breaking Rules: "You may break a rule if you understand it.". I understand this rule and its history quite well.)

And finally, there is a difference between a Slashdot posting and a CEO's communication ;-) I'd never use a smiley in a corporate communication, and I'd never write a comment inside of Mozilla's text box without spell-checking support. But it's not worth the effort to do any better for a Slashdot comment.

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[skinny.net]

That's fine. I hope to see more people using this jargon and 133+ 5p34|
Bob asked, "Where are we?" No one suspects you're asking a question.

Bob said, "Oh my gosh, that hurt!" We understand Bob's emphasis from context.

Your way isn't better. It is different and incorrect. I honestly don't care which you use. There is a difference between a Slashdot post and a CEO's public communication, true. I simply find it funny (as opposed to insightful) that gentlemoose is calling us asshats and saying, "Look at that black kettle." There are circumstances where punctuation can fall outside quotes, although you haven't presented one. "Logical quoting" is no more easily understood than proper grammar.

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[Jerf]

That's fine. I hope to see more people using this jargon and 133+ 5p34|

Obvious exaggeration of a point doesn't serve to forward your opinions.

Bob asked, "Where are we?" No one suspects you're asking a question.

You can contrive any example you want; the plural of anecdote is still not data. Your logic taken to the logical conclusion is exactly the same logic that rslts n ths bng ccptbl; context is enough to figure that out. The question is, what do you do when there is confusion based on context?

There are circumstances where punctuation can fall outside quotes, although you haven't presented one.

So? I didn't say, always put the punctuation outside of the quotes, only as it makes sense.

My way is empirically better; it results in fewer ambiguous situations. This point isn't open to debate, it's a simple fact. The only way in which you are correct is that that is how it was done fifty years ago. You want to stand on that definition of "correct", fine, but don't be stunned when we move past you. Some of us have moved past concrete operational, we'll be happy to welcome you when you join us.

And again, I remind you, your "correct" way was imposed on us by typographers, for reasons that are now completely out of date. "Correct" has shifted before (hope that doesn't blow your brains too much)... are you so sure it isn't shifting again, back to the way it was done before typesetting? Like I said, I've seen this "in the wild", I've even seen it in recent style guides mentioned by name, though regrettably they are under copyright and not linkable. Perhaps you are behind the times.

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[juhaz]

It looks like you're an idiot and are trying to write a letter to save your sorry companys ass, would you like help?

Re:The CEO can't afford a spellchecker?

[gentlemoose]

I couldn't agree more, frankly. I posted as a tongue-in-cheek troll. How the hell'd I get modded up to +5 Interesting? I was hoping for a +2 Funny or an Offtopic at best.

I wonder if they coulda insured themselves

[way2trivial]

for losses through an insurance company, for less.

Why he's an idiot (part 1 out of ...)

[ksp]

"We did, however, license certain IP from SCO."

And what IP may that be? Elaborate, please. What does SCO own that you had to pay for when you are using Red Hat Linux, from a company that will cover the risk for you?

I wonder what long-term consequences this has for EV1 when they publically say that they believe SCO is right and their server OS (Linux) was more or less pirated from SCO. I suspect that no matter what the result of the trial is, this guy is f*cked because he signed SCOs papers.

Re:Why he's an idiot (part 1 out of ...)

[AKnightCowboy]

And what IP may that be? Elaborate, please. What does SCO own that you had to pay for when you are using Red Hat Linux, from a company that will cover the risk for you?

It's a protection fee, nothing more. You used to pay it to a guy who came into your shop every week or later that night a group of thugs would come by and smash in your windows, bust up your shop, and beat you and your wife as you're trying to close up for the night. Welcome to the information age where the "busting up your shop" is done through expensive frivilous lawsuits and protection fees are paid through "licensing".

Re:Why he's an idiot (part 1 out of ...)

[aggressivepedestrian]

RTFA He did not say he believes SCO is right. He said he made a prudent business decision for his company and customers. Sure, McBride's off his rocker, but not everyone has the resources to fight the good fight.

Re:Why he's an idiot (part 1 out of ...)

[Lost Race]

It's a protection fee, nothing more.

No, it isn't. He's no more protected from SCO now than he was before he paid. Even if he really were protected from SCO now, he's definitely not protected from everyone else. Anyone in the world could make the same claims against him, with just as much credibility. And now that he's proven himself spineless, they will come out of the woodwork. Will he pay them all?

EV1 is a cash pipeline from Microsoft to SCO. Instead of EV1 paying MS for all their Windows licenses, and MS handing the money over to SCO to further the anti-Linux FUD campaign, EV1 just takes Windows and pays SCO directly. The "IP licensing" BS is pure sleight-of-hand.

Re:Why he's an idiot (part 1 out of ...)

[ksp]

Although this is Slashdot, I did actually RTFA before posting. By paying for this license he acknowledges SCO's right to demand money for his Red Hat installation. Several others have commented that he is pretty stupid if he has signed the license agreement that is publicly available. Perhaps he cut a deal and got a more sane license, but he has still become SCO's new poster boy.

My point is that by signing anything from SCO you are not covering your ass, you actually setting yourself up to get screwed later on.

I am willing to chip in for any company that gets into legal trouble with SCO, and so are plenty of others (individuals and companies). Considering SCO's progress in their case with IBM, you can forget about ever having legal expenses due to a SCO suit before they are wiped off the ticker.

Re:Why he's an idiot (part 1 out of ...)

[demon]

There's a difference between his words and his actions. His mouth is saying "I don't really approve, but what choice have I got?" but his actions are saying "This is just fine with me." Also, by caving like he did, as others have pointed out, this makes his company prime fodder for this kind of thing in the future - since it's now known he'll cave to the demands of a company that's still tied up in court, and is generally considered by anyone "in the know" to be off their collective rocker, every two-bit jackass who thinks he can make a buck off them to "protect" them from a "potential lawsuit" will be banging on their door, lookin' to score some of that action.

Certain IP from SCO

[Serious Simon]

We did, however, license certain IP from SCO

"Certain"? Did SCO actually tell them what IP they are licensing?

I thought not.

Re:Certain IP from SCO

[sharkey]

Did SCO actually tell them what IP they are licensing?

Yes-- 127.0.0.1

No...

[Anonymous Coward]

what he has done is spend shareholder profit in a wasteful fashion. He is saying

"I would spend your money to save me being taken to court".

Makes no sense.

[eddy]

I read this earlier today. Marsh is just doing spin. End-users were never liable anyhow, if there'd been a problem they'd refer SCOX to EV1 (since they're buying the service from them), which would refer to RedHat (the OS supplier) which is already in litigation with SCOX anyhow.

He claims this was 'cheap' insurance. However, he refuse to tell us how much it actually was. If it was so cheap, why wouldn't he like to be able to tell his customers "Look, we only paid $X, it's cheap!". On the other hand, if it was cheap then SCOX wouldn't want the numbers to be out there ("We gave away 20K server license for PR-rights" wouldn't sound too great), which brings us to the fact that EV1 was in a position of power over SCOX, and chose to agree to not disclose the sum. In other words, they're helping SCOX out.

I think that Marsh is pretty much alone in thinking this was a good idea. There was no pressure from linux-customers _at all_. He's He did this for the PR. New server-center around the corner, using SCO to make headlines sounded great!

He just can't admit it in public. Reading his 'this was a sound business-decision'-bullshit is sickening.

SCO says: "Copyrights and patents are protection against strangers," [...] "Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with. From a legal standpoint, contracts end up being far stronger than anything you could do with copyrights." -- http://e-businessadvisor.com/doc/12514

Enjoy your new friends, EV1LServers.

Re:Makes no sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd just like to add something that someone else brought up (I think on the SCOX yahoo board). This is the perfect set up for a future "Case study" from Microsoft on Linux to Windows migration.

'Linux server use at a popular hosting provider declined 50% the first three quarters of 2004'

Laura "I sell myself for money" DiDio could run with that.

Re:Makes no sense.

[jemfinch]

He claims this was 'cheap' insurance. However, he refuse to tell us how much it actually was. If it was so cheap, why wouldn't he like to be able to tell his customers "Look, we only paid $X, it's cheap!". On the other hand, if it was cheap then SCOX wouldn't want the numbers to be out there ("We gave away 20K server license for PR-rights" wouldn't sound too great), which brings us to the fact that EV1 was in a position of power over SCOX, and chose to agree to not disclose the sum. In other words, they're helping SCOX out.

I would imagine that a condition of the "discount" EV1 received from SCO was non-disclosure of the actual price.

Nothing else would make sense.

Jeremy

Re:Makes no sense.

[Tough Love]

Brilliant comment, however: "He did this for the PR". No, the only theoretical beneficiaries will be their Linux users, and most will be outraged by this action, which plainly supports SCOX strategems. So there is another explanation, likely measured in dollars.

Re:Makes no sense.

[Tough Love]

I would imagine that a condition of the "discount" EV1 received from SCO was non-disclosure of the actual price.

So EV1 hasn't disclosed the price and they haven't disclosed what the "IP" is they licensed. But they have made a high profile disclosure that they bought the protection. This stinks to high heaven.

Re:Makes no sense.

[silicon not in the v]

'Linux server use at a popular hosting provider declined 50% the first three quarters of 2004'

There was a book called "How to Lie With Statistics", originally published in 1954. It was an entertaining read, and this was one of the great examples it pointed out. You can shift percentages how you want by changing the total number you compare to. Here is Amazon's link to the book if you're interested.

another reason to avoid them

[ajs318]

First they demonstrated lack of clue by ending up deploying Windows quicker than Linux. From my personal experience I'd say the only way you could install Linux slower than Windows, is badly. Then they bought a bogus licence from someone who quite clearly has no right to sell it. Now one of their spokespeople is unable to spell the word "plagiarist". That speaks volumes.

Re:another reason to avoid them

[eth00]

They started off donig linux servers so how do you know how long they took to deploy linux? As far as the windows servers they had been looking at it for a few months before actually deploying them with MS techs comign and all. Unless you work at ev1 you cannot be sure how long they started plans to deploy them. In the new datacenter they just finished the windows servers were the last to get setup. As far as the setup time, the disks are all images from a master so once they setup they are pretty quick to deploy. Not being rude or anything but those claims do not make any real sense.

Re:another reason to avoid them

[inc_x]

> They started off donig linux servers so how do
> you know how long they took to deploy linux?

Because they wrote so in their Microsoft advertorial. It first took them 45 minutes but with Microsoft it now only takes 18 minutes!

> Not being rude or anything but those claims do
> not make any real sense.

Maybe their tech-department just isn't very bright.

Re:another reason to avoid them

[tiger99]

To amplify one point they bought a bogus licence from someone who quite clearly has no right to sell it. That is the whole point, what SCO did was fraudulent because their licence to use any GPL code has terminated, because they attempted to place restrictions on others, the only thing that the GPL prohibits. Every copy of SCO Unix they sell is also illegal, same reason. Anything sold or licensed by SCO to anyone, anywhere, is a straightforward case of copyright violation, because all of their products contain GPL code, and they have no valid licence to distribute it.

Basically it has sunk to the level of a protection racket, and this coward has fallen for it. Protection rackets happen because the victims are too spineless to report the matter to the proper authorities.

Is it illegal to buy something which violates copyright, or just to sell? It may be that this guy is in fact breaking the law.

Re:another reason to avoid them

[Anonymous Coward]

Oooooh, there's a grass-roots campaign of smart people against this company.

------------

Goodness gracious, this is astroturfing at it's worst.

Re:another reason to avoid them

[0x0d0a]

To amplify one point they bought a bogus licence from someone who quite clearly has no right to sell it.

The license is basically "to not be sued by SCO". It's worthless, because SCO could never win a lawsuit, but it's not fradulent, because they aren't selling you a license to Linux -- just to avoid being sued by SCO for using it. Hell, I can sell you a license to avoid being sued by me for using a ballpoint pen. You'd be awfully stupid to buy it, but I can offer it.

it makes sense now

[Anonymous Coward]

Atrocious English; atrocious legal decisions. Yep, I see a pattern: the small-business-manager effect strikes again.

Still inexcusable

[mjrauhal]

Sure it can make some business sense, from a certain perspective, to cover one's ass in this way, especially given that you get a lot of free publicity to boot.

However, there is one simple reason that I hope that the negativeness of the publicity negates in this case the sheer amount of it: ev1 has voluntarily given SCO's claims credibility (in the eyes of some) and financed their crusade against Linux. This is, as such, inexcusable.

Someone in their forums suggested that ev1 redeem itself by voluntarily donating the same amount to some of the SCO legal defence funds. This would be a good start, but I can't see it being very likely.

Migration costs

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, the biggest reason is migration cost.
Setting up X servers for FreeBSD is not easy.

Plus, they have existing service contracts with RedHat. And this alone seems to make it worth it for them.

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[inode_buddha]

If I am to believe this post from groklaw:

Weeding through the noise at Yahoo, I found this from one of the dependable
regulars:

About EV1
by: korbomite
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell 03/01/04 09:36 pm
Msg: 100568 of 100685

EV1 has become famous as a porn hosting site:

http://hosts4porn.com/profiles/ev1.cfm

and

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/thread/140 12 4-1.html (hint why they
changed their name from RackShack--their IP address was blackholed for porn
spamming)

and

From Wired Magazine:

QUOTE
Since mid-September, numerous myNetWatchman participants have received repeated
probes on port 135 from a handful of Internet protocol addresses assigned to
Everyones Internet (EV1.net), an Internet service provider in Houston, according
to Baldwin. The numeric addresses translate into "NetBIOS machine
names" that begin with WEBPOPUP and that have appeared in several recent
ads, he said...EV1.net officials, who did not respond to interview requests, are
investigating the issue, according to Baldwin...Now that spammers have pioneered
the Windows Messenger technology, worm writers may be next to target the
service, according to Harlan Carvey, a security engineer with a financial
services firm..."I'm sure we're going to see spyware or malware that makes
use of this," Carvey said.
ENDQUOTE

from
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,128 2,55795, 00.html

and

http://jdo.org/hamas.html (That's right: Hamas and the al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade
terrorists use EV1 as their ISP and hosting provider)

and

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/10/02/106 49 88318651.html (hackers and
Trojan writers)

k

#END

Truth is definitely stranger than fiction. It would seem that both companies
figured that they could get some mileage out of the license deal if they spun it
the right way (and the truth and backroom dealing would only stay quiet). After
all, reports have it that Marsh and McBride were pal-ling around in California
during the past week at a trade show.

The tinfoil hat in me says "Follow the money".

It's money racketeering, plain and simple

[Quizo69]

The cost of being sued is more than the cost of paying "protection money" is what you meant to say, right?

Face it, this is as much extortion as the RIAA suing children and then "settling" for a fraction of that amount, but with guaranteed payment. The government should be using the RICO Act to nail all the offending parties. That they don't speaks volumes about their allegiances....

Re:It's money racketeering, plain and simple

[cwlh]

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,

To puff and look important and to say:--

"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.

We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

But we've proved it again and again,

That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld

You never get rid of the Dane.

Now I know EV1 is a pushover

[baryon351]

Now I know EV1 is a pushover, I have sent them letters in the name of my company advising them that an unknown but substantial piece of software that they are running infringes on my IP

I cannot reveal the nature of this software, but my company and I have identified thousands of pieces of it running on EV1's servers.

As EV1 have not indicated to me that they are not running such software (and as with SCO, the burden of proof is obviously on EV1 duh) then I have no option but to request the payment of $1599 per deployment of my IP on their systems. This comes to a total of $65,900,000 (some of their machines are running multiple instances of my IP).

All fees will be waived if they provide proof they are not running my IP, which I do not believe they will be able to do. I expect payment within 90 days. If payment is received, I will not take legal action against EV1.

(yeah I'm joking but damn, how far can protection rackets go once the weak cave in)

Re:Now I know EV1 is a pushover

[cozziewozzie]

It would be a joke if it weren't exactly what SCO is doing. It's too bizarre to be true, except that it is.

Re:Now I know EV1 is a pushover

[rajafarian]

Dude,
You should think like this, "... that an unknown but substantial piece of software that they may be running may be infringing on my IP. They won't know the difference.

Re:Now I know EV1 is a pushover

[fedork]

All fees must be submitted in the form of microwaved 20-dollar bills in a plastic bag.

K&P

[Burb]

There's always The Elements of Programming Style by Brian W. Kernighan, P. J. Plauger ...

Legal Terrorism...

[uberkuba]

I think that something is horribly wrong with the US legal system if people/companies are bullied into paying up because it'll cost less than potential litigation. This is the sort of problem that I'd expect in a school where a kid might decide that not having lunch will be less painfull than beaing beaten up.

It means that large companies can make it their business to use their legal team to steal money from smaller entities. US seems to have no problem with that... "sure beat up on the small guy, he must be commie or a retard" is the message I hear.

I hope that SCO case(s) gets big enough to highlight this problem at a sufficient level. Although, as a free country, why have law at all, have absolute freedom. Just bend over, cough twice and thank that they used lube.

small fee?

[Mr_Silver]

Other have claimed that we're essentially funding SCOs various lawsuits. This is not true. SCO already has like $60 million on hand and our small fee would not go very far

Oh I don't know. $1m seems like it'll go pretty far however big the size of your company.

Re:small fee?

[foxtrot]

"Oh I don't know. $1m seems like it'll go pretty far however big the size of your company."

Note, though, that nobody's actually said the real amount of the payment, and that it's a SCO droid who 's said, "Oh, it's worth about a million dollars."

The implication here is that ev1.net didn't pay SCO anywhere near a million dollars. SCO doesn't want the real amount to be released, because then their $1599 figures start looking really huge. ev1.net can't release the information, because SCO wasn't willing to let them disclose it as part of the deal.

SCO wanted a "large user" to sign on, and cut a hell of a deal to ev1.net. And ev1.net's sitting in the business section of every newspaper in the free world. Hell, that kind of publicity would be worth a million dollars...

-JDF

What a Lawyer

[linuxislandsucks]

I just did an informal survey fo Lawyers yesterday in woudl they advise a client who is an end user to pay the SCO Group bribe..

They stated in quite clear langauge that end users cannot be sued for copyrigth infringement only the authro sof Linux can be sued..

So what did this company pay for in its lawyer recommending this action?

and was Canapoy involed in the behind the scenes pressure on this company?

Re:What a Lawyer

[millahtime]

"They stated in quite clear langauge that end users cannot be sued for copyrigth infringement only the authro sof Linux can be sued.."

I guess this makes sense. If you buy a dvd player and they didn't license the dvd stuff correctly then they sue the manufacturer not the buyer. But, this is the US. Those little laws and precedence don't really mean much here.

The most probable possibility

[RoLi]

Let's face it. Nobody in their right mind would pay SCO million(s) for their license, especially EV1servers who are RedHat customers and are protected from SCO through RedHats programme: link

The only possibility that makes sense in my opinion is that EV1servers dealings with Microsoft included the SCO-deal as well. Microsoft has a strong interest to channel money to SCO, they have already done so by buying licenses from them they don't need.

So I think EV1servers has essentially become Microsoft's cash pipeline to SCO.

There just is no other way that makes sense. Please don't forget that RedHat protects their customers (like EV1servers) from SCO, so even if EV1servers pretends to think that SCO has a chance and even if they pretend to think that they have to pay before the trial is over, they simply don't need a license.

Re:The most probable possibility

[SpaceLifeForm]

And likely, the money from EV1 came from MS to pay SCO just to give some legitimacy to the SCO "license".

Just more FUD in the MS campaign.

Re:The most probable possibility

[Atzanteol]

"The only possibility that makes sense in my opinion is that EV1servers dealings with Microsoft included the SCO-deal as well. Microsoft has a strong interest to channel money to SCO, they have already done so by buying licenses from them they don't need."

I believe it's called money laundering. The way SCO has been behavig recently they're very similar to the mob.

Nice Linux disto. Would be a shame if something were to happen to it. We can provide protection for a small fee.

Easy enough decision

[ProppaT]

EV1 is deciding to pay up front now to avoid legal fees and press. However, once multiple people are sued, it's brought to court and the court finds SCO's claims completely ludicrious (which they are), all the companies that have paid up to SCO are going to be able to reclaim damages paid to SCO under false pretenses. In actuality, I would think that companies that were giving bad press from SCO, such as EV1, may be able to collect some kind of damages.

I'm not a lawyer and I'm just speaking what I'd see as common sense...so, it's just my 2 cents...

Re:Easy enough decision

[inc_x]

By the time the courts have debunked SCO's frivolous claims, SCO will be bankrupt with all money siphoned away to Boies / Canopy. So it is very unlikely that there is anyone left that you can sue by then.

Re:Easy enough decision

[Anonymous Coward]

"In actuality, I would think that companies that were giving bad press from SCO, such as EV1, may be able to collect some kind of damages."

*NO* read the EULA.

Basically you are purchasing:
- the right to use SCO IP under linux.

Whether there is any SCO IP *in linux already* is irrelevant to your licence. Hence, you will recieve exactly what you purchased and cannot seek a refund.

Re:Easy enough decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me you won't have a chance in hell to recoup $mil once SCO goes into banktrupcy with IBM and/or Novell calling dibs first. Oh... I think RH has a hand in there too.

Kiss the mil goodbye. If I would have been in the meeting to throw a $mil away, I would have suggested a charity instead.

Now, they have a relationship with SCO. We _all_ know what that means in unsolicited phone calls sense (read: screwed!).

If the morons in the forum would just follow up on their threats of leaving, EV1 would be on its way out too. Of course they won't, so EV1 doesn't give a crap what the general consensus is.

The real problem...lawyers!

[eth00]

I really think that it was a bad decision to fund this SCO campaign against linux. All that money is goign to be used to fund some other lawsuit against a smaller company. Though no exact figure has been give the above poster linked to an article where SCO said it was over $1 million. SCO might already have alot of money but if they keep getting payoffs like that they will be able to go after anybody. I wish ev1 had not done this. That being said it was a business decision and we all have to trust that HS made the correct decision. In the past he has broken many barriers and helped bring down the prices in the dedicated server market, he has to be doing something correct as they finish the new datacenter tomorrow. So even though I am against it I can see that from a business standpoint they were doing it to just end the debate now and get it over with...while helping sue another poor company that will not have the resources that ev1 has. The root of the matter is the legal system, such friviolus lawsuits need to just get thrown out. Germany just stopped SCO from doing anything else in their country, now we just need to do that here. If you get burned by coffee its your own stupid fault, if it was cold you would probably complain that it was cold and demand another cup! The world we live in is sue happy and the lawyers/legal system do nothing but promote it!

Can't work that way can it?

[hauer]

As far as I understand from reading the SCO license, you cannot have it both ways:

We license Linux through Red Hat. They provide our distribution and support/updates for the Enterprise distribution. Plus, they do an awesome job at delivering. Their support and dedication is second to none. Our agreement with SCO is in no way any kind of indictment on Red Hat. [...]

versus

We did, however, license certain IP from SCO.

Unless it is substantially different from this, the clauses of the license make this pretty impossible.

What am I missing?

Create a new option for companies like EV1

[spells]

Insurance. Some companies are protecting their clients from SCO IP suits, why not pay insurance to a third party to CYA rather than to SCO?
If one of the big insurance firms analyzed SCO's suit and calculated the odds of SCO winning, they might be able to offer insurance to these companies at a similar price to the extortion being paid to SCO. Everyone wins, companies can say they did their due diligence and SCO does NOT get a dime until they prove themselves in court.

okay, someone find out

[Anonymous Coward]

How much stock in SCO does this bastard owns ?

"Plaugerists?" "PLAUGERISTS?"

[dpbsmith]

That sounds to me like high praise, and that's the fair dinkum.

It's nice to know that the GPL Linux programmers are reading the C++ Programmers' Journal, programming on purpose, and following the elements of programming style.

I hope they'll all keep Plauging away at it.

NetCraft story (including /. reference)

[glassesmonkey]

EV1Servers Pays License Fee to SCO

...
By paying a licensing fee to insulate itself against SCO's legal claims, EV1Servers drew immediate fire from many corners of the Linux community, with some Slashdot readers suggesting a boycott of the company. EV1Servers is one of the largest dedicated hosting companies, with more than 11,000 Linux servers visible on the Web, according to our most recent survey.

"We realize we may be vilified by some diehards within the industry, but we feel a real obligation to take care of our customers," Marsh said in an interview this afternoon. "We had private discussions about this issue with some of our customers, and they were quite concerned about the uncertainty and the potential for a legal quagmire. What we've done is ensure that it's not an issue for our customers."
...

Re:NetCraft story (including /. reference)

[zippyRRB]

"We had private discussions about this issue with some of our customers, and they were quite concerned about the uncertainty and the potential for a legal quagmire. What we've done is ensure that it's not an issue for our customers."

I'm not a customer of EV1, but if you are, and were not 'privately consulted', and seriously consider taking my buisness elsewhere.

Re:NetCraft story (including /. reference)

[Sigl]

we feel a real obligation to take care of our customers

But they don't feel an obligation to protect them from extortion.

I'm sorry, but he's an idiot

[Arker]

It does indeed sound like he did this with the best of intentions.

But no, I'm sorry, no word less strong than 'idiot' could possibly begin to describe the path to hell he just set his company on, with the best of intentions of course.

TSG hadn't the slightest grounds to sue them before. Of course, under the US legal system, you sue first and the court checks if you have any grounds later, so they could have cost him some lawyer time.

But doesn't a company that size pay a retainer already, for just such reasons?

TSG had no grounds to sue them before, no grounds to be involved with them in any way shape or form. Now they've signed a contract. 'Contracts are what you use against people you have a relationship with' as Mr. McBride so eloquently stated.

This contract gives EV1 nothing whatsoever they didn't already have, in the sense of assets, positive things. It does give them plenty of liablilities. It gives TSG a contract that may give them cause for a suit in the future. It may very well be violating their license under the GPL, rendering any new linux installations they undertake copyright infringement, punishable by a statutory fine of $125,000 US per incidence as well. It in no way makes their position any more stable, but rather opens them from attacks from every side that they were completely and utterly proof against before taking this license.

I said it before, in the last article on this story, and I'll say it again, either EV1s attorneys are utterly incompetent, or their management is, or both. Go to Groklaw, read this license. It's a license for nothing, it gives the buyer nothing, it's only possible purpose is to set the buyer up for a lawsuit later. Anyone that would pay a dime for this thing after reading it is just plain stupid. If TSG was offering to pay you $699 per processor, flat rate no bulk discounts, it would still be a bad deal.

I am (happily) not personally involved with them at the moment. If I were I would terminate that relationship immediately. I certainly will not even consider entering any business relationship with them in the future. A company that size that can't afford an hour of a lawyers time to look at such a thing before they sign it has no future in this world, that's just the cold hard facts. EV1 customers - find an alternative. Today. Not to punish these folks - this kind of incredible stupidity is its own punishment, and quite sufficient. But simply to protect yourself. If you make the change now, you can do it with minimal hassle. If you wait until someone summons these bozos into a court, it could be a lot more painful.

Re:I'm sorry, but he's an idiot

[Dan Ost]

It may very well be violating their license under the GPL, rendering any
new linux installations they undertake copyright infringement, punishable by a
statutory fine of $125,000 US per incidence as well

I'm no expert on the GPL, but since the GPL limits distibution and not use,
I don't see how the above statement makes any sense. Are you claiming that
since EV1 rents out machines running Linux that they are essentially
distributing Linux? Are you also claiming that they are somehow violating
the GPL by paying someone in order to be able to use GPL software that they
already have?

I don't think their position makes any sense, but I don't see how this can be
construed as a GPL violation on EV1's behalf.

Re:I'm sorry, but he's an idiot

[Arker]

Oh they can rent out the systems they already have, perfectly legal. But a good case can be made that accepting this license terminated their GPL rights. And if it did... well they would still be legal if they bought a copy of Linux for every new computer they install it on, but we know for a fact that they use disk images nowadays, right? That's copying not necessarily allowed under default copyright law. Not a problem as long as you have a valid GPL, but if you've given the GPL up by taking another incompatible license to cover any portion of the Linux code... then it's copyright infringement.

Re:I'm sorry, but he's an idiot

[bmedwar]

he's not an idiot. I worked there for four months. They are crooks and scam artists, but not idiots. They set up a fake company to pose as an independet Intel reseller , so they could get Intel gear at wholesale. I certainly wouldn't put it past them, to be involved in other shady deals.

Re:I'm sorry, but he's an idiot

[swv3752]

If they sell box, then they have distributed GPL code. It doesn't matter how they obtained the GPL code, they are still distributing it and are in violation. There would be a very good argument if they even lease an intire box, then they are distributing code.

So now anyone that has copyright in the Linux Kernel could file an injuction on EV1 to prevent them from selling any new Linux servers. Not exactly the sort of position any reseller would want to be in.

Re:I'm sorry, but he's an idiot

[Dan Ost]

Please explain how accepting this license terminates EV1's GPL rights.

I'm skeptical because EV1 is a user, not a distributor, and
as far as I can tell, there is no way a user can violate the GPL.

Re:I'm sorry, but he's an idiot

[z_gringo]

That's not exactly unusual. It's not illegal or unethical either. Depending on your volume, it makes perfect sense.

Re:I'm sorry, but he's an idiot

[Arker]

A user who stays completely within default copyright rules doesn't need the GPL. But this means in particular no duplication, no making copies. This means buying 1 CD from someone who distributes under the GPL and installing to one machine. Want to install on a second machine? You need to buy a second CD. Normally this isn't an issue, of course, because if you need a second machine you can just copy it right on over under the GPL, but if you lose your GPL then you can't legally do that anymore - it would be copyright infringement.

Now you'll notice I've not said for sure they are in that position - just that it seems possible. I'd say you'd need some lawyer time to sit down and go through their paperwork with TSG quite carefully to see whether or not that's the case - but it certainly seems possible. The GPL doesn't allow you avail yourself of it if you cannot legally fulfil all the conditions. A binary-only license from TSG sure sounds to me like something that would be a legal impairment to fulfilling those conditions. If so, then the rest follows. But the license TSG put up publically, if it's the same one that EV1 is now contractually bound to, goes to such incredible lengths to say nothing at all that I wouldn't pretend to know exactly what effect it has, other than giving them a great excuse to sue you if you buy it.

11,000 linux servers

[Anonymous Coward]

check on netcraft
(so 55%)

Licenses(?) for whom?

[icejai]

For people who didn't read the article, I think what he's trying to say is that he didn't purchase licenses for linux from sco, but from redhat.

And, from the bottom of his message, it sounds to me that his payout to sco was done to protect his customers from being sued by sco if they have linux hosted on their servers.

Justification?
They just don't want to waste money fighting sco in case sco does pursue them.

I know to some, it may seem like he caved, or gave up, or did exactly what sco wants these companies to do (give up and put out $$$), but as a CEO sees it... business is business. He had to weigh in the risks (chances of sco filing suit against EV1, and/or against his customers), against the costs of those risks (total costs of fighting the lawsuit, and/or his customers fighting the lawsuit) against the benefits of exposing his company and customers to that risk (or not)... and make a decision that seemed best for his customers and his company.

I don't agree with his decision, but I can certainly see it from his point of view.

Get a DECLARATORY JUDGMENT!

[dilute]

There IS a response to these types of groundless threats, it's called a "declaratory judgment" - a definitive court declaration that a bully (e.g., SCO) has no basis for its bullying. A class action could be brought at any time by Linux users seeking a court declaration that SCO's claims are completely bogus. The procedure for doing this is on the books, and well known. Somebody just has to decide it's worthwhile. Sooner or later, someone probably will, though there is unlikely to be any big pot of monetary gold for the winner (other than getting back their own attorney fees, if SCO has any money left at that point).

Re:Get a DECLARATORY JUDGMENT!

[HPNpilot]

The problem is that most people lost faith in the American legal system long ago. The business of tricking the system is far more advanced and overshadoes what is "right" and moral.

Re:Get a DECLARATORY JUDGMENT!

[Fnkmaster]

Yes, RedHat has already sued for declaratory judgement. The wheels of justice are turning, they just don't work on "internet time".

What's legal about this?

[Durzel]

One thing I don't understand, forgive me if this has been touched on before, is how SCOX can offer licenses based on as yet legally unproven information? I could understand SCOX charging for IP licenses after a successful court ruling, and EV1 opting to purchase said license(s) to indemnify themselves against prosecution after the event.. but before? It makes no sense.

And how is charging real money on the basis of an unresolved case even legal?

Anyway, what sort of company pays out protection money to another company when there is no actual proven threat of damage should they fail to? The Mafia could learn a lot from SCOX it would seem, as they appear to have mastered the "insurance" racket without actually having tangible muscle.

Re:What's legal about this?

[djeaux]

And how is charging real money on the basis of an unresolved case even legal?

See any number of references to "selling the Brooklyn Bridge." You'll find plenty of references to my personal favorite Brooklyn Bridge here.

But yeah, what SCO is doing is similar to a person selling a car for which he doesn't have a clear title.

Re:What's legal about this?

[gothzilla]

George Carlin once said: "If you stick two things together that have never been stuck together before, some schmuck will buy it"
I think there are plenty of schmucks out there willing to buy anything, even if it doesn't exist.

Re:What's legal about this?

[FooAtWFU]

One thing I don't understand, forgive me if this has been touched on before, is how SCOX can offer licenses based on as yet legally unproven information?

Hello. You must be new here. :)

Even though your user ID seems to say otherwise. Ahh well. Welcome to our US legal and business systems...

Re:What's legal about this?

[Durzel]

I'm not new no, but I have been lurking for much of the time. :)

I'm also from the UK so I suppose my understanding of the workings of the legal system might be different to your own.

Re:What's legal about this?

[nomadic]

But yeah, what SCO is doing is similar to a person selling a car for which he doesn't have a clear title.

Not too uncommon. Especially in regards to land property, where owners can sell "quitclaim deeds", which basically say "I'm selling you any interest I have in this land". EV1 could have bought something similar.

Suing SCO

[AngstAndGuitar]

I hope he'll sue SCO for the price of his worthless licenses after SCO loses it's IBM case. :)

Re:No articles. No server. Just slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

The server seems to be running just fine to me, I'm browsing it quickly.

anybody pull out of EV1 over this?

[joejor]

I am not an EV1 customer, but if I were, their action would prompt me to immediately seek a new provider.
If they took my fees, turned around and handed it to SCO, oooooh, I'd be livid.

Business reasons blah, blah, blah ...
I cannot stand the idea of giving SCO money, even through a proxy.

Not insurance, but like hiring a hitman

[Quixote]

EV1 isn't buying any insurance for the "little guy"; the little guys were never liable anyways! All EV1 just did is payoff SCO to go and sue one of EV1's main competitors.

EV1 wins by (a) getting its name in the press; (b) by sicing SCO onto its competitor.

SCO wins by (a) getting a "customer" for its IP, and (b) getting some money.

See, both win.

EV1 just found a new weapon in the cutthroat wars that are the hosting business these days.

The question is: will enough people leave EV1 to cause them some pain? Will customers be able to break their contract based on this? Will some other hosting company jump in to provide the same deal to existing EV1 customers if they switch?

Stay tuned!

Useful links

[RDW]

A helpful summary of the logic behind the EV1 decision can be found here, and a historical perspective is here.

EV1 - Everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they now talk about '"everyone" bought a licence from sco' on english speaking radio-stations?

...random thought

Grammar and spelling

[Ih8sG8s]

Maybe this guy should have his letters spell checked. The grammar is terrible too!

Maybe I'm taking the wrong view, but an official letter posted on a company site should be more professionally presented.

This act is not CYA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who has read the SCO lines and has some common sense knows that buying into their "IP" is not the CYA move. Buying into their "IP" is the sticking your head out move. Buying into their "IP" and letting the world know is the sticking your head out and yelling "aim over here!" move. Anyone who truly believes this is a CYA move is falling for something and probably needs to practice some CYA. I would recommend a government job.

Logical move

[heikkile]

On one hand we have SCO, who has no case, and needs all the publicity it can get to keep its stock afloat. On the other hand we have a large but not world famous hosting service that is just about to open a new data center, and could use more publicity. Both need the publicity, and what better way to announce a slightly controversial deal?

BS...

[Seven001]

Fortunately, pretty much everyone saw through his BS comments. I must say that I'm rather disappointed that he would try to fool us with such transparent arguments. He *used to be* known for his honesty among customers. I fear he has been bitten by the greed bug though. If I hadn't just blown my bankroll on a new computer yesterday, I might have been using it today to move my servers and customers somewhere else.

His customers and he are already covered; so WHY?

[leonbrooks]

EV1, porn capital and Windows Popup spammer extraordinaire, is the end user here. EV1, not the customers, would get sued. And since they use Red Hat, they're indemnified even if TSG win their barratrous suit. They had nothing to gain by paying the Danegeld, so why did they do it? Evidently Mister HeadSurfer plans to get the money back somehow, all we need to do is find out how and we can probably blow TSG's racket right open.

EV1 don't give you a discount for choosing a FreeBSD server instead of MS-Windows 2003 or Red Hat Enterprise server. Why not?

EV1 were one of the first big rollouts of MS-Windows 2003, does this suggest anything to you about their real feelings? As in, "We'd love to go all Windows, Bill, but our customers aren't interested. Is there anything else we can do for you? Help out a friend?"

United we stand, divided we fall

[Where Do I Begin]

EV1, while ensuring they won't be sued by SCO, has just helped SCO to sue other people.
Thank You Very Much(tm)

I think $1,000,000+ would have been better spent by giving it to the EFF, they are pretty much guaranteed to stand behind those who are sued.

Boycott!

[Progman3K]

Want to make a difference?
Convince any user of SCO's *nix products that you will boycott their service/product unless they DROP SCO.

Re:Boycott!

[theguywhosaid]

woulndt it also help to start using their stuff again when they drop SCO? unless they see that dropping sco will get customers back, why risk the ones you still have?

Re:Boycott!

[Anonymous Coward]

I always preferred Burger King to McD's anyway...

Re:Boycott!

[StarTux]

Who actually uses SCO? I mean, not old installs that were being phased out, but new ones?

Suspicious

[shic]

When I read a statement like this, all I can think is that it seems incredible that someone has a free hand to $1m, yet seems to have only a tenuous grasp of English and an apparently hopeless understanding of prudent business and general common sense. Why hasn't someone else fleeced them sooner? I suspect that there has been an unspecified incentive.

In Other News

[Slavinski]

The Mafia received full exercisable business
license to operate across the nation extorting
money from whomever they feel.

Death of a thousand pinpricks

[dillon_rinker]

His response to charges that he is funding SCO's lawsuits:
SCO already has like $60 million on hand and our small fee would not go very far defending an action such as this

No single raindrop believes that it is to blame for the flood. Presumably this CEO also believes that donating $25 to Al Qaeda doesn't promote terrorism, or that dumping a gallon of used motor oil in a river doesn't promote pollution. Or that buying somethng from a spammer doesn't promote spam.

Re:Death of a thousand pinpricks

[Anonymous Coward]

When you do you taxes, and it has checkboxes to donate $1 to political funds... I guess that doesn't help anyone either.

EV1 not honourable

[horza]

He certainly has a point. Civil disobedience is not a good business model.

No-where does he mention anything along the lines of civil disobedience. No court has found against anyone of any wrongdoing, not IBM, not EV1, or anyone else. There is nothing to be disobedient AGAINST.

Consider this, though: They care enough about their customers and their own business that they're willing to take this "voluntary" hit of over a million bucks just to protect themselves and their customers. Even if SCO isn't right (preaching to the choir, I know) then they've still made a major step in the direction of "we'd take a bullet for you."

Many other posters have already pointed out that they did NOT do it for their customers. And others have pointed out that they are volountarily funding the SCO campaign of intimidation and fraud. It's obvious that they DON'T care about their customers and will shaft them for cheap publicity.

Phillip.

EV1Server Refugee

[xheliox]

We made the switch last night to ServerMatrix.com. Hopefully they won't screw over the Linux community too.

We had a total of 3 servers with EV1 which will all be offline by the end of the month. Certainly my 3 servers will not hurt them, but hopefully many more are taking similar actions.

EV1 has made untold amounts of money off of Linux and then to sell it down the river without a fight is just plain wrong. There's no other way to say it.

Re:EV1Server Refugee

[Queuetue]

What will hurt them more is that empty 20,000 box datacenter. People will move slowly to relocate a hosted box, and attrition will be creeping.

On the other hand, if no one shows up to use that new hundred million dollar datacenter because of the way they've just slowed new adoption, they're going to be completely screwed.

Re:EV1Server Refugee

[fedork]

I guess you (and other like you) need to get an explicit statement from the new company that they do not currently have that "license" from SCO (without publicity) and are not going to get one.

Re:EV1Server Refugee

[xheliox]

Dedicated server providers like EV1 and SM are becoming a commodity. I'll switch again if I must. :)

Re:EV1Server Refugee

[Anonymous Coward]

Hurting a Linux company will hurt Linux itself. You are saying that by commiting your time and energy to Linux you are likely to lose. Here is a simple algorithm that shows Linux is a really bad decision.

if (UsingWindows) { //You are safe here, nothing to worry about //Just run your business //Well except Slashdotter will think that you are losing //though you will make enough money as other windows users
} else if (UsingLinux) {
if (SCOSuesYou) { //You lose
} else if (YouPaySCO) { //You lose //Assuming that your customers are as stupid as Slashdot users
} else if (SCOWins) { //You Lose
} else { //You are somewhere near competition that uses windows //Maybe even worse
}
}

As you see Linux mostly for losers.

??? What did he say?

[Anonymous Coward]

"plaugerists" ??? perhaps they meant plagiarists? And what does a "bright mind" have to do with being a plagiarist? There are plenty of bright minds over the years who have copied the works of others. Either this guy is an idiot or someone isn't quoting him very well.

As an EV1 customer I don't see any advantages

[putaro]

I have a server that I rent from EV1. I've been planning to upgrade and was planning to get another server from them for that. This action has me seriously considering switching our business to another provider. My company uses Open Source software and wants to promote it. Anything that encourages SCO in their anti-Linux/anti-Open Source attacks is directly offensive to us.

I'm willing to take the risk of being sued by SCO. We're small enough that we'd be pretty far down the list. Further, I doubt that any of EV1's customers are large enough to be on SCO's initial list of targets. I don't see this as EV1 "protecting" me. I see this as them encouraging and abetting a criminal company who is out to extort money from me. The more people there are who legitimize SCO and SCO's "licenses" the easier it will be for SCO to pressure small companies into paying cumshaw.

The legal cost of being sued is zero

[lma]

OSDL has put in place a legal defense fund whose purpose is to reimburse legal expenses of companies in this position so that their cost to defend a lawsuit is zero.

Paying SCO before the legal issues have been resolved is a waste of money since companies can turn to OSDL to reimburse their legal costs. This was a bad business decision.

Larry

Re:The legal cost of being sued is zero

[dillee1]

The cost is a few rifle bullets.
Just gun down Darl and his fellow lawyers,
then everything is over.

I think everybody wanna see them die and SCO go bankcrupt anyway.

Re:Eh NOT

[GlacierPilot]

It's funny that ./'ers can spot tech FUD a mile off, yet not be able to decode corporate BS when it's thrown right in their faces. He's not buying protection, even in the wise guy sense. He's got some "in" with SCO for publicity and favors. There's no good business reason to pay off SCO at this point.

Microsoft + SCO + EV1 = anti-trust

[glassesmonkey]

Had to repost this brillant post from previous EV1 story.

by ImpintheBox (153919) on Mon Mar 01, '04 02:00 PM (#8432077)

Microsoft provides SCO $millions in loan cum licensing deal (to attack their No. 1 threat, Linux)

EV1 has amazingly low, low pricing for Win2003 servers.

Microsoft touts EV1 in Win2003/Linux case study.

Netcraft names EV1 the top Win2003 hosting provider.

EV1 buys SCO license in $million+ just days before Q1 conference call
and on the day of the PIPE and Boies deals deadline

ok, then

[CAIMLAS]

Ok, then. If he's not calling them plaugerists, then what the hell is he doing? I certainly see his move as - at least! - a big wad of virtual nastyness in the face.

If this is respect, then goddamn, I don't want it.

Prudent business decision

[EachLennyAPenny]

So instead of seizing the 10 mio USD defence fund from ODSL they rather paid a 7 figure amount?

My company should quickly do some prudent deals with them...

I call bullshit

[leonbrooks]

PXE -> boot-image == under 5 seconds

boot and self-test == under 10 seconds

boot-image notices that box is bare == fraction of second

system image (make it comprehensive, call it 1GB packed into 300MB) -> ungzip -> disk @ 100Mb/s == 10MB/s == 30 seconds

edit config files to suit, remount system image == under 1 second

bring up firewall, named, sshd, apache, ftpd == 3 seconds

total time bare -> running Linux, under a minute, and you don't even need to reboot if you sent out the right kernel the first time

you can also broadcast the disk image and do as many Linux machines as you like roughly every 30 seconds ...and MS-Windows setup is faster? How? They shipped it on the hard disks?

He should make one more contribution

[pesc]

He says he that it merely was a "business decision" to buy a "don't-sue-me" license from SCO. From a purely business bottom-line risk-analysis calculation, he might have made a good decision.

But morally? He has made a business with more than 10,000 Linux servers. He got that software free thanks to the GPL. And now he finances the SCO litigation and becomes a poster child for both SCO and Microsoft. He pays millions of $$$ to fund the destruction the GPL and free software that he exploited to create his business.

So in my eyes, this move makes him a filthy scumbag. I think he should remember where he got his Linux source from originally. If he insists that paying $$$ to SCO is a wise business decision, I think he should pay a equally large sum to the SCO defence fund (whatever it is called). That would make him honourable again in my eyes.

marsh bows to extortion

[morelife]

So he doesn't deserve any freedoms extended his way anyhow.

How do they claim from a bankrupt company?

[leonbrooks]

When their case folds, SCO are going to vanish beyond the financial event horizon at relativistic speeds. Expecting to recover from them is just dumb: as dumb as leaving a rucksack full of hundred dollar bills on a Harlem street and coming back a week later to recover them.

No, this was a buddy-buddy deal. Whether SCO is rewarding EV1, or Microsoft, EV1 is not doing this primarily for the stated reasons.

Headsurfer.

[13Echo]

The "Headsurfer" needs to turn his surfboard around and drift out to sea.

He claims to be supporting his customers, but in reality he's done nothing more than strengthen SCO so that they can carry on with these ridiculous claims and lawsuits a little longer. My hosting provider is an EV1 customer, and I'm already shopping for another provider.

SCO has yet to present proof of their allegations. Numerous other countries' legal systems are essentially telling SCO to screw off because they are unable to present proof. Isn't that good enough, EV1? We all know that there is no "SCO IP" in Linux, and there never will be. EV1 made a mistake in supporting these criminals. Now, in my eyes, EV1 is a criminal company as well.

Screw off, EV1. Hope your new data center gets wasted from lack of business.

dude, where's my license?

[Colonel Cholling]

SCO already has like $60 million on hand and our small fee would not go very far defending an action such as this, much less prosecuting one.

"dude, they've got, like, way more money than that, so like, we figured it was like cool and stuff."

SCO or no SCO, I wouldn't want to do business with a company whose CEO has the spelling and diction of a twelve-year-old sk8r.

Re:dude, where's my license?

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO or no SCO, I wouldn't want to do business with a company whose CEO has the spelling and diction of a twelve-year-old sk8r.

c'mon, bra, he's 1337! :^)

Does anybody believe Marsh?

[walterbyrd]

Is he just stupid, or is he another scam artist? I firmly believe the latter. At first, I didn't feel that way. But the more this smarmy jackass tries to defend his stance, the more I become convinced he's another msft stooge.

>>By now, many of you have heard of oru agreement with SCO. What you have probably heard, though, is misinformation about the arrangement.>We license Linux through Red Hat. They provide our distribution and support/updates for the Enterprise distribution. Plus, they do an awesome job at delivering. Their support and dedication is second to none. Our agreement with SCO is in no way any kind of indictment on Red Hat.>We did not license a linux distribution or any software covered by a referenced EULA from SCO. We did, however, license certain IP from SCO.>We fullly support the GPL and the open source movement.>Other have claimed that we're essentially funding SCOs various lawsuits. This is not true. SCO already has like $60 million on hand and our small fee would not go very far defending an action such as this, much less prosecuting one.>We make no endorsement of SCO nor do we make any admission as to their claims.>HOWEVER, what we did do was make a prudent business decision based upon our circumstances and our customers needs and the need to bring certainty to their businesses.>the vast majority of smaller hosts using our services do not have our resources to defend/prosecute such an action

He goes on and on like this. Methinks he doth protest too much, about how is just protecting his customers - the informed here know that this arguement makes no sense.

Again, the more he goes on, the more this entire thing has that rancid stench of msft all over it.

BTW: I have not been able to register on the ev1 site.

Affordable alternative?

[BigGerman]

I have 3 boxes there and I want out.
If anyone knows for a fact about some other hosting company with comparable prices / service, please post below.
I am sure other /.ers would appreciate it too. No flames, just short info.

Re:Affordable alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

rackspace, but dunno how affordable they are.

Re:Affordable alternative?

[Krojack]

I don't like rackspace. We have all their ip's blocked due to spam. If someone hosting on their network wants mail though my servers they have to contact me and I'll allow just their server though.

Same goes for rackshack.net (aka ev1.net aka ev1servers.net)

Did he read the license?

[dtfinch]

The restrictive wording of SCO's license makes it almost impossible to not violate it. Plus SCO can terminate the license at any time without cause and in the license they agree to stop using Linux in that case, regardless of the outcome of SCO's lawsuits. Just about the only way for an end user to subject themselves to litigation from SCO is to buy their license.

Re:Did he read the license?

[noknownpurpose]

You're making the assumption (incorrectly) that EV1 signed the license as you see on the web site. What we do not know is what alterations were made by EV1 before hand. If none, then they are stupid and will be out of business soon but I sincerely doubt that. I would bet that the pricing structure was changed significantly and the language strengthened in favor of the licensee (EV1). SCO needed a win of this nature, it will help them sell licenses to other organizations and give them some good PR going into earnings.

All theories aside I fail to see what liability EV1 is looking to protect themselves from by spending $1M (or whatever it was) when Red Hat is indemnifying them for losses because of this issue. My guess is that the funds are coming out of their advertising/PR budget since that is the only plausible benefit to making this announcement.

Some Questions for Mr. Marsh...

[ArtDent]

Mr. Marsh owes his customers much more information than this. Specifically:

1. What price was paid for this "IP license"? A claim like "our small fee would not go very far defending an action such as this, much less prosecuting one" is totally unconvincing while the amount of the fee remains secret. Moreover, obviously customers will be indirectly footing the bill for this, so they need to be able to figure out just how much it's costing them.
2. Exactly what IP was licesnsed? Did Mr. Marsh in fact "license certain IP from SCO," or did he in fact license uncertain IP -- agreeing to their standard whatever-IP-may-or-may-not-be-in-there wording?
3. What are the terms of the licensing, and to what degree are customers protected? Since, he's claiming to have done this for the protection customers, he'd better tell them what their rights and obligations are. For example, are there any restrictions on their ability to access, modify, or compile Linux source code?

I hope that all of EV1's customers demand answers to these questions, as forcefully as necessary. They need this information to assess whether they are, in fact, better or worse off as a result of Mr. Marsh's decision.

Re:Some Questions for Mr. Marsh...

[senzafine]

I don't see why customers could be upset with a company that makes a business decision to protect themselves and their customers. I do understand that individuals can think "that's dumb...I hate SCO". But this was a business decision...nothing more.

Re:Some Questions for Mr. Marsh...

[friendklay]

The price which EV1 paid to SCO should be of great interest to all EV1 Customers and potential customers. There are two possibilities:

1. EV1 paid a paltry sum just to get a 'good name', that they are the only SCO-Risk-Free hosting provider.
2. SCO paid them an undisclosed NDA bounded sum and and gave them the "License to use Linux".

Both ways SCO profits by being able to point at the large number of Linux Web Site which have signed up fo SCO Linux License. EV1 profits by having paid very little. Because they paid very little they would profit in the long run. That is some of us might get angry and boycot them, but others would be delighted and switch to EV1 servers just to get that protection. Either way EV1 is beting that more will switch to them. Thats my $0.20

Re:Some Questions for Mr. Marsh...

[ZoneGray]

Other reports indicate that it was a one-time, flat rate, enterprise-wide fee in the neighborhood of a million dollars.

What makes me feel especially warm inside is envisioning the bargaining session. Once they get a nibble, software salesmen are your bitches. The poor dude who negotiated the price with Marsh is gonna have trouble sitting down for a long, long time.

Re:Some Questions for Mr. Marsh...

[kiwimate]

Okay, now I think people are beginning to go overboard.

What price was paid for this "IP license"? A claim like "our small fee would not go very far defending an action such as this, much less prosecuting one" is totally unconvincing while the amount of the fee remains secret. Moreover, obviously customers will be indirectly footing the bill for this, so they need to be able to figure out just how much it's costing them.

Nonsense. Customers also foot the bill for EV1's servers, air-conditioning, security services, and so on. Should EV1 (or anyone else) be forced to disclose those costs? If not, why not? It's the same principle.

In fact, why not take this to the logical conclusion? Does your company have customers? If so, those customers are paying your salary. Do you see where I'm going here?

Re:Some Questions for Mr. Marsh...

[prophetik_1]

It would be great to know how much EV1 paid SCO for the "IP licence". SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said it was worth at least $1 million, but that doesn't necessarily mean that EV1 paid anywhere close to that figure.

Re:Some Questions for Mr. Marsh...

[ArtDent]

Nonsense. Customers also foot the bill for EV1's servers, air-conditioning, security services, and so on. Should EV1 (or anyone else) be forced to disclose those costs? If not, why not? It's the same principle.

The servers serve Web pages. The air-conditioning stops the servers from overheating. And so on. What does this "IP license" do? Allegedly, it makes customers feel better, it prevents worrying.

Can you see the difference? Given that its value is, to be generous, questionable, I think it's quite reasonable for customers to ask just what is its cost.

What's more, some customers may feel that it's value is negative: that it only serves to fund SCO's courtroom antics. Mr. Marsh tried to deflect such criticism by claiming that "our small fee would not go very far defending an action such as this, much less prosecuting one," but it's impossible to evaluate that claim without knowing the amount of the "small fee."

Re:Some Questions for Mr. Marsh...

[Eggplant62]

I don't see why customers could be upset with a company that makes a business decision to protect themselves and their customers. I do understand that individuals can think "that's dumb...I hate SCO". But this was a business decision...nothing more.

Protect them from *what* exactly???

The corporate likeness of the Windy Wolf from The Three Little Pigs fairy tale??

SCO has no clear claim to the IP they think they own full rights to. Novell is on the table claiming rights to it. Only an idiot would pay a license on something that the seller cannot show clear title to.

Re:Some Questions for Mr. Marsh...

[senzafine]

I agree with you regarding SCO's claims. But a business has different interests than individuals. There's plenty more at risk for a business in the off shot that SCO does win parts of the lawsuit. For an end user...there are hardly (if any) consequences. That's what EV1 Servers did....think of it as insurance.

This is coming from someone who hates insurance and the idea of it. I have a server at ev1servers....and the first thought I had was....DAMNIT. I'm not at all supporting the move on ev1 servers part...but I do understand the logistics of the decision.

Re:Some Questions for Mr. Marsh...

[John Hurliman]

The only people who have business knowing what was paid for the license are shareholders and the IRS. Everyone else can choose not to do business with EV1 on moral grounds, or on a potential price hike from the licensing costs.

Re:Some Questions for Mr. Marsh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Real businesses don't concern themselves with other companies "courtroom antics" unless they have a significant impact on their own business. That's what zealots are for.

Risk assessment & Liability (& EULA)

[nuggz]

There is a risk they could get sued. They determined it was cheaper to pay them off then risk it.
Unpopular decisiton, but justifiable. Note he did refer to the cost of defense, not just losing.

Now the liability issue, people keep claiming that the end user isn't liable. However I thought that in US law the act of running a program (ie copying into memory) required a license, this is the arguement behind EULA.
In this case the person actually running the software would be committing the infringement, and liable. They could claim someone else gave it to them, and get the money back from Redhat or something, but that wouldn't excuse them.
Just thoughts IANAL

Re:Risk assessment & Liability (& EULA)

[silicon not in the v]

Those sound like valid concerns, but they are already taken care of by other factors as indicated here:

There is a risk they could get sued. They determined it was cheaper to pay them off then risk it. Unpopular decisiton, but justifiable. Note he did refer to the cost of defense, not just losing.

That's always possible because anyone can sue anyone else for anything. The saving factor here is that they bought their Linux software and support from Red Hat, who has promised all their customers that they will cover all their legal expenses against anyone suing them for their usage of Red Hat's Linux. Therefore, no risk--no reason to pay.

Now the liability issue, people keep claiming that the end user isn't liable. However I thought that in US law the act of running a program (ie copying into memory) required a license, this is the arguement behind EULA.

The end user is only responsible for the terms of the license they agreed to when they bought the software. They bought the software from Red Hat, so the only license that applies to them is the license Red Hat presents with their software. If Red Hat is doing something wrong and does not have rights to resell the software, then that is an issue Red Hat has to deal with. EV1 had not signed (until now) a license with SCO, so they had no responsibilities to SCO as long as they were complying with the Red Hat license they agreed to.

In this case the person actually running the software would be committing the infringement, and liable.

The license they agreed to (GPL in this case) does not restrict their own use or copying (imaging to more servers) so they are not in any violation. If they break that, then they would be liable to the original copyright holders, which would then depend on SCO's claims of ownership.

Does not have the ring of truth

[Tough Love]

Apparently paid a million or more of but had access to a ten million
legal defense fund, so I think this is a more likely explanation.

Give this company no peace, something has passed under the table.

There's a reason you're not a lawyer...

[the_mad_poster]

Sue them for WHAT?

Go ahead, spit acronyms left and right all you want, but there's nobody that can sue them under RICO no matter how much you want to believe it as a result of the fact that you have NO clue what you're talking about. You don't understand the purpose of RICO or how it's used anymore, so stop claiming it can be used against SCO or the RIAA or anybody else for that matter.

SCO did nothing illegal. The RIAA did nothing illegal. You can't usually successfully sue somebody for being immoral. You're never going to get an extortion charge for offering a settlement to stupid people. There's no "racketeering" going on.

Next time you try to claim that "such and such" should sue/arrest/whatever somebody else, at least take 5 seconds to Google the damn law you're going to claim can be used. I can imagine that with assinine comments like this one being modded up, this place must be like a comedy club for lawyers. OFFERING BAD CONTRACTS TO PEOPLE (without misrepesenting them) WHO ARE DUMB ENOUGH TO SIGN THEM IS IMMORAL - NOT ILLEGAL. OFFERING SETTLEMENTS TO PEOPLE FACING LEGITIMATE COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT SUITS *MIGHT* BE IMMORAL DEPENDING ON YOUR POSITION IN THE MATTER - IT IS NOT ILLEGAL.

Please, Slashdot. Do try to beat that into your thick skulls. Go ahead and label me troll now. I know you'd rather stroke your overinflated egos and pretend you know what you're talking about rather than admitting that, in fact, the law is not going to step into either one of these issues unless it's in the context of evaluating how the legal system is being abused by the respective parties. That would be nice, but don't hold your breath.

Re:There's a reason you're not a lawyer...

[njcoder]

The RIAA is already being sued by one parent citing RICO statutes.

Re:There's a reason you're not a lawyer...

[imkonen]

OFFERING BAD CONTRACTS TO PEOPLE (without misrepesenting them) WHO ARE DUMB ENOUGH TO SIGN THEM IS IMMORAL - NOT ILLEGAL.

Isn't that the whole point? I agree that unfair contracts are legal, but it's still illegal to misrepresent the facts in order to get them signed. SCO stands to gain money from convincing people that Linux is corrupted with their IP, both in terms of selling liscences for IP in Linux, and from creating enough uncertainty in Linux's future that new businesses will consider just starting out with Unix...and a liscence purchased, of course, from SCO.

If I tell you I own the Brooklyn Bridge, am planning to provide evidence of such ownership any day now, then tell you you can drive over my bridge any time you want for a mere $100 unlimited liscence... Aren't I commiting fraud? What if I add to that that the price will go up exhorbitantly once I've established my ownership in the courts, but you can get it on the ground floor now while it's still a good deal?

Well calling it racketeering is probably a little overboard, but I think something in there has to be actually ILLEGAL as opposed to merely IMMORAL.

Re:There's a reason you're not a lawyer...

[sphealey]

[...] You don't understand the purpose of RICO or how it's used anymore, so stop claiming it can be used against SCO or the RIAA or anybody else for that matter.

SCO did nothing illegal. The RIAA did nothing illegal.[...]

The RIAA, of course, is currently facing at least one civil RICO suit. Whether or not it will succeed is a different question.

sPh

Re:There's a reason you're not a lawyer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time you try to claim that "such and such" should sue/arrest/whatever somebody else, at least take 5 seconds to Google the damn law you're going to claim can be used.

Malicious prosecution
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Malicious prosecution is a common law intentional tort. While similar to the tort of abuse of process it is the misuse of a prior legal process (civil or criminal) that is dismissed in favor of the victim that was brought without probable cause with intentional malice by the defendant.

See also barratry, vexatious litigation, frivolous lawsuit

Re:There's a reason you're not a lawyer...

[Fnkmaster]

The more you beat your chest about it, the more you make yourself look like a troll. Maybe there's a RICO case, maybe there isn't - at least some people think there is a legitimate RICO case against the RIAA. Around here, we value discussion and argument. Frankly, as silly as it sounds and as much as we may self-efface regularly on Slashdot, knock the sliding standards of this community, the trolling, the karma-whoring and so on, many ideas that have been proposed or supported on Slashdot over the years have turned out to have legs. Some have turned into successful products and Open Source projects. And certainly successful memes and social phenomena have sprung out of individuals on Slashdot.

So I figure, if somebody wants to throw out the idea that there is a RICO violation involved in using misleading contracts and false legal claims and press statements as part of a systematic attempt to threaten and bully money out of admittedly naive companies, then dammit, either explain why he's wrong and give him a thwack upside the head or constructively contribute to the discussion. DON'T spew out sentences in all caps reiterating your argument without any evidence of your own to back up your point, you'll just get yourself ripped a new asshole.

Re:There's a reason you're not a lawyer...

[the_mad_poster]

Yea, boo hoo. I'd hate to get "ripped a new asshole". Dude, seriously. Look at what I posted and tell me with a straight face that you honestly believe people don't already try it on a regular basis.

Now's the part in our show where I rip you a new one. Or, at least point out that, in fact, in the context of the original post I responded to, I'm perfectly on base whether you agree with the way I pursued the response or not. And, I quote:

The government should be using the RICO Act to nail all the offending parties.

Nope, I'm sorry, you lose, would you like to play again? THIS piece of the Hobbs act is the closest I (yes, I'm willing to admit I'm wrong or didn't dig deep enough - if you'd like to say so and push the RICO bullshit a little more... tell me WHY I'm wrong for once instead of just shooting off your mouth about what the government or some lawyer should do without backing up your rant) could find to support a court case against SCO on the basis of this alleged RICO act violation:

The term "extortion" means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.

Now, I'm no lawyer, but I'd have to say it's quite a stretch to say that anyone who would respond to SCO's rants is anything more than a moron if they're actually afraid of any kind of retaliation. THe important part of this is that SCO is not specifically threatening anybody and, in fact, the only reason there's any fanfare over what they're doing isn't becuase of anything more than the idiotic media circus that has erupted around them. Notice how IBM is just playing it cool and taking it all in stride? Gee, do you think maybe the crack legal team at Big Blue knows what it's doing? Better than we do?

Go ahead and call me a troll for calling bullshit on all the people who think they somehow know what SCO can be charged with (better than AGs and lawyers and corporate legal hounds at that), but at least I did a little digging the first time someone suggested the idea. So excuse me for being a little annoyed by the hundred of little karma-whoring trolls who keep pushing it even though it doesn't appear to be a valid measure of recourse.

Whatever the sum

[phy_si_kal]

Whatever they paid to SCO, when SCO loses its actions, then the official price ($699 by machine) should then go from SCO to the right owners (FSF/ IBM / RH) ! Hope that when this story is over, finally free software will benefit from it.

Why is this so hard to understand?

[IANAAC]

This is all you need to say to SCO:

"I did not purchase anything from you. My purchases are with RedHat. Please sue them, not me".

End of story. Honestly, I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept for people to grasp - You don't give me anything, I don't pay you anything.

Re:Why is this so hard to understand?

[caluml]

This is all you need to say to SCO:

"I did not purchase anything from you. My purchases are with RedHat. Please sue them, not me".

And what if you didn't purchase anyone from anything?

Slashdotted already!

[Mirk]

The site is slashdotted already. Here is the text of the open letter:

Dear EV1 Users,

We were smoking crack. Sorry.

Yours, etc.

Brief, to the point. I like it!

pimping around with mcbribe

[codepunk]

I heard that yesterday he was pimping around with Mr
McBribe at some conference. That seems like a guy with the Linux community good will in mind. If I had just been extorted out of a million dollars the last thing I would do is follow around the CEO with my lips attached to his ass.

Grammar?

[aisnh]

I don't know about any of you, but it would take a large amount of convincing to buy any of this company's services, let alone invest in them. This man, supposedly the CEO of a (reasonably) profitable business repeatedly makes errors in grammar and spelling throughout a letter to his customers.

• "We did not license a linux distribution..."
• "...various GPL Linux developers plaugerists..." (What are those? People who transmit the plague?)
• "SCO already has like $60 million on hand..." (Like, oh-my-god! That's like sooo much money!)
• "Whatever your position on the various suits, which SCO has said will increase." (This is not even a sentence.)
• "There is significcant risk"

That is by no means an exhaustive list. The letter is riddled with unprofessional colloquialisms and poorly-constructed sentences. Even the parent company name (EV1) is formally listed as "Everyones Internet." Missing an apostrophe, Bob? -Aaron

Re:Grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the CEO going out of his way and posting his personal writing directly to a public forum, instead of releasing some spin-doctored piece of press-release rehash. I think the fact that it may have a few spelling errors gives it the 'personal touch' and lets us know that, yes, this guy is real, he has real feelings and real opinions, and he's not going to let someone speak for him. How many times have you fat-fingered a Slashdot post and missed a period or two in an effort to get your opinion heard?

Re:Grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Robert Marsh.

Welcome to Slashdot where almost everyone is a proud "grammer nazi". I think the point is, that if you're the head of a company, you'd better proof-read what you publish, because many people feel that a lack of attention to details in your writing is indicative of a lack of attention to details in other areas of business as well.

Thanks for playing. Have a nice day!

Re:Grammar?

[Westech]

I have many sites hosted in EV1 and have been following the business for a long time (it used to be named RackShack.) Every time Robert Marsh posts something online, it is filled with poor grammar and misspellings. At first, this turned me off (If he can't learn to spell, can't he at least afford a secretary to proofread his announcements!) but now I've gotten past it. I think that he is a great businessman who runs a profitable company that successfully delivers a quality product to its customers. While I do not agree with his decision on the SCO issue, I can understand his reasoning. Likewise, while I still think he should have his announcements proofread before making them public, it doesn't seem to be hurting his business any.

I think that in Mr. Marsh's mind it's all about business. Each decision is based on cost-benefit analysis.

For example:
To him, it is worth the "licensing" fees to remove the possible costs of defending a lawsuit.
To him, the increase in sales gained by presenting a better image by posting gramatically correct announcements would not outweigh the cost of hiring a proofreader.

Of course, this is all simply my opinion from observing the company from the outside.

Re:Grammar?

[Ath]

I always find it humorous when people defend blatant spelling and grammar mistakes, especially when they chalk it up to just being typos.

The fact is, a person's writing skills is almost a direct correlation to the quality of their education. It is not unreasonable to determine someone is less educated after reading material from them that is riddled with grammar and spelling mistakes.

Maybe he is intelligent but poorly educated. However, to suggest he adds some level of authenticity to his writings by making spelling and grammar mistakes is a bit silly. I also have real opinions and real feelings. I consider it more effective to share those opinions and feelings with others by doing it through proper spelling and grammar. It is also considerably more effective when you are writing something with the intention to convince others that you made a correct decision to use proper grammar and correct spellings.

When I read his open letter to the community, I immediately concluded that he just is not smart enough to understand the full consequences of his decision. He definately does not comprehend that, despite his protests, he gave SCO the full argument that there is now a company which accepts the validity of SCO's claims. Otherwise, he just paid them money for nothing.

Granted, he may have done the equivalent of an actuarial analysis in his head and decided that the SCO licenses were a cheap insurance against the possible legal exposure. But given the impression that he is not very educated, I suspect he is not very capable of doing a good analysis.

Re:Grammar?

[Daveman692]

He always writes like this, it is nothing new.

Re:Grammar?

[bullestock]

"...various GPL Linux developers plaugerists..." (What are those? People who transmit the plague?)

No, Plaugerists are of course the followers of C++ guru P. J. Plauger.

Re:Grammar?

[Skapare]

Add this:

To him, the cost of terminating a customer that is spamming at an extreme level is outweighed by the cost of being blocked due to that spamming continuing.

He certainly does seem to be one of those people who thinks in pure business terms, and never about doing things right. Maybe that's why my servers were under a 6 weeks long spam attack from their network, while all attempts to contact them by email and telephone never got past the idiots he hires to field (deflect) the calls.

To him, the cost of all that spam causing a huge spike in my mail server load stats is nothing compared to the cost of losing a paying customer, because he doesn't have to deal with the end result of the spam.

So now maybe you can understand why I have the entire EV1 network blocked from access to my mail servers. You would do well to find a different place for hosting.

Re:Grammar?

[fredrik70]

sorry, but that's bull, IMHO.
If you're writing quickly in the heat of the discussion, or in the heat of a brainstorm session there are usually more important things to worry/think about than spelling, as long as the message gets through. It's more about prioritising where to put your effort.

Re:Grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah okay - you're right. Thats why all the big CEO's release statements about their situation with spelling errors, right?

Re:Grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick list of misspellings:

oru, fullly, plaugerists, significcant, thay

Yeah, I'd say Robert could use some help.

Re:Grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to buy services from people who do not worry about the quality of what they produce, go right ahead... I for one will not be doing so anytime in the near future.

Re:Grammar?

[IANAAC]

If you're writing quickly in the heat of the discussion...

"In the heat of the discussion" is not the best way for a CEO of any kind of organization to release any sort of public message. Period. Brainstorming usually isn't done in a public forum either. As a matter of fact, were it a public company, I'd think the shareholders would have something to say WRT public brainstorming from a CEO.

Re:Grammar?

[spood]

The fact is, a person's writing skills is almost a direct correlation to the quality of their education.

Classic.

Re:Grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was really funny that you spelled 'definitely' like you did after going on and on about proper spelling and grammar.

Re:Grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nerd Alert! Warm up the flag pole. I hate Slashgeeks.

Re:Grammar?

[Prof.Phreak]

The fact is, a person's writing skills is almost a direct correlation to the quality of their education.

You're kidding, right?

Amm... wait... Oh, no... you're not... OMG!

I guess you may be talking about English majors or something, 'cause I sure as hell can't write legibly without a spell checker (which I almost never use).

Re:Grammar?

[thirdrock]

The fact is, a person's writing skills is almost a direct correlation to the quality of their education.

The fact is, a person's writing skills are almost a direct correlation to the quality of their education.

I consider it more effective to share those opinions and feelings with others by doing it through proper spelling and grammar.

I consider it more effective to share those opinions and feelings with others by doing it with correct spelling and grammar.

He definately does not comprehend that

He definitely does not comprehend that

Otherwise, he just paid them money for nothing.

Sentence fragment.

But given the impression that he is not very educated

Beginning a sentence with a conjunction.

I suspect he is not very capable of doing a good analysis.

I suspect he is not capable of doing a very good analysis.

Also, 'good'' is a sloppy word to use in this context, as it conveys no specific information. 'Accurate' , 'Rational' or 'Intelligent' would have been better choices.

HTH.

Re:Grammar?

[dr.fishopolis]

The fact is, a person's writing skills is almost a direct correlation to the quality of their education. Congratulations on writing the worst sentence I've read all day, while apparently trying to convey the importance of strong sentences. 1. a person's writing skills are 2. the skill is a direct correlation? I thought a skill was a particular ability. 3. *almost* a *direct* correlation? 4. your next sentence begins "It is not unreasonable" I can only guess this was modded +4 for the unrecognized irony

Re:Grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently not enough people care to make any difference.

Re:Grammar?

[fredrik70]

I might have misunderstood you slightly, I was under the impression that you meant in everyday life as in writing a comment on slashdot for example. Yeah, a CEO should be careful with what he write to his customer, but if I get an email from my tech lead regarding something urgent in the end of a project when time is dear I do not sit and judge people because of a spelling mistake or ill formed sentence.

Plaugerists?

[Mirk]

From the article:

It has been argued by a Linux Journal reporter that I have essentially called the various GPL Linux developers plaugerists. This is false.

Hmm, I'm not sure about that. I certainly learned a lot from P. J. Plauger's books, not least The Elements of Programming Style (co-written, of course, with Brian W. ``Water-Buffalo'' Kernighan). Does that make me a Plaugerist?

Re:I'm sorry, but he's NOT an idiot

[walterbyrd]

Are you aware of EV1's msft success story so prominently displayed on msft web-site? Seems like an awfully cozy relationship to me.

And consider the timing. Scox has a windfall of negative news right now, and earnings come out Wednesday; what convenient timing for this PR hype.

The guy is CEO of #6 web-hosting company in the USA. Hardly an idiot. Certainly his company has a legal department. Certainly they know about redhat indemnification, certainly they know that scox can't sue their customers, certainly they how laughably weak scox's case is.

And notice how Marsh doesn't give any real information? Notice how he tap dances around the real issues? This guy knows what he's doing.

Marsh isn't an idiot, he's another scam artist. His "hip" act doesn't fool me. Mr "headsurfer" and "redhat is awesome" I'm not falling for any of that. I'm not buying that "I'm your buddy" bullsh!t.

Also from the article

[Mirk]

Marsh says:

In every step building the EV1 business, I've had to make decisions that I believed in my heart were in the best interests of my clients and my shareholders.

Shame he didn't use his brain instead.

Ugh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man. So, so bad.

See the piehole that just spouted out all that garbage? Plaug it. =)

cheaper than what?

[walterbyrd]

How much did he pay? I've seen this "7 figure" claim all over the message boards (yahoo,groklaw,slashdot) but I can't find that in any article, or news release.

It's possible that he didn't pay anything, and got a break on win2003 servers from msft.

Re:Full Text -- Translation

[MinutiaeMan]

Translation: "We didn't want to get sued, so we gave SCO a big wad of cash to make sure that they don't send their lawyers after us."

In the Mafia, this kind of practice is known as "protection." They'd force local shopkeepers to pay them money to not send their goons to trash their stores. It annoys the heck out of me that SCO can get away with extorting this kind of money from companies before they've even proven their case in the IBM-Novell lawsuit(s). But then, everyone here agrees on that point.

Liars, Dumbasses and Fools

[Queuetue]

Oh my!

I'm amazed that a person with $1mm in cash to spend can't spell, reason, or defend themselves properly.

I yesterday suspected that this was MS/SCO reverse astroturfing, and now, I see I was probably right . These EV-whatever guys are actually an MS Case Study, indicating how much easier it is to deploy and manage windows boxes over Linux ones.

Case Study

(Incidentally, these doofuses were using RH's kickstart instead of just copying a tarfile to the fresh box - that's how MS beat them.)

This whole thing feels like a riculous show that got out of control. I am glad that I didn't choose them for a service provider - I'm in the market right now, and they saved me a phone call.

Re:Liars, Dumbasses and Fools

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you read the case study carefully, the only part that took longer than windows was the ensim installation ( control panel )

Re:Liars, Dumbasses and Fools

[Queuetue]

Interesting point - although they never come out and say it, they do make a point of mentioning the control panel whenever they quote a time...

One could ask why would they be so precise unless it was a necessary part of making the statement true.

Good eye, btw - I didn't catch that - mainly because I still have no idea what ensim is.

Snake-oil sales pitch?

[BenjyD]

Doesn't this seem exactly like the classic snake-oil sales technique - having a friend in the audience who you pretend never to have seen before enthusiastically buy ten bottles to make the product seem more attractive?

Purges for Dummies authored by Stalin!

[Hiigara]

Excerpt from the second page of the thread:

"If this was a publicity stunt then it's probably not a very good one, considering that now most slashdotters are going to be vehemently against EV1, so while they'll get the traffic it won't be translating into sales for the most part (it may for some, not all slashdotters hate SCO, but I imagine it's a fairly small percentage of the total)."

There... is... evil... among us!

We must hunt down the dogs and purge the SCO supporters! ...

Okay done. :)

Re:SCO not TSG

[Anonymous Coward]

TSG is the stock symbol for "The Sabre Group" not "The SCO Group", just call SCO SCO.

Re:I'm sorry, but he's NOT an idiot

[Arker]

Are you aware of EV1's msft success story so prominently displayed on msft web-site? Seems like an awfully cozy relationship to me.

Yep. They started an all linux site, and MS went way out of their way to make it possible for them to roll out Windows servers as easily as they had been doing with Linux from the get-go. So now they offer both. I don't see anything necessarily sinister in that. There could certainly be some sinister dealings underneath it, but maybe not *shrug* it could just be good business sense on EV1s part, given that MS was willing to go to all that trouble to lower their costs, and that some customers do want Windows servers, why not?

And consider the timing. Scox has a windfall of negative news right now, and earnings come out Wednesday; what convenient timing for this PR hype.

To the best of my knowledge true, and sleazy as hell, but doesn't necessarily mean that EV1 is up to anything wrong themselves.

The guy is CEO of #6 web-hosting company in the USA. Hardly an idiot. Certainly his company has a legal department. Certainly they know about redhat indemnification, certainly they know that scox can't sue their customers, certainly they how laughably weak scox's case is.

Well I've known several high ranking executives over the years that were total morons, so I won't just accept this as a given. It's possible. But I think it's more likely the guy is a well meaning moron, personally.

forget ev1

[Norny]

If I were an ev1 customer, which I'm not, I'd leave and go to someone that runs FreeBSD servers like pair.com.

Re:No articles. No server. Just slashdot.

[johannesg]

I wasn't dissing you, I was annoyed I couldn't do it myself ;-)

Dear EV1servers.net

[Rorgg]

you're using my IP too! Please send me $1 million. What? I've shown you as much proof as SCO has.

Who else?

[Queuetue]

Applying some guesswork and false logic, I can come to the inaginary conclusion that SCO has tried to make "sweetheart deals" with other Linux-using companies, and was turned down.

If you know of any, please apply pressure to them to come forward and tell why they sent SCO packing - this story needs some anti-spin applied.

Sent this to my hosting provider today:

[ballpoint]

Dear Sirs,

You may be aware that the SCO Group is offering a Linux IP 'License', and that this is seen by a large portion of the internet community as an attempt to threaten and extort Linux users. More information about this case can be found here: http://www.groklaw.com

It is my opinion that entering a business relation with the SCO Group is a dangerous proposition. Therefore, as your customer, I would like to be assured that you have no plans to license anything from the SCO Group. If I do not receive this assurance in due time, I will be obliged to start contingency planning.

Regards

Re:EV1 is also infringing my IP

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention, with quantity discount, the expected licensing fee only comes to $6,590,000. What a bargain!

$1 million won't go a long way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the math....at a $500 per hour billing for David Boies (I'm a lawyer, and I don't charge that amount, but I know a number of lawyers who do - doh!) that works out so that Ev1servers.net paid for an additional 2000 hours of Mr. Boies time, or put another way, 2000 hours of Mr. Boies various associates' time. That is practically an ENTIRE YEAR that Boies et al can work on the case.

Haven't seen the reference, but 20,000 servers at ev1servers.net @ $699 per server yields $ 13,980,000. If they paid full fare, that would yield over 13 YEARS of fun. Woo-hoo!

Extortion - the new American pasttime.....

Head Surfer is an idiot.

[fuqqer]

I'm finding it hard to believe that this guy is running this company. With choice quotes such as " SCO already has like $60 million on hand." I have like fifty like dollars in my like wallet you know.
Great typos like 'oru', 'significcant' and 'plaugarists'.
The brilliant insight into our legal system "The outcome of every legal action is subject to risk. (Just look at the OJ Simpson case .. who would have figured that one) There is significcant risk on both sides of this equation."
The most telling thing that says this guy is an idiot is that he fell for SCO's BS hook line and sinker. If his company truly uses RedHat, as far as I know, he's already been offered indemnification.

Let this guy throw money away, hopefully evolution will take over and make this guys business unfit to survive.

No sig here, move along now.

My Response

[Bob9113]

Just sent the following to EV1:

Hi,

I rent one of your servers (the machine from which I'm sending this). I have been extremely pleased with your uptime, bandwidth, and pricing. I would like to remain a customer.

I have read your open letter regarding the SCO license in the forums, and understand your position. I also think some of the counterpoints that have been made are quite valid. I think there is an easy way to recover the support of those who see Linux as an important part of the national and global economy.

Please consider contributing to the OSDL's legal defense fund.
http://www.osdl.org/about_osdl/legal/lldf/l ldf_des cription.html

I will be on vacation until early next week. Upon my return, I will check the front page of your website. If there is a large public notice that you have given the OSDL's Linux Legal Defense Fund a contribution equal to or greater than the amount you paid SCO, I will be very happy to continue using your service.

You have chosen to give money to highwaymen who have made baseless allegations about their ownership of some small portion of Linux. If you genuinely feel that SCO has earned your money, it seems abundantly clear that you owe far more to the people who actually wrote Linux. What better way to invest that money than in defending Linux from the same highwaymen that have just held you up at lawyerpoint?

You currently pay Red Hat for their support services. According to the license under which Linux is distributed (including the license under which SCO distributes Linux), you do not have to pay for the intellectual property. If you choose to pay for the intellectual property rights to Linux, you should be paying the people who own those rights. In this case, that money can be best spent by defending those authors' right to their intellectual property.

Thank you for your time,

Robert Bushman

Re:My Response

[aguga]

I have six servers on EV1. Payed for them this month already, and yes. I agree with Robert Bushman. Seconding this, and disgusted. People, time for an EV1 Exodus.

Re:My Response

[lordkimbot]

Very good! The most intelligent response I've read so far today. It will be interesting to see if anyone picks up on this. It certainly illustrates a fallacy. Their business model relies on the hard work and creative talent of Linux developers, yet they make no effort to support Linux, beyond their Red Hat licenses. I hope this point gets legs.

Re:My Response

[Anonymous Coward]

Another stupid Slashdot user who essentially hurts Linux. Linux is not about your religion, the number one reason why Linux become Linux today is not because of the Linus only, but because companies didn't see any problem using it. By hurting a Linux user you are sending a message to possible Linux users that they should stay away from Linux and never touch it. Dealing with Linux is definitely dangerous in anyway. If you succeed in hurting this business, not many companies are going to support Linux anymore. Right now, all hints point to the fact that you shouldn't be touching Linux. Of course I am assuming that Linux users are going to follow Slashdot or that average Linux user is as idiot as an average Slashdor user.

And the real owner of the car can sue.

[GodWasAnAlien]

The real owners of the linux car can/should sue SCO for slander of title.

NO

[Arker]

No, I will not call TSG SCO. SCO was the Santa Cruz Operation. They weren't the be all and end all of Unix, but they were actually fairly cool. They are not in the same league at all with The SCO Group, and they do still exist, under the name Tarantella. And no one reading this page is going to think I'm referring to The Saber Group, we know who we're talking about, the Canopy company formerly known as Caldera, now calling themselves the SCO Group and fraudulently impersonating the Santa Cruz Operation.

So no, I won't call TSG SCO, thanks anyway.

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[RobertB-DC]

EV1 has become famous as a porn hosting site:

Well, at least now I know *why* I only pay $12/month (after "fees") for dialup: My surfing is subsidized by porn.

If you plugged that into a spreadsheet, wouldn't that be a "circular reference"?

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's more likely RackShack changed it's name to EV1Servers due to the fact that their #1 competitor RackSPACE was rather unhappy about the name confusion that was going on.

What are the alternatives?

[scarolan]

Ok, I'm an EV1 customer and would like to bring my business elsewhere. What are my options? Here are a few competitors I checked out, can anyone suggest some more:

ServerBeach.com
1and1.com

Features that are important to me are:

* Reasonable pricing
* 24/7 customer support - at least via email/chat if not by phone
* Reliable company, good uptime record

Re:What are the alternatives?

[scarolan]

Forgot to mention, I need a dedicated server. Don't care what flavor of linux or what kind of control panel it has on it. As long as I have PHP and MySQL, and also an automated backup option would be REAL nice.

Re:What are the alternatives?

[Reziac]

I can't help wrt stuff like managed servers, or options beyond what's listed in their hosting packages, but when 1and1.com offered their smallest package for 3 years free as a promo, I took it under the "what the hell" theory. And within a month, I'd already about decided that if this was typical, I'd be keeping the account when the freebie runs out, and have been sending clients there as well. ($5/mo.: 500mb space, 5GB/mo. xfer allotment, 50 mailboxes, various other perks incl. full version of NOF7. Goes up from there.)

One reason being that live humans answer support emails, with relevant answers to issues or questions, not scripted bullshit.

We'll see what I think of it in 3 years, but if nothing changes, I'll be staying.

Re:What are the alternatives?

[/dev/trash]

* Reasonable pricing
* 24/7 customer support - at least via email/chat if not by phone
* Reliable company, good uptime record

pick two

Re:What are the alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been very happy with ServerMatrix so far. I migrated from EV1 last year.

EV1 RedHat license termination?

[kompiluj]

Should not Red Hat terminate EV1 license as Fyodor did with SCO?

Didn't Spend Enough Money

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't spend enough $$ to purchase the SCO Spellcheck IP, although if you have a brain you don't need it.

Suspect !CYA

[burnin1965]

In the written statement the EV1 CEO, if that is who wrote the letter, does make the arguement that a license agreement appeared to be the better business case compared to fighting a legal battle.

However, I suspect there are some closed door dealings going on because this business case arguement doesn't hold water.

1) A lawsuit will result in short term expenses where as licensing has both short and long term expenses. There is the risk of losing the lawsuit and then paying both but....

2) With a little reading of the media coverage on both sides of the SCO issue it should be rather obvious to anyone but the densest dolt that SCO now has a snowball's chance in hell of winning this case. Basically SCO's arguement is that anyone who has purchased a license from AT&T for SYSV have relinquished some of their rights to their OWN source code and cannot make their OWN source code available to anyone. Not only is the arguement ludicrous, but this is only a SCO interpretation of the license which has been debunked by recent discovery of an AT&T explanation in 1985 of the license which clearly states that the licensing intention was NOT to take away such rights from licensees.

3) And the risks associated with the licensing business case are very high. You may lose current and potential customers due to negative publicity and your increased operational costs due to licensing will force an increase in customer pricing which may give competetors an edge.


Of course I am biased, I use linux extensively and I believe the benefits of open source far out weigh any purported benefits of closed source. But I still try to look at these issues with an open mind and to me something seems fishy in this EV1 SCO IP licensing business case.

burnin

No, it not OK

[nonameisgood]

It is still illegal in the US to pay blackmail. Aside from enabling further frivolity, payment to SCO undermines principles we hold dear, such as a freedom from coercion or extortion.

Further, SCO does not have the right to sell what they do not own and which was created by others (and released under the GPL), and there is a great deal of doubt whether they do in fact own what they pretend to own, Linux notwithstanding. They are coercing people and companies into giving them money and they are doing it with the intent to defraud, as demonstrated by their obfuscation.

It is bad business and it is bad for America (and everywhere else for that matter.)

Any action to support or promote SCO's lawsuit is in fact an attack on all of the tremendously dedicated and talented unnamed that put their own work (read "IP") into Linux and other open source projects.

Haha!

[boudie]

Boy,that was an easy million. How did anyone that stupid make that much money? Extortion must be tax-deductible these days, I'm sure the accountants will take care of it.

cover

[mu51c10rd]

He probably wants to cover his company no matter what happens. This is understandable as his customers and employees rely upon stability. Hopefully, the SCO lawsuit will lose in court and SCO will cease to exist, but it appears that this gentleman merely wants to insure himself against anything bad (ie SCO wins by a miracle)that may happen.

On a side note, he probably should have proofread his letter as it is full of grammatical errors.

More money to the FUD machine

[chrispyman]

While I think that EV1 Servers is honestly just trying to protect its customers and put their fears at bay, it's foolish to think that whatever 7 figure amount they paid isn't going to go directly towards SCO's FUD machine. Besides, didn't SCO themselves say they weren't going to sue an ISP?

Clueless customers.

[phorm]

From my understanding, which was also my original thought in the first place, EV1 "bought" SCO "licenses" because of the concern some of their customers had about the Linux servers.

Now this wasn't because EV1 particularly wanted to bend over to SCO, but because they'd rather do so that alienate the idiots. For those that know the situation, think of it something like doing something you know is rather useless/stupid for a boss or important client (many of us have been there).

Explaining exactly what was "bought" isn't going to help much, because those who are clueless enough to press for a "license" never understand that it wasn't needed in the first place. I'm just hoping that any excess costs due to this (though EV1 might just take a bite if it's small enough) get passed on to the stupid customers who wanted the license rather than those who saw it for the BS that it is.

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[boudie]

So THAT is how they got all their money... guess they don't have to worry about losing those customers on principle.

Mod parent up

[Error27]

Probably the CEO was promised kickbacks from Microsoft for signing up with SCO. That's fine if that's how he wants to make money, but we want our share in return.

very, very simple response

[SlashDread]

Just pull your account from EV1.

"/Dread"

Stop funding SCO!

[silicon not in the v]

You know, I loved his self-contradicting response to the allegation that they are funding SCO's legal fights. Here are the two choice quotes:

"Other have claimed that we're essentially funding SCOs various lawsuits. This is not true...our small fee would not go very far defending an action such as this, much less prosecuting one."
So just because you don't give enough to completely fund an entire lawsuit on your own, you are not funding them??? I can't wait to hear that from hundreds of other wuss companies who roll over to SCO's threats and then wonder how they have the funds to continue their rampage.

"Whatever your position on the various suits, which SCO has said will increase. These suits have a very real and significant cost, even if proven unsuccessful. These are costs we were prepared to bear as we did in the Free Speech case with CI Host."
You're right! SCO is mounting up significant costs with all these lawsuits they have going, and it's extremely helpful to them that you are willing to bear these costs. I do see that he means they will bear the costs on the receiving end of their customers that might get sued, but I don't see how giving money to SCO accomplishes that. On the contrary, if people would stop giving money to SCO, they wouldn't have the funds to continue filing lawsuits.

I have this funny picture in my head of SCO running out of legal bullets, but companies like this keep giving them "special" bullets that can't hit their customers. They think they are protecting their customers, but if they would STOP GIVING THEM BULLETS, they would be protecting everyone!

"plaugerists"

[Rock Ridge]

Are they related to P.J. Plauger?

Let's see the "license" Headsurfer

[Newspimp]

Well, from one Texas-based "Robert" to another, I make this proposal to Headsurfer.

Make your license with SCO public. You say it wasn't Linux you licensed from SCO, then prove it. Publish your license with SCO. Not only will it quell those that say you padded the coffers of SCO with protection money for Linux, by showing them that you paid for *actual* intellectual property (you did, right?) but it will calm your clients and potential clients if they know that you used money taken from customers and spent it on valid software for their use.

That is unless the license reads "We 0wn j00" (in essence, of course)

Currently, it appears you've done the following.

• Paid SCO to not be bullied over using Linux anymore
• Got a helluva licensing deal from Microsoft in the interim, which is kinda shady WRT the SCO bit...
• Snubbed MANY of the Linux and Open Source contributors, those that you say you respect and that provided MUCH of the software that has made your business economically viable
• Snubbed many of the same technical types who *were* considering your services
• And have entered into a contract, which currently, appears to be impossible not to violate (GPL + Linux + Kernel redistribution on server + SCO License = revoked GPL and violation of SCO license which opens you up to suits. They've said recently they intend to sue their customers. Helluva time to become one...)

So, do you think the protection was worth it. If so, show us what you got for your Million dollars. That is unless there was a great snake oil sale in Lindon....

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[molo]

I have mod points, but I'm responding instead because I think you have a flawed argument.

Its called FREE SPEECH !! I'm glad that they allow their hosting to be used by anything the customer wants. Being a common carrier means that you are not responsible for other people's content.

Isn't this what we said that the Internet is all about? Anyone can be a publisher, anyone can create content. The corralary to that is that the content needs to be hosted somewhere.

While I do disagree with their customers, I don't disagree with the company allowing people to post whatever they want.

-molo

Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

"But boycotting a third party because they host with people who paid protection money to the criminals ... well, I think that's enough levels of indirection for even the most rabid C++ programmer."

Well, EV1 is a haven for spammers and porn, so it won't be much of an effort to avoid their customers.

Re:Not really

[TWX]

"Well, EV1 is a haven for spammers and porn, so it won't be much of an effort to avoid their customers."

That's easy for you to say...

After SCO looses their law suits ...

[scharkalvin]

I hope EV1 will then file suit against SCO for fraud, in selling them a license that they had NO right to sell (and demand their $1000000 back).

That's the only way they will wipe the shit off their face.

Free Money from EV1!

[0x0d0a]

I would like to encourage everyone to take advantage of this exciting opportunity!

EV1 apparently gives anyone willing to threaten them with a lawsuit money to not sue them! All you have to do is file a ridiculous lawsuit and take the money. Heck, sue the CEO for not having blue hair. They'll enthusiastically shell out! Opportunities like this do not come along often -- usually, executives aren't suckers to this degree -- so grab it while you have a chance.

Note that if you are an EV1 customer, you are helping fund the SCO lawsuit.

Morals

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think that he is a great businessman who runs a profitable company that successfully delivers a quality product to its customers."

I think he supplies a good hosting solutions for porn and spam.

Further, he support SCO by paying them money; money that will be used to destory and fragment the Linux community.

I don't know about you, but I actually care where my money goes. I'd rather pay $20 more a month and go with somebody with scruples.

This guy always has an excuse whey he has no morals or scruples, so AFAIC, he can go to hell because I won't do business with him or any companies affiliated with him.

Surely...

[dex22]

Surely, if EV1servers agreed to this license from SCO, they have repudiated the GPL and lost their right to use software under the GPL license? This means they can't use any of their admin tools, or NMAP, or...

Neither is Larry Flint

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hardly an idiot."

Larry Flint is a smart guy too, but I wouldn't do business with him.

If profit is all that rules your life, then I feel sorry for you. But more importantly, i choose not to do business with a guy who is mostly known as a person who provides a safe have for pop-up spammers, and porno sites.

Nothing wrong with Porno, either. But you've got to admit, he's so sleazy you'd wash your hands if you shook hands with him.

no, Mr. Marsh, what you've done...

[rbird76]

is to ensure that this is an issue for your customers, and to put yourself and your company at great financial risk. In a previous post (post #8435019), I posited that going into business or establishing a contractual obligation with SCO puts EV1 at more risk rather than less from SCO. If that is correct, then EV1 has given away much of their defense (their ability to dismiss a lawsuit against them by SCO) and paid their attacker off (although considering SCO's plan of suing their customers, that doesn't seem like a good defense). This sounds like Czechoslovakia in 1938 claiming that giving up part of their land to Germany relieved them of worries about Germany's territorial ambition. That worked out so well for Czechoslovakia, didn't it?

Then you are "vilified by some diehards within the industry"? No, you should be vilified for your stupidity. Paying SCO to avoid trouble in this case (where it would be both easier and more sensible to avoid it) is like committing suicide for fear of being murdered. You gave up your freedom to secure your safety only to have neither, all while putting you and your customers at risk. I can't fathom why you think this is a good idea - either your legal team failed their EEG tests or there is a big part of this that I am missing.

If the legal opinion here is correct (and it's possible that it isn't), then what EV1 has done is increased the risk to itself while damaging its reputation among the people it advertises to and appeasing the demon of IT known as SCO. Is there any legal or business opinion in which context this makes sense?

Re:no, Mr. Marsh, what you've done...

[emurphy42]

This sounds like Czechoslovakia in 1938 claiming that giving up part of their land to Germany relieved them of worries about Germany's territorial ambition. That worked out so well for Czechoslovakia, didn't it?

I hate to have to remind you of Godwin's Law (I really do think this was a boneheaded move on EV1's part), but...

Re:no, Mr. Marsh, what you've done...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, bugger Godwin. He was a complete Nazi anyway.

dont use serverbeach

[Indy1]

avoid serverbeach, they are heavily blacklisted for spamming.

Don't be an idiot.

[handmedowns]

The problem is.

1.) SCO ALREADY licensed them use of this IP under the GPL and is now revoking that use even though they continued to distribute it after their lawsuit was filed and the stolen IP was supposedly known.

2.) You have NO IDEA what you just bought since SCO has no idea either, just look at the transcripts during the motion for discovery for IBM. They admit they can't provide what IBM has stolen until IBM provides them with everything under the sun so they can sift through it and find something.

3.) Since you DONT know what you licensed, there's nothing to keep SCO from coming back and saying "oh, we found some more stolen IP, and this ones really a whopper, so you'll have to license that too." Do you really think that 1 $699 license covers all acknowledged stolen IP as well as any IP found stolen in the future? They may re-assess its worth just like they re-assessed your rights to use that IP through the GPL.

Congratulations, you've just purchased a vapor license to "protect" your company and your customers.

If you're going to look at this from a business perspective, at least pretend you have some knowledge and experience in doing so. This isn't about funding more legal battles or supporting or not supporting SCO, this is and always has been about covering your ass.

PR sounds right to me...

[GAVollink]

I don't buy the SCO payoff (maybe discount) theories. Basically, this is part of an old addage: "There is no such thing as bad publicity."

How many people are SlashDot readers, and have never heard of EV1? (plenty)

And maybe some don't run Linux, and maybe don't care about the SCO debate, and hey, look at this big hosting provider - big enough for SlashDot to post info on them, front page...

Maybe they look up EV1 for an offsite distributed hosting project.

Now consider that Slashdot is not the only 'often checked-front page' that is covering this story. Guaranteed, they'll gain far more business than they'll loose in the long run because of this stunt.

Plaugerists

[Losat]

It has been argued by a Linux Journal reporter that I have essentially called the various GPL Linux developers plaugerists.

Well, many of them have enjoyed articles and work by P. J. Plauger over the years. Does that make them Plaugerists?

GNU/GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

What GPL license can do with who pay a license to SCO?

By example, any OpenSource Project can deny their use because of this paid false license from SCO?

like if they use phpBB, the ppl from phpBB can do like nmap has done with SCO? but with EV1, SCO and anothers that may go by this way?

mods bust

[Stormbringer]

Okay, I'm killing my mods. Anybody know how to fix a mouse-slip in moderation once you've hit 'moderate'? The parent post should NOT have been modded off-topic by my mouse.

Just Look at the Simpson case

[mykepredko]

This is an unfortunate reference and if it was the basis for deciding to buy the license from SCO, it was an uninformed opinion.

A couple of excellent references on why the jury decision came out the way it did are:

• Outrage : The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder by Vincent Bugliosi
  
• REASONABLE DOUBTS : THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM AND THE O. J. SIMPSON CASE by Alan M. Dershowitz
  

The long and the short of both books is that the prosecution didn't have their game face on and blew the case before the trial even started.

The comment above "Law means what the judge/jury feels right will win" is exactly right - I just wish something other than the Simpson case was used as a reference as something that went unexpectedly.

Probably a better thought, as my company's lawyers have told me on several occasions, when you go to court, nobody wins.

Sorry for the personal soapbox but the reference to the Simpson case in this way made me question the validity of the decision to buy the SCO License.

myke

danegeld

[geoff lane]

The problem with paying Danegeld is that the Danes keep coming back for more.

Now that SCO know who the easy touch is they'll be back whenever funds are low, "Oh no Mr March the new IP wasn't covered by the previous license. $1M in small bills please. Have you met Big Frank and Slasher Bill?"

been there....

[ShadowBottle]

I've actually worked with Robert Marsh before. Do not even bother noticing this event. Where morals and ethics are involved, Mr. Marsh is a sailer, deep in the Atlantic, without a compass. I have seen him award employees (in person) for their "excellent customer service" skills in cash (in front of the entire company) only to have someone from finance force them to sign an agreement two days later that allows EV1 to add the award to their paycheck, remove it and then tax them for it (I guess $10,000 tax free in gift's a year isn't enough when it's going towards some mustangs huh Robert?). Or better yet, giving $1,000 to say three families whose entire lives were mangled by a pretty nasty flood in Houston, sending an email out to all your customers saying "Hey.. look what good guys we are, people that work here had problems just like you guys and we're helping them out, back patting all around!" Then, again, doing an about-face about three weeks later and saying "Oh yeah.. that uh.. thousand dollars? Yeah.. well most of that was a loan.. but that's ok! We can slowly take it out of your pay check until you pay us back." Yes, it may have been nice to do this to begin with, but you don't brag to all your customers that you -gave- these families a thousand dollars and then take most of it back from them. That has to be criminal on some level. Why didn't you tell your customers about that Robert? That you made most of it a loan? Anyway... I'm sure George or someone over at EV1 is seeing this. Just wanted to say that you guys actually made it fun and I still can't understand how Marsh got it to stay up this long.

Re:been there....

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude! Did he really do this?

Re:been there....

[/dev/trash]

So what youa re saying is that it's okay to cheat the IRS out of its money?

Re:been there....

[Anonymous Coward]

Company's and individuals are allowed to give out "gift" monies up to $10,000 a year without taxation. www.irs.gov Ev1 is not that big of a company, no more than 100-150 employees.

His common-root ancestry kicked in

[fleppir]

Obviously the man is from London East-End and just typed what he would say.

Well, he's sitting pretty

[delmoi]

His only problem right now is that he doesn't have enough hardware to meet customer demand. EV1 has sold out of every dedicated host package they offer.

I admit, I've been looking for hosting packages lately and I checked them out because I'd heard of them. They have pretty good rates, $90 for 700gb/mo. and I'd be tempted if was looking for something in that price range.

Re:Well, he's sitting pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if 30% of the statements about cancelling EV1 contracts are true, he'll have quite a few available servers by the end of this month. One problem less for Mr. Marsh...

Its all adding up now...

[Anonymous Coward]

EV1's close relationship with Microsoft, both companies contributing heavily to SCO, and SCO's announcement that they will be suing a company that uses Linux tomorrow http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/02/03 17222&mode=thread ... anyone else think the DOJ should pay attention to this?

Why trust a company that doesn't know how to spell

[dtperik]

I started to read the article, and the 9th word is spelled wrong. You'd think they were posting to /. I guess it shows how brilliant they are. First wasting $ on SCO (and funding their illigetimate legal tirade in the process), then throw out an explanation that has a simple spelling error in the first few words. My suggestion .... run,... run away as fast as you can.

P.S. If there are spelling errors in my submission, remember, this is /., and I wouldn't want to ruin the mood by proofreading ;-).

Hey now!

[autopr0n]

What's wrong with porn hosting!?

Re:Hey now!

[Anonymous Coward]

All hail autopr0n.

I think it's not so much the hosting that everyone is bothered about, but the spamming that they (EV1s' customers, [formerly Rackshack] spammed quite a bit).

Re:Hey now!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing inherently wrong with porn hosting, but 99% of porn companies are insufferable spammers who ruin everyone's internet experience with horrible pop-ups, googlebombing, spyware, etc.
Well, looking on the bright side, they're also one of the reasons why I and many others use Mozilla... builtin pop-up / ad-blocking...

Stupidity should be painful

[Weaselmancer]

I can see where this is coming from, but isn't it just a tad extreme? Boycotting SCO is one thing. Boycotting EV1 because they paid their protection money is another.

Nope, it's not extreme at all. Just one single user buying one of their stupid licenses gives them a note of validity. A precedent.

And, that money goes to SCO, who will use it to hurt other people with and continue their nonsense. I don't buy music CDs for the same reason, because of the RIAA. I make sure my money does not support people who wish to abuse me, curtail my rights, or harm the world if I can help it.

A good example of this would be spam. It's the one idiot in a gazillion that buys the Gene-ric Vi'ag'ra that makes spam profitable, and therefore keeps spam around. And EV1 just became that idiot for the entire Linux community.

So to sum up, stupidity should be painful. Boycott them.

Weaselmancer

Re:Stupidity should be painful

[Captain Splendid]

Shorter Weaselmancer:

"EV1, don't be that guy."

Re:Stupidity should be painful

[RAMMS EIN]

``I don't buy music CDs for the same reason, because of the RIAA.''

And what is the RIAA doing wrong? They are protecting themselves and their customers against revenue declines due to illegal copying of music. True, the DMCA is flawed and being abused, but it wasn't the RIAA who wrote it into law, and they seem to be using it to do their job of bringing copyright pirates to justice. The law may be their (or the MPAA, or whomever's) idea, but even then they were just using the means they had (exploiting weaknesses in the legislative system).

``So to sum up, stupidity should be painful. Boycott them.''

I am not so convinced EV1 is being stupid. They protect themselves and their customers. I think that's what any reasonable company should do. Others may believe SCO's case and SCO's licenses are crap (and I'm with them), but that doesn't mean that SCO is not going to win. By buying the license, you can at least have the reasonable expectation that SCO will go after others rather than you.

Of course, you are free to boycott EV1 for whatever reason you have, but I do not believe buying SCO licenses is a good one.

BTW, I know I am the devil's advocate here, but I am open to good arguments. Please don't waste your time on flames.

Re:Stupidity should be painful

[Weaselmancer]

I know I am the devil's advocate here, but I am open to good arguments. Please don't waste your time on flames.

Fair enough. You didn't post as AC, so I'll bite. Anyone spending that much karma deserves a few straight answers.

And what is the RIAA doing wrong?

You have an id # in the 500,000 range, so you're not new here. So, I'm not going to bother with this one. I will say this though - it's the comment that got you modded to zero as flamebait. Around here, that's like walking into a bar mitzvah and saying that you admire Mel Gibson's dad for his refreshing point of view.

I am not so convinced EV1 is being stupid. They protect themselves and their customers.

I'm sure some guy in marketing thought exactly that. "Hey Bob, I've got an idea! Let's buy a SCO license and be the first on the planet to be immune to the SCO litigation."

The problem is, is that having a business association with SCO opens you up to lawsuits from them, not prevent them. To put it another way, never deal with the devil, son. He don't play fair.

Of course, you are free to boycott EV1 for whatever reason you have, but I do not believe buying SCO licenses is a good one.

I do. And I can give you a few more reasons why, as well as my original post.

For one, it sets a precedent to other companies dumb enough to back SCO's dubious claims. If a boycott is the result of buying one of SCO's bogus vaporware licenses, maybe the next guy will think twice before buying one.

Also, it's not fashionable these days to say things like this, but I'm going to do it anyways. Evil must be opposed. If I may take off my kid gloves for a moment - SCO are thieves. Their claims to other peoples works are immoral, and therefore must be opposed. All it takes for criminals to prosper is for good people to do nothing. So I'm doing what I can, by boycotting SCO and anyone who backs them. And I hope others do the same.

Weaselmancer

Re:Stupidity should be painful

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. A pro-RIAA and SCO troll in one post. Personally, I have pretty much quit listening to new music and only buy CDs to replace my old LPs. The radio doesn't play what I like and some RIAA sturm truppen might come knocking on spec. if I subscribed to a file sharing network in order to locate artists I do like. So, the RIAA obviously neither wants or needs my cash. What are they doing wrong? Why, they are poisoning their own well. It might not actually be wrong, but is stupid and hopefully profoundly painful.

EV1 now, EV1 is in bed with Microsoft as well as SCO. They showed up back in September in an MS add about ISPs who found Linux too difficult. EV1 also shows up on Spam Haus. As far protecting themselves goes, like Lehmans, their attorney, if competent, could suggest they contact Red Hat. They could ask for help from one of the defense funds now set up to protect users from the silliness of SCO.

Even if SCO wins its cases with IBM, Red Hat and Novell, there are no legal grounds for any suit against a Linux user, unless they have some grounds for suspecting the "user" of copying. The user was employing the software in good faith, following the terms of the license (GPL), ergo no grounds.

The only targets that SCO could legitimately paint are organziations that originate distributions ("copies") of Linux, even under the near irrationality of the DMCA. Study up on Groklaw and Lamlaw. It might be revealing. SCO may be lucky if the copyright holders of a lot of the parts that compose a linux release don't slap them with a DMCA suit or suits. It could amount to thousands of individual suits, which would consume SCO's war chest in moments of legal time.

Re:Stupidity should be painful

[MrResistor]

And what is the RIAA doing wrong?

You have an id # in the 500,000 range, so you're not new here. So, I'm not going to bother with this one. I will say this though - it's the comment that got you modded to zero as flamebait. Around here, that's like walking into a bar mitzvah and saying that you admire Mel Gibson's dad for his refreshing point of view.

You have an id # in the 500,000 range, so you might not have this realized yet: slashbot groupthink != right.

The RIAA isn't doing anything wrong. Copyright infringment is against the law, you know, and sharing your entire music collection with everybody and their third uncle on kazaa is copyright infringement. You can argue till your blue in the face that it isn't, but you'd still be wrong.

I'll grant you, suing grandmothers and 12 year old girls is bad PR, and maybe even bad for business, but it isn't wrong. All the people who got sued were breaking the law.

Re:Stupidity should be painful

[Weaselmancer]

You have an id # in the 500,000 range, so you might not have this realized yet: slashbot groupthink != right.

Read again - I didn't imply any right or wrong. I said that I wasn't going to bother with responding, and pointed out why he got modded to zero. Slashdot is an unfriendly room to back the RIAA in.

But since you brought it up, the RIAA is in the wrong - and it's an opinion I came to all by myself.

Weaselmancer

Re:Stupidity should be painful

[MrResistor]

But since you brought it up, the RIAA is in the wrong - and it's an opinion I came to all by myself.

The law says they're not. How do you back up your position?

Re:Stupidity should be painful

[Weaselmancer]

Because the law isn't always the best yardstick of right and wrong. Currently, the laws that govern this kind of behavior are the result of some of the most intense lobbying ever. They're overblown.

I believe in checks and balances in the system. Having a single unilateral entity that answers to nobody is not how the system is supposed to work. Currently the RIAA/MPAA are sidestepping due process with the help of a senator, Fritz Hollings. Do a little research on him. Search Google for his nickname, "The Senator from Disney", so named because of his being bankrolled by the entertainment industry. Here's an example of the kind of nonsense this guy is trying to make into law.

As an example of the way things work now, let's say you share a music file. The RIAA logs on to the network and finds "this IP is sharing this file". They then bully your ISP into divulging their records, and then threaten to sue you for millions, and "allow" you to settle for thousands.

The FBI currently doesn't have that much leeway in pursuing criminals. Think about that. Now consider that they're still lobbying. What's next? They've already asserted that if the music went to your account, you are responsible. Even if it wasn't you. They've busted grandparents who's grandkids downloaded music. What if your machine gets a virus and sets itself up as a file swapping node?

Another problem with the RIAA, is that they fail to meet their established purpose. They are supposed to facilitate music and protect musicians, but instead do the exact opposite. They're essentially an extortion racket, and have been since long before the first MP3 was burned.

If you'd like to know about what a nest of criminals the RIAA are, read this article by Steve Albini. It's a must-read about how the music industry works. They're a protection racket.

And with the exception of Metallica (who, as everyone knows were replaced by pod people replicants late in '97), how many musicians can you name that are in favor of the RIAA's legal thrashings about? If the RIAA is helping people, wouldn't those people stand up and say thank you? The silence is deafening.

Do a little research. Here's a good example, an interview with Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo fame. It's a good read, especially where music executives fly him to Jamaica, get him higher than a kite and try to get him to sign legal documents.

Make no mistake, the RIAA are scum. And the fact that their lobbying has given them powers that compare well with the NSA should make you worry. It does me - and I don't share music. It gives me the creeps when criminals get that kind of power.

Weaselmancer

Re:Stupidity should be painful

[MrResistor]

Woah there! Put the collander down and back away from the tinfoil!

First of all, I'm very much aware of how the music industry works. I used to be a musician myself, and I have several friends who have among them been involved in every aspect of it, including but not limited to members of signed bands, recording engineers, scouts, and executive positions. A few have even done all of those. Additionally, I've been reading /. for a long time, and have probably read far more articles on copyright and the doings of the Senator from Disney than you have. I agree that the RIAA is a wreched hive of scum and villainy.

However, that's largely irrelevant to this particular discussion, and several of your points are simply wrong.

As an example of the way things work now, let's say you share a music file. The RIAA logs on to the network and finds "this IP is sharing this file". They then bully your ISP into divulging their records, and then threaten to sue you for millions, and "allow" you to settle for thousands.

Aside from the bullying, this is exactly how it SHOULD work, and the bullying only works because the people who run the ISPs are generally spineless wimps who choose to submit to improperly filed subpoenas. If you have an issue, why don't you take it up with your ISP?

If I were sharing a music file, I'd be breaking the law, and the "victim" certainly has a right to seek recompense.

They've busted grandparents who's grandkids downloaded music.

Image that! An adult being held accountable for the actions of a minor in their charge, what a novel concept. Oh wait, NO IT ISN'T!

What if your machine gets a virus and sets itself up as a file swapping node?

Well then you'd have a pretty good defense, wouldn't you? Regardless of what powers you think the RIAA has, they aren't judge, jury, and executioner, they're merely the plaintiff.

Another problem with the RIAA, is that they fail to meet their established purpose. They are supposed to facilitate music and protect musicians, but instead do the exact opposite.

No, you fail to understand their purpose. It's the Record INDUSTRY Association, NOT the Record Artists Association. Their purpose is to protect the interests of the record companies which are members, and they perform that function quite well.

There is, to my knowledge, no such organization for musicians. Thats because, by and large, musicians are a bunch of flakey whiners, even more so than actors, and that's saying something! If the musicians are sick of getting the shaft, then the musicians need to get off their asses and do something about it; either they avoid the trap and self-publish (and I know several who do just that), or they organize, ala SAG.

And with the exception of Metallica (who, as everyone knows were replaced by pod people replicants late in '97), how many musicians can you name that are in favor of the RIAA's legal thrashings about?

While Metallica hasn't released a decent album in over 10 years, they have remained true to themselves. It's their music, they created it, they own the rights to it, and they want it distributed to the world on their own terms. It may be stupid, but stupid != wrong, and a band as established as they are has nothing to gain from filesharing, and quite a bit to lose.

The FBI currently doesn't have that much leeway in pursuing criminals.

Copyright infringement is a civil matter, not a criminal matter, so the rules are different. There's a lot more leeway in civil law.

Now consider that they're still lobbying.

That is their right. It's also your right to lobby against them. Do you vote? Do you write letters to your representatives? Do you do anything to support the EFF? If you don't like what's going on, do something about it.

Currently, the laws that govern this kind of behavior are the result of some of the most intense lobbying ever. They're over

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[sweetooth]

Thier principles are that they don't care what you do with your server for the most part. They are more of a common carrier than anything else, and if they did block adult webmasters or hamas members they would simply be impinging on someones free speech. The only time they appear to cut off accounts is when the AUP is broken, the bill isn't paid, or law enforcment asks them to hand over a box that may have been used in a crime. This seems perfectly reasonable to me. Just like the telephone company providing phone service. They provide it for homes, businesses etc without discrimination based on the type of business.

Nope, sorry

[autopr0n]

The GPL only applies to redistribution, not use. You can use GPL software without accepting the agreement, by law (probably) and by the text of the GPL itself.

Re:Nope, sorry

[Arker]

The GPL only applies to redistribution, not use. You can use GPL software without accepting the agreement, by law (probably) and by the text of the GPL itself.

Yes you can use it, but you can't copy it. Making a disk image and installing to thousands of machines from a single source would be copying, now wouldn't it?

Re:Nope, sorry

[TWX]

That's probably still just "use". Remember, the terms of the GPL are for distribution, not for use.

Re:Nope, sorry

[Arker]

That's probably still just "use". Remember, the terms of the GPL are for distribution, not for use.

The terms of the GPL mean nothing if it's revoked. What matters then is straight copyright law. Look it up. You don't have a right to make any copies, outside of one copy for archival purposes only.

Has anyone considered...

[Anonymous Coward]

that it is possible EV1 is going to take a fall for MS/SCO to set a precedence?

SCO is not the government

[autopr0n]

Only after SCO wins their lawsuit against IBM, and has the weight of the US government behind it will not listening to them be Civil disobedience.

Not paying protection money to the mob isn't Civil Disobedience either.

I already block EV1 due to spamming

[Skapare]

I already block EV1 due to spamming. Back in March 2003, my servers were hit with a huge repeated spam attack coming from several addresses in an EV1 address range. It wasn't so huge as to bring down the servers, and they did keep running. But it played hell with my statistical and performance measurements. In terms of incoming email delivery attempts, it was a huge spike on the graph. And despite attempts to communicate with them to get them to stop this, sent my email and made by telephone, I was never able to get the word to any responsible person. A week into the situation it was still going on and I had heard nothing from several emails sent to their abuse address. So I called by telephone and spoke to idiots who refused to even pass on a message, much less get someone responsible on the phone. All he suggested was to send more email to an address that was obviously not being read by anyone capable of stopping the attack. This went on for 6 weeks.

So is it any wonder why I am blocking all of these EV1 address ranges from my mail server:

• 64.246.0.0/18
• 66.98.128.0/17
• 207.44.128.0/17
• 207.218.192.0/18
• 216.12.192.0/19
• 216.40.192.0/18
• 216.88.76.0/23
• 216.127.64.0/19

Note that it isn't because of the spam attack that these are blocked; it's because of the irresponsible way that EV1 is managed that these are blocked.

Had EV1 been sued by SCO, and fought the suit, that would have been reason enough for me to completely wipe out that spam attack incident and remove these blocks. Had Head Surfer even so much as simply announced a refusal to pay extortion money to SCO, and donated it instead to the defense fund, that would also have been reason enough for me to completely wipe out that spam attack incident and remove these blocks. But instead, SCO has not only been helped, but this practice of legalized extortion has been further encouraged. That's reason enough for me to lock these addresses in place.

RIAA Style argument

[autopr0n]

RIAA: "We're doing this to protect the artists" (even though we took their copyrights away).

EV1: "we're doing this to protect our customers." even though the customers face no legal threat.

Actualy, it's the same argument that was used by CT and Hemos about http://alterslash.org/ which reposts the top comments from slashdot. They claimed in an online chat a year or so ago that they *had* to protect comment posters copyright, or something, which was completely false. They were rightfully slammed in the comments, and I guess they never ended up doing anything, since the site is still there.

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[Senior Frac]

Its called FREE SPEECH !! I'm glad that they allow their hosting to be used by anything the customer wants.

I think the real issue is that the customer was spamming, or at least probing for vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, this person making the argument is anti-porn as well as anti-spam. When such people include "it was porn too!" in their argument they open themselves up to the free-speech-at-all-costs crowd. But, they're too stupid to realize this and keep using the argument anyway.

Being a common carrier means that you are not responsible for other people's content.

ISPs are not common carriers. The last time I checked, they were not anxious to become common carriers either. I think your definition of what it means to be a common carrier could be more specific. It's not the panacea you seem to think it is.

A few points...

[Sevn]

The Mafia existed long before the 1920's alcohol prohibition.

There would be no need for a "black market" if it was obviated by a good common market.

Business has no conscience and a higher rank in the pecking order. We've made sure of that by giving corporations higher legal rights than common living breathing individuals. That's not the say being "inherantly evil" but it's much easier for something with no conscience to be perceived that way, and actually be that way.

There are very few amicable deals. Most of the time someone is a loser, and the other person knows it. There isn't much truly voluntary trade left. Try to think of ANY transaction without some sort of rider or clause or parasitic condition that benefits the buyer more than the seller. You'll be hard pressed.

A Free Market is a great dream, but that's not what we have.

Legal Warchest and Amnesty

[BuckaBooBob]

Didn't redhat set up a warchest and a amnesty program to protect its client base from SCO? or was it that they were one of the odd commercial distro's that did not... but if they did opt out on this type of fund they really need to look at it again to prvent their client base from supporting SCO's actions... They need to stop their name from ending up in the press when someone does give into SCO FUD and pay the fee's...

Pig in a Poke

[Lord Apathy]

My grandfather always said never buy a pig in a poke. I think that old saying can be applied here, all though I'm not all together sure what a poke is.

Oh well that is what this dumb fuck as bought. What are the ip address for EV1 so I can go ahead and firewall them off. Hell, that would be a good way to let them know we are not too happy with them. Black hole thier ass.

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[molo]

ISPs are not common carriers. The last time I checked, they were not anxious to become common carriers either. I think your definition of what it means to be a common carrier could be more specific. It's not the panacea you seem to think it is.

Ok, fill me in.. what are the risks?

-molo

Re:Full Text -- Translation

[CBravo]

Criminals get smarter these days...

opensource support

[MrWhitefolkz]

For those who do not know ev1servers.net (used to be rackshack.net) is also a contributor to many OS projects. Some examples: virtualmin: Robert Marsh donated $400 http://www.swelltech.com/virtualmin/ php.net: They provide the servers and bandwidth for php.net http://www.php.net/thanks.php Ev1 servers sponsor smaller projects. I assume others; I am not going to spend all day looking to see what projects they do sponsor :). My point is not to defend them. It has to make people realize that ev1servers and Robert marsh probably are not as anti-open source as everyone is making them out to be.

BOYCOT EV1

[darthcamaro]

BOYCOT EV1 - That's the only answer...otherwise we're all screwed.

Re:I'm sorry, but he's NOT an idiot

[meburke]

Robert (and his brother Roy and the Network guy, Randy) built the company from a garage-size endeavor into a $50 million + company. The prices are low and many people are successfully running their webhosting companies on his servers.

It does not make sense for EV1 to fight SCO. SCO has more in their war chest than EV1 profits in a year. I want to see someone stand up to SCO, but it has to be some one with more resources, such as IBM. Now if some of the warmongers in this thread would contribute the necessary funds for EV1's defense I'd be impressed, but I don't see that happening.

He may not be quite and idiot, but he has other problems. I mostly enjoyed the people I worked with at EV1, but the pay SUCKS, the equipment is marginal, the chairs are broken pieces of crap, corporate concern for the customer is questionable, they can't keep their forums straight, and service in the Data Center is degraded because he won't pay enough to get real talent, so the few talented people he has are grossly overworked. Despite this, EV1 has the largest pool of underpaid and overworked smart guys I've seen since I left the Army. I saw employees who were grossly overweight, handicapped, required meds and other people who couldn't get jobs in other places who were treated as trusted employees at EV1. The benefits were better than average, and if I could have made a living wage I'd still be there, 'cause I'd be too lazy to find another job until I was personally insulted.

I personally know people who are supporting their families and numerous employees on their webhosting businesses running at EV1, and I'm sure none of them would appreciate a useless show of defiance that would ruin their livelihood.

So, business-wise and customer-wise, I think Robert's decison to bend over and bare his ass for SCO was justified.

Mike

OH please

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm sure none of them would appreciate a useless show of defiance that would ruin their livelihood."

If you're paying $120 for hosting, you can just move it.

Maybe if you add another zero on the RH, you'd have a point, but this is junk hosting for junk sites.

Yea!! We figured out what the ? means

[poofyhairguy82]

The missing link in SCO's business plan is revealed. Instead of

1. Claim possession of a popular open source work.

2. ?

3. Profit

We now know it is

1. Claim possession of a popular open source work.

2. Use legal threats to dupe chickensh*t companies like EV1 Servers to paying licensing fees

3. profit

Since this is now an effective way of making money, I claim Mozilla (conquistador style) as my intellectual property. Better reinstall Internet Explorer nerds, or pay my $100,000,000 licensing fee. ;)

Definately

[r_j_prahad]

Mad spelling skills? or just a typo?

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[remmy1978]

Their principles are that they don't care what you do with your server for the most part. They are more of a common carrier than anything else, and if they did block adult webmasters or hamas members they would simply be impinging on someones free speech. The only time they appear to cut off accounts is when the AUP is broken, the bill isn't paid, or law enforcment asks them to hand over a box that may have been used in a crime. This seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Back when they were still called rackshack, they changed their AUP without communicating it to their customers. While at first their website explicitly allowed chat servers to be run from their servers, later on they changed it and took servers offline without any prior notice. This was done even when said server was not causing any problems. You would only find out this happened to your server when you'd go and ask them why you can't reach your server anymore. That is a lousy service and a great disservice to their clientele.

Licensing stolen property

[nuggz]

Lets assume that Linux has SCO material and SCO has some sort of magical legal leg to stand on.

In this case the end user doesn't have a license, because Redhat can NOT relicense code they don't own.
Redhat would be liable to the end user for licensing software they don't have rights to. But the end user who is infringing the copyright of the actual owner would be liable to them.

Just my opinion.

Digital Boycott

[Oriumpor]

Digital boycott:
begin pseudo-junk:

echo iptables -A FORWARD -d www.ev1.net -j DENY>>/etc/rc.custom.fw
echo iptables -A FORWARD -d ev1.net -j DENY>>/etc/rc.custom.fw
echo iptables -A FORWARD -d ip.block.of.ev1.net -j DENY>>/etc/rc.custom.fw
scp /etc/rc.custom.fw root@allservers.suck:/etc/rc.custom.fw

/root/scripts/reloadiptables.allservers

Wow what a mis read!

[zoloto]

EV1 Servers CEO Responds To Customers

did anyone else read that as EVIL Servers CEO?

Indemnification

[mic256]

Why not buy indemnification from HP or Novell ? I guess it's cheaper and wiser.

Not so insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what the NV1 people keep saying (in addition to "we did it for you, our valued customers"). But that doesn't make it true.

The fallacy of that argument is that it assumes there is no downside to signing an agreement with SCO. People have documented various reasons which it is bad to help SCO. But maybe NV1's owners don't care about the community. Fair enough.

What's damaging for NV1 then? Well they will have customers leave for one. For another SCO tends to sue people they have contracts with, and even have a famous quote to go with it. For example the new "Linux copyright lawsuit" looks to really be about them suing an ex-customer. Contracts give them leverage over you they wouldn't otherwise have. Things like audit clauses. Then there is the problem that NV1 is going to be violating the GPL if a customer asks for the source code on one of their systems. And Red Hat may cut them off from binary security updates. And they voluntarily agrees to avoid source code updates and patches. What about the next kernel vulnerability? Do they have to wait for someone else to release a binary? Yes. Hopefully they won't be sued for copyright infringement by kernel developers, but it is possible.

There are downsides.

Bumps Israeli Web Site: Keeps Terror and Nazi

[choconutdancer]

Houston ISP Bumps Israeli Web Site: Keeps Hosting Terror and Neo Nazi Sites

article at http://www.americandaily.com/item/2273

Re:Bumps Israeli Web Site: Keeps Terror and Nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

Keeps Hosting Terror and Neo Nazi Sites

But you said they bumped the Israeli site!?

I thought of that, but..

[rbird76]

I couldn't think of a better analogy. Sorry.

Re:I'm sorry, but he's NOT an idiot

[Arker]

It does not make sense for EV1 to fight SCO. SCO has more in their war chest than EV1 profits in a year. I want to see someone stand up to SCO, but it has to be some one with more resources, such as IBM. Now if some of the warmongers in this thread would contribute the necessary funds for EV1's defense I'd be impressed, but I don't see that happening.

Umm someone already did. Several someones. If they had been sued RedHat would have been first in line, since they are RedHat customers.

Re:Full Text -- Translation

[16K Ram Pack]

At least with the criminal underworld, you know that if they threaten you that you'd best take them seriously.

SCO is more like paying a million bucks to a kid who's trick or treating.

This is not about money

[Panoramix]

Look, I do understand your point, but I think you are missing the one that is driving mad most of us that are otherwise reasonable people.

Let me try to explain. Right now, I'm writing a piece of software that I intend to release under the GPL. It is nice software---nothing as relevant as Linux or Apache, but cool nevertheless. The reason why I'm commited to doing this, even if it consumes a substantial amount of my otherwise billable time, is because I like doing this stuff, and I'd like to see other people using my software. Maybe it will help some guy with a thight budget somewhere. Or maybe some kid will learn something of my code. It feels good to help people, and in my experience it is also a good strategy for my own benefit, in the long run. Call it "building karma", if you like (go read Lin Yutang on this topic---really insightful stuff).

And I think the guys and gals spending lots of time building Linux, or Apache, are doing it for similar reasons. I just don't see what other reason they can have. Even the big companies, like IBM, should be able to see now how this "helping people" strategy may yield substantial benefits to everyone involved. This is a non-zero sum game.

Now, along come these SCO guys. These are men that are trying to make it so that people cannot use free software unless they get paid. They are effectively trying to steal what other people gave to the world. These men have directly called free software authors plagiarists and incompetents, and by not so subtle implication, thieves and terrorists. These men have reaped great finantial gain from free software, and now are turning around stabbing in the back the very people that helped them get where they are.

You see, this is not about what is more "cost effective", or what makes more "business sense", and it is very much a big deal. I bet Mr. "Head Surfer" and his customers like their free Linux, their free Apache, and their free PHP. By paying off SCO, they gave a slap in the face of the people that wrote that software (and many more other programs that EV1 depends on, whether they realize it or not).

I don't know how much it costs to host with this company, but if I were a customer, I'd gladly pay twice anywhere else. Hell, EV1 could pay me to stay, and I wouldn't. This isn't about money at all.

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[Mind Socket]

EV1 has become famous as a porn hosting site:

See! They aren't all bad.

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[sweetooth]

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying they are perfect I'm just saying that some of the things hosted there that people are complaining about aren't ev1's problem. If there is some moral reason the sites shouldn't exist that should be taken up with the site owner not ev1.

Mod this man up

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, as long as the situation cannot be remedied the best thing to do is to openly "break" SCOs license (cant break it if they dont have any IP to license of course, but that is besides the point).

I would suggest any of EV1s customers to do the same, preferably with a mention how this makes EV1 license an even greater piece of garbage than it already is. Also tell EV1 to do likewise ... it is the most gracefull way they can backtrack on this really (it would be nice if they could just get their money back, but I doubt that is possible anymore).

Host some Linux sources if you disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus complain and threaten to leave of course.

Huh? In America?

[defishguy]

Mr. Marsh,

Spending one million dollars (pinky pointed toward edge of lips) on the possibility that some time possibly in the distant future a company might win a lawsuit against all odds and then sometime possibly in the yet more distant future sue you on the basis of the first lawsuit is the most absurd thing I've heard in my life.

For crying out loud this is AMERICA... your odds of getting sued every day are at least 6 to 1 against you.

Here is what I propose you do. You pay me one million bucks today and I will not drive down there to see you, and slip on your sidewalk and get injured. After all you ARE just looking out for your customers aren't you?

He hurt his own business, the damage is done

[Anonymous Coward]

But forgiveness will not come till he admits his mistake ... I agree, he shouldnt be forced to part with his cash. He should just publicly reneg on the license, which will not cost him any money at all.

He is too easy on SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

So it kinda evens out, he wants to be carefull ... we want to call him an asshole.

Fair is fair, we both get our way ... and a fucking asshole he is, hope his e-mail servers run out of capacity after the complaints about this fucking disgrace.

Binary only? 11,000 hackable servers

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the many objectionable clauses in the SCO license is that you may only keep binary copies of their IP.

Does this mean we now have 11,000 linux servers which will not be kept up to date with recompiled security patches?

If you thought the spam from EV1 was bad before... wait for 11,000 high bandwidth boxen acting as zombies....

Re:Binary only? 11,000 hackable servers

[Anonymous Coward]

Headed to here, as one of the targets.

Sellout

[Eggplant62]

This guy is just a sell-out. He's sold his business, his customers and his ideals down the river for false security.

If he'd been smart, he'd have sat on his $million$ and waited to see the final results of all this, just like everyone else.

Now, he's going to lose tons of business, has effectively alienated thousands of people and other businesses, and committed political suicide by siding with SCO.

Bad move dude, bad move.

(-: I've worked for a few

[leonbrooks]

In general, they're not nice people. Certainly not as nice as our beloved autopr0n. (-:

Example? The Adult Shop in Perth, WA. I found out who I was working for (contacted through an intermediary) when I read the name on the door - I'd only been given an address. Their server worked fine for about a month, then they asked me to put in MajorDomo so they could spam people.

I warned them that MajorDomo was insecure and they might lose the box because of it, and that spamming would attract negative attention.

They told me to go ahead anyway, I did, and 90 minutes after the first spam went out someone broke in through MajorDomo and trashed the box. Then about an hour after that they and their network neighbours got DDoS'ed, big time.

They never paid me for any of the work.

The office politics in there were incredible, the intensity of hatred and jealousy floating about was amazing, and everyone wore black. And I'm afraid that's typical of the adult places I've bumped into over the years.

Danegeld Kipling poem

[Anonymous Coward]

Others have mentioned it; here's the
full poem. Remember.

Brad Baxter.

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:--
"We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:--
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to says:--

"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

What a cavalier way to take care of costumers...

[jotaeleemeese]

... legitimizing a racketeering scheme.

Thankfully I am not one costumer of this company, I would feel betrayed to the point I would be terminating business as soon as practically possible.

Talk about ignorance.

Even in the hypothetical case in which SCO would win their fishing expedition, still EV1's customers have no relationship with SCO, legal, commercial or otherwise.

Even in the worst case scenario, costumers of this company have no legal obligation whatsoever with SCO.

Why people supposedly intelligent and business wise fail so miserably to see this is beyond me.

If I was a dishonest person I would claim tomorrow that I own IP that found its way into MS software. I know which company's door I would be knocking tomorrow with a generous offer to protect against legal action from my part.

What a bad joke.

Bullshit.

[jotaeleemeese]

I am educated to MSc level, but my native language is not English. I commit multitude of mistakes when writing in a hurry, I check them later and oh boy, theu look bad, the medium also influences how the message is delivered.

Re:Bullshit.

[MrResistor]

The point is, while that might be OK for everyday communication, it's not OK in what is essentially a a corporate press release.

Business folks are fond of the saying ,"Perception is reality." In this case, the CEO of the company has created the perception that he is: (a) uneducated, and therefore possibly unqualified to make the decision he's trying to defend, and (b) doesn't care about the companies public image.

I certainly hope that, given your level of education, you would be smart enough to at least run something through a spell check before you posted it as a public statement from your company. If not, then there's no way to make you understand what the problem is.

YOU ARE WRONG

[RedBear]

The fact is, a person's writing skills is almost a direct correlation to the quality of their education. It is not unreasonable to determine someone is less educated after reading material from them that is riddled with grammar and spelling mistakes.

You are wrong.

The fact that someone can't spell well might usually have a relation to their education level. But I personally know someone who knows more about:

- Electricity
- Electronics
- Building codes
- Fire codes
- World history
- Geography
- International conflicts
- Heating systems
- Welding techniques
- Carpentry
- Mathematics
- Writing
- Storytelling
- Sociology
- Anthropology
- and much, much more that I can't think of right now...

...knows more about these subjects than any 100 people from the general population, and any 10 specialists from those areas! Yet he can't type and can't spell worth a god-damn even when he's writing it longhand, because his brain doesn't work that way.

A little dude they call A. Einstein had a quality education all the way up through enough college to get his doctorate, yet I hear he was so dyslexic as a child that he had to teach himself to read whole sentences. This may or may not be true, but the fact remains that there are plenty of brilliant people who couldn't avoid spelling and grammar mistakes if their lives depended on it.

What you fail to understand is that written human languages are a relatively recent invention, and man is not born with the pathways that allow him to learn to not only use the basic rules of a language, but also to memorize all the stupid-ass exceptions! The English language is filled with stupid exceptions to often just as stupid rules, because during its evolution it has pulled words from probably a hundred other languages. You can be well-educated and even brilliant without having the ability to avoid spelling errors.

On the other hand, you can have a very poor education and still be able to follow all those spelling and grammar rules to the letter. Or have a high education level, be a great speller and still be an ignorant fool.

I always find it humorous when someone assumes that because they have good spelling skills it means they are not only well-educated but also intelligent and knowledgeable.

By the way, I'm not disagreeing that it is usually more effective to communicate with proper grammar and spelling. But you certainly can't make a blanket statement that anyone is an idiot who makes a few spelling mistakes in a message posted on a public forum, which was probably written in a web browser text field like this one was.

When I read your post, I immediately concluded that you are an arrogant, jump-to-conclusions, spells-pretty-well... jerk. If I thought about it for a while and looked at things from both sides, I would probably conclude that I was partially incorrect and shouldn't be so hard on you. Just like you shouldn't be so hard on this guy. Last I checked, leading a company of any size is not an easy task, and when was the last time you understood the full consequences of any decision you made?

Now that I've gone to all this trouble, I wish I could cut-n-paste this post in reply to all the other people on this forum who are berating this guy because of some spelling errors. There are bigger issues at hand, and he's only human.

Re:YOU ARE WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

If a person can master one of those listed items to that degree but can't master spelling and grammar skills, then he's not brilliant. Apocryphal stories of Einstein add nothing to your argument (the ev1.net guy doesn't have dyslexia). Guess what: building codes, heating systems, and sociology are relatively recent inventions as well.

If one's brain "brain doesn't work that way" then he might as well be autistic -- locked into a single mode of thought; brilliance implies an ability to figure out how to make one's brain work in new ways.

Furthermore, writing skills are merely an extention of speaking skills, not just an indication of education level. There are just as many nonsensical rules of grammar in auricular language as well, but I don't hear you arguing that Dubya's speaking fumbles speak nothing of his intelligence and he could very well be a brilliant world leader.

The bottom line is that this CEO's crappy writing is indicative of a man who is sloppy and careless. I don't give a fuck if it's pencil and paper or a web form field; if you can't do a simple proofread, you're a moron and shouldn't be running a company. An even scarier thought is that he might've actually proof read it before submitting. Hell, he runs the fucking company....it's not like he can't get into the database and edit his post.

Mr. Marsh obviously lacks the skills to properly make the decision he's made, so I'm taking my business elsewhere.

Re:YOU ARE WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

"If a person can master one of those listed items to that degree but can't master spelling and grammar skills, then he's not brilliant."

Thanks for your personal definition of the word "brilliant".

In some circles being unable to make your point without profanity is considered an indication that you're not truly educated.

As a practical matter, failure is not strongly correlated with poor spelling or with profane language, so I don't think the CEO or you have to worry about it much.

Re:YOU ARE WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thanks for your personal definition of the word "brilliant"."

Thanks for your personal statistics on the correlation between failure and poor spelling.

"In some circles being unable to make your point without profanity is considered an indication that you're not truly educated."

We're neither in one of those circles (this if Slashdot, not a faculty lounge at Harvard), nor are we discussing my personal level of education: we're discussing the Ev1 CEO's abilities and, by implication, HIS level of education.

I will not be renting a server from EV1

[Anonymous Coward]

I WANT to take the "risk" that SCO will sue me, and I don't want one penny of my money going to help finance SCO, even if it is only one penny.

So I will not be renting a server from EV1.

Speaking of SCO

[RoadkillBunny]

Does anyone know who they will sue today?

SCO ally/allies

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever gets their hosting from EV1 should rethink their investment in this hosting company...

In truth ALL who chose LINUX over WINDOZE at EV1 probably did so for financial reasons (atleast in part). The fact the EV1 supports SCO's attempt to slip it's hands deep down into LINUX users' pockets is proof that EV1 dos not have its users interest at heart since eventually this move will mean that users will have to pay more for LINUX hosting!

USERS CHOSE! CHOSE SOMETHING ELSE THAN EV1!

They are going against redhat and the GPL

[OSSRocks]

Buy liscensing IP from SCO you in turn denounce the GPL liscence on the Linux Code. Which means if they are cought distributing any linux GPL material on their sites then they can be sued for violation of the GPL .. am i right?

Re:They are going against redhat and the GPL

[AhBeeDoi]

Buy liscensing IP from SCO you in turn denounce the GPL liscence on the Linux Code. Which means if they are cought distributing any linux GPL material on their sites then they can be sued for violation of the GPL .. am i right?

It means that you gave in to the intimidation, that you paid the protection money, that you made a decision rooted in dollars not sense, that you took the route of expediency over principle.

It is not easy being the CEO

[trungson]

Making this unpopular decision wasn't easy for Robert I'm sure.

Re:It's a big deal for other reasons too

[squiggleslash]

You usually have an obligation to carry traffic regardless of customer (as long as it's legal.) AUPs become regulated and the carrier has much less leeway about what they can put in them.

In short, if the world's blocking you because you have a spammer as a customer (as one example), there's not a whole lot you'll be able to do about it, unless that spammer either leaves or forgets to pay their bills.

how far can protection rackets go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or does the way you put it ring a bell?

unknown but substantial piece of software? - unknown but substantial weapons cache?

infringes on my IP - could nuke Chicago.

I cannot reveal the nature of this software - I cannot reveal my intelligence sources

I have identified thousands of pieces - I have absolute proof of hundreds of tonnes of WMD.

As EV1 have not indicated to me that they are not running such software - As Iraq has not provided evidence that they do not have WMD

I have no option but to request the payment - I have no option but to invade Iraq

This comes to a total of $65,900,000 - This comes to a total of $87bil

All fees will be waived if they provide proof they are not running my IP - war can be prevented if they provide proof they do not seek WMD.

I expect payment within 90 days - I expect compliance tomorrow.

(yeah I'm joking but damn, how far can protection rackets go once the weak cave in) - idem.

Oh God

[ElliotLee]

I was afraid there were businesspeople gullible as this. Not only was EV1 ripped off, they're supporting a lawsuit that doesn't have case.

SCO might win now, as stupid and greedy as they are.

Imagine how many Slashdot subscriptions you could buy with that $1+ million EV1 wasted.

something obvious got missed

[alizard]

They're claiming 400K customers?

I'd say the great majority don't need anything remotely close to what EV1 is selling. I've been poking over EV1's site, and I'm not remotely interested in buying. Does anybody really believe that there are 400,000 people that need 700G/month BW? I know I don't.

Unless one is a major publication (or mid-sized pr0n provider) or serving up primarily multimedia content or expects to be slashdotted every other day, who the hell needs 700G bandwidth per month? If you're a user, are you burning even 1Gbyte a month in BW?

My guess is that most of their users would be better off switching to another provider for a level of service more appropriate to actual usage. 2000 megs and 100 megs of storage space is perfectly adequate for the average individual or small business. That's like $10/month or less. Intelligent shopping will find you plenty of shops selling virtual domains running on *nix boxes.

$100/month is low-end colo if you shop around.

Is ev's service that good to be worth $99/month?

If you're an ev1 user, figure out what your bandwidth usage really is. If it's under 2G/month, there's no particular reason for you to be spending more than $10/month. Start your new account almost anywhere and change your nameservers and run content in parallel until you know your new site has propagated through all the nameservers. Replacing a typical individual or small business website that isn't getting heavy traffic is not a big deal. A colo is a much bigger deal, but do you know a cheaper way to buy BW?

If you're buying (or reselling) several hundred EV1 sites, you probably should be thinking of running your own box anyway.

(IANAL DISCLAIMER) Their purchase of a SCO license appears much more likely to expose you to legal action than protect you from it. Are the suggestions elsewhere in the discussion about blacklisting due to pr0n spam and Microsoft promotions making you wonder if what you are buying is really worth $99/month? Do you want to depend on this kind of professional judgement to present your business to the world?

Once you know traffic is going to the new site,you can tell ev1's owner "blow it out your ass" without the least bit of concern about service impract.

Made my purchase decision

[mattr]

Thanks but I'll not have my hard-earned money being sent to SCO under any guise or excuse. Like lots of others also think, EV1's move made me wonder if they were paid to make this high-profile announcement, one of the first companies to take SCO seriously. They should have been able to protect linux users' rights with RedHat indemnification. I had been looking seriously at EV1 but now am also glad I managed to stay away from what I now hear is a notorious porn farm which hosts Hamas!! But they have no moral responsibility eh?? I'm sure that's one well-surveilled hosting company!

Well I have made my purchase decision, and so far am very happy with my sparkling new virtual private server at globalservers.com.

Well listen, for far less than your lowest level linux server I get a dual hyperthreaded xeon (looks like 4 cpus) running at load 0.00, mucho gigs of ram, 10 gigs of RAID disk space, 100GB transfer, unlimited domains, a free domain name for a year, phone calls direct to a very able engineer, and guaranteed uptime! (The guarantee won me over from linode.com but that is also seems good.. and I am from overseas but pair.com also sounds good.)

And guess what, it turns out you only pay a month at a time even at the yearly rate! I had just put to clients on it and not even set up my new ASP service, and I already made back a year's worth of VPS III fees, three times over, within a week of launching it. Bwahahahah!! Globalservers.com RULES Planet Earth!! Mars is too good for brothers Daryl & Marsh! I will put all of my clients on globalservers.com in the future.

Sincerely overjoyed with globalservers.com,

Matt Rosin
CEO, Telebody.com

P.S. GS' VPS III is way cheaper and RAID with guaranteed uptime. Ask if they will give you a free month to switch! Do you really need 100gigs? Or would you like something cheaper, well managed, and always on?

Re:Seven figure payment

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck your mother in the cunt ass. fuck it hard.

No, YOU are wrong

[MrResistor]

What you fail to understand is that in order to communicate effectively you must use language appropriate to the context. This letter would be fine if it was posted as a response on Slashdot, but as a public statement as a representative of a corporation, it's unacceptable. An intelligent CEO would be conscious of how such sloppy, unprofessional writing reflects on the company and would take appropriate steps. It's not as if spelling and grammar checkers aren't readily available.

As the marketeers are fond of saying; perception is reality. Any CEO who fails to recognize that is unfit for the position.