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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.""
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.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
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.
Because sometime later today, SCO is going to sue one of his competitors...
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
"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...
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.
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.
Underholdning.info
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.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
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.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Atrocious English; atrocious legal decisions. Yep, I see a pattern: the small-business-manager effect strikes again.
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.
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)?
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.
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....
Visceral Psyche Films
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
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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.
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".
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?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
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.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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!
A helpful summary of the logic behind the EV1 decision can be found here, and a historical perspective is here.
Want to make a difference?
Convince any user of SCO's *nix products that you will boycott their service/product unless they DROP SCO.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
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.
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.
PXE -> boot-image == under 5 seconds
...and MS-Windows setup is faster? How? They shipped it on the hard disks?
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
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Mr. Marsh owes his customers much more information than this. Specifically:
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.
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
(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...
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.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
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.
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.
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?
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
"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 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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?
Life is too short to proofread.
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
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.
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!
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
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....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.
"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.
While your purpose is noble, please remember some businesses have these things called multi-year contracts.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
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.
- 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.-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
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.
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
A couple of excellent references on why the jury decision came out the way it did are:
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
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
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.
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.
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.
...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.
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
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- and much, much more that I can't think of right now...
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.