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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.
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.
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)?
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"
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".
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.