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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.""
After Yesterdays /.'ing of their forums, here's the full text of the commnet before the whole thing bork's out
.. who would have figured that one) There is significcant risk on both sides of this equation.
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
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.
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
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.
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.
Evolution or ID?
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...
... 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.
What an itiod! It's people like him who give snodware delevellers a bad mane.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
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.
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
Evolution or ID?
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."
'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...
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
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
Cover Your Ass.
It strikes me that it's all he is really trying to accomplish. For himself, and his customers.
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".
for losses through an insurance company, for less.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"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.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
cat
"Certain"? Did SCO actually tell them what IP they are licensing?
I thought not.
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.
If I am to believe this post from groklaw:
0 12 4-1.html (hint why they
8 2,55795, 00.html
6 49 88318651.html (hackers and
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/14
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/0,12
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/2003/10/02/10
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".
C|N>K
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
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)
There's always The Elements of Programming Style by Brian W. Kernighan, P. J. Plauger ...
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.
Oh I don't know. $1m seems like it'll go pretty far however big the size of your company.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
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.
versus
Unless it is substantially different from this, the clauses of the license make this pretty impossible.
What am I missing?
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.
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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."
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.
check on netcraft
(so 55%)
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.
I hope he'll sue SCO for the price of his worthless licenses after SCO loses it's IBM case. :)
Less look fast, more go fast.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
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
The Mafia received full exercisable business
license to operate across the nation extorting
money from whomever they feel.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
I have 3 boxes there and I want out. /.ers would appreciate it too. No flames, just short info.
If anyone knows for a fact about some other hosting company with comparable prices / service, please post below.
I am sure other
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.
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
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.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
"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.
Brief, to the point. I like it!
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
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.
Got Code?
- "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? -AaronHmm, 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?
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
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.
Shame he didn't use his brain instead.
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Just sent the following to EV1:
l ldf_des cription.html
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/
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
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
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"?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
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
Should not Red Hat terminate EV1 license as Fyodor did with SCO?
You can defy gravity... for a short time
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...."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.
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?
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
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.
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
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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.
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.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.
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...
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
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.
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
- 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...
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.
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.
Tech Public Policy stuff