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Leaked Memo Says Microsoft Raised $86 million for SCO
badzilla and numerous others wrote in with this: "Eric S. Raymond's Open Source site has a new Halloween memo. The Halloween X memo, which ESR says he received by email from an anonymous whistleblower inside SCO, appears to confirm Microsoft's alleged funding of SCO's anti-Linux initiative. And the actual dollar amounts are much larger than previously rumored!" The consultant is discussing his fee for bringing in this business, in the first few lines of the email.
For $86 million Microsoft has created an enourmous amount of chaos. There is little doubt they will make their $86M back on additional because of the FUD the SCO crap has caused.
That doesn't make it any less sneaky, underhanded and evil though.
I mean how better to fight an anti-competitive war against Linux than to use a non-monopoly-wielding company to do it?
Hmmm... I have to agree. I can't recall (or find) an email that I have received from an exec, save for the tech exec I used to work for, that did not have spelling errors.
The tech exec knew where the spell checker was and he used it.
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
For 86 Million USD, I'd act like a total jackass, too. Not many people wouldn't. I don't know SCO's legal history before this whole thing started. It might be because they never did anything this assinine. 86 million USD would more than justify why they are doing it, esp. if they were on the verge of dying.
Anyone got another 86 Million USD to make them shut up?
When they talk about "fo"ing the IPX code, I'm assuming that it's an acronym for some sort of patent process? What's the deal?
My question then, is what happens now? Is it possible to use this as evidence in a lawsuit? Is it possible to get it confirmed by subpoenia-ing (?) the original, and if so how quick?
What exact crime has been committed here, if any, and what are the possible punishments, again if Microsoft are actually doing anything illegal.
It's got to be consipiracy theory BS. Patenting IPX? give me a break. Also it says that SCOs main earner will be MS... seems unlikely given their track to date... So far MS seem to be getting very poor value for money, no evidence that the SCO campaign is in any way helping MS or even that it will.
I call BS on the whole article.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
From: Mike Anderer
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003
To: csontag@sco.com
CC: Bob Bench
Subject: Conversation Friday
I work inside SCO. Mike Anderer hasn't had anything to do with the company since June 2003. This is a clear and simple forgery. I lend it no credence. I'd suggest ignoring it.
The document below was emailed to me by an anonymous whistleblower inside SCO. He tells me the typos and syntax bobbles were in the original.
Wave bye-bye to the nice whistleblower. I bet the 'typos and syntax bobbles' are part of a document tracking system. SCO will know who released this.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
If the discovery process yields the original email, Microsoft is fucked.
ESR wasn't very smart. He shouldn't have published this YET.
Give IT to IBM lawyers so they know what to look for and when they are fairly certain that they have it among their discovery material, THEN publish it.
SCO's going to be shredding and I hear their email server *just* crashed and its hard drives are going to have to be replaced. All of the archive tapes have suddenly gone bad too.
This *could* have been the bomb but ESR probably blew it by speaking a little too soon.
Mods: Please mod the previous comment down and let this one replace it.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
There are several things wrong here. First, it was already known that Baystar invested in SCO to the tune of around $55m. The memo says Microsoft brought in $86m INCLUDING baystar, so other monies from Microsoft or Microsoft related referrals would only be $31m. And we know microsoft bought a SCO license, which was a good bit of that.
I can believe that Microsoft gave $100 million to SCO. I think both Microsoft and SCO should burn in hell.
But I don't buy the memo. There are just too many "carefully placed" typos. It looks like someone engineered typos to make it LOOK authentic, but something about it's just a bit too intentional and obvious looking.
Is it really 'unfair'? One company says they have a valid and legal way to take out the competition... why not fork over some cash to help them out?
Honestly, if Red Hat says they have proof that MS was using copyright code from one of its properitary dlls, and IBM gave them a boatload of cash to help out, would it be 'unfair'?
Always reverse the situation before you guys go foaming at the mouth!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Now, if you are going to condemn it in this case you also need to condemn it when one of "the big guys" comes to the rescue of something that *you* like.
Well said!
This is business for good or bad, it all depends on what side of the line you are on in the situation at at hand
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
But you do have a valid point about the "them and us" aspect. If someone condemns Microsoft for this, then by rights they should also condemn IBM if they were to, say invest $100m in an anti-MS smear campaign. Not that that would ever happen - IBM still has a policy of never smearing a competitor as far as I am aware... ;)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Wait, are you being sarcastic? I can't tell.
And if you're not, exactly how would ESR go about doing that, hmm? If he knows the identity of whoever leaked it, he would have to reveal that in court. As far as I know, the source is anonymous. Is it possible to go to the investors and get the numbers on how much was contributed? Is that knowledge even public yet?
Join Tor today!
I don't think its illegal to fund another company through a third company. But in the case of Microsoft, their actions of funding SCO's effort to destroy the competition are to further their monopoly, which could be looked upon as illegal in the eyes of the DOJ.
... of MS funding.
The text of the email and [some but not all] of the article above talks about Microsoft helping raise $86m through external sources. It doesn't talk about Microsoft writing a check.
While the line is thin, this sort of thing goes on in business all the time, friends use friends to help with problems.
I wouldn't be surprised if one of M$'s upcoming strategies is this:
1) Create shell company A that creates Linux code
2) Have a few spies pretend to develop open source applications for Linux, and have them slip in a ton of code from company A, without licensing it.
3) Wait a few years until this code is widely adopted into Linux
4) Sue like SCO is doing
eTrade SUCKS
I see myself as a sceptic, but on the other hand...
>Patenting IPX? give me a break.
Would you categorize this as more or less preposterous compared to the statements "There are millions of literal lines of System V copied into linux" and "We own the UNIX operating system"?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
This may have makings of a whole story of it's own, and it may have been previosly reported.
Scroll to the bottome of this page and you will see sco's logo! Why? Is this some sort of mistake or does the page have some sort of time travel cgi written into it?
Or better yet, does this blow Sco's whole case out of the water?
that anyone's surprised by this news.... It's something the conspirationlists stated the moment MS officicially "bought" $10M worth of SCO licenses and the lawsuit started 5 days later with a $10M fund. At the very least, everyone was exposed to the idea.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Although tipoes can make an e-mail seem more real, this one seems to have too many. It's almost like someone tried too hard. Yes, I receive typoed e-mails from collegues, but seldom are they as bad as this "leaked" letter.
Perhaps this is a real e-mail, perhaps it's not. Even the poster "cannot certify its authenticity..." Regardless of truth, it sure is entertaining to watch this type of content fuel the conspiracy theorists!
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
sorry...here is the link to the page I was talking about.
http://www.unitedlinux.com/
I distinctly remember being very surprised by some information I got in my Michigan law class.
The examples were "based on real cases."
A thief broke into a home and found a meth lab, and reported it to the police.
Another thief robbed a home, and later found what turned out to be murder evidence among his stollen goods. He reported it to the police.
In both cases, the evidence obtained by the thief was admitted into the trial.
I know this holds true in Michigan, and at the time the book stated that this was true in "Most US states." No clue about Federal court.
It was even mentioned that sometimes cops will make a deal with a known burglar to break in and retrieve evidence for them. So long as it never becomes known that the thief was asked or told to do this by the cops, then all is well. If it comes out that an officer of the law encouraged the activity, then the evidence will not be admissible. (The law course didn't tell us what would happen to a cop who encouraged such activity)
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I never said I liked MS but they're not the one's suing everyone. SCO is.
The letter suggested that SCO would now be at least $15 million in debt if it were not for MS. This basically means that SCO is a puppet which MS controls to some point. If MS decides they don't like what SCO is doing, they stop funding, SCO goes under. So don't exonorate MS because they arent doing the suing here, they are still just as responsible.
First off:
1) There is no real tangible evidence that it is a real memo, and not just shock press with no backing
BUT
2) If it is true, it would be intresting to see if there is a correlation between those sued companies like crysler if they have recently cut big ties to MS in favour of linux.
My 2 cents
I don't remember the journalist who made it, but an steady battle against Linux based on IP/patents was one of the predictions for Linux during 2003/2004. We have it at full steam... and now it's become clear who's steering the boat. If SCO doesn't sue ESR immediately (asking for death penalty at least!), all we knew he's right.
---
All my submissions to Slashdot rejected... and proud of it!
Well, if you buy the stock, SCO doesn't get the money, the stockholders do. SCO needs the money to fund its lawsuit.
The real point though, is that MS doesn't want to own them. If MS or an MS owned subsidiary was claiming rights to IP in Linux, everyone would be screaming "Monopoly, Monopoly, Anti-Trust!". Personally, I'll doubt the veracity of this memo until it is turned up in court by a subpoena, but the reason these rumours persist is that funding this under the table would be an ideal position for MS. They get to chill the Linux market without looking like the bad guys.
BTW, Baystar got a 17.5% ownership stake in SCO for its $50M investment so they actually did buy a part of the company, not give the money away.
This is one of the things you have mastercard for, just invaluable.
At my former job (got laid off), I used to print all of my documents on the laser near the accounting/legal group. My explanation was that "it's the only printer that has legal-size paper in it." Good stuff for engineering spreadsheets, schematics, and code listings.
... again ..."
Of course, there were ample opportunities to "accidentally" read someone else's prints that had gotten mixed-in with mine. Hyu-mons are predictably lazy - you can learn a great deal if your timing is right. It also helps if you use the adjacent copier (i.e. large flat surface) to sort out the prints. "Oops, accidentally hit the copy button
ESR has a long history of releasing internal memos from Microsoft (and others) that are verified to be genuine. Heck, this is his tenth "Halloween" memo with no hoaxes yet.
It might be time for you to rethink who the zealot is. Just because you don't like ESR's politics doesn't mean that he isn't an excellent source of information.
I could very well be wrong. It's mostly an instinctive reaction to the content of the memo. It seems very possible to me that a memo like this could be a cover - someone knows that the facts are more or like this, turns it into this bogus memo to obsfucate the actual source... Time may or may not tell.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I read somewhere about a quote from someone at Microsoft about competition. Something to the effect of just having to wound the competition and apply pressure and wait while they bleed to death.
Micosoft has money to burn. Don't doubt for a minute that they will fund something for years and years without getting a return. Just consider the return from every other business division except windows and word - they all loose money on the order of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
They can keep pushing into new areas by dint of mass and money. Put up a new product. Prop it up for years and wait for the competition to get tired or make a mistake. They have nothing to loose.
Linux is the number one threat to Microsoft on just about every front - servers, embedded devices, maybe phones with Motorola and others, maybe the desktop in a couple years if Sun can others can get thier sh*t together.
Micosoft has spent more money on stupider things.
Ethics are very important in busyness. Let's talk about Enron etc. In the long run it is a good policy to be honorable. You can be aggresive and honorable. It is not dificult. And, I want to make business I want an honorable partner. Otherwise I won't be able to sleep. Not becouse morals dilemas but becouse he can damage my interest from the simple capitalistic point of view
If that's the case, why go through a third party anonymously.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
Found this doing a little Googling.
Wonder if this is "the" Mike Anderer?
"It's hard to find a large corporation interested in it. Anybody with any scars in this business doesn't want to be the first to do anything," commented Mike Anderer (emphasis mine), vice president of systems integration at Ikon Office Solutions, a large international integrator. "Right now it's kind of a manufacturing and standards war. In a year or two it might be a viable product."
Was found in this story:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001_3-200420.html
If it is "the" Mike Anderer from the e-mail, funny that Mike would have been part of Ikon, which I believe is the company Darl McBride worked at, sometime before SCO, which he sued and won some settlement for.
One way of reading this is as the private scheming of hucksters trying to milk Microsoft rather than a Microsoft driven plan.
Whilst I doubt Microsoft can be unaware of what's happening and I fully believe are willing participants to some extent, they may not be as guilty as everyone assumes.
Remember: SCO are the con-artists here, Microsoft could just be willing victims. That unfortunately would cover their legal arses. Worse its not obvious SCO have done anything actionable either, sleazy != illegal.
"We should get what we can from them ad then work the other and larger areas of the company and groups where they have real budget and need for our help."
I suppose others saw this, but it never really occurred to me that SCO was receiving money from multiple sources at Microsoft. It changes my view from a large monolithic entity where one or two people call the shots, to a multi-faceted group of mini-bosses give portions of their budgets to "fight the evil communist Linux".
Ruby on Rails Screencast
> no evidence that the SCO campaign is in any way helping MS or even that it will.
(conspiracy theory)
OK, think about this. People will obviously get sick of being sued by SCO, and not want to be SCO's customers any more. You thing AutoZone will do business with them again?
Now, some of these sick of SCO people may still be nervous about the Linux situation, and not want to get into or stay in that "problem area" until the lawsuits are sorted out and they know for sure who "wins". So people want to avoid SCO, some of them will want to avoid Linux for the time being, and end up buying into Microsoft products.
You don't think this isn't helping MS??
(/conspiracy theory)
According to The Motley Fool, they won't much longer. SCO is fast becoming solely a litigation engine. They have no new products. Their sales of older product lines are dropping off fast. They've alienated a huge number of people. They're bleeding red ink, and the legal bills are mounting.
-Hope
"This letter is typical of large business relationships."
It is not.
See? My words mean as much as your; you didn't give one documented example of normal business relationships that are designed to start legal actions via proxy.
You're either a troll or stupid. Your grammer is good enough that I'm guessing you're a troll.
As ESr points out himself on the site - let the lawyers subpoena the mail, then we will all know if it is true or not.... anyway, truth is subjective at best, and the real question is "what does it matter?" nobody needs *proof* that MS hates Linux/OSS, and what difference does it make that SCO got backed for 10 mil or 100 mil? We all know that they are in the endgame right now, and from where I am standing the whole SCO case has not done much to damage my considerable Linux business. If anything, it did Linux some good - it got a lot of people asking that otherwise would not have cared, and people asking is always a great opportunity to evangalise.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
This is most likely a faked memo. Any sort of influx of that amount of funds would need to be reported in their 10Q - which SCO has not done.
So either SCO has committed a major SEC violation, or the memo is a fake. I am betting on the latter.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Why do most slashdotters assume that just b/c you have an MBA you must be some evil hell bent individual? Because we've actually met and worked with MBAs long enough to get to really know them, and have found few that don't fit this stereotype? Like the guy that sat on his ass for a year drawing a six figure salary because "you don't have a product for me to sell yet." Or the ex-IBM manager that thought forcing all the Unix programmers out and replacing them with kids fresh out of school at lower wages was the best way to get a product out the door, because after all people are just replacable pieces like machine tools, right? Or the guy who spent all his time hitting on the cute programmer 20 years his junior in the cubicle next to mine (yes, he was married). Or the guy whose idea of making a requirements document was to look at every competitors product, then insist that we implement the union of all our competitor's features... this same guy took code where somebody had busted his ass to meet his spec in the shortest time possible, and when it was given to him said "we've changed our mind, do it this way instead..." Three times in a row. For the same feature. Yep, we've got a low opinion of MBAs 'cause we've actually known some of them... which is not to say that their all bad.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Hey, who called MBA's evil? I just said semi-mockingly that they have a secret, or at least get exposed to a taboo: that enhancing shareholder value is the foundation of any ethics at a publicly-held company. Or haven't you got to that stage of synthesizing your studies yet?
I myself have worked for a variety of ethically-conscious corporations: but they've been either private or not-for-profit corporations, so that gave me some perspective on the range of dilemmas. The publicly held companies I've worked for realized shareholder value at the expense of good global citizenship, virtual individuals [without the full range of responsibility of a meat individual, and pathological liars to boot] run by some really nice people, who act like assholes when making business decisions.
You'll see. It's easier to convince yourself that you're not being an asshole if you don't consider the full impact of your decisions and actions.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Just take note that M$ has a lot of "Partners" it can twist arms on to cause this money to appear to be from somewhere else. This behavior is an Empire that is collapsing!
For the "Free Trade" and "Capitalist" arguments out there. This isn't either. It is pure and simple Investment FRAUD. Investors are not getting paid, and the money is being spent to acquire power. This also brings up another falacy of the "Free Trade" and"Capitalist" arguments. Bluntly the super rich will spend any money they have to keep or acquire POWER. Money is not their object. You cannot entice them by better earnings or a freer richer world to make money in. They want CONTROL!
By the way I am a capitalist! I believe in the principal that investors should get paid for their investment. The problem with the American Economy right now is that Investors are not getting paid and it is hurting everything! Until we break the CONTROL Freaks in the board rooms of America of their control, nothing is going to get better for the Capitalists!
Sorry for the previous post but this is the Standard Operational Procedure(SOP) for MOST American Businesses at this time.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
No, I believe that it is in the public interest that we hold all companies to legal standards and that those standards, by necessity, should be higher for monopolies. However, I think that it is obvious that some companies, like Enron, are completely out of control with no regard for law or business ethics, while others, like Baxter Healthcare and 3M are responsible actors. You have to admit that just because GM sued Ford buyers in 1903 does not make it plausible that they would do so today, even in secret by proxy. If MS did pay SCO to sue Linux users, it is an extreme case. Although IANAL, I would be shocked if it were legal
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
"lons"? I don't know where it is that some of you work... but this is beyond the pale. This seems to be a good example of stereotypical spelling mistakes injected into fake emails. "fo"? This guy would have to be trying to finish up his email in a burning building to be this rushed.. he flubs marketing, brutal, for, loans, keep but then gets acquisitions, gauntlet (why not guantlet? favorite word?)
In the very least, this is way too suspect just to be spammed onto your website. At least give some indication that you know the "whistleblower" is from inside SCO. I can't see how this Mike Anderer guy could keep work (let alone secure clients) if he's using "kepp" for "keep" in professional interbusinees (oh no! sp!!) dealinks.
p
While the Beast overall might seem complex and baffling in its motives, each cell is pretty straight forward in it's wiring. Two layers of complexity are all which are required for them to play their roles. --Layer One being the Objective, (Greed), and Layer Two being the lies to smooth it over.
You may be right in that the Lawyers at SCO are probably grinning at the big piles of Microsoft cash rolling in to help them, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if a portion of that money were being skimmed. But I doubt such an outcome was their original objective. Greed just wants to take. Greed always prefers the route of least resistance because having to think and plan and work are forms of giving. And, yes, I believe it's that simple.
-FL
You have to wonder how the "whistleblower" got his/her copy of that message. Maybe different versions with different program-generated typos went out to different potential whistleblowers, so they could internally identify the culprit. Stuff like that has been done before.
I suppose it could; but then 95% of the revenue goes to Novell.
I doubt MS would send $86 million to SCO, only to have Novell get $80M and sco $6M.
Well after thinking about it, isn't Services for Unix (which is now free of charge) falling upon SCO's IP licensing program? If that's the case, could the 86M$ be licensing fee SCO charged Microsoft?
There is a very interesting document around on this subject. Basically, if this was UNIX licensing money then SCO has to pass it on to Novell, who subsequently give SCO their 5% collection fee. It appears in SCO's financial filings as a sort of loan, IIRC
If this memo is true, then there would be some serious implicications that would include jail time for both sides -- the impliciations reek of anti-competive behavior, violations of the Microsoft settlement (no suprise here), collusion, rackateering, and extortion. If it was just a licensing fee, then SCO would have to prove that the money was indeed a licensing fee and not just called a licensing fee, otherwise the execs could be facing federal time. Further, the value of the IP would have to be proved to be worth $86 million. If other vendors paid $5 or $10, or whatever, and Microsoft knew about the Linux asualt and then agreed to pay $86 million, that could constitute fraud and collusion. Depending on what M$ knew of the Linux campaign and what the money would be used for, that could mean rackateering and anti-competive practices.
If I were a Microsoft exec, I would adimately deny the charges. But the problem is that both grammer and basic spelling are missing from the memo. In particular parts, I had to wonder whether the writer even speaks English as his first language (words were consistantly mispelled through out the memo, for example, brought was spelled "brough"). But we don't know how the memo was presented and who actually typed up the memo -- was it done in house by Eric or was it actually typed by Mike. If I had come across something like this, then I would have cleaned it up.
Also it may be a complete fabrication. I had a discussion with a friend about fabricating an set of government documents stating that the CIA and the FBI considered the SCO suit a threat to Homeland Defense. We talked about the idea of placing a classification on the paper with "Top Secret" and the like with a note to "deny any allegations of an investigation." Did we do it? No, because we did not care to contract a liability that could land us in jail. But that is not to say that some other guy decided that he would do something like the memo. So it goes with out saying that although we are happy to see the memo, we need to be cautious until it can be deteremined whether the memo is legite or not.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
I don't know about you, but if I were planning to change energy policy, I would probably meet with the largest names in the energy business to try getting their perspective.
Imagine this:
Bush changes energy policy and causes a massive economic disaster. Thousands of energy workers, union men all lose their jobs. Later is it discovered that he didn't consult with anyone from the industry to research and discuss his policy changes. Imagine the uproar from the liberals and the media criticizing him for that.
Clinton met with industry people, Bush #1 did, Reagan did, (Carter met with the French to dream about socialism), Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy.. all met with industry people to discuss policies for those industries.
Is it really 'unfair'? One company says they have a valid and legal way to take out the competition... why not fork over some cash to help them out?
Yes. Microsoft has already been convicted of being a monopolist. By purchasing part of SCO by way of BayStar, they seem to now be trying to get control of one of their most significant competitors, Linux. It would also give them significant control over all other Unix distributions, if SCO's tenuous legal arguments are upheld.
The logical end result of all this stuff, if things go the way SCO wants them to, is that SCO would be able to charge license fees to anyone using Linux or any other version of Unix, whether or not it was coded independently. Since Microsoft now controls 17% or more of SCO, even if it's indirectly, that would give MS even more control over the Operating System market.
If Microsoft is allowed to continue using this kind of tactic, there is little to stop them from buying SCO outright after SCO establishes control over Linux, giving MS the ability to kill yet another competitor.
Shrugging this off as "Just Good Business" is giving Microsoft and other monopolies a license to raid your wallet and your tax dollars. Without competition, Microsoft will be able to charge whatever it wishes for Windows. Because Microsoft will have no competition, there will be no incentive for Microsoft to make any real innovations in it's software.
If you want to see how Microsoft acts after it "wins" and becomes a monopoly, just look at Internet Explorer and contrast the improvements in IE before and after Netscape was "beaten."
Monopolies have never been good for anything except draining everyone's wallet.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
I haven't looked at Microsoft's SFU since it's been called by that name, but their product 'Interix' which preceeded it (a purchase from Softway Systems) even came bundled with the GNU C Compiler.
Yes, that's right. Microsoft shipped a product with GCC in it. I purchased a copy at a previous employer. It's superior to Cygwin in many regards, as it's an entire new POSIX subsystem, not a kludge that rides on top of Win32, which is what Cygwin amounts to.
---
Funding to SCO by MS could be made in one of two ways: 1) Through contracts for services; or 2) Capital investment. Either way it appears to me that SCO and perhaps MS would have a problem, if in fact this email is verified
If payment is through services agreements, there is a GAAP (Generally accepted accounting principle) requirement for disclosure that you are reliant on a third party where that third party is supplying a substantive proportion of your revenues. Even if several different parties provided revenues to SCO, if the executives at SCO knew it was solely due to MS and where therefor reliant on MS, disclosure would be required.
If the source of funding was through capital invesment in SCO, there would be a required disclosure in the Company's 10K or 10Q MD&A, since it would appear they are dependant upon this source of funding to carry on with their business. The amount of funding is not insignificant and certainly material.
Furthermore, a hidden MS investment of this signficance, without disclosure, would have manipulated the market price. This would hold MS and SCO open to SEC related lawsuits
If this turns out to be true, lawyers and the SEC are going to have a field day at SCO and MS's expense
As another MBA-to-be, I have to object to the stereotypes. The closed-mindedness of your statements is nothing short of apalling.
Does having an MBA make you evil? Maybe not. Maybe people who are already evil are attracted to the MBA degree and position.
Many of us who either have or are obtaining the MBA do NOT seek power or money as an end. (Granted, some do, and those idiots have tarnished the reputation of the rest of us.) Rather, more than a few of us are interested in growing our careers in other ways than the technical track, and to learn more non-technical skills along the way. (Like, oh, the kind that keep the software engineers in a firm employed.)
Let me tell you about my worst job-fair experience, pal: I interviewed with a hiring manager who was looking for top engineers, and he insisted (after learning my MBA plans, whoops, silly me) that a good engineer needs no business background. In as delicate a manner as possible, I told him he was utterly full of shit: a good engineer does NOT rise on technical skills alone. (Needless to say, I blew that interview, but I'm not crying over it. The attitude tells a lot about the organization, after all; the same company let go of top engineers later anyway.)
Sorry, doesn't happen. At best, s/he gets steady paychecks. I know, I know, that sounds perfectly acceptable to a lot of you, but let's be honest: it's not much of a long-term career aspiration, despite how difficult it is to maintain these days.
Okay, enough ranting...
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
I'm not going to argue with the economic principles, because it's not really something that anyone can resolve any way except by doing it (and note that economocists tend to think of "the good of the majority" as "the good of people like me who're upper middle class at least and play the stockmarket"), but the idea that we should applaud the loss to an individual, and especially to a very large set of individuals, because we're all better off is so morally bankrupt it makes my ears bleed. If we just killed 30% of the population, then the rest of us would all be better off, but we don't because it's morally repugnant. Offshoring may be good economically (or it may not), but it's NOT good for the morale of the country, especially in the sectors being offshored (everything except management, basically).
I don't know about all MBA schools, but between my own classes I once sat outside an MBA class. The prof was explaining the different ways to trick people into buying your products with advertising. All legal, because it wasn't out right lying, but what your mom would call a lie. Never once did the prof talk about the morality of doing it or even what the smart audience would think of a company that would pull these tricks. Nothing. Amoral jerks.
Eric's lost enough credibility lately that it might actually fly. Heck, I wouldn't be too surprised if it's just someone trolling him...
... zilch?
Okay, you've lost me. How has Eric lost credibility? What exactly is your beef with him (your allusion "It's really about time")?
And while we're at it, your personal contribution to the Open Source community would be what
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=sco&FORM=SMCR T
Please remember that SCO has been battling the Linux community as well, not just IBM. Has it occured to anyone that SCO could have willfully released this fake through a proxy to get your panties in a wad?
/. crowd spinning about something relatively benign and fuels their paranoia. They MIGHT get another DDOS attack out of it, which Darl will use as a mia culpa in his next speech about how evil the linux community is and how SCO needs to stop it.
What purpose would it serve? Well, for one thing, it might sidetrack IBM's lawyers a bit if they try to suponea it. It might give SCO some leverage in court. The corporate world might view it as a M$ endorsement of the suit, thus keeping SCO's stock afloat for just a few more weeks (remember they just announced a disasterous quarter). Finally, it gets the
Keep this in mind when reading this memo, and it starts to smell more like a fake sent out just to tweak us.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
I hereby propose that we Googlebomb the phrase "Microsoft Shill" to point to www.thescogroup.com.
EOL
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
then why in hell would SCO's new MS overlords allow them to hire David Boies to do the legal work? I mean, ok, he probably has all kinds of inside information...oh...
Ok, I can answer myself. It was probably his idea in the first place.
Steve -- If you have to call it a system, you don't know what it is.
If this turns out to be true its a pretty backlashing move of Microsoft. Microsoft had almost got rid of the bad taste of the antitrust case and now this. If anything it hordes the open source crowd togheter and opens a unified front, Anything But Microsoft. I presume MS is really involved in some stage cause frankly, what kind of license to unix did they need costing 10 mil? They hadnt any chance of buying a second license since that would have been to obvious. A third party like Baystar funding MS makes perfekt sence.
The halloween docs have all proven themselves on the spot from start and the indices all points towards MS. Why else would this suit have been such a big publicity stunt against linux wich have been a third party in all cases so far that SCO has been starting?
It just reekes of MS "business practices".
HTTP/1.1 400
The problem isn't that he met with big industry people. The problem is that he met ONLY with big industry people and shut every other voice out. If you weren't big business, you had no say whatsoever in energy policy. So if you had concerns with pollution controls, etc, you were shut out.
Then they kept all records of this meeting secret, so no one else can even see what they talked about, even though court after court has said that the documents MUST be public under the Freedom of Information act (it's going before the Supreme Court...if you've missed the articles about Cheney taking a supreme court justice out for a nice long weekend trip right before his court case comes before that justice, you should really read something besides the conservative media.)
Evan Reynolds evanthx@hotmail.com
Two peanuts crossed the street. One was assaulted.
Assuming this is an accurate and actual letter, how is it that a company can continue to do business in this manner? This company is not in the softwrae business anymore - it's in the lawsuit business. After all the happenings with Enron and WorldCom, how is it that this company, which has no real business plan (that's evident even outside the letter) attract customers or money?
Along those lines, if their strategy is to just replace any real products with creative lawsuits and complex money raising schemes as described, perhaps people should replace the litigious bastards Google-bomb with "the Enron of Software" or "the next Enron" and start referring to them as such.
If that happened, I could see the mainstream press printing nice little asides like -- "...SCO and the Canopy Group are often described as "the next Enron" or the "Enron of Software" by members of the tech community..."
Maybe the litigiousbastards.com guys could buy up nextenron.com and enronofsoftware.com (unless SCO or Canopy already plan to as part of their positioning campaign!).
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Is the actual memo, without ESR's blitherings and typos, available in its original form? That would be valuable.
Does it not seem at least a little bit ironic to any of you that the "halloween" documents always get sent to the same chap? What reason does anyone have to send the documents to ESR, and not someone else, such as slashdot, groklaw or RMS, even?
Could it not be possible that ESR has simply fabricated them, at least part of the time?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
well..it's only a matter of time until the second round (aka rematch) of anti-trust trials. Now you can't tell me that paying a rival of your rival money to sue your rival (competition) to kingdom-come isn't monopolistic.
Of course, this also reinforces the idea that M$ is REALLY fearfull of linux; it's natural enemy.
The latest issue of the Economist (registration required for some articles, but not this one) has a news item on the SCO lawsuits that calls SCO "a pariah firm in the software industry". I found this interesting, as past coverage by the Economist had been relatively sympathetic to them.
As for communism vrs capitalism, you aren't even comparing apples and oranges, and you're doing it in such a way that makes me think you don't even know the difference. It's not an all or nothing issue, communism is a social structure, not an economic one, capitalism is economic, not social, socialism (which is probably what you mean) has nothing to do with shooting people who speak up, and the countries with the highest standards of health and education are largely socialist (although, again, it's not a cut and dried difference).
I find it especially interesting that you claim that welfare makes up the difference, because most people who push the hardcode capitalist angle detest welfare with a passion. In addition, the money that powers welfare doesn't come from increased efficency in the economic process - the food and the money and the living space are there. The problem is a logistical distribution problem, not an economic one.
In any case, I'm not talking about the large scale economic view - both because I'm not convinced it's valid, and because I, as a person, don't really care if the standard of living is higher in India. I'm talking about the HUMAN cost of offshoring, which is very high. Not just on a personal basis, either. Entire regions become economically devestated and take years to recover - and the benefits do NOT trickle down!
I think MBAs are a joke, people get MBAs because they want to make a quick buck, or because they are to stupid to do anything else. Oh i'm sure smart poeple DO get a MBA, and not all want $$$. But most of the ones i know are plain dumb. even at a university level.
Getting a CS degree, ENSC degree, ANY science, a medical degree, is much harder and requires more smarts effort and knowlage. I've seen the cources req and work for lower lover courses. MAYBE it gets harder in the upper, but alls i can tell its "This is how you do this, this is how you handle that"
Most the poeple i know who are getting a MBA are getting it because they couldn't deal with whatever their first choice was.
MBAs are easy to get, just hard to get into.
Well, it's not exactly what you are looking for, but in 1886 the Supreme Court used the fourteenth amendment to give corporations the same legal rights as citizens.
You can read about it here.
With regards to what the founding fathers had in mind vis-a-vis corporations, Thomas Jefferson himself said this:
"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
--Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816.
Proof enough for me that they saw this train wreck coming. Also, don't forget that up until the '70s, the tax-rate for rich folks was really high stemming from a post world war ii emphasis on "shared sacrifice." Post WWII, for at least a decade or two, the top tax rate was 90%!!! Interesting, eh? Good luck in your search!
---macshune
Interestingly, didn't the last big payment that came directly from Microsoft for "licenses" show up in one of their SEC filings listed as "Senior Debt"?
Commentary on Groklaw seemed to say that "Senior Debt" means a debt(!) that gets paid back first ("Senior" as in it has "Seniority") in the event of e.g. a bankruptcy.
If this is true, doesn't that imply that Microsoft's money was given under conditions that it might have to be returned in some circumstances?...making it a sort of 'loan' rather than an actual 'payment'?
I haven't heard anything about this particular aspect lately (and I don't even know for certain if my understanding is correct here) but I found it very interesting...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I have to agree. I am a die hard RedHat user. I always compile from source. None of that wimpy rpm stuff. I was completely skeptical of anything easy to use. I then tried Lindows and I was so amazed at how well it worked that like thousands of other users, I ditched Red Hat. I now use Lindows for our entire company of over 150 employees. We saved thousands of dollars switching from Microsoft products. The majority of people in our office had never heard of Lindows until this deal with SCO and how microsoft bankrolled them. Everyone was so outraged that they demanded I find another option. After checking out all of the mainstream linux versions, only one was good enough and easy enough to use for the desktop for the average to advanced user. LindowsOS Rocks! After reading all the reviews on the various Desktop Linux distro's, Lindows cameout on top by a wide margin. Now that Lindows is the fastest growing Linux Desktop, it can only get better. Thanks Microsoft for helping linux to grow on the desktop and thanks Lindows for being number one!!