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More on Recent SCOings On
An anonymous reader writes "Blake Stowell, SCO's director of communications, acknowledged that the leaked memo is real." However, Stowell went on to say that the memo was misunderstood, and that Microsoft has not been funding SCO, as was previously alleged.
In addition, Computer Associates is now vehemently denying they ever licensed Linux from SCO. AlabamaMike writes "Being employed by Computer Associates myself, I had to admit I was terribly dismayed by the news that the company I work for had licensed SCO's dubious Linux IP. I sent some mail around to those I thought would have some info about what was going on with this very odd move, and the response that came back truly should be posted for the /. community. Basically this is a very creative spin on a settlement CA did with Canopy Group regarding a breach of contract settlement totally unrelated to Linux. Associated with that settlement was a set of UnixWare licenses to which SCO has taken the liberty of attaching these 'Linux IP' licenses."
It's hard to see how they can continue to maintain that they were just "licensing" IP from SCO. As the memo appears to be genuine, it seems to me that Redmond has a lot of explaining to do. Especially to the Justice Department; I mean, if this isn't predatory behavior then I don't know what is.
not only are SCO's IP ambitions doomed, but its Unix interests are a "trailing negative" on the road to dropping from 10% of the market to 3%-5% in a few years and then "SCO will be irrelevant," he said.
Assuming this court case is settled in Linux' favour, SCO will be irrelevant the next day. No company will want to deal with a firm that sues its own customers.
Trolling is a art,
The Linux faithful have been hammering Computer Associates as a heretic since the British publication Computer Weekly quoting the SCO Group's CFO Bob Bench identified CA Thursday as one of SCO's rare Linux licensees.
CA senior VP of product development Mark Barrenechea says that Bench's claim is nonsense. CA has not paid SCO any Linux taxes, he said.
Drawing up short of calling SCO a liar, Barrenechea claims that SCO has twisted a $40 million breach-of-contract settlement that CA paid last summer to the Canopy Group, SCO's biggest stockholder, and Center 7, another Canopy company, and has turned it into a purported Linux license.
As a "small part" of that settlement, Barrenechea said, CA got a bunch of UnixWare licenses that it needed to support its UnixWare customers. SCO, he said, had just attached a transparent Linux indemnification to all UnixWare licenses and that is how SCO comes off calling CA a Linux licensee.
But when CA agreed to that settlement, Barrenechea said, "It was not CA's intention to become a Linux licensee. It has nothing to do with CA's product direction or strategic direction," he said.
CA has absolutely no sympathy for what SCO is doing, Barrenechea said, and in fact, he said, reading from a formal statement, it stands in "stark disagreement with SCO's tactics and threats."
Barrenechea and CA's Linux chief Sam Greenblatt are worried that CA will be tarred with the SCO brush and that CA's considerable Linux ambitions will be damaged by a disaffected, if not hostile, open source community when in reality CA has "nothing to do with SCO's strategy and tactics," they said.
CA was the mystery company SCO was thinking of when it announced last August that an unidentified Fortune 500 company had supposedly become a Linux license. SCO privately described the deal as "significant."
CA couldn't disassociate itself from the rumors that identified it as that licensee because of an NDA that the Canopy side had insisted on hedging in the $40 million settlement with, Barrenechea and Greenblatt said.
Barrenechea said that SCO now regards that NDA as being off because of the legal discovery that's been going on in SCO's $5 billion suit against IBM.
See, SCO lawyer Mark Heisse in a letter dated February 4 to IBM lawyer David Marriott at Cravath Swain identified CA, Questar and Leggett & Platt as Linux taxpayers.
According to that letter, which is up on the Groklaw site, Heisse owed IBM a copy of the CA agreement on CD.
Barrenechea said that SCO was dropping CA's name to associate itself with the "third-largest software company in the world" and build support for its "lost cause."
But according to Barrenechea, not only are SCO's IP ambitions doomed, but its Unix interests are a "trailing negative" on the road to dropping from 10% of the market to 3%-5% in a few years and then "SCO will be irrelevant," he said.
By the way, CA doesn't have enough UnixWare licenses to cover all its Linux servers, Greenblatt said.
In answer to CA's contentions, SCO said its lawyers think that CA has a Linux license.
Meanwhile, Bench also told Computer Weekly, whose story was picked up by sister paper InfoWorld and maybe other properties in the IDG stable, that SCO had signed between 10 and 50 Linux licenses.
The new URL is: http://blogs.cocoondev.org/dims/archives/001770.hPimpin' all the Karma Hoes!
It smells pretty desperate when you won't let your "best" customers comment on what they've bought from you.
Lasers Controlled Games!
LA Times (free crappy reg) story
Here's the highlights (emphasis added):
SCO Confronting Its Creation
Company's CEO is taking precautions as the head of the 'most despised' tech firm
From Bloomberg News
Darl McBride, chief executive of SCO Group Inc., says he sometimes carries a gun because his enemies are out to kill him. He checks into hotels under assumed names. An armed bodyguard protected him when he gave a speech last month at Harvard Law School.
Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system, calls SCO "the most despised company in technology."
McBride and SCO are more hated than Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, and its Chairman Bill Gates, according to some Linux backers. That's because SCO, once a backer of Linux, has turned around and attacked the essence of the system: its free source code.
"SCO are just complete hypocrites," said Jeremy Allison, co-author of Samba, an open source software that runs a file and print service that SCO sells.
"The real reason why people don't like SCO, and Darl McBride in particular, is that he is so dishonest," Torvalds, 34, said in an e-mail.
So on one hand the leaked memo was just 'misunderstood' or a piece of creative spin, yet on the other hand the same could be applied to the CA Linux 'licenses'....
Hmmm, this is just more proof that these guys really do have their heads jammed up their own asses.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Translation: every new lawsuit that SCO initiates costs SCO money in legal fees (and you know Boies doesn't work cheap) and other costs.
The whole article is here.
Well, if SCO says Microsoft isn't funding them, we should undoubtely put that truth in proper context with all the other truths SCO has been claiming.
All along, I've been wondering if enough lies are floating around at SCO that they actually believe their horse crap.
It looks like this proves that's the case. They've lost any grip on reality now.
See, SCO lawyer Mark Heisse in a letter dated February 4 to IBM lawyer David Marriott at Cravath Swain identified CA, Questar and Leggett & Platt as Linux taxpayers.
"Taxpayers", huh? I never knew... Must be so difficult, to pay a tax on a product that COSTS NOTHING..
Where do they get all that money for that damn tax?And where does it go? I bet Darl wants us to believe it's that secret Linux shadow government that causes all the problems in... Woops.. Sorry. Wrong case...
No. 1 is EV1Servers.net who announced SCO lied about how much they were paid (Microsoft is a fan of EV1)
(little did the CEO know when he made the deal that SCO planned to 'worth' him out of seven figures)
No. 2 is CompterAssociates who announced SCO lied about "linux licenses" which are really from an unrelated settlement
No. 3 is Leggett and Platt say SCO lies and they don't have a license and "would not have an interest in doing so"
No. 4 is Questar Gas said they just wanted to get things over with and also runs Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) on Windows 2000
Make sure *you* are Legally Unencumbered(tm) by getting a SCOsores license
and don't forget to head over and sign your Clean Slate contract with the RIAA
This article is more interesting:n efd_top
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5170181.html?tag=
Since they decided they really can't get a whole lot of people to buy their linux licenses, SCO have to give them to companies without their knowledge, and then call them "Linux IP licensees" and issue a statement as such just to try to weasel a few more bucks from other "uninformed" companies who then decide to buy the "licenses" after all. It's time for CA to lay the smack-down and discredit these punks.
30 posts so far, not one from anyone saying "I was wrong about the comments I made about Microsoft in the previous thread".
And I'm not expecting any.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
The really unfortunate part is that in the elder days, Caldera used to be one of the better Linux distros out there. They had a good system installer, lisa, for example. Shame, really, what mr. McBride's done with the company.
One can only hope.
I mean, who could have thought of a worse, more stupid way to piss off the whole tech sector and drive yourself into bankruptcy. The more I think about it, the more this strange idea develops that SCO (Caldera) is actually doing all this rubbish to help the Linux community. OK, it is way out there, but in some perverted way, it makes sense.
First of all, you have a Linux company (Caldera) who, despite their best efforts, has trouble staying afloat. At this time, there is no corporate support for Linux, the big vendors are running away from it, and the "GPL has never been tested in court" is touted as an argument all over the place. Big UNIX vendors only see Linux as a way to get people into their more proprietary solutions.
So, Caldera buys out a UNIX vendor and does the most ridiculous thing imaginable: sues everybody, proclaims that Linux is communist and all that bullshit. Fast forward to the current situation: IBM, HP, Novell and other big players are squarely behind Linux and protecting it. Microsoft is exposed as a greedy monopolist who uses underhand tactics (yet again). GPL gets tested in court and it is under such circumstances that guarantee a strong precedent in GPL's favour. The UNIX heritage is cleared once and for all. Linux wins, in a BSD fashion, and is free from corporate FUD. And who pays the bill? Greedy investors.
This could turn out the be the best thing for the corporate image of Linux ever.
I find this zdnet news article to be velly intellesting.
-- SKYKING, SKYKING, DO NOT ANSWER.
Hypo-crisco-y. Hmmm.
I got it! It means a slick/greasy hypocrite.
Actually that fits. Good one, T-Kir.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
All this posted anonymously because my employer is continually having cash sucked out of it by CA as they suck all useful life out of its products.
So why on earth are the suing Autozone if they have
a license to run the binary form in Linux. Isn't that the meat of their argument.
A little quote from Blake reguarding the CA vapor
license deal.
"UnixWare licences allow SCO customers to run UnixWare and the SCO Intellectual Property Licence allows Linux end users to run our Unix intellectual property in binary form in Linux. Today, CA has a licence in place to run our Unix IP in binary form in Linux without fear that they may be infringing on our intellectual property."
Got Code?
They buy companies and immediately layoff 20%. They ask the managers and rank everyone, and the bottom 20% get chopped off immediately.
Then, they basically mothball all new development in these acquired companies, and after Indians have been trained on how to maintain the software, they fire everyone in North America/Europe.
This is their business strategy. They don't care about their employees and their customers.
Sorry, but I don't give one shit about CA. They could go belly up for all I care, and it would only be good for the software industry.
Memo misunderstood? Is SCO now implying to the world at large that all of us had failed our english comprehension?
:P
:P
Can everyone sue for personal attacks?
Not only they don't know how to count...(million lines of code)... they have problems with their english language too! I am sure Darl's teachers won't be pleased
Since the site is horribly slow and I haven't seen the news about Leggett & Platt anywhere else, here's the text:
05 March 2004
Two of four SCO licensees deny their purchase Linux licence? What Linux licence?
By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service and Kieren McCarthy, Techworld
Two of the four companies that SCO has publicly named as having bought a licence from it to use Linux, have denied doing anything of the sort.
Both Computer Associates and Leggett & Platt have been held up by SCO as purchasing a $699 (384) licence to cover the alleged SCO copyrights in the open-source operating system. But both have publicly stated that they have done no such thing.
The chief architect of CA's Linux Technology Group, Sam Greenblatt, admitted the company had struck a deal with an investor in SCO over UnixWare licences and said that for each UnixWare licence bought, it was indemnified against a Linux box but he denied outright that the company had bought a licence specifically dealing with Linux.
Leggett & Platt was even clearer. "I have now talked to our people who handle our Linux systems and, at least at a corporate level, we have not bought such a licence from SCO Group," said the company's VP of human resources, John Hale. "To their knowledge they would not have an interest in doing so."
The denials come the same day that SCO was forced to admit an email appearing to demonstrate that Microsoft had helped fund the group to the tune of $86 million was real. But, the company claims, the email does not show what people claim it does.
This same misunderstanding approach was used by SCO to explain CA's statement. SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said that CA had indeed obtained an IP licence for Linux in an email. "UnixWare licences allow SCO customers to run UnixWare and the SCO Intellectual Property Licence allows Linux end users to run our Unix intellectual property in binary form in Linux. Today, CA has a licence in place to run our Unix IP in binary form in Linux without fear that they may be infringing on our intellectual property."
This hazy distinction angered CA's Greenblatt, who strongly objected to the portrayal of CA as a IP licensee for Linux. "To represent us as having supported the SCO thing is totally wrong," he said, before accusing the company's tactics as "intended to intimidate and threaten customers". "We totally disagree with [Darl McBride's, SCO CEO] approach, his tactics and the way he's going about this," Greenblatt added.
SCO claims to have copyrighted material within the Linux open-source operating system and has embarked on a dramatic legal battle to enforce them. Earlier this week, it expanded its lawsuits to include one of its own customers and a company using the Linux software and warned that it "will take and continue to take" legal action against Linux end users. The company sees itself as educating people about its rights in the same way that the RIAA - the US music industry body - has sued individuals in an attempt to prevent the free trade in copyrighted music.
However, one financial analyst said that the conditions surrounding the CA licence did not cast a favorable light on SCO. "I think it just speaks to the weakness of their case. Why could CA have not been convinced to take a licence without legal action," said Dion Cornett, managing director with Decatur Jones Equity Partners.
The other two companies that have been named as IP Licence for Linux customers are EV1 Servers.Net and Salt Questar. Both have confirmed that they did purchase SCO's licence.
and their $86M payment to SCO is just to cover the $699/each licensing fee.
From the article .
CA couldn't disassociate itself from the rumors that identified it as that licensee because of an NDA that the Canopy side had insisted on hedging in the $40 million settlement with, Barrenechea and Greenblatt said.
Barrenechea said that SCO now regards that NDA as being off because of the legal discovery that's been going on in SCO's $5 billion suit against IBM.
If CA is now doing this, this will be the first time a company has stood up without worrying about money, breking an NDA for the sake of moral correctness (You know you should not trust SCO when the say that NDA is invalid)
Otherwise goodluck to the guy who put it on the blog.
SCO: (sKO) verb
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
"By the way, CA doesn't have enough UnixWare licenses to cover all its Linux servers, Greenblatt said."
Shame eh?
Imagine the fun things they'll find!
I mean, SCO is such a beacon of truth, why not just take them at their word?
Or better yet, why don't we ask M$ directly if they gave up the dough?
Most industry analyists knew that Microsoft was concerned about Linux.
But I for one never quite realized that Microsoft was in a panic.
I heard all the rumors - "maybe Microsoft is behind the SCO lawsuit"... but I didn't think Microsoft would actually be funding this entire effort. I mean, isn't Microsoft focusing on the Next Generation Great Thing that will put Linux to bed once and for all? Obviously, the answer we now have is "no".
I read the news yesterday, and it seemed pretty clear that the memo was a fabrication. I mean how could such a blatent memo be true? And with all the grammar and spelling errors? It just didn't add up. Mircosoft is smart, right? They hire smart people, right? They may be a monopoly, and they may make try to lock their customers into their products, but they're doing it to make globs of $. That's smart, right?
Well obviously I was mistaken. Microsoft was more-or-less caught trying to fuck up the entire Linux industry by buying what is looking more and more like secretly misusing the courts. On top of that, Microsoft is looking like it's releasing blatent lies about the Linux industry under the guise of Microsoft fabricated or controlled companies.
Microsoft, it's time to come clean. Don't you think it's time that you admit that you're funding these lawsuits?
Or is Microsoft so scared about Linux and the Law that it'll continue to shelter itself behind a quickly diminishing cloud of deception and covert control of companies like SCO?
read the memo and the article. If I interpret it correctly, MS has been helpful referring SCO to potential investors. Since MS knows these firms, they do have some influence on them. It doesn't appear MS is directly funding it, but I'm sure they are indirectly funding/influencing companies like Baystar. Is this illegal? Nope! It is underhanded and sneaky. But did anyone really expect MS not to try? Grow up people, it's called business.
SCO seem to want to be bought at the moment, which made me think if everyone on /. had a single share in sco, we could bring forward proposals at their agm and get voting rights on how the company was run.
...
Just a thought
charlie harvey's website
Seriously, the 15 updates per day about what SCO is doing and what Darl had for breakfast is really enough already. All you're doing is making it look like they might have a valid case since you're so intent on discrediting them all the freaking time...just shut up and let them discredit themselves.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
"I am sure Darl's teachers won't be pleased"
I need some clarification. By Darl's teachers, did you mean Stalin, or Lenin?
In the stead of proclaiming that SCO is run by lying corporate scum bent on world domination,
I believe that discussion should focus on what can be done to destroy SCO.
A question for the more legally-knowledgeable among us: The gov't can do this, but is it possible
for a private citizen or public group to initiate proceedings for the revocation of a corporate charter?
A civil case resulting in the dissolution of SCOX would be a landmark in the demonstration of power-of-the-people.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
That sounds like pretty good ammo for a fraud suit if you ask me. It's not in itself enough, but it certainly shows SCO in a lie that's so obvious and deceitful that it just can't be ignored or chalked up to misunderstanding, and it's not too technical for a *moron(ie. a U.S. judge) to understand.
* no, I don't really think all U.S. judges are morons, but sometimes you gotta wonder...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
... there's still FreeBSD. In the worst case scenario where SCO actually wins its legal battles making it difficult for people to use Linux any longer, FreeBSD could help lessen the sting. FreeBSD already has Linux binary compatibility and Debian is working on porting its tools for use with a FreeBSD kernel.
It's hardly desirable that SCO does succeed, but at least there are open source alternatives (and AT&T already resolved the issue of proprietary UNIX code in BSD with University of California years ago).
My operat~1 system unders~1 long filena~1 , does yours?
Interestingly enough, no one was or is jumping on said bandwagon. I have found it very interesting to read some of the ways that AC has been used to distract this discussion away from Microsoft/SCO.
I don't think the question here is CA or IBM (another AC posted on how CA is almost as bad as IBM at FUD, which is interesting when the discussion is really on Microsoft and SCO.) but it is certainly good to spread the mud around to make things less clear. I also saw the statement that this was no different than media saying that linux advocates were behind MYDOOM, and that none of the Halloween papers had every been objectively proven as real, despite the fact that both this latest one and many early ones WERE confirmed by Microsoft (and in this case SCO).
Just a warning to everyone, it seems like there is alot of counterattacks on Slashdot. This particular post might be legitimately from someone who has some grudge against CA and isn't really a press representative sent to sow some discord and confusion into a discussiont hat is already hard enough to follow.
Don't forget SCO phrases:
"Don't pull a 'SCO' on me"
-To suddenly forget a promise, fail to meet an agreement, or just be obstructive
"You're SCO'd"
i.e. screwed
"He's been SCOing from the start"
i.e. lying
SCO could sponsor the duel and put it on pay-per-view. They could rent a boat and do it out at sea since, as I've learned from The Simpsons, "Anything is legal in international waters."
Lasers Controlled Games!
I assumed the spelling mistakes were due to OCR scanning of a printed page. If the party who sent it to ESR was rushed, s/he may have quickly printed the email and then scanned it later to send off. ESR would print it exactly how it was received, with OCR errors intact.
If you read the groklaw articles, you'll see that the initial posting of court documents are full of the same types of errors since they're scanned from the official court documents (usually in pdf format). The readers then proof it and PJ corrects them as they're pointed out.
Barrenechea and CA's Linux chief Sam Greenblatt are worried that CA will be tarred with the SCO brush and that CA's considerable Linux ambitions will be damaged by a disaffected, if not hostile, open source community when in reality CA has "nothing to do with SCO's strategy and tactics," they said.
Advice to CA:
Document,
Document,
Document,
Litigate.
Burn SCO alive.
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
I think you'll find that 'licence' is the correct way of spelling the word, unlike the corrupted, colonial version you might be more familiar with, old bean. ;-)
The Halloween 3 document ( http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween3.php ), first posted by Eric on Nov 5. 1998, contains an interesting quote:
...snip... }
"Unless Linux violates IP rights, it will fail to deliver innovation over the long run."
The comment by Eric is even more interesting:
{ This final remark is worthy of an essay all by itself. It is the least logical -- and at the same time, most damning -- assertion in Ms. van den Berg's entire statement.
As propaganda, it has a superficial cleverness. It plants the idea that any MIS manager so foolish as to use Linux will find his operating system yanked out from under him by a future patent lawsuit -- perhaps one initiated by (whisper it) Microsoft itself. It's a perfect FUD tactic.
More clear sighted theory there than anyone would have thought, 5 years ago.
SCO are totally dishonest and they will repeat the "Linux is ours" routine until someone stops them.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
of the iraqi minister of communications while reading this?
*que some sco guy getting a check from bill gates and a pat on the back*
"No! that isnt what you think it is! microsoft isnt giving us $86 million dollars and encouragement to take out IBM and linux.. so it isnt! no! we are the true owners of linux! linus is running a huge corporation that is taking over 95% of the desktop mark...er... what?"
...CA suing SCO for PR damage.
There you are, staring at me again.
Right?
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
These events happened yesterday, and this is the stock market we are talking about. It was more than 15 min ago, and the traders saw a shiny thing between now and then, it will have no bearing on today's trading.
-Charlie
Isn't this right out of the MS playbook? When MS agreed to settle with the Justice department, part of the original settlement proposed millions of dollars of vouchers for schools redeemable only for MS software. Later when it's competitors complained that this just extended their monopoly, it was changed to any software or hardware.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Look for his quote about repeating a lie too many times.
Tonto.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And unlike linux BSD doesn't have any large backers. Who is going to pay your lawyers? No BSD better hope that linux wins this battle. If it looses all the other free software projects are next. SCO would be rich and have precedent.
That settlement would mean nothing to SCO. Truth doesn't. Why should a deal they never signed do?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
All the time i thought that this was an indication that SCO-stock was massively sold short and that those sellers needed 2.4 million shares (as of Feb. 13) to cover their sales.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
You have read some of IBM's arguments, no? A lot of it looks like it came right off Slashdot, just presented more professionally.
Maybe you want people to shut up so SCO has a better chance? Do you own SCO shares?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Any other possible motives for a planned leak?
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." Stephen Hawking
As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), C|Net has ties to Microsoft, so its no surprise that they took SCO's side of the story.
Also, did you notice at the bottom of the story the "white papers" claiming savings in running MS servers rather than Linux servers? These same "white papers" have been linked from other SCO stories on C|Net.
So who is pulling the strings on all this???
Moral correctness? They're trying to build a Linux business and they don't want to be seen as one of the bad guys to the community. They found a good legal excuse to get them out of the NDA, weighed the risks vs rewards and decided it was worth the possible law suit. I don't see any evidence of moral courage here.
Yes, the "unwise investment" defense could be given a workout. But do not forget that MS is an adjudged monopolist (upheld on appeal) and thus it's and BG's behaviour is held to a different standard.
Since SCO is in the "computer field", any transactions between it and MS/large shareholders is subject to anti-trust scrutiny.
Because part of going bankrupt is to divest all assets, including Intellectual Property. Someone (like Microsoft) would probably leverage their power to buy all Intellectual Property interests left by the demise of SCO and continue these lawsuits on their own.
Point is, the problem won't simply "go away" if SCO does. Someone else, like Canopy, Baystar, M$, or even IBM, could pick up the ball and run with it.. .
I had a class in high school called "Global Issues" ... I hated it. It made me aware of things I didn't want to know about, like female circumcision, Waco, Ruby Ridge, anti-abortion violence and domestic terrorism. And we watched "Arlington Road" (which really disturbed me.)
And the teacher seemed to me to be an obsessive conspiracy theorist.
But when I have kids, I'll make sure they take that class. It opened my eyes to a lot of stuff that I used to change the channel on.
This was at Grandville High School, if anyone cares. Call your local school district and tell them you want them to adopt a class like it.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
CA sees, knows where the future is headed, and calls it like it is, "stopping just short of calling SCO a liar".
While EV1 mumbles some half-hearted SCO PR in order to justify it's "license" purchase, one I believe it made purely for the publicity aspect just prior to launching a new data center.
I'll continue to buy from and otherwise support CA.
Fsck EV1, they can rot with SCO in hell.
When I worked for Tandy back in the good old days, Microsoft supplied us with the Xenix OS for the 68000-based systems (Model 16s & 6000s). At some point in the early 80's, Microsoft sold off the Xenix system (then based on Unix v7, if I recall) to Santa Cruz Operation. My understanding was that M$ owned 25% or so of SCO as part of that deal.
Did this change or am I senile?
Blake Stowell, knowing that we will never beleive a word he says, claims the memo is real to convince us that it was faked!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
No, no, no.
I'm sick of you people constantly misquoting reputable news sources and press releases from large companies, already. It wasn't a payment of seven figures at all...it was seven fingers, as made famous in the Neo/Agent Smith scene in the original Matrix film. As in "How about I give you the finger...and you give me my phone call."
It's just that EV1 had each of seven highly-placed executives give Darl the finger, resulting in a payment of seven fingers.
I do so hate having to correct you people.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
They'd just be a potential witness.
The United States Constitution guarantees that litigants will "have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor" (Amendment VI). While Amendment VI is construed strictly towards criminal trials, the right to have a compulsory process to obtain witnesses has been construed to also apply to criminal trials.
A subpoena is the classic tool used to compel witnesses to testify. MS has no protection from subpoena just because it isn't a direct party to the lawsuit(s).
You got all the good stuff but here's the whole thing.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Whilst logging into a 7 year old SCO UnixWare box:
UnixWare 2.1.3 (Bradley) (pts/2)
login: etr
Password:
UX:in.login: INFO: Your password will expire in 5 days
UnixWare 2.1.3
Bradley
Copyright 1996 The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1984-1995 Novell, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1987, 1988 Microsoft Corp. All Rights Reserved.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,349,642
Last login: Fri Mar 5 10:26:10 2004 on pts001
You have mail
Display Desktop (y/n)? n
$
Hmmmm. Copyright 1984-1995 Novell, Inc. All Rights Reserved.??? Whats this???
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
Please do not equate what Darl is doing to communism. What Darl is doing is exploiting the loopholes of Capitalistic setup for money
Moreover, Lenin and Stalin are entirely different. Lenin is to Stalin what Nepolean was to Hitler. Lenin was not really responsible for mass murder of civilians (though the formation of USSR out of neighbours might not be very good thing to do in retrospect). Similarly Napolean never sent Jews to the gas chambers either though he,like hitler, attaccked all his neighbours.
It is like a twisted variation on the "do not explain by conspiracy what may be adequately explained by incompetence" -- which in the SCO worldview has become "do not explain by competence what may be adequately explained by conspiracy"
It is a sorry state of affairs if whenever someone does something efficiently, that by itself raises suspicions? That's close to libelous, even. It does however seem to be something to look for in the other actions as well.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
1) When all is said and done, I don't think that SCO will have really done much damage to Linux (or by extension, the GPL). When all this started, the more far-sighted among us said this would be a great test case for the GPL. As SCO's smoke and mirrors have been pierced and as the various cases have developed, however, this has not been about the GPL. It's all been FUD. Most of us have known this for a while, but now EVERYONE knows it. If anything, Linux has gained strength, if this is the best that it's enemies can do.
2) This potentially hugely damaging to MS. If the allegations are true (I'd put money on it), they're in breach of the settlements. Kollar-Kotelly, the judge of the punishment phase, will certainly want to take another look at the case. The various state Attorney Generals will want to reopen the case. There might also be new criminal charges filed, not to mention civil cases. At the very least, we should see some investigations. And I haven't even mentioned how this might play out internationally.
3) Regardless of how this plays out in the courts, MS is going to lose big in the court of public opinion. The MS defenders will not have a leg to stand on. (I never imagined Enderle with any legs. Instead, I've always imagined him as a giant farting ass, with no other body parts attached.) The FUD campaign has not only fallen apart, it has backfired.
4) Having failed to really slow Linux adoption or development, MS will continue to lose ground. Longhorn is two or more years out, folks are already suspicious about "XP Reloaded" (why name a product after a really bad sequel?), and Linux clearly has huge momentum.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Fair competition does NOT mean that everyone has the same starting point. It just means they have the same field to play on.
Exactly! And there is only *one* company that can control access to the field. I find Microsoft's "We don't want government regulation in the computer indunstry!" rhetoric disingenuous; MS itself regulates the industry much more efficiently and ruthlessly than the government ever could.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I have SCO (Caldera) Unix and SCO (Caldera) Linux at home, somewhere.....
They don't licence Unix freely for personal use any more, because allegedly people were cheating and using it commercially. That is of course criminal, and should not be condoned. But I doubt that it happened on a large scale, there never was much sign that AT&T Unix for example was being copied illegally. Business users usually know that the penalties for being causght are too great, and if your servers are visible on the Internet, you will be caught, sooner or later.... I think the withdrawal of new licences for personal use was simply one of the first McBrideisms, trying to show how poor little SCO was being ripped off by unscrupulous FOSS people (who would of course not bother, because Linux or BSD offers more facilities, as I discovered).
Ashcroft got a little queasy upon hearing about the Halloween X document and what it might mean for the future of his pet anti-trust trial.
Just a thought here, perhaps this would show the kind of positive, forward thinking and dedicated group we really are!
The Matrix is real... but I'm only visiting!
It's a weird kind of fraud. SCO can claim it would be like buying a candybar and discovering a $1 bill in there, it would not make sense to complain to the candy manufacturer that they did not tell you they added a dollar bill to every candy bar.
Of course the reason they did this was so they could make the press release. But you could say that the press release does not harm CA so there is no fraud?
The Flatlander
Blake Stowell, SCO Information Minister -- even his initials are BS!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
So one of the possible outcomes of all this SCO-crap that I would not be happy with is some other company, particularly like MS, end up owning SCO's Unix rights. In reading this infamous Halloween memo, I was worried about this sequence:
Difficult to decipher, with all the typos and what not, but what does ".. we could exit and Unix components... potentially back to Microsoft" mean ? Is part of the understanding that after the SCO dust settles, that MS might end up with Unix ? ugh...
Feb. 22, 1989, the music industry stunned nearly the entire world when they handed Jethro Tull the grammy for best Heavy Metal over Metallica.
Clearly, MTV and the rest of those yahoo's had no clue what the general population listened too. Its easily argueable they still don't, when was the last time you watched MTV? Better, when was the last time you saw a video?
"Noone runs Linux, Microsoft owns 99% of the desktop market!"
Companies scared of SCO's ramblings, figure that there's no harm in a little prospective legal protection... afterall, who's going to complain? "Everyone runs Microsoft Windows."
Are those suitable for board room politics so out
of touch of the consumers' wishes that they honestly have no idea how many desktops are running Linux? Are they so gullible to figure that such an act can go unnoticed? That, as far as public backlash goes, there's no consequences due to the lack of users?
To corporate America, Microsoft and SCO. My GRANDMOTHER is aware of Linux, and not becuase I told her. She asked ME about it! Games are being developed natively for Linux, the pengiun icon is showing up on merchandise ranging from network cards to video cards, from CD-RW drives to packs of diskettes.
Now, some corporations, where their executives have yet to venture to a local computer store, corner store or at the least mingle with the general public, are now realizing that reality is far from what their so-called-educated marketing team tells them in facy presentations and graphs.
EV1, felt the heat, heat great enough for them to post publicly an explanation (excuse rather) for their actions supporting SCO's claim.
No doubt, Computer Associates did infact pay SCO, only to later regret it and "vehemently" try to catch up with public sentiment.
Corporations try so hard to control the market, they don't even realize when they no longer have control. By the time they catch up, it's too late. (I still don't respect Music Award ceremonies becuase of the foul foolishness of 1989).
"As a "small part" of that settlement, Barrenechea said, CA got a bunch of UnixWare licenses that it needed to support its UnixWare customers. SCO, he said, had just attached a transparent Linux indemnification to all UnixWare licenses and that is how SCO comes off calling CA a Linux licensee.
But when CA agreed to that settlement, Barrenechea said, "It was not CA's intention to become a Linux licensee. It has nothing to do with CA's product direction or strategic direction," he said.
CA has absolutely no sympathy for what SCO is doing, Barrenechea said, and in fact, he said, reading from a formal statement, it stands in "stark disagreement with SCO's tactics and threats."
Barrenechea and CA's Linux chief Sam Greenblatt are worried that CA will be tarred with the SCO brush and that CA's considerable Linux ambitions will be damaged by a disaffected, if not hostile, open source community when in reality CA has "nothing to do with SCO's strategy and tactics," they said."
So the truth comes out... SCO's "Significant" Linux license taker didn't pay a dime for the Linux licenses but rather had them slipped in uninvited so that SCO could make a misleading claim! Typical of SCO...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
http://www.ecosyn.us/SCO_v_IBM_copyright_issues.ht ml
SCO v IBM: SELECTED WEBPAGES CITATIONS OF COPYRIGHT LAW HISTORY RELEVENT TO UNIX SYSTEM V COPYRIGHT CLAIMS STATUS
* NO copyrights for computer programs, source code or machine readable binary were copyrightable in the US before 1980.
* Before 1976, mandatory notices were required on all copyrighted materials in standardized mandatory forms -- failure to adhere to the law regarding mandatory notices on published works forfeited what copyright protection was available.
* Before 1976 copyright was not automatically conferred upon creating a fixed tangible form -- copyright was limited to those works which complied with the provisions of the prior law "The Copyright Act of 1909". Unix was developed and distributed for seven years under this law.
* Distributing works, making one or more copies for sale, lease or loan, constituted publication during the first seven years of Unix development.
* Since 1976, mandatory requirements for copyrighted works have required deposit of copies with the Library of Congress within 3 months of first publication. Unless Unix source code is in the Library of Congress it is not copyrighted. Unless Unix System V is in the Library of Congress, it is in violation of the 1976 revisions. Before 1976 "promptly" depositing copies was mandatory, defined in caselaw as within one year of first publication.
* Unix System V is a collection of modules, mostly public domain through copyright forfeiture between 1969 and 1976.
* It is defined as fraud under the 1909 Copyright Act [ 105] "shall insert or impress any notice of copyright required by this title, or words of the same purport, in or upon any uncopyrighted article" to post-fix copyright notices upon works not qualifying for copyright.
* None of the 1976, 1980, or 1989 adjustments to Copyright laws and the Berne Treaty permitted retroactive copyrights to previously forfeiting or public domain works.
* Unix System V is basically public domain in the catagory of a compilation or anthology. Only new material added after 1976, or after 1980 (when computer programs first became copyrightable) could possibly qualify for copyright status, and only those collections which complied with mandatory deposit with the Library of Congress. Everything else is not in compliance with copyright laws and treaties.