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SCO Aims For The Feds
MoFoQ writes "News.com reports that SCO is now targetting the Feds and their supercomputers (the Beowulf clusters, etc.). Looks like they bit off more than they can chew, even before winning a single case "
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Have you seen their stock price recently?
They need to make as much noise and annoy as many as possible, and they need to do it now. The bigger and more controversial the opponent, the better.
If they don't make noise, Microsoft doesn't get much value for their investment, right? So they need to capitalize every second SCO is still alive.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Yes, but this is the Federal Government here we're talking about. All they have to do is come at them with the big guns.
This sig no verb.
...who's just laughing his head off and thinks no commentary of any kind is really needed?
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Okay, this is just a little more than SCO to handle, even if they do have funding from Microsoft. The government, although horibly expensive and utterly dumb to most things geek, has their fair share of the alpha-geek. Besides, the government already has a thing for suing Microsoft and winning. Hopefully this will transend to SCO as well.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
It was once said after World War II that the United States should be ready to fight two and a half wars at any point, anywhere in the world. Other conflict management is just like this idea. You can only have so many fights before you will not effectively be able to handle them all. SCO not only has too many fights right now, but their fights are way too large for the relative size of their company. Anyone who takes on IBM, an assortment of other companies, and then the United States Federal Government needs to have their heads checked.
No, they haven't bit off more than they can chew. Their business model isn't about winning court cases, it's about squeezing money. The fact they're willing to go after the feds means that they're not afraid of anybody, particularly YOU, Mr. CEO, so pay up now, before we drag you in too.
Meanwhile, MS has been having some problems with governments defecting from the 1 Microsoft Way) so this helps them out.
Microsoft has gone out of it's way to point investors at SCO because any crap SCOX throws at Linux only makes them look less awful. It's a classic case of MS saying "Lets you and him fight!"
Of course, if they can get federal agencies (who aren't playing with their own money anyway) to pay them to shut up and go away, so much the better! I'm suprised that they haven't thought of this earlier.
There's even a tiny chance that they'll be able to argue for a change of venue based on the courts using FOSS now, and therefore not being disinterested parties. It won't throw the case out, but it might be a good delaying tactic, and time really is money.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Not a wise move to go after the University of California (who manage livermore and los alamos).
UC regents already won one lawsuit over this business... SCO may be violating BSD vs USL.
Test your net with Netalyzr
First of all, the federal government would probably stomp a hole in MS's skull for anti-trust concerns
Sorry, I may be misunderstanding something here...
Aren't we talking of USA right now, with that George guy on the rudder?
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
He states a computer expert in North Korea can download Linux and create a super-computer. Yet I'm sure the same expert can download some ISOs of Windows from somewhere. Of course one method is legal and one is illegal, but I'm sure they wouldn't care about having unlicensed copies of Windows if they can't purchase legitimate copies.
I'm sure Darl would sooner they be running SCO software.
You are mostly right, they need to make noise to pump the stock price again. However, there are some targets which we know they chose not to pursue. Bank of America, for one. Why go after Daimler/Chrysler instead? This is complex, and forgive the tin-foil hat sound of it.
BoA is big. More importntly BoA is VERY influential in the Banking and Investment Banking industry. Think it through. BoA has ties to virtually every financial institution on the planet of somekind and could very easily use its influence to ruin SCO in a heartbeat. A few phone calls from some BoA execs and suddenly SCO's line of credit dries up and loans are called-in. Even better, the Mortgages and auto loans, whatever debts, of SCO execs are called and there are suddenly no other banks anywhere willing to lend them money.
Not only that, but BayStar has all its credit affected also, as well as its execs. Sure all these SCO-scum and BayStar-bitches are probably rich enough to handle it, but it is going to hurt and hurt bad. Most Americans, even Donald Trump, are so heavily "leveraged" that if something like this were to occur it would destroy them. It would most certainly destroy SCO, et al.
SCO's lawyers probably realized this at the last minute and convinced Darl that BoA and any other super-sized Bank was capable of playing hardball at a level SCO can't survive. Otherwise, why change targets instead of just tactics? SCO could have just amended that letter to BoA to sue them just like Daim\Chrysler instead of trying to get the court to seize, effectively, all their computers. Answer: SCO isn't suing BoA because they are scared of what BoA could do to them. If not, why announce the Fed-suit instead of going back after BoA? A company that everyone now knows(thanks to MS-Word fun) was an initial target. Answer: Not even the Feds scare them as bad, as this headline proves.
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your.opinion >
Imagine SCO won some hilarious claim in the US - pretty much every other nation in the world would ignore them. Imagine all the American businesses that would have to pay licence fees to SCO - and all the non-American businesses that would not. That would hurt the US economy for real.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Uhh, no. The Fed will be more than pleased to drive a stake through SCO. Most corporations like to flex their muscles. The Government is probably the worst about this.
It seems suicidal.
And stopping Microsoft's march is a net loss nationally. That does not mean its not the right thing to do.