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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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The Federal government might have a pretty good case for Eminent Domain.
Those labs are multibillion dollar projects.
The value of the unix source code is not more than the fair market value of the company (ie $300 million dollars) , so the feds could easily begin eminent domain proceedings against SCO in which the US government would take the Unix source code in exchange for fair market value.
Considering the massive use of Linux in federally funded schools, colleges and universities, settling the IP question once and for all would be worth it.
Then the federal government could treat the unix source code as a public document.
Im sure Microsoft would whine but its good public policy to preserve a competitive market.
My colleagues and I were wondering if they'd have the guts to consider a suit against the labs. We're a seriously major player in terms of installed nodes and code contributions, and suing one or more of us would get a great stock price bounce. It would also some of the brightest geeks on the planet and lawyers with a bottomless checkbook involved in SCO's world (not that it isn't happening already via the existing suits). They'd also be suing a weapons lab in a time of war and telling them you want to confiscate their classified gear - if you thought the Nazgul were cranky, try threatening somebody with enormous amounts of restricted data and see what kind of badness shows up at your door.
:)
On balance, I just can't see them doing this. The government can really spank somebody in a million different ways if you irritate them (SEC, FBI, air strikes...) and SCO's got enough to worry about right now. Then again we're talking about a company that thinks it's a good idea to sue IBM, so who knows?
God, I hope they do it.
ok, i admit i'm clinically paranoid - but i still think SCOX will eventually set up a patsy to lose a case to ensnare gnu/linux. i wonder if the US government would collude in such an operation. MS is a big money vacumm cleaner that sucks cash from other countries into the US - democratizing computing could appear to the technically ignorant realpolitikos as a net loss, nationally.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
someone was asking $9,000 for 100 shares of SCO? Sheesh! Talk about being out to lunch...
Lemme explain how this works. Having experienced the joys of a pump and dump scheme first-hand, there are a few common strategies probably being used by SCOX's capital team:
- keep the public relation newswires busy with misinformation that misdirects strategic setbacks, court losses, and other negative information. This is especially important when you're expecting a major setback. It's a sort of "watch the monkey! keep an eye on the monkey!" misdirection.
- negotiate third party buy deals with market makers. Under the table stock transfers and other mechanisms help load these parties up and allow them to take a partial loss from stock purchases such as these. When this is well coordinated, using a good amount of "buyers" instructed to follow a release like this, it can push a stock like SCOX up $2-$3.
- funnel money in via Reg-S deals: Reg-S, similar to Reg-D private placement deals, allows SCO to sell shares directly to international investors who have a shorter holding period. Watch for a large amount of Reg-S as a clue for pump & dump. These folks are likely buying at a steep discount but are able to beat the market by dumping well ahead of the decline. SCO's 10Ks show a good amount of Reg-S activity.
Incidentally, has anyone found an offshore bank being used by SCOX yet? I've been looking but haven't yet found the usual Bermuda/Turks/etc. channel for funneling money beyond US control.
"And C++ programming languages, we own those,"
Geesh. parent poster was not kidding.
Darl: "several dozen requests a month just to come in and see AIX or HP-UX code base."
Didn't they ask IBM to show them the AIX source in their case against IBM? Then what is this about?
Maybe this was the interview where he had to prove to the rest of the 'gang' that he was capable of lying through his teeth without blinking?
Actually, googling around this article a little, extrapolating the trend: Will he sue the US Courts for migrating to Linux next? (btw wouldn't that be some sort of chicken-and-egg problem (ergo very likely for SCO to do)?)
Darl: "NASDAQ, for example, runs all of the trading machines in their brokerages on OpenServer."
Oh, and the trade 'floor' that lists their stock, NASDAQ too? Actually in that article NASDAQ "wants to eliminate the company's Unisys Corp. mainframes and migrate the trading-floor functions that run on those machines" and "Nasdaq currently uses about 300 Unix servers running a mix of HP's Tru64 and HP-UX operating systems as well as Sun's Solaris". I see mentions of Unisys, HP Tru64, HP-UX, and Solaris: Where is the SCO OpenServer that Darl was speaking about? Not mentioned, so not even close to OpenServer on 'all of the trading machines', likely even none at all, given the specific mention of Unisys for trading functions...
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
According to the quote attributed to him in the news.com story, the "export" of open-source software could be used by enemies of the U.S. -- he cites a North Korean computer specialist as an example. (Never mind the fact that he is implying that the U.S. is the only nation contributing to the propagation of open-source software, which is ridiculous on its face.)
But by that same logic, the U.S. should immediately cease all exports of, say, wheat -- because terrorists outside the U.S. can use that for sustenance, which means they can grow up to be Big, Strong, Healthy Terrorists as a result of those exports.
OK, so it's a stretch, but then so is pretty much everything McBride has said in the past year.
-Brian