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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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I don't know who to root for?
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
This is a bit of bad reporting by news.com (surprise!). It's just referring to the letters SCO sent out in December, and it's JUST been released NOW that two of those targets were Federal institutions.
Just more lame press releases by SCO. Nothing out of the ordinary. Move along, please.
I remember my mom used to tell me never to hit bee hives with my hockey stick. SCO never listens to this kind of advice, which comes up every time there's a story here about them; so what's their major malfunction? I just want it to end!
He calls for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, he should call for an amendment to ban SCO.
Or... cue the shock and awe campaign.
Same scene, later that day.
Random SCO employee: "Umm, Mr. McBride, sir, there are a whole lot of people in ill-fitting suits who want to 'talk' with you ...."
Best Slashdot comment ever
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.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The first is never get involved in a land war in Asia. The second, only slightly less well known, is this: never go up against a nuclear weapons laboratory when death is on the line!
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.
Yeah, we can only hope they do!
But why are they doing this, then? It does seem suicidal...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Groklaw covered this yesterday - it's nothing more than confirmation that those institutions received the threatening letter that SCO's been sending out.
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.
>>WE BELIEVE WE CAN PROPOSE SOLUTIONS THAT WILL BE AGREEABLE AND ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE FOR YOU
I originally read that as "AGREEABLE AND ECONOMICALLY PLEASIBLE FOR YOU" and I thought it was like many of the letters I receive from Nigeria.
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
Coverage and discussion at Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200403192 34017885
It's awefully difficult to believe the rediculous actions of this company.
""If you fail to respond to our efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement, WE WILL TURN YOUR NAME OVER TO OUR OUTSIDE COUNSEL FOR CONSIDERATION OF LEGAL ACTION," Pettit said."
This was amusing. For consideration of legal action? It's sad how they managed to turn the legal system into a circus. It painfully shows how we need to fix our system or face future SCO's.
""Open-source software--available widely through the Internet--has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by U.S. law," McBride said. "A computer expert in North Korea who has a number of personal computers can download the latest version of Linux...and in short order build a virtual supercomputer.""
This will happen regardless of what happens in the US. Linux is all over the world in multiple distros. I don't think a SMALL company like SCO will ever be able to do anything about it. SCO is in it's death throws. Let's bury them before they stink up the place.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Sounds like Mr. McBride is really looking for any way to show linux is a danger. But does he really believe to make us think his goal is to protect the world from US enemies ?
And who is SCO to tell what the US should do with free software ?
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
The difference is that if you sue the Federal Government (as opposed to a State or private organization) they get to decide if you are allowed to sue them or not. That may seem unfair on the face of it, but considering the number of people that make a living from deep-pockets lawsuits it's not hard to understand (there aren't any deeper pockets than the U.S. Government.) A judge will say "Have a nice day, Mr. McBride" and that will be that. But in the meantime SCO gets to capitalize on yet another round of high-profile public FUD. I'm not sure what it's going to take: for some reason the American legal system seems unable to shut them up for more than a couple of days. We all keep hoping that IBM will go to the mat for us and take them down. Somebody needs to. They shoot rabid animals, don't they?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
-Matt
linux networx is a canopy company like SCO/caldera is. see: http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/pr042800_canopy.h tml
Now in the news article it says:
"SCO sent letters raising the prospect of legal action for using Linux to two Department of Energy facilities, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)."
But in this press release it says that linux networx is the one that installed the linux clusters at the LLNL.
http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/8.28.2001.49-Lawr ence_Liverm.html
The new lesson of the day is if you do business with anyone funded by the canopy company you risk being sued by other members of the canopy group.
Read the article. This letter was obtained by a FOIA request by an attorney defending the case against Daimler-Chrysler I believe. It's from the round of letters where SCO claimed various header files were in violation of copyrights related to the UNIX ABI.
hasn't SCO already had several unfavorable rulings in the IBM case? Haven't they been ordered to ~finally~ show the offending code? That should end that case quickly...
Basically yes. And now it's changed from a "there's SysV code in Linux" case to a "there's derivative works of code you licensed from us in Linux" case. That's a big difference. They have not been able to identify ANY code, bar similarities in 5 ABI files, that has been ported directly from SysV to Linux. None. And they admitted it in court in the IBM case.
What it's about now with IBM is that, while they admit IBM invented JFS, and IBM own the copyright over JFS, and while JFS may have originally been included in other IBM products (OS/2 perhaps?) that because it's attached to the AIX code, it's a "derivative work" of SysV, and therefore SCO have a say over how IBM can use that code.
How about that. A completely independent IBM invention, used in SysV, and SCO are getting all shitty saying now that IBM cannot now move that code anywhere else after it's been used in IBM's own implementation as AIX.
And they call the GPL viral. Darl's accusations there are that if anything touches SysV code licensed from SCO, then SCO have a right to say what can be done with it. That just doesn't make sense.
In any case, it won't end the case quickly due to these changes, as SCO still want to see exactly what the JFS code looks like, so they can see if it was inserted into Linux, and then they can run around and issue more press releases saying "IBM has revealed 10,000 lines of our code is in Linux. see. they admitted it". I think the worst is yet to come in the press-release war that SCO has been waging.
That is, unless they run out of money first. With their stock price nearly down to a third of what it was just a few months ago and an increasing number of legal fronts being fought, we can only hope that's sooner rather than later.
linux networx is a canopy company like SCO/caldera is. see: http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/pr042800_canopy.
Now in the news article it says:
"SCO sent letters raising the prospect of legal action for using Linux to two Department of Energy facilities, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)."
But in this press release it says that linux networx is the one that installed the linux clusters at the LLNL. http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/8.28.2001.49-Law
The new lesson of the day is if you do business with anyone funded by the canopy company you risk being sued by other members of the canopy group.
Or it could stand for Beavis and Butthead.
Uh, huhuh huh, he said SCO.
Yah yah, that sucks! Fire fire!
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.
As far as Slashdot, we all know even the submitters don't read the articles. "now targetting" my ass.
NIH, The National Institues of Health, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States government, is using Beowulf clusters to help cure diseases such as cancer, Alzheimers, stroke, heart disease and kidney failure.
I'm definitely rooting for the Feds on this one.
This is disgusting.
Probably the only thing worse would be if SCO were to send out dunning letters to worthy chartible organization that happen to make use of free and open source software in an effort to save money for helping people.
The sooner that this company's fradulent claims are shot down in flames in the courts and its criminal executive officers charged by the SEC and led in handcuffs to join Ken Lay, the better.
Were it me, I'd send back a letter indicating that my attorneys were in the process of closely examining your claim and will be contacting you shortly. To expedite our process, please submit supporting evidence of your claim to our counsel.
I doubt you'd hear anything more from the litigious bastards.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They're not trying to win a single case, they're trying to get back in the press in a positive or semi-positive light and get the stock back above $10/share. Suing the federal government will give them exactly what they want: attention.
Darl and company will likely end up enjoying the last of their days relaxing on a south pacific beach somewhere. Microsoft wants them to do as much damage to FLOSS before they have to flee the country. Winning the lawsuits isn't one of their goals. Understand those facts and the whole thing starts to make some amount of sense.
Do you have ESP?
"Open-source software--available widely through the Internet--has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by U.S. law," [...] "A computer expert in North Korea who has a number of personal computers can download the latest version of Linux...and in short order build a virtual supercomputer."
The people who read this letter include people who think like this.
No, it's news because the targets of the letters, save a few, hadn't been previously known publicly. An attorney for several of the targeted companies managed to snag these two letters from the gummint labs via a Freedom of Information Act request. FOIA requests are not fullfilled instantaneously.
/. (surprise). I posted this same story to /. early last evening, but it was ignored and then rejected by the editors.
I could say, by the same token, this is just a bit of bad reporting by
"SCO threatened US DOE labs in December letters
18:32 Friday 19 March 2004 Rejected"
To prove we mean business, we're typing this WITH OUR CAP LOCK ON! (evil, maniacal laugh)
This guy is way out there
"Open-source software--available widely through the Internet--has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by U.S. law," McBride said.
Wow, I didn't know SCO was so concerned about saving the world from terrorists. Could someone give these people a humanitarian award please?
All of this reminds me of something my dad said growing up: Companies can get away with just about anything, until they burn either the government or the military.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
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.
predicted that with their stock recently dropping in price (again) that they would stage another publicity stunt.
Quote from yesterday before this happened "every time their stock goes down, they escalate the circus"
This guy is way out there
maybe so...if it was on fair grounds.
But remember, the IRS is only a quick phone call away. Or the president can declare that SCO is an enemy combatant and send SCO off to Cuba.
Is it possible to rent penguins? I know their droppings are like any other birds, pretty nasty, kind of a pain to clean up and stink like hell in large quantities. Would it be possible to rent a flock of penguins and cage them in the sco parking lot for a work day? Everyone would have to walk through it and the penguins would probably hop up onto cars etc... Or just get a few pissed off male emporer penguins and leave them in Darl's office....
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
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.
Maybe... Remember Darl Mcbride when he claimed that SCO owns C++ So in the future SCO may sue people using QT with C++ See: http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/mai n/0,14179,2877578,00.html
"We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++."
What with Canopy representatives on their board of directors and all.
I can personally reassure you on behalf of Trolltech that Canopy has no influence in our day to day management.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
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.
Flash is the Herpes of the Internet.
your.opinion >
While they may lose ( or they may not.. that is still yet to be determined since there hasnt been a judgement on ANY of their claims, yet.. ) that wont instantly mean they goto jail.
.. If the people at SCO truely belive they are in the right.. then no *fraud* was commited.. just a lot of stupidity .. and last i heard that isnt a crime...
The SEC must prove there was intent to defraud
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Its ok he's dead now, we're safe...
AAAHHH!!! there he is again!!!
*stab* *stab* *stab*
ok now he's dead for sure this time... we can go on with our lives
AAAHHH!!! there he is again!!!
*stab* *stab* *stab*
and etc
Dr. McBride or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love SCO
So now SCO attacks the US government?
I find this reminiscent of the activities of McCarthy in the post WW2 period.
The McCarthy investigation and activities were very successful in trying to root out left-wing people from jobs, on the basis that they were a threat to National Security. The world and its people were very weak after the second world war, so all sorts of nutty ideas could get talked about. As the USSR and the USA were involved in a turf war, it was alleged that anyone who supported the US communist party, was in fact undermining the security of the USA. I suppose the modern day equivalent would be any American who supported a pro-Iranian or Pro-Beijing party today, being accused of threatening US security.
Some particularly famous examples were show trials involving Hollywood stars.
Anyway, the whole investigation went on quite successfully until one day the "McCarthy-ites" decided to accuse the US armed forces of containing subversive activities. This was one step too far, and the investigations were halted, and became discredited in the eyes of many.
----
"send a card today - make someone happy"
"SCO sent the letter to every member of the Senate and House of Representatives, said Blake Stowell, a SCO spokesman." No, no, they did not send the extortion letter to congress. This refers to Darl's letter warning congress about the danger to our way of life posed by the and their GPL.
Hah! If you REALLY had an imaginary girlfriend then you would have linked to her page to show her off instead of to the front page. I bet you only have an imaginary imaginary girlfriend.
None of SCO's desperate attempts to prop up the stock price have worked. Even the announcement of a stock buyback propped up the price for only one hour, between 0930 and 1030 last Tuesday. SCOX continues its long slide. SCOX closed at 8.71 on Friday. It started the week at 9.5, and the year around 20.
SCO has reached the point where nothing they can say can help them. Only winning some of their lawsuits can help them, and that looks increasingly unlikely. They have to win three separate suits (against Novell, IBM, and Red Hat) to even start collecting from end users.
"i wasnt aware that he had any opinions towards/against old billy boy"
Then - no offense - your awareness is incomplete.
Microsoft was found to be guilty of anti-competitive practices. The DOJ recommended breaking up Microsoft. This sound familiar?
George W. handed down the proclamation from on high that the Justice department was no longer allowed to pursue a breakup of Microsoft.
This took the wind right out of the sails of the DOJ's case, and Miscrosoft ended up with a slap on the wrist and a request not to do it again.
I'm guessing that GWB's feelings about Microsoft may be *directly* related to the size of some campaign contributions he's received...
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
This is a good move for two reasons:
;) )
1) If the government decides to settle, SCO will be able to twist the truth and claim that the US Government backs their side of the case.
2) If the government doesn't settle, SCO will be able the claim the government biased against them, which may help with PR.
Hopefully SCO and their supporters pay for what's going on, now. I'm thinking of closing my account at Royal Bank to avoid indirectly funding SCO. That's a pretty big deal given the fact that when I grad I'm going to be a lawyer with an MBA. (And now I'm officially hated by slashdot
"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.
SCO's house of cards finally tumbles McBride and Co. will cash out, ..
... nothing. ... scream bloody murder.
I think this should read";SCO's house of cards finally tumbles McBride and Co. will have cashed out,"
This is what the stock buy back plan is for.
Exercise employee stock option.
sell stock, SCO buys like amount of stock.
employee happy.
stock price (on open market) not affected.
repeat;
What does BayStar do about this?
1. If they are in on it
2 If not in on it
> 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.
Crikey, you're on to something! Imagine a Beowulf cluster running
Windows ME......you can't put anything past those filthy Commies!
With that sort of computing power they could develop any sort of
weapon you can imagine....knives, axes, sticks....anything is possible
Clippy: I see you're trying to develop a WMD, can I help?
If the prospect of that doesn't constitute a clear & present danger
then I don't know what does.
I'm for GWB carrying forward the "War On Terrorism" and
pre-emptively nuking Redmond. Who's with me?
The Machine stops.
This came from English common law.
You literaly could not sue the king without
his permission.
I would not call that disinformation at all. I assume you are attempting to make a subtle distinction between management of the labs, and what one typically means by "belong to", not that you are attempting to troll or anything.
Prime Contract W-7405-ENG-48 (Contract 48 or Prime Contract) is executed between the University of California (UC or University) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and it is under this contract that LANL and LLNL function.
In other words, UC manages the labs under contract from DOE.
I remember my mom used to tell me never to hit bee hives with my hockey stick. SCO never listens to this kind of advice, which comes up every time there's a story here about them; so what's their major malfunction? I just want it to end!
They hit one, then run to the next, hit that, run some more, hit another one.... currently they have a shitload of bees after them, and their legs are getting tired...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The difference is that if you sue the Federal Government (as opposed to a State or private organization) they get to decide if you are allowed to sue them or not. That may seem unfair on the face of it, but considering the number of people that make a living from deep-pockets lawsuits it's not hard to understand (there aren't any deeper pockets than the U.S. Government.)
That's a useful effect. But it's not the reason for the rule.
The reason that's in there is so that when the fed tries to exercise its constitutional authority on some OTHER big pockets (i.e. a state), it doesn't get tied up in a bunch of legal crud.
The fed, however, DOES let such suits proceed much of the time.
And after the CIA ripped off a company's database, installed spyware, and marketed it cheap to the world's banks (wrecking the market for the original authors), and the fed refused to be sued, resulting in the database's company folding, Congress got pissed and passed some laws to prevent it happening again. (That's why you see that bit about federal agencies in ELUAs - to set up a suit they can't wiggle out of if an agency tries to pull it again.)
I don't know if this would keep the agencies from ducking the suits, but it might. (IANAL, and haven't even read the darn gobbledegook directly.) Let's see what shows up on groklaw.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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
SCO: I'm calling the FBI to confiscate all your computers and do an investigation!
FBI: Sir. We are the FBI.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I'd say it's more liker firing a '22 at a grizzly... It *IS* possible to kill it, but chances are it's gonna be spitting up the spare bullets you have (had) in your back pocket.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
DEPLOYING UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE
ACQUIRING TARGET
LOCATION: LINDON, UTAH, USA
TARGET DESTROYED
SEND NOTIFICATION
TO: LEGAL DEFENSE TEAM
CONTENT: It's Miller time!
"If not, why announce the Fed-suit instead of going back after BoA?"
Keep your tinfoil hat on; there's plenty of other oddities about this thing of SCO's, but you're a little off on this one point.
1.) SCO hasn't sued the fed labs yet and announced nothing yesterday.
2.) The letters were part of one of the threatening spam runs SCO did in December; the revelation now comes because an attorney representing several recipients of the sco scam spam just now has been able to obtain them, after filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the letters.
Except that it's misleading and there's not enough clarification:
It's not an idle threat, though many Linux fans dismiss the Lindon, Utah-based company's assertions. SCO's attorneys, Boies Schiller & Flexner, have indeed sued AutoZone for its use of Linux, claiming that the open-source operating system infringes on SCO's Unix copyrights.
Unless author clarifies his point, it's misleading. SCO did not sue AutoZone simply because AutoZone uses Linux. They sued AutoZone because SCO had a licensing agreement with them which SCO felt was violated by AutoZone's use of Linux. Author's point seems to imply that if you are a large company and use Linux, you are at a risk of getting sued. This is not true. What legal principle can SCO use to sue Linux users that have no contract or licensing agreements with them? None, as far as I am aware.
This is a problem with most mainstream press reporting on this issue. They follow SCO's FUD more than do their research and report facts.
2004 campaign contributions thus far
Note the important:
Microsoft Corp $160,850
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I think that people who see the U.S. government as some behemoth that can devour SCO are missing something. Four years ago, that might have been a reasonable analysis, but now you have people in charge of the govenrment who are actually much more hostile to the institutions that they nominally govern than they are to the industries they nominally regulate or serve.
This is actually a perfect oppotunity for SCO to walk in, whine about lost IP value, and have a truly sympathetic ear on the other side of the table. The government shut down several nominally free services provided by the government because private industry concerns complained that they were too successful and taking away business from the private sector.
The Bush administration loves anything that makes a buck, and probably hates things like Open Source software because it sounds too much like Communism.
About the only interesting things here are that we now know they've been sending these letters to (pseudo) government organizations, and they've managed to threaten the Regents of the University of California ( thus re-igniting USL vs BSD).
It's also increasingly unlikely that they did any sort of vetting in terms of who they sent the letters to. Dead Tree SPAM.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
This raises a possibly interesting point. Any lawyer here who understands the US legal system? Could TSCOG then claim that the US court system is not qualified to consider the main case because of conflict of interest? This seems nuts, but less nuts than any other legal argument that we have heard from them. Any chance of an appeal based on it?
Umm... Its an ISO standard, royalty free... They might get some money licensing an *implementation* but not the language.
Sadly, while I would chalk it up to a poorly transcribed/edited interview if it was anyone else saying it, McBride might actually believe they own C++...
At the end of the article, they mention letters that SCO sent to every congressman saying:
"Open-source software--available widely through the Internet--has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by U.S. law," McBride said. "A computer expert in North Korea who has a number of personal computers can download the latest version of Linux...and in short order build a virtual supercomputer."
Like most of their previous assertions, they don't let logic get in their way on this either.. As if Linux is the threat here.. By this same logic, you would need to outlow Solaris-x86, Windows, *BSD, and anything else running on x86's.. They key to these systems is not the OS, it's the price/performance of these commodity CPU's.
Darl, do you have any idea how many Linux clusters those Mafia guys are running? And they're loaded! Go get 'em!
You sued WHO???? Don't you know that they have nukes?
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
SCO wanted the general public to think of this case as one of David v. Goliath. However, it is becoming clearer and clear that it is not a David v. Goliath case at all. In the historical David v. Goliath, Goliath picked the fight. In fact Goliath taunted the Isrealites. The would-be David in this case is SCO, and SCO picked the fight. But it seems that SCO did not just limit the fight to one Goliath. Oh no. Getting cocky, while swinging its sling, and a limited supply of ammo, SCO has gone on to pick a fight with a couple of other Goliath's; some of the Goliaths are bigger and some are smaller. But now SCO has decided that by threatening to sue the Feds, SCO has decided to pick on the biggest Goliath of them all. But that is not the best part -- this new Goliath (we'll called it the US Goliath Family) has a family, one that has deep pockets and several methods of persuasion. Between the members of the US Goliath Family you have the FTC, with power to investigate and criminalize the actions of SCO; the FBI, which has the power to investigate rackateering and extortion amoung other things; the SEC, which can investigate the claims of M$ involvement and bring criminal charges for securities fraud; the IRS, which can look into the finances of the company and conduct an expensive and lengthy audit; and several others in the family. SCO has just opened a can of worms, and they had better hope that they are right, becasue if they are wrong, they will have sealed their own coffins.
The tables have now turned. Several government agencies have said this is a copyright issue. Now that there is a threat that government agencies will be dragged into the equation, there is now a huge financial incentive to look into possiable criminal conduct. The US government does not take well to extortion attempts. Perhaps SCO is doing this out the "spirit" of capitalism. Who knows. But one lesson that I learned quickly well growing up in the Wash, DC area is that when the government gets pissed off at a company things get rather unconfortable for the company. And forget the congressional support. When things start to hit the fan, you can bet that some General is going to have way more power in swaying a Congressman's opinion than SCO will.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Think about it, they're already neck-deep in shit if they don't win everything. Pissing off the feds isn't going to screw them over any more. The chance that they're taking is that the way government agencies deemed important enough to be allowed supercomputing clusters, adding on a charge for linux licenses won't bother anyone enough to raise a stink about it. They then get the credibility of a federal agency paying up to voice their threat with.
That said, I think they *will* get hammered in court, but that doesn't make their behavior irrational from where they stand right now. Proving criminal fraud would basically require audio tape of them saying "No, we don't own the code, but we can still extort them for lots of money." which is unlikely, so all they really have to lose here are attorney's fees.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
There was something I was wondering. Many people make the "mistake" of associating Linux with the GNU operating system. Linux is just the kernel. GNU can run on several kernels, Linux is the most popular one, the default one.
When I started using FreeBSD I noticed that the kernel was really not that big of a deal compared to the Linux kernel, which was more of a bigger deal, or seemed to be, anyway. I remember I swapped an OpenBSD harddrive between minor architecture changes and had to compile a new kernel. It wasn't a big deal, it only took short period of time, and involved just editing the file directly, then compiling it and reboot.
So here is what I was wondering. When they say AIX - the accusation there is AIX code in Linux - they mean the kernel, right? Or are they talking all of AIX. I am even wondering how these things match up; because, technically, calling what most people call Linux Linux is incorrect, it's actually GNU/Linux to begin with, and then perhaps some proprietary stuff thrown on top like YaST was up until yesterday or so.
So I wonder how much people realize that we are just talking about a kernel here, or are we? Is it more than that? And how does the logic of these accusations draw the dividing line between kernel and OS? The accusations seem to be based on the fact that everyone is "using Linux" and "not using Unix" anymore, but identifying infringing code seems to be an afterthought, with no specific facts as of yet (probably ever). The accusations don't appear to be primarily about the technical details, they appear to be of a broader nature, about the fact that ex-Unix customers are now "using Linux". It's almost as if the individual(s) responsible for these legal actions don't know the difference between Linux and GNU - why would they be asking for "AIX" and not the "AIX kernel"?
It's just kind of strange, if you asked me. It's basically tying software to hardware, because the kernel is all about hardware, all kinds of hardware. Since there is no evidence, and no infringement has taken place, these court cases are obviously going nowhere; but shouldn't tying hardware to software be at the discrection of the hardware manufacturer/chipmaker?
The simplest answer to SCO alegations; They are going down !
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
now just imagine... SCO kill linux in USA, 699$+equipment per additional CPU. the Enemy: only equipment cost. now who will have the fastest computational power?
Bank of America can't simply call every financial institution in the world and get SCO shut down. That is retarded.
Besides, don't you imagine BoA has competitors?
Now that this will involve the Feds as defendants, can we just let the Navy Seals have a training mission in Utah?
SCO goes to their offices on Monday and finds nothing but an empty shell, not even a fingerprint.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Its an ISO standard, royalty free... They might get some money licensing an *implementation* but not the language.
Since when does being an ISO standard make a technology royalty free?
It's not like MPEG is royalty free.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
There's a legal doctrine which addresses this issue. I can't remember the precise term for it, but the Judiciary is allowed to be a litigant before itself. It's somewhat frowned upon, but the logic goes as follows: under the Constitution, the only branch of the government with standing to hear grievances against the government is the Judiciary. If the Judiciary has a grievance against another branch of the government, it is the Judiciary's Constitutional duty to hear its own case.
For obvious reasons, this is really frowned upon. The Judiciary tends to judge itself much more harshly than it judges others.
For instance, under the Constitution the Federal government is not allowed to reduce the pay of a judge during his/her term of good behavior. Sounds straightforward, right? Up until you consider that Federal judges haven't had a COLA (Cost Of Living Adjustment) in a decade. Due to inflation, Federal judges are getting paid about fourteen percent less today than they were in the '80s.
During this time, Congress has made it a priority to give itself frequent and generous COLAs (when they haven't been giving themselves outright raises). It's outraged a large number of judges, who are--in terms of real buying power--getting their salaries cut by over an eighth despite the Constitution's guarantee that Congress is forbidden from doing that.
So some particularly outraged judges filed a lawsuit against Congress, suing them to compel them to give the Judiciary a proper COLA. The Judiciary heard this lawsuit, because (a) nobody in their right mind could say the judges didn't have a legitimate grievance against the government, and (b) the Judiciary is the only agency authorized to hear these grievances.
In the end, the suit was dismissed before trial. A trial is for the determination of facts, but there were no facts in disagreement. The disagreement was purely one about law, and those disagreements tend to be handled in pre-trial motions. The plaintiffs claimed that Congress' refusal to pass a COLA amounted to an unconstitutional cut in salary, and the respondent (the United States Solicitor-General, I think) claimed that Congress only says their salary shall not be cut, not that they're entitled to COLA increases in salary.
The judge hearing the case decided the Solicitor-General had the correct view of the law. The question of law was resolved in the government's favor, and given that there was no violation of law, the plaintiff's lawsuit quietly vanished.
All of this is if-I-recall-correctly. I may be in error on some details, but I think that I'm right on the major points.
(Also, a sidebar: the next time you hear about how government jobs are cushy and high-ranking spots like judicial appointments are overpaid, consider this: on average, a Federal judge gets paid less than a quarter what they would make in private practice. The Judiciary is facing an exodus of judges into the private sector because the $120,000 salary of a Chief Judge of an Appellate Court simply doesn't compare to the $1-million-or-more they could make in a law firm. Are judges paid well? Yes. Are they paid market rates? Not even close.)
SCO thinks it owns the C++ programming language according to one article:
S tory03.html#C++_Issues
http://www.mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-02_
Excerpt:
MozillaQuest Magazine: C++ appears to be one of the properties that SCO acquired through Novell's acquisition of AT&T's UNIX Systems Laboratories and subsequent purchase of Novell's UNIX interests by SCO. At this time most Linux and/or GNU/Linux distributions include C++ compilers and editors. Is this something for which SCO currently charges? If so, just what are the current arrangements? If not, will C++ licensing and enforcement be added to SCO's licensing and enforcement program?
Blake Stowell: C++ is one of the properties that SCO owns today and we frequently are approached by customers who wish to license C++ from us and we do charge for that. Those arrangements are done on a case-by-case basis with each customer and are not disclosed publicly. C++ licensing is currently part of SCO's SCOsource licensing program.
MozillaQuest Magazine: How about GNU C++? Does GNU C++ use SCO IP? If so, could SCO license and/or charge for use of its IP in GNU C++?
Blake Stowell: I honestly don't know.
According to the article, Blake Stowell works for SCO, but I don't know who he is. He goes on say that SCO would have to research any violations on the part of the GCC team.
I know that the C++ language is developed by ANSI and ISO, but the language was developed by Bjorn Straussop (sp) as work property owned by AT&T. Am I correct?
SCO claims it acquired C++ from AT&T or Novell. Despite being a programming language, C++ itself is still a technology no different from a hammer.I can't just create a language and call it C++. If I did, ISO couldn't sue me, but SCO would have us believe SCO could. So if I create my own language and call it Borland C++, I would be liable to both SCO and Borland (who is also liable to SCO).
I know it's always in good form to bash Microsoft. Can we honestly believe that Microsoft is somehow behind this, or that Microsoft is still the evil empire? It looks like we have a new contender. I think it's about time we see more cartoons lampooning SCO like we saw for Microsoft. Where's the pic of McBride as a Borg?
Darl will have a hard time letting go of the popularity he enjoys among the /. crowd.
/. members ;-).
In order to keep it, he'll start a new career in modelling. He will become the new, hmmmm, face of the reborn Goatse.cx
$699 fee for linking to the site will be waived for the registered
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Maybe the courts should consider non-lawyer judges. I know a few out-of-work slashdotters who might fit the bill :)
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"