Slashdot Mirror
Groklaw Debunks SCO's ELF Heist
Xenographic writes "Following SCO's earlier claims that ELF really belonged to them, in this Groklaw article, we find enough proof to show that SCO does not and never could have owned ELF or any part of it. Moreover, it shows that their real motive in this is to desperately raise new issues to stave off IBM's motion for summary judgement on IBM's 10th counterclaim. For those who don't remember, that's the one where IBM asked for certification that their Linux activities did not violate any of SCO's copyrights, and SCO replied (with forked tongue) that the case against IBM wasn't about copyrights... Let the "Santa Claus Organization" jokes commence."
...what stupid people can do with a lot of money
Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greed. They want you to misunderestimate them.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
oh please! what they are doing is insane but not stupid. They are manipulating eveything from market to laws. If they are anything but stupid. I would say greedy, cunning but not stupid. They are actually making money off this. Pump and dump? The only people who are going to be affected are the programmers at sco but i am sure they would find alternate employment once this fiasco is over.
Main Press?
Hahaha! This stuff is WAY too geeky for any average person to even care about.
Think about it for a second, it's all computer stuff AND lawyer details... As geeks, we all know it's mostly garbage-claims, but we still NEED Groklaw to clear things up.
Unless Linux get more mainstream press (something other than hype) you won't see this. Main press is more interested in hype stuff (like the lastest Ipod model or how's going to be the next American Idol,etc..) than actual more boring facts...
still, you can try news.google.com for SCO news in the main press...
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
"The TIS Committee grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use the information disclosed in this Specification to make your software TIS-compliant..."
Pretty straightforward, isn't it?
Should it be obvious to SCO's lawyers that the ELF infringement claim has no value? YES!
Knowing this, should their rudimentary sense of ethics tell them NOT to help bring this suit? YES!!
Should lawyers be held PERSONALLY responsible for participating in worthless suits like this that waste everybody else's time and money? HELL YES!!!
Here is the thing. you CAN be sucessful at it but you will need to set up a support center. call in line and tech support. people dont give a rat's ass about what OS they run. they care about if they can use it.
will you be available to help them when the Comcast High speed internet moron shows up at heir house and says" Where's the windows CD?", "My drivers wont load, your computer is broke.", " your internet will not work without our special software"...
How about at 9:00pm at night when they want to install a software app? (note sell CD-r's with tested RPM's of games and aps for your customers! hell profit making possibilities are endless with this!) are you going to set up a website that will filter them to the software they ca neasily install??
if I buy a computer from dell and I'm the typical drooling moron, I can call them to help me. (yes even at a cost) same for Compusa purchases... I can buy a "tech support" card and talk to a guy/gal that will help me figure out that complex and hidden "search" feature.
you want to make it a success? build a support center around it... like APPLE did. selling a computer preinstalled and configured and then afte r taking their check you scream RTFM!!!! LOL LOL LOL in their faces will not make you money.
and that is where linux retailers fail miserably.
if you want to sell it and make money at it... SUPPORT IT!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Linux is the OS that works against itself the most.
I love the choices I have with Linux, at least a few dozens flavors of kernel, hundreds of distros, and countless tarballs, RPMs, and DEBs for me to choose from. But when you want to support these countless and fast growing numbers, it becomes a nightmare.
My company just converted over to Linux recently (every desktop, servers were all already on Linux/BSD). One of the biggest challenge we had was how we are going to handle support. The best solution was to have a contractor company to support us so we don't waste our valuable resources. The idea is to have one of our own employees pick up the phone, and have someone walk him/her through the problems (or even have the support person control the desktop via VNC or krfb).
But do you know how hard it is to find good support for Linux? We had a rough time finding a company that would do what we want, and to add on top of that, the ones we find only support some generic dsitros. We are not running any special kernels or distros here, we are using a major distro, the only difference is we modified the GNOME desktop a little to fit the needs of each department. But this becomes insanely difficult to for someone else (a contractor) to support remotely.
In the end, we went ahead and did the support ourselves. People bitch and whine about how the desktop is different than their Windows XP desktop now, but we always through this question back at them: "Can you still do your job?" And that silenced most of the complaints. Users were complaining about not being able to play certain games online (especially from MSN), or not being able to run certain programs that they downloaded.
But with home users, you are not so lucky. Regular home users expect to have total freedom over their machine. To some, this means having root access. And we all know root access in the hands of the not-so-smart people is a dangerous thing. And it only takes a couple of these morons to suck up all of your time and resources.
I am not saying that Linux on the desktop doesn't work. It does, everyone from my company is using it. The problem is supporting the various flavors of Linux distributions. It's easier for Dell to train their support techs to know all flavors of Windows, but it would be impossible to train a staff of support techs to know lots of Linux distros + different windows managers. An user running GNOME and an user running Enlightenment think they are on very different machines, while they could both be running the same version fo the same distro.