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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."
Is any of this getting press in the media, besides these odd articles at non-mainstream news sites? Or investiment news sites? I can't imagine all this SCO news exists in a vacumn.
Obviously this SCO stuff is a riot. And possibly a pain in the butt. But it does a couple of things:
1. Gets Linux more press; this is good
2. Proves that Linux has *serious* game, and can play with the big boys
3. Shows legitimacy (see 2): publicly whooping SCO time and time again demonstrates the legimitacy of Linux and its IP.
4. Entertains everyone: remember this? Everyone loves watching things crash and burn...
So, after all, what's not to love?
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Dr. Movie Movie, PhD: DrMovieMovie.com
Witty movie reviews, eating contests, and a guy who once drank a gallon of milk in an hour.
There was a story a couple days ago that the only thing propping up SCO at this point was the insane percentage of short positions held in the stock.
Something like 54.5% of the positions held in SCO were shorts..
People Talking in Movie shows.. people smoking in bed.. people voting republican.. GIVE THEM A BOOT TO THE HEAD!
Any unfounded claims to yet again churn the media and fuel another cycle of funding (either misguided or selfserving).
Anything to prolong the story.
This is all they have, there is no sustainable business plan, no ongoing investment, no hope of a true future.
All there is is short-term stock inflation and lawyers fees.
And for some, that is enough.
Well, for one thing, even if SCO stood for "Santa Claus Organization", they could not claim Santa Claus, or even the North Pole, very easily, as this matter is already in dispute between several parties:
1) The Danes, who claim to own the North Pole because the Lomonsov Ridge, which passes under the ice cap, is an extension of Greenland, which is part of the Danemark Kingdom. (Controversially, however, Santa (Jule manden) is already a Dane because he lives "in the capital of Greenland, Nuuk. So giving the North Pole to Greenland does not change his status, even if he has an extra factory there. He stays a Danish citizen.)
2) The Russians, who claim to own the North Pole because the Lomonsov Ridge is an extension of Russia.
3) The Turks, because St Nicholas, on whom Santa Claus is modelled, is buried on Gemiler, a tiny island off Turkey.
Another issue is that the USA wants to divide the Arctic sea by sectors, as is the case with Antarctica, because the north coast of Alaska is the southernmost border of the Arctic ocean, so by sharing the Arctic in this way, the USA gets a larger share.
Finally, on behalf of all my fellow Canadians, I claim Santa Claus, because he proudly wears the colors of our National Flag, and we own land up there too.
"We have extended this traditional copyright doctrine to exclude from protection against infringement those elements of a work that necessarily result from external factors inherent in the subject matter of the work. For computer-related applications, these external factors include hardware standards and mechanical specifications, software standards and compatibility requirements, computer manufacturer design standards, industry programming practices, and practices and demands of the industry being serviced.See Gates Rubber, 9F.3d at 838; Computer Assocs. Int'l, Inc. v. Altai, Inc., 982 F.2d 693, 709-10 (2d Cir. 1992); Plains Cotton Coop. Assoc. v. Goodpasture Serv., Inc., 807 F.2d 1256, 1262 1635](5th Cir. 1987)
If Word documents (or Office documents in general) an be argued to be 'standard', could this clause be used to protect code used to open them, regardless of how Microsoft changes them? This part appears a double edged sword, as the next question becomes who deigns something a 'standard'. Does common use qualify, or does it have to be recognized by some board or group?
As I think about it, it may mean that the method of using published standards can't be copyrighted; but the 'published' part is implied. Perhaps the whole document defines 'standards' and 'specifications' more specifically (Groklaw only quoted part itself), but it seems like a possible angle to use in a non-intended manner.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Programmers at SCO? Nevermind...
Doesn't seem stupid or insane, merely desperate; it's lawyers doing everything possible to win an apparently losing case. They seem to be in territory nowhere near where they expected to be from the beginning, as their original plan was to be bought out to shut them up.
What would you do as a lawyering firm expected to do everything possible to win the case for your client?
I'll still be rubbing my hands with glee anyway.
Insert witty saying or aphorism here.
it would be cool if people had some stories about selling SCO's stock short!
I sold 400 SCOX shares short about the time it hit $10 per share, on the way up. I rode it all the way to the peak of over $20, and still hold my position now that it's below $5. I tried to short some more when it was high, but couldn't get any. It's taken over a year so far, but I'm ahead, and if I cashed out now it would even be a long-term gain.
I intend to ride it into the ground, though.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
That makes me think that there are things waiting in the wings with IBM. Looking Glass is cool, but I bet there are things much cooler from IBM that they're not disclosing until all this clears up. I bet IBM has some really good linux, and even OSS, products that will be coming out as soon as this goes away.
I still wish IBM would just buy Sun. Sun has a lot of very valuable IP, but they're not mass-producing enough processors to be competitive. If IBM bought Sun they could get a lot of Sun's chip-to-chip stuff, their new smart threading cores, etc - and just put it on their own power chips. Then those could be used in Sun servers and IBM servers alike.
We need more whitebox shops in towns all over to start selling linux or installing it. Put up a big sign "windows viruses eliminated forever!" that would be enough to get a lot of people inside the store at least. Then if they saw a few machines setup running some good different distros with all the apps that come with them, a lot of folks would think about it. Let people play with it a little, then they can see there's enough similarities to be comfortable with it, and enough installed apps that they probably wouldn't need much more. For what people pay for their semi monthly windows debugging at the shop, they could get a shiny new distro installed and have a bit of handholding in the store to show them how to use it.
Personally, I just am not going to worry about ANYTHING that might come from the SCO issues. Initially I thought they might have something, but now it's obvious they have less than squat.
If I could figure out a way to be two people I would do the linux whitebox shop myself, but I got a job now.....
(Just saw this yahoo press release from SCO)
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX - News) announced today that the SEC has declared effective, as of July 21, 2004, SCO's registration statement relating to the resale of shares of common stock issuable to BayStar Capital II, L.P. This fulfills the only condition to closing the repurchase transaction under the stock repurchase agreement between SCO and BayStar dated May 31, 2004, which was previously announced on June 1, 2004. Accordingly, SCO has informed BayStar that it considers the repurchase transaction to be closed as of July 21, 2004.
LINDON, Utah, July 23
BayStar has notified SCO that it is BayStar's position that the repurchase transaction has not closed, pending resolution of claims by BayStar that SCO's recent public statements regarding SCOsource licensing opportunities are inconsistent with statements previously made by SCO to representatives of BayStar. SCO takes such questions very seriously and reaffirms the accuracy of its public disclosures concerning its SCOsource business and confirms its belief that such disclosures are not inconsistent with any confidential statements previously made to BayStar. As SCO previously has cautioned in its public disclosures, it has limited experience with its SCOsource licensing initiative, and projecting SCOsource revenue is difficult and subject to numerous risks and uncertainties.
BayStar has also claimed that it will not consider the repurchase transaction closed until SCO provides BayStar with confidential information supporting the accuracy of SCO's recent public disclosures regarding its SCOsource business. SCO has declined to provide the SCOsource information requested by BayStar in order to protect the confidential and proprietary nature of the information and the names of the companies engaged in SCOsource licensing discussions and to avoid fostering speculation regarding its SCOsource business.
SCO believes that the stock repurchase agreement with BayStar is effective and binding, and observes that the issues raised by BayStar are neither conditions to closing nor the subject of any representations, warranties or other terms of that agreement. In connection with the closing, SCO has sent to BayStar a stock certificate representing 2,105,263 shares of SCO common stock and notified BayStar that is ready to deliver $13,000,000 in cash, constituting the balance of the repurchase consideration, upon receipt from BayStar of its wire transfer instructions.
SCO has requested BayStar to fulfill its obligations under the stock repurchase agreement to deliver to SCO the certificates for the 40,000 shares of SCO Series A-1 Convertible Preferred Stock upon closing, and has informed BayStar that SCO will, in any case, consider all such Series A-1 stock cancelled and no longer issued and outstanding, effective as of the closing on July 21, 2004.
People Talking in Movie shows.. people smoking in bed.. people voting republican.. GIVE THEM A BOOT TO THE HEAD!
Of course there is nothing illegal about implementing a standard from scratch. But copying another person's implementation is indeed infringement. It's possible that a kernel developer was careless and thought "why should I go to the effort of writing an ELF implementation from scratch, when the UNIX implementation is pretty much in the public domain?"
If they did that, it would be copyright infringement.
I'm still convinced that not everyone over at SCOG is mentally retarded. They've got some intelligent folks over there. All the same, it took a volunteer paralegal 24 hours to come up with overwhelming evidence against their latest claims. Certainly they could have at least come up with something more substantial, or in lieu of that, more vague.. to base their claims on.
So what are they trying to pull? There's more involved here, and I think that it might be really important to understand what it is before they show their hand.
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?
Long ago my planet solved its lawyer problem for good. At first we wanted to just fire all the lawyers, but that wasn't enough. So we changed our plans, and instead fired all the lawyers into the sun. After that, any new lawyer could represent a client, but if he did so and lost his case, he was consequently fired into the sun.
After doing these things, the world economies boomed, birth rates shot up 150%, the average intelligence of my fellow Orks increased by 25%, and global warming became a non-issue.
Some days I wonder why the hell I came to this planet.
These aren't the sigs you're looking for.
People literally do not know to even consider changing. They have never seen it, used it or in a lot of cases even heard of it. to most people, they think windows equals the computer equals the internet. Heck, most people have never even seen a mac for that matter. You have to physically show them, stick it right in their face, that's why you need a stock windows install running next to a major distro install on identical (or close enough) machines. I've done it, people freak out just looking at the menu, they are amazed all the stuff you get. Show them the browser, the office app, how to play a cd, how to look at pics, etc, that's all most folks do. I say line em up next to each other, there's hardly any difference except the vast difference in quantity of apps you get with linux, and modern linux desktops are certainly pretty enough. Compare what you get with both of them, and at the time you tell the customer "no more windows viruses, no more popups, no more winodws broken-ness". And you have to do that deal where you insist that you only support it as it sits, that any third party apps they get from you, and you could put tripwire on it or something to help you maintain that if they complain. Frankly, I think most users would be overjoyed to just not have to dick with it. They really don't want ot, they want it to be secure online, and there's no queestion the stock linux apps work perfectly fine now. Show them how to get online (pre set it up for them in the store with their ISP info), show them the browser, do the email thing (I would recommend mozilla suite to people, keep it simple and effective), and that's it. Only let them run as root for day to day updates that are automated, like RHN or whatever else the other distros have.
I think it's doable,either preloaded sales or load it up for them and give them an hour to play with it in the store or at their house, like I said, I would like to do it, everytime I go in a whhitebox store around here there's a stack of borked windows machines waiting to be picked up, usually from something they got being online, and-insert sam kinnison voice- it never ends. You can be there ten minutes and yet another windows victim walks in the store. I have been seing this for years now, it's crazy. no reason for it.
With any major distro, there are literally so many apps that can go with it right from an install, I think most folks would be quite comfortable with the selection. Tell them once or twice a year they can bring it in for a discounted upgrade, and reload the next version of the distro, charge something reasonable like only 20$. Tell them to compare that to windows, they'll get the message, they know what a windows upgrade costs. I mean, if their machine will take it, it will take it. You can get lists of easily supported hardware, and most hardware out there now is supported. Not all, but most, it's close enough now to deal with it. Keep note of your customers machines specs in a file, and recommend they always upgrade their RAM if it needs it, and do it for them at cost, it will make their machines run better and score you a lot of customer loyalty brownie points at the same time, worth a few minutes work, toss 'em a bone, people love that stuff, they love not getting gouged. Word of mouth will get you more business as these new customers friends get nailed by the exploit du jour, and they don't-they'll brag about it. People are tired of windows BS a lot more than they are "used" to windows BS, they just literally have no other place to go, they don't see it! They have no credible idea other than maybe they heard of it and think it's some strange app, they really don't know.
I keep thinking on this, maybe I might do it at night with some flyers and driving. It's obvious that the large companies are going to drag their feet with linux on the desktop, I say snag the billions a year cash they are ignoring. You are hard pressed to find anyone who has had a computer more than a year who doesn't have a windows horror story, it's the best advertising there is.