Slashdot Mirror
The Register vs Groklaw: Who Gets It Right?
microbee writes "Over the past weeks Groklaw has been running a series of articles on new discoveries about SCO and Project Monterey. Surprisingly (to me, as I love both sites), The Register published another article to counter the argument of Groklaw's serials, claiming "it's difficult to envisage Groklaw's conjecture swaying a court case, but it provides SCO with valuable public relations ammunition."" There's also a rebuttal on groklaw as well.
As others are reporting, postings to daddypants@slashdot.org are ignored...
Why not present both sides fully? PJ has already posted a rebuttal to this on Groklaw.
And for the record: Groklaw gets it right
PJ's Rebuttal
It would not be in their best interests to do so, by suing a big name, SCO keep their name in the limelight, hoping they will be bought or something similar
I guess they hope it's a case of any publicity is good publicity
Business Voyeur
I found it difficult to see the point of the Register article. There was very little in it that was actually inconsistent with what has appeared on Groklaw. The main theme seemed to be that Groklwas was wrong to think that it had made a big discovery about Project Monterey, but Groklaw has never claimed to have made such a discovery, just to have assembled lots of evidence that counters SCO's claims. The Register article's claims about PJ retracting statements are not backed up by any evidence.
As for Groklaw's alleged errors helping SCO, I don't see it. At worst, Groklaw has exaggerated the significance of the history of Project Monterey. SCO has made no hay out of this, and I don't see how it could, even if the Register's claims were true.
Every GrokLaw article has a thread under it entitled "Corrections go here: So PJ can find them" or something of that nature.
"The saga illustrates one of the perils of online forums, the "echo chamber" effect. Many participants join a forum to have beliefs re-affirmed, and context is often a casualty. It's also a characteristic of the "information age" that facts are often applauded regardless of whether they make sense in a particular context."
A brilliant explanation of how something becomes "fact" on the Internet. I wouldn't say The Register's article is really an indictment of Groklaw, but perhaps it would be better if Groklaw let the courts decide this particular case.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
In looking at the "response" by the register, it looks more like the original article than a response.
;-)
In any case, the big problem the register has is PJ's summary of how Monterey was a "stopgap" on IBM's way to Linux.
That seems to be much ado about nothing (then we ARE talking about the register
Whether Monterey was a "stopgap" or not doesn't matter to the case, but rather whether SCO was aware of IBM's intent to run the code on the power PC. THAT is why the "evidence" that has been recorded on Groklaw is important.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
One part of the reg's article was certainly correct - that a number of these sites act as echo chambers for people who want their own beliefs reaffirmed. So far in this Slashdot thread I've seen "well it's obvious, Groklaw gets it right" or similar sentiment displayed in multiple comments, without one statement of factual evidence used to corroborate the claim. Me, I don't know anything about Monterey, but I'd be happy to consider any evidence that people are willing to post :-)
Given how weak their case appears, I can't imagine that anyone wants their IP. Nor can I imagine that any self-respecting Unix SA would want to support their product.
They've been left in the dust by Linux and they're really not relevent anymore. If anything, they're the posterchild for why you should abandon propriatary OSs. I hope Bill Gate$ is paying attention.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
When this all started, SCO was worth .5 / share. In addition, they had no money in the company. Then they meet with MS and Sun. Suddenly, they had money in the bank from MS, Sun, and a few other investors, a law suit was announced, and their share price was driven to +20. In addition, the Norda's owned a huge chunk of it and simply gave it away to dump the contriversy (sadly, not before the lose of their daughter). While I have no respect for the people involved, and certainly for their lack of morals or ethics, it has made lots of money for them. In fact, other than the Norda's, the biggest loser out of all this was probably MS/Sun, as it appears that Linux is only getting lots of press, and a number of legal questions are disappearing at a quick rate.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Summary: the Register saw a flaw in some groklaw articles (about the 'stopgap' claims), wrongly interpreted some other comments (proof that SCO knew about Monterey on Power) in that context, and wrote a very long article about it. PJ's response, unfortunately, only goes into those last claims, not the critique on the stopgap claims, which are justified, IMHO.
Anyway, storm is a glass of water.
Jan
Andrew Orlowski wrote the best coverage I saw of the Microsoft monopoly trial, and pretty much changed my mind from one of "Well, if Microsoft wants to include a browser, then so be it, you can't stop progress" to "Hang the bastards!" (obviously I mean as past tense being "hung" not "hanged", I'm an opponent of the Death Penalty. Ooer, little bit of politics, little bit of politics.)
He's anything but a Microsoft astroturfer.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
the author of the article doesn't exist
Where id PJ say that?
I quote below the second paragraph of the groklaw article:
Andrew Orlowski is a fine journalist, whose skills I have long admired. However, in this case, he didn't understand why legally the evidence Groklaw found of Project Monterey being intended from the beginning to be used on POWER matters. It matters because SCO's proposed 3rd amended complaint apparently is claiming that IBM had no right to use the Project Monterey product on POWER and only did so after Project Monterey was killed.
Of course it is difficult to envisage this, since Groklaw isn't about trying to sway any court case. The lawyers for IBM and SCOX are the ones to make that kind of impact, and they have to rely on whatever are the facts. Groklaw is merely reporting the various twists and turns of this case, and in this process it is helping the lawyers and the technical people understand what the other say and how they think. As far as any conjecture being presented there, this appears mostly based on available material, such as court filings and technical documentation generally available. There may seem to be a bias against SCO, but if the realities of the case had been different, there could just as well have been an apparent bias against IBM.
As for being valuable to SCO PR, I'd beg to differ! Groklaw has been able to neutralize much of the FUD that Darl McBride would have us believe about SCO owning and controlling this and that... if anything can be compared to ammunition, it would be the torpedoes that are about to sink SCO. Even without Groklaw, SCO would eventually have foundered, it would have taken longer, and resulted in a slower growth of Linux.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
Do you remember Jon Katz? I don't know if he still posts on Slashdot, because (hallelujah) they provided the block-Jon-Katz option in user preferences.
I've stopped reading El Reg because they don't have a block Andrew Orlowski option. I could tell within a sentence (without reading the byline) that an article was by Andrew.
Previously his articles have dripped with vitriolic envy of Google. I'm guessing that the new ones have the same acidic content agains Groklaw. While I've doubts about the objectivity (ho ho) of Groklaw, life is too short to read Andrew's rantings on the subject.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
Thanks PJ for the most polite but devastating putdown I have seen in years :)
PJ: "I see I should have explained all that more clearly, and I'll surely be more alert in the future,
to make sure those with no legal background or training can follow along."
So, thanks for the article, guys. As others have pointed out, P.J. has already put up a response, with her usual discussion forum there.
Being open about things requires getting at the truth. And I think people generally agree that the real truth, presented in Court, will make Linux stronger, not weaker.
I also note this falsehood in the Register article:
"SCO made friendly with Linux as best it could,"
Pure, utter bull. SCO was never, ever a nice company. They pulled EVERY dirty trick in the book that they could. This case is, in fact, the SECOND time they have partnered with Microsoft to bring down a UNIX competitor via the Courts. The first time was a legal threat to a small company called Microport, when Microport publically announced Xenix binary compatibility in stock AT&T UNIX.
Microport, by the way, was the company which provided Richard Stallman's foks with a complete development system for free, just so that he could put gcc on the 386.
Also, there was a quote from Doug Michaels (head of SCO at the time) stating in an interview that SCO would "steal everything it could" from Linux. Michaels later retracted that statement; but it was clear that his original words were what SCO had on its mind.
So noo, SCO never, ever made friendly with Linux. It was always trying to stab Linux in the back at every opportunity it could. To state otherwise is an outright lie, and is to the Registers' general discredit.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
After seeing how many people relied on the Register as a news source I figured I should check it out. After a few days I gave up; I was really put off by their lack of professionalism in reporting (I know lightning will strike me for writing that on Slashdot...) and the blatant bias in everything they write. I have come to view it as a cross between the Weekly World News and People Magazine of technology reporting. It's more like entertainment than news.
a ttack/ .
Here's an example of their crapola: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/11/torvalds_
Can you imagine a newspaper printing, "Here's a quote from president Bush. Haha... just kidding!" I have a sense of humor, but there are times when stuff like that is appropriate and times when it's not. It's like an entire site of editorials and wannabe pundits.
rooooar
"it's difficult to envisage Groklaw's conjecture swaying a court case, ..."
That's not what Groklaw is doing. Groklaw makes as many court documents as possible public. Convincing a court of anything is the lawyers' job. What Groklaw is doing here is clarifying arguments already made by IBM's legal team.
What Groklaw does is fight FUD. It has done a very good job of fighting FUD. The result is (imho) that the mainstream press has figured out the truth much sooner that it would otherwise have done.
I emailed them on a couple of occasions to advise them of factual innacuracies in their stories, only to be ignored.
On one occasion when discussing a new database used by casinos in Vegas, they stated that blackjack players, who are card counters, were cheats and criminals who could be arrested.
Card counting is perfectly legal in Nevada, even if casinos dont like counters, and the Register could have checked that and then corrected it, but chose not to.
So I choose not to read their often inaccurate garbage anymore.
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
Of course, this being el Reg, I'm never entirely sure whether or not to take said tariff with a pinch of salt. Overall, I think I'm tending toward not.
It doesn't diminish my my affection for the rag, I just don't take them too seriously when they pull sudden a volte-face in favour of someone with deep pockets.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Look further down in the comments section of that article by PJ. She points out that she did make a minor adjustment in her phrasing of the stopgap phrase in order to be clearer about what she meant. Orlowski misinterpreted her intention, and she promises to try to be clearer in the future.
Isn't it a good thing that a news site can not sway a court case?
"it's difficult to envisage Groklaw's conjecture swaying a court case, but it provides SCO with valuable public relations ammunition.""
I really want news services to inform me about what is going on in a court case not have any real effect on a court case. In theory anyway court cases should not be effected by public opinion or news coverage.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's barely coherent- if the author has a point, it's well-concealed. He cites nothing to back up his assertions, whatever they are. Groklaw always includes source material- you don't have to take PJ's word for it, anyone can see for themselves.
Mr. Orlowski glosses over or ignores to many things for his piece to be taken as anything but a clickity magnet.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
...this Slashdot story is a case in point, particularly with the mod point system used.
As Orlowski says, "commenters who pointed out the shortcomings of the argument were lost in the Groklaw noise [...] They're lost amidst comments such as "Absolutely fascinating", and "Doesn't this just about blow the whole of SCOG's case out of the water?"
The same is perfectly true here - I'm sure there are far more of the latter on Slashdot, and being a "democratic" mod system the latter wield the greater "power".
Thus, those who post comments such as "This article is wrong", "Groklaw is right", "PJ is right" etc. etc. will in general be moderated far higher than those posting "...perhaps Andrew Orlowski has a point".
Now, the big question is whether that's a bad thing. The point of the Slashdot mod system is that only after repeated moderation by severak different people does a comment become noticed. The system is, in it's own idiosyncratic way, a democracy. But as a result of this, some opinions that may actually have some merit but are disagreed with by the majority are left behind.
The echo chamber exists right here - when this article was at around 75 comments posted, I'd say I saw many more pro-Groklaw posts modded up to 5 than criticisms...there were critical posts there, but they had yet to be moderated up.
...I thought the major point was pretty easy to see - that forums such as Groklaw (and Slashdot) exist so that many users can have their beliefs confirmed or backed up by the majority, the "echo chamber" described...
The article is trying to put across the point that on single-sided sites such as Groklaw (and that's really what it is), context is lost completely.
Open simply means that anyone is free to contribute.
Groklaw is an open forum, because anyone is free to post there. If it were a closed forum, only a certain select few individuals would be allowed to post there.
The "open-ness" of a forum has nothing to do with the general opinions of its members, and whether or not they agree or disagree with your opinions.
A similar analogy is open source software vs. closed-source software:
1. Open source: anyone can see the source code
2. Closed source: only those with special privileges can see the source code
Notice that what makes open source software open is not the opinions of the people who use or develop it (like open source forums).
The point of that argument is to draw a parallel between Linus' statements regarding the whole "Tridge" thing, and how they apply to reverse engineering projects elsewhere (OpenOffice for the MS Office compatibility, SAMBA for reverse engineering SMB over-the-wire, etc..)
It was saying that Linus' attacks on Tridge might-as-well-have-been attacks on OpenOffice, or other compatibility based projects.
~Dave
...the author of the Register article says he bases his account on "first hand experience," including attendance at 4 SCO Forums.
Certainly the SCO representatives at these forums would not have hesitated to be completely open and honest with customers, investors and media - if SCO's announced strategy for the future (Project Monterey) was a mere stopgap until Linux became dominant, I'm sure they would have come right out and said so.
Ahem.
Oh, please.
Since when does "open forum" = "unbiased forum"?
In point of fact, I'd have to say that pretty much ALL of the groklaw contributors (by which I mean articles, rather than comments) are pretty much "anti-SCO", but this doesn't mean that the site isn't open.
Last time I checked the T&C you didn't have to promise faithfully to switch your brain off and follow the party line to comment over at Groklaw. Nor does PJ go through every comment ensuring that the purity of the site's Anti-SCO bias is untarnished.
That's near enough "open" for my liking.
Oh, god, here we go again.
The SCO that threatened Microport is not the SCO that is suing IBM.
Santa Cruz Operation != The SCO Group.
This SCO is Caldera. Caldera who used to sell Linux. Remember them?
Got it?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Let's see: The Register, a general tech info site located in another country. Versus: Groklaw, a legally focused site located in the US and run by PJ, a legal expert (not a lawyer, but any lawyer would do well to hire her to clerk).
And they disagree on a point of US law?
On the face of it, I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to Ms. Jones.
While reading the ./ article I thought, "hmm, this sounds like Andrew Orlowski's work". And lo and behold, it's his byline at the Reg article. Orlowski is a pure contrarian: he writes anti-blog articles and pro-DRM articles, knowing that outraged people will link to them and drive traffic to the Register. And it works!
In 1979, Larry and Doug Michels founded The Santa Cruz Operation ("oldSCO"). Santa Cruz was then partly held by Microsoft. They ported UNIX to the 8086, releasing Xenix-86 in 1983, followed by releases for the '286 and '386 chips. (Both Santa Cruz and Microsoft sold Xenix at various times.)
In 1994, Caldera was founded as a Linux distributor by Ransom Love and Bryan Sparks, financed and guided by Novell founder Ray Noorda.
In 1995, Santa Cruz bought Xenix from Microsoft and UNIX/UnixWare from Novell.
In 1996, Caldera bought DR-DOS from Novell, and promptly sued Microsoft over antitrust.
In 1998, Project Monterey was announced between IBM, Sequent, and Santa Cruz.
In 1999, Microsoft sold off all it's Santa Cruz shares.
In 2000 (January), Microsoft settled the DR DOS case with Caldera for between $60 and $150 million. In March of that year, Caldera Systems reincorporated in Delaware, receiving a $30 million investment from Sun, Santa Cruz, Citrix, Novell and venture capitalists and made an IPO. Ray Noorda then owned 73% of Caldera Systems. In a deal announced in August of 2000 and completed in the Spring of 2001, Caldera bought the server and OS part of oldSCO. OldSCO then changed its name to Tarentella, which (in 2005) sells a nice directory for Unix. At some point after the UNIX purchase, apparently, Ray Noorda stopped giving much guidance to Caldera.
It was widely believed, that Caldera's purchase of Santa Cruz' UNIX group would mean the end of Monterey. Certainly it gave IBM an out, since their Monterey contract specified that a change in control could end the agreement.
In January 2003 IBM made some public statements implying that they were using their AIX knowledge to advance Linux.
In March of 2003, Caldera sued IBM for copyright infringement, I mean trade secret violations, I mean "this has always been a contract case". In July, Caldera changed its name to "The SCO Group".
As far as I know, none of the people calling the shots at The SCO Group (Caldera) have anything to do with The Santa Cruz Operation.
sigs, as if you care.
Is that pronounced "fan-BWAH"?
What I want to know is this: How highly does the register value its journalistic integrity? If highly, then why print a tariff at all, since it can be used to call any article into question. On the other hand, if they place little value on the that integrity, then why would they not "sell their soul" for 15k? I mean it's not like it's a one off deal -- they get to sell out again and again at 15 grand a time.
I find your faith in the Reg touching. But on this issue, I think I shall have to remain agnostic.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Well in this case it is Orlowski taking "facts" out of context.
The point of the Groklaw interest in Monterey was to gather information on SCO's claim that IBM broke their contract with SCO by developing Monterey on POWER. This was always the main focus for the fact gathering. Thus the majority of the statements and "revelations" made were regarding this position taken by SCO. That Monterey on POWER isn't much of a revelation for Orlowski is not really surprising given the mountain of "evidence" gathered by Groklaw. But maybe he should be contacting SCO to ask them why SCO thinks otherwise rather than quibbling with Groklaw over a speculation by PJ on a minor point eg. "Monterey being a stopgap towards Linux".
So Orlowski takes a speculation and blows it up in to a 4 "page" story, that basically comes down to that PJ's speculation was 2 years too early, e.g. Monterey wasn't a "stopgap" from the beginning but it certainly seemed abandoned by the beginning of 2000 and certainly by Aug. 2000, and thus could be characterised as being possibly a "stopgap".
Now that is all that Orlowski's article is about, an attempt to deride Groklaw based on a speculation by PJ in the midst of an article used to gather information not really connected to the speculation.
It is obvious to me that Orlowski did not take the time to understand what the whole point of Groklaw's Monterey fact gathering mission was about. It seems to me he came in part way through, didn't read the previous discussion and took issue with a minor speculation. If that isn't taking something out of context I don't know what is. The worst part is that it is Orlowski who is supposed to be the "Journalist", but than maybe this isn't surprising because that is what I have come to expect from mainstream journalists anyway.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
I was on a job interview a couple of years ago in which the job was to develop software that currently ran on Solaris and part of the job would be to port that software to Linux. One of the questions asked, rather off-handedly, was what I thought of the then-emerging SCO litigation. I have used SCO products as well as Linux for as long as they've been around, and also have much detailed exposure to AIX and Solaris. I mentioned that I believed if SCO owned the technology of AT&T System V Unix such technology was their property and some of it is subject to patent protection as well as intellectual property protection. IBM appeared at the time to have released this technology directly into the public domain without regard to prior ownership and much of that code ended up in major Linux distributions' kernel and toolchains. I described how I read that the biggest reason that the BSD4.4-lite2 and subsequent NetBSD/FreeBSD distributions came about was because of intellectual property that had to be removed from BSD Unix (at the same time the BSD Unix project was ending). It appeared that the same thing was happening to Linux, except that today we have SCO suing IBM (instead of AT&T suing UCB).
I will never know how much that contributed to their opinion of me.
Kriston