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SCO Relies On IBM-donated Servers With Groklaw
Technician writes "It appears that SCO and Groklaw have the exact same tie to IBM: the ibiblio service. 'An eagle-eyed Groklaw ninja, sk43, has spotted an ftp site where you can get binary copies of Linux libraries needed by SCO's OpenServer and UnixWare customers who use lxrun. But you can't get the source code from that sco.com ftp site. SCO directs their customers to .... sunsite.unc.edu. Why bless my stars, sunsite.unc.edu is the old name for what is now ibiblio!'"
... but I'm afraid that hook is buried where the sun don't shine.
People Talking in Movie shows.. people smoking in bed.. people voting republican.. GIVE THEM A BOOT TO THE HEAD!
I must have been hibernating for some time... Ibiblio? Is this news? Interesting? Do I need to follow this?
Anyone else getting that old-junior-high-school drama vibe?
/.
Did you hear about Becky? She's been with Dave.
Dave! But Dave's been seeing Sarah.
Dude that's my sister.
Well she's hot.
Shut up.
Cue the collective sigh from the rest of
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This can only mean one thing...
SCO is a front for IBM!
No, wait...
Did you even read the entire Groklaw article? The whole reason this was posted is in response to this totally asinine Information Week Article headline:
h tml?articleID=198100504)
IBM Helps Fund Web Hosting For Anti-SCO Site Groklaw
(See http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.j
Basically, Information Week and some asshat reporter named Paul McDougall tried to smear Pamela Jones by suggesting IBM was behind Groklaw because Groklaw is hosted on ibiblio. Well, so is a shitload of other stuff, including support files for SCO OpenWare.
Read the SCOG complaint ...
... "In fact, most of the servers on which Groklaw.net and other ibiblio publications run are hosted on IBM-donated servers. IBM's support of ibiblio is, according to the project's director, continuing in nature."
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/IBM-1018.pdf
In that motions, SCOG make the claim
OK, so groklaw simply points out that SCOG material is found amongst the "other ibiblio publications", and the entire SCOG motion is easily exposed as the utter nonsense it truly is.
Huh?
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200704032 33141649
Exhibit 15 and 16 as offered by SCO are about Ibiblio supporting Groklaw. This isn't just about an Information week article - this is evidence SCO is offering to the court.
Sco is using this as evidence IN COURT that IBM is supporting Groklaw. Now we see that SCO is supported by Ibiblio (and therefore IBM, by SCO logic). This nullifies pretty much any benefit these exhibits would be for SCO.
SCO will add themselves to the list of people being sued. They will then quickly settle with themselves thus proving that being hoisted on ibiblio is admission of guilt. It's the ultimate Catch-SCO-22.
There have been many strange articles in the media, for example in this forbes article they report that IBM may have destroyed evidence. However that evidence was what SCO used as a basis for starting the case, and so SCO "must" have had it to begin with. Forbes and other similar media outlets report large amounts of SCO material without comment.
The question has been raised: where are they getting this material and why are the reporting it as it is. The primary place where that's been raised has been Groklaw and the accusation has been that parts of the media are actively backing SCO even against all possible evidence. Now SCO and those parts of the media have started an intimidation campaign against Groklaw both in court and in the media, along side attempts to by SCO's media friends to invade her privacy. This recent posting is showing the hypocrisy which is behind this campaign and it's media backers who use as accusations in court filings things that they themselves also do.
I've read some other stuff by Paul McDougall. Total waste of text if you ask me....
Nevermind Biff. Console yourself by spending the vast fortune you can get selling your SCOX shares.
Let's remember that IBM is still the biggest 'Unix' vendor - AIX. IBM's association with Linux may be purely incidental. They still maintain BOTH branches - Linux and AIX in their offerings. The case with SCO could've been closed months ago... wonder whether IBM's taking the matter REALLY seriously.
How will this drama unfold? Given the parallel SCO - Novell case that'd be heard first, I guess it could appear Novell, not SCO holds copyrights... and SCO vs IBM gets dissolved.
Given the negative publicity surrounding the MS-Novell deal, it's going to look foolish if Novell suddenly sues IBM and shuts down other distros except SuSE.
Anyways, it now appears SCO is just a front for IBM.. or the other way round!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I would say IBM has bet the farm on Linux. Otherwise, the case might have been over long ago.
As far as anyone can tell, SCO brought the suit in hopes that IBM would buy them to shut them up. A few people would have made a lot of money and they could move along to the next scam. The trouble was that IBM, having bet the aforementioned farm, needed Linux to be unencumbered by any taint of anyone else's IP. So, IBM has defended Linux vigorously and when it's all over nobody will doubt that Linux is as pure as the driven snow. As Machiavelli pointed out, you don't send half your army into a battle that will determine your whole fate.
So, no, it's not just drama.
Did IBM donate $50,000 to SCO via the IBM-chaired OSDL organization, as SCO alleges that they did with "Groklaw" (i.e. PJ)?
Or... are we still not allowed to talk about that part of SCO's allegations, or PJ's refusal to so much as discuss, let alone deny it, until she gets (quote) "lawyered up"?
Commence troll ratings in 5... 4... 3...
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It now proves IBM is also behind SCO and this whole trial is nothing but a PR tool so IBM can sell more AIX and zOS licenses.
Oh.. Wait...
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
You pay peanuts, you get lawyers who throw monkey shit at the judge.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Except they aren't paying peanuts.
SCO didn't just pick some random lawyers out of the phone book. One of the firms has Kevin McBride as a partner. Last name sound familiar? Kevin is the brother of SCO's CEO Darl McBride. In my paranoid (yet possibly true) ravings, part of SCO's plan has alway been to funnel part of the money to their friends and relatives in these law firms. Grab as much as they can for themselves, send the rest to friends as legal fees, and leave as little as possible for the damages that they'll be forced to pay once the farce is over.
On the other hand, this monkey shit is exactly what the lawyers are getting paid for. Not to win the case, not even to make valid legal point--only to draw the case out as long as possible. SCO isn't trying to win, just to get more money out of the market. (Does Microsoft pay "licensing fees" based on how long SCO keeps up the FUD about the legality of OSS?)
The thing I don't understand about this is what difference it would make if PJ *was* a front for IBM.
I mean, OK it's unethical for a company to hire someone to act as a PR front without admitting they work for them, but that doesn't make it against the law. Suppose SCO is exactly right (unlikely I know) and PJ isn't a real person at all but just a front for IBM's PR department - so what?
didnt beleive it .. so i did it myself .. .. so lest see :
.. IBM is hosting the SCO's investors relations ..
.. conspiracy theories are surfacing that :)
ir.sco.com is the investors relations website for SCO
well ok
ric@ric ~ $ host ir.sco.com
ir.sco.com is an alias for cald.client.shareholder.com.
cald.client.shareholder.com is an alias for webcenter360.shareholder.com.
webcenter360.shareholder.com has address 170.224.5.57
ric@ric ~ $ whois 170.224.5.57
OrgName: IBM
OrgID: IBM-1
Address: 3039 Cornwallis Road
City: Research Triangle Park
StateProv: NC
PostalCode: 27709-2195
Country: US
So
website
errr
IBM actually owns SCO
ROFL
Sorry, don't mean to rewrite history but I'm pretty sure ibiblio was the 'new' name for sunsite.unc.edu, not the other way around. Everything old is new again.
Ignore me, my eye transplants are acting up again.
I notice the summary managed to spell "ibiblio" two different ways in the same paragraph. If they had editors here, do you would think they would have caught that?
Yeah, I must be new here.... sigh
If PJ is a front for IBM, that means that every Linux user owes SCOX $699 per cpu!
errr .. conspiracy theories are surfacing that :)
IBM actually owns SCO
Just wait a little while longer... They will soon enough.
Read enough on groklaw and you quickly find out it is SCO that is drawing this out.
Well, TO be fair, SCO claimed IBM destroyed evidence when they had their linux developers remove the Unix source from they workstation. But IBM claims that it wasn't destroying anything because they already had copies of everything as well as what was released to the public supporting their claim.
So, there was some destruction of evidences. Although this so called evidence had nothing to contribute other then what was already known and wasn't really destroyed in the sense of trying to hide it. It was just removed from particular workstations after SCO had copies of everything.
The issue with OSDL $ going to Groklaw is that the OSDL is promoting corporate acceptance of Linux and thus should be impartial to a matter where one company is claiming that their IP was stolen and placed into Linux.
No matter how bogus SCO's claims might be, the OSDL is trying to on one hand appear impartial in that the matter will play out justly in the courts and on the other hand, if the OSDL is funding Groklaw (which they have not commented on despite inquiries from the media) then they are taking sides on the issue.
So OSDL legitimacy could be compromised due to the appearance that if a corporation's IP is placed into an open source project without the corporation's consent, the OSDL would be siding against that corporation in the matter.
Lots of places have been accusing SCO of violating the GPL by providing lxrun but not the sources for it, and referring people to ibiblio for the sources. It's quite difficult, though, to violate the GPL when the project seems to be licensed exclusively under the Mozilla Public License.
Let's not sink to the level of SCO by making accusations which are easily demonstrated to be false. Of course, if there's GPLed code in lxrun which was relicensed without permission of the original author that's another matter, but I haven't seen any claims of that.
People really should not assume someone is violating a license without checking to even see what license is involved. That includes when the accused is a big ball of crud like SCO.
Do you guys remember when ibiblio was sunsite.unc.edu? And when it was ftp.cdrom.com?
c kware/slackware-3.2 .... with a capital L in Linux. Else it wouldn't work.
I still remember the way I used to fetch Slackware binaries, ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/distributions/sla
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
The concern is over Linux libraries...which are not part of lxrun, and _are_ licensed under the GPL.
However, the whole thing is really silly because nobody uses lxrun anymore. SCO dropped lxrun in favor of LKP more than five years ago. The fact that there's any mention of lxrun on SCO's web site just shows they've been spending more resources suing IBM than keeping their web server up to date.
IBM's fighting of this case has nothing to do with the importance Linux has in their business plans.
IBM, quite simply, does not give in to legal blackmail. And that's been well-known in two major communities for decades: the technical and legal communities.
So don't tell us SCO was trying to get bought out. That's bullshit, because everybody on planet Earth knew the last thing IBM would do would be to actually reward a nuisance lawsuit. Nope, SCO is nothing more than a wind-up FUD monkey that Bill Gates aimed at Linux. Any nuisance lawsuit aimed at getting SCO bought out would not have needed a PIPE fairy...
--
please type the word in this image: contempt
The fact remains that if they are distributing GPL code in contravention of the license (I have no idea if they are or not and don't much care at this point as they will become a smoking hole in the ground with an IBM sign up next to it) their sole remedy is to stop distribution.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/special_ca ldera_case_report_microsofts/
Caldera successfully sued Microsoft over Dr DOS. Having managed to shake down Microsoft, they probably thought they could do the same thing to IBM. It is quite possible that Darl was clueless enough to think he had a case. The grandfather post refers to the motivation that led Caldera/SCO to attack IBM in the first case. Conditions changed and so did their motivation. They went through a phase when they looked like they were doing a pump and dump. At some point it became clear that the pipe fairy was at work. Now, I think they are desperately trying to make it look like their case was not completely frivolous. If they can't do that, they and their lawyers are in serious trouble.
The consensus over at Groklaw (people who have actually been following the case closely) was that the case started out as a shake-down. Other aspects emerged later.
It looks like the slimy underhanded attack on Pamela Jones, the independent journalist (and apparently a very competent researcher/analyst), who is responsible for Groklaw, is backfiring in the usual spectacular SCO fashion. SCO really has a problem with anyone who dares to examine the facts in their spurious lawsuit circus.
Even without Groklaw, anyone with a brain could read any of SCO's filings and easily pick out weasel words, half truths, untruths, and outright lies. I challenge you to find a single filing from SCO that is truthful, and backed up by believable evidence.
Not only that, but logs of who checked what out when should be a part of their source control system. IBM gave SCO a server that contained a complete copy of the repository that would have had that information in it, if SCO actually bothered to look for it.
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
The difference is that IBM stated for the record that they were not publishing any information regarding the trial either themselves or through third parties.
If SCO could prove that IBM was using the *PJ* persona to funnel information (even if it's all accurate) it would go against IBM based on what they presented to the courts.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
as is apparent from the unfair modding of the parent as "Flamebait"
... I'll just stick with Digg.
Take a look at my user # - I've been following Slashdot a long time and I can say that it is no longer worth a damn to really read
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
"lxrun" might be under the Mozilla Public License, but the Linux binaries that SCO is hosting without the source code are not.
Perhaps because it's a legal document, filed about her specifically?
It's one thing to refute claims made about you in the media, or claims made in court about someone else. But claims made about you in a court of law? Can you blame her for not wanting to make statements on the subject without legal representation?
Groklaw met the criteria for hosting on ibiblio's free servers. If your web site meets the criteria, you can host it there for free also. View some other sites on their collection page. Groklaw is a site to discuss open source legal issues, it is not limited to IBM or to SCO, although that is the predominant legal battle going on at this time. If you read Groklaw, you will know that there are not only articles about the other SCO litigation (RedHat, AutoZone, Daimler-Chrysler and Novell), but discussions about Microsoft, patents, ODF vs. MSXML, other GPL cases and the new GPL V3. Ibiblio is run by the University of North Carolina. IBM has contributed servers to the project long before Groklaw came into existence. IBM has no say in the sites hosted at Ibiblio or their content. Ibiblio could host SCO's site if it met their criteria.
I want to know why it matters though... Groklaw looks at the public filings that anyone could get if they were willing to go to the courthouse for a copy. They don't have any secret information and don't get information from IBM. IBM has been nearly quiet in the media since the case has begun, citing their preference not to comment on litigation.
Since before the IBM case started, SCO has been issuing public statements both through their media shills and on their own web site. They've made outrageous claims with no evidence whatsoever to support them. They've tried to co-opt the GNU/Linux operating system as their own, charging $700 per processor to run it. That's a slap in the face for the thousands of contributors who relied on the GPL and made their own contributions, and to Linus Trovalds who initially developed Linux. After initially claiming that three teams of experts found millions of lines of infringing code in Linux, they waited three years to show ANY evidence and then it was only 326 lines. They transformed their case from Trade Secrets (since UNIX contains none as admitted by their lawyer Kevin McBride) into some bizzare "ladder" theory where IBM loses control of it's own independent creations simply by associating them with their flavors of licensed UNIX.
The most bizarre thing is how they value their "core UNIX intellectual property". Caldera was created as a Linux company in 1994. They raised about $70 million in an IPO as a Linux company when they went public in 2000. They purchased assets and operations from Tarentalla (Santa Cruz Operation) for $93.8 million in 2001. You can see that in the 10-Q report they filed with the SEC (search for "Purchase price allocation"). They allocated that money this way:
Calde
Ummm...you should check YOUR facts. lxrun is licensed under the MPL, but the LINUX LIBRARIES used by lxrun are still covered under the GPL or LGPL, much like the end-user software run using lxrun would retain the same license. The Groklaw article clearly states it is talking about Linux LIBRARIES used BY lxrun. I just skimmed the article and retained that much before reading your comment, did you even bother opening and reading it?
They belong on ibiblio. They dont profit anymore, that makes them a non-profit organization :)
Make SELinux enforcing again!
You know what, I did in fact read several posts all over the web that said Lxrun was GPL. However, I went to SCO's site to see if they really are distributing Linux libraries, and this is what I found:
1. There's a link to a linux-libs directory which no longer exists. that link is here. I have no proof there's been anything there in the last ten years or that there weren't sources under that directory somewhere when it did exist. The date on the link does not necessarily reflect when the directory actually existed, either.
2. There is actually a binary copy of something called ld.so in the lxrun tar.gz file available at this location So yes, there does seem to be an issue here after all. Now, I did say "seem to be". Let's dig a little more...
If you read the README files that come in the lxrun tar.gz file and the source comments for the ld-linux.c that's in the lxrun sources (hosted by SCO), they talk about including a fake ld-linux which just sets the environment in order to call the real ld-linux.so, and then go on to say where to get both the binary and the source for that. Look in this location and open any of the lxrun archive files there to see what I mean.
Now, there might still be some truth to the claims, since the fact that I didn't find it doesn't mean it's not out there somewhere. However, I went looking for some and still didn't see it. All I found for sure was there's an MPL-licensed package -- with source* -- which uses GPLed libraries. If that's what passes for a GPL violation, then I'm going to stop using GPLed software.
Now I hate SCO as much as the next guy. However, making accusations that can't be proven is their M.O., not mine. You can talk about anything you want being the real issue, but unless it's true and verifiable, it doesn't mean a damn. I don't actually doubt SCO has violated several licenses in several ways, because the people involved with them seem to have no respect for law or justice in any form. In this particular case, though, it may just be that there's not the smoking gun we'd all like.
* The versions available as binaries do not match exactly the versions for which source is available, but there are multiple binary versions and multiple source versions. The MPL, as I understand it, doesn't require one to distribute the source if it's unmodified anyway.
Uhm.. Your user number is 18 million, 667 thousand and 13... How does this make you 'following Slashdot a long time'..
And no, please don't check my user #...
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
ROFL.
Someone please hand me more coffee... I wanna go home!
Man that was silly.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.