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SCO Is Undeniably, Reliably Dead (fossforce.com)
An anonymous reader writes: On Friday, IBM and SCO filed an agreement with the US district court in Utah to accept a ruling of dismissal of the last remaining claims by SCO against IBM. Says the linked article, in line with our most recent other mentions of the long-due death spiral:
This agreement wasn't unexpected, and in fact, came down right on deadline. On February 10, I reported that Judge David Nuffer with the U.S. District Court in Utah had ruled to dismiss a couple of interference claims SCO had filed against IBM, and had ordered both parties to reach an agreement on whether to accept the dismissal by February 26, which was Friday. In all likelihood this is the last we'll ever hear from SCO as its current owner, the California based software company Xinuos which now owns and markets many of SCO's old products, will probably remove what's left of SCO from life support.
In that case I make claim to all of linux.
Here we thought unicode support was just broken in comments and discussion, apparently it doesn't work anywhere here...
I know this came up in the discussion back on February 2 after someone accidentally bought slashdot, but apparently it still isn't that important a month later...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
March 2016, still UTF8 errors on /.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Where do I send my $99 licensing fee?
Trolling is a art,
And we owe this 30 year court battle over Linux to... copyright law! I'm sure we all feel glad our work is protected by such an efficient and fair system!
Has Netcraft confirmed it?
That is all.
I was wondering what's happening with the "XXX is for cows" comments... the only time it could be insightful the anonymous coward isn't making it...
I can't call that English
Generallisimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
Red Hat sued SCO in 2003 for false advertising, and that case was stayed pending resolution of the IBM case. Is that still pending (and can Red Hat try to get damages)?
Sure its not just pining for the fjords? Or maybe just stunned?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Started in mid-2003, so not quite 13.
While not successful in its original goal (that is, to destroy Linux) it did last long enough to serve Microsoft's purpose (to at least keep Linux off the mainstream user's desktop and blunt server adoption).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
(adopt high-pitched voice) ...and SCO's not only merely dead,
it's really most sincerely dead!
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
The SCO lawsuit started in 2003 and, in comparison, Unicode version 1.0 was released in 1992. So, it's not like this is a new standard, preceding the lawsuit by ten years. Unicode support in Linux seems to be around 1999.
I guess somebody at /. (or, more likely submitters) are getting a perverse kick out of copy and pasting unicode characters on the SCO article and I'm trying to figure out why. Maybe /. article editor tools make the unicode characters invisible to them but this has been going on long enough.
Timothy, et al, could you take this back to your new masters and get it fixed - one way or another? I, like probably a lot of people who come to this site, when we see the acronym "SCO" immediately look to see how many unicode characters are embedded in the summary.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I'm getting quite worried about the future of Linux. We're seeing numerous factors converging, and it's not looking good for Linux.
The first problem is that Linux is making no inroads into the desktop/workstation market. Desktop environments like GNOME 3 and Unity are widely disliked. Systemd has caused stability issues for many. There's no compelling open source applications, and the ones that might be candidates, like Firefox or GIMP, pale in comparison to their main competitors.
Worse, Linux is becoming questioned as a server OS. Systemd has caused too many admins too many problems. The OpenSSL and Bash security woes have not helped. Now there are licensing questions about using ZFS with Linux. Meanwhile, we've seen OSes like FreeBSD and OpenBSD avoid many of these problems, or do a much better effort at prevent further problems.
We've also seen recent versions of Windows Server become much more appealing options. There are now very minimal versions available, and they're extremely usable and practical. Best of all, they allow the use of the .NET stack and C#, which are among the best around. Serious developers prefer to use C# and .NET instead of the more amateurish PHP platform that's so common on Linux.
While the Linux kernel does see widespread use in mobile devices through Android, it's critical to note that it's well hidden, with little use made of GNU or other open source software. Most Android users, and even many developers, wouldn't have any idea that Linux is involved, it's so well disguised.
So we see Linux having totally failed in the desktop/workstation segment of the market. It's faltering within the server segment. It's barely visible within the mobile segment. It's facing strong competition from FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Windows and OS X. More and more people have found Linux's quality and robustness to be decreasing. And there's nothing to suggest that things will be improving for Linux any time soon.
I'm really worried about all of this. I really hope that things will turn around, but it all seems so uncertain to me at this point.
How do all the bad actors in this case just get to walk away?
What SCO agreed to is dismissing remaining motions for summary judgment . This is more IBM agreeing there is no point delaying SCO's option of appealing the motions that went against them. It is still possible that SCO might try one last gasp effort in the appeals court. I am not sure how long they have before they must file such an appeal.
This bit here made me laugh way too fucking hard. Thanks damn_registrars - you've made my gloomy Tuesday a bit brighter :)
The Linux desktop developers did a better job than SCO ever could have.
I can't believe this went on for so long. What is it, 14 years?
Oh, now, you're making me feel old! I remember getting an email from the Chief Counsel from IBM, instructing me that I would have to give a sworn deposition concerning this case. This was because I had access to the AIX source code, and also did some work for the the IBM Linux Technology Center. CSI: Austin, Texas!
The lawyer assigned to me had a Park Avenue address in New York City. I'm normally not the best friend of lawyers, but this guy was really good. I explained to him that I did some work with the AIX TCP/IP stack, and later did some device driver stuff for Linux, and he understood it all.
It was all still pretty creepy, but the lawyer told me that SCO was just grabbing at straws, and trying to intimidate folks.
Wow! Right out of the "Theater of the Hard to Believe!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Why aren't Darl Mcbride and his cronies locked up in Club Fed for pump-n-dump scam they perpetuated?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
The first problem is that Linux is making no inroads into the desktop/workstation market.
Nothing new there. It's going to be virtually impossible to push Windows out of this desktop market. It's simple network effects. Linux would have to offer something that isn't available on Windows that people care strongly about for people to switch. Unlikely that is going to happen. The only thing that linux has that Windows doesn't is that it is available for free. But until the applications they use are also available on linux AND it is installed from day 1 they aren't going to switch en-mass.
Worse, Linux is becoming questioned as a server OS.
Not really. Yes it has problems but that's nothing new and none of them are so awful that it's going to change the landscape. People that use Windows servers will mostly continue to do so and people that use linux servers will mostly continue to do so. There really aren't any other serious options for most use cases. BSD isn't really terribly different (porting software between them is trivial) and OS X isn't really used for servers.
While the Linux kernel does see widespread use in mobile devices through Android, it's critical to note that it's well hidden, with little use made of GNU or other open source software.
So what? That's nothing new either. Whether or not people are aware they are using linux is mostly not very important. Most people don't care so long as it does what they want. Whether or not they know it is open source is similarly immaterial. It's important that it be open source but awareness of it is a peripheral concern.
You may not believe it, but /. supported Unicode for probably over 15 years now.
Its just early abuse by posters destined to misuse it forced the implementation of a whitelist of acceptable UTF-8 characters, which basically are all the printables between 32 through 127. Everything else is effectively stripped. Since UTF-8 uses the high-bit to indicate that the codepoint consists of additional bytes,
(The Unicode support came as part of Slashdot.jp way back when.).
If you google for erocS or even 5:erocS, you can try to guess what the Unicode "fun" posters and trolls did that forced the implementation of the whitelist.
That's why I said "quite premature".
COBOL lives because it's well-tuned by time for its niche of high-volume reliable back-end business and monetary processing, and isn't jacked around by fads, trends, and whims.
It's like Latin: it's used in science and church documents BECAUSE it's a "dead" language not subject to societal whims. Nobody messes with it; here today, here tomorrow.
Table-ized A.I.
History should record that the whole SCO fiasco was the brain child of this scam artist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... It was a patent submarine attack and one of history's ugliest. The guy is now the CEO of some company he made up in his garage. Check out this garbageL https://www.crowdfunder.com/sh... What a joke. He got what he deserved.