You have a point. One side of Sun is viciously trying to kill Linux on servers, by funding SCO, as well as just ordinary business competition. But another side of Sun makes massive contributions to Linux on the desktop, specifically Open Office.
Sun has its own agenda. Sun attacks the aspects of Linux that hurt Sun's agenda and supports the aspects of Linux that contribute to Sun's agenda.
HP has not bought a SCO Source license. Sun has, for $7.5 million and counting. See the 10-Q's.
HP has not acquired warrants to buy stock in SCO, and Sun has. See the 10-Q's.
If there's any evidence that HP is supporting SCO, it's not showing up in SCO's 10-Q's.
HP decreased its existing support of SCO since SCO filed suit this year. HP pulled its sponsorship of SCO Forum, and I don't think they are not sponsors of this road show. SCO keeps trying to use HP's logo, but HP keeps making them stop.
Sun increased its existing support of SCO, and then lied about it. Sun tried to push the story that they paid up their license years ago, when in fact they were buying a secret license in February 2003.
That's pretty cool. First the page said "Sponsored by HP" with a big HP logo. Then there was an HP logo, but no "Sponsored by". Then the "Sponsored by" came back. Now the whole logo is gone.
It's hilarious that you talk about "monopoly" and in the same breath call "Coke" and "Pepsi" monopolies. Obviously they are not. And the last time I went to a sporting goods store and looked at the shoes, there were many other brands on the shelf besides Nike.
But that's just a side point. The real point is your claim that other people (obviously not you, right?) import their goals from a reference group, and that they get their reference group through advertising.
Yes and no. Advertising speaks to people's real needs, whether you like those needs or not.
One of those needs is the need to fit in with a peer group. The ironic thing about American culture is that there's a whole anti-culture who are devoted to trashing the main culture, and they have just as much -- if not more -- propaganda, group-think, and exclusionary mechanisms. You yourself have been propagandized in this way, to the point where you casually use "monopoly" to mean any company whose products you don't like.
Like I said, if you want to get past the dominant orthodoxy, and past the counter-orthodoxy, try some Thoreau. Real non-conformists don't even care what *other* non-conformists think of them.
The difference is that Sun did not admit to paying SCO money until the deals started coming out in SCO's 10-Q filings. Sun didn't step up and say "why, yes, we bought some drivers, no big deal". Sun acted as if they had finished their business with SCO a long time ago.
I don't know what I would buy there [SCO]. Why buy what you already own? I thought I already paid for that sucker.
That's Scott McNealy failing to see your distinction between a Unix source license and a license for new drivers. That's Scott McNealy hiding the SCO relationship until he's forced to admit it.
Project UDI? Come on. They haven't updated their reference implementation since September 2001. You think Sun paid $7.5 million (and counting) for that crap? You think you can convince anyone else that Sun paid $7.5 million for that crap?
Speaking of going down the tubes, Red Hat has increasing revenues and is profitable; Sun has declining revenues and isn't profitable. That's gotta hurt.:)
Linux is eating away at Sun's market from below. Sun is going the way of Cray, where fewer and fewer and customers need the high-end machines which Sun has and Linux doesn't. It's not just the end of the dot-com bubble. It's the permanent shrinkage of Sun's core market.
Sun's customers know this. Sun knows this. That's why Sun supports SCO, and that's why SUN is taking the reputational hit for supporting SCO.
Human goals come from physiology, psychology, sociology. I need food and shelter; I need to to feel useful and entertained; I need the people around me to support me.
Economics is the stufy of how people allocate scarce resources to pursue their goals. Economics does not explain what the goals are.
As another poster commented, the fancy athletic shoes are about the goals of status and sexual attractiveness, not about the goal of physical fitness.
For another example, a lot of business people buy more computer power than they need to perform their computer tasks, because they are concerned about status goals, not performance goals. Ditto with fancy wristwatches, fancy cars, and conspicuous consumption of many types.
If you want to step back from all this and get some perspective, read some Thoreau. There's a guy who had very low status needs.
Oh look, here come the Sun apologists. Perhaps the same guy each time, perhaps not.
List which of the following organizations have acquired warrants in SCO this year: Sun, Costco, McDonald's, Dixons', NEC, Nortel, Fujitsu, Pearle Vision, National Weather Service, California Department of Motor Vehicles. All I see in the 10-Q's is SUN.
First you said that Sun didn't pay SCO any money.
Then, when CNET reported quotes from SCO executives and Sun executives that Sun paid SCO money, you said it was a one-time expense.
Then, when SCO said in its 10-Q that Sun will pay for several quarters, you say okay, it's a recurring expense, but's for software. Nothing wrong with buying software, right? Except that it gives the lie to Sun's PR line that they don't need an additional SCO license because they did a complete buyout several years ago. Sun omitted to mention its deal THIS YEAR with SCO when they were floating that line.
Then, when SCO says that Sun gets warrants in SCO as well as IP rights, you say that warrants aren't really stock yet.
Yeah, right. As if Sun is going to leave warrants at $1.83 per share unexercised.
Basically, the position of the Sun apologists is to stay as far from SCO as the publicly known facts allow. But as each piece of documentary evidence comes out, it gives the lie to the current line of apology, so Sun apologists have to admit more and more of Sun's sponsorship of SCO.
"The Linux(R) Kernel Personality (LKP( for UnixWare 7.1.3 provides Linux environment hosted on the UnixWare kernel. This environment does not contain a Linux kernel..."
Well, since this commercial product does not contain a Linux(TM) kernel, where does SCO get off using the registered trademark Linux(TM) as part of its name?
Given that hypothetical, I would not forgive SCO. As you say, I would concede SCO's point, and think that SCO defended their rights in a very poor manner.
Specifically, there's legal precedent about what to do if you find someone distributing your copyrighted work without permission. You send a cease & desist, with specific notice about what the infringing work is. See the DMCA sections on takedown notices (those don't rely apply, but they are related). See A&M versus Napster, where the Ninth Circuit held that A&M had to provide specific notice to Napster of infringing works, which A&M duly provided.
SCO hasn't done that. SCO actively refuses to do that.
SCO can change that any time they want, by sending a proper cease & desist to people who distribute code that SCO claims is theirs. But they won't do that. In fact, Darl McBride stated, in one of the conference calls, that SCO would not inform Red Hat of the specific infringing code "because then Red Hat would just take it out".
Back in January 2003, Microsoft could have bought the whole frickin' company for $18 million: $1.50 per share times 12 million shares. Microsoft could have bought the company, fired all the programmers, and done whatever the fuck they wanted with the source code, the copyrights, and the existing licenses, including filing the exact same suits that SCO has filed against IBM.
So Microsoft already had the choice: buy all the assets of SCO for $18 million, or buy a SCO Source license for a similar amount of money and let SCO take the heat for making the attack. According to SCO's 10-Q, about 2/3 of the SCO Source money comes from Microsoft, and 1/3 from Sun. There have been $15 million paid so far with at least $2.5 million more to come from Sun and an unspecified amount from Microsoft.
The link that Slashdot provides is on Yahoo Finance, and is actually just an excerpt from the whole 10-Q.
To get the whole 10-Q, go to www.sec.gov. Click on "Filings and Forms (EDGAR)", subsection "Search for Company Filings". Click on "Companies and Other Filers". Company name "SCO", a couple more clicks, and...
Then search for "German" and this section pops up:
"Several entities in Germany have obtained temporary restraining orders in Germany precluding SCO GmbH, the Company's German subsidiary, in substance, from making statements in Germany that disparage Linux, or entities involved in the Linux business, or implicate Linux as infringing the Company's intellectual property rights. SCO GmbH has received an administrative fine of 10,000 Euro for a technical violation of one of the temporary restraining orders. The Company is currently negotiating with the various claimants in Germany over the temporary restraining orders and is evaluating whether it will appeal the administrative fine. Informal letter complaints similar to those raised in Germany have been received from companies in Austria and Poland. The Company has responded to those letters. It is not known if those complainants will take future action."
Can someone familiar with the 10-Q requirements explain whether this omission is permissable (because it was brought in Germany?)
I don't know the exact law, but the requirement is that the 10-Q disclose all of the material information about the company. "Material information" means relevant information; it means information that would make a reasonable investor likely to pay a higher or lower price for the stock. The German location is not relevant; what's relevant is whether this issue is likely to be important to SCO.
It's normal for a company to list all the important lawsuits that it is involved in, and then to say "the company believes the case has no merit and is vigorously contesting it", blah blah.
It's like selling a house. If I sell you a house, and I diclose in writing during the sale that the house contains asbestos, you might decide not to buy the house. But if you do buy the house, and then two years later you say "hey! this house has asbestos!" then I will say "you knew the house had asbestos when you bought it. Here's the paper you signed where you acknowledged that I told you that."
The 10-Q is like that for stock. If someone buys SCOX stock tomorrow, and then next year they come back and sue SCO's directors for not telling them about the German lawsuit, SCO's directors will point to the 10-Q and said "you had access to this information before you bought our stock".
For the quarter ended July 31, the whole company reported $20.1 million in revenue and $3.1 million in net income. The SCO Source division generated $7.3 million revenue and $5.6 million in gross margin. That means the products&services portion of SCO generated $12.8 million revenue and ($2.5 million) in net loss.
I dug out numbers for the past five quarters and posted them here. You can really see the declining trend in products and services revenue.
So, if they weren't profitable before, then a decline in product and service revenue should put them *far* into the red without the SCOSource thing.
SCO has also been cutting costs. As another poster pointed out, income = revenue - costs. Both revenue and costs are declining, so income can go either way.
The 10-Q covers the period of 2003-05-01 to 2003-07-31.
The mystery "Fortune 500" company deal was announced on 2003-08-11. So that revenue will appear in the next 10-Q, for the quarter ended 2003-10-31, which will come out about 2003-12-17 or thereabouts.
The next questions are: will SCO identify the F500 licensee by name in their 10-Q? And will SCO break down their revenue enough so that we can figure out how much that license cost? My predictions are: (a) probably not; and (b) likely, but not guaranteed.
Of course if the SEC climbs up their ass they can make SCO disclose just about anything, either to the SEC or to the public. In last quarter's 10-Q, for the quarter ended April 30, SCO did not identify Sun by name. This quarter SCO makes a point of doing so. I'm speculating here, but my intuition suspects there was some pressure on SCO to disclose this.
As you said -- and, more importantly, as the 10-Q for the quarter plus the 10-Q for laster quarter said -- Sun gets options to purchase 2% of SCO. That's more than a cleanup license. That is a strategic investment.
Sun is helping desktop Linux a lot, specifically through Open Office. Sun is also attacking server Linux via its partnership with SCO. Sun is a Linux ally in cases where Linux competes with Sun's competitors, and a Linux foe in situations where Linux competes with Sun.
Interesting. Let's take a side trip to the grocery store.
A head of lettuce: definitely a product. Not very useful to the customer until they combine and customize it with other products.
A ready-made salad in a clamshell dish with a plastic fork, plastic knife, napkin, and a pack of dressing: a lunch solution.
Some people go for the solution (especially when it comes from a restaurant rather than a grocery store); some people compose their own solutions from grocery store products.
Flour and yeast: products. Sliced bread: a solution. In this case, most people go for the turnkey "solution" most of the time.
Actually, "product" and "solution" are just crude categories here; there's actually a continuous scale from "grow the grain yourself" to "hot pizza $2 per slice".
But damn... okay, so you don't buy off-the-shelf computers from Dell or Compaq. Do you weave your own clothes? Do you generate your own electricity, or does it just come out of the wall? Do you make your own toothpaste? Do you grow your own food? How self-reliant are you about avoiding things that you and your neighbors don't make?
Me, I'm happy to buy turnkey desktop and laptop computers, and then slap a turnkey Linux distro on them and start doing things.
There's nothing inherently good or bad about products versus solutions; it depends on the specifics of the products and the desires of the customers.
In other fields:
CD's and MP3's: very turnkey solution. Sheet music and guitar tabs: nice raw product.
ftp.gnu.org: many fine products that do fine things Debian CD: a solution for your personal computing needs
One interesting thing about open source is that there are legions of volunteer programmers working on products, and a complementary spectrum of for-profit companies (plus a few not-for-profit groups like Debian) offering solutions based on those products, and they are working out novel arrangements for mutual co-operation.
This is an age old marketing issue in the computer industry. Here's my take on it.
A "solution" is, well, something that actually satisifies all the customer's needs. Also known as a "system".
A "product" is something that a customer buys with a defined feature set and just does what the seller says that it does. Also known as a "box".
In McNealy's view of Sun's market, there are two ways to set up a data center or a big web site or whatever he's calling his market these days:
(1) Buy a "solution" from Sun which comes with hardware, software, service agreements, and a damn big price tag. Single-vendor integration all the way.
(2) Buy a bunch of "products" like x86 hardware + a Linux distro + a database and then hire some people to put it all together with in-house support. For example, Google.
What McNealy does not get about open source is that it lets us work on the "products" (kernel, gcc, apache, et cetera) and still let companies sell the integrated "solutions" (like IBM and Red Hat enterprise support). Sun's competition is not Dell; it is other complete "solution providers".
This whole argument is obscured by the fact that most people's experience with computers (including mine) is with personal computers; and for personal computers, Dell, Compaq, et al, do sell complete solutions.
In the majority slashdot worldview, spammer == terrorist.
We're all for an end to spam, which means we won't object very strongly to increased government monitoring and filtering of the Internet for purposes of ending spam.
Don't get me wrong -- I think that non-consensual e-mail is a form of assault, just like many other non-consensual activities. I just hate to solve the problem by government monitoring and filtering. I don't want a world where I need a government-issued photo id to get access to the public Internet, and I think that's where we're going.
Yeah, I've got the "deep troll" hypothesis in mind as well.
If it is a troll, then it's just another Slashdot chat, no big deal.
If it's not a troll, and the guy really is a SCO Group employee who transferred in from the former Santa Cruz Operation, then the people who read this thread will be a little more sensitized and react a little more quickly as SCO unveils their legal attack on the GPL.
I've suspected this for several months: that SCO's strategy has been to declare every bit of non-SCO code "public domain" and then assert their own copyright over the entire kernel.
Slashdot Mirror
... Beowulf Cluster imagines YOU !!!
You have a point. One side of Sun is viciously trying to kill Linux on servers, by funding SCO, as well as just ordinary business competition. But another side of Sun makes massive contributions to Linux on the desktop, specifically Open Office.
Sun has its own agenda. Sun attacks the aspects of Linux that hurt Sun's agenda and supports the aspects of Linux that contribute to Sun's agenda.
HP has not bought a SCO Source license. Sun has, for $7.5 million and counting. See the 10-Q's.
HP has not acquired warrants to buy stock in SCO, and Sun has. See the 10-Q's.
If there's any evidence that HP is supporting SCO, it's not showing up in SCO's 10-Q's.
HP decreased its existing support of SCO since SCO filed suit this year. HP pulled its sponsorship of SCO Forum, and I don't think they are not sponsors of this road show. SCO keeps trying to use HP's logo, but HP keeps making them stop.
Sun increased its existing support of SCO, and then lied about it. Sun tried to push the story that they paid up their license years ago, when in fact they were buying a secret license in February 2003.
That's pretty cool. First the page said "Sponsored by HP" with a big HP logo. Then there was an HP logo, but no "Sponsored by". Then the "Sponsored by" came back. Now the whole logo is gone.
"Our balance sheet is healthy. Our revenues are up, and we have had two profitable quarters and are expecting more."
"Nothing. IBM owes us $3 billion in damages and we intend to collect. We have no plans to sue Red Hat at this time."
"Our claims are valid and substantial".
Those are lame questions. If you ask those questions, you're just going to give SCO a springboard to make positive statements about the company.
My suggestion:
"Is there any GPL code in your new SCO Authentication product?"
[If the answer is yes] "Do you respect the GPL license on that code?"
It's hilarious that you talk about "monopoly" and in the same breath call "Coke" and "Pepsi" monopolies. Obviously they are not. And the last time I went to a sporting goods store and looked at the shoes, there were many other brands on the shelf besides Nike.
But that's just a side point. The real point is your claim that other people (obviously not you, right?) import their goals from a reference group, and that they get their reference group through advertising.
Yes and no. Advertising speaks to people's real needs, whether you like those needs or not.
One of those needs is the need to fit in with a peer group. The ironic thing about American culture is that there's a whole anti-culture who are devoted to trashing the main culture, and they have just as much -- if not more -- propaganda, group-think, and exclusionary mechanisms. You yourself have been propagandized in this way, to the point where you casually use "monopoly" to mean any company whose products you don't like.
Like I said, if you want to get past the dominant orthodoxy, and past the counter-orthodoxy, try some Thoreau. Real non-conformists don't even care what *other* non-conformists think of them.
The difference is that Sun did not admit to paying SCO money until the deals started coming out in SCO's 10-Q filings. Sun didn't step up and say "why, yes, we bought some drivers, no big deal". Sun acted as if they had finished their business with SCO a long time ago.
:)
See, for instance:
McNealy weighs in on Linux, Unix, Sun
I don't know what I would buy there [SCO]. Why buy what you already own? I thought I already paid for that sucker.
That's Scott McNealy failing to see your distinction between a Unix source license and a license for new drivers. That's Scott McNealy hiding the SCO relationship until he's forced to admit it.
Project UDI? Come on. They haven't updated their reference implementation since September 2001. You think Sun paid $7.5 million (and counting) for that crap? You think you can convince anyone else that Sun paid $7.5 million for that crap?
Speaking of going down the tubes, Red Hat has increasing revenues and is profitable; Sun has declining revenues and isn't profitable. That's gotta hurt.
Linux is eating away at Sun's market from below. Sun is going the way of Cray, where fewer and fewer and customers need the high-end machines which Sun has and Linux doesn't. It's not just the end of the dot-com bubble. It's the permanent shrinkage of Sun's core market.
Sun's customers know this. Sun knows this. That's why Sun supports SCO, and that's why SUN is taking the reputational hit for supporting SCO.
Human goals come from physiology, psychology, sociology. I need food and shelter; I need to to feel useful and entertained; I need the people around me to support me.
Economics is the stufy of how people allocate scarce resources to pursue their goals. Economics does not explain what the goals are.
As another poster commented, the fancy athletic shoes are about the goals of status and sexual attractiveness, not about the goal of physical fitness.
For another example, a lot of business people buy more computer power than they need to perform their computer tasks, because they are concerned about status goals, not performance goals. Ditto with fancy wristwatches, fancy cars, and conspicuous consumption of many types.
If you want to step back from all this and get some perspective, read some Thoreau. There's a guy who had very low status needs.
Oh look, here come the Sun apologists. Perhaps the same guy each time, perhaps not.
List which of the following organizations have acquired warrants in SCO this year: Sun, Costco, McDonald's, Dixons', NEC, Nortel, Fujitsu, Pearle Vision, National Weather Service, California Department of Motor Vehicles. All I see in the 10-Q's is SUN.
First you said that Sun didn't pay SCO any money.
Then, when CNET reported quotes from SCO executives and Sun executives that Sun paid SCO money, you said it was a one-time expense.
Then, when SCO said in its 10-Q that Sun will pay for several quarters, you say okay, it's a recurring expense, but's for software. Nothing wrong with buying software, right? Except that it gives the lie to Sun's PR line that they don't need an additional SCO license because they did a complete buyout several years ago. Sun omitted to mention its deal THIS YEAR with SCO when they were floating that line.
Then, when SCO says that Sun gets warrants in SCO as well as IP rights, you say that warrants aren't really stock yet.
Yeah, right. As if Sun is going to leave warrants at $1.83 per share unexercised.
Basically, the position of the Sun apologists is to stay as far from SCO as the publicly known facts allow. But as each piece of documentary evidence comes out, it gives the lie to the current line of apology, so Sun apologists have to admit more and more of Sun's sponsorship of SCO.
Your defense of Sun is untenable.
The difference is the millions of dollars which Sun paid has paid SCO in 2003 and continues to pay and which HP is *not* paying.
The difference is that Sun now owns part of SCO (stock warrants to buy 2% of SCO at $1.83 per share).
Sun takes your money and gives part of it to SCO.
HP takes your money and spends part of it on lawyers to defend you from SCO.
One factor:
Hedge funds gunning the stock so that they look good when they report on September 30.
"The Linux(R) Kernel Personality (LKP( for UnixWare 7.1.3 provides Linux environment hosted on the UnixWare kernel. This environment does not contain a Linux kernel ..."
Well, since this commercial product does not contain a Linux(TM) kernel, where does SCO get off using the registered trademark Linux(TM) as part of its name?
Oh, wait. I live in St. George, New York City. Not St. George, Utah.
Nevermind.
Given that hypothetical, I would not forgive SCO. As you say, I would concede SCO's point, and think that SCO defended their rights in a very poor manner.
Specifically, there's legal precedent about what to do if you find someone distributing your copyrighted work without permission. You send a cease & desist, with specific notice about what the infringing work is. See the DMCA sections on takedown notices (those don't rely apply, but they are related). See A&M versus Napster, where the Ninth Circuit held that A&M had to provide specific notice to Napster of infringing works, which A&M duly provided.
SCO hasn't done that. SCO actively refuses to do that.
SCO can change that any time they want, by sending a proper cease & desist to people who distribute code that SCO claims is theirs. But they won't do that. In fact, Darl McBride stated, in one of the conference calls, that SCO would not inform Red Hat of the specific infringing code "because then Red Hat would just take it out".
Do you honestly think MS cares?
Yes.
Back in January 2003, Microsoft could have bought the whole frickin' company for $18 million: $1.50 per share times 12 million shares. Microsoft could have bought the company, fired all the programmers, and done whatever the fuck they wanted with the source code, the copyrights, and the existing licenses, including filing the exact same suits that SCO has filed against IBM.
So Microsoft already had the choice: buy all the assets of SCO for $18 million, or buy a SCO Source license for a similar amount of money and let SCO take the heat for making the attack. According to SCO's 10-Q, about 2/3 of the SCO Source money comes from Microsoft, and 1/3 from Sun. There have been $15 million paid so far with at least $2.5 million more to come from Sun and an unspecified amount from Microsoft.
The link that Slashdot provides is on Yahoo Finance, and is actually just an excerpt from the whole 10-Q.
...
To get the whole 10-Q, go to www.sec.gov. Click on "Filings and Forms (EDGAR)", subsection "Search for Company Filings". Click on "Companies and Other Filers". Company name "SCO", a couple more clicks, and
SEC 10-Q
Then search for "German" and this section pops up:
"Several entities in Germany have obtained temporary restraining orders in Germany precluding SCO GmbH, the Company's German subsidiary, in substance, from making statements in Germany that disparage Linux, or entities involved in the Linux business, or implicate Linux as infringing the Company's intellectual property rights. SCO GmbH has received an administrative fine of 10,000 Euro for a technical violation of one of the temporary restraining orders. The Company is currently negotiating with the various claimants in Germany over the temporary restraining orders and is evaluating whether it will appeal the administrative fine. Informal letter complaints similar to those raised in Germany have been received from companies in Austria and Poland. The Company has responded to those letters. It is not known if those complainants will take future action."
Can someone familiar with the 10-Q requirements explain whether this omission is permissable (because it was brought in Germany?)
I don't know the exact law, but the requirement is that the 10-Q disclose all of the material information about the company. "Material information" means relevant information; it means information that would make a reasonable investor likely to pay a higher or lower price for the stock. The German location is not relevant; what's relevant is whether this issue is likely to be important to SCO.
It's normal for a company to list all the important lawsuits that it is involved in, and then to say "the company believes the case has no merit and is vigorously contesting it", blah blah.
It's like selling a house. If I sell you a house, and I diclose in writing during the sale that the house contains asbestos, you might decide not to buy the house. But if you do buy the house, and then two years later you say "hey! this house has asbestos!" then I will say "you knew the house had asbestos when you bought it. Here's the paper you signed where you acknowledged that I told you that."
The 10-Q is like that for stock. If someone buys SCOX stock tomorrow, and then next year they come back and sue SCO's directors for not telling them about the German lawsuit, SCO's directors will point to the 10-Q and said "you had access to this information before you bought our stock".
Does anyone have any numbers of how far they'd be in the red if it wasn't for this initiative?
Yes. Start here:
The SCO Group Reports Third-Quarter Results
For the quarter ended July 31, the whole company reported $20.1 million in revenue and $3.1 million in net income. The SCO Source division generated $7.3 million revenue and $5.6 million in gross margin. That means the products&services portion of SCO generated $12.8 million revenue and ($2.5 million) in net loss.
I dug out numbers for the past five quarters and posted them here. You can really see the declining trend in products and services revenue.
SCO's Core Business Is Not Profitable
So, if they weren't profitable before, then a decline in product and service revenue should put them *far* into the red without the SCOSource thing.
SCO has also been cutting costs. As another poster pointed out, income = revenue - costs. Both revenue and costs are declining, so income can go either way.
The 10-Q covers the period of 2003-05-01 to 2003-07-31.
The mystery "Fortune 500" company deal was announced on 2003-08-11. So that revenue will appear in the next 10-Q, for the quarter ended 2003-10-31, which will come out about 2003-12-17 or thereabouts.
The next questions are: will SCO identify the F500 licensee by name in their 10-Q? And will SCO break down their revenue enough so that we can figure out how much that license cost? My predictions are: (a) probably not; and (b) likely, but not guaranteed.
Of course if the SEC climbs up their ass they can make SCO disclose just about anything, either to the SEC or to the public. In last quarter's 10-Q, for the quarter ended April 30, SCO did not identify Sun by name. This quarter SCO makes a point of doing so. I'm speculating here, but my intuition suspects there was some pressure on SCO to disclose this.
Are y'all sure that Sun did give SCO $$$ recently?
Yup. I got yer links right here:
SCO 10-Q
Sun expands Unix deal with SCO
As you said -- and, more importantly, as the 10-Q for the quarter plus the 10-Q for laster quarter said -- Sun gets options to purchase 2% of SCO. That's more than a cleanup license. That is a strategic investment.
Sun is helping desktop Linux a lot, specifically through Open Office. Sun is also attacking server Linux via its partnership with SCO. Sun is a Linux ally in cases where Linux competes with Sun's competitors, and a Linux foe in situations where Linux competes with Sun.
Interesting. Let's take a side trip to the grocery store.
... okay, so you don't buy off-the-shelf computers from Dell or Compaq. Do you weave your own clothes? Do you generate your own electricity, or does it just come out of the wall? Do you make your own toothpaste? Do you grow your own food? How self-reliant are you about avoiding things that you and your neighbors don't make?
A head of lettuce: definitely a product. Not very useful to the customer until they combine and customize it with other products.
A ready-made salad in a clamshell dish with a plastic fork, plastic knife, napkin, and a pack of dressing: a lunch solution.
Some people go for the solution (especially when it comes from a restaurant rather than a grocery store); some people compose their own solutions from grocery store products.
Flour and yeast: products. Sliced bread: a solution. In this case, most people go for the turnkey "solution" most of the time.
Actually, "product" and "solution" are just crude categories here; there's actually a continuous scale from "grow the grain yourself" to "hot pizza $2 per slice".
But damn
Me, I'm happy to buy turnkey desktop and laptop computers, and then slap a turnkey Linux distro on them and start doing things.
There's nothing inherently good or bad about products versus solutions; it depends on the specifics of the products and the desires of the customers.
In other fields:
CD's and MP3's: very turnkey solution.
Sheet music and guitar tabs: nice raw product.
ftp.gnu.org: many fine products that do fine things
Debian CD: a solution for your personal computing needs
One interesting thing about open source is that there are legions of volunteer programmers working on products, and a complementary spectrum of for-profit companies (plus a few not-for-profit groups like Debian) offering solutions based on those products, and they are working out novel arrangements for mutual co-operation.
This is an age old marketing issue in the computer industry. Here's my take on it.
A "solution" is, well, something that actually satisifies all the customer's needs. Also known as a "system".
A "product" is something that a customer buys with a defined feature set and just does what the seller says that it does. Also known as a "box".
In McNealy's view of Sun's market, there are two ways to set up a data center or a big web site or whatever he's calling his market these days:
(1) Buy a "solution" from Sun which comes with hardware, software, service agreements, and a damn big price tag. Single-vendor integration all the way.
(2) Buy a bunch of "products" like x86 hardware + a Linux distro + a database and then hire some people to put it all together with in-house support. For example, Google.
What McNealy does not get about open source is that it lets us work on the "products" (kernel, gcc, apache, et cetera) and still let companies sell the integrated "solutions" (like IBM and Red Hat enterprise support). Sun's competition is not Dell; it is other complete "solution providers".
This whole argument is obscured by the fact that most people's experience with computers (including mine) is with personal computers; and for personal computers, Dell, Compaq, et al, do sell complete solutions.
In the majority slashdot worldview, spammer == terrorist.
We're all for an end to spam, which means we won't object very strongly to increased government monitoring and filtering of the Internet for purposes of ending spam.
Don't get me wrong -- I think that non-consensual e-mail is a form of assault, just like many other non-consensual activities. I just hate to solve the problem by government monitoring and filtering. I don't want a world where I need a government-issued photo id to get access to the public Internet, and I think that's where we're going.
Yeah, I've got the "deep troll" hypothesis in mind as well.
If it is a troll, then it's just another Slashdot chat, no big deal.
If it's not a troll, and the guy really is a SCO Group employee who transferred in from the former Santa Cruz Operation, then the people who read this thread will be a little more sensitized and react a little more quickly as SCO unveils their legal attack on the GPL.
I've suspected this for several months: that SCO's strategy has been to declare every bit of non-SCO code "public domain" and then assert their own copyright over the entire kernel.
Thank you for confirming this.