You do understand that business is a process not an event? I've personally spent several thousand dollars over the past ten years on video cards for myself and my family and will probably do so over the next ten. It's not whether nvidia has my money now, it's that they won't get any of my money in the future if they continue down this path of providing only intentionally crippled drivers for their cards.
Now, I'm not going to scrap the few nvidia cards I have. I'll just move them as needed to non-multimedia machines such as servers and workstation/gaming machines I build for family members.
Whether or not there are enough people like me to have an economic impact on nvidia's bottom line is another question. I don't really care as long as there are alternatives.
The poster said 'local governments'. From what I've gathered, local (city?) and state governments are generally a lot less ominous than the federal government. If that's the case, I suppose it wouldn't be so bad?
You must have a benign local government. Lucky you. I've found it to be the case that local governments tend to cut corners on rights violations more and tend to be more intrusive than state and federal; and state governments more than federal. This tends to affect outsiders and minorities (I mean this term in the broadest sense -- political as well as ethnic and religious) in the community more -- smaller governments (and government-like entities) tend to be much more lax about imposing a tyranny of the majority than larger governments. Another reason is the lower visibility of smaller governments -- Deep throat from the Occoquan, VA PD isn't really going to make the front page of the Washington Post. Smaller governments are more resposive to local majorities, but they also tend to be the most intrusive in my experience. The epitome of this phenomenon is the homeowners' association (technically not a government entity, but very government-like.)
With all due respect, this makes no sense whatsoever. Piercing the corporate veil is a term used to describe holding individuals responsible for their acts rather than letting them hide behind a corporate shield (although the corporation can also be charged for misdeeds of its employees).
Canopy is a SCOX shareholder (and Ralph Yarro sits on the BOD of both companies.) The "corporate veil" term also describes the protection of shareholders' assets from civil liability for debts incurred by the corporation, say by losing a Lanham Act suit. In general SCOX shareholders will not be liable for any SCOX debt. But, if a shareholder commits an act that assists the corporation in the commision of an act which incurs a civil liability, then the shareholder protection does not apply to that act. There is no "corporate veil" that protects shareholders from their own actions.
The settlement required CA to obtain UnixWare license, which cleverly SCO slipped in the Linux indemification. SCO tried to spin the settlement as licensing deal. It's a damned lie but probably not a crime. Again, no need to pierce anybody's veil.
IBM's Lanham Act claims are that SCOX's lies harm IBM's business. Additionally, the claims are civil, not criminal. If IBM can show (to the lower standards of civil court) that Canopy's likely reason for including the UnixWare license requirement as part of the deal with CA was to help in SCOX's anti-linux campaign, and that the campaign was dishonest, and that the campaign harmed IBM's business, then Canopy is liable to IBM for its actions in furtherance of that campaign. I agree that there's no veil to pierce. That was my point.
What's interesting about this is that Daimler-Chrysler, a publicly acknowledged Linux user, is being sued for not signing SCO's IP compliance statement. If it is a licensed UnixWare user, why shouldn't it also have Linux indemnification?
I suspect that SCOX is trying to limit the breadth of the various offensive suits in which they are engaged in order to later change them when the current tack is starting to look like it's about to run them aground in court. They'll shift their claims and spin it like it was an expansion. Just like they did when they dropped the IBM trade secret claim and moved to the AIX copyright claim. They're nothing if not slimy.
By "overt" I only meant they documented it with an outside party, NDA or no. If the transaction had occured between SCOX and CA rather than between Canopy and CA, then that would have been a covert act.
They only needed to pierce the veil as long as Canopy stayed behind the scenes. The limitation of liability afforded a corporation's shareholders only covers the shareholder from responsibility for the actions of the corporation; it does not in any way protect a shareholder from liability for his or her own actions.
With this deal, Canopy commited an overt act in furtherance of SCOX's campaign to mislead the public in SCOX's anti-linux campaign when they made the UnixWare license (with the linux indeminification attached) part of the CA lawsuit settlement. SCOX then used this deal to misleadingly imply that CA had entered into a voluntary deal to license linux. I'd say this falls under IBM's Lanham Act claims[See this, start at 84.) IBM doesn't need to pierce the veil, Canopy pulled is aside themselves.
I expect that is correct, if IBM can pierce the veil.
They only needed to pierce the veil as long as Canopy stayed behind the scenes. The limitation of liability afforded a corporation's shareholders only covers the shareholder from responsibility for the actions of the corporation; it does not in any way protect a shareholder from liability for his or her own actions.
With this deal, Canopy commited an overt act in furtherance of SCOX's campaign to mislead the public in SCOX's anti-linux campaign when they made the UnixWare license (with the linux indeminification attached) part of the CA lawsuit settlement. SCOX then used this deal to misleadingly imply that CA had entered into a voluntary deal to license linux. I'd say this falls under IBM's Lanham Act claims. IBM doesn't need to pierce the veil, Canopy pulled is aside themselves.
This guy is a business man. He wants to keep his customers in business too. He's paid his protection money so his store and his customers' stores don't get firebombed. We should pitty him instead of vilifying him.
In paying protection, Marsh has established a contractual relationship with a company whose executives say things like "Contracts are what you use against people you have a relationship with." With a company who stated explicitly that the first end user suit will be with a Unix customer. So by paying protection, he made himself and his company more vulnerable to a lawsuit by SCOX, not less so. He can only hope they go bankrupt before they have a chance to sue him.
Their contribution was under GPL. They will have to disprove that first, which IMHO is he kernel of the case
After all these months and hot air, I'm *still* unclear on that point.
This particular point goes specifically to the claims made in this letter to Unix Licensees that SCOX sent out a little over a month ago. If SCOX released those into linux under the GPL (and they did,) then they cannot go after *anyone* (including Unix licensees) for using a version of linux with those files without violating the GPL. Additionally, if *they* distribute a version of linux which contains those files (and they do) they are in violation of the copyright of every other contributer to any such linux distribution that they are distributing. Thus, pretty much any recipient of the above linked letter has a pretty good case for telling SCOX to pound sand (after consulting a lawyer to be sure) and IBM has a damned good case in their copyright countersuit. By pointing to the letter, and to the GPL ABI release by SCOX and then pointing to any linux distribution from SCOX's site in the recent past (and there have been plenty right up until 1/25 -- but oddly various locations keep disappearing with each DDoS) IBM can show good evidence that SCOX tried to sublicense linux (the letter) for containing something that they themselves released as GPL into linux (PGP signed files) and that, since they are in violation of the GPL terms, they do not have permission to distribute linux, which they are doing (get someone who's recently downloaded the kernel from the SCOX site to testify.) SCOX is SCOrewed.
Cheers,
Craig
Re:The ultimate call for group think.
on
More MyDoom Gloom
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I personally like to see SCO denial of serviced to kingdom come.
The problem with that is it doesn't hurt SCOX at all. Look at their business; look at the SEC filings with their financial numbers -- SCOX is not getting any revenue from their website, but they do get some sympathy every time some jackhole pulls a DoS on their pathetic site (of course, in the lab tests show that MyDoom.a doesn't actually execute the DoS code.) Yeah, SCOX can kiss my arse as well, but so can the spammers who coded this and anyone else who puts SCOX in the news for something other than their impending bankruptcy and fraud investigation.
I know you probably know this, but Germany has rendered itself (at least temporarily) immune to SCOX's European licensing initiative, since SCOX is now under an injunction not to make their claims in Germany thanks to LinuxTag's suit. I have written emails to the authors of a few of the articles on the topic SCOX's European efforts asking why they fail to mention the German injunction. The one response I received indicated that reference to the suit had been removed during the editorial process. I suggest that everyone bring this (nearly universal) omission to the attention (politely) of the authors and editors of these articles. As always, include a link (or reference to) a news source; I have used http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/lin ux/story/0,10801,84564,00.html in my emails. As it stands, most of the articles are reports on the claims made in SCOX press releases, occasionally with mention of the IBM suit.
If vendors feel so confident with the intellectual property foundation under their massive contributions into Linux, then they should put their money where their mouth is and protect end users with true vendor-based indemnification.
In other words, Hey, no fair! This makes it so it isn't cheaper for a company to defend itself against our frivolous litigation without giving us a rich insurance company to intimidate! Tough luck, Darl!
"I march to a different kettle of fish"
-(Jeremy Cavendish, Doonesbury)
Thanks for the correction, and the etymology -- I originally wrote "one God damned dime" and decided I wanted to be a little less inflamatory. Oh well.
What I find amazing is the big stink that SCO brought up about indemnification, and protecting your customers against legal action. Even Laura DiDio, our favorite shill, brings up the indemnification issue time and time again.
Now look what's happening here. OSDL is indemnifying linux users against legal action (more than an MS EULA can do, by the way), and SCO is... what's that? they're making noises about suing their own UNIX licensees?
What's really really funny to me is that this is the worst of all possible worlds for SCOX -- it takes the wind out of the extortion aspect of this fiaSCO ("pay up, or da Boies will sue youse") and it doesn't give them the leverage against a company's insurance provider of unlimitted liability that "indemnification" would have -- they actually have to sue an *indemnified* HP customer, or they have to sue *many* linux end users before they can start squeezing anyone on legal costs. As my 1yo daughter would say, Uh-Oh!
Now they are going after companies whose core products rely on Linux. Red hat, and now Google. Since IBM and Red Hat are comfortable with the idea of duking it out with SCO in court, I doubt that Google is going to meekly pony up the license fees.
I hope Google handles this exactly like RedHat did and sues SCOX first.
Right. Those Fortune 500 companies aren't stupid. That's why they would rather pay the relatively paltry sum than waste the lawyer's and executive's time with something whose best outcome is saving the company $1000.
I've seen about 1000 people implicitly claim that large companies are stupid, and want to encouage frivolous lawsuits by rewarding publicized threats of frivolous lawsuits with money. Scumbags would be lining up around the block to sue Google if they gave SCOX one red dime. Additionally, I imagine such a transaction would involve a contract with SCOX; a company whose executives say things like "Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with...." Yeah, you really want to do business with a company like that. Not.
It is not the end. You cannot just replace the code retroactively. There has been a lot of people who have made money off of that code. They would need some sort of reperations. That would get messy and would hurt Linux's adoption rate.
This would be true if and only if SCOX were able to demonstrate copyright rights to the code (claims that it has not formally made in court) and then it could only obtain damages from distributors, not end users. Nobody but IBM is liable for any breach of contract by IBM -- and that is the only claim SCOX has formally made. And if in the ridiculously unlikely event that IBM did violate some contractual confidentiality obligations, well the cat is out of the bag. Trade secrets lose their status as trade secrets once they are published.
Anyhow given the pathetic nature of the "evidence" that they have produced to date, I doubt they'll be able to survive the counter-suit or Redhat's suit alleging SCOX's Lanham act violations. I don't see this litigous little company doing anything to linux's adoption rate except accelerating it by making more people aware of it as an alternative. The idea that end-users are in some danger of owing SCOX money is laughable -- and judging from linux usage number, almost everyone know that.
People are buying this stock like they buy a lottery ticket, expecting that most likely it will fizzle, but if it pops, it could be big. Even the weakest case has some chance of succeeding in court, or being bothersome enough to prompt a settlement.
Which just goes to show that people are stoopid. There are two miscalculations in the view of this stock as a lottery ticket. 1.) The chances of victory, which any sane analyst should have noticed got a whole lot longer after reading the transcript of the Dec 5 hearing on IBM's motion to compel. And 2.) The likely damages if SCOX were to actually pull of some kind of victory, which are nowhere near the downright laughable Dr. Evil figure of $3bn. And stoopid people probably also think that there's some way that a SCOX victory would let SCOX charge linux end users. Based on what fscking legal theory? Gah! Too many dolts!
SCO's lawyers get a twenty percent payoff if SCO wins or IBM settles. If SCO is bought out while the lawsuit is pending, the lawyers get twenty percent of that, too.
Not only that, they get 20% of any equity financing deals that come along during the suit and up to an additional $1mm and 400K in options (see the Oct 17 8-K filing with the SEC here.) And note, they got $50mm in equity financing right around that time. So, Boise & co. could alrady have (or have commited to the) $11mm cash and $7mm worth of SCOX stock (at yesterdays closing price.) So much for Didio's confidence on SCOX's case 'cause Boise is taking it on "contingency."
And what were they doing between March and September of this year? Working on the time machine to get their $10 million from the future into the past so they wouldn't be working on contingency?
From March to September, they may have been working on contingency. Then they renegotiated. Now it's quite possible they working on contingency plus $11mm in hand.
All shows that run on Fox, at this point forever, have been banned from using fake news crawlers. ...
I'd call that a problem. Just because it didn't go to court didn't mean it didn't have ramifications.
Yes, the Fox parent decided that no Fox enitity except Fox News will ever use scrolling headlines. I guess this is a problem for Fox. But Fox News is obviously so touchy that if it weren't The Simpsons it'd be someone else. What a bunch of non-joke-taking whiners. Didn't it used to be the liberals who were humorless?
If they left these three out, there wouldn't have been a problem.
There's not a problem now, parody is protected speech in the U.S. If Fox News actually brings suit, they will be laughed out of court, just like they were when they sued Al Franken.
The difference is that the customer does the choosing. MySQL doesn't choose who will get what licence, the customer chooses which licence they wish to use.
If the customer rejects the license under which MySQL granted them permission to distribute, it is incumbent upon that customer to negotiate another license with MySQL. The customer does not have the option to dictate what license it will operate under -- MySQL does. If the customer does not negotiate a license that is to MySQL's liking, and the customer distributes the product anyway, the customer has violated copyright law.
The real question is whether or not SCO's bluster is sufficient to demonstrate an across-the-board rejection of all GPL obligations. I don't believe that it is in the general case; but the copyright holder of the linux kernel could certainly use the extortion letters as evidence that the terms of the GPL had been rejected by SCO in the specific case of the kernel, and so they are in violation of copyright law if they distribute any kernel which contains non-derivative work. If Linus chose to sue SCO, he would have a very strong case, IMNLO (In my Non-Lawyerly Opinion.)
I like what the samba team has done here -- essentially asked them to clarify their position. I'll take a failure by SCO to negotiate a new license (assuming they still ship a version of samba) as evidence that they consider the GPL valid in general.
If you want genuine competition among suppliers of a service, you can't have one of the suppliers running the infrastructure that the service is supplied over. Public infrastructure should be owned by and run for the benefit of the public, not for the profit of one particular user of it.
Welcome to the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, Now A Wholly Owned Subsiduary of Ford Motor Co. Inc. $2 Surcharge Per Axle for Non Ford Vehicles.
Would we tolerate that? Well, the Bell network is little different, it's just less blatant.
Which is why the ILECs should not be allowed to provide end service at all. A good solution, in my opinion, is to have a fully regulated ILEC selling only wholesale service, and completely independent CLECs providing unregulated retail service. That's the only way you'll get competition when the infrastructure is a natural monopoly.
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Now, I'm not going to scrap the few nvidia cards I have. I'll just move them as needed to non-multimedia machines such as servers and workstation/gaming machines I build for family members.
Whether or not there are enough people like me to have an economic impact on nvidia's bottom line is another question. I don't really care as long as there are alternatives.
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
They only needed to pierce the veil as long as Canopy stayed behind the scenes. The limitation of liability afforded a corporation's shareholders only covers the shareholder from responsibility for the actions of the corporation; it does not in any way protect a shareholder from liability for his or her own actions.
With this deal, Canopy commited an overt act in furtherance of SCOX's campaign to mislead the public in SCOX's anti-linux campaign when they made the UnixWare license (with the linux indeminification attached) part of the CA lawsuit settlement. SCOX then used this deal to misleadingly imply that CA had entered into a voluntary deal to license linux. I'd say this falls under IBM's Lanham Act claims[See this, start at 84.) IBM doesn't need to pierce the veil, Canopy pulled is aside themselves.
Cheers,
Craig
With this deal, Canopy commited an overt act in furtherance of SCOX's campaign to mislead the public in SCOX's anti-linux campaign when they made the UnixWare license (with the linux indeminification attached) part of the CA lawsuit settlement. SCOX then used this deal to misleadingly imply that CA had entered into a voluntary deal to license linux. I'd say this falls under IBM's Lanham Act claims. IBM doesn't need to pierce the veil, Canopy pulled is aside themselves.
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Thanks for the correction, and the etymology -- I originally wrote "one God damned dime" and decided I wanted to be a little less inflamatory. Oh well.
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Anyhow given the pathetic nature of the "evidence" that they have produced to date, I doubt they'll be able to survive the counter-suit or Redhat's suit alleging SCOX's Lanham act violations. I don't see this litigous little company doing anything to linux's adoption rate except accelerating it by making more people aware of it as an alternative. The idea that end-users are in some danger of owing SCOX money is laughable -- and judging from linux usage number, almost everyone know that.
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
Cheers,
Craig
-Craig
The real question is whether or not SCO's bluster is sufficient to demonstrate an across-the-board rejection of all GPL obligations. I don't believe that it is in the general case; but the copyright holder of the linux kernel could certainly use the extortion letters as evidence that the terms of the GPL had been rejected by SCO in the specific case of the kernel, and so they are in violation of copyright law if they distribute any kernel which contains non-derivative work. If Linus chose to sue SCO, he would have a very strong case, IMNLO (In my Non-Lawyerly Opinion.)
I like what the samba team has done here -- essentially asked them to clarify their position. I'll take a failure by SCO to negotiate a new license (assuming they still ship a version of samba) as evidence that they consider the GPL valid in general.
-Craig
-Craig