Every day that SCO goes without doing a full "no kidding" revelation of the "infringing" code raises the probability that the whole thing is a "pump & dump" smoke screen.
If the "infringements" were anywhere near as widespread as SCO claims, they would be showing something a little more convincing than what we have seen so far.
One way or another, the shareholders are going to end up with a share price of $0. No punishment is going to make it any worse than that. As for Daryl, his life should be made interesting in a Martha Stewart sort of way. Any legal recourse against SCO is pretty much meaningless unless the individual officers are targeted. Otherwise, it's like threatening to confiscate the Titanic after it hits the iceberg and is sinking anyway.
SCO takes on IBM plus the entire Open Source community. Then the geniuses adopt a "James Bond" theme for their little convention. I guess the OSS national anthem should be the theme from "A View to a Kill"
Now wouldn't it be funny if SCO decided to abandon the whole thing and keep Bill's money. After all, they are sure to lose vs. IBM. If I were Daryl, I would pump up the stock price for a while and pull the ejection handle when the senior management golden parachutes are ready to deploy?
"I setup over a dozen e-commerce solutions for my clients, and they all are running Win2003 server with IIS 6.0 and MSSQL2000, and not a SINLE ONE has ever been hacked."
Since you seem to think that a few months with no breakins is a noteworthy accomplishment, you unintentionally highlight the fact that Windows/IIS is well known for breakins.
Those of us who have done more than a dozen installs over the course of more than a few months are well aware of the overall security trends of the various platforms.
I just wish Oracle would give us a supported/documented way to do this as opposed to an unsupported hack. Even if it's just a script that does what you suggest or a document that says "this is how to do it.". After all, if Linux is really a mainstream platform for Oracle, they would have something to say other than "Windows required".
At my company, we run Oracle Financials. We use a stupid little Windows app called jinitiator to launch the "javatized" version of Oracle Forms. Unfortunately, Oracle refuses to release a Linux version of jinitiator, despite what is probably hundreds of requests/complaints on Metalink and thousands more that really want the product. Java is supposed to mean platform independence, but somehow we get stuck with Windows anyway. All this rhetoric about Oracle supporting Linux is great, but the action is another story.
I think people will only pay for content that is truly unavailable via the "free" method. Ninety percent of the time, the content that is for sale via a pay service is available somewhere else (in a slightly different form), for free. When "pay" competes with "free", "pay" generally loses.
If you can find no evidence of the product for sale, I wonder if it is possible to make productive use of the code and how much time has to elapse before you claim ownership.
If your lawyer determines that adverse posesssion is not applicable, I wonder what other "abandoned property" laws might be useful.
To me, it looks more like SCO is trying to convince investors that there is viable revenue stream in their "SCOsource" initiative. Nobody in their right mind is going to buy this "license", but people might buy SCO stock if the fantasy of licensing Linux can be maintained for a while. If this isn't a "pump and dump" scheme, I don't know what is. SEC take notice.
This battle is really Microsoft vs. IBM, with SCO (and now Red Hat) as proxies. Neither SCO nor Red Hat has the resources to fight this battle, therefore the cash comes from M$ and IBM.
"NRA members are almost zealous in their financial support."
Most of them pay their dues; $35/yr. They have an incredible number of members, so it really adds up.
"And if you're paying a lobbyist... it ain't free any more." Granted, there is no such thing as "free" file sharing if you have to pay a lobbyist to defend the concept, but there are other desirable goals. It would be worth something to have competition in the music distribution industry, elimination of all the well-known unpopular business practices, the ability to make download and manipulate non-crippled files for personal use.
A boycott could be launched at zero cost. When the NRA launched a boycott of Smith & Wesson, they sent faxes. Today, we have e-mail, or the splash screens of the P2P programs themselves.
Influencing elections is a bit more expensive. Eventually, the money to do it will come from the hardware industry when they discover that crippleware media players are next on the boycott hit list. CSS and Macrovision were "under the radar" for the average home user, so the hardware industry will assume that is that DRM is OK until consumers resist. Let's see what happens when a few million crippled music players turn into "shelfware".
Perhaps targeting the CEO is the way to go. Once a target is selected and the boycott gets started, the pressure is maintained until a new CEO takes charge, seeking to end the boycott by distancing the company from the RIAA position. I would think that getting canned (even with golden parachute) from a CEO position is a real humiliation if it happens because your company got boycotted. Most companies will can the CEO before they go bankrupt. For what they get paid, anything beyond 3 bad quarters and it's "game over".
When something like this happens, the other CEOs will try to learn from the misfortune of their fallen colleague.
Even if geeks don't buy music (which I doubt), they can recruit others to join what is already a limited boycott. I read somewhere that there are an estimated 56 million people who use P2P. Even a 10% particpation rate would be a real attention getter.
Laws won't make people buy things. They can discourage the alternatives, but the choice of listening to what you already own is probably beyond legislative shenanigans.
Study NRA tactics. Organize a boycott. Pick one record label and concentrate on driving them into bankruptcy. Enforce a new reality on the music market. Then it wouldn't matter who is running RIAA, would it?
Notice how Congress fears the NRA, and not just because they have guns. There are more file sharers than NRA members. Consider the possibilities.
"You argued earlier that the risk was least for current Limux users, implying that the risk increases for new buyers."
I did? I see no way for anyone to distinguish new vs. pre-existing Linux installations. I challenge anyone to explain how new Linux installs increase the odds of being sued, beyond whatever trivial risk there might be as a pre-existing Linux user.
Look at SCO's financials. How much money do you think they have in the bank? How much will Canopy Group put up to launch these little missiles? If you were an investment banker, would YOU extend credit to SCO?
A popular opinion is that SCO is aiming for a buyout; this makes perfect sense when you consider what they sell and their prospects for the future. How is suing Linux users going to advance that goal?
How does a new investment increase the threat level over a pre-existing investment? Even if SCO manages to sue companies that use Linux, how are they going to distinguish old vs. new? Does it really matter? Not even Gartner suggests abandoning existing Linux installations, so the risk of a SCO lawsuit would appear to be about the same for anyone that currently uses Linux. Also note that Gartner has nothing to say about paying for SCO's new "Linux license", which would allegedly shield companies from SCO lawsuits. If nobody is seriously considering paying for a license, then the threat can't be all that great.
Granted, new installs would increase the cost if you had to tear down the whole thing, but what are the odds of THAT? Hell, there is a chance that penguin commandos will wipe out Redmond with a guided missile -- people continue to buy Windows despite the "risk".
Speaking of the "risk" of Windows, there is always the threat of BSA audit. Hardly anyone emerges from one of those unscathed, even if they make serious efforts to track licenses and utilization. BSA has audited many more companies than SCO has sued.
You make an interesting point about GPL and how it might be related to EULAs. If GPL is not enforceable, then I don't see how EULAs will fare any better. If Microsoft somehow funds the SCO vs. IBM battle to successful conclusion, it would be poetic justice for Microsoft to drown in a sea of piracy when its EULAs suffer the same fate as GPL.
The threat against companies using Linux is the least likely to materialize. I don't think even Gartner takes that threat seriously. If that case had any merit, SCO would have selected a "deep pockets" target and sued by now.
The "risk" is that SCO somehow wins, IBM abandons Linux, and the distributors are forced to pay royalties to SCO. That's a bad day for all parties concerned. It would pretty much kill the development community. The people who wrote all that code for free are unlikely to continue if the end result is another "licensed" commercial product.
I seriously doubt that SCO can pull it off. If GPL is enforcable, they will be hard-pressed to claim infringement of either patent or copyright over the code that was given away by them and redistributed by others. If GPL is to be ignored, the future of open source is very much in doubt. If SCO manages to simply walk away from their obligations under GPL, then the door is wide open for corporations to walk away from all kinds of contracts, not necessarily limited to software licensing.
Sometimes I agree with Gartner. Their recommendation to abandon IIS was right on target. Gartner's ability to collect facts is more valuable than their conclusions about what to do. Many of us in IT management will face additional questions about our Linux deployments thanks to Gartner. Dealing with a little sporadic flak is part of the job.
I wonder why Gartner didn't have a "go slow" recommendation on Microsoft deployment during the DOJ anti-trust crisis and all the various states suing in pursuit of a breakup? It becomes even more interesting when you consider that the ONLY company that makes Windows was up to its neck in legal trouble, whereas NONE of the MANY Linux distributors is currently in any trouble at all. One dubious lawsuit and we all have to stop and wait? I don't think so. To me, Gartner is attempting to spray water where there is no fire.
Ultimately, the decision factors in choosing Linux vs. the alternatives remain the same, with or without SCO. If we have to hide under our desks every time someone launches an idle threat or a lawsuit, we might as well power off and go home.
As long as broadband ISPs are out there trying to sell additional IP addresses for home LANs and misleading customers into thinking these additional addresses are necessary, there cannot possibly be a real shortage.
The Vaios I have seen had what amounted their own version of Windows. They seem to have funky BIOS, hardware, and drivers. In my opinion, Windows Update slowly destroys the machine as these goofball drivers become less and less compatible with the new DLLs you get from Microsoft. I wonder if the word "Vaio" is perhaps Japanese for "disaster"? Sony makes alot of great products, but the Vaio is not one of them. Check Usenet; see just how satisfied the customers really are. Then buy some other brand, any other brand. You really can't do much worse.
Vaios look cool, and we have a few PHBs who fell in love with the style and (lack of) weight, but they are a total nuisance for the support staff. Our travelling people occasionally gripe about the weight of their IBM Thinkpads, but at least they aren't calling headquarters with show-stopper events in the field.
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Every day that SCO goes without doing a full "no kidding" revelation of the "infringing" code raises the probability that the whole thing is a "pump & dump" smoke screen.
If the "infringements" were anywhere near as widespread as SCO claims, they would be showing something a little more convincing than what we have seen so far.
What do they have to sell? Aside from Linux licenses, what is there to not buy?
Now wouldn't it be funny if SCO decided to abandon the whole thing and keep Bill's money. After all, they are sure to lose vs. IBM. If I were Daryl, I would pump up the stock price for a while and pull the ejection handle when the senior management golden parachutes are ready to deploy?
"I setup over a dozen e-commerce solutions for my clients, and they all are running Win2003 server with IIS 6.0 and MSSQL2000, and not a SINLE ONE has ever been hacked."
Since you seem to think that a few months with no breakins is a noteworthy accomplishment, you unintentionally highlight the fact that Windows/IIS is well known for breakins.
Those of us who have done more than a dozen installs over the course of more than a few months are well aware of the overall security trends of the various platforms.
Thanks for the info; I'll give it a try.
I just wish Oracle would give us a supported/documented way to do this as opposed to an unsupported hack. Even if it's just a script that does what you suggest or a document that says "this is how to do it.". After all, if Linux is really a mainstream platform for Oracle, they would have something to say other than "Windows required".
At my company, we run Oracle Financials. We use a stupid little Windows app called jinitiator to launch the "javatized" version of Oracle Forms. Unfortunately, Oracle refuses to release a Linux version of jinitiator, despite what is probably hundreds of requests/complaints on Metalink and thousands more that really want the product. Java is supposed to mean platform independence, but somehow we get stuck with Windows anyway. All this rhetoric about Oracle supporting Linux is great, but the action is another story.
I think people will only pay for content that is truly unavailable via the "free" method. Ninety percent of the time, the content that is for sale via a pay service is available somewhere else (in a slightly different form), for free. When "pay" competes with "free", "pay" generally loses.
If you can find no evidence of the product for sale, I wonder if it is possible to make productive use of the code and how much time has to elapse before you claim ownership.
If your lawyer determines that adverse posesssion is not applicable, I wonder what other "abandoned property" laws might be useful.
To me, it looks more like SCO is trying to convince investors that there is viable revenue stream in their "SCOsource" initiative. Nobody in their right mind is going to buy this "license", but people might buy SCO stock if the fantasy of licensing Linux can be maintained for a while. If this isn't a "pump and dump" scheme, I don't know what is. SEC take notice.
This battle is really Microsoft vs. IBM, with SCO (and now Red Hat) as proxies. Neither SCO nor Red Hat has the resources to fight this battle, therefore the cash comes from M$ and IBM.
"NRA members are almost zealous in their financial support."
... it ain't free any more."
Most of them pay their dues; $35/yr. They have an incredible number of members, so it really adds up.
"And if you're paying a lobbyist
Granted, there is no such thing as "free" file sharing if you have to pay a lobbyist to defend the concept, but there are other desirable goals. It would be worth something to have competition in the music distribution industry, elimination of all the well-known unpopular business practices, the ability to make download and manipulate non-crippled files for personal use.
A boycott could be launched at zero cost. When the NRA launched a boycott of Smith & Wesson, they sent faxes. Today, we have e-mail, or the splash screens of the P2P programs themselves.
Influencing elections is a bit more expensive. Eventually, the money to do it will come from the hardware industry when they discover that crippleware media players are next on the boycott hit list. CSS and Macrovision were "under the radar" for the average home user, so the hardware industry will assume that is that DRM is OK until consumers resist. Let's see what happens when a few million crippled music players turn into "shelfware".
Perhaps targeting the CEO is the way to go. Once a target is selected and the boycott gets started, the pressure is maintained until a new CEO takes charge, seeking to end the boycott by distancing the company from the RIAA position. I would think that getting canned (even with golden parachute) from a CEO position is a real humiliation if it happens because your company got boycotted. Most companies will can the CEO before they go bankrupt. For what they get paid, anything beyond 3 bad quarters and it's "game over".
When something like this happens, the other CEOs will try to learn from the misfortune of their fallen colleague.
Even if geeks don't buy music (which I doubt), they can recruit others to join what is already a limited boycott. I read somewhere that there are an estimated 56 million people who use P2P. Even a 10% particpation rate would be a real attention getter.
Laws won't make people buy things. They can discourage the alternatives, but the choice of listening to what you already own is probably beyond legislative shenanigans.
Study NRA tactics. Organize a boycott. Pick one record label and concentrate on driving them into bankruptcy. Enforce a new reality on the music market. Then it wouldn't matter who is running RIAA, would it?
Notice how Congress fears the NRA, and not just because they have guns. There are more file sharers than NRA members. Consider the possibilities.
Ask not how to get rid of spam, ask how to send your spam to SCO.
Now that is news.
"You argued earlier that the risk was least for current Limux users, implying that the risk increases for new buyers."
I did? I see no way for anyone to distinguish new vs. pre-existing Linux installations. I challenge anyone to explain how new Linux installs increase the odds of being sued, beyond whatever trivial risk there might be as a pre-existing Linux user.
Look at SCO's financials. How much money do you think they have in the bank? How much will Canopy Group put up to launch these little missiles? If you were an investment banker, would YOU extend credit to SCO?
A popular opinion is that SCO is aiming for a buyout; this makes perfect sense when you consider what they sell and their prospects for the future. How is suing Linux users going to advance that goal?
How does a new investment increase the threat level over a pre-existing investment? Even if SCO manages to sue companies that use Linux, how are they going to distinguish old vs. new? Does it really matter? Not even Gartner suggests abandoning existing Linux installations, so the risk of a SCO lawsuit would appear to be about the same for anyone that currently uses Linux. Also note that Gartner has nothing to say about paying for SCO's new "Linux license", which would allegedly shield companies from SCO lawsuits. If nobody is seriously considering paying for a license, then the threat can't be all that great.
Granted, new installs would increase the cost if you had to tear down the whole thing, but what are the odds of THAT? Hell, there is a chance that penguin commandos will wipe out Redmond with a guided missile -- people continue to buy Windows despite the "risk".
Speaking of the "risk" of Windows, there is always the threat of BSA audit. Hardly anyone emerges from one of those unscathed, even if they make serious efforts to track licenses and utilization. BSA has audited many more companies than SCO has sued.
You make an interesting point about GPL and how it might be related to EULAs. If GPL is not enforceable, then I don't see how EULAs will fare any better. If Microsoft somehow funds the SCO vs. IBM battle to successful conclusion, it would be poetic justice for Microsoft to drown in a sea of piracy when its EULAs suffer the same fate as GPL.
No.
The threat against companies using Linux is the least likely to materialize. I don't think even Gartner takes that threat seriously. If that case had any merit, SCO would have selected a "deep pockets" target and sued by now.
The "risk" is that SCO somehow wins, IBM abandons Linux, and the distributors are forced to pay royalties to SCO. That's a bad day for all parties concerned. It would pretty much kill the development community. The people who wrote all that code for free are unlikely to continue if the end result is another "licensed" commercial product.
I seriously doubt that SCO can pull it off. If GPL is enforcable, they will be hard-pressed to claim infringement of either patent or copyright over the code that was given away by them and redistributed by others. If GPL is to be ignored, the future of open source is very much in doubt. If SCO manages to simply walk away from their obligations under GPL, then the door is wide open for corporations to walk away from all kinds of contracts, not necessarily limited to software licensing.
Where was this logic when Microsoft was under attack from the DOJ and numerous states?
Sometimes I agree with Gartner. Their recommendation to abandon IIS was right on target. Gartner's ability to collect facts is more valuable than their conclusions about what to do. Many of us in IT management will face additional questions about our Linux deployments thanks to Gartner. Dealing with a little sporadic flak is part of the job.
I wonder why Gartner didn't have a "go slow" recommendation on Microsoft deployment during the DOJ anti-trust crisis and all the various states suing in pursuit of a breakup? It becomes even more interesting when you consider that the ONLY company that makes Windows was up to its neck in legal trouble, whereas NONE of the MANY Linux distributors is currently in any trouble at all. One dubious lawsuit and we all have to stop and wait? I don't think so. To me, Gartner is attempting to spray water where there is no fire.
Ultimately, the decision factors in choosing Linux vs. the alternatives remain the same, with or without SCO. If we have to hide under our desks every time someone launches an idle threat or a lawsuit, we might as well power off and go home.
As long as broadband ISPs are out there trying to sell additional IP addresses for home LANs and misleading customers into thinking these additional addresses are necessary, there cannot possibly be a real shortage.
The Vaios I have seen had what amounted their own version of Windows. They seem to have funky BIOS, hardware, and drivers. In my opinion, Windows Update slowly destroys the machine as these goofball drivers become less and less compatible with the new DLLs you get from Microsoft. I wonder if the word "Vaio" is perhaps Japanese for "disaster"? Sony makes alot of great products, but the Vaio is not one of them. Check Usenet; see just how satisfied the customers really are. Then buy some other brand, any other brand. You really can't do much worse.
Vaios look cool, and we have a few PHBs who fell in love with the style and (lack of) weight, but they are a total nuisance for the support staff. Our travelling people occasionally gripe about the weight of their IBM Thinkpads, but at least they aren't calling headquarters with show-stopper events in the field.