Isn't SCOs stock price/equity low enough to where IBM could just buy them outright?
No. While the cost to simply purchase the company outright may seem cheap there are going to be some hidden expenses. tSCOG owes Novell more cash than they actually have on hand so whoever buys up tSCOG will also inherit that debt. And on top of that there is the Red Hat lawsuit resulting from the lies tSCOG representatives were spreading in the press when they started this fake crusade. And, who knows what kind of new lawsuits will pop up from investors who've been bilked out of millions and other companies who have been harassed by these clowns.
No, there is no reason to buy tSCOG, unless you enjoy pain, and I doubt IBM will be buying anytime soon.
... except that businesses with 1 license of Windows running on 250 machines is hardly a "customer" of Microsoft's.
Except, they aren't talking about a business that purchased 1 license and runs 250 machines, "For example, a company with 250 PCs may be flagged if it bought several server licences but only two client-access licences, which are required to connect desktops to an Exchange email server."
If Microsoft upsets these people into turning to OSS, then there's no lost revenue.
Nope, and on top of it Microsoft obviously isn't hurting from the "piracy" that is going on.
But one thing that is for sure, companies moving from pirated Microsoft products to OSS will create a market for many people who are skilled in setting up and maintaining the many OSS packages out there. I'm not looking for Microsoft to go out of business, I own stock in Microsoft, I'm looking for a lively and competitive market.
Not to mention it adds value to all of the legitimate businesses out there who paid for their licenses.
LOL, very true, scare the crap out of your paying customers by slaughtering a few to make an example and watch the value of ALL accounts increase.
"Customers" who don't pay are not customers that any business wants.
There is no reason to put customers in quotes, if you RTFA you would know that they are going after customers.
"Microsoft is hoping to 'spark off the engagement' with its customers",
"Microsoft keeps purchase records for volume-licence customers, and those lists can reveal usage inconsistencies",
"At that point, if the customer point blank is refusing and or telling us he doesn't want to talk with us and we are seeing this large discrepancy, that's when we will engage the BSA"
If you pirate 100% of your Microsoft software then you probably don't have to worry because you will not be a registered customer of Microsoft AND it gives the BSA less legal strength to audit you because you haven't signed up to the EULA which gives them the right to shake down your business.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that customers who pirate your software can be a bad thing and shouldn't be tolerated, but what Microsoft does truely is a shake down. When they sent the BSA into my area they didn't even bother going through a list of customers. They acquired a list of ALL businesses in the area and carpet bombed the place with threatening letters to scare up some business. I know this because one of the businesses was a small Vietnamese restaraunt that didn't even have a computer let alone any Microsoft software.
Who says that "customers" who don't pay for their software from Microsoft are going to be any more likely to pay for OSS?
Who said anything about making people pay for OSS? One of the primary means of making money off OSS is by providing a service. Its a bit harder to pirate services, I guess you could try to enslave the people providing the service.
it certainly says something about the state of OSS when people have the choice of using MS software illegally without paying, will choose that over using OSS legally without paying. What this says to me is that many companies would rather risk a lawsuit than use OSS software.
Well, I'm certain it says a whole lot more about marketing and illegal monopolistic business tactics than it does about choice. The sad part is that many of the companies that Microsoft shakes down aren't big hardcore pirates who intentionally steal from Microsoft, it has more to do with poor management of a confusing licensing system and maintaining long term records to prove you did pay for what your using.
I'm just curious if all those paid for TCO studies that show how cheap it is to use Microsoft software in your business take into consideration the cost of 1) maintaining perfect records in case your audited, and 2) the cost of going through an audit of your software while your trying to run your business, or 3) having to just pay Microsoft for the number of licenses which they "suspect" you need just to get them off your back.
The more Microsoft squeezes their own customers and makes it difficult and expensive to do business using Microsoft products the more these same businesses will finally open up to the idea of using open source solutions instead of consuming the spoon fed FUD from Microsoft's marketing machine.
This will result in more competition in the market where some of us can jump in and compete with the heavies in providing added value to businesses in the form of IT related services.
the benefits he lists for using steam-powered computing hardware, is the complete absence of any attacks targetting his box
Yes, but what about the difficulties in securing an OS that was designed for steam powered hardware and gets a new coat of paint every now and again? Or perhaps this latest coat of paint will be the one to do the trick eh?
Mac/Linux supporter: (Tosses chair at Microsoft supporter.)
As a linux supporter I was abhored at this innovation in the use of office furniture by Microsoft, but once I tried it at work I must say it is quite effective at subduing coworkers whom I find annoying. So here's to keeping up with Microsoft's innovations (/me tosses a chair over the cubicle wall).
Each time these articles come out I go to dell.com just in case there is a deal to be had, unfortunately its the same story every frickin' time.
The basic stripped down N521* comes to $749, the basic stripped down E521 with Windows XP Home is $729! So I save $20 if I buy Windows, WTF!!! I have to pay about $70** for NO OS***?
Try again Dell.
* I had to add the 320GB drive to match what is offered on the E521. ** the N521 is $20 and Windows OEM is maybe $50. *** it comes with FreeDOS, but its FREE, get it!
Can you imagine the problems that will occur when HDCP goes mainstream?
The perfect storm.
Copy protection is inherently broken in every implementation. The idea that someone would sell a product which must be transmitted electrically to a transducer for consumption and yet they dont want the content to be copied is something only a moron would consider to be acheivable.
Its already known that its a waste of expense and effort because the copy protection schemes only provide short term proection, if any.
The problems with HDCP are a blessing because they will serve to pound the message home the only way these morons can understand it, make it cost them capital for their stupidity. As customers return hardware and media the costs of returned defective products will eat into their profits.
filing a patent for it and then refusing to license it, thus crippling adoption of that technology
Actually it likely will not cripple adoption. Although there is no intention of licensing the technology they didn't state they were going to sue anyone who had such technology in their products. I suspect that Red Hat has no issues with companies like Apple and Microsoft enraging their own customers by implementing technologies that hinder legal use of products they've paid for.
But I'm still not that excited. Most on/. thought Novell was a fine upstanding company until recently.
Its funny you should say that because I suspect this patent filing with no intention of licensing the technology is a direct result of Microsoft's shots over the bow of FOSS after signing an agreement with Novell. The patent filing along with the statement of intent are a defensive posture in the face of Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates flatulent IP statements concerning FOSS.
The court won't hold it against you that you paid the bill if you make it clear to the court that you never considered yourself to be liable for the debt.
Of more interest to companies is that they can avoid treble damages for willfully violating a patent if they acquire a license and still have the option to challenge the patent. As was learned in the Blackberry vs NTP case although NTP's patents were in the process of being invalidated Blackberry could not stop the patent troll case against them. Perhaps Blackberry could have saved some capital by licensing NTP's patents when they first demanded extortion payments and then followed up with a suit against NTP to invalidate the bogus patents and request compensation for royalties paid.
Unfortunately, the fact that the victim benefited is rarely a valid defence in a court of law. What's wrong is wrong, period.
Setting aside the absurdity in your comparisons between crimes involving property, physical, and emotional harm to the illegal copying of bits, I'd say you have an excellent idea there. Perhaps we need a little tit for tat, and considering the crimes which the management of Microsoft have been found guilty of perhaps its time we had a little justice in the form of hard time for the perps.
While I don't buy into the outrageous claims by Microsoft and others as to their losses to pirating I do support their efforts to stamp out piracy of their products around the world. I think it would be very beneficial to everyone all around if we could stamp out piracy of Microsoft products over the next few years with the release of Vista. But I suspect one of the benefits will not be a huge influx of licensing dollars to Microsoft's coffers, there will be a mass exodus to open source alternatives.
loaded or will be loaded with "pirated" or "illegal" copies of Microsoft's Windows software
Very true, but will it balance the years of Microsoft taxes levied on linux user's who purchased systems for linux use and were never provided the option of no-OS or linux pre installed? I've personally purchased two laptops on which I ran linux and never intended to run Windows but I had to pay the Microsoft tax if I wanted the hardware.
I think the pirating also helps Microsoft more than it hurts. The large pirated install base helps to maintain Microsoft's monopoly position. Given a choice of paying for Windows or using linux free I suspect the majority of those users would dump Windows in a heart beat.
I wonder if Redhat had a do-over if they'd still commercialize Redhat they way they did.
Have you been watching their revenue growth quarter after quarter? 30% to 50% year over year revenue growth for the past 16+ quarters. While their business decision was frustrating for some of us it was definitely a good "business" decision.
While its not the same thing as the previous RHL distro many of us enjoyed working with, Fedora is an excellent distro with a thriving community and with proper attention can even be used where RHL was used in the past.
Their plan (as admitted in interviews) was to withhold "evidence" to the last moment
In this interview were their lips moving? If they were then there is no reason to believe anything quoted from the interview.
Considering that one of the documents that was uncovered by IBM was an internal tSCOG e-mail to the CEO, Darl McBride, explaining how there was no evidence, its obvious they were not withholding evidence, they were withholding the truth.
Its a pretty safe bet to assume that their plan was not to withhold evidence but instead to extort settlement cash from IBM and others in exchange for not dragging their name through the courts and at the same time cashing in on lucrative FUD funds from linux competitors who were more than happy to have Darl McBride espousing the evils of open source and linux and at the same time providing bullet points to throw up during sales pitches and press releases.
Fortunately IBM has called tSCOG's bluff, the court has now concluded that not only is there no evidence but there never was any evidence, just a pack of lies. The unfortunate part is that although these scum bags have not profited the way they expected from IBM they have managed to pull in significant profits from Microsoft, Sun, and a few shady others behind the scenes.
There never was any evidence, just an insolent bluff.
Since you quoted "evidence" you are probably already aware of this. The tSCOG would like everyone to believe that IBM's involvement in open source and linux are malfescence enough to award tSCOG something for pointing this out. To bad for tSCOG that labeling the button down multi-billion dollar capitalistic market machine known as IBM as communist hippy dope smoking theif was futile. While Darl McBride wastes his time expounding the evils of open source and linux big business is profiting from the value of the new development model.
Re:Um, market manipulation for 2 million
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Red Hat Sales Surge
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· Score: 1
Sales up profits down?
Don't believe the headlines from journalists who don't actually follow Red Hat's financial performance. Sales are up massively and profits are down by a small fraction. Last year Red Hat's press release financial reports did not include stock compensation, however, their SEC filings did. If you compare last quarters sales and earnings to the pro forma numbers in the SEC filing for the previous year you find that sales went from $73 million in 2005 to $106 million in 2006, pro forma earnings went from $15 million in 2005 to $14.6 million in 2006. So while some headlines are screaming 37% drop in profits its actually a 2.7% drop while the revenues are up over 40% year over year.
IMO Red Hat needs to get a better handle on stock compensation, but make no mistake the 40%+ growth rate in revenue and the previous 16 quarters of similar growth are justification for the spike in the stock price.
burnin
Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer
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Red Hat Sales Surge
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· Score: 2, Informative
A) RMS/GNU will complain that Redhat is violating the spirit of the GPL by not providing 100% equal access to free-loaders and then change the GPL
B) One or several competing corporate entities will successfully be able to offer the same updates (so-called "support") by free-loading off Redhat's efforts...
C) Redhat will be forced to include some proprietary software that will truly seperate them from the free-loaders...
Either way, the system seems unlikely to generate the kind of revenues needed to pay for massive improvements to the open source components of the linux platform over the long term... without some pretty fundamental shifts at least.
A) RMS/GNU will not likely complain about Red Hat not living up to the spirit of the GPL because they do. The GPL is about access and redistribution of source code, all Red Hat's contributions to linux are open source, everyone has access and can change and redistribute the code. Your confusing Red Hat's network and personell resources people pay for to provide updates, installation support, and training with the source code coming out of Red Hat and available under the GPL.
B) While anyone can setup a business to deliver Red Hat's updates at a lower price, i.e. Oracle, its not likely that most Red Hat customers will be foolish enough to fall for fake open source proponents to provide support to the open source solutions their businesses depend on. Oracle and Microsoft are not a threat to Red Hat because they are obviously against open source and contrary to supporting it would actually like to stamp it out when it appears threatening to their primary business models.
C) Rather than Red Hat being forced into including proprietary software in their code base its more likely that customers will demand that other vendors support Red Hat by either developing and testing their proprietary products on Red Hat or by open sourcing their proprietary product so the community can provide the value of open source developement to the customer and the customer's vendors.
And either way, arguing that costs of developing linux and its components outstrips any possible revenues is a weak arguement considering linux came from $0 revenue to a serious competitor now generating billions in revenue. Yes I said billions. Red Hat is a small part of the linux market, there are several other vendors, IBM, Dell, HP, Novell, etc. who are making hundreds of millions off linux as well. Server hardware sales of linux based machines alone is over $1.5 billion a year.
Thats funny, on page four of that pdf you linked to it says:
Will Oracle continue to support other operating systems? Yes. Oracle has a thirty-year history of supporting Oracle products on numerous popular operating systems. Unbreakable Linux does nothing to decrease our commitment to other operating systems such as WindowsTM, other distributions of Linux, or UNIXTM environments.
So "other distributions of Linux" seems to contradict your conclusion that "Not running on Unbreakable Linux? You won't get support. It's that simple.".
I wouldn't put it past Larry to attempt such a trick but when it comes down to it Oracle does what the customer wants so if the customer wants Oracle on Red Hat's linux distro then its likely Oracle will continue to support that platform.
IMO Oracle as a linux provider is a dead end. Larry has repeatedly made statements to the effect that developing for open source is a bad idea because you give your best ideas to the competition. Obviously with that mentality Oracle has no plans to put any significant effort into linux that may provide an advantage to their competitors.
Oracle linux is a dead end. Red Hat's response "Unfakeable Linux" says it all, Oracle is a fake linux provider.
Each state (and Washington DC) should able to interpret "well regulated militia" itself.
There in lies the problem with the interpretation by the DC attorneys. While it may be possible to take that fragment of the ammendment and form a justification for the DC attorney's conclusion you are leaving out the most important part, "the People". The second ammendment is laying out the rights of the citizens, not the military. Think about it, why would you pass a law giving your military the right to bear arms? What kind of moron comes up with that interpretation?
By its definition and original intent a militia is not a government controlled and organized operation like the National Guard. You can't just change the meaning of words to manipulate the laws by which our government is regulated. There is a process by which ammendments can be made but what these attorneys are trying to do is bypass all the checks and balances and redefine the meaning of words so their preconceived conclusion matches their interpretation of the 2nd ammendment.
Firearms are a problem in major urban centers but not a big problem in rural states. Each state crafts its own rules. There will be states with tight rules and loose ones.
Agreed, and so each state should work within the checks and balances of our democracy to serve the people. The 2nd ammendment must be taken into consideration when a state crafts their rules, which makes it difficult as it should be and as it was intended when the ammendment was passed and when our government was formed. Infringing upon the rights of the citizens is a serious issue and should not be taken lightly. It is also quite possible that taking away the rights of the citizen to bear arms with have no affect on the big problems in urban centers. Perhaps the problem is not the guns but some other underlying issue, economics, education, culture?
But Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said Army soldiers and Marines are not forbidden to come up with new ways to do their jobs, especially in Iraq's ever-evolving battlefield. And he said commanders are given money to buy nonstandard supplies as needed.
There is a mechanism in place for procurement of nonstandard military equipment, such as silly string.
There was some reassuring PR coming out of Novell, however, when Microsoft asked to include a patent deal the negociations should have ended right there. In one of those open letters it states "Novell will make ongoing payments of at least $40 million over five years to Microsoft, based on percentages of Novell's Open Platform Solutions and Open Enterprise Server revenues".
So basically anyone who purchases Novell's Open Platform Solutions is also paying a Microsoft tax, as Novell's new partner Steve Balmer noted, "because open-source Linux does not come from a company -- Linux comes from the community -- the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders" and Steve expects to be paid.
No mitigation of infringement, no proof of infringement, no analysis of the patents to even verify if Microsoft actual has valid IP. Nope, but Novell does us all a favor and bypasses all that boring routine. Thanks but no thanks.
Imagine a world where MS and Linux worked even 25% together than they do now.
That is easy to imagine, linux would be where OS/2 is. That's how Microsoft cooperates.
I look at where linux is today and I don't think it needs anything from Microsoft.
Could someone explain to me, in simple terms, how this effects anything I have anything to do with?
I use Ubuntu, why should this matter to me? If the Ubuntu folks don't like what Novell is doing can't they just ignore whatever Novell is doing?
Everyone is acting like this is the end of Linux as we know it. Honestly could someone explain why this is?
The worst case scenario would be Microsoft using their patent portfolio in an attempt to shutdown any open source projects which infringe their IP. Your Ubuntu is based off many many open source projects and the loss of many of those projects could be detrimental to the capability of your favorite distro.
Now obviously its much more complicated than that but you asked for some simple terms and how they would effect you so there ya go.
And in any case, why bother... their stock is toast, so couldn't IBM just buy a controlling interest for $11.2M and wind it down?
The short answer, no.
The SCO Group has dug themselves into a rather large litigation hole that surpasses what it would cost to purchase the entire company. They owe something like $20 million to Novell in royalties, Red Hat has a lawsuit which TSCOG will likely lose now that its become obvious to the court that they had been lying all along, and there is the potential of investor lawsuits due to the run up in the stock price to over $20 dollars a share and the eventual collapse as everyone realized they were lying about their evidence.
So you see it would be foolish for IBM to purchase TSCOG at this point because of the huge financial risk now hanging over them.
a piracy tax on iPods DOES make more sense than blank media taxes
Hey Firehed, sorry but its actually more of the same BS. Taking someone elses property or cash without consent is theft, I don't care if its theft through breaking and entering or theft through some BS business deal. If I paid for the music on my MP3 player I don't owe the RIAA another dime. If they make me pay simply because I purchase a product from another vendor to play the music I already paid for then they are stealing from me. The corporate theft from consumers through blank media royalties is no different than theft through MP3 player royalties.
I wont even label this as a disagreement, fact is they want to steal from consumers for something the consumers did not purchase. Where is the line drawn? How much does the public owe these theives and at what point is the debt paid? Its a ludicrous corporate crime.
Slashdot Mirror
No, there is no reason to buy tSCOG, unless you enjoy pain, and I doubt IBM will be buying anytime soon.
But one thing that is for sure, companies moving from pirated Microsoft products to OSS will create a market for many people who are skilled in setting up and maintaining the many OSS packages out there. I'm not looking for Microsoft to go out of business, I own stock in Microsoft, I'm looking for a lively and competitive market. LOL, very true, scare the crap out of your paying customers by slaughtering a few to make an example and watch the value of ALL accounts increase.
"Microsoft is hoping to 'spark off the engagement' with its customers",
"Microsoft keeps purchase records for volume-licence customers, and those lists can reveal usage inconsistencies",
"At that point, if the customer point blank is refusing and or telling us he doesn't want to talk with us and we are seeing this large discrepancy, that's when we will engage the BSA"
If you pirate 100% of your Microsoft software then you probably don't have to worry because you will not be a registered customer of Microsoft AND it gives the BSA less legal strength to audit you because you haven't signed up to the EULA which gives them the right to shake down your business.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that customers who pirate your software can be a bad thing and shouldn't be tolerated, but what Microsoft does truely is a shake down. When they sent the BSA into my area they didn't even bother going through a list of customers. They acquired a list of ALL businesses in the area and carpet bombed the place with threatening letters to scare up some business. I know this because one of the businesses was a small Vietnamese restaraunt that didn't even have a computer let alone any Microsoft software. Who said anything about making people pay for OSS? One of the primary means of making money off OSS is by providing a service. Its a bit harder to pirate services, I guess you could try to enslave the people providing the service. Well, I'm certain it says a whole lot more about marketing and illegal monopolistic business tactics than it does about choice. The sad part is that many of the companies that Microsoft shakes down aren't big hardcore pirates who intentionally steal from Microsoft, it has more to do with poor management of a confusing licensing system and maintaining long term records to prove you did pay for what your using.
I'm just curious if all those paid for TCO studies that show how cheap it is to use Microsoft software in your business take into consideration the cost of 1) maintaining perfect records in case your audited, and 2) the cost of going through an audit of your software while your trying to run your business, or 3) having to just pay Microsoft for the number of licenses which they "suspect" you need just to get them off your back.
This is great news.
The more Microsoft squeezes their own customers and makes it difficult and expensive to do business using Microsoft products the more these same businesses will finally open up to the idea of using open source solutions instead of consuming the spoon fed FUD from Microsoft's marketing machine.
This will result in more competition in the market where some of us can jump in and compete with the heavies in providing added value to businesses in the form of IT related services.
Go Microsoft!
Yes, but what about the difficulties in securing an OS that was designed for steam powered hardware and gets a new coat of paint every now and again? Or perhaps this latest coat of paint will be the one to do the trick eh?
As a linux supporter I was abhored at this innovation in the use of office furniture by Microsoft, but once I tried it at work I must say it is quite effective at subduing coworkers whom I find annoying. So here's to keeping up with Microsoft's innovations (/me tosses a chair over the cubicle wall).
Each time these articles come out I go to dell.com just in case there is a deal to be had, unfortunately its the same story every frickin' time.
The basic stripped down N521* comes to $749, the basic stripped down E521 with Windows XP Home is $729! So I save $20 if I buy Windows, WTF!!! I have to pay about $70** for NO OS***?
Try again Dell.
* I had to add the 320GB drive to match what is offered on the E521.
** the N521 is $20 and Windows OEM is maybe $50.
*** it comes with FreeDOS, but its FREE, get it!
The perfect storm.
Copy protection is inherently broken in every implementation. The idea that someone would sell a product which must be transmitted electrically to a transducer for consumption and yet they dont want the content to be copied is something only a moron would consider to be acheivable.
Its already known that its a waste of expense and effort because the copy protection schemes only provide short term proection, if any.
The problems with HDCP are a blessing because they will serve to pound the message home the only way these morons can understand it, make it cost them capital for their stupidity. As customers return hardware and media the costs of returned defective products will eat into their profits.
Are micro-mirror arrays truely cheaper to produce than a CCD or CMOS photo sensitive array?
Actually it likely will not cripple adoption. Although there is no intention of licensing the technology they didn't state they were going to sue anyone who had such technology in their products. I suspect that Red Hat has no issues with companies like Apple and Microsoft enraging their own customers by implementing technologies that hinder legal use of products they've paid for.
Its funny you should say that because I suspect this patent filing with no intention of licensing the technology is a direct result of Microsoft's shots over the bow of FOSS after signing an agreement with Novell. The patent filing along with the statement of intent are a defensive posture in the face of Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates flatulent IP statements concerning FOSS.
Of more interest to companies is that they can avoid treble damages for willfully violating a patent if they acquire a license and still have the option to challenge the patent. As was learned in the Blackberry vs NTP case although NTP's patents were in the process of being invalidated Blackberry could not stop the patent troll case against them. Perhaps Blackberry could have saved some capital by licensing NTP's patents when they first demanded extortion payments and then followed up with a suit against NTP to invalidate the bogus patents and request compensation for royalties paid.
Setting aside the absurdity in your comparisons between crimes involving property, physical, and emotional harm to the illegal copying of bits, I'd say you have an excellent idea there. Perhaps we need a little tit for tat, and considering the crimes which the management of Microsoft have been found guilty of perhaps its time we had a little justice in the form of hard time for the perps.
While I don't buy into the outrageous claims by Microsoft and others as to their losses to pirating I do support their efforts to stamp out piracy of their products around the world. I think it would be very beneficial to everyone all around if we could stamp out piracy of Microsoft products over the next few years with the release of Vista. But I suspect one of the benefits will not be a huge influx of licensing dollars to Microsoft's coffers, there will be a mass exodus to open source alternatives.
Only? For $55 that had better be a nice bottle of sake.
Very true, but will it balance the years of Microsoft taxes levied on linux user's who purchased systems for linux use and were never provided the option of no-OS or linux pre installed? I've personally purchased two laptops on which I ran linux and never intended to run Windows but I had to pay the Microsoft tax if I wanted the hardware.
I think the pirating also helps Microsoft more than it hurts. The large pirated install base helps to maintain Microsoft's monopoly position. Given a choice of paying for Windows or using linux free I suspect the majority of those users would dump Windows in a heart beat.
Have you been watching their revenue growth quarter after quarter? 30% to 50% year over year revenue growth for the past 16+ quarters. While their business decision was frustrating for some of us it was definitely a good "business" decision.
While its not the same thing as the previous RHL distro many of us enjoyed working with, Fedora is an excellent distro with a thriving community and with proper attention can even be used where RHL was used in the past.
In this interview were their lips moving? If they were then there is no reason to believe anything quoted from the interview.
Considering that one of the documents that was uncovered by IBM was an internal tSCOG e-mail to the CEO, Darl McBride, explaining how there was no evidence, its obvious they were not withholding evidence, they were withholding the truth.
Its a pretty safe bet to assume that their plan was not to withhold evidence but instead to extort settlement cash from IBM and others in exchange for not dragging their name through the courts and at the same time cashing in on lucrative FUD funds from linux competitors who were more than happy to have Darl McBride espousing the evils of open source and linux and at the same time providing bullet points to throw up during sales pitches and press releases.
Fortunately IBM has called tSCOG's bluff, the court has now concluded that not only is there no evidence but there never was any evidence, just a pack of lies. The unfortunate part is that although these scum bags have not profited the way they expected from IBM they have managed to pull in significant profits from Microsoft, Sun, and a few shady others behind the scenes.
There never was any evidence, just an insolent bluff.
Since you quoted "evidence" you are probably already aware of this. The tSCOG would like everyone to believe that IBM's involvement in open source and linux are malfescence enough to award tSCOG something for pointing this out. To bad for tSCOG that labeling the button down multi-billion dollar capitalistic market machine known as IBM as communist hippy dope smoking theif was futile. While Darl McBride wastes his time expounding the evils of open source and linux big business is profiting from the value of the new development model.
Don't believe the headlines from journalists who don't actually follow Red Hat's financial performance. Sales are up massively and profits are down by a small fraction. Last year Red Hat's press release financial reports did not include stock compensation, however, their SEC filings did. If you compare last quarters sales and earnings to the pro forma numbers in the SEC filing for the previous year you find that sales went from $73 million in 2005 to $106 million in 2006, pro forma earnings went from $15 million in 2005 to $14.6 million in 2006. So while some headlines are screaming 37% drop in profits its actually a 2.7% drop while the revenues are up over 40% year over year.
See page 10 of last years Q3 SEC filing for the correct numbers to compare this quarter against.
http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/fetchFilingFr
IMO Red Hat needs to get a better handle on stock compensation, but make no mistake the 40%+ growth rate in revenue and the previous 16 quarters of similar growth are justification for the spike in the stock price.
burnin
A) RMS/GNU will not likely complain about Red Hat not living up to the spirit of the GPL because they do. The GPL is about access and redistribution of source code, all Red Hat's contributions to linux are open source, everyone has access and can change and redistribute the code. Your confusing Red Hat's network and personell resources people pay for to provide updates, installation support, and training with the source code coming out of Red Hat and available under the GPL.
B) While anyone can setup a business to deliver Red Hat's updates at a lower price, i.e. Oracle, its not likely that most Red Hat customers will be foolish enough to fall for fake open source proponents to provide support to the open source solutions their businesses depend on. Oracle and Microsoft are not a threat to Red Hat because they are obviously against open source and contrary to supporting it would actually like to stamp it out when it appears threatening to their primary business models.
C) Rather than Red Hat being forced into including proprietary software in their code base its more likely that customers will demand that other vendors support Red Hat by either developing and testing their proprietary products on Red Hat or by open sourcing their proprietary product so the community can provide the value of open source developement to the customer and the customer's vendors.
And either way, arguing that costs of developing linux and its components outstrips any possible revenues is a weak arguement considering linux came from $0 revenue to a serious competitor now generating billions in revenue. Yes I said billions. Red Hat is a small part of the linux market, there are several other vendors, IBM, Dell, HP, Novell, etc. who are making hundreds of millions off linux as well. Server hardware sales of linux based machines alone is over $1.5 billion a year.
So "other distributions of Linux" seems to contradict your conclusion that "Not running on Unbreakable Linux? You won't get support. It's that simple.".
I wouldn't put it past Larry to attempt such a trick but when it comes down to it Oracle does what the customer wants so if the customer wants Oracle on Red Hat's linux distro then its likely Oracle will continue to support that platform.
IMO Oracle as a linux provider is a dead end. Larry has repeatedly made statements to the effect that developing for open source is a bad idea because you give your best ideas to the competition. Obviously with that mentality Oracle has no plans to put any significant effort into linux that may provide an advantage to their competitors.
Oracle linux is a dead end. Red Hat's response "Unfakeable Linux" says it all, Oracle is a fake linux provider.
There in lies the problem with the interpretation by the DC attorneys. While it may be possible to take that fragment of the ammendment and form a justification for the DC attorney's conclusion you are leaving out the most important part, "the People". The second ammendment is laying out the rights of the citizens, not the military. Think about it, why would you pass a law giving your military the right to bear arms? What kind of moron comes up with that interpretation?
By its definition and original intent a militia is not a government controlled and organized operation like the National Guard. You can't just change the meaning of words to manipulate the laws by which our government is regulated. There is a process by which ammendments can be made but what these attorneys are trying to do is bypass all the checks and balances and redefine the meaning of words so their preconceived conclusion matches their interpretation of the 2nd ammendment.
Agreed, and so each state should work within the checks and balances of our democracy to serve the people. The 2nd ammendment must be taken into consideration when a state crafts their rules, which makes it difficult as it should be and as it was intended when the ammendment was passed and when our government was formed. Infringing upon the rights of the citizens is a serious issue and should not be taken lightly. It is also quite possible that taking away the rights of the citizen to bear arms with have no affect on the big problems in urban centers. Perhaps the problem is not the guns but some other underlying issue, economics, education, culture?
There is a mechanism in place for procurement of nonstandard military equipment, such as silly string.
So basically anyone who purchases Novell's Open Platform Solutions is also paying a Microsoft tax, as Novell's new partner Steve Balmer noted, "because open-source Linux does not come from a company -- Linux comes from the community -- the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders" and Steve expects to be paid.
No mitigation of infringement, no proof of infringement, no analysis of the patents to even verify if Microsoft actual has valid IP. Nope, but Novell does us all a favor and bypasses all that boring routine. Thanks but no thanks.
That is easy to imagine, linux would be where OS/2 is. That's how Microsoft cooperates.
I look at where linux is today and I don't think it needs anything from Microsoft.
The worst case scenario would be Microsoft using their patent portfolio in an attempt to shutdown any open source projects which infringe their IP. Your Ubuntu is based off many many open source projects and the loss of many of those projects could be detrimental to the capability of your favorite distro.
Now obviously its much more complicated than that but you asked for some simple terms and how they would effect you so there ya go.
The short answer, no.
The SCO Group has dug themselves into a rather large litigation hole that surpasses what it would cost to purchase the entire company. They owe something like $20 million to Novell in royalties, Red Hat has a lawsuit which TSCOG will likely lose now that its become obvious to the court that they had been lying all along, and there is the potential of investor lawsuits due to the run up in the stock price to over $20 dollars a share and the eventual collapse as everyone realized they were lying about their evidence.
So you see it would be foolish for IBM to purchase TSCOG at this point because of the huge financial risk now hanging over them.
Hey Firehed, sorry but its actually more of the same BS. Taking someone elses property or cash without consent is theft, I don't care if its theft through breaking and entering or theft through some BS business deal. If I paid for the music on my MP3 player I don't owe the RIAA another dime. If they make me pay simply because I purchase a product from another vendor to play the music I already paid for then they are stealing from me. The corporate theft from consumers through blank media royalties is no different than theft through MP3 player royalties.
I wont even label this as a disagreement, fact is they want to steal from consumers for something the consumers did not purchase. Where is the line drawn? How much does the public owe these theives and at what point is the debt paid? Its a ludicrous corporate crime.