I'm a 31 year old veteran sysadmin (12 years experience) who doesn't try to awe users. I just try to deal with them.
I don't have much tolerance for management bullshit. And I have the performance record to get away with it.
I hate meetings. I've YET to be to one that didn't waste minutes and hours of my life I will never get back... Thank GOD for my Thinkpad and 802.11 wireless, now I don't HAVE to even pretend to listen during them;)
I work for a company that is owned by someone who has yet to make the transition from the days you could make a 20% margin and good money off HARDWARE, service is a giveway to the CURRENT days where you break even on hardware and make your money on services...
He can't put value on people, only on objects...
In a small town like Huntington, WV, I've already been billed out to a tune of well over $4,000, HALFWAY through the month... I've already made back almost twice my monthly salary.
Yet, the moron can't see the opportunity there. He keeps coming up with new idiotic schemes to SELL HARDWARE rather than services...
I'm about THIS close to going into business for myself and taking every client away from this guy...
"Hehe gotta be careful with that attitude. I've consulted for companies that had sysadmins with that attitude. Pretty easy to slap them down to reality and guess what? I got paid $80/hr to do it;)"
CONsultants with that attitude are a dime a dozen. And I've yet to meet an IT operations CONsultant who knew which end of the IDE cable went into the motherboard.
" When my phone is near my computer speakers, my speakers "ring" before my phone does. Used to freak the girlfriend out when I'd pick up my cell phone before it rang."
When I'm in the car, I am usually listening to my Nomad MP3 player (plugged into the car stereo via an auxillary jack). The sound gets distorted just as the phone rings...
On the upside, I can crank Van Halen until the windows break and know the phone is ringing;)
" As has been hinted at in previous posts, many times in life there's the "Official Policy" and the "Unofficial Policy". Check to see what the unofficial policy is before complaining about the offical one. It's what seperates the elites from the nobbs..."
Where I work, I'm so freaking overworked I pretty much decided some time ago to ignore any stupid company policy that gets in the way. Dress code, for one.
I'm technically violating it because the only "polo" shirt I'm allowed to wear is a company one. But try doing the job of a sysadmin who also has to function as a jack-of-all-trades tech (it's West Virginia) with a tie on.
Last time the owner tried to start on me on this one, I cut him off with "I will not wear a tie, that is not open to discussion". Indeed, in some areas (I was told this was true in NC) wearing a tie is an OSHA violation for a computer tech...
My pay, hours, etc suck, and I can't stand the boss because he is a congenital (poor) liar. But at least I'm working, and the upside is, I'm so irreplaceable because of proprietary knowledge (and skill) that I could show up to work buck naked and the boss really couldn't say or do much.
And, I do get to do some cool stuff every now and then (such as WAN design) from time to time.
Ah well, soon as the economy improves I'm out of this hell hole...
" How the hell are you supposed to look for a new job if you can't use your cell-phone at work? Oh, you mean that was the point. Never mind."
Which might be the point... Our whole IT staff is looking to desert this crappy place and we all receive calls from headhunters on our personal cell phones;)
This guy is doing the company a favor by even LETTING the company have use of his personal cell phone. I say cut it off.
Let them see morale and productivity PLUNGE.
If my company tried to ban me having a personal cell phone I'd keep it anyway, just as I ignore the owner's attempt to force a shirt and tie dress code down my throat.
I'm not going to spend $300 on clothes every month to replace items ruined because I have to crawl around on floors in dirty computer rooms, and occasionally have to deal with loose printer toner...
Ah, middle management edicts, the dead wood (and I'm not talking about the paper used to print their memos on) in ANY organization;)
Here is how I deal with stupid management:
I try to use polite, logical argument.
If that fails I will then impliment what they want TO A T and watch disaster to unfold. When it does, I show the memo/policy that ordered me to do it.
I'm a systems administrator for a local IT firm and I manage systems for a couple dozen clients. I have a personal cell phone. The company won't provide one, and they only offer me a mere $10 a month in compensation, which I turned down so I have the priviledge of NOT taking someone's call if I so choose not to, as I always choose not to when it's the owner calling. I'll use my phone as a pager, and call from a land line when it's convienent.
Our owner has become increasingly paranoid about monitoring our every minute. He pays a small fortune for internet monitoring (Stellar) at the office (of course, we mostly ARENT THERE), and is paranoid about our IT people even having the admin password to the company server (he wouldn't know how to even add a user).
Most of us on the staff have taken to using our personal laptops with our Citrix remote access server in the office so that our every keystroke isn't potentially logged... We also use an "underground" remote access machine to surf the web on;)
You just can't do that sort of thing to techies without consequences. We are always three steps ahead.
Frankly, since having a cell phone, I've found it to be a curse. I HATE being reachable all the time, I've found that it causes me to do MORE work. I miss being able to drive from one site to another and not be bothered DURING... I think anyone like me who has to know a couple dozen diffrent client site setups NEEDS a few mintues here and there to clear our minds!
But, by keeping my cell phone personal, I can avail myself of the priviledge to use the OFF button, which I do often.
"Can you cite any instances where MS unleashed the BSA hellhounds on someone for anything OTHER than unlicensed software use?
Which, despite all the hippy free-software advocacy around here, is their right under their EULA. It's not a nice EULA, and their SW mostly sucks, but that still doesn't justify illegal use."
They unleash the BSA to blackmail companies/schools, etc to UPGRADE when they don't want to. And their EULA makes it impossible for any organization with over 20 PC's to keep up with EVERYTHING without a full time MS compliance person.
In MS's EULA world, they can send in the BSA, you can have EVERY copy of EVERY piece of software, box, license, everything, and STILL be guilty of using "pirated software" if you don't have the receipts for every box!
Posession alone isn't proof! Of course, I'd like to see someone take MS to court on that... But MS is smart, they always make it so that upgrading is cheaper and less painful than fighting them in court, even when you know you can win.
Re:Lawsuits dig a deeper financial hole for SCO?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
"The common Slashdot response is it is because they are stupid. I don't think so. If they are not stupid, then what could explain these apparently nonsensical actions? Well, if it was in someone else's interest that Linux had legal difficulties..."
It's obvious what they are getting out of it.
The board members and other execs are getting dollar stock options then dumping them at 10 times (or more) what they paid for them. The FUD does their funders (Microsoft) wants, AND pumps up the stock price so they can cash in as well.
NOT ONE of their insiders has excercised an option then stayed long... They have all dumped IMMEDIATELY. That says alot for what they think of the long term viability of Scaldera.
SCaldera ceased to be a company and became a scam when McBribe came in.
If you follow the Yahoo SCOX forum (there is a lot of noise, but some people there who are REALLY well informed as well), you will note that it's pretty obvious that on low volume days "painting the tape" is going in.
Little blocks of 100 shares keep changing hands at prices above what the last sell off was...
It's an illegal, but hard to prove practice.
But SCOX seems to consistently get "painted" upward daily after a big sell.
Assuming SCO wins they are STILL irrelevant the next day...
Linux will be rewritten, and there are the BSD's. No one will do serious business with someone who sues their customers NO MATTER HOW GOOD their product is, if there is an alternative.
Even Microsoft is a better alternative than SCO, at least they don't sue customers over what they do. They just use the BSA to do it...
" If you couldn't file a lawsuit until you had an airtight case against the defendant, not many lawsuits would be filed.
And boy, wouldn't THAT be terrible. "
Tell me about it... This thing has damn near dragged on a YEAR and no one (including the accused) knows WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN ACCUSED OF DOING!
Discovery is supposed to be where evidence is exchanged. The charges and allegations are supposed to be known BEFORE discovery, else, how will the defense know WHAT to seek IN discovery?!
It seems to me that if a plantiff in a civil case won't be forthcoming with WHAT they are accusing someone of, and seem to be abusing the process to use the court to try to FIND something to support their vage accusation, it's an abuse of the process and the judge should not permit it.
Circumstantial evidence it is, and it may not be enough to get a conviction of Darl and Co, but it IS enough to show probable cause to launch an investigation...
IF SCaldera and it's executives from Darl on down are doing what we THINK they are doing (and so far evidence does not contradict it) they are guilty of some very serious crimes. If the SEC permits companies to get away with these things, then they prove that NOTHING was learned from Enron.
SCO at the very least is misleading investors. It's SEC filings do NOT include ANY risk statements involving Redhat and IBM's counterclaims, and nothing concerning Novell's allegations involving their license agreement.
Novell could go to court at any time and possibly get SCaldera's assets seized to pay them the 95% they were owed from the Darlgeld Microsoft and Sun paid!
Not to mention, their current stock price is SOLEY the result of what is likely a frivilous lawsuit, and insiders have been excercising PENNY stock options and making TENS AND HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS on the backs of people who BUY these shares.
The fact that so many execs have options for SCO stock DRASTICALLY below the current price suggests to me that this whole scheme was premeditated...
" Yeah - isn't it interesting that SCO seems to basically be saying that "we're waiting on the defendant to prove our case for us"? I hope McBride and Co. have their graves dug already"
Which they cannot do. You can't file a lawsuit to use it as a fishing expedition. It is the burden of the plantiff to prove their allegations. Considering that Linux source is available, I don't see why SCaldera needs ANYTHING from IBM to "prove" their "millions of lines" allegations.
The court set the deadline and put SCaldera's discovery on hold UNTIL they showed IBM exactly what they are accused of doing. Seems to me they have not done so. The next hearing will be very interesting. At the very least, Darl and his other brother Darl will have a VERY pissed off judge on their hands...
If they piss the judge off enough, they might have their case thrown out. The judge could even dismiss "with prejustice" meaning the same charges could not be made again. A dismissal would not affect IBM's countersuit.
The judge also could allow the case to proceed, but bar SCO from introducing any additional evidence other than what they just provided... Discovery deadlines are just that... A deadline. The party so ordered MUST turn over what they are ordered to, and then some, if they want to be certain to get that evidence into the court during trial...
If SCO had a case, they should have turned over exactly what they were ORDERED to turn over. But then, as most of us suspect, they DONT have a case, but want to use the spectre of one to get rich off a "pump n dump" while receiving revenue from Microsoft to encourage the FUD machine...
60-ish pages... That can't point to all that much, and can't possibly answer all they were required to respond to.
SCaldera's PR machine has been in meltdown after all the negative events that have happened to them this week... Novell's release of their legal correspondance, Novell's indemnification, the OSDL/IBM/Intel (Intel openly joining on our side is a MAJOR event in itself), all VERY VERY bad news for them, and their stock started to tumble.
The only cash the company formerly but really known as Caldera is their stock price. If that crashes, so do they.
The SEC really needs to get involved, NOW. They are not listing the possible risks involved in losing this case in their SEC filings. They aren't listing the risk of Novell's claims regarding being owed 95% of the Microsoft/Sun and other "Darlgeld" being collected...
I think the next step is Novell files a suit against SCaldera, asking for summary judgement regarding money being owed to them...
And it's 100% provable. They are STILl distributing GPL code (the kernel) while claiming that the GPL itself isn't enough authority for people to run it.
Even IF SCO has some copyrighted bits in the kernel that they can prove they didn't place there, and didn't authorize, they still don't own all the OTHER millions of lines of code they didn't author...
Which they are STEALING for themselves to exclusively profit from if they insist that ONLY having their "Linux license" are you allowed to use it.
SCO lost all legal rights to that code the minute they declared their DISAGREEMENT with the GPL. The GPL alone gives anyone authority to copy, use, modify, redistribute any of the code in Linux.
To claim that the GPL is illegal, SCO is confessing to violating US copyright law, unless they have seperate agreements from EVERY copyright holder of that code!
This is why I think their threats to sue Google, or another Linux user over COPYRIGHT issues are complete FUD. They have shown their hand. They are going to pick out some of their OWN customers who licensed SCO Unix in the past and sue them for breach of contract for using Linux...
Very, VERY weak if you ask me.
SCO wants to stay the HELL away from copyright and stick to breach of contract (which is all the IBM suit is) but use those cases to "win" the copyright case in the court of public opinion (and thus defame all Linux people) because a court of LAW is the last place they want to have to answer for the fact that they themselves have pirated MILLIONS of lines of code illegally just by continuing to distribute Linux...
It's coming back up. Looks like their buddies are stepping in to intervene as usual... Why ANYONE would buy stock in a company without a business plan (suing and blackmailing people, while good for a lawfirm isn't a sucessful business model for a tech services company).
Even if SCO wins they lose, as their winnings will be a ONE TIME THING that mostly gets paid to lawyers (not investors), while users will either switch to a "clean" Linux or to something else! Why would anyone do business with a proven asshole of a company like SCaldera?
Haven't investors and VC's learned ANYTHING from the Dot Com bubble?!
" Why do people ignore IBM's past? They're so easy to forgive IBM , and yet so quick to jump down Microsoft's throat for any little thing.
Imagine if Microsoft was doing team-ups like this. Slashdotters would be all over them for the "unfairness" of it all."
Microsoft already HAS "teamed up" and is intimately involved in this thing, or at the very least encouraging it.
$8 million dollars to SCaldera for licenses they didn't need, for one thing...
You can bet Microsoft will _NEVER_ "team up" with anyone fighting a cause for FOSS... The whole reason they are funding SCO's FUD driven pump n dump is because of the fact that the GPL is "Kryptonite" to their Embrace, Extend, Extinguish business model that they have used thus far to maintain their monopoly.
I forgive IBM for past transgressions because it seems they LEARNED from the mistakes they made in the 1980's. If they hadn't, it's likely IBM would have gone the way of Digital and other former dominant players...
Microsoft could crush Linux forever tomorrow... If they released Windows complete with source under the GPL. Won't ever happen.
" In SCO's legal reasoning (take appropriate psychodelics to get into that state), the Unix license is an agreement that a given customer has entered into, and in their opinion the use of Linux somehow represents a breach of that agreement by using the same intellectual property without paying for it. It gives them a "gotcha" on the customer in question, at least in their view."
It seems to me that SCaldera is trying to retroactively change their license terms (ie: contract) with their customers to make it a violation to use Linux if you licensed OpenServer or UnixWare.
Legally, I'd think that (IANAL) unless such language was SPECIFICALLY already there when the customer signed, it's an extremely weak claim.
Such language would also almost certainly be illegal in some, if not most jurisdictions, as it's anti competitive.
If anyone wanted confirmation that SCaldera's business plan is a MS funded FUD machine stock "pump n dump", the fact that they are DIRECTLY attacking their own customers, their SOLE source of ongoing revenue should do it.
SCaldera isn't a business, unless you count shilling for Microsoft and Barratry as legitimate business practices.
Last 15.95 Change(%) -1.15 (-6.73%) High 17.18 Low 15.77 Volume 216,036
It doesn't even bear predicting (because it's a sure thing) that Darl will vomit forth more bombastic FUD today or tomorrow in response to this.
SCOX stock is the only currency they have. They pay their lawyers in it. If it collapses, they are done.
But, their bubble can't have much longer to run though... For all the threats, intimidation, spin, etc, SCaldera has YET to take any action on their copyright claims...
Sooner or later, the Emperor will be exposed for the streaker he is.
"What the hell are we missing here? SCO hired the "best" lawyers in the country. There has to be some sort of strategy behind all of this. Or meybe the just want us to think that; keep everybody guessing."
Are you kidding? David Boies is the biggest high profile LOSER in the legal profession!
Not to mention, SCO pretty much lied when they implied that Boies and co were on contingency. They aren't, they are taking only 1/3rd of their fees on contingency.
This is a shameless pump of their stock, using the publicity of Google's IPO and nothing else. If SCO's stock price collapses to a level more representative of their actual going business (say around $.01 per share) they have NOTHING to pay lawyers with and thus, lose by default.
MS and allies aren't going to be able to get away with many more blatant funding of this campaign either...
What needs to happen is for EVERYONE with standing to file as many lawsuits against SCO as possible, in as many locales as possible. That will destroy them. They will either go bankrupt defending themselves, or they will lose default judgements.
" Who wants to bet many future eula's will include a clause that requires you to certify your complience with the terms upon request..."
Wanna bet?
That kind of overt heavy handedness would almost certainly drive more corps to go for GPL/BSD licensed software.
The BSA's blackmail has already been the best Linux/OpenOffice marketing campaign of all time.
Notice that you don't hear as much about the BSA threatening to raid schools and municipalities like we did a year or so ago... This is a stupid thing for the BSA to do anyway, as they INVITE legislation to limit extra clauses above what copyright law allows them to put into their EULA...
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I'm a 31 year old veteran sysadmin (12 years experience) who doesn't try to awe users. I just try to deal with them.
;)
I don't have much tolerance for management bullshit. And I have the performance record to get away with it.
I hate meetings. I've YET to be to one that didn't waste minutes and hours of my life I will never get back... Thank GOD for my Thinkpad and 802.11 wireless, now I don't HAVE to even pretend to listen during them
I work for a company that is owned by someone who has yet to make the transition from the days you could make a 20% margin and good money off HARDWARE, service is a giveway to the CURRENT days where you break even on hardware and make your money on services...
He can't put value on people, only on objects...
In a small town like Huntington, WV, I've already been billed out to a tune of well over $4,000, HALFWAY through the month... I've already made back almost twice my monthly salary.
Yet, the moron can't see the opportunity there. He keeps coming up with new idiotic schemes to SELL HARDWARE rather than services...
I'm about THIS close to going into business for myself and taking every client away from this guy...
"Hehe gotta be careful with that attitude. I've consulted for companies that had sysadmins with that attitude. Pretty easy to slap them down to reality and guess what? I got paid $80/hr to do it ;)"
CONsultants with that attitude are a dime a dozen. And I've yet to meet an IT operations CONsultant who knew which end of the IDE cable went into the motherboard.
" When my phone is near my computer speakers, my speakers "ring" before my phone does. Used to freak the girlfriend out when I'd pick up my cell phone before it rang."
;)
;)
When I'm in the car, I am usually listening to my Nomad MP3 player (plugged into the car stereo via an auxillary jack). The sound gets distorted just as the phone rings...
On the upside, I can crank Van Halen until the windows break and know the phone is ringing
The downside is I know the phone is ringing
" As has been hinted at in previous posts, many times in life there's the "Official Policy" and the "Unofficial Policy". Check to see what the unofficial policy is before complaining about the offical one. It's what seperates the elites from the nobbs..."
Where I work, I'm so freaking overworked I pretty much decided some time ago to ignore any stupid company policy that gets in the way. Dress code, for one.
I'm technically violating it because the only "polo" shirt I'm allowed to wear is a company one. But try doing the job of a sysadmin who also has to function as a jack-of-all-trades tech (it's West Virginia) with a tie on.
Last time the owner tried to start on me on this one, I cut him off with "I will not wear a tie, that is not open to discussion". Indeed, in some areas (I was told this was true in NC) wearing a tie is an OSHA violation for a computer tech...
My pay, hours, etc suck, and I can't stand the boss because he is a congenital (poor) liar. But at least I'm working, and the upside is, I'm so irreplaceable because of proprietary knowledge (and skill) that I could show up to work buck naked and the boss really couldn't say or do much.
And, I do get to do some cool stuff every now and then (such as WAN design) from time to time.
Ah well, soon as the economy improves I'm out of this hell hole...
"Do they provide you with a phone at your desk or nearby? Seriously, a cell phone is not a necessity."
Sysadmins are RARELY in one place.
" How the hell are you supposed to look for a new job if you can't use your cell-phone at work? Oh, you mean that was the point. Never mind."
;)
Which might be the point... Our whole IT staff is looking to desert this crappy place and we all receive calls from headhunters on our personal cell phones
This guy is doing the company a favor by even LETTING the company have use of his personal cell phone. I say cut it off.
Let them see morale and productivity PLUNGE.
If my company tried to ban me having a personal cell phone I'd keep it anyway, just as I ignore the owner's attempt to force a shirt and tie dress code down my throat.
I'm not going to spend $300 on clothes every month to replace items ruined because I have to crawl around on floors in dirty computer rooms, and occasionally have to deal with loose printer toner...
Ah, middle management edicts, the dead wood (and I'm not talking about the paper used to print their memos on) in ANY organization ;)
;)
Here is how I deal with stupid management:
I try to use polite, logical argument.
If that fails I will then impliment what they want TO A T and watch disaster to unfold. When it does, I show the memo/policy that ordered me to do it.
I'm a systems administrator for a local IT firm and I manage systems for a couple dozen clients. I have a personal cell phone. The company won't provide one, and they only offer me a mere $10 a month in compensation, which I turned down so I have the priviledge of NOT taking someone's call if I so choose not to, as I always choose not to when it's the owner calling. I'll use my phone as a pager, and call from a land line when it's convienent.
Our owner has become increasingly paranoid about monitoring our every minute. He pays a small fortune for internet monitoring (Stellar) at the office (of course, we mostly ARENT THERE), and is paranoid about our IT people even having the admin password to the company server (he wouldn't know how to even add a user).
Most of us on the staff have taken to using our personal laptops with our Citrix remote access server in the office so that our every keystroke isn't potentially logged... We also use an "underground" remote access machine to surf the web on
You just can't do that sort of thing to techies without consequences. We are always three steps ahead.
Frankly, since having a cell phone, I've found it to be a curse. I HATE being reachable all the time, I've found that it causes me to do MORE work. I miss being able to drive from one site to another and not be bothered DURING... I think anyone like me who has to know a couple dozen diffrent client site setups NEEDS a few mintues here and there to clear our minds!
But, by keeping my cell phone personal, I can avail myself of the priviledge to use the OFF button, which I do often.
Where? I haven't seen ONE of them... But then I use FireFox with Adblock and Flash Click to view plugins ;)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/30/36116.html
HILARIOUS. And using licenses to shit as an example is so appropriate.
"Can you cite any instances where MS unleashed the BSA hellhounds on someone for anything OTHER than unlicensed software use?
Which, despite all the hippy free-software advocacy around here, is their right under their EULA. It's not a nice EULA, and their SW mostly sucks, but that still doesn't justify illegal use."
They unleash the BSA to blackmail companies/schools, etc to UPGRADE when they don't want to. And their EULA makes it impossible for any organization with over 20 PC's to keep up with EVERYTHING without a full time MS compliance person.
In MS's EULA world, they can send in the BSA, you can have EVERY copy of EVERY piece of software, box, license, everything, and STILL be guilty of using "pirated software" if you don't have the receipts for every box!
Posession alone isn't proof! Of course, I'd like to see someone take MS to court on that... But MS is smart, they always make it so that upgrading is cheaper and less painful than fighting them in court, even when you know you can win.
"The common Slashdot response is it is because they are stupid. I don't think so. If they are not stupid, then what could explain these apparently nonsensical actions? Well, if it was in someone else's interest that Linux had legal difficulties..."
It's obvious what they are getting out of it.
The board members and other execs are getting dollar stock options then dumping them at 10 times (or more) what they paid for them. The FUD does their funders (Microsoft) wants, AND pumps up the stock price so they can cash in as well.
NOT ONE of their insiders has excercised an option then stayed long... They have all dumped IMMEDIATELY. That says alot for what they think of the long term viability of Scaldera.
SCaldera ceased to be a company and became a scam when McBribe came in.
If you follow the Yahoo SCOX forum (there is a lot of noise, but some people there who are REALLY well informed as well), you will note that it's pretty obvious that on low volume days "painting the tape" is going in.
Little blocks of 100 shares keep changing hands at prices above what the last sell off was...
It's an illegal, but hard to prove practice.
But SCOX seems to consistently get "painted" upward daily after a big sell.
Assuming SCO wins they are STILL irrelevant the next day...
Linux will be rewritten, and there are the BSD's. No one will do serious business with someone who sues their customers NO MATTER HOW GOOD their product is, if there is an alternative.
Even Microsoft is a better alternative than SCO, at least they don't sue customers over what they do. They just use the BSA to do it...
" Beginning tomorrow, more than a dozen Web sites, including MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, will not be visited by people who read Slashdot."
I will... I want to see how I can make Mozilla Firebird block these horrors.
" If you couldn't file a lawsuit until you had an airtight case against the defendant, not many lawsuits would be filed.
And boy, wouldn't THAT be terrible.
"
Tell me about it... This thing has damn near dragged on a YEAR and no one (including the accused) knows WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN ACCUSED OF DOING!
Discovery is supposed to be where evidence is exchanged. The charges and allegations are supposed to be known BEFORE discovery, else, how will the defense know WHAT to seek IN discovery?!
It seems to me that if a plantiff in a civil case won't be forthcoming with WHAT they are accusing someone of, and seem to be abusing the process to use the court to try to FIND something to support their vage accusation, it's an abuse of the process and the judge should not permit it.
Circumstantial evidence it is, and it may not be enough to get a conviction of Darl and Co, but it IS enough to show probable cause to launch an investigation...
IF SCaldera and it's executives from Darl on down are doing what we THINK they are doing (and so far evidence does not contradict it) they are guilty of some very serious crimes. If the SEC permits companies to get away with these things, then they prove that NOTHING was learned from Enron.
SCO at the very least is misleading investors. It's SEC filings do NOT include ANY risk statements involving Redhat and IBM's counterclaims, and nothing concerning Novell's allegations involving their license agreement.
Novell could go to court at any time and possibly get SCaldera's assets seized to pay them the 95% they were owed from the Darlgeld Microsoft and Sun paid!
Not to mention, their current stock price is SOLEY the result of what is likely a frivilous lawsuit, and insiders have been excercising PENNY stock options and making TENS AND HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS on the backs of people who BUY these shares.
The fact that so many execs have options for SCO stock DRASTICALLY below the current price suggests to me that this whole scheme was premeditated...
" Yeah - isn't it interesting that SCO seems to basically be saying that "we're waiting on the defendant to prove our case for us"? I hope McBride and Co. have their graves dug already"
Which they cannot do. You can't file a lawsuit to use it as a fishing expedition. It is the burden of the plantiff to prove their allegations. Considering that Linux source is available, I don't see why SCaldera needs ANYTHING from IBM to "prove" their "millions of lines" allegations.
The court set the deadline and put SCaldera's discovery on hold UNTIL they showed IBM exactly what they are accused of doing. Seems to me they have not done so. The next hearing will be very interesting. At the very least, Darl and his other brother Darl will have a VERY pissed off judge on their hands...
If they piss the judge off enough, they might have their case thrown out. The judge could even dismiss "with prejustice" meaning the same charges could not be made again. A dismissal would not affect IBM's countersuit.
The judge also could allow the case to proceed, but bar SCO from introducing any additional evidence other than what they just provided... Discovery deadlines are just that... A deadline. The party so ordered MUST turn over what they are ordered to, and then some, if they want to be certain to get that evidence into the court during trial...
If SCO had a case, they should have turned over exactly what they were ORDERED to turn over. But then, as most of us suspect, they DONT have a case, but want to use the spectre of one to get rich off a "pump n dump" while receiving revenue from Microsoft to encourage the FUD machine...
60-ish pages... That can't point to all that much, and can't possibly answer all they were required to respond to.
SCaldera's PR machine has been in meltdown after all the negative events that have happened to them this week... Novell's release of their legal correspondance, Novell's indemnification, the OSDL/IBM/Intel (Intel openly joining on our side is a MAJOR event in itself), all VERY VERY bad news for them, and their stock started to tumble.
The only cash the company formerly but really known as Caldera is their stock price. If that crashes, so do they.
The SEC really needs to get involved, NOW. They are not listing the possible risks involved in losing this case in their SEC filings. They aren't listing the risk of Novell's claims regarding being owed 95% of the Microsoft/Sun and other "Darlgeld" being collected...
I think the next step is Novell files a suit against SCaldera, asking for summary judgement regarding money being owed to them...
And it's 100% provable. They are STILl distributing GPL code (the kernel) while claiming that the GPL itself isn't enough authority for people to run it.
Even IF SCO has some copyrighted bits in the kernel that they can prove they didn't place there, and didn't authorize, they still don't own all the OTHER millions of lines of code they didn't author...
Which they are STEALING for themselves to exclusively profit from if they insist that ONLY having their "Linux license" are you allowed to use it.
SCO lost all legal rights to that code the minute they declared their DISAGREEMENT with the GPL. The GPL alone gives anyone authority to copy, use, modify, redistribute any of the code in Linux.
To claim that the GPL is illegal, SCO is confessing to violating US copyright law, unless they have seperate agreements from EVERY copyright holder of that code!
This is why I think their threats to sue Google, or another Linux user over COPYRIGHT issues are complete FUD. They have shown their hand. They are going to pick out some of their OWN customers who licensed SCO Unix in the past and sue them for breach of contract for using Linux...
Very, VERY weak if you ask me.
SCO wants to stay the HELL away from copyright and stick to breach of contract (which is all the IBM suit is) but use those cases to "win" the copyright case in the court of public opinion (and thus defame all Linux people) because a court of LAW is the last place they want to have to answer for the fact that they themselves have pirated MILLIONS of lines of code illegally just by continuing to distribute Linux...
It's coming back up. Looks like their buddies are stepping in to intervene as usual... Why ANYONE would buy stock in a company without a business plan (suing and blackmailing people, while good for a lawfirm isn't a sucessful business model for a tech services company).
Even if SCO wins they lose, as their winnings will be a ONE TIME THING that mostly gets paid to lawyers (not investors), while users will either switch to a "clean" Linux or to something else! Why would anyone do business with a proven asshole of a company like SCaldera?
Haven't investors and VC's learned ANYTHING from the Dot Com bubble?!
" Why do people ignore IBM's past? They're so easy to forgive IBM , and yet so quick to jump down Microsoft's throat for any little thing.
Imagine if Microsoft was doing team-ups like this. Slashdotters would be all over them for the "unfairness" of it all."
Microsoft already HAS "teamed up" and is intimately involved in this thing, or at the very least encouraging it.
$8 million dollars to SCaldera for licenses they didn't need, for one thing...
You can bet Microsoft will _NEVER_ "team up" with anyone fighting a cause for FOSS... The whole reason they are funding SCO's FUD driven pump n dump is because of the fact that the GPL is "Kryptonite" to their Embrace, Extend, Extinguish business model that they have used thus far to maintain their monopoly.
I forgive IBM for past transgressions because it seems they LEARNED from the mistakes they made in the 1980's. If they hadn't, it's likely IBM would have gone the way of Digital and other former dominant players...
Microsoft could crush Linux forever tomorrow... If they released Windows complete with source under the GPL. Won't ever happen.
" In SCO's legal reasoning (take appropriate psychodelics to get into that state), the Unix license is an agreement that a given customer has entered into, and in their opinion the use of Linux somehow represents a breach of that agreement by using the same intellectual property without paying for it. It gives them a "gotcha" on the customer in question, at least in their view."
It seems to me that SCaldera is trying to retroactively change their license terms (ie: contract) with their customers to make it a violation to use Linux if you licensed OpenServer or UnixWare.
Legally, I'd think that (IANAL) unless such language was SPECIFICALLY already there when the customer signed, it's an extremely weak claim.
Such language would also almost certainly be illegal in some, if not most jurisdictions, as it's anti competitive.
If anyone wanted confirmation that SCaldera's business plan is a MS funded FUD machine stock "pump n dump", the fact that they are DIRECTLY attacking their own customers, their SOLE source of ongoing revenue should do it.
SCaldera isn't a business, unless you count shilling for Microsoft and Barratry as legitimate business practices.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/scripts/webquote.dll?i Page=lqd&Symbol=scox
As of this writing:
Last 15.95
Change(%) -1.15 (-6.73%)
High 17.18
Low 15.77
Volume 216,036
It doesn't even bear predicting (because it's a sure thing) that Darl will vomit forth more bombastic FUD today or tomorrow in response to this.
SCOX stock is the only currency they have. They pay their lawyers in it. If it collapses, they are done.
But, their bubble can't have much longer to run though... For all the threats, intimidation, spin, etc, SCaldera has YET to take any action on their copyright claims...
Sooner or later, the Emperor will be exposed for the streaker he is.
"What the hell are we missing here? SCO hired the "best" lawyers in the country. There has to be some sort of strategy behind all of this. Or meybe the just want us to think that; keep everybody guessing."
Are you kidding? David Boies is the biggest high profile LOSER in the legal profession!
Not to mention, SCO pretty much lied when they implied that Boies and co were on contingency. They aren't, they are taking only 1/3rd of their fees on contingency.
This is a shameless pump of their stock, using the publicity of Google's IPO and nothing else. If SCO's stock price collapses to a level more representative of their actual going business (say around $.01 per share) they have NOTHING to pay lawyers with and thus, lose by default.
MS and allies aren't going to be able to get away with many more blatant funding of this campaign either...
What needs to happen is for EVERYONE with standing to file as many lawsuits against SCO as possible, in as many locales as possible. That will destroy them. They will either go bankrupt defending themselves, or they will lose default judgements.
" Who wants to bet many future eula's will include a clause that requires you to certify your complience with the terms upon request..."
Wanna bet?
That kind of overt heavy handedness would almost certainly drive more corps to go for GPL/BSD licensed software.
The BSA's blackmail has already been the best Linux/OpenOffice marketing campaign of all time.
Notice that you don't hear as much about the BSA threatening to raid schools and municipalities like we did a year or so ago... This is a stupid thing for the BSA to do anyway, as they INVITE legislation to limit extra clauses above what copyright law allows them to put into their EULA...