I suppose thats your unbiased and objective opinion.
Look, Sun has been stairing at the Linux Open source spectre for years now. They're not going away silently and neither are they interfering. They are attending to the business of their investors without decimating their employees jobs.
It's not fun watching your market evaporate. Not market share but the market. Instead of crying about it, they have rolled up their sleeves and are trying to maintain a niche and prominance in the emerging new markets of information technology.
What they are doing is taking advantage of a competitors misfortune. Much like IBM did to Sun while Sun was defending its Java vision from the embrace and extend and totaly confuse strategy of Microsoft.
There is no need for them to take sides. They are clean as a whistle according to SCO. Perhaps they saw something that IBM doesn't?
Everybody (including myself) is giving IBM to much credit and too much benefit of doubt. What if in some absurd Machiavellien way IBM set this up to sabotage the future of linux themselves?
IBM made big bucks from AIX and stand to lose alot of revenue from Open Source software. "The Industry" as a whole has probably been secretly wishing the demise or destruction of Linux and Open Source projects. And what I mean by "The Industry", I mean the corporations who make money selling what Linux and Open source is going to take away from them.
I remember a little bit back when the Unix Rights were being bought and sold. Everybody laughed at them or thought little of it, while in real life, this should have been seen as a warning shot on how "The Industry" is going to combat open source software. Now we see what the strategy was and it appears that it is going to pay off in some way to SCO.
Is IBM really going to put their heart into fighting this? Or are they going to eventually capitulate, pay SCO more licensing fees, stop recommending or supporting Linux, advocate the Evils of Open source and go back to Selling AIX licenses?
You are being a little over critical of Sun. It's only smart business to market to your competitors weakness.
Sun has made significant contributions to Linux and even though it eats and erodes into their Solaris and systems sales, they don't go around whining about it. They are trying to adapt and remain relevant and not go out the way of so many other has-beens. Like Microdata, Dec et al....
I read this last night on Forbes and my take was it is just a puff piece of journalism. You know, how they have to try and cover both sides and make it interesting.
Today, it is not news that sells, it is controversy that sells. Here I think Forbes is just selling controversy.
I'm already getting bored with this. I'm waiting for IBM to knock them out, but IBM looks like they are playing the rope-a-dope strategy. which seems to be somewhat effective if you take into account how SCO's story changes as they try and fine tune their lawsuite.
I'm interested in whether there was some pre-lawsuite negotiations with IBM before this all became public and what exactly SCO was trying to get then, rather then in the lawsuite.
I think discretionary income that people would normaly use to buy music is getting spread out in the music industry. Due mainly to the quick easy access to new artist.
It wasn't too long ago that RIAA would beg radio stations to play their artists of choice (top 40 anybody). Heck, they probably still do beg and pay kickbacks too. Remember when that was a scandal? They weren't too concerned about copying back then.
But radio airtime is a finite period to a finite audiance. While P2P sharing of music is a infinite period to an infinite audiance. (I use infinite quite loose here) I'm sure that back then, as it is now, it was cheaper to promote a big artist to concentrate in a few products rather then promote alot of artists across the board.
Now, with the P2P method of distributing music, I theorize that peoples tastes are diverging because of the easy access to non-mainstream music or even just older music. THey have more choice now and they are taking it. While tastes are diverging, the RIAA and the Industry still hasn't "got it". They still use thier old models in trying to promote a few stars. Look at the all the recent flops and huge contract dumps in the past few years.
They cannot control the tastes of music listeners anymore and their tastes are diverging. Making it more and more expensive for the Industry deliver. It will get worse before it gets better (read somebody in the industry comes in with new ideas). They are still trying to sell 10 million records of one artist, while what they really need to be doing is concentrating a couple of hundred thousand records each from a bunch of artists.
This is too funny. SCO does not know what it is doing. Here I'm going assume my hat as "barracks lawyer".
1. It is not SCO that is going to determine the pace of this case. Upon trying to unilateraly cancel IBM's license a judge will step in and maintain the "status quo" until the dispute is settled.
2. If you bought AIX prior to SCO's accusations, then you still have a valid license. SCO cannot retroactivly cancell prior licenses on it's own whim. Can you imagine the havok that would cause in the business world as a whole if it were so? Can you imagine Novell announcing tomorrow that they are cancelling whatever agreement they had with SCO?
3. The mere fact that SCO is dragging IBM customers into this tells me that this is more a political manuever then a valid legal manuever. They are trying to get IBM customers to pressure IBM to resolve this fast, and fast means caving to SCO.
4. SCO has yet to prove harm. 80 lines of code copied exactly word for word, punctuation for punctuation means nothing without harm. The actual code has to do something particular that is germain to SCO and that the loss (or unlawfull distribution) has harmed SCO.
5. So not only does SCO have to reveal the offending code, it has to say when it discovered it and when it notified IBM and prove what type of harm was done. I find that hard to believe that 80 lines of code out of a code base of a million plus lines is going to fly just on its own.
6. There is no doubt that IBM is insured for all errors and ommissions on their part, that will protect their customers. As long as everybody was acting in good faith... IBM believed they were in compliance, the Customers believed they were in compliance, the only damages that SCO will be entitled to are actual damages.
7. Actual damages will be a whole 'nother lawsuit and court proceedings. Probably take years to sort this out. But then, who doubts this is SCO's intent. To hold LINUX hostage for years.
8. If it turns out that SCO discovered this a while ago, and didn't immediately notify IBM, they themselves may have given up alot of rights in the remedy. I.E You just can't discover it and hold back a few years, then come forward and try and correct or remedy it.
Predictions... When IBM makes its legal move, watch how fast SCO shuts up (gag order, restraining order. If IBM sees no need to capitulate, they will slap SCO silly with gag orders and restraining orders enjoining them from frightening IBM's customers.
I have a feeling it's not going to be pretty for SCO
White Knights, Green Mail, Poison Pills and Proxies.
Oracle is trying to gain controlling interest in People Soft without the blessing of the board of directors of People Soft.
Proxies can be considered the voting rights of the stock.
Green mail is two things, primarly it would be People Soft bribing Oracle by buying back whatever shares Oracle accumulated -- giving Oracle a nice profit. Another form of Green Mail would be Oracle offering to buy huge blocks of stock off of People Soft stock holders at premium prices -- or simply gaining the proxy of them.
Poison Pills would be People Soft doing things to wreck the company and make it not so attractive as a takeover. Poison pills are usually a package of things they do. But the most adverse is to take out huge loans to buy back its own stock, Licensing company IP, and even awarding employees huge stock options. Basicaly they are throwing road blocks up and salting the earth.
White Knights are 3rd party corporations that come in and start buying People Soft and forcing the stock price up and making Oracle have to deal with two companies rather then just one. White Knights often really Gray Knights in disguise and are trying to make a profit too.
Usually hostile takeovers are preceeded by months of slowly accumulating the stock of the takeover target. However there is a point, I think 5% at which the company has to notify the other company that they are targetted for aquisition. And I think the targetted company can get an injuntion against the other company enjoining them from buying more stock until the shareholders meet.
They are long and costly bloody battles that are usually done to scuttle or destroy the targetted company and the real benefit to the company initiating it is gaining market share, intellectual property, and other desired assets to the detriment of the targetted company.
Hey, I think we oughta code this up and make an mmorpg out of it!
HAH! Most people who advocate the U.S so-called "addressing the grievances" of the dispossed people in other countries do not realize that they themselves are tacitally approving of eventual military intervention.
In this very forum the very same people harp on and point fingers at corporations and corporate leaders for abuse. Yet it it's these very same type of mentality in corporate leadership that you find in people running countries and abusing or misuing their power for their own ends. The answer is certainly not just giving them money and aide -- where it is likely to be used to further their own goals rather then as aide.
Take Zimbabwe for example. Once the bread basket of the Central African region -- took over the farms and land from the white folk (who incidently got there not from American intervention but from European adventurism) Zimbabwe can't even feed itself now. Further more, they refuse American aide because it comes attached with American policy. (not to mention geneticaly enhanced)
The point is, you just can't give these countries money and aide without angering somebody in that country.
To sum things up -- There is a saying that war is diplomacy by another means. That cuts both ways. Diplomacy is war by another means. Be carefull what you advocate. You may think you are advocating a peacefull solution, when in fact you are advocating diplomatic, political, and military intervention.
And, in conclusion, 80% of all the problems in the mideast and Africa are the direct result of European adventurism in the late 1800's to the early and mid 1900's.
The price of freedom is constant vigilence. I think that's a quote from Ronald Reagan quoting somebody else.
Anyway, the world is full of good people and evil people and then people who just can't tell the difference. Thank you, I think I'll just keep America, and sleep soundly for it.
Database file systems and OS's are not new. Isn't that PICK(OS) and Reality OS from Microdata?
Hmmmm, wonder who owns the patents on database file systems....
BTW: loved the article. Dont' know why people are complaining or dissing it. It's a nice one.
Isn't it ironic that Matt Drudge is managing to build himself a little empire... starting with nothing, while Salon can't.... starting with all that money.
When you get into the opinion selling business, you better make sure that there are enough people willing to buy what you think.
I view Salons demise as merely the rejection of elitist liberal journalism by the news and opinion consumers.
Ya, keep calling us dumb ignorant conservatives while trying to get us to buy your product.
This is not true. The top end commercial systems suppliers all run within 90% of each other when comparing apples to apples. 50% less is a notion you pulled out of the sky.
What is true. Sun is not at the bleeding edge of processor development -- a place primarly for scientific computing. They are however at the leading edge, along with many others, and because of that they produce very stable, very productive, very scalable commercial application servers.
Oh, and please do have a visit to Sparc Consortium and check out the many other who contribute to sparc development.
Yea, and the world is full of people and software capable enough to build and support x86 failover clusters that have 24/7 operation... right.
Oh, I guess not... once you get past the technojocks who think networking 4 x86 systems with linux is clustering.
The fact of the matter is, once you've hired the right people to do this alternative, then invested in the premium hardware (What? Not buying cheap clones for your companies critical apps?), then arrange for Software and software support... guess what? You've just gone to 4 independants and paid more for what you could have got just by going to somebody like SUN for a one vendor solution.
On top of that... Where are your consultants going to be around long? Or are they just a traveling snake oil salesman?
Linux is cool, no doubt. Intel platforms are inexpensive, no doubt. Linux programmers, Linux support and intel System engineering all combined together for building, deploying and maintaining mission critical apps is not. So the time you took and the money you spent and the money you are going to spend on support... you'll find is just as expensive as going to a top notch vendor like Sun.
As for Windows? Pftttt, Windows is a toy. Look how much effort Microsoft is putting into the home entertainment market. They see their future quite clearly.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, Sun has been stairing at the Linux Open source spectre for years now. They're not going away silently and neither are they interfering. They are attending to the business of their investors without decimating their employees jobs.
It's not fun watching your market evaporate. Not market share but the market. Instead of crying about it, they have rolled up their sleeves and are trying to maintain a niche and prominance in the emerging new markets of information technology.
What they are doing is taking advantage of a competitors misfortune. Much like IBM did to Sun while Sun was defending its Java vision from the embrace and extend and totaly confuse strategy of Microsoft.
There is no need for them to take sides. They are clean as a whistle according to SCO. Perhaps they saw something that IBM doesn't?
Everybody (including myself) is giving IBM to much credit and too much benefit of doubt. What if in some absurd Machiavellien way IBM set this up to sabotage the future of linux themselves?
IBM made big bucks from AIX and stand to lose alot of revenue from Open Source software. "The Industry" as a whole has probably been secretly wishing the demise or destruction of Linux and Open Source projects. And what I mean by "The Industry", I mean the corporations who make money selling what Linux and Open source is going to take away from them.
I remember a little bit back when the Unix Rights were being bought and sold. Everybody laughed at them or thought little of it, while in real life, this should have been seen as a warning shot on how "The Industry" is going to combat open source software. Now we see what the strategy was and it appears that it is going to pay off in some way to SCO.
Is IBM really going to put their heart into fighting this? Or are they going to eventually capitulate, pay SCO more licensing fees, stop recommending or supporting Linux, advocate the Evils of Open source and go back to Selling AIX licenses?
Time is going to tell.
Sun has made significant contributions to Linux and even though it eats and erodes into their Solaris and systems sales, they don't go around whining about it. They are trying to adapt and remain relevant and not go out the way of so many other has-beens. Like Microdata, Dec et al ....
Today, it is not news that sells, it is controversy that sells. Here I think Forbes is just selling controversy.
I'm already getting bored with this. I'm waiting for IBM to knock them out, but IBM looks like they are playing the rope-a-dope strategy. which seems to be somewhat effective if you take into account how SCO's story changes as they try and fine tune their lawsuite.
I'm interested in whether there was some pre-lawsuite negotiations with IBM before this all became public and what exactly SCO was trying to get then, rather then in the lawsuite.
I think discretionary income that people would normaly use to buy music is getting spread out in the music industry. Due mainly to the quick easy access to new artist.
It wasn't too long ago that RIAA would beg radio stations to play their artists of choice (top 40 anybody). Heck, they probably still do beg and pay kickbacks too. Remember when that was a scandal? They weren't too concerned about copying back then.
But radio airtime is a finite period to a finite audiance. While P2P sharing of music is a infinite period to an infinite audiance. (I use infinite quite loose here) I'm sure that back then, as it is now, it was cheaper to promote a big artist to concentrate in a few products rather then promote alot of artists across the board.
Now, with the P2P method of distributing music, I theorize that peoples tastes are diverging because of the easy access to non-mainstream music or even just older music. THey have more choice now and they are taking it. While tastes are diverging, the RIAA and the Industry still hasn't "got it". They still use thier old models in trying to promote a few stars. Look at the all the recent flops and huge contract dumps in the past few years.
They cannot control the tastes of music listeners anymore and their tastes are diverging. Making it more and more expensive for the Industry deliver. It will get worse before it gets better (read somebody in the industry comes in with new ideas). They are still trying to sell 10 million records of one artist, while what they really need to be doing is concentrating a couple of hundred thousand records each from a bunch of artists.
1. It is not SCO that is going to determine the pace of this case. Upon trying to unilateraly cancel IBM's license a judge will step in and maintain the "status quo" until the dispute is settled.
2. If you bought AIX prior to SCO's accusations, then you still have a valid license. SCO cannot retroactivly cancell prior licenses on it's own whim. Can you imagine the havok that would cause in the business world as a whole if it were so? Can you imagine Novell announcing tomorrow that they are cancelling whatever agreement they had with SCO?
3. The mere fact that SCO is dragging IBM customers into this tells me that this is more a political manuever then a valid legal manuever. They are trying to get IBM customers to pressure IBM to resolve this fast, and fast means caving to SCO.
4. SCO has yet to prove harm. 80 lines of code copied exactly word for word, punctuation for punctuation means nothing without harm. The actual code has to do something particular that is germain to SCO and that the loss (or unlawfull distribution) has harmed SCO.
5. So not only does SCO have to reveal the offending code, it has to say when it discovered it and when it notified IBM and prove what type of harm was done. I find that hard to believe that 80 lines of code out of a code base of a million plus lines is going to fly just on its own.
6. There is no doubt that IBM is insured for all errors and ommissions on their part, that will protect their customers. As long as everybody was acting in good faith ... IBM believed they were in compliance, the Customers believed they were in compliance, the only damages that SCO will be entitled to are actual damages.
7. Actual damages will be a whole 'nother lawsuit and court proceedings. Probably take years to sort this out. But then, who doubts this is SCO's intent. To hold LINUX hostage for years.
8. If it turns out that SCO discovered this a while ago, and didn't immediately notify IBM, they themselves may have given up alot of rights in the remedy. I.E You just can't discover it and hold back a few years, then come forward and try and correct or remedy it.
Predictions ... When IBM makes its legal move, watch how fast SCO shuts up (gag order, restraining order. If IBM sees no need to capitulate, they will slap SCO silly with gag orders and restraining orders enjoining them from frightening IBM's customers.
I have a feeling it's not going to be pretty for SCO
Oracle is trying to gain controlling interest in People Soft without the blessing of the board of directors of People Soft.
Proxies can be considered the voting rights of the stock.
Green mail is two things, primarly it would be People Soft bribing Oracle by buying back whatever shares Oracle accumulated -- giving Oracle a nice profit. Another form of Green Mail would be Oracle offering to buy huge blocks of stock off of People Soft stock holders at premium prices -- or simply gaining the proxy of them.
Poison Pills would be People Soft doing things to wreck the company and make it not so attractive as a takeover. Poison pills are usually a package of things they do. But the most adverse is to take out huge loans to buy back its own stock, Licensing company IP, and even awarding employees huge stock options. Basicaly they are throwing road blocks up and salting the earth.
White Knights are 3rd party corporations that come in and start buying People Soft and forcing the stock price up and making Oracle have to deal with two companies rather then just one. White Knights often really Gray Knights in disguise and are trying to make a profit too. Usually hostile takeovers are preceeded by months of slowly accumulating the stock of the takeover target. However there is a point, I think 5% at which the company has to notify the other company that they are targetted for aquisition. And I think the targetted company can get an injuntion against the other company enjoining them from buying more stock until the shareholders meet.
They are long and costly bloody battles that are usually done to scuttle or destroy the targetted company and the real benefit to the company initiating it is gaining market share, intellectual property, and other desired assets to the detriment of the targetted company.
Hey, I think we oughta code this up and make an mmorpg out of it!
Thats my bastardization of hostile takeovers.
In this very forum the very same people harp on and point fingers at corporations and corporate leaders for abuse. Yet it it's these very same type of mentality in corporate leadership that you find in people running countries and abusing or misuing their power for their own ends. The answer is certainly not just giving them money and aide -- where it is likely to be used to further their own goals rather then as aide.
Take Zimbabwe for example. Once the bread basket of the Central African region -- took over the farms and land from the white folk (who incidently got there not from American intervention but from European adventurism) Zimbabwe can't even feed itself now. Further more, they refuse American aide because it comes attached with American policy. (not to mention geneticaly enhanced)
The point is, you just can't give these countries money and aide without angering somebody in that country.
To sum things up -- There is a saying that war is diplomacy by another means. That cuts both ways. Diplomacy is war by another means. Be carefull what you advocate. You may think you are advocating a peacefull solution, when in fact you are advocating diplomatic, political, and military intervention.
And, in conclusion, 80% of all the problems in the mideast and Africa are the direct result of European adventurism in the late 1800's to the early and mid 1900's.
Anyway, the world is full of good people and evil people and then people who just can't tell the difference. Thank you, I think I'll just keep America, and sleep soundly for it.
Here comes the DMCTA ... The Digital Millenium Copyright Terrorist Act.
We all knew Napster was domestic terrorism.
Now since the advent of Solaris being free, Red Hat has now decided to charge $2400 for an entreprise edition of Linux?
Go figure, damned if ya do and damned if ya don't.
Usagi Yo
Database file systems and OS's are not new. Isn't that PICK(OS) and Reality OS from Microdata? Hmmmm, wonder who owns the patents on database file systems ....
BTW: loved the article. Dont' know why people are complaining or dissing it. It's a nice one.
Isn't it ironic that Matt Drudge is managing to build himself a little empire ... starting with nothing, while Salon can't .... starting with all that money.
When you get into the opinion selling business, you better make sure that there are enough people willing to buy what you think.
I view Salons demise as merely the rejection of elitist liberal journalism by the news and opinion consumers.
Ya, keep calling us dumb ignorant conservatives while trying to get us to buy your product.
What is true. Sun is not at the bleeding edge of processor development -- a place primarly for scientific computing. They are however at the leading edge, along with many others, and because of that they produce very stable, very productive, very scalable commercial application servers.
Oh, and please do have a visit to Sparc Consortium and check out the many other who contribute to sparc development.
Yea, and the world is full of people and software capable enough to build and support x86 failover clusters that have 24/7 operation ... right.
... once you get past the technojocks who think networking 4 x86 systems with linux is clustering.
... guess what? You've just gone to 4 independants and paid more for what you could have got just by going to somebody like SUN for a one vendor solution.
... Where are your consultants going to be around long? Or are they just a traveling snake oil salesman?
... you'll find is just as expensive as going to a top notch vendor like Sun.
Oh, I guess not
The fact of the matter is, once you've hired the right people to do this alternative, then invested in the premium hardware (What? Not buying cheap clones for your companies critical apps?), then arrange for Software and software support
On top of that
Linux is cool, no doubt. Intel platforms are inexpensive, no doubt. Linux programmers, Linux support and intel System engineering all combined together for building, deploying and maintaining mission critical apps is not. So the time you took and the money you spent and the money you are going to spend on support
As for Windows? Pftttt, Windows is a toy. Look how much effort Microsoft is putting into the home entertainment market. They see their future quite clearly.