Their license will likely include the right to audit your systems to confirm license compliance, probably at your cost. If you have multiple Linux systems, things could get ugly.
So basically we can say 499 out of 500 Fortune 500 companies don't feel any need to pay SCO for the use of Linux after all of SCO's PR work.
People have guessed Microsoft as the Forture 500 company. There's an alternative option. SCO has a large customer that's no small fry.
Some know that McDonald's uses SCO at their cash registers for POS. Perhaps SCO managed to sell them Linux licenses in exchange for other favorable treatments.
Has anybody done a study comparing membership in NRA with Linux usage? I've noticed there's a fair number of advocates of gun ownership and rights amongst open source advocates. It might make a facinating slashdot poll to assess this overlap of interests! It could be useful information about the Linux 'customer profile'.
I think it only fair to return the claimed 50% Linux IP infringement to SCO. Just cut your Linux CDs in half and mail to SCO in lieu of remittance. After all, it was sort of like getting that unexpected book in the mail with an invoice attached. Just send it back. SCO imagines getting 10% compliance from Linux users. I bet we can do better with this plan.
It's back. Must have been some hackers messing around just before the big meeting. Or another sly play to get the price to drop a bit then zoon up just before the forum.
What if someone signs the SCO NDA then breaks it by revealing the offending code? How much risk does this person actually incure? My guess is that the risks and consequences are purely individual. What if such a person basically had nothing to lose? What if such a person had only months to live and would be willing to volunteer for this Don Quixiote type of role? What would it take to have such a one enter into the NDA code review role?
Change GNU/Linux to GNU/nix, or GNU/Unnix, or, GNU/GNOT*NIX, or GNU/GNOS (generic network operating system), or GNU/NICES (network information control/exchange services), or GNU/SOX (Gnu/Systems Operating eXecutive), and for the slightly cynical, GNU/Systems Unix-like eXecutive (GNU/SUX).
Names convey adequate Unix tie and retains essential GNU-ness, plus a dose of cute self-deprecating humor. Innocuousness and a basic societal benefit motif should be preserved. Avoids all the legal hassles. These names should make it seem extreme and silly for corporations to sue or attack free software groups or identify as threats. Who would approve of attacking Tux, the cute penguin, or other cute cuddly critter-based free software products? The BSD Demon is out-there enough to indicate non-mainstream.
Still thinking? Need a FSF/ix? Sounds like some are ready for GNU/Portable Interative Standard System Operating System - Official Release, er, GNU/PISSOSOff Release.
I suspect we'll leave unconsidered: GNU/General Operating and Tertiary Services Executive (GNU/GOATSE).
Maybe embedding your name in a program isn't so good an idea if it gives SCO or MSFT lawyers an easy target.
Maybe rpm or apt-get could be enhanced to have an option to list developer names as it installs or uninstalls software.
Easy way out for IBM, just buy controlling interest, 51% of their $2 stock--before someone else does. That 51% of the shares of SCOX can't be worth a $Billion. Give shareholders a slightly dignified price a little above $2. Give employees option to join IBM or affiliate, swap 401K SCOX stock for IBM stock, allow early retirement. Add a few more patents to their legal patent hanger. Give Mr. Gates reason to reconsider selling off his SCOX a couple years ago...
\Behaving like professionals might require defending the focus of the conference against lightweight argument and wholly inappropriate demand for 'fairness'. Microsoft's rights are vociferously defended by it's 650 lawyers, by it's buckets of campaign gold, by it's multimedia advertising presence, by it's purchase of influence, retention of prime PR and lobbying firms.
Behaving like a professional might require a little more careful thinking. One doesn't need to ask a fox to adddress the chickens inside the henhouse in the interest of 'fairness' or allowing opposing views.
Behaving like professionals might be protecting an environment of freedom where government IT and managers can safely convene, discuss, review and determine where free software can best help our government's mission, without fear that Microsoft will be going to congressional committees and administration about their potential choices of viral, anti-American, terrorist-friendly software, naming names and departments.
Behaving like professionals might require telling Microsoft it fails to play this game fairly and needs to be muzzled to allow fair consideration of real options. To get rid of the muzzle, show us the software from Redmond that comes with GPL or OSS source code license. Show us the internet, data and document standards to which you are committed to uphold, instead of overthrow and supplant. Donate the OpenGL patents to the FSF. Open the OEM license to allow PC vendors to preload the OS of customer's choice. Vigorously advertise, support and provide the refund stated in the EULA...if Windows is not good enough to back with a real money-back guarentee, that's really not American! Donate marketing to free software groups. Donate computers to schools allowing them to use GPL software without being covered by that all-encompassing PC and Mac license currently being foist upon school districts.
Maybe I'm paranoid, but consider these in constellation:
Microsoft applies for.Net patents. It may be able to lock down functionality which Linux-hosted Apache, SSL, Perl, J2EE, JBoss, PHP, Mono, etc., are delivering without patents or price.
Microsoft evades legal requirement to provide a current Java version in 1Q 2003. Another quarter free of Java, another to push.Net to corporations.
SCO patents loom to threaten Linux at the heart of it's unix-like functionality. Making SCO a commercial viral licence? At with no more direct SCO stock holdings, Mr. Gates has the appearance of having some distance from this whole course of action.
Military efforts to minimize utilization of WiFi frequencies and transmission power. Don't want to make free access too easy.
ISPs forced to honor DCMA and IP related challenges on hosting software and tools, turning over individual records, perhaps being forced to allow political spam, perhaps 'commercial free speech' as well with the arrival of commerce-friendly federal spam laws.
The inner and outer IP nooses have been thrown, the attacks affect software outside and inside the lines defined by GPL, as was threatened in earlier Halloween documents.
More loss of personal liberty and rights threatened as Patriot II bill surfaces. Will GPL software be classified as a tool of terrorists and illegitimate software users?
The Free Software and Open Source communities both need to lobby now, hard, fast, and furious to preserve a legal environment in which these communities can legally continue to exist and flourish within US borders, and all those countries eager to adopt US-like laws. Or we'll find free and open software classified like illegal munitions, illegal drugs, and associated with illegal child porn, illegal democrats (well, they're still working on making that illegal), and evil illegal hackers (done).
Maybe this problem is just a symptom of a bigger issue, the failure of current states to adequately govern for the people in an electronic age.
Is retaining the currently defined regional states still viable as a way to govern our people? Is it time to merge a bunch of states into more efficient regional units? Do we need adapt to a virtual global universe?
Most of our states, big and small, are going broke, often more than billion dollar deficits. Governors and legislatures are panic-stricken to find new revenue sources. Let's not race to tax the internet like a big fat tasty pie to divide. Maybe the right answer is to redivide how we do city, county, state and regional government so they don't need so much pie. This current parochial layering sorely needs streamlining. Federal dollars go into so many coffers for reshuffling and redividing, with administrators at each level reallocating and approving or denying. Streamlining alone should reduce the amount of needed tax revenue.
It's time for states to review what they do and get rid of unnecessary tasks.
How much does EPA mandated state-run emissions testing really helps with automobiles now? Most of the fleet runs pretty clean. Time to ax that program. Focus on testing and taxing trucks and SUVs due to their larger share of the remaining pollutant emissions problem.
Education funding is in dire need of reform on every level. A simple formula is needed here that focus on enabling each school age kid to have a good education, in preparation for work, college, and life. The money should be directed to the lowest level government, to be controlled by the parents for the kids, not feeding directly private corporate charter schools, religious schools, public schools, etc. Give parents the vote and choice on how this is spent.
Highway paving funds...huge pork barrel problem here.
Move the entire Federal employee group and Congress into Social Security instead of their special little plans...hmm, maybe that deficit there goes away. Then can they can really care about it like it matters to everyone.
Slash military spending by 50%. Even then we'd be the biggest superpower remaining.
Government should be asked to take over healthcare since the private approach is resulting in 20 to 25% cost increases annually, and less people can access care now than 20 years ago. States can't cope with this adequately.
So, taxation without representation is indeed an evil. Taxation to support an outmoded way of governing requires the citizens to rise up and dismantle that government and restructure a more fair system!
1) If you appear in another Star Trek movie, could you include Jeri Lynn Ryan (7 of 9)? Perhaps in some sort of dream sequence where Kirk goes to a heaven, or as a near death experience, filled with favorite angels? Or as some great reckoning with karma?
2) Can the Q Continuum communicate with the Prophets in the DS9 Blackhole? What would they talk about?
3) If you could select any of the Borg implants, what would you pick and why?
4) The Star Trek Computer voice sounds so sterile. Why isn't it made more sexy or personable? You'd think 24 century technology would be able to make facinating human interfaces.
5) Why are Star Trek hand weapons point and shoot--for hitting single targets like.38 revolvers? Some might guess that 24th century handheld weapons would be able to smartly select and hit multiple targets, adjusting lethal and stun settings for small and large targets, and would never ever work for anyone but the person who owned the weapon. Is it true that the NRA has a 24 century advocacy group?
We have the judge applying antitrust rules from the last century, within a context of a legal system and ownership laws derived from the centuries before, to a company that's only existed within the last few decades but predominates on the desktops of homes and corporations. Microsoft's is legally an old model capitalistic entity seeking as near to a monopolist market it can attain...and succeeded, well, a bit too well for antitrust considerations.
The options for legal correctives can limit and restructure, but not change the basic nature of the organization's primary goals of domination through a proprietary product line.
Even if the government gets the source, it's still not open.
Whoa, I'm trying to grok simultaneous dialation and contraction at the same time and feeling my FPU processing is bound, even much mental panic. Ok, sqr root, so what happens if it's two cars heading toward each other at light speed, each driven by Shroedinger's cat, with black holes parallel to their interception path, then they flip on their headlights, then the 4-way flashers, then the high beams and...and yes, get this...meowing and honking the horn??? How about an equation for all them photons and waves? Huh, well, smarty, got it? So what does the cat see and hear? Can SMP solve that? Hmmm, will that give Linux the left and right brain needed to solve it in parallel? Seriously and with reverence, I suggest we give Linus Torvalds the moniker 'OSmoses' for his ability to slip under the surface tension of corporate resistance and leading us away from the tyrannical monolithic slavery of pharoah Gates, where one window pane fits all views. And Sir Allen of Cox would be his rod bearer, as 'brother' Aaron. Thank you, thank you both! Just help us avoid the Golden Calf scene, ok? I'd hate to see the kernel source code tablets breaking over the false idols of gold. Apologies for the metaphoracide. wall Blessings to all net stations, PB8
Slashdot Mirror
SCO Denies Rumor that Google is Next Legal Target
Attach the 120 laser pointers to 120 dogs, after making them activated by barking and/or tail wagging. Release dogs at a cat show.
Didn't SCO complain that the FSF selectively enforced the GPL in court documents?
Now SCO wants to sue just *one* company over using Linux with their alledged IP in it? Pretty darn selective move Mr. McBride & Mr. Boies.
If McBride was Pinocchio, he'd need to be made out of Redwood to handle that nose length...as a certain SCOX stock pumper said, "to the moon!"
Their license will likely include the right to audit your systems to confirm license compliance, probably at your cost. If you have multiple Linux systems, things could get ugly.
So basically we can say 499 out of 500 Fortune 500 companies don't feel any need to pay SCO for the use of Linux after all of SCO's PR work.
People have guessed Microsoft as the Forture 500 company. There's an alternative option. SCO has a large customer that's no small fry.
Some know that McDonald's uses SCO at their cash registers for POS. Perhaps SCO managed to sell them Linux licenses in exchange for other favorable treatments.
Has anybody done a study comparing membership in NRA with Linux usage? I've noticed there's a fair number of advocates of gun ownership and rights amongst open source advocates. It might make a facinating slashdot poll to assess this overlap of interests! It could be useful information about the Linux 'customer profile'.
I think it only fair to return the claimed 50% Linux IP infringement to SCO. Just cut your Linux CDs in half and mail to SCO in lieu of remittance. After all, it was sort of like getting that unexpected book in the mail with an invoice attached. Just send it back. SCO imagines getting 10% compliance from Linux users. I bet we can do better with this plan.
By the way, IANAL, just a provocateur.
Oops...The missing Link to Finance Message board
Looks like financial traders are ready to line up to get sued by SCO:
It's back. Must have been some hackers messing around just before the big meeting. Or another sly play to get the price to drop a bit then zoon up just before the forum.
Looking for Mr. or Ms. Good Lawyer...
What if someone signs the SCO NDA then breaks it by revealing the offending code? How much risk does this person actually incure? My guess is that the risks and consequences are purely individual. What if such a person basically had nothing to lose? What if such a person had only months to live and would be willing to volunteer for this Don Quixiote type of role? What would it take to have such a one enter into the NDA code review role?
Change GNU/Linux to GNU/nix, or GNU/Unnix, or, GNU/GNOT*NIX, or GNU/GNOS (generic network operating system), or GNU/NICES (network information control/exchange services), or GNU/SOX (Gnu/Systems Operating eXecutive), and for the slightly cynical, GNU/Systems Unix-like eXecutive (GNU/SUX).
Names convey adequate Unix tie and retains essential GNU-ness, plus a dose of cute self-deprecating humor. Innocuousness and a basic societal benefit motif should be preserved. Avoids all the legal hassles. These names should make it seem extreme and silly for corporations to sue or attack free software groups or identify as threats. Who would approve of attacking Tux, the cute penguin, or other cute cuddly critter-based free software products? The BSD Demon is out-there enough to indicate non-mainstream.
Still thinking? Need a FSF/ix? Sounds like some are ready for GNU/Portable Interative Standard System Operating System - Official Release, er, GNU/PISSOSOff Release.
I suspect we'll leave unconsidered: GNU/General Operating and Tertiary Services Executive (GNU/GOATSE).
Maybe embedding your name in a program isn't so good an idea if it gives SCO or MSFT lawyers an easy target. Maybe rpm or apt-get could be enhanced to have an option to list developer names as it installs or uninstalls software.
Easy way out for IBM, just buy controlling interest, 51% of their $2 stock--before someone else does. That 51% of the shares of SCOX can't be worth a $Billion. Give shareholders a slightly dignified price a little above $2. Give employees option to join IBM or affiliate, swap 401K SCOX stock for IBM stock, allow early retirement. Add a few more patents to their legal patent hanger. Give Mr. Gates reason to reconsider selling off his SCOX a couple years ago...
Try putting Slashdot into the validator:
Validate Slashdot.
\Behaving like professionals might require defending the focus of the conference against lightweight argument and wholly inappropriate demand for 'fairness'. Microsoft's rights are vociferously defended by it's 650 lawyers, by it's buckets of campaign gold, by it's multimedia advertising presence, by it's purchase of influence, retention of prime PR and lobbying firms.
Behaving like a professional might require a little more careful thinking. One doesn't need to ask a fox to adddress the chickens inside the henhouse in the interest of 'fairness' or allowing opposing views.
Behaving like professionals might be protecting an environment of freedom where government IT and managers can safely convene, discuss, review and determine where free software can best help our government's mission, without fear that Microsoft will be going to congressional committees and administration about their potential choices of viral, anti-American, terrorist-friendly software, naming names and departments.
Behaving like professionals might require telling Microsoft it fails to play this game fairly and needs to be muzzled to allow fair consideration of real options. To get rid of the muzzle, show us the software from Redmond that comes with GPL or OSS source code license. Show us the internet, data and document standards to which you are committed to uphold, instead of overthrow and supplant. Donate the OpenGL patents to the FSF. Open the OEM license to allow PC vendors to preload the OS of customer's choice. Vigorously advertise, support and provide the refund stated in the EULA...if Windows is not good enough to back with a real money-back guarentee, that's really not American! Donate marketing to free software groups. Donate computers to schools allowing them to use GPL software without being covered by that all-encompassing PC and Mac license currently being foist upon school districts.
Maybe I'm paranoid, but consider these in constellation:
.Net patents. It may be able to lock down functionality which Linux-hosted Apache, SSL, Perl, J2EE, JBoss, PHP, Mono, etc., are delivering without patents or price.
.Net to corporations.
Microsoft applies for
Microsoft evades legal requirement to provide a current Java version in 1Q 2003. Another quarter free of Java, another to push
SCO patents loom to threaten Linux at the heart of it's unix-like functionality. Making SCO a commercial viral licence? At with no more direct SCO stock holdings, Mr. Gates has the appearance of having some distance from this whole course of action.
Military efforts to minimize utilization of WiFi frequencies and transmission power. Don't want to make free access too easy.
ISPs forced to honor DCMA and IP related challenges on hosting software and tools, turning over individual records, perhaps being forced to allow political spam, perhaps 'commercial free speech' as well with the arrival of commerce-friendly federal spam laws.
The inner and outer IP nooses have been thrown, the attacks affect software outside and inside the lines defined by GPL, as was threatened in earlier Halloween documents.
More loss of personal liberty and rights threatened as Patriot II bill surfaces. Will GPL software be classified as a tool of terrorists and illegitimate software users?
The Free Software and Open Source communities both need to lobby now, hard, fast, and furious to preserve a legal environment in which these communities can legally continue to exist and flourish within US borders, and all those countries eager to adopt US-like laws. Or we'll find free and open software classified like illegal munitions, illegal drugs, and associated with illegal child porn, illegal democrats (well, they're still working on making that illegal), and evil illegal hackers (done).
Is retaining the currently defined regional states still viable as a way to govern our people? Is it time to merge a bunch of states into more efficient regional units? Do we need adapt to a virtual global universe?
Most of our states, big and small, are going broke, often more than billion dollar deficits. Governors and legislatures are panic-stricken to find new revenue sources. Let's not race to tax the internet like a big fat tasty pie to divide. Maybe the right answer is to redivide how we do city, county, state and regional government so they don't need so much pie. This current parochial layering sorely needs streamlining. Federal dollars go into so many coffers for reshuffling and redividing, with administrators at each level reallocating and approving or denying. Streamlining alone should reduce the amount of needed tax revenue.
It's time for states to review what they do and get rid of unnecessary tasks.
How much does EPA mandated state-run emissions testing really helps with automobiles now? Most of the fleet runs pretty clean. Time to ax that program. Focus on testing and taxing trucks and SUVs due to their larger share of the remaining pollutant emissions problem.
Education funding is in dire need of reform on every level. A simple formula is needed here that focus on enabling each school age kid to have a good education, in preparation for work, college, and life. The money should be directed to the lowest level government, to be controlled by the parents for the kids, not feeding directly private corporate charter schools, religious schools, public schools, etc. Give parents the vote and choice on how this is spent.
Highway paving funds...huge pork barrel problem here.
Move the entire Federal employee group and Congress into Social Security instead of their special little plans...hmm, maybe that deficit there goes away. Then can they can really care about it like it matters to everyone.
Slash military spending by 50%. Even then we'd be the biggest superpower remaining.
Government should be asked to take over healthcare since the private approach is resulting in 20 to 25% cost increases annually, and less people can access care now than 20 years ago. States can't cope with this adequately.
So, taxation without representation is indeed an evil. Taxation to support an outmoded way of governing requires the citizens to rise up and dismantle that government and restructure a more fair system!
2) Can the Q Continuum communicate with the Prophets in the DS9 Blackhole? What would they talk about?
3) If you could select any of the Borg implants, what would you pick and why?
4) The Star Trek Computer voice sounds so sterile. Why isn't it made more sexy or personable? You'd think 24 century technology would be able to make facinating human interfaces.
5) Why are Star Trek hand weapons point and shoot--for hitting single targets like .38 revolvers? Some might guess that 24th century handheld weapons would be able to smartly select and hit multiple targets, adjusting lethal and stun settings for small and large targets, and would never ever work for anyone but the person who owned the weapon. Is it true that the NRA has a 24 century advocacy group?
We have the judge applying antitrust rules from the last century, within a context of a legal system and ownership laws derived from the centuries before, to a company that's only existed within the last few decades but predominates on the desktops of homes and corporations. Microsoft's is legally an old model capitalistic entity seeking as near to a monopolist market it can attain...and succeeded, well, a bit too well for antitrust considerations.
The options for legal correctives can limit and restructure, but not change the basic nature of the organization's primary goals of domination through a proprietary product line.
Even if the government gets the source, it's still not open.
Whoa, I'm trying to grok simultaneous dialation and contraction at the same time and feeling my FPU processing is bound, even much mental panic. Ok, sqr root, so what happens if it's two cars heading toward each other at light speed, each driven by Shroedinger's cat, with black holes parallel to their interception path, then they flip on their headlights, then the 4-way flashers, then the high beams and...and yes, get this...meowing and honking the horn??? How about an equation for all them photons and waves? Huh, well, smarty, got it? So what does the cat see and hear? Can SMP solve that? Hmmm, will that give Linux the left and right brain needed to solve it in parallel? Seriously and with reverence, I suggest we give Linus Torvalds the moniker 'OSmoses' for his ability to slip under the surface tension of corporate resistance and leading us away from the tyrannical monolithic slavery of pharoah Gates, where one window pane fits all views. And Sir Allen of Cox would be his rod bearer, as 'brother' Aaron. Thank you, thank you both! Just help us avoid the Golden Calf scene, ok? I'd hate to see the kernel source code tablets breaking over the false idols of gold. Apologies for the metaphoracide. wall Blessings to all net stations, PB8