My guess is that the creditors auction off SCO's assets (which include any remaining contested IP) to the highest bidder.
I furthermore guess that this bidder will be Sun, because it's a major licensee of SCO IP and would ABSOLUTELY NOT want to be in a position of having it's Solaris based on the IP of any other potential acquiror.
Then we'll have some peace for a while, as whomever ends up owning this IP will not have the stomach to continue the lawsuit; but it'll stay in some uncontested limbo forever.
Other reasons why I think it'll be Sun: Some of sun's management like to see themselves as an operating-systems-IP company. They want to own the part of SCO that IBM licensed to be better positioned in their "IP sharing partnership" with Microsoft. etc.
It's interesting to see how Amazon's playing the patent game. In some ways it looks like they recgonise it's an absurd game and are taking out all these borderline patents that wouldd be a great case study as to why patent reform is needed.
If he does take that approch, he could be seen as a great hero to your average/. guy, with quite a bit of positive PR. Wonder if this segment of the market matters enough for him to do this.
A preditor/parasite found that it's easier to keep eating if it doesn't kill off it's host completely. Small steps from there could make it benign to it's host; and further small steps can make it cooperative.
Very few people and companies customize the software or utilize the source code in any way.
In my experience that's false.
Every company I've seen that actually ships a product based on free software encounters bugs or has demands for new features, and in a minimum download patches for the stuff that often come in source format.
The only exceptions I know are the ones who buy customized open source software from support organizations (like Red Hat - and yes, they use a non-standard kernel) where the vendor they bought it from did the customization for them.
First, Sun
steps away from their wins in China because they're Linux based, and now every chance he gets he bashes free software while before the settlement McNealey claimed "We're going to immediately roll out the Java Desktop System to between a half million and a million desktops in 2004. It makes us instantaneously the number one Linux desktop play on the planet," McNealy said at the time."
Clearly (from the get the facts site) it costs even less than Linux (just kidding) -- so I'm guessing Linux won not because of cost but because of technical superiority.
The OSI (open source initiative - a california nonprofit org, funded largely by industry) & members including ESR has always been at odds with the FSF (Free Software Foundation - a massachusetts nonprofit organization, funded & staffed largely by academia) & members including RMS
regarding free/open software.
Each compete for donations, developers, mindshare, etc just like any other two organizations.
Please take anything the OSI says about the GPL, and anything the FSF says about the CDDL with a large grain of salt rubbed in the wound.
(opinionated rant: To ESR and the rest of the OSI - I don't give a damn how much Sun paid you from their Microsoft settlement to get the pattent-encumbered CDDL approved, please stop bashing the FSF and trying to divide and conquor the F/OSS community)
Thanks for the informed response to my troll [argh, I was going for a cheapshot conspiracy-theory-funny and I even said I was trolling yet I still got modded up (go figure)]
"We're actually seeing for the first time security concerns trumping 'user friendliness', which is great."
Is it great? As someone with stock in Microsoft, I wonder if Microsoft's newfound obsession with security is a poor strategic decision that really doesn't play to Micrsoft's strenghts. Computer security is really an area of expertise that really lends itself to small contained systems that are very conservative in the features they include. The bulk of Microsoft's market lends itself to feature rich (some would say bloated) applications and leading edge (some would say beta-quality) features.
Of course security is important - but consider that all businesses in all industries have to make calculated risk/reward calculations when they ballance security with other demands. For example, if Ford decided that security was the overriding principal, their cars would all have 4-point-seat belts; be armored tanks; and go only 10 MPH. Surely there are small niche demands for such features (racecars, infant-car-seats, and military); but Ford strikes a reasonable ballance between risk and reward for the core of the market. Similarly credit companies strike a careful ballance between the ease to use a credit card and the ease to steal a credit card. Much like a credit card company, it seems Microsoft would be better served by continuing to focus on the most profitable segment and like credit companies provide guarantees against loss due to their inevitable security problems.
By saying Microsoft wants Longhorn to be both feature-competitive with Linux and security-competitive with OS/390 & Solaris they're really creating a bizzare racecar+tank+HondaCivic-frankenstein that will fail at all of those goals.
Anyway, we have too many eyes from different groups going through [our] designs and actual code for people to make such[...]
Forgive me from finishing your sentence; but seeing how many features got dropped from Longhorn it seems these eyes are preventing a lot of features from getting done as well.
And of course I didn't mean to suggest that Gates and Balmer are deliberatelly telling people to inject bugs. However they are telling them to inject features (like RSS, and Internet Explorer, etc) that have no place in a secure OS. And I do believe that they are well aware of the security implications of those directions; and that they're smart enough to realize that this will help their upgrade business down the road.
One thing we often overlook is that weak security is actually in the interest of Microsoft, because it's a primary drivers of corporate upgrades.
Many businesses are still content with Windows2000; and see little reason to upgrade to Longhorn. One of the easiest buttons to push to get a CFO to approve upgrades is finding security holes in the old systems.
As long as Microsoft's business model is so dependant on bleeding it's existing customers until they're dry; I don't think it's really in their interest to stop security holes. Of course they don't want to launch Longhorn with a bunch of old IE holes that are already exploited, so they need to find new areas for this. Slowly adding new holes like RSS; where the holes may not be found for many years is perfect for the upgrade plan.
[yes, it was a troll; but I think there's a truth to the fact that security weeknesses in Windows is a major driver of upgrades]
For example, in the OO world you hear a good deal about "patterns". I wonder if these patterns are not sometimes evidence of case (c), the human compiler, at work. When I see patterns in my programs, I consider it a sign of trouble. The shape of a program should reflect only the problem it needs to solve. Any other regularity in the code is a sign, to me at least, that I'm using abstractions that aren't powerful enough-- often that I'm generating by hand the expansions of some macro that I need to write.
He goes on to reference Norvig's paper Design Patterns in Dynamic Programming
that points out that in more productive environments, many if not most of the classic "design patterns" are totally invisible in better platforms today.
If you are spending a lot of code writing stuff that fits nicely into design patterns, you'd be far better off switching to a platform (any lisp platform; any python platform; ruby/rails) that frees you from this redundancy automatically.
Another good summary of the Fogerty/Zaentz/lawsuit/LoTR background that gives Fogerty's own opinion can be found here: here
Fogerty says he is now at peace and even enjoyed one of the recent "Lord of the Rings" films despite the fact that Zaentz owns the movie rights to the underlying J.R.R. Tolkien books.
"Years and years ago, there was a really bad 'Lord of the Rings' (cartoon), and I remember thinking, 'Yeah, I paid for that!'
"But the one thing that is way more precious than money in our world is time, and I probably have a lot more time than he does," Fogerty said of the 83-year-old Zaentz.
Note that Saul Zaentz, the guy whoowns the worldwide distribution rights to Lord of The Rings is himself a litigious bastard who sued John Fogerty for soundinig similar to himself.
A nice summary is here
Fantasy owner Saul Zaentz agreed on the condition that Fogerty sign over all the rights to CCR's music to him.
Fogerty agreed, but the two already had a long history of conflict. After leaving the Fantasy label, Fogerty recorded his album Centerfield, which included the songs "The Old Man Down the Road" and "Zanz Can't Dance." Saul Zaentz immediately filed suit against Fogerty over these two songs. He claimed the first song was a copy of Fogerty's own previous hit "Run Through the Jungle" and filed a defamation suit based on the lyrics of the latter.
Fogerty settled the defamation claim by changing the lyrics and title to Vanz Kant Danz, but fought the first claim and eventually won. Zaentz eventually had to pay Fogerty's attorney's fees. However, considering that Zaentz owns the worldwide distribution rights to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy thereby earning him a percentage of the receipts from Peter Jackson's film versions, the case did not affect him much financially.
Basically, Zaentz sued John Fogerty for sounding similar to himself; and stole (for many years as the case trickled up through the courts) John's right to make his own music.
Get rid of the call centers, keep them in the country that they expect to be dealing with (UK call centers for UK clients etc)
Rather than arbitrary rules like that (there can be corrupt or sloppy UK organizations too; as well as excellent Indian ones), make the bank execs liable rather than the poor kid in india. If the bank exec who made that decision served jail time for essentially giving his customer's accounts to criminals, you bet bank execs in the future would be more careful what controls (or lack thereof) they apply on sensitive data they might hold.
IBM defends Linux in Court, which made by boss realize that Linux is a serious computing platform with (Thanks SCO!!!). This shows IBM's willingness to stand by linux within the legal system.
IBM, in a move reminicent of drug gangs, got in trouble with their
illegal graffiti across san francisco and chicago; giving IBM the street cred they needed so badly. This shows IBM's willingness to stand by linux outside the legal system.
So far I haven't seen HP breaking the law for Linux, so I can only assume IBM loves Linux more.
I trust Google to track my every move, and to archive every search/click/purchase/EVERYTHING that I ever do on line; and keep this information and slice&dice it to build up a profile that knows me better than myself.
I trust PayPal to mess up regularly; and to mix up my transactions with that of people overseas; and to occasionally lose money and occasionally find random amounts of extra money.
Viewed in this light, PayPal == anonymous cash; while Google == Big Brother. In many ways, this makes PayPal safer.
With most OS vendors shipping some sort of hypervisor that lets you run multiple OS's on a machine simultaneously, I can finally get rid of some of the extra boxes sitting around my room.
It might be nice if these could use separate CPUs, since I never know when one of them might be busy (say, getting slashdotted).
Slashdot Mirror
I furthermore guess that this bidder will be Sun, because it's a major licensee of SCO IP and would ABSOLUTELY NOT want to be in a position of having it's Solaris based on the IP of any other potential acquiror.
Then we'll have some peace for a while, as whomever ends up owning this IP will not have the stomach to continue the lawsuit; but it'll stay in some uncontested limbo forever.
Other reasons why I think it'll be Sun: Some of sun's management like to see themselves as an operating-systems-IP company. They want to own the part of SCO that IBM licensed to be better positioned in their "IP sharing partnership" with Microsoft. etc.
If he does take that approch, he could be seen as a great hero to your average /. guy, with quite a bit of positive PR. Wonder if this segment of the market matters enough for him to do this.
A preditor/parasite found that it's easier to keep eating if it doesn't kill off it's host completely. Small steps from there could make it benign to it's host; and further small steps can make it cooperative.
In my experience that's false.
Every company I've seen that actually ships a product based on free software encounters bugs or has demands for new features, and in a minimum download patches for the stuff that often come in source format.
The only exceptions I know are the ones who buy customized open source software from support organizations (like Red Hat - and yes, they use a non-standard kernel) where the vendor they bought it from did the customization for them.
Wow, in that case even Microsoft Windows is free, if you count the kid-gloves that the justice department uses in it's monopoly settlements.
> 11. Taking undue liberties; forward or overfamiliar.
And with the viruses I see windows systems getting at work, I'd say this definition counts too.
> 5. Empty: a free space.
And here I see that even Longhorn&WinFS are free.
Looking at that list, I'd say Windows is a more free OS than Linux.
How much more did that $2billion buy.
Any other ideas?
This whole thread is rediculous.
The OSI (open source initiative - a california nonprofit org, funded largely by industry) & members including ESR
has always been at odds with
the FSF (Free Software Foundation - a massachusetts nonprofit organization, funded & staffed largely by academia) & members including RMS regarding free/open software. Each compete for donations, developers, mindshare, etc just like any other two organizations.
Please take anything the OSI says about the GPL, and anything the FSF says about the CDDL with a large grain of salt rubbed in the wound.
(opinionated rant: To ESR and the rest of the OSI - I don't give a damn how much Sun paid you from their Microsoft settlement to get the pattent-encumbered CDDL approved, please stop bashing the FSF and trying to divide and conquor the F/OSS community)
That's what the practical difference between the GPL and BSD licenses represent.
"We're actually seeing for the first time security concerns trumping 'user friendliness', which is great."
Is it great? As someone with stock in Microsoft, I wonder if Microsoft's newfound obsession with security is a poor strategic decision that really doesn't play to Micrsoft's strenghts. Computer security is really an area of expertise that really lends itself to small contained systems that are very conservative in the features they include. The bulk of Microsoft's market lends itself to feature rich (some would say bloated) applications and leading edge (some would say beta-quality) features.
Of course security is important - but consider that all businesses in all industries have to make calculated risk/reward calculations when they ballance security with other demands. For example, if Ford decided that security was the overriding principal, their cars would all have 4-point-seat belts; be armored tanks; and go only 10 MPH. Surely there are small niche demands for such features (racecars, infant-car-seats, and military); but Ford strikes a reasonable ballance between risk and reward for the core of the market. Similarly credit companies strike a careful ballance between the ease to use a credit card and the ease to steal a credit card. Much like a credit card company, it seems Microsoft would be better served by continuing to focus on the most profitable segment and like credit companies provide guarantees against loss due to their inevitable security problems.
By saying Microsoft wants Longhorn to be both feature-competitive with Linux and security-competitive with OS/390 & Solaris they're really creating a bizzare racecar+tank+HondaCivic-frankenstein that will fail at all of those goals.
Anyway, we have too many eyes from different groups going through [our] designs and actual code for people to make such[...]
Forgive me from finishing your sentence; but seeing how many features got dropped from Longhorn it seems these eyes are preventing a lot of features from getting done as well.
And of course I didn't mean to suggest that Gates and Balmer are deliberatelly telling people to inject bugs. However they are telling them to inject features (like RSS, and Internet Explorer, etc) that have no place in a secure OS. And I do believe that they are well aware of the security implications of those directions; and that they're smart enough to realize that this will help their upgrade business down the road.
Many businesses are still content with Windows2000; and see little reason to upgrade to Longhorn. One of the easiest buttons to push to get a CFO to approve upgrades is finding security holes in the old systems.
As long as Microsoft's business model is so dependant on bleeding it's existing customers until they're dry; I don't think it's really in their interest to stop security holes. Of course they don't want to launch Longhorn with a bunch of old IE holes that are already exploited, so they need to find new areas for this. Slowly adding new holes like RSS; where the holes may not be found for many years is perfect for the upgrade plan.
[yes, it was a troll; but I think there's a truth to the fact that security weeknesses in Windows is a major driver of upgrades]
This is what the highly hyped partnership is all about
- web hosting,
- high-performance computing and
- security(!!!).
and here's Microsoft saying that in a few years- In a few years Windows will be competitive with Linux for clusters
- Longhorn will be "supercocmpetitive" with apache.
- One day windows will have a scripting language (msh/monad) as powerful as
/bin/sh.
Is it the case thah people can see through the fud, so they're concentrating on reality? Wow.Paul Graham said it best:
He goes on to reference Norvig's paper Design Patterns in Dynamic Programming that points out that in more productive environments, many if not most of the classic "design patterns" are totally invisible in better platforms today.If you are spending a lot of code writing stuff that fits nicely into design patterns, you'd be far better off switching to a platform (any lisp platform; any python platform; ruby/rails) that frees you from this redundancy automatically.
Lots more links on this sordid background here
Aren't there a bunch of other privacy related issues with them being non-common-carriers/
Clean dry cold air. Self sufficient oil. Great physical security
Rather than arbitrary rules like that (there can be corrupt or sloppy UK organizations too; as well as excellent Indian ones), make the bank execs liable rather than the poor kid in india. If the bank exec who made that decision served jail time for essentially giving his customer's accounts to criminals, you bet bank execs in the future would be more careful what controls (or lack thereof) they apply on sensitive data they might hold.
-
IBM defends Linux in Court, which made by boss realize that Linux is a serious computing platform with (Thanks SCO!!!).
-
IBM, in a move reminicent of drug gangs, got in trouble with their
illegal graffiti across san francisco and chicago; giving IBM the street cred they needed so badly.
So far I haven't seen HP breaking the law for Linux, so I can only assume IBM loves Linux more.This shows IBM's willingness to stand by linux within the legal system.
This shows IBM's willingness to stand by linux outside the legal system.
IBM and SGI get quite some publicity through JFS and XFS. I'm unaware if HP does similar.
HP does offer nice Debian Support; and that's what I know them best for.
Does anyone have a list of how each company contributes?
Viewed in this light, PayPal == anonymous cash; while Google == Big Brother.
In many ways, this makes PayPal safer.
It might be nice if these could use separate CPUs, since I never know when one of them might be busy (say, getting slashdotted).