SCO claims they're going after companies with whom they've already had "unsuccessful" discussions. The lesson is clear; it's dangerous to even talk to these nut jobs. Better to discard their mail and not return their phone calls.
I predict one of four things will happen with the threatened lawsuits:
They will claim that they have been successful enough without the suits and let the deadline slide by, which is what they did last time.
They will sue someone on an unrelated issue, as they did when the sued IBM for a contract dispute.
They will be told by the court that they have to settle their dispute with Novell over who actually owns the stuff before they can sue someone else for copyright infringement.
They will claim the target of the lawsuit settled without going to court. The name of the target will never be disclosed.
IBM, I believe has no interest in purchasing SCO as part of a settlement.
Not as part of a settlement, but they might buy them later. The thing to keep in mind is that SCO UNIX actually has people using it who are willing to pay to keep using it. SCO UNIX has been directionless since the end of Monterey, so I don't see them making a comeback as an independent company. But, sooner or later, someone with an established UNIX business (think HP, Sun or IBM) will check them out and come up with a dollar value for their business -- developers, customer base, intellectual property (they must have some) -- and will make an offer to buy them out. At first the customers will continue to receive service they way they always have, but -- sooner or later -- a migration plan will be developed to upgrade from SCO UNIX to the parent company's products. Customers will be nudged along as quickly as the new owners feel can be done without losing any (kind of like sheep).
SCO will not "die" or "be crushed". They will simply fade away like any company which cannot keep a profitable business going.
Which version are we talking about here? If it's a collection of first hand accounts why so many different edits?
Do you mean in edits in transmission or translation? As far as transmission goes, that's what textual criticism is for. Theoretically, critical texts should be able to cull out later edits from the original text. If you check the underlying text of modern bible translations, there are only trivial differences. Even the non-critical texts (like the Textus Receptus) don't provide a lot of ground-shaking variations from the later versions.
Translation variations are more likely to be for historical or scholastic reasons than anything else, but history plays a part as well. For example, the King James version was partly created to produce an English translation to displace the Geneva Bible, mainly because James didn't like the footnotes in the latter. But it wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it didn't pass intellectual muster. Later translations such as the Revised Standard Version and the New International Version were made mostly to clean up the older version of English and to apply textual criticism principles to the contents.
Bottom line is that they're all pretty similar and the differences that exist are pretty unimportant. Think about it; tinkering with a translation is more likely to get you laughed at by anyone who knows the language, and the languages are too well known to just muck around with. Any modern Greek can pick up a copy of the New Testament and read the original language. If he knows English too, there's not a lot of wiggle room for a biased translator to move around.
Not that people don't try. Lots of cults produce their own "interpretations", but they're just not accepted. The major translations don't have a lot of variations either in the translation or the underlying text. The big difference isn't the interpretation of the text, but applying it to real life. If you want to see an editor's bias, keep an eye on the footnotes.
Since the Middle Ages didn't start until about a thousand years after the text was already written, I think it would have been public domain even with the bone-headed extension act.
Did you look in places like this? You've gotta figure that someone has realized that there's a business in buying dead laptops for parts salvage (like they do for cars). There's another company that deals in parts for PDAs. It would already be worth more than the PDA itself to send my two year old Visor in for repairs, and that's before charging for parts, but I could get a used motherboard for twenty bucks.
but isn't that basically what the legal defense fund is?
Nope. A legal defense fund agrees to pay for your lawyers. An indemnification means you'll pay for any judgements against you. This is the worst of both worlds for SCO. It means that if they sue some dinky little Linux shop they can be up against top-notch lawyers, but without a hope of getting at the money that pays those lawyers.
The reason the big players haven't wanted to offer indemnification on SCO's terms is that it allows the possibility of SCO getting some money. Suppose IBM offered indemnification for its Linux users and one of those users -- without IBMs knowledge -- did something improper with UNIX and Linux. Depending on how the indemnification is worded, IBM could be on the hook for the legal judgement. IANAL, but I believe that the size of the judgement is often based on the defendant's ability to pay. SCO could wind up spending huge bucks in legal bills for chicken feed.
And the truly shocking part: it looks like Wall Street noticed. The story showed up in the newspapers around noon, so I figure the release must have happened a couple of hours before that. And look at what happened to SCO's stock right around ten.
I was working on a Y2K gig and we had four people who had been working for a month verifying that the UNIX system was Y2K compliant. It was late and I was trying to run a big job on a test machine that was too small to hold all the data (which was in a directory off the root). I was trying to scrape together more space by deleting old test files in the test user's home directory. Imagine my surprise when I found that some yutz had copied all the test data to the home directory. I decided to scratch the copy ("rm -rf" means delete all files and subdirectories below current directory without prompting) and get back to testing.
But now none of the tests would work. It took me a while to figure it out and then a while longer to stop swearing. The master test data wasn't in a directory off the root, as it was in production, it was under the home directory. The person who had set it up had used an alias to make it look like it was in the normal spot. I had just wiped out four man-months of work.
I explained what had happened to those in charge and -- after much wailing and gnashing of teeth (and more than a few meetings) -- it was decided that we had done quite enough Y2K testing. They declared victory and let the matter drop.
As a person pursuing a degree in higher education (dropping $100,000+ on said education) I don't feel like it would be worth it to work for minimum wage or less.
That's part of America's problem; there's no real financial aid anymore. People make a big deal about getting a "good job" when you get out of college but, if you spend the next twenty years trying to deal with a student loan, you're better off going to a trade school and banking the difference.
It's not like that in other countries. My Indian colleagues paid little of their own tuition, but it was a more rigorous process to get in. Individual talent is a national resource like any other and it needs to be used effectively.
Read anything about picking stocks and they talk about finding the "next Microsoft", a company that sells cheap but will make huge pots of money in the future. This greed for the big payoff has pumped a lot of speculative money into SCO's stock. When you read early financial analysis, it focused on what SCO would make if they got licensing rights for every copy of Linux, but there was no attempt to figure out how likely that was. That's what propelled the stock up into the $20 range. More recent analysis is more skeptical about SCO's chances and the stock has been pottering around between $17 and $18. But hope springs eternal and the speculators are hanging onto their SCO stock for the same reason people buy lottery tickets; maybe that impossible long shot will come in.
But the game's already been set and it's just a matter of waiting to see how it plays. Will SCO get anybody to cough up cash for stuff SCO doesn't own? How long will SCO be able to keep stalling the court? Will the astonishingly well-paid Mr. Boies actually show up, or will he be so embarassed that he sends in Darl's brother again? It's a bit like Superbowl XX; you knew the Bears were going to pound the Patriots into the dirt, it was just a question of how long it would take and what the point spread was going to be.
If the Linux community must bring something to the proceedings, I recommend popcorn and a drink.
Of course it's five years, and that's deliberate. If you look at IBM's white paper on the same subject, the time frame is three years. Why the difference? Because a big part of the cost of the Windows system is hardware and upgrades. If you upgrade less, the cost is lower. That's part of how Microsoft gets the answers they want for these "impartial" studies; they set up the ground rules to favor their stuff.
Now, which one is real? Ask yourself, is the OS in front of you the same version you were using in 1998?
You don't want to respond to their letter at all. The letter begs the question of whether SCO really owns the code, so it's sort of like answering the question, "Do you still beat your wife?" If you answer, you've given their legal team another piece of ammo.
You've also identified yourself as someone who can be bullied and someone who is not getting good legal advice, just the guy SCO is looking for. If SCO ever actually does sue an end user, they want someone who will pay the fee just to avoid the legal costs. That gives them the appearance of legitimacy and might lead to more people caving in. The last thing they want is for someone to fight back. A savvy lawyer will probably raise the issue of Novell's claims to the same copyright and say something like, "Gee. your honor, shouldn't we find out who really owns the code before we start paying for it?" Once that happens, the jig is up. Everyone else will make the same argument and SCO gets no money until the copyright case with Novell is settled, which could take years.
Better yet, why not just replace the old turbines with more efficient new ones over the course of a number of years? Altamont is a worst-case scenario for bird kills because it's older equipment. Modern turbines are taller and slower moving, so there are a lot fewer bird kills.
Wind farm operators and environmentalists aren't exactly natural enemies. There should be some kind of workable compromise here.
Modern turbines spin a lot slower and are situated higher off the ground, giving them much less of an impact on the local wildlife population.
And don't forget the poles. Old turbines are set on lattice towers, like high-tension phone wires, while modern ones are set on single poles. They've found that birds like to perch and nest in the towers, making them more likely to travel through arc of the blades.
SCO's view of the world is so firmly embedded in fantasy land that I'm sure they'll decide this article is actually a ringing endorsement. Witness this bit of self-congratulation about how they are recognized for "excellence in operating systems." Then compare that to the original article and see if you see the same thing SCO sees. Typically, I wouldn't think phrases like "train wreck" work out to high praise.
This isn't a levy. Since it's a payment for presumed illegal activity, it's a fine based on the assumption that anyone who would buy something as suspicious as a blank cassette must be up to no good.
It's good to see that this "innocent until proven guilty" nonsense has not infected the Canadian justice system.
I don't believe they can lay claim to the SCO name, IP, assets, etc., and still claim "But that's not really us."
Sure they can. You can buy a company's assets without buying the company. Caldera did not buy SCO, they bought some of SCO's assets, including the name. The original SCO still exist, but they've gotten out of the UNIX business and renamed themselves after their core product Tarantella.
Insofar as this interrogatory seeks information... SCO has never authorized, approved or knowingly released any part of the subject code...
Whenever I see something like this I immediately look for the weasel words; stuff that seems to say something on the first read, but says much less when you look close, giving the speaker a plausible escape if cornered by facts.
I see three examples of it here. The opening phrase allows the writer to say, "Oh, I didn't think you wanted that information." The phrase "authorized, approved or knowingly released" allows the writer to respond that any releases (note they never claim not to have released the code) were not sanctioned. And, of course the big one: "the subject code." Until SCO deigns to define what code they're talking about, they can continue to claim that any releases they authorized are not the code in question.
In spite of this, they're in for a rough time if they need to argue in front of a judge that all of Caldera's pre-lawsuit Linux work was unintentional.
SCO is suing IBM for breach of contract, nothing more, nothing less. What dows Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman et al have to do with this contract? did they sign it?
It has to do with the GPL. As part of their defense, IBM claims that SCO's claims are rubbish from the get-go because SCO distributed Linux under the GPL. If the GPL holds up in court, SCO will have a very hard time blaming IBM for distributing the same code that SCO has been distributing.
If you ask me, the ultimate in geek exercise has got to be Prop Cycle. They hooked a video game into a stationary bike and suddenly a dull ride on a motionless bike become exciting. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to think of variations -- think "Spy Hunter" with bicycles.
It sounds like the GPL is going to get an airing in court. IBM and most of the other big firms with a stake in Linux probably want that because the GPL is the cornerstone on which Linux was built. If the GPL can't handle a legal challenge, it's better to find that out sooner rather than later. This makes it pretty much guaranteed that IBM won't buy out SCO; they'd rather see the legal test through to the end and make sure their reliance on Linux being owned openly (leaving them free to sell hardware and services) stands up in court.
If the GPL stands up in court, it's SCO's case that is going to be crippled.
They'd be breaking Federal Law if they actually sold any licenses. It's called mail fraud.
No, it would be mail fraud if they had sent out invoices -- a plan which they recently scrapped. If you give them money for a license, it depends on the wording of the license. Presumably they're intelligent enough to word it something like:
This license give you the right to use the intellectual property (if any) SCO has in Linux and we promise not to sue you. And you can't get your money back in any case.
The idea is to sell insurance in case they have any intellectual property, without promising that you're buying anything of value.
There's a sucker born every minute. Usually, that's enough.
Anyway, this means the SCO v. IBM case is not likely to ever make it to court because there's *no* motivation for Darl to go that far.
Actually, he does have motivation. If he makes it obvious that the scheme is a pump and dump, he runs afoul of the SEC and shareholders, who will bleed him white with lawsuits. Even if he doesn't believe it, he has to act like he thinks the case has merit and that SCO actually does own the entire UNIX universe. A poor business decision is not a punishable offense, fraud is.
They claim the right to use and distribute that code without regard to the GPL because all code vaguely associated with an operating system is derived from the UNIX sources and is therefore their property.
The complication with that is that they have to say it out loud in open court in front of a judge. It's one thing to float wild theories in the press, it's another to try to slip it by someone with real legal training. And it's not going to be good for their stock price if the judge can't keep a straight face while they're talking.
That would be something like Digital Research suddenly claiming ownership of Windows, since it's based on DOS, which in turn was based on QDOS, which was a CP/M clone.
Funny you should mention that. Digital Research sold DR-DOS to Novell, which sold it to Caldera (now SCO) which then sued Microsoft for using their monopoly to kill DR-DOS.
Slashdot Mirror
I predict one of four things will happen with the threatened lawsuits:
SCO will not "die" or "be crushed". They will simply fade away like any company which cannot keep a profitable business going.
Translation variations are more likely to be for historical or scholastic reasons than anything else, but history plays a part as well. For example, the King James version was partly created to produce an English translation to displace the Geneva Bible, mainly because James didn't like the footnotes in the latter. But it wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it didn't pass intellectual muster. Later translations such as the Revised Standard Version and the New International Version were made mostly to clean up the older version of English and to apply textual criticism principles to the contents.
Bottom line is that they're all pretty similar and the differences that exist are pretty unimportant. Think about it; tinkering with a translation is more likely to get you laughed at by anyone who knows the language, and the languages are too well known to just muck around with. Any modern Greek can pick up a copy of the New Testament and read the original language. If he knows English too, there's not a lot of wiggle room for a biased translator to move around.
Not that people don't try. Lots of cults produce their own "interpretations", but they're just not accepted. The major translations don't have a lot of variations either in the translation or the underlying text. The big difference isn't the interpretation of the text, but applying it to real life. If you want to see an editor's bias, keep an eye on the footnotes.
Since the Middle Ages didn't start until about a thousand years after the text was already written, I think it would have been public domain even with the bone-headed extension act.
Did you look in places like this? You've gotta figure that someone has realized that there's a business in buying dead laptops for parts salvage (like they do for cars). There's another company that deals in parts for PDAs. It would already be worth more than the PDA itself to send my two year old Visor in for repairs, and that's before charging for parts, but I could get a used motherboard for twenty bucks.
The reason the big players haven't wanted to offer indemnification on SCO's terms is that it allows the possibility of SCO getting some money. Suppose IBM offered indemnification for its Linux users and one of those users -- without IBMs knowledge -- did something improper with UNIX and Linux. Depending on how the indemnification is worded, IBM could be on the hook for the legal judgement. IANAL, but I believe that the size of the judgement is often based on the defendant's ability to pay. SCO could wind up spending huge bucks in legal bills for chicken feed.
And the truly shocking part: it looks like Wall Street noticed. The story showed up in the newspapers around noon, so I figure the release must have happened a couple of hours before that. And look at what happened to SCO's stock right around ten.
But now none of the tests would work. It took me a while to figure it out and then a while longer to stop swearing. The master test data wasn't in a directory off the root, as it was in production, it was under the home directory. The person who had set it up had used an alias to make it look like it was in the normal spot. I had just wiped out four man-months of work.
I explained what had happened to those in charge and -- after much wailing and gnashing of teeth (and more than a few meetings) -- it was decided that we had done quite enough Y2K testing. They declared victory and let the matter drop.
It's not like that in other countries. My Indian colleagues paid little of their own tuition, but it was a more rigorous process to get in. Individual talent is a national resource like any other and it needs to be used effectively.
But the game's already been set and it's just a matter of waiting to see how it plays. Will SCO get anybody to cough up cash for stuff SCO doesn't own? How long will SCO be able to keep stalling the court? Will the astonishingly well-paid Mr. Boies actually show up, or will he be so embarassed that he sends in Darl's brother again? It's a bit like Superbowl XX; you knew the Bears were going to pound the Patriots into the dirt, it was just a question of how long it would take and what the point spread was going to be.
If the Linux community must bring something to the proceedings, I recommend popcorn and a drink.
Now, which one is real? Ask yourself, is the OS in front of you the same version you were using in 1998?
You've also identified yourself as someone who can be bullied and someone who is not getting good legal advice, just the guy SCO is looking for. If SCO ever actually does sue an end user, they want someone who will pay the fee just to avoid the legal costs. That gives them the appearance of legitimacy and might lead to more people caving in. The last thing they want is for someone to fight back. A savvy lawyer will probably raise the issue of Novell's claims to the same copyright and say something like, "Gee. your honor, shouldn't we find out who really owns the code before we start paying for it?" Once that happens, the jig is up. Everyone else will make the same argument and SCO gets no money until the copyright case with Novell is settled, which could take years.
Wind farm operators and environmentalists aren't exactly natural enemies. There should be some kind of workable compromise here.
I wonder what color the sky is in Darl's world.
It's good to see that this "innocent until proven guilty" nonsense has not infected the Canadian justice system.
I see three examples of it here. The opening phrase allows the writer to say, "Oh, I didn't think you wanted that information." The phrase "authorized, approved or knowingly released" allows the writer to respond that any releases (note they never claim not to have released the code) were not sanctioned. And, of course the big one: "the subject code." Until SCO deigns to define what code they're talking about, they can continue to claim that any releases they authorized are not the code in question.
In spite of this, they're in for a rough time if they need to argue in front of a judge that all of Caldera's pre-lawsuit Linux work was unintentional.
If you ask me, the ultimate in geek exercise has got to be Prop Cycle. They hooked a video game into a stationary bike and suddenly a dull ride on a motionless bike become exciting. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to think of variations -- think "Spy Hunter" with bicycles.
If the GPL stands up in court, it's SCO's case that is going to be crippled.
There's a sucker born every minute. Usually, that's enough.