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New Linux topic.  Pages: 12

TRB on Tue December 23, 2003 9:51 PM User is offlineView users profile

Just reading through Investors Business Daily and ran across this article. May not run the stuff but could buy a little stock for the heck of it. Problem I see it whom do you buy!! Red Hat or this SCO Group.

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Linux systems are cheaper than similar PCs running Windows. But that doesn't include support and migration costs. A Microsoft-funded International Data Corp. report this month found that Linux, in some cases, was more expensive to run than Windows.

Another study by Gartner Inc., also funded by Microsoft, echoed those findings.

SCO Suit Adds Uncertainty

Linux could get even more costly if SCO Group Inc. succeeds in forcing Linux users to pay license fees, which would add $199 to the cost of Linux when used on desktop PCs. That's the retail price of Windows Professional, the version designed for business users.

SCO claims to own rights to Linux and wants compensation. "

There's no free lunch or free Linux," said SCO Chief Executive Darl McBride.There are other concerns about putting Linux on PCs. For one, businesses may have trouble converting their applications to the operating system.

Linux typically includes free software that mimics Microsoft's Office with e-mail, schedule, word processing and spreadsheet programs. But they're not feature-for-feature copies and aren't always 100% compatible with Microsoft files.



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k5guy on Tue December 23, 2003 11:51 PM User is offline

Don't buy SCO. Lots of lawyers say they are going to lose and big. I expect they will be bankrupt by 2005. Novell recently filed a claim with the US Copyright office and they claim to own the Unix rights that SCO is threatening linux users with. Let's see. Redhat filed a lawsuit against SCO. SCO filed against IBM. And now it looks like Novell vs SCO. Maybe SCO is the problem? Nah, couldn't be. SCO is too busy convincing people that they own Linux, and they haven't shown 1 piece of code that comes from their beloved Unixware. Bye, bye, SCO.

I really like Redhat, but the stock is a really poor performer. Lots of people I know have taken a bath with the losses from Redhat. The recently got a new CEO, so maybe things will turn around for them. Or maybe not.


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NickD on Wed December 24, 2003 12:05 AM User is offline

Sounds like yet another legal battle:

"[The NY Times requires free registration]
The SCO Group plans to announce today that it is escalating its campaign to collect license fees from corporations using the Linux operating system, with warning letters to the companies. Supporters of Linux, including I.B.M. and other companies, say that SCO's interpretation of its claim over Linux is exaggerated.

The letters, dated Friday, are the second round that SCO has sent to corporate users of Linux. SCO sent letters to 1,500 companies in May, warning them that it contended that Linux had violated its intellectual property rights. SCO owns the rights to the Unix operating system. The company asserts that Linux, a variant of Unix that is distributed free, violates SCO's license and copyright."

"Linus Torvalds, creator of the popular Linux computer operating system, defended his work yesterday as not always lovely but original - and certainly not copied, as a Utah company has contended.

The Utah company, the SCO Group, has begun sending out a round of warning letters to large corporate users of Linux, which is distributed free. The letters, dated Friday, assert that Linux, a variant of the Unix operating system, violates an SCO license and copyright. SCO, based in Lindon, Utah, owns the rights to the Unix operating system."

Linux can be downloaded for free for more on this subject can be read at:

http://www.linux.org/

How SCO got their hands on Unix is another subject, Unix was developed in a similar open fashion as was Linux, but somehow AT&T got their greedy hands on it and skyrocketed the cost making it a dead system. Unix was supported heavily by the electronics industry in the 80's and eventually dropped, I don't know who is using it now or who would even care to.

Guess anybody can claim anything, but with IBM behind Linux, SCO may have taken on a foe they cannot defeat.

This is more fun than watching the OJ trial.

Looks like Intel is taking a neutral stance on this by offering both compilers for Windows and Linux, seeing how they could get over $1,200 for a 486 processor about ten years ago and less than a hundreds bucks today for a Xeon 2.OGHz, they are looking out after themselves.

http://www.intel.com/software/products/compilers/embedded/

Unlike the Superbowl where 50% of the fans leave happy and the other 50% sad, the playoffs being these giant corporations is a lot more interesting, because the final winner will be the consumer for a change with better products at lower prices. There certainly was greed with these corporations when PC's first hit the market.

Who am I favoring as the victor of all this, LOL, the consumer of course. I don't want to get into my old man's Chevy is better than your old man's Ford kind of a deal, LOL, that is grade school stuff.

Edited: Wed December 24, 2003 at 12:28 AM by NickD

Bigchris on Wed December 24, 2003 1:51 AM User is offline

Everything I've read about this suggests says that SCO's claims are just laughable and I've been trying to figure out what might be behind this. SCO had been a Unix supplier for quite a number of years and then began to market Linux as well. Unfortunately, they haven't been very successful with either in recent years and appeared to be fading into oblivion at the same time competitors were gaining market share. This might have started as a stunt to bring the company's name to prominence and re-establish them as a front-line Unix/Linux supplier. Instead, they're becoming an industry laughing stock by making claims that no knowledgeable person takes seriously and falling on their swords every time they go to court.

IBM has some long held principles against killing competitors but in this case SCO may do themselves in with legal expenses that wind up bankrupting the company. Not only has Novell decided they want a piece of them too, but the Linux Open Source Community has written SCO a letter explaining that SCO is in violation of the General Public License under which Linux is distributed and encouraging anyone receiving an invoice from SCO to file a civil suit against SCO.

I have a sneaking suspicion that SCO might have a silent partner in all this litigation because they just weren't big enough to take on IBM much less all their other competitors but that's probably something we'll never know.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is suing the makers of Lindows, an increasingly popular Linux based O/S, charging trademark infringement because MS says the Lindows name creates confusion and implies some connection with Microsoft. So far in that case it now appears Microsoft's Windows trademark may actually be invalid and unenforceable because the terms "window" and "windowing" were in common usage well before MS grabbed the word. Talk about falling on your sword!

k5guy on Wed December 24, 2003 2:44 AM User is offline

Actually, this is even better. We know who is behind SCO. We have the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Baystar Capital Partners that infused $50 million (US) dollars into SCO during October. We also know that Microsoft and Sun have purchased licenses from SCO. Now, what does Microsoft want to license Unix for? Hmmm.... Let's think a minute. Just on speculation, would it be to cause trouble in the Linux camp? Since they can't attack a single company, maybe they can FUD everyone into not using Linux. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Most people in the industry think that SCO is full of it. I think SCO is playing poker, badly, and bluffing. Either that, or they're incompetent. You just can't come up with the garbage they're spouting unless it's a tactic, or they're stupid. And it doesn't matter which anymore. They've had a year to come to their senses. Instead we get a constant escalation of threats.

So, they've manage to p!ss off every major corporation in the Fortune 1000, their customers, every Linux user, and thousands of geeks with too much time on their hands. If I was a CEO, CIO, or CTO of one of those companies, I'd make real sure that we had a plan to phase out SCO. I have enough problems in my daily work without a vendor or supplier threatening to take legal action over a copyright violation and then have them refuse to tell you what the violation is, or what exactly is being violated. Add to this that every IT shop that sells Linux, codes for Linux or supports Linux will be gunning for SCO. SCO is a marked man, with a price on his head.

One last thing- one of the Directors on SCO's board quit on Friday. His name is Steve Cakebread, and he works for salesforce.com, which has heavy involvement with Linux. SCO says that Mr. Cakebread has time constraints and stepped down. Mr. Cakebread hasn't released a statement. Maybe Salesforce.com got one of those letters from SCO?

The Lindows vs Microsoft is interesting. I haven't followed that one recently. In light of the Supreme Court ruling on Victoria's Secret, Microsoft doesn't have a chance.


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Edited: Wed December 24, 2003 at 3:33 AM by k5guy

k5guy on Wed December 24, 2003 3:02 AM User is offline

Quote
Originally posted by: NickD

The letters, dated Friday, assert that Linux, a variant of the Unix operating system, violates an SCO license and copyright. SCO, based in Lindon, Utah, owns the rights to the Unix operating system."

More lies by SCO.

Linux is not a variant of the Unix operating system, as stated above. I know it seems that I am splitting hairs, but Linux was written from scratch without prorietary Unix code. Basically, Linux was reverse engineered to operate like Unix, but the internals are different. Legally, it makes a difference because Linux cannot be in violation of a copyright case, if it used clean code. Since Linux's code has been placed on the web for public display since the 1990s, there is no question of it's history or evolution. More lies.

Next point. How can Linux violate SCO's license, if Linux is not a Unix licensee? Think about it. A license is a contract. It states that party A will give party B something of value, like money, but it could be something else. Party B gives party A, in exchange, a license to do something with their product. Now, does a license agreement exist if only one party agrees to it? Does a license exist if there is no exchange of value? Contract law says it does not. More lies by SCO.

Last point. Novell claims to own the rights of copyright to the Unix operating system. SCO can take that up with Novell. You should note that SCO doesn't mention that this is in dispute. More lies.

The only truthful statement there was that SCO is based in Utah.


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Edited: Wed December 24, 2003 at 3:18 AM by k5guy

NickD on Wed December 24, 2003 10:58 AM User is offline

Sounds like SCO is doing some shotgunning, nevertheless it's a pain in the butt. Copyright laws are very narrow and are limited to a verbatim copy of the works, but care must also be used in copying just a portion of a work and can be carried to the nth degree, even to using a common symbol like ">" if the plaintiffs are crazy enough.

The Copyright office doesn't even want to hear about it, and a copyright application is not verified as being an original work or anything like that, they just make a copy of it and file it, what else can you expect for ten bucks or whatever the charge is now. It's up to the courts to fight it out.

We get shotgunned with patent infringements, a more serious offense, most of these are a bad joke, would like to tear them up and pitch them in a trash can, but they have to be responded to, to avoid a court battle that can be expensive and time consuming. Many industries don't even like to fool with patents for this reason and use secrecy for production or design techniques. Another phrase for a patent is an invitation to a lawsuit. The patent office certainly isn't foolproof when awarding a claim, any bit of public information, however remote can kill a claim in court, the patent office to an extent is limited by their own backlog of previous patents, and now with over six million patents issued, it's getting to be a madhouse.

So are there any patents on Unix? How did SCO get so control of this once universal operating system and was once in the public domain? Are they just claiming copyrights on this OS, and if so, which portion, certainly Linux is not a verbatim copy.

SCO's 1500 some odd letters using scare techniques may get one or two to think they have to pay licensing fees, but if all 1,500 recipients join together is a common ground lawsuit, they would have definitely bit off more than they can chew. I would like to see Unix as originally intended, a public domain OS.

Maybe SCO's actions may backfire and this age old battle will come to a climax once and for all.

calairematt on Wed December 24, 2003 12:51 PM User is offlineView users profile

sound similar to the Trevor Law Firm... they go around with extremely minor complaints from BAR and try to sue or "settle out of court" for $5,000.00 to a mom and pop shop. then in the end the law firm gets the money and the customer that made the complaint to the BAR never new action was taken on their behalf and never see a dime but they are the whole reason for this "extortion law". It sounds like SCO is just trying to make a buck off all the people that dont want a court battle. Thats how the Trevor law people worked and finally got stopped after a truck load of bad press and i think 12 million dollars later. I think i could sell my soul for 12 mill.

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Independent shop parts and airconditioning specialist.

Bigchris on Wed December 24, 2003 1:07 PM User is offline

Once you put a legal ball like this on the playing field, the lawyers come out of the woodwork and they will try to keep the ball in motion for as long as they can collect fees. The only reasonable explanation that I can see for doing such a thing is to create confusion to try to delay the spread of Linux.

Presently, the Fortune 500 isn't concerned and is continuing to install more and more Linux servers. That probably accounts for why SCO keeps trying to escalate their case to include more users, now including even their own customers. They are frantically trying to lie down in the road in front of Linux but the more frantic they get, the more ridiculous they look.

As Nick points out, this should be a fun battle to watch, especially now that Novell has stepped in. SCO claims that Linux users are violating Unix trademarks that SCO bought from Novell for $100 million. Novell says SCO doesn't own the trademarks. Until SCO can prove they own the trademarks they'd be nuts to go to court against any Linux user because the case would be thrown out. So SCO logically needs to fight the Novell battle first but their somewhat limited legal and PR teams have been focusing all their energy on the Linux crowd.

Filing a trademark is a pretty trivial action and doesn't mean much but Novell has filed trademarks against intellectual property that SCO claims to own and that is a big deal because if Novell is wrong they've committed fraud. Clearly Novell thought long and hard before taking that action and must have a war chest to back it up. It's also interesting that Novell has not made any claims against Linux, only against SCO! I wonder if Novell has a silent partner too!

It would be so much easier to follow if they handed out white and black hats!

k5guy on Wed December 24, 2003 1:19 PM User is offline

So far, SCO hasn't raised any patent issues. The reason is that IBM owns the patents. SCO is claiming rights on the OS and any derivative works. So, if you take something from the OS and improve it, SCO claims a right to it, but not ownership. I guess the courts will decide what rights SCO really has.

Unix was originally developed by Bell Labs in 1969, by two guys, now famous in Unix history, by the names of Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. AT&T didn't think much of the new operating system from these guys. But the researchers at Bell liked it. Its popularity began to grow. A guy by the name of Bill Joy used the system, and put together some compilers for it (pascal) under a free license from UC Berkeley (BSD). Bill Joy later became the senior technical person at Sun. Lots of people added stuff and contributed to Unix. These were researchers wanted to get features that they could use in an OS. The climate was one of openness.

Later DARPA noticed Unix. DARPA is the research arm of the US military. They waned a national computer network. At the time, each vendor had it's own proprietary system, and other vendor's computers couldn't communicate together. Also it was difficult to port software from one machine to another. Different machines had different compilers, operating systems, and even the syntax within the same language was different. DARPA wanted to fix that. So they funded UC Berkeley and some other research centers to work on this problem. Berkeley Unix was born. Berkeley released this under the free BSD license. I think Bell Labs was also under grant from DARPA to work on this.

Around 1992, the two Unix versions collided. USL, a company mostly owned by AT&T, and BSDI, a company selling a packaged version of Berkeley Unix filed suit in court. USL claimed copyright violations. Later it came out that USL had stolen some files from BSD. So they ended up settling out of court. Some of the agreement is still sealed. Much is not. However, UC Berkley still has the rights to release their Unix for free. AT&T could still sell their Unix, called System V.

USL later sold the rights to System V Unix to Novell. Even later, Novell some rights to SCO. What rights were sold to whom? Novell, IBM and SCO know. They have the agreements.

Linux was originally written in 1991. Over time, it has picked up lots of code from Berkeley Unix, with the original Berkeley license.

It seems that SCO didn't like the outcome of the USL vs BSDI case, and wants to have another trial of that case. What makes this case interesting is that most of the Unix vendors cooperate with each other, or at least don't file lawsuits against other Unix vendors. SCO has changed all that. They have this Napoleon syndrome that makes them think that they have the right to disrupt what is now an industry, and no consequences will follow. Waterloo is coming.


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k5guy on Wed December 24, 2003 1:23 PM User is offline

Novell recently bought SuSE, the #2 rated version of Linux in the world. Novell is protecting its assets by protecting Linux. Also filing bad copyright statements with the US Copyright office is perjury. I don't think Novell would do that without some facts to back them up.

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Bigchris on Wed December 24, 2003 1:29 PM User is offline

I can think of two reasons MS needs Linux licenses.

They're fronting their corporate network with a Linux server farm to protect their corporate assets.

They're developing MS Linux the same way they developed MS Java and for the same reasons.

Edited: Wed December 24, 2003 at 1:30 PM by Bigchris

k5guy on Wed December 24, 2003 2:37 PM User is offline

It seems that Wall Street is getting the message. Here is an outlook from Decatur Jones.

SCO Outlook - PDF

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Bigchris on Wed December 24, 2003 4:03 PM User is offline

I think it's great that SCO has David Boise heading their legal team. He was a great help to Al Gore. But when their legal expenses exceed their revenues they'll have a tough time hanging on to him.

NickD on Wed December 24, 2003 4:29 PM User is offline

From Chris's comment about MS backing SCO, I asked my Linux kid about this, he almost flew off the handle stating that MS invested $50 million into SCO to help kill Linux. True or false? This article may shed some light on the subject:

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020472,2134917,00.htm

Other investment firms are involved including the Canadian National Bank.

This is going to be an interesting case just in code witting in general, I took a university course in code writing about 20 years ago. The professor gave an assignment and if you wanted to pass, your program had to work, if your program was short, sweet, and direct, you would get a higher grade, if it was long poorly organized, but still worked, you would still pass, but with a lower grade. If it didn't work at all, you failed. The point being that with 30 kids (including me, LOL), is how similar the programs were, even though no two were identical, the professor wasn't that stupid to read 30 identical programs from 30 different students. Same with the so called professionals, given the same application, the end result has to do, essentially the same thing and it has to be based on the standards of the industry to make different written programs, even that more identical.

The key to any legal battle, I get more involved with product liability suits than IP is to find a potential culprit with money regardless of what involvement that potential culprit had with the case, the more money involved, the more is the emphasis to go against the company or individual.

In this IP case, money is the major and only reason to take any legal action, screw the principle behind it, attorneys only work on principle in the movies. I suspect that MS has a vested interest in all this, and it sounds like MS is not buddy buddy with the likes of HP or IBM.

"The deal also confirms his suspicion, he says, that the software giant (MS), has been a force behind SCO's legal push. Microsoft has denied that charge. "This benefits Microsoft more than anything else. Microsoft does a little Unix work, but not much," Perens said.

Bigchris on Wed December 24, 2003 7:47 PM User is offline

Sounds to me like some of your smarts rubbed off on your son!

If you think about it, there has been bad blood between IBM and MS since the original DOS deal. Why do you think IBM sold PC-DOS against MSDOS?

Now the two are in a proxy war because IBM peed in MS's soup by pushing Linux instead of MS software. MS needs SCO to front for them because they know they can't badmouth Linux and then turn around and sell it themselves. IBM will help Novell any way they can to cut the legs out from under SCO. MS made IBM regret riding the OS/2 pony and now IBM has a willing army of Linux-loving MS haters to put some hurt on old Bill.

Stay tuned, this is going to be fun!

PS: I just saw this and had to share it. Looks like SCO will need a change of venue...outside the US! The courts too

Edited: Thu December 25, 2003 at 12:12 AM by Bigchris

NickD on Thu December 25, 2003 9:02 AM User is offline

What a sue happy industry, software that is, it's crazy. While this industry is more intangible than others, they are still providing a product.

Take any other industry for example and go shopping with a young child, if you are looking for toasters, washers, refrigerators, TV sets, etc., that child would not have any problems in telling the difference between a toaster and a refrigerator, but would have problems in telling one toaster from another as they pretty much all look the same. Even in automotive styling, place any model year car at the length of a football field and hire the best experts in the world to tell exactly which model is which, they all gook pretty much the same.

But yet you don't hear nor read about constant suing in these industries, the software folks must really be paranoid, and not one of them had much to do with developing the hardware we use today. Phillips and Sony developed the CD ROM, Sony the 3.5" floppy, and everyone is making these drives nowadays, certainly not a very attractive market to enter.

I was surprised to learn that MS holds 2920 patents, but that is since day one of Microsoft Corporation, companies like Ford, Toyota, GM get awarded that many patents in a year. Ha, but most of these patents are not the least bit earthshaking like using a rivet to hold a head in place. MS patents are for the most part, obvious in software routines to do a specific well known task, but at least they have some, the SCO sue happy group doesn't even hold one patent. Ha, and the rights they did purchase from AT&T where was AT&T granted a perpetual license, they want to change all that.

Many products have switched to the microcontroller to do the most simplest of functions, why? Because these controllers sell for pennies and you have management demanding they be used. This is a constant argument in the engineering world, these things still run programs, byte by byte and are subject to all kinds of delays and glitches and consequent crashes where a direct hardware solution may be a much better solution. This is slowly changing as ASIC development is becoming cheaper each day, even in low volumes, but is a far more direct approach to doing a function than screwing around with a processor plus trying to interface it with the outside world.

We are seeing now in the automotive world where the software can be reprogrammed, but in such a way, the DIYer and independent shop is being squeezed out, here we go to court again.

I was on the MS site several years ago, for a long time I had to load DOS 6.0 then the upgrade on top of that, MS was giving away the full version of DOS 6.22 that filled up two floppies to make loading much easier. MS isn't so bad. But I see they don't offer that anymore.

Edited: Thu December 25, 2003 at 10:13 AM by NickD

k5guy on Fri December 26, 2003 3:05 AM User is offline

Quote
Originally posted by: BigchrisPS: I just saw this and had to share it. Looks like SCO will need a change of venue...outside the US! The courts too

Yeah, I saw that on Wednesday. Too bad the court in Utah isn't switching to Linux! It's been a slow news day. The biggest thing I saw was a big industry yawn to Microsoft's royalty plan on licensing for FAT. I am more concerned about Jennicam shutting down on Dec 31st!

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Bigchris on Fri December 26, 2003 3:46 PM User is offline

Sorry to hear about Jennicam but maybe that's just a prelude to "Jennicam The Movie". Or maybe even "The Best Of Jennicam Volume 1" on DVD from Time/Life!

MS's licensing announcement smells like a company with cash flow problems. With desktop sales off the last couple of years and corporate america a little hesitant to eat the costs of upgrading to XP, server software being hurt by Linux and the schedule for the XP replacement slipping, their marketing group is looking at a long dry spell. So when marketing says "What can we sell?" corporate says "Licenses, patents and whatever else that is not nailed down!" It's not a new story but it's never pretty.

Edited: Fri December 26, 2003 at 3:56 PM by Bigchris

k5guy on Sat December 27, 2003 4:30 AM User is offline

Microsoft claims that they won't see any real revenue from this. They claim in their projections to disregard any income this might bring in. Smells like dead fish to me. What are they up to?


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Bigchris on Sat December 27, 2003 12:11 PM User is offline

Let's see...
Money
Intimidation
Control
Revenge
O ? Your turn.

k5guy on Sat December 27, 2003 3:08 PM User is offline

Obsolecence
Suppression
Obfuscation
FUD
Total World Domination

"What are we doing tomorrow?"

"The same thing we do everyday, Pinky. Try and take over the world."


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Bigchris on Sat December 27, 2003 8:41 PM User is offline

That's great K5Guy! Now let's get it embroidered on a pillow for Tim to use during those allnighters when he's trying to install those security plugs and service packs.

k5guy on Sun December 28, 2003 2:46 AM User is offline

LOL! Yeah, patching my system is just awful.{NOT!} I have to read this mail that comes in and tells me that my system was updated. What a pain! I used to get more hands-on time when I ran Windows. Maybe I should switch?



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Edited: Sun December 28, 2003 at 2:47 AM by k5guy

Bigchris on Tue December 30, 2003 1:35 AM User is offline

I hope you're referring to gender, it would be less painful.

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