SCO annouces 'jihad'

[Marsden11]

SCO acquired UNIX -- they didn't write it -- they are enforcing patents of other's work that they merely acquired for this VERY purpose.

Maybe...Let's say you are company A. You have spent years developing a very cool and useful network diagnostic tool. You had 100s of developers working on this product over the years. I run company B and have a similar tool but have been unable to grab market share. I decide to tender an offer for your company. The offer goes before your BoD which approves the deal and then to a shareholder vote. It passes shareholder with approval and now your company is mine along with all your products and intellectual property. All the effort your people have given is now ours to do with it as we see fit. We may stick our companies name on your supperior network tool. At that point it appears like my developers have done all the work and in reality hardly anything. It is the free enterprise way of business... the American way...

[jbredmound]

You know, the more I read and ponder about this, the more I think that SCO is in league with MS. I've not read that anywhere, just projecting my negative feelings on this matter - it will be tragic.

I read, in the last few days, that M$ had purchased a product or a patent that would put them "in the game".It was in a Linux-related article, and my thought was, "Uh-oh, here comes the Bill and Steve show."I just can't remember where the article was...Ominous, ominous, ominous.

[Cluttermagnet]

You know, the more I read and ponder about this, the more I think that SCO is in league with MS. I've not read that anywhere, just projecting my negative feelings on this matter - it will be tragic.

I read, in the last few days, that M$ had purchased a product or a patent that would put them "in the game".It was in a Linux-related article, and my thought was, "Uh-oh, here comes the Bill and Steve show."I just can't remember where the article was...Ominous, ominous, ominous.

Here's an article which tends to downplay the possibility that any acquisition of SCO's IP assets could provide a weapon for use against the Linux community:http://www.esj.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=463The trouble is, companies with 'deep pockets' sometimes abuse the legal system, filing frivolous lawsuits to gouge unfair settlements out of their competitors who find it cheaper overall to settle rather than risk losing in court. While buyouts may be an "...American way" of doing business, they are not necessarily a good thing. Seems like more often than not, companies purchased end up being gutted and don't provide much real return on investment. Many current American business practices including buyouts (often highly leveraged and sometimes hostile), obscenely greedy executive compensation packages, and outright embezzlement of company assets through 'creative' accounting games have shaken the confidence of the investor community to its core. It is more of a rarity where acquired companies mesh well with and complement the market share of the buyers. Even then, integration is not often 'seamless' or painless. Good people get thrown out of work for no good reason, and it is usually the snake oil merchants who still have jobs after the dust settles. The stellar disasters that were AOL/Time Warner, Enron, and Worldcom are current prime examples. Buyouts are often more about enriching executives at the expense of everyone else. This "...American way" of doing business is not something that makes me particularly proud to be an American. Often these folks buy companies only to suck the life out of them and then quickly discard them, selling off the empty husks. 'Growth by acquisition' saddles companies with mountains of debt and often weakens them. Not a problem for the greedy execs who take the money and run, but it does hurt the rest of us.

[Marsden11]

Then explain Jack Welsh and GE... Profitable for years of purchasing smaller companies. Look at their Market Cap... still number one @ 276 billion.

[Steve_H]

Here's an article of note I came across that may spread good cheer:------------------------------There is one intriguing scenario, suggested by Perens, where SCO might have a case but might have already lost it due to their own legal incompetence. Assume, as we have been, that there is proprietary Unix source code included in Linux. Assume that Linux vendors have been distributing this source code. Well, SCO is a Linux vendor too -- they announced on Wednesday that they are suspending distribution of Linux, but for years they did distribute Linux, under the same General Public License used for all Linux distributions. Since all the Linux vendors share source code, it's entirely possible that SCO was inadvertently distributing its own proprietary Unix code in its version of Linux. In that case, SCO would've already released its Unix source code into open source. SCO says, "Whoops!" the Linux community says, "Hooray!" and the English language has a replacement for the phrase, "Hoist by his own petard." I asked SCO about that scenario, they didn't have a good response. Mitch Wagner is senior editor at InternetWeek.---------------------------- Steve H

[GolfProRM]

Then explain Jack Welsh and GE... Profitable for years of purchasing smaller companies. Look at their Market Cap... still number one @ 276 billion.

Yes Marsden, it happens and it works (a lot of the time), but that doesn't make it good, right, or something to be proud of. Buying out competitors has become the "way" of American business. Instead of focusing on making a better product, companies find it easier to increase marketshare (and therefore profit) by buying out companies that hold a smaller portion of the share (often times by using the threat of running them out of business if they don't sell out). While this may be successful, it's not what capitalism was founded on. The point of a capitalistic society is to allow multiple companies to sell competing processes, therefore keeping prices down and quality up. The problem is that it rarely works that way anymore... everybody's looking for a cheaper buck!

[jbredmound]

I think that this really shows the issue for what it is, not the piracy of open source, but the piracy UPON open source.Good Read!

[Bruno]

It is a good read ! Thanks jbredmound, we don´t see you often here in the LInux forum, thanks for dropping in and posting this article ! Bruno

[jbredmound]

It is a good read ! Thanks jbredmound, we don´t see you often here in the LInux forum, thanks for dropping in and posting this article ! Bruno

You are more than welcome! My interest in "All Things Linux" is a future interest. I don't have the Chutzpah to take it on now, but I want to see it developed."Proprietary interests" will be Linux's best friends and worse enemies as all of this unfolds. First, the "hangers on" must be jettisoned. Than "value added" folks can start moving the OS into my section of the population.Have you ever heard of the EFF? Electronic Freedom Foundation, I believe. I don't have their URL, anymore, but they seemed to be a good site for information. I think they had some legal activities going on as well. I still thinks that the Linux crew will need to be more organized to fight these pirates off.

[Guest ThunderRiver]

Yeah, that's their last desparate act, which will possibly put them in extinct species. I didn't know the author of that article wrote Mutt. Unfortunately, I use PINE (developed by Washington University) more often than Mutt ;)Technically speaking it is true that hacker community own the code of UNIX, and for god sake, UNIX was first developed as a game OS, and if it wasn't hacker community's contribution, that toy OS would end up in trash can a long time ago. Nonetheless, hackers should value more with their pride rather than what they have accomplished in coding. What you have done today, someone will do better tomorrow.

[Bruno]

jbredmound,Here is the link you were after of the Electronic Freedom Foundation.I´m going over to browse the site, but legal talk is not my forte. . . . . Bruno

[Guest LilBambi]

It was barely tolerable when AT&T claimed to own our work; they at least employed the Bell Labs crew that wrote the original Unix system. But Darl McBride and his co-complainants are mere carpetbaggers who own the old codebase only by an accident of history. For them to attempt to parlay it into a controlling lock on today's Unix and Linux is beyond outrageous.We've seen a lot of abuses in the name of intellectual property rights in the last five years. What outfits like the MPAA and RIAA have done to consumers' fair-use rights is appalling. But SCO's case, if it is upheld, could be far worse. It's a power-grab against the open-source future, a direct threat to the hacker culture that keeps the Internet running and remains the only serious rival to the Microsoft monopoly.

I knew they wouldn't take it sitting down!Peachy posted the link to their OSS rebuttal document** Merging this thread with the main discussion about this. It will be a great addition to the TopicGreat article JB!

[zox]

Meet Linux's New Public Enemy No. 1 - SCO Group CEO Darl McBride:http://www.businessweek.com/technology/con..._2790_tc121.htm

[Cluttermagnet]

I think that this really shows the issue for what it is, not the piracy of open source, but the piracy UPON open source.Good Read! 

Wow! Great article, jbredmound! There's a lot of other excellent material about the SCO debacle, but Eric S. Raymond has written a brilliant piece that summarizes to near-perfection.

When...AT&T closed the Unix code (, it) went into decline and left a vacuum for Microsoft's shockingly inferior software to enter. Only with the explosive rise of Linux after 1993 did Unix recover its early dynamism.

To be fair, I should mention that Microsoft's "shockingly inferior software" has brought a lot of fun- and capability- into my computer experience. Sloppy, yes, bloated, yes, but it accomplished the valuable service of truly popularizing home computing for the masses. For that , they deserve (and have received) due credit.

[Guest LilBambi]

Ryan --You are right. It is sometimes very sad to see the turns that capitalism has taken from its roots.Bruno --Thanks for the EFF link.Here's an encouraging quote from one of the EFF articles:

"Governor Owens, in vetoing the Colorado super-DMCA bill, recognized that these bills are bad for innovation, bad for competition, and bad for consumers," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. "These MPAA-sponsored bills represent the worst kind of special interest legislation, sacrificing the public interest in favor of the self-serving interests of one industry."

That's one down Cluttermagnet --I know I have had a blast with Windows despite its shockingly inferior programming LOL! And hope to continue to have a blast with it. Like I've stated before ... I really love Windows. My beef isn't with the OS itself, its with the direction and mindset (intrusiveness, politics and control factors like DRM) that I am have trouble coming to terms with.Otherwise I love WinXP (except for their weird and inconsistent networking bugs). The OS has gotten much more stable and the OS has really taken off beautifully I think. But there are these other concerns ;)Anyway come June 30th, when my security updates to their sloppy programming in Win98se will go away, I just don't know. Depends on how reasonable they can be LOL!

[Cluttermagnet]

Then explain Jack Welsh and GE... Profitable for years of purchasing smaller companies. Look at their Market Cap... still number one @ 276 billion.

Yes Marsden, it happens and it works (a lot of the time), but that doesn't make it good, right, or something to be proud of. Buying out competitors has become the "way" of American business. Instead of focusing on making a better product, companies find it easier to increase marketshare (and therefore profit) by buying out (smaller) companies...

Reminds me of that Michael Douglas 'Wall Street' movie character intoning the mantra that is America's corporate law of survival "...greed is good..." We see, in that incestuous circle where life imitates art and art imitates life, the Enrons of the world rise out of the landscape like oversize, toxic mushrooms. The corporate battlefield is littered with the bodies of companies that were not ruthless enough and did not grow fast enough. GE may well be one of those few 'points of light' in an otherwise bleak landscape, and they may indeed have done lots of good things that made business sense, but the fact remains that they also grew up under 'survival of the fittest' conditions, and do indeed have their own share of skeletons in the closet. GE is one of those rare, century-old corporations that has hung on quite successfully.For another enlightening dip into history, research the matter of industry ripping off Colonel Edwin Armstrong, a prolific inventor in the early 20th century. RCA profited greatly from Armstrong's inventions of the superheterodyne receiver and of FM radio. Many have regarded David Sarnoff's calculated exploitation of Armstrong's IP as a prototypical example that well encapsulates the 'evil' model of industry as ripoff artist. Armstrong, despondent and virtually penniless, eventually commited suicide. Sarnoff and others went on to amass fortunes and live quite comfortably. Some ignorant (or biased) historical writers/commentators occasionally lionize Sarnoff as a 'captain of industry' type, but others have portrayed him as more of a captain of a pirate ship. RCA eventually settled a suit by his widow, but she got pennies on the dollar and RCA grew fat on the sweat of Armstrong's brow. RCA was eventually acquired by- er, ah- GE, by the way.http://world.std.com/~jlr/doom/armstrng.htm

According to ads that Microsoft ran recently in the Wall Street Journal, a country's true innovators are its companies. It's an extraordinary claim, especially from a company not known for innovation. The corporatist attitude seems to be as alive today in Microsoft as it was in RCA's and AT&T's attempts to discredit Armstrong. RCA was long ago swallowed up by General Electric, and even AT&T is fading these days, but the publicity machine lives on. Only the organization produces; the individual is just a cell in its body.

For a fascinating historical tour, do a google search on "edwin armstrong suicide". This concatenation of words will tease out the seamy side of the corporate whale in that particular chapter of history. They say that history is written by the winners, but that is not always true, due mainly to the vigorous independent media that once existed in the US (in Armstrong's time). BTW there are some whales that eat individual penguins, but they never eat the entire flock. There are plenty enough smart penguins that escape and survive.

[Guest LilBambi]

Since my Jim is an electronics technician, I was familiar with the sad story of Armstrong. Of course, that's only one of many stories like that in Corporate history, and not just in our country either. We certainly do not have a corner on that market.Tagline:Truth is often stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense.

[Prelude76]

some interesting 'food for thought' i connected. I was reading this in the Halloween Microsoft memos. particulary this quote from the second memo, a confidential microsoft memo from August 1998.

The effect of patents and copyright in combatting Linux remains to be investigated.

hmmm.. microsoft, 5 years ago, already was thinking of ways to fight linux via patents and copyrights. now i not only smell the rat, i see his head popping around this whole SCO mess.

[Guest LilBambi]

Prelude --I hear ya!Information is a powerful illuminator.

[Cluttermagnet]

The effect of patents and copyright in combatting Linux remains to be investigated.

hmmm.. microsoft, 5 years ago, already was thinking of ways to fight linux via patents and copyrights. now i not only smell the rat, i see his head popping around this whole SCO mess.

In boxing, that is called 'telegraphing your punches'. Seems there have been 'moles' in Redmond, both past and present. It probably is hard for them to keep anything confidential for long. Probably the best countermove for that is to plant competing false rumors to feed the mill, and to fuel the ones that give the best cover for their true intentions. Maybe they are better at that than they are at learning from other mistakes ("unchecked buffer"). Our government is renowned for manipulating public opinion through strategic leaking- maybe they do that too. They appear to sometimes float trial balloons and continue to fine-tune their business stragegies as withering volleys of criticism send them scurrying back to their foxholes. Maybe there's no way SCO can be their magic bullet against Linux. It sure sounds like a load of baloney at this point.

[Guest LilBambi]

Some new articles on this SCO thing today:The father of Linux says he's skeptical that the case has meritSCO's Big Score: Microsoft surprised the tech world by agreeing to license cash-strapped SCO Group's Unix technology, which is at the heart of a copyright fight over Linux.And there's the following PCWorld and ComputerWorld articles from a couple days ago as well:SCO's licensing deal with Microsoft raises user doubtsUsers Voice Doubts About SCO-Microsoft Deal - What does the software giant's licensing of Unix mean for the future of Linux?

But critics of the two companies said it's hard to believe that a vendor as powerful as Microsoft would sign a deal with SCO unless it thought the move would help keep Linux from posing a competitive threat to Windows. Microsoft "would love for corporations to believe that they will have to pay big licensing fees to SCO for using Linux," said Scott Davis, chief technology officer at Realty Times, a Dallas-based real estate Web site. Davis uses Microsoft products and wrote Computerworld about the issue. "Anyone who can interpret Microsoft's announcement as anything other than a PR ploy needs a serious reality check."Jeffrey Nicholas, a systems analyst at a large New York financial services firm that he asked not be identified, said he thinks Microsoft wants to help fund SCO's Linux-related legal actions. "The whole thing to me really doesn't smell right," he said. "It seems like it's all just too coincidental." Ken Schumack, a software engineer at LSI Logic Corp. in Milpitas, California, said in an e-mail that he sees Microsoft's involvement as a "behind-the-scenes tactic ... to try and keep Linux from taking market share. A lot of people are thinking that--especially given Microsoft's history in the past--they almost tip their hand that they're involved in some way." In a research note, Tony Baer, an analyst at onStrategies in New York, called SCO's actions "the software industry's equivalent of terrorism." Baer said he "can only conclude that the licensing of SCO Unix is Microsoft's strategy to drive a new wedge into the Linux community, a sector whose growth poses a far more formidable threat than the empty roars emanating out of SCO."

Nice to see others see the same things