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| Darl McBride-Dan Farber ZDNet Interview - Transcript |
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Monday, March 15 2004 @ 12:37 AM EST
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Here is the transcript of the Dan Farber interview with Darl McBride at the Sand Hill Group's Software 2004 conference in San Francisco, which Groklaw has been given permission to transcribe. Our thanks to Mr. Farber and ZDNet and the Sand Hill Group. Thank you, too, to rakaz and doughnuts_lover for helping arrange for the transcript and for helping me to transcribe it.
The video is here if you wish to follow along.
What stands out from the legal perspective is what he lets slip about being in competition with Red Hat, expecting that the result of the lawsuits will be that SCO will pass Red Hat once again. They argued strongly in their reply to Red Hat's complaint that they were not competitors, that Red Hat had no standing, wasn't involved with the kernel, just wasn't affected by the SCO challenge in any relevant way. Yet here, McBride says: If you remember SCO back
in the eighties, nineties, was the leading brand for UNIX on Intel. If you think
about it in a horse-race metaphor, the UNIX on Intel race was going, SCO was way
out ahead. As you head into early 2000s, all of a sudden SCO comes back to the pack
and Red Hat shoots past it. OK? And now we are back on our horse and gaining ground
again in some major, albeit probably small compared to Red Hat, but at the end of the day,
that is the race. Now the question that it is going to come down to you is, we get
through the court system and get our claims heard and the jury comes back with the
verdict we expect to get, then you're going to see it come back in the other way.
We're going to catch up and pass Red Hat again. If I were analyzing this for an attorney, that's where the stickie note would go. They are suing end users so that Red Hat's business will be reduced in favor of SCO, and Red Hat has no standing to bring Lanham Act claims?
Here's what their lawyers argued: Contrary to the assertions in Red Hat's answer brief, it has not stated (and cannot state) a prima facie case under the Third Circuit's Lanham Act test because of one incontrovertible fact -- Red Hat has no ownership or proprietary interest in the Linux 2.4 and 2.5 kernels that are the subject of SCO's lawsuit against IBM -- indeed no one has such an interest.. . .
Red Hat's alleged interest in the Linux 2.4 and 2.5 kernels is too indirect, too remote, and too disconnected from any ownership or proprietary control to show a sufficient economic interest in the 'product' under the Lanham Act. . . . Stansfield v. Osborne Industries, Inc., 52 F3d 867, 873 (10th Cir. 1995) (standing for false advertising claim requires plaintiff to be a competitor and allege a competitive injury; with the freely distributed Linux kernels, Red Hat is not a competitor, cannot allege competitive injury and has no standing). The other thing that stands out is where he asks the audience to do a search on Google and find "independent" attorneys attacking the GPL. Those independent attorneys, whoever they are, aren't "independent" like the "independent" ha ha analysts on Microsoft's "We're cheaper than Linux" web page, are they? Finally, this interview makes clear that they have based their attack on the GPL on a misreading of its terms. The GPL does not forbid making money from software. In fact it encourages it. His slur that the goal is zero price is either a gross misunderstanding or a cynical way to cause a lot of time-consuming trouble and FUD about the GPL. Take your pick. Here is what the GPL FAQ says about that very question, and now that Mr. McBride has told the world he reads Groklaw, he can not plead ignorance from this day forward on this point: Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)
Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site?
Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide "equivalent access" to download the source--therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary. And while we have his attention, allow me to draw attention to this question and answer: Who has the power to enforce the GPL?
Since the GPL is a copyright license, the copyright holders of the software are the ones who have the power to enforce the GPL. If you see a violation of the GPL, you should inform the developers of the GPL-covered software involved. They either are the copyright holders, or are connected with the copyright holders. They might like to inform their lawyers about that, since their most recent legal document filed in the IBM case shows a lack of deep understanding of this point. We have tried to be accurate, and any mistakes are ours, not those of Mr. Farber, ZDNet, or the Sand Hill Group. If you see any errors, do tell us, so we can perfect the transcript. That would be errors in transcribing, as we are not responsible for any errors on Mr. McBride's part. I have already denied his false charge that IBM sponsors Groklaw. It does not. I await his public apology, naturally.
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Dan Farber (DF): You have an announcement today that you've signed up a
licensee called EV1Servers.net.
McBride: Right.
DF: And I was talking to the CEO of the company backstage, and he said the
reason that he signed up for this was because he felt like he got an insurance policy.
McBride: Right.
DF: So why would anyone need an insurance policy?
McBride: Well, I think you start with, I mean, to make sure we're on the same page here to
start off the discussion, SCO owns the UNIX operating system. We have claims
out there that our code is showing up in Linux, and we are in the process of
working our way through the court system there. In certain cases, we've actually had
Linux community members come back and say, There is code in there. It
wasn't supposed to be there. We took it out. So by definition, there is some
level of tainting already going on with Linux.
DF: But how much code are we talking about? I have seen the numbers
that say 20 percent of the code of Linux...
McBride: Right.
DF: ...is owned by SCO. On the other hand, what we've heard is that
some of the code -- actually most of the code -- actually comes from IBM and wasn't
part of UNIX System V, and that the code that's been taken out is a
few hundred lines at most.
McBride: I think the part the people have said that they have taken out definitely categorizes as the couple of hundred lines, but it definitely creates a situation where there is code in there that wasn't supposed to be there. There is a few million servers around the world. EV1 today took down a
license. They don't need to worry about the next year, eighteen months,
what's going to happen through the rest of this battle. See, what's going to happen they're s...
their customers are now safe. In the case of the derivative works, we are not claiming to own IBM's derivative works. We claim to have a title ownership.
It's a little bit like if you have a property and then running through the back,
you have a utility easement. Our claim is around the utility easement, not on the
whole property.
DF: Well, I've heard it described differently. It's like if I wrote a song
for a movie.
McBride: Right.
DF: And that the movie company would then claim ownership of that song
and therefore as a derivative work, you know, I would have no rights to it as the
author.
McBride: Well, our view on it is very clear. If you look at our contracts -- we have them posted at our website -- if you go read them, basically when someone takes a work and derives it, extends it, then they have responsibility to treat that work as though it's the product itself that we licensed to them, in this case System V.
DF: Let me ask you this. In your filings before the SEC you say: "Our SCOsource initiative is unlikely to produce a stable or predictable revenue
stream for the foreseeable future. Additionally the success of this initiative
may depend on the perceived strength of our intellectual property rights and
contractual claims regarding UNIX, including the strength of our claim that
unauthorized UNIX System V source code and derivatives are prevalent in Linux." Now this sounds to me that the claims that you are making are not necessarily proven even to yourselves, given that you put this statement into your filings.
McBride: Again, I think if you look at the claims we have out there, there
are a variety of claims, and what that is in reference to is not everything that we
have out there.
DF: So what are the claims that you feel are bulletproof?
McBride: Well, OJ is walking around free, so I guess nothing is
bulletproof. [laughter, applause] But with respect to the claims that we feel very strongly
about, Dan, we feel very strongly that in twelve months from now, a courtroom
in Utah with 12 jurors are going to come back and say, We
agree with your reading. I mean it's not really a complex case.
You read the contract verbiage -- I got it right here -- it's not that complicated.
We have a lot of faith that a Utah jury is going to come back to that conclusion.
DF: Well, if it's not that complicated, how come that armies of lawyers
and people picking over the code and people talking about, Well, have you read
AT&T's newsletter...
McBride: Right.
DF: ...the echo newsletter that says that the derivative works...
McBride: Right.
DF: ...are granted to the individuals who create them?
McBride: We'll be glad to take our contracts against the newsletter.
OK? If you look at what the newsletter is claiming, it's claiming that you, in
fact, own the derivative work. We've said that from the very first filing in the
IBM case. IBM owns their derivative works. That's what the newsletter says.
We're saying we have an easement through the back of the property.
DF: You have a backdoor basically into everybody's code.
McBride: I wouldn't call it that, per se, but I say we have absolutely
property rights.
DF: Well, but you can extract a toll.
I mean one of the questions is, you know, were you sold the Brooklyn Bridge or
do you actually have the code? Now if it's indeed the Brooklyn Bridge, and you
are trying to charge a toll for it...
McBride: Right.
DF: ...that's a major problem. [laughter]
McBride: Well, you know it's a, it's a good question that came up here.
David Berlind wrote this article a couple of weeks ago, 'Did SCO Buy the Brooklyn
Bridge or UNIX?'. We like to think we bought UNIX, because the contract says we
bought UNIX.
DF: But the ... Well, we are getting into all that legal mumbo jumbo,
but the Novell people are saying that the contract that you had allowed
you to get the copyrights and IP, but that you didn't do it, and therefore
it's not yours.
McBride: So if you take the Novell contract, it is a lot of legal mumbo
jumbo, but one thing that a courtroom, a judge, or a jury can certainly
understand is this part right here, under the assets that we bought that says
"All rights and ownership of UNIX and UnixWare, including all versions." OK,
I think I understand that.
DF: All right, all rights except A, B and C which they list.
McBride: "All rights and ownership of UNIX and UnixWare." Now if you go to
the one thing they will claim, 'Oh, you didn't get the copyrights'. OK? Well
fair enough. There is a part in there that says the copyrights didn't
transfer over in the first pass. But a year later, there is an Amendment 2
that shows up and says, "Oh, in addition to everything you got a year ago, all
copyrights are now transferred over for UNIX and UnixWare." OK? So that's why
we filed a a complaint against Novell last month...
DF: The slander of title.
McBride: The slander of title. OK? They have come out and tried
to say they own UNIX, and we, you know, what did we pay hundreds of
millions of dollars for?
DF: Well, apparently that's up for the courts to decide or some other
venue.
McBride: Right.
DF: But it still seems to me that if you're asking people to pay a
license of $699 or $100 or whatever it is, that given the uncertainty as to whether SCO owns this or not, why should anyone pay?
McBride: Right. Let's go back to the baseline of when we started this
program. We came back, and the Linux community first said, "Look, if your
code is in Linux, please show us where it is. And we want to do something
about it." So we came out, laid some code down, they came back and responded
and said: "Oh, that wasn't supposed to be in there. We're gonna take it out."
OK? Then we had customers saying, "Well, can we take a license? We want to
keep using Linux. But could we just take down a license so we just, so we can
keep running it?" We said, Sure, here is a license. So now we're in a situation
of enforcing our intellectual property and...
DF: Your, your *alleged* intellectual property. [laughter]
McBride: Well ... it's, it's, we've, you know, we either paid millions of
dollars for something or we didn't.
DF: Whether you made a good deal or somebody else, Caldera
or some other company, years ago made a good deal or not, that's a
separate question from whether or not you actually own the rights.
McBride: Sure. And believe me we, we'll be glad to see where that goes. The customers are
stepping up. So in the case of EV1, Robert March, the CEO there, did a bunch of
work with his customers. Customers are coming in, they were doing focus groups.
And his whole goal is to have a data hosting environment that's very
certain, very reliable, very safe. And one thing that kept popping up was this
issue of being safe on the SCO issue. And he said, Look we're going to be totally safe.
We're gonna take down one of these licenses.
DF: But it's certainly -- you know, that's a nice company, 70 million dollars
in revenue, but it doesn't represent much of the universe of Linux servers.
McBride: Sure.
DF: In fact Linux is continuing to grow at an incredible rate.
McBride: Right.
DF: 63 per cent [inaudible] year growth... [1]
McBride: Right.
DF: ...at the end of 2003. So you're really not kind of stopping.
In fact, IDC says it's going to be a breakout year for Linux. And when I talk to
Gartner, they say what are the concerns if you're a Linux user, they say,
well, there is a moderate concern about SCO but not a major one.
McBride: Right.
DF:So it seems like your message isn't getting through.
McBride: You know, we're basically enforcing our property. And there are going to be some companies that -- The one study I saw said 80 percent of the companies out
there were not concerned about it. 20 percent were. So basically what's that? One in five are concerned.
DF: I haven't seen that research. But clearly if you have a win, it's a big
windfall. People are saying your stock could go to $200, which would be nice
for your investors.
McBride: Well, let's backtrack just for a moment. If you remember SCO back
in the eighties, nineties, was the leading brand for UNIX on Intel. If you think
about it in a horse-race metaphor, the UNIX on Intel race was going, SCO was way
out ahead. As you head into early 2000s, all of a sudden SCO comes back to the pack
and Red Hat shoots past it. OK? And now we are back on our horse and gaining ground
again in some major, albeit probably small compared to Red Hat, but at the end of the day,
that is the race. Now the question that it is going to come down to you is, we get
through the court system and get our claims heard and the jury comes back with the
verdict we expect to get, then you're going to see it come back in the other way.
We're going to catch up and pass Red Hat again.
DF: So your goal is to pass Red Hat? A 100 million dollar company that
sells a Linux. Now you used to sell Linux.
McBride: Yes, we did.
DF: And in fact you still use some open source code in products that
you ship today.
McBride: Right.
DF: Such as the Samba...
McBride: We haven't any claims on Samba or some of these other projects. We are very
specific about Linux. Linux replicates UNIX. We own the UNIX operating
system. Linux is replicating it. When you go to Barnes & Noble and buy a book
on how to program in Linux it says, 'How to program in UNIX/Linux'. When you
read the book, it's not two different sections. It's the same book.
DF: But there is a very long history. You are talking about System V.
But what about Ancient Linux and previous versions where you go back to
BSD?
McBride: Sure.
DF: So it's not as cut-and-dried as you make it out to be.
McBride: Well, very clearly there are portions that have been made
available in the public domain that we would agree with. OK? Just as clearly there
are advanced versions of UNIX that people have paid a lot of money for.
If you look at how much money IBM and HP and all of the big vendors have paid over
the years, they paid that in the face of understanding that there was a public-domain element to UNIX. Look at how much McNealy paid. You know, he's paid over a hundred
million dollars over the years. OK? That was for versions for System V that
came from AT&T that were different from the ones that were running in the BSD environment.
DF: But that's presuming . . .
McBride: He had Bill Joy working there. Bill Joy was one of the guys who
put BSD together, and they took down a license for all this, so . . .
DF: That was prior to Linux and obviously they have a vested interest
in Solaris, and they have actually given you money for a licence, as has
Microsoft, so you have the two people who really aren't big fans of Linux paying a
huge portion of your revenues right now. In fact, Microsoft paid, like, 12 million
dollars so far out of a 25 million dollar quarter. And some people would
even say that Microsoft is behind SCO, but I find that very hard to believe, because with David Boies on your side and Bill Gates on the other side, that
seems impossible. Those two could never get together after the skewering that
he got.
McBride: Yeah, so it is an interesting setting that you're looking at, and obviously
I hear the same conspiracy rumors that are out there that you're
hearing. But I can tell you from a personal standpoint, being in the
the driver's seat on these deals, you know, that there is none of that
going on.
DF: Let me ask you. You missed a deadline on February 18th where you were supposed to have a suit against a user, a company that is a big user of Linux,
and bring to mind Amazon, Google, Verisign -- just to name a few.
McBride: Right.
DF: Are you about to pop on that one?
McBride: Right, so.. David came out in February or in November -- I'm
sorry -- and said within 90 days expect to have a lawsuit out. That
would have been February 18th. We missed by a couple of weeks. The first one won't actually show
up until tomorrow.
DF: Tomorrow.
McBride: Right.
DF: So can you name the company that you are going to be suing?
McBride: I can't go into that right now. There are actually a couple of factors
right at the end here, but tomorrow we'll have that announcement out.
DF: And does this company know at this time that they're about to be
hit by a lawsuit?
McBride: Only if they're a palm reader. [laughter]
DF: OK, so tomorrow is going to be an interesting day. So by "palm reader",
are you inferring that the company that deals with the Palm platform is going
to be your target for tomorrow? [laughter]
McBride:[laughs] If they can read the Palm...No. What it comes down to is, we have had multiple communications
with a handful of companies that have kind of come down to the finish line
here with where we will start with the end user litigation. And so when I say they won't
know it's coming -- they will absolutely know, we have been in communication with them, we've gotten to the point
where you know we are where we are now, and now it's time to move to the litigation
part of the enforcement.
DF: And is this a company with, bigger than EV1servers.net or . . .?
McBride: Yes.
DF: So it's a major company who everyone will recognize?
McBride: Yes.
DF: That's not Palm.
McBride: No. It's not Palm. And it is one that everyone will recognize.
DF: I have a question just about the licensing, separate from whether
people should actually acquire a license given the uncertainty about whether
your claims are valid or not.
McBride: Right.
DF: Which is why charge $699? Why not say, We are not out to really capture a
huge market or have the same license fee as other server software.
Why not charge 50 dollars or 100 dollars?
McBride: Yeah. Well, if you take the value proposition of our core UNIX offerings
and compare that to where Linux is, you're basically getting the same thing.
We have priced this at a discount of where we are typically selling our UNIX servers. You know we'll start at 800 dollars and go up to a few thousand, depending on the configuration.
DF: But if you don't make the distribution, then why should you pay a
full server license?
McBride: Right. So what we came back with was, look... if some ...
the question came to us, we aren't the ones who started the licensing deal, it's based on the customer, if the customer comes to us and says, "Hey, if I can keep running Linux, what would it take
to keep you guys happy?" We took a discounted price over where we were, but it
was enough that the ticket would be fine. We do have an annual feature where if you want to pay a 150 bucks a year instead of the 699, then that works for us too. We have introduced that just recently.
DF: So you're -- right now you have specials on for the licenses? You
know, you get your license by this time, we'll give you a very special deal?
McBride: No, we are trying to take this pretty seriously. We have gone, we've
had a handful, a handful of companies sign up. A major deal
we just signed up that is material for us that we just announced this morning.
And we have taken a lot of care in moving through this process on the
enforcement side of it, especially with respect to the litigation that's going to
start tomorrow. So we put the licensing plan out there, we said you know take
this. But some customers have said, "Look, we want to see the claims heard
in a courtroom." Then tomorrow, that's we're going to say: "OK, let's go to
court and let's get your claims heard."
DF: Let's talk about some of the other issues. One is the flavor of
the argument that's going on that's fairly contentious. It's almost a
religious type of argument.
McBride: Right.
DF: For example, Linus Torvalds has said that "They are a cornered rat,"
referring to SCO, "and I think they have rabies to boot." [laughter] And here is a remark
that you made: "IBM is the master of creating an illusion that they're being
attacked by this big, brutal bully, SCO, when they are the ones are attacking us.
They are the ones who are doing all the behind-the-scenes work." Now, I don't see a
lot of comment from IBM, maybe they are doing some behind-the-scenes work.
But it seems like most of what's been played out has been played out from SCO in terms of trying to characterize, you know, your claims versus the claims of
the Linux community, which seems to be the voice of those who
oppose.
McBride: But you would agree that there are people that are boisterously attacking us in
the marketplace?
DF: Yes, and in fact of denial-of-service attacks.
McBride: Right. I read there in USA Today this morning the MyDoom.f
version is out there now attacking RIAA and Microsoft and somebody else. So this
thing keeps going on and on. You know, I think with respect to the organizations
that are out there attacking us, there are absolutely very strong links into
IBM. I mean...
DF: Well... how ...
McBride: OSDL. OSDL is very strongly funded by IBM. OK?
DF: And you are strongly funded by Microsoft. So...
McBride:Well, yes but about IBM, so let's talk about them for a minute. OK? So you got OSDL where
Linus works -- that's funded in part by IBM. You've got Groklaw. That's the Internet
chatboard of, you know, everything having to do against SCO...
DF: ...or with SCO.
McBride: Yeah, but it's attacks against us. You don't see things on there saying, Oh this is really strongly in favor of SCO
or even half strong in favor.
So you go peel that away and you realize IBM is a sponsor of Groklaw. OK ...
and as you go look at Novell and the attacks they are putting out against us, you
realize IBM put 50 million into them. So to say that IBM doesn't have some
connection with these other people is, it rings hollow.
DF: So there is a conspiracy out there on both sides?
McBride: I don't see a conspiracy. It's pretty straightforward. And there's nothing hidden about it.
DF: So there is a lot at stake, and maybe we can move the topic of
conversation to something a little higher level than conspiracy theories.
McBride: Right.
DF: And I'd like to focus for a moment on the letter that you sent to Congress in January
in which - I'm just paraphrasing a little bit but - in which you're saying
that "Open Source as it's currently constituted is a slippery slope. It
undermines our basic system of intellectual property rights and destroys
the economic reasons for innovation. There is really no middle ground. It is not an understatement to say that the future of the global economy is in the balance." That seems like quite an indictment.
McBride: If you look at what the Free Software Foundation is saying
about proprietary software, Stallman and the folks over there have made comments that they think that proprietary software is evil, and it should not exist. I mean how many people in here are involved with some level of proprietary
software? That's what they are saying: It is evil, and it should not exist.
OK? These are the folks that bring you the GPL. So if you look at IDC
numbers and if you you look at the WIPO numbers in the year 2007 the projections
are 289 billion dollars for software, proprietary software. If you look at
the goals of the Free Software Foundation that has the license that
governs Linux, it is that all software will be priced at zero. OK?
So, 289 billion or zero. I do call that a slippery slope. I think it's a running a dangerous
path.
DF: But that's just an extreme view, as they have on their end at the
other end of the spectrum.
McBride: It's an extreme view. But the extremists are the ones that are setting, they are the ones that put the GPL together.
DF: But let's look at the GPL for a moment.
McBride: OK.
DF: The GPL basically says that it respects intellectual property rights.
It just says: if you want to put it out in this form, this is the way
you do it.
McBride: Right.
DF: And these are the characteristics of it. But it doesn't mean
that it can't live in a hybrid environment with proprietary software.
McBride: Except that if the proprietary touches the other, then it supposedly
gets destroyed. I mean ask CISCO. Anybody heard from CISCO? They're getting attacked
by them at this very point right now on their Linksys acquisition. You have
the drug, the biotech, companies. You go and put together a new drug formula,
and because it's software and touches GPL, if you're not careful, that gets
destroyed. So I think it's a very dangerous setting we're talking about.
DF: But just don't need things to evolve? It's not GPL and Open Source bad, proprietary good. We are going to have both...
McBride: Absolutely.
DF: ..and in fact you are a company that uses open source
development tools.
McBride: And we've donated things to open source. We're not saying that
open source, per se, is bad. But we think that when you make something that
is an industry standard that requires that your software value be
destroyed, we don't think that's a good thing.
DF: But you don't have to put it out as open source.
McBride: I understand. And in the case of our situation with the
GPL, we're not arguing over things that we put out there. We're arguing
about things that we see showing up inside of Linux that are against
our property rights, and that's what we're making claim to.
DF: But that's precisely it. You're making claims against your
alleged property rights as opposed to the notion that the GPL and open
source are bad. Your claim, it seems to me, is that open source is using
intellectual property that you claim to own. So why attack the GPL as
something that's potentially unConstitutional or unAmerican?
McBride: Well, one thing that's interesting ... I mean take ... so maybe
you can discount our arguments -- we have a vested interest, obviously, to
beat these guys up. Discount Microsoft's arguments. They obviously want
proprietary, not free software. But go look at, go do a Google search
and...
DF: But is software really free?
McBride: That's the question. But go look at a Google search. Some other independent
third-party attorneys are out there right now saying that this
notion of a GPL being a licence and a contract at the same time are pure
gibberish. These are not my words. These are academic lawyers.
DF: But we have other academics who are taking a completely
different point of view and are saying that bits are not like atoms, that there needs to be changes in the copyright notions of dealing with
digital data.
McBride: Right.
DF: And yet, you know, we're kind of sitting here as if nothing has
changed, and we going to apply same old laws.
McBride: And I think that's the the slippery slope that I'm
concerned about. If you look at Congress has weighed in on this with the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act from a few years ago. As recently as just a year
ago, the Supreme Court in Eldred versus Ashcroft came down and weighed in
heavily and said the public good, progress of science, is best driven from
people who have private ownership interests, and we celebrate the profit
motive. So they have weighed in within last twelve months that said profits
are good. And you should be able to ... You know, I think there are
three points here: technologies come and go. I think for everybody in this room that deals with technology.. Technologies are going to come and go..But the three points
that I would go to is:
1) You ought to be able to have private protection on it;
2) It should be able to operate in a free market environment. It shouldn't
be artificially suppressed down to zero; and,
3) There should be a rule of law to be able to enforce it. You know, enforcement should happen through the courtrooms, not MyDoom viruses.
DF: But these are individuals, not governments, who are making
these products. And therefore to say that someone can't decide that this is
how I'm gonna sell my product, I'm going to put it into this GPL, people can
use it. There are companies with hybrids that say if you make a commercial
version, you can charge for it.
McBride: Right.
DF: But that's different. So there, there's not...
McBride: I agree. I have no problem with people putting things
into GPL. I have problems with people putting my things into the GPL.
DF: That comes back to the same issue, which is do you allege
that there are things that SCO owns that are going to the GPL? McBride: Absolutely.
DF: And
therefore would you admit that the GPL is not all bad?
McBride: ...Oh, ah, no, it's absolutely not all bad. I just think that
with a few minor tweaks of it, it would be actually pretty good.
DF: And what tweaks would you make to it?
McBride: Oh, I think the whole part about the
price thing. Go look at the differences between a BSD-style license
and a GPL license. I think those spell out the differences that I would
be concerned with.
DF: Now you have also said in your letter to Congress that Linux and
open source are a threat to national security.
McBride: Right.
DF: How do you justify that?
McBride: Well, we justify it because when IBM licenses AIX, when HP
licenses HPUX, when SUN licenses Solaris, all these guys have
requirements in there from an export control standpoint that you keep this
material protected. So the proprietary versions of UNIX out there today
have an absolute standard that you can't put this stuff out in the open
and and let, you know, third-world countries, Iran, Iraq, different places, get
hold of it. In the open source ...
DF: Well, it's not too hard to get hold of any code...
McBride: In the open source world, basically you have a situation
where you can get hold of it and in, that's a major problem. We've met
with some people at Capitol Hill, and they agree that it's a problem that
you can get access to something that, you know, you can go create
a supercomputer out of a few Intel boxes, and you are up and going.
DF: Let me read to you what USENIX had to say in response to that kind of
thing.
McBride: Great.
DF: That the US export control authorities have acknowledged the
impossibility of restricting the geographical distribution of most computer
software programs in any event. Neither area of law hinges on whether
software programs are licensed for a fee or for free. Or whether the
innovations are kept secret or shared.
McBride: So if you come back and look at the requirements we have
with the United States government with respect to export control, they're
very tight.
DF: But I can go to your site, pay for a license and then give it
to somebody in Iraq.
McBride: I understand. But if I go out and make that available to
somebody in Iraq, the US government is going to come after me. OK? I'm just saying
that there is, they're out of sync right now with proprietary versus
the open source versions. They are absolutely out of sync.
DF: But doesn't the government even have its own secure versions
of Linux? So are you suing the US government, the NSA, because they use a
secure version of Linux?
McBride: They are not going to be named tomorrow in the lawsuit. I can guarantee that. [laughter]
DF: OK, still trying to get there. Now there seems to be some people
are saying that the case is due in court in about a year?
McBride: Yes. April 11, 2005.
DF: So what are the next steps that are going to happen over the
next year, besides a bunch of, a flurry of lawsuits, to get to court? Or is there
any chance that you'll look to settle, to be bought out?
McBride: The next steps, in the IBM case, we're dealing with
primarily a set of contract issues. We've recently added some copyright claims into
that...
DF: But you took out the trade secret.
McBride: Right. The most part of the IBM case revolves on contracts.
That's moving to litigation. Litigators do what they do, discovery motions
back and forth. But we look forward to be in front of a jury in 13 months
from now. Over on the copyright side, which has more to do with the end users
who're off using this, that's really, we're just starting that tomorrow and
that will have its own lifespan and we'll just
see how that plays out.
DF: Now you are going to sue one company tomorrow. Do you have a
bunch of others that you teed up so that you have a good number of
suits? Regarding the users.
McBride: Well, we are not speaking yet about where we go on
that front. You know, if you look at the type of problems, digital
piracy problems, if you look at the RIAA and what they've done, I don't
see hundreds and hundreds of lawsuits like the RIAA did, but we definitely
see more than one.
DF: So as you look to the future, do you see SCO becoming a
company that is no longer thought of as the outlaw, as the company that
everybody loves to hate? What would it take, do you think, for SCO to become
a company that is respected?
McBride: Well, I think if you talk to our customers right now, they have
a lot of respect for the technologies we're delivering. Seven of the top ten retailers
around the world run on SCO UNIX software. When you go in and order a Big Mac
today, SCO UNIX is in their power net transaction.
DF: That's the Santa Cruz Operation legacy, right?
McBride: Right. But again we have 300 employees. 290 of them are
working today on delivering products. It happens that the products
they're delivering are being undercut by a free version out there that
does basically the same thing. So we have one part of our company that's
focused on enforcement efforts, the other majority of the company that
are focused on delivering products, and as you see our company go forward, you're going to see us very focused with the core
business on providing some interoperability solutions that we think will
grow that business.
DF: Really, we're talking about intellectual property versus what you're
calling free, but actually is not necessarily free because most of the
companies are building around I guess what you'd call a service, delivering
services. And that software operating system is a part of that.
McBride: Right.
DF: But not a big part of it. So why, why in your case
do you think that that model is flawed, given that that's where the
industry seems to be going.
McBride: The industry that's "going that way" are people who have services they're
adding in on top of that. Large hardware vendors that have large service organizations love that model.
DF: We'll have to end it on that note because I see that the clock has hit
zero. Thanks very much Darl. McBride: Thanks very much, Dan.
[1] While I was unable to make out the specific words, I believe he is referring to the following report from International Data Corp., as reported on CMPNetAsia.com:
"Unit shipments of Linux servers increased 52.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2003, compared to the same period the prior year; and revenue from the operating system jumped 63.1 percent to $960 million, according to International Data Corp. Unit shipments and revenue from Windows servers also increased."
|
|
|
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| Authored by: PJ on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 12:39 AM EST |
Please record my mistakes for posterity here, so I can find them quickly.
Thanks.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: PJ on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 12:41 AM EST |
| Please put updates and urls to news here in this thread. Thanks. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
- URL: Funny commentary on Yahoo - Authored by: Callan.ca on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:06 AM EST
- Updates and URLs to News Here - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:07 AM EST
- MPAA Puts Words in Mouth of CA Attorney General - Authored by: ravenII on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:47 AM EST
- Updates and URLs to News Here - Authored by: hardcode57 on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 12:14 PM EST
- Darl's strategy explained in simple form - Authored by: cricketjeff on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:46 PM EST
- Weasel words - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:13 PM EST
- SCOX Stock Dropping Again - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:30 PM EST
- Information about the PIPE deal? - Authored by: nzkoz on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:01 PM EST
- Short and to the point article about FOSS - Authored by: Captain on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 01:16 AM EST
- SCOforum 2004 - June Las Vegas - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 01:59 AM EST
| |
| Authored by: ravenII on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 12:48 AM EST |
I think Res Hat Lawyers would love this and I hope they use it. I read bits and
pieces about this interview but thanks to PJ and others, I see the whole
picture, (no I did not watch the video)
Thanks again
---
"Snowflakes are one of nature's most fragile things,
but just look what they can do when they stick together."[ Reply to This | # ]
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| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:07 AM EST |
> We're going to catch up and pass Red Hat again.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA![ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: stevem on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:12 AM EST |
On the one hand, we ship Open Source products, we contribute to Open Source, and
we don't have any problem with Open Source.
On the other hand, it's an evil slide downwards to wiping out a multi billion
dollar industry.
I'm confused Mr McBride. Which one did you mean? As I listen to your words of
wisdom it's sounds like you're confused as to what you're actually doing. It
seems that you are activly involved in wiping out a multi billion dollar
industry by actively encouraging the promotion and take up of Open Source
products.
You are also activity shipping and promoting a product that directly competes
with one of your biggest clients in the last year? To quote "Yes
Minister" - "a very Brave move".
Open Source is either bad or it isn't. Please please please end my confusion and
yours. Which one is it????
- SteveM[ Reply to This | # ]
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| |
| Authored by: kpl on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:13 AM EST |
"I have already denied his false charge that IBM sponsors Groklaw. It does
not. I await his public apology, naturally."
Actually, I think he
will owe a lot of people, companies, the community as a whole
an
apology, but I don't see that happening (even when they are finally trounced in
court) until a very hot flaming
place freezes over.
;-)
---
--------------------
mv sco /dev/null
-------------------- [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:15 AM EST |
> They might like to inform their lawyers about that, since their most recent
legal document filed in the IBM case shows a lack of deep understanding of this
point.
I'm sorry PJ, but I have to disagree here. I think they are all well aware of
who's in charge of enforcing copyright - they are just pretenting they don't
know. If I was able to figure that out for myself in less than a day (IANAL),
then they cannot lack this understanding.
Just like they are pretending GPL is invalid. They full well know it very valid.
It's just that they have no case, so they have to resort to this kind of
shysterism.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:16 AM EST |
DF: But not a big part of it. So why, why in your case do you think that that
model is flawed, given that that's where the industry seems to be
going.
The industry seems to be going to both services and
copyright/patent litigation. Maybe Darl is on the right track after all.
Enough of this selling software.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:19 AM EST |
Muahaha!!!
<br>
MS puts money in SCO and there's no conspiracy, yet IBM "puts" money
in Groklaw and there is conspiracy.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:21 AM EST |
> McBride: I think the part the people have said that they have taken out
definitely categorizes as the couple of hundred lines, but it definitely creates
a situation where there is code in there that wasn't supposed to be there.
False. The code was removed BEFORE it was identified as something that looks
SIMILAR to what System V has. However, equally similar code can be found in some
other variants of Unix that are either public domain or relased under a BSD
licence.
Bottom line: this code is not property of SCO and there was no copyright
infringement if it were.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: whoever57 on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:35 AM EST |
| A few interesting comments by McBride:
He still seems to believe that he
own's IBM's code, look at his words:
McBride: I wouldn't call it that,
per se, but I say we have absolutely property rights.
"Property
rights" -- his language betrays what he seems to believe --
ownership!
How much did oldSCO of Caldera pay for "UNIX"?:
McBride:
The slander of title. OK? They have come out and tried to say they own UNIX, and
we, you know, what did we pay hundreds of millions of dollars for?
I
thought the only company to pay hundreds of millions was Novell.
But
here is what I believe is the heart of his belief system:
Linux
replicates UNIX. We own the UNIX operating system. Linux is replicating it. When
you go to Barnes & Noble and buy a book on how to program in Linux it says,
'How to program in UNIX/Linux'. When you read the book, it's not two different
sections. It's the same book.
Quite simply: he believes that because
Linux is very similar to UNIX, SCO owns it.
---
-----
For a few laughs, see "Simon's Comic Online Source" at
http://scosource.com/index.html [ Reply to This | # ]
|
- oldSCO yes newSco no - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:06 AM EST
- "Hundreds of millions"? - Authored by: PJ on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:12 AM EST
- "Hundreds of millions"? - Authored by: eriktorbjorn on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:02 AM EST
- "Hundreds of millions"? - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 05:07 AM EST
- "Hundreds of millions"? - Authored by: ine on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 05:32 AM EST
- Wierdness - Authored by: bruce_s on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:04 AM EST
- Wierdness - Authored by: rakaz on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:24 AM EST
- Wierdness - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:52 AM EST
- Re: dos - Authored by: ogre on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:49 AM EST
- UNIX vs Unix - Authored by: hdw on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:01 PM EST
- So Micosoft owns DR-DOS? - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:41 PM EST
| |
| Authored by: RedBarchetta on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:39 AM EST |
DF: But how much code are we talking about? I have seen
the numbers that say 20 percent of the code of Linux...
McBride:
Right.
DF: ...is owned by SCO. On the other hand, what we've heard is
that some of the code -- actually most of the code -- actually comes from IBM
and wasn't part of UNIX System V, and that the code that's been taken out is a
few hundred lines at most.
McBride: I think the part the people have
said that they have taken out definitely categorizes as the couple of hundred
lines, but it definitely creates a situation where there is code in there
that wasn't supposed to be there. There is a few million servers around the
world. EV1 today took down a license. They don't need to worry about the next
year, eighteen months, what's going to happen through the rest of this
battle. See, what's going to happen their s... their customers are now
safe.
You don't need to read carefully to detect
that McBride is deftly changing the course of the interview. He smoothly
changes the subject from a question about the number of lines of code [in
Linux], to "EV1 bought a license," they are safe from our racket.
Also
notice how McBride pulls another slickster move by strategically inserting the
sentence, "There is a few million servers around the world" in the middle of
this reply, implying millions of servers are violating their copyrights,
but never specifically stating it (by some accounts, the code in question (SGI
Itanium specific) is only running on a few hundred machines
world-wide).
His ability to manipulate and deceive is such that I no
longer have a hard time believing how RBC and Baystar invested in SCO: they were
conned and dazzled, amongst other things.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:45 AM EST |
I'm always amazed at how politicians, lawyers and criminals (not suggesting that
Darl and any of these) are able to string a dozen contradictory statements
together and make normal conversation.
I guess most people on here are kind of used to this but I'm baffled by it.
The only serious point I get out of this is the same old "Listen to what I
mean and not what I say" story, where he basically admits that a lot of
what he says is crap. Based on what he says, I'd predict that he can't completed
a simple join the dots puzzle to show the complete picture. He either is trying
to sell us a used car, or he needs some help with communicating his real point.
I got a laugh out of linux customers that wanted to pay him to keep SCO IP in
the code. He is of course free to do that provided its all under the GPL.
However it would kind of undermine his case against IBM if he's willing to GPL
SCO code anyways. Of course SCO is deadmeat if they try to sell Linux that isn't
GPL, and anyone who buys it can never ever use it.
No matter which way this argument pans out he can't seem to spin it his way at
all.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Confusion - Sociopathic - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:33 AM EST
- ADHD - Authored by: Weeble on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:07 AM EST
- ADHD - Authored by: Wol on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:43 AM EST
- ADHD - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:42 AM EST
- ADHD - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 12:14 PM EST
- ADHD - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:19 PM EST
- ADHD - Authored by: RevSmiley on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:12 PM EST
- Confusion - Sociopathic - Authored by: WhiteFang on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:57 AM EST
- Confusion - Sociopathic - Authored by: Steve Martin on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:53 AM EST
- Confusion - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:24 AM EST
| |
| Authored by: Khym Chanur on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:45 AM EST |
Did ZDNET and company say who could copy the transcript, and under what
conditions? Or is it soley for Groklaw?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:04 AM EST |
Dan comes across here as a person that understands fundamental questions
surrounding the issue (he might have missed a few minor points, but he's mostly
on the ball). Darl, on the other hand, comes across as a person full of
contradictions, lots of nonsense, topic changing, lack of substance, very
defensive and generally avoiding a straight answer. Just take his rambling about
the GPL. Can anyone actually tell if he's against it or not? I don't think so. I
don't think Darl himself knows.
There was a time when SCO and Darl were taken seriously, especially at the
beginning of the whole fiasco, before the "infringing" code was
actually shown. As the time goes by, they are less and less convincing, to the
point where mainstream IT press is having a field day with Darl. Truly sad...[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Dan v. Darl - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:44 AM EST
- Dan v. Darl - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:28 AM EST
- Dan v. Darl - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:53 AM EST
- Dan v. Darl - Authored by: leguirerj on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:24 AM EST
| |
| Authored by: jmc on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:52 AM EST |
It almost sounds like SCO are so confident that the RH case will be tied up
forever in Delaware they feel that they can say anything about RH.
When is *anything* going to happen there?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| |
| Authored by: Khym Chanur on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:52 AM EST |
| We haven't any claims on Samba or some of these other projects. We are very
specific about Linux. Linux replicates UNIX. We own the UNIX operating system.
Linux is replicating it. When you go to Barnes & Noble and buy a book on how
to program in Linux it says, 'How to program in UNIX/Linux'. When you read the
book, it's not two different sections. It's the same book.
Is there
any way to interpret that other than him claiming tha SCO has patent-type
rights to UNIX? [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Totosplatz on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:00 AM EST |
Here is the heart of McBride's belief system, in his own words, from the
transcript:
McBride: Well, OJ is walking around free, so I guess nothing
is bulletproof. [laughter, applause] But with respect to the claims that we
feel very strongly about, Dan, we feel very strongly that in twelve months from
now, a courtroom in Utah with 12 jurors are going to come back and say, We agree
with your reading. I mean it's not really a complex case. You read the
contract verbiage -- I got it right here -- it's not that complicated. We have a
lot of faith that a Utah jury is going to come back to that
conclusion.
It couldn't be more clear - McBride is convinced that if the
case can survive to the point of getting in front of a jury he can have a chance
to overwhelm what he hopes and expects will be a collection of non-technical
individuals who will see this purely in terms of The SCOG being the poor local
Utah underdog, and Big Bad Blue IBM From New York trampling the poor local
underdog under it's big rich feet.
In fact I can almost hear the closing
remarks (having served on two juries) from SCOG Counsel - "Ignore this, ignore
that, just remember that IBM came in and stomped on tiny little SCOG. Thank you
members of the jury."
I have a feeling that this case really is "not
really a complex case. You read the contract verbiage -- I got it right here --
it's not that complicated."
More simple than Mr McBride thinks, in
fact. In fact I expect simple enough to be settled without having to ask a jury
to look in on the matter. Credit to GROKLAW for making the public filings in the
case available and comprehensible to the non-lawyer.
---
All the best
to one and all. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:00 AM EST |
This was the first time I saw and heard McBride. It was funny!
Especially about copyrights: they own them, because "what did we pay
hundreds of millions of dollars for?"[ Reply to This | # ]
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| |
| Authored by: RSC on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:25 AM EST |
I have been following Darl for quite some time now and the one thing that
strikes me about his interview style is that it is very farmiliar.
Listen to any modern day polititian in the press and you can see the style,
repetitive, always steer the interview to where he wants it, never give the
answer that the interviewer wants.
He would be a comsumate polititian. Who here would vote for Darl as president?
More to the point if things go sour and he makes the transition to politics, who
other than us would know enough *not* to vote for him?
I am sure the republicans would welcome an individual who is so obviously for
big business. And I think he could easily fit into the polititian role.
Geez I am glad I'm an Aussie and wouldn't have to see his name on a pole.
RSC.
---
----
An Australian who IS interested.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:51 AM EST |
McBride: Well, we justify it because when IBM licenses AIX,
when HP licenses HPUX, when SUN licenses Solaris, all these guys have
requirements in there from an export control standpoint that you keep this
material protected. So the proprietary versions of UNIX out there today have an
absolute standard that you can't put this stuff out in the open and and let, you
know, third-world countries, Iran, Iraq, different places, get hold of it. In
the open source ...
I think Darl has some problems in
understanding some basics on Linux. The first one is that Linux kernel is owned
by Linus Torvals, who is a Finnish citizen, not U.S. citizen. So why in the
world would U.S. export control anyhow be able to regulate in which countries
Linux can be distributed.
Second issue is that people involved in developing
Linux might also be citizens of third-world countries, not U.S. citizens. So why
would U.S. export control have anything to do with something developed outside
U.S.
Just my two cents, but I think that Darl thinks that "World" means the
same thing as "Darl" or "U.S.".
- Just an interested reader of Groklaw... [ Reply to This | # ]
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| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:59 AM EST |
"Linux replicates UNIX. We own the UNIX operating system. Linux is
replicating it. When you go to Barnes & Noble and buy a book on how to
program in Linux it says, 'How to program in UNIX/Linux'. When you read the
book, it's not two different sections. It's the same book."
Never mind, Darl, that UNIX is an open standard owned by the Open Group. Just
ignore that insignificant fact and continue the posturing Darl! Keep it going
Darl, all this nonsense, it is hilarious!
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:04 AM EST |
"Linux replicates UNIX. We own the UNIX operating system. Linux is
replicating it. When you go to Barnes & Noble and buy a book on how to
program in Linux it says, 'How to program in UNIX/Linux'. When you read the
book, it's not two different sections. It's the same book."
The first level is of course that SCO doesn't own Unix.
But, for the sake of argument, suppose it would. Would it be unlawful to create
a work/lookalike (a "clone") from scratch? What has the law to say
about this?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:09 AM EST |
McBride: That's the question. But go look at a Google search. Some other
independent third-party attorneys are out there right now saying that this
notion of a GPL being a licence and a contract at the same time are pure
gibberish. These are not my words. These are academic lawyers.
Eben Moglen: The GPL is not some contractual example of what these days is
called a license in the IP world. The GPL is an example of a permission, what we
used to call a license . If you take an ordinary first-year property class in
law school, which I have sometimes taught, the word license is used in a
particular way to describe permission to use real property.
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/38115.htm
who would have though Darl and Eben would see eye to eye?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:15 AM EST |
Is anyone else picturing "GPL" as some icky slimey blob with psuedopods
reaching out to destroy all that is good and clean and pure?
No?
Didn't think so. But I'm damn sure that's the impression Darl would like to
cultivate.
Waaaaaait... hasn't Darl been touched by the GPL? How
can we trust him after that? Perhaps GPL has got to him too! Perhaps
that's why he's being so comically inept! It's all a sinister GPL blob
ploy! Who can save us now?
[Cue Bill Gates in a cape and leotard, burning
away the evil with his Proprioto-Vision(tm)] [ Reply to This | # ]
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| |
| Authored by: WhiteFang on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:19 AM EST |
For me, things have reach the point where I can't read Darl et al's tripe much
like I can't listen to some politicians. I either foward through these
transcripts, as here, or change radio stations instantly.
Darl's lack of logic, twisting of facts to support whatever position he's
stating and use of unsubstantiated outright lies stikes a raw nerve in me. I
simply can't force myself to read his garbage.
I'd like to thank everyone who _does_ put up with this garbage to expose the
truth and nothing but the truth. The Groklaw Community ROCKS.
Thank you one and all.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| |
| Authored by: Rann on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:27 AM EST |
| Would it be possible to mark topics such as these with a "No
Coffee/Pop" warning??
I'm rather fed up having to replace keyboards
and windex the monitor down!!!!
Just when you think you've heard it all,
Darl gets his shovel out again!
Rann [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: the_flatlander on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 05:17 AM EST |
PJ wrote:
I were analyzing this for an attorney, that's where
the stickie note would go. They are suing end users so that Red Hat's business
will be reduced in favor of SCO, and Red Hat has no standing to bring Lanham Act
claims?
And now we can all see that my skepticism was
misplaced. Obviously Darl has gotten death threats; and the danger is greatest
when he speaks in public, or to the press. The threats are from his own
lawyers....
The Flatlander [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 05:21 AM EST |
| I found this bit quite interesting:
McBride: OSDL. OSDL is very
strongly funded by IBM. OK?
DF: And you are strongly funded by
Microsoft. So...
McBride: Well, yes but about IBM, so let's take
about them for a minute. OK? So you got OSDL where Linus works -- that's funded
in part by IBM. You've got Groklaw. That's the Internet chatboard of, you know,
everything having to do against SCO...
Looks to me like an admission that
MS is bankrolling the lawsuits...[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: blacklight on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 05:52 AM EST |
"McBride: We'll be glad to take our contracts against the newsletter. OK?
If you look at what the newsletter is claiming, it's claiming that you, in fact,
own the derivative work. We've said that from the very first filing in the IBM
case. IBM owns their derivative works. That's what the newsletter says. We're
saying we have an easement through the back of the property."
There is no mention of control or distribution rights in any of the AT&T
contracts. Those contracts have just one purpose: to delineate what AT&T
owns from what an AT&T licensee owns. Control and distribution rights over a
licensee's code are nothing more than a crass invention by the SCO Group.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:15 AM EST |
It shouldn't be much of a problem for them to show the
court that Caldera OpenLinux was literally a fork from
RedHat. That will look very bad on SCO.
As far as SCO being *the* "UNIX on Intel", well, perhaps,
but surely not as far back as the 80s. More like late 90s
when Linux was already around. To be more precise, like
1999 to now. They're trying to fool people into thinking
that older UNIX also ran on Intel or something... [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: TwinDX on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:15 AM EST |
You know what? I can't take any more of this greasy hateful little man. I know
what he's spewing is wrong, you know it's wrong. SCO's claims are laughable, and
Darl's great at putting his foot in it. But I just can't take any more of him,
his half truths and downright lies, and his dreadful analogies that he clearly
spends days working out in advance. I hate his twistyness. I can't take him any
longer.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: rakaz on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:24 AM EST |
We own the UNIX operating system. Linux is replicating it. When you
go to Barnes & Noble and buy a book on how to program in Linux it says, 'How
to program in UNIX/Linux'. When you read the book, it's not two different
sections. It's the same book.
I decided to check this claim. How
many books on Linux are combined books about Linux and Unix. And how many book
on Unix are also about Linux. So I went to barnesandnoble.com and ran the
following search queries: LINUX, UNIX and UNIX LINUX. It
didn't really match Darls claims. So I decided to go to amazon.com and do the
same thing. This is what I found:
Barnes and Noble
UNIX -- 1074
titles found
LINUX -- 952 titles found
UNIX LINUX -- 30 titles
found
Amazon
Unix and not Linux -- 1137 titles found
Linux
and not Unix -- 1032 titles found
Unix and Linux -- 42 titles found
That
is quite different from what Darl wants you to believe. I did some more
checking. I looked at the books available at Barnes and Noble that both had the
words UNIX and LINUX in the title.
Of these books most of them were about
Applications that run on both UNIX and Linux. For example a book about Samba...
Other books were introductions to Linux and UNIX, some where about security,
shell scripts and server administration. Two books were dealt with security on
Linux, Unix and Windows, which is also not what I was looking
for.
Finally I found the books Darl was referring to:
Understanding
UNIX/LINUX Programming: A Guide to Theory and Practice and Network
application Programming on Linux and Unix. After all this searching I
only found two books about programming on both Linux and UNIX. So, let me
ask you Darl, where did you come up with this nonsense? [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: JohnPettigrew on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:29 AM EST |
"McBride: They have come out and tried to say they own UNIX, and we,
you know, what did we pay hundreds of millions of dollars for?
DF: Well,
apparently that's up for the courts to decide or some other venue.
[snip]
DF:
Your, your *alleged* intellectual property. [laughter]
McBride: Well ... it's,
it's, we've, you know, we either paid millions of dollars for something or we
didn't."
So, the argument is basically "we paid lots of money so
we must own it". The interviewer wasn't buying it and I wonder whether
Darl was realising how weak this argument really sounds![ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: blacklight on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:37 AM EST |
"McBride: Oh, I think the whole part about the price thing. Go look at the
differences between a BSD-style license and a GPL license. I think those spell
out the differences that I would be concerned with."
The BSD license is
litterally a license to rip off the copyrights holder's code. The contradiction
between the SCO Group's position that it stands for strong enforcement of IP
rights and its stated desired that Linux run under a BSD license is interesting
to say the least. If I owned 20%, 40% of the Linux code, would I stand for
having my code ripped off, especially if I were to allege that my code was
improperly there under the terms of the GPL itself? I don't think so.
The logical conclusion is that the SCO Group actually owns so little
code in Linux that it has much more to gain from Linux running under a BSD
license than a GPL license. I mean, if it really was my own code out there: why
would I turn down an opportunity to have code improvements being recycled to me
by a third party for free, simply by distributing my code under the
GPL?
I surmise that the GPL is a strong business motivator for IBM's
contributions to Linux. Absent the terms of the GPL and present the terms of the
BSD, IBM will look elsewhere for a partnership and Linux will suffer
accordingly: I don't think IBM likes to have its code ripped off any more than
any of us - Needless to say, IBM is an exceedingly strong supporter of the GPL.
On the other hand, the SCO Group's technology situation is sufficiently
desperate that it would derive a short-run benefit from Linux running under a
BSD license - so that it can rip off the Linux code with impunity.
I
wouldn't be surprised if UnixWare and UnixOpenServer are running with a fair
amount of Linux code right now, and I wouldn't be surprised if most if not all
of the SCO Group's allegations of line by line copying boiled down to that: the
SCO Group's business situation is precarious enough for it to aggressively cut
corners every chance it gets.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: doughnuts_lover on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:55 AM EST |
Darl about their new licensee ev1servers.net:
The customers are
stepping up. So in the case of EV1, Robert March, the CEO there, did a bunch of
work with his customers. Customers are coming in, they were doing focus
groups.
But a poll at ev1servers.net tells another story. Ev1net customers did not ask for
protection against SCO litigation and Ev1net customers were not asked in
advance whether they wanted protection against potential SCO
litigation.
Ev1net's 'head surfer' Robert March might be an interesting
witness when a court is investigating Microsoft's involvement into this Ev1server 'license' deal.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: blacklight on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:56 AM EST |
The Dan Farber interview is a definite improvement from Ziff-Davis' usual work.
The interview format underlines how slippery the Darl is, and how important it
is to nail the SCO Group down in a courtroom with no escape possible. "You
did not answer the question, Mr. McBride. Answer the question!" Darl is in
his usual form, with his mouth an asset to us.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:18 AM EST |
"McBride: That's the question. But go look at a Google search. Some other
independent third-party attorneys are out there right now saying that this
notion of a GPL being a licence and a contract at the same time are pure
gibberish. These are not my words. These are academic lawyers."
Now, you can be right on an issue in basically only one way: the truth. You can
be wrong on an issue in, litterally, an infinite number of ways. What struck me
on the recent anti-GPL FUD from, iirc, Malaysia as a little odd
is that the three lawyers I am aware of that vented GPL FUD are wrong on it, and
wrong on it in exactly the same way. Even the wording out of Malaysia sounded
familiar. This wouldn't mean that their misconceptions have a common source, or
would it? Not that I have even the faintiest idea of what that source might be.
(ha ha). And now our beloved McBride gives a pointer to these lawyers. I guess
his recommendation is fully unrelated to a company, whose name escapes me at the
moment, that funneled a substantial amount of money into TSG.
Anyone in for a group effort to find answers to questions like the following?
1) Who are the customers of these lawyers?
2) Who sponsered the events they gave their speech to?
3) Who invited them to do their speeches?
etc. etc.
In other words: follow the money!
Peter
Who'd better subscribe...
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:26 AM EST |
| DF: And you are strongly funded by Microsoft. So...
McBride:Well, yes but
about IBM, so let's talk about them for a minute. OK? So you got OSDL where
Linus works -- that's funded in part by IBM. You've got Groklaw. That's the
Internet chatboard of, you know, everything having to do against SCO...
Hes
admitting SCO is funded by Microsoft. omg this is going to be fun. :)
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:51 AM EST |
| And the background to this Darl quote
So we came out, laid some code down,
they came back and responded and said: "Oh, that wasn't supposed to be in there.
We're gonna take it out."
needs to be written large so they catch him
next time he makes the claim.
Not sure if a mailable html doc or just a
website would work better but it's time to start seriously helping the
journalists out. The ZDNet interview was surprisingly hostile (for ZDNet if
Microsoft might be involved) but it could have been so much worse for
Darl.
Its time to take SCOGs toys away, cut off their access to uninformed
journalists and watch them whither away.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- YES! a FAQ - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:45 PM EST
| |
| Authored by: Stephen on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:53 AM EST |
According to dictionary.com, "unConstitutional" should be
"unconstitutional" and "unAmerican" should be "un-American".
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 08:18 AM EST |
My first job in 1992 or so was working for a company who produced real-time
medical diagnostics equipment. These machines used 386 boards in custom cases to
perform blood sample analysis and so on. I recall evaluating operating systems
at the time, and one of was SCO unix.
<p>
We had been using QNX 2 but it was clunky and we were faced with upgrading to
QNX 3 (which had Posix compliance and other niceness) for more $$$ or moving to
something like OS/2, NT or a Unix variant. An obvious requirement was that it
should run on 386 hardware.
<p>
Even at the time I was struck by how arcane SCO was and expensive. At a time
when other operating systems were SVR 4.x with bits of BSD, SCO was still using
SVR3.2. So it was already a dinosaur compared with its contemporaries. Then the
licencing was plain ridiculous, being expensive just for a single user licence
and outrageous when you threw in things like development, X-Windows, network
support etc.
<p>
So it was rejected out of hand. I have to say the company was very conservative
and bound by certification issues that may have ruled Linux, but even back then
I considered Linux to be far superior to SCO. I would have certainly championed
its use even if it were just to lower in-house costs by acting as a mail / print
server, or X server, or for running GNU plot which we used a lot.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- This is important to show - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:01 AM EST
- This is important to show - Authored by: fb on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:24 AM EST
- SCO Boxes - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:26 AM EST
- This is important to show - Authored by: phrostie on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:37 AM EST
- SCO boxes DO exist - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:03 AM EST
- market leaders - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:43 AM EST
- This is important to show - Authored by: prong on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:59 AM EST
- Who Use(s|d) SCO? - Authored by: Lazlo Nibble on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:10 PM EST
- SCO machines - Authored by: prammy on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:58 PM EST
- Unix on PC/AT - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:06 PM EST
- A double SCO spotting! - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:04 PM EST
- This is important to show - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 12:48 AM EST
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 08:23 AM EST |
Would it be possible to create an annotated version to clearly (like with
the pretty colors and such) point out the many places where McBride is lying
through his teeth?
Something with references/links to documents which clearly
indicate (a) how wrong his statements are, and (b) that he knows they're
wrong? Dan makes a vallient effort, but he let's alot of things slide which are
just absurd.
It would also be nice to submit it to ZDNet if they're
interested in publishing it. It would also be interesting to see if McBride has
anything to say for himself.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: phrostie on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 08:33 AM EST |
| I won't point a finger at anyone, but does this ring a bell?
"We don't do bad
things because we will feel bad about it," Raine said. "Psychopaths don't have
those feelings - they do not have a conscience. That means they can be callous
and manipulative. They don't care about other people. If they can get what they
want from life by hurting other people, they'll do it."
http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/3/12/81046/4634 ---
=====
phrostie
Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of DOS
and danced the skies on Linux silvered wings.
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/snafuu [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 08:40 AM EST |
<<<Yeah, but it's attacks against us. You don't see things on there
saying, Oh this is really strongly in favor of SCO or even half strong in favor.
So you go peel that away and you realize IBM is a sponsor of Groklaw. OK ... and
as you go look at Novell and the attacks they are putting out against us, you
realize IBM put 50 million into them. So to say that IBM doesn't have some
connection with these other people is, it rings hollow.>>>
Too bad Groklaw is a non profit site, cause SCO could get sued for saying things
like that. That's slander isn't it?
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Thomas Downing on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 08:56 AM EST |
Darl: Go look at the differences between a BSD-style
license and a GPL license. I think those spell out the differences that I would
be concerned with.
Here's one place where he tells the truth
- IMHO one of the major differences between the GPL and BSD licenses is that the
latter allows you to take derivative code private. Darl would love to do that
to the Linux kernel and to whatever GNU stuff he liked.
As to the
Linksys/Cisco bit, while that may involve some code developed by Linksys,
it also involves a great deal of code that is not even derivative.
Besides the kernel, it also includes BusyBox, etc. The beef is not that Linksys
used this GPL code, it is that Linksys did not make the source available under
the terms of the GPL. ---
Thomas Downing
Principal Member Technical Staff
IPC Information Systems, Inc. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: maroberts on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:10 AM EST |
For once, I'm playing Devils' Advocate.
I see where SCO is coming from: they're upset that Linux is a Unix clone (spare
me the exact semantics), and feel like copyright should protect them against
something that looks like their own product. They sort of want a "Look and
Feel" rerun.
They're caught in a bit of a dichotomy here, because if it's legal to use header
files to interface with Unix, then it's equally legal to use header files to
create programs that look like Unix. And they also have problems with the
muddled history of AT&T, Unix, BSD et al to do this. If they truly owned the
copyright to Unix they'd be in a much stronger position.
By the way, have we been barking up the wrong tree? There may be no exact lines
of Unix in Linux, but what they are aiming for is lines of Linux that are
similar to lines in Unix. Copyright does cover some elements of making something
similar, as The Harry Potter/Tanya Grotter copyright issue seems to show; this
case was in Russia, but as copyright law is generally fairly similar the world
over thanks to WIPO and the Berne Convention, how far does this idea stretch in
the US?
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:10 AM EST |
Panel backs EU
Microsoft ruling
A EU competition panel has unanimously backed a
draft plan of action which could see US software giant Microsoft hit with fines
and penalties.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: maroberts on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:20 AM EST |
Judging by his comments, I would be quietly pleased about the effects Groklaw is
having; it looks like Groklaw is having the same effect on SCO as swallowing a
wasp.
The more allegations he makes against it, the happier you should be.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:21 AM EST |
To watch someone lie and lie and lie again like that, and not just little
white lies, but huge whoppers about well document facts that will figure in
court cases ("So we came out, laid some code down" - what code, Darl?
Who did you show it to? Where is your record of that?) and then just blithely
stumble on as though unaware of their enormous gaffe.
What will it take to
shut Darl up? How many lost cases? How many personal suits for libel and
slander? I mean, you cannot get any clearer than what he just said about
Groklaw, or any more wrong.
PJ, instead of just documenting and refuting,
why not take pre-emptive action? Darl just called you a stooge. He's been
given plenty of opportunities to retract and hasn't taken them. If you put a
button on the left saying "Donate to Groklaw's legal fund for a slander suit
against Darl McBribe", I would donate, right now, without hesitation. Why
should Darl be the only one to profit from the swathe of lawsuits flying around
right now. I think even Darl would find it difficult to spin a suit over
whether he is a liar or not to his advantage.
Unless... oh, Darl, Darl, nice
try. Troll PJ until she brings a suit, and then see her silenced because it's
now a sub judice matter? Bumbling like a fox again?
Darl - you are a
risible lying weasel. Google for it if you don't believe me! [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:36 AM EST |
Darl talked about the simelarities between Unix and Linux.
Linux is a kernel and not a os. The point is that most of the 'Unix' flavour in
Linux doesn't come from the kernel but from stuff outside the kernel,like
LIBC/Commandline tools etc..And those parts are outside the scope of the current
SCO actions
The remaining stuff is for most part an API specification, so this a only a tiny
part of the kernel. Ergo Darl argument are irrelevant.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:49 AM EST |
| McBride: Well, OJ is walking around free, so I guess nothing is bulletproof.
[laughter, applause]
I take this to mean Darl feels he can kill Linux and
no can do anything about it. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:51 AM EST |
McBride: You have the drug, the biotech, companies. You go and put
together a new drug formula, and because it's software and touches GPL, if
you're not careful, that gets destroyed. So I think it's a very dangerous
setting we're talking about.
He just doesn't get the GPL, does he? Now
he's saying that a company's data and information is affected if it's processed
by GPL'ed software!
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Night Flyer on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:52 AM EST |
I found the following while browsing, I particularly want to highlight point #3.
CEO's generally like to play fast and loose with the truth to create an
impression. Sometimes "truth" is an incumberance and an annoyance,
and it becomes a casualty, bent and twisted by a CEO. Note the date is prior to
"Halloween X".
This underscores the fundamental value of GROKLAW. Keep them honest.
------------------------
"Re: Price and PR -- The Two Big Pumps
by: Eric_J_Landes (38/M/Gig Harbor, WA) 03/10/04 09:27 pm
Msg: 107884 of 107990
>>>
"Follow the money ...." I think there's something so stupidly obvious
I'm (we're) missing here.
<<<
I think one of three things have happened:
1. They've got a money-back-guarantee from somebody with deep pockets that this
will all work out.
2. Nobody believed IBM would rather fight than buy out SCOX.
3. Nobody quite foresaw the anti-FUD machine that is open-source legal research.
CEOs and Analysts aren't used to operating in an environment where they're every
word is double-checked and cross-referenced within 24 hours of its utterance.
Compare this to an international-master level chess player. They're good, but
they're best using a set of openings they know well - puts them into familiar
positions.
We're not operating in known territory here. The FUD-meisters are used to their
words having a certain effect, and are NOT used to being called on what they're
saying. I think they got caught off-balance and suddenly found themselves in a
situation they don't know how to escape.
Historical counterpart: read about the battle of Ramillies. The French were in a
good position, outnumbered the British and did everything they were supposed to
by the way battles were fought 300 years ago. The British, however, didn't quite
play by those rules - they pushed the tempo, and put the French into a situation
where everything the French were _supposed_ to do was the exact wrong thing.
That's where SCOX is right now - according to the rules of the game they're
playing, every move they're supposed to be making (filing suits, working the
press, spewing FUD) is having the exact WRONG effect. And they don't know what
to do next. So they're flailing. Badly. And a lot of people are going to be
caught holding a lot of bags. And it's gonna be painful.
Posted as a reply to: Msg 107876 by manyhats23"
--------------------------------------------
My Clan Motto: Veritas Vincit: Truth Conquers
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Ph(i)Nk 0 on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:56 AM EST |
Yes, Darl is cynical. He doesn't understand the difference between value and
cost. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: dmscvc123 on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:01 AM EST |
The problem with Darl's assertion that they paid "hundreds of
millions" for Unix is that they didn't. They bought some as yet to be
determined rights to Unix for about $36 million.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:08 AM EST |
It's kind of funny that Darl refuses to answer some questions during their
quarterly report tele-conference due to the "gag-order" and yet, he blabbers
away comically about various and sundry things "generally" and about Red Hat.
His lawyers must be having a cow, or "cows".
He readily admits being funded
by Microsoft, apparently without batting an eye. He sees an IBM backed
conspiracy (via Groklaw and others) but cannot seem to "see" the
conspiracy he is part of. Selective blindness, if you ask me.
He kind
of reminds me of Don Knotts in "The Shakiest Gun in the West". Darl straightens
his hat, quickly draws his six-shooter and proceeds to empty all six rounds into
his right foot. Except, when this is all over, Don Knotts will be a well thought
of and enjoyed entertainer, and Darl will be one of the most scorned men in the
history of Information Technology (IMHO). It couldn't have happened to a
nicer guy. :) [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:24 AM EST |
| "IBM is a sponsor of Groklaw"
Seeing as PJ wants to be seen as an
impartial source, can't she now sue Darl for slander? [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:35 AM EST |
I think this is really important to point out:
He talks a lot about a *Jury Trial*. This is how they intend to win. They
don't intend to be right-- they intend to get in front of a sympathetic and
non-technical jury and then bamboozle them with salesmanship and whining.
They also, I'm sure, intend to play the Mormon card. Darl is a Mormon, and he's
hoping to get a sympathetic Mormon jury.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. So is religion. Darl is going to
get in there and wave the flag and the bible and paint himself as a good honest
businessman being trampled on by all these atheist communist open-source
abortionist unamerican baby killers who worship Satan.
This is something we need to keep our eyes on folks. We've been focusing on who
is right, and that's admirable. But, in this case it doesn't matter who is
right. It matters who *wins*. This is going to be a jury trial, and in front
of a jury what matters is whose lawyers are better at showmanship and whose
arguments can be more easily understood.
SCO can win in front of a jury, especially a sympathetic one. The facts don't
matter.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Jury trial - Authored by: Ben_Broeckx on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:40 AM EST
- Jury trial..ain't gonna happen - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:52 AM EST
- Jury trial - Authored by: brenda banks on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:57 AM EST
- Josef Stalin said... - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:06 AM EST
- Jury trial - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:36 AM EST
- Jury trial: Needs to move the hell outta EWTAH! - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 12:35 PM EST
- Jury trial - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:25 PM EST
- Jury trial - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:52 PM EST
- Jury trial - Authored by: Callan.ca on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:52 PM EST
- Jury trial - Authored by: wilsonm80 on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 05:18 PM EST
- Jury trial - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:59 PM EST
- Jury trial - Authored by: ashnazg on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 02:35 AM EST
- Jury trial - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 03:06 PM EST
- Marriot == Mormon Card - Authored by: Daddio on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 03:15 AM EST
- Mormon jury? No problem. - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 11:19 AM EST
- Jury trial - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 02:39 PM EST
| |
| Authored by: Ben_Broeckx on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:37 AM EST |
PJ,
I've seen the suggestion a couple of times to have a documented response to
Mr. McBride's comments in public every time he utters them.
This would be a
great source for journalists, and they will pick up on it. While initially this
may be some work (I'm willing to help out on this one) it will become easier
after a while because, frankly, there's not much new material out of Darlland in
the past weeks.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Rgds - Ben[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:42 AM EST |
"You have the drug, the biotech, companies. You go and put together a new
drug formula, and because it's software and touches GPL, if you're not careful,
that gets destroyed. "
This proves Darl will spread FUD beyond any reason.
A 'drug formula' is software? How?
Drugs are covered by patents. And they're not software any more than a
screwdriver is.
I'm a chemical engineer, and I have many friends in biotech. They use a lot of
perl and python based programs. A lot of Linux too.
Of course, under SCO's definition of "derivative works" I suppose he
might be right.. :-)[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Bill The Cat on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:54 AM EST |
As I read this, SCO had Caldera Linux. They managed it extremely poor and it
lost money. At the same time, using the same product (Linux), Red Had managed
their position very well and came out ahead. That's competition and that's
business.
You don't see Pizza Hut going after Domino's Pizza because Domino's has more
stores now. I can just see it - Pizza Hut suing Domino's because some of their
yeast got put into Domino's crusts!
The bottom line is that Darl and Co. are bad managers and bad marketing types
and since they can't compete in the market, they are going to try and litigate
their way to success. If history repeats itself, they're going to spin, crash
and burn.
---
Bill Catz[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:54 AM EST |
Dependence on commodities is intrinsic to economics, trade, and society.
Before humans became civilized, each group scavenged for their needs
and wants. As humans evolved, we developed technologies, packaged
commodities, and traded goods and services.
How does information technology fit into commodities? Is software a
commodity?
The personal computer, PCI cards, and peripherals definitely are
commodities. The UNIX style operating systems are the closest any
operating system has come to being a commodity, with most commercial
operating system vendors selling versions of Posix standard systems
(excepting Microsoft). Shrink wrap software is a commodity. Downloadable
software is a commodity. Current operating systems limit treatment of
software as a commodity.
The distinction between commodity and specialized, or non-commodity,
goods includes the number of copies sold, standardization of properties,
roles in society, and individual needs. Technology derived commodities
like telephones and televisions provide ample experience to predict the
future for software. Standardization is required. Performance improves
and price drops dramatically during the early years. Regulation is required.
Branding plays a big role. Distribution channels influence market share.
Commodity products and services that did not exist within living human
memory are soon indispensable fixtures.
Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, monopolists have fought each
other for sole control of vertical and horizontal industries like steel, oil,
shipping, meat processing, telephony, radio, and television. They controlled
production of tangible goods and services. These are HIGH FRICTION
ECONOMIC ENGINES requiring extensive capital, machinery, and natural
resources to operate at competitive efficiency.
In contrast, information is intangible. The only way most users know
whether they have the actual software is to run it. Most software can be
downloaded over the Internet for free or for a fee with negligible
distribution cost. This is a negligible friction economic engine, labeled the
FRICTION FREE ECONOMY, because the cost to make additional copies is
insignificant. Financing, banking, government, education, entertainment,
messaging, email, and unimaginable things are enabled by this “friction
free” society.
Recently, we are dealing with businesses in conflict, threatening to destroy
all opportunity to advance in evolutionary steps. Traditional businesses are
fighting change in the software, music, publishing, and movie industries.
DISINTERMEDIATION in the channels threatens their business models so
they intend to attack their customers for acting in accordance with human
nature. These businesses are creating artificial scarcity to corner their
markets.
These legacy companies remain with diminished core competencies. Their
original brain trust has left for better opportunities. What remains is a
marketing engine obsessed with a Willy Lohman type dream of making the
next huge sale. The shell companies are the worst of these disintegrating
organizations because they have abandoned products and services in lieu
of shady deals. Enron was the most egregious.
Each technological innovation, like the development of the Internet, begins
a wave of change. The S shaped logistics curve predicts the temporal rate
of adoption. However, the secondary and unintended consequences are
difficult to foresee. The one constant is human nature, and we have not
changed much in the last five thousand years. Moral standards, the ability
to lead people, education, knowledge, skill, and motivation continue to
determine the victors. COHESION among knowledeable users units them
against businesses that refuse to adapt to the changing environment.
Any magistrate knows that rat sightings are the harbinger of impending
danger. When rats invade the normal daylight activities of citizens, they
are driven by survival instincts. The interference with normal commerce by
SCOG and Anderer, right on the heels of Enron, involves such sightings.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:24 AM EST |
| that Darl is delusionally paranoid! He should be restrained and confined. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:28 AM EST |
| At 11:30 EST, down 3% to 9.25 with small volume. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:30 AM EST |
I second that! This can be really usefull.
I know that his lies have been shred to
pieces several times, but we have to make
sure that everybody -even the hmm... *journalists*-
are aware of the facts. Any volonteers? I am willing
to help too. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: kberrien on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:36 AM EST |
Whats the scoop on this SEC filing deadline which comes up today? Something to
do with the RBC/Baystar deal?[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: lightsail on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:39 AM EST |
Darl is constantly expounding on the AT&T and Novell contracts.
He points out the specifics that he interprets to favor his views.
He rarely discusses the Caldera – Santa Cruz Operation sale. The details of the
contract are still unresolved in the IBM lawsuit, TSG cannot find the contract.
What is detailed in that contract? And why might TSG now what to show it to
anyone?
The chain of ownership of Unix intellectual property is at the core of the SCO
Group’s entire premise, why is this link being played down or outright hidden?
The Caldera – Santa Cruz Operation sale originally did not include any Unix
intellectual property, then Caldera had Santa Cruz Operation add Unixware and
OpenServer intellectual property to the deal. The exact nature of the
intellectual property that was transferred by Santa Cruz Operation to Caldera
has not been released to the media or included in any discovery for any of the
lawsuits. The specific details of the transfer will limit the scope that the SCO
Group can claim. Given that Santa Cruz Operation paid royalties regularly to
Novell, they had clear knowledge of their intellectual property and the
intellectual property that was retained by Novell.
I suspect that we will not see the details of the Caldera - Santa Cruz Operation
sale ever supplied by the SCO Group. Will Tarantella be subpoenaed to fill in
the missing pieces?
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Big hole - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:21 PM EST
- The Defining Silence - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 12:28 AM EST
| |
| Authored by: orgngrndr on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:50 AM EST |
Darl McBride is a walking talking example of why attorneys prefer you not talk
with the press during an ongoing lawsuit.
We already know that IBM has used the illustrious "quotes" of DM in
its case against SCO.
So why does he (DM) do it??
Anytime you have a stock value that is so vastly overvalued, you need a constant
stream of hot air to keep the stock properly "inflated".
If you can cast even the slightest light onto the dark pit that is SCO's future,
you may keep the stock inflated for a few more days or weeks, or you can buy
back the overvalued stock with your own assets, draining the company but giving
the preferred stockholders (SCO management) who bought shares at $1.00 a share
another oppportunity to cash out.
So you talk to whoever will listen, you make outrageous claims, you purposely
misconstrue facts to support your suppositions, and you outright lie.
But sooner or later the facts and your words & quotes will comeback to bite
you, hopefully in a court of law.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:55 AM EST |
Back in the 1920's and 1930's what was then called the mob would send a couple
of people to a mom and pop store and offer them protection. Insurance, if you
will. If mom and pop refused then those folks would show up again and trash the
store, throw battery acid into the eyes of mom or pop, burn the store down.
Then *other* store owners would, in fear of the same, pay the weekly protection,
ie., insurance money to that particular organization.
This is exactly what the SCO Group Inc. (SKAG) is doing with "end
users." It is a modern form of the old, albeit violent, protection racket.
No more, no less. Here is Darl's quote on the matter:
"McBride: . . . EV1 today took down a license. They don't need to worry
about the next year, eighteen months, what's going to happen through the rest of
this battle. See, what's going to happen they're s... their customers are now
safe."
So instead of threatening physical harm, SKAG threatened them, and other
companies as well, with financial harm -- litigation. Their (SKAG) letters to
"end users" so state.
Indeed, consider the AutoZone and Daimler-Chrysler suits. SKAG has made (or is
attempting to make) examples of them so that other companies will take out ...
insurance from skag.
krp
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: cfitch on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 12:08 PM EST |
| As of right now, SCO is down to $9.09 dropping .44 so far.
I wonder of they
will drop below? Perhaps we will see some stock buy-backs or a new press
release?
SCO GROUP INC (SCOX) [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 12:12 PM EST |
this is what caught my eye...backdoor indeed.
We'll be glad to take our contracts against the newsletter. OK? If you look at
what the newsletter is claiming, it's claiming that you, in fact, own the
derivative work. We've said that from the very first filing in the IBM case. IBM
owns their derivative works. That's what the newsletter says. We're saying we
have an easement through the back of the property.
DF: You have a backdoor basically into everybody's code.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: jdaggs on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 12:21 PM EST |
superscova - adj. When a company is no longer competitive or has used all
available resources or is consistently losing market share and would otherwise
begin a normal exit strategy e.i liquidating material assets, sell off business
units etc, instead seeks to use its limited intellectual property rights as a
means to increase shareholder value by suing any company producing or
distributing products vaguely related to the intellectual property rights of
said company before final dissolution of that company. Companies that can be
described as going 'superscova' believe that facing dissolution suing existing
or potential customers is acceptable as a means to delay immediate dissolution
and unjustly enrich the current executive team before dissolution occurs. In
addition, creating an environment of hostility or uncertainty among the
customers of competitors could be used as a way to increase the value or buy out
price for competitors looking to end this the explosion of negativity generated
by the company in its dying stage of existence.
Phrase:
Going Superscova.
Usage:
Microsoft has consistently lost money and is losing market share to linux.
However, they own many copyrights and patents and have started suing other
Linux companies as a way to increase the value of their company before they
fold. They have gone superscova.
See Also:
Supernova - adj. What happens to a star when it has used up all its fuel for
it's fusion reaction. And in its last stage of death expands and destroys all
nearby planets before finally dissappearing into the vast emptyness of space.
P.S I said it first![ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:13 PM EST |
I bid $8 a share.... before the end of this week.... heh heh.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: LvilleDebugger on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:48 PM EST |
| SCO Acknowledged
Contributions to Linux
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 01:50 PM EST |
Ralph Yarro, Prez and CEO of Canopy Group:
"Canopy's president and chief executive, cannot help but relish his
company's feisty, litigious reputation, even as he argues it is undeserved.
Multimillion-dollar settlements from big-name companies make headlines, he says,
but the dozens of tech companies and thousands of Utah jobs Canopy has helped
create are its true legacy.
'I would prefer to be a peacemaker than to fight,' Yarro says. 'But I don't have
the luxury to pick who steals from us, who attacks us. All I can do is decide
whether or not we will defend ourselves.'
'Once that decision is made, the commitment is total. 'We don't care how big you
are. If you mess with us, we're going to take you on, even to our utter
destruction, whatever occurs. We fear nobody, and we are respecters of no
persons.' "
Full article is here:
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Sep/09282003/business/business.asp
krp[ Reply to This | # ]
|
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| Authored by: phrostie on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 02:56 PM EST |
scox just dived below 9USD. expect a press release tomorrow to try and bring it
back up.
---
=====
phrostie
Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of DOS
and danced the skies on Linux silvered wings.
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/snafuu[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:21 PM EST |
Are SCO's antics finally catching up to them? Stock is down below $9.00. A bit
more of that, and Bill will have to step in and fund them directly 'cuz there
won't be time to put together another PIPE before they fold.
IBM: get after Canopy before they get away!
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Superbiskit on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:21 PM EST |
Red Hat has no ownership or proprietary interest in the Linux 2.4
and 2.5 kernels . . . indeed no one has such an interest.. . . Red Hat's alleged
interest in the Linux 2.4 and 2.5 kernels is too indirect
Well, I
think they are going to discover the hard way that this is just plain
upside-down. For one, Linux(tm), the name, is a trademark owned by Linus
Torvalds; for a second thing, every contributor has an ownership or proprietary
interest - and indeed a copyrighted interest - in some part of the kernel
code.
As to Red Hat, they certainly have copyright assignments for some of
the things they distribute. But their product is a packaged
distro. And their standing to challenge any slander that attacks the value of
that product seems impeccable.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: blacklight on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:23 PM EST |
"We're going to catch up and pass Red Hat again"
Nobody is racing the SCO Group to the bottom, if he or she can help it. So the
SCO group wins that particular run hands down.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Superbiskit on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:32 PM EST |
[The case is] not that complicated. We have a lot of faith that a
Utah jury is going to come back to that conclusion.
Maybe because
someone raised the issue in another recent thread. One thing that does bother
me a bit, and I'm wondering whether SCOX have bet their a**es on
it.
Whatever part of this mess goes to a jury, it will go to a Utah jury.
How much is it the case that, to a Utah jury, this will be "the good ol' boys we
sat in a church meeting with last week" vs. the "big city slickers from
New York, who came out here to try and cheat the yokels."?
Now, OTOH, a
great deal hinges on the Novell transaction, and that is one Utah bunch against
another.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:42 PM EST |
DF: Which is why charge $699? Why not say, We are not out to really capture a
huge market or have the same license fee as other server software. Why not
charge 50 dollars or 100 dollars?
McBride: Yeah. Well, if you take the value proposition of our core UNIX
offerings and compare that to where Linux is, you're basically getting the same
thing. We have priced this at a discount of where we are typically selling our
UNIX servers. You know we'll start at 800 dollars and go up to a few thousand,
depending on the configuration.
Now you don't have to buy UNIX. Linux is just as good. Coming from Darl, I
don't know how to take that.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Superbiskit on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 03:51 PM EST |
McBride: I think with respect to the organizations that are
out there attacking us, there are absolutely very strong links into IBM. I
mean...
DF:Well... how
...
McBride:
OSDL. OSDL is very strongly funded
by IBM. OK?
DF:
And you are strongly funded by
Microsoft. So...
McBride:Well,
yes
[emphasis mine. At least, he admits it!]
but about
IBM, so let's talk about them for a minute. OK? So you got OSDL where Linus
works -- that's funded in part by IBM. You've got Groklaw. That's the Internet
chatboard of, you know, everything having to do against
SCO...
DF: ...or with
SCO.
McBride:
Yeah, but it's attacks against us.
You don't see things on there saying, Oh this is really strongly in favor of SCO
or even half strong in favor. So you go peel that away and you realize IBM is a
sponsor of Groklaw. OK ... and as you go look at Novell and the attacks they are
putting out against us, you realize IBM put 50 million into them. So to say that
IBM doesn't have some connection with these other people is, it rings
hollow.
Urmmm. Ignoring the admission that Microsoft is funding
SCOX, this looks like another bit of playing to the home-town folks about how
they are being picked on by the evil pinko hordes from back East.
If I had
retained any innocence at all, I might ask: "can the man possibly
believe this hypocritical drivel?" However, I've discovered no limit
on what some folks can believe . . . especially when it comes from their own
mouth.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Callan.ca on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:11 PM EST |
>>>Prediction time. What possible moves do you see SCO making
next<<<
[* Sue MS for putting them up to it in the first place.]
LMAO!
---
IANAL, IANAP, IAAC (I am a Canadian)[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: FrankH on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:47 PM EST |
| It has been postulated that SCO (and/or Microsoft) want(s) to have the GPL
rewritten to be more like the BSD licence. If the courts did order it to be
rewritten in this way what effect does this clause have then?
"This program
is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version." [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: 16k ram pack on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 04:54 PM EST |
PJ,
You want any support in suing this guy?
Bottom line... the video evidence of his allegation is there now.
Anything a UK Groklaw supporter can do to help?[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 05:01 PM EST |
"we have a vested interest, obviously, to beat these guys up." - Darl McBride,
referring to the GPL software community.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 05:35 PM EST |
A poster containing all the elements that we know of so far...
-- Darryl
-- his gun that he carries
-- the penguin
-- SCO logo
-- extortion
I want a poster of Darryl wearing an SCO teeshirt, his arm around the Linux
Penguin, gun pointed at the penguins head... and a slogan that says "PAY
US, OR THE PENGUIN GETS IT!"[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 05:51 PM EST |
Darl: Google for it if you don't believe me
Me: I would Darl but tomorrow you are going to lay a lawsuit on them to extort
money for using Linux on their servers and because of that they have shut down.
Void[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: darkonc on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 05:53 PM EST |
McBride: OSDL. OSDL is very strongly funded by IBM. OK?
DF:
And you are strongly funded by Microsoft. So...
McBride:Well,
yes but about IBM, [ . . . . .]
(spoken emphasis mine)
It's
these off-the-cuff comments that can be most damaging... Dropping bombs behind
his own lines. ---
Powerful, committed communication. Touching the jewel
within each person and bringing it to life.. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:03 PM EST |
You know, we spend a lot of time talking about how new SCO isn't the same as old
SCO. Given that contract disputes generally have to be settled by finding out
what the people who signed the contract meant, why do we give any credence to
how New SCO interprets any of these contracts? I mean, really, think about it.
Why don't we just go to Ransom Love and the guys pre-McBride, and find out
exactly what *they* thought the APA contract meant when *they* signed it with
Novell. New SCO has nothing to do with how the contract is interpreted, and
never did.
Beanwar[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: brian on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:26 PM EST |
I really can't believe the shifting and misleading going
on in one short answer...I'll tear this one up!
"Well, let's backtrack just for a moment. If you remember
SCO back in the eighties, nineties, was the leading brand
for UNIX on Intel."
Let's do as he says, backtrack to the eighties and
nineties. SCO was the Santa Cruz Operation in California
and had nothing what-so-ever to do with SCOG in Utah. SCOG
of today is a transfromed fromer Linux distributor known
as Caldera. This is the type of misleading that has been
going on throughout this case that simply infuriates me.
Look at the Wookie!
Also, if it really was "the leading brand for Unix on
Intel" then why was OldSCO willing to part with it so
fast? In interviews with Ransom Love the only reason to
buy it was to place it in Linux and / or use the Unix
channel to push their Caldera Linux.
"If you think about it in a horse-race metaphor, the UNIX
on Intel race was going, SCO was way out ahead."
I would hardly call McDonalds cash registers as being "way
ahead" of the likes of IBM, SUN, HP. This is wishful
thinking on his part.
"As you head into early 2000s, all of a sudden SCO comes
back to the pack and Red Hat shoots past it. OK?"
And that's because Red Hat actually kept on top of
development and added value to their product unlike
Caldera did. They also vigorously pushed their products
with good marketing. Nothing mysterious about that.
"And now we are back on our horse and gaining ground again
in some major, albeit probably small compared to Red Hat,
but at the end of the day, that is the race."
And what he is basically saying here is that Caldera is of
the same quality as Red Hat. It could have been but wasn't
through nobody's fault but Caldera's. They didn't keep on
top of development for Linux just like they don't do
anything new for Unix.
"Now the question that it is going to come down to you is,
we get through the court system and get our claims heard
and the jury comes back with the verdict we expect to get,
then you're going to see it come back in the other way."
Again, this is simply wishful thinking. If they couldn't
make quality products before the suit what makes him think
they can do it after?
"We're going to catch up and pass Red Hat again."
They were NEVER ahead of Red Hat either as a Unix vendor
or a Linux one. He feels that by litigating this customers
will flock to SCO. I for one would unplug and get rid of
my computer first.
Watching Darl & Co. in PR stunts like this only serve to
agravate me beyond belief.
Just my .02 on this one line.
B.
---
#ifndef IANAL
#define IANAL
#endif[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:49 PM EST |
http://www.arie.org/doh/
Get'm Duke's!!![ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 06:58 PM EST |
Without ever reading comments (yeah, I know..) something I want to comment on is
the GPL=VIRUL thing.
Linksys goes ahead and uses Linux without regard to the GPL's licencing terms,
and now they have a problem. Fair enough, I would think.
Clearly, if they had used something like the Windows CE code (which is Shared
Source) without regard for Microsoft's licencing terms, they would not be in all
the trouble they are now. I'm sure Bill Gates would personally call them up and
say "Yeah, that's fine guys, we know the licencing thing was just an
oversight, go ahead and keep using our code".
Right?
Surely..!
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Linksys... - Authored by: Dan M on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:25 PM EST
- It's not complicated - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 08:36 PM EST
- Linksys... - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 08:38 PM EST
- Linksys... - Authored by: zcat on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:00 PM EST
| |
| Authored by: suppafly on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:11 PM EST |
It's funny how many times Darl McBride tries to prove a point using a sentance
fragment and then changes the topic, totally avoiding making any sense.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:24 PM EST |
He's been trotting this out for some time now:
We have claims out
there that our code is showing up in Linux, and we are in the process of working
our way through the court system there. In certain cases, we've actually had
Linux community members come back and say, There is code in there. It wasn't
supposed to be there. We took it out. So by definition, there is some level of
tainting already going on with Linux.
Now, I believe that he is
refering to the 'obfuscated' they showed at the SCO Vegas slide show and about
which Bruce Perens said
Slides 10 through 14 show memory allocation
functions from Unix System V, and their correspondence to very similar material
in Linux ...
In this case, there was an error in the Linux developer's process
(at SGI), and we lucked out that it wasn't worse. It turns out that we have a
legal right to use the code in question, but it doesn't belong in Linux and has
been removed. These slides have several C syntax errors and would never compile.
So, they don't quite represent any source code in Linux. But we've found the
code they refer to. It is included in code copyrighed by AT&T and released
as Open Source under the BSD license by Caldera, the company that now calls
itself SCO.
I understood that it was removed for technical reasons
before the slide-show.
So if Darl is spinning the rest of the SCO
reality like he is this particular instance, then I'm feeling quietly confident
about the rest of the SCO case.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Phong on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 07:48 PM EST |
| Darl said: If you look at the goals of the Free Software Foundation
that has the license that governs Linux, it is that all software will be priced
at zero.
PJ said:
His slur that the goal is zero price is
either a gross misunderstanding or a cynical way to cause a lot of
time-consuming trouble and FUD about the GPL.
While I don't agree with
Darl's statement (or indeed with almost anything I've heard him say lately), I
do think you, PJ, are missing an aspect of the GPL that has a large impact on
pricing.
However, let's start with how Darl is wrong. His contention that
one of the goals of the GPL is to force the price to zero appears to be
wrong. To quote RMS:
I don't want prices to be low.
That's not
the issue at all. The issue is freedom.
[ref]
So, while a zero price is not the goal of Free Software, I
contend that a low purchase price does appear to be one of its
side-effects. The main factor is not in what a company is permitted to charge
(since, as PJ rightly pointed out, the GPL allows someone to charge whatever
they like for their GPLed software). Instead, it is what a company can
reasonably expect to charge for their software while still succeeding in selling
it. The primary factor in this equation is that everyone who gets a GPLed
program gets the source and the ability to redistribute the software without
further payments to the original seller. This means that the upper price for
selling software is constrained by the ability of competitors to spring up and
undercut the selling price. (Don't confuse a price that includes support with
the ability to charge a high selling price for the software itself, BTW.) [ Reply to This | # ]
|
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| Authored by: chrisbrown on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 08:29 PM EST |
I still can't understand Darl's definition of Ownership.
McBride:
We'll be glad to take our contracts against the newsletter. OK? If you look at
what the newsletter is claiming, it's claiming that you, in fact, own the
derivative work. We've said that from the very first filing in the IBM case.
IBM owns their derivative works. That's what the newsletter
says.
Next statement:
McBride: I wouldn't call
it that, per se, but I say we have absolutely property
rights.
Darl, Please explain the difference between
IBM owning and [SCO has absolute] property
rights. No, Darl, your "easement" description doesn't cut it.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Ken Wilson on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 08:43 PM EST |
Interesting, positive article with known names talking about their use of Open
Source.
http://www.cio.com/archive/03
0104/open.html
Includes a sidebar article that discussing SCO's
silliness.
"Lawyers, too, seem unconcerned about the risks that the
SCO assaults pose to the typical CIO"
"As for the
Constitutional claim? ...is just plain silly and has generally been dismissed as
such ...It is certainly one of the more bizarre allegations that he has
made." ---
Ken Wilson [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: dht on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:23 PM EST |
---------------------------------------------------
DF: Now you have also said in your letter to Congress that Linux and open source
are a threat to national security.
McBride: Right.
DF: How do you justify that?
McBride: Well, we justify it because when IBM licenses AIX, when HP licenses
HPUX, when SUN licenses Solaris, all these guys have requirements in there from
an export control standpoint that you keep this material protected. So the
proprietary versions of UNIX out there today have an absolute standard that you
can't put this stuff out in the open and and let, you know, third-world
countries, Iran, Iraq, different places, get hold of it. In the open source ...
DF: Well, it's not too hard to get hold of any code...
McBride: In the open source world, basically you have a situation where you can
get hold of it and in, that's a major problem. We've met with some people at
Capitol Hill, and they agree that it's a problem that you can get access to
something that, you know, you can go create a supercomputer out of a few Intel
boxes, and you are up and going."
----------------------------------------------
There it is.. Darl thinks BSD is a threat to National Security too. Any open
source code is a threat.
I wonder if Darl realizes how many operating systems (including SCO Unixware)
are built with BSD source code?
I certainly hope the "people at Capital Hill" he met with have more
sense than he does.. On the other hand, perhaps he will expose a few of the more
clueless of these "people" if they start spouting this line of
gibberish. Help sort out the wheat (intelligent ones) from the chaff for the
voting public.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: mcstafford on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:32 PM EST |
How significant is that Jury of Utahahans (how does one say that?) that Darl
makes note of? I know that politicians sometimes win their "own"
states for no other reason than the He's From 'Round Here vibe, regardless of
their merits; do juries get to decide for the hometown company regardless of the
ridiculousness of their case? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: prammy on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:41 PM EST |
DF: And what tweaks would you make to it?
McBride:
Oh, I think the whole part about the price thing. Go look at the differences
between a BSD-style license and a GPL license. I think those spell out the
differences that I would be concerned with.
Yep now i see what
he wants. He wants to harness the power of the open source community and take
without giving anything back. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 09:43 PM EST |
| The Age website published an article detailing the ongoing battles between open
source and proprietry systems in an article
here.
What's interesting to note are a few small but quite significant
changes to the article over the course of the day, possibly due to the concerned
emails of myself and no doubt others.
Phrases such as "SCO, a software
company that sells Unix operating systems and owns a large portion of the code
on which Linus is based ..." (yes it said 'Linus', not 'Linux') have been
replaced with more accurate wording.
Just thought I'd share this with you
so that everyone is encouraged to write polite letters to their
mainstream press to keep them from passing on SCO FUD.
Luke. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: zcat on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:38 PM EST |
Reading Darl's spin on "removal of inappropriate code" (I get the
impression from the Linux mailing list that the code in question was really onyl
removed because it was ugly and unnecessary), I can't see how SCO justifies not
disclosing the rest of the 'disputed code'. If there was anything questionable
in the remaining 'millions of lines of code' and the Linux developers remove it,
SCO would then have a clear run at collecting 'three billion dollars' (ObPinky)
in damages from IBM.
This assumes that there are actually 'millions of lines of code', and their
current almost-certain-to-lose strategy only makes sense if there aren't.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 10:45 PM EST |
How can SCOG's legal team let McBride say these things? Do they see some
strategic advantage in these public comments, or is Darl beyond their control? I
thought the standard corporate response in times of major lawsuits was
"That's a subject of ongoing litigation, so I cannot comment talk about it
at this time."[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:15 PM EST |
I watched some of the video, and what jumped out to me was watching Darl talk.
He stares at the floor when he talks, and almmost never makes eye contact - with
the interviewer, with the camera, or with the audience. Not much in and of
itself, but I would be very suspicious of someone who talked to me like that.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: 1penguin on Monday, March 15 2004 @ 11:45 PM EST |
I've had a fairly long day, but currently have a very high speed connection at
this hotel and one of my Windoze machines (my Linux boxes are home and I miss
them) so I couldn't resist watching the video. I'm very curious about Darl's
body language and his apparently nervous responses... IMHO, I would guess he had
been drinking or something. If in fact that is the case, I wouldn't be suprised.
After all how long can anyone continue this sort of an attack against what is
good. How long can the apparent twisting of facts continue without taking it's
toll.
---
John[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 12:47 AM EST |
Farber sure did a good job of interviewing Darl. It was certainly far better
than what we usually see. It sounded to me like he had been reading groklaw. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 01:28 AM EST |
Murphys law of management - "Everyone raises to one level above their
competency level and remains there."
I'm not a troll. Don't flame me. Think about what I'm going to say.
Daryl is a very brave guy. He also has alot of guts. You have to give him some
recognition on this part of his personality. He is also a blithering idiot. As
entertaining as Coco, Bozo or Red Skelton are at playing a simpleton. You know
that there are brains behind every action that they make. You know that they
plan everything that they do. This is something that Daryl lacks. He doesn't
plan anything OR it doesn't look like he does. But atleast he is out there and
not afraid to put both feet in his mouth and swallow. On that one attribute I
give him praise.
I personaly wouldn't go to Harvard Law School and give a lecture unprepaired. I
would probably have someone help me to write out what I was going to say. Daryl
figures he can just wing it. It is not like the people in the audience are the
top minds and best logical thinkers on the plannet or anything....
Then Daryl goes on ZDNet. Dan did his research. He lead Daryl all over the place
and constantly backed him into a corner. That is alot of abuse. Notice that Dan
had notes? He was prepaired. Once again Daryl wasn't and it showed. Before I
agree to go on a possibly hostile talk show. I'm going to want a list of
possible questions so that I can prepair myself. No list. No Show. And that is a
resonable request. If I was Gates I would just give the 'interviewer' the
questions that I wanted them to ask me. Then I don't look like an idiot. Does
Daryl prepair for his public appearances? It doesn't look like it. And That is
what makes him look like an idiot.
From the ZDNet interview you can tell that Daryl tried to steer the
conversation. But was grossly incompetent, and underprepaired.
I think Daryl is hoping to go for the David and Goliuth metephore. He sure has
painted himself as a small town, good ol' boy who is lost in the big city.
I guess Daryl is two levels above his competency level. I pity him.
He is always good for a laugh though.
McBride: Right. But again we have 300 employees. 290 of them are working today
on delivering products.
DF: .... So why, why in your case do you think that that model is flawed, given
that that's where the industry seems to be going.
McBride: The industry that's "going that way" are people who have
services they're adding in on top of that. Large hardware vendors that have
large service organizations love that model.
OK the numbers aren't accurate but lets just use his numbers. Out of 300
employees 290 of them are 'delivering' product. How many are in uppper
management? 5? That will leave 5 for R&D. And that is if no one is answering
the phones, reading the mail or doing the bookkeeping. Wow. LOL. It sounds like
a service organization to me. SCO is claiming that they are something that they
are not. And bashing the kind of organization (and I use that word loosly when
describing SCO) that they are. Are they creating product or adding value? NO.
They are just delivering someone elses goods. Kinda like Wal-Mart. Hmmm. Sounds
like a service organization to me.
I know it is bad karma to laugh at some one elses missery. But Daryl just keeps
serving up the laughter.
Artiken - Ken Parnell[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: GLJason on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 02:49 AM EST |
I think it's amazing how McBride keeps saying they must own all rights to UNIX
and anything to do with it because they paid hundreds of millions of dollars to
Novell. It's amazing that in a few years that hundred million dollar investment
became worth $5 billion in a suit against one company (IBM), and billions
more if he actually got $699 for each install of Linux out there. The real
amazing thing is that they think they deserve all that money for an operating
system that they contributed very little to. If their Unix on Intel was
actually that great, why isn't everyone using it now?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Khym Chanur on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 04:08 AM EST |
| What's this a reference to? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 07:36 AM EST |
When in McBride going to learn to just put down the gun he keeps shooting
himself in the foot with? If my understanding as a Brit in France working for
the circus (this is all true so my apologies if this makes no sense!) is
correct, then the American constitution was holding some of Red Hats possible
attacks back since they where not in competition with the SCO and thus this case
could not be viewed as anti-competative (as it could if MS had done the sueing
hence the alledged payments etc.) but by announcing that Red Hat is in fact not
only a direct competitor (in what sounds like McBride sees as a 2 horse race)
but is in fact doing better than SCO this would be a case of trying to use the
law to reduce another companies profitability as you are unable to produce a
better product.
Is any of this anywhere near accurate???[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 08:47 AM EST |
>>"McBride: Yeah, but it's attacks against us. You don't see
>>things on there saying, Oh this is really strongly in
>>favor of SCO or even half strong in favor."
I would suppose not Darl. Not too many great things to say about you, SCO, and
your unethical suing business practices.
Please give us something nice to say about SCO.
No attacks here. Just the facts here.
>>"So you go peel that away and you realize IBM is a
>> sponsor of Groklaw."
Darl, whatever your smoking really isn't healthy for you and most likely
illegal.
>> OK ... and as you go look at Novell and the attacks they
>> are putting out against us, you realize IBM put 50
>> million into them. So to say that IBM doesn't have some
>> connection with these other people is, it rings hollow.
Darl, Novell is protecting their rights in Unix. I do believe that you claim you
have ownership of Unix. Novell has stated publically that they do not agree with
your stance on complete Unix ownership. I would believe that Novell is merely
protecting their IP rights. What rings hollow is the gap between your ears.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 12:28 PM EST |
Maybe SCO's plan is to let the stock collapse and then file chapter 11? This
will go towards sympathy. The point here is not to win; they know that their
claims are unwinable. The point is to cause FUD. Besides, if the company
conveniently is desolved before trial, can the case even have resolution? The
suing corporation no longer legally exists at that point.
Although better than times of horse mounted mercenaries, the legal profession
seems to largely exist for the purpose of acting as modern day assailants.
Jeff Carr [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 16 2004 @ 07:48 PM EST |
Since IANAL too, I want to ask the legal eagles here about this
quote:
In the case of the derivative works, we are not claiming to
own IBM's derivative works. We claim to have a title ownership. It's a little
bit like if you have a property and then running through the back, you have a
utility easement. Our claim is around the utility easement, not on the whole
property.
Does this make any sense in terms of IP law? I don't
understand how you can have an "easement" on software, or in this case a title
claim without a claim to owning the work. In a short perusal of the contracts
it does seem that some kind of joint ownership is envisioned, but I don't know
what that means. If true, would you need a license from two different parties
to use a piece of software?
Thanks,
Dan
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