I don't know about LDP, but according to a post I read somewhere (yahoo?) some guy who wrote one of the LDP documents, wrote to SCO, may be even a cease and desist, because he thought they weren't using the document appropriately.

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It is a game now of who can spin what information first. The SCO Group was even so blatent to invite members of the media all expenses paid to their upcoming SCOForum. I cannot speak directly for other media outlets, but I can tell you that it would be a huge conflict of interest for journalists to accept room, board, and airfare to Las Vegas to attend their conference.

#include <stdio.h>

main (){ printf ("Standard disclaimern"); printf ("not a lawyer, not a paralegal, just a codern"); }

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ROFLMAO

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About the cluelessness of SCO, read this (May 30) column: http://www.al wayson-network.com/comments.php?id=514_0_3_0_C ;-) It still is very relevant!

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- SCO's target selection was limited by who actively contributed code to Linux. A company that sold Linux products but did not contribute significant code would not be a viable target. IBM is almost certainly the heaviest Linux contributor and promotor among SCO's licensees.

- To the extent that they might have been motivated by trying to get a short-term boost in stock prices, a billion-dollar suit against IBM is a lot more credible than a billion-dollar suit against a smaller and less financially solid company like SGI would be.

- IBM's deep pockets would make a settlement short of winning a lawsuit practical. IBM has more than enough wealth that they could buy SCO, buy SCO's Unix rights, pay SCO to license the needed Unix code under the GPL, or do any of a number of other things through which SCO could profit nicely from a settlement. Which other potential target could afford to pay out big bucks to get rid of a nuisance?

- IBM's big size helps SCO look more like David and less like Goliath than they would otherwise. That is useful both for public relations and, potentially, for selling a jury on the idea that they are the victims rather than the ones who are mistreating others.

In hindsight, it currently looks as if SCO miscalculated seriously both in terms of the strength of their own case and in terms of how willing IBM would be to settle. But if they just looked closely enough to see the potential advantages of choosing IBM as a target and didn't adequately consider the problems they were getting into, it's not hard to see how choosing IBM as a target might have made sense at the time. And even now, can we really rule out out the possibility that IBM might pay SCO a little to go away if SCO brings their demands down low enough?

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Yes, that forum page you link is up, but the sponsers page is still "Document not found".

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• SMP: Alan Cox "Thanks to Caldera", Linux 1.3.31, Oct 1995.
• RCU: IBM, Linux 2.5.43, Oct 2002.
• NUMA: SGI, Linux 2.3.30, Dec 1999.
• JFS: IBM, Linux 2.4.20, Nov 2002. patches were available earlier.
• ReiserFS: Reiser/Namesys, Linux 2.4.1, Jan 2001.
• ext3: Red Hat, Linux 2.4.17, Dec 2001. patches were available earlier.
• XFS: SGI, Linux 2.5.36, Sep 2002.

It still boggles my mind when I try to understand SCO's strategy.

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But I think that until the stock price starts to really fall, or other Canopy companies feel pain, I doubt the strategy will change.

When it begins to hurt Canopy as a whole, I think Yarro will probably pull the rug out from under McBride - maybe not immediately, but at opportune moment.

I think that there might even be one or more people on the board who, while maybe happy about the current stock price, have spotted the opportunity, are maybe greasing the skids, and looking forward to the chance to stick a knife (in the metaphor sense, not literal!) in McBride's back. I think look for the ones for you might expect to be saying more about SCOsource but hardly open their mouths.

I personally would find it enjoyably ironic, if this were to end with ex-CEO McBride suing SCO or vice-versa.

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It all links to Microsoft!, something even an IBM spokesman has mentioned himself.

Microsoft last 'lock in' attempt will be Longhorn, since they know Linux will one day soon be a real winner.

I expect, after SCO is finnished, MS itself will strart with attacking Linux with all the patents they own

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BTW, Pete, why do you link yourself to Microsoft (Hotmail)?

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So if anyone's professional duties force your attendance at SCO Forum, please take good notes.

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It's easy to look for a MS conspiracy, and even find "evidence" to back the claim.

But, I tend to follow the adage "why blame conspiracy, when stupidity will suffice?"

In the current situation, my supicion is that the executive officers of the then Caldera while looking at decling revenues from their SCO products, minimal revenues from their GNU/Linux offering and stock that was in the tank decided that the only way the company could be saved was by expoiting what ever they could from the rights they held in SysVrX. In examining the source, and the AT&T licenses, they, stupidly, concluded that they hold more rights than they do.

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How many people are expected there (attendants and reporters(media))

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I suspect the reason SCO decided to go for IBM was because of Monterey - they thought that that gave them grounds to challenge IBM for supporting Linux regardless of the ownership of the code. They probably still thought that when they wrote the notification that they would withdraw the license but realised when drawing up their complaint that it looked too weak (maybe because those contracts were with old SCO and never got transferred - marketing agreements for a dead project were probably considered irrelevant at the time of the sale) so they would have to come up with something else.

I don't think the Linux Today comments about us doing our investigation in the open are a real threat - the important investigation is what IBM are doing - the fact that IBM may choose to make use of what is discussed here and elsewhere does not mean that IBM will not be able to pull a few surprises at trial. It may of course stop things going to trial if SCO realise their case is too weak to be worth persuing - even if David Boies is on contingency getting all of the required expert opinions will cost real money.

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If we ignore subtract the 5.3M from 6M then only 700K shares are held by individual directors and of those 114K were sold last quarter and at least 140K are expected to be sold this quarter - it suddenly makes their confidence look a lot less impressive.

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According to SCO's estimates, with some 2.5 million enterprise servers running Linux, there is a 'very significant opportunity' for SCO to gain revenue through the licenses, McBride said. At $699 per CPU, that becomes a potential pool of revenue in the neighborhood of $1.7 billion.

'We're cautiously optimistic,' he said. 'We've done a lot of models on this, and the models are pretty exciting.'"

-- SCO's McBride: IT world backs SCO in its fight with IBM

That drooling, greedy thief actually thinks people will pay him for code even if the court finds in SCO's favor. Has it not occurred to him that the moment they reveal the "offending code", a new, non-offending version will be available?

I'm quickly coming to agree with those who think McBride and his cohorts are simply dumb. There is no "grand strategy", beyond basic stupidity.

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I think, that I doubt McBride really thinks he will get the fees. If he did he would put $699 X 2.5 million on his revenue prediction (in SEC filings and quarterly reports) spread over the next few quarters. He didn't.

But he gave the *vague* impression that it might be plausible to people listening to his conference call, that there was something there.

Microsoft? I'm sure they are enjoying the circus, but the public evidence [MS Australia comments, comments after they bought the license], to me at least, is more suggestive that they were hit on by SCO too, and simply paid them to go away. Do you really think Microsoft would be pleased just months after paying up, that SCO then appears in Byte and starts making new claims on Windows?

If you look at what Microsoft says they think they licensed, it sounds more like some APIs and source code for UNIX interfacing. In the pro-SCO press, this is presented as if it somehow has something to do with the Linux license scheming, and means Microsoft said they endorsed it. Neither of which is true AFAIK.

I don't think they is any love lost between MS and SCO/Canopy/Caldera/Yarro-Norda.

MS are not fools, and can also see SCO/Caldera is massively outmatched by IBM. They know the outcome will be in IBM's favor, that MS has massive business interests entwined with IBM etc., so they'd be fools to damage that to support some guys they don't even like with a 1 in a million shot. One of MS's strengths is a long-term business strategy, they just keep plugging away, so they'll be thinking about what happens to them in 2,3,4,5 years not just short-term FUD effects.

In sumamry, I think that people are confusing two different things:

1. Whether MS actively support SCO/Canopy?

2. Whether SCO/Canopy wants people to think MS support SCO/Canopy?

I see plenty of evidence for 2.

No real evidence whatsoever, so far for 1. The only so-called "evidence" is in the same articles with are filled with McBride-isms and DiDio-isms, and the tin-foil hat brigade "it would be typical MS to do something like this", or "MS hate Linux...blah blah".

Personally I think, and agree with the comments, that you don't need complicated conspiracy theories, when greed and stupidity are available, and sufficient explanation.

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Greed_Stupidity=1 Conspiracy=0

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When I first read up on McBride's past and Yarrow's past what struck me is that this is now a good candidate for the classical 'den of vipers' cliche that gets overused in adventure novels.

I started wondering a long time ago, who's squirreling what documents away, who's secretly taping meetings, all for both self-protection (who wouldn't want to protect oneself in a den of vipers?) and for use later as weapons (this group of vipers knows a thing or 2 about litigation) ....

I dunno, it's very reminiscent of 'house harkonnen' and some of Frank H.'s best cloak-and-dagger intrigue-upon-intrigue stuff.

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Agreed, now all we need is McGee and the Bureau of Sabatoge.

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What are the odds of that?

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/ Bill Gates pretends to defend ``innovation'', and if he did I'd love him for it. But there's very little evidence that Microsoft even knows what the word means. Buying or outright stealing key technologies rather than innovating has been a Microsoft trait from the beginning. Consider this list...

MS-DOS: bought (from Tim Paterson). PC1 BIOS code: stolen (almost bit-for-bit from Gary Kildall's CP/M BIOS). The Windows interface: copied (incompetently, from Apple). On-the-fly disk compression: stolen (from Stac Electronics). Internet Explorer: bought or stolen, depending on who you believe (from Spyglass). And the list only starts with these.

And the worst -- the absolute worst -- is that he's conditioned computer users to expect and even love derivative, shoddily-implemented crap. Millions of people think that it's right, it's normal to have an operating system so fragile that it hangs crashes three or four times a week and has to be rebooted every time you change anything deeper than the wallpaper. /

Here, here! I agree 100%! As a computer engineer, I've been disgusted at MS since their first pathetic release of BASIC for 8 bit computers. I chose OS/A+ rather than the buggy, slow, expensive joke MS delivered. It's been the same for everything else they've released since then. Find an alternative and it's GUARANTEED to be better... which is why MS sooner or later tries to buy or destroy it.

Anyone who thinks it's just stupidity and not an MS conspiracy should go read the Halloween Documents at http://opensource.org/halloween/

Then go read all of Eric Raymond's rant at http://www.pgts. com.au/download/misc/halloween-rant.html

Why look for stupidity when conspiracy is clubbing you over the head with a lead pipe? How obvious does it have to be before you believe? Don't expect Bill to start advertising on prime time TV. Well, not YET at any rate. Give him a few more years of unchecked rampages.

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Like the time the CEO of a major airline wrote an open letter saying he was not going to lower HIS fares but if any other airline did he would eagerly get into a fare war.

Nothing secret or underhanded is required to conduct collusion. Darl never needs to speak to anyone at MS.

Darl knows what MS wants (MS has been clear vis-a-vis GPL), MS can see what Darl is doing (he isn't exactly maintaining a low profile) and if MS wants to support Darl, since he's signalled he'll push their agenda and MS know where to send the checques.

Same with Sun, all the anti-IBM signalling is public, and SUN's response is public ("spreading radioactive IP waste?"). All the signalling is public, no secret collusion, backroom smoke-filled rooms, winks, nods, brown paper bag filled with money in the tree hollow or under such and such a bridge required.

I don't know about the legality of this type of public, in-the-open collusion, though.

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I am well aware of the Halloween Documents, and have been recommending that people read them for years.

Personally, I have a personal dislike for Microsoft and their methods from the days they highjacked BASIC, and were an ambitious but basically going nowhere outfit.

While 'tis quite likely that BG & Co. are cynically supporting SCOG through their "unix" license, I do *not* see this to be *proof* that the evil empire of Redmond has instigated SCOG or conspired with SCOG to start these actions.

Speaking of cluesticks, you might want to understand that participants in this forum have mutual understanding to avoid the very easy tactic of bashing MS. We also have a tacit agreement to avoid flaming.

Regards

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O dont know of anyone that supports him, and from my understanding, SCO is losing sponsors fast for its SCO forum. I cannot think of anything funnier than McBride standing alone talking to an empty room.

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http://www.google.com/search?q=%22we+want+Apple+to+do+to+undermine+Sun%3F%22

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Because stupidity is a lot easier to pull off successfully. And the necessary talents are a lot more common...

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And yes, I've been aware of the "Halloween Documents" since Raymond first released them...

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Given MS's past track record, they should NOT be given the benefit of the doubt. They haven't earned it. In fact, given their past record, every move should be scrutinized and challenged. Microsoft should be under some form of industry probation with a probabtion officer examining every part of their business at regular and frequent intervals.

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I thought this could be true, but then I remembered that SCO is controled by Canopy, and Canopy is owned by Ray Norda, and Ray Norda hates Microsoft with a passion and would never do anything to help them. Or do I have this wrong?

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Like I said, what _evidence_ do you have of a Microsoft conspiracy in this fiasco? I haven't seen any.

Let's not forget SCO may want you to think Microsoft is behind them. It could part of the bluff to give the impression they had more resources and support behind them, than they in fact do. See my previous 8/16/03; 12:48:01 PM post for further comments

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If Microsoft is involved and it can be proved, then they'll likely be punished for it. I believe IBM has already made references to the possibility. But just because it's something "they would do" doesn't mean that they're doing it. I'm afraid you need a little more than that.

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http://www.lamlaw.com/

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