SCO Protest And Anti-Protest In Provo

a.ameri writes "On Friday, June 20, the Provo Linux Users Group decided to head on over to SCO's offices and hold a protest; information on the event, including pictures and press coverage, can be found on the PLUG page. Among other things, the protesters claim that SCO employes came out and joined the event holding pre-prepared signs saying things like 'I love software piracy' and 'Try communism - use Linux.'" There are some funny shots linked here (thanks to reader lucif latum). Daddio64 points to the press covereage in the Deseret News and Provo Daily Herald.

Original LWN discussion

[TRS-80]

The original post on LWN [lwn.net] containes a few comments on why the SCO people did this (ie they have a sense of humour).

Slashdot - stealing LWN stories for fun and profit since 1998

Slightly OT - The SCO dog ;)

[Daath]

Userfriendly [userfriendly.org] has modified a Gary Larson (Farside) comic to fit SCO! It's quite funny!

Image Problems?

[RWarrior(fobw)]

I can't mirror the pictures, but when they get Slashdotted, the important text on the signs are below, since I can't mirror them.

It this really the image these people want to project?

• "Legalize Stupidity - Smoke Linux"
• "Give Communism A Try - Free Linux"
• "Who's Down With IPOP - Other People's Intellectual Property" with Tux saying "I'm Down I'm Down"
• "My Son Stole Code & Republished It (and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"
• "I Don't Pay For Music - I Don't Pay For My O.S. Either - So Sue Me"
• "Software Stealing Is Not A Crime - In Iraq And Parts of France"
• "I [heart] Software Piracy" complete with Tux in a pirate outfit

Too bad I'm not an SCO shareholder. Maybe I could sue SCO management for permitting such stupid childishness on company time.

Read this before bashing SCO

[Martin Kallisti]

From the LWN page: This is sad... (Posted Jun 22, 2003 20:47 UTC (Sun) by erat) (Post reply) No, not the SCO folks who made the signs... It's the people who don't have a shred of humor left and, more importantly, weren't even there who seem to be take everything SCO employees touch as being an insult. I work across the street from SCO. I was at the protest. At one point, I was one of the people carrying a SCO-produced sign (as a JOKE. At one point I even saw picketters holding SCO signs). If you were there you'd know that the entire event -- albeit serious in its message -- was taken in good spirits by pretty much everyone. I'd be surprised if anyone seriously though the SCO signs were meant to be anything but fun. You remember FUN, don't you?? It's like when you're in a bar watching a football game and there are folks rooting for the other team in the bar with you; friendly "traitor" jabs are tossed back and forth, joking insinuations are made, and in the end you all laugh together and say "bye" when you leave. Here are some facts that some (all?) of you didn't get from the pictures: 1) It was very hot that day so Canopy provided drinks for everyone, including the protesters. And yes, protesters took them up on the drinks, and they even said "thanks". 2) SCO and Canopy employees (including Ralph Yarro and Darl McBride, among others) shared laughs with the picketters. No, I didn't see Chris Sontag or Blake Stowell out there, but I don't know them so I could have just missed them. 3) Darl, on his way home, stopped by the picketting near 1600 N. (he didn't have to; he could have driven by and nobody would have noticed) and chatted with the protesters. There are at least two pictures of him with his arms around a few of the protesters, and all of them are happy. Sorry folks, but other than a reporter who got heat stroke, the people who showed up had a good time. The folks there mixed with SCO, Canopy, etc. employees from around the office complex, had some fun with the "rivalry", and went on their merry way happy. At least that was my observation. The intent of the protest was to bring attention to the opinions of those who oppose SCO's actions, not to threaten, throw things, fight, or yell. In that regard, the protest was more successful than I would have hoped. Nobody walked away with a different opinion of SCO's actions, but people can disagree without hating each other. At least here in Utah they can.

Re:pro-linux sco employees

[d3faultus3r]

Quite a bit. If you look at the history of SCO, half the time they were working on Linux alongside UNIX. I'm sure a lot of SCO [sco.com] employees developed an affinity for Linux.

Darl McBride?

[metatruk]

In this pic you can see that Darl McBride has his arms around two of the protestors:
http://mirror.lug-nut.com/mcnabb/med/IMG_0057.JPG [lug-nut.com]

Re:pro-linux sco employees

[Jonner]

Unless there's been a purge, I'm sure many of them are big GNU/Linux users, since that was one of the company's main products until a month or two ago.

Re:Read this before bashing SCO

[amcnabb]

I was there, too, and I don't agree with this interpretation of what the SCO people were doing. First of all, they only gave drinks to two or three people; the rest of us had our own.

And none of our protesters touched their anti-protest signs. The writer of this comment must have mistaken them for our people because the signs were being marched around.

Sure, everyone had a great time, but I don't feel like the SCO people were very respectful, except for McBride who talked to us in a political not-actually-answering-any-questions way.

Re:Humor or no, SCO signs are wrong

[EvilNTUser]

I know you didn't draw any conclusions from Finland being allied with Germany, but before anyone else does, I would like to point out two things:

1) Russia sought to invade Finland
2) No one else would help

Re:SCO really does want to own Linux

[amcnabb]

I was at the little "chat" with McBride afterwards. He informed us that home users don't have to worry yet, but that commercial users aren't going to get away with their free lunches anymore. McBride repeatedly (at least 10 times) said that SCO's intentions would become clear in July.

My impression is that in July, SCO is going to send a bill to each of the 1500 companies that they sent the warnings to, and more. I think that they're going to start collecting money before anything has happened in court.

Re:40,000 Lines...?

[althalus]

Yes, I was misquoted (yes, I'm that Jason Hall, the one who also made the page). The reporter is the same one who suffered the heat stroke, and had absolutely no clue about computers. It was hard enough trying to get her to understand what linux was, or even 'source code'. I did give a more accurate count of total lines, but that didn't get through apparently.

SCO trying to win an award...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the Valerie Mallinson award, given each year for the best corporate astroturfing campaign. Last year was the first year of the award, won by Microsoft [slashdot.org], of course.

The anti-protest was overreported

[expro]

I was at the protest. I saw it pre-announced on /. and decided to show up. Sadly, from the world's perspective, it becomes what was reported.

In some of the media, the SCO signs are shown larger than life. In reality, they were 1. devoid of intelligent comment, 2. quite small, 3. sitting off to the side on SCO property for most of the time. They were mostly insignificant except for to those taking pictures. If individual pictures had been taken of the protester signs, there were 10 good protester signs for every stupid SCO sign, and real stakeholders/protesters circulating them.

It WAS obviously a waste of time to protest in front of SCO for any significant amount of time, and after the first hour the protesters went to a very busy nearby intersection and carried on their protest in complete absence of SCO, and brought hundreds to some degree of awareness of the issues surrounding the case, and what a bunch of scum-sucking lawyers in their community with no technical merit were trying to do to community-developed free software.

Maybe Utah is not unique in giving the establishment much better press than they deserve. Maybe we bring it upon ourselves. I could not say. But regardless, I will be there again next week.

More images and mirrors

[kuwan]

My co-workers and I were the ones that took some of the pictures. You can find more of them here (with mirrors):

http://www.kuwan.net/scotesters/index.html [kuwan.net]

http://www.karlrees.com/sco/scotesters/index.html [karlrees.com]

http://www.normanfam.org/sco/scotesters/index.html [normanfam.org]

I should note that Ralph Yarrows, head of the Canopy group which owns 46% of SCO, was the one to organize the anti-protest and was the one who had the posters made.

Re:Original LWN discussion

[shadowbearer]

Especially when one considers this [zdnet.co.uk]

Tuesday 17th June 2003

(emphasis mine)

SCO has made no secret in recent months that it hired high-profile attorney David Boies to spearhead its case against IBM, but the company's legal representation in Utah courts is also noteworthy. The company retained Brent O. Hatch and Mark F. James of the law firm Hatch, James & Dodge. Hatch is the son of Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a representative for SCO confirmed Monday.

SB

Hmmm...interesting little tidbit from the article

[knewman_1971]

One of the comments made by the SCO reps was "Linux users will still be able to use Linux, it just won't be free. Linux users are just upset because they've been getting a free ride for so long and it's coming to an end".

Um, I think I have paid for every distro of Linux that I've used in the past 3 years. RedHat, Club Mandrake, Suse. I've either bought them from CrapUSA or paid for the direct from the company (in the case of Mandrake).

So how have I been getting a free ride? I've paid for an OS that I sometimes use.

The only freedom that I've had has been that which is like speech, not that which is like beer.

Re:Children cringe factor

[Anonymous Coward]

That little girl happens to be my daughter, and she does use linux. She is quite good at clicking on the little icons, drawing pictures in Gimp, playing games with GCompris, closing windows, and generally screwing up the KDE setup I have for the rest of my family. She is far more computer literate than my 5 year old, and she is only 3. That is far better than I was doing when I was 3.

More images and mirrors

[kuwan]

My co-workers and I were the ones that took some of the pictures. You can find more of them here (with mirrors):

http://www.kuwan.net/scotesters/index.html [kuwan.net]

http://www.karlrees.com/sco/scotesters/index.html [karlrees.com]

http://www.normanfam.org/sco/scotesters/index.html [normanfam.org]

I should note that Ralph Yarrows, head of the Canopy group which owns 46% of SCO, was the one to organize the anti-protest and was the one who had the posters made.

Re:More images and mirrors

[dysprosia]

"I should note that Ralph Yarrows, head of the Canopy group which owns 46% of SCO, was the one to organize the anti-protest and was the one who had the posters made."

Very interesting, considering Canopy [canopy.com] owns a Linux clustering company, which supports Linux's use and even has a Linux BIOS product!

Re: Humor or no, SCO signs are wrong

[Anonymous Bullard]

Britain tried to promote the creation of a neutral Nordic (Norway, Sweden, Finland) zone to prevent the germans from gaining access the massive nickel deposits in the Finnish Lapland.

Stalin refused to allow this. What the world didn't know back then was that Stalin and Hitler already had a secret pact diving Europe between them, and Stalin considered Finland and her resources to be his.

Churchill was pissed when Stalin attacked Finland (having even the nerve to claim at the time that it was Finland who started the war LOL), giving Hitler his cue to start occupying Norway.

In what became known as the miracle of the winter war, an ad-hoc Finnish army with no modern weapons or even rifles for everyone, beat back a massive mechanized Soviet force and managed to sue for peace in spring '40 when even bullets were running out in many sectors of the front.

Until 1941 Churchill was praising Finland as the model for all nations fighting against tyranny but neither Britain nor US were prepared to offer Finland material assistance to keep any imminent threats (i.e. Stalin, who's purges the Finns had helplessly witnessed across the border for a decade) at bay. Out of ammo and any modern gear, Finland is approached by Germany who are prepared to sell them much of what is needed (in preparation of their own Operation Barbarossa, as it turned out).

Let's see what the choices were: 1) Refuse German material aid and subject the Finnish nation to Stalin's mass murder, or 2) Accept the material support (without political alliance), at least have a chance of defending yourself and unfortunately piss off Churchill who was offering no material support anyway.

Soviet bombers began bombing Finnish cities and air fields without declaring a war (nothing new there) a few days after Hitler had betrayed his friend Stalin by invading, and with the red army occupying the homes of some 400,000+ Finns after the winter war, those folks were soon to be back fixing their homes and resuming their lives.

After reaching the old borders, and even invading western parts of Soviet-held Karelia where ethnic Finns and Karelians had been suffering under the totalitarian communist rule and contemplated their own independence, the war became stationary until Stalin (using the latest weaponry Britain and US could provide them) started another massive attack in '44 and under the imminent threat of national extermination and genocide, the Finnish parliament agreed to some very harsh and unjust peace terms dictated by the Dear Leader himself.

In the final peace treaty in Paris '47, just before the Cold War began in full swing, the western allies watched approvingly as the Soviets pushed all their demands through, threatening to throw the Finnish delegation out if they were to as much as speak.

End result for Finland: hundreds of thousands of casualties, second largest city (Vyborg, now decayed beyond recognition) and the homes and lands of over 400,000 people surrendered to Stalin, massive war reparations to Stalin (uniquely paid in full, while many others were receiving Marshall aid) and, bitterly, declaration of accepting guilt for the whole madness. Oh, but Finland was never occupied so the civilian population was spared from the horrors in which tens of millions russians and their occupied neighbors died...

In a sense, therefore, one can argue that Hitler's desire to keep Stalin busy with Finland created the path of history in which Linus was born with appreciation for freedom and yet with ability to freely engage in modern western scientific cooperation that lead to the release of Linux and the subsequent SCaldera scam and yesterday's picketting...

(I was just trying to help you guys back on topic here!)

Re:Original LWN discussion

[commodoresloat]

The french based their actions on their perception of their national self-interest, as any country's leaders worth their salt will do. If anti-Americanism played a role in french foreign policymaking, it was based on a belief among french leaders that it was in their national interest. And in this case it was also based on the fact that the overwhelming majority of French citizens felt this was the right stance to take.

Re:Conversation between SCO and AIX

[hynek]

Nice copy'n'paste from http://www.livejournal.com/community/linux/397771. html?thread=2531787 [livejournal.com].
However you forgot to mention it.

Re:Original LWN discussion

[Smeagel]

No offense, but there are stupid laws in every country. You're the one being foolish if you think that the US is the leader of stupid laws. US citizen (as it seems from france) are NOT educated. Funny that one of our 50 states (california) alone has a larger economy than all you genius french citizens. Oh yeah, your economy is also shrinking drastically solely because we decided to stop visiting you after you desecrated the cemeteries that our grandfathers are buried in from liberating you from nazi's -- classy. Your post is pretty funny though, you accuse all American citizens of being uneducated solely because there's a law against drinking in public in New York. You probably don't understand our version of Federalism, since your government operates differently not because I'm calling you stupid, but just because a law is in New York doesn't mean it's everywhere. For instance, it is illegal period to drink OR be drunk in public in Ohio and Indiana. I'd be willing to bet, if you were intelligent enough to do your research, you'd find it IS illegal to be drunk on the streets in New York. Everywhere I've been in this country it is illegal to be drunk in the streets (Public Intoxication) IF you are making it obvious. I suspect that's the only way it's illegal in France too -- they don't go around breathalizing everybody do they? And by the way, I'd never call an entire country of citizens ignorant -- especially if my own country's economy was largely dependant on the aforementioned country's tourism.