SCO News Roundup

Bootsy Collins managed to combine all of today's SCO stories. He writes "The firm of David Boies, SCO's attorney in charge of their Linux IP cases, has announced their compensation (so far) from SCO: $1 million USD in cash, and $8 million in SCO stock. Keeping that stock price high until they can sell is clearly of some importance to Boies, Schiller and Flexner LLP. Given the cost of selling a $50 million convertible note to fund their legal actions, the actual cost to SCO is more like $17 million USD. Meanwhile, SCO CEO Darl McBride is saying that Novell's purchase of SuSE violates a non-competition agreement reached when SCO bought the Unix source, and thus is legally actionable by SCO. Over at the Register, they've noticed that SCO's latest SEC filings indicate how firmly they're putting all their eggs in the legal basket: the filings effectively say that 'SCO has already lost business from its loyal customer base, and it expects to lose more.' And finally, in response to a poor response to SCO's attempts to get Fortune 1000 companies to pay $699/server for 'Linux licenses' before the fee jumped to $1399, SCO has announced that the $699 discount rate will apply to the end of 2003. Hurry before time runs out again."

Yeehaw! A roundup!!

[Limburgher]

Git along, little stories, git along!!!

Good news for SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

Great to see a small company like SCO stand up to huge billion-dollar Goliath as Novell is, and remind them that an agreement is an agreement, and if you sign it, you better stick to it.

Hope the lawsuit is successful and mormons from Novell are not allowed to outsource programming job to that German outfit.

If SCO gets Novell to cash out, that's great news for Caldera Linux users and at least one vendor found a sustainable business model.

Roundup?

[silicon not in the v]

Sounds like that's what they are doing to their bottom line.

Ticker Symbol

[R2.0]

Does anyone else have a Beavis 'n Butthead moment whn seeing the ticker symbol "SCOX"?

Linux written to compete with SCO?

[tuffy]

"When (The Santa Cruz Operation) sold us the property, included in the property was a non-compete," McBride told IDG News Service. "Last time I checked, Linux was intended to compete with our core products."

I think Darl is going to have to prove that if he wants to enforce that no-compete clause in the contract.

SCO news is good news, or is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just took a break from coding, and thought, "Gee, I haven't checked /. in a while. I wonder what's new with SCO today."

THANKS for being my source of SCO drama!

the dreaded SCO joke...

[Dreadlord]

...before the fee jumped to $1399...

Attention all SCO jokes posters, get ready to update your jokes by the end of the year, thank you.

Bootsy!

[kurosawdust]

Bootsy Collins managed to combine all of today's SCO stories.

Holy crap! Funkalicious bass lines and journalistic know-how? Bootsy, I hardly knew ye...

SCO license makes a great gift for the holidays!

[4sheez]

Now that you can purchase the license until the end of '03, we have the perfect x-mas/kwanza/Chanukah/XXXXX-holiday gift for that linux nerd in your family Get one for mom, dad, the dog... Great stocking stuffer! plaque it up next to that resume before its too late and costs $1400!

What I like about this

[bigjnsa500]

I just love the fact that SCO is now paying its lawyers with stock options. I can't wait to see the look on McBride's face when their stock tanks. One thing you never want McBride, is a room full of angry lawyers..

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!

Re:Bootsy!

[kmankmankman2001]

Tear the root off, we're gonna tear the root of, tear the root of this sucka!

Lawyer in a Box

[malia8888]

From the Article: The SCO Group has again extended its offer of cut-price Linux licences, this time until the end of the year - and possibly beyond. The UnixWare licensing scheme, announced at the beginning of August, set the price at $1,399 (828) per server for Fortune 1000 companies, but offered a special price of $699 for those who signed up before 15 October.

The attractive feature of this software product is that it is bundled with a blue-suited lawyer-in-a-box.

Re:Ticker Symbol

[seanmeister]

pretty much! :-D

offtopic, but related to your comment: I work for a local telco, and a while back, the president was giving us the annual vision shpiel. He mentioned that the local cable provider was going to roll out dialtone service in our area, and that "penetration by Cox" was something we had hoped to avoid.

It was all I could do to prevent busting out laughing, but nobody else seemed to catch it... sigh...

That should be trademarked man!

[Chordonblue]

"Gotta get me somma that SCOX!!" (tm) :)

Re:Linux written to compete with SCO?

[whome]

I don't see how SuSE competes with SCO's core business. As far as I know, SuSE has never sued anyone.

Re:Linux written to compete with SCO?

[jcknox]

It seems to me that the only ones currently competing with SCO's business model are ambulance-chasing lawyers.

Next round of news:

1. SCO patents litigation as a business model; changes name to Tort, Inc.

2. Tort, Inc. (formerly SCO) files suit on over 4000 law firms specializing in personal injury and workers' compensation cases, claiming patent infringement.

3. Tort, Inc. sues US Senate and House of Representatives, claiming tort reform bills designed to threaten innovation and excellence in their product line.

Sweet! More SCO news!

[capn_buzzcut]

I want SCO news 24/7, day, nite, morning and evening. I wanna read about SCO on the back of my Wheaties box. Is there a SCO channel? Sign me up. What's happening in the SCO executive lounge bathroom now? I WANNA KNOW. I want a 27 way, split screen webcam view of anything and everything happening at SCO. Did someone mention SCO? Email me that quote right NOW dammit. I want my SCO-TV. YES YES YES give me more SCO news right away. I demand up-to-the-minute coverage all day, every day, of anything and everything even remotely related to SCO. Is there a SCO vs IBM Nintendo game yet? DAMMIT! Please post more SCO news now!

Re:Ticker Symbol

[adric]

It's their crack legal team [rr.com] which does it for me...

The story of how this will end (spoiler!)

[AwesomeJT]

SCO and IBM fight for years. Eventaully, SCO wins a few battles but by then most of the linux community has moved to kernel 3.0 which removed any offending code years ago. IBM has merged the AIX stuff to Linux without any offending code (of course, they're still running old 2.8 stuff). SCO lingers with a few large companies paying the lisc demanded of them (typical scare tatics apply). Eventually, SCO stock dips to penny stock levels and the lawyers cash out for nickles on the dollar and the lawyers start asking for "real money" instead of stock. SCO goes bankrupt (re-org). Flownders around for a few years trying to re-organize until they finally give up the ghost. SCO will eventually die but perhaps take half the computing industry with it. Windows becomes the unquestioned king of desktop AND server operating systems. Bill Gates declares himself God of IT and all systems must authenticate with the Master Server in Redmond. The world is cursed with rampant hacking, script kiddies, worms, viruses, and the like (someone thought trust-based security was a good idea). This all leads to a massive breakdown in society and the end of the world as we know it.

Re:Posts over time

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably a lot like a timeline.

Got a license as birthday gift...

[Anonymous Coward]

The first time my parents care about my real hobbies and what do I get? A SCO license for $699.

What can I do to reverse this? I don't wan't to hurt my parents.

What will happen now since SCO knows my address? I don't wan't to get sued either.

Re:SCO

[obsid1an]

Let me guess. They wanted to pay you entirely in stock options?

Re:Yeehaw! A roundup!!

[Jeffery McGrew]

Rollin', Rolling', Rollin',
Rollin', Rolling', Rollin',
Rollin', Rolling', Rollin',
SCOhide!

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'
Keep the stock price swollen,
Keep them lawsuits rollin',
SCOhide!

Ignorance and Hubris together, Hell bent for treasure, Wishin' IBM was on my side.
All the things I'm missin, Source code, money and lawsuit dissmissin', Are waitin at the end of my ride.

Move em' on, Head em' up, Move em' on,SCOhide!
Cut em' out, Paste em' in, Greek em' out, Show em' off, SCOhide!

Keep movin', movin', movin'
Though their dissaprovin', Keep them Unix users groanin', SCOhide!

Don't try to understand them, Just Subpoena, sue and charge em', Soon we'll be livin' high and wide. My heart's calculatin', My new Rolls Royce will be waitin', Be waitin' at the end of my ride.

Move em' on, Sue em' up, Move em' on, SCOhide!
Cut em' out, Paste em' in, Greek em' out, Show em' off, SCOhide!

Move em' on, Sue em' up, Move em' on, SCOhide!
Drown em' out, Subpoena em' in, Cash em' out, Sue em' ALLLLLLL!!!, SCOhide!

Rollin', Rolling', Rollin', Rollin', Rolling', Rollin', SCOhide!

SCOhide!

Re:Oh, for the love of God...

[drakaan]

I, for one, welcome SCO's new neck-shitting overlords...

Re:SCO

[Dark Lord Seth]

I'd say yes, definitely!

Me: Good day, you've called hell, Satan speaking!
SCO customer: Er, yes, quite... Uhm... Well... My UnixWare server crashed.
Me: Hardware issues. Our software is so shit it doesn't cause crashes, just leprosy, STDs and the occasional appocalypse.
SCO customer: I... see... So, what do you suggest?
Me: How about replacing your hardware with something flashy? Tried using a Super Nintendo?
SCO customer: What's wrong with you!?
Me: I'm just out of maximum security prison after killing the last person who called me. Have you ever enjoyed the sound of a spinal column snapping? It's like music...
SCO customer: *disconnects*

Re:Ticker Symbol

[Roofus]

Cox customers are so easy to harass!

Hey, do you have COX at Home?

What about COX on demand?

I hear you've been a customer of COX for many years...

There's a million of them!

Lawyer Compensation

[isoga]

...announced their compensation (so far) from SCO: $1 million USD in cash, and $8 million in SCO stock.

So that would be $1 million then ;0

NY tech stuff [homelinux.net]

Re:Yeehaw! A roundup!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate everything you are

Re:Linux written to compete with SCO?

[wintermute740]

"When (The Santa Cruz Operation) sold us the property, included in the property was a non-compete," McBride told IDG News Service. "Last time I checked, Linux was intended to compete with our core products."

SCO has a core product?! Santa Cruz Operation had a product. SCO has litigation. The difference between the two reminds me of the old anti-drug commercial. Picture of Santa Cruz Operation's upper management, with a voice-over "This is SCO" followed by a pic of Darl McBride and Company, "This is SCO on drugs... Any questions?"

Completely wrong analogy

[burgburgburg]

Trying to paint SCO as a lame horse is an insult to horses everywhere. Horses are productive, helpful animals who sometimes, through no fault of their own, come up lame. When their injuries are severe and causing the horses great pain, the animals are shot to put them out their misery.

SCO is a malignant cancer. It needs to be surgically removed, irradiated, poisoned with Chemo.

Better things to do

[anachattak]

Hopefully, with the election less than a year away, David Boies will be getting really busy soon trying to sell his "contested-recount-prepaid-legal services" plan to the candidates and find somebody else's time to waste. You'd think with all his gum-flapping last time, he'd be in the forefront of the fight against electronic voting (let's be honest: the hanging-chad is big business for him).

Re:Bootsy!

[Call Me Black Cloud]

I'm still waiting for George Clinton to weigh in. You know someone whose website [georgeclinton.com] has an intro that reads, "Welcome black, mellow-maggots, fellow-funkateerz, gangsta-tokeheadz and hippyfied-deadheads, to our brand spankin' nu cyber-haven-a-go-go!" is going to have a unique take on SCO.

Re:Sweet! More SCO news!

[Eberlin]

SCO vs. IBM Nintendo game? Of course not! It'll be a fighting game from Namco based on the Soulcalibur engine. All platforms will feature Boies (Finishing Move: Briefcase Bash), McBribe (Finishing Moves: Lying Bastard, Pump-And-Dump), Gates (Moves include: Trustworthy Backstab, The Monopolizer), McNeely (The Rising Sun, Big-Iron Swing), Szulik (Fedora Drop), and all the prominent players in the real game. Of course you'll have distro mascots in there, too, from Suse (Lizard Tongue), Mandrake (Resurrection Club), and even some agent-like dude with a red hat (Enterprise-Only Chop).

Then there are the special characters exclusive to each platform:

PS2: Linus (The Kernel Hack) and Tove (Royal Ass-Kicking)
X-Box: Stallman (The Hacker Song) and ESR (Bazaar Twist)
Cube: A Gnome (Foot Stomp) and the Ximian Monkey dude (The Evolutioner).

And then maybe on a non-US release version, Alan Cox (DMCA Twister) can show up as an unlockable.

Re:Lawyer Compensation

[wintermute740]

" ...announced their compensation (so far) from SCO: $1 million USD in cash, and $8 million in SCO stock. "

"So that would be $1 million then ;0"

No, that would be $1 million cash and $8 million in toilet paper.

Re:Yeehaw! A roundup!!

[Uma Thurman]

Can you get a version of "Danny Boy" that we can sing at SCO's wake?

Re:SCO

[Black Parrot]

> Let me guess. They wanted to pay you entirely in stock options?

Heh, shares in future lawsuits.

Re:Ticker Symbol

[BoomerSooner]

Lol, I saw signs at a High School football game where the cheerleaders (too young & too hot for me) were holding up signs that said I (heart) Cox. I just busted out. Unfortunately I had to explain my low brow humor to my wife who was none too pleased.

How much would you pay?

[mpitcavage]

Hurry before time runs out again.

I'm holding out for the "Buy 1 licence get 9 free - Noncompliance Blowout Sale"

-Karma neutral, but you'd better stop looking at me..

Great article, but incomplete.

[SiliBelgian]

ADDENDUM:

In an interview with Darl McBride later this day, the well-respected CEO of SCO also stated the following:
The arguments of IBM in this conflict are clearly pathetic. I have detailed information about the situation...which completely proves that what the IBM lawyers allege are illusions... They lie every day. The IBM lawyers, they always depend on a method what I call ... stupid, silly. All I ask is check yourself. Do not in fact repeat their lies. In fact, I can actually say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that the infringers of our intellectual property have started to commit suicide under the walls of Lindon, Utah. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly. We have up to this date also received a total of 500 billion dollars in Linux licensing fees, and the revenue generated from our Linux Sales Departement is still increasing exponentially as we speak. Although our arguments are rock-solid, we can efficiently use this revenue in our ongoing battle with the big bully IBM. If IBM's lawyers are still planning to continue their lie and want to take us to court, I have only one thing to say: They are most welcome. We will butcher them."
When asked for his opinion about the non-paying individual users of Linux, he replied: "My feelings - as usual - we will sue them all..."

Re:Why must it always come down to this?

[Hypocritical Guy]

You must've typed that up on a Windows box.. you, uh, cock-smoking uh teabagger.. whatever that means.

Slashdot and SCO == Microsoft and patches

[BigGerman]

Instead of a random vulnerability every couple days - round them up and release once a month. SCO Tuesdays anyone?

Re:Bootsy!

[sharkey]

journalistic know-how

Hello, Satan? Something was said on Slashdot today, and I'm just checking the weather.

Re:Good news for SCO

[u-235-sentinel]

I'm stunned this is still going on. SCO must be insane to think they can go to court with no evidence. Blocking discovery at every opportunity. Amazing.

I can see it now

Judge: So where is your evidence that IP has been violated?

SCO: Your Honor. We cannot disclose this information otherwise everyone would know.

Judge: How can we determine if IP has been violated without any evidence?

SCO: Trust us your Honor.

I give it two minutes in court before it's thrown out.

Re:Ticker Symbol

[cwest]

well there was a TV commercial in England many years ago (the early 70's I think) which had a full-screen picture of an apple (a Cox's pippin) and a voice over:
"Feels good, tastes good. English cox".

Only saw it once.

Re:Ticker Symbol

[kinnell]

On a related note, I heard that Siemens used to have a customer support center in Staines, UK.

Re:Ticker Symbol

[nate1138]

I'll go ahead and one up you:

Prior to the Clearchannel buyout, there were two major companies in my city that owned radio stations: Dix communications, and COX. So of course the joke was that there was nothing on the radio but a bunch of Dix and Cox.

The !real! story of how this will end (spoiler!)

[Slime-dogg]

It actually goes like this:

After Bill Gates declares himself "God of IT," the Master Authentication Server starts to consume all other pc's without anyone knowing. Those PC's become dumb terminals to the Master Authentication System. This continues on until one man write a small security program that checks all other programs for things like buffer overflows. This program becomes a part of the system, as the MAS consumes this last man's machine.

The MAS, realizing that it has run out of pc's to consume, then starts consuming humans by turning them into batteries. These humans believe that they are in some kind of virtual world, where they play games like 'lightbikes,' and 'catch the glowing ball while trying not to fall off of the very thin floating discs.' Eventually, all but a small portion of mankind is enslaved.

As time goes on, a new instance small security program is created, but it thinks that it is human. This small program then proceeds to attack the system through the massive numbers of buffer overflows, making it appear that this program has Godlike powers. He moves incredibly fast, flies around, and makes his lightbike break that stupid blueish wall boundry.

The humans notice him, and start thinking that their dreams feel more real than when they're awake. They start to question the system, all the while the MAS is sending out security programs to try and stop these people from the realization. People start to drop out of the system, and fall back into reality.

The reality that they see is rather bland, it is a lot more colorful than the virtual world was, and they notice that it's texture and bump-mapped too. There's a whole bunch of boxes around where they're sitting, and some sort of headset with goggles attached. Some people put the headset on and get trapped back in the system, but then immediately pop out of the system. They start to develop traits like the security program that freed them, but not as great.

These people then go to the MAS headquarters in Remond, Microsoftdom. The constitution of the ancient land of the United States appears to have been used as wallpaper, but then painted over multiple times in varying hues of bright orange, blue, and red. They notice that the MAS computer itself has a plug, it didn't have the physical capabilities of producing anything. They pull the plug, and immediately the rest of the world pops out of the system.

Some of the people die of shock, they were really pissed off because they were just one ring away from beating the computer in 'catch the glowing ball while trying not to fall off of the very thin floating discs.' Most of the people rejoice at the enhanced graphics of this world, and start to understand the nature of copulation again.

In the end, the sky is blue, the grass is green, people are laying around naked, and the world is free of SCO and Microsoft forever.

ah what the heck

[koekepeer]

if all else fails, we still have a hird of unix replacing deamons as a backup ;)

Re:Ticker Symbol

[WalletBoy]

That reminds me of where I work. At my office, documents have cumulative yield abbreviated "cum yield". So there's always e-mails flying around saying "We need to increase our cum yield."

Re:Boycott SCO customers!

[gnu-generation-one]

"This crap has continued long enough. It's high time that we the people start punishing the people who use SCO software."

What, both of them?

I am worried about the SCO lawyers

[howlatthemoon]

I am worried that SCO's lawyers are going to be out of luck, poor guys only get 1,000,000 dollars and a capital gains loss when SCO tanks. How will they ever survive on that. They might not be able to get that new 5 series BMW.

Re:The historical importance of SCO

[Kenja]

Tell that to my buddy who lost his server man. Did he get a parade? No, people spat on him when he got back form the last SCO development seminar.

Re:Ticker Symbol

[Hieronymus Howard]

Better still, a few years ago I worked for a major news agency who supplied financial and business news. We were writing software to search for information about companies and, whilst testing this, I discovered a Turkish company named Arcelik. Better still was the discovery that their parent company are named Koc Holding (google cache link) [66.102.11.104]. Those crazy Turks!

I mentioned this to my girlfriend and asked her if she'd like a job at Arcelik (as an arcelikker perhaps). She replied that she'd prefer one that involved Koc Holding.

True story.

HH
--

This is great!

[eniu!uine]

I can't wait to see Darl McBride in one of those "if you've had a personal injury" commercials.

Re:Yeehaw! A roundup!!

[dipipanone]

Something like this, you mean?

Oh Darly Boy,
The pipe, the crack pipe's calling,
As once again, our stock is on the slide,
It once was high, But now the price is falling,
So pack a case because its time to take a ride.

Oh IBM,
They looked like easy targets,
We thought they'd fold,
And pay us just to go,
And then their lawyers tore us all to pieces,
And now this single crack rock's all that's left of SCO.

So light your pipe,
And recollect the good old days,
When whorish analysts hung on every word,
Because at last, your business rep is ruined,
And everybody knows,
You're just a stinking turd.