SCO Changes Tune, Again: Linux Now Just a Riff on Unix 573
dr3vil writes "eWeek publishes an interview with SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag about the IBM lawsuit. SCO now claim that Linux is a 'nonliteral implementation' of Unix, and compare their claim to those involving Harry Potter rip-offs and Vanilla Ice versus David Bowie and Queen." And ronaldb64 writes "Yahoo Business has a nice summary of the last couple of months of stock movement of SCO, and the reasons why. It contains quotes from business analysts ('Win or lose, the outcome is at least a couple of years away' - 'In the interim, we know the company is going to burn through its cash balance.'), the lack of interest in SCO licenses, the effect the license purchase of EveryOne Ltd. had, and its continuing battle with Novell. The explanation given by pro- and contra-SCO activists is interesting: the pro-SCO group (in the form of SCO CFO Robert Bench) says it is because SCO has been laying low lately, the contra-SCO group (in the form of Eben Moglen) says it is because investors are beginning to understand how weak SCO's case is."
What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
"In the interim, we know the company is going to burn through its cash balance.",
The saddest part is that this money goes to lawyers and only lawyers, who'll just opt for the luxury version of their next car or shop for the more expensive waterfont summer property. Think if that money went anywhere else--charities, disaster funds, education, investment, open source funding--you name it. Dozens of
Re:The Money Shot (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice how he carefully avoids stating what conclusions he came to...
McBride on record as opposing the GPL in business (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet the Arse of Lindon continues to distribute (unsupported) Apache as well as other F/OSS products which adhere to the GPL.
Need we any other evidence of the duplicity of these scumbags?
Someone, please shut his piehole. I am sick and tired of listening to the lies and FUD and blastant misrepresentations made by this company and its executives and lawyers (same thing?).
Re:What gets me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Rock...Hard Place...Oops (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO marketeers must have just relized that their lawsuit is in effect telling the public, and in particular the business public, that Linux is Unix for free. Otherwise, why sue?
He is right (Score:3, Insightful)
He is right : everyone with a rational mind would understand SCO initial claims were so silly that it was worth for Darl McBride to change his strategy.
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Non-Literal Implementation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Umm.... yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)
Backpedaling faster != going back in time (Score:2, Insightful)
Look at todays comment.
SCO now claim that Linux is a 'nonliteral implementation' of Unix,
If it's 'nonliteral' why did they even bother with a copyright suit in the first place? Still looking for the "millions of lines" of infringing code, Daryl.
Anybody on
Wat een gelul (Score:1, Insightful)
Wie gaat McBride eens mee naar de hoeren nemen, het lijkt erop, ik zeg niet dat het zo is, het lijkt erop dat die "kerel" het eens nodig heeft.
Je kunt wel lief blijven, sommige mensen verdienen het!
Bah bah Bah, bij mij in de familie heet al een toilet --> McBride en de keutel die weggespoeld wordt een Sontag.
Dankejewel SCO voor de nodige humor, jullie hebben goed jullie best gedaan.
PLZ translate it to your language.
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
GDP? What ever happened to coming home to your kids and convicing yourself that you are decent human being?
Fuck the GDP.
Nick
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Re:it's basically true -- no point in denying it (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to think... (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought that the hello world example referenced in the article was trivial, so lets consider a non trivial application:
If someone writes a game that plays the same as Tetris, but hasn't ever looked at Tetris' code, can the copyright holder of Tetris sue even if the implementation is completely different?
Now what about older games like Chess or Go? Does the first programmer who writes an implementation of the game get the copyright, and thus the ability to stop everyone else from writing an implementation of said same?
Is it content or implementation that can be copywritten or patented?
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Follow the money (Score:3, Insightful)
The only question you have to ask yourself about SCO's share price is how long Microsoft is going to keep letting them suck on it's teat.
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
The first kind of lawyer is neccessary in a civilized society. I'm not very glad that so little can be done to prevent the second kind of lawyer of abusing the legal system.
But I'm sure that there must be a way to do this, because else we'll all get stuck in a lawsuit mud stifling competition, and, vastly more important, constraining the freedom of individuals in one or another way.
Re:it's basically true -- no point in denying it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
that's because Russia wasn't communist.
this is one of those situations where the answer is in the question: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
>Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's the best system we've been able to come up with.
no it's not, the best system that we've been able to come up with is a mixed economy in which there exists elements from capitalism (private ownership of means of production) and elements of socialism (social security, free education/health care)
Not so (Score:5, Insightful)
At the heart, we have to ask 'what is UNIX?' Is it the core userspace tools? Then "copying" UNIX has already been shown to be OK, as BSD "copied" (read that "replaced") UNIX bit-by-bit while AT&T had it available to the schools.
Is it a kernel? If so, then SCO's claim of Linux 'copying' UNIX is meritless, as all it does is impliment POSIX calls so UNIX programs can compile and run on it. Behind the scenes they differ immensly, hammered home by the fact that SCO talked of adding a Linux compatibility layer to their UNIX product a few years back, but dropped it because it just would have been too difficult to impliment IIRC.
If UNIX is everything that runs on the 'UNIX' kernel, then there's never been a UNIX. Ever. Because each 'UNIX'(AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Sun OS) has been so drastically different that it has been the major reason UNIX never hit it big until someone came who didn't trying to block other vendors out and prevented others from using it to in turn block other vendors. (Namely, GNU/Linux) Had HURD pushed forward and been the default GNU kernel, perhaps they would have some theoretical merit, but HURD is also drastically different, being a mircokernel design and all the spiffy stuff that comes with that.
To say "Linux copies UNIX" is to say "Timex copies sundials." They have a common ancestory, serve similar roles, but vary greatly in implimentation.
Extremely week argument (Score:5, Insightful)
And most cars have doors, windows and 4 tires. Perhaps all of the auto companies should sue each other for making similiar items.
If this is the best they can do they have a hard road ahead.
But Star Wars is... (Score:1, Insightful)
http://www.castlebooks.com/star-wars-myth.htm
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not so (Score:4, Insightful)
If this is the case, than SCO should have to go after microsoft next because, to my knowledge NT 4.0 was POSIX complient as well.
Plus it's not like they don't have a history of biting the hand that fed them.
Re:Are you even reading it people??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you think SCO will *win*???
Anyone, what exactly isn't clear in Darl's answer??? Should he start with : "I think SCO will win because..." or can we at least accept he's gone past 1st grade???
SCO's one track mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Lots of companies big and small engage in lawsuits everyday as part of doing business. Breach of contract, patent infringement, etc. These things can take years to come to some sort of end, with the parties working something out or a judge making a ruling.
But business should continue to go on. You can't simply put everything on hold due to ONE lawsuit. But that's what SCO is doing. It seems to me that their entire focus has shifted to this ONE lawsuit. And regardless of whether or not you believe in the merits of their case or the ethics of a company whose business model is nothing but lawsuits... they are putting way too much weight into the potential revenue it might generate. And that is quite risky.
This is ONE lawsuit. By putting all their time and energy into this one lawsuit it has dwarfed everything else about the company and its real products. This to me is a bad business practice, and is the real reason that SCO is losing investors.
Non-Literal?? (Score:5, Insightful)
We've gone from "full blown copying of 1M+ lines" to "no copying, but those are our derived works" to "we claim these header files" to "Linux is a riff on UNIX". Oh, please.
Come on, Darl, you mean to tell me you think that someone can't write something *similar* to something else without infringing?
What about Free DOS and the myriad of other OSes out there. Hell, according to this logic, Windows would infringe. Why don't you go sue MS? Oh wait, that would be biting the hand that feeds you.
GJC
Re:Path of least resistance (Score:5, Insightful)
This is standard operating procedure in intellectual property litigation -- even if you have a good claim. First harvest the low hanging fruit. Build your war chest by first feasting on adversaries who won't put up a fight. Avoid the risk that you may not collect from weak players becaue you attacked a strong adversary too early, and received an adverse precedent (i.e., published) decision that the weaker players can benefit from and couldn't otherwise have obtained.
On the other hand, it is also the perfect strategy if you have a weak claim. Attack only weak adversaries who can't afford to defend themselves, or for whom the cost of defense would be greater the the cost of capitulation. There are companies who survive and prosper by asserting weak (cough) intellectual property claims and offer to settle for amounts less than their adversaries' cost of litigation. The key is to make sure that the claim is not so baseless that you expose yourself sanctions or a subsequent claim for malicious institution of a civil action.
Then again, SCO has already violated these rules by attacking IBM far too early in the game. Go figure.
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonliteral goes both ways (Score:2, Insightful)
-m
Bois and his SCO stock (Score:4, Insightful)
"The stock plunge won't affect star lawyer David Boies' compensation.
Is that statement just plain wrong ?
Shouldn't that read:
"The stock plunge will affect star lawyer David Boies' compensation.
Re:Right on the money. (Score:0, Insightful)
I doubt it would do any good anyways. People already don't bother to preview enough, so another spell-check step likely won't get used much.
Just because I'm bored, I copied your first post into Word and checked it. "Definitely" was spelled wrong, but no grammar errors (like accidentally using the wrong word as you did) were detected. A lot of good that spelling/grammar checker would have done you in this case. Exact same thing with a few other posts I tried (like one with the way too common "loose" instead of "lose" error): all were spelled correctly (technically, yes) and written with perfect grammar (not even close...).
Jeez, Friday night and I'm writing long-winded comments on how Word's grammar checker can't detect Slashdotters' raping of the English language... I'm pathetic.
Re:The Money Shot (Score:3, Insightful)
But, as McBride himself says: The truth will come out in the courtroom.
We can only hope.
Re:What gets me... (Score:1, Insightful)
Not counting western European social democracy, that is...
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Litigation Bad.
Farmers under capitalism grow food to make a buck.
Computer companies make computers to make a buck.
Factories make pollution spewing SUV's (but at least they make something) to make a buck.
Lawyers and CEO's like Daryl just produce briefs and FUD. They delay, lie and prevaricate. They make nothing to humanity's benefit.
Even a low mileage, polluting SUV can bring kids to school. It has a purpose and is productive. SCO has not produced anything in years now.
There comes a point when money loses its proper function. In a capitalist society it is a portable ticket carrying your labor or the value of your labor. Instead of trading 500 chickens for your SUV you bring little green pieces of paper that say "I have produced something of value to society. Society says my 500 chickens is worth the same as this SUV."
Daryl has no chickens to trade. He never made any chickens. He just makes up lies. Someone somewhere is saying his lies are worth 500 chickens. I do not agree. Daryl deserves no chickens. Daryl deserves no SUV. He has produced nothing. Please someone take away his little green pieces of paper and don't give him any new ones until he stops lying and produces something.
Re:What gets me... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, social security is a pyramid scheme that relys on population growth to sustain itself. Also, it's no cooincidence that teachers are one of the worst paid professionals in the US, and it is one of the feww socialist services in the US. Note that doctors are striking in France on threats of cutting heathcare, which means cutting doctors salaries. Free market economies work much better at soving problems than governments, because there is strong feedback that either makes a company successful or bankrupts it based on performance. Governments services are at best adequate because the only feedback is that if things get really bad, you might lose an election. It's no cooincidence that the US develops most live saving medication, and the US doesn't regulate drug prices. People aren't smarter in the US, but our system gives people a profit motive to pursue noble goals, whereas Europe scorns profit in favor of need, and therefore no one is interested in investing in health care. To put it simply, Europe has reduced the reward for developing new prescription drugs, but hasn't reduced the risk, so of course there's more research in the US in prescription drugs. Capitalism is an assertion of individual freedom, while socialism is a sacrificing of individual freedom to satisfy the needs of the collective.
Re:Rock...Hard Place...Oops (Score:5, Insightful)
Quoth the GPL:
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
parties under the terms of this License.
End quoth.
Therefore, by modifying a piece of GPL software (linux), they agreed to distribute the modification under the GPL. If they didn't use the appropriate notification of the change, they are violating the terms of the GPL, which they agreed to by contributing to a GPL program. They aren't released from the terms of the GPL. If you refuse to make a payment on your apartment, does that entitle you (because you broke the contract) to choose any new contract terms you want (rent is now $-10,000 a month, k thx!)? No, obviously. So why does a violation of the terms of the GPL entitle them to exemption from their legal requirements?
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the problems with capitalism seem to be realted to individuals lacking information or acting in line with a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Take the example of those executives. Why do investors turn their money over to individuals who have nothing to lose by running the company into the ground? I certainly don't.
Why do companies structure themselves like a monarchy or oligarchy? It doesn't work for nations, yet big companies routinely take the revenue-generating power away from the individual workers or team managers, and make corporation-wide decrees (e.g. "the whole company will run windows"). If the execs would just cede a little of the decision making to the smaller units, the smaller units could pick up the small-scale revenue and efficiencies that can't be seen from the boardroom. I'm waiting for the day big business is run more like a bunch of small companies working together. That's a place I might invest.
It's only the last 100 years that banking and investing have been even close to the scale of today. We have another 100 years to go before people realize that it's a losing proposition to buy into litigious companies that are bound to fall apart ("I'll get out before it blows up...", sure, uh huh). People will stop playing the stock market as though they were just letting a bet ride in Las Vegas. People will start looking at the real incentives they create for the corporate execs (in the case of Darl McBride, the incentives are not apparently long-term).
Maybe in the longer term the banking system will facilitate larger investments more quickly, which will mitigate the monopolistic powers (the monopolists rely on have more money than any competitor can access). A monopolist couldn't employ "predatory pricing" unless the monopolist has way more money. A bank would be willing to loan the money in order to, in the long term, get it's foot into the lucrative (and previously monopolized) market. With a powerful enough banking system, competition would take hold and benefit the consumer.
At least I hope these things can start to happen in 100 years. I have my doubts that anyone is going to invent anything better than capitalism. After all, you speak of the different economic systems but they are really just different points along the spectrum of government control. Capitalism is close to 0 government control of the economy, and the other systems' governments control different aspects of the economy different amounts. Feudalism is really just about land ownership and tennants (in a time when you couldn't pick up and move quite so easily to find a better lord). So, are you planning to just pick different points on the scale until you find a "sweet spot"? Or are you hoping for new scale to appear?
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Education and health care aren't free, it's just a question of who pays the costs, and how.
Re:What gets me... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to talk completely out of my ass here, I hope you'll bear with me. But this relates to what keeps my interest in following the Free Software movement.
To me, the most fascinating thing about Open Source is simply this: it provides an example of motivated co operation that does not directly involve the transfer of currency; but yet, it's very self-interest directed (ideally).
The idea being that while I am not being paid in cash (capitalism) to produce widget foo (nor having a gun put to my head as in socialism), I am being paid directly because I have a better widget foo; and by contributing to a larger group, we all have a better program than we could (or would) have come up with seperately.
I think that this will be the basis of the next economic model; if we can get over the major hurdles involved in translating that into more menial tasks (getting a better sewage system probably does not outweigh dealing with sewage).
In this sense, open source can be outlawed today (or tomorrow, which is on the drawing board) and it will have already served its' purpose: showing an alternative means of motivating people to work together which does not involve coercion (socialism) or require cash (capitalism).
Of course, the same way that the democracy of the greeks bears little resemblance to our democracy -- so our open source will barely resemble whatever comes down the pike. I think it points to a new economic model, although one in the fetal stages of development at this time.
Re:What gets me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lol.
You see Marx and Engels said, "Under Communism the State will wither away."
Maybe I should spell out that there has never been a country that claimed to be Communist that showed any sign of the state withering away.
Was real communism possible? I doubt it. Human nature being what it is there is just too much opportunity for petty corruption.
But the "free market", that so many Americans worship, is also, in practice, extremely corrupt. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, what embarrassments those guys are. Awarding lucrative defence contracts to their corporate cronies. Aren't those huge, useless, defence contracts a form of corporate welfare?
Re:Why doesn't IBM just BUY SCO? (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, isn't that what you're suggesting: paying an extortionist? Sounds like an easy way out, but IBM knows better.
Re:What gets me... (Score:2, Insightful)
Modern people are apathetic and are hardly as kind as you would hope them to be. People die all the time because they don't have the money: even with the socialist ideas in action. Without those, no doubt, more would die.
Beautiful (Score:5, Insightful)
McBride: Would you buy an operating system without the source-code copyright? If you don't have copyright, they can turn around the next day and screw you.
Sontag: Instead, they waited nine years.
McBride: We have no doubts that our Unix copyright claims are valid.
One must, of course, ask why SCO felt that they had to wait years before notifying Linux folks of their alleged horrific infringements, and then felt that it was necessary to avoid actually *telling* Linux folks what the alleged infringements year until months and multiple court orders forced them to do so.
Sontag: We don't have to knock out the GPL for us to succeed on the copyright issue. The GPL itself supports, in a lot of ways, our positions. Section 0 of the GPL states that the legit copyright holder has to place a notice assigning the copyright over to the GPL.
All these contributions of our IP did not have an assignment by SCO saying here, 'We assign these copyrights to the GPL.' The fact that we participated with Linux does not mean that we inadvertently contributed our code to the GPL. You can't contribute inadvertently to Linux. We feel we have a very strong position based on the GPL.
First, this tidbit:
'We assign these copyrights to the GPL.'
Okay, enough fun has been made of Sontag and McBride's lack of competence when it comes to IP, so I'll avoid the jokes. You don't "assign a copyright to a license" (though GNU contributors are required to assign their copyright to the FSF for a number of reasons, in addition to licensing it under the GPL -- Linux is not a GNU project.)
Uh, huh. The fact that you added them to a file containing a GPL header doesn't count, eh? It's been well understood for many years that one header works for multiple contributions. When it comes to licensing, intent matters, and there was very clearly intent to GPL this code. I can't understand how you could make any kind of a counterargument.
The fact that we participated with Linux does not mean that we inadvertently contributed our code to the GPL.
Well, the alternative you have is that you committed massive infringement of thousands of IP holders that licensed their Linux code under the GPL. It's one or the other, SCO. If you want to go after Linux (and it's a damned weak argument -- I can't see how you'd manage to win it), you're also admitting that you deliberately committed a far worse crime. The potential costs of years of theft of perhaps millions of copies of Linux would easily bankrupt your company. I would expect that a shrewd mediator would find that donation of your code's copyright to the IP holders as a group would be the most acceptable form of restitution (trying to work out monentary damages from a class action lawsuit by a mass of coders with no interest in your money would be hard to resolve), which would put you back at square one, except without your money.
McBride: We will admit the things we've contributed and that we can't claw them back.
Darl, your second-in-command just said otherwise five seconds ago. C'mon, guys. At least maintain a cohesive position.
We think we have protection under both the GPL and copyright law.
This makes no sense. Name one right granted you by the GPL to either your IP or anyone else's IP that would entitle you to "protection" from other people using this code. If your code or other people's code is GPLed, everyone is clearly in the right to use it.
the copyright holder must make an explicit assignment, typically in writing, in a contract.
No. Team-written software is a form of joint authorship, which does not require explicit copyright assignment. While SCO might be able to argue that perhaps they have sole copyright ownership of the patch itself, the patched work is also owned by all the other authors of Linux, who
Re:In other news... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
For example if gas prices rise high enough then people will eventually reduce their driving or buy more fuel efficient vehicles. It happened in the early 80s.
I bring this up because sometimes people think a market economy is about getting people everything they could possibly want. It's not. It's about allocating resoruces efficiently. As a result of efficiency, people tend on average to get more of the kinds of things they want.
With respect to a future system that improves upon capitalism, I suspect that any such system will probably be due to to the fact that efficiency is not the highest possible goal in every case. Effectiveness, defined in different ways, can be a distinct goal. Efficiency supports effectiveness, and inefficiency saps it, but this tendency to go hand in hand does not mean they are the same thing.
As an example, businesses have efficiency as a primary goal. If they can produce a widget for less money, they make more money. On the other hand an army is more concerned with winning a battle with the greatest possible certainty, efficiency being a secondary consideration.
Actually wartime rationing is an example of this logic. It would be more efficient just to let prices soar as goods are shifted from the civilian economy to the war effort. The market would produce more civilian goods per dollar. However, in practice only the wealthiest people could buy a commodity like gasoline, or coffee. The lack of shared sacrifice would undermine the morale of the greater part of the population, and in turn reduce the effectiveness of the war effort. Although rationing saps the profit motive and exacerbates shortages, under wartime circumstances these considerations are less important than fairness, which in turn is instrumental to victory.
"Communism" is a tricky term (Score:5, Insightful)
The term "communist" isn't actually as cut and dried as you make it out to be.
Marxists defined communism as the dissolution of the state, elimination of private property, and the leveling of all class barriers. That idealized goal was not achieved during the Soviet era, obviously, but the term was hijacked by the Communist Party, which for obvious political reasons presented its society as the realization of the communist dream.
The West saw little reason to quibble over terminology, and so bought into this misrepresentation by using the term communism rather than another, more accurate term (such as totalitarian socialism).
So yes, our history books call it communism, but history books simplify presentation of complicated historical material for reasons of clarity, ideology, and so on. Check out Lies My Teacher Told Me [uvm.edu] to get a glimpse at these simplifications in effect.
For more info about communism, check out this detailed explanation [wordiq.com].
Re:Sontag and McBride - confused cats (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are you even reading it people??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course we all saw that bit. We know that Darl "thinks" he's going to win (I'm not actually convinced of that). The part the granparent noticed is that Darl isn't able to *give any credible theory or evidence or reasoning about how he might win*
Right now, SCO's case is very thinly strung together. They're making totally new arguements (and few if any tried & true ones, and I assure you that they *would* use precident wherever they could), which advocate an inequitable solution (give us all the code IBM made, due to our strained theory of an ancient contract we discovered after sitting on for years).
The thing about the two contending theories is this: SCO's arguement is thin. If any one piece, each of which is built on top of the other, fails, the whole line of arguement fails, and SCO with it. Whereas, if you read IBM's legal filings (and yes, I have... IANAL, but I've learned a hell of a lot by reading all the tons of legal documents from Groklaw), you will notice that IBM has a layered defense. What I mean by that is that, even if one layer fails, they have not just one, but several other claims, where if *any* of them were to prevail, they would be entirely defended on those grounds.
I mean, look at some of the defenses: SCO doesn't have the copyrights (SCO will have to prove that they do vs. Novell, and they've shot themselves in the foot by contradicting themselves in their own legal filing! They claimed that Novell was slandering their title to the copyrights SCO purports to own, yet asked for the court to transfer them from Novell to SCO as a remedy, implying that they do NOT own them!), even if SCO does have the copyrights, IBM asserts that the work-product doctrine (hey! WE made this, not SCO!) and the old $echo publication refute SCO's reading of their contract. And even if both of those go SCO's way, SCO gave Linux out under the GPL (and the onus would be on SCO to prove the nonsense about it being "unconstitutional" here).
So there are three strong layers right there. Pick any two, even if those fail, IBM still has a defense and SCO is up a creek.
In the mean time, I'm wondering about the SCO publicity. Lately, they have been pretty quiet, probably because of the judge's private conference with IBM & SCO a while back after which SCO mysteriously went quiet and even withdrew from some debate or another. There's also that website that put up a fake press release about them buying a SCO license which SCO asked them to take down. Pity the site was not in English, but SCO's fax to them (which they put up) was, for some reason.
Maybe I should investigate the contact listed in that fax? I believe it was press.winkler@sco.com / 1 (801) 932-5800 -- it would be nice if I could find out what exactly they're up to these days...
Re:What gets me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ah lawyers! The next big thing! (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, this is an interesting point. 10 or 15 years ago, CS was the hot thing to study in school. The Internet was new, the money was fantastic , now it's changed to law. All the kids will be going to law school, because it is now the hot thing, and the money was fantastic
This is a bunch of crap. CS has never been the hot thing to enter if you want to be a big earner. Lawyers and Medical professionals have always made more than CS people. During the height of the dot com boom, 2 things happened: alot of CS majors started to make relatively high salaries, and many were making these high salaries doing NOTHING. Furthermore, unlike law and medicine, there is no true professional certification or barrier to entry into IT (MSCE and other professional "certs" are a joke). From my experience, most CS grads (and most college grads for that matter in the non professional fields) are absolutely incompetent.
During the dot com boom, it was just as lucrative to be a patent attorney, cardiologist, anesthesiologist, or general law partner as it is now (actually moreso for the medical fields as the cost of tuition has gone up significantly). These fields, have remained relatively stable though. A little bit, because it is more demanding and time consuming to get through these fields (I know for a fact that one can go through an accredited CS or EE program without learning a single thing (I work with these people, and they didn't cheat, the program simply had NO rigor whatsoever)). Although I have met many incompetent doctors and lawyers, the style of training and certification for these fields forces one to know something.
Hell, earning a Private Pilot License requires more discipline than earning a Bachelor's degree in the US. Sad indeed.
Re:Europeans are trained from birth... (Score:4, Insightful)
Darl... (Score:1, Insightful)
You can't succeed in hijacking Linux - it's ONLY merit is its freedom. Destroy that and you destroy Linux, and create a new opponent. If you don't believe that the people are determined to create an OS unencumbered by commercial ties, you need to wake up and smell the coffee. The question is - what is your job description? Claim IP for SCO, or hault the spread of free software in business? If it's the latter you have no hope.
Re:Europeans are trained from birth... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please note I have not gone in to quite how self-flageletory the German texbooks are about WW2...
Re:The Money Shot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Europeans are trained from birth... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think you live in the same US I do. We don't see ourselves as infallible (remember VN?), we don't believe slavery never happened, we study Wounded Knee, Trail of Tears, etc., we are aware of the Shah and others.
We're aware they all happened. We're also aware that each and every child is not *guilty* of their father's sins. Just correct and move on. Then keep correcting and moving on.
And fer the love of man, don't hold your neighbor responsible for what happened 400 friggin' years ago.