SCO Says 'Linux Doesn't Exist' 739
4A6F656C writes "In an article on LinuxWorld.com.au, Kieren O'Shaughnessy, director of SCO Australia and New Zealand, details SCO's plans for Australia, stating that they have 'prepared a hit list' and "would approach Australian Linux users to ensure they had an IP licence." In closing, he adds 'Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix'." UnknowingFool writes "IBM's lawyers have been busy the last few days. Groklaw has reported a number of different filings. On the heels of last week's motions (1) and (2) for summary judgement, they have filed more documents. First, IBM wants large portions of SCO's testimonies striken (removed) on multiple grounds. Deep in the motion, they call out SCO to produce the 'experts' that did the code comparison analysis. If IBM wins on most of these points, SCO will have very little left in the way of legal evidence. SCO answers on IBMs 10th counterclaim. IANAL but from I understand SCO says this copyright infringment that SCO has allegedly committed on one of IBM's patents is irrelevant to the case and the court doesn't need to decide on it. So SCO is saying that they can sue IBM for infringing on their Unix copyrights and patents but IBM can't counter sue on a specific patent. IBM also filed another memo to support summary judgement. As a matter of law, SCO has to produce evidence to backup its claims. This mountain of evidence SCO has claimed all this time: If they don't produce it, the court has to rule in IBM's favor."
Misleading Graph (Score:5, Informative)
Showing a graph of 3 months is worthless, since this whole thing has been going on for years now. If you look at the 2 year chart [yahoo.com], you will see that they still have quite a bit to dip before they even hit the low point.
Re:Backpedalling we a'go... (Score:5, Informative)
I believe it's a cricket reference. Out for a duck is out for no runs, breaking your duck is actually getting somewhere (i.e. making some runs).
There's a lot more on groklaw (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Backpedalling we a'go... (Score:5, Informative)
In Cricket, that funny game played by Poms, Kiwis and Aussies (among others) a zero score is known as a duck. To break one's duck means to have scored, at least, one run. So SCO are claiming to have sold, at least, one Linux "licence" down-under.
Re:Backpedalling we a'go... (Score:3, Informative)
Slang derived from cricket. Broke our duck means to break zero. In cricket, to be out for zero is called "scoring a duck" or just "out for a duck".
Be very careful how you pronounce those phrases. Remember - the letter is 'd'. Definitely 'd'. Not any other letter. Oh no.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Do IBM's actions buy loyalty? (Score:3, Informative)
As long as they're defending open source with their lawyers, I can't imagine a sane person wanting to attack it--I've read the legal briefs, they don't miss a thing.
already discussed at Groklaw... (Score:3, Informative)
these last days, such redundancies have become quite frequent. My guess is that cowboyneal is on a vacation.
Re:Misleading Graph (Score:3, Informative)
Yet if you look at the chart on the link you provided you will notice their 52wk low was this morning.
Re:Delisting SCOX (Score:3, Informative)
As for us, we were given grace in the aftermath of the attack on the WTC, and the period was extended long enough for us to get our stock price up. Soon after we go t bought by a much larger company, so those days ar over...
Re:IBM's response (Score:4, Informative)
His answer to the question: "What chair?"
Probably an urban legend, as discussed [snopes.com] by Snopes [snopes.com]. Nice analogy, though!
Re:Misleading Graph (Score:2, Informative)
Re:IBM's response (Score:3, Informative)
Penmanship counts.
Re:Does IBM's actions buy loyalty? (Score:5, Informative)
It sure beats HP's
and Sun's IBM, of all the vendors, took by far the most productive aproach without trying to leverage and further hype SCO's fud. They're certainly my prefered Linux vendor, and probably will be unless/until their position changes radically.Given IBM's legal filings... (Score:5, Informative)
If you read them, SCO is betting the farm on a diversion tactic to answer IBM's request for summary judgement.
Basically, they're feigning surprise that this is an issue, complaining that they need more discovery, and trying to say that they haven't had time to properly prepare for this because it could take 25,000 man hours.
Unfortunately for them, IBM responds that it's been hammering SCO on this question for over a year now (in spite of SCO sticking their heads in the sand to avoid it). Also, IBM's experts say that SCO's characterization of the times involved is ridiculous and SCO has already claimed in the media *many* times to have made these comparisons already (even though it refuses to provide them to IBM).
Worse, SCO's "experts" haven't been properly qualified, they're testifying about things they would appear to have no personal knowledge of, and as such IBM is moving to strike our large portions of their declarations, meaning that SCO wouldn't have much of an arguement left. This is especially true because SCO's Samir Gupta, the only "expert" who appears to have done any code comparisons (and I say "expert" because they give no credentials for him other than him being in the employ of SCO), has completely ignored the abstraction & filtration required by the case law (whereas IBM's properly qualified MIT professor has done one refuting theirs, which respects the case law in question).
Lastly, they point out via copious amounts of case law that SCO does *not* need any more discovery. They show that the only thing which matters for a judgement in terms of *copyright infringement* is the two final works. SCO surely has its own product line, and IBM points them to every version of Linux since 1.0, which is available online.
Taken in sum, unless SCO can pull off one hell of a miracle to convince the judge in the oral arguments, I would tend to think that SCO is screwed here. SCO's tactic of sticking its head in the sand to try and duck IBM's arguement doesn't seem very persuasive, and *SCO* has the burden of proof to show that there are material facts in dispute. Given how IBM so carefully destroys all the testamony SCO relies on, it's hard to see how SCO could prevail in any meaningful way when these motions are resolved.
Re:SCO doesn't care about this (Score:5, Informative)
It is now an undisputed fact that Microsoft was behind BayStar investing 50 million in SCO, and a BayStar manager has admitted that they made the investment based on the guidance of Microsoft. Microsoft also purchased SCO license(s) for Linux for an undisclosed sum (I'm assuming it was a bit more than $699).
Re:Does IBM's actions buy loyalty? (Score:5, Informative)
So yeah, we agree- they have bought a lot of loyalty with their code contributions, their defense of the GPL, and more.
It's probably appropriate to consider IBM as a services rather than a software company. Distributing software for free enhances the value of the services they provide enormously - it makes the market possible. IMHO, a services business benefits tremendously from open source, while a software business will be inevitably chewed up and spit out without govt. intervention in the form of prior-restraint patent laws. So IBM's switch to outright developer coddling (seen in this context) is less of a dubious religious conversion and more of a practical business necessity- the more stuff I can do for free, the more stuff I can do on customer's behalf without having to sock them with a huge oracle or microsoft tax.
Your wrong, IT IS LINUX (Score:3, Informative)
It is important to keep the facts straight in an argument especially when one half of the debate is of its rocker.
Re:SCO doesn't care about this (Score:5, Informative)
Where is the source for this information?
Does this little lot help?
http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween10.h
http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/04/03/08/04572
http://www.practical-tech.com/business/b05212003.
Re:Does IBM's actions buy loyalty? (Score:2, Informative)
From a strictly business perspective, a potential customer of IBM's would have been much better off buying hardware from a failed ISP than buying new hardware from IBM. The price per CPU cycle was much lower for the abundant used machines that were flooding the market as failed businesses tried to get some of the money they had spent back. This is the reason the entire IT industry was affected by the failed internet companies. They were offloading their equipment meaning manufacturers couldn't be competitive.
The trend is only now starting to go the other way as faster machines are being built which have a competitive advantage over the older slower machines for industries or businesses that need large computing resources. Since there isn't a current glut in the market of these faster machines, I believe this is the trend that will continue over the short and long term.
The need for faster computers will always be an upward trend. It may dip slightly from one year to the next, but it will never go down over the long term provided there isn't some kind of global catastrophic event.
IBM has even said themselves that their reason for promoting Linux is so they can provide their hardware at a more competitive price. Currently the price of their hardware includes the cost to produce their software. If they can reduce this cost, they can lower hardware prices and at the same time increase profitability. IBM believes that Linux is the right answer to do this.
Re:Misleading Graph (Score:2, Informative)
Same trends, different relative value.
Re:Market Value (Score:2, Informative)
But not quite: that's in terms of their balance sheet as of the end of the last quarter. They don't have $61M any more--beside the legal expenses of ~$4M/quarter, they've spent $13M buying out part of Baystar's investment.
So sadly it appears the market still thinks SCO is worth something other than the cash they have on hand. After all, there's also office furniture, real estate, etc.
As for liquidating their "business" and distributing it all as a one-time dividend, I wonder if an admission at this point that they have absolutely no case might further expose them to shareholder lawsuits and so forth
FUD is now a legal term!! (Score:2, Informative)
I'm amused at:
FUD is now a legal term! :D
Not really (Score:5, Informative)
A log scale chart is more meaningful when it comes to the real value of the company - a share price drop from $5 to $4/share means they've lost 20% of their value, while going from $15 to $14 is only about a 7% drop. The log scale graph comes a little closer to representing how serious each day's change is to SCO (and their investors).
The market isn't buying (Score:5, Informative)
The current price is roughly consistent with their cash position, now that they've paid off BayStar. There's an earnings call on August 31, and then we'll know how well, or badly, SCO did this quarter. SCO has lately been issuing press releases for many minor events, and none of them mention substantial revenue. So there probably isn't any new income.
Meanwhile, many of the various motions in SCO vs IBM will be heard in September. If IBM wins any of them, SCO is toast. If IBM doesn't win any of them, IBM is no worse off.
Re:Given IBM's legal filings... (Score:5, Informative)
25,000 man YEARS.
IBM had a nice zinger (pg. 34 of IBM's Redacted Reply Memorandum In Further Support of its Cross Motion For Partial Summary Judgment on its Claim for Declaratory Judgment of Non-Infringement):
"Under SCO's view of what is required to review source code, it would take
14 million man-years to review this additional code." [referring to the AIX and Dynix code SCOX wants].
Re:Given IBM's legal filings... (Score:3, Informative)
Since SCO cannot dismiss IBM's counter-claims, this isn't going away.
I can't blame you for missing it--IBM's reply memorandum is massive--but it IS in there, and IBM did not miss a single beat. This is important because if you do not challenge something, it creates the presumption that you *cannot* challenge it.
It's not illegal to lie to the press and this judge can't do anything to stop them.
Wrong! IBM's counter-claims address why this is NOT true, and detail how exactly IBM believes that SCO has broken the law in its media campaign.
Re:Does IBM's actions buy loyalty? (Score:5, Informative)
As a former IBM employee, I had the opportunity to sit in on a lot of different presentations on many different topics in the FOSS and Linux areas.
One thing a lot of people seem to miss is that one of the very important reasons why IBM started embracing Linux had nothing to do with it being free, but instead being able to offer a single OS and API set across all of their hardware platforms. This had been a "holy grail" at IBM for some time -- I actually sat in on a public presentation one time where IBM developers were talking about extending OS/2 up to their mainframe line -- and Linux fits the bill.
IBM is still, at its core, a hardware company, and being able to have a single API with which you can use to control all their different systems is a huge potential benifit.
Java, another technology IBM has pushed heavily, is one such solution. And Java isn't free -- IBM pays Sun licensing fees in order to create the JVMs for all their different platforms (OS/2, Linux, Windows, AIX, OS/400, etc.).
IBM got into Linux in a big way not so much because it was free, but because it was readily portable (a side-effect of being free).
IBM wants to be able to sell you an Intel-based xSeries server for your business. And then another. And then as you grow, upgrade you to a bigger server (like an iSeries). Then a xSeries mainframe. If you start off running Linux and developing your business code in Java, they can push bigger and more expensive solutions on you, and you don't have to retrain your IT staff to deal with a new OS, and you don't have to rewrite your business code.
That's where the big benifit to IBM is. Of course, it doesn't hurt IBM when it's trivial to port DB2 (and WebSphere, and other big business products) for Intel Linux over to an S/390 also running Linux. They can target different hardware without having to hire on a whole new development team to port it to yet another platform.
Yaz.
Going back to their roots, too bad they're rotted (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Australian slander laws? (Score:2, Informative)
1. It is true
2. It is in the public interest
I'm not sure if any of this applies to companies.
IANAL, however there are two in my immediate family, and my mother (a historian) was recently looking into the issue as she was writing a history which might have got a few people hot under the collar.
Re:Does IBM's actions buy loyalty? (Score:1, Informative)
You don't recall correctly. Toshiba, Texas Instruments, STMicro, Samsung, Infineon, NEC, Motorola, Hitachi, and yes Intel are all well ahead of IBM in semiconductor sales. (2002 numbers). Each of them had over $4 Billion in semiconductor sales in 2002. IBM didn't.
Intel and AMD are toy companies in comparison
Well, IBM may have 3X the revenue than Intel, but its more costly -- their EBITDA is only about 50% more than Intel. Intel is hardly a toy.
AMD on the other hand, is a toy. Intel made more money on their Red Hat investment than the entire company AMD is worth.