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Caldera Software Linux

SCO Roundup 471

Time to clear out the bin of the taint of SCO, hopefully we haven't posted these already... The Economist has a piece titled Face Value -- Of Monkeys and Penguins. The EFF is pushing an email campaign about SCO. An anonymous reader submits this completely unverified claim that SCO needs to change the password on their mail server: sco.txt. And another reader presents a theory about SCO's stock performance.
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SCO Roundup

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  • by G3ckoG33k ( 647276 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:35AM (#6831683)
    I just read Rob and Eric's long, well-written rebuttal to SCO's complaint but missed any remarks from them on paragraph 141.

    To me, it seemed too important to be not commented. Has it been commented upon since?
    • by EvilAlien ( 133134 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @05:06AM (#6831963) Journal
      There is still no comment, but I think the comments to 140 say it all. DYNIX is not relevant here, given that it is based on the BSD lineage: "DYNIX developed at Sequent years ago was derived from BSD 4.1 with patches from 4.2 and new code by Sequent".

      The precedent set in the Berkeley v AT&T decision counters much of SCO's mindless spew. I got the idea that by the time Rob and Eric got to that point in the rebuttal that they got sick of repeating the same point over and over again, resulting in comments becoming sparser.

      Can somebody just hand Halloween IX to the appropriate judges so they can dismiss this thing already and focus on IBM's counterclaims? hehe Stupid SCO.

    • Para 141 merely establishes that Sequent has an agreement with whover was the vendor du jour of UNIX, and makes a claim about the terms of theocntract ... Rob and Eric are only commenting on those parts where they have knowledge and expertise, not on the interpretation of contracts.

      IBM's reply says it all:
      141 Denies the averments of paragraph 141, except refers to the referenced document for its contents. [that's legalese for "that copntract don't mean what you claim it means]
      142 Denies the averments

  • My sig... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Knunov ( 158076 ) <eat@my.ass> on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:35AM (#6831684) Homepage
    ...should be McBride's mantra.

  • and it was rejected.

    I'm not grousing.

    The Economist has captured the issue very well, and in a way that any businessman (your boss, your clients, for instance) will understand.

    It has also defined the core of this issue, namely the realignment of the IT industry from old to new, with SCO/MS on the old side, and IBM/OSS/Linux on the new.

    I never thought I would see IBM on the right side of IT, but there we have it.
    • by Soko ( 17987 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:46AM (#6831717) Homepage
      I never thought I would see IBM on the right side of IT, but there we have it.

      All as it takes is one sanguine person to turn the tide. Remember that.

      (I read about one OSS advocate who @IBM who caught the attention of Mr. Gerstner. That was when I was sober...)

      Soko
    • Adapt and Succeeed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Farley Mullet ( 604326 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:48AM (#6831720)
      I never thought I would see IBM on the right side of IT, but there we have it.
      IBM is crafty, eh? The most charitable way of putting it is to say that they know how to adapt to changing business environments (although it might be more accurate to say that they have an almost supernatural sense which way the wind is blowing). Think about it: old alliances, like IBM-MS, are a thing of the past, with IBM being perhaps linux's greatest corporate benefactor, while old oppositions, like IBM-Apple, have evaporated, starting with the old AIM partnership, and now with IBM-made CPU's in the latest Macintoshes.
      • Uh, would you believe that the extra "e" is for "evolution"?
      • IBM was the last to enter the PC industry in 1981, so I don't see that as an example of adaption. Fortuantely for them, there were enough old-time IBM mainframe types around still that the PC took off on name-brand recognition and they lived on top of the pile until 1987 when they tried to halt the clone industry by tossing Microchannel machines onto the market and forever losing their dominance in the desktop machine world. (At least their introduction of the 3.5" disk helped kill the 5.25" floppy. True, H
        • by Syre ( 234917 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @05:31AM (#6832022)
          Actually, what happened with MicroChannel was that IBM tried to set a new standard, which actually was much better than the old PC-AT slot standard. It included automatic configuration of interrupts, better mechanical characteristics, etc.

          The problems were:
          a) IBM wanted to charge a rather high fee for anyone to license the new bus, both to clone manufacturers and to card manufacturers.
          b) Card manufacturers found it more expensive to make cards for the new bus, partly because the traces required for the slot contacts had such a tight tolerance requirement.

          This spurred the industry to create their own new standard, the VESA bus, which was then superceded when Intel successfully forced the industry to adopt the PCI bus. But that's another story.
    • by mcgroarty ( 633843 ) <brian.mcgroarty@nOSpAm.gmail.com> on Saturday August 30, 2003 @07:12AM (#6832243) Homepage
      and it was rejected.

      When they do roundup postings, they'll typically reject all of the original articles (or all but one) and save a few lines out of each submission.

    • I can't agree that The Economist captured the issue all that well. I am glad that they were clear that SCO refuses to detail the violations because then Linux would quickly be rewritten around it because Linux people WANT to fix it. However, I found the heavy editorializing, like calling Mr. Perens an evangelist, to be clouding the issue.

      I was also disappointed by this:"Roughly as apes and humans allegedly have common ancestors, several operating systems can trace their lineage to UNIX, including Linux."
  • sco.txt (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jailbrekr ( 73837 ) <jailbrekr@digitaladdiction.net> on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:36AM (#6831690) Homepage
    If you feel like lowering yourself to their level, keep that sco.txt link there.

    I thought the whole point was to take the high road?
    • Re:sco.txt (Score:5, Insightful)

      by miknight ( 642270 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:42AM (#6831709) Journal
      I agree, we all know that we can beat them using ethical and legal means - we shouldn't give them (more?) anti-linux-community firepower.
      • We?
        You have a disparate mob here running the gamut from *BSD partisans down to us Windows users who find /. indespensible for keeping up with the latest in Microsoft wormage. (And a few astroturfers thrown into the brew;)
        SCO does not get to do battle on just one front. It would be wrong for the linux-community to attack SCO's servers, but I would strongly suspect that its not the linux-community or even some individuals in it that are doing the attacking. SCO has a lot of enemies and a habit of being nasty
    • Re:sco.txt fake ? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by terminal.dk ( 102718 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @03:57AM (#6831856) Homepage
      Lokking at the password line, you will notice that the password is stored as a standard crypt password.

      I can't remember how many years ago it became standard to use MD5 sums instead, which are way harder to crack. The only reason to use crypt passwords today is because you had to carry hundreds of users forward, and was not willing to re-issue a new password.

      I have now put john the ripper at the job to crack the password, so I can see if the password looks likely to be true.
  • by NetRanger ( 5584 ) * on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:36AM (#6831691) Homepage
    ...when the EFF is coming after you. The EFF is not light-handed on the legal representation side, and if they're coming down on the side of Linux against SCO, then SCO has problems.

    What I want to see happen, however, is an injunction that holds all funds paid for "Linux licenses" in an escrow account until this matter is settled permanently.
    • by wwwrench ( 464274 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @03:02AM (#6831745) Homepage
      The fact that SCO stock increased while there case was shown to suck, really shows we are not kicking SCO in the right place. We need to hit them where it hurts.

      We finally got to see what was presumably their best evidence, and it was a steaming turd of donkeyshit. They were either lying or were unbelievably negligent. While this was all over geek websites, it didn't make much of a ripple in the business press, and as the last article points out, SCO stock actually got pumped in the business press after the bogus code was released. And the business press is the place to hit SCO -- all they care about is their stock price, and the corporate hacks who determine stock prices don't read Slashdot.

      Playing on the defensive as the EFF is doing is good, but we also need to go on the offense more.

      People and organizations should contact biz journalists, or write letters to the editors. Send out press releases. Post the information at stock sites -- wherever. If stock traders know how bogus SCO's claims are, it will hurt the fuckwads at SCO. While the SCO story may not be of interest to the general public, it is of interest to the business community. I am sick of seeing unbalanced articles in businessweek or whatever, which contain no viewpoint from the free software software community.

      And hackers can go on the offensive by filing lawsuits or threatening such. Send out cease and desist letters and make it public with a press release. Specific people and development teams have been libeled. They have accused the kernel team of theft. Now that code snippets have been made public, further lies by SCO can even be considered as slander against the specific people who contributed that code. And those who are the public face of the kernel team can claim damages as well. While the damages one could claim would not be enough to retire on, it can damage SCO's stock price with the publicity. SCum needs to be told to put up or shut the fuck up.

      Stick it to the bastards!
      • by DASHSL0T ( 634167 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @03:28AM (#6831797) Homepage
        Speaking of going on the offensive, I am trying to put together a list of alternatives [linux-universe.com] for each company that is a member of Canopy Group. Hit them in the pocketbook, as that is all they understand.

        I need your help idientifying alternative companies for each of them. If you know alternatives to them, please contact me [linux-universe.com] with the information, or reply to this thread. :)
      • by MuParadigm ( 687680 ) <jgabriel66@yahoo.com> on Saturday August 30, 2003 @05:34AM (#6832031) Homepage Journal
        "Post the information at stock sites -- wherever. If stock traders know how bogus SCO's claims are, it will hurt the fuckwads at SCO."

        They know. Check out the SCOX messages at Yahoo. It's got a high noise to signal ratio, but a lot of people there are shooting down the stock pumpers, and spreading anti-FUD in general.

        The reason the stock has been going up is because a company known as Integral Capital Partners has apparently been purchasing a shitload of stock and filed with the SEC that they had over 5% interest in SCO as of 8/22. Interestingly enough, ICP owns the majority of shares in Drugstore.Com, and Melinda Gates (Bill's wife) sits on the board of Drugstore.com.

        I wouldn't be at all surprised if the real float on SCOX's stock was less than 25% at this point.

      • For more information, check out Groklaw [weblogs.com]. Their latest article features a full write-up of Groklaw's research into the ICP affiliations, with links to the relevant documents and SEC filings.

      • " The fact that SCO stock increased while there case was shown to suck, really shows we are not kicking SCO in the right place. We need to hit them where it hurts. "

        The price of SCO's stock has NOTHING to do with the merits of their case. It's getting heavy attention from day traders, speculators, and what appears to be careful manipulation ... most of the rises happen on very light volume, and may be "painting the tape" (fake transactions at small volume done just to advance the price)

    • by smallpaul ( 65919 ) <paul AT prescod DOT net> on Saturday August 30, 2003 @04:43AM (#6831927)

      The EFF is not light-handed on the legal representation side, and if they're coming down on the side of Linux against SCO, then SCO has problems.

      Would you rather go up against the EFF's lawyers or IBM's lawyers?

  • Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alizarin Erythrosin ( 457981 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:37AM (#6831695)
    Even though SCO hates Linux and the GPL, if that text file of their server shell is true:

    mail:/usr/share # hostname -f; uname -a

    mail.sco.com
    Linux mail 2.4.19-64GB-SMP #1 SMP Fri Feb 7 16:29:22 UTC 2003 i686 unknown

    They run Linux... SMP version even. So I guess Linus can sue them for copyright infringement if they won't follow the GPL? Assuming this is a valid text log. Would a Netcraft report [netcraft.com] count as evidence?
  • by kb3edk ( 463011 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:38AM (#6831697)
    "SCO Stock Goes Up After SCOForum Code Revealed as Baloney... Does This Make Sense?"

    No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.

    If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

    • by stwrtpj ( 518864 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @07:49AM (#6832350) Journal
      "SCO Stock Goes Up After SCOForum Code Revealed as Baloney... Does This Make Sense?"

      Hey, this gave me an idea. To really increase visibility of the whole case, maybe someone can get the Onion to do a feature article on it. Here's some suggested headlines:

      SCO to Sue God

      Darl McBride Caught in Bizarre Love Triangle With Bill Gates, Penguin

      Darl McBride to Rename Self Darth McBride, Builds Death Star

      SCO Accidentally Sues Self For 10 Billion

      Local Man Wonders What Is This SCO Shit

      SCO Enters Partnership With Gorzo the Mighty (subtitle: New Corporate Motto: "Seize Him!")

      Infinite Number of Monkeys Write UNIX, Sued by SCO

  • by gaber1187 ( 681071 ) * on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:39AM (#6831701)
    What this tells me is that maybe business folks/investors think the Linux/open source community is sort of just a group of whiners and will always be dogging SCO no matter what. Although SCO seems to be clearly just looking for a buyout offer and the execs, a runup in stock price, I think this tells me that maybe we need to start trying to be a little more objective so that we can get more respect from the people with lotsa money... I'll believe it when I see a posting on Slashdot that says, "newest version of redhat sucks" or something to that effect... :-)
  • by delirium of disorder ( 701392 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:50AM (#6831723) Homepage Journal
    the1:/home/the1# john sco.shadow Loaded 1 password (Standard DES [24/32 4K]) guesses: 0 time: 0:00:00:20 (3) c/s: 5150 trying: 1951 - stanney guesses: 0 time: 0:00:00:22 (3) c/s: 4688 trying: stephes - sunnette guesses: 0 time: 0:00:00:24 (3) c/s: 4334 trying: samart - bunny guesses: 0 time: 0:00:00:26 (3) c/s: 4021 trying: 1182 - carison guesses: 0 time: 0:00:00:46 (3) c/s: 3196 trying: chammen - mady157 . . .
  • Who cares??? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mrs. Grundy ( 680212 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:55AM (#6831731) Homepage
    "We're absolutely not going away, and they're not giving up, so we got a big problem," says Mr McBride.

    I imagine he is using 'we' in the royal sense meaning 'he.' It's a little shocking to me that so many people are devoting so much time to this. Wouldn't we be better off to just ignore him and let IBM squash him and his claim unnoticed as a something as unsubstantiated as his is should be.

    Instead we spend an awful lot of time and energy talking and reading...and making SCO a household word. And worse, making people nervous about linux and open source software in general for (so far) no reason at all. This seems to be a guy who likes to make his money suing people and is getting some free publicity at everyone's expense. Until they are willing to pony up with some real evidence let them slither back to the obscurity more fitting companies that have nothing good to offer.

    • Re:Who cares??? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DASHSL0T ( 634167 )
      If you don't fight back against them, who is there to counter their FUD? It is bad enough the "trade media" isn't giving their claims a critical look, you want the people (us geeks) to shut up and ignore them too?

      Then nobody will be speaking out against their frivilous claims. Surely that is a Bad Thing (tm).
    • If we don't dismiss the SCO claims then those looking to adopt or those who have adopted Linux will feel isolated and unsure about the licensing. Such people will probably buy the license from SCO if they feel the claims are valid.
  • by infonick ( 679715 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:56AM (#6831734) Homepage
    but after months of this SCO bullplop... I wonder why i am up at 12:57 in the morning reading this stuff. is it just me, or has development on this story slowing down?
    • Yep - and I predict it will continue to do so.

      I think SCO have two strategies here. The main payoff is the licence money paid to them by Microsoft. If they want to safeguard they're only reliable source of income, they need to keep the FUD coming. That means slow development, but a constant sense of threat for IT managers thinking of investing in Linux. The second string, of course, is that they manage to distort the facts enough that they get awarded the rights to linux and can start selling it.

      Now the

  • by superchkn ( 632774 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @03:03AM (#6831749)
    Yeah, I'll believe that "sco.txt" link when SCO releases every last one of those allegedly misappropriated snippets of code to the LKML.

    Well, I take that back. I wouldn't be surprised if SCO released that themselves in the hopes that they could catch a OpenSource supporter breaking into their server...

    You know you have to watch out for them sneaky commie bastards!
  • by Knunov ( 158076 ) <eat@my.ass> on Saturday August 30, 2003 @03:10AM (#6831760) Homepage
    In case the SCO.TXT file gets /.'d, here is a copy of it, along with a rough Czech -> English translation. I will post an exact translation when my Czech buddies wake up :)

    ----------
    Subject: schvalne jestli ve SCO ctou ceske servery
    From: root <root@mail.sco.com>
    Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 05:59:24 -0600
    To: redakce@root.cz

    jestli ano,

    urcite se budou lepe venovat svym serverum.. a nejen tomu nasledujicimu :-)

    <b>if yes,

    it will be better to get the whole server.. trace/follow the server :-)</b>

    mail:/usr/share # hostname -f; uname -a
    mail.sco.com
    Linux mail 2.4.19-64GB-SMP #1 SMP Fri Feb 7 16:29:22 UTC 2003 i686 unknown
    mail:/usr/share # free
    total used free shared buffers cached
    Mem: 2068160 1997756 70404 0 210712 1527008
    -/+ buffers/cache: 260036 1808124
    Swap: 2097136 0 2097136

    mail:/usr/share # df -h
    Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
    /dev/sda2 2.0G 410M 1.5G 22% /
    /dev/sda1 99M 10M 84M 11% /boot
    /dev/sda8 3.3G 33M 3.1G 2% /home
    /dev/sda6 1012M 35M 926M 4% /tmp
    /dev/sda5 3.0G 1.6G 1.3G 55% /usr
    /dev/sda7 325G 905M 308G 1% /var
    shmfs 1010M 0 1010M 0% /dev/shm

    root:6X7liA1zmJhyA:12255:0:10000::::

    ----------

    Knunov

  • by skogs ( 628589 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @03:16AM (#6831768) Journal
    I know the horse has been whipped until it won't go anymore...

    But I did think that the articles were pretty well written. They were not polarized and edgy(as I would have written it...something along the lines of 'those lying cheating @#$% call my @#$# code @#$@theirs??'.

    I also, just for kicks, tried to telnet into the mail.sco.com server. No luck. They don't accept telnet links. That would have been fun ehh?

    At first I didn't think they were up, still DDoS...but I was able to ping them. Ping Ping Ping. I only did it once, but I'll bet you guys could ping them too...just to make sure they were still up of course. Purely curiosity.

  • by loraksus ( 171574 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @03:20AM (#6831775) Homepage
    I read that as "it is time to clean the taint of sco"
    yup. bedtime. I swear I haven't been watching porno.
  • Free Lunch! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phauxfinnish ( 698087 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @03:30AM (#6831802)
    At a more general level ... he found the entire free-software trend "communistic", he says: "We don't get the whole free-lunch thing."
    It's not about "free-lunch" and he knows it! This more appropriately equates to "We don't get the whole free-speech thing." This happens to fit with a quote in this story: [connect-utah.com]
    Darl McBride, current CEO, says the last straw for SCO was at Linux World this year. "An IBM executive stood up and basically announced, 'We're moving our AIX (Unix) expertise into Linux, and we're going to destroy the value of Unix,' " says McBride, who contends that
    the statement alone was a violation of IBM's AIX contract. (emphasis added)
    He wants a closed system, where any advancements made are the sole property of a central organization who can there-by control the market, and we're the communists? Alright, maybe in a classical sense of communism, the Open Source movement does share some traits. However, in the derogatory fashion he implies, SCOs recent actions much closer resemble the totalitarian regimes of applied communism.
    • Re:Free Lunch! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by neillewis ( 137544 )
      OSS is only communistic in the same way that barn raising was communistic, or Adam Smith was a comunist for wanting a free market.

      Calling linux communistic is like Sara Lee calling the local church ladies communist for holding a bake sale.

    • "It's not about 'free-lunch' and he knows it! This more appropriately equates to 'We don't get the whole free-speech thing.'"

      You know, I don't think he does know it. He really does come across as being that stupid. I don't think he gets the free speech thing either.

  • Thank God (Score:4, Funny)

    by RevSmiley ( 226151 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @03:34AM (#6831810) Journal
    I thought I was going to have to go Cold turkey. I was starting to get delerious from SCO story withdrawals.

    Yes I can't spell and often leave out whole words let alone the endings of words. Some place I lost 20 IQ points. I am only a slightly above average 120 now. maybe I should have some more to drink.

  • Weird shit (Score:2, Funny)

    by FrankoBoy ( 677614 )
    Unfortunately, the Slashdot editors always seem to forget to verify that there's a link to the SCO website somewhere in the stories. Does anobody knows what their URL is ? I'm Google-impaired and it would help me a lot to go and buy a Linux license for my Debian box. Thank you guys.

    *wakes up* AAAAAAAAAAH ! What the hell was THAT ?!
  • by penguin7of9 ( 697383 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @04:03AM (#6831861)
    Darl McBride, capitalist crusader against the commie horde of Linux users

    There is nothing "capitalist" or "fundamentalist" about McBride--his is a campaign of lies and stock manipulation, and McBride's company is apparently engaging in intellectual property theft. Like so many other dishonest people before him, he is hiding his misdeeds by accusing his opponents of being un-American and communists.

    There is nothing "communist" about Linux. Linux has thrived in free market economies because it's a highly efficient way for commercial entities to develop software. Linux is about free markets at their best: goods being produced at marginal costs, which, in the case of software, happens to be zero.
    • While your argument isn't necessarily false, I think you missed the point here. If you had read the rest of the article you probably wouldn't have posted this. The headline is not a value judgement against the CEO or linux users--it's an intentionally over-emphasised statement to give you a glimpse of what it looks like from SCO's point of view. Reading the Economist requires a higher level of comprehension than slashdot, and you need to keep that in mind when following links. Slashdot is written for ro
  • by Gregg M ( 2076 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @04:14AM (#6831878) Homepage
    SCO needs to change the password on their mail server: sco.txt.

    Please.. Do you know what that will look like to the rest of the world? Maybe Michael should read the Linux Advocacy FAQ, or at least what not to do! [tldp.org]

  • by StickMang ( 568987 ) * on Saturday August 30, 2003 @04:26AM (#6831897)
    I've created a random comment generator for stories about SCO, with Slashdot in mind. All you geeks with no ability to write +5 Funny articles, here's your savior. [rageagainst.net] Have fun!
    • Title: Charge them with mail fraud!

      Body: Soon we'll hear zillion infinities lines plus their dads being bigger than our dads. I found IBM wanting to reduce my hourly rate for SCO bashing as so many people are willing to do it for free! Shhh! You are breaking my concentration! I'm trying to shed a bitter tear for them. And we certainly don't want to mash the SCO executives into a bloody pulp, either. Looks like Dennis' check from IBM finally cleared. This is like the director (?producer, someone else)
    • I pictured an IBM semi-trailer rumbling down the highway, with an SCO chicken (looked like Darl with feathers) standing at the other end of a straight, squaking furiously at the oncoming behemoth. The chicken doesn't stand a chance. But that's actually the same thing. I'm no expert, but having dreams about about somebody cutting your balls off and running off with them doesn't sound good to me! I pictured an IBM semi-trailer rumbling down the highway, with an SCO chicken (looked like Darl with feathers) st
    • Those comments aren't random, they appear to be quotes taken directly from Slashdot and probably other message boards. For shame!

  • The SEC? (Score:3, Informative)

    by w42w42 ( 538630 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @05:08AM (#6831968)

    The last article [threenorth.com] looks like it'd be of interest to the SEC [sec.gov], though I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.

  • Just nit-picking, but Scopes initially lost the case [umkc.edu] ($100 fine, woo!). Later the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed it, but only on technical grounds. Hardly a decisive legal victory.

    Hopefully any victory over SCO will leave a smoking hole in the ground and no one will admit to ever having had the slightest thing to do with them--but that's just my little hope and dream. :^)

  • There is a Wired article quoting Darl McBride [wired.com]. Notably, "We're trying to work through issues in such a way that we get justice without putting a hole in the head of the penguin."

    I think maybe he overestimates the size of his gun

    • maybe he overestimates the size of his gun

      Are you insinuating that Darl has a dinky winky?
      A tiny weenie?
      A miniscule member?

      "Our power grid was just fine until it was shut off by dickless here."-Ray
      "Is this true?"-Mayor
      "Yes. This man has no dick."-Bill Murray

  • by mormop ( 415983 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @08:08AM (#6832398)
    At a more general level (and surprisingly for a Linux distributor), he (McBride) found the entire free-software trend "communistic", he says: "We don't get the whole free-lunch thing."

    I still don't get the constant references from Gates, McBride et al about Linux being communist.

    In Soviet Russia which was communist in name if not nature, the provision of all goods an services was centralised in the hands of a few, huge agencies. These agencies excercised a vast amount of power over those it "served" and generally with property being theft and all that no-one could truly be said to own their their property, e.g. house, car etc. This basically constitutes the large organisations licencing the use of "their" property to the members of the society and as many dissedents found, these licences could be revoked along with the issue of a new one way licence to Siberia.

    The free enterprise west on the other hand, benefitted from competition between many decentralised comapanies, organisations and individuals that in some cases formed alliances and co-operated when it would benefit.

    If anything, the behaviour of the vast corporations bears more resemblance to the overpowering Soviet interpretation of communism than Open Source. On the other hand, open source follows the free market evolutionary pattern with projects popping into existence all the time with the weaker pointless ones falling by the wayside and the stronger useful ones maturing.

    The open source system negates the need for money as developers receive the kudos of a job well done ,a notch on their CV for them to earn bread with and the support of users who pay their way by submitting feedback, bug reports etc.

    In the meantime, please stop giving us this shit about open source and communism. The one thing it offers is freedom of choice and action. I don't remember the Russian people having much of that before the wall came down and I don't see that in any EULA from Microsoft, SCO or any other proprietry software company for that matter.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 30, 2003 @09:37AM (#6832721)
    Groklaw [weblogs.com] seems to have cracked the SCO-Microsoft connection.

    It certainly explains who has been buying SCO stock.

    I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

  • SCOX = BRE-X ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 30, 2003 @10:05AM (#6832865)
    Following is an opinion - all Speculation & conjecture - could SCOX = BRE-X?

    BRE-X was a struggling small town Canadian mining company.

    SCOX is a struggling small town Utah software company.

    Midland Walsh, one of the principals of BRE-X was famous for suing a former employer and getting a settlement for an undisclosed sum.

    Darl McBride, one of the principals of SCOX is famous for suing a former employer and getting a settlement for an undisclosed sum.

    BRE-X suddenly said they found these incredibly huge gold deposits in a mine in Indonesia. This despite considerable prior evidence that this mine never contained gold before.

    SCOX suddenly says they found these incredibly huge illegal UNIX code deposits in Linux. This despite considerable prior evidence that Linux never contained illegal UNIX before.

    BRE-X brought in well-known outside experts (Kavanagh and Francisco) which made their claims of gold found, look more credible. Investors didn't know if these outside experts were directly involved in the search for gold - it later turned out that they weren't.

    SCOX brought in well-known outside experts (Boies and Heise) which made their claims of gold found, look more credible. Investors don't know if these outside experts were directly involved in the search for UNIX code - how will it later turn out?

    BRE-X said they had their own secret teams of experts, whose identities they couldn't reveal, supporting their claims (assaying of core samples for gold).

    SCOX says they have their own secret teams of experts,whose identities they couldn't reveal, supporting their claims (finding illegal UNIX code in Linux).

    Industry experts criticized the BRE-X techniques for assaying which were unorthodox, which they say didn't follow industry standard practises, and lacked concrete details.

    Industry experts criticized the SCOX techniques for code search which were unorthodox, which they say don't follow industry standard practises, and lack concrete details.

    BRE-X's reports (with incredible claims) were criticized by industry experts for the same reasons. The industry experts were ignored.

    SCOX reports (with incredible claims) are criticized by industry experts for the same reasons. The industry experts are ignored.

    BRE-X kept issuing new reports, with no verifiable concrete details, upping and upping their claims of gold found.

    SCOX keep issuing new reports, with no verifiable concrete details, upping and upping their claims of UNIX code found.

    Despite the obvious reasons to doubt, media and stock analysts preferred the BRE-X version of events to that of the industry experts. Some stock analysts (Bianchini of Nesbitt Burns) really pushed the stock hard.

    Despite the obvious reasons to doubt, media and stock analysts preferred the SCOX version of events to that of the industry experts. Some stock analysts (Cohen of JHC Capital Management) really pushed the stock hard.

    As more and more discrepencies in the BRE-X story came to light, the company produced a series of increasingly unsatisfactory explanations, and more outrageous claims, which were disputed by industry experts too.

    As more and more discrepencies in the SCOX story come to light, the company produced a series of increasingly unsatisfactory explanations, and more outrageous claims, which were disputed by industry experts too.

    The BRE-X stock prise rose and rose on the Toronto Stock Exchange, driven by massive relatively uncritical media coverage.

    The SCOX stock prise rose and rose on the NASDAQ, driven by massive relatively uncritical media coverage.

    BRE-X insiders cashed out millions of stock. It was a tiny fraction of the total company stock, but still a lot of money to them, especially considering their prior investment in the company was worth a relative pittance.

    SCOX insiders cash out millions of stock. It was a tiny fraction
  • by naph ( 590672 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @10:25AM (#6832949) Homepage Journal
    wired interview with darl mcbride [wired.com]

    my fav quote: "The world is moving to a Unix operating environment, and SCO owns the intellectual property rights to it"

    SCO to rule the world then? heh!

  • by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @10:43AM (#6833040)
    Ripped from Yahoo's RHAT message board:
    ===
    Possible explanation of SCOX price
    by: heimdal31 08/29/03 04:34 pm
    Msg: 98717 of 98729

    I've tried to put some of the information I've gleaned from the SCO board into more easily digestible form.

    I think the most interesting one is

    http://www.threenorth.com/sco/cohen.html

    but all 4 are linked from

    http://www.threenorth.com/sco

  • by MichaelCrawford ( 610140 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @01:22PM (#6834003) Homepage Journal
    I am happy to report that the last time I posted a link [slashdot.org] to my following article on Slashdot, the article received 1200 referrals from my comment:

    Also, in the day and a half since posting the link a Google search for "Let's Put SCO Behind Bars" [google.com] went from 2190 to 3250 matches.

    The article is under a Creative Commons license. Please copy it to your website, your weblog, or other message boards. The markup is very simple and the page completely self-contained to enable easier copying.

    There is a UBB code version [goingware.com] for message boards that use that format. When I get some time I'll make a plain-text one suitable for email and usenet news.

    Thank you for your help.

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