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Caldera Software Linux

SCO Gives up on Linux Website 178

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-i-want-to-hear-their-side dept.
Richard Mathias writes "Following on from the posting a month ago, where SCO said it was going to launch a new website to counteract Groklaw and give its side of things - well, now the company looks like it's given up on the whole plan. It was originally supposed to be at Prosco.net, then SCOinfo.com, but both have holding pages and a spokeswoman has said it may never happen at all because of "legal and management concerns"." Update: 11/03 01:10 GMT by T : editingwhiz writes "Despite earlier published reports, SCO Group is indeed still planning to post a lawsuit-information Web site under a new name, SCOinfo.com, company spokesman Blake Stowell told IT Manager's Journal today. So SCO is not throwing in the proverbial towel after all. But does it really make any difference? (IT Manager's Journal is part of OSTG.)"
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SCO Gives up on Linux Website More

SCO Gives up on Linux Website

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  • Looks to me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by leonmergen ( 807379 ) * <lmergen@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:39AM (#10699609) Homepage
    Looks to me that website was to Groklaw what Elgoog is to Google - a fun but twisted way to look at reality... :-)

  • Just goes to show... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:41AM (#10699627)
    You can only throw shit for so long before your arm gets tired.

  • Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

    by forgotten_my_nick ( 802929 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:41AM (#10699631)
    SCO is still around? Thought they died months ago.

    • Sorry, but I have to say it.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by cyberkahn ( 398201 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:48AM (#10699715) Homepage
      Netcraft hasn't confirmed it yet. :-)

    • Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:49AM (#10699725) Homepage
      They died years ago. Now they're just shambling around like a zombie, causing damage and panic, and looking for brains. So far they haven't found any.

      • Re:Wow! (Score:3, Funny)

        by Blob Pet ( 86206 )
        Someone needs to tell them Halloween was Sunday.

      • Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)

        by DigitumDei ( 578031 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:17AM (#10699995) Homepage Journal
        A couple of my favourite bits from Zombies [wikipedia.org] according to wikipedia. Doesn't take much to apply them to SCO or Darl.

        A more skeptical take is that a zombie is a living person who has never died, but is under the influence of powerful drugs

        While zombies do not usually appear in lawbooks and few laws exist to regulate them, in some places, such as Haiti, they are considered a public nuisance.

      • Didn't you see Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days later?
        Zombies don't shamble around anymore - They RUN!!!

        • Re:Wow! (Score:3, Funny)

          by AndroidCat ( 229562 )
          No, I don't have Dawn of the Dead (2004), fsck off and go away!!!

          Oh, sorry! Yesterday I got a dirty DHCP IP address, and all day long there was a continuous stream of Gnutella clones knocking on my port 6346 and asking for part of that movie. I could turn away some of them with a "HTTP/1.1 404" response, but the P2P net kept sending more of them to look for the last piece of that movie. Eventually I gave them a 302 Moved response and told them that the Location was themselves, but I'm not sure if their pro

      • Re:Wow! (Score:3, Funny)

        by EvilAlien ( 133134 )
        Its important that we're all prepared for assault by unknown evil such as al Qaeda, Iraq, SCO, or Zombies: Zombie Survival Tactics [tragicalmirth.com].

        I'm not sure any of those tactics will protect against SCO/Darl Zombies, however.. coming soon on Fox: "When Darls Attack".

      • Re:Wow! (Score:2)

        by mpe ( 36238 )
        They died years ago. Now they're just shambling around like a zombie, causing damage and panic, and looking for brains. So far they haven't found any.

        Maybe they are hoping someone will vote for them :)

    • Re:Wow! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Karma Farmer ( 595141 )
      Well, at this point SCO can't even afford to create a website, so it's probably all over but the lawsuits.

      Though, I can't see why they wanted to create a website anyhow. Who would be the target audience?
      1. Potential new customers?
      2. Current customers who haven't committed to migrating away?
      3. ...
      4. Underpants Gnomes?

      Heck, the lawyers probably own most of the equity in the company by now anyhow. They're probably less interested in an actual business plan that McBride is.

  • Perhaps occasional lying is better than constant? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:41AM (#10699633)
    Fernandes cited "legal and management concerns about the content of the website" as precipitating the review but declined to comment on specifics.

    I have a feeling that they knew they would have very few supporters on that site. They would probably spend more time astroturfing and fighting off the "bad" posts than they would "spreading the truth".

    They have enough lies coming out in press releases do they really want to have a site that lies constantly? Wouldn't that just be more fodder for those on the pro-Linux side?

    • Re:Perhaps occasional lying is better than constan (Score:5, Insightful)

      by I confirm I'm not a ( 720413 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:45AM (#10699676) Journal

      I have a feeling that they knew they would have very few supporters on that site

      IIRC, SCO weren't going to permit posting. My suspicion is that SCO realised that it'd be deadly dull with no posting. (It's a tribute to Groklaw volunteers that Groklaw manage to make a very dry topic quite interesting - without volunteers I doubt SCO could have given "watching paint dry" a run for its money).

      • Re:Perhaps occasional lying is better than constan (Score:4, Interesting)

        by happyemoticon ( 543015 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:15AM (#10699973) Homepage
        My suspicion is that SCO realised that it'd be deadly dull with no posting.

        Groklaw: Provides legal docs; presents a point of view which does not get media coverage; and, allows people to discuss the issues.

        They already have a repository for legal docs somewhere on their main site. Their highly publicized press releases are partisan to their viewpoint. They are not really interested in posts from people in the "community" because there is no community; they are more unilaterally despised than any other computer company today, perhaps in the last ten years.

        QED, a website would have been a redundant waste of the precious little money they have left.

    • No posts (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:47AM (#10699697) Homepage Journal
      They were not going to allow posts from the public, as does Groklaw - their site was to be nothing but their voice, with no comments from the peanut gallery. As such, the concern for trolling/astroturfing/conflicting opinions was non-existant.

      The more likely explaination was that, in the absense of such posts, the only thing their site could have would be either court documents a la Groklaw (which would do them no good), or statements from SCO, which would find their way into the courts, and as such would have to be true or they would expose SCO to (more) problems in court. When SCO legal informed them of this, SCO probably realised that there was no benefit in doing this.

      • Re:No posts (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:59AM (#10699831)
        statements from SCO, which would find their way into the courts, and as such would have to be true or they would expose SCO to (more) problems in court

        Exactly. SCO's various adversaries have already been having a blast showing their various judges the inconsistencies between what SCO has claimed in different courts. In Red Hat's case, in fact, the whole point of the litigation is the lies that SCO's management had been spreading in public statements. I suspect that "legal and management concerns" is shorthand for "legal was concerned that management was full of idiots".

        • Re:No posts (Score:3, Funny)

          by badasscat ( 563442 )
          I suspect that "legal and management concerns" is shorthand for "legal was concerned that management was full of idiots".

          And legal isn't?

          I think you're giving them entirely too much credit. I think Darl probably just couldn't figure out how to get FrontPage to put the site up for him, and finally gave up.

    • gotta be a budget thing. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:56AM (#10699791) Homepage Journal
      I have a feeling that they knew they would have very few supporters on that site. They would probably spend more time astroturfing and fighting off the "bad" posts than they would "spreading the truth".

      How many sites can they afford to astroturf and DoS? There's Slashdot, Kuroshin, Google, Grocklaw itself. All of those efforts cost money but have failed to one extent or another. I doubt they have the money to keep it up.

      No one was going to read their goofey fanboy site anyway. It's hard to make a community out of brand loyalty to a product no one is buying. You can fool some all the time and everyone some of the time but you can't fool all the people all the time, not even the press.

    • There is a substantial flaw in your argument.

      Firstly, I must object to your subject, "Perhaps occasional lying is better than constant?". It assumes that the managers of the company under discussion, SCO, are deliberately spreading falsehoods. This is not an objective fact. You risk sounding like a zealot by using such strong language in this regard.

      Also, if SCO is already, as you claim, partaking in regular 'lying' by means of press releases, what is the principal difference between this behavior and set

    • Re:Perhaps occasional lying is better than constan (Score:5, Insightful)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:16AM (#10699976) Journal

      They would probably spend more time astroturfing and fighting off the "bad" posts than they would "spreading the truth".

      Well, they said in their initial announcement that they wouldn't allow comments, so that wouldn't have been a problem.

      do they really want to have a site that lies constantly? Wouldn't that just be more fodder for those on the pro-Linux side?

      This, I think, is the crux of the matter. Assuming they ever really planned to do this (it may have just been a PR stunt designed to help their stock out for a short while), I think they probably realized they had a problem when they started trying to decide exactly what to put up, and where they were going to get it from.

      Some of their options were:

      • Misleading information that wasn't actually wrong, just carefully selected or out of date. Older court filings and press releases, for example. The problem with that, of course, is that the Groklawyers would have been all over it, dissecting it minutely to both de-FUD it -- PJ would probably have set up a page specifically to fill in the gaps -- and to analyze SCO's thinking, motivation and legal and PR strategies by what they chose to put up. That plan would likely make SCO look bad.
      • Baseless claims, probably with a few complete whoppers mixed in, but with no actual evidence, since they don't seem to have any that they can go public with (or any at all, more likely). Again, the Groklawyers would have trashed this soundly, making SCO look very bad.
      • Up-to-date and accurate information, like the court filings, depositions, etc. There really wouldn't be anything to criticize about this approach, but it's very doubtful that they could do it without coming off as a poor imitation of Groklaw's excellent archives. If they just pulled the content from Groklaw, they'd look really dumb and if they didn't they'd have a lot of work to do just to provide scanned versions of all of the documents, much less nicely-formatted text/html! They don't have Groklaw's army of volunteer court-runners, document scanners and transcribers. Not to mention the fact that the truth as reflected in all of the court filings is not very flattering to SCO's position.

      I think (still assuming they ever intended to do this) that they started trying to figure out what they could put up that would be legally safe (no libel, etc.), helpful to their image and not make them look like a poor Groklaw imitation, and they came up empty.

      Oh, two other potential problems with pulling the material from Groklaw just occurred to me: First it might open them up to charges of copyright infringement. Although the court documents are public domain, any formatting is copyrighted. PJ licenses everything under a creative commons license that does not permit commercial use, so using Groklaw's stuff could land them in yet another court case. Second, it would definitely open them up to more criticism; they're accusing others of "stealing" their IP and talking a great deal about the sanctity of IP and the importance of honoring it, so it would look really bad for them to be accused of "stealing" from Groklaw.

      Oh, one more problem: It's a bad idea to speak in public about ongoing court cases. Thanks to SCO's regular violation of this bit of wisdom, Red Hat, Novell and IBM have been able to construct their recent filings with large doses of SCO words, mixed with a bit of explanatory text. SCO has said so much to screw themselves that the attorneys on the other side were probably more excited about this new source of material than anyone. I'm sure the lawyers told Darl and co. yet again that they should really keep their mouths shut. SCO obviously isn't inclined to listen to such advice, but maybe they caved this time, based on all of the other problems.

    • Re:Perhaps occasional lying is better than constan (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:17AM (#10699997) Homepage Journal
      "Fernandes cited "legal and management concerns about the content of the website"
      The lawyers must have finally beat some sense into the management at SCO. What would this gain them? Nothing. What would it do? provide more material for Slashdot to bash SCO over the head with. More material for IBMs lawyers to bash SCO over the head with. And more bills for SCO to pay to have there lawyers review everything they post to make sure it didn't do more harm than good.
      What probably happened is they showed some of the first information that they wanted to post to the lawyers. And after the lawyers edited it all was left was the SCO logo and pictures of the SCO Christmas party.

    • I think this confirms that they were unsuccessful in recruiting Ari Fleischer. [wikipedia.org]

  • slashdotted? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tanktalus ( 794810 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:41AM (#10699635) Journal

    First time I ever saw a site slashdotted before it went live...

    • It looks like it's doing okay. [prosco.net] Check it out and hit refresh a few times to make sure.

  • They Had Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by brandonp ( 126 ) * <`moc.liamg' `ta' `nesretep.nodnarb'> on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:42AM (#10699639) Homepage
    In order for their idea to work, they'd actually need to have real and factual material to put on their Groklaw 'archrival'. Otherwise the new site would've been ripped appart.

    So in summary, They Had Nothing.

    Brandon Petersen
    Get Firefox! [spreadfirefox.com]
    • They already have a website where they blither all they want. Nothing real or factual, of course.

      For current information about SCO's suit against IBM, please visit www.sco.com/ibmlawsuit, and about SCO's suit against Novell, please visit www.sco.com/novell."

      They have one really nice server [netcraft.com]. Why would they need another? It's not like they have anything new to say.

  • the liars start running.

  • "legal and management concerns" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MarkEst1973 ( 769601 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:42AM (#10699642)
    Means they didn't have the money to put towards it. That website would not be the profit center that the lawsuit will be. All resources must go to the lawsuit, while there are still resources to be found.

  • Speaking of SCO... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:42AM (#10699643)


    For those who haven't checked lately, SCOX has been trading at around 3.0 [yahoo.com] lately.

    • ...was forbidden. If not, it should be.
      Oh, damn, I said "SCO". Doh, I said "SCO" again! GD, There I go again. "SCO" right there in print.
      Auughhh! Crap. I just can't keep from saying "SCO".

      SCO. SCO. SCO. SCO. SCO.

      Sorry for that folks. The author has comitted suicide for saying "SCO". Oooops, sorry for saying "SCO". Ahhhh, sorry for saying "SCO again". Oh, no. There I go saying "SCO". Forgive me...

    • For $3 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by forgotten_my_nick ( 802929 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:54AM (#10699773)
      I would buy one share. Is it possible to get the share in paper format that will look nice framed? Might make a good history piece.
    • LOL, less! Currently trading at 2.91 as I write this. I thought they'd tank a lot faster than they have, but I suppose there were a lot of fingers of the scales bolstering the price before now. With Baystar bailing out as fast as possible, I wonder if the pace will accelerate.


      Bye bye SCO we hardly knew ye.

    • For those who haven't checked lately, SCOX has been trading at around 3.0 lately.

      Dumber things have happened. Why mess around with plot when you can go to the conclusion? Pump followed by dump.

      The DLoP (Distributed Lack of Purchasing) attack continues.

      The real questions are, "who's buying that garbage" and "what do they think are they are buying?" After the largest investors expressed their misgivings and tried to get out, you would wonder who'd be dumb enough to buy SCOX.

    • Aw, c'mon, post a link to the FUN [yahoo.com] pic.

  • Sco lawsuit is media driven not truth driven (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nattt ( 568106 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:42AM (#10699644)
    Again this proves that the SCO suits are all media driven to spread FUD about Linux, to help their "friends", Microsoft, and to manipulate their stock price.

    Once Groklaw started to show people the facts of the case through legal filings and great research, SCO started coming undone, because we know they are Caldera, they contributed to Linux, released Unix code, helped IBM with project Monterrey and didn't object at the time to PPC AIX, indeed advertised the fact! We see their lies in their own words where they repeatedly contradict themselves.

  • Legal concerns? (Score:5, Funny)

    by dnaboy ( 569188 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:43AM (#10699654)
    SCO? Who'd have thunk it.
  • scocucks.com

  • SCO be a happy place to work (Score:5, Funny)

    by lottameez ( 816335 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:46AM (#10699680)
    I can't even imagine how depressing it must be to work at that place. Can't even manage to put up a website with their version of the truth.

  • Clever monkeys (Score:5, Interesting)

    by /ASCII ( 86998 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:46AM (#10699681) Homepage
    Guess they figured out that it is easier to track down lies in websites than in complex legal documents, speeches and interviews.

    This way they can continue to make snide remarks about groklaw beeing owned by IBM without backing their claims.

  • Keeping a low profile (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FearUncertaintyDoubt ( 578295 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:48AM (#10699710)
    To date, SCO's actions have been a little like sticking your head up out of the foxhole -- with about a thousand guns trained on your position. Every time they try to take a shot themselves, they get pounded with a barrage of fire from several different directions. So if you have any sense, you just stay down and don't give them anything to shoot at.

    SCO doesn't have much on it's side. The more they encourage effort on the part of their adversaries, the more they have to lose. Perhaps they believed that in this overly intellectual property-conscious land, they would get sympathy, but if so, that was a miscalculation.

    • if you have any sense, you just stay down

      SCO clearly has no sense.

      they believed that in this overly intellectual property-conscious land, they would get sympathy, but if so, that was a miscalculation.

      Microsoft paid them to steal other people's work and try to make free softare look like a legal pain. The attempt was recognized for what it was and the actors for who they are. They are liars and theives and few people have sympathy for that.

  • To prevent karma whoring. . . . . . (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:48AM (#10699714)
    SCO dumps Linux crusade website

    Having second thoughts thanks to 'legal concerns'.

    By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

    The SCO Group is reconsidering its plans to launch an alternative to the Groklaw.net website that was due to go live yesterday.

    Nearly one month after promising to launch the site that would provide information on SCO's various legal disputes, the company is having second thoughts on the project, said Janielle Fernandes, a spokeswoman for the software vendor. "It's still up for debate whether the website will ever go up," she said.

    Fernandes cited "legal and management concerns about the content of the website" as precipitating the review but declined to comment on specifics.

    After having its every legal move dissected on the Groklaw.net website for more than a year, SCO executives decided to launch a website of their own, devoted to giving their side of the argument. It should have gone live on 1 November - yesterday.

    SCO originally said the site would use the domain name Prosco.net. That name has now been dropped in favor of SCOinfo.com, although both now resolve to a blank screen with the message: "SCO is anticipating that it will use this site as the future home for all information relating to SCO's pending lawsuits and related issues. For current information about SCO's suit against IBM, please visit www.sco.com/ibmlawsuit, and about SCO's suit against Novell, please visit www.sco.com/novell."

    "The name was changed to support the purpose of the website," she said. "The purpose is to provide factual information regarding SCO's litigation, thus the name SCOinfo.com." Whether and when SCOinfo.com will ever contain this information is still up for debate within the company, Fernandes said.

    SCO is presently involved in a number of legal disputes with IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Autozone and DaimlerChrysler - all stemming from its insistence that it owns the copyright on part of the open source Linux kernel.

    Started shortly after the 2003 launch of SCO's multi-billion dollar lawsuit against IBM, Groklaw began as a Web log for Linux enthusiast Pamela Jones, a paralegal working for a law firm at the time. It has evolved into an open-source project itself, where legal filings are meticulously dissected by an army of volunteers.

  • The site will be up... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dinosaur Neil ( 86204 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:49AM (#10699729)

    I'm sure the site will be up just as soon as they present some actual evidence of how IBM done them wrong...

  • Management Concerns.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:50AM (#10699741) Homepage

    At SCO ? I mean how likely is that ? These are people who think that attacking IBM is a good company move. This means either two things

    1) The site was actually a good idea

    2) SCO management have gone past insantiy and out the otherside, potentially a large number of times.

    I doubt its 1, so it must be 2, which is fantastic as all we need to do is wire them up to a magnet and coil and that constant rotation from sanity to madness will enable us to create cheap, non-polluting energy. The only by product of this generation would be an increase in Slashdot posts around the madness peak, but hopefully we can pull that energy in as well.

    Other potential energy sources included the quantum state of Iraqi WMDs, but unfortunately their state has now resolved itself.
    • I think #1 may in fact be correct. SCO *needs* good spin on this issue, and we all know Darl isn't providing it. Given proper implementation, they could possibly help themselves with such a site.

      I doubt they'd win the case, but their share prices may go up long enough to sell out.
      • Which opens another can-O-worms -misleading investors.

        If SCO "publishes" misleading information on their web site, and people make investments based on that information, seems they could be in for another round of lawsuits aimed at them.

        IANAL.. ...but I play one on the internet.

  • The end is near for SCOX (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    bye bye SCOX [yahoo.com]

  • The real reason? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:52AM (#10699756) Homepage Journal
    and a spokeswoman has said it may never happen at all because of "legal and management concerns"."

    Maybe they looked at their own argument and realized it even looked stupid to them.

  • SCO Fail It! (Score:4, Funny)

    by cheezemonkhai ( 638797 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:54AM (#10699766) Homepage
    SCO has noticed code violations in other website which are directly taken from our own site.

    Due to this we have pulled our site to prevent further theft and will be taking legal action to defend our interlectual property.

    Examples of stolen code include:

    - used on many lines in may pages.
    - used on many lines in may pages.

    - used on other pages and I guess we should have used XHTML too ;)

    On consultation with out lawyers they said this case whad a good chance of being profitable, although they didn't say who for ;)

  • read as... (Score:5, Funny)

    by catdevnull ( 531283 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:54AM (#10699767)

    Read "legal and management concerns" as "We're tired of DDoS attacks and getting rooted by people who know more about *nix than we do."

    he he

  • i noticed there was no link to sco in the story... probably a good idea to avoid doing anything that may lead to a barrage of litigation...
  • SCO is a "legal and management concern"

  • They found prior art (Score:5, Funny)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @09:58AM (#10699812) Homepage
    when they researched the term sock-puppet. (Mainly the Usenet usage where a kook creates dozens of alternate identities to agree with himself; but usage of a cheap puppet with a hand up its bum works too.)

  • How about.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by freaksta ( 524994 )
    scowho.org ?

  • ``legal and mamagement concerns'' REALLY means: (Score:5, Funny)

    by nels_tomlinson ( 106413 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:01AM (#10699847) Homepage
    ... a spokeswoman has said it may never happen at all because of "legal and management concerns".

    ``Legal concerns'' probably means their lawyers told them: ``If you do this, we won't be able to maintain the fiction that you have a case.''

    ``Management concerns'' probably means that management didn't think it would pump the stock up enough to make up for the lawyers jumping ship.

  • Did the lawyers have a say? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:02AM (#10699853)
    I seem to recall several several times that if you are involved in a court case, you should keep your mouth shut. Maybe the lawyers are telling SCO execs that this is a dumb idea.

    By the way, I am not a lawyer, and taking this as legal advice without asking a real lawyer is like drinking poision to see what it tastes like.

  • Pronunciation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by subStance ( 618153 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:03AM (#10699868) Homepage
    "legal and management concerns" is pronounced "fear of being sued for libel".

  • www.darlmcbride.com is functional (Score:5, Informative)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:05AM (#10699890) Homepage Journal
    http://www.darlmcbride.com [darlmcbride.com] has been up and functional. It contains an "Open Letter to the Open Source Community September 9, 2003".

    Stop by and take a look....unfortunately I couldn't locate a place to leave "Comments" and "Feedback" to their FUD.

  • What about the Indians? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ebooher ( 187230 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:20AM (#10700022) Homepage Journal

    While we have all joined each other in loud, hearty guffaws at the rate at which SCO as a company has driven itself to hell without aid of handbasket, I must take a moment for an aside.

    According to the SCO website, they are still attempting to deliver a UNIXWare(R) product. This means that they *must* still have technically savvy folks working for them. Slaving over a hot pentium all day to cook us up some UNIXWare(R) goodness. How do they find the strength to get up in the morning and make the drive to work? For that matter, how does Darl McBride? The writing has been on the wall for quite a while now. How many of them are just hanging in, hoping for a long enough tenure with the company to get *something* out of all their hard work?

    This only causes to reenforce in my mind an earlier (albeit drunken) revelation I had about the truths of the online community that is /. I am sorely tempted to register a holding company, some Corporation designed to hold stock. I know there are legal Corp Classes that are allowed to do such things. Get everyone on every online forum I can find to be shareholders of the Holding Company and use all share money to outright purchase SCO and end this once and for all.

    I mean, they do have *some* validity to the claim that they own UNIX(R) Source. I'm not quite sure how much they truly own lock/stock. But what happens when their bubble *does* bust? We all know it's coming, we all know it's going to happen. Think that which is the UNIX(R) Source will suddenly become automagically opened?

    Most likely Microsoft or some other non open friendly giant will swoop in at the last minute and purchase up what remains of the UNIX(R) Source so that it will forever remain in a corporate collective somewhere. If it is Microsoft, they would probably begin the litigation anew. After they ran patents for everything and anything that looked like it might clear the US Patent Office in favor of the new owners.

    • Except that Microsoft isn't stupid, and they realize that SCO's case holds absolutely zero merit.

      Although I'd love to see Microsoft and IBM battle it out. It'd be like Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. We'd have to evacuate Tokyo, of course, but the movie sales alone would make it profitable.
    • I'm not sure what relevence the ownership of Unix really is. Linux is not Unix and doesn't appear to contain any closed Unix code. SCO's claim revolves around stolen code, a claim backed by arguably the most famous legal firm in the US and still it goes nowhere. Microsoft 'buying' Unix and taking up the baton only exposes them to further accusations of anti-competitive practices and pits them directly against IBM. My guess is if MS really is behind this they'll find other ways to do Linux damage and let SCO

  • SCO press releases (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mobiGeek ( 201274 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:44AM (#10700165)
    Has anyone noticed an absolute lack of "SCO headlines" since May? http://www.sco.com/company/news/ Really wicked change in PR-direction, is it not?

  • it may never happen at all because of legal (Score:5, Funny)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:46AM (#10700185)
    it may never happen at all because of "legal and management concerns".

    Makes sense. I expect the lawyers and management pointed out that SCO would certainly never say anything about someone else that was not 100% true, and a program of wild accusations would be unseemly for a respected member of the community.

  • Here I was expecting a web site which would explain how SCO was giving up on Linux.

    The problem with the English language is that it doesn't have a word for ambiguous.

  • Not too surprising for me. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Robotron2084 ( 262343 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @11:25AM (#10700449) Homepage
    I was actually emailed by a sco representative who wanted to link to one of my animations on their website. Here's most of it:
    -----------------
    We are putting a site together that will go live on November 1 and have a link on the site called "Just for Fun."

    We would like to link to your site to give people access to "Steve the Linux Super Villian." It's absolutely hilarious and we would love to profile that on this section of the site, just to show people that we have a sense of humor.

    May we have your permission to link to your site from our site?
    -----------------
    To which I replied:

    ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT A DOUBT, NO.

    Obviously they didn't notice my Penguin Blood Ninja FiaSCO animation.

    I'm not too surprised by today's news!

  • SCO had to shut up. IBM was quoting them. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @11:39AM (#10700525) Homepage
    SCO's output of over-the-top press releases stopped about the time IBM started quoting them in court filings. It looks bad to the judge when the plaintiff is making public statements that contradict what they're saying in their court filings. And SCO definitely did.

    Over on the stock front, SCOX is at $2.93 today, continuing the long, slow slide of the last year. [yahoo.com] Since July, the price decline has been almost a straight line on a linear scale. The market cap seems to be tracking how much cash SCO has left, which means the market is valuing SCO's UNIX rights at zero.

  • Has anybody read the article? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Herschel Cohen ( 568 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @12:31PM (#10700953) Journal
    The content is essentially: the web site <b><i>may never</b></i> be activated due to management and legal issues. The spokesperson refused to supply either the specific reasons or flatly state the site will never open.

    So much speculation and comments on so little substance. Indeed, you need a different headline on this story.
  • Just like their court case.

  • Heh, funny. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Baloo Ursidae ( 29355 ) <dead@address.com> on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @01:20PM (#10701596) Journal
    "legal and management concerns"

    You mean other than not owning Linux and having no case, right? Cause that didn't stop SCO before...

  • I figure only 2 things could have happened:

    Hypothesis 1: Someone in legal said that someone could potentially be held personally accountable for any slander on the site, they couldn't find anyone in the company stupid enough to step into the line of fire.

    Hypothesis 2: Someone in legal realized that a site with enough "spin" to make it useful would have to print quite a lot of outright lies, putting up a nice big target for a SEC "Shareholder Fraud" investigation.

    Of course, IANAL so I don't know feasib

  • SCO chief Darl McBride broke down in tears today and sobbed to reporters, "I just want people to like me."

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