The MAIN "SCO" (rant) thread (Please post in here)

[nonz]

sco won't get anything

[Tesl]

Originally posted by nonz
sco won't get anything

nothing im going to add to that. Situations change, and even if SCO were to win (which is highly unlikely) it wont really even cause any problems for Linux.

SCO will go bankrupt soon enough anyway

[Icarus]

I really doubt there should be concern here...

The article says they have a 'tight group of friends', do they mean the ones they have backstabbed in the last couple years? I don't think friends stick around after you buy all their stock for cheap and try to make a %500 profit off it.

McBride is flaming anyone that gets in his way, reminds me of Napoleon...

[2ndsign]

SCO and microsoft have teamed together no worries though!

just microsoft make more agent smiths!

[Parcival]

Linus must be Neo, then.

[blackbelt_jones]

Okay, so the suits at SCO are rough and tough, they're not dummies, blah blah blah... this story doesn't have a thing to say about whether these manly men of business actually have a case.

Most of the skeptical coverage that I've read actually tends to looks at things from the"have-they-got-a-case?" perspective. This, on the other hand, isn't even good FUD. Most of the stories I've seen about how the Linux community isn't taking this threat seriously enough share this fundamental lack of substance-- but this is just pure fluff.

The coverage this has received from the Linux community has been detailed and extensive. The idea that because we're not intimidated we're not paying attention is spurious. Many of us can quote SCO's "there are no Americans in Bagdad" absurdities by rote, chapter and verse. The position paper issued by Eric Raymond and his organization takes a hard look at SCO's position and eviscerates it. I haven't seen anything written on the other side that bothers to get so specific.

[erazo]

SCO is a perfect example of a company where lawyers (read: shysters) run the corporation. They don't produce anything new; they buy and sell other companies to stake a claim in some technology invented by someone else; they change names and alliances so fast the SEC and analysts have a hard time keeping up; and finally, they sue anyone thay can in the hope of generating income through settlements and judgments.

Welcome to the new century of business.

[hop-frog]

Don't look, but who's saying "Blah, Blah, Blah" now?

I've been reading a quite a good number of articles about SCO. This also includes articles linked from this site and all of the lame jokes that the Slashdot community uses as a substitute for arguments. All they say is "Look SCO's complex history" and "IBM has a huge army of lawyers and more money" and "SCO is inconsistent" and "It won't matter to me even if they do win" and "SCO is with MS." So far I haven't seen anything to suggest that SCO's allegations aren't true and they won't bring significant harm to Linux.

Maybe I've just been reading the wrong articles?

And please don't link to Humorix, The Register, or The Inquiror if you want me to take you seriously.

[blackbelt_jones]

Here's a link to the "archives" page of the Linux show webcast.

http://www.thelinuxshow.com/archives.shtml

Check out Eric Raymond's appearance for June 10... this is the most detailed discussion of the SCO case that I've found anywhere. The interesting thing is that so far Raymond's predictions (which, admittedly as he says have to do with a "standard legal dance") have come true since then all down the line. I'll see if I can find the position paper.

(Eric appears about a half hour into the show.)

[saithan]

Hop frog,
you are not looking at the situation from the proper perspective.
simply put:

the burden of proof falls on SCO.
not IBM nor the Linux community.

IBM lawyers know this.

[El_Cu_Guy]

In 1996, SCO's predecessor company, Caldera, bought the rights to a decrepit version of the DOS operating system and used it to sue Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT ), eventually shaking a settlement out of the Redmond, Wash., software giant.

Wow who'd have known the CP/M (renamed DR-DOS or Digital Research-DOS) was simply an old version of DOS.

Not really proof of the crappy journalism skills but funny none the less.

[blackbelt_jones]

http://opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html

Here's the position paper by the open source initiative on the case
Wow, is this a hot thread or what? Everytime I finish eciting my post, there's another post beneath it already!

[blackbelt_jones]

I don't know anything about SCO vs. MS, but it would seem that as with many bullies, it doesn't take that much to get MS to cower. Recently they backed down under public criticism of their licensing program for schools, and when there was a big squawk about copy protectionm on Media Player 9, they issued a patch.

(You know, about an hour and a half ago, I came this site hoping to post a question about fluxbox!)

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by blackbelt_jones
Okay, so the suits at SCO are rough and tough, they're not dummies, blah blah blah... this story doesn't have a thing to say about whether these manly men of business actually have a case.

Details, details! You don't need a case to be able to win a lawsuit, do you?

Not that they're even necessarily looking to win the suit -- they may just be looking to get bought up. Though I don't think they will be, as it'll set a bad precedent, it may be SCO's internal safety net or something.

[blackbelt_jones]

You don't necessarily need to have the facts on your side to win a case... but I'm guessing that it really helps to have the facts on your side to win a case against IBM. Isn't it ironic that the standard bearer of Linux, which is supposed to be the ultimate anticorporate operating system is... International Business Machines? In my opinion, IBM isn't going to as easy a mark as Microsoft. Microsoft may have more money, but IBM has much much more experience at being a huge corporation.

The important thing to remember is that IBM can make this go away any time it really needs to, by buying out SCO-- so the only thing that matters is IBM's ability to read the seriousness of the case against them, or if there even is a case against them. I think that we can trust them to do that.