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| SCO's License Is Only For the Big Guys... For Now |
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Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 05:05 AM EDT
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Unless you are a Fortune 1000 company, you can't get a Linux license from The SCO Group Inc. for love or money, according to IDG. So now you know. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but someone had to tell you. Try to be a man about it:
"'We're trying to execute on this licensing plan (by) really starting to deal with the very top players and working our way down,' said Blake Stowell, a SCO spokesman. 'After the company has rolled this out to the Fortune 1000 and we're satisfied with how the program is going ... we'll then roll it down to small to medium businesses.' . . .
"SCO has admitted in recent weeks to having difficulties rolling out the licensing plan. Last Thursday it revealed that it had delayed until Nov. 1 a plan to double the price of the license in order to give users more time to buy licenses at the lower rate.
"Stowell advised small and medium-sized businesses interested in the Linux license to wait for SCO to contact them. However, customers that contact SCO before the Nov. 1 deadline will be eligible for the $699 per processor rate even if they can't actually purchase the license by that date, he said." So now you know why you were getting the runaround. Wait. Maybe there is more to the story than the PR spin? Why, yes. Yes, there is. Here is analyst Dan Kusnetzky's thought: "'As soon as they sell the first one, litigation will be started from all quarters,' he predicted. 'I think the people from The SCO Group realized that if they opened that box, they'd never be able to close it again.'" Newhouse News has a What If SCO Wins article which includes this somber thought: "Eben Moglen, a Columbia University law professor who represents the Free Software Foundation, says an SCO victory would further consolidate the software industry, raising possibilities for electronic surveillance of citizens.
"'The ability to modify technology in the 21st century is power,' Moglen says. 'And it either belongs to a few, or to everybody. ... Those who control the behavior of technology control lives.'"
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| Authored by: ZeusLegion on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 05:31 AM EDT |
One more good quarter and McBride gets some options or extra dough according to
his contract, right? That's certainly an incentive for him to have the lawyers
drag out the legal process.
As I recall from his lawsuit with an earlier employer, he's big on
performance-based bonuses.
---
Z[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: egan on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 05:34 AM EDT |
Fortune 1000 companies are, by definition, big companies. Big companies have
in-house counsel and are much less likely than small companies to pay SCO for an
unneeded software "license".
The only Fortune 1000 companies one can imagine taking any SCO licenses are
companies with which SCO already has some vendor relationship, such as some of
the fast-food and retail firms. And, in order to induce such companies to play
along, SCO will probably have to offer equal or greater discounts on current or
future payments for its products UnixWare and OpenServer. So those
"licenses" will really be shams erected to enable further FUD
generation by SCO.
In the past, SCO claimed that one or two companies actually acquired its Linux
binary-only "licenses", but refused to identify them (though I
suspect one was the Eckerd's retail drugstore chain). It will be interesting
to see whether any other of SCO's existing customers will admit to buying
SCO's Linux "licenses".
Any companies that take "licenses" for Linux from SCO will be losing
my business forever, as well as that of many other open source users, possibly.
(Are you listening, McDonalds, Wendys and PizzaHut, etc.?)
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 05:39 AM EDT |
like so many of these "what if SCO wins" articles, is so riddled
with inaccuracies as to be not worth the paper its not written on.
Its interesting that the spokesman for SCO, and their spokesman, Blake Stowell,
and their new investor, BayStar, can both use the initials BS![ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 06:00 AM EDT |
It really wasn't a "what if sco wins" article.
It was just a sumation type of article that touched on a ton of different
points. Nothing new for the groklaw crowd but pretty decent reporting for
regular people.
BTW. I was just reading Rob Enderle's last article. In this linuxworld forum
you can see why he wrote it. http://www.linuxworld.com/story/34237_f.htm
He started out saying that SCO would lose, but people in the forum pissed him
off by saying he was fired from IBM so he wrote the article saying that SCO
would win.
What a moron...
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| Authored by: Draconis on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 06:15 AM EDT |
"Eben Moglen, a Columbia University law professor who represents the Free
Software Foundation, says an SCO victory would further consolidate the software
industry, raising possibilities for electronic surveillance of citizens.
"The ability to modify technology in the 21st century is power,"
Moglen says. "And it either belongs to a few, or to everybody. ... Those
who control the behavior of technology control lives.""
This is being overplayed somewhat. If anything, the current government
dithering over whether spam represents a legitimate industry or a
pain-in-the-ass is going to have more ramifications than if SCO wins. BSD and
BEOS are still being developed, and we'd actually get to see the 'infringing'
code to remove it from Linux anyway. If anything this is the wakeup call
that's been awaiting the OS ever since it really appeared on the radar.
*someone* will have appeared with a hand outstretched sooner or later, but it
wouldn't be the death of the operating system if SCO won either of the
lawsuits.
Basically the entire world that disliked SCO would 'route around' the problem
and essentially ignore them...this is their final dive because noone will trust
them, use them or have anything to do with them. Their big client licenses will
dry up after their purpose has been served.
Going the route of saying that civil liberties will be eroded is simply getting
into the rote of fear...there are more pressing issues regarding surveillance
and datamining that would have more profound effects than SCO winning a day in
court. If anything it will be a phyrrhic victory anyway because the rewards
would be short term.
I feel quite sad that Moglen fails to understand that the whole raison d'etre
of the internet was robustness, and that Linux was born out of necessity. This
isn't a static world, and the FSF isn't a static society. Route around.
""We believe it is important to respect the IP rights of others;
intellectual property rights are extremely important to the technology
industry," Microsoft spokeswoman Alex Mercer says."
All I can do is laugh at that remark.
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| Authored by: Marc Duflot on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 06:48 AM EDT |
Here is a new
interview in French of Darl McBride.
Now, he talks about
millions of lines
(not just one million) and he claims one billion dollars
of damage
from IBM each week.
Extra : a recent
picture of Darl!
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 08:34 AM EDT |
Que répondez-vous à l'argument d'IBM, qui met en avant la GPL(2) ?
-- How do you respond to IBM's argument, which puts the GPL(2) forward?
Il est intéressant de voir le ralliement que cet argument a généré.
-- It's interesting to see how people rallied around this argument.
IBM a choisi de surenchérir en mettant en avant la GPL. Sujet que nous n'avions
pas soulevé.
-- IBM chose to overbid (go farther than us?) by putting the GPL forward, a
subject which we didn't raise ourselves.
Nous pensons que l'utilisation de notre code relève des lois de copyright, et
non de la GPL.
-- We think the use of our code concerns copyright laws, and not the GPL.
Il s'agira du second round de la bataille.
-- That (the GPL?) will be the second round of the battle.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 09:23 AM EDT |
1. State that the license is only available for the big guys.
2. State that small to medium size businesses should wait for SCO to
"contact you". (sounds vaguely like a legal threat).
3. Indicate that half price deal has been extended.
4. Suggest that small to medium size businesses that simply contact SCO to
indicate interest in the license *before the end of the half price deal* will be
eligible for the half price deal beyond the deadline.
5. Small to Medium sized businesses realize they have almost nothing to lose by
contacting SCO right now, because no money changes hands and because no
agreement to take the license is made.
6. SCO sits back as their phones start ringing a hell of a lot more than
before.
7. SCO, either by press release, quarterly report, or other share-enhancing
method announces that 1000s of businesses has strongly expressed interest in the
license. "This proves the validity of our case against IBM" or some
such nonsense is added to the PR.
8. Share prices soar again.
9. Profit.
Just you watch.
-brendan[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 11:52 AM EDT |
SCO has said one company bought a Linux license from them, right? Does that
mean, I, who have contributed to Linux, can sue SCO (or that company since they
probably don't protect their customers) for profiting off of my work by
changing the license by which I released my work?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 08:46 PM EDT |
They change their story yet again. Somebody should do a timeline of what they
have said about the licensing plan, pointing out changes and contradictions.
Oh, and do a similar one about the invoice plan.
Maybe there is no licensing plan. Do we have any proof that anyone has bought a
license? Maybe it is all just FUD. We never get the licenses, we never get the
invoices, we never get to see the alleged infringing code. As Gertrude Stein
said of Oakland, "there is no 'there' there." This is sort of the
legal equavalent of vaporware, something you say is real but never appears.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 08:52 PM EDT |
"We didn't articulate that at the time, and probably should have,"
Stowell said.
Oh, so at the time they brought out the licensing program, they knew it was only
for Fortune 1000 companies, but they forgot to say it? And when all those
non-Fortune 1000 people called up, their operators and salespeople forgot to
tell them that either?
Or maybe it originally was for everyone, but SCO just today changed their mind.
Or maybe there is no licensing program, it is just a hoax. Or maybe... no, I
need to stop, I am starting to go nuts trying to make sense of their actions.
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| Authored by: gdt on Wednesday, October 22 2003 @ 08:52 PM EDT |
I'm Australian and not a lawyer. So I've no idea how US law
works.
SCO are offering for sale a promise not to initiate legal action
over a firm's use of Linux.
It is offering this to firms like News
Limited, but to not equally-large non-incorporated bodies such as
privately-owned businesses or government agencies.
SCO says it will make
the same offer to them later. But offers no way for a firm in that situation to
mitigate the damages it says SCO is suffering in the interim.
So SCO's
offer to the Fortune 1000 is materially different from SCO's offer to other
firms.
Can anyone else see why this might upset corporate
regulators? [ Reply to This | # ]
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