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In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French
Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 12:35 AM EDT

Our own eagle-eyed belzecue submitted this article from The Financial Express, which reports that the largest insurance company in India is dumping SCO and going with Red Hat Linux:

"It is Linux time for the financial sector. Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the largest insurance company of the country, is implementing Linux, the open source code operating system, replacing SCO Unix across its 2,048 branches. . . . Said Mr H Nanda, deputy secretary, software development centre, IT department, LIC, 'We chose Linux over some popular proprietary OS like Windows as we wanted to run all our existing in-house applications without spending much and at the same time did not want to be tied to license based OS. We will have the necessary freedom in future to develop various applications according to customers’ requirements.'

"LIC officials believe that by choosing Linux the company will save a huge amount of money in terms of licence fees, minimum use of third party applications and customisation cost of existing applications."

So it's bye bye, SCO. Hello, Red Hat:

"Red Hat will provide centralised support and training along with helping LIC’s software developers develop Linux based business applications."

The reason this has got to be hurting SCO is LIC India just happens to be listed on their web site as one of their prized "success stories". They had 6,000 servers running UnixWare, according to the success story. Let's see. The story indicates they were wanting to dump UNIX and considered Windows and Linux and finally decided on Linux. Presumably, then, had SCO not stopped selling their Linux products, they could have held on to this customer, by just swapping in Linux. Woops.

Well, perhaps they consider that a small loss, compared to their pie-in-the-sky dreams of unimaginable wealth from litigation, the new SCO business model. Marc sends us a report from France, with a Darl McBride interview in French, in which he tells us how much money he figures he will get from IBM if SCO wins. His calculation is $1 billion per week. The interview is here, in French. My rusty French, with support from an English translation by computer, and some help from Groklaw readers, informs us that he apparently said that SCO is fighting for the good of the computer industry. It's like the early US history, he says. First they just took the land and then things got organized later. I gather he plans to organize the software industry.

More like strip mine it.

He says IBM will owe them maybe 50 billion dollars a year, so delay, while a negative in one way, is not hurting them financially if they win the IBM case. Then there are all those servers using Linux they can license. Ka-ching. Ka-ching.

Judge Kimball might like to know what a week's delay is worth to SCO, since they are currently requesting several delays in the discovery process. Hopefully, the judge won't let them keep the meter running for all the delays SCO itself caused when calculating damages if, in some alternate universe, SCO is able to win anything. Here's the French on that answer, so you can translate for yourself:

"Ce délai nous fait du mal. D'un autre côté, étant donné que nous avons révoqué le contrat Unix d'IBM, ce dernier nous devra, selon nous, de 40 à 50 milliards de dollars par an si la justice nous donne raison. Parallèlement, cinq  millions de serveurs avec un noyau Linux 2.4 ou supérieur ont été déployés. Ce qui représente des milliards de dollars..."

He again says Linux companies can't realistically remove the code, because there's millions of lines, not thousands, but if they did remove it, that's fine with SCO, as is dropping down to any version of Linux below 2.4. Wait. Didn't they just tell the judge it's about methods and ideas, not ... I'm confused.

Maybe he's fund-raising among the French. Financially, SCO is doing fine, he says, and again he says the company has no long-term debt. And they plan on sales of licenses. Open source means freedom, not getting code free, he says. Ha ha.

I must have misunderstood the French and/or the computerlingo, because I can't match any definition of the word freedom with what he is planning for Linux. If accuracy matters to you, get a real translation, please. I'm just pointing you to the source.

Speaking of methods and ideas, there is a really interesting article by an attorney, Douglas L. Rogers, of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, on trade secrets and SCO's claims, and he touches on the methods and ideas angle. Maybe SCO should drop the trade secret claims. After reading the article, I don't think things are looking so good for them on that score.

In contrast to Darl's rah rah talk, there is this TechNewsWorld story, in which Neil Macehiter, research director at Ovum, says analysts were largely right in predicting that not many would buy a license from SCO:

"'Reality is dawning on SCO. They've yet to release details of exactly what is the subject of the case; no litigation has gone ahead as yet and, in the meantime, Hewlett Packard has said it will indemnify HP Linux users against any litigation with SCO,' he said. 'Apart from a handful of enterprises, businesses aren't playing ball with SCO, which is not seeing the success it anticipated with the legal case against IBM.'"

UPDATE: James Sauve has stepped up to the plate and offered us a line-by-line translation of the McBride interview. For copyright reasons, I will quote significant snips only:

"Linux contains portions of UNIX, of which SCO is the sole proprietor. We are aware that many are unhappy. But, this is the battle of the century : things are going to change when it comes to intellectual property of digital information, and we are mounting this campaign for everyone's benefit. It's somewhat like the birth of the United States of America : at first people just took the land, then things got organized."

"Q:How do you feel about the fact that the IBM case won't go to trial until 2005?

"The delay is hurting us. On the one hand, given that we have revoked IBM's Unix license, they owe us, according to our calculations, 40 to 50 billion dollars per year, if we win our case. On the other hand, 5 million Linux servers with the Linux 2.4 kernel or higher have been deployed. This represents billions of dollars...

"IBM chose to over posture themselves by putting forward the GPL, a matter we hadn't yet raised. We think that the use of our code is governed by copyright law, not the GPL. That will be the second round of the battle.

"Replacing the illegal code seems unimaginable, even if we would be the first to approve such a solution. But we're talking about millions of lines of code and not a few dozen. On top of that, the pieces that were taken are precisely what makes Linux a viable solution for enterprise deployment, like SMP and NUMA. We therefore invite enterprise users to properly license Linux by purchasing our run-time-only Linux license or downgrading to a version of Linux prior to 2.4, which will probably be enough for some companies."

The most interesting part of the new translation is that it makes clearer what they mean by copyright trumping the GPL. I understand now that they mean their code, which was distributed by them under the GPL, they now claim, wasn't really distributed that way, because they didn't mean to so distribute the code and copyright law protects them from having to GPL it forever. Now, since Linus and the FSF told them from the beginning that if they had inadvertently released any code it would be removed, why are they litigating the point instead of just accepting that generous offer?


  


In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French | 54 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 02:29 AM EDT
Yes, but don't they realize they are going to have to buy a SCO license for
every Linux server?

[ Reply to This | # ]

In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French
Authored by: rand on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 02:40 AM EDT
First they just took the land ...

The Cherokee part of me just got a cold chill...

---
urk...I apologize in advance for wrong keystrokes: tendonitis of the lfet hand, the fingers drag sometimes...

[ Reply to This | # ]

In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 03:24 AM EDT
I can't stop smiling .... :)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Meanwhile in France?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 03:30 AM EDT
Maybe he's fund-raising among the French.

Maybe the French Linux companies and user groups could force him to prove his case or shut up, like the Germans managed to do (anyone know about relevant French laws?). Too bad MandrakeSoft is still in the French equivalent of Chapter 11... they cannot reasonably be expected to pick legal fights.

[ Reply to This | # ]

In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 03:46 AM EDT
01 is one of the 2 professionnal generalist computer weekly.
A few year ago, there were one page of comics, and job offers that interested
developpers, and a lot of redactionnal for PHBs. They removed the page of
comics, and the economic situation removed a lot of job offers, so for a few
years, I didn't see a reason to read them. But, each and every time I read an
article in 01 about some subject I know, I see they write crap.
Credibility of the paper : 1/10.
Journalistic attitude (checking other sources, etc ...) : 1/10.
I don't understand how they can still be there.

[ Reply to This | # ]

In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French
Authored by: DrStupid on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 04:37 AM EDT
The Rogers article is very interesting. It's worth scrolling into the footnotes
too, for he makes one very important point that we knew but again should be made
forcefully to worried PHB's:

"41. Even if IBM had misappropriated SCO’s trade secrets, the use of Linux
software by the public should not be open to challenge under trade secret law.
See, e.g., Tedder Boat Ramp Systems, Inc. v. Hillsborough County, Fla., 54 F.
Supp. 2d 1300, 1304 (M.D. Fla. 1999), and authorities cited therein. As the
district court said in Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-Line
Communications Services, 923 F. Supp. 1231, 1256 (N.D. Cal. 1995), quoting
Underwater Storage, Inc. v. United States Rubber Co., 371 F.2d 950, 955 (D.C.
Cir. 1966), cert. denied, 386 U.S. 911 (1967), “Once the secret is out, the rest
of the world may well have a right to copy it at will; but this should not
protect the misappropriator or his privies.”"

TSG cannot demand end users (fortune 1000 or otherwise) to "compensate
it" for any trade secret breach by IBM.

[ Reply to This | # ]

In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French
Authored by: Hygrocybe on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 06:40 AM EDT
I am not normally a vindictive person, but in this particular case I could not
be more pleased. SCO is here reaping the whirlwind and deserves every desertion
that occurs. If this continues, what income apart from litigation or fall-due
loans do they have ? We know that uptake of licences has fallen flat and
"everybody and his dog" has been waiting and hoping that the licence
letters would go out to allow the start of the biggest cascade of law suits
against an IT company that has ever been seen.


In any event, I wonder if Darl McBride realises yet what he has done to SCO ?
From the status of a mediocre and somewhat passed over company, it is now a
"pariah firm". Who in their right mind will ever trust them or buy
from them again ? I suspect we will see more of this as SCO UNIX firms steadily
pull the plug. And good luck to them; they are simply displaying sound business
practice.

---
LamingtonNP

[ Reply to This | # ]

In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 08:53 AM EDT
I'll second that funny +1.

Its gonna be so nice when SCO loses everything.

[ Reply to This | # ]

New French - Old English?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 10:07 AM EDT
New French - Old English?

When I read the Altavista translation last evening, I thought that it looked a
bit familiar. Then again SCO have the habit of spouting out the same old mantra
when they've nothing really new.

I'm still not convinced this morning that it's not a translation of an older
english article, so I've had a look on Google and various other site's news
archives, but I cannot find it; perhaps I'm mistaken.

The one thing that still niggles is that he says:
"SCO est passé d'une valorisation d'environ 10 millions de dollars à 130
aujourd'hui."
"SCO passed from a valorization of approximately 10 million dollars to 130
today."

Yahoo currently gives a market cap of $238.84M at $17.25 a share. $130m works
out at more like $10 a share, which hasn't been seen since mid-August, but was
first reached in mid-June, just after "nous avons révoqué le contrat Unix
d'IBM" / "we revoked the Unix contract from IBM".

"Que répondez-vous à l'argument d'IBM, qui met en avant la GPL(2)
?"
"What do you answer the argument of IBM, which proposes GPL(2)?"
Did IBM only propose the GPL with their counterclaim (6th August)? SCO's
so-called licences were around by then, so perhaps it dates back to between then
and SCOForum.

The boxes at the bottom appear more up-to-date, but I think that the
"interview" itself was lifted and translated from an earlier english
version with the original footnotes mis-formatting into the last paragraph.

Tim

[ Reply to This | # ]

POS Systems
Authored by: Alex on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 10:13 AM EDT

Speaking of doing bad things to SCO, is anyone out there writing a good Linux
based POS system?

Alex

---
Destroying SCO one bozon at a time

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • POS Systems - Authored by: mac586 on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 10:27 AM EDT
  • POS Systems - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 03:18 PM EDT
  • POS Systems - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 03:56 PM EDT
  • POS Systems - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 16 2003 @ 12:10 PM EST
In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French
Authored by: inc_x on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 10:40 AM EDT
Note that "SCO Germany" has been made to shut up. That is a
seperate legal entitity from "TSG". I am not aware of any "SCO

France"

[ Reply to This | # ]

"Darling"
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 10:47 AM EDT
Whatever else, Darl McBride will be remembered for the new meaning he has given
the word "darling."

From now on, "darling" [may be capitalized] will mean "fatuous
promotion of a company for the purpose of increasing its stock price."

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • "Darling" - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 11:41 AM EDT
  • "Darling" - Authored by: jmc on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 12:29 PM EDT
In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 12:10 PM EDT
As nice as it is to see that SCO is getting the boot in favor of Linux, SCO will
likely twist it to their own means. I can see the quote now:

"This is a perfect example of how SCO's business has been harmed by the
misappropration of our IP into Linux." Ignoring that Linux can be
suitable without SCO's IP, this is still mischaracterizing the problem. I
suspect that "this is a perfect example of SCO's litigious behavior
discouraging customers."

Now SCO will probably steal my mock quote.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO has some BIG problem with the India distributor
Authored by: BubbaCode on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 12:55 PM EDT
The 10-Q reports that their distributor was fired and then the distributor sued
SCO for just under $2Million. Wonder if this win has anything to do with todays
news?

[ Reply to This | # ]

In India, Red Hat Shows SCO the Door and Darl Talks Turkey, in French
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 23 2003 @ 03:18 PM EDT
<i>
I understand now that they mean their code, which was distributed by them under
the GPL, they now claim, wasn't really distributed that way, because they
didn't mean to so distribute the code and copyright law protects them from
having to GPL it forever.
</i>

That would hold more water if they stopped distributing the code. You can still
download it from their website right now if you want.

Also it would have held more water if Ransom Love hadn't told the press how
much he loved XFS. Sort of defeats the argument that they didn't know about
it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Absolutely nothing to worry about.
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 26 2003 @ 08:39 PM EST
I'm not doing IBM defence (though I'd hardly call it that) and I'm not going
to possibly help out SCO.

The majority of their claims will be dismissed (millions of lines of code to
less then 300 and the 300 weren't being used by anything anyways). Time and
time again they've passed up/abused/thrown away every opportunity granted to
them consistently proving inept policy which should be bankrupt in a capital
system. Their own clumsiness or greed manufactured the current situation and is
entirely of their own making.

Sometimes I seriously think this will never make it the courts and Darls
attempts to trial this in the public eye is either obnoxious or humorist.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Darl talks chicken feed... used.
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, November 03 2003 @ 01:04 PM EST
But we're talking about millions of lines of code

Hogwash. The entire Linux kernel (Linus' version 2.4.22, ready to make a Debian package out of but without any object files, just pure source) is 5,292,421 lines. How do I know? I just counted (find /usr/src/linux-2.4.22 -type f -print | xargs wc -l >/tmp/out (roughly translated into English, find the names of all the files in the Linux source and run them thru "wc", a program which counts characters, words, and lines, telling it to just count lines, and trap that output in a temporary file))... and then did a little more magic on that file to add up all the totals. (Being open about my methods so they can be duplicated.)

I think people like Donald Becker, Alan Cox, Andrea Archangeli, and St. Linus Himself, would argue that there's no way there could be "millions of lines" of System V in Linux... they would personally know of too much code written elsewhere.

In short, Darl McBride just totally wasted any credibility he ever had..... and, as we all know, in a civil case, where preponderance of evidence is king, credibility is paramount, is the sine qua non...

[ Reply to This | # ]

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