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It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 05:01 AM EST

Well, it's official. Reuters is reporting that China is saying on a government web site that the government will financially support Linux development:
The Chinese government plans to throw its financial weight behind Linux-based computer systems that could rival Microsoft Corp's Windows in one of the world's fastest-growing technology markets, an official said on Wednesday. . . .

China's information technology market is growing at 20 percent a year, with software sales expected to reach $30.5 billion in 2005, according to research house International Data Corp.

Oddly enough, Gartner's George Weiss says that Linux will soon dominate the US Unix space, and pretty much everything else, despite SCO:
Gartner expects the [SCO] suit to have little affect on the adoption of Linux worldwide. "Linux is expected to be the predominant, or near predominant, operating system in the Unix space, and one of the major operating systems in most enterprises by 2006," Weiss said.
Of course, there will be what Intel's Andy Grove calls "friction" during the transition.

Grove gave a keynote address at the recent Business Software Alliance's Global Tech Summit, and he warned in stark language that the US needs to develop public policy regarding IT in a number of key areas, and he specifially warned about the drag on the economy of patent litigation:
There is another friction issue which has to do with intellectual property that we should talk a great deal about. And the trends here are not particularly favorable to our increased productivity. The number of software patents issued has skyrocketed in recent years. The number of patent software patents in the backlog according to the head of the patent office are expected to reach a million items. This leads to terribly increased litigation. Let me call your attention to this chart, which shows the actual judgments rendered in software intellectual software cases over a 15 or so year period of time. So what you see is 5 million to four billion dollars change over the 15 year period of time. A large portion of the software talent and managerial talent in this country is associated with issues of this sort representing another element of friction. . . .

When it comes to friction, raise the hurdle for litigation so that we don't get involved in a litigation wave and make the patent office more discriminating and more expeditious in evaluating filed cases.

He cited China as a good example for the US to follow, in the sense that at least they have a public policy on IT issues. You can read his remarks here.

Speaking of friction, LinuxWorld has a snip of an interview with Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School professor and author of "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Investor's Business Daily. He was asked why is Linux disruptive? Here is his answer:

Christensen: Linux... signals the beginning of commoditization. In the past, popular operating systems have been proprietary and interdependent.

IBD: Should Microsoft be worried about Linux?

Christensen: Linux is very disruptive to Microsoft. To their credit, Microsoft has a bunch of disruptive attacks of their own under way.

I wonder if IBM will be asking Mr. Christensen exactly what he means by that remark.

So, the graph is plain, and Linux is ascending, no matter what. Somebody tried to sell a SCO UnixWare license on eBay, but there were no bids.

Of course, Darl McBride, still firmly in the rear of the IT caboose and facing nostalgically backwards, sees the world differently. He would like Unix to prevail, specifically the version of Unix his company bought, regardless of what the rest of us want, and he warns that there is no free lunch and no free Linux, according to a press release about the address he plans to give to the Enterprise IT Week/Computer Digital Expo (CDXPO) conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, November 18. Looks like he didn't get invited to the larger COMDEX conference, which will be going on around the same time, also in Las Vegas. I can't believe McBride actually wants to return to Las Vegas, the scene of the SCOForum debacle. Here's a chunk of the release:

In his address titled "There's No Free Lunch -- Or Free Linux," McBride will present his perspectives on the prospects of free industries, SCO's suit against IBM, and why intellectual property must be protected in a digital age.

"The Internet created -- and creatively destroyed -- great wealth. It also created a culture legitimizing intellectual property theft," said McBride. "When you defend intellectual property, you speak an unpleasant truth. People don't like to hear unpleasant truths. The alternative to this fight, however, is the death of an industry and thousands of jobs lost."

McBride will also explore how the information technology industry - software, hardware, networking and services -- depends on money passing from one hand to another, asserting that the livelihood of engineers and developers rests on paid models, even as those developers donate time to free projects such as Linux. McBride will lay out his assertion that without paid software, there would be little or no free software. At the conclusion of his keynote, McBride will be available for media questions.

So, SCO contemplates its own death. What a refreshing blast of reality from Utah.

This announcement isn't getting the usual amount of play from the mainstream media, perhaps because it's idiotic on its face, and what coverage it is getting shows puzzled headline writers in a creative knot, as can be seen in The Age's headline:

SCO to argue that free software cannot exist in a vacuum.
Well, what can?

I wasn't aware that McBride was scientifically inclined. Maybe he found those physicists hidden somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, with the missing MIT mathematicians, and they instructed him on the scientific principles of vacuums. But, scientifically or economically likely or not, I could have sworn there already is a free Linux, and nobody paid for it to happen, either. Furthermore, it hadn't a care in the world until crazed commercial software companies showed up, drooling. I therefore conclude that Mr. McBride has misdiagnosed the problem and that his economic views may safely be ignored. [Update: He invites us to watch.]

What he might be thinking of, aside from the usual rant about having to pay for Linux training, blah blah, is the Business Software Alliance's concept of software's role in the economy. If you go to the BSA site, you will find considerable efforts to persuade not only gentle readers who might show up but recalcitrant countries, who don't view copyright as being the highest need on their list of priorities, that the economy depends on protecting intellectual property. Here is their self-portrait from their most recent press release:

The Business Software Alliance (www.bsa.org) is the foremost organization dedicated to promoting a safe and legal digital world. BSA is the voice of the world's commercial software industry and its hardware partners before governments and in the international marketplace. Its members represent one of the fastest growing industries in the world. BSA programs foster technology innovation through education and policy initiatives that promote copyright protection, cyber security, trade and e-commerce. BSA members include Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Avid, Bentley Systems, Borland, Cisco Systems, CNC Software/Mastercam, Entrust, HP, IBM, Intel, Internet Security Systems, Intuit, Macromedia, Microsoft, Network Associates, Novell, PeopleSoft, RSA Security, Sybase and Symantec.
The BSA had a press release in December of 2000 entitled "Copyrights Are the Driving Force of the Information Economy", which you can read here:
Robert Holleyman, President and CEO of the Business Software Alliance, made the following comments as the International Intellectual Property Alliance’s (IIPA) study was released. The 2000 study reaffirmed that the U.S. copyright industries continue to be one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. economy. High Tech, including software and hardware products, continues to enlarge its part of these industries dependent upon copyrights for their business models.

It is clear that intellectual capital is a vital part of our nation’s economy. As our economy moves from an industrial base to one of information, intellectual property’s supporting role will only grow. This report is positive proof that it is in the country’s interest to preserve and protect copyrights even as distribution moves to the Internet. According to a recent survey of the BSA’s leading high tech CEOs, only twelve percent of all software is distributed online today, and in five years that number will expand significantly to at least 66 percent.

Employment opportunities, foreign sales and revenues in general, are all up in the copyright industries. America’s strength is its ingenuity, creativity and ability to innovate—this is intellectual property and it is the reason why we are the leaders of the expanded economy.
That was 2000. In April of this year, there was another release saying that IP is needed to jumpstart the economy. They did a study, so they know. Trust them. They're experts:
New Economic Impact Study Details Benefits of Strong Copyright Protection

Washington, DC (April 2, 2003) -- Increased copyright protection for software could help jumpstart the world's stagnant and struggling economies by creating new jobs and business opportunities that would generate billions of dollars in new spending and tax revenues, according to an economic impact study by IDC that was released today by the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

The study, commissioned by the BSA, assesses the impact that the information technology industry has in 57 countries around the world and the economic benefits that those countries would experience by tightening and enforcing their intellectual property laws. The countries surveyed represent 98 percent of the world's IT market.
However, there seems to be a problem with their conclusion, judging from another of their own press releases in June, saying that there has been a "significant decline" in software piracy since 1994. Um... so what happened? The economy in 1994 compared to now would be what direction on the graph, up or down? The economy has been tanking, while software piracy has been declining. Woops. Here's the release:
New Study Reveals Significant Decline in World Software Piracy Since 1994

Washington, DC, (Tuesday, June 3) – The global piracy rate for commercial software has decreased 10 points over the last eight years, supported by piracy declines in all regions of the world, according to the Business Software Alliance’s (BSA) eighth annual survey on global software piracy(www.bsa.org/globalstudy/). Intensified education efforts are critical to shrinking the piracy problem further, BSA said.

BSA, the Washington, DC-based international association representing the world’s leading software publishers, today announced that the global software piracy rate declined to 39% in 2002, below its 1994 all-time high of 49%.

Worldwide, every country except Zimbabwe has reduced its rate of piracy since 1994, the year in which the study was first commissioned.  The U.S. piracy rate hit an all-time low of 23%, currently the lowest piracy rate in the world.
I think we may conclude, if we apply their level of scientific method, that copyright protection has had a depressant effect on the economy. If you really wish to be scientific, the question needs to be: whose economy? Ours? Or proprietary software companies? So when Mr. McBride gives his little speech to the handful of folks who aren't at COMDEX instead, they can have a little prophylactic information from Groklaw to protect their brains from contamination.

You can read lots of interesting information about the BSA on this page, where they list all their releases going back to 1999. For example, the BSA testified in NY on software procurement policy, asking that open source not be given preference over commercial software by governments. In the opening remarks, the spokesman said:

As you may know, BSA represents the leading developers of software, hardware and Internet technologies. Our companies are well-known creators both of "traditional" commercial software products as well as open source tools and services, and many of them have a significant presence in New York.
Then in June, it sent a spokesman to give testimony on federal policy and open source software before the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where it represented itself similarly:
BSA represents the world's leading commercial developers of software, hardware, and Internet technologies. Many of our members provide both commercial and open source products, as you have heard today. As you know, development models and distribution models in our industry are constantly evolving. That is not new for us. We are an industry that is accustomed to change and welcomes it. Our members have responded to the growth in open source development in a number of different ways, based upon their specific circumstances and business models. But while each company has its own approach to the issue of open source development, there is one area in which they are in complete agreement.

And that is in their belief that governments should not try to influence the development of the marketplace towards one method of software development or another, and that government procurement policies should remain neutral with respect to the method of software development. This consensus is reflected in BSA's "Principles for Software Innovation," which were adopted by our members last year. The principles reflect four important conclusions:

-- Governments should select software on its merits, not simply the model of its development.

-- Government-funded research should be available to all.

-- Neutral standards should be promoted.

-- Strong intellectual property protection, consistent with these principles of neutrality, must be maintained.

Does that sound to you like the BSA represents open source? If it got elected, I want a recount.

Why all this talk about the BSA? Two reasons. First, Novell and IBM are members. They surely have the capacity to influence BSA policy in a more enlightened direction. After all, if China, the US, and the whole world ends up going Linux, who will the BSA represent then? They need to keep up with the tidal wave that is happening in the software world. Besides, the economy needs a boost, fellas. A Red Hat representative yesterday mentioned, specifically with regard to Novell, "users would have to decide for themselves whether they would be comfortable with a company which offered both proprietary and open source solutions side-by-side." That isn't just competition talking. It's a real question, particularly when you think back to the Caldera mess and what it has led to.

And the second reason I mention the BSA is because a SCO director, R. Duff Thompson, who is also on the board of old SCO, now Tarentella, turns out to be a former Chairman of the Board of the BSA. More on Mr. Thompson another day.

SCO, continuing its pattern of imitation, has filed its own Motion to Compel Discovery in the IBM lawsuit. This whole discovery dance is quite interesting, because SCO appears to be holding no proof of its charges against IBM, or so little and unconvincing proof it doesn't want to reveal to the judge, IBM and the world what it is they think they have, until after IBM shows them the answers to their discovery requests. They must think if they can just get IBM to go first, they will find something to keep their case alive. The motion isn't available yet online, but no doubt it will be soon. If you go to look at who sent the other side interrogatories first, you will see that IBM sent theirs first (June 13), by a couple of weeks (SCO June 24). That will make it hard for SCO to argue that IBM should go first.

Here is what is up on the court list:

11/4/03 - 66 - Motion by SCO Grp to Compel Discovery [Entry date 11/05/03]

11/4/03 - 67 - Memorandum by SCO Grp in support of motion to Compel Discovery [Entry date 11/05/03]


  


It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech. | 208 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: maxhrk on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 08:33 AM EST
1) I want to congrat on Novell on their moves by partnering SUSE is quite good
thing(tm). I am totally surprised( forgot which article i should link to) that
Microsoft even congratulation Novell on that. Ha. I think Microsoft should be
scared of Linux because it is distruptive movement to them.


2)Beside Novell, I think SCO will never a good case against IBM, More likely
never will happen at all. Those Stock traders should be aware of that too.

3) I think Linux is not UNIX, but it is actually Clone of it. Just a thought to
point it out. But i can be mistake by then. It only a food for a thought that i
remember someone told me about that.

4) other cheer for PJ on this report.

5) I am waiting for SUSE Linux package mail... have to wait 3 or 4 more days to
get it.



---
SCO: Linux... I am your.. father.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Council for SCOs game plan
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 08:44 AM EST
I just posted this on the last story, and I apologise for duplication, but I
think it might be an important clue as to what's going on inside the SCO team,
and it's not very likely to be seen there.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/031106/tech_sco_1.html

Reuters
SCO's lawyers could get 20 pct of sale, settlement
Thursday November 6, 5:36 am ET

NEW YORK, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Lawyers for software company SCO Group
(NasdaqSC:SCOX - News) could wind up with 20 percent of the proceeds if the
company were to be sold or reach a legal settlement, according to a recent
document filed with regulators.

If the software company were sold for an amount equal to its current stock
market value -- $247 million -- its legal counsel would walk away with about $49
million, under the terms of a deal that are still being finalized.

SCO did not name the law firm in the regulatory filing, but it is known that the
company is being represented by the firm of David Boies, a former government
prosecutor who led the anti-trust case against Microsoft Corp.

The details were first reported early Thursday by The Wall Street Journal.

SCO sued International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - News) for billions
earlier this year, saying the company took Unix software code and introduced it
into free Linux software.

Under an agreement, the law firm would get 20 percent of proceeds of a
settlement, an equity financing or a sale of the company during the
"pendency of litigation," the Oct. 17 filing with the Securities and
Exchange Commission (News - Websites) said.

A spokesman for SCO was not immediately available to comment. Representatives of
the firm of Boies, Schiller and Flexner also were not immediately available to
comment.

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: belzecue on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 08:49 AM EST
"SCO, continuing its pattern of imitation, has filed its own Motion to
Compel Discovery in the IBM lawsuit"

Okay. This is no longer funny. It's like the idiot at school who follows you
around the playground repeating "I know you are, but what am I?".
The embarrassing part for onlookers, as always, is that the idiot has no clue
that he is the one who should be embarrassed at the mindless "right back
atcha" behaviour.

At least with Boies and SCO dutifully following the path that IBM has laid for
them, IBM can have some fun pulling their puppet strings. Sometimes, even big
corporations need to have a little fun along the way.

PJ, you're going to need a talented children's illustrator to supply the
sardonic pictures for your SCO-IBM book!

[ Reply to This | # ]

The BSA, IBM, etc.
Authored by: overshoot on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:00 AM EST
Don't hope for IBM and Novell to influence the BSA. Novell in particular has reason to know that regardless of the ostensible membership, the BSA is basically Microsoft's enforcement arm.

There was a news item a few months ago recounting how the BSA effectively muscled their victims into replacing Novell with MS.

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: Jude on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:00 AM EST
I must be a doofus, so somebody's gonna have to explain this to me.

If I develop commercial software for an open-source platform, I might want to buy my development platform and tools to get support, but if I'm on a tight budget I can also elect to spend my own time and effort working out the problems myself.

OTOH, if I develop for a proprietary platform, I must pay for my development platform and tools, and I might also have to pay licensing fees on every copy of my software that I sell. This will inevitably increase the price I must charge for my product if I wish to make a profit. Also, each of my customers must also make a greater investment in the platforms they will have to buy before they can use my product, so the total cost seen by the customer is even higher.

The last time I checked, price was a significant factor in purchasing decisions, so anything that increases the price of my product makes it less attractive. I can't see how chosing a proprietary platform for my product helps me make money. Maybe it helps in the short term if there are many potential customers who already have the proprietary infrastructure, but the assumption that this will always be true seems at best fragile.

[ Reply to This | # ]

BSA says that it is protecting copyright - Well,
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:01 AM EST
BSA is protecting copyright... Linux advocates are in favor of the complete
legality of IP management AND isn't the Linux kernel's GPL is based on
copyright? No one on the Open Source side has attacked copywrite, have they?
So - BSA should support LINUX too (not just their paid members), NO?

I think that everyone in the US will suffer from the mismangement of the whole
of the Software Patent idea and process! Intel is not stupid! Only the US
lawyer will profit. If the rest of the world follows a different track on this,
then bravo for them!

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: worldyroyster on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:04 AM EST
Well, China. China will be a deciding factor on many aspects of world
developments in the coming years, and that will be one of them, I guess. They
have at their disposal all this awesome technology for free, and I'm sure they
can see where their iterest lies.

As for the economic arguments around Free Software, I think it's very early to
have any definitive ideas about this.

My current view (that could change tomorrow), eventually, the success of free
software will go together with a banalisation of it, and with it not having any
differentiating value on the marketplace, like telephones, for example.
This means that any company with an IT department can embrace free SW and maybe
pay an extra salary to maintain it, but stop paying millions in rent to
Microsoft and others.
The billions of dollars that will be saved this way will then be invested in
other real economic stuff, hopefully job-related, and thus contribute to a
healthier economy where less friction is caused either by all this patent
litigation, but also less money is taken out of the economy by Microsoft and
others.

At the end of the day, software should cost what it costs to develop it, and
free software enables a mutualisation of that cost, and a disseminaton of that
value, rather than an appropriation of the value and a multiplication of the
cost that the proprietary model works on.

I really think that a lot of work remains to be done on the economics of free
software, and I'm not sure that any of us can really tell for sure how it will
work out economically.

Some of the most interesting stuff i've found on this topic was linked from the
FSF (www.fsf.org) site. Here is a selection of interesting things:
A series of papers on the economic aspects of intellectual property:
http://www.researchoninnovation.org/tiip/archive/issue2003_2.html

Intersting study on the motivations of F/OSS programmers (in there you find out
also what percentage of people are paid to develop free SW, very interesting).
http://freesoftware.mit.edu/papers/lakhaniwolf.pdf

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: archanoid on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:24 AM EST
I called it! What did I say? I said a while ago SCOX would file a motion to compel. Wow, that's cool! oh, wait...does that mean I think like SCO now?

AAAUUGGGHHHHH!!! My brain is leaking. It's only a matter of time now before I run out of memory and crash...hard. So long everybody, and thanks for the fish.

... But seriously:
"-- Governments should select software on its merits, not simply the model of its development.
Yes, on the merits. Cost being one factor. Control being one factor. Freedom from vendor lock-in being a factor. Yes, on the merits indeed.
" -- Government-funded research should be available to all.
Yes, it should. To keep it available to all, it must be protected from usurpers via mechanisms like the GPL.
" -- Neutral standards should be promoted.
Not just promoted. Protected. Methods to prevent proprietary interests from corrupting standards (*cough* MS-CHAP, MS-Kerberos, MS-anything, *cough*) should be utilized.
" -- Strong intellectual property protection, consistent with these principles of neutrality, must be maintained."
Agreed. Strong intellectual property protection like the GPL and copyright law. Very consistent with the principles of neutrality.

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:30 AM EST
"Quite frankly Mr. McBrides
presentation has caused a stir"

If it bleeds, it leads. Truth takes one for the fairly simple equation of bums
on seats. It would be far more amusing to hope that there's a question and
answer session and wear an amusing T-shirt.

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: belzecue on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:32 AM EST
Darl talking is a good thing.

I repeat, Darl talking is a good thing. Just check Groklaw's quote database.
More fodder for IBM. Re SCO's public yapping, I remember wondering on the
Yahoo Finance board, about midway through the year, if IBM was happy to simply
keep quiet and let SCO take as much rope as they wanted for their noose. Let
that be IBM's free lesson to litigants about where to fight your legal
battles.

And as you yourself point out, it's another chance for a wiser (hopefully)
press to get under Darl's scaly hide and draw some blood.

More FUD is irritating, yes, but it has now reached a saturation point where
only the hardened SCO shills are lapping it up.

I reckon you should go. You might see that Darl is just a man, not some
world-shaker to be feared. Just a sad little misguided man who fell into the
same greed trap that has captured so many in the corporate world. Besides, in
future you can sit your grandkids on your knee and give them your "the day
I heckled Darl" story.

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:39 AM EST
I hate to be a prig, but: do you have permission to post the complete text of
Moriarty's responses to you, rather than excerpts, or a paraphrase? As I
understand it, such letters are implicitly copyrighted by the author.

Scott McKellar

[ Reply to This | # ]

Christensen's remark about disruptive attacks
Authored by: Drew on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:42 AM EST
PJ, I think you (and probably many others) misunderstood Christensen's
remark about Microsoft's disruptive attacks on the way: You have to see
them in the context of his book where disruptive technology has a very
precise and narrow meaning. A legal battle against linux might disrupt it
but it's not what he'd mean with the word.

In short, it corresponds to cheap, often low tech innovations/products,
that move up-market and disrupt higher quality/price products. This
forces those established vendors to move higher and higher up-market
while the disruptive low-tech keeps improving and getting better and
better and encroaching into more and more previously unavailable
market segments. His main examples are hard drives and steel mini-
mills.

So off the top of my head I'd say he might refer to Microsoft's products
moving into the data center and maybe their growing engagement in
business software encroaching on SAP's/Oracle's turf.

I can highly recommend his very enlightening book.

Drew

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: belzecue on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:44 AM EST
Docket Text: Added for Intl Bus Mach Inc attorney Amy F. Sorenson.

Go Amy!!

Nazgul? Still looks human to me...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Open letter to Jack Powers by Don Marti
Authored by: Thomas Frayne on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:48 AM EST
See
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7240&mode=thread&order=0&
;thold=0

"I see that you are scheduled to moderate a discussion at the Enterprise
IT Week conference after Darl McBride speaks. Although there may be an
interesting debate over the merits of free and proprietary software development
models, Mr. McBride is hardly a strong representative of the proprietary side.

As Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn said about King Henry VIII, "S'pose he
opened his mouth -- what then? If he didn't shut it up powerful quick he'd
lose a lie every time." "

Marti goes on to list SCO lies and the facts. He concludes:

"As is clear from the growing torrent of corporate purchase orders and
investments flowing to Linux, Mr. McBride's outlandish claims are completely
outside the mainstream of the IT industry. Mr. McBride's legal shenanigans have
little to do with real-world software development and everything to do with
making a quick exit from a failed company.

I would like to encourage you to read some of the background information on Mr.
McBride's scheme located at sco.iwethey.org and groklaw.net. Both sites have
extensive links to SEC filings, court papers and other primary sources.

If you would like a demonstration of how unlikely we in mainstream IT believe
Mr. McBride is to succeed in his shakedown, I offer to walk on stage and sell
you a copy of Linux for one dollar and give you a signed receipt, in front of
Mr. McBride. Please let me know if you're interested. "

[ Reply to This | # ]

Priceless...
Authored by: ricerocket on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:51 AM EST
Sue the world because your software sucks. $50 Million
Try and attach your license fees to GPL'd Linux kernel. $795 per seat.
0 bids on SCO license on ebay. Priceless..

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3634453924&category=1
82

I know, I know, it's old stuff, but funny anyway..

[ Reply to This | # ]

The BS Alliance
Authored by: Rob on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 10:13 AM EST
The Business Software Alliance protects "IP", and BSA is a tradmark
of the
Boy Scouts of America (I think). So, to show our respect for the Business
Software Alliance's concern for "IP" rights, our shortened form of
its name
should be the BS Alliance.

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It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 10:30 AM EST
"Trade shows are arenas to air out such disputes."

Silly me, I thought that was what the courts were for. Or, perhaps, Jerry
Springer.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Open Source: Is history repeating itself?
Authored by: Jude on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 11:03 AM EST
AFAIK, Apple beat Microsoft to market with a usable GUI-based OS by a large margin: The original Mac beige boxes came out in 1984, but Windows 3.0 wasn't out until 1990. In spite of this, Windows came from behind to win the race and become the predominant desktop OS. Why?

The reason I hear stated most often is that Apple ran on proprietary hardware that was much more expensive than the commodity PC's that Windows used. Microsoft didn't have to try to be a hardware company; They let the PC makers fight it out amoungst themselves, and the PC rapidly became a commodity item that was available for rock-bottom prices. Meanwhile, Microsoft concentrated on the software that ran on top of the hardware, and they became a very successful business.

Microsoft realized that nobody really wants a computer, but instead wants the things a computer can do. I submit that nobody really wants an operating system, either, but instead wants a platform that will support applications. The fact that MS calls some applications part of the OS is just smokescreen: If those applications ran on other platforms, the users wouldn't care about the OS underneath.

Microsoft's control of the undelying operating system presently gives them a tremendous advantage in the applications market, but I think that in the long run they're repeating Apple's mistake. I think the cost of the proprietary OS will eventually become as much a disadvantage to Microsoft as the cost of the proprietary hardware was to Apple.

This is why I think Darl's whole argument is bogus. Just as the cost of proprietary hardward held Apple back, the cost of proprietary OS's will eventually drag down the software industry. I think the same argument applies to development tools and any other commonly-used components. Those things are not what the end users pay for, so keeping their prices artificially high is NOT good for the industry as a whole.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I could have sworn there already is a free Linux, and nobody paid for it to happen, either.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 11:05 AM EST

"But, scientifically or economically likely or not, I could have sworn there already is a free Linux, and nobody paid for it to happen, either."

I believe that Linux is not and has never been free (as in being paid). The consumer may not actually have to pay for it, but someone somewhere did. Its development may have been done on a barter economy or using some similar mechanism, but I seriously doubt that nobody paid for it to happen. Most everyone who has contributed to the development of Linux has been paid for his or her work, albeit not necessarily in specie, and not necessarily directly (A firm may have paid a developer to work on Linux to add some feature the firm needed and then published that work for the community).

I think here is a case where the English language really falls down: Linux did not happen for free (gratis), but is free (libre). To quote somebody at the FSF: “‘Free software’ is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ‘free’ as in ‘free speech,’ not as in ‘free beer.’”

Disclosure: I am a developer and do work on software published under the GPL for just those reasons above. My employers get what they need, as do the employers of other developers working on the same software, and those students who work on the same software are pretty creative about getting class credit for it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

BSA promotes software copyright infringement
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 11:09 AM EST
I have been making submissions to the Canadian government on various FLOSS public policy areas for a few years now. My most recent submission to Heritage Committee includes a section on Reduction of Software copyright infringement.
There is quite a bit of talk about software copyright infringement committed by the average software user. Traditional "software manufacturing" lobby groups send out studies yearly suggesting that this is a very serious problem.

There are, however, serious problems with the methodologies used by these studies, and one of the best solutions to the problem is completely ignored by these "software manufacturing" groups. Both of these issues highlight differences between "software manufacturing" and peer produced FLOSS software.

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: rand on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 11:10 AM EST
Governments should select software on its merits, not simply the model of its development.
Governments outlive people, institutions, and software companies. How 'bout this: Governments should select software that will be available, usable, and adaptable, even if the developer is dead and gone. Governments should never select software unless the source code is at least deposited in escrow with the equililant of the Library of Congress. Better yet, require the source to be registered and available for study. Consider: would the Army buy 20,000 pickup trucks and agree to never look under the hood?
Government-funded research should be available to all.
I'm remodelling my house, so I went to the city code-enforcement website to look over the building codes. They required IE6 to view the webpage. This is not an abstract argument, its become personal.
Neutral standards should be promoted.
OPEN standards should be required. You're spending my money, buckos.
Strong intellectual property protection, consistent with these principles of neutrality, must be maintained.
Reasonable intellectual property protection, consistent with absolute requirements of open government, should be encouraged.
[end of rant]

I'm assuming a reasonably people-oriented government, of course...

---
#include "IANAL.h"

[ Reply to This | # ]

X can't exist without Y
Authored by: chrism on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 11:26 AM EST
free software cannot exist in a vacuum
I'm glad "The Age" brought this up. The implication is that free software wouldn't exist without proprietary software.

There are all sort of X can't exist without Y relationships that bear comtemplating. There are many unpaid activities that couldn't exist without paid activities and vice-versa.

For example, the entire world of business wouldn't exist without the child bearing and raising activities that most people devote their lives to and are not paid for. Talking about free lunches, the free lunch business gets from child raising has to be the biggest free lunch of all.

Returning to SCO's example, I do agree that the unpaid activity of free software writing depends on paid activities, but not on the paid activity of writing for-sale software. It depends on the paid activity of writing for-use software, like the software that banks use to process checks. This for-use software, software written in-house by comapnies to enable them to produce a service that they then sell (like check processing), accounts for the vast majority of paid programmer hours. for-sale software accounts for almost none of the paid programmers hours programmers use to put bread on the table of their families.

McBride stops asking the question of why people do things once he reaches the point at which money changes hands. He needs to ask at least one more question: why do people want to make money? So they can provide for and raise their families, silly. An *unpaid* activity upon which everything else depends.

[ Reply to This | # ]

A possible motivation for Microsoft
Authored by: phildriscoll on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 11:50 AM EST
One of the comments on the current Slashdot article about the new arrangement between SCO and their lawyers says:

Normally, MS cannot get into the unix business due to an agreement they signed when they spun off Xenix to a different company (They agreed that they would not compete against the product line they were selling off to someone else, and thus they would not get involved in the unix market again.) But - here's the interesting thing - what's the company they signed this agreement with? SCO.

No links are given to the agreement mentioned, but maybe someone here knows more?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Details on the MS/SCO dispute (Xenix)
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 12:19 PM EST
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1997/Nov97/scopr.asp

[ Reply to This | # ]

Why IBM wanted a piece of Novell's SuSE action
Authored by: Thomas Frayne on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 12:40 PM EST
See
http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020505,39117676,00.htm

I responded to this article as follows:

Excellent article, but you left out one point.

Why did IBM exactly match Microsoft's $50 million gift to SCO?

Why, to encourge Novell to sue SCO for copyright infringement, of course.

Or, maybe they just want Novell to be a complaining witness in a criminal
complaint against SCO's officers, directors and insiders.

I filed my stock market manipulation complaint with the SEC in September.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Satori?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 12:43 PM EST

"McBride will lay out his assertion that without paid software, there
would be little or no free software."

I just can't quite wrap my mind around this assertion. It's kind of like a
Klein bottle of Mobius strip.

It's just so... Zen.

[ Reply to This | # ]

OPEN GROUP says: SCO is "misleading"
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 12:46 PM EST
SCO does it again: From their SEC filing Form 8-K on 5-Nov-2003 available here
The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX), the owner of the UNIX operating system, today announced...
The OPEN GROUP has said before that
Regarding SCO's positioning on UNIX, The Open Group would like to make it clear that SCO holds the rights ONLY to the operating system source code (originally licensed by AT&T) and related intellectual property and DOES NOT OWN the UNIX trademark itself or the definition (the Single UNIX Specification) of what the UNIX system is. Reference to the SCO web site shows that they own certain intellectual property and that they correctly attribute the trademark to The Open Group. SCO has never owned "UNIX". SCO is licensed to use the registered trademark UNIX "on and in connection" with their products that have been certified by The Open Group, as are all other licensees. These are the ONLY circumstances in which a licensee may use the trademark UNIX on and in connection with it's products. Statements that SCO "owns the UNIX operating system" or has "licensed UNIX to XYZ", are clearly inaccurate and misleading.
Time for the OPEN GROUP to act on SCO?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Creating Live Web Link in Groklaw
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 01:36 PM EST

<a href="URL here in double quotes">name of link; can repeat
URL </a>

Change "Plain Old Text" to "HTML Formatted" at bottom of
message window.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Board gets Another member!
Authored by: geoff lane on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 01:45 PM EST
LINDON, Utah, Nov. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. , the owner of the UNIX operating system, today announced the appointment of Daniel W. Campbell as the ninth member of SCO''s Board of Directors and a member of the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors. Campbell brings to SCO a strong background in investment, accounting and finance with a long tenure of board and executive experience.

See article for details.

It continues to amaze me that SCO can hold onto it's existing board members never mind attract new ones.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO: lawyers $1 million+20%, clients jail
Authored by: Thomas Frayne on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 01:57 PM EST
(Also submitted to SlashDot)

SCO's lawyers get up to $1,000,000 plus 20% of essentially everything else SCO
owns: stock, sale, settlement, winnings in court, license fees. The clients get
a bankrupt company and jail terms.

SCOX is currently worth $17 per share, so the lawyer would get $49 million, if
they could sell it quickly enough.

No one would buy the company, except as a gift to SCO (Microsoft?), and then
they would get a can of worms with a 20% surcharge.

IBM won't settle, and won't buy.

Winnings in court? Don't make me laugh.

License fees: SCO has already collected almost all the license fees it is going
to get.


How quickly would the lawyers have to collect in order for the 20% to exceed the
up front payment? Well, let's consider some recent history and scheduled
events.

SCO's press releases have become few and far between; each is quickly answered
by someone from SlashDot or Groklaw, sometimes in a Talkback forum on the same
medium.

IBM's motion to compel discovery will be heard in court on December 5, and I
expect the judge to rule in favor of IBM.

SCO's motion to dismiss the Redhat suit will come up soon, and I expect the
judge to rule in favor of Redhat.

Novell bought SuSe, greatly enhancing its multi-platform services strategy, and
making it a major Linux player, both for services and for desktop. The Linux
community now has two very strong competitors, Redhat and Novell, with giant IBM
backing both.

Novell and its customers are effectively immune from suit by SCO, because of the
rights Novell retained when it sold assets to SCO. NOTE: No indemnification or
license from SCO is needed by any Novell customer.

IBM invested exactly $50 million in Novell, matching Microsoft's gift to SCO.
This has to be a hint to Novell to file a suit or criminal complaint against
SCO.

I filed a criminal complaint with the SEC, against SCO's officers and
directors, in September, accusing them of stock market manipulation. HAVE YOU?


How quickly would the lawyers have to collect in order for the 20% to exceed the
up front payment? My guess is six weeks maximum.


I don't know when the criminal complaints will become public knowledge, but I
expect that to be the last straw for SCO.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Darl's Speech Transcript?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 01:58 PM EST
<P>Anyone out there have any idea how we might acquire, obtain, get or
otherwise view a transcript of Darl's speech.

<P>Of course, I want it solely for my personal amusement.

<P>Regards,

<P>Fredrick

[ Reply to This | # ]

Can Darl's speech be used by RH?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 03:05 PM EST
Even if D's speech contains nothing about RH is it possible for RH to argue
that once SCO had accused/threatened RH once (in a way deemed verboten by
Lanham),

a repetition of the allegations and threats would be seen by any reasonable
individual as another set of allegations and threats against RH, even if RH is
not mentioned by name?

[ Reply to This | # ]

No, Mr. Moriarty - blacklight
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 03:06 PM EST
Tradeshows are hardly the arenas to air the kind of disputes such as the one we
have with the SCO Group: I doubt that these arenas have rules against verbal
evasions, attempts to mislead and outright lying. And even if they had these
rules, where are the mechanisms for enforcing them? And without an enforcement
mechanism, rules are meaningless.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Free software can't exist in a vacuum... not!
Authored by: gumout on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 04:29 PM EST
I have an old 10 liter vacuum bell jar from my physics demo days. I placed the
full complement of SuSE 8.2 distribution CD's in the jar and evacuated to 1
millibar for 24 hours.
After repressurizing I checked each CD for data integrity. All five CD's and
two DVD's survived unscathed. Proving once and for all that Darl is full of
bullshit... as if we didn't already know.



---
"If people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to
be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to
be sent up." --- Rush Limbaugh

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: PJ on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 05:23 PM EST
I had to delete a comment from an anonymous poster, because it
included someone else's email, and because it was posted anonymously,
I couldn't find out if the poster had permission. It's a crying shame
because it was a valuable post.

Please, all you anonymous posters, if you can, get a user account, so I
can contact you when things like this come up. Obviously, some may
prefer to stay anonymous, which I understand too.

There was a name on the comment, but no email, which is
understandable, considering spam, etc. That is the same reason why it's
not quite nice to post someone else's email address publicly, by the way,
aside from copyright issues.

So if Brent could find out how Jupiter feels about the email being used,
I'd appreciate it and will put it back up.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Motion to compell, can they do this?
Authored by: smtnet1 on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 05:47 PM EST
SCOs motion to compell is admitting that they dont have a case and need a
fishing trip to IBM to hopefully find some evidence.

It may of course just be a last attempt to stall the discovery in the hope that
they can dump some stock before it crashes.

Can SCO get away with this?

Aren't they surposed to have a case before they file the suit?, and before
discovery?

Darl has been saying that there are more than "a million lines of copied
code", "direct line-for-line copying of code". Surely if he
can show the evidence in Lindon under NDA, and make repeated claims in the
press, he should be made to show what he has in court.

I'm ranting!!, it gets frustrating when SCO keep stalling.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Is email copyrighted?
Authored by: lpletch on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 06:20 PM EST
From: Lucinoor web site.

"Yes it is. The original author of an email letter holds the copyright on that email and that email is protected under the same laws as a physical letter.

So unless the author has granted permission for the email to be reprinted or it is being reprinted under the conditions of fair use, the reproduction, forwarding, copying or modifying an email is copyright infringement."

There are other sites with similar statements. I have found nothing saying E-mail is not copyrighted.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Att. IBM lawyers: SCO's violations of THE OPEN GROUP's license agreement?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 07:48 PM EST
SCO in Violation of TOG's License Agreement? SCO seems in violation of OPEN GROUP's 'Open Brand Trademark License Agreement, Schedule 5: Trademark Usage Guide' available here or here. The License Agreement says:
This Guide forms Schedule 5 of the Open Brand Trademark License Agreement (January 1998). It forms an integral part of the Agreement and should be read in conjunction with it. The Agreement defines the conditions and technical criteria that must be fulfilled before the Licensee may make use of the Trademarks.
This Guide defines the permitted visual presentation, form, and manner in which the Trademarks can be used by a Licensee who complies with those conditions and technical criteria. Failure to comply with the mandatory provisions of the Guide constitutes a breach of the Agreement, but the Licensee shall use its most reasonable efforts to comply with all the provisions herein.
In fact THE OPEN GROUP is aware of SCO's violations at least since May 22, 2003. At this date THE OPEN GROUP published a press release which stated:
Backgrounder on the UNIX® System and SCO / IBM legal action

Status

Regarding SCO's positioning on UNIX, The Open Group would like to make it clear that SCO holds the rights ONLY to the operating system source code (originally licensed by AT&T) and related intellectual property and DOES NOT OWN the UNIX trademark itself or the definition (the Single UNIX Specification) of what the UNIX system is. Reference to the SCO web site shows that they own certain intellectual property and that they correctly attribute the trademark to The Open Group. SCO has never owned "UNIX". SCO is licensed to use the registered trademark UNIX "on and in connection" with their products that have been certified by The Open Group, as are all other licensees.

These are the ONLY circumstances in which a licensee may use the trademark UNIX on and in connection with it's products.

Statements that SCO "owns the UNIX operating system" or has "licensed UNIX to XYZ", are clearly inaccurate and misleading.

Source here

SCO has used "misleading" claims being 'the ownwer of the UNIX operating system' among other occasions
March 7, 2003
May 14, 2003
May 19, 2003
May 20, 2003
May 28, 2003
May 30, 2003
June 6, 2003
July 21, 2oo3
November 5, 2003

BTW: Isn't THE OPEN GROUP obligated to enforce its regulations? What about legal liablities to investors who might sue SCO in a class action suit for "misleading" investors? What about investors suing THE OPEN GROUP for failing to stop SCO from making "misleading" claims?

[ Reply to This | # ]

What is Unix?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:01 PM EST

I would like to point out that regardless of the copyrights or settlements in BSDi or UC Regents v USL, Caldera placed 32V under a four point open source license that unencumbered all of the UC Berkeley Computer Science Research Group Distributions. That includes 4.1BSD that was taken back to Bell Labs to be turned into Eighth Edition Unix; and the 4.2BSD, 4.3BSDreno, and 4.3BSDtahoe versions that were used in the development of AT&T's derivative works trademarked under the SVR4 brands.

They are all available - including source code - only now without any need for an AT&T license here

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 06 2003 @ 09:22 PM EST
Interesting article by David Berlind at zdnet about the Novell-SuSE merger. He thinks a key reason for it was IBM wants their Linux customers to be indemnified against lawsuits. The idea is that Novell is immune because it retains rights to Unix. Yeah, can you imagine SCO trying to sue an SuSE customer now that it belongs to Novell? That would make even less sense than suing IBM. link

[ Reply to This | # ]

It's Official. China Goes Linux. Gartner Says US Will Follow. And Darl's No Free Linux Speech.
Authored by: Hygrocybe on Friday, November 07 2003 @ 05:15 AM EST
On the Chinese Red Flag Linux aspect - and Microsoft. (I am not sure if anyone
has commented on this. If they have, I apologise - the interleaved comments are
now so complex and there are so many it is easy to miss one.)

Okay, about 2-3 months back, I remember reading a journalist's article when he
asked a rather high level IT person (sorry cannot remember whom) if he thought
Linux would replace Microsoft on the desktop. The answer was very interesting:
"No, but with one condition. If China fully implements Linux, the answer
is then yes."

The plain facts are now that China has not only embraced Linux, it has also
formed a 'triumvirate' of Japan,South Korea and China, and intends exporting
Red Flag when it is mature. And where is one of the world's largest
populations ...and therefore an enormous user market ? I think that this
segment of 2003 has definitely marked the beginning of the unstoppable march of
open source software to the desktop PC's of the world. It will be fascinating
to be alive in the next 10 years because the Microsoft-Linux interactions are
going to be intense.

---
LamingtonNP

[ Reply to This | # ]

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