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Doug Michels to Receive Award at SCOForum
Monday, July 10 2006 @ 10:55 AM EDT

I just received an email from someone who gets SCO Partner email, and they are announcing that SCO is presenting an award to Doug Michels, who used to be the CEO of old Santa Cruz Operation, at this year's SCOForum. You know. The guy who famously said that Linux was written by punk kids and that it was free R&D for SCO. He claimed later he was misquoted. Here's the letter he wrote in 1999 to try to clear that up. I found it funny to read some of the comments on this 1999 story.

Here's a bit from the announcement today:

Dear SCO Partner,

SCO Forum 2006, to be held August 6-9th 2006 at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas plans to be one of the biggest, best Forums in its 20-year history. That's right, this is the 20th year of Forum, and to mark that milestone we are bringing back the original architect and visionary for SCO Forum, Doug Michels, one of the original founds of the Santa Cruz Operation, who will be honored with a UNIX Lifetime Achievement award. ...

The Platinum sponsor for SCO Forum 2006 is HP.

We look forward to seeing you in Vegas!

Well. Not me. But it's interesting that Michels is willing to be so honored. I assume he has agreed to be there. Otherwise, it'll be like the Academy Awards: "Mr. Michels could not be here tonight, and we accept this award on his behalf."

Update: There is a press release now.

Update 2: There is now video on YouTube of Darl giving Michels the award and asking some questions about SCO

Forums when run by Santa Cruz.

Just to be clear, here's what he wrote in that clarification letter, in part:

SCO believes that Linux is a good thing and wishes to promote its ongoing success. We believe that the success of Linux is healthy for the overall competitive landscape. We also feel that open source developments have accelerated the growth of the Internet and the general rate of innovation in the industry, and that they are often the precursor to important new commercial opportunities. We plan to continue making key open source technologies available to our customers as well as to continue contributing technology and resources to the open source community....

To clarify a few points:

a) I do not believe Linux was created by "punk kids." During interviews, when I am asked about Linux, I always clearly state my respect and admiration for Linus and the community of developers who participate in the open source movement. I believe that the open source community is often perceived as an unruly bunch of young hackers, especially by the IT establishment, and that this will be a factor in the adoption of Linux.

b) Of course, I don't believe that Red Hat is in any way fraudulent. But, I do believe that there is a fundamental difference in the value proposition to customers between that of Open Source Aggregators, such as Red Hat, and that of traditional commercial software companies such as SCO. We will continue to educate customers so that they understand our view on this difference. And I will continue to try and find the right way to communicate this in measured and objective terms but none the less forcefully.

c) I also believe in the principle that great programmers should "steal" great code whenever possible, so long as they do not violate any laws or license agreements. In hindsight, it's clear that "steal" was a poor and confusing choice of words on my part. I was perhaps being too flippant by trying to point out that one can't really steal that which is freely offered.

All in all, I sincerely apologize if anything that I said, or am reputed to have said, has offended anyone. I promise to do my best to avoid saying anything which could be twisted or misconstrued into sounding this stupid....ever again!

Doug Michels

President and CEO, SCO

So, Santa Cruz's CEO was advocating "stealing" Linux code? And he writes in 1999 that SCO was going to "continue contributing technology and resources to the open source community." That might explain some similarities, I'm thinking, huh? I found this tidbit of interest too, from an interview in 2001, after the SCO/Caldera deal:

ZDNet: Why did the sale of SCO's operating system and services arms -- announced last summer -- take nine months when you originally thought it would be over in three?

Doug Michels: An acquisition is a process that requires the SEC to approve all documentation before you can ask shareholders. The transaction was more complicated than normal - and coming in the middle of the dot-com crash, the SEC was unusually paranoid about making sure everything was right. It's all about whether you disclose everything the shareholders need before they can take an informed vote. Because Caldera was a new economy Linux company, the SEC was meticulously careful. We ended up sending 800 pages of documentation to every shareholder. The process just took forever, but because of this we did have a chance to think about the actual deal and simplify it, but that meant making major changes to the document mid-way through.

When you have two public companies - one buying the other - then because both have already been audited it is a straightforward process, but because we were selling two out of three divisions we had to create accounts for the two parts of SCO going back five years.

All in all, an intriguing development. Here's a screenshot of a page I saved before it too went to the great 404 in the sky, a page about some of the technological contributions SCO made, including contributions to the Linux kernel. I took this screenshot of the page in 2003 because I thought it might die and go to heaven one day. As you can see with your own eyes, SCO announced proudly to the world some items it contributed to Linux. The page is not there any more to sing SCO's praises, but I am. Their Linux kernel page used to be at http://www.sco.com/developers/community/contrib/linux.html and I quoted from it in 2004 in an article, listing the contributions they had on that page then:

  • Minor modifications to enhance support for Windows environments like Sun's Wabi and WINE (Ron Holt)
  • Initial release of the Sangoma frame relay driver (Jim Freeman)
  • Extensive work on the kernel's IPX support (Greg Page, Jim Freeman)
  • SPX support (Jim Freeman)
  • Certain mutations of the kernel's NFS support (Olaf Kirch)
  • Initial release of the TLAN network card driver (James Banks)
  • Dynamic PPP channel work (Jim Freeman)
  • Early support of the SMP development effort (hardware provided to the SMP development team)
  • General occasional kernel hacking and patching (Torsten Duwe)
  • Help with the original IBM Token Ring driver (Greg Page)

And here's the screenshot:


  


Doug Michels to Receive Award at SCOForum | 232 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Doug Michels to Receive Award at SCOForum
Authored by: WhiteFang on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 11:35 AM EDT
All I can think of is "Birds of a feather ... "

I wonder what he really thinks of Linux and SCOX now.

---
DRM - Degrading, Repulsive, Meanspirited
'Nuff Said

[ Reply to This | # ]

Corrections here
Authored by: Erwan on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 11:36 AM EDT
If any.

---
Erwan

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT Here, please
Authored by: WhiteFang on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 11:38 AM EDT
Include clickeys if you got 'em.

---
DRM - Degrading, Repulsive, Meanspirited
'Nuff Said

[ Reply to This | # ]

Some of his comments are ironic in the current situation
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 11:40 AM EDT
Such as when he said

"[Then there's] the whole intellectual property issue. The last thing
they want is some kid from Norway to sue for $100 million for misappropriation
of intellectual property."

Looks like he got that backward.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linux wasn't written by punks !
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 11:55 AM EDT
It was written by hippies !


Joke. Joke.

[ Reply to This | # ]

You know, it's a shame...
Authored by: kehall on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 12:11 PM EDT
My first exposure to UNIX was in 1978 or 79, with a DEC PDP-11 that ran a
version of V6. It didn't even have the "vi" editor, and networking
was an add-on.

At the time, the company I worked for serviced these machines, and my job was to
go to Comdex and set up the equipment in the booth. At one of the shows, we did
a cooperative exercise with some guys from "The Santa Cruz Operation",
which was a small company with a half dozen very earnest and knowledgable
employees, and I strongly suspect that Doug might have been one of them. Their
business seemed to revolve around converting mainframe COBOL programs to run on
UNIX via a compiler from a company called Micro Focus.

Every time I read more of the antics of the current SCO, it saddens me that they
climbed so high, only to turn into what they did.

[ Reply to This | # ]

He probably thought of them as punks.
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 12:12 PM EDT
Linux is a disruptive technology.

The nature of disruptive technologies is that they start at the fringes. The
people who use and create it usually aren't suit wearing corporate types. They
may even look like punks to the corporate types. Too bad for the corporate
types. They often don't recognize the nature of the threat they face and even
if they do, they usually can't cope with it.

Usually an entrenched market player cedes the fringes to the disruptive
technology. The result is a retreat up-market. Finally, the disruptive
technology becomes good enough for the needs of the whole market and there's no
market left for the previous market leader.

The additional problem with open source is that the product is free. That means
that the basic business model has to change not just the value chain. IBM has
already had to re-make itself because of changing technology and that's probably
why it 'got it'. Red Hat seems to understand what it needs to do to survive.
Caldera and Santa Cruz seem to have missed the point. Microsoft has enough
resources that it can probably survive in some (changed) form just as IBM did.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Doug Michels - "Stealing"
Authored by: Observer on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 12:19 PM EDT
I haven't gone back to his original comments to see if he really was "clarifying", or if he was just trying to back-peddle after saying something really stupid, and getting called on the carpet for it, but from reading the part quoted here, I don't think his comments are that far off base.

While his use of terms is poor ("steal" has too many negative connotations), his idea that people should steal code whenever they can (subject to the licenses of the code) is really the basis for Open Source development, and in fact, pretty much all scientific and technological development in human history. The one thing that Open Source, or "Free Software" adds is that it requires that you return whatever you have taken, along with your enhancements, so that the next person can in turn "steal" what you have done.

His use of the term may, however, indicate that Mr. Michels still doesn't "get" the real heart of Free Software. When you say that something is "stolen", the implication is that the original owner can no longer make use of that which has been taken. This is precisely what the BSD license guarantees -- some of the offshoots and enhancements may in fact make their way back into the commons, but many (most?) will remain hidden away, buried in proprietary software. The part I release will remain forever FREE, but there is no incentive for the next guy to reciprocate and give me his work in exchange for what I have given him.

---
The Observer

[ Reply to This | # ]

Doug Michels to Receive Award at SCOForum
Authored by: Latesigner on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 12:52 PM EDT
Larry Ellison had a predecessor.

---
The only way to have an "ownership" society is to make slaves of the rest of us.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Steal this code
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 12:54 PM EDT
In the mid 90s (and to some extent today), there was a popular phrase that
authors wanting to give their code away used: "Steal this code"

Indeed a 1995 book had this exact title:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201409984/sr=8-1/qid=1152550160/ref=sr_1_1/103
-1741911-3487830?ie=UTF8

If you google for Steal this code, many of the top 30 entries, are also authors
giving their code away.

So there seems to be a slang usage of the term "steal" that was
popular, meaning "use this code with permission".

I don't know if this may have influenced Doug Michaels' choice of words, or not.
(And I certainly don't know why he's wasting his time with Caldera-fake-SCO if
indeed he is).


Quatermass
IANAL IMHO etc

[ Reply to This | # ]

Buying HP Products ?
Authored by: edal on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 02:14 PM EDT
"The Platinum sponsor for SCO Forum 2006 is HP."

As if the damage done by Carly wasn't bad enough, now we have this. The next
time you want to buy an HP printer or camera just remember who the company is
supporting.

Ed Almos

[ Reply to This | # ]

The changeling
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 02:21 PM EDT
Remember that episode from ST:TOS where the peaceful science probe
"Nomad" had a collision with an alien probe and subsequently developed
a nasty little glitch causing it to "sterilize" entire solar systems
of all "imperfect biological life forms"?

Something like SCO, who used to be a respectable Unix company melding with a
pioneering Linux company to emerge as a dangerously litigous psycopath, intent
on sterilizing the IT industry of the very community that created it in the
first place.

How pitifully desparate they are to "be" old SCO. I would love to see
Mr. Michaels decline to appear, but I doubt that his value system is that far
out of alignment with newSCO. Neither old nor new SCO ever "got it".

[ Reply to This | # ]

Why has nobody said the obvious?
Authored by: Alan(UK) on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 02:50 PM EDT
Doug Michels: An acquisition is a process that requires the SEC to approve all documentation before you can ask shareholders. The transaction was more complicated than normal - and coming in the middle of the dot-com crash, the SEC was unusually paranoid about making sure everything was right. It's all about whether you disclose everything the shareholders need before they can take an informed vote. Because Caldera was a new economy Linux company, the SEC was meticulously careful. We ended up sending 800 pages of documentation to every shareholder. The process just took forever, but because of this we did have a chance to think about the actual deal and simplify it, but that meant making major changes to the document mid-way through.

If Old SCO really thought that it owned the UNIX copyrights, worth zillions of dollars, and Caldera thought that it was getting them, why did it not get mentioned if the SEC was so thorough?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Mirage Hotel.... irony?
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 03:05 PM EDT
Was it intentional on SCO's part or just pure irony that SCO Forum
2006 is going to be held at the Mirage Hotel-- seems appropriate given
that SCO's case is such a flimy illusion to begin with?

[ Reply to This | # ]

I found one comment rather eerie
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 03:18 PM EDT
From that web archive page. Sounds a lot like another letter they sent out:

lachlan Dunlop - Subject: SCO upgrade letter (1999-04-21 14:46:18)
About a year ago I got a letter from SCO. It was a competitive upgrade letter that would give me a copy of SCO for 750+750 a year for maintenance. The jist of the letter was to upgrade from an obsolete OS called Linux?

I think not, SCO free, Microsoft free.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Expert reports due dates
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 04:10 PM EDT
I was looking at the IBM timeline and saw the following two events listed:

7-July-06 Rebuttal Expert Reports
10-July-06 Final Deadline for Expert Discovery

Has anyone with a Pacer account seen anything filed relating to these
deadlines?

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO forum... plans to be...
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 04:32 PM EDT
"SCO Forum 2006, ... plans to be one of the biggest, best Forums in its
20-year history."

Hmmmm ... just like SCOG plans to collect big $ damages from IBM.

To me this is just market-droid wild claims and hyperbole.

I also take exception with the comment about "how can you
'steal' something freely given". Open-source software may
be obtained possibly free of charge, and has other
freedoms associated with it, but it is NOT entirely free.

There are certain requirements associated with GPL or LGPL
or even BSD. These requirements are part of the 'cost' of
Open-source software.

These 'costs' are not necessary to simply use open-source
software, but often the only thing that allows you to
distribute open-source is to meet these requirements ...
(... pay these 'costs').

It seems these people (Doug Michels) just do not 'get'
what Open-source actually is, or what it is about.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic... Sort Of.
Authored by: sonicfrog on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 05:10 PM EDT
I just came across this fun bit of spin on the last ruling from Judge Wells. Enjoy!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Doug Michels to Receive Award at SCOForum
Authored by: BobinAlaska on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 05:54 PM EDT
Couldn't resist looking to see who other than HP are sponsering the forum. Hp
is Platinum and MySQL is Gold. No other sponsers are listed. They do have an ad
for exhibitors but I didn't see a list of any who have signed up.

---
Bob Helm, Juneau, Alaska

[ Reply to This | # ]

Doug Michels to Receive Award at SCOForum
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 06:00 PM EDT
If you kill a shark you may discover that even after delivering it a mortal
wound in a vital organ, you still have a very active and dangerous animal to
deal with, for an amazingly long time. And sometimes if you behead a chicken it
will continue to run around for a minute or so. And we've all had the
experience of bisecting an earthworm while gardening and watching the two doomed
halves crawl off in different directions as if they had somewhere to go.

So it should not be so amazing that SCOG is holding a forum, wooing developers,
and handing out awards.

It's really creepy to watch, though.

-Wang-Lo.

[ Reply to This | # ]

How ironic
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 06:14 PM EDT
It's held at the Mirage...

MSS2

[ Reply to This | # ]

HP & MySQL sponsoring SCO... unwise if you ask me...
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 06:55 PM EDT

Am I the only one who find it questionable that HP & MySQL, who both claim to be Linux and Open Source friendly companies, are sponsoring an event hosted by SCO?

I would suggest that we all let both HP and MySQL know that we find this action questionable and suggest they withdraw their support.

I've personally submitted a short message to both HP & MySQL, letting them know my displeasure about this, an I'd suggest you all do the same.

I personally used these links to send those messages :

HP    : 
http://www.hp.com /hpinfo/execteam/email/hurd/index.html
MySQL : 
http://www.mysql.com/company/contac t/

If you do contact them, please, Please, *PLEASE* be polite in your mail. Flames, rants and the like will only do more harm than good.
Also, using your real name and email address when you contact them will lend more credibility to your message.


[ Reply to This | # ]

Keynote speakers
Authored by: hardcode57 on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 07:57 PM EDT
Notice that both keynote speakers are analysts (not even consultants), rather
than people who actually use the technology commercially.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Doug Michels to Receive Award at SCOForum
Authored by: blacklight on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 08:52 PM EDT
The trouble with a lot of these MBA suits such as Doug Michaels is that the
capitalist system as they know it requires a profit motive at all levels to
work. The capitalist system itself, as represented by IBM for example,is showing
a great degree of flexibility, adaptability and resilience working effectively
with those who don't have a well developed profit motive.

It's just that these MBA suits haven't caught up with the reality of the
capitalist system as it works as opposed to their concept of the capitalist
system as it is supposed to work. It is these MBA suits who demonstrate lack of
mental flexibility, adaptability and resilience, not the capitalist system.


---
Know your enemies well, because that's the only way you are going to defeat
them. And know your friends even better, just in case they become your enemies.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Hey Darl: free analysis
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 11:03 PM EDT

I looked at the original comments referred to in the story. And lo and behold, some dude had this to say (in 1999!):

We have used SCO Unix for a long time, and have migrated to Linux because SCO was not satisfactory: it does not support enough hardware, it is slow, its support is expensive, its products are expensive, the quality of its tools is not very high. SCO wants to make lots of money without investing enough in development and structural improvement.

Now you know why SCO failed as a UNIX provider.

You should have listened to your customers and sued your lawyers...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Doug Michels and the boss of Red Hat patent troll Firestar are friends from Santa Cruz days.
Authored by: Brian S. on Monday, July 10 2006 @ 11:19 PM EDT

Richard Morgan, Chairman of the Board

Chairman and CEO of Amphion Capital Partners LLC. Over the last twenty years, Mr. Morgan has been involved directly in the successful creation and development of over 30 companies in the software, computer systems, healthcare.... Firestar Software


The Amphion management team has significant experience in nurturing companies through all stages of their growth adopting a hands-on approach to operating as an extension of their management teams. Collectively, the team has created and developed more than 30 technology-driven companies in the information technology, physical and life sciences industries. Our public companies have included Celgene, Medisense, SEQUUS, Quidel, Macromedia, Veritas, Vortech Data, Santa Cruz Operation, and AXCESS. Richard C.E. Morgan is Chief Executive Officer of Amphion Innovations PLC. He was a founder and CEO of Amphion Capital Partners LLC....Mr. Morgan currently serves as chairman of Axcess International, Inc. (Nasdaq:AXSI), FireStar Software, Inc., and Motif BioSciences Inc..... Amphion PLC


Is Doug Michels outed?

Brian S.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Scof Or Um is more descriptive of the event
Authored by: kawabago on Tuesday, July 11 2006 @ 01:39 AM EDT
and getting an award from SCO is like getting a free tar and feathering!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Doug Michels to Receive Award at SCOForum
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 11 2006 @ 05:47 AM EDT
To me it seems they either didn't configure their linux properly, or tested on
different hardware.
If you look at python/jboss vs. .net you will see the difference.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Stock Exchange investors answer SCO
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 11 2006 @ 07:13 AM EDT
The following Stock Exchange comparisons make for some interesting associations
between SCO actions and stock price. No doubt someone with more time on their
hands can link the individual actions and the effect on SCO
stock.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&a
mp;c=ibm,%5EIXIC

[ Reply to This | # ]

COAS was "Caldera Open Administration System"
Authored by: magic on Tuesday, July 11 2006 @ 08:24 AM EDT
Funny how things change. I recall working with Caldera Openlinux (wayback) and COAS started as the "Caldera Open Administration System.

I do not recall it being renamed / rebranded SCO Open Administration System (maybe they didn't like the term SOAS - too close to SOS?)

Anyway, the release was Caldera Open Administration System - Version 1.1 (stable) released on 1999-09-03, and am unsure of when the name change occured.

A few ref(s) IRT COAS:
http://directory.fsf.org/all/coas. html
http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/software/linux_caldera_vs_redhat.html http://www.linuxjournal.com/arti cle/4052
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl? ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-04-2000/0001379006&EDATE=

[ Reply to This | # ]

Doug Michels to Receive Award at SCOForum
Authored by: fudisbad on Tuesday, July 11 2006 @ 09:47 AM EDT
>> "SCO Forum 2006, to be held August 6-9th 2006 at the Mirage Hotel
in Las Vegas plans to be one of the biggest, best Forums in its 20-year
history."

Is that also because it is going to be the last, thus going out with a bang
instead of a whimper?

---
"SCO’s failure to provide code for the methods and concepts it claims were
misappropriated is [...] a violation of this court’s orders." - Judge Brooke
Wells

[ Reply to This | # ]

What was Unix (USL) really worth?
Authored by: jog on Tuesday, July 11 2006 @ 11:23 AM EDT
See this analysis published in Unix Gram (G2)
in Jan of 93.

http://r.empstudios.com/Techdoc/Unix/novell.att

I found this trying to sus id of DDT on Yahoo SCOX
message bd.. He seems to know and care for MOG.
jog

[ Reply to This | # ]

Doug Michels to Receive Award at SCOForum
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 11 2006 @ 03:59 PM EDT
RE: Doug Michels, this is priceless......

"[Then there's] the whole intellectual property issue. The last thing they
want is some kid from Norway to sue for $100 million for misappropriation of
intellectual property."

What about the kid (SCO) from America?

[ Reply to This | # ]

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