Posted on 07/21/2003 6:07:30 PM PDT by amigatec
SCO is giving the "tainted" Linux users out there a way to clean up their filthy ways via a licensing program that will begin in the coming weeks.
After dolling out threats of legal action, SCO has called on enterprise Linux users to come forward and pay for code the company claims to own. The legal zealots at SCO reckon Linux has grown up too fast by nicking technology such as support for large SMP systems from its copyrighted Unix code. SCO plans to start calling Linux customers this week, asking them to pay up or face the consequences.
"Following the distribution of our letter to the Fortune 1000 and Global 500, many prominent companies using Linux contacted SCO to ask, 'What do you want me to do?'," said Darl McBride, president and CEO, The SCO Group, in a statement. "Today, we're delivering a very clear message to customers regarding what they should do."
Well, it's not all that clear of a message. SCO says the pricing terms for a license will not be announced for weeks. The suspense continues.
SCO's sudden burst of courage comes after it received U.S. copyright registrations for Unix System V source code. The company had been waiting to make sure all its legal bits and pieces were in proper order before kicking off its Linux licensing business.
IBM has been SCO's main target up to this point, but now the company wants to attack all the dirty, open source users out there.
"Today, we're stating that the alleged actions of IBM and others have caused customers to use a tainted product at SCO's expense," McBride said. "With more than 2.4 million Linux servers running our software, and thousands more running Linux every day, we expect SCO to be compensated for the benefits realized by tens of thousands of customers. Though we possess broad legal rights, we plan to use these carefully and judiciously."
Doesn't that put your mind at ease?
After making "no contribution" to the 2.2 Linux kernel, large vendors began dumping hundreds of Unix files into the OS in the 2.4 and upcoming 2.6 Linux kernels, according to SCO. This code has made it possible for Linux to run well not just on the two processor servers where it got its start but on eight, 16, 32 and 64-way boxes.
SCO is demanding that enterprise users pay for this SMP technology, but why?
There are but a few Intel-based boxes that size in existence, and IBM, the main target of SCO, does not even scale to 64 processors as of yet. Linux is most often found on small systems or on clusters of servers. The number of customers benefiting from this Unix code is quite slim.
Still, Linux customers of all shapes and sizes are to pay for all the bells and whistles in the code. SCO says home users and small-time players aren't on its immediate legal horizon, but contaminated corporate users need to fess up.
"We have a solution here that gets you clean," McBride said, in a conference call.
SCO suggests that the dirtiest players of all are companies such as IBM and Red Hat that let users purchase Linux without providing an OS warranty. SCO continues to put pressure on IBM to help its customer base out and take on the Linux IP costs.
SCO also added a little pressure to Linus Torvalds. Up to this point, SCO has been attacking IBM on contractual issues which left Torvalds out of the fray. With the new copyright claims, however, SCO says Torvalds may come under attack.
"As of today, it is a different game," McBride said. "We are not saying Linus created the problems, but he inherited them."
SCO claims it has a well thought out plan for licensing the Unix IP but remains reluctant to provide any details on the costs a business may face. The lack of information here leaves a nasty air of intrigue hanging over the matter, and we think SCO should speak up sooner rather than later. ®
"If you're greedy, you vote democrat - that's how you get entitlements that you're not entitled to, and tax refunds where you never paid any taxes, and government subsidies for things that don't deserve to be subsidized."
"How is it greedy to want to save money? Your own money? I put in the extra hours, I got the deliverable done on time, I did the work, why shouldn't I keep my money? How is that greedy? I think that coveting other people's money is what is greedy. "
"Tax cuts and smaller government just make sense. More money for productive citizens, less for the bureaucrats whose very nature is to prolong the problems they are supposed to be solving so as to hang on to their cushy jobs and pensions."
All from this thread. Conclusion: people have different opinions. Deal with it.
Is that supposed to be a big deal? I can't imagine that shrinkwrap retail is a very good channel for operating systems. You have to be kind of a propeller-head to even think that installing a new operating system would be fun. If you're that much of a geek, you probably know how to download and burn ISOs. If it had been me, I'd have shot that channel a long time ago. I bet all it ever brings in are support headaches.
Should I care? If he wants to work his butt off and give the results away I will gladly take advantage of it.
This is far more common from their actual members, from the same thread you cite:
I think that if we could just get rid of the USA, like some sort of neutron bomb or something, the entire world will once again live in the tranquil peaceful Utopia that existed before 1903.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=72136&cid=6510534
You may agree with the perverse rants of their psychotic members, but I never will.
Maybe not to a linux puppet, whose arguments fly all in the face of reality.
But to rational people it's nothing more than proof their empire, possibly illegally constructed, is begining to fall apart. Why? Because 'free' software can't sustain itself, and 99% of linux users aren't willing to pay anything for it, nor do they contribute anything back.
Microsoft was playing around with something called the "Interface Manager" as early as 1981. They didn't get serious until the VisiCalc guys showed up at COMDEX in 1982 with VisiOn, which was mostly 'mouthware' but made a hell of a demo. Microsoft was back in 1983 with "Windows," which was mostly mouthware as well. Both companies ran around to all the hardware vendors at that show, begging us to put little tent-signs on our boxes saying, "Windows Ready" or "VisiOn Compatible." Sure, what the Hell, we want to be compatible with everything.
I don't think VisiOn ever shipped. If Windows didn't ship until 1985, it wouldn't surprise me.
Had you bothered to check you would have found that none of the posts I quoted were anonymous.
I think that if we could just get rid of the USA, like some sort of neutron bomb or something, the entire world will once again live in the tranquil peaceful Utopia that existed before 1903.
That post is a satire, as its context makes obvious. You are either foolish for not recognizing it or intellectually dishonest for pretending otherwise.
You know Bill Gates is a liberal, right? Is that grounds for boycotting Microsoft?
You seem more interested in how this affects Microsoft (who is not violating the GPL) rather than Red Flag (who most definitely is violating the GPL). Inadvertendly, you're helping me make my point about 'professional courtesy' for the chicoms at Red Flag. :-)
The vast majority of people will follow a software license, regardless of whether or not they will get caught and sued. It's just basic human nature. But there are always those who will violate the law (or a software license).
If you're insisting that no one is violating the GPL, that's as laughable as insisting that everyone on Interstate 70 is driving the speed limit. You're asking everyone to make an unreasonable leap of logic - that the GPL is strong enough to hold up in court... When no one has ever upheld it. Not a single lawyer is interested in taking on Red Flag on contingency. Knowing how lawyers are, how strong can GPL be?
That post is not defensible, whether you you are willing to impale yourself on your own sword in an attempt or not.
Worse though, is there are countless other similar ones posted by slashdot members on a regular basis. And attempting to defend them is right under actually posting them yourself.
You insist on viewing the issue through the lens of a software maker. You're absolutely right: spending even one dollar to create something that is to be given away makes no sense as a business model.
But that is not what the problem looks like to a hardware vendor. Having an OS is a prerequisite to selling hardware. I gotta have one, or I don't get to sell any boxes. We already had the war about every hardware vendor having his own high-margin proprietary OS, and the IT managers won. UNIX it shall be. So here I am stuck with a huge expense maintaining my own flavor of UNIX, which I can't make any profit on because UNIX is UNIX (that's not what my brochures say, but the IT managers can only be fooled so much). UNIX-based OS's are a profitless commodity product, except for the services I can sell around them.
So here comes this linux thing, where I still get to sell my box and my services, but instead of footing the whole bill myself for my flavor of UNIX, I just chip into the pot, and we all use the same thing and compete on the basis of hardware features and services, which is in fact what we're doing now anyway.
The hardware vendors do not care whether the linux development effort makes money. They already have a UNIX development effort that doesn't. If they can shuck that, and replace it with something that costs less or ties up fewer assets, they're in.
So here's IBM Global Services "partnering" with Red Hat to handle all the sub-$250K linux consulting deals they find. IBM didn't want the damned things anyway. And for this they get an operating system that actually moves iron. Not that much yet, but this is a much better deal than funding AIX.
If you only look at the software economics, you can't see what's driving this.
No, I'm simply repeating anti-American posts that appear on the #1 Linux site which you are attempting to defend. IMO that's puts YOU in one of your own two categories, if not both.
Yes, I know, and I'm glad it's finally getting through to you. But the rest of your post drifts off into some sad form of an excuse for hardware companies just because time after time they have proven they can't write operating systems worth a flip on their own.
If they can't create good software on their own, that's their problem, and they will need to negotiate with other companies who can and get some software better than their competitor's loaded on those systems asap.
But breaking off business ventures with O/S companies, then stealing their technology from them to use for yourself without paying the original owners for it is simply not acceptable.
No I didn't, you're wrong, again.
I said exactly this:
the rest of your post drifts off into some sad form of an excuse for hardware companies just because time after time they have proven they can't write operating systems worth a flip on their own.
Which I said because it was nothing more than a sad excuse turned into whining for entitlement. Just because operating system software costs are "inconvenient" does not give anyone the right to steal it from them instead.
If you can't afford them, tough. The markets have naturally determined fair price over time through competition. And yes, there is choice already, M$, Unix and Apple. Just becuase you can't afford any of them doesn't mean they're not fairly priced, it simply means you cannot afford them.
You actually expect me to somehow believe you are an American, when you can not even spell the word correctly!
ROFLMAO!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.