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To the outsider, and even to me for some time, the various lawsuits involving the SCO Group follow a relatively simple story line. I'm not a lawyer, but after many interviews with the involved parties and lawyers, the case boils down to divergent interpretations of the subject matter. The Linux operating system was coming on strong. A group of individuals, some with a history of using litigation to extract wealth from other parties, started to behave like pit bulls. They clamped onto the Linux ecosystem in hopes of exploiting it for riches that for the most part have not accrued...

Apple's Mac OS X has been declared one of the world's safest operating systems by London-based security experts, mi2g. The security firm's Intelligence Unit has run a comparitive study of the variety of operating systems available today. It states: "The world's safest and most secure online server Operating System (OS) is proving to be the Open Source family of BSD (Berkley Software Distribution) and Mac OS X based on Darwin." It's also claimed that Linux has become the most breached online server OS in the government and non-government spheres for the first time, while the number of successful hacker...

Now They Own It, Now They Don’t: SCO Sues Novell to Stay Afloat ~ Eben Moglen February 5, 2004 The SCO licensing campaign—which has been all bark and no bite since its introduction by way of threatening letters to the Fortune 1500 last summer—lost a wheel last month, and is now headed for the wall. From the beginning of this irresponsible attack on the freedom of free software, SCO has promulgated public positions about the nature of its supposed rights that conflicted with facts known to the free software community, and relied upon legal positions that were untenable given the...

Remember when Microsoft bought a license from SCO back in May and you asked why they would bother? While the question is probably still valid, here is one likely answer. Yahoo News says Microsoft is preparing to launch its Windows Services For Unix 3.5: "As LinuxWorld Expo approaches, Microsoft will try to upstage gains made by its open source nemeses next week by launching Windows Services For Unix 3.5. Windows Services for Unix 3.5, which is currently in beta testing and will be officially launched next week, is updated for the latest round of Windows offerings, Windows Server 2003 and...

BSD developers speak out on SCO campaign Thursday November 20, 2003 - [ 08:00 AM GMT ]       Topics: Linux , Software , Operating Systems By: Chris Preimesberger and Joe Barr In view of the latest SCO lawsuit news conference, we have been talking to BSD professionals to get their opinions, including one of the principals in the AT&T vs. Berkeley Software Design, Inc. lawsuit settlement of 1994; a disillusioned former SCO employee; and several other BSD developers. At issue is the charge SCO has made in a court case against IBM that copyrighted UNIX code has been incorporated...

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 17, 2003 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- As the economy continues its recovery, the demand for top-quality Linux/Unix software developers seems to be on its way back to levels not seen since the late-90s. With its focus on providing the best Linux/Unix-based C++, Java, and Perl application developers to Fortune 500 companies, PerlUSA is seeing growth well ahead of the general economy. This growth is about to accelerate even faster, as PerlUSA gears up to help IBM and others find top talent in 2004. "IBM's announcement about needing 10,000 skilled technology workers in 2004 is obviously great news...

Copyright Lawsuit Is Turnabout for SCO By JOHN MARKOFF Published: October 13, 2003 AN FRANCISCO, Oct. 12 - The SCO Group, the company that touched off a computer industry slugfest last spring by suing I.B.M. over its use of Unix software, may find itself embarrassed by a similar claim against a company once related to SCO. Since filing a lawsuit claiming that I.B.M. added parts of the Unix operating system to the freely distributed Linux software, SCO has threatened other computer companies, the open source software movement and hundreds of corporations that rely on Linux, saying they are unfairly using...

SGI compares Linux, Unix source code IDG News Service 10/6/03 Robert McMillan, IDG News Service, San Francisco Bureau An open letter to the Linux community published by Silicon Graphics Inc. indicates that SGI has conducted a comprehensive comparison of the Linux kernel and the Unix System V source code owned by The SCO Group Inc. According to the letter, authored by SGI Vice President of Software Rich Altmaier, SGI conducted an "exhaustive comparison" of the Linux kernel and the Unix System V source code, which turned up only "trivial" code segments that "may arguably be related" to SCO's software. The...

Here they go again. SCO has brazenly put up on their website the Powerpoint presentation from SCOForum 2003. And you don't need to sign an NDA to view it. It appears to be setting forth their legal position, including some cases that they seem to believe support them. Let's see if they do. And let's take a look and see what we can learn about the way they view their case. While it is missing whatever it was they said during the presentation at SCOForum, leaving some question marks in the air, it contains the following, which I will...

SSH glitch gives 'skeleton key' to networks Patrick Gray ZDNet Australia September 18, 2003, 11:10 BST A patch for the Unix remote management shell has been re-released after suggestions attackers have for months been exploiting the vulnerability to gain access to systems A critical security flaw in SSH has been revealed that threatens servers worldwide. SSH is a widely used encrypted remote management shell for Unix, Linux and BSD platforms. Experts say attackers have been exploiting the vulnerability to gain access to systems illegally for months. What started as quiet mumblings and rumours turned into screaming warnings this week as...

Sun's leader says the software industry overcharges buyers by a factor of 10. Sun Microsystems is proposing to cut software costs by reducing the complexity and expense of installing system software and by reducing expenses at the desktop. "We are overcharging by a factor of 10 in our industry," Sun CEO Scott McNealy told attendees in an opening keynote at the SunNetwork Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Asked later at a question-and-answer session whether that meant Sun might undergo additional layoffs, McNealy rejoined, "No, but other companies will." Sun has declared a price war on the expense...

  Here is IBM's Subpoena to Canopy Group You can get it as a PDF here, thanks to a resourceful Utah person who went to the court and did all the legwork. Thank you so much, Frank. I'll comment on it as I get a chance to read it. Meanwhile, feast your eyes. UPDATE: The subpoena sets September 10th as the date for a deposition, at Snell & Wilmer's law offices in Salt Lake City, and instructs that these are the documents Canopy Group's representative, whoever they choose to get deposed on behalf of Canopy, must produce on that...

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Developing Windows-based applications is easier and cheaper than making Linux-based applications, according to a study paid for by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O) and released on Monday. The world's largest software maker, which is facing increased competition from Linux -- the open-source software standard that can be copied and modified freely -- hired Giga Research, which found that licensing, associated software, maintenance, labor, and training was 25 percent to 28 percent cheaper on Windows for certain types of applications.The study compared applications built to run over the Internet on Microsoft's .NET platform to applications developed with J2EE, a development...

Utility logs start to be revealed Transcripts of telephone conversations between utility operators prior to last month's power blackout in the US and Canada were published Wednesday, so writes Wired. They include explicit mention of some unknown 'computer problems' at FirstEnergy, the Ohio utility thought to have triggered the regional power failures, in those preceding hours. Early on, a controller at the Midwest Independent System Operator asked his counterpart at FirstEnergy why it hadn't reacted to a transmission line outage. The utility's technician replied: "We have no clue. Our computer is giving us fits, too. We don't even know the...

Writing a column containing debatable comments from security experts is nearly as good at filling up your e-mail inbox as the SoBig virus. Last week, I concluded that Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh OS X provided safer computing than Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating systems -- in part because its small market share offers Internet villains too little opportunity to spread mayhem and partly because OS X ships with all of its vulnerable services turned off. This blocks potential attackers from gaining access to the system's software in the first place.

SCO's Evidence: This Smoking Gun Fizzles Out Version 1.0 -- first general release 20 August 2003. Version 1.1 -- note significance of the missing 32V copyright. Version 1.2 -- corrected description of the locking calls, added SIII. Executive summary: There are three pieces of good news for SCO about the evidence they revealed on 18 August 2003. One is that the evidence does support a claim of code-copying; the second is that GPL is not in this case a usable defense; and the third is that BSD probably doesn't save us either. But the rest of the news is all...

The ruckus erupted when SCO showed its "smoking gun" to delegates at its conference in Las Vegas yesterday. A German journalist photographed some of SCO's presentation slides, despite attendees being required to sign non-disclosure agreements before attending the event. The slides then came under the full scrutiny of Linux advocates, with one, former Hewlett-Packard open source strategist Bruce Perens, publishing a damning analysis online. Perens claims the code can be traced to AT&T, which developed the Unix code eventually sold to SCO, and was written as far back as 1973. Since then it has been released under varying licences as...

SCO Preparing Legal Action Against CustomerBy Matthew Aslett SCO Group Inc is preparing to take a Linux user to court to speed up the legal process in its claim Unix code has been illegally copied into Linux, and also encourage Linux users to take out a license for its intellectual property. The company has signed one large customer up to its Intellectual Property License for Linux, but faces opposition from many more who believe SCO must prove its claims in a court of law before they will hand over the $700 per CPU for the license. Speaking at SCO's Forum...

Analysis of Linux Code that SCO Alleges Is In Violation Of Their Copyright and Trade Secrets. Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com>, with help from many members of the Linux community. On August 18 at their trade show in Las Vegas, SCO showed code that they claim was copied into Linux in violation of their copyright or trade secrets. The German publisher Heise photographed two slides of SCO's code show and made them public on their news ticker. Heise publishes c't, a popular German computer magazine. These are the slides: This slide has some of the "System V" source code comments deliberately...

SCO Insider Trades Here's a list of all the insider trades since 2002 that I could find so far. I compiled it from SEC public records. I am seeing approximately $1,375,654 in sales since March. I can't guarantee 100% accuracy, though my eyeballs are melting and my head about to explode from trying for it. It's surely the big picture: 11-Aug-03 (8/8/03) - BENCH ROBERT K., CFO 7000 ... $10.90 . . . value= $76,300.00 221,043 shares still owned after transaction. 07-Aug-03 (8/5/03) BROUGHTON REGINALD CHARLES, Sr VP Int'l Sales 1900 . . . $12.57 . . . $23,883.00...