Embarrassing Dispatches From The SCO Front

An anonymous reader writes "Dennis Ritchie has acknowledged he with Ken Thompson wrote the code cited as 'proof' by SCO. This seems to fit perfectly with Bruce Perens' Analysis of SCO's Las Vegas Slide Show, and undermine Blake Stowell's claim 'At this point it's going to be his word against ours." Andreas Spengler writes "In the ongoing battle between SCO and the Linux community, German publisher Heise has shown that not only was the Linux implementation of the Berkeley Packet filter written outside of Caldera (now SCO), but that it was common practice there and at other companies to remove the BSD copyright notices from the internally used source code. In effect, SCO has proven publicly that they violated the BSD license." (Warning, article is in German.) Finally, a semi-anonymous reader writes "Learn all about how IBM's stomach will be roasted on a pyre of CDs at WeLovetheSCOInformationMinister."

SCO's Website Down

[emacnabber]

Something must be going on... I haven't been able to get there in the last 4 or 5 hours...

time to play a new game!

[borgdows]

Who wants to be a Darl Mc Bride?

- Question 1 -

Your best friend kindly lent you his new Toyota, but you have literally destroyed it in a accident you were entirely responsible.
What do you do?

[ ] a) You apologize.
[ ] b) You buy him a new car.
[ ] c) You sue him.
[ ] d) You sue him AND General Motors.

Answer :
If you choose D, congratulations! You could be SCO's CEO!

Awesome

[dtfinch]

I already had the welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com bookmarked. This one is going right next to it.

Now if only he sold t-shirts and playing cards to go with it. Or perhaps diapers with the name McBride stamped on them. Honey, I think he needs a new McBride, this one is all poopy.

Ritchie vs Torvalds: Celebrity showdown ...

[Rajesh Raman]

Dennis got into the act after Linus called his code ugly: damn, them be fightin' words!

Re:Awesome

[beanyk]

No, no, it's

"Honey, I think he needs a new daiper, this one is all McBridy."

Re:SCO's Website Down

[Anonymous Coward]

It's currently being hit by a massive DDoS. Not all sobig.f viruses managed to collect the executable from their targets last night, but those who have are thrashing sco.com left right and centre.

When is Slashdot...

[chrisgeleven]

Going to sell a deck of cards showing the faces of SCO management and lawyers?

Will they

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they be able to get *BSD out of it's deathbed to battle SCO?

Google translation of the Heise article

[yokem_55]

SCO vs. Linux: The time of the conspiracy theories In history around SCO and the source code from SCO existence, rich at idioms and twists, possibly transferred after Linux, new turns are to be reported. With the conspiracy theory that Microsoft behind SCO stands, it associates the theory that the refusal of the requirements of SCO is a only one, well camouflaged campaign of IBM. Thus the InfoWorld reported that SCO boss sees Darl McBride IBM as an author of the dirt campaign. IBM caused Novell to place itself against SCO meant McBride, employed long years with Novell as a director/conductor of the Netware Embedded division (NEST). IBM has talks floated to complain against SCO means it in addition. Also Eric Raymond of the open SOURCE initiative would stand on the pay roll IBMs, which would finance besides the Free software Foundation and thus the lawyer evenly Moglen, continued to implement Darl McBride. While IBM as talk has the accusations lapidary for nonsense explained and about Novell none came, Eric Raymond raffte itself up to send an open letter at Darl McBride. In it answered in the negative Raymond by IBM to be paid did not deny however IBM to have helped. Altogether Raymond appealed to the reason of the SCO upper one with an allusion to the insight ability of Darth Vader : "you have the choice. Remove the dark helmet and converse with us like a human nature, or you continue your way, which lets bad times fear for us, however you and the entire SCO Topmanagement into the ruin will completely surely float." Off the roaring star Wars Rhetorik Eric Raymond used the open letter, in order to make attentive on a Petition of the Linux Community, which were read out on the SCOForum. In their the SCO Group is requested to give up and all inkriminierten places in the SOURCE code call the confrontation course. In response the Linux programmers want to assure to revise all questionable places: "if right right-hurt-hurting that code in the Linux Kernel to be present should become, we it remove, because our community would not like to have a part of this Kernels." The polite request will possibly remain without answer, because SCO with first, on which SCOForum published proofs could not convince. Apart from the problem of the "Greek" code is in the meantime the Berkeley presented by SCO pack filter (BPF) into the center of the interest moved. The SCO example originates from the file/sys/net/bpf.c, which is available here. In the cutout shown by SCO is missing the BSD Lizenzbedigungen, which is to be always called in accordance with BSD license: "Redistributions OF SOURCE code must retain the above copyright notice, this cunning OF conditions and the following more disclaimer." Because they are missing, code experts go such as Bruce Perens and Greg Lehey of the fact out that SCO with the example proved that the license conditions were removed agreement-adversely. Thus a classical self-gate could be present, particularly since other possibilities are impossible. Like that the programmer of the version used in Linux was employed by BPF, Jay trainingist, with Caldera, wrote however the Clean Room variant of BPF before its time with Caldera. From the circles of former Caldera developers several persons can remember that in the SCO Trees in many places with the BSD code the copyright notes were missing. The procedure to cut "redundant" licenses off seems to have practiced also at other companies. Thus heise on-line developers to, that experienced the "technology" at Siemens Nixdorf, announced themselves. If the proof situation in the case SCO should confirm itself, then the code Hunter of this company excavated a proof, which occupies the exact opposite of the accusations by SCO. At least in the case of BPF SCO the power POINT presentation would not only have ( when ppt , when pdf ) separate the whole code make public, in order to weaken the suspicion.

Is it just me?

[Lord_Dweomer]

Or are the PR releases and subsequent disproving of them getting more and more ridiculous? I mean, come on.....this REALLY needs to have a series of cartoons done on Pennyarcade.

2 hours late

[Anonymous Coward]

You were almost two hours late with my daily noon SCO bashing story! I was trapped here for TWO whole hours clicking refresh furiously as I awaited my noon story!

Oh the horror...

WHAT???!?!

[Ayanami Rei]

"Building your company on a GPL license is like building your enterprise software on quicksand. Everybody is scared to death that their own IP is going to get sucked into this GPL machine and get destroyed."
-Carl McBride

::slack-jawed, agape stare::

Let me get this straight. He made an analogy about building a company on a LICENSE, to writing software in quicksand.

I think what he meant to say was "Building your enterprise software using a GPL license is like building your company on quicksand" or something like that but he is so full of shit he can't get a coherent analogy to the reporter. Didn't the copy editor of that story pick that up, or do they want him to look like a fool.

I'm not going to even address the drawn out, oft-repeated FUD of the second part of his statement.

I'll post more comments about some of the quotes on http://www.anerispress.com/wltsim/ [anerispress.com] as I get a chance.

Carl, you're comedic gold. Let's keep the hits coming.

Re:Awesome

[dtfinch]

They start out clean like regular diapers, but they can hold 10 times as much before leaking to investors that they're full of crap.

DarlThink

[HopeOS]

[ ] e) After taking possession, it became your car anyway; he owes you a new car.

-Hope

I Love Babelfish

[sabat]

I love babelfish:

Altogether Raymond appealed to the reason of the SCO upper one with an allusion to the insight ability of Darth Vader: "you have the choice. Remove the dark helmet and converse with us like a human nature, or you continue your way, which lets bad times fear for us, however you and the entire SCO Topmanagement into the ruin will completely surely float."

Re:Awesome

[eddy]

How about when this is over and "if" SCO is destroyed, we could print up tshirts and give them to prison inmates. Here's what I'm thinking:

[ photochop of McBrides face, in weddingdress ]

Be My Bride, McBride!

Re:Link to the fish

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, can somebody please post a link that translates from babelfish English to real English?

Approximately, are you whom you speak what? privately, I find babelfish translation clearness, can rely on completely completely!

Darl McBride quote from the future

[geophile]

"You want fries with that?"

Darl responds

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know who this Dennis Ritchie guy is, but he obviously has no respect for SCO IP. As soon as my crack legal team locates him, he will be sorry!

Yours Truly,

Darl
Oh yeah, we are also implementing a new SCO trademark, "SCO owner of all IP post Genesis". What do you think?

Re:time to play a new game!

[Dark Lord Seth]

- Question 2 -

When you we're a little boy/girl, you greatest wish was to one day grow up and become:

1. a fireman
2. a policeman
3. a superhero
4. a fighter pilot
5. a movie star
6. a corrupt and unethical CEO of a dying company

Answer :
If you choose 6, congratulations! You could be SCO's CEO!

You know your a nerd when...

[wiggly-wiggly]

...you think Linus Torvalds is a celebrity.

Kicking it

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a kick out of seeing 80's ghetto slang co-existing with dry white-bread terms like "10Q".

Mamma said knock you out! Momma said claim yourself as a dependant!

Slashdot T-Shirt design

[Frantactical Fruke]

Black shirt, white text:

"Uh, SCO sucks! (Score:5, Insightful)"

I'm trying to cut down on my SCO story habit by reading at +5. Not that it helps much...

Re:time to play a new game!

[heinousjay]

7. A warm and responsive lover for your cellmate.

Re:time to play a new game!

[jd]

[] e) You sue him AND General Motors, the accident victim and road builders sue you, and you attempt to pressure the US Goverment into invading Japan. Oh, and you demand BMW gives you a new Rolls Royce to replace the car.

Re:When is Slashdot...

[ergonal]

Would Darl McBride be the joker?

at SCO hq

[bgs4]

Darl: so, um. Ya. So we didn't try googling our code before we showed it in las vegas?
Blake: ya, no.
Lawyer#1: ya, um, we, ah. Ya.
Lawyer#2: dropped the ball on that one!
Darl: so, ya, and, um, it's, ah, in a book from 1977? Huh. Didn't know that.
Blake: ya, a book! Who knew.
Lawyer#1: didn't think to look in a book.
Lawyer#2: ya, hm, ya, book.
Darl: hmm, book. And, ya. Umm, it was released under the BSD license?
Lawyer#1: ya, BSD. Hmm.
Blake: so. That was, um. Ya.
Lawyer#2: BSD. Uh hu.
Darl: so... Dennis Ritchie? Really? He's famous and stuff.
Blake: um, ya. Dennis Ritchie.
Lawyer#1: Dennis Ritchie, uh hu. Famous.
Lawyer#2: Hmm. Ya.
Darl: um, Linda, if you could get my stockbroker on the phone that would be great, thanks.

Huh

[Flower]

Looks like Dennis' check from IBM finally cleared...

Re:SCO's Website Down

[unoengborg]

"Ok, cool. But why would someone do that on a Saturday? Should have done it during the week when their customers might be more likely to try to get to their site."

Its not part of SCO business model to have customers.

The site is down for maintenance as they needed to do a search & replace operation on all their webpages, to replace the word "customer" with the word "defendent"

Re:SCO's Website Down

[Overly Critical Guy]

Ok, cool. But why would someone do that on a Saturday?

Because script kiddies don't go to school on Saturdays.

McBride quotes:

[Treacle Treatment]

"There is no infidel BSD code in our source. Never!" "My feelings - as usual - we will sue them all" "Our initial assessment is that they will all pay $699" "I blame the media and IBM for beating up on us - they are marketing for the Linux Community!" "God will roast the Linux users stomachs in hell at the hands of SCO." "They're coming to buy us out or be burned in court." "No I am not scared, and neither should you be!" "Be assured. SCO stock is safe, protected"

Re:Simple Version

[ZPO]

The timing isn't right at the moment. Wait for the stock to tank (SEC investigation or 10Q filing). Then the pimp stick will come out.

In my dream world IBM will buy SCO once the stock dips below $0.66US (the price all the execs had their options repriced to), but before they declare bankruptcy. Then IBM could run a charity action and sell the chance to "Fire a SCO executive". I think the bidding would go quite high on who gets to fire Darl McBride. It will also pretty much completely ruin the credibility of those involved on the SCO side.

Re:Awesome

[Nucleon500]

welovemcbride.com isn't taken! C'mon, lets donate that to this site. And we should all pester ThinkGeek for a deck of cards (does SCO even employ 52 people?). And don't forget dyndns.org, I now have mcbride.kicks-ass.net and sco.kicks-ass.org, but with no server to associate it with.

Help! I'm an SCO news addict!

[sela]

At first it looked quite innocent, like a genuine interest in the story, but then, it got worse and worse. The story just had everything: Crime, Comedy (Linus: they are smoking crack. SCO: IBM is staging everything. Haaa, that's hillatrious!), bad guys, good guys, all the good stuff!

Soon I've found out I cannot pass the day without reading the daily SCO item on slashdot. But it wasn't enough. Just like any other addiction, I found out I need an increasing dosage every day. When slashdot didn't provide it, I turned on to google news search and started refreshing the "SCO" search every hour and so, but even this wasn't sufficient. There just wasn't enough SCO news to provide my ever growing thirst, so I started making my own SCO stories.

Help! I think I'm an addict. Is there a remedy?

Re:This can't have been well planned...

[Anonymous Coward]

It had to be a crack/pot party when they conceived of the plan to roll over Linux.

A fly on the wall tells me that it went something like this:

It was about nine months ago when 'the man' delivered a particularly good shipment, somewhere in Utah...

McBride: Damn but that's some good shit, man.
Sontag: Stop hogging the pipe, Darl. You've had it for the last half hour already.
McBride: Sheeesh... OK, you can have another rock if you give me a blowjob. I'm really wired and I need to de-stress.
Sontag: Oh, fuck off sweetie. We've been locked in our office for so long, we haven't taken a bath in a week. You stink. Why don't we get some hookers over instead?
McBride: That's a thought. But hang on. We haven't sold any software for the last two years. We're down to our last ounce.
Sontag: Those fucking linux hippies. We should drive over their and jack 'em for their dough.
McBride: Won't work, man. The damn commies have been giving it away. Tell you what though. IBM has been laying the pipe to those Open Source pinkoes. Why don't we run a Murphy game on the biggest Mack Daddy of them all?
Sontag: We need to build up our crew though. I'll get on the cell to Boies and his little gofer Markie Heise. Given that Boise managed to shaft Gates and Ballmer, two of the heaviest G's in the valley, he should be able to kick the living shit out of IBM.

Sontag dials phone

Sontag: Hello? David? Why dont'cha come on over and visit with us? We've got some excellent freebase man, and we've got an idea that could see us both well stocked for the next few years or so. No, I promise I'll get Darl to keep it in his pants this time, and I've locked the Uzi's away in case he gets paranoid again.
Sontag: They're on their way.

30 mins later.

The room is a terrible mess now. McBride is pacing the floor, eyes bulging. Sontag has just loaded up a fat pipe and he hands it to Boise as he lays down the plot.

Sontag: So what do you think, man? Are you in, or do we go and find that guy who does the Chewbacca defence? What's his name, Darl? Kinda hot black guy?
McBride: Um. Don King? Al Sharpton? Fuck knows, they all look alike to me anyway.
Sontag: Well, except for that guy we get the rocks from. You could pick him out in a crowd.

McBride turns to Heise, pulls out his cock and jabs it in his face.

McBride: OK, law bitch. You've been smoking my coke all night, now it's time for you to contribute. You haven't been making it with the brilliant legal strategies, so how about making it with a hummer for Unca Darl?

Boies stands up, and bitchslaps McBride

Boies: Look, asshole. This idea isn't have bad. We stand a good chance of stealing some serious dough here provided you can do just two things for the next twelve months. You've got to keep your mouth shut. You've got to keep your dick in your pants. And you've got to stop smoking crack.

Fast forward to today. Boies on the phone to McBride.

Boies: Listen, Motherfucker. What have I been telling you for the last six months? What did I I tell you, ever and over again?
McBride: Hey, I kept my dick in my pants, didn't I? One out of three isn't a total failure...

Re:This adds weight to my hypothesis

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

You may recall that recently SCO declared the GPL invalid.

In Sovied Russia, the GPL declares SCO invalid!

Re:I Love Babelfish

[Alsee]

I just had a horrifying thought. What if someone were to dub Star Wars (or almost any movie) after running the dialog through bablefish?

::SHUDDER::

-

Re:SCO's Website Down

[Admiral Llama]

What's this "we" shit? Are you a virus writer? I'm sure as hell I'm not!

Hey Ashcroft! You might want to check this guy out!

Re:time to play a new game!

[ncc74656]

A lifelong career as a sore, whiny loser.

<rimshot>
I guess this means McBride has a future as a Democrat politician...
</rimshot>

Re:SCO's Website Down

[jwilcox154]

It's currently being hit by a massive DDoS. Not all sobig.f viruses managed to collect the executable from their targets last night, but those who have are thrashing sco.com left right and centre.

Translation, the site's being slashdotted. ;)

Re:Forget Satuday...

[questamor]

Oh SCO would just claim the virus code was their IP all along, and claim license fees from everyone who's still running it - people whose IP they can get easily as it keeps contacting their website!

Actually that doesn't sound any more nonsensical than their current machinations.

I knew it all along

[ndogg]

I thought there was something fishy about all of this. I just figured it out, and my suspicions were correct all along, the Iraqi Information Minister went to work for SCO!!! It all makes sense now. Without this case, he would have been bored out of his mind!

Possible Explaination

[Gleng]

Well, given that Darth McBride has blown all the company's money on really crappy lawyers, the only equipment they can afford to run their website is a Commodore 64 running a custom stripped down version of OpenServer.

Give it time, it takes a while for a web page to stream from an audio cassette.

Re:Funny as the thought is

[zulux]

, but the ugly part was the rest of it - having a separate malloc implementation just for their code in particular.

ALL really-good code has to have it's own malloc, string and big-num implementations. Bonus points if you write your own parser for reall small expressions, extra bonus points if your parser has really odd operator precidence that require lots of parens to make usable.

Re:SCO's Website Down

[wo1verin3]

Naw, I'm thinking SCO may have packed up and bailed. Taken down the servers, covred the windows with newspaper and signs that say 'under renovation'.

Anyone live near can run by and check if they are 'under renovation' or loading computers in the back of darl's vw beatle?

So they are BOTH thiefs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heise has shown that not only was the Linux implementation of the Berkeley Packet filter written outside of Caldera (now SCO), but that it was common practice there and at other companies to remove the BSD copyright notices from the internally used source code.

The Linux kernel and userspace in the past has had BSD licence violations, USL had violations, and now SCO might have violated the BSD copyright.

Is Apple under Jobs the only honest people out there?

Re:SCO's Website Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Because script kiddies don't go to school on Saturdays.

They don't go to school during the summer, either...

Re:If you're wondering who this Ritchie guy is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Karma Whore.

Re:Darl McBride quote from the future

[HopeOS]

How about "Note to self: don't pick up the soap."

Re:True believers and bubbles

[skookum]

Maybe we need an exit poll for people buying SCO shares.

"Excuse me, Mr. Ameritrade customer, we'd like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind... What in the bloody piss were you thinking buying SCO shares?"

SCO v IBM court case in full.

[Eric MB Lard MD]

SCO: Linux contains Unix code.
RMS: It is GNU/Linux if you please.
Judge: What's this GNU thing?
RMS: Gnu's Not Unix.
Judge: So Linux is really GNU/Linux
and Gnu's not unix?
RMS: Correct.

Judge: So what are SCO on about? Case dismissed.

Re:Kicking it

[MyHair]

Even gangstas need 1099's for their bling bling.

Maybe not a full deck...

[corB]

Does SCO still have 52 employees?

Re:time to play a new game!

[loconet]

8. CowboyNeal

Re:SCO's Website Down

[Nucleon500]

With the sheer volume of electronic and dead-tree mail SCO must be getting, I don't think they could respond to a DMCA claim in less than a few years. The only way to communicate with SCO is to issue a press release, which they'll read when they notice a decline in the stock. If the ISP didn't issue a press release, SCO will think they're irrelevant.

Re: using the dmca

[plj]

"if major companies were as routinely screwed by this law as the little guy, the DMCA would be a memory."

*cough* SCO? *cough*

I think you'd better pick up an english dictionary and check the definiton for the word major.

But seriously thinking, true.

Re:I knew it all along

[buford_tannen]

Yep... I just spotted this!

The Iraqi information minister holds SCO Press Conference [theinforma...nister.com]

Yeah, what do you call a TSG customer in a suit?

[leonbrooks]

Next they'll be including copies of UnixWare in the writs they send out ("Is that really grey paper? It looks like very, very fine print to me... my goodness, they've taken almost all of the whitespace out... but it does look like a winner from the Obfuscated C competition...") so they can be sure that all recipients have unlicenced copies of their code.

Mods, put down those crack pipes...

[aweraw]

How the name of fuck, did this AC get modded +2 informative?

Re:SCO's Website Down: It's Not A DDoS

[majorflaw]

Assuming all this is true, has anyone considered the possibility that SCO simply didn't pay their electric bill?

Oh oh

[Camel Pilot]

Did anyone else notice the 66.6 in the trace route. Maybe Darl's more evil than we thought...

Re:SCO's Website Down: It's Not A DDoS

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, yes we are Attacking SCO. The attack targets not only the websites but the internal network. Unlike most script kiddie attacks (hey if I got 20,000 bots to hit something, lets use all of them!) this attack is surgical in nature, in fact, I would use the terms "shock" and "awe" to describe it. No NO innocent equipment is being damaged any more than necessary, and to our knowledge there are no civilian casualties in these pinpoint laser guided attacks. This is Wolf Blitzburg for CNN, back to Washington. (erm oops wrong war)