McBride Speaks, In Person And In Print 782
Phil Windley writes "Darl McBride gave the keynote at CDXPO this evening and held a press conference afterwards. I've posted my summary of his talk and the press conference on my weblog. In his talk, Darl seemed to be saying "Don't hate me. I'm only doing what I had to do."" On the other hand, in this interesting interview with CRN, McBride comes one whisker from likening Linux users to drug users, renews threats to sue end users, and says "all the big guys" are out to get SCO.
Here's the Meat of the Story... (Score:5, Informative)
McBride: Our goal is not to blow up Linux. People ask why we don't go after the distributors...'If you have such a strong case, why not shut down Red Hat?' Our belief is that SCO has great opportunity in the future to let Linux keep going, not to put it on its back but for us to get a transaction fee every time it's sold. That's really our goal.
"Users" (Score:3, Informative)
In case of slashdotting: (Score:5, Informative)
"Carl McBride: Linux Won't Remain Free
The evening keynote at CDXPO is by Darl McBride. On the way in they handed out a pamphlet from WIPO entitled "Intellectual Property: A Power Tool for Economic Growth." I'm not sure who decided to hand it out, but I think its a little silly.
Darl starts out with a history of SCO. He says "SCO = UNIX." (Note: in the interest of my fingers, I'm going to stop typing "he says" and just type the essence of his speech. If I add commentary of my own, I'll note that.) A year ago, the answer to the question "who owns UNIX?" would have gotten a variety of responses. While there are many branches of UNIX, they all tie into the same tree trunk. AIX, HPUX, and others are licensed products of SCO. There are more than 6000 licensees with access to UNIX source code. Now he world knows that SCO owns those licenses.
When Darl joined SCO, its market cap had gone from a billion dollars to 6 million and had about 6 months of operating funds in the bank. When he looked at the assets, he saw $60 million in revenue, a channel of resellers, and intellectual property. He didn't think the company was getting the most from its IP assets and saw IP infringements from "the upstart Linux."
He was told when he examined this space that going after Linux infringements would bring down the wrath of the Linux community on the company. He didn't see the Linux community as one of his assets. His constituents are his shareholders and customers.
SCO set up a licensing program to put UNIX libraries on Linux. IBM threatened that they would not support SCO on their products if they didn't retract their licensing program. 20% of SCO's operating systems ship on IBM hardware. IBM thought the program would imply licensing issues with Linux. IBM was talking about taking major parts of AIX and moving it into Linux. Since IBM makes a large portion of its revenue from its IP, SCO thought this was unfair.
SCO got to the point where they had one option left: litigation. That set in place a chain of events that led to the last six months. What is not in dispute:
SCO owns all UNIX System V source code
SCO owns agreements to all UNIX vendors
SCO owns all UNIX System V copyrights
SCO owns all claims for violation of UNIX licenses.
SCO controls UNIX System V derivative works.
SCO doesn't own the derivative, but they have rights to confidentiality that are the same as for the original work.
The Linux infringements include literal copying, obfuscated copying, derivative works, and non-literal transfers.
Darl takes on what he calls urban myths surrounding SCO.
I am not a Penguin Slayer or a Suit-Happy Cowboy.
SCO does not want to destroy open source or Linux. With the appropriate checks and balances, open source has merit.
End users are not safe in taking a wait and see position. SCO is contacting customers and asking them to take a license of litigate position.
Linux infringements cannot be fixed by simply removing or changing it.
The GPL is at risk, but IBM put it on the table, not SCO as part of the litigation.
Some other points:
There's no free lunch or free Linux. The value proposition of Linux is UNIX for free. Free models such as free music, free Internet, free bandwidth, and free love haven't worked.
Giving away a UNIX-like OS for free isn't a problem. What is a problem is giving away UNIX or pieces of it when you don't own it.
Free software removes the incentive for innovation. There will lost jobs and lack of competition. SCO is in a tug-of-war between those who want software to be free and those who support proprietary software. SCO is a bellwether for this giant tug-of-war.
This country was built on the notion of property ownership and being about to protect one's property. What's left in this company are concepts and ideas. If you take away the ability to protect that, we're reduced out ability to compete as a country (cue the break out the flag, someone).
Predi
Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
You're
The real Perens is #3872.
As long... (Score:2, Informative)
I said absolutely nothing about him being a troll.
I said absolutely nothing about the content of his post.
I said absolutely nothing about high ID = bad content.
I will point out that he's posing as *someone* important enough to have an inbox stuffed with Darl McBride's e-mail, though.
If that's a lie, it's still a lie.
what it comes down to: (Score:5, Informative)
If I'm Merrill Lynch and have a trading application proprietary to Merrill Lynch and deploy it across all my trading desks, if that deployment occurred where the Linux OS and app are distributed togetherm there are arguments that Merrill would have to provide their proprietary trading application in source form to everyone. That's a problem.
Go read the GPL. Nowhere is that said. This is purely a lie to get people to not invest in linux, or to use it; the only other alternatives, of course, being SCO... and MS. SCO is likely to benefit little - their technology isn't capable of doing what most people use linux for. So MS gets the customers. Combine that with the SCO discount for converting to MS, and everything else...
I'ts pretty damned obvious to those that know even the most basic things about the GPL and IP law that SCO has no case. McBride makes inference after inference, and all of which are lies. Add them up, and to most people, it's a convincing case. Now to get this thing into court and smack him in the mouth.
Given MS's history of buying politicians....
Don't just sit there, whine and complain. (Score:5, Informative)
BSD (Score:3, Informative)
From the article:
Re:To Quote Sontag (Score:3, Informative)
Talk about shooting oneself in the foot. Managers like Linux because that tech who lives in his cubicle can administer a whole bunch of them without leaving and they can put them on as many computers as they want without paying anyone anything (except that poor tech guy in the corner secretly wooried that they will outsource his job to India)
That poor tech guy likes linux because he can just get things done. He hacks out perl scripts to automate his work and he likes to look at the code just for fun. He also likes the fact that he can recompile his kernel whenever he wants. There are so many great tinkering things you can do with linux which is what makes it so popular. Most of these things would not be possible if we have to pay $700 to SCO every time we install another copy of Linux. Linux is about choices, Debian, Redhat, Slackware, Mandrake, Gentoo, Suse, turbolinux, etc... I can go download any one of those and install it on my computer and then decide I don't like the way this distro arranges things so I switch back to another distro (or try something new).
SCO just wants money, nothing more, nothing less. They really don't care that their code is in linux, they just want money! Linus and others have said many times - show us the code and we'll remove it. Apparently that's not enough for them. I just wish this would go to court already.
GPL doesn't give a warranty!?! (Score:5, Informative)
Last I checked that's what the MS end user license agreement says:
DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES. The Limited Warranty referenced below is the only express warranty made to you and is provided in lieu of any other express warranties (if any) created by any documentation or packaging. Except for the Limited Warranty and to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Microsoft and its suppliers provide the Product and support services (if any) AS IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS, and hereby disclaim all other warranties and conditions, either express, implied, or statutory, including, but not limited to, any (if any) implied warranties, duties or conditions of merchantability, of fitness for a particular purpose, of accuracy or completeness of responses, of results, of workmanlike effort, of lack of viruses, and of lack of negligence, all with regard to the Product, and the provision of or failure to provide support services. ALSO, THERE IS NO WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF TITLE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, QUIET POSSESSION, CORRESPONDENCE TO DESCRIPTION OR NON-INFRINGEMENT WITH REGARD TO THE PRODUCT.
different company, dude! (Score:3, Informative)
Unless it was a pretty short "looong time", you didn't work for the same company. The company you worked for, The Santa Cruz Operation, is now called "Tarantella", and they're out of the OS business. The company that's suing IBM is the company formerly named "Caldera", now The SCO Group (no "Santa Cruz" in the name any more). They purchased some assets (name and SYSV source licenses) from the old SCO, but they're a completely separate company.
Re:What if it's not sold? (Score:5, Informative)
IBM has always been very dangeorous to mess with and while SCO may gain some stock value in the short term anyone who bets on them surviving in the long term is going to lose.
Re:Always Wondered (Score:5, Informative)
Not the same at *all*. A lawyer who defends a mass murderer is almost always appointed by the court. This lawyer is there to ensure that the legal rights of the defendant are secured. It's a basic and fundamental part of how our legal system works.
With this in mind, it's easy to be vigorous in defending the legal rights of somebody you detest. It's not self-interest, it's moral duty.
On the other hand, McBride is in a different ballpark altogether. Here's somebody who's clearly seeking personal gain at other's expense.
We're talking about something worse than a scum-sucking lawyer... the PR man!
Re:Why does he hate himself? (Score:5, Informative)
With knowledge of possible IP infringement by IBM and others, it would have been illegal for these gentlemen not to follow up on it as agressively as possible.
Unfortunately for Darl, libel, tortious interference with trade and willfully misleading potential investors are *also* illegal, among other recent SCO actions. A CEO has a legal responsibility to lead his company aggressively, but that doesn't give him license to break the law.
As far as copyright infringement goes, SCO has now been spouting about this for a year and thus far SCO has revealed *one* legitimate infringement -- and it was an ancient and trivial bit of code that was removed from Linux without even replacing it, because better code already existed in the kernel.
With respect to the other IP issues, patents and trade secrets, well, the former is really funny because SCO doesn't appear to possess any applicable patents and the latter has also not been revealed, even though SCO has a legal obligation to do so. IBM has now filed *two* separate Motions to Compel, trying to get SCO to say just exactly what IBM did wrong. Early next month, those motions will almost certainly generate a court order. We'll see if SCO can finally invent something plausible when their other option is to be held in contempt of court or to admit that their case is groundless.
In case any true SCO apologists want to point to the million pages of code and the list of Linux files as evidence that SCO *is* complying with discovery, consider:
include/asm-m68k/spinlock.h
What, does SCO own C pre-processor macros?
There was another funny one (which I can't find right now), which happened to mention IBM in a comment regarding a hack used to work around some misfeature of ancient IBM hardware. The file was a driver for said hardware, and wasn't written by IBM.
Pah! It's clear that SCO just grepped the Linux source base (which the community has deduced was version 2.5.59, BTW) for SMP, NUMA, IBM and JFS, excluding matches related to architectures pushed by companies who have been cooperative with SCO (Sun and HP).
You really think a CEO has a fiduciary responsibility to engage in crap like that?
Re:Interesting note at the end of the interview (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm not sure this is so funny (Score:3, Informative)
This one is actually not a good case to use. One version of the facts of this case includes the information that McDonalds in fact heated their coffee to 190 degrees or more, when the normal temperature is usually more like 120 degrees. And numerous people had been scalded and complained, and McDonald's refused to do anything about it or to change their process in any way. And that's why, even though it was dumb to drive with a coffee cup between her legs, the plaintiff was awarded a judgement: McDonald's knew their coffee was too hot and committed itself in writing to the effect they weren't going to change things. And any first year law student will tell you those are the elements for negligence.
By the way, the woman had to have some reconstructive surgery as a result, if I'm recalling this correctly.
and no, IANAL.
0x01 (Score:3, Informative)
I would love to see this guy hanged. If I ever see him on the street, he better watch out.
Re:I'm not sure this is so funny (Score:4, Informative)
The facts of this case have been so misrepresented it's become an urban myth.
It was February 27, 1992. Her name was Stela Liebeck and she was a very active 79 year old retired department store clerk in Albuquerque NM. She and her grandson drove her son to the airport one morning and on the way back they stopped at McDonalds drive through for breakfast. Her grandson was driving. The grandson parked the car so she could put sugar and cream in her coffee. She had trouble removing the lid so she put it between her legs for leverage. When she got the top off, the scalding coffee spilled into her lap. (Most restaurants serve coffee that is 130-150 degrees, Mcdonalds coffee is 180.) She was wearing a sweat suit, it held the 180 degree liquid against her skin and helped retain the heat. She suffered third degree burns to her genitals, buttocks, and legs. She was hospitalized for 8 days, immobilized at home for 3 weeks, then went back to the hospital for skin grafts. It was an excruciatingly painful and VERY expensive experience. Luckily, her insurance DID pay most of her bills. In 1994 Stella simply wrote to McDonalds and asked them to lower the temperature of their coffee. She did not plan on suing at the time. Her familly felt that she was due $2000 for lost wages and various expenses. They had to pay the insurance deductible and her daughter had taken time off work to care for her. McDonalds offered her $800. The family hired a lawyer and he asked McDonalds to give Stella $100,000 for her injuries and $300,000 in punitive damages. The lawyer tried to settle the case before they went to trial. McDonalds' position was that Stella knew she was buying hot coffee and spilled it herself due to her own neglect. They knew that they were not liable for someone spilling coffee on themselves. If they took responsibility for this injury, they would have to take responsibility for untold numbers of other things that people do to themselves. They were technically absolutely right. The plaintiff (that's Stella's lawyer really), said that McDonald's knew that their coffee was not drinkable at 180 degrees and that they knew there was a risk of severe burns, and that they had decided NOT to warn their customers and had NO INTENTION of changing their policies. He also showed large color photos of Stella's burns and reconstructive surgery. This is where it gets fun. McDonald's defense lawyers did themselves more harm than good by pressing their point and case which was LEGALLY SOUND, but EMOTIONALLY OFFENSIVE. It turns out that McDonalds had incurred over SEVEN HUNDRED lawsuits from their coffee. A quality assurance supervisor dismissed the complaints as "statistically insignificant". The McDonald's lawyers asserted that Stella was asking for too much money because she was old and therefore didn't have much use left in her injured body parts, therefore she deserved less money. The lawyers also noted that Stella hadn't LEAPT from her bucket seat, so the coffee stayed in her lap making her burns worse. In other words, McDonalds made themselves look like insensitive pricks to the jury, and the jury didn't like it one damned bit. Now for the financial facts: The jury awarded Stella $200,000 compensation for her injuries, but found her 20% at fault, so they lowered it to $160,000. The jury also found McDonald's guilty of "Wanton, willful, reckless, or malicious conduct", which is grounds for awarding punitive damages in the US. The jury was fundamentally disturbed by McDonald's behavior and attitude and they wanted to send a message to the company bigwigs. They based the amount of punitive damages awarded on two days worth of McDonald's coffee sales. $2.7 Million dollars. The judge reduced the award to $670,000. McDonald's appealed and the case went back to court. Stella and McDonald's eventually settled for an undisclosed amount of money. McDonald's has since lowered the temperature of their coffee. Please, research your facts before you speak. -kate
Re:Here's the Meat of the Story... (Score:5, Informative)
That you aren't allowed to create derivative works of a GPL'd work without them also being subject to the GPL is not a violation of copyright either, as derivative works typically contain some or all of the original copyrighted code, and must therefore be subject to whatever copyright restrictions were placed on it.
I find it peculiar that the GPL is practically the exact _opposite_ of what McBride seems to think it is.
Re:Interesting note at the end of the interview (Score:2, Informative)
In fact, DR-DOS was incompatible with a lot of things. That's a different story, but all of those cool features in DR DOS didn't come without a price -- it wasn't MS/IBM DOS and it didn't work exactly the same. Even after it became "Novell DOS", it still needed to be patched to be compatible with Novell's Redirecter. That should tell you something.
Anyone who has ever worked on a software project could tell you that Microsoft wanted Windows beta testers to report bugs against Windows, not DR-DOS. The message had a legitimate purpose beside FUD.
Re:I'm not sure this is so funny (Score:2, Informative)
-
And that's why, even though it was dumb to drive with a coffee cup between her legs, the plaintiff was awarded a judgement: McDonald's knew their coffee was too hot and committed itself in writing to the effect they weren't going to change things. And any first year law student will tell you those are the elements for negligence.
Actually she was the pasenger, not the driver, and the car was stopped when she opened the coffee and got so severely scalded. You are correct, while many think that case was just frivolous, it wasn't. McDonald's was also heating their apple pies to obscene tempatures and ignoring complaints about scalding and 2nd and 3rd degree burns caused by them. As a result of the coffee lawsuit, McDonalds finally lowered the tempature of their coffee and apple pies to sane tempatures. That alone probably saved untold numbers of people from very serious injuries. Imagine if your kid had gotten a 3rd degree burn from a super-heated apple pie because McDonalds didn't care they served them too hot.Re:I'm not sure this is so funny (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, she wasn't an idiot, and she didn't get millions.
If you investigate the "idiot's" case, instead of parroting the meme, you will find a couple of things you may not have known.
First, the coffee was not "hot". It was near-boiling. McDonalds in New Mexico had apparently kept the coffee super-hot - 180 degrees or higher - both to satisfy health inspectors who were concerned about coffee sitting in pots for hours, and to keep the coffee hotter longer for take-out orders.
Secondly, there were over 700 cases of such cases of people being injured by the boiling coffee.
Third: the woman wasn't driving, or doing anything else other than prying the lid off of the coffee cup between her thighs. The coffee splashed on her pants, and soaked her skin. She suffered third degree burns on her genitals, perineum, buttocks, and inner thighs. She underwent eight days of skin grafts and debridement (think of a steel wool pad scouring the subdermal layers of your now-skinless penis, boys). Normally hot coffee made at home doesn't make third degree burns; it is served at around 140 degrees. Near-boiling coffee, at 180-190 degrees, which McDs had been doing, does. I can add a personal observation: I've been burned by normal coffee, and also I've fallen into a puddle of boiling hot water. Believe me, 30 degrees or more variance determines the difference between a second and a third degree burn.
Fourth. She originally asked to settle her claim for 20 grand. McD's refused her offer.
Fifth. She didn't make millions. Here's a quote from ballinlaw.com:
"The jury awarded Ms. Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages (money to compensate the injured party for the injury sustained). The judge reduced this amount to $160,000 because the jury believed the plaintiff was 20 percent at fault. The jury also awarded Ms. Liebeck $2.7 million in punitive damages. The jury considered McDonald's actions reckless and willful, but despite this, the trial court reduced the punitive award to $480,000, which was considered three times her compensatory damages. "
Six. McD's in New Mexico reduced the serving temperature from 190 to 158 after the punitive damages.
http://ballinlaw.com/mcdonald.htm
Seven. The large judgement was not awarded because the woman was burned; it was because McD's had served the coffee at boiling temperature for years, ignoring over 700 instances of scaled customers. They found them willfully negligent for not reducing the temperature long before the 80+ year old lady lost the skin on her lap.
Here's some more documentation:
http://www.mattenlaw.com/FSL5CS/ar ticles/articles6
"The coffee was 40 degrees hotter than most other restaurants keep it - close to the 212 degree boiling point.
A national burn center had issued a public warning not to serve hot beverages over 135 degrees.
There were 700 other burn claims against McDonald's before this injury, yet no action was taken.
The victim offered to settle the case for $20,000 before trial, but McDonald's refused to settle. "
"The jury in this case decided that the coffee was a defective product and that McDonald's had violated products liability laws that assure that consumers are protected.
The jury awarded her $200,000 in compensatory damages (to compensate her for past and future pain, suffering, emotional distress, lost wages, and medical bills). The jury also decided that she was 20% at fault and reduced her damage award by that amount.
The jury also awarded $2.7 million in punitive damages. However, the judge reduced the award of punitive damages to $480,000. The case settled for an undisclosed amount before it was appealed."
Now that we've discussed the facts of the case, I'm up for some editorial comment.
BIG point: The vast, vast majority of liability cases do no
Re:In case of slashdotting: (Score:3, Informative)
First, there is no concept under US law called "Intellectual Property". There is patent law and copyright law and that is it. As far as trade secrets are concerned, that is a matter between contracting partners. McBride has no claim against partners with whom his company or their predecessors weren't contracted.
The problem is that the Opensource model means that companies must make money out of support. They can even compete to provide support as all have source access. SCO as a company (like Microsoft) do not provide good support. Actually, SCO don't provide anything these days except entertainment.
I actually started programming around the time that Unix was written. I was never at a place with source code access, as this was before that time. On the other hand I worked with other system software where I had source access and many have their own solutions to the problems of multiprocessing, reliable file systems and clustering. These solutions were from the early eighties before AT&T had anything in S4. There is *nothing* special about Unix. Some things were so basic that two programmers working on different ends of the planet would come up with identical answers (they were both probably reading Knuth).
BSD was derived from Unix but was in many ways a parallel development. Linux is not Unix at all and even by McBride's standards until IBM/SGI started working on it, it was clean.
Re:different company, dude! (Score:2, Informative)
Mod grandparent down, Overrated.
(1) SCO Group != Santa Cruz Operation
(2) Santa Cruz Operation - UNIX = Tarantella
(3) Caldera + (Santa Cruz Operation - Tarantella) = Caldera
(4) Caldera - ? = SCO Group
(5) Canopy = SCO Group +
Yes, I know that (3) implies UNIX = 0.
The unknown in (4) is probably sanity.
Re:No, it _is_ her fault (Score:3, Informative)
Pal, you are a good example of a waste of air.
This 79 year old woman made a mistake. It seems she realized that, since initially all she did was ask McDonalds to sell the coffee at a cooler temperature. It was McDonald's assinine behavior that cost it the lawsuit and all the bad publicity that came with it.
Now read this next part carefully: The coffee you make at home in your Mr. Coffee is NEVER at 180 degrees F. As has already been pointed out, that is too hot to drink, and hot enough to be considerably more dangerous than "normal" coffee. McDonald's stance on this was inexcusable (and I do recall getting a very rude surprise the first time I sipped a cup of hot coffee from McDonalds myself).
I'd be willing to bet you're under 30 years of age (most likely under 20). Someday you'll grow up - I hope.
(I do agree there are many frivolous lawsuits, and they're bad - this just wasn't one of them. As to your "Einstein" comment, that is called "sarcasm", and is actually a compliment to Einstein. I think most people who were seriously compared to Einstein would be immensely flattered. Here's a suggestion though - rather than sitting around being bitter and complaining, perhaps you should actually do something to improve the world. Apologies if you already are.)
SCO hires Body Guards (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No, it _is_ her fault (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, at most restaurants (McDonald's included) it's made by steam. Water is boiled, the steam is collected and when it condenses it drips through the coffee grounds. By the time it's servable, it can have cooled to quite a lower temperature than the 212 F required to boil the water in the first place.
A simple test [vanfirm.com] was done to compare coffee temperatures, and nobody came within 20 degrees F of the 180 McDonald's kept theirs.
She never asked for $3MM, the jury awarded her that amount because of McDonald's stance on the issue. That large amount was a punishment for McDonald's having received numerous complaints and not doing anything about it.
Article: SCO hires bodyguards for execs (Score:1, Informative)
By Bob Mims
The Salt Lake Tribune
LAS VEGAS -- The debate over SCO Group's claims on the Unix and Linux operating systems has never been polite.
But now, it has grown deadly serious. Literally.
Following telephone and e-mail threats to the Lindon software company and Darl McBride, SCO's president and chief executive; senior vice president Chris Sontag, and others, an unspecified number of bodyguards has been assigned to protect SCO's leadership.
"It's crazy," McBride said during an interview Tuesday at a Las Vegas hotel, where he is not listed on the guest register and visitors must be escorted to his room by security.
"This started off as a contract dispute with IBM, then we discovered [alleged SCO-owned Unix code] within Linux," McBride said. "Now we have a firestorm of controversy and anger from many in the Linux community."
The Linux operating system, seen as a challenger to the predominant Microsoft Windows OS, is the darling of the so-called "open source" community -- a global network of programmers dedicated to freely distributed software.
In March, SCO sued IBM in federal court over alleged contract violations stemming from purported incorporation of the Utah company's Unix OS into the latest versions of Linux. SCO seeks up to $50 billion in damages.
SCO also has sent out 1,500 letters to corporate Linux users warning them that by using the allegedly tainted versions of the OS, they are violating SCO's intellectual property rights. SCO has offered to license such users for varying fees.
Earlier Tuesday, SCO underscored its determination to continue its litigation. In a teleconference, the company announced expansion of its contract with the law firm of Bois, Schiller & Flexner, saying it will pay the firm and others $1 million cash and 400,000 stock shares.
In addition to the IBM litigation for which it was originally retained, the firm will represent SCO in upcoming copyright lawsuits against Linux end-users.
SCO's Sontag emphasized those suits, which could begin within 90 days, will target only "the larger commercial users of Linux. We have already said that for noncommercial use of Linux we will not be taking any action."
The reaction throughout the controversy has largely been one of defiance. IBM has countersued, directly challenging SCO's Unix-Linux claims; leading Linux distributor RedHat Inc. also has filed what it calls a preemptive suit, also challenging SCO's attempts to license Linux.
McBride claims others in the open-source community have chosen to express their displeasure outside the law. Since SCO filed its suit, there have been at least three major "Denial of Service" attacks -- cyber raids that overwhelmed SCO Web sites, effectively crashing them.
In the past few weeks, though, the tenor has become more direct, and more serious, SCO alleges.
"With the personal threats to our lives we have had to rachet up security both for our company and for certain individuals," McBride said.
Sontag stressed that most in the open-source community, while understandably upset with SCO's Linux claims, are reasonable in their conduct.
"However, there are some elements who have an almost religious zealousness about Linux," he added. "In some ways, that can be scary for anyone opposing their positions."
Reaction Tuesday from the open-source community to SCO's security concerns was a mixture of disbelief and scorn.
"I just don't buy it," said Bruce Perens, a Berkeley, Calif.-based Linux developer and open source advocate. " This is just an effort to discredit the open-source community.
"If there were real threats, the police would be there instead of husky fellows with radio tubes in their heads," he said.
Perens and other open-source advocates long have speculated SCO's lawsuits may be an attempt to attract buyers -- perhaps even IBM, if the litigation proved enough of an annoyance.
Both McBri
Re:nothing to worry about (Score:3, Informative)
But it's entirely possible for the kernel developers to show due diligence. PGP-signed e-mails, for a start.
Furthermore, the Linux kernel developers are not the only people who would be susceptible to this sort of thing. How does anyone know, for example, that Microsoft have not incorporated some of SCO's proprietary code into Windows? It could easily be there, but protected from SCO's prying eyes by Microsoft's closed-source practices. It's only the unique nature of Open Source Software that has allowed them to complain about code in the Linux kernel - because with Linux, everything is done out in broad daylight. If there is nothing the Linux kernel developers could have done to guard against proprietary code finding its way into the kernel, then it follows that there is nothing anybody else could do to prevent the same thing either.
SCO were in the better position all along, because they could see both their code and Linux, whereas the Linux people did not have access to SCO's code. As soon as they spotted their code entering a release candidate, they should have had a polite word with the kernel team right then and the whole mess would have been sorted. They missed an opportunity to nip it in the bud, and must carry at least some of the blame for what happened after it could have been fixed.
Example: your neighbour's dog shits in your garden. You spot it, but don't mention it to the neighbour until it has already turned your lawn yellow, given your kids diseases, and your wife has slipped on it and banged her arse good and proper. Some of the responsibility must be yours, because you could have taken action sooner -- you could have pointed it out to your neighbour and asked what they were going to do about it, but instead you chose to wait until the problem had escalated.