SCO Says They'll Sue A Linux User Tomorrow 606
Xenographic writes "InfoWorld is reporting that SCO intends to sue a Linux using company. Ordinarily, this would not be newsworthy, as they have not followed through on past threats. However, this time, they have given themselves a concrete deadline--tomorrow. While they claim that it will be one of the "top 1,000" companies, they apparently have yet to decide which company to actually sue. Perhaps they need more practice playing darts?" Reader Fished links to CNET's coverage.
Oh, good call SCO (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I woulda sued... Well... Me.
Re:Google (Score:2, Insightful)
IMHO that pretty much rules out Google doesn't it?
this is all really out of hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A little confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
What do they wish to gain? (Score:2, Insightful)
- I'm not creative enough to have a sig.
A little premature? (Score:2, Insightful)
SCO will sue EV1! (Score:5, Insightful)
As other have pointed out, EV1 can't comply with SCO's linux license and still get Redhat patches, so there is actually a case that SCO can win against them now.
How about... (Score:5, Insightful)
And we all know how assiduously ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll just be holding my breath over there, in the corner.
Big surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
OK now let me make sure I have all of this straight. Wednesday is the day the SCO quarterly non-earnings report will be released, which most likely won't be good news. So, on Tuesday, the day before the report is released, SCO makes a stock, I mean lawsuit announcement. Do I detect a pattern here?
Re:A little confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the corporation's lawyers will respond, "Sorry, we bought our Linux from (insert distributor here). You have take your claim to them, and you will receive any compensation you might be due directly from them for selling SCO IP without a valid license. Piss off."
KFG
Re:A little confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if you can really get much worse than IBM. IBM's been around the block, they've been the bad dog, have more US patents than most nations have in their patent registry, and probably have more elite, fire-breathing IP layers than SCO has employees.
And SCO is suing for three billion.
Of course, more straw on the camel's back won't do them any good, but I fail to see how they could have picked a harder target than what they already have.
Cheers
And if they win? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Oh, good call SCO (Score:5, Insightful)
what about the use of linux appliances? (Score:2, Insightful)
face it sco, linux is everywhere, and there are foundation companies which are using/deploying it(sun, ibm, novell, cisco, nokia) and threatening one of their end users with your pathetic attempts will only cause more companies to join the team against you.
give it up! you lost!
Tomorrows (Score:3, Insightful)
"Tomorrow never comes" Vitalstatistix [angelfire.com]
"After all... tomorrow is another day" Scarlett O'Hara [reelclassics.com]
Re:A little confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What do they wish to gain? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A little confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
>Since when has anything SCO said made sense?
hey, it's a valid question! the concept of end user isn't objective, it depends on who you are:
of course if you just piss away your valuable dev time posting on slashdot, the end user is whoever has mod points...
What the hell do they think they're doing? (Score:3, Insightful)
They have NO case. We all know it. This would be like me tying up the legal system with a lawsuit against my neighbor because I chewed gum on a Thursday (aka Completely Utterly Frivolous).
It's a waste of our judicial system along with taxpayers' money. The federal govt along with any of these companies being sued by SCO should countersue the shit out of them. This is just stupid.
Re:A little confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seven Figure Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
This has to be bullshit. There's no way that EV1 is going to pay 7 figures for a license from these pricks. They operate on a razor thin margin at $99 bucks per month per server. This is a bargin basement hosting facility. I call bullshit on this this statement. The price was probably:
$1,000,000 - License Fee
- $999,900 - Early Bird license discount.
___________
I want to see the additional 7 figures in the quarterly report. 7 figures my ass.
Re:Open source needs to find a hungry DA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A little confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, the old on-line adage "don't feed the trolls" seems somehow appropriate.
Re:Walmart (Score:1, Insightful)
(You might not get that.. google for Wal-Mart and Vlasic"
They have two options. (Score:5, Insightful)
a) Going to pass this by, probably with a lot of angry geeks and scared company CEOs. Watch as their target "bought a license at the last minute" and they don't even disclose who it is.
b) Sue someone, get laughed out of court while trying to hold it as long as they can, and die anyway. Stealing people's money in the process for their license fees. Hopefully, the SEC will get off their ass and stop them.
That, or... (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea is, they can't possibly win, but they can attract lots and lots of attention to themselves because they can drag out the trial ad infinitum. By suing someone really big who people expect would have a strong case instead of someone small, people will apply the false analogy that SCO has a strong case and can win lots of cash.
I've heard many older folks repeatedly say that "trading music is okay now", because they've conflated the idea that Kazaa sued the RIAA with the idea that there happen to be legal places to buy music online. SCO is hoping that they can scum up the same type of conflation: "SCO is suing IBM for using that bad, bad linux thing (the one we saw on those IBM commercials), and Microsoft says Linux is bad..., and we use Windows at home... and..."
SCO HAS to sue someone else. (Score:5, Insightful)
http://financyahoo.e.com/q?s=SCOX
SCO is not a software company. It's a publicly traded lawsuit. They've delayed and delayed and delayed too long with IBM and the truth is getting out. If they don't start another lawsuit their entire business model is threatened.
Could be a long-term contract (Score:5, Insightful)
EV1 might have agreed to pay SCO $1/year for the next million years, for all we know.
Isn't this illegal even with a disclaimer (Score:5, Insightful)
"McBride said the arrangement with EV1Servers.net is perpetual and that SCO doesn't offer companies their money back if courts later find SCO's claims baseless. It will bring in revenue that will be material to SCO's financial results, he added."
Re:Conspiricy theory again! (Score:5, Insightful)
Competecy? Are you kidding? This is stock scam, it's been going on for a year, and still going very strong. The market cap has been pumped from under $20 to over $150 million in a year. And scox was never worth even $20 million. This scam is way beyond competent.
Ever hear of the Mormon Mafia?
Re: CNN Article (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Office Pool.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? You don't think so? Why was it that Google delayed that IPO again? Something about bad timing wasn't it?
Tomorrow, when SCO sues Google, I'm going to link back to this post*. How much longer can they keep this up? The whole story is starting to fall apart so why not have one last huge grandstand move and sue Google. Even your GrandMa has heard of Google, and what's that? MSNBC says some company is sueing them? Noone will ignore the press release, air will be gasped, monocles will pop out of eyes and ladies will swoon. But SCO stock will rise, and rich people will get richer and Darl will have to think of another more astonishing way to get peoples attention or we'll start to ignore him like we should. And SCO still won't have actually done anything.
*And of course, if they don't, I'm going to ignore it and hope no one notices
My biggest fear.. (Score:2, Insightful)
*Everyone* with enough technical background to fully understand the issue has been following this case in the news and lets face it: Most programmers have a pet OS. We're not the most impartial bunch.
Anyone without the IT backround could potentially be fooled by the silver-tongued army of SCO lawyers.
Re:That, or... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what I suspect will happen:
SCO: We'll sue ACME
ACME: Judge, we're being sued over copyrights when those copyrights haven't been established (see Novell case for SysV code, IBM for SCO's "We control everything else" code)
Judge: This case is postponed until the copyrights are established.
SCO gets to blow lots of hot air knowing that for all intents and purposes that case is going to be put on hold. They can also then try to squeeze the nuts of ACME for a settlement.
Re:A little confusing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Which means that SCO must first validate their claim. Unlike the case of the movie where the ownership of the IP is a trivial matter, and only the just compensation for its use is in question, there is, as yet, no evidence that any of SCO's alleged IP is in Linux, which raises the issue of how it got there, which is through an entirely different manner than renting a DVD from Blockbuster, someone must have illegally put it there, and thus only the party that put it there can speak to that matter.
In other words, to use your analogy, the case inherently involves bootlegging by the distributor who then sold it to the user.
SCO would also have to demonstrate that use is a valid license issue. For a DVD, play or song such performance royalties, not use, are an issue of law. They are in the legal code. They are not in the code for software. In fact, under the Berne Convention, use of software is explicitly not a copyright violation. You cannot extrapolate copyright law from one medium to another.
Your analogy needs a bigger ass because the cases are not similar under law. I'm perfectly willing to view such a fuller assed analogy though and give it some thought.
KFG
Re:My biggest fear.. (Score:2, Insightful)
SCO Lawyer: Peremptory challenge, this juror is too smart.
Judge: That's your 167th peremptory challenge, counsel.
SCO Lawyer: Yes, your honour. We're looking for slack-jawed yokels.
Unfortunately, if it gets to trial any time within the current millenium, it's likely that SCO will use such challenges to try and get a jury as dumb as possible. (Not that I blame them, really. It's not like IBM's lawyers won't be trying to get a biased jury either. They both want to win.)
Kierthos
Re:A little confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the better response would be "Your honour, the actual ownership of the IP in question has not been resolved yet, therefore we believe that this suit is premature, and ask for it to be held in abeyance until such time as SCO actually proves it owns what it is suing us for."
Kierthos
Re:A little confusing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A little confusing... (Score:2, Insightful)
but I think the case is different.
Even if not indemnified, the Fortune 500 company has a license from it's distributor that sais that it is ok for them to use Linux.
So the company can argue that they have two contradictory statements (one from it's distributor, one from SCO), both without proof, and that it shouldnt be their job to resolve this contradiction, but that SCO should first clear the license issue with their distributor.
In your movie scenario, the theater has no license from Blockbuster that allows public presentation of the movie, thereof they cant claim that there were contradictory claims.
BTW, as SCO has (somewhat) admitted that there is no SysV code in Linux, all their claims hang on some AT&T/IBM contracts and some AIX code, that this Fortune 500 company has never seen. One more reason to argue that they arent qualified to judge SCO's claims and that SCO should settle the dispute with IBM first, or make public all relevant evidence so that everyone can evaluate the merrit of their claims.
Of course this doesnt prevent SCO from sueing whoever they want, but it gives a good reason to put the new case on hold till the IBM case is resolved.
Re:No evidence until IBM case is settled (Score:5, Insightful)
The Novell case is much more interesting here as it deals with wether SCO really have any copyrights to Linux.
sounds more like..... (Score:2, Insightful)
SGI is my guess (Score:3, Insightful)
SGI is also a Linux contributor, and McBride once said that they'll have their day in court with SGI (or words to that effect).
He might say they're deliberately going kamikaze (Score:2, Insightful)
But.
But? But what if the whole thing's for show, and TSG intend to go down in flames? Perhaps in exchange for golden parachutes all around from someone. Pull a name out of my ass at random, say it's Microsoft?
Looked at that way, their actions make more sense. Sick sense, yes, but lots more of it.
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA tactics (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Suing oneself (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the sad commentary was on the way that individuals sabbotage themselves. Let's say I had a fervent belief that copyright was an evil and felt that I had to sacrafice myself as a praxis in the social revolution to repeal the copyright laws themselves...I am likely to sabbotage my case by venting my anger at the law itself.
If, on the otherhand, I was just Joe businessman running a shop and getting an annoyance lawsuit from SCO; I would be more apt to focus on the case and to listen to good legal advice on how to win my case.
A person's beliefs affect the way they act. It affects the way they present their arguments, who they choose to represent them, etc.. This is not prejudice on the part of the court, but the beliefs of an organization can affect the outcome of lawsuits.
Brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
Where people more interested in the tone of voice than the ideas.
Where people more interested in hair styles than Social Security.
Where people who would rather feel as if they were just consuming another product they may judge by the pretty packaging and ad campaign.
Re:Suing oneself (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a classic strategy of fraudsters, like salespersons who cheat the elderly out of their money. Find someone who is weak and milk them until they have nothing left.
They'll follow through on this threat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Suing oneself (Score:4, Insightful)
Something that disturbs me, and I don't see it mentioned here, is that SCO has not proven their case in court. Don't they have to prove their claims before they can sue anybody?
Re:Could be a long-term contract (Score:2, Insightful)
The idiot who was smart enough to realize it only takes one idiot judge to sign a court order that does far more than a million dollars of damage to your business. Ev1 is a business. They are not into playing the lottery with their futures. A law suit, even if EV1 won could well cost far more than the sum they paid. A loss would of course be far worse. So they took
1) pay several million in lawyer fees and other expenses to win a case against SCO
2) possibly loose the case and go out of business
and turned it into
3) pay a fixed price far lower than any other possibility and know you are going to not only be in business next year, but proffitable
It sounds like a good strategy to me. They have minimized their maximum loss. I you don't understand that logic, call me when you start your own business, because I want to be one of your competitors.
Dean G.
P.S. The interesting thought is that EV1 was going to be the end user that SCO sued until they signed the deal. Think about that for a moment. Also, since the deal in NDA'd, we would never know if EV1 go a sweetheart deal on this. They very well may have gotten more than just the useless IP licenses that SCO is publicly peddaling.