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SCO Seeks Licenses Down Under 278
WildCode writes "SCO is now targeting Aussies in its continuing Linux licence saga. According to the story, one Aussie organization has already signed up for the licence. The ACCC has no comment at this time but this certainly puts a twist on things as the ACCC were waiting for the results of the lawsuits in the U.S. before making any judgement. Personally I think its time for the ACCC to say to SCO 'wait for the U.S outcomes before taking action here.'" An anonymous reader points to another story at internetnews.com.
Personally, I think... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Personally, I think... (Score:2, Interesting)
READ for THE FINAL sco OUTCOME (Score:3, Funny)
I think it will happen like the movie Contact. The first "machine" blew to shit and then Hadley phones from space and tells Ellie there is another machine. (Why buy one when you can have two for twice the cost?)
I think Linus will disappear for about 8 months, and then one day he will email us all from space, with a replacement operating system for us to use:
"Linux is gone, it is SCO's, we will now use the Mannix operating system."
Did you know that Hadley, in the movie "Contact" was also Olivander from Har
Re:Personally, I think... (Score:5, Funny)
"Tell 'em to get stuffed"
Re:Personally, I think... (Score:5, Funny)
No worries, mate
The soon-to-be-released MyDundee worm will take care of 'em SCO bastards in a hurry.
MyDoom is not a worm, THIS is a worm!
Re:Personally, I think... (Score:2, Funny)
No its not - its a spoon
Re:Personally, I think... (Score:2)
The soon-to-be-released MyDundee worm will take care of 'em SCO bastards in a hurry.
Will it fill up their hard drives with deep fried pizza and heroin? Oh, right, the other Dundee...
Kieran O'Shaugnessy - Austin Powers character ? (Score:2)
Am I the only one seeing this as a character for the next Austin Powers movie?
PS: RTFA. It's there.
Re:I am (Score:3, Funny)
I.e. You can do just as well by guessing.
How much (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How much (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How much (Score:4, Funny)
damn right. BUY BUY BUY and then SELL SELL SELL for LOW LOW prices. It will spook the market and everyone else will start selling and won't buy again. Sure, you'll lose a lot of money but now is the time to ask yourself: "how much do I love linux?"
Below 6.75 for 20 days, according to this article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Below 6.75 for 20 days, according to this artic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Below 6.75 for 20 days, according to this artic (Score:2)
There appears to have been a lot of manipulation of the stock price by insiders: a big drop in price during the day is followed by incremental increases in the price just before close, so
Re:Below 6.75 for 20 days, according to this artic (Score:2)
That would not seem to be a negative for SCO (Score:2)
Re:How much (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Other cases probably thrown out (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, winning the IBM case (if SCO were to win it) will take a lot of time and money. Since revenue from sales and licenses might not be enough for SCO to survive that period, they need something else. And winning cases mights just be their only option.
At the same time, if a few judges (anywhere in the world) might go with SCO, it might give them some form of platform of precedents to use in other cases (like he IBM one). And they might need something extra, because it isn't really lokking go
That wouldn't make complete sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Take a closer look at SCO's charges. Most of the complaints aren't copyright infringement, but contract violation. SCO isn't just saying "IBM isn't supposed to do that with our code!", they're saying "IBM isn't supposed to do that with their code!"
I personally don't expect either claim to survive a trial, but it's theoretically possible for SCO to lose all of the copyright claims and win some of the contr
Re:How much (Score:3, Insightful)
Reputation is irrelevant because SCO is playing an end-game. Caldera's hopes for a viable company ended with Project Monterey [rice.edu] and the head of that company left for better things [eweek.com]. The original SCO took their one viable product and changed their name to Tarantella [tarantella.com], selling off their unprofitable ventures -- and their old name -- to what is now SCO. The Canopy Group looked over what was left and determined that it was not possible to make a real company out of it
Re:How much (Score:3, Interesting)
Then there was a change in management. I had thought that they would have a hard time doing worse than Ransom Love, whose community relations were...abysmal. But they have pulled off a truly stupendous coup.
Ultimate Goal (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ultimate Goal (Score:4, Funny)
More realistically, I think they may start suing their programmers on Fridays before a weekend. Everyone knows that as soon as coders have seen a few lines of SCO source code, all their subsequent thoughts (and possibly emotions) are the intellectual property of The SCO Group, Inc. I think this interview with Darl McBride sums their tactics up well:
Re:Ultimate Goal (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ultimate Goal (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ultimate Goal (Score:2)
When somebody sells licenses about something he does not own its fraud, when you send wrong signals to the finacial market it is financial fraud. The aussies shall report it to the police.
BTW.: Werent there lawsuits or injunctions against SCO in Australia?
Bring it on! (Score:5, Informative)
If SCO calls you, give them the finger and then report them to the ACCC. The Perth company, CyberKnights, lodged a complaint [smh.com.au] earlier on this month.
If SCO keeps going with trying to get UNIX licenses in Australia they should be prepared to face the ACCC.
Re:Bring it on! (Score:2, Insightful)
But this is direct proof of the problems with our governments adoption of American Policies and Laws. When a US company goes litigious, this country is next in line due to more and more similarities every day.
Aussies - Vote out John Howard. Latham is no angel, but he's way better than Bush's bum buddy Howard.
Re:Bring it on! (Score:2)
You know what the funny thing is, most Americans think American laws and policies are too fucked up to live. Its just really hard to change things.
Give Kieran a call (Score:5, Informative)
And prepared to face us.
Give Kieran (SCO AUS CEO) a call or email and let him know what you think (politely)
His voicemail is answering at the moment - 'I am away from my desk' but he will listen to your message as soon he gets back'
Haven't tried his mobile yet....
Kieran O'Shaughnessy
Regional General Manager ANZ
The SCO Group
Level 11, 56 Berry Street
North Sydney NSW 2060
Australia
Tel +61 2 9440 7577
Fax +61 2 9440 7588
Mob 0419 66 00 16
email kierano at sco.com
web www.sco.com
Re:Bring it on! (Score:3, Informative)
Do you come from the land down under? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do you come from the land down under? (Score:2)
Re:Do you come from the land down under? (Score:2)
I just wish I had the time to compose a full-scale filk on this, though. It's such a rich seam to mine :-)
Re:Do you come from the land down under? (Score:2, Funny)
Something SCO doesn't know about.
SCO seeks what? (Score:4, Funny)
Should not this read......"SCO seeks victims down under?"
It just never ends with SCO (Score:2, Interesting)
Sco still dropping (Score:4, Interesting)
Lets just take a look at their current stock-price? This url [url.raw.no] [nasdaq.com] trully shows who's dropping here. It's for sure that SCO now seem desperate, and for a reason. Their business is dying, and so are their case.
Re:Sco still dropping (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a one year version [yahoo.com]. It currently shows that SCOX rose pretty steadily relative to IBM until last September, and then it oscillated a bunch until January, when it started down. In this view, SCOX still hasn't gone below the relative position it was at last year.
Of course, there's also the short term absolute status [yahoo.com], which currently shows SCOX under $8 and falling. I believe that's already below the critical panic level for Darl. Don't they have to put up some real money now?
Re:Sco still dropping (Score:2)
The recently leaked memo shows that MS has a whole huge budget earmarked for just such an occasion.
Re:Sco still dropping (Score:4, Informative)
Wi (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wi (Score:4, Informative)
Have you been reading the news lately? The ACCC has just taken action against Telstra (again) by compressing what would normally take nine months into three weeks!
Give the man a break, he hasn't even been in the job for a full year yet!
Re:Wi (Score:2, Informative)
Unfortunately, this is not acutally correct. While it is true that each state has a "Fair Trading Act", it is limited to trading by natural persons, all fair trading laws relating to corporations are under the federal Trade Practices Act. So to put it simply, don't expect to see state governments going after SCO any time soon.
Meanwhile, their stock... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=3m&l=off
or google to scox.
Best to view the 3month graph, in a linear scale to get that good vibration...
It's quite obvious why they are doing this (Score:5, Insightful)
Justly or unjustly, rightly or wrongly, they have already paid a heavy price for their underhand techniques, in the form of the mydoom worm. This clearly shows how much anger and resentment the society has against this vulture of an organisation.
Under these circumstances, it is highly unlikely that their legal action will work anywhere in the world. Even if MS pumps more money into SCO to damage Linux, it will not save SCO.
SCO can't kill Linux. What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger.
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Re:It's quite obvious why they are doing this (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's quite obvious why they are doing this (Score:2, Insightful)
Return on Investment (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, obviously Microsoft threw in some funding to this group to help sponsor the lawsuits. And they don't nessecarly have to succeed in order to have effect. Defending oneself from lawsuits is expensive and undesirable. Any moderatly to low executives now have more to worry about in any thoughts of migrating to Linux. This seems like it will help Microsoft in the short run.
It seems like the time bidding might be all they need. If they can prevent massive pop-culture defections from Windows until the migration to 64 bit, they would most likely continue the prevelance of windows for a long time to come.
How effective do you think this tatic will be for them.
Could it be ... (Score:2)
I wonder if, in a kind of "last resort" move, they could buy out SCO and pursue the legal actioins themselves, but then they'd need to really believe these could end in their favor, and I doubt it. Maybe that's why they went with such a trojan horse as SCO ? Less effective as press releases go (imagine the taglines: "MS sues Linux companies", "Linux plundered Windows code ?" etc...) but m
Working for SCO outside US (Score:3, Interesting)
"Start sending out license letters."
"But,.. but I have a meeting with N clients in the next week, we are closing deals on M systems."
"Forget that. Send out license letters."
Why are people still working for SCO?
Re:Working for SCO outside US (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, I would not get my hands dirty with such a job, but many people have landed in it and carry its stigma now so they cannot find another one in the industry even if they want.
Re:Working for SCO outside US (Score:3, Interesting)
Leaving the actual SCO case aside it is a standard practice to not hire people working for companies involved in an ongoing intellectual property litigation.
So anyone trying to jump ship from SCO will have to overcome the stigma of carrying bomb in their pocket.
Even if they desperately want to jump ship they are not lik
Re:Working for SCO outside US (Score:2)
Where N=1 and M=0.
-
No surprises here (Score:5, Funny)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=scox
It's going down under!
Re:No surprises here (Score:2)
Oops.
Re:No surprises here (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact of the matter is, they're getting incredibly little money from licensing, they're having to continually meet payroll of their existing staff AND their lawyers, and the number of lawyers can't be decreasing if they continue to add lawsuits, without having won a judgement on a single suit yet. If they win a suit, which I
Perhaps by buying a license....... (Score:3, Interesting)
We know SCO will go under but there will be possibilities of suing the companies who have been financing SCO to do this.
OTOH, thinking about how much IBM are likely to hammer SCO and thier backers for them I don't think there will be anything left even in the upper layers of the pyramid;-)
one Aussie organization has already signed up (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Unjustified Threats (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unjustified Threats (Score:2)
That's certainly a nice bit of law, but I'm not sure those "groundless threats" provisions will apply here. For them to apply, you really have to show that the organisation concerned was reasonably knowledgeable that it had no grounds to make the claims, and it made the claims in a clearly threatening way. It doesn't seem as though SCO could meet that test, despite the fact they might use stronly worded letters, and eventually lose the dispute in the US.
What should occur is that if anyone does pay for lice
Re:Unjustified Threats (Score:2)
Luckily, we have s202 of the Copyright Act which says that it's illegal in Australia to make groundless threats of legal proceedings.
If your legal system is based on English common law, which seems to almost certainly be the case given Australia's history, then such threats would be illegal anyway without the copyright act.
Four words for SCO... (Score:3, Funny)
How's "get fucked" sound?
Yeah yeah contractions blah blah
What sales??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Last week, he was fairly certain at least one sale had been completed, but would not comment on how many more were in the pipeline. "The first sale may well have gone through, but I'm not going to comment on each and every sale," Mr O'Shaugnessy said.
Fairly certain? may well have gone through?
You'd think the SCO Australia-New Zealand general manager would have more of an idea if they'd made a sale.
With all the money Microsoft has raised for them they should be able to afford a decent accounts department. After all, its the only income they're going to see in this country for a while.
$AUD999... doesn't even buy their legal team breakfast.
Of course (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course (Score:2, Insightful)
When you are an insignificant foreign country, doing business with the US govt is like having dinner with Mike Tyson: you can expect to be raped.
SCO meets Crocodile Dundee (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SCO meets Crocodile Dundee (Score:2)
Re:SCO meets Crocodile Dundee (Score:2)
Or Steve Irwin.
Both are bloody dangerous, mate.
*sings* Put another SCO on the barbie!
Cheers
Stor
SCO's form of 2-up !. (Score:3, Informative)
SCO are simply forum shopping. When they get a bite then Darl cracks a fat saying how some Aussie wuss fell for it.
You gotta call SCO's bluff mates. They have never asked anyone to remove any SCO code from the Linux source tree because it just isn't there.
ps: My first car was a Holden (Just Hold'in Together) Premier V8 so please forgive me !.
Re:SCO's form of 2-up !. (Score:2)
As far as I know Slashdot does not have an official language but, generally speaking, posts are made in English.
Can babelfish translate whatever this is to American?
if they come knocking.. (Score:2)
Why wait for the US? Germany didn't (Score:5, Interesting)
Germany told SCO to shut up or bring in some evidence [slashdot.org]. The aussies should do the same.
It's still a mystery to me how the US legal systems works (or doesn't work)
Re:Why wait for the US? Germany didn't (Score:3, Informative)
Wait for US? Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
(asked by an american)
Re:Wait for US? Why? (Score:2)
Of course, SCO should be waiting until that case is resolved of their own accord before they start on their licensing scam, but I'm sure they know that.
I think it would be more a matter of the ACCC telling SCO to bugger off until they have som
Re:Wait for US? Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wait for US? Why? (Score:2)
I'm confused on this issue... but ownership of the IP in question is being disputed by American companies, it would make sense for the ACCC to wait for the courts to establish ownership before making the valued judgement of whether they have any evidence to support their request for license fees for their property. Also... why waste your own nations money on something that is little more then a Jerry Spri
Re:Wait for US? Why? (Score:2, Funny)
Why is this under "your rights online"? (Score:5, Insightful)
There should really be a section for "Corporate crime" or something along these lines. Posting this as a YRO makes it appear like the law is on SCO's side.
P.S. Another SCO Linux licensee? We should really start referring to any companies that fall for this scam as SCOXsuckers.
They haven't proved ownership (Score:3, Informative)
This is the whole point. It hasn't been proven that they own any IP in Linux. Novell have stated that SCO didn't even aquire ownership of what they claim to own. A respectable company would prove such things before pursuing users. Respectable, SCO is not.
Why wait? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think so. Even if the outcome is favorable to SCO in the US (I doubt it, but lets suppouse it just for the sake of the argument). The US court ruling doesn't apply to other independent countries.
Doh (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry Darl, when I told you where you could stick the license, I meant that figuratively.
Wow... (Score:2)
This is a load of bull (Score:2)
Darl encounters Mick Dundee in a outback alley (Score:2)
"Tha's nah a loy-since," he says. He whips out a copy of the GPL. "Tha's a loy-since!"
Darl flees in terror.
What tribe was that guy?
SCOX was down to 7.7 yesterday (Score:2)
Re:License this! (Score:2)
Beside which, after the Linux suit is over, McBride and co. will either be penniless, or behind bars; so, either way, it will be a long time before they get anywhere near another courtroom.
Re:License this! (Score:2)
Re:License this! (Score:2)
You know, there are more than 3 operating systems and of them, gasp, were written from scatch.
The future of OpenSource is not "at stake".
Mplayer is not entirely opensource [sic]
What's to stop other litigous bastards grabbing some opensource code and sticking it into a version of their software then claiming that they wrote all the code?
Nothing, whats to stop me scooping up a dog turd, plonking it on your dorstep and saying 'I pooped this?'
calm down son, it's not worth the stress.
Re:Who would have the day woud come (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps DarlCo is infringing Satans' IP? Probably not a smart move for someone who asserts devout faith. But Darl never was the sharpest crayon in the box...
SCO attempting to sue FreeBSD users (Score:2)
They are attacking Satan Himself. Anyway, why are they under the impression the "people down under" would use linux? I do believe they are running pirated version of SCO Unix. Of course, not having worked for SCO, I do not have first-hand information on what software people of the nether-world would use.
And nwo the little demon gets SCO inflicted on him as well? Man, even he doesn't deserve that.
Re:Is Bush a board member of SCO? (Score:2)
I'm sure someone else would be happy to mod you down.
Re:What problem? (Score:2, Funny)
It was on the 2000 olympic closing ceremony (Score:2)
Also, I am pretty sure that it was on the soundtrack to "Coming to America" with Eddie Murphy, who knows why, maybe Zamunda is in t
Re:SCO could probably make some real... (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't mean to say that the papers have a clue about computers they would have a go at them just because it was an American company trying to sue UK one's
Re:Publicity Stunt By Linux Geeks (Score:2)