Linus Speaks Out, Calls SCO 'Cornered Rat'
Posted by
michael
on Tue Jan 27, 2004 03:10 PM
from the tell-us-what-you-really-think dept.
from the tell-us-what-you-really-think dept.
dexterpexter writes "In an interview with Business Week, Linux founder and guardian Linus Torvalds had, in his usual brand of blunt humor, the following to say about SCO: 'They're a cornered rat, and quite frankly, I think they have rabies to boot. I'd rather not get too close to them,' and 'There are literally several levels of SCO being wrong. And even if we were to live in that alternate universe where SCO would be right, they'd still be wrong.'" In the same issue, there's also an interview with Darl McBride where he admits that the company was failing and the Linux-related lawsuits were a last-ditch effort to prevent bankruptcy.
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Linus Speaks Out, Calls SCO 'Cornered Rat'
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The question is... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The question is... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.northdude.com/)
Re:The question is... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://the49thparallel.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 03, @09:47PM)
ttyl
farrell
Re:The question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday November 08 2004, @03:43PM)
To maintain the maximum amount of portability, don't say /bin/bash. Say /bin/sh instead.
Also, don't assume true is located at /bin/true. On some systems in may be located in /usr/bin/true, or in some cases, somewhere else entirely. You'll probably be better off using ':'
Now we have:
#!/bin/shwhile
do
wget -r -l10 http://www.sco.com -O
done
exit 0; # really unnecessary
Re:The question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://scottgant.blogspot.com/)
Where's he pulling this from? Who in the Linux community said it was tainted? Any links to these statements?
Or is he just pulling this out of his ass?
Re:The question is... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://austinfire.ca/)
Darl is the goatse guy?
Sorry goatse guy, just kidding.
not quite yet (Score:5, Funny)
No, but he sure is going to look like him after Novel, IBM and the others gang bang him with litigation.
Re:SCO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SCO (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://frymaster.ca/ | Last Journal: Monday September 15 2003, @12:58AM)
more interesting is what will happen to the companies that paid the licensing fees. if they decide they've been ripped off (well, that's only a matter of time) they're going to have a bejesus of a time recouping their costs. there will definitely be civil action. that's a given. but will there be criminal action to follow suit?
you can't sell the brooklyn bridge to tourists, after all. they put you in jail for that.
Tax write off (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, right now lawyers are running the show over at SCO. You really think they're gonna let the licensees get paid before they do? Once that company folds, the lawyers get paid first, probably creditors next and then anyone who threatens to sue last.
How many licenses? (Score:5, Funny)
Q: Have you had direct talks with customers yet?
A: Very carefully over the last quarter, instead of sending out mass invoices, we stepped very carefully and really had a lot of direct one-on-one meetings with 15 or so companies. In the process of doing that, we learned a lot. We listened. We talked. And we went back and forth. About 20% of those companies signed licenses with us.
15 companies x 20% = 3
So, ABOUT 3 companies have signed the licenses. I'm inspired. I'm going to throw money at SCO and drive up their stock even further.
SCOX (Score:4, Funny)
(http://achurch.org/index-e.html)
I'm going to throw money at SCO and drive up their stock even further.
Please let me know when you do, so I can short it afterwards.
Shameless Karma Grab (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.etoyoc.com/yoda | Last Journal: Tuesday June 10 2003, @10:53AM)
I just can't imagine what it must be like to be constantly having to explain the same damn thing over and over again.
Hang on, my first job here was helpdesk. Nevermind.
Re:Shameless Karma Grab (Score:5, Funny)
(http://goldspider.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 18 2005, @10:54AM)
Not to mention constantly having to read the same damn thing over and over again.
But then, this is Slashdot!
I'm glad he was honest at least (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.madprof.org/)
Does he *really* talk like that? (Score:5, Funny)
Remember, cubicals are for closers:
"We're going to go out and shine this company up."
Quick Martha, order me a set of those fancy word talking tapes:
significant asset base...Unix intellectual property...wasn't being optimized.
As if switches came in decimal or octal:
it wasn't like a binary switch
Complete mastery for metaphors:
that's like beachfront property...that's still on the beach. An elephant on a table...
Looks like those mail order degrees are good for something after all.
Re:I'm glad he was honest at least (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday November 15, @08:57AM)
A: Very carefully over the last quarter, instead of sending out mass invoices, we stepped very carefully and really had a lot of direct one-on-one meetings with 15 or so companies. In the process of doing that, we learned a lot. We listened. We talked. And we went back and forth. About 20% of those companies signed licenses with us.
That means 3 companies signed licenses. MS, and who else? That's not a stellar record.
And now, something from the article I didn't know before:
Q: Do you think that any copyright or patent-protected Unix code has actually found its way into Linux?
A: Unlikely. There are now a number of people who have access to both Unix sources and Linux code, and literally written automated tools to find similarities. They found something like 30 lines from [Silicon Graphics, SGI ] that were dubious and that had been removed already.
I hadn't known that there were people with access to Unix source that were working on this. I guess now we know that there isn't unix code in Linux, contributed by IBM or otherwise. We don't have to wait for SCO to 'produce' (read: falsify) evidence. As far as I'm concerned, case closed.
Re:I'm glad he was honest at least (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.titaniummantis.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday April 10 2004, @07:17AM)
He said 'about'. MS signed one and Sun signed another. Apparently, 2/15ths is about 20%.
Seems like par for the course for Darl.
Raymond is doing it (Score:5, Informative)
"...last ditch effort..." (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday October 02 2003, @03:46PM)
Surprised by Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
In the end, I think we'll all look back on this as the time where Linux went from sort of a fringe software in the minds of a lot of people to a mainstream player, where corporations learned they shouldn't mess with the OSS community and when the idea of open-source really started to make people ask "Why *am* I paying for this software?"
After all, that which doesn't kill us, etc. etc.
Re:Surprised by Linus (Score:5, Informative)
(http://nermal.org/)
You read his response here [groklaw.net]
Re:Surprised by Linus (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://juddy.org/)
This is a seed that has been germinating in the computing underbelly since Linus posted to comp.minix.announce.
The world's largest, most influential software manufacturers are duking it out over one of the next major milestones in computing.
It's a noble thing to ignore spit, sticks, and stones,, but nobler still to stand your ground and speak the truth when the time is right.
Ask *them* why they are paying for software. They just don't know that it's out there for free. It grows on the only tree they are aware of - CompUSA, BestBuy, etc.
Mention "no more" in connection to these items:
Ad ware
Spy ware
$450 word processors
Viruses (mostly)
and most importantly, you can look under the hood to see what and who is doing what with the computer in *YOUR* living room.
The times - they are a changin'..
Re:Surprised by Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://127.0.0.1/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 04, @07:40AM)
But is the recognition good or bad? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with this is sometimes a few bad apples make the OSS community look like a bunch of crazy lunatics. Take the nice worm that is going around now... CNN already has an article [cnn.com] which pretty much blames the OSS community for the worm. In fact, a quote like this: "Virus experts suggested MyDoom's author was a fan of the Linux open source community..." can be damaging to getting Linux and OSS recognized in a good light.
It is too bad that this has to happen because PHBs do not read message boards or surf
Re:But is the recognition good or bad? (Score:5, Funny)
CNN already has an article which pretty much blames the OSS community for the worm
Hmm.. Where is the source for this open source worm.
Re:But is the recognition good or bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.geocities.com/joshbooth2000)
Face it: every group of people has people in them that will do something stupid. They are called extremists and they are the real threat, not any one group. RMS himself is extreme enough to be a threat to his own philosophy, but thankfully not extreme enough to write a stupid virus like that luser.
Re:Surprised by Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
The corporate community fights legal battles, appeals to the law for redress.
The OSS community fights PR battles, and appeals to the world, and indirectly, the customer base for redress.
Think about the OSS projects that have had code ripped off - they let the company know that there may be misuse of Open Source code. If they get an unfavorable response, the make an announcement, they add the company to their "blacklist", and suddenly a very large group of consumers has been activated against them.
The whole OSS movement operates within the Social Conscience. It's the fact that there exists a social conscience in this world that it works in the first place. It's the companies without a social conscience that cause problems. It's the companies with a social conscience that benefit from the OSS model.
On a side note, I'm just amazed by IBM's social conscience. It's plain how few companies there are that recognize opportunities to invest in community for the benefit of the company and the community.
Differences in dealing with the OSS world (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 03 2004, @04:03AM)
IBM doesn't necessarily (well, as a company) have a social conscience. IBM, however, is smart enough to realize that dealing with the OSS community can be phenomenally profitable -- that acting as if it *does* have one is marvelously beneficial. There are, very many differences in dealing with OSS versus traditional software. Here are some of my guesses as to what to do differently:
* A feeling of good will matters. Goodwill only matters normally as far as wining and dining a negotiator to try and get him to sell out his company a little. The OSS community is *extremely* sensitive to companies, treating them like people, whom are either friendly or unfriendly to OSS. A cohesive positive-sounding OSS company policy does a tremendous amount to keep a company in the good graces of the OSS folks. Press releases about how said company uses OSS, and thinks it's a good idea. Periodically releasing some code as OSS is a nice icing. (Take OpenAFS -- IBM only benefits from having that around, and it generates lots of good will.)
* Legal issues need to be minimized. Dealing with a company, you have lawyers who can hammer things out. The OSS community likes things pretty simple and clear.
* The OSS community doesn't demand masses of money. It's appreciated, like IBM's ongoing investment in open source development (which was probably done for strategic reasons, improving software that they needed worked on, as much as PR value), but a positive attitude toward OSS can count more than donating masses of money toward OSS.
* You don't need to worry about getting screwed over legally, in general. OSS folks are not generally out to shaft people over licenses. Legally, things are simple and nice.
* The OSS community can jump to conclusions quickly, and needs to be spoken to publically when misconceptions start going around. You have a lot of people with individual opinions. If a major Linux Ethernet player, like Donald Becker, writes a letter to, LKML saying that some chipset made by a company is lousy, said company needs an official, public response quickly. If there's a Slashdot story out about how your company is discontinuing production of Mindstorms (and the story is wrong), you should probably have a press release out within the day.
* The OSS community values specs. Take a page from Matrox, who decided what they could and couldn't release (couldn't release source to some on-card microcode, which had to be distributed in binary, but *could* release specs to much of the rest of the card.) Matrox's older G200-G450 series are still among the best supported of video cards under Linux and X.
* Maintain an official presence on relevant public forums, since so much OSS-related stuff takes place in the open. You might just have a mail filter that drops any email on major mailing lists containing your company name or product names into your PR department's inbox.
* Little of the OSS community accepts legal liability. This should be noted -- however, problems like illegal code copying do not seem to be prevalant, simply because of the high visibility of doing so. There are times when you may want indemnification of code you use -- the OSS community doesn't do that.
* Giving gifts can be inexpensive and valuable. In healthy Linux tradition, if someone runs out and implements a driver for your chipset, send 'em something nice in the mail. In rich Linux tradition, a case of beer seems to work well. It also costs you about a ten thousandth of what it would to implement the thing commercially, and ensures future good will. For driver writers, it's frequently a really, really good idea to just send along a few other products that you make (ones without drivers). This encourages people who have already demonstrated willingness to produce, wi
What about the open source community? (Score:5, Insightful)
While it may be humorous to some of the immature individuals on this site, a worm to DDoS SCO is a terrible blunder. It just strengthens SCO's arguments that the open source community is made up of troublemakers that need to be stopped.
What I think is great (Score:5, Insightful)
The linux community, meanwhile, has to be absolutely perfect and saintlike and have not a single user do anything that could be interpreted as unethical, or they get blasted as scary anarchists.
This is even more funny when you consider SCO is a singular organization which can enforce ethical standards, whereas "the linux community" is an open ended, uncontrollable group of people that basically means everyone who downloads a certain program.
We need a media that knows how to do more than reprint press releases.
it's not the open source community.... (Score:4)
(http://www.byzantinecommunications.com/adamhoward | Last Journal: Wednesday May 25 2005, @02:26PM)
I find it hard to believe that the "open source community" could be responsible for this DDOS against SCO.
My guess is that the SCO attack is a red herring -- what better way for the spammers to divert your attention from the fact that this virus enables remote access of infected computers than to get people all in a huff about the supposed "baddies" in the open source community.
Re:What about the open source community? (Score:4, Insightful)
The world is quite used to their Windows machines getting infected. This time is exactly the same.
Who's SCO, anyway? Nobody anybody is interested in.
Don't worry about it; it's a WINDOWS virus, not a Linux virus, THAT'S the thing to point out.
Re:What about the open source community? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.comprank.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 05, @10:59AM)
The worm's real goal is to install invisible keystroke monitors in an attempt to gather passwords and bank account numbers of infected users. With all the noise coming from those infected PC's going to SCO, a few packets going elsewhere slip through very easily if you're not looking for it.
It's classic prestidigitation. Make a big show with one hand while the other does the dirty work.
Why part of the open source community? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.chriscanfield.net/)
I've got some crazy ideas that would make this worm even slower / more bloated / more error-prone, and would love to try and split the community with a fork. It would be so much better if it was recoded in obfuscated Perl on an XML base with full x86, Sparc, NeXT, and Amiga source compatibility. Besides, the current maintainer is a power hungry jerk. When I find out who he is and where his sources are hosted, his project will be obsolete.
Where did you hear that this worm is part of the open source community again?
When all is said and done (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday May 06 2005, @02:21PM)
Other people have said it and I agree with it... those attempted extortion, excuse me, licensing letters they sent out are should be pursued as federal mail fraud, and the SEC should take a long hard look at Mr. McBride and his lawyers, and how they're playing their own company's stock.
Re:When all is said and done (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.etoyoc.com/yoda | Last Journal: Tuesday June 10 2003, @10:53AM)
Granted, if I get busted with a loose joint and I have another in my pocket I'd probably be busted with intent to sell. But lawyers don't seem to be comfortable making those quantum assumptions about fellow lawyers.
I think Linus... (Score:5, Funny)
Editor Spin (Score:3, Insightful)
Way to make it sound very sordid. The company was falling towards bankruptcy, yes. It was a last ditch effort, yes. But.....oh.....