More on SCO Code Snippets 339
anoopsinha writes "A story in linuxworld reports that SCO itself has no idea what the history of a particular snippet of code might be - even a high profile snippet like the one SCO highlighted at SCO Forum. Having no idea if its claims have merit has not stopped SCO so far, so we can expect more from SCO along the lines of big claims with no merit."
The Oracle Speaks (fp?) (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr. Nauvek [linuxworld.com] isn't kidding,
SCO's press releases are just echoing back what Perens, or what that Groklaw guys say in
twisted words.
Let's just not talk about SCO anymore. We're just giving them ideas for press releases that pump up their stock price.
Now... (Score:5, Insightful)
No Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Oracle Speaks (fp?) (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that SCOX was a penny stock before this lawsuit... Well, do the math.
SCO has no care about winning their suit. A weakness of the US legal system is they can make their claims based on the virtue that they HAVE sued.
Unless the trial judge is Lewis Kaplan of DECSS fame, I can't see SCO winning.
What threw me (Score:5, Insightful)
- SCO shows code snippets to stockholders and says "here are infringing code snippets"
- People actually look at code snippets, point out they are non-infringing
- SCO says "Well, THAT was not an example of an INFRINGING code snippet. It was just an example of a code snippet. We haven't shown you the REAL infringing code snippets yet, but they're doozies."
- There are no ill effects to SCO whatsoever from the fact they showed non-infringing code snippets to their investors and to the press and presented them as infringing code snippets whatsoever, SCOs investors remain unaware of this, and little to no-one in the "mainstream" (non-geek) press covers this.
WTF????Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
I invision that building being a bunch of yes men and raid attack lawers who have the combigned morals of Stalin, Goering, and Ghengis Kahn all rolled up into one.
Oh, you said greek! Well, what I said still holds true.
Re:No Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I could tell after reading the whole article, they did not actually admit anything. The writer of the article is just coming to that conclusion via other evidence.
Bit full of ourselves aren't we? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a rather daft assumption. The junior programmer doesn't need to know the history of the code. Simply that the code is the same. Then all he needs to do is compare it with BSD and any other publically available kernels to eliminate any that may have had a common ancestry. The rest of the work could be left to someone who's good at researching in books,
And there's no reason that SCO couldn't hire someone with "depth of historical knowledge to know where to look". Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond aren't the only people with this knowledge. We don't know what SCO are doing, or what they're planning. Their public statements may be misleading simply because they don't want to show their hand. The code they did show may have been a gamble that didn't pay off. There may still be many lines of code that were stolen from SCO Unix.
Do we really know? (Score:4, Insightful)
The only way people will trust open source is to trust the open source developers. As more and more people are warming up to the idea that "free software isn't junk" the last thing needed is for consumers and companies to think that it was all done using someone else's code.
Re:Now... (Score:5, Insightful)
History Repeated (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a lawyer' dream retirement project...at least until SCO runs out of cash. Since this is a public company the Feds and State can get involved and end this non-sense er I mean string it out for years with no meaningful outcome.
Those that do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. [umich.edu]
Code Snippets are a Red Herring (Score:4, Insightful)
But the real crux of their argument is that *every* modern OS violates their "Intellectual Property" (bad phrase) rights stemming from SysV Unix.
That includes the BSD's.
That includes Windows.
Every OS that does basically what you could with SysV Unix is in violation, whether there's code sharing or not. It's a very disturbing concept, and the implications are chilling. It is absolutely imperitive that SCO lose this case.
Where have the SCO programmers gone ? (Score:1, Insightful)
Or is their single programmer tied up in trying to fix bugs in their existing products ?
Finally, MIT/Ex-MIT people, were they staff/lecturers, or just people that attended MIT ? What are their qualifications ?
I personally think this is an exercise in pumping the stock, and scaring someone enough that the will take over the company (and hope that they dont notice the cupboard is bare)
Re:Code Snippets are a Red Herring (Score:2, Insightful)
The only problem is the only people who care about the whole SCO crack-smoking-binge... is us bunch of geeks.
I tried explaining to my mom the other day as well as to my sister and I eventually gave up. Not that I couldn't explain it, but it's just too much to explain about GPL and Open Source and IP and company claims and Linus and "open letters" and everything...
Had to just throw my figurative hands in the air and say, "Well, they're just being idiots is all!" and left it at that.
*Includes myself in the bunch of geeks who care about SCO illicit claims... Also only us bunch of geeks who cares about RIAA, or online rights, or copyrights extended to eternity...
Point is...I'm just not sure the general public groks what's going on enough to even care!
Re:WTF? Moderators..? (Score:2, Insightful)
With proprietary software, you don't see the code. If you steal code, you have a better chance of getting away with it AND you can be more competitive.
With open source software everyone gets to see what you've done! That's the rule! There is more motive to create your own code or use other open sourced code under this system than taking it illegally. Doing so is more harmful than good.
Re:Time for the Internet Death Penalty (Score:5, Insightful)
It does not matter how much slashdot, groklaw, memepool, kuro5hin or metafilter or whoever cover the SCO nonsense. Ignoring it, or covering it until it's blue in the face, will not help or hurt SCO's case.
The one and only thing that matters is: Are investment news sites, and the sites read by executives and people who buy stock, covering it?
Since these sites will *do* things like take press releases and reprint them without investigating the veracity of their content, yes, they are, and will no matter what we do. If all SCO-unfriendly (i would call this "is aware of the facts of the situation") news sites dropped their SCO coverage, press-release-friendly/sco-friendly news sources-- the ones executives and stockholders read-- would continue to run their stories. This would mean that the people who are causing SCO's stock to be pumped up would still be getting the constant source of PR (lies?) from SCO, but it would mean that there would be no dissenting voices elsewhere in the media.
Dissenting voices elsewhere in the media, if they *exist*, however, may eventually have the effect, eventually, somehow, of effecting the stock-news sites. Once this begins to happen, and the stock-news sites begin to report on the actual situation rather than SCO's single (imaginary?) side of the story, SCO's stock will be toast.
In the long run all that matters is getting SCO's stock price to drop, becuase all that matters to those fueling SCO's nonsense is getting it to rise...
There is such a thing as bad publicity.
Maybe SCO Knows What They're Doing (Score:5, Insightful)
So while the community is thinking everything is just fine because SCO doesn't have jack, they are sitting on one or two really excellent examples of IP ownership they haven't released yet. This way when the code is released we will all be caught with our jaws gaping open and our feet stuffed into them. They are just down the street from me, I know some of these guys. They are slippery. The best way to kill a fox is not by chasing it.
Now maybe what they do have is small and can be replaced simply. That doesn't matter because on the phsycological front the open source / free software camp just took a hit. Unfortunatly it's too late to do anything about it.
I think a good approch is the "show us the code" approch. Not the "you must be an idiot smoking crack" approch. Hubris is a good thing when hacking code, but not when dealing with a bunch of lawyers. I urge a level headed course of action rather than a kick SCO's butt becuase there is no way we can be wrong action. Use caution - I promise there is an "Ace" up their sleave. Or at least a "Queen of Hearts".
They can have Bruce or Eric (Score:5, Insightful)
And to have all those people claiming it's pump and dump of SCO stock, think of this: Some execs have call options (right to buy at a certain price) that can't be exercised till somewhere in 2004. That means they have to keep the SCO stock price up till they can exercise the options. With a case like this, I wonder if that's possible: sooner or later the 'regular joe' catches on, and the stock will end up in a free-fall, and if printed on paper, making geek toilet paper (But that might make the demand among us geeks so high the price gets back up). Next to that, they sold quite some stock, but so far it's been in 5000 - 10000 chunks, While they own 10 - 20 times that much each. If they really wanted to get rich, they would dump it as fast as they could, and leave the country.
My guess is they started seriously believing they have a case, but now continue in order not to lose their face. I think McBride and his servants have lost a lot of sleep over this case by now, and will have a lot of sleepless nights in he near future.
A Slow Song and Dance (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean isn't it pretty apparent to everyone that these are some last rites? These are just theatrics as a last dying attempt in vengeance against their bane. I mean this makes SCO look really really awful as they writhe in agony, striking out as spitefully as they can at the IBM/Linux partnership.
I don't think anyone can take this whole charade seriously. I hope this abuse of the court system doesn't go unpunished. Has anyone ever considered how quickly things move along and get developed in the techological world? Does anyone see how grossly slow and inadequate the traditional court system is at handling things of this nature? With legal battles, appeals, loopholes, etc. by the time anyone wins a case they're looking at technology that older than dirt.
Re:Baghdad McBride does it again. (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd be Broke (Score:5, Insightful)
They're around $18 right now. In May they were in the $3s.
Feast your eyes on this lovely chart [pcquote.com].
SCO is doing what Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and so many other companies have done. They do absolutely anything, legal or not, ethical or not, to pump that stock. And keep in mind that for the stock to trade higher and higher means that people have been standing in line to buy it. Those asses share some of the blame. It's just a bunch of people trading, overall, lots of the world's time, energy, and money, for a little personal gain.
Fuck them.
Fuck McBride [caldera.com]. His method of improving SCO's business here brings into serious question the supposed successes he ha d at other companies.
Speaking of the snake, does anyone have personal information on him? It would be a real shame if he personally were to receive indications of the world's negative feelings about him...
Re:No Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure how McBride and co. hope to keep their ill-gotten gains after the shareholder lawsuit that's bound to arise from this. Maybe they're shuffling the money into numbered offshore accounts. I suppose it's expecting too much to imagine reprisals from the SEC or criminal fraud charges, given how Enron, Worldcom, et al turned out. <sarcasm>Yep, the potential for false reporting and stock market manipulation has really decreased and a return of investor confidence will happen real soon now.</sarcasm>
Re:No Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I think this whole case is as fucked up as the rest of you, I just expect a bit more objectivity if I'm to take something seriously. But maybe a site called "linuxworld.com" is the wrong place for that (same goes for Slashdot).
Re:Maybe SCO Knows What They're Doing (Score:5, Insightful)
Now this is exactly what we should stay at. They claim "linux" stole their code? Well, when anybody makes a difficult to believe affirmation, the only sensible answer is "I may believe you, but only if I see a proof". And considering they took their position publicly, the proof must also be shown publicly: No NDA stuff or so. The german ruling is perfect here, stating "Show the offending code or shut up until you're in a courtroom". This is the exact sentence they should get served at every attempt to speak about the case.
Re:Bit full of ourselves aren't we? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unconvincing (Score:5, Insightful)
"In this Q&A, CEO McBride states, 'Well, at SCO Forum, there were some folks that came out and basically sniffed out some of the [disputed System V] code we were showing and [concluded] that it emanated from SGI.' That this code "emanated" from SGI was news to SCO."
I don't see how you can get from Darl's quote to the conclusion that the source being SGI was news to him. All he says is that people outside of SCO worked out where the code came from, which is why he's commenting on it publicly. Nothing there implies either way whether he knew about it before.
Once you remove this strange interpretation of his quote there doesn't seem to be anything left to base the article on.
There are plenty of legitimate flaws in SCO's case. This doesn't seem to be one of them.
Re:Why not use linguists? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the problem were text comparison, I'd call for someone from the English department who makes critical editions, as it's the most similar to the human processes working on text, not independent words or natural forces working anything.
But I don't think that's the problem. What they need is a computer science historian (aka a long-bearded Unix geek), and copies of every Unix source released. Given that, it shouldn't be hard to find all the copies of that malloc function, or the fact that the Berkeley Packet Filter was also showing up in BSD releases and originally came from Berkeley. But they don't seem to be bothering to do that kind of deep research.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
This was a rehersal (Score:5, Insightful)
They can either learn a process or learn things about specific pieces of code this way. If they learn about pieces of code, they present code at trial that stood up to public scruitiny in their practice runs before the trial. If they learned a process, then they hire people to do the same sorts of reasoning the public used to debunk their practice runs, and by that means find a better chunk of code to demonstrate at trial.
It would seem rational for them to do a few more rehersals before show time.
It would also seem rational for the open source community to refuse to play this game by not giving them further accurate information about the validity of their public claims before the trial. But since the open source community has no central control, there's no way to make that happen.
Your semi-daily stock ticker (Score:5, Insightful)
Last Trade: 17.75
Trade Time: Sep 12
Change: Up 0.24 (1.33%)
Posting to Slashdot on SCO's balderdash is preaching to the choir. Try chatting up your local investment firm manager. Bring your same verve for debunking SCO's house of cards to a financial investment manager. Got a 401K? An RRSP? Call your broker/advisor/coin tosser and tell them to drop SCO from YOUR portfolio. And explain to them why they should. Yeah, I know, who's going to listen to one complaint? Slashdot has more than a few readers, and I imagine some of them have investments. SCO stepped on your turf. So take the fight back to theirs.
C'mon Now (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I think he's as much of a prick as anyone else and that he and his cohorts deserve, to some degree, a horrible and painful fate, but I will NOT resort to lowering the bar and hitting below the belt. And furthermore, I'd urge you to do the same. The guy has a family. Leave them out of it. Let him suffer his due when this ends and he's in jail.
Re:This was a rehersal (Score:2, Insightful)
It is found to not be infringing, showing they have no case (what's happened so far), or
It is genuine IP infringment and work can immediately be done to remove it from Linux, and their case is weakened.
This would seem to be a win-win situation.
WTF is SCO using for version control? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which makes me wonder... what the fuck is SCO using for version control if they can't look at the history of their own code?
And if SCO does submit changelogs (or is forced to divulge them during the discovery process), is there any way that IBM will be able to determine whether those changelogs were forged or not?
Given the recent history of SCO making demonstrably false statements in the press, I'm beginning to think that they might well do the same when it gest to the courtroom - except with non-demonstrably false statements.
If they do it, it's called perjury. But if they forge a set of CVS or RCS changelogs, how the hell do you prove it?
Re:You'd be Broke (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO is doing what Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and so many other companies have done. They do absolutely anything, legal or not, ethical or not, to pump that stock.
That's an important point there.
And keep in mind that for the stock to trade higher and higher means that people have been standing in line to buy it. Those asses share some of the blame.
Oh, I imagine there are probably a few investors or wannabe investors really banking on SCO's chances of a big payout, but most are not.
SCOX stock is shorted to the hilt. It's shorted so hard, a lot of people are having trouble finding shares to short. That means a lot of investors are fully confident that SCO will go down in flames. The only reason SCOX stock is rising is because of some pretty flagrant stock manipulation. SCOX is a small-cap, tight-float stock that started this affair as a penny stock in danger of delisting. For those unfamiliar with the stock market, the practical upshot of that is that SCOX stock is very easy to manipulate.
Who's manipulating it? My guess is, SCO's the chief manipulator (with other parties serving as accomplices), though I can't be certain. This isn't the first time this company's tried it; if you look back in the days when they were still Caldera, you'll find an old (unresolved?) class-action lawsuit hanging around:
(See legalcasedocs.com. See legalcasedocs.com get slashdotted. Gee, I sure am sorry about that!) [legalcasedocs.com]
If you want to see the current manipulation in action, just grab yourself a copy of LinuxTrade [0catch.com], get yourself a free real-time account, and watch the trading happen in real-time. (The LinuxTrade docs will give you hints as to where to get free real-time accounts; I refuse to have a nameless, innocent, and very generous brokerage slashdotted on my account). You'll see miniscule volume, mystery entities bidding up the ask on the smallest lots possible, and end-of-day tape painting to get the stock to close higher. Lately whoever's yanking the stock around seems to have a fetish for targetting close to exact dollar amounts like $17.00 and $18.00, so I'm betting the yanking duties have recently been consigned to a bot.
Re:Your semi-daily stock ticker (Score:3, Insightful)
As a community of semi-intelligent geeks, lets put some more serious effort into sharing our knowledge of 'reality' in our geek worlds with those with the power to change things.
This goes for the RIAA story too
Re:Bit full of ourselves aren't we? (Score:1, Insightful)
Sun has plenty of people who know plenty about Unix history. Sun has been actively hostile to Linux lately. And, oh yeah, there's that pesky money trail: Sun bought a SCO Source license in February 2003. And Sun also took an equity position inSCO.
If SCO needs Unix history advice, they can get plenty of it from the greybeards at Sun.
Re:SCO's intensions ;) (Score:2, Insightful)
But even when they are paid they'll run out of money anytime and the company is dead. Even a single person like SCO's boss can't be that stupid.
Ok, they GOT paid the UNIX licenses from Sun and MS.
It won't have that big impact on Linux anyway. We'll see how this all ends. I agree, they won't win as it looks currently.
Re:SCO hurting Court Case? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure they do, notably in the case filed by Redhat
The IBM case is a little more focued around what constitute "Derived Code" so maybe less so there.
That being said the 10'th claim [lwn.net]in IBM's response states that SCO is not intitled to any relief since they didn't do anything to mitigate damages. The latter is an affirmative defense, and the fact thay took the time and effort to release press release after press release yet did nothing to mitigate the alledged damages makes it almost impossible for them to win this case
Lastly they have to crawl the first 9 barrieres first.
Re:Microsoft statement on SCO lawsuit (Score:3, Insightful)