Forbes Examines SCO Subpoenas

z4ce writes "It seems that Daniel Lyons of Forbes just wrote yet another article on the IBM vs. SCO law suit. Now, Daniel seems to seeing SCO for the liars they are. One of the choice quotes include, "What's the point of hassling people who make chips and set-top boxes? Don't ask SCO's top execs. They don't know anything about this stuff, remember?""

Confusion ...

[bigjocker]

Stallman says the Boston-based Free Software Foundation, which he founded in 1985, has nothing to do with SCO's lawsuit. "SCO is suing IBM for violating a contract. We don't even know what the contract said. In terms of the resolution of that lawsuit, the Free Software Foundation is entirely uninvolved," he says.

Stallman's GNU/Linux operating system is not the target of SCO's suit. Linux, the program SCO is targeting, is not an operating system, but only the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system, which could run using a different kernel.

This sums it up. SCO is suing IBM for breach of contract, nothing more, nothing less. What dows Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman et al have to do with this contract? did they sign it?

Even that Forbes reporter could (kind of) tell the difference between GNU/Linux the OS and Linux the kernel ... how come Caldera, a former distributor, can't?

Re:blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm tired of hearing from whiners. If you don't want to hear about SCO, turn off Caldera (there old name). Look here [slashdot.org] under Topic. Check Caldera and click submit. Then we can both be happy, until the next whiner.

Re:Confusion ...

[Cheeko]

Well Linus could make sense in that context. As mentioned in the article, as the one overseeing much of the direction Linux takes, he is in a unique position to provide information with regard to IBM's Linux submissions. This could directly impact the lawsuit claiming IBM breached its contract. The rest though, seem like the result of an angry child flailing about for being put in its place.

No whining

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

I've seen a few posts already about "stop beating the dead horse" (to quote one post).

If you'll kindly notice, everything SCO has been posted under the "Caldera" icon. So here's how to turn that off, for those that don't want to see any SCO stories anymore.

1. Go to http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edithome [slashdot.org]
2. Where it says "Exclude stories from the homepage", middle column ("Topics"), and check Caldera
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page (or press ctrl+end, or just end) and click the Save button

You're done! Now shut the hell up.

Re:preaching to the choir

[Camel Pilot]

You can have it your way. Just go to your preferences and select to exclude Caldera stories.

Re:Argh!

[bahamat]

How about we just hear about it once a day until either its settled

I must have missed it, and it's not showing up in the search either. Could you please post a link to today's previous SCO story? No? How about the two from yesterday then? The two from the previous day? Any stories from the 3 days before that? In fact, there have only been 7 stories in the past 14 days. That would be (averaged) one every two days. Are you proposing more SCO stories?

Have you never looked at your preferences [slashdot.org] Mr. FortKnox [slashdot.org]? Do you see that big section entitled "Exclude Stories from the Homepage"? Click Caldera and you'll never have to bother with it again. That's what that feature is for: so you don't have to hear about subjects you don't want and we don't have to hear you complain.

Re:Exact wording?

[bahamat]

Here [darksideofdenton.com] are [state.nm.us] some [texas.net] links [itsforthekids.com] to images of subpoena's found in a Google Image Search [google.com]. As you can see, there isn't much to it other than "be in court". Unless SCO tells us we won't know until the date of the summons why they've been served.

Removed article retrieved from cache.

[Anonymous Coward]

The SCO Group Closes $50 Million Equity Financing
Thursday October 16, 5:16 pm ET

$50 Million Private Investment Transaction Led by BayStar Capital Provides SCO With Funding for Future Software Development, SCOx Web Services Partnerships And Acquisitions, Future Licensing Opportunities and the Protection of the Company's Intellectual Property Assets

LINDON, Utah, Oct. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO(R) Group (SCO) (Nasdaq: SCOX - News), the owner of the UNIX operating system, today announced it has received a $50 million private investment led by BayStar Capital, an investment fund that is a leader in providing negotiated private equity placements in publicly traded companies. The investment in SCO was structured as a private placement of non-voting Series A Convertible Preferred Shares, convertible into common equity at a fixed conversion price of $16.93 per share, which was the average closing bid price for the Company's common stock for the five previous trading days prior to the date of closing. Upon conversion, the investors will own an aggregate of approximately 2,953,000 shares of SCO common stock representing 17.5% of the company's outstanding shares.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990421/SCOLO GO )
The net proceeds from the private placement, combined with the Company's cash balance reported for its third quarter ended July 31, 2003, will provide the Company with a cash position of approximately $61.0 million. The increase in cash will significantly enhance the overall financial strength of SCO while providing substantial additional funding for business objectives including future UNIX and SCOx Web Services software development, new strategic partnerships, and protection of the Company's UNIX intellectual property and related programs.

"The momentum in the marketplace continues to shift in SCO's direction," said Darl McBride, president and CEO, The SCO Group. "Over recent months, we have made significant strides forward in our on-going effort to protect and enforce the Company's intellectual property rights through SCOsource. During the same period, we have been steadily strengthening our core operating business, and in the coming weeks, we look forward to providing the industry and Wall Street with additional details on our plans and initiatives. Now, with a $50 million investment from BayStar, we believe we have secured the capital necessary to fund all aspects of the long term growth of this Company."

"BayStar Capital looks to invest in growth-oriented firms with strong management, substantial market opportunity and solid, comprehensive business plans, and we believe that all of those fundamentals are in place for SCO to succeed," said Lawrence Goldfarb, General Partner, BayStar Capital. "SCO owns the most predominant UNIX software assets in the I.T. industry, has a 20 year history of providing trusted software solutions to end users around the globe, and an aggressive and seasoned management team focused on generating profitable growth."

SCO will hold a teleconference to address this investment on Friday, October 17 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time. Participants should dial in 10 minutes prior to the start of the call and dial toll-free 1-800-811-8824 and use the confirmation code 690025. International callers should use the toll number [phone].

The securities sold in this private placement have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933 and may not be offered or sold in the United State in the absence of an effective registration statement or exemption from registration requirements. The Company has agreed to file a resale registration statement on Form S-3 within 30 days after the closing of the transaction for the purposes of registering the shares of common stock underlying the shares of Series A preferred stock acquired by BayStar.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward looking statements related to our business plans and objectives and spec

Re:SCO

[MuParadigm]

Nope, they're going after Andrew Morton, assigned maintainer of the 2.6 kernel and former(?) Digeo employee.

He's with OSDL now. I'm actually not sure about the "former" part of that statement, as he may be on sabbatical from Digeo.

Notice how they're not going after Alan Cox or Red Hat in the subpoenas? Looks like Red Hat's suit has given them some protection from SCO predation.

Great quote...

[herrvinny]

Don't ask SCO's top execs. They don't know anything about this stuff, remember?

Classic, definitely classic. The mass media is finally catching one. SCO is really going to be backed into a corner now.

Although, I question if that's a good thing. The Chinese general Sun Tzu once said that you should always leave your enemy a way out, so he does not become desperate and do some lasting damage. Like a animal, it must be shown that it has been defeated fairly, and let go to nurse it's wounds.

Slightly OT, I know, but would anyone be interested in building an open-source website mocking SCO? I already regged two good domain names, registrations lasting for two years (Which should coincide with the end of this case). What stuff should I put on it?

objective reporting at its finest

[akahige]

One of the other stories linked in the sidebar -- also by Daniel Lyons -- contains this pithy quote about the community and its reaction to the initial suit:

Linux geeks howled a bit, but then wrote off SCO as a bunch of sleazebags and went back to playing live-action roleplaying (LARP) games in their mothers' basements, or whatever it is they do when they're not writing device drivers and complaining about clueless end users.

It's nice to see that a magazine as well-regarded as Forbes takes such pride in objective reporting.

-----http://www.forbes.com/2003/08/04/cz_dl_0804 linux.html [forbes.com]

Is this about right? --A taste of reality--.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this about right? --A taste of reality--.

At the bottom is a list of 345 programs, scripts, libraries, and software suites of an average Linux install (minus KDE-sorry). The inux kernel is one suites in what is primary coined linux. Linux is 'just' layer of software between the user and her/his computer. Also many software suites can be added to or subtracted from the kernel giving speed and functionality to drivers, applications and features.

Most are just as compatible with little to no modification with the Bsd kernels This represents hundreds of thousands of man hours, from a great many men and women from around the world and america is the biggest contributor right now. Most are licenced under the GPL licence which means the orignal authors gave you the right to learn from, to modify alter or change and yes even make money off of their work; if you can. The only condition, release your modifications under the same terms you recieved the code. Many of the authors claim this is a better way to write programs and this just represents the beginning of open source development.

Microsoft hates this simply because their not (and can't be) the main contributor and like any competitor they can't control it. They hate this because the author's desire was for you to use the code at no cost to yourself. They hate this because it dispells much of the 'magic' which the take so much credit for and gain an extraordinary income from.
Many of these programs are used by enterprise every day and the number is growing at an exponent. The microsoft myth of linux is a marketing campaign of misinformation designed to coerce an income from you. If you use a computer or any technological device chances are you've depended on some of these suits at one point or another. Proprietary and closed source software can and does exist within the linux environment including for pay desktops and standalone executable movies (more on that later).
If linux or another supplants Microsofts' operating system, microsoft the software company will go on, but it's monopoly hold on the software industry will come to an end; and with it inappropriate acquistions, the bullying customers and developers alike, and a very long list of wrongs in what this problem child has done within the tech industry as a whole.

Sco does sell a majority of these suits and continues to do so. Sco has and does derived an income from many of these suites. Their challenge to GPL'ed software is a slap in the face to every contributor and sadly a last resort to substantiate claims of legitimacy over these software package (some of which they helped develop and create).

Manpages, Glibc, Binutils, GCC, Coreutils, Zlib, Findutils, Gawk, Ncurses, Vim, Bison, Less, Groff, Sed, Flexa, Gettext, Nettools, InetutilsPerl, TexinfoAutoconf, Automake, Bash, File, Libtool, Bzip, Diffutils, Ed, Kbd, Efsprogs, Grep, Grub, Gzip, Manm, Make, Modutils, Patch, Procinfo, Procps, Psmisc, Shadow, Sysklogd, Sysvinit, Tar, Utillinux, LinuxPAM, Shadow, iptables, GnuPG, Tripwire, Vim, Emacs, nano, JOE, ASH, Tcsh, ZSH, OpenSSLc, pcre, popt, slang, FAM, libxml, libxml, libxslt, readline, GMP, GDBM, GLib, GLib, expat, libesmtp, aspell, ispellepa, Guile, slibd, GWrap, LZO, lcms, libjpegb, libpng, libtiff, libungifb, libmng, Imlib, AAlibrc, SVGAlib, DirectFB, Imlib, bc, repgtk, Compface, GPM, Fcron, hdparm, whichandalternatives, UnZip, Zip, PCIUtilities, pkgconfig, cpio, MC, Python, Perlmodules, librep, JSDK, Ruby, GCC, Tcl, Tk, GCC, NASM, PPP, WvDial, DHCPpl, dhcpcdpl, RPPPPoE, cURL, WvStreams, GNet, libsoup, Linkspre, Lynx, wm, NcFTP,OpenSSHpclient, rsyncclient, CVS, Wget, tcpwrappers, portmapbeta, Inetutils, NCPFS, NTP, Traceroutea, Nmap, Whois, BINDUtilities, Nail, Procmail, Fetchmail, Mutti, Pine, slrn, daemontools, ucspitcp, Postfix, qmail, Sendmail, Exim, Qpopper, Courier, BIND, RunningaCVSserver, DHCPpl, Leafnode, OpenSSHprsync, OpenLDAP, Samba, xinetd, BerkeleyDB, BerkeleyDB, MySQLa, PostgreSQL, Apache, PHP, ProFTPDp, XFree, XFreeComponents, FreeType, Fontconfig

"The GNU stuff"

[crucini]

The problem is in the label GNU. It makes people assume that Stallman either wrote or played a major role in creating the software. However today's GCC is really Cygnus's EGCS - the original GCC development could not keep up. EGCS embraced a more open, Linux-like development model and thereby outpaced GCC, eventually replacing it. So the name GCC is now a bit of a misnomer - GNU didn't make it, but rather hindered it.

Read this statement by Ulrich Drepper, glibc maintainer [redhat.com]. Among other things, he says:

I find this completely unacceptable and can assure everybody that I consider none of the code I contributed to glibc (which is quite a lot) to be as part of the GNU project and so a major part of what Stallman claims credit for is simply going away.

So the bottom line is that GNU, like Microsoft, takes credit for a lot of people's work, sometimes with their complete approval, sometimes against their will. In reality, most of the energy in free software came from Linux and people's desire to get Unixy things working on Linux.

Oh, and log in so more people see your posts.