Leaked Memo Says Microsoft Raised $86 million for SCO

badzilla and numerous others wrote in with this: "Eric S. Raymond's Open Source site has a new Halloween memo. The Halloween X memo, which ESR says he received by email from an anonymous whistleblower inside SCO, appears to confirm Microsoft's alleged funding of SCO's anti-Linux initiative. And the actual dollar amounts are much larger than previously rumored!" The consultant is discussing his fee for bringing in this business, in the first few lines of the email.

Wow

[vrioux]

Another good reason not to buy Microsoft products... They give your money to try and prevent you from using anything else than Windows.

How can they get away with this?

[bc90021]

Assuming this is an accurate and actual letter, how is it that a company can continue to do business in this manner? This company is not in the softwrae business anymore - it's in the lawsuit business. After all the happenings with Enron and WorldCom, how is it that this company, which has no real business plan (that's evident even outside the letter) attract customers or money?

We should attach a motor to Adam Smith's grave. I'm guessing we're at about 100K RPM and climbing.

Paging the DoJ...

[Zocalo]

If this turns out to be genuine (and I'm sure ESR would have gone to great lengths to validate the document before going public), I can't think of better grounds for another anti-trust case. It's already on the Register [theregister.co.uk] too, and Groklaw can't be far behind. Let's draw attention to this smoking gun, shall we?

Welcome to the real world folks.

[GMontag]

Although this does smack of "unfair" business practices it is a look at how *some* business alliances are formed.

Now, if you are going to condemn it in this case you also need to condemn it when one of "the big guys" comes to the rescue of something that *you* like.

Also, if you assume that IBM, etc. had no idea that this was going on then that would be a bad assumption. They might not of known the details, but they *probably* knew something was up.

Does this really matter?

[dartmouth05]

While this might have an effect in the court of public opinion, and I certainly think that it should (big bad Microsoft, trying to kill off its competitors using SCO as a weapon), I don't see its bearing in the legal arena. Regardless of whether or not Microsoft is bankrolling this lawsuit to stiffle competition from Linux, SCO either owns or doesn't own the code that they are trying to claim as theirs. If they own it, they'll win their lawsuits, regardless of who is paying for them.

Smoking gun? Well, maybe, if you're looking at a Microsoft violation of their anti-trust agreement, but it really has not bearing on the court cases.

Re:Wow

[Fishbu]

Why wouldn't they?

It makes sense in a capitalist economy that any business would want to own the greatest market share.

Everything old is new again.

[musingmelpomene]

It's not like this is the first time one corporation has funded blatantly false muckraking efforts against another. It's just Robber Barons, Part II. They'll all have their little squabbles and the money will pass from hand to hand, and in the end the only people who win aren't the consumers, or even the corporate bigwigs - it's the lawyers. Same as it ever was.

Re:Paging the DoJ...

[base3]

Don't hold your breath. Remember that the current DoJ is the one that administered the slap on the wrist for the convicted monopolist's most recent infractions. Even if Kerry wins, I'm sure his administration can be bought, as well.

Re:It makes good sense for Microsoft

[The One KEA]

I will concede that there has been some upheaval and surprise in the business world due to this lawsuit, but I don't call it "enormous chaos." Despite the FUD and the lawsuits and the dupe of the media, Linux is still being enhanced and improved. And most importantly, it's still being adopted.

Now, if SCO were to win, THAT would be chaos indeed.

Not an open source

[Knetzar]

I find it amusing that the people one /., the same people who believe that one should be able to go to the source and verify the code on voting machines, seem to believe what ESR is telling them about MS and SCO w/o having access to his source.
Does anyone else see the irony in this?

Too good to be true

[nonmaskable]

I don't think these guys are _quite_ dumb enough to admit to this stuff in email. Much less on company email that is all under subpoena in the IBM litigation.

I smell a setup.

Re:Wow

[the_consumer]

Sure it makes sense. It also makes sense that if you have a car I like, I should just take it, right?

If they want they want to maintain the greatest market share, maybe they should compete in the market, not in the courts. I suppose you like getting screwed, though, Fishbu.

Re:Wow

[boobsea]

And you don't think that Ford wants to use your money to try to keep you and others from buying GM?

What's wrong - not a troll

[aacool]

Pray tell - what precisely is wrong with Microsoft, or any other company funding another company? Companies do this all the time. Providing funds through a holding company or joint partnership is a very common model.

The unethicality of SCO's actions are obvious. What is not valid is that Microsoft did something wrong by funding SCO. I am open to correction on this front.

Re:Wow

[nial-in-a-box]

Yea, but this is blatant dishonesty and essentially cheating. I just read an article that says that ethical corporations do better in the long run, and this isn't a simple karma question. Be good to people and they'll be good to you. They're not just "customers" or "consumers," but people. This stuff is real, it's not a game. There aren't just rules, there are laws and morals and values. If you're an asshole now, as a person or a corporation, it will come back to get you one way or another. Microsoft and SCO may be getting what they want now, but they'll be hurting for this later.

Microsoft's strategy could backfire

[RoLi]

It's pretty logic that Microsoft is behind all that. Otherwise the anti-Linux FUD spread by SCO just doesn't make any sense.

However, Microsoft's efforts could backfire badly:

If people actually start to think (I said "if" okay?) and realize that it's proprietary software that got people into legal trouble:

• IBM was sued because of their agreements around project Monterey and their licensing of proprietary SCO IP.
• Autozone was sued because they used the proprietary SCO Unix and SCO claims that they continued to use it after their contract expired.
• The suit against DaimlerChrysler is similar, they dumped SCO and SCO claims they continue using it

If any of those firms would have used 100% open source software from the start neither would have been sued.

Isn't the whole SCO-mess the biggest pro-OSS argument imaginable?

If you look at SCO: First you buy software from a seemingly honest Unix-vendor, a couple of years later their management changes and you get sued for it! SCO proves how dangerous proprietary sofware can become.

Microsoft is clearly feeling the Linux heat

[Swift03]

Think Linux inroads has got Msoft shitting in its pants so this comes as no surprise. If you can't beat it technologically, create FUD around it--In Malaysia and Thailand, our redmond fiend has launched a so-called Windows XP "Lite" for cheap...Y? Cos the govts "threaten" to launch desktops with Linux! [cnet.com]

The document is a troll?

[Jerk City Troll]

Either the author of the leaked document in question was in extreme haste, or he has lackluster grammar skills. The document is full of errors like: "The will help us a lot", "componients", "shoudl", "wjich", and so on. That isn't exactly the kind of document you send out when you are trying to convince people to do something shady. You'd think the author would at least had the initiative to spell check the thing before sending it out. Perhaps it should be taken with a grain of salt, and by that, I mean deer salt licks [saltlicks.co.uk].

Re:This is a forgery.

[Anonymous Coward]

So we're supposed to trust one anonymous source (you) over another anonymous source?

Re:Wow

[Guy Innagorillasuit]

Yeah, but they're not funneling money to Yugo to sue GM and it's consumers.

Re:Paging the DoJ...

[nuffle]

I'm sure ESR would have gone to great lengths to validate the document before going public

Don't be so sure. According to ESR's statement: I cannot certify its authenticity, but I presume that IBM's, Red Hat's, Novell's, AutoZone's, and Daimler-Chryler's lawyers can subpoena the original.

So take it with a grain of salt. I'm sure ESR thinks it's authentic, but until someone can confirm its authenticity, don't believe it. In the end, it's better to be skeptical of surprising evidence than to instantly accept false claims.

I'll hold my horses

[Underholdning]

There's nothing indicating that this is real. "An anonymous whistleblower"? What does that mean? He got it from [e-mail] from a public library IP?
I'd like to see the headers of the email. If the email originates from SCO then I believe it's authentic (judging from Received: lines rather than the From: field). If it's from a dial-up or public IP, I'm pretty sure it's fake. Of course, there's another posibility. OSI know who the whistleblower is, but they claim they don't so they can't be forced to reveal his identity in court. After all, they're the good guys.

It may not...

[Chordonblue]

...now that the cat's out of the bag. The FTC should be informed, IBM and Novell should demand memos, etc. Microsoft may end up wishing they'd never done this.

I wonder if anything will be done based on this leaked memo - I mean legally can anything be done?

Re:HAH!

[dubious9]

Yes, and if, in fact, this e-mail is real, then it will be real interesting to see what happens to SCO's revenue stream. I'm sure that MS doesn't like to be played the fool, and that about what these guys are saying here. I mean, christ...

but there are other ways to get money from them, their partners,investment bank referrals, etc..

and

This Microsoft deal is the Ante to the poker game...We should get this done and go after several $2-3 Million deals from the expense side of their company.

...sure makes it seems like they think MS is an easy, endless source of money. Well, let's just wait and see what'll happen.

Also, ~$100 mil isn't chump change, shouldn't there be some sort of public record of MS explaining this transaction, or can you "creatively account" for it?

Re:Right...

[PickyH3D]

It's also convienent that the whole letter just keeps reiterating how much money they have gotten from MS. I think after the second time it would be understood.

I realize most people are going to disagree, but of all the memos leaked before this does not look real. I could care less about the spelling, but the point of the e-mail is just sad ESPECIALLY if we are considering someone leaked the memo must have been a recipient. That's not exactly a business wide e-mail. No one that high up would go try to shoot themselves in the foot at this point.

fraud and racketeering

[Anonymous Coward]

If SCO ends up losing the case then I hope there are a large helping of fraud and racketeering charges to go around. SCO has been very reluctant to disclose exactly what has been misappropriated which to me indicates that their case is pretty tenuous. It's a bit like a department store telling the police that a specific person was a shoplifter but not being willing to tell them exactly what was stolen. A claim like that should be met with a great deal of suspicion.

Microsoft's investment in SCO at the time seemed potentially dangerous. In the short term there were probably some companies who could be swayed into deploying on Microsoft products instead of linux. In the longer term Microsoft is jeopardizing their companies reputation. If the suit is actually determined to be fraudulent and it becomes common knowledge that Microsoft helped the suit along then they'll have done damage to their name.

So Microsoft knows that the case should be valid or they were misled (which I would also thing should result in a loss of reputation - a company with as much resources as Microsoft should be difficult to mislead) or a third possibility is that they don't worry about negative outcomes.

Re:I am a gud speller

[nomadic]

Yep, if this SCO thing doesn't work out he can always become a slashdot editor.

Re:Wow

[Fishbu]

From a business standpoint it makes sense. Businesses other than Microsoft are doing things like this all the time, that's what I'm saying. MS deserves bad sentiment, but not for this in particular. Not for simply wanting to knock their obvious competition out of the playing field. Sure it's not honorable, but it's something any large business would do.

I never said I liked MS but they're not the one's suing everyone. SCO is.

SCO is a subsidiary of Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

AIT (assuming it's true) this is an absolutely stupid idea from the goons in Microsoft. They've got the Department of Justice and public opinion to lose and nothing to gain. [Code infringements, if they exist, can easily be re-written]. Microsoft is funding a company that runs around suing exactly the same Fortune 500 group of companies that it hopes to then do business with. How long until IBM, RedHat, Novell, AZ or Daimler find a way to really see what's behind the SCOsource strategy with the help of some good ol' 'discovery' in the courts. This house of cards is headed for a fall.

Re:Who will this hurt more?

[MrMickS]

With whom would Microsoft be losing credibility?

They've managed to survive fairly brutal beatings before and will again. It usually ends up something like this:

"Yes I know that Microsoft have been caught doing something wrong. They have been caught though, and punished, so that just proves that the system works. In the end we need PCs and they come with Windows on and we need that to share files with everyone else."

As far as this is concerned it won't damage Microsoft. They are much more vulnerable to increases in Viruses and Worms. These impact people directly and can make them look for alternatives.

Re:Wow

[TheLinuxSRC]

Absolutely. But Ford is not backing lawsuits against GM by a third party. And doing it under cover of darkness. The Baystar deal was a front for what would (will) probably be anti-trust violations on Microsoft's part. If Microsoft wanted to support SCO, there are legal ways to do it. Not by using other companies (Baystar> as cover-ups.

Re:Microsoft is clearly feeling the Linux heat

[dave420]

What inroads? Don't get me wrong - linux is freakin' great, but it's no threat to Windows on the desktop. Microsoft are merely spending a tiny, miniscule amount of their money on hedging their bets for the future. It sounds like a sensible business move, but of course this is slashdot, so it must be a sign of the apocalypse.

Re:What's wrong - not a troll

[kalidasa]

If there's nothing wrong with it, why are they using Baystar to hide the money? Microsoft is not funding SCO, they're funding SCO's court attacks on Linux, which may constitute anti-competitive actions in violation of their DOJ settlement. Of course, even if it does, we'd have to wait until January to see some action on this ...

Anti-trust fear is real also...

[Chordonblue]

The question is - where is this money coming from? What department at Microsoft authorized it, and do the shareholders/gov't know?

Squashing the competition is one thing, doing it in secret is another. This was clearly done this way to avoid more scrutiny by the DOJ. THAT'S what the problem here is.

If Microsoft wants to support SCO, they should just be honest about their intentions. If this memo is true, however, it's going to look fishy to anyone with half a brain at the FTC/DOJ.

Um... heh, how about some GPG for you?

[Raleel]

You would think that people would start using gpg/pgp for their internal emails now. There are other solutions, but this is one case where youj _don't_ want the keys in escrow. You want them changed, regularly.

At least, that's the way I see it from SCOs perspective.

Re:Who does this?

[kalidasa]

The message wasn't sent to all SCO employees. It was probably printed out (after all, don't all PHBs print their email to read it?), then tossed in a wastebasket rather than shredded like it should have been. And the typos are all obvious likely typos, so either the person who wrote it is an expert on the kinds of errors typists make (say a professional English teacher or editor) or it's real.

Re:Not an open source

[eddy]

Just imagine a "If this is true then;" in front of every post. That's what the rest of us do.

Re:The document is a troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever actually gotten a message from higher-ups? Or sales people, or lawyers??

That message reads about like all of them.

You're thinking too geeky. "I'm doing something subversive. Make it clean, neat, nice... blah blah." These people don't think like that. It's just another day at the fast paced office.

Re:Wow

[S.O.B.]

I never said I liked MS but they're not the one's suing everyone. SCO is.

The point here is that if not for the money from Microsoft, SCO wouldn't be able to sue anyone. Besides, why did you think Microsoft gave SCO the money? Just to be nice?

Re:Newsflash!

[Chordonblue]

SHOCKING!!!

A company convicted of monopolistic practices secretly funds an initiative to destroy it's competition.

What you mock in sarcasm may be viewed differently by those who care due to the secrecy of Microsoft's actions, not the actions themselves.

Because it's illegal?

[Royster]

Read up on Maintenance and Champerty. These are legal torts involving funding lawsuits, especially frivilous lawsuits.

I don't happen to believe that the email is genuine, emails are too easy to forge, but no one should be so sanguine about this being in any way appropriate.

Re:The memo looks bogus

[blue_adept]

I agree. Why would one executive tell other something to the effect of

"keep in mind, MS is giving us X million dollars, and blah blah".

Too contrived, too conveniently incrimminating.

Re:Wow

[gobbo]

Sure it's not honorable, but it's something any large business would do.

Look, stop saying things like that, people. You're giving away the MBA secret that big business is not honourable.

OK, it's not really a secret, just a taboo topic unless you're the so-called left-loonie fringe trying to change it. The amazing thing is, so many accept this kind of underlying failure of democracy and free markets without so much as a shrug! So is MS a success story or a travesty to you?

Re:Not an open source

[TwistedGreen]

That's not irony, it's a bad pun.

legislating stupidity

[kardar]

My favorite Jesse Venture quote, or one of them: "You can't legislate stupidity".

He was talking about people riding snowmobiles on thin ice, ignoring warnings from the weatherman, and then dying from falling into freezing water.

But in this case, it would have to be the stupidity of the people who involve themselves in these meaningless pursuits of trying to immerse themselves in power.

It seems to me, anyway, that these guys corresponding are fascinated with power, not with anything else. Just power. Probably because they don't think they have enough money in their bank accounts.

Hopefully, they are in a minority - well, at least - this is not the way to be successful, and participating in this type of nonsense will only bring you and your family great misery - in the long run. Despite how successful these folks are in their own minds, their plan is just doomed to fail anyway - leak or no leak. Which means one thing... they are wasting their time, hence they are stupid. If they really cared about power and prestige and wealth, they wouldn't be wasting their time attacking Linux, which is innocent.

Clearly you work for smarter people than I'm used

[doublem]

First off, I'm not addressing the authenticity of this specific e-mail, just the idea that such dealings would be sent by e-mail.

They are.

It's a common communication form, and I've had people where I work now think that by deleting an e-mail from their inbox, they erase if from exitance.

One of the shadiest people I met in my entire life was having problems with his computer, so the (then) network admin emptied the trash on the desktop and in Outlook as part of his cleanup. Said sales jackass was standing over his shoulder demanding an explanation of everything he was doing, and refused to believe that three years of e-mail were still readily available after he hit the "DEL" key.

"I deleted them, they're gone."

After much explanation, including my input, he finally said "It doesn't matter if only geeks can get at them."

Total idiot.

And then there was the day he found out about the backups we were doing of the mail server, and the fact that the "deleted items" were kept in our archives for 30 days.

He was not a happy man.

BTW: This is the same guy who was later fired when one of his business partners called up threatening to show up with a baseball bat and take out kneecaps.

I'm not saying the MS execs are anywhere near that level, I'm just saying that just because YOU and I wouldn't put something that incriminating into a system that could be tracked and recovered, doesn't mean other people would.

Besides, they probably never suspected the document would be leaked.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's their money. When you pay for gas, "your money" will eventually reach terrorists under that logic.

Anyway, objectively, and using available evidence rather than assumption, none of the "Halloween memos" have ever been confirmed as being real.

Given that the idea that MS is backing SCO has been a popular conspiracy theory since Groklaw was born, isn't assuming this is true jumping the gun a bit?

When the non-geek media went ahead and assumed that the Mydoom virus was authored by Linux zealots, without objectivity or evidence, merely because the assumption made sense, everyone cried bloody murder.

Re:The Wizard of SCOz

[Boing]

Torvalds: Isn't that... I knew it!
McBride: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!!

Hmmm, what are you implying? All evidence I've seen indicates that Linus has a heart, the lion's share of courage (so to speak), plenty of brains, and he's nobody's lapdog. Where does that leave us, hmmm?

Re:Microsoft is clearly feeling the Linux heat

[TravisWatkins]

Sure, Linux isn't any threat right now but what happens when in 2 years Gnome and KDE are better than Windows and there are lots of big games available? Seems to me that they are getting scared and trying to block it now.

Re:Right...

[fader]

if we are considering someone leaked the memo must have been a recipient.

Not necessarily. I'm not sure that this memo is legit either, but SMTP isn't exactly known for being secure. There are any number of people who could have been capturing packets in case anything interesting showed up... not to mention any sysadmins with direct access to the queue on the mailserver.

Re:Welcome to the real world folks.

[strider]

Now, if you are going to condemn it in this case you also need to condemn it when one of "the big guys" comes to the rescue of something that *you* like.

I don't even understand why you would think this. What we have here (regardless of the truth of the memo) is a classic case of a monpolist using its cash, market power and the legal system to maitain control of the market in order to continue its monopolistic practices. I can damned well condem this and be happy when a different company (say IBM) spends money to try to back a new product that threatens them, not because I think an IBM monopoly would be better but because I want no monopoly at all. That's consistent.

Why not buy SCO then?

[b0r0din]

That figure doesn't seem right. Why would you give SCO 86M? Right now their Market cap is only like 170M or so, according to Yahoo Finance. If you had 86M you could just BUY a majority share in them.

Well I'm guessing it's pretty obvious. Windows doesn't want to be seen as an active participant in this lawsuit, but it's fairly apparent that they're trying to influence the court's decision. This is probably legal but highly unethical. Also, whose pocket is this 86M coming out of? The shareholders, probably.

The whole thing stinks, but I'm not completely sure this is correct information. 86M is a lot of money to be giving (and not investing) in a company. Maybe the reason they aren't investing is that they know SCO's lawsuit isn't sound?

Beep, beep....COULTER DETECTOR ACTIVATED!

[Hellburner]

Boom!
"You (other readers) do know that it is the *current* administration that actually lifted a finger to prosicute and jail the folks at Enron and WorldCom, yes?"

OK....I'll bite.

So you mean the same administration that met with Lay, et al. to formulate "energy policy"? What you see as righteous prosecution I see as CYA once the public outcry against corporate banditry got too loud.

The contention that DOJ or the Bush are acting out of altruism is ludicrous. This is an echo of Ambrose's statments about Nixon: he let everyone else take the hit until there was no one else left. Skilling, the WorldCom guy getting jammed this week, they are all sacrificial lambs for the Cons. They were useful allies as long as the smoke and mirrors stock bubble was cruising. Now they are liabilities.

DOJ has ended up looking like doofuses because Elliot Spitzer is doing an Elliot Ness impersonation. Spitzer is burning Wall Streeters in NY while the DOJ is hassling hospitals for abortion records. Ashcroft hasn't exactly pursued a full court press on the MSFT antitrust stuff, either.

Lifting a finger? Balls. They're cutting accomplices loose.

Re:Wow

[1SmartOne]

Sorry bud but you'll probably be beaten to death for defending M$.

I personally think that this is a shameful tactic but I agree, people do this all the time. It's not the same within each industry, obviously this is even more shameful than other shady business deals.

Is this what Bill calls his philanthropy?

-----
My karma is bad because I don't like Linux, is that so wrong?
-----

Re:Wow

[abe ferlman]

The question you have to ask yourself is, do the executives of ethical companies do better in the long run?

The reason many unethical businesses fail is that they are fleeced by unethical executives.

Corporations aren't people except legally, and they don't actually have cares or desires- only the people who control them do.

Re:Because it's illegal?

[DaHat]

"especially frivilous lawsuits"

Oh? And what makes this a frivolous lawsuit? While you may not agree with it, can you at least for a moment concede that just maybe SCO has a case and that some of their intellectual property was used in an unauthorized way.

Thankfully this case will not be decided by the likes of you in the court of public opinion but will instead be done within the court of law.

It seems that in your mind that you believe a lawsuit is frivolous if you don't agree with it.

Re:Wow

[Spamlent Green]

It's generally accepted that the big automakers certainly used whatever resources (legitimate or otherwise) they had to 'torpedo' Preston Tucker back in the 40s...

Re:This is a forgery.

[ScottGant]

I work inside SCO. Mike Anderer hasn't had anything to do with the company since June 2003.

You may be right, he might not have anything to do with SCO since June 2003...but since he's a consultant that brought MS into the SCO deal, which was BEFORE June 2003...he really doesn't have to have anything to do with SCO...this memo is mainly about his fees he would garner from the deal.

So sorry, spread your FUD somewhere else.

It's too much like bad television

[Flyboy Connor]

Before the hour is up, when all seems hopeless, the lead detective finds the criminal made "one fatal mistake" - like leaving an email around that specifies his evil plans to the detail.

Life is not like a television show. Chances are excellent this email is bogus.

I should check the spelling mistakes... maybe when you place all wrongly spelled letters together they form a phrase like "Hahaha I fooled you all - Billyboy".

Re:Why not buy SCO then?

[Plac3bo]

Well, from MS's viewpoint, I think any money spent on killing Linux is an investment, just indirectly.

It all makes sense now

[idiot900]

$86 million is the sort of money Microsoft finds when they pull up their couch cushions. I suspect that they don't expect SCO to succeed at all - they just want to give the appearance that open source software is highly vulnerable to attack by random morons. If you are a PHB deciding between Linux (the new kid on the block as far as you are concerned) and Windows (I have that on my laptop! And it's shiny!) this kicks Linux down a notch. Most PHBs don't care about whose IP goes where as long as it doesn't make them vulnerable.

If Windows is found to contain someone else's unlicensed code, the rightful code owners are not going to sue end users, period. MS would either sue them into the ground or settle with them out of court to get them to shut up. The analogous thing can't happen with Linux because no one entity controls it from a legal standpoint. So, score Windows 1, Linux 0.

Like everyone else with at least one functioning neuron, I think SCO will lose. But the damage to Linux credibility has been done. Even when this is resolved, there is always the class of PHBs who will think back to this whole mess and how it could have cost them money. These feelings won't last forever or necessarily outweigh the benefits of Linux, but for Microsoft, it has been well worth the money.

Why all the paranoia?

[dave420]

Before I start this, I must let you know I'm an open-source developer. I've instigated linux use at the company I work for (proving it's more reliable than windows, and cheaper). I moved our web systems from IIS to Apache, from ASP to PHP, and our databases from MSSQL to MySQL. I feel I have to say that before what follows, so I'm not moderated as troll/flamebait/whatever. Even if I am, who cares. I gots to say this:

Microsoft are business partners with SCO. Lots of companies are. There's nothing untoward about that.

Everyone's acting like they met up in a dark alley and handed over a fat envelope stuffed with cash and discussed how best to sabotage Linux. They didn't. It was a perfectly legitimate business deal between two companies.

People here are saying it's anti-Linux. How is that possible? Because they're paying money to SCO? If that were true, everyone who has a SCO license is "anti-Linux". Everyone who even buys a Microsoft license is "anti-Linux". If you think about it for a second, that can't possibly be the case.

It's not like Linux is this great desktop OS that's ripened into something everyone's clamouring to get hold of. Let's face it, it beats the crap out of MS products on the server side, but on the desktop front it's usable, yet not ready for prime-time just yet. There are too many disparate systems for Average Joe to figure out what they do, let alone how to fix them when they go awry/get upgraded.

When Linux is ready for the desktop, people will buy it. Microsoft can't stop that. Nothing can get between the public and good, free stuff. Not even Bill. Until then, instead of attributing Linux's relative obscurity to Microsoft's bad actions, maybe we should start attributing it to the fact end users don't want to edit .conf files to play an MP3, and work on it. After all, step #1 is identifying the problem. As long as we are all barking up the Microsoft tree, we're wasting our energies, and making the Linux community look like a bunch of jealous kids.

Again, I'm a proponent of Linux (the only one at our company :(), and I'd love to see Linux on everyone's desktop. I just think we need to work on the real problems, not the perceived ones.

Windows Source Code Leak

[thepeete]

The Windows source code leak has not happened by accident. Windows is using SCO as a test case. If it works (or if they set a reasonable precedent), Microsoft will then start claiming that their code ended up in Linux. Since you're not supposed to have the source code without being tagged a criminal, nobody will be able to come forward and say it is not so without opening themselves to criminal charges... But hey, if Linux "contains" Windows code, it'll be deemed illegal (at least in the US...)

Re:Microsoft's strategy could backfire

[Vexler]

Not necessarily. I agree with you that this strategy could backfire, but only if people make the distinction between truth and fiction. Keep in mind that SCO's position is that Linux, an OSS, is in fact proprietary work. If there is a general acceptance of this nonsense, then OSS could be in for a tough ride. But if people could see that Linux is IN FACT open-source and that SCO's claim is false and baseless, then OSS stands to gain. The distinction is not so much between open-source and proprietary software, but between what SCO is claiming and what is actually reality.

not to be on the wrong side here, but...

[fudgefactor7]

...do we know for certain that this isn't a faked letter? I mean, do we have any form of independent corroboration? Otherwise this is just heresay and speculation.

On the other hand, if we get some other proof (or evidence) then MS is about to get a little pissed at SCO for their antics. Perhaps that's a good thing as a previous poster indicated, without MS's $86M influx SCO would be bankrupt.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Actually, that could be good.

[shystershep]

It's called spoliation of the evidence (no, that's not a a typo, that's how it's spelled). If IBM/Novell/etc can show that the evidence was destroyed, then the jury is allowed to consider that the evidence was probably damaging to SCO/MS.

Instead, they'll release enough of the emails to claim that they released them all (kind of like in a certain anti-trust action a few years ago). That way, nobody can prove anything based on the email or that SCO destroyed any email.

I think ESR probably did the right thing, because this is much more useful in the court of public opinion than in a court of law -- even if it could be proved. As the Register article points out, MS could have legitimate (from a business standpoint) reasons for investing in SCO that would be perfectly legal. But they can't do anything about how bad it looks, so they had a reason to hide it even if it were legit. So dragging it out where everyone can see it is the best course of action.

Re:Paging the DoJ...

[ratamacue]

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought and sold are the legislators.

-- P.J. O'Rourke

Re:Wow

[twilight30]

I think you forgot one corollary to your statement.
'There aren't just rules, there are laws and morals and values...' : which are only effective when society as a whole upholds them. And even then it's not a given that 'in the long run' evil gets what's coming to it.

We all may hate SCO and Microsoft around here, and hope that they both get royally bumblasted by the courts, but there is no certainty that this will be the case. Moreover, the expectation that SCO will be flattened can only exist in a society that actively promotes those values as important. If your society doesn't value those ideals...
(For instance, where I am now, we have basically a crook [wikipedia.org] in power and thinks there is nothing wrong with controlling both the public [www.rai.it] and most of the private [mediaset.it] media in the country...)

Re:Wow

[dillon_rinker]

"Businesses other than Microsoft..."

Most businesses other than Microsoft ARE NOT MONOPOLISTS!

If I could get one thing through the thick skulls of the "Microsoft is a business" shills here on slashdot, it would be that standard business practices are often illegal for monopolists.

And as for MS not suing anyone, au contraire. MS hired SCO to hire lawyers to sue people. Perhaps you feel there's a moral distinction between a hitman and the mob boss who tells a lieutenant to dispatch the hitman, but I don't.

Re:Beep, beep....COULTER DETECTOR ACTIVATED!

[GMontag]

The contention that DOJ or the Bush are acting out of altruism is ludicrous.

Who said anything of altruism or any other motovation? Action is what counts no matter what motive you wish to assign, good or bad.

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

[Rogerborg]

Honest to god people, look at it. Have you ever seen such painfully careful mis-spellongs? It reeks. It's a joke gone wrong. SCO will find and sue the crap out the basement dwelling prankster that wrote it, and good luck to them.

You. Have. Been. Trolled.

Re:Why not buy SCO then?

[daviddennis]

Microsoft doesn't care about any profits SCO makes from its lawsuit. They probably think, as we do, that those profits are insignificant to none.

What they do care about is spreading FUD. I was bored the other day and read Optimize, one of the free magazines Ziff-Davis sends me on a regular basis. I almost lost my lunch when I read a lengthly article about the legal hazards associated with open source. It was written in a way that would make any Linux-using corporation fear for its life! It was so filled with distortions and half-truths that I threw it in the trash bin where it belonged, and ignored all the solicitations asking me to continue my subscription for free.

I don't want that garbage in my company - but we should be aware that it's there, it's floating around, and it wouldn't have even a mirage of plausibility without this lawsuit.

The longer this lawsuit lingers, the more time they have to spread the FUD and use it to their advantage. So it's greatly in their interest to fund SCO.

That's Microsoft's real game.

D

Re:Paging the DoJ...

[kelzer]

Oh, I'm skeptical alright, a few spelling mistakes yes, but this looks like it was written by a high school kid, not some MBA. I know educational standards are slipping, but *this* far?

I'm not skeptical at all based on the general sloppiness of this memo.

First, I've known plenty in management (and technical people, as well) whose spelling and grammar are horrendous. On top of that, few of them take the time to proofread their stuff.

Second, if this were some top notch guy, would he have to resort to this kind of sleazy behavior to make a decent living? No, he'd instead be a productive member of society.

Re:Wow

[DoraLives]

The reason many unethical businesses fail is that they are fleeced by unethical executives.

Concur.

The mindset of this sort of individual will be to bleed whatever is most conveniently at hand to bleed. Including the corporate body in which they are imbedded.

Eventually this sort of behavior will get its comeuppance, but an awful lot of blood winds up on the floor before it happens. Unfortunately.

Controlling this kind of thing is what's driven political change since the days of bearskins and flint axes. Needless to say, NOBODY has come up with an effective solution to the problem in all that time. Expect no magic bullets any time soon. Or ever.

Re:The document is a troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to get emails from our company's president that looked exactly the same. He actually took pride in not using the spellchecker.

From what Ive seen, when you get to the Ceo/leather chair level, you tend to feel very comfortable, and there is generally a "good old boys" attitude among you and your close coworkers. You tend not to think about things like your email being logged. In my previous boss's case, he thought it a waste of his precious time to spellcheck an internal email.

Also, remember that from SCO's side this is legit. The egg is on MS's face, not SCO's. Well maybe they do have a bit on their face, but the real PR fiasco is MS's.

Ive seen this stuff before, and the lack of professionalism is almost encouraged. You want to melt people's game face so you can get to them on a personal level. That way you are no longer dealing w/ "Mike Smith, the VP of MS's division", but Mikey your buddy that youre doing a deal with.

(note: I have never been at that level, but made it far enough up in a smallish company to get CC'ed on these types of things. Never underestimate what sheer arrogance can do. For further examples, see "infectious greed" by Frank Portnoy-He outlines cases where employees who knew their phone conversations were being recorded discussed how they were F'ing their customers over, and bragging about it.)

Re:He's as good as fired.

[TheSpoom]

So there's an idea for ESR: Correct any typos in documents received, and kill any extraneous whitespace.

Re:Why not buy SCO then?

[dspeyer]

What would be the point in that?

Assume that MS is competant (a reasonable assumption, since we're dealing with legal and corporate matters). They want this suit to hurt Linux's reputation. They know it will lose. They know the only way it will make money for them is when worried users purchase Windows licences. They konw SCO will never make back anything, and that SCO may wind up severely in debt after countersuits (Redhat for slander, IBM for patent violation...). Finally, they know that the FUD will be less effective if they are identified with it.

In short, owning SCO would bring them no money, increase their risk, and decrease their effectiveness. All they would get in return is control. They seem to have that thoroughly enough now.

Of course, they run the risk that IBM will hostily take over SCO and shut the suit down in an instant. Since this would give more public evidence for "SCO's claims", MS would be perfectly happy.

Re:Uh, this DOJ is pretty effective.

[jimhill]

What are you talking about? The DOJ and their attorneys beat Microsoft seven ways from Sunday in court. They even satisfied the most pro-business court in the land that the company was an abusive monopolist. Had Jackson kept his damn mouth shut, all would have been fine, but he didn't, and so the penalty was vacated and a new hearing ordered.

The case was assigned to a new judge, one with virtually zero antitrust experience, and she ordered settlement talks. During that time, the Administration changed over and the DOJ went from hardcore, aggressive demands for breakup to the loving kiss with tongue and extra saliva that Judge KK ultimately accepted.

"Stinking cesspool" ? Bull. The case was a slam-dunk and the new Administration threw in the towel on Microsoft when the ref's count had reached nine and three-quarters.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this seem a little too obvious? Do you really think someone would be dumb enough to put any part of something like this in an e-mail?

I think I will wait to see if more corroborating evidence (in the form of e-mail subpoenaed messages from MS) surfaces before taking this on face value.

It seems to me that the judgment of many on /. Is "if any news comes out regarding MS they are immediately deemed guilty", no chance or possibility that this is a hoax. There are certainly enough people (even here on /.) who are so biased against MS that they would under take any means to get a dig at MS.

Re:Wow

[toiletmonster]

yeah and i bet microsoft isn't contributing anything to the democrats. i haven't looked it up or anything, but big well funded companies like that tend to cover all their bases.

besides outsourcing is good for everyone.

Also Remember

[ch-chuck]

Also be advised that SCO's mission as Msft's attack dog has nothing to do with who owns what code - that's just a smokescreen to create confusion and disuade people from using Linux. The last thing they want is to have the issue settled - the more they can create an atmosphere of legal uncertainty surrounding GNU/Linux and force people into the arms of the 'safe haven', Windows.

Remember, it's not "You're using Linux, you owe us money", it's "Some people say Linux is illegal, some people say it's OK. Gee, I don't know who to believe so I'd better play it safe and get Winders."

I'm skeptical of this e-mail.

[brain1]

The grammar and spelling of this e-mail resemble that of a 16-year old with a 'D' average. This Mike Anderer is apparently a highly paid consultant, and one would assume that he has a college, if not at the least, a good secondary education. He should possess good communication skills and be able to write effectively. Those skills would be an essential part of his job.

To temper my above statement, I do not expect quick e-mail notes to have much spit-and-polish, but spell checkers are a standard feature. Just push the little icon and accept the corrections.

Frankly, I find it hard to put a lot into this, but I would like to be proven wrong. If this is authentic, then you can read a lot into why SCO is doing the stupid things they are attempting.

Would you put this guy on your payroll?

This isn't proof.

[Awptimus Prime]

I see a lot of people taking this memo as complete and total fact. Be careful with quick assumptions from an anonymous source.

It's quite probable someone did this to FUD SCO and MS. Just saying.. Use a little sense before spouting rhetoric.

Re:Microsoft is clearly feeling the Linux heat

[TravisWatkins]

Sure, Windows will be 2 years better, if Longhorn is out by then.

Re:Wow

[nehril]

it's not really surprising. if you follow what SCO has actually been doing *in the courts*, you find that they haven't really attacked linux at all, but rather contracts with business partners. but whenever they speak to the press, they always claim that it's "suing linux." Even their two recent "linux user" lawsuits are not about linux, but about SCO Unix licensing contracts. That's why Google wasn't a target, they have never been a SCO customer or licensee.

there's no real reason for them to always spin every action as "bringing pain to linux and linux users." They could have proceeded with all their lawsuits (and any "stock value boosting tactics") without all the public rhetoric that is actually damaging one of their own operations.

it was only a matter of time before a link was made public, this whole campaign seems to have been intentionally twisted in a way that previous Halloween documents indicated Microsoft should proceed (attack the IP, attack the GPL).

IBM's lesson

[technoCon]

Back in my youth, IBM had a permanent law suit going against the Feds on anti-trust charges. This is where the Nazgul learned their chops. IBM is no stranger to perpetual legal cold war. However, I don't think Microsoft is.

If this funding of SCO's (IMO spurious) case is actionable, then IBM is an ideal belligerant. I believe IBM, et al. will not only win the SCO case, but win their counter-suits. Damages could easily bancrupt SCO, and after those funds are expended I'd like to see if Microsoft could chip in the difference. Or be compelled to do so by a court.

If it is not, perhaps the creative juices of the Open Source community could be redirected toward devising a class-action law suit against a Redmond Washington corporation who has knowingly distributed a complex of products which is easily compromised via computer virus. If Big Tobacco could be shaken down a decade ago, why not Microsoft? We don't *have* to wait for the DOJ do we?

Re:This could have been big!

[cpu_fusion]

You are correct that ESR should probably have passed this along to IBM and others first to help preserve evidence, BUT ... the real smoking gun is not really the memo, but rather the movement of the money.

If this memo gets the feds/DOJ involved in looking for/at the money trail, that's all it takes. It's pretty hard to move $86 million without leaving a trace.

Of course, I have about as much faith in the DOJ investigating this thoroughly as I have in them punishing Microsoft for any of their other infractions.

Also: remember folks, this could just be a fake memo released by Darl and co. in an effort to make us all look like chumps! I'd hesitate on blowing this up too big until further evidence is turned up.

If this is true, it illustrates the absolutely sick nature of Microsoft's upper management.

Re:Why not buy SCO then?

[Trailer Trash]

The whole thing stinks, but I'm not completely sure this is correct information. 86M is a lot of money to be giving (and not investing) in a company.

How you got modded up to 5 is amazing. Let me clue you in. Microsoft has about $50B in cash on hand right now. Yes: Fifty billion dollars. Knock 6 zeros off each number. If Microsoft had $50,000, they've given SCO $86, or about 1/500th. For all the harm they've done to Linux, is likely *is* an investment, and it's cost them essentially nothing.

I'd been guessing all along that Darl and company were acting so recklessly in public (they're obviously not trying to win these lawsuits or they'd be quiet) because that was part of the deal.

Re:Wow

[harrkev]

Maybe ESR was lied TO. I have not seen pointy ears on him, so I doubt that he has perfected the mind-meld. The mail come from "an anonymous whistleblower inside SCO." It could also be "an anonymous disgruntled liar employee inside SCO."

In short, while this mail MAY be true, it is far from a certain thing yet.

How to utterly discredit evidence

[Xargle]

Have Eric S Raymond publish for you.

I'd like to believe it, and maybe it is plausible, but the man is a raving lunatic at the best of times. May as well have stuck it in Fortean Times.

Re:Why not buy SCO then?

[bagel2ooo]

I'm curious as to if all you did was throw away the magazine. I'm not trying to be rude, but perhaps next time you should send a well-written letter to the editor(s) of the magazine as well as the parent company expressing what caused such digust and duress in their product. While it is doubtful that a single message put across will make much change enough will, hopefully, at least convey that many intelligent and quite possibly fairly economically stable no longer want to purchase their publication.

what an odd comparison

[ph43thon]

I have a very hard time seeing the connection between a whistleblower (not sure if this reaches that level, but it's a handy label) and proprietary voting machine software. Code is not a person.. code cannot be retaliated against. In my opinion, your confusing the person or agent making information known.. and the information that "should" be known. The identity of the person isn't important.. it could be the Pope or Osama Bin Laden.. all that matters is the authenticity of the information. That can generally be determined without knowing who released it.

p

Re:Wow

[k_head]

" This pisses me off. Why do most slashdotters assume that just b/c you have an MBA you must be some evil hell bent individual?"

Because of how businesses act. We don't assume anything we simply look around us and see that people with MBA have a very different moral outlook then we do.

Does having an MBA make you evil? Maybe not. Maybe people who are already evil are attracted to the MBA degree and position. Who knows.

If you work at a large institution you know who the MBAs are. You know how they talk and act. No assumptions are required.

Change in Administration

[nightsweat]

We need to get an administration in that's serious about anti-trust. This is as Rockefellerian (to coin a term) as it gets.

I'm not saying Kerry is it, but it sure as heck isn't the Bush Jr. administration that's going to hold Microsoft's feet to the fire. Do we HAVE to rely on the EU to do our dirty work?

Re:Wow

[FauxPasIII]

> I'm working on getting my MBA and that doesn't mean that I'm going to try
> to walk all over the other businesses and perform illegal activities

Then you'll fail or, at best, be marginalized due to competition from those companies who are willing to lie, cheat, and steal, and so won't make much of an impact on public perceptions.

Haven't you ever heard that nice guys finish last?

Re:Wow

[Bull999999]

It's because many shashdotters think that having a CS degree means that they know everything and because if that, they cease to learn.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed going through the CS program but I learned about how business and accounting works from my business classes (currently taking them so that I can run my own businesses). I think that many geeks fear business and accounting related classes as much as a non-geek fearing computer related classes.

Re:Wow

[TopShelf]

No, they don't have to belive the case is truly valid. That's simply the element of risk that is involved here. Just like firms spend money on research projects that don't work out, MS is risking what is for them a paltry sum for a chance at hindering the growth of Linux.

Re:Wow

[dubl-u]

Amazing how you and many others assume that most MBA's are idiots and just out for money and will do anything illegal to get there.

As far as I can tell, that's like saying that the people on Slashdot are dorky. Sure, there are plenty of exceptions, but it's true often enough that it's not an unreasonable stereotype.

I know a number of people with MBAs, both personally and professionally. Many of them are smart and honorable. But a substantial minority of the ones I have met, especially the ones fresh out of business school, are arrogant pricks with a gloss of book-learning and an desperate desire to cover up their ignorance with a lot of glib waffle.

This is a lot like the stereotypical fresh-out-of-college cowboy coder. Except that cowboy coders mainly cause trouble for themselves, whereas an MBA can wreak havoc on a much larger scale. Also, in my experience, hubristic cowboy coders are mainly annoying on geeky topics, whereas the annoying fresh-minted MBAs think they know everything about everything.

I don't entirely blame the MBAs, either; some top-tier MBA programs seem to actively train people to be arrogant and glib, presumably because clear thought and honest self-appraisal are mainly handicaps when playing the primate dominance games that upper managers seem to spend most of their time on.

Re:It makes good sense for Microsoft

[dillon_rinker]

"that's a bit too much tin-foil-hat thinking"

No, it's not. I once worked for a law firm and saw the corporate setup of a small ( $100 million valuation) company. It was printed out on a 11x17 piece of paper and looked like a map of Zork - lots of squares and lines and arrows. It showed all the corporate entities and which owned what percent of the others. Byzantine doesn't begin to approach it.

Microsoft discounting server licenses in exchange for action, a deal that involves only three corporate entities, is, by comparison, positively barbaric in its simplicity.

Wow, here's another once out of touch

[bogie]

So you think secret meetings with what turned to be criminals to decide who Bush would pick for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was a good idea? You think its ok that only one company (consisting of criminals btw)had exclusive access to Cheney when he drafted a new energy policy while others were shut out?

You know what? Your right. There was no conflict of interest and the fact that Enron was Bush's number one supporter and closest ally since he was governor only serves to clear Bush's name. Its obvious the administration was the clean one here and was just collaborating so closely so they could get more evidence on Enron. Yea, that's the ticket. They were going to turn their evidence to the DOJ but we just didn't give them enough time...

I'll never understand how someone can become so brainwashed that they can no longer distinguish right from wrong. I feel sorry for you.

Re:Wow

[josh_freeman]

I don't want to say that ALL /.ers think that you have to give up your soul when you get an MBA. What I will say is that for those of us that are about my age (30), the vast majority of the people we knew in business school in college were soulless, greedy shadows of humanity. It seemed they were only interested in getting rich, and by the mid 90's, I'd have enough of the "me generation". Of course, it doesn't help that Business majors and CS majors (or liberal arts majors. I was getting my English degree then) don't speak the same language.

All that being said, I've considered getting an MBA. Eventually I am going to have to get promoted out of the programmer category or change jobs if I wish to advance. Sad, but true.

Has this been sent to the DOJ?

[gmac63]

If not, WHY NOT!

This (if truly is an email and is complete and factual) is PROOF M$ is committing an act of Antitrust. Blatant and boldfaced.

Subpoena the "anonymous" emailer from SCO(?) and get his ass on the witness stand.

Note: The originator of the email does not know how to use a spell check very well does he? I did.

Dissolve these corporations.

[DroopyStonx]

I'm not a lawyer or anything, but this shit is shady practices and is no different than what Enron pulled. Greedy execs jerking the system for their own gain.

There should be a law or some kind of punishment where a judge just dissolves the company aka the company can no longer legally practice business within this country.

Why don't our government officials realize that nearly everything these corporations do is scandalous and does nothing but was other people's money and tie up the courts just so a few execs can get richer? This is ridiculous.

Is this the way of the future where our system just lets these corporations constantly step over boundaries that shouldn't have been crossed in the first place? If so, let me know so I can get the hell out of this country.

To put it bluntly: SO F'ING WHAT?!?

[fzammett]

Is this surprising to anyone, that Microsoft might be playing dirty pool?

We all realize this is a company that is not above using underhanded tactics to deal with the competition. And anyone with Microsoft stock loves them for it frankly!

This is neither surprising nor is it especially evil in the end, unless you consider the corporate world evil in general anyway, which might be a very fair statement!, but I digress...

Microsoft has a very tough battle to compete with Linux on merit (some would say it's an impossible battle for them, but that's another argument). They're never going to stop the Slashdot community from using Linux, but where they might have something to say is in keeping corporations way from it, and frankly this is where they stand to lose the most anyway.

So, how do you fight what has been correctly stated many times is a community and a philosophy rather than a concrete corporate competitor? You can't. But what you CAN do is try and keep any of the big players in the business world from hitching their wagon to Linux and upping the ante because, let's face it, many corporations will not use Linux if it doesn't come from someone like IBM. The fact that it's free and great for the bottom line won't make them go download the ISOs and install it everywhere because they NEED to have someone like HP to back them up.

So, Microsoft finds a puppet in SCO who can go attack IBM, HP, whoever else they view as the threats in this game, and maybe in the process get big businesses to back off the Linux train because they are worried about the whole SCO mess, whether for good reason or not.

It's a game of perception, nothing more. They aren't going to keep me from using Linux to power my home server, but big deal, I'm not their major source of income. The big businesses are. If propping up SCO helps them keep some of those companies away from Linux, Microsoft wins. And they maintain plausible deniability the whole time by claiming they are paying "licensing fees" to SCO for certain "Unix services licenses". This memo can be interpreted other ways, it's not as clear-cut as it's being made out to be (note that I am NOT diagreeing with the interpretation, just pointing out it's not so clear-cut as to be beyond reporach)

So, people are trying to make a big thing of this memo when it's just par for the course, nothing surprising at all. It doesn't even point to some massive, evil conspiracy really. It points to a company known for low tactics staying with the status quo to fight a formidable enemy to their profit margins. Businesses are SUPPOSED to make money, Microsoft is exceptionally good at it PRECISELY because they take every threat seriously and attack it with Machiavellian fervor.

Hate them for being so good at it if you want, but don't be surprised when the Zebra doesn't change it's stripes.

Re:He's as good as fired.

[subtropolis]

Ordinarily, i'd tend to agree with the canary trap argument. Except that, unless the whistleblower was BCCed, this memo seems to have been sent only to a couple of people. I'm thinking it's more likely this was lifted from a server within SCO. And we know how easy that is to do. When will people realise that (completely unencrypted) email is *not* private? Hallowe'en X and counting...
--

Is this really a secret ?

[polyp2000]

Does anyone here actually think that SCO are not receiving funding from Microsoft for the court cases? Whether or not this alleged leaked memo is a fake. I personally am in no doubt as to where they are getting the funding from and it certainly isnt linux IP licences.

The only thing this "Alleged Leaked Memo" could possibly be useful, is that, if Microsoft were to declare it as a fake and use it to cover up the fact that they really are helping smudge the open source community by assist SCO. It might well be a double bluff.

Nick ...

Re:Microsoft's strategy could backfire

[RoLi]

Nonsense, the BSA audits, sues and fines companies all the time about Microsoft software.

Of course, unlike the SCO-stuff, it's not news, it's just "the normal run of things".

Also, it's about CSS vs. OSS. With proprietary software, you are forced to agree to a thingt contract which can easily violated because many things are unclear or bound to interpretation. (Like "Am I still allowed to use my OEM license when I change the CPU, then the motherboard and then add a harddrive?" or "Is the company liable for pirated software installed by an employee?") Even if you want to be fully in compliance, it often isn't that easy.

On the other hand it's impossible to violate the GPL as an end-user (the very definition of end-user is that an end-user doesn't distribute software).

So realistically, any commercial software contract is a legal risk, while OSS isn't.

The difference is that IBM has already learned...

[Ayanami Rei]

the pain of userbase backlash, in the "big bad blue" mentality that formed after years of the IBM FUD machine. So in a complete 180 they're listening to customers (rather than dictating to them).

So we wouldn't expect this out of them, as we hope they always take the high ground. Or it could be 3 strikes, your out.

Re:Wow

[cygnus]

four words for you: Race To The Bottom.

The bigger question is...

[bonch]

...why is everyone automatically believing an "anonymous e-mail?"

Eric himself says "I cannot certify its authenticity."

I'm sure everyone believes Microsoft has something to do with SCO (to not believe such would go against the Slashdot mindset), but this doesn't actually prove anything. Everyone's discussing it as if it's automatically true.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

You are assuming that this "leaked" memo is genuine. Guilty until proven innocent?

Re:Wow

[Captain_Carnage]

Why do most slashdotters assume that just b/c you have an MBA you must be some evil hell bent individual?

Huh?

The post to which you're replying said no such thing. What was said, if I may quote, was precisely this:

You're giving away the MBA secret that big business is not honourable.

This does not mean or even imply that all MBAs are evil. Nor do all MBAs work for evil corporations. Maybe you should have studied English instead of business...

Being an MBA may not make you evil, but the reality is, you don't get to be as big as IBM, Microsoft, AT&T, RJR Nabisco, etc. without stepping on some toes. In big business, people get hurt. Always. But that's the nature of competition.

Smoking gun? What smoking gun?

[Jonny Royale]

This doesn't look like "microsoft paid sco to fund their anti-linux efforts" as ESR would have you believe through his notes. More realisticly, here's what the memo is saying:

1. The lawyer guy, who's sending it is documenting the percent rates he's going to charge for various deals (billed separately, percents of deals as fees).

2. NOWEHERE in the document does it say "hit microsoft up for money" or anything even VAGUELY similar. The deals are ALL through VC firms, or parts of firms. Microsoft "bringing in" 86 mill through Baystar referrs to the fact that Microsoft referred sco to baystar, not that they money went microsoft -> baystar -> sco. The other deals are with the VC firms, NOT WITH MICROSOFT. The small aquisitions are getting VC funding, the amounts are small to prevent the VC firm's greater scruitiny (and possibly sec filings, but that's a different matter).

Re:Why not buy SCO then?

[_Sprocket_]

Assume that MS is competant (a reasonable assumption, since we're dealing with legal and corporate matters).

It goes without saying that Microsoft is competent. They would not be in the position they are today without some degree of business acumen. The reason folks in this environment don't honor Microsoft for their core competency is because we tend to honor technology above business. And when technology is sacrificed for the sake of business, we tend to take a dim view.

They want this suit to hurt Linux's reputation.

This is a really important observation: ruining Linux's reputation has strategic importance. Microsoft has long had a strategy embodied by the phrase "cutting off their air supply." This is usually done by impacting the revenue to a product. Most competing technologies are based on a product offering that must generate a certain level of revenue (either directly or indirectly) or it is no longer justifies its continued support and development. Once support for an IT product is removed from the market, the market will eventually move to whatever competitors remain. Therefore, if one can impact the revenue stream for a product enough, one can kill a competing technology. And then reap the benefits of being the last product standing.

Linux offers a challenge to this strategy. Individual companies leverage Linux for their own profit. However, impacting the revenue of one company will simply remove a single business entity while leaving the technology itself (Linux) intact... and likely still being supported and developed by other entities. One can not bury Linux by attacking a single company's Linux-based revenue stream.

On even more simple terms, Linux is not based on hard currency. But it does run on its own currency; reputation.

Linux is enjoying an increased level of support from hardware and software developers due to its increasing popularity / reputation. Along with that comes an increased level of adoption as various entities from single users to enterprise environments deploy Linux. Which increases the demand for hardware and software offerings. And also increases the available resources to further develop of the platform. This increased demand and resources feed back to Linux's reputation. It becomes a nice regenerative loop.

It should be pretty obvious that the "cutting off their air supply" strategy is still applicable, it just has to be modified to attack a different form of currency. Instead of impacting revenue or hard currency, Microsoft will have to impact the reputation of the competing technology. It must harm Linux's reputation. Which, in turn, reduces or erodes Linux's adoption and resources.

Re:Wow

[vluther]

I disagree with you completely..

The dishonest MBA's would be doing something illegal or immoral to get themselves and their cause ahead no matter what, wether they had an MBA or not..

There are honest people with MBA's and dishonest people.. who do you think does the whistleblowing , or fact finding or just understanding that the other guys are doing something wrong ?..

From what you're saying it sounds like MBA programs across the country are designed to help you forget your sense of morals..
which I think is incorrect.

Re:Wow

[Unassuming Puppy]

Why do most slashdotters assume that just b/c you have an MBA you must be some evil hell bent individual?

This is the typical geek's (over-)reaction to their observation that the wider culture of MBAs does little or nothing to stop the excesses perpertrated by a number in their ranks.

I would enjoy seeing reports of people from the business management world excercising some public discussion amongst themselves of dubious stunts by members.

The unwillingess of MBA culture to engage in this type of self-correcting "maintenance of the profession" is resented by scientists and engineers who have seen much gain from critical discussion in their fields of work.

Re:Wow

[beforewisdom]

I'm no fan of the Bush Administration, but they are right here. Outsourcing hurts the folks that get outsourced, but the rest of us win. The people that can do the job the cheapest get the job, the basic goods and services we use get cheaper, our standard of living goes up, etc

What is the value of cheaper retail products if people are out of work or in lower paying jobs?

Are the goods even going to be cheaper? The Outsourcing American IT companies are still charging full prices.

I'd add more, but the Economist doesn't have a free online site. If you don't mind paying $2.95, you can read the whole article

Hey, that is cheap but I can't afford it, I have been outsourced.

It's painful to see outsourcing move from the manufacturing sector to the service sector, but we're better off because of it. Keep your skills up-to-date folks, and think about those management jobs.

Oh Please. Nobody has proven that outsourcing will create more jobs.......let alone *skilled* jobs, let alone a sufficent number of *skilled* jobs.

Who wants to spend the rest of their lives in a menial job.....even if money is not an issue.....just to save a few dollars on a consumer good?

If there are fewer skilled jobs Americans will not get educated in those fields. We will become dependant on foriegn countries to do brain intensive things for us.

How does that benefit everyone?

So far the only Americans who are benefiting from offshoring are the rich CEOs/stockholders.

Economics is not science. Take whatever an economist says with a grain of salt. Ask for proof.

Think for yourself. If they tell you "x is good" ask for proof.....it may just be that they are telling you this because it serves their interests regardless of whether or not it has anything to do with the truth

Steve

Re:Beep, beep....COULTER DETECTOR ACTIVATED!

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine this:

Bush changes energy policy and causes a massive economic disaster. Thousands of energy workers, union men all lose their jobs. Later is it discovered that he didn't consult with anyone from the industry to research and discuss his policy changes. Imagine the uproar from the liberals and the media criticizing him for that.

No imagination needed, this is Enron we are talking about here. That's pretty much what happened in real life, except he had better spin control than you give him credit for

Re:The bigger question is...

[GLowder]

If it's authentic it gives a place for discovery to start. Knowing something specific is present makes discovery so much easier.

It'll also make SCO work hard to prove it's not authentic if it's not discoverable.

Re:Wow

[spectecjr]

The point here is that if not for the money from Microsoft, SCO wouldn't be able to sue anyone

Of course they would. They're getting money from Sun Microsystems as well, remember?

Personally, I can't work out what the "Halloween" email is about - whether it's talking about licensing deals, about straight out loans, about cooperative licensing deals (eg. Microsoft comes up with a solutions package, and passes customers for some of the back-end systems over to SCO), or what. It may even have been faked. There's only one shifty possibility here, but everyone jumps at it.

Disclosure: I worked for Microsoft for 9 months in 1998

Any more blanket generalities?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Because of how businesses act. We don't assume anything we simply look around us and see that people with MBA have a very different moral outlook then we do.

How many businesses do you have an intimate working knowledge of? SCO maybe? Only ones in the news? You have to realize, this is self selecting - you don't hear about all the companies who do nothing wrong, and treat both their customers and shareholders well, and compete fairly with their competitors.

Does having an MBA make you evil? Maybe not. Maybe people who are already evil are attracted to the MBA degree and position. Who knows.

If you work at a large institution you know who the MBAs are. You know how they talk and act. No assumptions are required.

That's a mindless overgeneralization. How many MBA's do you actually personally know? The fact that this is tolerated and actually modded insightful is stunning. Substitute any other group of people and people would condemn statements like that.

And no, I'm not an MBA.

Re:Wow

[boule75]

"This pisses me off. Why do most slashdotters assume that just b/c you have an MBA you must be some evil hell bent individual?
I'm working on getting my MBA and that doesn't mean that I'm going to try to walk all over the other businesses and perform illegal activities."

You mix up two things : evil things and illegal things. One can implement evil tactics provided they are not illegal.

Are tax-free paradise micro-countries illegal? Noooo... Is it illegal to avoid paying any tax ? Nooooot necessarily... provided you've got a "good" lawyer and a guy with an MBA. Funny how US citizens frequently imagine that every evil is identified and made illegal by US laws ! Er... is it really funny in fact?

I used to discuss frequently with students from Law schools and our equivalent of MBAs here in France and the mentalities are the same: "it is not forbidden, it leads to profit, do it; whatever that may be". They have even casted out the word "moral" and they talk of "ethics", so that nobody knows what is behind. Much more practical.

Key phrase: "hey! it's not evil, it is lawfull business !". Sure. And MBA students are trained to spot & use holes in the law, as far as I know. Business as usual.

Re:If this is for real...

[Xuranova]

Geezus people. Did we all forget that the Anti-trust judges can't do a damn thing unless SCO is shown to be doing something illegal? If SCO even has the slightest case, and it's showed that MS is helping them UPHOLD SCOs IP. Then please oh please tell me how MS will get punished for doing what can be viewed as not the best thing but the "right thing"?

If this was some form of extortion, then sure, send in the law!. But as long as SCO is still able to hold their place in court, MS is can continue to sitting pretty in the shadows.

Re:AHEM! (Was:Wow)

[TamMan2000]

Many of us who either have or are obtaining the MBA do NOT seek power or money as an end. (Granted, some do, and those idiots have tarnished the reputation of the rest of us.) Rather, more than a few of us are interested in growing our careers in other ways than the technical track, and to learn more non-technical skills along the way. (Like, oh, the kind that keep the software engineers in a firm employed.)

Do you not see the contradiction in your own statement? Why are you seeking to advance your career? You could be one of the rare exceptions (and I really hope you are) who wants to get into the managerial track to increase their sphere of influence and make a bigger difference than they can from the tech positions, but, unfortunatly, everyone I have ever known outside of an academic setting and most of those in an academic setting who aspire to "climb the ladder" are out for prestige, which is just a different metric for the same BS power and money type of succes that most slashdotters view as evil and corrupting.

Every good manager (meening morally good and effective, not just effective) who I have known was a pleasure to work with, respected by his workers, hated by his superiours, and above all else, reluctantly in the position they were in (meaning that they were managing because they felt nobody else could do the job justice).

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

if phrase equals "Go ahead and mod me down as offtopic."
then Insightful = 5;

Re:Wow

[schuster]

that is so true. when I first started taking information technology classes, we talked about why we all wanted to go into IT in the first place and probably 90% of the class said they just wanted to make money. if that's all they want, then more power to them, but I wonder if it will make it that much more difficult for them. I have a friend who went into IT classes not knowing a damn thing about computers but wanting to learn. For him, the money was just an added benefit. Two years after graduating now, he's just one rank below VP at a major multi-billion dollar company. At the end of the day, you have to have more than some idea of where you want to go. You also have to have a vehicle that can take you there.

New flash - slashdot readers overreact!

[Call Me Black Cloud]

Two points. Is this real, and is the dollar figure correct?

If it's real, consider the source. The e-mail was not widely distributed so did someone raid an inbox for this? Was it printed out and left on the printer? In either case, the source must be close to the principals. Why hasn't more information been forthcoming from this source? Certainly this source would have been able to pick up things like, oh, what the infringing code was, who SCO is planning on suing...

Let's say the e-mail is authentic. Consider the $86M figure. From the memo:

Microsoft will have brough in $86 million for us including Baystar.

The poster (and many many of those leaving comments) seem to assume MS gave SCO $86M. If you read the memo, clearly that's not the case. It says MS has brought in that money, including Baystar. From the commentary, we know that Baystar provided at least $50M. MS just referred SCO to Baystar.

Take a look at Baystar's site [baystarcapital.com]. They invest in many companies, not all tech related. If you read the Baystar news section, you'll see this article [baystarcapital.com] that shows Baystar is not letting SCO have free rein and is interested in protecting its investment.

Bottom line: MS is not funnelling money to SCO via Baystar. MS introduced them but Baystar made the decision to fund, based on the best interest of its investors. Of course, the way Raymond spins it is, "If not for Microsoft, SCO would be at least $15 million in debt today." No, if not for Baystar. Sure, MS introduced them but you may as well say, "If not for the mothers of Baystar's founders giving birth to those founders..." A lot of things came together for SCO to secure the funding.

It's a lot less ominous than the excitable posters here seem to think, or certainly Raymond:

There you have it. A hundred million funnelled from Microsoft to SCO

Nonsense.

Re:He's as good as fired.

[liquidsin]

Even if it *is a document tracking system, firing the snitch would be on par with fessing up to that document being authentic. And I'm sure that IBM and RedHat and Novell would all be interested in this document, which somehow never got handed over in discovery. And the SEC may want to know why MS is funneling tens of millions of dollars through other companies to SCO, and how SCO is reporting this income. And the DOJ may want to know why MS is doing this as well, since it just may be considered anti-competitive to fund a company's attempt to exterminate your enemies.

Re:Wow

[michael_cain]

The reason many unethical businesses fail is that they are fleeced by unethical executives.

Of course, it's not like some companies don't deserve it. Suppose I set up the CEO's compensation scheme like this: (1) you get $1M per year to run the business, (2) if there's a change of ownership and you lose your job, you get $20M, and (3) you get these risk free stock options and if the share price goes up $10, you get $30M. What's the CEO's motivation? Polish the chrome up and sell that sucker! If the board of directors didn't intend for that to be the outcome, why did they set up the compensation scheme that encouraged it?

Have you ever noticed how many board members of large companies are CEOs of other large corporations? I think it's a conspiracy!

Gaining momentum...

[Anthony Boyd]

I note that ZDnet now has an article [zdnet.co.uk] on this. And Design Technica [designtechnica.com] and ENN [www.enn.ie] have picked up (copied) the Register article.

I think we should be shouting this from rooftops. Microsoft secretly funnelled a whole lot of extra money to SCO, through intermediaries. It's a big deal, especially for a convicted monopolist.

Re:Uh, this DOJ is pretty effective.

[jimhill]

The Appellate Court's comments on Jackson were that he knew what he was doing. I thought then and think now that they were hittin' the pipe to say that he did a good job but they were going to vacate his order for relief to avoid the always-trite "appearance of impropriety". Either he did a good job, end of story, or he didn't and they should have punted the whole shootin' match.

I was out of work for much of the trial and had the opportunity to read the hundreds of pages of Jackson's findings. He demonstrated a clear awareness of Microsoft's misdeeds and what would be an appropriate level of sanction to restore competition to the marketplace. Only the most ardent Microsoft cheerleader could claim that the KK-approved settlement has done jack to restore a marketplace twisted out of recognition by the company.

Re:$50 says bullshit. "brutial"?"makerket"?"kepp"?

[The I Shing]

I have received email from people with PhDs who head up university departments that have just as many typos as that message. I guess that they're in a hurry to get the message out, and don't have anyone around to proofread. The typos in the message in this case are the kind someone doing a fast hunt-and-peck without regard for the consequences might make.

And on a cynical note, I think that high-up, well-to-do people don't think enough of most of their email recipients to bother with accurate typing or grammar. They save the careful typing and sentence structure for the people who are at the same level or higher than them on the food chain. They'll even have their secrectaries proofread and recompose their email before sending it to their own superiors.

Re:Wow (FUD ALERT)

[DLG]

Little bit of FUD analysis here from an amateur. Feel free to discredit me as well but I think this is a sneaky posting that has sneakily been given a higher moderation.

Actually, it's their money. When you pay for gas, "your money" will eventually reach terrorists under that logic.

There is no logic in this response either. By the same mislogic buying American Flags will eventually get into the hands of people who kill babies. Spending money at all means that someone else gets to spend money and so on. The fact that oil->terrorist is a give away that this AC is stuck in some old discussion about the old anti-drug commercials. Probably a conservative shill for hire who has run out of 'gas'(Pun intended)

Anyway, objectively, and using available evidence rather than assumption, none of the "Halloween memos" have ever been confirmed as being real.
I am not sure if this is correct or not, but it is good to just say something like this as it is hard to prove whether something has been proven. This same statement can be used almost verbatim about every piece of journalism that has ever dealt with leaks, or witness accounts.

Given that the idea that MS is backing SCO has been a popular conspiracy theory since Groklaw was born, isn't assuming this is true jumping the gun a bit?
I don't want to dig around but MS has been an investor in SCO for years. There is no conspiracy theory there, it is financial relationships. Drawing Groklaw into this for no apparent reason is a bit of distraction and an attempt to sully as many targets as possible. The reality is that we aren't questioning whether or not MS has the right to give money to SCO but whether SCO has any product besides harassment law suits, and if it does not, should it's shareholders be supporting this continuous legal effort. If the entire rationale of SCO is as a hired bully for MSoft, then they have no future.

When the non-geek media went ahead and assumed that the Mydoom virus was authored by Linux zealots, without objectivity or evidence, merely because the assumption made sense, everyone cried bloody murder.

This is good. Totally off topic. It is always good to try to require individuals to operate based on no bias when you can't win an argument. Objectivity and evidence are not required in discussing any of this. We are not only allowed to use our experience, and perception, but are encouraged to do so, as that is a useful technique towards investigating matters. Until we are in a court of law we can discuss conjecture, and theories quite healthily.

----

Re:ESR credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously because I suspect this will get modded down...

Okay, you've lost me. How has Eric lost credibility?

ESR is a controversial guy. His recent moves of questionable success/value: asking Sun to open-source Java, picking a hacker logo that no one is actually using, writing a new kernel configuration system that no one is actually using, and revising the Jargon File so that "hacker" now implies "neo-conservative."

His continued abuse of his hacker prominence to promote assault weapons is not entirely popular.

There's some question about how much IBM is paying him to research and respond to SCO.

ESR has been claiming for about six years that cheaper PCs, anti-trust battles, improvements in GNOME, and other such things will be the death of Windows and Microsoft. He even published a timeline once.

And then there's Sex Tips for Geeks [catb.org] and Dancing with the Gods [catb.org], both of which are more than a little bit disturbing.

Eric flaunts his hacker fame (based on what? intercal and fetchmail?) to push unrelated political-fringe causes, picks fights with everyone from Scott McNealy to RMS for fun, and thinks he channels an ancient Greek sex god. Yeah, you could make an argument that his credibility is running a little bit thin...

Re:Wow

[gcaseye6677]

Have you ever noticed how many board members of large companies are CEOs of other large corporations? I think it's a conspiracy!

Its an old boy's network that consists of CEOs giving each other pay raises and having no real accountability to anyone. Even if shareholders do become aware of this and try to stop the fleecing of their company, there is usually little they can do. Shareholder resolutions typically do no good, so the only real hope for change is if a majority shareholder gets fed up and starts voting out directors. If you are thinking about buying stock in a publically traded company, it may be helpful to know the makeup of the company board so you can avoid the stock if the company is not being run for the long term good.

Re:Wow

[soliptic]

Why do most slashdotters assume that just b/c you have an MBA you must be some evil hell bent individual?

I have to agree.

I work doing a vague assortment of database management / fiddling, VLE maintenance, and other IT-related tasks for the office that supports the MBA by Distance Learning of a major institution. (Cant name names, but its in the Financial Times top 20 DL MBAs).

I'm not a fan of business, globalism, etc. In fact, my natural philosphical/political tendencies would make most slashdotters decry me as a communist - (I'm in the UK, so our political right and your political left seem more or less identical, and i'm left of what passes for our left these days). So naturally I've felt very "alien" since starting this job. Our students are all types with 60K UKP pa salaries, who'll jump straight to 6 figures once they get the MBA - something which I would ordinarily find abhorrent in general. So I've thought quite a lot about the ethical aspects of all this stuff.

And basically s.a.m is 100% right. MBA is a ticket to evil corporate nastiness. Quite the opposite probably. Our programme has a "Business Ethics" component. I've read the course material, and I was extremely impressed. I have a degree in history - whilst many people seem to think history is learning dates, degree level history is basically the ultimate arts subject - required a carefully judged balance of economics, philosophy, politics, sociology, linguistics, etc, etc. And this material wasnt messing about. It wasnt "here's how to be evil". It covered advanced philosphical and economic thinking, from the classics like Kant or Smith, to twentieth century thinkers like Foucault. It was also very strong in covering the interaction between business and different cultures worldwide: I learned some extremely interesting things about how Islamic/Arabic religion/culture impacts on economic and business activity, for example.

Elsewhere in the finance components Enrol et al are regularly mentioned...

So, in short, MBAs dont teach people how to be evil. Far from it.

Re:Wow

[JWhitlock]

It's interesting to be marked a Troll and a Flamebaiter for mentioning ideas that are considered fundamental in the academic discipline that studies the subject. It's a little like being modded down for mentioning that most English majors think Shakespeare was a pretty important dramatist.

Oh Please. Nobody has proven that outsourcing will create more jobs.......let alone *skilled* jobs, let alone a sufficent number of *skilled* jobs.

This ain't an academic proof (Slashdot isn't a great place for such proofs), but consider computers. In the beginning, the manufacturing, assembly, and sales of computers were almost entirely in the U.S. As the industry became larger, companies found that they could outsource the manufacturing jobs to Southeast Asia, ship the parts (or assembled computers) to the U.S., and still make a larger profit over those who made them in the U.S. Soon enough, the vast majority of computer parts were manufactured in Southeast Asia, spelling doom for anyone in the computer industry in the U.S. Only the upper managers of IBM (and the stockholders, of course) were making any money.

Or, maybe not. While moving computer manufacturing to Southeast Asia was bad for the worker trying to make a living constructing computers, it was pretty good for anyone that used a computer in their job. As they became cheaper, businesses could buy more, until you got to the point where it was common to have every employee with a computer. Whole industries were created around maintaining an office of computers (which employed huge numbers of people), and some of the largest fortunes of the modern age were made from selling computers, software, and services.

Computers got cheap enough that many American families bought them for the home. Enough people had computers (hooked up to the Internet) that businesses scrambled to find ways to make money off of these people. For a while, you could actually get a job creating web pages and web sites, just so that companies could reach consumers in new ways (either directly or through advertising).

I'd argue that outsourcing those computer manufacturing jobs to Asia directly resulted in cheaper computers and their widespread ownership, and that creates millions of jobs, many more than the hundreds to thousands that Cray ever employed in Wisconsin and Minnesota. It also made it possible for a few folks to collaborate on a free Unix clone for the (newly cheap) PC. There are people arguing that that little development will mean the end of anyone making money in software, but anyone who has worked with FreeBSD or Linux knows that there is still plenty of work to be done.

So, can I say that sending x-rays to India has created new skilled jobs? Well, I can't give their names and numbers, but there is someone who closed the deal on the dedicated bandwidth between U.S. and India, someone else who maintains the equipment that makes it cheap enough to send those images, someone in the U.S. whose job it is to interface with his Indian counterparts to negotiate rates and solve issues, etc. etc. There are companies that pay a few dollars less per employee for health care costs, and perhaps a couple of people that don't get laid off because of it. There is an emergency room doctor that can see an additional patient per hour. And on, and on, and on. And, yep, there is an x-ray technician, bitter and out of a job.

I'm sorry for you if you have been outsourced. I'm angry if the government has failed to pay benefits because the laws haven't caught up to the fact that service industry jobs are now being targeted. But I'm pretty tired of paying more for food because the government is trying to protect farmers and for paying more taxes because the government just can't close a military base that employs half a town. And, as much as it hurts, I'm tired of paying more for software because some folks thought four years of school would be enough to employ them for life.

Re:The bigger question is...

[mod_parent_down]

...why is everyone automatically believing an "anonymous e-mail?"

I understand your point... but what do you expect, a 100% verifiable PGP-signed email from a high-ranking microsoft employee?

It's the whole reason this has garnered so many damn slashdot postings -- nobody knows anything for sure, so we all get to talk about all the possibilities.

Re:Wow

[Torinaga-Sama]

Everyday a man goes home and doesn't murder his entire family.

We never hear about that guy, do we?

Re:Wow

[spitzak]

It is possible that SCO's plan is to convince people that Microsoft is funding them, without it being true. Even this memo may be a fake for that purpose.

Investors are not stupid. They know that if SCO "wins" and gets rid of Linux then SCO gets nothing. So they must think that SCO is somehow making income in another way. The only plausable way is to assumme somebody is giving them a lot of money secretly.

So many of SCO's proclamations so anti-Linux, without serving any possible purpose for advancing their case, that it has convinced everybody here that Microsoft is paying them. It is not impossible that this is a scam to make investors believe the same thing.

Only problem is that Microsoft could refute this in a press release. So it would seem that perhaps they fooled Microsoft into coughing up some money such as that license, enough that Microsoft cannot refute their involvement without lying a bit.

no no no

[elbarrio]

The lesson of Enron is "do what's legal" not "do what's honorable". If the leaders of Enron hadn't done anything illegal, the story would be the same as every other corporation.

The problem is that when people work in groups in a corporate setting they adopt new ethical standards to match their group. The ethical standard in corporations is to do whatever you can to make money. Doing things of questionable legality is just a financial risk like anything else. In order to keep corporations from doing things we don't want we have to make either the chance of getting caught or the punishment or both so high as to make it no longer financially wise. We cannot simply rely on them do what we think is ethical because the ethics within coporations are different than the ethics in the general populations.

Re:I'll hold my horses

[John Hasler]

> There's nothing indicating that this is real. "An
> anonymous whistleblower"? What does that mean?

I take it to mean that Eric knows who it is but has agreed to keep the individual's identity secret.

> OSI know who the whistleblower is, but they claim
> they don't so they can't be forced to reveal his
> identity in court.

Where do you see such a claim?

Re:Wow

[teromajusa]

If minimum wage were lowered substantially, and various labor restrictions on corporations were lifted, then small and medium sized business could actually afford to do business here, and the larger ones would realize that the cost of moving offshore is too great for the decrease in labor cost.

Yeah, why move jobs to the third world, when you can move the third world here! Sounds great. Where do I sign up to get wages lowered, health benefits removed, and longer work days under poor working conditions?

Re:Wow

[elfuq]

Where do I sign up to get wages lowered, health benefits removed, and longer work days under poor working conditions? Walmart. Duh!

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the case, why go through a third party anonymously

in re: the anonymous part, a little something called the Sherman Act [usdoj.gov] is more than a little relevant.

in re: the use of a third party, there's the issue of standing (as in MS would not be able to do what SCO is doing in the courts because they have not been harmed).

My question is, does the $86-106M include the "licenses" that MSFT purchased from SCO or is that accounted for separately?

Re:HA HA HA HA Jokes on you Slashdot....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is he a dumbass, he obviously has never had any real contact with the sorts of cretins who occupy the upper strata of corporate management these days. IP guys are probably the bottom of the corporate barrel, their chosen field being a damning admission that they themselves are incapable of producing anything and that all they can do in life is feed off the IP output of their betters. What surprises me is not the awful state of the revealed document but that there is a document at all. The parties involved probably communicate with greater comfort by means of grunts, farts and eye-pokes.