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SCO Caught Copying 351

linuxwrangler writes "While accusing everyone else of copying "their" code, SCO has meanwhile been caught copying documentation. In fact they copied several chapters of the Book of Webmin directly into their online documentation. While the book is available online, it is not licensed for redistribution. Details are sparse but it appears that SCO had to pay the publisher for using the material."
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SCO Caught Copying

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  • Re:Uh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 13, 2004 @02:44PM (#9142437)
    They only paid after they were caught.
  • by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Thursday May 13, 2004 @02:47PM (#9142498) Journal
    its not that uncommon for a slimeball to go around and accuse others of doing what they themselves are doing. Thats the first sign of a cheating husband, he starts accusing his wife of running around.

    Are we really shocked that SCO was stealing someone elses IP?
  • Re:Uh (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 13, 2004 @02:47PM (#9142503)
    Umm cause THEY VIOLATED COPYRIGHT. Pointing fingers at the linux community while they are guilty of doing the same type of crime.

    And, of course the major difference .. the linux community isnt guilty ..whereas THEY are.

  • Credibility (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 13, 2004 @02:48PM (#9142518)
    SCO spokesperson Blake Stowell could not be reached for comment.

    What was that phrase again "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"? This story may not be news, but it's important to note how SCO is no better than everyone else next time Darl gets on his soapbox.
  • sco? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by golgafrincham ( 774723 ) on Thursday May 13, 2004 @02:50PM (#9142546) Journal
    is there anyone out there to whom sco does not seem like a big joke?

    if there was one smart person left in that company, they will remain quit, stop their court activities and die a peacefull death. i do not care about the harm sco may do to the gnu and linux community (because they do no harm), but i care about the harm they do to computer business in general. it is hard enough to raise vc nowadays, don't destroy the image of software companies any longer.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 13, 2004 @02:51PM (#9142570)

    Quite interesting [rcn.com].

  • by Jtheletter ( 686279 ) on Thursday May 13, 2004 @02:53PM (#9142590)
    With each passing day and new SCO article I bemoan a total lack of cash to short the hell out of SCOX. Shit, if I'd started in January I'd be buying a new car this spring.

    As to this infringement, I demand RIAA-style copyright sentencing. For each possible infringement SCO should have to pay the maximum fine, multiplied by the total possible number of people who had access to the material. Given that it's posted online on a public site, and not in a limited user base network (ala p2p) this means the entire world population had access and SCO should be fined roughly the total value of all money produced in the world from 1972 to present.

    If our justice system is going to let all these companies warp the law as they do it seems only fair they should fall prey to their own tactics.

  • by bonch ( 38532 ) on Thursday May 13, 2004 @02:58PM (#9142657)
    After all, if SCO does it, gets sued, and settles, it's funny and bad and an illustration of how evil SCO is.

    But when a pirate does it, gets sued, and settles, somehow it's evil that the RIAA sued in the first place and the pirate is the good guy martyr.
  • Re:Oi, reminds me... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GreyPoopon ( 411036 ) <gpoopon@gmaOOOil.com minus threevowels> on Thursday May 13, 2004 @03:06PM (#9142746)
    Surely Darl dumped enough of his stock already to ensure comes out of SCO wityh a big pot of cash.

    If he did, that might also ensure a trip to Club Fed.

  • Perhaps all software vendors, commercial or not, should be audited by the open-source community to make sure they don't include stolen code.


    How else would a customer know that their business wasn't using some illegal components that they couldn't depend on in the future because their vendor might have to remove them.


    Just think if SCO or some other OS you might be using might be dependant on an illegally-copied component. Your business would be SOL if they had to remove it and couldn't find a replacement. Yipes. I think we should be insisting on audits of the commmercial packages we buy.

  • by Limburgher ( 523006 ) on Thursday May 13, 2004 @03:15PM (#9142833) Homepage Journal
    The book of Webmin is a great reference for a great tool. I've used both to take the initial fear of Linux out of newbie admins. Once I show them how frigging easy even SENDMAIL config is under webmin, they jump right in.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 13, 2004 @03:17PM (#9142852)
    I thought at one time SCO and Caldera were one ... and Caldera owned Webmin... i remeber a big stink about how Webmin was not really open source it was owned by the guy who started it Jamie Cameron ... and he said he would make it GPL after version 1.0 ... weellll.. at about version .8 or .9 Jamie ended up selling the whole thing to Caldera .. everyones work... dont know if he went to work for them or not...
    But since it was owned by caldera at one time.. and caldera was owned by SCO... isnt it SCo's now?

    I hate SCO..
  • by c0defiant ( 763041 ) on Thursday May 13, 2004 @03:25PM (#9142944)
    ... there must be a "Darl Strangelove" joke in here somewhere...

    on hindsight of cease and desist letters:
    "Based on the findings of the report, my conclusion was that this idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious. "

    on Free information:
    "Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world?"

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 13, 2004 @03:27PM (#9142963)
    Ok, you have a point, but so does the grandparent. You need an auditer. A third party neutral company that audits the code. They would have confidentiallity agreement so they would not give away "trade secrets." sure there is room for abuse, but given the current situation, its better than we got. And there is always room for abuse.
  • by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday May 13, 2004 @03:33PM (#9143063) Homepage
    SCO stock continues to drop. The chart for the last three months [yahoo.com] is almost linear, going from 14 to 5. The bump in April was apparently SCO's announced "stock buyback" program, which had little long-term effect.

    Two more points down, and SCOX will be back where it was before all the lawsuits, down around 3. That level looks likely within a month.

  • Yahoeuvre megachart (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 13, 2004 @03:34PM (#9143078)

    Another interesting resource, the new Yahoeuvre megachart [warmcat.com]. Plots shareprice vs events (and more).

  • by Anonym0us Cow Herd ( 231084 ) on Thursday May 13, 2004 @03:56PM (#9143323)
    FYI... There is a new article [groklaw.net] at groklaw [groklaw.net] describing a ruling in the Canopy vs. Novell case.

    For those who don't know, this is yet another case where Canopy (parent company of SCO) says that what is written in the contract isn't as important as the oral agreements they made, and that what the parties agreed to is the opposite of what the written contract says they agreed to.
  • by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Thursday May 13, 2004 @04:10PM (#9143483) Homepage Journal
    Yep. In fact, I think the second meaning listed -- "Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs" -- is actually the original one, and the linguistic usage of "irony" is a later construction.

    Alanis Morisette's stupid song has created a generation of wannabe language Nazis who jump on any perceived misuse of the word, and often embarrass themselves in the process. They're not language Nazis at all; they're not competent enough to be Nazis. They're language Italian Fascists!
  • Re:Uh (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vsprintf ( 579676 ) on Thursday May 13, 2004 @07:22PM (#9145713)

    They copied text, waited for someone to notice, then paid up without a court order.

    I love that logic. It's okay for SCO to knowingly infringe on others' IP as long as they pony up when they get caught.

    That's pretty much the way most businesses work.

    What company do you work for? The company I work for would be very upset about unknowingly infringing someone's copyright. If it wasn't an accident, the person responsible would be fired -- well, as long as it wasn't one of the CxOs, of course (then they'd find ten real workers to blame and fire).

  • Re:Oi, reminds me... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Artifakt ( 700173 ) on Thursday May 13, 2004 @07:23PM (#9145728)
    The US has some similar situations, like people still calling Denali Mt. McKinley. It hasn't taken pushing for the recognition of the change in the schools, however, as lots of outdoors types have figured out that it gets more chicks to brag about climbing thigs with Native American names. It's sort of an anti-PC reason to be PC.
  • Re:Oi, reminds me... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vsprintf ( 579676 ) on Thursday May 13, 2004 @08:09PM (#9146184)

    Actually, we haven't heard from Darl and the boys for a while. No ludicrous statements. No bold and cunning plans. No 'all your code are belong to us! Muahahahaha!'

    Baystar publicly told SCO to shut Darl up or replace him or pay back all the money. Why is the silence surprising?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 13, 2004 @10:57PM (#9147321)

    I know most of you prefer nothing more than foaming at the mouth, and checking facts isn't needed, but here are some:

    www.webmin.com/partners.html [webmin.com]

    Thanks to the following companies and individuals for their support of Webmin over the years :
    • Caldera Systems, for being the first sponsor of Webmin and paying me to work on it full-time for for over a year. Caldera was also the first distribution vendor to include Webmin as their standard administration tool, and developed the Caldera theme.

    www.webmin.com/theage.html [webmin.com]

    Jamie Cameron sits in his Mount Waverley home coding system administration tools, 14,000 kilometres from his boss in Utah, US. Cameron, 27, parlayed a free open source project into a lucrative career working for the No.2 Linux distribution company, Caldera.

    www.webmin.com/intro.html [webmin.com]

    What licence is Webmin distributed under? All recent versions of Webmin are under a BSD-like licence, meaning that it may be freely distributed and modified for commercial and non-commercial use. Early versions were distributed as betas of what would eventually become a commercial product, but following Caldera's sponsorship of the project in 2000 all subsequent releases have been BSD licenced. Even though Caldera is no longer supporting the development of Webmin, all future releases will remain under a free licence.

    www.webmin.com/trans.html [webmin.com]

    Caldera's translation team contributed to the German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean translations.

    So are you sure the book didn't copy the Webmin online doc, that Caldera made a significant contribution to. Who needs facts?

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