This Old Blog

Being a Linux user and supporter I've been watching the SCOX litigation train wreck unfold, all the way up to last Friday's Chapter 11 announcement . This filing was foretold by the 102 page ruling for Novell and against SCO, handed down by Judge Kimball back on August 10th . I decided to let some of the dust settle before wading in with my two-pence-worth observations. Etymology The title for this post comes straight from an entry on the Yahoo! SCOX board . Normally I spend as little time there as possible, but I had to go and see what those guys would write after Friday's news. I was not disappointed. Posted by vanburgerstein, it is, as raoulduke_esq notes in his reply, some of the best over-the-top sarcasm I've read in quite a while. So I start off with a complete quote of vanburgerstein. It certainly appears that the operating system whose source code was not transferred to Linux in any way shape or form isn't owned by SCO. I'm willing to concede that afte...

Screenshot from CNN Money today.

Maureen O'Gara, that intrepid American technology [sic] journalist [sic], took a swipe at Judge Kimball's ruling in SCO v. Novell. And she did it behind the ".NETDJ News Desk" byline on the cutting edge Sys-Con website, Open Source version. (If you want the entire article, Google for it. I refuse to provide a link.) How much braver can you get? So what was in the article that shows her writing fingerprints? Allow me to quote: Judge Kimball dismissed the testimony of Novell management at the time Novell sold Unix to the Santa Cruz Operation, starting with CEO Bob Frankenberg who signed the APA without reading it, testifying that the copyrights were transferred; dismissed testimony from Santa Cruz management saying that's what they thought they bought and wouldn't have done the deal without them; dismissed evidence that Novell changed the copyrights in the code to read "SCO" when the deal went down; dismissed evidence saying Novell left the copyrights ...

I've been on vacation on Amelia Island all this week, and even I found out about Judge Dale Kimball's ruling handed down in the SCO v. Novell trial today. Granted it was about four hours after the fact, but then I am on an island at the beach. Some things just take more precedence. But the bottom line is that Novell owns the Unix and UnixWare copyrights after all. That, and SCO owes Novell a considerable chunk (95%, I believe) of the monies it earned when it sold licenses to SUN and Microsoft. All that's left now is for the dominoes to fall down on SCO in the SCO v. IBM trial as well as the Redhat v. SCO trial. SCO is so fscked. I'd offer up a link to the story on Groklaw, but I'm so bloody tired of error messages being offered up when you do link to Groklaw stories that I'll offer up this link to The Register's story instead . You can then navigate to Groklaw on your own. As wonderful as this news is, what would really put icing on all this for me is, when ...

In one of her worst editorials to date, Pamela Jones writes another long-winded preachy peace ("Goldman Sachs: Linux Will Dominate in the Corporate Data Center - and a Tip for Them") and centers her arguments around a four year old (January 2003) Goldman Sachs article titled " Fear the Penguin ". The premise of the Goldman Sachs' paper is this: In our view, Linux has evolved into an enterprise-class operating system that will have a significant and lasting presence in the IT landscape, and its continued emergence will cause considerable changes in the enterprise IT vendor ecosystem. We believe its strongest effects will be seen in the corporate data center, where we see a shift occurring toward Linux-on-Intel servers away from the current paradigm of proprietary Unix-on-RISC systems. This paradigm shift should have significant implications for the enterprise computing market and for a broad range of vendors in both hardware and software. It's the vindication...

It couldn't have happened to a nicer company. SCOX (The SCO Group), those fine folks from Lindon, Utah, who think that the Linux-using world owes them billions because they happen to own the tattered remains of Unix, will be dropped from the Russell Microcap come June 22nd . This follows SCOX's stock-price drop to below $1 from mid-March until late May of this year. Then the price shot above $1 on some wild speculation in the market as well as what appears to be some fairly heavy dumping of institutional investors. The SCOX stock price now appears to be on the way back down. Whether it will go back below $1 remains to be seen, but today's near 10% drop, in conjunction with the Russell news, doesn't appear to be mere coincidence. I look forward to seeing SCOX slide back below $1 and into NASDAQ capital listing non-compliance. Followed by bankruptcy. Followed by oblivion.

There's a nice little blog called " SCO News Roundup " hosted (like mine) on Google/Blogspot. The author, atul666, does a right fine job running the place. His latest post (5/22) is about a new SCO' 'opinion piece' disguised as fact (as so many of SCO's latest submissions seem to be) about what Novell really intended to do when it signed the APA deal with Santa Cruz Operation (i.e. OldSCO). It's a hoot. The author of this legal fan fiction, G. Gervaise Davis III, seems to have a long and tangled history with prior versions of SCO stretching back to CP/M and Dr DOS. Head on over and read atul666's blog. You'll be glad you did.

Groklaw has posted the readable version of Ransom Love 's voluntary declaration in support of IBM. Let me repeat that. Ransom Love wasn't deposed, he volunteered. Ransom Love was the co-founder and former chief executive of Caldera before it renamed itself to The SCO Group, so he has plenty of knowledge about the company and what it knew before Darl McBride replaced him as chief executive. You need to read Love's deposition to fully understand every lie that the current SCO Group has attempted to sue IBM and other Linux users over. Here is the link to his deposition on Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061104213326242

I've been sick the past few days, but not so sick as to have missed the Microsoft and Novell detente that took place. The one where Microsoft and Novell agreed to cooperate. Where Microsoft agreed to support Novell. All sorts of reasons were given, and you can read about them just about everywhere. So in the interests of adding One More Opinion (OMO), I'll throw in my two cents. SCOG vs IBM In case you haven't noticed it, the three-year-old case continues to drag on and on. And slowly but surely SCOG (SCO Group, formerly known as Caldera) has had, effectively, all its evidence and claims debunked, one by one. It's now obvious to everyone who has bothered to follow that SCOG was in it as a shakedown of IBM. And IBM said no. So over the past three years IBM has systematically demolished every argument SCOG has presented, and in the process has slowly pulled Linux from under the cloud of 'infringment' of SCOG's supposed 'intellectual property' that it s...