SCO News Roundup

• Another batch of new filings in both the Novell & IBM cases. No story on GL yet, but there's sure to be one soon. SCO's asking for a PSJ on a few of the claims in the case, claiming that the "plain language" of the infamous Novell-OldSCO Asset Purchase Agreement ("APA") transfers all copyrights, even though it says precisely the opposite thing, and SCO's failed to find any other document that does explicitly transfer copyrights, and when they started their anti-Linux jihad they went to Novell, hat in hand, begging, pleading that the copyrights be transferred. And while dismissing one of the earlier round of PSJs in the IBM case, Kimball made it very clear that he was only doing so because SCO might still locate a Section 204 document -- that's a legal copyright transfer document -- some time in the discovery phase. It doesn't look like they found one.
  
  Over the years, SCO execs have occasionally described their legal strategy with card-playing metaphors, like the time Darl(?) said they had no intention of showing all their cards just yet. The new filings suggest they still think of the case as a big poker game, and are trying to bluff and look confident while playing a losing hand. It's a real shame for them that the courts don't work quite like a poker game. At least in principle, all your cards are on the table, face up, and a losing hand is a losing hand, period. But still, I'm feeling generous this morning, so I'll award them a tiny lil' gold star for effort. That plus $4 will get you a cup of coffee down at the corner Starbucks.
  
  
• Updated: The GL story is up now: SCO Moves for Summary Judgment on Slander of Title in Novell Case. MOG figures prominently in the new filing, so there's plenty more in the article about her, and Lyons too. If you aren't already sick of hearing about SCO's dynamic duo, I mean.
  
  Then there's this alarming tidbit from the piece:
  

  
  Someone placed a threatening comment on Groklaw the other day, saying someday the "darkness" behind PJ would be revealed, and to "sleep well", and because of the threatening tone, I checked the logs and the comment appears to have come from an ad agency that does a lot of work for Microsoft. So I am wondering about things I didn't think about before. I remember what happened to an innocent man's reputation in the Massachusetts ODF affair.
  

  
  
  Is there anything these dirtbags won't stoop to?
  
  
• sk43999 is on a roll right now. The latest: "SCO Relies on gnu.org and redhat.com To Provide ELF Support for UnixWare Customers". Now, from SCO's perspective they're perfectly entitled to do that, since they claim to own everything related to ELF. But still, the fact that they make a claim like that, and then don't have any software tools of their own to do the job, that ought to be a little embarrassing, shouldn't it? Well, I mean, it would if the bigwigs at SCO were capable of feeling embarrassment, and all the evidence suggests otherwise.
  
  
• Jonathan_Sizz has updated his table of SCO's allegations and what's become of them. And then he digs in to allegation #166 (already tossed out by Wells) and explains just how bozotic that claim really was.
  
  
• If you've been following the ongoing Dan Lyons thing at all, you'll want to check out Simon G. Best's new blog, Sinking Point, and Tim Ransom's Flailing Point. Snort. Giggle.
  
  
• Tim O'Reilly & Jimbo on bringing "civility" to the world-o-blogs, with a proposed code of conduct for bloggers. A take on that from a prominent local blogger here in Oregon.
  
  As I see it, civility is nice when you can get it, but I wouldn't call it vital. If I think SCO is a pack of sleazy third-rate grifters, and I do, I'm going to say so, and I wholeheartedly agree that it's uncivil and just not very nice to say that about someone.
  
  And as for getting rid of anonymity, well, I don't want to get all melodramatic about it and speculate about what SCO and its allies might try to pull if they knew who all their critics were. But I'd say the current PJ situation shows they clearly have ill intentions on that point. My feeling is that the free flow of information often requires anonymity. So no, you won't ever see a policy of requiring all real names here. I turned off anonymous posting temporarily when I was having blogspammer issues, but that's back on again. Actually I'd forgotten I'd turned it off until I saw this code-of-conduct thing, and I just turned it back on. So there.
  
  
• Dvorak insists that pr0n doesn't drive the tech industry. It sounds like this is kind of a sore point with him.
  
  
• CRM News on migrating to Macs. One of the companies profiled is named "Sustainable Harvest Coffee", so, I mean, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the company, or with migrating to Macs generally, but I think it's fair to say this isn't exactly a representative sample of the larger business community.
  
  
• SGI has a new CEO, FWIW. In related news, Francisco Franco and IRIX are both still dead.
  
  
• Speaking of dead stuff, here's a link to Paul Graham's "Microsoft is Dead" piece. A more accurate description might be "Microsoft is Boring and Somewhat Less Scary Than Before", but I doubt that would generate quite so many page views.
  
  
• The icky Big Media corps want to be exempted from a proposed California law banning pretexting. Because nothing, nothing is more important than tracking down those dastardly music & movie pirates. If it takes a little identity theft and curtailment of basic civil liberties to do that, hey, that's the price we've all got to pay to keep Big Media profitable.
  
  I don't condone piracy, of course, but if the only way to guarantee it never, ever occurs is a sort of digital police state, the price is far too high.
  
  
• Remember the HD-DVD + Blu-Ray key crack from a while ago? The cat-and-mouse game commences, with the Big Media guys now revoking those keys for new disc releases.
  
  
• Debian 4 is out, complete with its suite of rebadged Mozilla apps. "Iceweasel"? You gotta be kidding me.
  
  
• Here's SJVN's take on Debian 4. I have to agree with him here. The Debian guys have jumped the shark. I'm not a pundit, a tech analyst, or a professional prognosticator of any kind, and I don't claim to know precisely what is most needed today in the F/OSS world. But I put it to you that an extra helping of licensing fundamentalism is not it.
  
  I have a longtime friend who serves as a sort of barometer of geekish l33tness. He was right about Google, and he was right (at the time) about Slashdot and K5, and more other things than I can list right now. He used to be a huge Debian fan, but he switched to Gentoo a year or so ago and hasn't looked back. Debian just isn't cool anymore.
  
  Naturally he's not always right. Even now, after all these years, he still hasn't seen the light and realized that Emacs beats up puny little vi and takes its lunch money. But hey.
  
  
• On IV, a follow-up to my earlier research on the BSD svr4/streams thing SCO's started whining about. Seems it's wayyy old, as in 1993 old, and OpenBSD's got it too.
  
  
• Here's a funny thing. A while back I linked to the membership list for iXorg, SCO's worldwide user group with exactly 30 total members. Well, the page lists web addresses for most of the members, so I took the liberty of running 'em through Netcraft to see which OS each member uses for a webserver. You know, just to see whether they like the taste of their own dog food or not.
  
  The results:
  11 Linux (definite or probable)
  6 SCO Unix (definite or probable)
  5 no website, or website down
  3 FreeBSD
  3 Windows
  2 Solaris
  
  All of the SCO Unix sites with sufficently old Netcraft data have been on the OS since the pre-Darl era. The lawsuits apparently didn't motivate anyone to switch to it. A couple of sites have migrated away in recent years, though. One to Linux, and one to FreeBSD. And one Linux site moved to Win2k3.
  
  Oh, and iXorg itself? Linux. Used to be SCO Unix, but not anymore.
  
  Snort. Giggle.
  
  
• Some ugly fallout from the M$-Novell deal, this time concerning FreeType and alleged M$ patents on sub-pixel font rendering.
  
  
• Purely because of the funny name, here's some info & photos about the XKL TOAD-1, a recent (mid-90's) continuation of the old DEC PDP-10 architecture.
  
  

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It turns out that over the weekend, Lyons went on a posting binge on his blog and then turned right around and deleted 'em all. Some people have speculated he did this after he realized the posts were really meanspirited and unprofessional. I doubt that, myself, because he left all his other posts up.

I missed out on this circus at the time, since it was a weekend and all that, and I had better things to do. But someone mentioned that Google's blogsearch cache still had brief excerpts of the vanished posts available, so here they are for posterity. One of them was apparently a rant about "fair use", as in Lyons' fair use of GL posters' comments, so I trust he's not going to give me any lip about posting these.

• On journalists and sources
  7 Apr 2007 by Dan Lyons
  Well PJ now attempts to deflect attention from her own issues by reporting here that journalists always get documents and other information from parties to lawsuits. Very true. She also reports that I’ve been given information by SCO. ...
  
  
• It’s called “fair use,” you can look it up
  6 Apr 2007 by Dan Lyons
  I’m getting some notes from folks who claim I’ve violated the copyrights of a Groklaw poster by publishing a copy of his very silly comment for the amusement of my readers. See my post here. Let me direct you to this page on the Web ...
  
  
• Update: OSDL and Groklaw
  6 Apr 2007 by Dan Lyons
  I’m getting some mail from people who say they’d rather not believe my recent item about OSDL making payments to Groklaw. A suggestion: Instead of bugging me, write to the folks at OSDL, which is now called the Linux Foundation. ...
  
  
• Head-in-the-sand award
  5 Apr 2007 by Dan Lyons
  Overnight I received a long email from a PJ defender who says he doesn’t believe that PJ sought and received payment from OSDL, as I reported. The reader says he’d like me to produce the canceled “cheque.” (I guess he’s British.) ...
  
  
• Groklaw comment of the day
  4 Apr 2007 by Dan Lyons
  PS, we love you. Authored by: Aladdin Sane on Wednesday, April 04 2007 @ 03:38 AM EDT. OK, I have to say it, without sexual intent or feeling, I love you, PJ. I have to say this. Please forgive me. This is not the first time I’ve spoken ...
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech