SCO News Roundup: 9/14 SNR

Thursday, September 13, 2007

9/14 SNR

Breaking: Reports that trading has been halted in SCO's stock. More as soon as I know more.
ComputerWorld on the fast-approaching SCO v. Novell trial, which starts Monday, and should be over by this time next week. Can you believe it?
SCO has retained a new firm to administer its 401(k) plan. The "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" metaphor has been chronically abused over the years in connection to SCO, but I can't think of a better one right now. Someone on the boards mentioned that Enron did this just before cratering, presumably so employees would be locked out of their accounts until all their savings had vaporized.
A CBR piece about Kimball denying SCO's fast-track appeal effort
An odd article at CIO Insight: "Battle Over Linux: When a Win May Not be a Win". It puts a scary-face spin on a small set of things that are technically true, such as the fact that Kimball hasn't ruled on the infringement claims in the IBM case, and the nonzero possibility that SCO might have better luck on appeal. It then wanders off into a spiel about why software copyrights are bad. I happen to disagree with that: Without copyrights, I'm not convinced you can have an enforceable free/open software license. You'd have to go hog-wild with software patents, while for the unpatentable stuff the only way you could protect your "IP" would be as a trade secret, which couldn't be any more incompatible with F/OSS if it had been deliberately designed that way.
On GL, SCO's doing a little supplemental whining for a do-over, in support of the previous begging they did a few days back. Yeah. Good luck with that.
Also on GL: A couple of days ago PJ had a piece rounding up SCO news coverage since August 10th, with a great chronological table. It's quite an interesting read.

One of the things I attempt to do here is observe and critique how the media covers the SCO saga. It's been a real goldmine over the years if you enjoy making fun of clueless journalists, which I do for some reason. Somebody's got to play "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" with those bozos, and for some reason I can't recall I decided to volunteer. Possibly there was beer involved. And now PJ's gone and done a better job of it than I've been doing all this time (if you ask me). Honestly, sometimes I wonder why I even bother with this SNR business.
I've never understood the animosity some people feel towards PJ, usually over extremely small and silly matters. A comment of theirs gets deleted or lost on GL, and they seethe about it for years afterward. I don't get it. Take, for example, the very latest anti-PJ jihad, this time by Jem Matzan, proprietor of something called the "JEM Report". He's searching high and low for people who've had comments nuked on GL and want to whine about it. PJ got wind of this and wasn't happy, and neither was SJVN, and now Matzan's convinced there's a vast conspiracy out there to suppress this story. He explains himself further in a thread at his TJR forums, where he goes by the nym "Valour". He's insisting he has only the noblest and purest motives at heart, and just wants to get the Truth out there about this super-important Scandal of the Century. I'm not convinced it's a scandal. The fact that someone exercises their own discretion about comments on a site they administer isn't even newsworthy, much less scandalous.

But then, the fact that I strongly disagree probably marks me (in his mind) as a co-conspirator in this nefarious global cabal he obsesses over. Ok. Cool. Count me in, then. I've always wanted to be part of an elite global conspiracy. Just don't call me a journalist, because them's fightin' words...