On Sat, 23 Aug 2003 20:43:58 -0500, Nucleon <tcfelker@mtco.com> wrote:

>Since yesterday or before, I can no longer access either sco.com or
>caldera.com. Across the net, many others are experiencing this, but
>nobody seems to know why. Does anyone know what's going on?

;-) It's a real shame isn't it? Sad to see such a useful source of
lies and threats shutdown. It's especially strange after their
hilarious attempts to steal Linux from the open source comunity, lie
about their code being stolen (when all evidence points to them
contributing the code themselves), then in a final act of desperation,
attempt to claim the GPL is invalid, since copyright law prohibits
more than one copy of any software! Oh yes, wasn't their major
announcement at their "big" annual conference the fact they were going
to be including Samba 3.0.x in their OS'? That would be the
Open-source Samba, you know, covered by the GPL. Oh I almost forgot,
they also bundle a great many open source tools with their crummy
systems to hide the fact their own stuff stinks!

Too bad they no longer have any revenue left to put into making their
products usable or competitive, since everything is paid to second
rate lawfirms, trying to defend them as the most reviled company in
the World.

I honestly can't believe anyone is still using this company's
operating systems - let's look at the facts:

1) Their own directors selling shares as quickly as possible.
The only reason SCOX stock is high is due to the amount of
short-stock. Noone in their right mind would buy it.
2) they're infringing upon IBM patents (which luckily cover
ALL their product lines ;-)
3) The entire OS community hate them, and support for SCO
products is likely to be removed from many projects.
4) The directors are likely to face jail terms for their
recent defamation and threats sent out to Linux users. Oh
yes, and for the stock price manipulation.
5) Their own products stink (believe me, moving from
OpenServer to Linux is like travelling 20 years forward
through time!)
6) Why pay per-seat licencing for an outdated OS, when Linux
is free, faster, supports much more hardware and all the
same software (and more)? Oh, and you get the source code!

Personally I believe sco.com should remain down to save these cretins
from further humiliation. Every time Darl Greedy McBride opens his
mouth it's just another avalanche of utter shit pouring out.

To anyone still running SCO software, you have my deepest
sympathies...

On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 15:47:07 +0100, Scott
<scott@tiktok.demon.c.u.o.t.s.a> wrote:

> - let's look at the facts:

Let's check the facts.

> 1) Their own directors selling shares as quickly as possible.
> The only reason SCOX stock is high is due to the amount of
> short-stock. Noone in their right mind would buy it.

See:
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/S/SCOX.html
There are as many options exercised as there are sales. The largest
sale was $261,000. Total insider sales was 1.7% of shares owned by
officers. As most of the sales were proceeded by options priced under
$2/share, I would be more than just tempted to sell when the stock
went to as high as $15/share (and then started to drop). Where is
your "selling shares as quickly as possible"?

> 2) they're infringing upon IBM patents (which luckily cover
> ALL their product lines ;-)

IBM is the worlds largest patent holder. They patent everything in
sight. It's almost impossible to do any kind of software without
locking horns with IBM. For example, XML for ecommerce is allegedly
patented by IBM.

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupda...861528,00.html
Of course, IBM is being magnanimous that week and offered free
royalties to those that will recognize IBM's ownership of ebiz XML.

In the current legal pissing match with SCO, IBM has no reason to be
so nice, and is defending their software patents. Let's just say that
IBM picks its opponents carefully.
Informix:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/s...7/daily10.html
I'm not surprised that IBM would claim patent infringement as the
current issue would cast them as the victim should it precipitate a
judicial or legislative review of the validity of software patents.

> 3) The entire OS community hate them, and support for SCO
> products is likely to be removed from many projects.

I doubt it. However, future support in new products is likely to be
lacking.

> 4) The directors are likely to face jail terms for their
> recent defamation and threats sent out to Linux users. Oh
> yes, and for the stock price manipulation.

For what crime? It really depends on how many congress critters one
owns. Ken Lay and Bernie Ebbers still haven't been indicted by the
Justice Department. My guess is that they never will be. However,
the JD has indicted Martha Stuart (not for insider trading, but only
for covering up her insider trading). High profile proscecution is
based on politix and not the letter of the law.

> 5) Their own products stink (believe me, moving from
> OpenServer to Linux is like travelling 20 years forward
> through time!)

I've been using SCO products since Xenix 2.0. My guess that would be
about 1988. I've been tinkering with Linux since 1.1.13 which is
about 1994. I do not claim to be an expert on either OSR5 or Linux.
I have made money with OSR5 but have not been able to do as well with
Linux. I'll leave it to others to pass judgement on the quality of
the product as I'm not a programmist.

> 6) Why pay per-seat licencing for an outdated OS, when Linux
> is free, faster, supports much more hardware and all the
> same software (and more)? Oh, and you get the source code!

Yep. It's difficult to compete with a product that's free. However,
I don't drive the direction of my customers. I've moved a few servers
to Linux, but the greatest number of seats (i.e. licensed users) seems
to be blundering in the direction of various Windoze products, which
is anything but free.

>Personally I believe sco.com should remain down to save these cretins
>from further humiliation. Every time Darl Greedy McBride opens his
>mouth it's just another avalanche of utter shit pouring out.

So much for free speech. Personally, I don't agree with either SCO's
actions or logic. There are many good people still employed by SCO
and I suspect many are stuck with my dilemma. How can I defend a
company without also defending its stupid management actions? I don't
have an answer. I've kept my big mouth shut in newsgroups and mailing
lists because any defense of SCO would probably be viewed as a defense
of SCO's point of view. I probably shouldn't have scribbled this
message. However, I take a dim view of warped facts and thought some
comments might be useful.

>To anyone still running SCO software, you have my deepest
>sympathies...

Thank you. I appreciate your concern.


--
Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
(831)421-6491 pgr (831)336-2558 home
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS
jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us jeffl@cruzio.com

"Jeff Liebermann" <jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us> wrote in message
news:stohkvojkohm63cs1s8nei75pddh3r7ejn@4ax.com...
>
> [...] Personally, I don't agree with either SCO's
> actions or logic. There are many good people still employed by SCO
> and I suspect many are stuck with my dilemma. How can I defend a
> company without also defending its stupid management actions? I don't
> have an answer. I've kept my big mouth shut in newsgroups and mailing
> lists because any defense of SCO would probably be viewed as a defense
> of SCO's point of view. [...]
>

That's rather my position.
I shudder at the thought that I may have to start shipping new systems on
linux.

Linux is great. Linux is fun. Linux is not an OS I want to have to support
in the context where I install osr5. I need to be able to install it, and
walk away from it and come back 3 years later when the customers hardware
gives out or they move or something, and I need my co-workers to be able
to do basic support for all the customers stretching over the years the
company has been in business and installing servers with our app on it.
Every time I turn around there is some new hack that gets any exposed box
rootkitted and every few months it changes so much there is no hope of
developing a common set of knowledge that allows a person to support boxes
of various ages stretching over several years. I *like* that not very much
has changed between 5.0.4 and 5.0.7. and what has changed has mostly not
broken backwards compatibility with any install-scripts or basic sysadmin
knowledge. If you knew how to restart the print spooler on Xenix, you
still do on 5.0.7. That is valueable. That is EXTREMELY valuable. The
linux kiddies and other short-sighted people don't understand that, but I
do and my customers are better off for it. Sure, I personally can handle
the changes in linux and actually could support a spectrum of boxes of
different ages, but I'm the only one in my company who could because it is
my pleasure to keep up with stuff like that and supporting the OS's is my
special focus. With sco *everyone* but the receptionist in the company
could do at least basic support. They learned some basic commands verbatim
years ago, and they still apply. They read commands out of a "tricks"
database that were put in years ago, and they still apply. For linux that
database would have to have pages of "or it might be like this, or it
might be like that, or if this file exists then you do it this other
way..." for every damned item. Either that or the whole thing get chucked
and replaced with one answer "get brian"

That would be good for all those linux-knowledgeable people out there who
could get nice jobs as consultants and support staff, but it would NOT be
good for customers who never needed that before. Moving to Linux in
certain environments is a Huge Advance Backwards.

--
Brian K. White -- brian@aljex.com -- http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
+++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++.
filePro BBx Linux SCO Prosper/FACTS AutoCAD #callahans Satriani

On Sun, Aug 24, 2003, Brian K. White wrote:
>
>"Jeff Liebermann" <jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us> wrote in message
>news:stohkvojkohm63cs1s8nei75pddh3r7ejn@4ax.com.. .
>>
>> [...] Personally, I don't agree with either SCO's
>> actions or logic. There are many good people still employed by SCO
>> and I suspect many are stuck with my dilemma. How can I defend a
>> company without also defending its stupid management actions? I don't
>> have an answer. I've kept my big mouth shut in newsgroups and mailing
>> lists because any defense of SCO would probably be viewed as a defense
>> of SCO's point of view. [...]
>>
>
>That's rather my position.
>I shudder at the thought that I may have to start shipping new systems on
>linux.
>
>Linux is great. Linux is fun. Linux is not an OS I want to have to support
>in the context where I install osr5. I need to be able to install it, and
>walk away from it and come back 3 years later when the customers hardware
>gives out or they move or something, and I need my co-workers to be able
>to do basic support for all the customers stretching over the years the
>company has been in business and installing servers with our app on it.

Funny, I've been doing that on Linux for years now. Our first mission-
critical Linux install was in September 1997. That machine ran six months
before its first reboot when a janitor knocked the power cord out. We've
had Linux running here, and at ISPs for years without their being cracked
or requiring constant maintenance. Linux uptimes, even at busy ISPs, is
generally a function of power outages or equipment moves, not software
problems.

Of course we don't install any Linux system without first going through it
to tighten security and replace vulnerable programs like sendmail and BIND
with secure alternatives. We do the same thing on OSR5, but it takes a lot
more effort there than on Linux or FreeBSD. I don't trust any vendor's
system out of the box, and have found major security holes in Solaris, OSR
5 (FCS with 777 permissions on ``/'' and all the ``/opt'' directories),
Linux, etc. The SuSE 8.[12] releases come with most services turned off by
default, and others listening only on the 127.0.0.1 localhost interface
(e.g. postfix) which minimizes the dangers even on default installations.

I do agree that Linux developers have a nasty habit of not worrying about
backwards compatibility, and have said so on many occassions. On the other
hand, the time necessary to keep up to speed is far less that that
necessary to keep up with the continual flood of Microsoft holes and
patches.

Bill
--
INTERNET: bill@Celestial.COM Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
UUCP: camco!bill PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX: (206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676
URL: http://www.celestial.com/

``Our Foreign dealings are an Open Book, generally a Check Book.''
Will Rogers

On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 19:17:04 GMT, Bill Campbell <bill@celestial.com>
wrote:

>On Sun, Aug 24, 2003, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>>On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 15:47:07 +0100, Scott
>><scott@tiktok.demon.c.u.o.t.s.a> wrote:
>>
>>> - let's look at the facts:
>>
>>Let's check the facts.
>>
>>> 1) Their own directors selling shares as quickly as possible.
>>> The only reason SCOX stock is high is due to the amount of
>>> short-stock. Noone in their right mind would buy it.
>>
>>See:
>> http://biz.yahoo.com/t/S/SCOX.html
>>There are as many options exercised as there are sales. The largest
>>sale was $261,000. Total insider sales was 1.7% of shares owned by
>>officers. As most of the sales were proceeded by options priced under
>>$2/share, I would be more than just tempted to sell when the stock
>>went to as high as $15/share (and then started to drop). Where is
>>your "selling shares as quickly as possible"?
>
>Certainly I dumped the SCO stock I had purchased at the original IPO
>recently (only losing about 80% of my original investment :-).
>
I sold mine long ago. The difference was so small I can't remember if
I made or lost.
>...
>>> 3) The entire OS community hate them, and support for SCO
>>> products is likely to be removed from many projects.
>>
>>I doubt it. However, future support in new products is likely to be
>>lacking.
>
>Support for the current products hasn't been what I would call stellar.
>The way things are going now, I doubt that SCO will be around long enough
>to bring any new products to market, and even if they do, they've managed
>to thoroughly piss off many potential customers and VARs.

It hasn't "been the same" for a long, long time.

>
>...
>>> 5) Their own products stink (believe me, moving from
>>> OpenServer to Linux is like travelling 20 years forward
>>> through time!)
>>
>>I've been using SCO products since Xenix 2.0. My guess that would be
>>about 1988. I've been tinkering with Linux since 1.1.13 which is
>>about 1994. I do not claim to be an expert on either OSR5 or Linux.
>>I have made money with OSR5 but have not been able to do as well with
>>Linux. I'll leave it to others to pass judgement on the quality of
>>the product as I'm not a programmist.
>
>I beat Jeff by a bit having started on the Tandy 4000 running Xenix in
>1987, moving from Xenix on the Tandy Model 16/6000s. We still support
>several customers running OSR5, but it's been quite a while since we sold
>anything but upgrades to existing customers who were locked into
>applications that only run on OSR5. Most of our customers have been moved
>to Linux (originally Caldera, now SuSE), the RealWorld users going to
>APPGEN, and others like SYSPRO and FilePro now have native Linux support.

Heh, my original SCO customer number was 577. Used their Xenix on
Altos in 84 or 5.

>
>We have never made significant money on the OS sales, but make it on
>service and support. We're getting a lot more new Linux customers now that
>we ever did with SCO, now mostly from businesses running from the Microsoft
>virii. We're doing a mix of Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X (Apple). The few
>OSR5 customers we have will probably have to move to other platforms over
>the next year or so because there won't be any support for the applications
>they're running.

I do more work for Linux customers and make more money off the Solaris
customers.
--
gburnore at DataBasix dot Com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Black Helicopter Repair Services, Ltd.| Official Proof of Purchase
================================================== =========================

Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us> wrote:

>So much for free speech. Personally, I don't agree with either SCO's
>actions or logic. There are many good people still employed by SCO
>and I suspect many are stuck with my dilemma. How can I defend a
>company without also defending its stupid management actions? I don't
>have an answer. I've kept my big mouth shut in newsgroups and mailing
>lists because any defense of SCO would probably be viewed as a defense
>of SCO's point of view. I probably shouldn't have scribbled this
>message. However, I take a dim view of warped facts and thought some
>comments might be useful.

Your comments were worth writing.

I haven't kept my big mouth shut and never will. In spite of
being very careful to avoid it, most of the Linux dolts have
seen me as defending SCO. That's so stupid that I can't say
any more about it without getting angry and spouting nasties
again.

I have never had much respect for the larger Linux community. They
have always seemed to me to be a bunch of yowling dogs, immature,
filled with religious fervor for their OS, and exhibiting all
the worst characteristics of a mob.

This DOS attack just confirms all of that.

--
tony@aplawrence.com Unix/Linux/Mac OS X resources: http://aplawrence.com
Get paid for writing about tech: http://aplawrence.com/publish.html

tony@aplawrence.com wrote in news:bicu94$b73$3@pcls4.std.com:

> I have never had much respect for the larger Linux community. They
> have always seemed to me to be a bunch of yowling dogs, immature,
> filled with religious fervor for their OS, and exhibiting all
> the worst characteristics of a mob.
>
> This DOS attack just confirms all of that.

Which is painted the "larger Linux community" with that single broad brush.
Nice.

--
fD

fLameDogg <flamedogg@operamail.com> wrote:
>tony@aplawrence.com wrote in news:bicu94$b73$3@pcls4.std.com:

>> I have never had much respect for the larger Linux community. They
>> have always seemed to me to be a bunch of yowling dogs, immature,
>> filled with religious fervor for their OS, and exhibiting all
>> the worst characteristics of a mob.
>>
>> This DOS attack just confirms all of that.

>Which is painted the "larger Linux community" with that single broad brush.
>Nice.


My apologies to the "broader Linux community" that has been spouting
nastygrams about SCO long before there was any indication that the
barbs were deserved.

I will say now that it sure looks like SCO DOES deserve the censure,
but none of them knew that until just recently. Yet many howled
for boycotts etc. in spite of not having any idea whether or not the
claims were legit.

OK, as I said, it sure looks like they are not legit. But being
right for the wrong reason doesn't make me respect 'em any more.

Interesting that I haven't seen a peep in Slashdot about this..

--
tony@aplawrence.com Unix/Linux/Mac OS X resources: http://aplawrence.com
Get paid for writing about tech: http://aplawrence.com/publish.html

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 at 20:06 GMT,
tony@aplawrence.com <tony@aplawrence.com> wrote:

> fLameDogg <flamedogg@operamail.com> wrote:
>>tony@aplawrence.com wrote in news:bicu94$b73$3@pcls4.std.com:
>
>>> I have never had much respect for the larger Linux community. They
>>> have always seemed to me to be a bunch of yowling dogs, immature,
>>> filled with religious fervor for their OS, and exhibiting all
>>> the worst characteristics of a mob.
>>>
>>> This DOS attack just confirms all of that.
>
>>Which is painted the "larger Linux community" with that single broad brush.
>>Nice.
>
> My apologies to the "broader Linux community" that has been spouting
> nastygrams about SCO long before there was any indication that the
> barbs were deserved.

I won't even try to pretend that there hasn't been an awful lot of
nastiness spouted--from both directions, IMHO.

> I will say now that it sure looks like SCO DOES deserve the censure,
> but none of them knew that until just recently. Yet many howled
> for boycotts etc. in spite of not having any idea whether or not the
> claims were legit.

I chalk a lot of that up to emotional reaction. Nobody wants to think
their pet OS is chock-full of stolen "IP". From my POV, though, SCO has
been full of it from day one. Interesting how they compare Linux to a
"bicycle" in their original complaint against IBM, yet even now Netcraft
shows www.sco.com running "Apache on Linux". Hmpfh.

SCO deserves something, it's very likely, but not DoS. That was
just stupid, not helpful to any "cause" against SCO.

> OK, as I said, it sure looks like they are not legit. But being
> right for the wrong reason doesn't make me respect 'em any more.

"'em" being what? The larger Linux community? Any passing penguin you
happen to see? Or just the number of Linux-using numbnuts which have
attracted your disdain?

I know a few decent people who use Linux, and I'm inclined to believe
there are more. I can't deny, though, the quasi-religious fervor that
seems to surround Linux. Sometimes it's kind of exciting, and sometimes
a bit disturbing, but mostly it's just interesting to contemplate.

> Interesting that I haven't seen a peep in Slashdot about this..

I couldn't say. I haven't looked at /. in weeks.

--
fD

fLameDogg <flamedogg@operamail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 at 20:06 GMT,
>tony@aplawrence.com <tony@aplawrence.com> wrote:

>> My apologies to the "broader Linux community" that has been spouting
>> nastygrams about SCO long before there was any indication that the
>> barbs were deserved.

>I won't even try to pretend that there hasn't been an awful lot of
>nastiness spouted--from both directions, IMHO.

>> I will say now that it sure looks like SCO DOES deserve the censure,
>> but none of them knew that until just recently. Yet many howled
>> for boycotts etc. in spite of not having any idea whether or not the
>> claims were legit.

>I chalk a lot of that up to emotional reaction. Nobody wants to think
>their pet OS is chock-full of stolen "IP". From my POV, though, SCO has
>been full of it from day one. Interesting how they compare Linux to a
>"bicycle" in their original complaint against IBM, yet even now Netcraft
>shows www.sco.com running "Apache on Linux". Hmpfh.

I can't argue that. SCO (as a corporate entity) has been pretty dumb
about Linux and Open Source right along. They had their Skunkworks
for making sopme of it available, but that was obviously a bastard
child project that got little respect and insufficient resources.
Always out of date, and important stuff took forever to get there.

The latest 5.0.7 does have more open source stuff in it though.

But then SCO, exhibiting typical corporate fear of anything that
threatens profit, slammed Linux. In a really brilliant move, they also
discontinued their own "free" non-commercial use license. That
helps immensely (not).

>SCO deserves something, it's very likely, but not DoS. That was
>just stupid, not helpful to any "cause" against SCO.

>> OK, as I said, it sure looks like they are not legit. But being
>> right for the wrong reason doesn't make me respect 'em any more.

>"'em" being what? The larger Linux community? Any passing penguin you
>happen to see? Or just the number of Linux-using numbnuts which have
>attracted your disdain?

OK, OK. I should have said "the Linux community on Slashdot", and
even that would include folks who don't deserve it.

>I know a few decent people who use Linux, and I'm inclined to believe
>there are more. I can't deny, though, the quasi-religious fervor that
>seems to surround Linux. Sometimes it's kind of exciting, and sometimes
>a bit disturbing, but mostly it's just interesting to contemplate.

Well, I find it disturbing whether it's directed to gods, diet fads,
or operating systems. Nothing much to be done about that, though:
people are what they are.

--
tony@aplawrence.com Unix/Linux/Mac OS X resources: http://aplawrence.com
Get paid for writing about tech: http://aplawrence.com/publish.html