Submitted by It’s time for bed over here, but before I turn in with a nice cup of tea and a Gilmore Girls episode, we’ve got some good news for you: SCO has been dealt yet another major blow in its baseless lawsuit against Novell. A jury has ruled that Novell owns the UNIX copyrights – not SCO.
With this verdict, the jury reiterates earlier verdicts which also stated that Novell owned the UNIX copyrights, and not SCO. It would appear SCO wasn’t even the slightest bit convincing; the jury was required to reach a unanimous conclusion, which they did.
“Novell is very pleased with the jury’s decision confirming Novell’s ownership of the Unix copyrights, which SCO had asserted to own in its attack on Linux,” Novell said in a blogpost, “Novell remains committed to promoting Linux, including by defending Linux on the intellectual property front.”
SCO still isn’t done, though. “The copyright claims are gone, but we have other claims based on contracts,” the company said. They are referring to their case against IBM, which is still ongoing. However, with the copyright claims gone, little remains. Linux users, in any case, are finally free from SCO.
“It’s time for bed over here”: Sleep, that sounds good.
“but before I turn in with a nice cup of tea”: sounds good, I too enjoy a nice cup of tea before bed. sounds good so far.
“and a Gilmore Girls episode”: ya ok… wait what?! If I want to watch the process of maturing through life and getting over life’s hurdles I will just subscribe to the official linux mailing list
. (i kid,… kind of).
Joking aside, hopefully this is the bullet to the heart or SCO that we have all been waiting for.
R.I.P. SCO: you will not be missed…
Joking aside, hopefully this is the bullet to the heart or SCO that we have all been waiting for.
R.I.P. SCO: you will not be missed…
SCO could go down, but even a silver bullet wouldn’t keep Darl McBride still, he’d still return as a zombie. On a second though, given how brainless he seems and how hideously ugly he is he could very well even be a zombie already!
Darl got Axed he’s no longer one of the heads of the hydra
Under his new company, he purchased a chunk of Sun/Oracle which removed a business they where not interested in and added to the legal budget of this particular case; I’d say the ghost of Mcbrides past is still lingering in the office halls.
It’s OK Thom, I got the box set of Gilmore and love it. Keeps your brain sharp trying to keep up with the verbal pace.
I just couldn’t resist…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTm1D3JhHzw
I like Gilmore Girls
lol
I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Tea contains caffeine, which does not really help you sleep. 🙂
not all, I get most of my tea here and love it: http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/tea_bev/tea_bev.html
bet time teas I enjoy:
Chamomile Tea
Dream Tea
Evening Repose Tea
I get my tea from the English Tea Store:
http://www.englishteastore.com/
I really like white tea (it’s even “greener” than green tea). It may smell like lawn clippings, but it tastes incredible.
SCO’s case concerning Linux never had one bit of merit to it. This is just the case of another UNIX company going down the drain simply because it refused to change with the times.
Time to move on, Linux is here to stay.
(Sorry Steve, maybe you could go over to Utah and show Darl how to properly throw furniture in one’s office)
As much as I dislike SCO … Linux lacks quality and consistency when compared to Solaris, IRIX and the BSD … which in the end turned me away form it.
I guess that very much depends on how you judge Linux.
If you’re talking about Linux as in software distributions as whole OSs, then that’s a little unfair as, for the most part, the same FOSS that runs on Linux also runs on BSD et al.
If you’re talking about Linux as in the kernel, then I’d love to know what is missing from the Linux kernel that is in Solaris, IRIX and BSD/Mach as, from my perspective, I’ve found the Linux kernel to be very stable, powerful and yet still flexible.
If you’re talking about enterprise tools, then have you factored RHEL (and the lark) that specifically target the same enterprise market as (for example) Solaris (thus comparing like for like)?
The problem with Linux is it’s such a diverse beast that many comparisons don’t seem to be a fair “like for like” comparison.
So while I’m not trying to undermine your experience*, I’d love some elaboration on your point.
footnote:
* I have used FreeBSD and Solaris (+ OpenSolaris and NexentaCP) but not IRIX. However the set ups I’ve built have been very modest by most servers standards. So I don’t boast to be an expert on the subject.
GNU/Linux has the problem of having inconsistent documentation, breaking drivers (that did work) and reinventing the wheel (ALSA, PulseAudio) when there are already good software that could have been built upon. It very much the attitude of one of the software engineers at our place .. completely rewrite something from scratch because you don’t like how some else has done it even thought it work.
Most of the BSD base system except for things like GCC are now not GNU.
Edited 2010-03-31 09:27 UTC
If they where before, aren’t they re-inventing the wheel?
For some things, they (BSDs) don’t have a choice. The GNU project is moving to GPL3, which effectively prevents those bits from being included in the BSDs. For example, GCC will never be upgraded beyond 4.something because they’ve moved to GPL3. Thus, alternatives have to be developed.
That depends on the distribution
As opposed to a lack of drivers on other platforms?
ALSA and PulseAudio are desktop tools and on the whole Linux is a better desktop OS than BSD or Solaris.
If we’re talking about desktop systems then the base system should be transparent to users – which, for the most part, it is on desktop distros (eg Ubuntu). In fact, the very reason I dislike Ubuntu is because I wanted to play with the base system.
However, if we’re talking about server systems, then why even mention ALSA / Pulseaudio as I’m struggling to think of any enterprise solutions that would require a soundcard let alone a sane sound driver model.
Furthermore, while BSD can make a perfectly adequate desktop OS (I’ve had FreeBSD as a working desktop as well as dedicated a file server), Solaris (read vanilla Solaris, NOT OpenSolaris) does not.
And finally, you talk about quality in your OS then go on to discuss BSD desktops, well my experience has taught me that a key quality desktop OSs should have is ease to build and maintain. The ports method on FreeBSD (as much as I loved it for the server) wasn’t a patch on pacman (Arch) or apt-get (Debian) in terms of ease and speed of delivery. Sure, you might enjoy tinkering, but most desktop users don’t.
pkg_add has existed on FreeBSD for many, many, many years. There’s even a pkg_upgrade that can be used on binary-package-only systems (no ports tree installed). And the major ports managements tools (portmaster, portupgrade, portmanager) all include support for binary package upgrades.
Good point. I’d forgotten about the binary package managers.
The other points still stand though. As good as FreeBSD is and as much as I liked it myself, it’s not the jack of all trades and as such there are occasions where Linux is the sane solution over FreeBSD.
And I don’t mean in an elitist or Linux-fanboy way either as I run a variety of platforms, many of which are non-Linux *nix.
*yawn*. Why do the *BSD guys keep on bugging the Linux community all the time? If *BSD was really that much superior that BSD fanboys claim it is, why the hell are over 90% of worlds fastest computers (top500.org) running Linux? Do you think, the people who set up those clusters are rookies? Why is Google running Linux? Why does CERN run Linux (I saw the machines myself there)?
I tested *BSD several times and different versions. And let alone the FreeBSD installer made me vomit. It’s centuries beyond debian-installer and I won’t even talk about the package management here.
The Linux kernel is the largest software project in the world and it is the operating system which supports the most architectures (source: Greg-Kroah Hartman during his talk @FOSDEM 2010).
Why can’t those *BSD guys just stop bitching around and just try to be better instead of telling people that Linux is crap? It’s just really annoying that so many *BSD people keep on telling us that they have the better solution.
And seriously. If you ever *had* used PulseAudio you would knew that it is just not another audio stack. PulseAudio is a powerful set of daemons and utilities that make using modern audio hardware just fun. It’s so easy to use bluetooth audio, re-direct audio input/output to other machines on the network and much much more. PulseAudio ROCKS.
Yeah, and re-writing a lot of GNU tools from scratch just for the sake of having the tools covered by a BSD licence is not re-inventing the wheel then?
Adrian
While I agree that Pulseaudio is a good thing, it’s not fully ready yet. It still has some bugs with certain audio cards, try using it with a Creative SB Audigy2 or other emu10k1-based card (some of the only cards left that actually still have full hardware mixing capabilities) and see what happens. It lags, cuts out, and in general is just not working right with these cards. Otoh though, it actually makes a lot of onboard chips, particularly buggy hda-intel based chips, actually work right without some of the annoying Dmix artifacts when doing a lot of resampling. There are also latency issues in Pulseaudio that make it unsuitable for audio editing and other realtime audio. You don’t notice it with regular day-to-day use but try playing a synthesizer or using Audacity with it. For those kinds of things, you still need to set up JACK for best results. At least Pulseaudio can run on top of and use JACK, so you don’t have to sacrifice one to get the other. It kind of reminds me of how the Windows situation used to be, you had the typical audio stack but if you wanted low-latency you installed and configured ASIO if your card supported it. At least in Linux the “if” part about being able to actually get low latency working with your card isn’t an issue, but it’s still some effort to set up.
Oops, got big time off topic didn’t we?
Edited 2010-04-02 05:22 UTC
Actually linux has MUCH better drivers nowadays than ALL of those mention *NIX versions and *SD distros(meaning the 3 major ones: open, net and plain old BSD).
Even for servers if I was going cheap today, I don’t know that I’d bother with *SD any longer. Solaris is just about dead, and AFAICT IRIX IS already dead.
It obviously depends on the market.
Solaris is pretty alive in the high end spectrum of the data center. But for the bottom segment, indeed Linux has pretty much replaced any other alternative in its space.
Still, if only Linux and GNU settled their f*cking interfaces or at least make them a bit more stable. The fragmentation in their user land is not helping at all. If they want to actually continue growing and not plateau soon, the linux people need to get their act together. It is insane that there are 10 different ways to bring up init and configure a system using the same f*cking kernel and tool chain. Not to mention that there are at least 4 major incompatible packaging infrastructures which offer exactly the same functionality. And on and on…
At some point efforts like Linux stop being an the same high growth system which advanced via concurrent exploration, and start to stagnate when effort and productivity are wasted due to unnecessary replication of resources. The challenge for the Linux folk will be how to make that transition. It will be interesting, and if history is a guide the “better” approach will not necessarily be the winner.
Just in: public reaction to this verdict.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMGKPajKs08
EVERYONE MUST GET STONED! Hookers and blow all around as we celebrate the end of thi–did that hand just twitch?
Seriously, let’s not be too quick to celebrate here until we’ve removed the head from the body, burn the body and buried ashes separate from the head. Oh and make sure that there aren’t any brothers we’d have to worry about. Goliath had four brothers*, and because the biblical King David didn’t get them the same time he got Goliath he had to deal with them later when he was an old man. We don’t want that to happen here!
–bornagainpenguin
*2 Samuel 21:18-22
Interesting. Out of curiosity, I looked up that Bible passage you listed there.
Not that I would believe anything the Bible had to say, but if I’m reading it correctly that passage asserts that David didn’t kill Goliath. Unless he later killed another giant called Goliath.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Samuel+21%3A18-22…
People changed names all the time in many ancient cultures, often to commemorate a major life event (Abram became Abraham, for example, and Jacob became Israel). It’s perfectly reasonable that when Goliath was killed in battle, one of his brothers would assume his name and superhero catchphrase (“the shaft of his spear is like a weaver’s beam!”) to continue the fight against Philistine’s mortal enemies. Which leads to the question… who will now take on the name “Daryl McBride” (“the spark of his intellect is like a boll weevil’s!”)?
Don’t forget about the Dread Pirate Roberts.
Is this finally the silver bullet to end Sco’s ridiculous posturing, or will a stake driven through the heart be needed instead? Seriously Sco, you’re dead. Accept it and die quietly… I’d say die with dignity, but you lost that a long time ago. Goodbye and good riddens. It’s just too bad the original Sco–the one that actually developed an operating system–is basically forgotten because of you jerk-offs.
Anyone who has seen Zombieland knows that one of the main rules is the doubletap. Someone needs to doubletap the shit out of SCO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PapZO7NXB3Q
This does raise an issue for all those organisations who have paid SCO for IP in the past; Microsoft and Sun are two organisations that I know of who have paid SCO for IP that they believed SCO owns. Could we see Microsoft and Sun (now Oracle) sue SCO for deliberately misleading as so far as selling something that was never owned by them in the first place.
I remember SCO right back when it was Santa Cruz Operations before Caldera bought it; they made great products with the only downside is the lack of reshaping their business model for the new reality – back then they were still charging for things that Microsoft included as standard with the operating system; honestly, who charges for an operating system then turn around and charge for the TCP/IP stack separately? and the backup software separately? It is depressing that a vendor that could have survived independently was managed so badly to the point it needed to be bought out.
Edit: You can look back to just before Windows 2000 was released and the CEO of Santa Cruz Operations was scoffing at the idea of Windows 2000 having 35million lines of code.
Edited 2010-03-31 02:56 UTC
They probably could sue to get their money back, but that wouldn’t necessary mean they would get it. I think we will see SCO go belly up again really soon and then the question will be how much residual money is there to split up – after a lengthy process in which SCO likely would burn up the remainders.
Not that Microsoft would do that – they got exactly what they paid for, even though maybe not as long as they had hoped.
I hope the SCO nightmare is over, but i still can’t believe it.
I don’t see the SCO nightmare being over given how stupid the bankruptcy system in the US operates – where zombie companies keep coming back in a re-invented form instead of just having a dignified death.
Microsoft and Oracle would have to wait in line behind Novell, IBM and Red Hat.
Novell: SCO fraudulently kept Novell’s money (when it sold Unix licenses to Microsoft and Sun).
IBM: SCO distributed IBM’s copyright software (in Linux) without a license (because with its SCOSource initiative, SCO repudiated the GPL).
These counter-claims are almost slam-dunk given the terms of the GPL, given that SCO did distribute a Linux distribution, and given that SCO have no patents and no copyrights covering the code in question.
Red Hat: has a seven-year-old Lanham Act claim against SCO:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanham_act
Red Hat’s case against SCO is a complaint that SCO fraudulently disparaged the good name of Red Hat’s product (Linux).
This case, too, is a slam-dunk, given that there is no Unix code in Linux.
SCO are in deep, deep doo-doo.
Edited 2010-03-31 10:05 UTC
Backup:
http://www.itworld.com/open-source/102946/sco-novell-groking-where-…
Edited 2010-03-31 10:45 UTC
MS’ taking a license from SCO was just a way of giving SCO some legitimate cash to encourage them in their anti-Linux activities.
MS’ arranging a date for Baystar and SCO was another channel of indirect funding.
Maybe someone not unconnected with MS just casually happened to drop the idea that suing over Unix IP might be a cool idea into Darl’s ear and his greed did the rest.
MS knew that SCO would probably crash and burn eventually but they didn’t care – they got a full 7 years of Linux FUD out of it and cost IBM, Red Hat and other Linux companies a pretty penny in legal fees and lost sales.
Like I said, slick.
Mac
…makes the right decision. Restores a little faith in the system.
I just have to say:
Hahahaahahahahahahahhahhah
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/files/www.freesoftwaremagazine….
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