Well, what can I say, after reading this I am convinced Darl is the poster child for the abortion movement (that is for, not against in this case).


Per Groklaw -

First Notes and Impressions from Today's Teleconference

Tuesday, November 18 2003 @ 03:06 PM EST

OK. Here are my notes and my impressions. A more complete transcript will follow. I'll be adding to this story as I get things typed up, so keep checking back.

1. They say they will sue Novell if they try to put a Linux distribution in the market.
2. They intend to go forward now on a second front, against end users. First they will target a victim from among the 1,500 who got letters. It could be an HP end user. They intend to enforce copyrights in System V and in code they say is being violated stemming from the old BSDi settlement. My impression was that the SCOForum was such a bust, they had to come up with some new code somewhere and so the old BSDi stuff is being trotted out. They will show that code to end users down the road.

3. They seem to have about given up on the voluntary licensing program, although they say they are going forward on that one by one, tailoring invoices to companies after they look into what they are using. After that, if the company doesn't buy a license, it gets turned over to David Boies for litigation.

4. As for just ripping out the code and rewriting it, they say the Linux community can do that, but it'd be hard, in their view. Example, the snip of copyrighted code they showed and then it was taken out -- that solves that for the 2.6 kernel, Darl said, but not for the 2.4, which is being used by companies now and is still out there. So they will go after 2.4. (Is this stupid or what?) If they win the IBM case, then it's a "million lines of code" that would be hard to replace, but the community could choose to go back to the 90s and rip out SMP, RCU, etc. and slowly rewrite equivalencies.

5. Microsoft isn't funding the litigation, they sort of said, but they are "on the same side of the table with SCO", according to Darl, along with Wind River Systems, Sun Microsystems, and all other proprietary companies. The world according to Darl. Details to follow.

6. The $1 Million and the 400,000 shares were paid to Boies for prior contingency events, specifically, according to Bench, the $50 million equity funding and other events. In the future, there could be other such contingencies, such as licenses, the company being bought, successful litigation and then Boies gets more moola. Darl described it as a partnership between SCO and Boies, so he's up to his eyeballs. No excuses. His firm now owns about 2-3% of SCO. As SCO succeeds, so does Boies, said Darl. And, happily, I might add, vice versa.

Lordy, me. Another speech by Darl to go today. How much can a girl take in one day? First, here is what they said about Microsoft:

Someone said to them that there have been suggestions in the Linux community that this litigation is being funded by Microsoft, that they have been coordinating with Microsoft and they commented like this:


DAVID BOIES: "I have not had any conversation nor, so far as I know -- and I think I would know -- has anybody from my firm had any conversation with Microsoft or with Microsoft representatives. This has been entirely litigation that we have undertaken on behalf of SCO and obviously the recent equity transaction, [unclear] preferred transaction, as I think Darl indicated, will provide adequate financing for the litigation without looking to any other company."

DARL MCBRIDE: "SCO's perspective: We're 100% driving our strategy here. There is no connection with Microsoft on this. It is a favorite topic of the open source community. People love to talk about this, because there are natural interests here. Anybody that owns an operating system that thinks it shouldn't be for free would naturally fall on this side of the table that SCO is on. So it's not just Microsoft. It's Wind River Systems. It's Sun Microsystems -- essentially anybody who thinks their valuable intellectual property in an operating system should have a price tag on it naturally lines up with SCO on this."
So, what do you think? Do you take that as an unequivocable no from either one of them? Boies said he has not had "any conversations" with Microsoft. But how tricky is he in his speech? I don't know. But I know he's a lawyer. Did he have email interaction instead? Letters? Was the "conversation" with SCO instead, who just told Boies about it? Some other intermediary? I have no idea.

And Darl's answer seems even less firmly a no. He names three companies and says they are naturally on SCO's side. I take that as saying that if they haven't given them money, they are at least rooting them on.

That means, of course, that Groklaw has just widened its scope of inquiry accordingly to include not just SCO but all other parties sitting on that side of the table.

In article <bpe18n$cij$1@news.Stanford.EDU>,
David Chait <davidc@bonair.stanford.edu> wrote:


>Well, what can I say, after reading this I am convinced Darl is
>the poster child for the abortion movement (that is for, not
>against in this case).


>Per Groklaw -
>
> First Notes and Impressions from Today's Teleconference
>
> Tuesday, November 18 2003 @ 03:06 PM EST
>
> OK. Here are my notes and my impressions. A more complete
>transcript will follow. I'll be adding to this story as I get things
>typed up, so keep checking back.

> 1. They say they will sue Novell if they try to put a Linux
>distribution in the market.

> 2. They intend to go forward now on a second front,
>against end users. First they will target a victim from among
>the 1,500 who got letters. It could be an HP end user. They
>intend to enforce copyrights in System V and in code they say
>is being violated stemming from the old BSDi settlement. My
>impression was that the SCOForum was such a bust, they had to
>come up with some new code somewhere and so the old BSDi stuff
>is being trotted out. They will show that code to end users down
>the road.

Targeting an end user for a suit can backfire.

And historic case goes back to about 1977.

Disney sued a user of a Sony VCR for recording a Disney program
from television saying it violated their copyrights.

Sony entered the picture on the side of the defendant.

In the end the judge ruled that if a program was broadcast over
the air by a TV station, then any end user could record the
program.

This became known as the Betamax case, and when that was settled
the home vcr movement went forward with explosive growth.

And targetting an HP end user is strange as HP is a licensee
of Unix from SCO - that version is called HP/UX.

Things just don't sound right in that report.



--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

> And targetting an HP end user is strange as HP is a licensee
> of Unix from SCO - that version is called HP/UX.
>
> Things just don't sound right in that report.
>

Listen to the conference for yourself, they have the recordings posted for
public consumption. I agree it doesn't make sense, but little that comes out
of that part of Utah does these days.

In article <bpf3om$lus$1@news.Stanford.EDU>,
David Chait <davidc@bonair.stanford.edu> wrote:
>> And targetting an HP end user is strange as HP is a licensee
>> of Unix from SCO - that version is called HP/UX.
>>
>> Things just don't sound right in that report.

>Listen to the conference for yourself, they have the recordings
>posted for public consumption. I agree it doesn't make sense,
>but little that comes out of that part of Utah does these days.

A URL please.

Bill

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 05:35:03 GMT, bv@wjv.comREMOVE (Bill Vermillion)
wrote:
>Targeting an end user for a suit can backfire.
>
>And historic case goes back to about 1977.
>
>Disney sued a user of a Sony VCR for recording a Disney program
>from television saying it violated their copyrights.
>
>Sony entered the picture on the side of the defendant.
>
>In the end the judge ruled that if a program was broadcast over
>the air by a TV station, then any end user could record the
>program.
>
>This became known as the Betamax case, and when that was settled
>the home vcr movement went forward with explosive growth.
>
>And targetting an HP end user is strange as HP is a licensee
>of Unix from SCO - that version is called HP/UX.
>
>Things just don't sound right in that report.

From the example you gave, it makes very good sense to me since HP has
promised to indemnify users of HP hardware running a Linux that they
supplied (as long as said distro is unmodified). Since HP would be footing
the legal bill, it could help SCO avoid a "picking on the little guy"
image, and would give them a chance to do a backhanded slap of HP in the
process.

Of course, there's also the risk that such a suit could give HP grounds to
file its own countersuit against the Evil Banana Empire. But since The
Yapping Chihuahua has shown its willingness to take on all comers (the
whole world if necessary), I doubt they are very concerned about that.

("The Yapping Chihuahua"--I like that one, too!)


================================================== =====================
I'm Mike--James' Dad, hence "JamesDad". I use this nym in memory of my
son James Webb (1992-2000) who died fighting leukemia. He was a greater
man at 8 than some ever become. May his life, battle and story never be
forgotten! More info at <http://www.themiraclekids.com/mem-james.htm>.
*** Remove ARROGANCE Before Replying ***

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?s...31118192048630

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 16:15:04 GMT, bv@wjv.comREMOVE (Bill Vermillion)
wrote:

>In article <bpf3om$lus$1@news.Stanford.EDU>,
>David Chait <davidc@bonair.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>>Listen to the conference for yourself, they have the recordings
>>posted for public consumption. I agree it doesn't make sense,
>>but little that comes out of that part of Utah does these days.
>
>A URL please.

Main Page:
<http://www.sco.com/cdxpo/>

Archived Broadband Stream:
<mms://wm9.bur.synccast.com/demo/streamplanet/sco_150.wmv>

Archived Dialup Stream:
<mms://wm9.bur.synccast.com/demo/streamplanet/sco_56.wmv>

These archives will be available through November 30.

And I'll say it before anyone else does: 'AHA! MORE PROOF THAT SCO IS IN
CAHOOTS WITH MICROSOFT! THE ONLY FORMAT IT'S AVAILABLE IN IS WINDOWS MEDIA
VIDEO!" ;-)


================================================== =====================
I'm Mike--James' Dad, hence "JamesDad". I use this nym in memory of my
son James Webb (1992-2000) who died fighting leukemia. He was a greater
man at 8 than some ever become. May his life, battle and story never be
forgotten! More info at <http://www.themiraclekids.com/mem-james.htm>.
*** Remove ARROGANCE Before Replying ***

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 05:35:03 +0000, Bill Vermillion wrote:

> In article <bpe18n$cij$1@news.Stanford.EDU>,
> David Chait <davidc@bonair.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
--snipped--.
>
> Targeting an end user for a suit can backfire.
>
> And historic case goes back to about 1977.
>
> Disney sued a user of a Sony VCR for recording a Disney program
> from television saying it violated their copyrights.
>
> Sony entered the picture on the side of the defendant.
>
> In the end the judge ruled that if a program was broadcast over
> the air by a TV station, then any end user could record the
> program.
>
> This became known as the Betamax case, and when that was settled
> the home vcr movement went forward with explosive growth.
>
> And targetting an HP end user is strange as HP is a licensee
> of Unix from SCO - that version is called HP/UX.
>
> Things just don't sound right in that report.

Try going back further. Shortly after the turn of the century several
automakers went after Henry Ford because he could turn out cars cheaply.
When that failed they went after end users which failed even worse. Has
there ever been a company which sued the customers it wants to
keep/attract and survived? Are you listening RIAA? SCO? Of course not.

On Thu, 25 Dec 2003 07:47:07 GMT, John <jwholmes@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Try going back further. Shortly after the turn of the century several
>automakers went after Henry Ford because he could turn out cars cheaply.
>When that failed they went after end users which failed even worse. Has

Could you elaborate on this a bit? I have to admit that my interest is
piqued.

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 10:28:27 -0600, dpuryear@usa.net wrote:

>On Thu, 25 Dec 2003 07:47:07 GMT, John <jwholmes@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Try going back further. Shortly after the turn of the century several
>>automakers went after Henry Ford because he could turn out cars cheaply.
>>When that failed they went after end users which failed even worse. Has
>
>Could you elaborate on this a bit? I have to admit that my interest is
>piqued.

George Selden patented the automobile in 1879. However, he didn't
produce anything useful. He did constantly revise his patent to keep
it alive. After Henry Ford became successful, it was discovered that
Selden held the patent. Ford tried to buy a license from Selden, but
failed. So, he produced autos without a license. Most of Ford's
competitors got together, licensed Selden's patent, and sued Ford,
Ford's suppliers, and Ford's customers for infringement.
http://artofinvention.tripod.com/Aut...eldenStory.htm

The litigation was acrimonious and protracted.
http://www.bpmlegal.com/wselden.html
Note that the threats of litigation included customers.

--
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