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Snowed By SCO (Forbes)Snowed By SCO (Forbes)Posted Sep 20, 2007 10:17 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304)In reply to: Snowed By SCO (Forbes) by slashdotted Parent article: Snowed By SCO (Forbes)
Well, he said that he relied on the reputation of the company for winning impossible legal battles (not SCO, Caldera), and overcompensated for mispredicting that sort of thing with Caldera in the past.
The foolishness here, really, was assuming that a company will continue to be as undefeatable when its management has been replaced with frauds and conmen; but it's in the nature of frauds and conmen that they are good at conning people who can't look at the underlying facts.
(So, yes, he should have looked at the facts, too; but I can't see anything wrong with this climbdown. Perhaps he waited too long to do it, is all.)
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Snowed By SCO (Forbes) Posted Sep 20, 2007 11:43 UTC (Thu) by interalia (subscriber, #26615) [Link] I think this is an impressive mea culpa. It is very rare that anyone in the tech media ever makes such a relatively humiliating admission of being wrong.
I think that for a non-technical person it was actually reasonable to lean towards SCO's statements rather than the rantings of the OSS "crowd". I suspect Dan wasn't himself technical enough to be able to investigate the arguments himself, and did not have know or ask anyone who was qualified and whose view he trusted. His mistake then was in not recognising his own lack of technical acumen and ability to judge.
Whether he's learned his lesson - well I have doubts, but I still give kudos to him for swallowing his pride and admitting his mistake. There are many many people in the OSS world who would find it difficult to do the same (and I include myself).
Snowed By SCO (Forbes) Posted Sep 20, 2007 14:13 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] I think this is an impressive mea culpa. It is very rare that anyone in the tech media ever makes such a relatively humiliating admission of being wrong.Outside the tech media as well. The best example I can think of was from the Economist, when it predicted a long-term $5-a-barrel oil price, whereupon the oil price shot up to over $50 and stayed there: that New Year they had an article with the title `We Woz Wrong' discussing that blooper and many others. :)
Snowed By SCO (Forbes) Posted Sep 20, 2007 16:22 UTC (Thu) by dune73 (subscriber, #17225) [Link] Inside the technical world, the have Linux Weekly News. They do predictions for every year and they discuss them at the end of the year. Great idea. Good journalism.
Snowed By SCO (Forbes) Posted Sep 20, 2007 19:37 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] It's very unfortunate that accusing someone of "stealing intellectual property" is trusted by default in the non-technical circles. Let's hope that the SCO debacle and this apology will help change some minds.
Snowed By SCO (Forbes) Posted Sep 21, 2007 0:55 UTC (Fri) by interalia (subscriber, #26615) [Link] I think that to a naive observer people don't bring such big (and public!) lawsuits without better basis.
The fact OSS people are often arguing about licenses indicates to outsiders there is not general agreement about what they mean and what is permissible. It makes it plausible that a developer may have done something wrong without understanding the consequences.
This is why I think it's reasonable for people to have thought early on there was indeed a problem. Greater familiarity with Linux development processes and the history of Unix is what made it unlikely to most of us here.
A bit contradictory Posted Sep 20, 2007 21:03 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I hope you notice the contradiction in your defense. First, Lyons is exonerated for trusting a company instead of "the OSS crowd" (which can be wrong on many issues, but are known to be technically competent). Then he is exonerated for not being technical enough and not having anyone technically competent to assist him.Well, he went to a company presentation and trusted them, fine. But then the whole community went out and debunked the supposed "millions of lines" of stolen code into some 200 lines entered by mistake into the kernel. And in this process many people joined; some were just fanatical, but many were trustworthy businessmen of the kind liked by the press. At this point most other journalists turned skeptical; gullibility alone could not support the corporate fairy tale. A certain measure of stubbornness or malevolence was needed as well to support that strange faith into SCO. In fact a measure of both, I would argue; not in vain all SCO supporters turned into trolls, mythological creatures famous for having plenty of both qualities. Finally, a technical journalist with no technical acumen and no technical friends to ask is a pathetic sight. Recursively I call: to the lions with him!
A bit contradictory Posted Sep 20, 2007 23:49 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] It doesn't exonerate him, but it does explain, a bit. A lot of people*really* dislike saying they were wrong: losing face is hard.
A bit contradictory Posted Sep 21, 2007 1:04 UTC (Fri) by interalia (subscriber, #26615) [Link] I don't think I'm exonerating him. Understanding how or why people make a mistake doesn't mean that it's no longer a mistake, or that the mistake doesn't matter.
In the end, the more interesting news is that he has admitted his mistake. And not in a throwaway line buried in a speech or a blog, but in a public article whose sole purpose is that admission. We might be better than him technically but many OSS people have such pride/ego that I suspect they'd find it difficult to do the same.
Good explanation then Posted Sep 21, 2007 8:49 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] As long as technical decisions are involved, the trick is not putting your ego in your decisions, so you can later backtrack. Linus said it better.For other decisions it is harder to do, but I think still feasible. When you put your reputation in line it gets worse. And when you let your testicles interfere with your decisions then you are lost. So, the lesson is: don't do that :D
Snowed By SCO (Forbes) Posted Sep 20, 2007 15:34 UTC (Thu) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link] Well, he said that he relied on the reputation of the company for winning impossible legal battles (not SCO, Caldera), and overcompensated for mispredicting that sort of thing with Caldera in the past.The securities business has an aphorism: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. I reckon that disregard of this principle is too common in the financial press to be ironic.
Snowed By SCO (Forbes) Posted Sep 20, 2007 19:23 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] Past performance certainly predicted current results: he was wrong about Caldera, and then he was wrong about tSCOg. This is perfect performance, for a negative oracle: if you want to know what will happen, ask this guy; the opposite is what will happen.
Snowed By SCO (Forbes) Posted Sep 20, 2007 18:00 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] One common problem underlies both Lyons' errors. He was wrong about Caldera suing MS, and SCO suing Linux, because he didn't know the field at all well.
I remember when Caldera sued over DOS. It was common knowledge among "my" crowd that MS had done everything Caldera said. The only real question was whether Caldera would stick with their lawsuit, and we reckoned they would, again because we had been in the industry long enough to know Caldera's background, all the dirty tricks played on them by Microsoft, and how vengeful their heart was after so long.
Ditto for SCO suing Linux. No one who had been following the industry for long could think SCO would prevail. I knew instantly that it would only result in Linux being proven bullet proof and SCO sinking from sight.
For Lyons to mispredict both of these can only mean he simply doesn't know the industry well at all. He may know the big players, he may get lots of gadgets to review, but he doesn't know the industry at all.
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