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Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer)
The Inquirer has a long
and cynical article on SCO's legal and press campaigns. "Smart money says that SCO will walk out of the courtroom today clutching their backsides, unable to sit down for weeks because of the chewing out they get. Emergency rooms around the world will be filled with people if SCO produces what it claims to have, and people will be so stunned they fall over and hit their heads. Personally, I expect nothing, or at least nothing said, in volumes of obfuscation.
With that background, imagine the odds of SCO taking today to launch what
appears to be a very lucrative set of claims against IBM. Golly. I would
say it is without precedent, but it isn't."
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Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 6, 2004 14:21 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] Spoke too soon. at www.news.com, their near-top story is that SCO has added copyright claims to the IBM suit.
News.com story Posted Feb 6, 2004 14:24 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] If you read the news.com story (it's over here) you'll see that Mr. Shankland doesn't really know anything. Blake Stowell wasn't telling. He's just going on SCO's December threat to add copyright claims and the fact that some sort of amended complaint is in the works - if the judge goes for it. The story is really just speculation, so I didn't post it on the front page.
News.com story Posted Feb 6, 2004 14:31 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] Appreciate that, and thanks for the call on it.I have real problems with CNET News lately, and after I posted my message, I started wondering why I didn't see this anywhere else. Maybe it's me, but I haven't seen a good way to complain to CNET about the way they write their news. Am I missing something obvious?
Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 6, 2004 14:39 UTC (Fri) by jonth (subscriber, #4008) [Link] Good journalistic practice is to strictly separate reporting from opinion.The news.com article is just reporting the facts, nothing more. There is no real opinion in there as to the merit or otherwise of SCO's case. Which is just fine by me. I can make up my own mind by digging around a bit more. The Inquirer is at the other end of the scale. They deal almost exclusively in opinion. Again, this is fine. I always read the Inquirer knowing that if I want to judge the merit of their argument, I need to have a second source for the facts they use. Don't get me wrong - I agree with most of what the Inquirer says, and when I don't I still enjoy their opinions. They have a wonderfully cynical view on the world, which is always a comfort. But it's a dangerous view to assume that cynicism is truth: "A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future."
Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 6, 2004 15:17 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] I understand. What I was trying to say was that the "poor little lamb" seems to be more like a really mean little goat (kid) with a big mouth, looking to impress a much larger character somewhere on the northwest coast...
Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 6, 2004 15:58 UTC (Fri) by jonth (subscriber, #4008) [Link] Fair enough.
Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 6, 2004 15:33 UTC (Fri) by sphealey (guest, #1028) [Link] Good journalistic practice is to strictly separate reporting from opinion.That model breaks down a bit in two situations:
When one "side" is deliberately manipulating/spinning the "news", using known weaknesses in the adversarial method of journalism to tilt the coverage in its favor, and the journalists either don't realize this is happening or don't make the effort to counteract it. sPh
Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 6, 2004 15:56 UTC (Fri) by jonth (subscriber, #4008) [Link] I disagree. In this case, there are two sides. In fact, there are several sets of two sides: you can't have a legal dispute without two opposing sides.AFAIR, the court cases in question are
The news.com article simply reports a new development in a), where SCO extend the dispute to cover copyright. The Inquirer, on the other hand, comments on it by saying that SCO's case is a pile of steaming cow dung. They're probably right, but we don't know that, and won't until we see the evidence. (If it ever turns up.
Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 6, 2004 16:34 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] Maybe so, but I don't get that sense when reading e.g. CNET News; it's more like the SCO group is protecting itself agains the evil IBM-and-Linux consortium. Once in a great while, they cover some Linux "guru" trying to show SCO for what they have become.Example: Why does CNET keep repeating the same paragraph over and over again regarding "MyDoom": "SCO has incurred the wrath of Linux users....." bla bla bla? And why do they give so little coverage to the organized-crime/spam possibilities of these new viruses?
Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 6, 2004 18:02 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] In the Red Hat case, Red Hat is accusing SCO of slander (essentially; theexact change may be slightly different). You're also missing IBM's copyright infringement case against SCO, which is probably the most dangerous case for SCO, since, if they lose, any kernel contributor has a good case with an exact precedent for copyright infringement against SCO (based on SCO violating the GPL). Furthermore, I'd expect a copyright claim by SCO against IBM to be deferred until the cases pending against SCO are resolved, which means they'll have to spend a lot of money and probably lose a lot of money before they can even argue the case.
Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 6, 2004 17:43 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] I just found this article at InfoWorld covering the issue. I get the impression from reading their article that SCO is just playing games to stall out IBM.
Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 6, 2004 17:59 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] That Infoworld article is the best journalism I've seen in quite a while (at least related to the whole SCO fiasco.) Just straight facts...and they even put in that "SCO licensed the Unix operating system to companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. after it said that it obtained rights to the license in 1995." Note that they put that SCO said they'd obtained rights to the license, not that it was a given fact. Very nice.
Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 8, 2004 19:42 UTC (Sun) by fjf33 (subscriber, #5768) [Link] "SCO licensed the Unix operating system to companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. after it said that it obtained rights to the license in 1995."I am quoting a quote so keep that in mind. But I think that it was not SCO that licensed IBM SysV but the original AT&T corporation set up to make money out of Unix (I don't remember their name)
Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs (Inquirer) Posted Feb 19, 2004 1:40 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599) [Link] But I think that it was not SCO that licensed IBM SysV but the original AT&T corporation set up to make money out of Unix (I don't remember their name)I believe it was Unix System Laboratories (USL), or something close to that. It was purchased by Novell, which in turn sold or licensed parts of it to Caldera/SCOX, which eventually led to this mess. I have no real memory of the dates involved, however. (I thought Novell acquired its rights around 1993, but maybe I'm remembering something else.) Greg
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