Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: KennyR on August 29, 2003, 06:54:34 PM
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Ok, we're all fed up of the SCO thing. But interestingly, now the non-IT media are picking up the story in more detail.
In this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3191281.stm) article, a writer for the BBC scolds the Linux community for attacking SCO for defending its own copyright, regardless of Linux's moral superiority. Note that this hasn't necessarily got to do with SCO's claims being true or false.
Those wishing to comment can even send their comments to the BBC.
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Why even bothering to reply to the BBC. They have their own agenda, regardless of the truth of the matter. Is the BBC corporation still financially supported by British tax dollars, btw?
Dammy
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Experience shows the BBC have no agenda - and that's because they're supported by the taxpayer. They have no reason to lie because no lie would be profitable anyway, unlike private owned news agencies like Fox and CNN.
And attacking the BBC isn't going to get Linux users off the hook. What they are saying is quite valid - that the Linux community howl in anger even at the very mention of copyright.
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Hmm, the author of the article seems to be missing the point. The Linux community (the non-zealot part of it anyway) doesn't like SCO because it, largely directed by MS, is trying to destroy MS's main competition.
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Experience shows the BBC have no agenda
Perhaps not an agenda, but they have definitely been seriously biassed on some issues. Their coverage of the second Iraq war being one example, and their pro ID cards stance.
And anyway, the BBC is still a corporation, and I doubt their only income is from the taxpayer.
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mikeymike wrote:
Hmm, the author of the article seems to be missing the point. The Linux community (the non-zealot part of it anyway) doesn't like SCO because it, largely directed by MS, is trying to destroy MS's main competition.
And rightly so. But this wasn't the point of the article. ;-)
Look at this quote:
Unfortunately, the typical response of a Linux user to SCO's claims has been to dismiss them. They criticise SCO for even hinting that Linux could be anything other than perfectly legal and clean, and support actions such as the recent denial of service attack on the SCO website.
Since the GPL relies on copyright law for its legal strength, it seems unwise for the Linux world to argue - as some have - that SCO should be destroyed for daring to protect its own copyright.
Instead, the developers and the team in charge of the Linux kernel should think about how they ensure that they really are respecting other people's copyrights when they accept contributions.
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The BBC were not biased on the Iraq war. There was a point where only the BBC and Al-Jazeera were sites you could go to to avoid US government spin. Al-Jazeera were biased the other way of course, but the BBC were impartial as ever. Their criticism of Blair for the lies he told the British people is just a reflection of our own anger towards Blair for those lies.
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by KennyR on 2003/8/29 14:09:17
Experience shows the BBC have no agenda - and that's because they're supported by the taxpayer. They have no reason to lie because no lie would be profitable anyway, unlike private owned news agencies like Fox and CNN.
It's quiet evident that the BBC has agendas, else they would not have been kicked off atleast one HMS ship during Operation Iraqi Freedom because of their bias reporting that annoyed that ship's crew. Wasn't the BBC the ones who orginally said that the now dead WMD expert wasn't their only source but in fact, was?
As for tax supported corporations not having agendas, I will point to the US' PBS as a prime example on how bias a tax funded organization can be. Check out Media Research Center (http://www.mrc.org/) for their watch on PBS and other left tilted networks. The dirty little secret with publically funded media corporations is that they back the political isle that will increase spending on those tax payier funded corporations.
As far as their coverage of Linux vs SCO, who cares? This is not a battle of public opinion but a court battle between different corporations. SCO wants IBM to buy them out, IBM has other ideas on the situation.
And speaking of SCO, latest /. article is here (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/29/0416253&mode=thread&tid=106&tid=123&tid=185&tid=187&tid=88&tid=99)
Dammy
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Is the BBC corporation still financially supported by British tax dollars, btw?
yes it is and it is a load of rubbish they are very biased . :-)
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It's quiet evident that the BBC has agendas, else they would not have been kicked off atleast one HMS ship during Operation Iraqi Freedom because of their bias reporting that annoyed that ship's crew.
Not biased enough, more like. Not enough flag waving.
As far as their coverage of Linux vs SCO, who cares? This is not a battle of public opinion but a court battle between different corporations. SCO wants IBM to buy them out, IBM has other ideas on the situation.
Correct, but Linux has a talent for making itself powerful corporate enemies thanks to its contempt of copyright. And as you and I both know, the dollar rules the US corporate courts. Microsoft's untouchability is testament to that. Even with a seemingly watertight case against SCO, Linux may still find itself up creek.c without a makefile.
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The BBC were not biased on the Iraq war.
You got to be jokinfg they were very biased . :-?
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Generally I don't fully agree with the article, even though it has a point. But, they make the common mistake of mixing GNU and Linux:
"The worrying thing is, there is nothing inherently implausible about this claim. There are over 30 million lines of program source in a Linux distribution, if you include all the programming tools and utilities."
GNU is separate from the kernel. What is now commonly known as "Linux" is in fact GNU + Linux kernel. More details (http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html)
In fact, SCO themselves use and rely on several GNU tools, for example GCC and Samba. They use these tools even today.
This is why I consider SCO god damn hippocrats for attacking GPL and free software in general.
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The BBC were not biased on the Iraq war.
You got to be jokinfg they were very biased :-?
Example please.
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I find this interesting...
"Novell sold it to the Santa Cruz Operation in 1995, which passed it to Caldera in 2002. At that point, Caldera changed its name to SCO and stopped selling its own version of Linux."
I mainly find it interesting because the president of Novell has stated that THEY own the patents and Copyrights to AT&T Unix system V, and never transferred the ownership to Caldera with the assets sale. The president went on to say that SCO is well aware of this because over the past few months, SCO has been repeatedly contacting Novell, requesting that such IP ownership be transferred in order to give their claims some legitimacy. A request which Novell has repeatedly denied.
http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/05/pr03033.html
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The BBC were not biased on the Iraq war.
This is an email I sent to some friends just before the war started:
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On the news, they were just showing some statistics of public polls about going to war with Iraq.
Regardless of the statistics being over or under 50% (give or take 20%), whenever a statistic was anti-war, they would say "a whole x% were against" or "a massive x% were against", and then "only x% were for"... I mean, can they at least try not to sound so blatantly biased, it's totally pathetic. After that, they were coming up with statistics that obviously proved that the questions put to the people who voted were also biased, as they came out with things like:
"a whole 45% were against war with iraq, while only 49% were pro war, and even then 40% of those said after another backing UN resolution, and only 3% said regardless of another UN resolution", which means they had to have asked questions that were trying to water down the pro-voters' opinions.
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@ Wain
That's an old article, Novell have since then caved in on those claims.
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dammy wrote:
Is the BBC corporation still financially supported by British tax dollars, btw?
We aren't quite the 51st state yet... ;-)
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That's an old article, Novell have since then caved in on those claims.
Link would have been nice.
Novell Statement on SCO Contract Amendment (http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/06/pr03036.html)
But still confusing. Novell says they still hold the patents but not the copyright?
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Link would have been nice.
I couldn't remember where I read it :-)
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The BBC is so biased that its world credibility is going down hill. Look at the latest BS about Iraq. Lies. Not a slight error. Lies.
The BBC has its own agenda. For those who side with the BBC, well I guess its fits your view point on the world.
But make no mistake - They Are Biased on many subjects.
Poor journalism. Slanted. 8-)
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@Wolfe
Or it might be that a lot of important and powerful people are sh*t-scared that their blatant lies will be exposed as such and the Iraq war will be seen as what it really was: a blatant military conquest motivated by political and economic self-interest.
As for the article in question, it's not biased, just based on misleading assumptions. They are assuming the Linux community is against SCO for defending their copyright, when in fact the community is against SCO because the indications are that they are lying their heads off.
I'd rather listen to the BBC than US based news services like Fox News, who are nothing more than a jingoistic propaganda channel, or privately owned channels who are obliged to reflect their patron's political and economic opinions.
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bhoggett wrote:
I'd rather listen to the BBC than US based news services like Fox News, who are nothing more than a jingoistic propaganda channel, or privately owned channels who are obliged to reflect their patron's political and economic opinions.
I think I'd have to agree with that. During the coverage of the Iraq war I watched BBC News 24, Sky News and also ITN News channels and they all pretty much had the same stories and content.
Yeah, each had a slightly different angle on stuff, but that's representative of a different journalist reporting on something. On the whole I've never really had much of an issue with the BBC.
If a story is wrong then email them and say so, I've done that a couple of times and they listened and then changed the items.
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But make no mistake - They Are Biased on many subjects.
Yeah, I'd agree with that. But even though they were critical of the war, in general they are quite pro-Blair.
During the fuel strikes last year, every newspaper and TV station were focusing on the price of oil inflated by government tax rises (which is what caused the strikes). The BBC, and some Labour-supporting newspapers completely ignored the cause of the strikes and took the government line and made their headlines about the effects on the NHS.
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Novell Statement on SCO Contract Amendment
But still confusing. Novell says they still hold the patents but not the copyright?
Interesting, but wouldn't Novell's original claim still hold true?? I thought SCO was claiming patent theft, not copyright infingment.
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Or it might be that a lot of important and powerful people are sh*t-scared that their blatant lies will be exposed as such and the Iraq war will be seen as what it really was: a blatant military conquest motivated by political and economic self-interest.
baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah :-p
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support actions such as the recent denial of service attack on the SCO website.
Unfortunately, the typical response of a Linux user to SCO's claims has been to dismiss them.
Yeah, cause the claims are totally false. SCO did this only to get their shares up, then fill their greedy pockets with money by then selling them.
support actions such as the recent denial of service attack on the SCO website.
How can they claim every linux user supports the attacks against SCO?? Just because some does, dosent mean that everyone does.
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support actions such as the recent denial of service attack on the SCO website.
What does that achieve?
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mikeymike wrote:
support actions such as the recent denial of service attack on the SCO website.
What does that achieve?
Nothing other than hurting the image of the linux community...
Probably SCO themself who attacked themself :-P
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The way you said it, I thought you advocated that...
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First things first. What exactly is SCO claiming was "copied"? Next, where should (not is) their blame be pointed to? Finally, why is it that the users got drug into it? GPL is fairly clear, and a user only has that to go on when the acquire a Linux Distrobution.
I do want to add that it is utterly disgusting, in my opinion, for ANY reporting body to attack USERS.
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I do want to add that it is utterly disgusting, in my opinion, for ANY reporting body to attack USERS.
But that's the whole point for SCO to embark on something like this. They want to rake in licence fees.
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Look at this quote:
Unfortunately, the typical response of a Linux user to SCO's claims has been to dismiss them. They criticise SCO for even hinting that Linux could be anything other than perfectly legal and clean, and support actions such as the recent denial of service attack on the SCO website.
And this is where this author is so wrong. Most important people in the linux community have always stated that they want to remove all code from the kernel which is not legally there. If SCO wants to cooperate they even want to help trace down the wrong code and take the necessary actions.
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@Targhan
First things first. What exactly is SCO claiming was "copied"?
Some code from UNIX was supposedly copied into the Linux kernel. SCO say this was done by IBM, but they are refusing to divulge further details. Even the heavily disfigured snippets of code they have supposedly shown fail to prove their case.
Next, where should (not is) their blame be pointed to?
If their allegations were true, then the blame should be pointed at IBM. At first, this is what they did because they wanted to invite (force?) a buyout bid from them, but then they received a bribe from Microsoft (in the form of MS buying a license they didn't have any use for) to turn the fight into an anti-Linux one.
Finally, why is it that the users got drug into it?
Because SCO chose to do so. The fact is that the only effective way to hurt Linux is to attack the users. Also, threatening users who have no access to the evidence of the case is easier than threatening IBM who know what they did or did not do.
GPL is fairly clear, and a user only has that to go on when the acquire a Linux Distrobution.
True, but any license is only as binding as the legality of the original contribution allows. If IBM illegally contributed code they did not own under the GPL, then the GPL license as applied to that code is void. Unfortunately, a user buying "in good faith" is not necessarily a good enough defense.
I do want to add that it is utterly disgusting, in my opinion, for ANY reporting body to attack USERS.
In this case, it's a question of hitting soft targets. It's the software industry equivalent of a military attack on civilian targets in order to turn popular opinion against its own side for causing or prolonging the war. Software terrorism, you might say.
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First things first. What exactly is SCO claiming was "copied"?
That is the biggest question... SCO does not want to show the code that was claimed stolen :-x
They expect to blindly trust their word, and pay for their license without any proofs at all.
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But that's the whole point for SCO to embark on something like this. They want to rake in licence fees.
I think so to, and also think they wanted to raise their stocks, so they could sell for big profits. "Rumours" i have heard say that is exactly what has happened, since SCO stocks raised sky high, the employes has been selling stocks as hel*
All they want is to fill their greedy pockets with money, before the company goes down.
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Wain wrote:
Interesting, but wouldn't Novell's original claim still hold true?? I thought SCO was claiming patent theft, not copyright infingment.
SCO is claiming theft of trade secrets, among other things. The full complaint should be available somewhere at http://www.sco.com/scosource (http://www.sco.com/scosource) when they get their servers back online again. Patent ownership probably can't hurt in terms of proving who invented/owns the 'secrets.'
Novell didn't 'cave' blindly; they had an old contract waved back in their faces, and decided it was too much of a mess to bother with a lawsuit over. They can wait for the IBM suit to blow through, and only have to waste time on it if SCO actually manages to win.
http://www.hostingtech.com/news/2003[...] (http://www.hostingtech.com/news/2003/6/5/St_Nitf_Contract_illuminates_Novell_SC_c0604001.7ne.html) (Truncated the link text to keep it from stretching the page wide.)
http://theregister.co.uk/content/archive/31086.html (http://theregister.co.uk/content/archive/31086.html)
Of course, from http://news.osdir.com/article203.html (http://news.osdir.com/article203.html), this shows who SCO thought really owned what recently... and why Novell really doesn't have to give two craps either way:
Further, from Bruce Perens via LWN.net: "it interesting to note the following in SCO's annual report as filed with the SEC: "The Company has an arrangement with Novell, Inc. ("Novell") in which it acts as an administrative agent in the collection of royalties for customers who deploy SVRx technology. Under the agency agreement, the Company collects all customer payments and remits 95 percent of the collected funds to Novell and retains 5 percent as an administrative fee." SCO never owned Unix; it just does the paperwork for a 5% cut. (Thanks to Karsten Self, who posted this to the linux-elitists list)"
So if Linux customers do get shaken down... Novell still gets a 95% cut? ...Meanwhile, *their* Linux business is well-protected by ownership of the patents, should SCO's crackheads-at-the-helm try to turn around and crash on them.
One of the more interesting ways to follow this is through Greg Lehey (http://www.lemis.com/grog/)'s analysis: http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.html (http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.html). As a veteran BSD developer, he's quite familiar with the old USL/BSD suit and its outcome... and also versed in much arcane UNIX lore.
One of the interesting lessons of that suit was that the Berkely side actually came away with more "UNIX" than anyone may have expected, since USL was proved to have resold *their* code while removing the copyright. (Resale would've been allowed, but copyright violation is copyright violation, even when you give it out for free!) You can see him approaching from this angle as he picks at Raymond's analysis; from his perspective, if the code was modified to the point that more was 'new' than 'the originator's property,' Linux would still have good grounds for ownership, so there's no harm in considering the possibility, and hey, it's not his project anyway. ;-)
Of course, the BSD code was never challenged over 'trade secrets' that I know of, USL was happy to discuss what they found infringing, and the settlement officially *blessed* the 4.4 Lite (2?) sources for all eternity.
In contrast, SCO's refused to provide evidence to the community so the problem can be resolved; this shows they're more interested in the 'extortion' angle than simple defense of their property. In essence, they've reported their car as stolen, claim a dealer has it on his lot, and are trying to sue for damages while refusing to reveal the make, model, or VIN, or even file a police report. (A 'police report' being a direct claim of copyright infringement against, say, whoever [at SGI?] professed to have copyright on it by submitting it to Linux, rather than the company with the deepest pockets.) You can argue - and occasionally they've argued - that they're only going after IBM because IBM put developers on Linux who might have maybe come in contact with what might sort of possibly be code that could've at one point been considered SCO (or USL?) property in AIX... but you can't make that jibe with their call upon *users* to stock up on magic Keep_SCO_From_Suing_You beans.
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Bill Hoggett said,
I do want to add that it is utterly disgusting, in my opinion, for ANY reporting body to attack USERS.
In this case, it's a question of hitting soft targets. It's the software industry equivalent of a military attack on civilian targets in order to turn popular opinion against its own side for causing or prolonging the war. Software terrorism, you might say.
Man, that's a weird way to phrase it. It's the equivalent of an *encroachment* in the hopes that the other side will do something to make it look bad. Like Israel walling Palestinians into ghettos, or Egypt blockading the Suez, stationing troops in the Sinai, and waiting for .il to substantiate its borders in the first place.
"Look at those horrid Linux refugees, lobbing Molotovs at our servers, stealing the fruit of our meager enterprise! We are civil, we come to sue for peace, and only ask for what we claim! IBM, why do you not put a stop to this?!"
But was he talking about SCO or the press, anyway?
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In short, buy a new Amiga :-D
'nuff said!
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My favorite page (lately) to get real linux info
http://arstechnica.com/etc/linux/index.html
also on the main page www.arstechnica.com , the storys about the death of flash and the Dell "click wrap" license conundrum
fun stuff no?
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DanDude wrote:
In short, buy a new Amiga :-D
'nuff said!
The only new Amiga I've seen about is the AmigaOne.. and what operating system does it use at the moment??
Siggy.