SCO, Linux, and Microsoft

[hostage]

Okay, the more I talk to co-workers the more it seems to frustate me.

SCO is a failing unix company, the fire all of their developers and higher lawers. Microsoft funds their case vs Linux. SCO claims that Linux stole code and put it in thier the kernal. SCO delays trials. SCO writes to major companies, that SCO will sue if they don't get rid of linux. The company I work for got such a letter and quit using linux. Seems like microsoft was not making as much money as they could since the open source community was making it cheap for companies to use. I hate microsoft a lot now, I will purge that crap from my systems and go all linux. This is not present news, but I get irritated the more I hear about it. BTW I heard most of this second hand, though many of the sources I asked said the same thing.
-Doron

[OfficerGoat]

I think you are having your leg pulled... at least somewhat. I dono who SCO is, however there is no "linux" to sue. You could suposedly sue redhat or someone like that but I really don't see much point in suing them.

Anyhow... so far as sending letters and actualy making a company switch OS... yeah right. I know the note they would get back from me It would include my lawers address to send any further corespondence. Transitioning a major infestructure from one os to another would be greatly expensive... in the case of most large companys proboly more costly than actualy getting sued by a little company like this.

[pbzmag]

SCO is big in the Mainframe and AS400 platform. From what I remember about the suit, SCO is claiming that some of their code is in Linux with out their permission. What company's just have to do is find and replace the "illegal" code. But that's the problem, there is so much code that finding if will take alot of time. I really don't know if SCO has given information about the stolen code.

[Steelrat]

God, I am sick of Microsoft bashing. We should all thank god that there is one major operating system to write software for. And I highly doubt Microsoft was giving money to SCO to have them sue anybody.

SCO is suing IBM and other major Linux developers/users. If anyone thinks that Linux developers wont just end up like Microsoft down the road, they are fooling themselves. All this touchy feely open source crap goes right out the window when it actually starts to gobble up significant market share.

I think anyone who crys about Microsoft needs to go read Atlas Shrugged immediately.

[OfficerGoat]

First off I don't serve web off of microsoft due to the fact they are the big guy, I dont use them because they simply don't cut the cheese when it comes to serving high volume, high availibility web pages.

When it comes to workstations I am microsoft all the way... I just don't think they have that great of a server product... although 2003 is showing more promise with things like shadow copy... which I had years ago using ...nx

This is just like those goobers that were suing everyone that used .gif on their sites. That sure got them really far now dint it.

As far as MS trying to dominate... good for them... buisnesses are meant to do one thing and one thing only, make money. Don't like it? Move to china or some other comunist state.

I think I know SCO now... I replaced an AS400 Mainframe at the company I worked at in 98 with a nice NT4 box and Windows based workstations.

[Tron]

Originally posted by OfficerGoat
First off I don't serve web off of microsoft due to the fact they are the big guy, I dont use them because they simply don't cut the cheese when it comes to serving high volume, high availibility web pages.

Why are you using linux then you should have a bsd on there...

-Tron

[OfficerGoat]

Originally posted by Tron


Why are you using linux then you should have a bsd on there...

-Tron

When it comes down to serving pages via PHP/MySQL a hacked down version of Linux is faster. (We do better than 100megabit average) I did try out a couple of bsd machines and when you looked at the stats they simply were not handling the load as well. When it comes down to running processor intensive aps the task goes over to solaris on sparq boxes.

Anyhow.. point still is that I wouldn't even consider running this sorta traffic on a similary equiped MS box... thing would croak daily.

[speeddemon]

Wow, I forgot all about that SCO suit. I guess I just figured that it had gone away since it started so long ago. Oh well, I guess we just have to hope that linux will prevail in the end. I have a feeling that SCO will simply run out of money in the end and just have to stop pursuing this. I mean they are taking on IBM, which is kind of a stupid target to tackle first IMO. Personally the only reason I still use anything MS is because of school. Linux is just easier to work with (well, after you get to know it) and it just doesn't break.


And to Steelrat:
Do you even know what you're talking about? The whole thing about Linux and open source is that nobody owns anything. There isn't anything to monopolize, because its all free. The major companies just hope that you will buy their CD versions instead of downloading it to help support their effort.
Yes it is nice to have 1 operating system that most people use, the problem is that this operating system happens to be a pile of crap. Its not hard to make a good user friendly operating system, Mac OSX is (I haven't used it) supposedly a great system.

[Steelrat]

Theres that touchy feely thing again...

Do you really think that if Linux became the predominant operating software, no one would try and monopolize the market? Please show me one example of where this has happened in the past.

Windows is not a piece of crap. Microsoft is hobbled by the fact that its stuff needs to be backwards compatible, and run on all kinds of funky systems. Apple has the benefit of knowing EXACTLY what systems its stuff will be run on. Its not like you can go down to the store, buy a bunch of generic crap parts, assemble a mac, then try and get OSX to run on that frankenstein machine. And linux is a fairly bare bones system that is mostly targeted at saavy users. Trust me when I say that once linux distributors start targeting mainstream neophyte users, you'll see a whole crapload of issues pop up.

And dont even get me going on security issues. EVERY operating system has security issues. The reason that everyone targets MS products is because they represent 95% of the market, and it therefore represents the best "bang for the buck."

[hostage]

did you know microsoft use to and most likely still uses Unix for many of their own servers. Also its free, can you really argue with that? The reason why microsoft is funding SCO is that MS wants to use lawsuits and threats to prevent companies from using linux or make them quit using it. We were forced to take linux off many of our machines since some guy in upper management, was a parinoid freak. Also how well does windows support multi-user mode? I think only WIN2k Adv. Server is the only one that comes close. XP doesn't and esp 98 etc. Also security, remember when Bill put out a version of NT and he said "hack this" and people hacked into in only hours. Or when he was showing windows 98 and it blue screened on him. Want any more info, I can get you plenty.

Note: OSX for Mac is basicly BSD, BSD and System V can both be considered Unix based.
-Doron

[Steelrat]

Microsoft has had their share of embarassing moments, but that hardly makes it an inferior product. Im sure every other operating system has had major glitches, but since Bill Gates and Microsoft are such media magnets, they are the only ones that seem to get any attention. And as far as free, last time I checked I cant walk into compusa and get a free version of Linux. Once someone tries to mainstream linux, its bye-bye free, hello capitalism.

And on a side note, where is everyone getting this info that MS is funding SCO? I'd like to see some hard proof.

[hostage]

Sorry this is long...but I put links to d/l Linux for free. If you go to compusa, you are buying their service. If you want more proof, you are making this to easy for me. I need ot hit the hay, but I hope this is good enough.

http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/9/en/iso/i386/

-Redhat Linux d/l from redhat's site.

http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml

-Gentoo's mirrored sites.

SCO, MS, and BayCapital----

Finally, for hard evidence we need look no farther than Microsoft's own e-mail service, Hotmail. Hotmail originally ran on Sun SPARCstations and Solaris. Microsoft quietly attempted to move the entire operation over to Windows NT, but NT couldn't stand up to the task. So Microsoft (even more quietly) moved the operation back to Solaris.

-CNN (refference below)

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9903/24/mslinux.html/index.html

http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=120229

SCO gets a 50mil investment also it made their stock rise
Go to BayStars website and see how they transfer money
Also in an artical I found one of the

http://www.baystarcapital.com/public/pdf/BayStar%20White%20Paper%20October%202002.pdf

Micosoft is 1 of the top 10 investors of Baystar, which gave SCO 50mil dollars

http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0...=109986,00.asp
Another good sites, contridicts the claims of BayStar

Sites on Microsoft and SCO

http://www.theitportal.com/staticpages/features23_5_03sco.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/support/partner/canada/trios.htm

--supports SCO unix

[hostage]

Once someone tries to mainstream linux, its bye-bye free, hello capitalism.

-steelrat

They can't read the GNU licenseing agreement, funny thing that SCO has it on their website.

http://www.sco.com/scosource/gnu_license.html

[Steelrat]

Well, those links merely showed that a fund that Microsoft is a contributor to invested in SCO. Stating that Microsoft was funding their case vs. Linux based upon that is extremely flimsy.

Linux is popular mainly with people who are tech-saavy. Mr. Joe America, with incredibly little techical knowledge, is going to need something simple, with plenty of support. Support requires a infrastructure. Infrastructure requires funding. Funding requires income. If a product remains free, where will this funding come from?

I'm all for competition in the marketplace. If linux is indeed the better product, is should topple windows. Unfortunately, what I see right now is some sort of witchhunt againt microsoft. I read about compaines switching without really understanding what it entails, then being forced to switch back to microsoft to regain the support they need. I also see the government going out of its way to crap on Microsoft, even though almost every other country on earth would do everything they could to protect a company that is so doiminant in the global market. And I see it being done at the behest of companies that are failing in the marketplace, due to inferior products or marketing plans.

Every company should be allowed to compete freely in the marketplace, with the best product/marketing winning. Microsoft giving away free products and such is not unfair competition.

I know the last part there is a bit off-topic, but this whole thing gets me angry. Microsoft has done so much for the industry, and now everyone just wants to jump on the bandwagon and villify them.

[hostage]

Thats not my arguement. I am not saying they haven't contributed to the developement. I am saying what they are doing is wrong. Do you think Microsoft is going to openly announce that they fund SCO, no they are using private channels. It seems like for the most part, they were sucessful.

Microsoft makes a LOT of money, since it is more markerting. They have high paid sells reps calling and talking to management and tell them a lot of BS.

The money is not in the software, but Sys Admins, servers and preconfigured packages.

Also, IBM prefers using Linux for servers now. They started getting big into not to long ago, and as soon as MS hears about this, then they try to find a way in stopping it. So "SCO" sues IBM. Lawsuits are very common. Rent the Tucker Story, good movie, about how a car designer trys to compete against Ford etc and gets shut down by dirty politions. Also the goldengate bridge was suied by Southernpacific, since they didn't want people to use the bridge instead of their ferry service.

Also, linux isn't that hard to use buddy, it comes with a lot more than any O/S by MS comes with. A lot of server settings, firewalls, routing, DNS, DHCP, SSHD (windows uses telnet mostly, which sends in plain text, very unsecure), great paintprograms gimp, full fledge word processors, spreadsheets, I cant list everything, but take a look. Mandrake is stupid easy to install, if you can install MS, then you can install Mandrake, and KDE is very strait forward. People hear linux and they think it is hard. If you do as much stuff as i do, perl programming shell scripting and prefer the prompt, then yes just as much as Windows users use CMD prompt. Try it out and lmk.
-Doron