SCO Licensing Debated Hotly in Online Forums

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SCO Licensing Debated Hotly in Online Forums
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Karen Snider, theWHIR.com
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March 17, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY
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REVIEW) — Discussion on message boards heated up across the Web after
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hosting firm EV1Servers (ev1servers.net)
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announced its decision to purchase UNIX licenses from the SCO Group.
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While a handful of users showed support for EV1, many in the outspoken
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open-source community condemned its decision.
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Following EV1 CEO Robert Marsh’s
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announcement at the beginning of the month, the bulk of responses made
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on the various Web hosting forums accused EV1 of helping to fund future
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SCO lawsuits – which claim that the UNIX code found in Linux violates
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its intellectual property rights. By doing so, forum users wrote, EV1
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betrayed the Linux community it claims to support.
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Marsh responded to the accusations
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on the EV1Servers forum by reiterating that EV1 does not endorse SCO.
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He added that SCO already had $60 million and EV1′s licensing fee
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(referred to as “worth seven figures” by SCO representatives, but
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considerably less by Marsh) would not “go very far in defending an
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action such as this, much less prosecuting one.”
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Forum users put up more than 440 replies to Marsh’s statement in a thread that was viewed almost 63,000 times.
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“It is absurd that you claim giving over
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$1,000,000 to SCO does not help them,” one user writes. “Even if you
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paid SCO nothing, you’ve given them credibility, as you’re the only one
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to publicly take out a license. Had you wanted to stay out of this,
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you’d not have agreed to go public and become SCO’s poster child.”
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Another user writes, “I don’t care if you
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gave SCO 1$ or 1,000,000,000$, the fact you gave them ANY money is the
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issue here for me. This is just ridiculous. Your money spent has made
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the statement for you. If you truly did not endorse them nor believe
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their claims as having any truth to them, you would not have paid such
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a high price to buy their licenses.”
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Some users were so upset that they threatened to leave EV1, or felt they had no alternative.
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“If I continue giving EV1 my business
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now, I see myself essentially contributing to the fight against Linux
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and open source software in general,” one WebHosting Talk (webhostingtalk.com) user wrote.
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Another just flat-out said he was
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leaving. “Whatever the reasons EV1 has for bending over for crooks, I
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simply won’t be party to filling the legal war chest of crooks,” the
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user writes. “I’m moving my servers from EV1elsewhere starting today,
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and will be transferring all of my clients out of there as well.”
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EV1 has not said how many customers – if any – it might have lost since its announcement.
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Forum users said they were upset
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because EV1 is a large enough company that its decision would likely
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influence those of other companies. “The fact that they do this sends
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the message that action like SCO’s is okay, and will possibly open up
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for a lot of similar bold fraud attempts from random companies,” one
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SitePoint (sitepoint.com) forum user writes.
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On other forums, users accused EV1 of pulling a publicity stunt
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because Marsh made his announcement about the decision to purchase the
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licenses only days before his second data center was opened in Houston.
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“If I had to guess, it was nothing more than a marketing deal,” one person writes on the HostHideout (hosthideout.com) board. “I can think of some other hosts who I wouldn’t be surprised if they signed up just to get their name in the paper.”
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“SCO will not win,” another user writes.
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“But this is a smart move anyway. Why? It got you people talking… and
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not just you, a lot of people. It’s better then paying for ads.”
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Marsh later said in an interview with theWHIR that while EV1 was expecting “a few concerns,” he had not anticipated a reaction of the size the company encountered.
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Whatever EV1′s intentions, the issue was bound to come up again, and it did when eWeek revealed that Microsoft acted as a matchmaker for a $50 million investment led by Baystar Capital into the SCO Group.
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The same news story, pointed out one
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WebHosting Talk forum, raised suspicions that Microsoft played a part
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in EV1′s decision to purchase the license because of its ties as a
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business partner to Microsoft.
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