Paul Murray's weblog, with news you may have missed and my $0.02 worth on a number of topics.

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it."
- Art Buchwald

I bet you don't have a friend who's an acupuncturist

E-mail me: pmurray [at] despammed.com

Die, SCO, die. Excuse the schadenfreude, but a computer company called The SCO Group is going down in financial flames ... and it couldn't be more deserved.

Since 2002, SCO's entire business model has been to intimidate and sue users of the Linux operating system, claiming that the OS infringes on its purported ownership of patents on the UNIX operating system. Shunned by users and facing an angry open-source software community that banded together to disprove their claims, SCO decided to play chicken with IBM. They sued IBM for selling systems running Linux, expecting IBM to settle, and then everyone else would cough up too.

Except IBM didn't blink. They eagerly went to court to force SCO to prove their claims. SCO demanded outrageous amouts of evidence from IBM, but dragged their feet continually when ordered to produce their own evidence.

(An aside: SCO was on its deathbed a few years ago. And then Microsoft invested in them, an amount that was lunch money to one of the world's largest corporations but enough to keep SCO going. As usual, Microsoft was trying to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) about a threatening competitor. Today they're huffing and puffing that Linux contains some of their copyrighted code -- which they won't reveal -- and encouraging companies to pay them a licensing fee. Yes, pay to license alleged infringing code without proof. But they're big and scary, so some companies have caved.)

And then last week the judge ruled that virtually all of the UNIX patents that SCO claimed to own actually belong to Novell. Cue the sound effect of air leaking from a tire as the stock, which had once traded at about $20 a share, plunged. As I write this, it closed at 44 cents.

Ironically, a previous incarnation of the same company (Caldera) was highly regarded by the Linux community. But new management in 2002 took them down what appears to be a dead-end.

Labels: lawsuits, Linux, patents, software

posted by Paul Murray at 12:31 AM | permanent link |

Adobe retreats. Adobe had the good sense to retreat yesterday on the Reader toolbar's FedEx Kinkos button (and FedEx let them):

Adobe is removing the button with a version 8.1.1 update to be released in about 10 weeks, said John Loiacono, head of the company's creative products division, on his blog.

"I know that there are a lot of folks who will be asking why we can't do it this afternoon. The answer is we can't just go back to the 8.0 release since the 8.1 release that contains the button included a lot of critical security and quality updates in addition to the new print option," Loiacono said.

Labels: Adobe, duh, software

posted by Paul Murray at 5:27 PM | permanent link |

From the "well, duh" file. I noted last week that Adobe removed the "Save As" button from the toolbar in the latest version of Adobe Reader, in favor of a "Print to FedEx Kinko's" button.

Turns out some people are even more irked than me, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

Adobe Systems Inc., the maker of Acrobat and Flash software, faces a wave of criticism from printing companies protesting a deal that gives FedEx Kinko's stores a prominent link on Adobe software.

The brouhaha could hurt Adobe's standing with important customers and partners and also throw a wrench into FedEx Corp.'s plans to revitalize Kinko's, the copy-and-print chain it bought in 2004.

Adobe's corporate rationalization for how wonderful this arrangement would be can be found in this June 6 press release.

Update: CNET has more details of the brouhaha.

Labels: Adobe, duh, software

posted by Paul Murray at 12:56 AM | permanent link |

Selling the toolbar. The newest version of Adobe Reader -- what we used to call Acrobat, but Adobe now reserves that term for its software to create PDFs, not merely open them -- replaces the toolbar's Save button with one to send the file to FedEx Kinko's for printing.

I understand that Adobe wants to make money, and I'm confident that's why this happened, but come on, folks: you eliminated the Save button for this? Honestly, which function will users need more often?

Fortunately, you can change things back yourself in a few seconds. Directions are here.

Labels: Adobe, software

posted by Paul Murray at 1:01 AM | permanent link |