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You know, it's the one where you claim that Linux vendors and users are infringing your copyright because you own Unix and there are bits of Unix code in the various open-source distributions.

Given the cost of litigation, this is an incredibly smart move by SCO who, until they came up with this bright idea, looked to be headed for oblivion.

I mean -- as far as the commercial press and a raft of PC-based users are concerned, Unix is a dinosaur and Linux is the future -- so who needs SCO and their wares right?

Fortunately for SCO, the world is now a litigious place and when faced with the prospect of being sued, many companies (both large and small) prefer to simply roll over and concede defeat, thus saving themselves a fortune in legal fees.

I strongly suspect that it was with this in mind that SCO embarked on its current course of action -- trying to scare the Linux community into buying licenses which, in all practicality, serve no purpose but to indemnify them from legal action.

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However, across the ditch our Australian friends look set to call SCO's bluff and have demanded proof of the alleged copyright infringements.

"Ante-up with the proof or we'll sue you for making false threats" is effectively what the Aussies are saying.

And there's a very good chance that SCO will have to back down because, it would appear that to date, SCO have not been able to front up to any court with significant proof of their claims that Linux contains parts of code that they own.

So, is this stand by SCO nothing more than a modern-day protection racket? Or does the company have a valid case and are they simply taking advantage of the remedies offered by the law?

I guess we won't know until SCO either put up or shut up.

Don't hold your breath though -- I can see your lips turning blue already.

Note: I hope to interview someone from SCO Australia/NZ next week and present that interview as a streaming audio feature. The questions I pose will not be easy ones and I won't allow any dodging of the bullets so don't miss it.

The Shame of NZQA's Website
For the second time in a few short weeks it would seem that the NZQA website which is supposed to provide ready-access to the exam marks of thousands of high-school students has collapsed under the load.

Good grief -- that's shocking.

If they can't organise enough resource or a robust enough system to support a level of load they must have known would be encountered then someone needs their backside kicked.

It's neither hard nor all that expensive these days to produce robust systems that can cope with high peak demands -- or at the very least, fail in a decidedly graceful manner.

Was it a lack of bandwidth? A lack of CPU resource? I don't know, but there's simply no excuse for a system that crumbles at the first hint of above-average traffic levels.

Perhaps their problem was that even they couldn't decipher the cryptic array of politically correct nomenclature that now surrounds the NCEA and, by mistake, hired an utter buffoon to produce this system?

As a parent, a sometimes employer and someone with at least a gramme of commonsense, I can't wait until they decide that A+ through F or 0%-100% is a far more sensible way to grade a pupil's performance than simply picking from a long list of fluffy PC descriptions where the absolute worst you can do is "not achieve".

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