Slashdot Mirror

IBM has taken steps to silence them.
Go to groklaw and read up on IBM's subpoena agains canopy (not SCO!). IBM has done the right thing, in that they are avoiding beating an already dead horse (SCO) and going for its owner.

Canopy will happily lead SCO to corporate suicide, as long as they are able to cash in. IBM now has changed the rules of the game, because they have signaled they are going to drag Canopy from their VIP lounges onto the playing field.

The above subpoena is IMO the most interesting and important development in this whole SCO fiasco, and I'm really surprised that it doesn't get the attention it deserves.

Over at Groklaw there is a large set of comments forming in the hopes of drafting an open letter response to McBride's. It is my hope when they are finished that the /. editors will publish the text of said letter in an effort to debunk his claims and outright lies and misquotes.

I tried to post my comment on there but for some reason it wouldn't take. I offer my services to mirror a PDF or HTML copy of the response once it is finished. I hope others would follow suit, and perhaps some of the readers here with connections can get it published on high-profile sites or even pass it along to CIO/CEO/CTO type people in an effort to dispel SCO FUD.

Well, according to this article (pointed to by this recent slashdot posting), it is!

The subpoena sets September 10th as the date for a deposition, at Snell & Wilmer's law offices in Salt Lake City, and instructs that these are the documents Canopy Group's representative, whoever they choose to get deposed on behalf of Canopy, must produce on that date:

1. All documents concerning this lawsuit, plaintiff's claims or IBM's defenses or counterclaims.

2. All documents concerning any communications regarding this lawsuit, plaintiff's claims or IBM's defenses or counterclaims.

3. All documents concerning plaintiff's rights relating to UNIX or Linux.

4. All documents concerning any strategy, plan, effort, or action (actual or contemplated) to use or enforce (or to threaten to use or enforce) rights to UNIX or Linux.

5. All documents concerning any open-source license, including the GNU General Public License.

6. All documents concerning any lawsuit other than this lawsuit (actual or contemplated) involving plaintiff and relating to UNIX or Linux.

7. All documents concerning any agreement, understanding or communication with Microsoft, Sun, Computer Associates, Tarantella, AT&T, USL, HP or Novell, relating to UNIX or Linux.

8. All documents concerning plaintiff's efforts to license UNIX or Linux.

9. All documents concerning plaintiff's alleged evidence of UNIX in Linux.

10. All documents concerning plaintiff's alleged evidence of misconduct or breaches of duty by IBM.

11. All documents concerning plaintiff's UNIX or Linux business.

12. Documents sufficient to show the organizational structure or personnel of The Canopy Group.

13. All documents relating to the ownership of plaintiff.

14. All documents relating to purchases or sales of plaintiff's stock since January 1, 2003.

15. All documents in the possession, custody, or control of Ralph Yarrow, Jan Newman, Darcy Mott, Raymond J. Noorda, Lewena Noorda, Joyce Wiley, Mark Cusick, or Dan L. Baker relating to UNIX, Linux, or this lawsuit.

16. All documents provided to plaintiff by The Canopy Group or provided to The Canopy Group by plaintiff relating to UNIX, Linux, or this lawsuit.

17. All documents concerning the decision to commence or pursue this lawsuit or other lawsuits relating to plaintiff's alleged rights relating to UNIX or Linux.

18. All documents concerning the decision to suspend distribution of plaintiff's Linux products or code.

19. All documents concerning any analysis of any IBM conduct related to Unix or Linux.

20. All documents concerning any UNIX source code, derivative works, modification. or methods contributed to Linux or to the open source community by AT&T, USL, Novell, Tarantella, or plaintiff.

21. All documents concerning the relationship between plaintiff and The Canopy Group.

22. All documents concerning any statements, declaration, affidavit, analysis, assessment, or opinion rrelating to plaintiff's rights to UNIX or Linux.

23. All documents concerning any statement, affidavit, declaration, analysis, assessment, or opinion relating to this litigation.

24. All documents concerning the nature, calculation, and basis of any damages or injuries plaintiff claims in this matter.

Don't believe M$ is behind it? Then you didn't read a previous post which pointed to this article which points out the string of holding corporations pointing to Mrs Gates.

The esteemed P.J. over at Groklaw had an interesting analogy related to this IBM campaign:

AntiFUD is an important part of this battle, which is why IBM is launching an advertising campaign about Linux. But legally they're like circling sharks. Not a sound. Just water rippling ever so slightly on the surface, a brief glimpse of a fin, as they slowly circle. Until it's time to lunge.

I'd like to add to it by saying that SCO is that loud mouthed kid who's splashing around in the water yelling obscenities and other unpleasantries at the sharks, almost daring them to attack.

Interesting comment from JF

Quote

Unless you are using the DMCA to get rubber-stamped subpoenas like the RIAA, a subpoena means you showed a judge enough evidence to convince them that you are probably right on a point related to the case.

The fact that IBM got a subpoena indicates that laid some pretty damning evidence in front of a judge. Any indication of which jurisdiction issued the subpoena?

If it was the courts there in Utah, that at least SQUARES the power of the evidence in my opinion given that SCO/Canopy has the hometown advantage. J.F. 9/3/03; 11:07:56 AM

More readable, human, translations of various articles and references to this story are available in the comments section of the write-up at Groklaw.

I can't take credit for the research on this one. It's reported on Groklaw, and the research was a joint effort of a couple of people, but mostly Pam Jones (I think that's her last name, it might be "Johnson").

Anyway, the story is heavily linked to the reference documents and Sec filings, so if you are interested you can easily verify the story for yourself there. Pam, aka pj, runs Groklaw and is a paralegel. She started the site to provide information on news stories from a legal research perspective.

When she started the site, the SCO v. IBM story was just breaking, and it became the site's focus. It's since developed a community of tech. and legal commentators who add to the research. If you're interested in in-depth discussions of the details of this case, Groklaw's probably the best resource for it on the web right now.

Pam Jones at Groklaw did some fascinating research into who may be funding SCO.

It seems that that Integral Capital Management companies as of this August own a total of 1,360,000 shares in SCO.

Drugstore.com's 10Q, their most recent one, just filed this month, is another company Integral has invested in heavily.

Melinda French Gates was just elected a director of Drugstore.com.

Pam points out:

As of last December, Integral Capital Management V didn't own any SCO stock, according to this SEC filing. They did own Microsoft stock back in November. But they didn't the previous May of 2002. So the chain of investment timeline appears to go like this: First, they invested in Drugstore.com, then Microsoft, and then in SCO.

It's a good read.

If Bill Gate's bucks are really behind SCO, you'd be shorting into someone with $50 billion to buy up SCO stock.

You'd wind up taking it in the shorts if you did that....

It certainly explains who has been buying SCO stock.

I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

For more information, check out Groklaw. Their latest article features a full write-up of Groklaw's research into the ICP affiliations, with links to the relevant documents and SEC filings.

Eric Raymonds is a good example.

Eric: SCO claims there was not DoS last Friday. (See GrokLaw ,
yet you blame it on Linux without providing evidence,
then declared yourself general. No comment.

First of all, I completely agree that some of the EULA clauses in proprietary software are absurd. (If I remember correctly, Microsoft did remove the benchmark testing clause at some point, however.)

But open source software has some equally bad doozies.

For instance, I write a software application similar to phpMyAdmin. It's open-source by nature since it's written in PHP, but I don't use the GPL or a free software license -- I sell the code and the users are then free to make any modifications they wish, but they have no redistribution rights (much like the vBulletin license.)

This software lets clients update a database easily. It uses MySQL as the backend.

Recently, MySQL changed their client license to the GPL. This means that ANY application that uses the MySQL client software (e.g. mysql_connect() and mysql_query() in PHP) must now be GPL, or you must pay a license fee to MySQL. This has upset many developers, and it will cause PHP itself to drop the MySQL client libraries since PHP isn't a GPL application. (The MySQL client libraries will be a separate download.)

Basically, the MySQL license change has polarized the development community into those who say "F*ck 'em; everything should be under the GPL anyway" and those who say that MySQL led everyone along until it became popular, and then decided to cut off their developers.

I have four choices now:
1) Release my application under the GPL, which grants redistribution rights to anyone I sell it to (i.e. anyone could buy it once and put up the application on Joe Blow's Download Site for free). I don't consider this a viable option because I don't want to allow redistribution rights for free.
2) Pay $220 per server to MySQL for my application. That is to say, pay $220 for our database server, and force my clients to pay $220 if they don't want to use our database server and hosting service. I don't consider this a viable option either, because I feel that it's blackmail.
3) Only use old versions of MySQL with my application.
4) Switch to PostgreSQL.

Obviously, #3 and #4 are what I've decided on. This means porting over 2500 lines of code to ADOdb (a database-independent PHP layer which I have used before with great success) and then testing everything with PostgreSQL instead. It means learning an entirely new database, and it means pulling ALL of my existing customers to a new database.

So while you may say that "Microsoft suxx0rs" because of their EULAs, I say that open-source often does the same thing. Look at Red Hat's absurd EOL policy. Why? Because they've finally figured out what step 2 in the following equation is:

1) Release open-source software
2) Charge people money for your product after you've locked then in, since they've already decided to base a business/software product around it
3) Profit!!

Only this won't work for MySQL, and it won't work for Red Hat either. I'm switching away from both. They've both been great for me, but I don't consider blackmail a viable business plan.

According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald "The SCO Group said today it had never planned to sue any Linux companies, had no concrete plans to sue anyone and also no current plans to take a commercial Linux customer to court."

At GROKLAW there is speculation that this is the start of an attempted defense to the Red Hat suit.

It's certainly an odd move, as only days ago, SCO said "We are in the process of contacting them about coming into compliance and taking a UnixWare license from us. If they refuse to do so, we will sue them directly and see them in court", and apparently claimed to have three groups working on identifying and approaching Linux users, plus were preparing to take a Linux user to court.

As this really does seem like the beginning of an attempted defense to Red Hat's law suit. It would seem like a good idea for the community to collect as many examples of SCO's legal threats as possible - especially to Linux companies and Red Hat in particular - and post them - as well as make Red Hat aware of SCO's latest PR spin, and all the contradictory evidence in their prior actions.

• SCO refraining from putting out a press release? Anything wrong with this picture?
  
• One thing is clear, if it were a denial of service attack, it'd be one for the record books.
  

Groklaw has very extensive research on Kimball's history, which is nicely summarized and easy to read. Every case has links to much more detail. The overall appearance is that Kimball will probably do the right thing.

Probably most important is the Jacobsen vs Hughes copyright case. Apart from considering much of the material uncopyrightable historical facts, Judge Kimball was quite unimpressed by the plaintif's failure to act in a timely manner to mitigate damages. Quoting from that article:

"Had Jacobsen voiced his disapproval in 1996, Hughes would have had the opportunity to take the offending material out of the books," Kimball wrote. "For Jacobsen to wait until three volumes of the series had been published before voicing his disapproval, when it is clear he had ample opportunity to let Hughes know of his disapproval as early as 1996, results in extreme prejudice to Hughes."

Obviously this bodes quite well for IBM and all Linux users. SCO of course will claim they stopped distribution of linux, but this ruling at least shows that Judge Kimball isn't likely to be be charmed with the deplorable way SCO has conducted itself. Kimball's willingness to consider the writing a separate work, even though a part of it was loosely based on Jacobsen's also casts quite a shadow over SCO's chances (assuming the unlikely worst case scenario that SCO has an ace up its sleeve, rather than the bogus examples we've seen so far). It's certainly a good sign that Kimball is unlikely to buy SCO expansive theories about what constitutes a derivitive work.

The groklaw page has examples where Kimball has ruled against big business, where he's shown competence at handling software intellectual property disputes (eg, Altiris vs Symantec), and where he's handled very complex cases.

While nothing is 100% certain going into the courtroom, it is a fact that the Judge Kimball has been selected to hear this case. His history shows he's competent, fair, and at least in Jacobsen vs Hughes, he doesn't tollerate the sort of shenanigans SCO has been pulling!

(yes, -1 redundant... I posted this on the last SCO story.... but the "idiot judge" comments never seem to stop either!)

Scripting News was most probably the first true blog, with Userland Frontier as the backend system [Aretha!]. Weblogs.com came shortly after but, I don't see an exact date. But I do believe it pre-dated Blogger and Pitas.

I also covered this subject some days ago in my blog. It is important to note that the medical applications of this technology should be ready within four years and these spray-on nanocomputers should be at work in hospitals, schools and shops in less than ten years. But this isn't the only application envisioned by the scientists. Professor Arvid, who leads the project, thinks our current computer interfaces, typically a keyboard or a mouse, will completely be replaced by these nanocomputers.

So, all they're really stating then is that they believe that since they (SCO) own the code that Caldera released under the GPL, Caldera had no right to do so. At least, that's my interpretation. How do you suppose they're going to explain why THEY THEMSELVES continue to use the GPL?

The current SCO and late Caldera are the same company (they changed their name).

SCO's argument seems to be that "their code" was released in Linux kernel under GPL without authorization by some UNIX licensors (e.g. IBM). If this were true they would probably have a case. But there are several facts against them, for example:

• They have themselves distributed Linux kernel under GPL and continue to do so even today (Groklaw, 21 August 2003).
• They have been unwilling or unable to provide the public any real proof to support their claims. SCO is yet to identify a single line in Linux kernel that violates their rights.
• Even if SCO would identify such lines there would still probably be lots of contractual issues (was the UNIX licensor authorized to contribute to the Linux kernel etc.).

Groklaw has very extensive research on Kimball's history, which is nicely summarized and easy to read. Every case has links to much more detail. The overall appearance is that Kimball will probably do the right thing.

Probably most important is the Jacobsen vs Hughes copyright case. Apart from considering much of the material uncopyrightable historical facts, Judge Kimball was quite unimpressed by the plaintif's failure to act in a timely manner to mitigate damages. Quoting from that article:

"Had Jacobsen voiced his disapproval in 1996, Hughes would have had the opportunity to take the offending material out of the books," Kimball wrote. "For Jacobsen to wait until three volumes of the series had been published before voicing his disapproval, when it is clear he had ample opportunity to let Hughes know of his disapproval as early as 1996, results in extreme prejudice to Hughes."

Obviously this bodes quite well for IBM and all Linux users. SCO of course will claim they stopped distribution of linux, but this ruling at least shows that Judge Kimball isn't likely to be be charmed with the deplorable way SCO has conducted itself. Kimball's willingness to consider the writing a separate work, even though a part of it was loosely based on Jacobsen's also casts quite a shadow over SCO's chances (assuming the unlikely worst case scenario that SCO has an ace up its sleeve, rather than the bogus examples we've seen so far). It's certainly a good sign that Kimball is unlikely to buy SCO expansive theories about what constitutes a derivitive work.

The groklaw page has examples where Kimball has ruled against big business, where he's shown competence at handling software intellectual property disputes (eg, Altiris vs Symantec), and where he's handled very complex cases.

While nothing is 100% certain going into the courtroom, it is a fact that the Judge Kimball has been selected to hear this case. His history shows he's competent, fair, and at least in Jacobsen vs Hughes, he doesn't tollerate the sort of shenanigans SCO has been pulling!

I also covered this subject today on my blog where I gave some additional references, including an illustration of a face reconstruction process.

And remember that this software was shown during last Siggraph. New Scientist published "Animation lets murder victims have final say" on this work about two weeks ago with a nice illustration, "How the dead can express themselves."

In "Skulls gain virtual faces," Technology Research News didn't give much more information.

Here's some links

Groklaw on Judge Kimball
Kimball rules on Jacobsen copyright case

I read all the comments about this story.

First, if you want a direct access to my report, click here.

Then, even if I agree that's the code behind and the robot itself don't look *very complex*, I think the idea of a robot recharging its batteries from pseudo-flowers is pretty refreshing -- if I might say so.

And, finally, you need to read what Andy Russell, Professor at Monash University in Australia, says on his homepage: "For me this is a new area of research and so there are no publications as yet."

A last note: the small videos available on his site are really fun to watch.

"And, I keep mentioning the two other law suits that need to be filed.

"One is a class action law suit by Linux developers to prevent anyone (including SCO) from demanding license fees from Linux customers when no such fees or licenses are required or even permitted under the GPL. That effort is simply an attempt to benefit from the IP work of hundreds or thousands of others. And, it needs to be stopped dead with a declaratory judgment. SCO can sue anyone they want if they have a basis upon which that defendant has violated their IP rights. But, SCO, by their own hand, gave Linux customers all they need. And, the contract or license picked by SCO specifically forbids SCO actions now. It would be the same if IBM just up and decided that they need more revenue this quarter so all AIX customers have to pay an additional amount. After all, AIX is IBM's IP right? And, that is the only basis upon which SCO is demanding money. SCO even demands money from those who are not SCO customers and do not use SCO products. Or, hell, even if they are SCO customers, right? If you are going to say the contract you signed does not apply to you, then SCO customers have to pay what ever money SCO is demanding too, right?

"The other is a class action by Linux customers to preventing anyone (including SCO) from demanding license fees from Linux customers when no such fees or licenses are required or even permitted under the GPL. Note that these two law suits appear to be similar. And, they are. Except the parties in each case are very different. And, the legal basis for the law suit is very different. In the first, the class of Linux developers would be preventing others from being enriched by demanding license fees for the use of a product developed by the plaintiffs (not SCO). In the second, the class of Linux customers would be preventing anyone from demanding additional fees and licenses of them for any reason. What SCO is doing is no different than if Microsoft just decided that all Windows 98 users had to pay additional fees to Microsoft. After all, Microsoft is running short of cash this month. And, besides, the customers are using the IP that Microsoft claims is their own, right? Never mind that the customer never agreed to pay more money just because Microsoft or SCO needed to cover some bills.

"You have to understand that the claim by SCO that they have IP rights has no nexus (or connection) to the charge that additional fees need to be paid. Or that customers can be sued if the products they use have possible IP related problems. All of the IP protection laws provide for remedies that may be assessed against those who are proven to have violated the patent, copyright, trade secret or what have you. They do not extend any right at all to extort money from the customers who use those products. That is the connection or nexus that SCO just ignores in their public extortion campaign."

This site and GROKLAW are well worth reading.

"The thing about Linux is, you can talk about a free, open operating system all you want, but you can't take that idea of free and open and put it into a capitalist system and maintain it as though it is some kind of hippie commune or ashram," she said in a phone interview from her home in Massachusetts. "Because if you can do it like that, at that point I'm like, 'Pass the hookah please!'" -- Salon

DiDio, you are the BEST analyst 3vah!

See also PJ's Groklaw for another set of DiDio quotes, which are hilarious when we know what code she was probably shown before uttering them. Non-programmers judging code.. *rotfl*

Jokes about restricting free speech aside, stealth marketing is the much more likely (and insidious) response to the people tuning out mass media hype and tuning into their webs-of-trusting-friends.

And by the way, my fellow slashdotters, Gigli is actually a GREAT movie! I really can't recommend it enough! Don't believe the critics or those lame spoofed SMS text messages either! See it tonight fer shizzle!!

--

A comparison between SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 with UnixWare 7.1.3 revealed some suspicious similarities between the two, particularly, but not only, between many new drivers which suddenly appeared in the SCO's closed-source Unixware, but previously existed in SuSE Linux.

SCO recently licensed several hundred drivers to Sun. Nobody knows for sure, but could they be the same ones?

While it might be premature to allege copying without access to Unixware source code, the investigators do say "I feel these issues need to be investigated further."

PJ at Groklaw is doing a wonderful job at cutting through the SCO fud. I suggest you check out if you havent recently. The article's comments are quite good too.

A comparison between SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 with UnixWare 7.1.3 revealed some suspicious similarities between the two, particularly, but not only, between many new drivers which suddenly appeared in the SCO's closed-source Unixware, but previously existed in SuSE Linux.

SCO recently licensed several hundred drivers to Sun. Nobody knows for sure, but could they be the same ones?

While it might be premature to allege copying without access to Unixware source code, the investigators do say "I feel these issues need to be investigated further."

You can find allot of great articles exposing SCO's insanity and comedy of errors.

Groklaw

Wasn't this the subject of a famous memo about a year and a half ago, when they were spending 10 months doing nothing bug security? Good job guys. Interesting enough Scoble has some things to say about windows and security. Some good comments as well (both for and against). Of course, as he's an MS cheerleader you can't expect completely unbiased reporting.

Wasn't this the subject of a famous memo about a year and a half ago, when they were spending 10 months doing nothing bug security? Good job guys. Interesting enough Scoble has some things to say about windows and security. Some good comments as well (both for and against). Of course, as he's an MS cheerleader you can't expect completely unbiased reporting.

Whoops, forgot to credit the most excellent GROKLAW, which is where I stole the Rosen link.

Very interesting article referenced in discussions at Groklaw by quartermass, IBM announced after buying Sequent that they planned on adding NUMA to Linux, and it was already running with NT and (eventually) 64-bit NT.

Why all the fuss now?

Regarding stock play, IBM mentioned this in their countersuit. Here's a summary I found so one doesn't have to wade through it in its entirety.

Serious accusations (I agree with) that I think really deserves a harsh penalty include:

"SCO has misleadingly overstated its rights to UNIX, AIX, and IBM's Linux-related products, for its own financial benefit" (and probably being fully aware of their overstatements as well)

"breach of contract, violations of the Lanham Act, unfair competition, intentional interference with prospective economic relations, and unfair and deceptive trade practices." (I assume this includes their intentional "tampering" with the stock value)

I hope they're prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for this, since what SCO has done goes far beyond a simple bickering about who owns a license and a breach of the GPL. Intentionally misleading their targets by spreading FUD, ruthlessly ignoring how it hurts an entire business, and tampering with their stock value is all in direct collision course with the law to me, and should be punished as such.

That SCO will be fried to a crisp by IBM (and others?) wouldn't surprise me, but I hope they take this to the next level beyond a fight for a license, since this behavior shouldn't be tolerated in any business.

From Groklaw

http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/


Old SCO Also Donated Code to Linux

Well, knock me over with a feather. It turns out that old SCO, The Santa Cruz Operation, also donated code to Linux. There is an article dated June 12, 2000, that tells us all about their Linux distribution and their plans, which included scaling it to the enterprise, as marketroids like to call it:

"While SCO may be rolling out its Linux distribution long after Red Hat and Caldera hit the market with theirs, SCO is no open source Johnny-come-lately. The company offers support services to Caldera and TurboLinux customers. In addition, the company's Tarantella middleware supports Linux, as will Monterey, the Intel-based version of Unix that SCO is building with IBM.

"SCO is expected to announce 32- and 64-bit versions of Linux for Intel-based servers, which will be available in the fourth quarter of this year. In early 2001, SCO plans to deliver a 32-bit Internet Infrastructure Edition that will come bundled with a Web server and other IP applications. The company is also working on a 64-bit edition for service providers, including ISPs and application service providers, which will feature special billing and management tools.

"The company is also expected to explore the following areas:

"--Building the Linux clustering capacity to be in line with SCO's NonStop Clusters technology, which scales to 12 or more boxes with advanced reliability for data and applications. Current Linux clustering technology is generally limited to two or four nodes.
--Beefing up Linux's symmetric multiprocessing capabilities. Currently the number of CPUs per Linux server is usually limited to eight; UnixWare can run on servers with up to 32 CPUs.
-- Managing multiple Linux servers as well as applications from a single console as if they were a single system.
-- Improving security and the ability of Linux to handle applications such as e-mail, including instant messaging.
-- Adding online support services and documentation."

Wait a sec. Isn't that what paragraph 85 of SCO's original complaint was talking about, and didn't they say that without IBM entering the picture, Linux could never have scaled? The complaint said:

"For example, Linux is currently capable of coordinating the simultaneous performance of 4 computer processors. UNIX, on the other hand, commonly links 16 processors and can successfully link up to 32 processors for simultaneous operation."

That wasn't accurate, but it does give me an idea. Maybe New SCO needs to sue Old SCO and leave the rest of us in peace.

One year earlier, in 1999, a press release from Old SCO described itself like this:

"We have over twenty years of experience with UNIX, Intel, and Open Source technologies. In fact, we believe that SCO has the largest staff of Open Source experts of any commercial software vendor.

"As a founding sponsor of Linux International, SCO is a strong proponent of the Open Source movement, citing it as a driving force for innovation. Over the years, SCO has contributed source code to the movement, and currently offers a free Open License Software Supplement CD that includes many Open Source technologies. SCO UnixWare 7 operating system, the fastest growing UNIX server operating system for the past two years, supports Linux applications as part of its development platform."

All the Tarantella-Linux press releases from June 1999 to February 2000 are here.All Tarantella press releases from June of '99 to July of 2000 are

5) Even if we (IBM) did do something wrong (which we didn't), then SCO didn't lose any money from it (mostly because their business sucked before any of this started).

No, this one is wrong, sorry. The economic-loss doctrine (and much of the rest of IBM's affirmative defenses) is explained very well here.

Groklaw has a breakdown of each of these defenses as well.

Most interesting was the bit about the "unclean hands" affirmative defence:

Unclean hands is basically saying you don't deserve to get any relief because you have been bad yourself. Here is dictionary.com's definition:

"a legal doctrine which is a defense to a complaint, which states that a party who is asking for a judgment cannot have the help of the court if he/she has done anything unethical in relation to the subject of the lawsuit. Thus, if a defendant can show the plaintiff had "unclean hands," the plaintiff's complaint will be dismissed or the plaintiff will be denied judgment. Unclean hands is a common "affirmative defense" pleaded by defendants and must be proved by the defendant. Example: Hank Hardnose sues Grace Goodenough for breach of contract for failure to pay the full amount for construction of an addition to her house. Goodenough proves that Hardnose had shown her faked estimates from subcontractors to justify his original bid to Goodenough."

There's an explanation of these terms by a paralegal with an interest in the case (and no great love of SCO) here:

weblogs.com

My summary

First Defense -- everyone claims this. "We did nothing wrong so there's nothing we need to fix."

Second Defense -- "We did nothing wrong AND we had the absolute right to do the things we did do that SCO is complaining about"

Third Defense -- SCO hasn't met the requirements for this to be heard in Federal court. It's a contract dispute so it should be in a state court.

Fourth Defense -- The stuff SCO is complaining about happened too long ago.

Fifth Defense -- SCO is claiming breach of contract, which means that it can't use tort law and must use remedies as per the contract it claims has been breached.

Sixth Defense -- SCO waited an unreasonably long time before taking action (like statute of limitations but based on fairness rather than some specific legal limit).

Seventh Defense -- Estoppel: this is the argument that the rights have been given away and can't be taken back; Unclean hands: this is the argument that SCO is not without sin.

Eighth Defense -- the writer doesn't know why this is there, but gives copyright as an example of Federal law that can't be resolved in a State court.

Ninth Defense -- IBM doesn't want to fight the case in Utah and appears to be in good shape here. The AT&T contracts claim to operate under NY law. Other documents cite CA law. And IBM's HQ is not in Utah.

Tenth Defense -- no comment.

Grocklaw has an overview of the IBM countersuit. And for added fun, the whole 46 page filing is available in multipage TIFF or pdf.

The patents are at:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,814,746.WKU.&OS=PN/4,814,746&RS =PN/4,814,746
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,821,211.WKU.&OS=PN/4,821,211&RS =PN/4,821,211
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,953,209.WKU.&OS=PN/4,953,209&RS =PN/4,953,209
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,805,785.WKU.&OS=PN/5,805,785&RS =PN/5,805,785

After reading the actual countersuit filing, it looks like an even bigger, more comprehensive smackdown than even was speculated yesterday. IBM is fully ready to press SCO's GPL transgressions, talks at length about the failure of SCO's business, makes clear in several locactions the difference between Old SCO (Tarantella) and Caldera/New SCO, they even mention that some of SCO's claims have exceeded the statute of limitations. IBM has clearly been tracking SCO FUD and mentions specific quotes from SCO execs that are damaging. They also reiterate that IBM's UNIX license is perpetual and irrevokable, but they also say that even if that wern't the case SCO still can't revoke IBM's license because SCO has not followed the agreement on the procedure to revoke the license. SMACK, SMACK, SMACK!

From Groklaw

I just spoke with Trink Guarino at IBM, who informed me that the SCO/IBM contract regarding AIX, which SCO claims they terminated, was a three-party contract, the third party being Novell, and that Novell sent a letter to SCO disputing their right to terminate IBM's AIX license. No wonder IBM hasn't been acting worried. Funny SCO didn't tell us about this, huh?

According to GROKLAW, SCO's contract with IBM was a three-party contract -- and Novell was the third party!

CNet is running a peice on the Open Source And Industry Alliance an advocacy and lobbying group sponsored by the Computer & Communications Industry Association.

This is indeed great news. Now perhaps the OpenSource community can get behind this effort to politicise itself and vigorously advocate where it most counts, the halls of the U.S. Congress.

In its statment of principles and purpose, the OSAIA states:

Business, government and private individuals must be free to choose software and technologies that best suit their needs, independent of the methodologies or licenses used in their development.

The marketplace must be free of prejudice against open source software, whether through law, regulation, defamation or other means. OSAIA will act to achieve this goal."

This is a good start. The CCIA boasts a formidable stable of memebers including AOL, Kodak, Oracle, Fujitsu, Verizon, Yahoo and others.

There are several good resources on the web that are acting as clearinghouses for information that can be drawn upon as resources in this fight. Notably are TWikIWeThey , the Open Source Initiative , the Free Software Foundation.

Numerous weblogs are available as resources most notably Groklaw.
Pam has amassed an incredible wealth of links and facts surrounding the SCO v IBM issue. Another good site for legal info is the Daily Whirl which is a legal blog site index devoted to lawyers for lawyers covering among other subjects, copyright. GrepLaw and A Copy Fighter's Musings are two good places to start.

Finally, for those of you who want to develop good arguments against intellectual monopolies visit Boldrin and Levine's, Intellectual Property Page .

IBM's certainly ahead of this, and IIRC IBM's due to file their response to SCO's amended complaint this week.

Given how SCO's stock price responded, this looks like it may be the opening shot of a legal shock-and-awe campaign that's targeted at SCO's stock price.

I can dream, can't I? (and it could be true!)

I fear this thread is about to die, but you might be interested in a Lamba the Ultimate thread about macros in Java. Designing a language well means finding a balance between power and flexibility. I'm personally very much against taking out features that might confuse new programmers or that can be misused, but I do believe in managing complexity well.

Very few languages that completely prevent beginners from doing stupid things allow experienced users to do very clever things. I hate that.