SCO NDA Online at LinuxJournal

shadowbearer writes "The full text of the SCO NDA is available here at LinuxJournal. IANAL, but my reading of it makes me understand all the industry "No way!" style comments. Here's a snippet:
"Dan Ravicher, an attorney who specializes in free software and open-source issues at the firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, said in an interview there are three key problems with the NDA. First, Ravicher said, "SCO can pick and choose among all its evidence" to show only the parts that back up the company's claims. "They're agreeing to let you see the half of the picture that they want you to see", he added.""

Comments

Red Flag

[killmenow]

RECIPIENT acknowledges that it will receive access only to a portion of information relevant to these issues.

One would think only a moron would sign an NDA that didn't guarantee access to ALL information relevant to these issues.

I didn't even read beyond the first section because that quote says it all right there.

Re:break the NDA?

[lpp]

I would imagine that part of what they can do by putting into the NDA the option to withhold whatever evidence they wish is to reveal specific exclusive pieces to whomever signs up. Joe One gets lines 400-500 of foo.c while Jane Two gets lines 800-900 of bar.c and ne'er the twain shall meet.

That way if 400-500 of foo.c is revealed anonymously as part of the conflicting code, SCO can go back and sue Joe One knowing he is the only one they showed that particular piece of code to.

At least, if I were SCO, that's what I would do.

Re:courtesy of nasdaq...

[Jason Earl]

SCO management knows that if they can keep their story in the news then people might start to believe they actually have a case.

The fact of the matter is that SCO isn't aiming their press release at members of the Linux community (or even members of the larger computing community), they are aiming these press releases at the large population of rubes that might be interested in gambling on an "insider deal." SCO's allegations are ridiculous to anyone with any knowledge of the situation, and their tactics are crude and hamhanded to any with an inkling of knowledge about the case. The mere fact that they keep issuing press releases should trigger alarm bells. Everything SCO management says is evidence, if they were trying to win they would listen to their legal counsel and do their talking in court.

In short, SCO isn't trying to win a court case; they are trying to hype their stock.

To an outsider their case looks like a bunch of poor underdogs who have are fighting an IBM Goliath. SCO's target audience doesn't have a clue about source code or NDAs, and to them the offer to prove their case almost certainly looks genuine. These people don't know about the GPL or the UC Berkeley AT&T court case. They don't even know that SCO isn't Santa Cruz Operations (the former UNIX company), but that SCO is really just Caldera (the former Linux company). They simply see that a small company claims to have rights to some code, and some journalists (and Microsoft) keep adding credence to their story.

This is a pump and dump scheme, nothing more, nothing less. Think of it as a variation on the Dot Com Boomers that hyped their stock up to the moon despite the fact that they knew that they had no chance of making a profit. Everyone makes fun of the dot com management teams, but they weren't stupid. They weren't selling pet food, or medical advice, their stock price was the real product they were hawking. The guys that founded those companies generally made a big fat pile of money at the subsequent investors expense. And it was all perfectly legal.

SCO management is in a similar position. They aren't going to win their case, but that doesn't matter, because right now their stock is what they are really selling. The difference is that the "Big Lie" in this case isn't that online commerce is going to change the world. The story this time is that scrappy SCO from Lindon, Utah has got IBM by the short hairs. It's pure @#$!!, but it plays well on TV.

As long as the SCO insiders jump through SEC hoops when they sell (and they have plenty of time to sell), and as long as they don't laugh out loud while pretending they have a case, it's all perfectly legal.

Caveat Emptor.

Re:Section 8

[munro]

They didn't have the crappiest UNIX on the market back in the day - it was awesome to be able to run UNIX on cheapo 386 hardware, and it worked really well.

I feel sorry for the excellent engineers and businessmen who made that happen (more than twenty years ago), their ancient and respectable company name has been turned into shit by a bunch of dot-com bubble idiots with a hangover and a patent lawyer.

I'm sorry--- you say that US' tort system changed?

[MickLinux]

Last I knew, it was always possible to buy professional witnesses to say whatever you want them to say. And you think that MSCO won't be buying witnesses?

Quite seriously, a major reason for America's economic troubles, according to the Harvard Global Competitiveness Report, is a failure of the court systems, especially in contract law.

Although the whole report is for sale, you can click through to some pdfs, and read them. Especially interesting is the Executive summary, in which [p. 19] they say that they are increasing the weighting of technological innovation, [p. 20] note that the US has fallen to #2 and Finland has taken #1.

Yet for the case of the United States [p.37], they note that the bubble has burst, and they say that technology is *overrated*. They also note that the major problems with the US are the undermined court system, now ranked around #14.

What that means is that they US hasn't just fallen to #2. In reality, the US has already fallen a good deal farther. And when you consider that superpowers *do* have more power, and therefore fall under the category of "more competitive" all other things being equal, that means that the US is really hurting, and is probably going to hurt more. Fallen, fallen, is Babylon and all that.

Now, flip over to the Cato Institute, and you can find documents [or this] where they point out that the fall Argentina's peso was engineered, and that this represented a major additional break from the rule of law. But what also hurt was that their court systems were completely corrupted, and their society had separated into two societies: the taxed and the government folks.

Well, hate to break the news, but it's looking a lot like what Argentina had, America is getting ready to eat themselves. Not that it will be exactly alike. I fully expect a blackmarket boom in Argentina, followed by [1% chance] them becoming the top economic power in the world if they are good to each other, or [99% chance] them turning military and conquering most of South and Central America, and sending a pressure hammer of refugees into North America. The US, on the other hand, I expect to slide into corruption, and be overwhelmed by said pressure hammer.

But back to the topic at hand, I don't think we can necessarily expect expert witnesses, truth, and Justice to prevail, in light of the American way.

So if you're into Linux, download all the source code you can right now, and put it on CDs/DVDs, and keep it. You may find that it is quite valuable for internal use, and public use after you're sure that it's clean. Don't let Linux depend on America, because America has different ideas right now.