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IBM Responds To SCO: Business As Usual
Newsforge is running a statement from IBM on its decision not to bow to SCO's demand that they stop shipping AIX. In a statement this short, there's not much room for weaselly language, but the even-shorter version is this: "IBM's Unix license is irrevocable, perpetual and fully paid up. It cannot be terminated."
SCO's claims today that anybody running AIX is doing so without a license are themselves illegal - they constitute the tort of "injurious falsehood". Watch for IBM to make a counter-claim against SCO on this. Imagine how much IBM could claim to have lost if customers stop using and buying AIX because of this. That's the pecuniary damages. Then there's punitive damages. Idiots.
IBM is multinational by all means and any measure. International laws, i.e. laws in other countries than US may not be so overwhelmed by SCO's case inside the US as indicate in this Byte magazine article:
"It is also undeniable that the business climate in the U.S. lets someone take a far more aggressive attitude towards a competitor's customers than does the climate in Europe. SCO should have anticipated this, but Sontag seemed to be quizzical about what these European lawsuits are demanding, and how SCO should react to them. I got the impression that SCO's management was thinking entirely in terms of U.S. law, and have not thought through the international implications of their actions.
I find this amazing, especially considering that SCO's latest 10Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that "revenue from international customers accounted for 48 percent of operating system platform revenue." "
Let's say everything that the most cynical slashdotter suspects about this case is true. SCO has no case, this is an exit strategy, they're running around making a bunch of noise and making outrageous claims just to get attention and to try to scare IBM into doing what they say, and the instant that they are in the courtroom and their bluff is called, they are going to go down in countersuit flames in the most spectacular way possible.
If that happens:
What is stopping the people within SCO who started this case and subsequently destroyed SCO utterly from quietly selling all of their SCO stock sometime between now and the point SCO goes into court, thus making gobs of money in the span of time between SCO's stock price being temporarily knocked up by all the publicity around this case and SCO's stock price being knocked down once it becomes apparent SCO has nothing to back up their claims with?
What is stopping the people within SCO who started this case and subsequently destroyed SCO from walking out of SCO with incredibly lucrative golden parachutes, and possibly simply being rehired at another company in incredibly high-ranking, lucrative positions just because from the ignorant perspective of another corporation's board, hey, they were the ones who got SCO all that attention and tried to capitalize on that IP, even though it didn't work out?
I think specifically i'm thinking of Daryl McBride here. But I can't get rid of the sneaking suspicion that, by design this case is designed to cause SCO to go SPLAT like a little tiny bug on IBM's windshield, obliterating it and its stock value utterly, while somehow letting the board members who initiated this entire fucking mess somehow wrangle a huge amount of money for themselves out of it and walk away scot-free and with a big impressive "CFO, SCO CORP" bulletpoint on their resume. What is stopping them from doing this? Anything? Anything at all, either legal or in the way corporations hire? Will the people responsible for causing this mess have consequences, or will the only ones to face the backlash after SCO implodes be the stockholders and employees?
Echo echo echo echo echo.
The OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint suggests why IBM seems so confident.
(I'm sure it's been posted here before, but it's required reading)
CousinDave
It's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around.
And not just that, Gerstner was a "traditional" CEO which is what they needed. Instead of responding to and engaging in the endless personality conflicts and insults that are constantly lobbed around Silicon Valley he basically just shrugged his shoulders and got down to the job of repairing the company and rescuing the stock price. His book is a good read, and the thing I find most interesting is that he didn't have some blinding insight into technology, he just shut his mouth, relied on common sense, and focused on what makes businesses work. It's amazing what a cool head can accomplish.
IBM is going crush SCO. It's gonna take a few years but they have been marked for death. No licensing, no merger, no buyout. Remember, IBM got into a pissing contest with the Justice Dept. in the 70's. In case you need to be reminded the Justice Dept. is part of the U. S. Government who prints the money. The Justice Dept. does not have to show a profit, IBM does. IBM fought the Justice Dept. to a standstill for over 12 years and still showed a profit every year.
IBM most likely employs more people in their legal department than all of SCO. IBM is going to go into court with SCO and stall, bleeding them dry in the process. The legal fees will bankrupt SCO and IBM will not even break a sweat. Want proof? Go to your local University library and start reading the New York Times from the early 70's. 1971 or 1972. If I remember correctly IBM went into court to file a brief and the brief was 56 4-draw filling cabinets. It took the lawyers 2 years to read it. Ever seen mainframe documentation? Visualize that as legal paper work. SCO is dead they just don't know it yet.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Imagine the fame for being the first person to be fired for buying IBM.
Old news. fortune(1) has the following quote from the WSJ in 1989.
Although it is still a truism in industry that "no one was ever fired for
buying IBM," Bill O'Neil, the chief technology officer at Drexel Burnham
Lambert, says he knows for a fact that someone has been fired for just that
reason. He knows it because he fired the guy.
"He made a bad decision, and what it came down to was, 'Well, I
bought it because I figured it was safe to buy IBM,'" Mr. O'Neil says.
"I said, 'No. Wrong. Game over. Next contestant, please.'"
-- The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1989
I agree. Wish I had mod points.
I also agree. SCO is wrong and so is IBM but that does not change that the fact that IBM has been down this path before and will use what ever stick they can get their hands on. Right, wrong, or indifferent, today in America the guy who has the most money to spend on lawyers wins. You don't like this? Fine! What are YOU gonna do about it? Talk is cheap.
SCO is wrong on 3 counts. 1) this bullshit that they own all the IP of Unix and all subsequent Unix like OS. 2) that suing people is a legitimate business model and 3) the thing that really pisses me off. That they can threaten IBM, Apple, the Linux, FreeBSD and Open Source community and get away with it with out retribution. In my view stupidity should be painful and stupidity on this scale should cause SCO and everyone associated with them should be extinct. All I have to do is wait a couple of years and they will be.
This does not change the fact that the patent and legal system in this country is profoundly fucked. But one pile of shit at a time.
Another day closer to redwood heaven