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SCO "Disappointed" by Red Hat Lawsuit
schmidt349 writes "SCO has issued a preliminary response to Red Hat's lawsuit, in which President and CEO Darl McBride advises that SCO will prepare a "legal response" to Red Hat's requests for injunctive relief. In addition, he promises that the countersuit that SCO will file may include "counterclaims for copyright infringement and conspiracy." His final statement-- that Red Hat's "decision to file legal action does not seem conducive to the long-term survivability of Linux--" is chilling in light of the business strategy that SCO has adopted in its sales of UnixWare licenses to actual and potential users of the Linux kernel."
- Darl McBride, CEO, SCO Group
Again, end users are not at risk, if anyone is, but rather the distributors of the Linux kernel in question. Secondly, the code was released by SCO under the GPL, negating the claim. Third, by not asking the "infringers" (who would be IBM primarily and companies like Red Hat secondly) to remove the suspect the code and instead attack the customers of the "infringers", SCO has made no attempt to keep their trade secret a secret at all, which renders it's claim to secrecy invalid in legal terms.
SCO has buried itself. I can't believe that anyone is still buying their stock, all they are doing is making McBride richer.
"In any such meeting, we will provide example after example of infringement of our intellectual property found in Linux. Of course, any such demonstration must be pursuant to an acceptable confidentiality agreement and must be intended to further good faith discussions about resolving the differences between us.........If you seek information for the purpose of informal discovery intended to benefit IBM in the pending litigation, or for the purpose of devising your own litigation plans against SCO related to Linux, we must respectfully decline your request."
- Robert Bench, CFO, SCO Group
In other words, they still refuse to take action in defending their trade secrets and rectifying the problem. No moral judge is going to cut them any slack with this kind of behaviour.
"Of course, we will prepare our legal response as required by your complaint. Be advised that our response will likely include counterclaims for copyright infringement and conspiracy."
- Darl McBride, CEO, SCO Group
It is amazing that this crook has the audacity to suppose that Red Hat is engaged in some kind of a conspiracy, considering the disgusting actions of his company. This is truly laughable.
So, they're disappointed that other people are choosing litigation, which is exactly what they did. No surprise to me, though; I'm surprised that SCO is surprised.
I still believe that Red Hat SHOUDLN'T have sued SCO. Red Hat is going to be drained of money for a loooong time in court. Or do you simply think that by suing, they would win in a few weeks.
Prepare for a long winded fight in which SCO will do ANYTHING in it's power to smear Red Hat.
In the long run, it's not who is right, it's who looks good in the end....
Who took my tinfoil hat?
Conspiracy is a word SCO should use lightly... Considering that the company that MOST benefits from anti-Linux FUD (and most definately from spreading doubts as to it's legality) propped them up to the tune of buying a "license" they didn't need...
I'm of course speaking of Microsoft...
How could Redhat conspire with ANYONE?! Did they conspire with IBM to SCO to sue?
Certainly Redhat and IBM will work together in their own defenses (and offenses). They are partners with common interests.
Just as SCO works with (and takes money from) Microsoft and Sun, the two companies with the MOST to lose from Linux...
Corporatism != Free Market
In this case, countersuing looks better to the consumer than simply allowing SCO's original claims to go largely uncontested in the court of public opinion. It might cost cash, but so does advertising. And in this case, both expenses accomplish largely the same purpose. It's not about winning or losing, it's about making sure SCO can't make Linux look bad.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
The enemies of freedom were at it again last night. On Kudlow and Kramer on CNBC some analyst hack mentioned Linux's "IP problems" in a Microsoft story. I am afraid that the SCO suit is having its intended affect by negatively influencing public opinion and support by business and analysts. By proxy with SCO, Microsoft is accomplishing what it could not do alone in creating Linux FUD.
By the way the /. crowd has ridiculed Stallman in the past about making contributors sign legal disclosure forms for FSF programs. What do you say now, fools? Had Linus and his open source buddies been half as vigilant about the source of code contibutions, this issue would not exist.
an ill wind that blows no good
An hopefully Linus, GNU, Mandrake, SuSE, Novell, and thousands of Linux contributors, users, etc start filing suit against SCO in every conceivable country, state, and locale...
That MS money won't last them forever...
Corporatism != Free Market
SCO will also be drained of money addressing this lawsuit. In fact, if all the companies that are hurt by SCO's grandstanding barratry did this at once, it would really turn the tap on SCO's money pipe, and the nuisance would be over as soon as it was done. Sort of a DDOS, only with lawyers.
The requested URL
I really thing RedHat was suing for one purpose : to get through subpoena (and thus, free of the Non-Disclosure agreements) the specific code samples out of SCO that they refuse to release publically themselves.
RedHat's lawsuit can probably get that information far faster than the IBM case would be able to. And as soon as RedHat has it without the NDA, they'll publish it up front and give IBM, Linus & Alan, and the community the time to remove the code if its really infringing and replace it.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
The lawsuit seems more likely to affect the long term survival of SCO than Linux.
I have seen this type of situation before. For several years a company called ZixIt littigated a case against Visa. The case was announced on the last business day of the year, this was significant because earlier that year the CEO had said 'people should sell their shares if we have no partners for ZixCharge by the end of the year'. Well there were no partners, customers or revenues but the lawsuit was announced the day that folk had been told to sell their shares.
ZixIt shares went up and up in response to the lawsuit. The bulletin boards were full of people predicting 'huge damages' of hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. In the meantime ZixIt exited the payments business entirely after their payments gateway was hacked.
The lawsuit was over anonymous statements made on the Yahoo buletin board by a person who turned out to be Paul Guthrie, a security expert employed by Visa. Ironically in the light of later events one of Guthrie's allegedly defamatory statements about ZixCharge had been that it did not address the real security issue.
The true believers continued to claim that the lawsuit was a sure fire thing right up to the day that the judgement was entered. Posters gleefully wrote that Visa, a Californian company stood no chance of winning against a Texas company in a Texas court. Hmm, jury bias didn't seem to be a problem for Ophra, It seems rather odd to invest on the assumption that the Texas courts are corrupt.
The jury found for Visa. The stock crashed but still has an amazingly high valuation for the company given their revenues. Guthrie is no longer at Visa, I am told he charges $5,000 a day as an independent security consultant in the Bay area and has plenty of business at that rate.