Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat Cornering SCO in Delaware
LordNite writes "There is a great article over at Groklaw on the latest motion in the RedHat's Delaware suit. RedHat has filed for the start of discovery. Looking at the list of documents RH is requesting it looks like SCO will finally have to come clean. Naturally SCO is trying to stall. It looks like the beginning of the end of this whole mess." The faster this can get into court and be over, the better.
45. All documents concerning a Linux Lottery or the phrase the "Linux Lottery'.
Thats a new one on me, anyone have any clue where this phrase comes from or what it means..why are RH interested in it?
ex$$
The article mentions that SCO is trying to stall as much as possible. Probably the executives at Santa Clara have'nt sold off all their shares yet. Once that is done, you can be sure to see the cases flying off the shelves.
My mom never taught me to sign.
Sure, Red Hat has a vested interest in defending Linux, however, there are more companies like Suse, who could take up the fight, but aren't. Kudos to Red Hat. This is one reason why I still buy and support Red Hat.
stowell - Unix licenses are revokable And this from a company insisting that the GPL is invalid whilst distributing GPL licensed software. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Does anyone know of a country with no extradition treaties? Chris wants to go to the South Pacific, but as a speaker of Asian languages, I was more thinking....
I am not a lawyer so maybe some people with more experience can tell me - is it usually obvious to a judge (it may be obvious to us in the case of SCO, but that's an entirely different matter) if someone is trying to stall for time, how do judges usually look upon this sort of behaviour (do they shrug their shoulders or get pissed off?) and if they do get annoyed what can they do to the stalling party?
You got that right.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5057033.html
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
Is there a chance that this could massively implode on SCO?
I'd wager there must have been some "UNIX" code in Linux at one time, albeit not intentionally and perhaps only small chunks for SCO to have made any claim at all.
But let's presume that RH's discovery finds the code was relatively small, inserted accidentally or under false pretenses, and not part of the current development of Linux.
Could SCO then be shown to be grossly misrepresenting their claims and mooting any licensing claims they made and perhaps open SCO's executives to claims of fraud, stock maniplation, or at least highly vulnerable to civil action from companies who could claim their misrepresentation had a chilling effect on their business?
If someone can get the man behind the curtain exposed, this could all come crashing down around the SCO guys..
I think it is also funny that they are concerned about "trade secrets" when everyone knows how Unix works. There is no big mystery.
Disclosure IANAL...
Don't be quite so quick to jump on this one. While I agree with you completely in principle, SCO does need to be careful in reality. Trade secrets are just that, secrets. Once they are discovered, they are no longer entitled to trade secret protection, meaning they cannot sue the releasing party if they were released illegally. Typically if there is a real trade secret, most reasonable judges will (rightly) make some accomodations for that fact.
Presumably SCO has a few trade secrets even though you are right that we basically know how all their stuff works. Just because we can figure it out, doesn't necessarily mean it isn't protected as a trade secret. So it's not surprising that they would be careful about trying to ensure they aren't unecessarily made public. Any company with proprietary assets in a legal battle would do the same. You can argue that they don't deserve such protection anymore because of what they are sueing for (and I wouldn't argue with you over it) but you should not be surprised that they are seeking trade secret protection. It's just a normal part of the legal proceedings.
That's why most of us don't read the articles!
Discovery is usually the most important part of a legal case, and it's especially important in this one. SCO, thus far, has offered tons of wild accusations about IP violations, misappropriation, drunken debauchery, etc. against IBM and the Linux community generally. They have offered almost nothing to back it up with, and what little has leaked out has proved to cut heavily against their court cases.
The fact that Red Hat and IBM are both filing motions to compel discovery is proof that SCO taking the same track in their legal battles. They are trying to stall because they don't want to show the code; they don't have anything to show. They're just praying that IBM will put them out of their misery and buy them out. And, by the way, one more indication for the non-legal world that, in case you didn't already know, SCO is full of shit and going to lose. Badly.
Tuck
Tuck's Journal.
SCO has asked the judge to rule on their Motion to Dismiss first, which is fair, and is almost certainly what will happen. The Motion to Dismiss says that even if everything Red Hat says is true, it still doesn't amount to an infringement of Red Hat's legal rights. So the judge has to rule on whether Red Hat's case will amount to anything *even if they prove everything they say* before giving Red Hat a chance to get that proof through discovery.
Actually they have several lines of defense.
First, no actual breach has been demonstrated, and TSG seems to be working overtime to avoid demonstrating any breach. IBM has been saying from day 1 "show us the breach" but TSG won't.
Second, in the case of the SGI code in particular, even if it was a breach (which it clearly wasn't,) even the appearance of a breach was remedied as soon as it came to light. No thanks to TSG, btw.
Finally, there are many amendments to that original contract signed later which override that clause. There's nothing illegal about that. McBride and co. like to trot out the main contract but ignore all the sidebars and amendments. A court is not likely to do the same.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Hate to break it to you, but more often than not scox goes up on bad news. Remember SCOForum, when scox showed the code, and it was debunked within an hour? Scox share price went up 50%, to about $15/share, in the next trhee sessions. Then the share price went up another 50% to about $20/share in the two weeks or so.
And on September 26 when IBM announced their countersuit SCOX dropped from around $17 to $13.8 a few days later. The difference? The debunking of the code didn't show up on Reuters which investors are far more likely to read than Slashdot. The crowd driving SCOX's price are not likely to be techies and won't be hanging out here. If "news" doesn't show up on the newsfeeds they check, it may as well not have happened. Besides, the only "debunking" that really matters is the one IBM (and RHAT) will do in the courtroom.
> I predict that today the stock value will mirror yesterday, it may even end slightly up. This is because little or none of the news read here at /. and other such places is getting filtered through to wall street.
Actually, the reason is that you buy stock like SCOX as a speculation, not an investment. It's a simple theory that boils down to this: no matter how dumb it is for you to own the stock, someone dumberer will buy it off you for more.
So far, that seems to be a pretty accurate assessment.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
OK, SCO. Enough talk. Let's see your cards.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
> Yes and those dumber people are speculators. It's called a bubble and it bursts when there is nobody left who is willing to continue speculating
Sure, but the market is rising right now, so it will continue to rise for ever, right? I mean, we'll never have another of those annoying bursts, surely?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Is this the same legal system that let the Asterix cartoon get an injunction on Mobilix. And something to stop people linking to the .nl site that showed people how to sabotage railway lines?
:(
All legal systems have flaws, they are just in different places