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SCO Asks IBM To Make SCO's Case For It
acousticiris writes "According to an analysis of Friday's memorandum from SCO on Groklaw: 'If I had to characterize it in a brief sentence or two, the sentence would be that SCO tells the court, "How are we supposed to know what code IBM misappropriated? It's up to them to prove our case for us."...' It's also interesting to note that in Friday's memorandum, footnote 4, SCO uses Eric Raymond's Jargon File entry for FUD to take pot shots at IBM (footnote 4). Evidently, Eric was not pleased, according to the updated entry."
Why does the term "possession is 99% of the law" come to mind for this case?
That is exactly what IBM was trying to do. The case is in discovery and IBM had asked for exactly what lines of code SCO is saying they stole from SysV and put into Linux. When SCO wouldn't show the code IBM filed a motion to force them to submit it. This is SCO's reponse to that motion saying the motion needs to be denied because they are waiting for IBM to show them what parts of Linux came from SysV.
Nifty eh?
-- Ed Bugg --You have freedom of choice, but not of consequences.--
I hate SCO just as much as the next guy, but the Amendments you cited are for criminal cases, and apply only to the government. This case is a civil matter, and therefore use a different set of laws. IANAL, so I believe SCO still has to prove its own case, but it isn't compelled to by those Amendments you listed above. -geoff313
Just for the sake of beating a dead horse, I'd like to remind my fellow Slashdotters that SCO isn't suing over SCO's code being included in Linux. They are suing IBM for including IBM's code which they say they have rights to. Same with SGI. JFS, NUMA, XFS, etc are not, and never have been in any SCO products. Groklaw is slashdotted, so I can't RTFA, but I'm assuming they can't compare Linux with IBM's code base, and thats the problem. Someone mirror TFA please. ;)
Not really, no. Canopy only owns about 5% of Troll Tech. There are other investors. Most of Troll Tech is owned by the employees (whom I'm sure would love to find a way to force Canopy to dump its shares).
-- Alastair
Royal Bank of Canada invests in SCO.
It's been revealled that it was not MS but rather a Canadian bank.
IANAL and I'm not a US citizen. Anyways, now I'm not up on US law to ANY respect but from what I remember from the last time I saw was that US law in a civil trial does not operate under British code - basically it's not assumed that the defender is innocent until proven guilty.
What this means in a civil trial is that proof can come from either party and that usually only sufficient evidence has to exist for an infraction rather than complete proof of infraction.
Basically - SCO can do this.
It's up to the judge on whether they can get away with it though.
Civil trials do not work under the same rules as criminal trials.
Actually I suspect (not sure) but they work under the Napoleonic code (guilty until proven innocent) which is the code a lot of US law is based on - or perhaps vice versa as (IIRC) a number of US founders were involved in Napoleon's government...
This has been said before, but since your post is way up here at the top of the view, I'll say it again: No. The US constitution protects against self-incrimination in criminal cases. This is a civil case. During the "discovery" phase of a civil case, each party is required to give all requested (and relevant) information to the other, even if the information makes them look bad.
Wrong. What actually happens is that the pary that has mixed non GPL'd software in with GPL'd code and distributed it is guilty of copyright infringement and can be held accountable for it by the holders of the copyrights on the code that *IS* GPL'd.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The plaintiff has to provide proof, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant is in the wrong.
Oops, you got it wrong again.
In civil cases, you must prove only that the "preponderance of the evidence" points to wrongdoing. In a civil jury trial, you only need a majority of the jurors to decide in your favor, not 100%.