SCO Madness Reigns Supreme

Sri Lumpa writes "It will come as little surprise for those of you that followed the SCO stories and read their latest filing that an IP attorney, Douglas Steele, Esq., thinks that 'SCO is trying to get the judge to declare all works released under the GPL for the last 3 years put into the public domain.' Meanwhile, more lawyers give their opinions, with Eben Moglen saying 'It's just rubbish,' while another says of SCO's defense: 'From the outside, it appears so bizarre and so ridiculous that I fear their argument is being misstated,' while Blake Stowell of SCO believes Congress has drawn a boundary between proprietary and open source and still insists that IBM should indemnify its Linux users while refusing to indemnify SCO's Samba users against a potential MS lawsuit. More links to related news stories continue to appear in the comment section of the first link, thanks to the Groklaw readers." Read on for another handful of updates in SCO vs. The World.

Roblimo knows good, honest Constitutional argumentation when he sees it, and over on NewsForge amplifies SCO's claims that the GPL is unconstitutional.

Dopey Panda writes "Looks like SCO has become just a bit worried about their liabilities for distributing the Linux kernel. Starting November 1 you will have to be a registered SCO customer to be able to access their FTP site. So that leaves just a couple days for you to download your own genuine SCO-approved GPL code!"

And perhaps today's most interesting SCO submission: 1HandClapping writes "In alwayson-network.com, Mark F. Radcliffe (HIAL) writes about a little-reported aspect of the SCO vs IBM case: 'Novell, as part of its sale of the UNIX licenses to SCO, retained the right to require SCO to "amend, supplement, modify or waive any right" under the license agreements (and if SCO did not comply, Novell could exercise those rights itself on SCO's behalf). At IBM's request, Novell employed this right and demanded that SCO waive IBM's purported violations. When SCO did not do so, Novell exercised its right to waive the violations on SCO's behalf. Basically, this defense destroys the core of the SCO case: IBM's violation of its UNIX license with SCO.'"

Comments

Re:(e)stop the madness

[cmason32]

You're thinking of equitable estoppel. There is also collateral and judicial estoppel. Collateral estoppel means that once a court has come to a decision, that decision affects other similarly related facts. Judicial estoppel prevents a party from asserting one thing in one instance and then the opposite in another instance.

The SEC needs some help from *you*

[anomaly]

I contacted the SEC about SCO, and they called me back!

I posted a comment with more information about this yesterday....

Re:Why is IBM so quiet?

[Rimbo]

Have you ever heard a representative of one company or another say, "I'm sorry, but we cannot comment on legal matters?"

There is a very good reason why you should keep your trap shut when you're involved in a lawsuit: "Everything you say can and will be used against you in court." Now I KNOW you've heard that one.

You do not discuss legal action until the case is over with. Time and time again, SCO's refusal to keep their lips zipped has fed IBM more fuel for their own counter-suits and defense. Everything they have said can and will be used against them by IBM.

IBM is not making the same mistake.

I also feel that their brevity and silence makes the cloud forming over SCO only seem darker, but that's just my own bias talking there. The reality is that what you don't say won't come back to haunt you later.