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IBM Puts Pressure On SCO
inode_buddha writes "An article at Groklaw shows IBM's legal team dissecting the whole SCO thing professionally and thoroughly. I'm almost willing to bet the case gets dropped with extreme prejudice, especially now that Novell is getting involved. Is anyone taking bets as to when the case actually closes and how?" I suggest the MIT Technology Review add this one to their markets.
It's been said by SEC representatives already (as posted in other forums and here on /.) that SCO and Darl do not represent enough "pump-n-dump" to affect the current market. In other words, he's not even on thier radar.
Actually, the SCO case can be dismissed and not affect the IBM countersuit. The GPL issue isn't brought up in the SCO case; it is part of the IBM case. The GPL will still be tested even if Judge Kimball tells SCO to quit smoking crack and continue with discovery for the suit that IBM brought against them.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
So what are you bitching about? What could happen is simply that the judge dismisses SCO's COMPLAINT, and the SEPERATE IBM countersuit goes forward. That seems to be a "GOOD GOOD" if that happens. SCO's fud (and company) is essentially dead in the water with the granting of any motion to dismiss, and IBM gets to litigate it's counterclaims which are based on SCO misusing their GPL protected code and hand them all a new ass. I hope when that comes to trial, they call Darl, a LOT, as a (hostile?) witness, you know, just to ask him a relevant "question or two", and then request the need to hold him over for additional questions each day for the next day...
SCO has filed a motion to compel discovery against IBM and IBM has responded...
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
It appears that "IBM's motion to compel is scheduled for oral arguments on Dec. 5." (stolen from Groklaw). Hopefully after that, things will tank and we can get back to normal.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
You could try suing them for fraud, since they wrongly claimed you needed a license. However, they are unlikely to have any money left with which to repay the license fees or any other damges.
Their 2002 annual report says around 350 people work there. They have announced 30 or so RIFs since then.
What does it mean? are IBM worried about losing ?
Oh wait, both selling patterns are pretty similar. This isn't really news it just means that people have set up automatic sales and these have to be done well in-advance. What will be news is when senior execs sell large amounts of stock automatically as the price DROPS.
If I was a SCO exec I'd be putting my sell price as a drop below 15 or a rise above 25, the drop price is the important one though as it will tell us how confident they are, the lower the drop price the more confident.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Yeah the kernel has about five and a half million lines. Probably under half a million in core architecture independant code though.
When you short a stock you are engaging in two steps : first, your broker will borrow shares and second, you sell shares you don't own ("selling short") in the open market.
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Now since you have borrowed stock, someday you have to pay back the loan (borrowed stock). Since you have sold the borrowed stock, you have to acquire shares (at a later date) to repay your debt. There are two scenarios here
1) Stock price appreciates markedly; since you have to pay back the debt by purchasing (more expensive) shares in the open market, your potential loss is unlimited.
2) Stock price tanks. Now you can acquire cheaper shares to repay your debt.
A simple example
Say I decide the future prospects of some random company are not good at all. I determine that the shares are overvalued at $17.50, and instruct my broker to sell short.
My broker lends me the shares. Later, if the share price of this random company declines to, say, $10 / share I can acquire shares in the open market at $10, repay the loan of borrowed stock and pocket $7.50 / share profit.
Of course this simple example blissfully ignores real world issues like taxes, interest on the borrowed stock (after all, it is a loan) and brokers fees.
Also, since you have to borrow the share before you can sell them short, we're also ignoring the issue of where and how your broker acquires these shares.
For a company like SCO, there are probably no more shares left to be borrowed.
Finally, if you sell short at $17.50, and if the price drop to $Worthless - another way of saying zero - you don't have to repay your loan; you would pocket $17.50 / share profit.
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Alternative 1 - Put option
Suppose that the stock of company FooBar is worth $80 today.
I buy the *option* of selling that stock at $80 in one weeks time (this of course cost me something since there is a risk involved for the entity that I buy this option from).
Let's say that priviledge costs me $1 (since everybody considers company FooBars stock prices to be quite stable).
Now, one week later IBM has barbecued company FooBar royally, the stock has plunged to $40.
The option of selling one stock at $80 is now worth $40 since the stock is currently priced at 40$. I don't even have to own the stock since someone who does can buy the option from me instead.
In total I've made 39$ on an investment of 1$ in one weeks time.
Alternative 2 - Buying short
This requires that you are in a position to do investments for others, such as being a bank.
Customer Bob calls you and want to buy FooBar stock, you say "sure Bob...uh...it costs $80". Bob agrees. You don't actually buy the stock until a week later when the price has fallen to $40, Bob will pay you $80 and you've earned $40.
Now, if the stock price has gone up, you will have to buy at the higher price instead and your boss will call you into his office for a short conversation...
Your regular expression finds any line that contains a } not just any line that is a }.
Try this, it is any line that is just a break; or a } except for leading and trailing white space:
$ grep -rE '^[ \t]*(break;|})[ \t]*$' "/usr/src/linux" | wc -l
109614
That finds about 3 times fewer instances, but still a good chunk of change.
how we would get rich by shorting this stock (SCOX)?
From what I hear the current situation is truely twisted. #1 There are a huge number of people already trying to short SCOX. #2 You need a supply of shares trading on the market to cover the short. #3 The vast majority of SCOX is being held by a handful of people tying up the market. Because of #3 there aren't enough shares trading on the market to cover #2 which is actually driving the price UP.
Yes, the price of SCOX is going UP because a lot of people know it's worthless.
The people trying to short SCOX are therefore losing their shirts and the people tying up SCOX are making a killing.
This situation may drag on like this for quite a while. If you manage to jump in at just the right moment you'll probably make a fortune, but most likely youll get royally screwed.
IANASB, IDEOS. (I Am Not A Stock Broker, I Don't Even Own Stock)
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
And now to balance things off from SCO's perspective. Never clueing in on the possibility that some companies pay their employees to produce some Software Libre. There's a balance out there between proprietary and OSS. You pick what best suits you, or your business model... but probably not a *nix that just now claims PAM as a feature.
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO(R) Group (SCO) (Nasdaq: SCOX), the owner of the UNIX operating system, today announced that Chief Executive Officer Darl McBride, will deliver a keynote address at the Enterprise IT Week/Computer Digital Expo (CDXPO) conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, November 18 at 5:00 p.m. The conference and keynote will take place at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.
O GO )
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Darl McBride, SCO Group CEO, to Deliver CDXPO Keynote Titled 'There's No Free Lunch - Or Free Linux'
08:32 EST Wednesday, Nov 05, 2003
LINDON, Utah, Nov. 5
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990421/SCOL
In his address titled "There's No Free Lunch -- Or Free Linux," McBride will present his perspectives on the prospects of free industries, SCO's suit against IBM, and why intellectual property must be protected in a digital age.
"The Internet created -- and creatively destroyed -- great wealth. It also created a culture legitimizing intellectual property theft," said McBride. "When you defend intellectual property, you speak an unpleasant truth. People don't like to hear unpleasant truths. The alternative to this fight, however, is the death of an industry and thousands of jobs lost."
McBride will also explore how the information technology industry - software, hardware, networking and services -- depends on money passing from one hand to another, asserting that the livelihood of engineers and developers rests on paid models, even as those developers donate time to free projects such as Linux. McBride will lay out his assertion that without paid software, there would be little or no free software. At the conclusion of his keynote, McBride will be available for media questions.
McBride's keynote will be followed by a Town Hall discussion moderated by Jack Powers, conference chairman of Enterprise IT Week and director of the International Informatics Institute.
Cheers,
Craig
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/34553.htm
Specifically, In the process, a federal judge deemed the GPL enforceable and binding.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Read the last para just before the section 'Migration' starts. http://www.thejemreport.com/software/freebsd51.php
FreeBSD license lets anyone to use their code in any propreitary software and not affect the software license. So I can take code from FreeBSD and incorporate it into my propreitary software and not having to release it to the community. That is I believe what happend with SCO, they thought they owned the code that is actually licensed by FreeBSD in the first place.
First point -- on the assumption that the case will continue, which I believe, it may be some time before anyone knows which lines are "tainted". For example, SCO points at the source files for JFS and says "These may be tainted." IBM says, "Which lines?" SCO responds with, "Any lines which you developed under AIX. Which are those?" SCO's legal theory seems to be that any features of AIX which were transfered to Linux are a violation, unless IBM can prove that the code given to Linux was developed as part of a non-AIX operating system, then ported to Linux directly from that non-AIX system. IBM is using the obvious tactic of providing a mountain of raw information, then demanding that SCO sift through it and identify the lines that are in question -- make it too EXPENSIVE for SCO to continue the case.
Second point -- on the assumption that SCO wins, which I don't believe will happen, generating cleanroom specs may well be a problem. As I understand it, the contract forbids revealing the methods as well as the source code. IBM would be in the position of having to say to the Linux community, "The code and documentation that we revealed to you, and on which your specs are based, were trade secrets that we did not have the right to reveal." ANY use of that information -- such as writing specs -- could be deemed improper by a court. However, if SCO wins and gets a large settlement from IBM, I would expect the judge to rule that SCO has now been compensated for the loss of their trade secrets, and that the Linux community is free to make use of those "secrets".
SCO appears to have (although IANAL) a simple case that is at least arguable. I have to believe that all of the public posturing, much if not all of which is irrelevant, is intended to run the share price up so that the executives can cash out.
Groklaw is now hosted by Ibiblio, so it's a bit harder to Slashdot.
http://www.tuxrocks.com/
Assuming there's anything in there, right. But by "rewrite" I hope you mean a complete cleanroom implementation, because otherwise it really is illegal. From what I'm told, there's nothing left in 2.5 (and I think 2.4) that was even remotely SCO (even that via old BSD).
I'm also sorry that modding is an issue for you. I participated in the discussion, and that is all I did so please accept my apologies if my opinion including the use of GPL and "vindication" somehow wasn't valid.
Sorry, that was a joke not directed at you - rather at the RMS-head mods. Sorry if that wasn't clear, no offense intended.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
When a case is dismissed "with prejudice," it means the matter is considered decided, and the suit can't be filed again (although an appeal to a higher court might be possible).
Dismissal "without prejudice" means that the matter is not decided, but some un-met condition (procedural or otherwise) prevents the suit from going forward. A suit dismissed without prejudice may be re-filed at a later date when conditions allow.
IAAL, but I've never heard the term "extreme prejudice" outside of jokes and movies about assassination.
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The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
The dots are pretty easy to connect. They planned time stock sales, and release fraudulent press releases before this. Pump and Dump schemes involve raising a stock price (fraudulently) and then selling the stock. The people who are selling are the people who are releasing the lies that raise the stock price. It's pretty obvious.
The code they pointed to as violating their copyright suggests that they didn't do any research on the history of that code, they simply saw something similar and jumped. However, they claim to have researched it, which is a lie. Lying for financial gain is fraud, and lying to increase your stock price is securities fraud. There's more to it than that, but it's pretty straight forward.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben