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IBM Subpoenas SCO Investors, Analysts
Bigfishbowl writes "Forbes has an interesting article about IBM sending subpoenas to large SCO investors in an effort to compel discovery. An IBM spokesman says IBM is frustrated by SCO's reluctance to produce proof of its allegations. '"It is time for SCO to produce something meaningful. They have been dragging their feet and it is not clear there is any incentive for SCO to try this in court," he says.'"
This is just like poker... And IBM finally called... now SCO is gonna have to lay down the cards or fold... Either way... we all win! :)
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
It is illegal and damaging to use the civil court system to intimidate people if you have no good reason to believe the law is behind you (like if you LIED about the facts used to support your complaint). A countersuit is in order, but who to sue?
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Pretty cool, if you think about it.
IBM, Big Blue, batting in Linux's court. This will likely be the case that stands as precedence for or against the GPL, and with such a giant behind Linux, I don't think SCO will win.
If they had a chance, they would have pressed their fist into using the law to compel licensing, instead of sending "invoices" and pressuring companies to provide 'insurance' against their lawsuits.
With the right leverage (such as the kind that IBM has) this could easially compel strong legal backing for the GPL, something it could definately use.
They don't call them Big Blue for nothing. IBM can be a very angry giant once awakened.
SCO claims to have shown "the code" to investors and such. IBM says, "okay, SCO won't show us the code, so we'll make your investors do so." Both intimidates the investors and calls SCO's bluff. Brilliant!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
You want this to be properly resolved. We don't need any more of the bullshit coming from the courts where it's decided that the case is not strong enough to set a precedent, so it's dropped instead of getting resolved. Then they wait until another situation comes up that is more favorable. The future of freedom can not wait.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Is Microsoft a SCO Investor? I thought they just paid for licenses, that would make them a customer not an investor.
Later,
Phil
Big companies like IBM, Microsoft, et al don't act in a single-minded way like we individuals tend to. You can't run a big company with a "you're my enemy so I won't do business with you" mentality.
There are many, many examples where IBM competes or cooperates with Microsoft and others. An even more extreme example is Sony, where, one half of the business is frantically taking on file swappers and copiers, and the other half is making bucks from selling devices used to copy and swap files.
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No. We don't want SCO "laughed out of court". We don't want them out of court at all. We want them _in_ court, unsuccessfully defending themselves against IBM's counterclaims after the judge grants summary judgement in favor of IBM on all of SCO's claims.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
As it was well known to the trained eye, the lawsuit had no merit but it was just a ploy to get acquired by IBM or some other entity. Now that it did not happen, SCO is trying to drag their feet so that some clueless VC with abundance of money and no brains could be found to rescue them. Plain and simple IMHO
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Going after the analysts is a great idea. If they are forced to respond to the subpoenas, they can say:
a) I just used public information and personal judgement to predict the stock will double in price. This would imply extreme naivety on the part of the analyst, and, given the current lawsuits against analysts pumping stocks, probably gets a Spitzer-style lawsuit against him and his firm.
b) SCO told me X, Y, and Z, and that is the basis for my estimate. If public info, see above. Else: Woohoo, material information given to analysts yet not publically disclosed.
c) SCO hinted privately at Microsoft (or other firms) involvement. Great evidence of dirty hands in the case, and maybe a bit of case b).
In short, I'd hate to be an analyst forced to defend my "strong buy" rating on a stock while also claiming to be an expert in its market sector.
Note also that the Forbes' article also used the phrase "pump and dump." It's never a good sign when the major media starts propagating such theories!
I don't think that Microsoft is directly behind this action, but I sure as hell wouldn't put it past them to do so. They've done some pretty weird stuff in the past such as the famous dead people mailing initiative and their famous round of hideous anti-linux FUD in 2001 where Ballmer, Mundie and just about every honcho at MS were telling strange tales of viral cancer etc.
Given that they discovered that such direct FUD backfired but are reportedly gearing up for the next round of FUD with respect to security would you be willing to state with 100% certainty that MS is not behind this action?
I wouldn't.
If it is discovered through IBM's process of subpoenas that MS is in fact behind this I wonder what will happen then. I assume that MS will be facing a court action for trying to willfully harm a competitor's business that will make the $3 billion SCO claim look tame, and I think that there will be a number of anti-trust questions raised.
They would take things you and ESR said out of context and make you answer yes-or-no questions in such a way that you come off like a file sharing pirate who says "arrrrrrr" all the time. They will basically assassinate your character any way they can....and sharp lawyering would likely stop you from doing anything about it. They are using the legal system to further a smear campaign.
From SCO's supplemental responses:
I've been wondering when someone was going to try this for quite a while. "Dumping", selling a product below cost in order to force your competitors out of business, is illegal for good reasons. It seems like a motivated attorney could pretty easily make a case that any company who is putting substantial investment into software that is distributed for free is dumping, and trying to kill a competitor.
This doesn't just apply to IBM and Linux, it also applies to Sun and OpenOffice, and perhaps others as well. Now it looks like SCO is trying this argument out for real.
I had hoped the argument wouldn't get brought up for a while, until a history of such corporate open source efforts was well established. And it seemed reasonable that it might not be brought up, since the "damaged" party in both the Linux and OpenOffice cases is Microsoft, and as a convicted anti-competitive monopolist with a massive market share they're not in a very good position to complain.
It seems like Microsoft has found a way to get the idea in front of a judge after all...
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Um, no. Forbes was not served with a subpoena. They were provided with a copy of one.
I think the precedent is the fact that SCO claims GPL is not enforceable. If the court agreed that GPL is a legal license, that will make any challenge in the future against GPL hard or impossible. Which gives open source softwares some legal backings.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
I totally agree that it's cool that Linux is heading to court with a pretty strong case (though I don't think GPL legal precedence will come into SCO's suit at all. SCO is saying that IBM stole their IP; they don't care how IBM released it; they're saying that it wasn't IBM's IP to release in *any* way. Some of the countersuits involve GPL, though).
I have to say I wouldn't celebrate much, though, if IBM won the case because they are "such a giant" with "the right leverage". If SCO's suit is valid, IBM should pay some kind of damages, and offending versions of Linux must be discontinued. Yes, the system doesn't always work right, but law is law and the little guy should win if the case has merit, whether he's hated or cheered for it. If the law is bad, then we have to work to change it.
If I cheer because IBM is huge, I lose the right to complain when MS squashes some small developer under the weight of a thousand lawyers.
Final thought: the elephant is walking the same direction as you for now -- but don't get confused and think you're riding it.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
I wonder what his views are on sending threatening letters to thousands of companies demanding licensing fees without offering a shred of evidence supporting its claims.
"If you want to call "B.S.", I suggest you call it on Forbes."
Er, the article says "subpoena provided to Forbes," *NOT* served on Forbes. In other words some other party let a Forbes reporter have a looksee at a subpoena.
I'm starting to wonder. It is so obvious that they are doing Microsoft's bidding... is it possible it is not true? Why are investors buying the stock? Surely not for any possible payout from the lawsuit, or any plausable income from Linux. The investors must believe that buying the stock is a way to get some of the big bucks Microsoft is paying SCO! Much better way to get some of their profits than buying Microsoft stock itself!
But some of SCO's recent announcements, where they more and more shrilly say Linux is dangerous and scary and it's problems could not possibly be solved by their lawsuit, and that they will pay you to use Windows, seem to be heavy-handed, exaggerated versions of Microsoft's assummed arguments. There purpose is obviously not to help their case, and lately don't seem really to be attacks on Linux itself (since their arguments cover virtually any software, open or closed, ever written by anybody who read another piece of software). They really seemed to be designed to prove (without saying so) that Microsoft is funding them. Maybe this funding is an entire scam.
Now this will require some inside help at Microsoft, somebody fooled them into making the original purchase of some useless licenses. If such a plot is figured out Microsoft should fire that guy's ass, and perhaps get him thrown in jail. A public action like this is the only way they are going to convince people they did not fund SCO.
So why doesn't Microsoft deny that they are funding it? Because SCO has never literally said they are getting money from Microsoft, so there is nothing to deny. If Microsoft makes a denial without a real accusasion from SCO, then everybody will then say "obviously they are funding it, since they felt they had to deny it".
Even on Slashdot most people do not belive that OSS will replace commercial software like Quicken or Autocad or Maya, the interior design software, the games, the commercial business-specific software loaded with catalogs of suppliers products. Even word processors are not replaced, sure OSS can write a Word-clone, but Word is stagnent due to lack of competition, if Word was crushed and the stifling need to import and export Word documents eliminated, new word processors may appear that have capabilites nobody has even dreamed of! The free OSS Word-clone you get with your Linux box would be considered a joke in comparison, so would Word.
If Linux (or something like it) is triumphant I think there will be a huge release of amazingly innovative new applications and software. And variations and additions to Linux itself. These will be things that cannot even be imagined by OSS and Microsoft programmers right now, because they will be the inventions of a competitive commercial marketplace and hundreds of thousands of developers (verses the perhaps 10 thousands of Linux developers, and the only thousands of Microsoft developers). This new stuff will make Windows and Longhorn, KDE and Gnome, and even OS/X look like a primitive joke!
If you are a commercial proprietary software company and not tied into supplying Microsoft, you are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Linux!
SCO's lawsuit against IBM is over a breach of contract. It doesn't mention the GPL at all. However, IBM's countersuit does bring up the GPL several times. SCO's lawsuit can be laughed out of court without affecting IBM's countersuit. From what I've heard, IBM would like a court ruling backing the GPL as much as the rest of the open source community. The chances of IBM dropping their countersuit is really small. If IBM is sending subpoenas to investors, then it sounds like IBM would like to make an example out of SCO and everyone that has helped them.
SCO made the mistake of attacking something very core to IBM's business, its reputation.
By claiming that IBM willfully and flagrantly breached its contracts with SCO and disregarded confidentiality agreements, SCO is jeprodizing IBM's business with almost every one of their customers including banks, government, and nearly every large corporation.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
I would like to see an investigation of the idiots who projected SCOX stock should go to $45 a share. In a sane world, it would be overvalued at $1 a share. With a PE well over 100 (it actually had a profit for a quarter to calculate), you might as well advise playing the lottery. If they lose this case, they are worth nothing. If they win this case, they are still a company that it the long run produces nothing of value but litigation. I don't see a bright future here.
Many readers (like the two reading over my shoulder) are taking this as a cop-out on Barny Franks part. I for one really wish more of our elected leaders understood the seperation of powers. If they did, we would have far fewer problems with the law than we do today.
I definitely understand the tendency to ignore all the paranoid ravings you hear on /., because I do too. That said, there are some legit reasons to give this one consideration. First, Forbes is typically quite the conservative mag, and I doubt they'd even have printed that had it not passed the laugh test to outsiders. Second, this scheme is simliar to what canopy has done before by Canopy. I'm generally skeptical, and I will bank on this being a pump-n-dump or similar scheme by SCO/Canopy. This is their MO.
The Microsoft angle is more farfetched, but not completely implausible. MS paid a *lot* of money for SCO licenses that were somewhere between unnecessary and worthless to MS. Also, lately, SCO has been making strange offers about discounts to people who make the switch to any non-linux system, and saying it in a way that all but screams "Windows."
Bottom line, I'd bet on Canopy running this scam. I'd wait for some more bookkeeping before I listened to the MS angle.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I really, really hope this gets settled in a decent fashion without getting any uglier.
--a
Interesting. But, the thing is, Barney Frank is pointing out that it is currently MOVING through the system and congress can't just reach out and stop it. That is not their role. Also, while there is room for concern, the courts have not finished their duties yet and, hence, we can't say that they have failed us by not bringing a swift judgement against TSG.
These cases can take a long time to resolve and a swift judgement by a court will only prompt appeals and FUD about the court's political motives for doing so.
While, unfortunately, companies (and, individuals?!? I thought it was only companies in the Fortune 500 list) are being threatened by TSG, that is for law enforcement and the courts to deal with (and, I venture to say that after a judgement on the TSG v IBM case, a landslide of smaller lawsuits v TSG will begin). If the courts "fail" to deal with this in a way that pleases the American People, congress can try to draft new legislation making debacles like this less likely to occur again in the future (new ways will be found, I imagine).
I don't think Barney Frank copped out at all. He is basically waiting to see what the courts determine (and it could take quite some time) to see what he can try to do about it in congress. It sounds like a pretty intelligent answer to me.