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.'"

Comments

Just like Poker

[Quasar1999]

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! :)

This is about calling SCO's bluff about code

[csoto]

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!

Re:Didn't Microsoft and IBM just get in bed?

[plierhead]

I thought Microsoft and IBM just signed a huge Xbox 2 chip deal? Maybe I am too idealistic and the proper way to act is to sue your business partners. Maybe thats why I don't own a big company :)

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.

I wondered if this would happen

[swillden]

From SCO's supplemental responses:

IBM has unfairly competed with SCO by... entering a conspiracy... with others in the Linux development and distribution business... to artificially restrain prices below natural levels for the purposes of destroying competition in the operating systems market for UNIX software on Intel machines. ... By artificially restraining the price of Linux to zero, which price is very substantially below the actual development cost contributed by IBM and others, IBM induces customers to switch to Linux. This is, among other things, unfair competition.

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...

Re:It's About time

[KD5YPT]

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.