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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.'"
I am by no means in hell a lawyer, but it seems like IBM is trying to determine whether something much of Slashdot suspects is verifiably true: that some sort of sinister third party (Microsoft comes to mind) is morally and financially behind SCO's actions.
The question is whether a "Microsoft is behind this whole sham" argument will be as well-received in a court room as it has been on Slashdot.
I am so not a lawyer that I don't even know whether it would be admissible.
Or, for that matter, whether my analysis is entirely incorrect.
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! :)
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
At this stage of the game, IBM is publicly stating they doubt TSG is serious about entering a court room. With that in mind they seem to be trying to hurt TSG where it hurts: the wallet. Have you seen SCOX performance lately? Beautifully mimicking a swan dive. Good riddance to bad trash
BTW, 5th post?
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
This is a little OT, but SCO told the names "offending" files in a court doc at groklaw. They don't say what parts of the files are "theirs", but they've narrowed it down to about a 1/5 of the kernel. :-)
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.
about IBM sending subpoenas to large SCO investors in an effort to compel discovery.
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"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Warning: put drinks and domestic animals safely out of danger first.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"I view this as an attempt to bully and intimidate..." says Christopher Sontag, executive vice president at SCO.
Oh, the irony.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
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
Geez, how lazy are you people? Just check the box next to "Caldera."
Let's start referring to www.forbes.com as a "stock-market enthusiast Web site".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
For the stock.
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.
The mind boggles! Sontag is asking IBM to deluge him in paper? He only has 100,000 pages, and he wants IBM to see his million and raise it!
Groan, somewhere, a forest cries in pain as the log chippers are fired up.
Do not start a land war in Asia, do not enter a paper war with IBM. Sheesh!
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
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.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
The idea here is to do to SCO what they are trying to do to the OS movement - make the public afraid to touch them. I mean, if buying SCO stock means you risk getting a subpeana, who is going to do it? So what if ESR gets one - I'm sure he'd be happy to give SCO a piece of his mind. The goal is to make your average wall streeter afraid to touch SCO with a 10 foot pole, and there's not a whole lot SCO can do that they haven't already done.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
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.
Sontag says SCO has provided 1 million pages of documents
I don't think he realizes that press releases don't count.
... that all of IBM's 100,000 pages so far all said:
"This page intentionally left blank."
Of course, all of SCO's 1M pages were diagrams of kittens and houses in crayon so they can hardly complain.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Big companies like IBM, Microsoft, et al don't act in a single-minded way like we individuals tend to.
That's because when individuals act the way big companies do, we call them things like "nut cases" and "psycopaths." An individual that dumped toxic waste into a river or FUD into the media (at what would be a modest rate by corporate standards) would be locked up. An individual who was insulting someone while kissing up to them would seem (at best) socialy maladroit.
This is what makes corporate characterization of hackers as social outcasts so ironic. The most nerdly hacker is still an order of magnitude more sane & sociable than the average mega-corp.
-- MarkusQ
Why would IBM need that information, unless they intended to go after somebody for securities fraud?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Oh, Chris, you words always have been so moooooooving.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
I don't see why Eric wouldn't want to testify. I'd like to. I sure don't have anything to hide with regard to this case, and I can't see how he would.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The author of this piece, Daniel Lyons, should use the by line, "SCO Mouthpiece." He is the same hack who wrote the "Linux's Hit Men" article about the FSF plus there was another recent piece of SCO FUD that I've managed to flush out of my memory.
You will also note that quietly buried in the body of the article is that Forbes was also served with a subpoena. This is undoubtedly because of Mr. Lyons' articles.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
They say it was the hand that Wild Bill Hickock was holding when he was shot in the back of the head.
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.
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 guess you just have to ask politely enough...
Q.
Insert Signature Here
I would like to purchase one (1) subpoena against oneclicksubpoena.com with regard to violation of US Patent# 5,960,411.
Sincerely,
amazon.com
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
First, if SCO stalls much longer on discovery, Cravath will be in a good position to move for a dismissal. They might get it, too. Maybe even a dismissal with prejudice, so SCO can't refile, or summary judgement in IBM's favor.
Independent of this, it looks like IBM is gearing up for a securities-fraud counterclaim. Cravath has pointed out in legal filings that SCO has made statements publicly that are inconsistent with the positions they take in court. Ordinarily, that's OK. But when the stock price spikes and insiders are cashing out, that's not OK.
There's also the potential of a false-claim-of-copyright claim. That's rarely used, but here, it's clearly appropriate.
This is going to crank for a while, but unless SCO comes up with something a lot better than what they've shown so far, they're not going to win.
Sorry hit submit instead of preview, I got flustered and the buttons are so close together.
Some of thoes files don't contain any UNIX System V source code, only "UNIX methods" which is a vague way of saying that it may have appeared in a textbook. That is why IBM feels that simply giving filenames is insuffecent since even if there is not one pice of SysV code in thoes files SCO can still claim that some of the algorithims are similar to thoes in SysV and thus there is still a copyright violation, even though these alogrithims are taught to students in classes and SCO dosent have a patent on them.
The last point is the major weakness in SCO's case and why Novell can now just flick them away like the tiny fly that they are.
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
This is just a hunch, mind you, the sort of thing you feel like you know without knowing how you know it, but reading this newest SCO thread, I got a strong premonition that this case has reached the stage where, by the time it is all over, some people connected are going to be dead, by what at least looks like suicide. If I'm right, you can call me psychic, or say it was a subconsious awareness of similarities between this case and Worldcon and other previous ones, but I'm willing to go on record with the prediction either way. (And If I AM right, I'm gonna claim first post to the thread that will doubtless result).
Who is John Cabal?
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.
I'm not sure whether it's illegal or not (as so many of our economics-related laws are irrational), but if it is, it is most definitely not illegal for good reason. Economists tend to get hot under the collar whenever their government engages in the economically self-destructive practice of protectionism under the spectre of dumping. Any first year economics student can explain precisely why dumping is good for the economy that is being dumped into in essentially every real world situation[1]. Any Linux enthusiast can as easily explain why the same is true of operating systems[2].
Consider the example of Netscape - Microsoft has spent nearly ten years attempting to dump it out of existence. Microsoft's price for IE remains at zero (not to mention their correlary anti-competitive attacks), and still Netscape lives on (and a host of other browsers, including ones with non-zero prices have poppoed up). And that's just looking at the browser producers - the rest of the world, the browser consumers, like 99.99% of the population and a similar percentage of businesses, are ECSTATIC about the browser wars. How different would the world today be if Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, Konquerer, and IE all cost $99, and had never been free?
[1] DUMPING
Selling something for less than the cost of producing it. This may be used by a DOMINANT FIRM to attack rivals, a strategy known to ANTITRUST authorities as PREDATORY PRICING. Participants in international trade are often accused of dumping by domestic FIRMS charging more than rival IMPORTS. Countries can slap duties on cheap imports that they judge are being dumped in their markets. Often this amounts to thinly disguised PROTECTIONISM against more efficient foreign firms.
In practice, genuine predatory pricing is rare - certainly much rarer than anti-dumping actions - because it relies on the unlikely ability of a single producer to dominate a world market. In any case, consumers gain from lower PRICES; so do companies that can buy their supplies more cheaply abroad.
That is - unless IBM's Linux division has a maintainable monopoly on the OS market (it does not), and the ability to raise its price (it does not), and the ability to drive its competition out (OK, guilty), and there are significant barriers to reentry to the OS market (there are none), claiming dumping is specious at best.
[2] Having the ability to run a variety of operating systems without having to pay for each license makes it easier for the user to satisfy his or her wants. On the business side, a vastly greater number of businesses are OS consumers than are OS producers - thus the business world as a whole *LOVES* OS dumping (if it can be called that).
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
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.
When SCO was going around threatening end users, I sent a letter to my congressman, Barney Frank of Massachusetts. Here is his response:
====
September 26, 2003
Dear Mr. Minsky,
I share your view that the suits being brought by the SCO Group
against the users of the Linux system are an entirely inappropriate
use of the legal systems for broader corporate purposes. While I have
note been able, obviously, to examine these in detail, the suits do
not appear to me, from what I have read, to have any merit, and in
fact seem to be motivated, as I said, by an effort simply to prevent
the use of Linux for competitive reasons.
There is, unfortunately, a very limited role for Congress here. I
agree with those who would like to see us "stop SCO from punishing
innocent consumers to inflate its other legal claims." But under our
separation of powers doctrine, Congress has no role whatsoever to play
in the pursuit of particular cases. We can pass laws which prevent
certain types of suits from being brought, but it is very, very
difficult to pass those in a way that would be retroactive - that is,
that would apply to existing suits. And the problem with this suit is
not that it is of a sort of legal claim that is inappropriate to
bring, but that it is totally unjustified on the merits. In other
words, the remedy here is for these suits to be dismissed on their
merits and Congress has no role, as I have said, in doing that.
I am prepared to join in expressions of extreme disapproval of what
SCO is doing, and I will be consulting with my colleagues to see if
there is a movement to do that. I hope that will have some impact on
them. All of these lawsuits brought against individuals will of course
be dismissed but I realize that is of little consolation to people
who have had to go through the trouble and expense of defending against
them. It may be that at some point a judge will act decisively enough
in this regard to prevent this proliferation of suits, and while, as I
said, our Congressional role is very limited here, I will be
encouraging anything we can do along these lines.
Barney Frank
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