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SCO Fires back, Subpoenas Stallman, Torvalds et al
SirFozzie writes "SCO has just, within the past hour, announced that they have fired back against IBM's legal broadside, with one of their own, filing subpoenas against several of the biggest names in Linux. SCO filed subpoenas with the U.S. District Court in Utah, targeting six different individuals or organizations. Those include Novell; Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel; Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation; Stewart Cohen, chief executive of the Open Source Development Labs; and John Horsley, general counsel of Transmeta."
"When the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers."
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
Lawyer: Mr Stallman, can you explain what GNU is? Stallman: Gnu's Not Unix
Lawyer: Yes, Mr Stallman, but can you please answer the question.
Stallman: Gnu's Not Unix
ad infinitum.
IBM is actually trying to get some facts with their subpoenas, like offending source code. What does SCO think they are going to get out of Linus? Hopefully he doesn't let them look a the Linux source code..... oh wait.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Is that you Darl?
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
>
> Is SCO completely, utterly, loony? What the fuck? What the fucking fuck fuck?!
Oh, right. That as me, quoting myself from Septempter, and then from October.
So, to bring you all up to date. It's November. The proper question is now:
"Is SCO completely, utterly, apeshit and batshit, half-a-gig-short-of-a-Debian-ISO, stark, slavering, buggo?!? What the fuck? What the fucking fuck fuck fuck [ several dozen instances of the word "fuck" deleted for brevity ] fuck?!?!"
Well, we do get our share of laughs making fun of European royal familes, so it probably balances out.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
That's just f***ing great, now the bar for being a cool guy in free software just got raised. It used to be you just had to write a million lines of useful code. Now you've got to get a subpoena from SCO to be cool.
"Should we invite Jeff to speak at our little conference?" "Well, he didn't get a subpoena from SCO, so he's probably not that important..."
jeff
Stowell, spokesman for the company, was unable to explain the latest round of subpoenas in the company's lawsuit against IBM for copyright infringment. When asked what the purpose was, he replied that he had no idea, but"I know that some of them have been served."
For veteran SCO watchers, this is a sign that the previously-untouchable spokesman may be on the outs.
"Why wouldn't the spokesman know what was going on?" asked one CIA analyst. "It's his job. But it's little clues like this that give us a suprisingly good idea of what's going on in Utah."
A source within SCO, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed this view of events.
"Darl [McBride, CEO of SCO] just went crazy the other day when [Stowell] asked what the next step was," he said. "He started asking all sorts of questions about whose side [Stowell] was on, was he wearing a wire, who else felt like this, this sort of thing. He even pulled out his laptop and started Googling for Stowell's name on LKML [a mailing list for Linux kernel developers]. Now we're not allowed to talk to Blake at all."
"It's a shame, because Blake was one of the moderates," the source continued. "A while back Darl started talking about putting Richard Stallman's head on a pike outside the compound. Said it was the least he deserved. Blake talked him down from that before anything could happen. Now there's very few left to do that."
However, McBride's hold over the company is anything but absolute, and the future of his leadership is still in question. "There's still a significant group within SCO that are trying to find the combination for the safe where he keeps his shares," said the CIA analyst. "That's why he hasn't left the compound in over six weeks."
Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, was unavailable for comment. Sources close to the computer guru said he had gone underground. "He saw some guy hanging around the office that he thought was a bounty hunter. That was enough for Richard."
Carousel is a lie!
"I imagine this is what Stallman wanted, a chance to prove the GPL in court. And involvement in the case may give him legal room to see 'evidence' without signing non-disclosures."
This has the potential to be really funny with Stallman and Torvalds on the stand.
SCO lawyer: "And here we have exhibit [x] that clearly shows infringing code in Linux."
Stallman: "That's BSD code. It worked for a while, but someone else came up with a much better algorithm. That code hasn't been in GNU/Linux for quite some time."
SCO lawyer (clears his throat in embarrassment): "Moving on to exhibit [x], here is a flagrant example of more infringement."
Stallman: "I wrote that code myself in the early nineties. I know that for a fact because you didn't even bother removing my copyright notice."
(the courtroom comes alive in murmurs from the spectators, requiring the judge to silence the room)
The SCO lawyer finishes with Stallman and calls Torvalds:
SCO lawyer: "Exhibit [x] shows a Caldera copyright. It also shows that you personally modified it and included the code in Linux. We've got you now, you Finnish smartass!"
Torvalds: "Your own exhibit [y] shows that Caldera released the original code into the public domain on many different occasions. I originally tried retrofitting it into Linux, and it stayed for a few revisions, but it was so badly written that I was compelled to rip it out. It was replaced by a far superior version written by an Italian contributor on his 12th birthday."
(the courtroom spectators start to giggle)
SCO lawyer: "Moving on to our crown jewels, we see that the core of SCO Unix is nearly line-by-line identical to the core of Linux. Try explaining that one, hotshot."
Torvalds: "Hey! That's MY code! Rather, it's a very early and buggy version of my code. It looks very similar to Linux 0.2. Come on, guys. If you're gonna steal from Linux, at least steal the good stuff. No wonder SCO Unix sucks so bad."
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Mmm, a condescending European. How novel.