OSDL Pays For Linus Torvalds' SCO Defense

geoff313 writes " For all of you who might be worried about what financial consequences Linus Torvalds might have to endure as a result of being subpoenaed by SCO, fear not: the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) will pay for its law firm to represent him. the OSDL, who are Torvalds' employer, will announce on Friday that the "OSDL has agreed to fund legal representation for Torvalds and any other employees of the lab who may become involved in the litigation." Just in case you didn't you didn't know, the OSDL is funded by a variety of corporations including (but not limitied to) IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Cisco, Computer Associates, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Nokia. "

Comments

you know

[The Terrorists]

maybe all you people spending all your time posting should put money where mouths are? taking it from torvalds firm simply robs peter to pay paul and equally weakens open source movement. Contribute your money, as if it were code.

Do you need a lawyer?

[herrvinny]

Do you really need a lawyer for a subpoena? Even if Linus was a US citizen, he's not being investigated or anything. Just answer a few stupid questions from SCO, and you're scot free.

Re:Do you need a lawyer?

[dipipanone]

Jesus, if Darl McBride is on crack, some of these retarded Slashdot moderators must be smoking an eightball an hour. This isn't a troll at all, but a legitimate question, and in a less high-profile case, the chances are that someone in Linus's position wouldn't need legal representation. Because of SCO's past behaviour though, and their tendency to use the courts to bully, to intimidate and to try and ramp up their stocks, Linus almost certainly *does* need a lawyer in this instance -- and he needs his own lawyers, rather than just IBM's lawyers, because he needs to preserve his independence, rather than giving SCO the opportunity to say 'Look, there's a big conspiracy going on between Linus and Stallman and IBM. Chewbacca lives on Endor. You must convict, you must convict.' The story headline is somewhat clueless though. Nobody is funding Linus's 'defence', because Linus hasn't actually been accused of anything.

Re:Do you need a lawyer?

[sfprairie]

Yes, you need a lawyer. If you receive a subpoena, you should let a lawyer handle it. It takes a rat to talk to a rat. If you structure your answer poorly, it will come back to bite you.

Re:Do you need a lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, this subpoena is a demand from SCO that Linus do some things, which probably include (a) sending in a stack of documents and/or (b) showing up to testify. It's a no-brainer that SCO probably demanded way more than they're entitled to.

So, Linus can either comply, flip SCO the bird/refuse, or do some combination of these.

What's a lawyer good for? Answer: the lawyer will know what demands Linus can flip the bird to and expect a judge to back him up on later. The lawyer will also know what things will cause the judge to grab Linus by that finger and spin him around so fast that he'll feel like Gandalf visiting Orthanc in Peter Jackson's LotR:FotR.

SCO's lawyer is trying to get SCO what it wants. Linus should have a lawyer there to make sure SCO gets what Linus wants.

YIAALBIANYL
GYOGDL--YPNO
--
Diplomacy = the art of letting other people have your way.
(Yes, I am a lawyer, but I am not YOUR lawyer. Get your own gosh darned lawyer -- you probably need one.)

Re:Do you need a lawyer?

[dipipanone]

the system appears designed to make sure that even good moderators mod things inappropriately - by accident

Oh, OK. Thanks for reminding me about this.

Actually, I've been caught by that 'feature' in the past myself. I'd modded one comment on the page, but somehow, the scroll wheel on my mouse managed to switch focus from the scroll bar to one of the drop down boxes and I accidentally randomly moderate a post that I had no desire to make any judgements about. As a result, when I clicked 'moderate', a random post got a random moderation from me.

That could also explain the many seemingly arbitrary mods up, as well as the mods down.

Re:It gladdens the heart

[braindigitalis]

I wonder if such big fish will be just as interested in funding the other people who have been involved in this such as Stallman etc...

Subpoenas are for witnesses

[Oliver Klozoff]

I thought Linus was being subpoenaed. A subpoena is issued to force a witness to testify; why would Linus need to be defended against this?

Can we contribute?

[fferreres]

I know, our contributions wouldn't make a monetary difference, but they would surely make us feel nice, along with putting some pressure on SCO :-)

google for the lazy

[mekkab]

And here you go

See? was that so hard?

Re:Yet more SCO fodder

[jrumney]

The lawsuit was bold, alleging trademark infringement on a hot market segment, Linux.

I think this statement from Tom Taulli's article pretty much sums up what the average investor can make out what this lawsuit is about. There is no genuine reason for SCO to be suing IBM, so they make up their own (wrong) speculation.

INAL but .....

[Usagi_yo]

If Linus is being subpoened by SCO and Linus isn't a named defendent, isn't SCO responsible for his travel and time off expenses?

While it's entirely Linus's option to have legal representation, shouldn't SCO have to foot the bill for that too? In essence SCO is subpoening Linus as an expert witness.

Just guessing how SCO is going to spin it...

[Kjella]

I'm guessing that SCO will try to spin it that he and IBM somehow cooperated, or at least he was aware or should have been aware or could have been aware, that IBM was "illegally" putting code into Linux. At best, they'll spin it as someone who can't properly control what's in Linux.

Anything Linux answers to those FUD-fishing questions will have great importance, not so much for the merits of the case but for Linus and Linux's reputation as well as SCOs FUD campaign. That's why he should have a lawyer.

Kjella

Re:Does he have to go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask any Mexican immigrant in Arizona, California, or Texas: If you have kids that were born in the US, you're practically guaranteed not to get deported. Those kids are quite the ticket. Of course if you want to go back to your home country, and your kids aren't citizens there, it can get pretty complicated.

I consider Scandinavia as something of an ideal. A realistic ideal, culturally, socially, geographically, and politically, not some kind of utopia. It never has quite added up that someone would move FROM Sweden, Denmark, Finland, TO the US. I can see maybe moving to Bavaria or the Netherlands or something. Or maybe going to Europe because there are no jobs in Iceland or Norway, or something. But I simply can't fathom why anyone would go FROM a free country with a good culture and society, TO the US, even if it is California. It just doesn't make sense.

Linus' lawyers will be busy.

[LightSail]

Linus will get the opportunity to allege copyright infringement in deposition. In SCO's reality the GPL is invalid, so they are infringing on Linus' copyrights or in the real world, by issuing a separate license for any part of Linux, SCO voids the use of the GPL thus infringing on Linus' copyrights. It's best to have a lawyer available in that circumstance. One who can explain copyright law to SCO's attorneys, as they seem to have some difficulties in that area.

Re:Won't SCO ultimately be the one that pays for h

[WCMI92]

"defense? The idea that OSDL or anyone else has to pay to defend themselves against a company that's gasping for air with some wild claims is wrong. What costs can be recovered once SCO is shown to be insignificant and wrong? All attorney's fees, travel fees, dining, babysitting, lost wages??"

There needs to be a "loser pays" provision added to civil lawsuit law. If the loser is the initiator, and is a corporation (individuals should be exempt) they should have to pay ALL such legal expenses.

If the legal action causes the corporation to go bankrupt, persons whom the corp owes legal expenses go to the front of the line, ahead of all other creditors when it comes to claims against assets.

This little poison pill might discourage what Scaldera is doing right now. It also encourages officers, execs, and employees, who's wages, benefits, etc would fall in line BEHIND these claims to discourage such practice.

Re:SCO's side of the story

[WhiteWolf666]

No, no they don't.

SCO does not have genuine IP claims on code in Linux.

Not one iota.

Why do I say that?

I have no evidence to suggest that it is try, except SCO's word on it.

Everyone, and their mother, has asked SCO to reveal the evidence.

IBM is getting sued over it, and SCO will not even describe the infringement.

Beyond that, Caldera distributed the code under the GPL.

Read Groklaw, and you'll feel the same way about it.

If SCO had actual evidence of infringement, they would play it up big time.

Why? Because they would be able to easily drive IBM to settle---IBM has no business being in bullheaded lawsuits, they would license any IP that was actually stolen.

Remember, IBM has full access to ALL of SCO's source tree, and IBM has full access to AIX's source, and the Linux source.

IBM already knows what is in all three source trees.

As far as I am concered, SCO is not entitiled to have their side of the argument heard, because they are doing their best to spew BullShit(TM) in order to drive up their stock price.

If SCO want's their side of the argument to be heard, they need to put up, or shutup.....

Show us some code, SCO---Or die!