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

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?

[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.

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 :-)

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.

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!