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More Damning SCO Evidence At Groklaw
An anonymous reader writes "There's a very interesting story up at Groklaw right now. PJ reports on new evidence that Chris Hellwig, a SCO employee, contributed code to SMP, XFS, and JFS and did so with the knowledge of his supervisor." Groklaw is thorough, and this is another good example of just quite how thorough.
If it is possible to prove conspiracy, it SCO will be left without any recourse in regard to its so called "intellectual property," which Novell still owns... Also, if conspiracy is proven, SCO, and its board, will face criminal, as well as civil penalties.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Look here and enjoy SCO's own word on how they supported and contributef to Linux. Year 2000 is the best.
Quote from May 2000
A corporate sponsor of Linux International, SCO has always supported open standards, UNIX Systems and server-based technologies and solutions that benefit business computing. Our engineers have continuously participated in the Open Source movement, providing source code such as lxrun, and the OpenSAR kernel monitoring utility.
Compare this to the legal filing they made here a few days ago telling the Judge that they never contributed Code.
Help fight continental drift.
Her efforts in putting together this site, with the participation of so many knowledgeable contributers is fascinating, and I'm sure it's valuable to those who oppose SCO's legal antics. I find the site to be generally "wide and deep" (thanks, Darl), and I'll wager that the people at SCO take very little humor from it. I wonder if the legal teams at IBM and Red Hat find it interesting? It's seems that there's a huge amount of free legal and technical research being undertaken.
Pamala Jones has my early vote for "Linux Booster of the Year for 2003".
how long does SCO intend to bang its head against this particular wall?
... to me this seems like an underhanded attempt to knock the wind out of our sails, regardless of whether or not our ship sinks. fortunately the open source movement does not seem to attract developers that quit at the first sign of difficulty, so i am optimistic that sco will fail even in this capacity.
... i was raised on a farm ... i rode plenty of horses in my day, let me tell you ... and the one thing i learned from shucking corn and milking cows was ALWAYS to claim that the other guy's ranch was really MY ranch, even though the other guy built his ranch all by himself from the ground up and never asked me for any help."
i suppose this does pose a threat to linux in terms of leaving a bad taste in vendors' mouths concerning but there really is absolutely no way SCO is going to shut us down.
even if SCO gives linux and gnu somewhat of a bad reputation, we already have major players in the industry who are committed to supporting linux (ibm, novell, sun). and by the time all of this bullshit blows over, linux will be even more robust and marketable, and our detractors will soon find themselves knocking down our doors once again to profit from our technology.
really the only thing we have to fear from the whole sco debacle is discouragement
but really the most appalling thing about the situation is sco's utter lack of common sense; it makes me wonder how they thought they were going to win in the first place (see below). how do they expect their argument to hold up in court when they STILL HAVE NOT YET PRODUCED ANY HARD EVIDENCE?!?
darl mcbride: "well
SCO, if you are reading this, pack your bags, go home. to quote eddie murphy (quoting richard pryor): "have a coke and a smile and shut the fuck up."
we all get the point that you don't like us, but unless you are going to actually do something about it, piss off.
There's a legal premise that would cover that kind of behavior: estoppel. Certain behavior on your part can bar you from later claiming damage in a civil suit. For example, if I told you it was okay to eat my lunch, I could not later sue you for improper consumption of my sandwich.
To the extent that an agent of The SCO Group helped develop and promote these technologies, The SCO Group is barred from making claims against others on that basis. There are lots of other defenses available, and other forms of estoppel than simple promissory estoppel (when you say something is acceptable, either explicitly or implicitly), but the above would apply to many defendants at once.
This has been known for quite a while, and to be honest it doesn't change that much. SCO will simply claim they had no idea where this code originated for at the time and so never sanctioned its official distribution. Their entire case is ridiculous, however it would be ridiculous even if they hadn't ever distributed linux or contributed to the kernel.
I'll dig up the old standby: RTFA. Better yet, RTFPTLTFTA, otherwise known as "read the f'ing post that links to the f'ing article", as it pretty well spells out the difference between what Groklaw discovered and what's been "known for quite a while" - namely that SCO willfully and knowingly not only distributed but also contributed to specific features of the kernel that they specifically claimed never to have touched in their legal filings. As far as I know, this is completely new - and it's not just an allegation, it's proved in the linked article.
In other words, they both modified and distributed the specific code they are claiming to now have been stolen from them and they did it under the GPL. This code did not get "misappropriated" from SCO's Unix into Linux, this code was put into Linux by SCO. This is huge.
IANAL, but it would seem to me that this blows pretty much their entire case out of the water in one fell swoop. This renders any contractual issues (the basis of their case against IBM) moot and leaves them only one fallback - that the GPL is invalid and is trumped by their own copyright. Of course, this is something they've also been saying now for a few months (not since the beginning of their case, though - I think they probably realized their case against IBM was flimsy at best a while back), but to say this news is "old" or doesn't affect their legal standing seems to be a misunderstanding of the facts.
If these are facts (and it seems Groklaw has done their homework to me), then SCO will get laughed out of court on day one. They did something, they lied about it, then they filed a lawsuit based on that lie... and now they've been caught.
Without a kernel debugger, developing an SMP kernel becomes increasingly difficult. Register at Groklaw, or wait till the article is published for all the nitty-gritty details.
Any judge who believes a company that suddenly claims ignorance after years of marketing Linux under the GPL, unlimited access to Linux source-code, and now proof of Linux code submissions, should have his financials investigated just to be sure his rulings don't return a profit.
In this I wholeheartedly agree. Not to mention that if this goes to court, which it presumably eventually will, killing as much time as possible so the perps can liquidate as much of their holdings as they think the SEC will ignore.
I hope the judge explains the penalties for perjury very carefully to the members of both legal teams while stareing straight at the SCO side of the table. Including Darl McBride if he has what it takes to show up without dipping his face in liquid nitrogen to keep it straight while he testifies.
Bah, bunch of losers, and I'm damned if I can understand why the VC and market analyst people cannot see that. There must be some kind of a soundproof barrier between reality and the guys bidding this crap on the marketplace floor...
But like P. T. Barnum said, there is one born every minute.
Cheers, Gene