SCOrched Earth

mm0mm writes "Just hours after we read Darl's open letter on copyrights, Groklaw has another breaking update on SCO up on their website. SCO's Reply Memorandum of Law in Support of its Motion to Compel Discovery is now available. (original document here) The memorandum requests court to order IBM, the defendant, to provide evidence and support their case against ....IBM. :D When I was young, it was the plaintiff who was responsible for preparing enough evidence to present to the court, but in Darl's world, with army of lawyers who will be given 20% of the proceeds from the settlement or of 'a sale of SCO during the pendancy of litigation', apparently rules are different." Lawrence Lessig has a great piece reviewing Darl's nonsensical letter.

Comments

Online mentions in IBM filing

[rkhalloran]

Kinda cool to see a reference to a Groklaw URL in IBM's filing. At least ONE of the legal teams knows where to look.

SCO's team, on the other hand, probably starts chewing the rug everytime there's an update...

Re:Online mentions in IBM filing

[gmack]

Because the moment they offer that it makes the smaller shops an easy pawn for SCO. They could just sue one of the smaller shops and force IBM to either divert resources or risk them getting a less competant legal staff and having to pay a settlement.

As for your tin foil hat theory INAL but if IBM were to do what you say and secretly settle with SCO then anyone forced to fork out a licence fee would have to take a look at the company that put the code there to retreive their damages. HP would probably get the damages etc right back from IBM in court.

IMO their behavior amounts to a bit of short term pain for the long term gain of reminding people why no one in their right mind sues IBM.

And hay.. if this finally gets the GPL court tested the rest of us may come out winners as well as it will remove a rather popular target to throw FUD at.

Soon to be decided

[x-router]

They are in court at this moment sorting this out.

Hopefully the judge will take one look at this this and ask SCO exactly why they arn't prepared to say what they have on IBM.

Darl gets his ass kicked.

[rice_burners_suck]

Darl McBride: The Most Dangerous Man in the Technology Industry(1). There was an article in the Nov. 24, 2003 issue of InformationWeek.

Here is my favorite quote from that article:

But McBride, a self-described cowboy, isn't about to back down. He once had his administrative assistant return the call of someone who challenged McBride to a fight--to get a time and place. "We have developed thick skin," he says.

My comments on that quote: I'd be willing to bet that whoever challenged Darl to a fight would have actually done it, but Darl, upon finding out that he was about to get his ass kicked, chickened out.

What do you think?

(1) These were some of the words off the magazine's cover. The entire title is: "Is SCO Group's Darl McBride THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN in the technology industry? With a lawsuit imminent, Linux users are about to find out.

--
Reference: "You May Be Next" by John Foley, InformationWeek, Nov 24. 2003, pp 20-22.

$CO sux0rz!! Linux r00lz!!

Re:SCOdot

[mattgreen]

I've been a member for a long time, and the content seems to be degenerating into a groupthink zealot factory with its own set of dogmas and censors.

Truer words haven't been spoken. Every slightest rant (no matter how small or insignificant the speaker is) against (insert holy technology here) is put on the front page for all to read and publically decry, but then every move by (insert evil entity here) is also posted so we can all rehash the same arguments again and again and complain that (far superior technology) is not number one.

Anyone know of a more balanced news site? I'm getting tired of reading about how Open Source will change the world every day and why I should convert my manager.

Request SCO source

[Camel Pilot]

SCO has requested "all versions or iterations of AIX". Why can't IBM request all recent versions or iterations of SCO products to look for inclusion of GPL code? There has been some evidence that such inclusions or copying has occurred.

Re:SCOdot

[h00pla]

I've been a member for a long time, and the content seems to be degenerating into a groupthink zealot factory with its own set of dogmas and censors.

I don't think this is the fundemental problem. This case needs to be talked about rationally and I think Groklaw (and in a way Slashdot) are providing a forum for this.

The problem to me is that SCO is obviously using the publicity to their advantage, both bad and good. Every time SCO is mentioned in the press, for good or ill, their stock starts climbing. And that's clearly what they are after. Everybody, including McBride, Yarro and their minions know the case is a fraud, but while the stock keeps climbing, it doesn't matter to them.

What we need to avoid is to talk about SCO just for the "tabloid" value inside the Linux community. You may have a point that some of this discussion borders on that, but as long as we keep to the purpose of revealing SCO's true intentions, then talking about SCO here is a good thing.

SCO seems uneducated about IP rights

[fw3]

From the Lessig commentary: If he chooses to give his property away, that does not make it any less a property right. If he chooses to sell it for $1,000,000, that doesn't make it any less a property right. And if he chooses to license it on the condition that source code be made free, that doesn't make it any less a property right.

Precedent: Rudolf Diesel patented the Diesel cycle engine in 1898. One of the reasons that the far less efficent Otto cycle (4-stroke gasoline) engine was/is more widely deployed is that Diesel would only license his patent for what he considered 'best use', requiring that Diesel engines must inject fuel continuously into the combustion chamber thoughout the combustion/power stroke.

This dictated a much lower power:weight ratio in early Diesel engines, which is appropriate to stationary power genaration but represented a distinct disadvantage for traction-power and automotive use.

Diesel's approach to license was probably not the most lucrative either for himself or society at large, however the *property right* granted by patent (and copyright) law let him make that determination.

To my mind whether commercial EULA, BSD, GPL, Artistic, all licenses fundamentally serve the purpose of allowing the *Author* a degree of control over the application and distribution of his/her work.

This is also how we get an OSS environment where two different Authors (say Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman) have the right to apply the same license (GPL) according to their own wishes.

Process rights are a good thing. SCO's making the best case it can but I really think it's going to backfire on them. Their rhetoric really doesn't stand up to analysis.

Pamela Jones and GROKLAW

[trick-knee]

I'd like to point out that the work that Pamela Jones & Co. at GROKLAW is clearly of some real use to IBM in this case. another poster has already mentioned that IBM has specifically cited a transcription GROKLAW produced in their recent filing.

I would also like to remind others that there's a little paypal donation button on the front page of GROKLAW, as mauryisland pointed out elsewhere.

click that button. give her a holiday bonus, just enough to make it hurt you a tiny little bit. and let's see just how robust PayPal's servers are.

Enough already!

[Frodo420024]

Instead of the (twice-)daily SCO item, isn't it time to have an 'SCO vs. IBM' box that carries the big load of SCO messages instead of posting everything to the main page. Or even a GrokLaw one, that's where you read 90% of the stuff anyway.

Then post to the main page when there's something really big coming, and otherwise let everyone else go on with the usual kernel rumours, Ogg design wins, etc. etc.

I enjoy GrokLaw a lot, and I'm (trying to) read /. for more general news items.

[Rant off :]

Re:That's how discovery works in litigation

[Abcd1234]

This is a non-issue. If IBM were forced to release trade-secret material during discovery, those court documents may very well be sealed at the end of the trial (or, at least, that material may be excised). Moreover, if SCO tried to leverage trade-secret material after the fact, IBM could take them to court for trade secret violations.

So, no worries... the legal system has considered these things. :)

Re:That's how discovery works in litigation

[rkhalloran]

That's one of the ludicrous things in this case: the trade-secret laws say once it's out in the open, it's no longer a trade secret. You can sue for damages for revealing it, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle. But SCO, after offering source for years, is now trying to claim trade-secret protection on this as-yet-undislosed code.

Groklaw pointed out the other day that for years, the AT&T Unix code had *NO* copyright notices for just this reason - they were trying to protect it as trade secret. It was only after the breakup when they were trying to 'marketize' it that the "THIS IS UNPUBLISHED SOURCE CODE OF AT&T" comment blocks went in.