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

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.

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.

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. :)