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SCO Ordered to Produce Evidence
harmless_mammal and others wrote in with news from the SCO-IBM hearing in Utah today - apparently the judge has ordered SCO to respond to IBM's discovery requests within 30 days. IBM is asking SCO to tell IBM precisely what code it is alleging is infringing, and to date SCO has failed to show any evidence whatsoever. Some reports from the hearing are at Groklaw, which is already slow under the load. If SCO continues to fail to produce the evidence they've claimed they have, the judge will likely be very displeased, perhaps dismissing the lawsuit entirely.
We can end all this SCO crap. Though I get the feeling that they've already gotten what they want...
LOAD "SIG",8,1
The judge could, indeed, dismiss the case if SCO refuses to comply, but that is an extreme remedy that is seldom used. I think SCO will either give the information (although probably not with "specificity") or else dismiss the suit on its own. As Michael's pithy tag-line says, this is a classic case of put-up-or-shut-up, and I (like most /.ers) doubt there is much of anything to "put-up."
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
IN reality, SCO will produce something, no matter how B.S. it is.
But it'd be super cool for them to produce nothing and have the judge fine them, and then KICK THEM IN THE NUTS. Yeah, that'd be sweet.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Hopefully the judge will order SCO to pay for the courts' time in filing such a meritless suit, a practice I believe our entire tort system should follow.
I don't like Linux, but having choice is better than not having it. I hope SCO is wrong and the case is dismissed.
Judge granted both IBM motions to compel, gave SCO thirty days to comply 'with specificity' and suspended further discovery
The same brute power of the Open Source movement is at work with this lawsuit as well. Should the code ever become public, you can be assured that the source of the source will be sourced faster than you can say...uh...'source'.
I'm looking forward to seeing how Darl and Co. spin this one!
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that they'll produce some of the same public domain type code we saw in the SCOforums to the judge, then claim that if it was stolen from their System V code or is a matter of fact for a jury to decide...
I know that I for one do NOT want this case dismissed. I would like to see it finished out for the future of Linux and the GPL. Let's put all this rubbish to bed. If this thing goes to court and SCO losses, then Linux and the GPL will be that much stronger. Less likely to be attacked down the road.
SCO is knowingly making false and misleading statements which negatively impact IBM, RedHat, etc. Furthermore they are representing themselves to linux-using businesses as owners of Linux IP and demanding license fees. This is all not just unlikely to succeed, but in fact illegal. It's fraud. If prosecutors want to deal with it, Sontag, McBride, etc could see themselves facing not just civil actions which could be ameliorated by resignation and/or bankruptcy, but criminal actions. And I hope they do. They represent a destructive force, they are theives, and I hope they suffer the consequences.
Great... so instead of posting a mirror, they make ABSOLUTELY SURE that Groklaw melts down.
I'm sorry, guys, but I really think this is crappy. You cry about how it's hard to mirror stuff, because it would require *gasp* permission. So instead of taking a little extra time, particularly when you know that the remote server ALREADY can't handle the load, you aim tens of thousands of hits at them.
I'm sure this isn't the intention, but it is essentially a deliberate DoS.
Enough excuses, already.... the prior permission thing just doesn't work anymore. Google mirrors practically EVERYTHING and they don't have specific permission. You can live by the same rules they do.
At the VERY least, in cases where the server is already obviously choking, post a synopsis without a link.
"Each side has spent bucketloads of money and all the judge could come up with so far is 'Shit or get off the pot.'"
In all likelihood, the lawyers that IBM uses are on retainer, and this hasn't really cost IBM much for legal fees. Thing is, this smear campaign has been damaging enough that once this is all said and done, IBM will be able to add libel and slander to it's complaints against Darl and his other brother Darl. All that they'd have to supply is proof of lost business or delayed business from people cancelling orders citing the SCO fiasco, and even if they're just delayed orders, IBM is a large enough company that months of inflation alone might be enough to show lost revenue.
The bitchslapping of Caldera is something that I'm looking forward to.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
.. than the judge simply throwing the case out. Let's hope he orders SCO to pay IBM's legal fees, forces SCO to require court clearance to sue anyone else, and orders/suggests an inquiry into SCOs stock price manipulation in addition to throwing out the case.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Even IF the SCO crime syndicate is thrown out of court, they will continue to "plead their case" in the media like they've been doing. They've already got a few trained seals slapping their fins on command in the media (like Didio) in their favour.
SCO needs a MAJOR smackdown if we're ever going to shut them up good.
1. Detailed migration plan and tools to ease transition from SCO UnixWare to Linux. This includes researching companies that will do his service. A paper showing hard numbers on the cost savings and benefit of migrating away from SCO Unixware.
2. Create a collection of testimonials from former SCO customers who has successfully migrated away from SCO products.
3. Extensive benchmark showing inferiority of SCO Unixware.
4. Feature comparison between SCO Unixware and Linux.
5. Create a list of things Linux can do that SCO products cannot do.
6. List of hardware that Linux supports which SCO products do not.
7. Create a list of companies using SCO product and educate these companies about findings from 1 - 4.
8. Urge Free Software and Open Source developers to drop support for SCO Unixware across all softwares being developed. GNU Software (GCC, Emacs, libraries, autotools, base utils), Samba, Apache, OpenSSL, OpenOffice, XFree86, Gnome, KDE, etc.
9. Dissemination of information regarding insider trading of SCOX stock. Collection of detailed information on who is selling how much shares and when.
10. Analysis of all SEC filings by SCO especially that part about disclosure of all SCO's competitors and it's liability with investing money in SCO.
11. Create a collection documents debunking every single press releases, interviews and official statement made by SCO officials. Dissection of every sentence ever came out of Darl McBride's mouth clearly citing fallacies, misinformation, and contradictions.
12. Create a list of all patents held by SCO and then systematically try to disprove the validity of those patents by citing prior art.
13. Start a letter writing campaign to Wall Street analysts of all the findings from above. (There has to be Linux users who has connection to Wall Street folks.)
Any thought?
But they're claiming its in the linux source.. so technically its already public
Which would mean they are no longer trade secrets, and therefore the judge should not seal them.
I do believe you are incorrect. Certainly court proceedings and processes vary by state and municipality, but hearings determine whether or not a complaint (a law suit) should go to trial. If the judge holding the hearings does not send it to trial, that's what they call a dismissal.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
...it might have something to do with the fact that, for the first time since this whole ugly debacle began in March, SCO had to get up in front of a judge and make its case, instead of trying it in the (clueless financial) media.
/. to cover it.
Man, the SCO-story whiners are starting to bug me as much as the JonKatz whiners did, before I removed him from my story preferences two years ago.
Again, if everyone is so pissed off about the SCO coverage, uncheck the "Caldera" topic in your Slashdot preferences and they'll go away (taking your much-vaunted eyeball impressions with them, for the tinfoil hats who think Slashdot is only flogging this case to get hits).
But this case is arguably more important to the Free/Open Source Software community than the Microsoft antitrust trial was, and as long as the suit progresses, and SCO shouts blatant lies about Open Source software, its advocates, and the GPL, expect
Jay (=
Really now, what is there here for IBM to buy?
Is there any technology that is not already available to IBM?
No.
Should IBM buy SCO to shut them up?
No.
If IBM were willing to spend any amount on SCO, it would be as a warning to tell the world not to try a similar form of extertion.
The great is, the judge ordered "specificity." There can't be any vague crap claims. IBM gets to see, specifically, all this great evidence SCO has been hyping all these months.
This is the equivalent of put-up-or-shut-up. FINALLY, is all I've gotta say. A little faith in the justice system has been restored. I was thinking this would be dragged out for years.
"Sufferin' succotash."
IBM's case was dropped. No Findings of Fact, no Findings of Law, and no Remedy.
Microsoft has a Findings of Fact (They are effectively a Monopoly and they used the position to leverage themselves into another market and crush a competitor...), they have a Findings of Law (Microsoft is guilty of violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act...), and they have a Remedy that has been accepted by half of the States involved in the case and the DOJ.
I'd say that it's a piss-poor comparison to what IBM did in their Anti-Trust suit.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Since SCO is already deep in grey legal territory, it's a small step to just toss *all* and *any* code IBM will release in Discovery to a safe Russian, or Chinese FTP site, and have it aired out like laundry IBM refuses to show any code whatsoever because the IBM code is extremely valuable.
The problem with this is that unlike System V itself (for a while you could download the entire Solaris source tree under conditions similar to the Java source license, ie restrictive but by no means a full NDA), IBM's Unix source code is very tightly held, even within IBM itself. If it became widely available on pirate sites within a few weeks of IBM turning it over to SCO's lawyers, there would be little doubt as to where it came from, and it would not bode well for SCO, although admittedly they could try to blame it on IBM and argue that it shows further proof of IBM's lack of respect for their contracts.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
I feel much more comfortable knowing whether the GPL is upheld or not, rather than leaving it in limbo.
But I believe it will be upheld. I've been following some of the articles by Mogden and Lessig - and they make clear and sensible arguments why GPL is valid. You write code, or a book. Its yours. Your property. Copyright law says its yours, and no one can monkey with it without your permission. GPL grants other people that permission to monkey with it as long as they agree to the conditions laid out. In a nutshell, that's all there is to it. GPL will be upheld.
If GPL is NOT upheld, it will have dramatic ramifications as to what you can and cannot do with your own property - hah - I'd like to see a judge/jury regulate the rights of ownership!