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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.
If this "evidence" is produced...will it become immediately public, or be only for the use of the lawyers and/or court?
If dismissal is rare, what is a more common sanction against a plaintiff in this case? Would the court fine the plaintiff, or dismiss certain parts of the case stemming from the unprovided information?
In this case, the lack of discovery seems to directly interfere with the defendant's ability to, well, defend, so I have been wondering how the case could be allowed to proceed without discovery.
This is the beginning of the end for SCO. They have 30 days to show the code and then they will die. They have no code. Even if, by some miracle, they did have code it would be removed, no matter what the effort.
Once this copyright thing is dead we just have to bone up on our patent law. That is next and is the real threat. Think of this as an easy warmup. We either need IBM to use its huge patent portfolio to protect OSS or we need to get the ridiculous laws changed. Note that an IBM defense just leaves the hole open for any two bit company with some backing to come up and make a fuss, the laws have to change.
There are miles to go before we sleep.
What's really bizarre is that apparently none of the high-priced lawyers from Boise & Co. even showed up at the hearing. SCO was represented by...
Darl McBride's brother.
WTH? Did DB finally realize his client was, um, fibbing to him and that he was filing a frivolous lawsuit?
The really telling thing is whether the upcoming copyright suit against a user comes from the Boies firm or from SCO directly. If the latter, we can figure that Boies has wised up and is inching away with his cash.
Some classmates and I in the PMST program at the University of Utah just completed a Business Fundementals course. As part of the course, we completed a semester long project that analyzed The SCO Group. We came to same conclusions that many analysts did, that if SCO wins this case, it will be huge for them. But no one can come close to saying for sure that they are going to win. Download the report here.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
If the recent RamBus vs Infineon case is to be viewed as a precedent this generally entitles the judge to dimiss a number of claims and instruct the jury to ignore specific evidence presneted by the plaintif. Basically, SCO will be still allowed to fight, but the judge will decide should it have a hand, a leg or even all of its tentacles tied behind their back to a nice big concrete block.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
IBM was extremely precise on what specificity means. By granting the motion, the judge also agreed to their definition of specificity. By bulshittin they will contempt the court and this is not a wise thing to do. Not that MSFT did not do that for several years for example.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I which case, SCO will say that it's not about direct copying, but "derivative works." At which point the old Novell, SCO, AT&T and IBM contracts get scrutinized, I guess.
Unless, of course, the judge decides that the disallowed portion is "derivative works" in which case SCO gets the enviable position of really trying to prove the GPL is unconstitutional.
Your scenario, however, is much more likely. Particularly given the claims to date.
IBM is also a very proud beast, and its honor has been besmirched by this case. I wouldn't be surprised to see IBM litigate SCO into a blood mess over this, just to prove a point.
The fun is actually just beginning, as Darl couldn't even convince his multimillion dollar legal team to show up for the judge. I think it was his brother who was making arguments, not Boies or even a Boies representative.
It looks like even the lawyers have left SCO for dead.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Against a legitimate plaintiff, that'd be the end of it.
This is SCO we're talking about. They make demonstrably false statements. Their press releases are full of self-contradictions. They haven't shown one whit of givashitness for the facts up to this point, what on earth makes you think they'll actually comply with a judge's order?
1. GPL has never been involved in a court case, so some buisnesses see it as unproven (nevermind that very very few eulas have either and most have been to extreme.)
2. What happens to the next piddling little company running out of money that may have something that they can BS into making it look like it's a big deal? This is another reason why IBM should squish them, so that they won't have to deal with it for quite a while. Litigation is expensive, and if you spend more on one case to prevent many others, then it does get cheaper in the long run, and IBM has *at times* been able to look to the long run.
3. Litigation is expensive, and SCO made IBM do most of the research already... does IBM's legal department want to look like they just wasted $$? In most businesses, that isn't a good thing for the department.
4. I know some people at IBM have got to be emotional over this. So throw back in the we are pissed at sco part. :)
5. If they win, given that IBM registers it's copyrights (please please tell me if I am wrong) it isn't just 150,000$ (if sco won, because sco didn't register the copyrights). The winnings could definately help defray some of the cost of Litigation, and if you were IBM would you object to twacking one of M$'s cronies, and getting some M$ funneled money?
True enough, but they may determine that the cost of litigating SCO into the ground is worth making it crystal clear that they don't put up with this kind of thing. A quick settlement, while not as expensive right now, wouldn't entirely close the book on 'is Linux a safe choice for my business?' Seeing as Linux is big business for IBM, they may decide to go for the easy kill now and avoid problems from someone else later...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
With Alan Meckler, the CEO of Jupitermedia. His company recently put on the CDXPO conference where Darl gave a keynote speech. I asked Alan if he had attended that keynote, and he said that he had.
I believe his quote was, "He's like a Nazi propagandist, trying to convince everyone that concentration camps are for the good of the country"
God Fucking Damnit
> If IBM doesn't think it's a good investment, IBM probably won't push it.
I completely agree, but it might be in IBM's best interest to discourage future lawsuits of this sort. I don't think they'd keep the countersuit out of revenge, I think they'd keep it so this sort of thing is less likely to happen in the future. I suppose it could be a double-edged sword if the GPL is ruled against, however. Even if the future lawsuit wasn't again them, they do have enough of a stake to want to prevent future FUD.
We don't need another SCO.
I started out thinking about all the ways that I could demolish his argument (not terribly hard), when the thought suddenly occurred to me that, in a sense, that was exactly what SCO wanted.
Let's use a little common sense on the whole SCO thing.
First off, toss out a couple of emotionally popular but rather unlikely theories:
1) Darl McBride is insane, in the medical, legally-incompetent sense of the word. If he was, the rest of SCO and the Canopy Group would have shut him down a long time ago. Similar reasoning applies for "unbelievably stupid", "totally ignorant" and similar epithets.
2) #1 is true, but for everybody in SCO and Canopy, not just Darl, which is why he's still there. Ok, c'mon. If you're that out of touch with reality, talk to your doctor about upping the dosage on the little green pills.
A common allegation is that Darl McBride is a greedy money-grubber with the morals of an advertising exec. This is probably true, but in America, at least, being greedy on behalf of your company is not only not frowned on, it is (somewhat) required by law. (There is a SEC regulation that requires all publicly-owned corporations to try and maximize the value of their stock. Since it says nothing about HOW that's to be done, the range of tactics is pretty wide. You won't find any American corporations saying "We gave away all our profits, 'cause we felt like being nice guys", though.)
SCO's basic strategy is obvious: Fire the shotgun everywhere possible, as often as possible, and see what sticks. I saw an article the other day that said the software business in 2004 was predicted to be about $230 billion. If SCO can get 1/10 of 1% of that, they'd be ecstatic.
Another characteristic that McBride has, he shares with lawyers, politicians, and most high-powered types in business: a thick skin. I very much doubt he has been bothered in the least by the various vilifications called down on him by his detractors.
I think he was a bit surprised at it when it first started, but since then, it's been more of a weapon in his arsenal than anything else. If he is not bothered by name-calling and accusations, but the other side (the open source community, in general terms) is, then the more furious the argument, the better his odds of being able to find a weak point and exploit it somehow. At the very least, he (and SCO) can point at all the ranters and ravers and claim "With enemies that act like THAT, doesn't it make sense that we're the ones in the right?" (Something along these lines may be what got the money out of Baystar.)
If you're caught up in a strong emotion, you're not entirely sane. If you're angry, all kinds of little things you would ordinarily blow off make you even angrier. If you're ecstatically happy, you can find a silver lining in a mushroom cloud.
The reason I brought up politicians, lawyers, and CEOs earlier is that they all have one thing in common. I called it a "thick skin" earlier. Another way to describe it is that they have the ability to climb out of their emotions and think rationally again about whatever the subject is. That ability is what gets them paid the big bucks.
So what I think SCO is doing with a lot of the more unbelievable claims they've made (like the attack on the GPL last night) is not to seriously convince anyone of that position, it's to stir up trouble. The more emotional the opposition gets, the better the odds that something, anything, will happen that he (they) can exploit. It goes with the shotgun approach: the more you get things stirred up, the more targets of opportunity there are.
Fortunately for IBM, they have good lawyers, who haven't been influenced in any way they shouldn't be by the public furor. They simply stuck to the facts and the law. My favorite element of what they've been saying is that it's mostly in plain English. When one side speaks English and the other sid
If you take a look at SCOX intra-day price movement over the last months you can see someone is "painting" the stock or propping the price up with carefully timed buy and sells at the open and close. SCOX tends to go down slightly overnight, bounce back right after open,maybe edge up a bit, then flat to down, if the stock is down enough someone dumps in a buy order in the last 30 minutes and since there are less sell orders at the end of the day the price bounces back due to "demand" for the stock. If I recall my MBA Finance class this is clearly illegal if done by the brokerage firms who own/sell SCOX, an individual could do it but they would have to own massive amounts of shares and have excellent market timing. It took 60K share today in the last hour to bring the price back to just below where it started, and the broader market was 1.5% on the NASDAQ. This stock must be on the radar screen of the SEC and they are just waiting to grab someone when the whole thing collapses.
I'm not a lawyer but I know a couple federal judges pretty well. They're fairly patient, up to the point they think someone is not being entirely forthcoming. For some reason they get a real chip on their shoulder about that. If the judges I know are any guide, this was a really stern warning. Made all the more ominous by the time factor. 30 days in a case of this scope is a message in itself.
If the intent is to stall, the SCO team should have planned to have something to turn in that will take time to analyze. Because if they don't have something pretty compelling ready in 30 days, they're in some deep shit. I wouldn't want to gamble on getting more time, either. Smart people would fold right here, so there's no fear of SCO doing that.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I did not know that SCO printed so many pages
and handed them to court; for I remeber
SCO complaining in court that they could
not provide evidence for *their* claims because
(seriously) the "evidence" are so many
and plentiful they
buy ink for the printer. I'm glad they found
the money.