SCO Code to be Protected in Closed Court

An anonymous reader writes "SCO public relations director Blake Stowell today said that the company had secured permission to present the code alleged to have found its way into Linux to a closed court. Once again SCO is refusing to tell Linux users just what code they claim is infringing on their IP rights, while still threatening to sue corporations running Linux."

Comments

Scepticism is still called for

[GnrlFajita]

There is a discussion about this on Groklaw as well.

The question, of course, is whether the claim is true or not -- it is coming from SCO, after all. There's a good chance it could be true, though, because a big part of SCO's claim is for trade secret violations -- which require the alleged secret to, well, remain secret (disclosure does not effect copyright, but it does trade secrets). It only makes sense for them to seek a protective order, and it does not really effect the case from the judge's and lawyers' standpoint. But that doesn't make it suck any less for the rest of us who want to see the code for ourselves.

Re:This protects the court

[pjrc]

Judge Wells seems to have shown some contempt directed at SCO. She specifically commented about their providing the SysV code to IBM in a useless printed paper format. When Kevin explained that they knew IBM did something wrong based on IBM's public statements (and therefore needed all the code to figure out exactly what), she replied that IBM wasn't the only party making statements to the press!

SCO FUDizing the pro-IBM protective order

[FreeUser]

groklaw has an excellent write up of this. To wit

• No new motions have been made since SCO's defeat in the last hearing
  
• No new hearings have been scheduled or held
  
• No new orders have been issued by the court
  
• The existing protective order was mutually drafted and agreed upon by IBM, the court, and SCO.
  
• It protects trade secrets, but not "code" per se.
  
• Showing that any code distributed by SCO as a part of GNU/Linux is not a trade secret is trivial to do, and we can expect IBM to do so quite quickly
  
• Non-trade secrets have no such protection, and will be available in open court documents
  

In other words, this is typical SCO FUD and misrepresentation of the facts, and in this case, facts that are already old and well known to those following the case. SCO has not won any victory here; quite the contrary. The alleged code (if it exists at all) will almost certainly be available after some very standard legal procedures.

There is truly nothing to see here; zdnet got suckered by a SCO press release. Regrettable, as they should have known better by now, but aside from allowing Darl et. al. to defraud some day traders and invenstors for another few days, it really doesn't amount to anything at all.

These are the people behind the actions.

[cgenman]

The executive board of SCO consists of:

Darl C. McBride
Chris Sontag
Robert K. Bench
Reg Broughton
Sean Wilson
Larry Gasparro
Jeff Hunsaker
Ralph J. Yarro III
Steve Cakebread
Edward E. Iacobucci
R. Duff Thompson
Darcy Mott
K. Fred Skousen
Thomas P. Raimondi, Jr

If you see any of these people in years following the implosion of SCO, do not give them a job. Do not enter into contracts with them. Do not loan them your car. They have proven themselves incapable of planning for the future of a company and incapable of behaving like mature partners in the sphere of business. At a time when SCO desperately needs to be investing in research and development, these people are plunging the company into bankruptcy. They're taking a tremendous gamble with their shareholders money, a gamble which even if successful would only mean residuals on existing Linux implementations in the US, and a painful migration for everyone else to OpenBSD. They're betting everyone else's money on a long shot, and should be held accountable for their irresponsible actions.

Once again, those names are

Darl C. McBride
Chris Sontag
Robert K. Bench
Reg Broughton
Sean Wilson
Larry Gasparro
Jeff Hunsaker
Ralph J. Yarro III
Steve Cakebread
Edward E. Iacobucci
R. Duff Thompson
Darcy Mott
K. Fred Skousen
Thomas P. Raimondi, Jr

You've bought SCO's bait-and-switch

[Theatetus]

SCO might have a case IF they could show that SCO showed IBM the trade secrets SCO was using under contract and that IBM then released those to Linux.

Ah, another victim of SCO's dishonesty.

Look back over the case that SCO filed against IBM. SCO is not claiming that IBM ripped off code SCO wrote or already owned.

I want to say that again because it's the crux of SCO's lies: SCO is not claiming that IBM ripped off code that SCO wrote or already owned.

What SCO is claiming is that code that IBM wrote for SCO was also included in Linux, allegedly contrary to IBM's license.

Essentially, SCO is claiming IBM had a "no compete" clause somewhere in that license. I don't know if they did or not. Even if they did, I don't know if they contributed code to Linux in contravention of the clause.

But please let's not let SCO distort the question of fact: they have never claimed that pre-existing code owned by SCO was added to Linux. They have claimed that code was simultaneously added to Linux and (I think; somebody correct me here) AIX in violation of IBM's license with SCO.

Re:Except that

[CanadaDave]

You conveniently left out this sentence:

"The creator of Freenet, Ian Clarke, has cast doubt on whether Winny uses Freenet's full identity-cloaking features or its cryptography, according to a report in New Scientist."