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SCO Fails to Produce Evidence
BlueSteel writes "For those of you that need that daily SCO fix, Groklaw has the declaration of Ryan E. Tibbitts of SCO, stating why they haven't produced any evidence... and that they need recent AIX and Dynix/ptx code from IBM before they can comply."
is it the defendant's job to prosecute himself?
except this time a judge ordered them to do it with a hard deadline, and they didn't. Can't wait till the hearing on Jan 23, I'm going to fiddle as SCO burns....
You stole from me but I can't tell you what it was until I search your house.
- cnb
Oh man.. I wish I had mod points left. Nice work.
(Disclaimer: SCO is smoking crack. I believe none of what I am about to say...)
Actually, SCO has a point. They claim ownership of the code in UNIX derivatives, of which AIX and the rest are examples. The fact that SCO has never seen or handled that code in any way is irrelevant. It is perfectly possible that IBM has infringed on SCO's property by copying code that IBM wrote for AIX/others into Linux. In which case, the only copy that SCO currently has access to is the Linux copy. After all SCO didn't write the code. IBM did. SCO just owns the rights.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
#include
It's worse than that. In the 5 December hearing, the judge ruled that they can't ask for ANY of IBM's stuff until they provide answers to IBM.
Tibbets' declaration seems to say, "give us the stuff you said we can't have, and then we'll give you the stuff you told us we had to provide".
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Seems to me that RBC (and any other investors) have a decent lawsuit against SCO.
With a $3Billion (pinky to mouth) lawsuit at stake, the friggin' directors couldn't give up their holiday vacation to provide info that the Court specifically ordered them to? Now, IANAL and IANACPA, but that would seem to be a breach of fiduciary duty!
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Exactly.
The court should order SCO and IBM to both put their codes into blind escrow and then release the code from both to the legal team for each so that no funny business can go on =and= so that both sides have equal footing for making their cases. Same for any other participants who have been accused by SCO.
May not be standard procedure, but this is a rather odd case. It would definitely help both companies show to their customers that they are playing fair.
Additional code discovery could happen, but it should always be under view of the court.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
This makes it clear that SCO is not talking about old code. They aren't claiming that IBM put ancient SysV code into Linux. They're claiming that they own code that IBM wrote and they never saw (and don't have a copy of).
If they were saying that AT&T gave IBM the Unix source, and SCO inherited the Unix source, and IBM put the Unix source into Linux, then SCO would have a copy of the source of the infringement. If SCO doesn't have a copy, then that's a damn good sign that they never owned it.
Clearly their interpretation is that anything IBM ever wrote related to UNIX is covered by their new UNIX copyright.
Does George Lucas own the copyright to every Star Wars book ever published--say, the Timothy Zahn trilogy?
I can feel the flames coming. Please note that I do hate SCO as much as the rest of you, Darl McBride should burn with Hitler, etc, etc, etc....IANAL, etc, etc...
The way I see it, it goes like this: SCO finds out that IBM contributed code to Linux, and believes that it is derived from their intellectual property (which is under debate). Of course they can't specify the code in question because they don't have access to it, so SCO is asking IBM for the AIX code to compare it to the Linux kernel to validate their claims. If substantial evidence is found that AIX code is also in Linux, SCO must prove that IBM violated their contract by submitting that code into the Linux kernel, AND that SCO owns the System V code.
That said, there is still no excuse for them to claim intellectual property rights over code that they did not write that is possibly derived from code that may not belong to them.
Maybe in legal terms, but while SCO has technically complied to the order, it was legal for them to do so without producing much evidence. Which apparently they did. 60 pages surely doesn't cover the millions of lines of code they were talking about in the press. A confident litigator would not accompany his case with an excuse-note saying that they don't know what the hell's going on, but they have just a suspicion.
So, while they have complied in legal terms, they have weakened their case in a significant order of magnitude. Not only that, but they have also weakened their case for any of their prosprective targets in their scoSource shakedown fiasco.
Maybe inaccurate on a legal basis, but significant when looking at the big picture.
I read Groklaw as well by the way.
why? SCO needs to prove their case. They have offered zero proof. There is no cause for forcing IBM to release any code.
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SCO is weenies
Gator is Spyware
Microsoft is thugs
To prove this, they only need to show their code in their source in their product and show where it is identical within Linux's code.
Not quite. They also have to prove that the code originated from within one of SCO's companies and was not, for example, ripped from BSD or a programmer's manual of some sort. Considering how daunting this second task is, I'd be surprised by the validity of any case that at this point hadn't even attempted to prove the first task.
The ______ Agenda
The fact that SCO has never seen or handled that code in any way is irrelevant. It is perfectly possible that IBM has infringed on SCO's property by copying code that IBM wrote for AIX/others into Linux.
And it's perfectly possible that Microsoft has copied GPL code into one of their programs, does that mean the developers can blindly accuse them, force them to show us source to all their products and force anyone who uses any Microsoft product to buy a vastly overpriced licence?
Note: I don't think there really is GPL code in any Microsoft products, if I'd written some code that crashed THAT much I'd keep it closed source.
In Soviet Russia Slashdot cliches use you
They may have taken steps to ensure that current programmers had never had any access to protected UNIX or AIX code, but I doubt it goes much further than that.
Surveys show that adoption of Linux is being affected very little by this thing.
IBM already has enough lawyers to darken the skys and a few million $ spent probably will be more than offset by the press and PR of it all when things are finally settled.
As far as I can see only SCO is really being affected. They haven't produced anything new for some time so that's notthe issue... but according to their SEC filings, this thing is costing them millions. (Something like $9 million in the last quarter alone.)
Ok, I'm confused. Since when do two false's make a positive.
That happens when you use a NOT, much like Darl the knothead
*ducks*
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
So SCO has old AIX source from Project Monterey. Now I wonder: how did Monterey end, and is SCO entitled to have this code? This could get even more interesting if IBM finds some contract saying SCO should have destroyed it.
Litigious bastards
I would like to use Linux, but many things are stopping me. One is concern over the SCO lawsuits, I won't explain the rest just yet.
So far I have not seen any evidence to back up SCO's claims. Why should I pay SCO for a Linux license when they cannot prove that I owe them for one?
This is not going to work, SCO is using scare tactics to force money out of Linux users and companies that produce Linux distrobutions. Anyone that pays SCO a Linux License will be used as evidence that others must pay as well.
SCO Unix is not the same as Linux, the issue is if Linux is using SCO Unix code which has not yet been proven anywhere.
What is the delay with SCO? If they had the hard evidence, certainly they would have produced evidence of it by now.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
These are the times when you really wish there wasnt the +5 limit. I wish you could just keep modding sky-high, if you so desired.
We should be able to spend our mod points as we choose!
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Okay so if it looks like something that was in AIX it infringes on their copyright?
"18.3. The "Enterprise Volume Management System (EVMS) contributed to Linux by IBM is based on the same architecture and data structures as are present in the AIX Volume Management System, and was therefore copied from AIX."
If you have ever worked on Dynix or know someone that did work on Dynix your code belongs to SCO.
"18.4. The AIO code contributed to Linux by IBM was written by an engineer who had a detailed knowledge and familiarity with the same area of technology in Dynix/ptx, and who likely used the same methods and/or structures in the AIO Linux implementation.
18.5. The scatter/gather I/O code contributed to Linux by IBM was written by an engineer who had access to the same area of technology in AIX. This engineer appears to have worked in conjunction with the aforementioned Dynix/ptx engineer and likely implemented Dynix and/or AIX methods and/or structures in the scatter/gather I/O Linux code."
SCO now owns OS/2!!!
"19.3 All versions of JFS, whether a part of AIX or not (including, but not limited to the AIX and OS/2 versions), together with documentation and programmer notes from the development process;
Okay SCO you have the source of Linux and you have the Source to Linux. It looks to me that they have NOTHING!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I think SCO's case -- the real case, the one that has to be argued in court -- will acknowledge that IBM owns their own work, and that they can do anything they want in terms of embedding it in binary form in their own products, but that IBM requires SCO's permission to reveal the source code or even the methods used to third parties. That's a fairly fine distinction. There are lots of situations where you own something, but there are constraints on the uses that you can make of it. I think SCO will lose, mostly on grounds that (a) most of the SysV "trade secrets" aren't, (b) the previous owners of the contract didn't adequately protect their trade secret rights (so SCO can't successfully attempt to reclaim those rights), and (c) neither party who signed the contract in 1985 intended for it to apply this far into the future.
SCO has claimed (under penalty of perjury) that they DID produce answers to ALL of IBMs interogatories (questions) before the deadline.
This includes an answer to IBM's request that they identify (with specificity) all rights that they claim to the Linux operating system.
We haven't seen this answer (yet). IBM will presumably claim that SCO has NOT answered its questions on January 23rd. But the title of the article is false. SCO _HAS_ produced evidence. The only question is whether or not that evidence is meaningful.
14. I have been informed by SCO's engineers and consultants that since the only version of AIX source code that was available for comparison purposes is several years old, and predates most of IBM's contributions to Linux, it was not possible to directly compare IBM's contributions to Linux with the most likely source of those contributions, namely the missing versions of AIX (including the most recent versions).
15. Further, we have only one CD of Dynix/ptx source code that was produced by IBM, and this CD only contains a limited history of Dynix/ptx releases. It was therefore not possible to directly compare IBM's contributions to Linux with another likely source of those contributions, namely the missing versions of Dynix/ptx.
They said they HAVE the proof and you needed to sign an NDA to see it. Yet no all the sudden they don't have all the information required to FIND the evidence they need. So, all these claims are just speculation now? Well, if I can sue for 3 billion off speculation, someones poor multi-billion dollar company is in alot of trouble. Hmmm, I wonder how the judge will see this. What they claim to have had, and what they have are two different things. They have nothing and just admited to it.
insider trading is trading stock with inside information. It is not inside information that the stock was overvalued.
PHP is the solution of choice for relaying mysql errors to web users.
But wouldn't it be funny if through careful analysis and testimony IBM is able to prove that the engineers working on AIX actually copied code from the Linux source code instead of Vice versa? Thus require AIX to be open sourced in compliance with the GPL.
Not exactly. If (very hypothetical now) IBM were to accidently use GPL code in AIX, they would not be forced to open source AIX. That would be one option. Recalling all versions and replacing all versions with non infringing code would be another option. Refusing to do anything and risk getting sued by whomever owns the copyright for that particular code is another.
And there is always the possibility that the GPL code was released under different license as well, such as BSD. Or the author released all copyrights, and turned it over to the Public Domain. Wo they wouldn't have to do anything, as long as they complied with one of the license the code was released in, or nothing at all if it was PD. Dual licensing is pretty common. (PD can't be dual, I know that.)
It's a common misconception that if a company includes GPL code in their software, they MUST open their source. They have to do SOMETHING to comply, but opening their source is just one option.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
They were either sitting around idle beforehand, in which case there are no new expenses but were lots of unnecessary old expenses, or
they had to hire new staff to handle the new work load, or
the staff working on this SCO business fortuitously had just finished some other big project.
I kind of doubt #3. I kind of doubt #1. Whether the new staff is really new bodies, or just existing bodies working tons of overtime, this is certainly costing them something.
Infuriate left and right
"16. Our engineers have reached the conclusion that parts of Linux have almost certainly been copied or derived from AIX or Dynix/ptx. In those cases, confirmation of this opinion would require access to more current versions of AIX and Dynix/ptx"
how can they come to that conclusion if they don't already have access to the code?
roflmao!
one nit tho. caldera bought sco using the $$$$ they got from their linux ipo. in other words, they're biting the hand that feeds them.
End of line..
They have joined several others in their lack of confidence in SCO's future:
Ask yourself, if these guys don't want to hold SCO stock, do you?
"discovered" so far. To judge from SCO's notice of [non]compliance, they apparently failed extravagantly to meet the court's order. They should be thinking about how to convinve the court that their suit isn't frivolous, and about convincing IBM to settle (e.g. by 'em out). Evidently, they aren't anxious, or else have neurological checksum problems in the board room. You would think that if they DID have actual evidence, that they would have shown IBM convincing evidence and asked for an offer from IBM that would make it right. As it is, SCO's name may go down in history right next to George Armstrong Custer under famous massacres due to arrogance and over confidence.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.