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Judge Orders SCO, IBM To Produce Disputed Code
An anonymous reader writes "A NewsForge story [part of OSDN, like Slashdot] says a court ruling by Judge Brooke C. Wells in the SCO Group vs. IBM intellectual property lawsuit amounting to 'show me the code' was released today in the form of a nine-page document [PDF link]. For a change, the SCO Group had no comment, because Judge Wells told it not to issue any. The judge said SCO is to provide and identify all specific lines of code IBM is alleged to have contributed to Linux from either AIX or Dynix, provide and identify all specific lines of code from Unix System V from which IBM's contributions from AIX or Dynix are alleged to be derived, and provide and identify all lines of code in Linux that it claims rights to."
I hope they are thinking "put-up-or-shut-up" now, and clamp down on SCO's grandstanding...
On the plus side, maybe the stock will slide to the point that we can get a dozen shares for a quarter. I'd buy 'em out for that price...
To start off I am pretty confident that no code was stolen. However, should I have faith that the court will also see this? I mean what if something was overlooked. What IF say two lines of code were from SCO? Just evaluating all possible variables.
It is a shame that SCO has been allowed to tramp around this long without any real evidence. Oh well.
42nd post?
The last announcement SCO made (re: the suing bit) had nothing to do with the disputed code, and they intentionally phrased it to seem like AutoZone was being sued for just running Linux.
SCO's tactics seem to be growing more and more deceitful and misleading..
[SCO] is hereby ordered to:
4. SCO is to provide and identify with specificity all lines of code in Linux that it claims rights to.
PDF: http://sco.tuxrocks.com/Docs/IBM/IBM-109.pdf
I can't wait to see the answer to this one...
Will I (some random guy on the Internet) get to see it? I'm not talking about the the proprietary AIX/Dynix stuff, but the infringing code that they claim to be in the Linux kernel?
My (obvious) guess is no, but this comment really is a question to those who might know more.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
So, can Linux distributors (or Linus himself) sue SCO for defamation? I'm sure that some companies have resisted purchasing Linux distributions in the past few months, in light of this court case...
I'm just waiting for common sense to hit the market (it kind of has already since it was down around $2 today).
A fair ruling IMHO.
A fair ruling is bad as far as SCO is concerned. All their stalling clearly shows their lack of real evidence and therefore this is going to be end of this BS. (I should hope.)
Since the source code is already in the hands of umpteen thousand people, I don't think there is any trade secret left to reveal, but the law, in its infinite wisdom, may disagree with me.
#include "IANAL.H"
...unbiased. She has asked that IBM provide the "approximately 232 products" and the source logs for them, as well as email and memos pertaining to them. She's basically allowing SCO to go diving for the information that they are after.
However, this is discovery and not trial so items obtained during discovery don't seem to always be admissable. It simply seems that Judge Wells is doing her best judicial duty to ensure that there can be no claim of mistrial due to denied evidence.
As well SCO has quite a ballgame ahead of them. The items requested from them were quite numerous and it seems that Judge Wells doesn't buy the "we can't specify it because it would violate agreements" argument that they are bandying about. (See item #5 on the order itself; where the code was distributed, to whom, and under what agreements.)
The end result is this order seems better for SCO than IBM, but then again SCO couldn't get much lower on hope than they were. I disagree with the allowance of the requested versions of Dynix and AIX and all source code for them -- perhaps I should simply sue Microsoft and insinuate that they have some of my code in their product. While I admire the discovery must be broad... that seems to be a bit too broad.
SCO wants to subpoena 7200 witnesses. Holy Christ. How, when, why? That many witnesses? Tell me there'd be some sort of expedited process to get the questions SCO is seeking answered -- that seems ludicrous, especially in light of the fact that SCO has repeatedly altered its complaints.
I also laugh at "considering SCO's good faith effort." What? WHAT? And THANK GOD she muzzled McBridge and his cronies. I just hope that she doesn't start putting the remainder of the case under seal so as to prevent the rest of us from knowing what's going on. You know SCO will suggest it at least once.
Talonius
My reality check bounced.
That would be a very difficult lawsuit. I think you have to prove malicious intent by SCO. The people that sent SCO money deserve to lose it. If SCO never produces a shred of evidence they will probably have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees that IBM racked up to defend a baseless lawsuit. I would love to see what their stock price does that week.
-B
Why, yes it is:
I wonder which will come first, the end of SCO vs. IBM or the release of Half-Life 2.
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Time to place another round of short-sell orders! And only 2 days after the order at $13.00 kicked in. Oh, and hold off until right after my next round goes through, mmkay? SCO is such a low-cap stock that even a small herd of Slashdot weenies can affect it...hmmm...
On second thought, everyone go find a broker and short like there's no tomorrow. If we all work together, we can drive SCOX into the ground! Think of it as a chartiable contribution that'll probably earn a sizable return inside of a few months.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
My guess is that SCO may claim that revealing this code would reveal a trade secret or something. . .
That issue was addressed last December, when the judge ordered that SCO submit code that it claimed to be a trade secret, but agreed that the record of such would be sealed to prevent the public from seeing it. This is standard procedure in such matters as trade secret claims are not uncommon and dealing with them in the courts was settled nearly centuries ago.
The issue is moot at this point though, since a)SCO have dropped all claims to trade secrets and have changed the complaint to copyright violation, and b)it's the publicly available Linux code that is in question, so any trade secret is widely published, thus no longer a trade secret.
They've already done about all the "fighting back" in discovery that they can. They've hemmed, hawed and claimed the dog ate their data over the holidays.
This ruling amounts to a "put up or shut up" ruling by the judge, who I imagine is about fed up with SCO's wishy-washyness and downright duplicity.
KFG
No. The code was a "trade secret", even though it was posted everywhere (like DeCSS and California). If they actually pointed it out publicly, then everyone would have seen that those snippets were actually the only valuable lines of code in the linux kernel. Well, that or the fact that they had nothing to their case. But corporations would never try to intimidate money out of users, or extort other companies to buying silence, would they? ----------
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
To me SCO's license policy looks like fraud, its PR policy like financial fraud. Let's report the offence to the police.
It's time for a structural change in the US legal system, competition law has tpo be strengthened. A baseless dirty media campaign like SCo's would be impossible on the European market. However the EU legislator prepares a IPR Enforcement directive that may give power to failed companies that "pull a SCO". Several law principles are weakened. I think the IPR Enforcement directive may infringe on German constitutional law.
I want to see SCO's management in prison.
Sure.. But the key here is that SCO must show -why- they need the files.
That means they need to have some kind of proof or indication to show. Given what we've seen so far.. I'm very doubtful if SCO will ever be able to satisfy this.
if SCO's IP is in the kernel? in about a half a day a new kernel will be available.
Is that the "oops my bad!" defense? You don't get a do-over if SCO wins. You'd basically have to start over from the 2.2 kernel, ensuring that nobody who works on the project has or had access to SCO's IP, including all derivitave works such as later Linux kernels. Basically everybody who worked on the kernel after 2.2 could be considered "tainted" by having seen SCO's IP.
Darl mentioned that "last summer" some Linux programmers admitted there was some stolen code in the kernel.
A really sharp female journalist from CRN asked what code was stolen and who these programmers were. Darl got tongue tied and someobdy else from SCO stepped in and said they couldn't comment on that.
This guy is way out there
(5) is good too. If I understand it correctly they'll have to tell the judge that they're still distributing linux 2.4.21 to the world under the license "GNU GPL", and we can all be on the list:
wget --http-user= --http-passwd= wget http://linuxupdate.sco.com/scolinux/update/RPMS.up dates/kernel-source-2.4.21-138.i586.rpm
"SCO is to provide and identify with specificity the lines of code that SCO distributed to other parties. This is to include where applicable the conditions of release, to whom the code was released, the date and under what circumstances such code was released."
Let's all help them out by posting our names, dates and the fact that the license is the GNU GPL and the circumstances is "public SCO FTP and HTTP server"
Belief is the currency of delusion.
As regards the actual topic of this thread, SCO, my own opinion is that this situation is different because the crime is ongoing, and SCO is actually using the legal system to help commit the fraud. This is a case where justice delayed is not merely justice denied, but actual injustice perpetuated.
On the positive side, I think IBM should just turn over everything, and immediately. I can't even imagine why they haven't done so already--except that lawyers love playing games and SCO's lawyers are probably desperately phishing for anything they can imagine. Sure, SCO's original claims will turn out to be completely bogus, but SCO is hoping to find a blue dress or some WMDs somewhere in there, and then they can start a whole NEW lawsuit against IBM.
Right now it looks like we'll have to wait another 45 days for SCO to clarify anything, and then there'll be another delay while they analyze those claims, and IBM will deny all of them, and SCO will claim they need more information from IBM, then amend their claims some more, and then, and then... By now we're somewhere in 2007. Anyway, you can safely bet that Darl et al. will have dumped their SCO stock by then. Actually, looking at Darl's track record, he's due to change employeers again any day now. We're all sure the next guy will be glad to clean up the mess, right?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Well, think again. Reportedly...
Daimler-Chrysler is a 15% shareholder in Deutsche Bank which provided the propup funds to SCO which is suing Daimler-Chrysler.
Novell has 20(?)% of its shares under the Norda Trust which is a majority (?) stakeholder in The Canopy Group which owns 37% of SCO (common stock) which is suing Novell.
My head hurts. I have to go get a drink.
cheers- raga
... but so far SCO has managed to avoid any deadline. Quite an acomplishment, in my opinion. Not a positive one, but it sure shows
a) they are scared
b) their lawyers are scared
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
On that note, I wonder what Darl will sue SCO for when he leaves them? He has a record of staying at companies briefly, ruining things, then filing a lawsuit after leaving.
Guess what? The Motley Fool said much of the same thing - SCO Digs a Deeper Hole. It concludes by saying "With declining revenues, increasing losses, and an expensive and damaging litigation policy, SCO looks like one of the best short candidates I've seen in a while."
In the Justice Department's anti-trust suit against IBM the government found an IBM strategy document with the notation "Telex -> dying company." In some context (perhaps it was the 1956 consent decree) IBM was not supposed to specifically plan to kill its competition. Perhaps SCO is hoping to find something along those lines. I hardly think that Sam Palmisano or Irving Wladawsky-Berger would be so incautious.
And in the only "me too" lawsuit of that era which IBM did not win outright, CDC acquired a bunch of IBM memos through disclosure. IBM and CDC settled out of court, with IBM selling its service business (Service Bureu Corporation) to CDC and promising not to re-enter the service market for many years. I wonder what CDC found in those memos.
The 45-day deadline is to produce "all lines of code that SCO can identify at this time."
Yes, and they already failed to do so during their last deadline, and then argumented that they cannot comply with the court's request without all of AIX, which they're not getting now.
If they did have something, they should've produced it prior to the last hearing. (actually, they should've produced this from the start)
So sure, if SCO now can show something (which they admit they can't), then the lawsuit can continue, and so can discovery.
If SCO can't show anything, they will face court sanctions. Most likely the case will get thrown out, or at least the claims of misappropriation.
Now, IANAL, but this tells me that SCO is pretty well fucked. They have to tell the court which lines of code IN LINUX (since they have to provide all lines in Linux which they believe were illegally contributed), SysV, etc were released, and under what licensing terms and conditions they were released. Since SCO (as Caldera) distributed Linux as a product, under the GPL....
The IBM "stuff" is to throw SCO a bone, IMO, although it -is- entirely possible that SCO may be able to find something. They probably won't, but the chance is there, and if they -DO- find something truly damning...well, let's just say that I don't want to follow that line of reasoning at this time
-
J.
I don't know about this .. as I read this This doens't look like a *complete* victory for IBM it says they (IBM) has to provide the "materials and documents" of the people involved in the linux project something that SCO didn't specifically ask for ....
That's a standard part of the discovery procedure. Not only had SCO had asked for this stuff prior to the discovery process being frozen by the judge, they'd actually asked for the names of over 10,000 IBM employees -- clearly an attempt to harrass the company and interfere with their business.
Because the case law on discovery insists that courts have to err on the side of generosity during the discovery process, the judge has to do everything that is fair and reasonable to enable SCO to make their case within the limits of legal procedure, there was no way that any judge was *not* going to make such orders. To do so would have simply given SCO good grounds for appeal.
But SCO didn't get the names of their 10,000 witnesses from IBM. The judge ordered that IBM provide SCO with details of a representative 1,000, and SCO will then have to provide good grounds should they wish to interview or depose any other IBM employee.
Seriously, IBM's lawyers would have expected and anticipated this -- indeed, their earlier findings suggest that they would actually welcome it. They're looking for a decisive victory, not some dismissal on a technicality, and so they also want the judge to give SCO all the latitude that they are entitled to under the law, because when they do eventually squash them like a bug, the victory will be decisive.
Basically, SCO got nothing that IBM wouldn't have wanted them to have, but they got a damn sight less than they asked for in all of their motions. While a layman might not see that as a complete victory, I'm pretty sure that that's how IBM's lawyers will view it.
The Server that they have to post their PDF filings to runs Linux! (The webserver for the court.)
Actually, could this become a reason to appeal? I don't know how something like this would work, but perhaps one could argue that the court is biased.
I've read through the order three times now, and can't find where SCO has been ordered not ot comment? Can someone point that out to me?
There will be no money left. Before this is over, the lawyers will be at each other's throats, snarling over scraps so small as to require a microscope to find.
It will be as if Michael Valentine Smith had rotated SCO ninety degrees away from everything, taking your license money with it.
Is it fascism yet?
I think you could easily show malicious intent if SCO doesn't own the linux code in question. The statement could be made that SCO filed their lawsuit with IBM to get illegal license fees because SCO is dying.
This is the first Slashdot story I've read that doesn't have a "Die SCO, linux forever" slant to it. Not that I support SCO or anything (I very much take the majority opinion here, that of SCO being wrong), I just find it interesting to see a mostly objective story on SCO for once.
All legal systems are far from perfect, and most everybody agrees, so that's a good point to start an argument from but...
I'm not an expert in international law, so I just want to draw your attention to the this: saying the US system is not perfect, and is meant to treat everybody fairly, and isn't so bad is kind of meaningless. That's only because you can say that about the legal system in any developed country.
That's like saying a turtle can move... most animals can.
My friends and I came up with the ultimate useless statement, for all occations "That's clearer than a Guiness"
So do US citizens compare their legal system to the bottom of the rung, or the top of the rung. For example, the German system have taken steps to protect all parties in this dispute, and it's done it fairly. I think if you compared the success of the US system to other systems in developed countries, you'll have something more interesting to say.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Wow. Almost four times normal volume too. Maybe people are catching on. They're still a $160M company.
Giving "the small guy" a better chance to fight is harmful when "the small guy" is wrong. What's the small guy's incentive to make sure he's not wrong?
The system is setup to maximize legal fees and contingency payments, at the expense of "the big guy". Justice is simply the sales-pitch.
Whatever happens, IBM, Autozone, Chrysler, Novell, Redhat, and OSDN are going to be out a lot of money on legal fees. How is that just? Wouldn't it be better if that money could be spent on something productive?
It's not perfect, but its not a bad system. ... But I would still rather see SCO get away with stuff like this, temporarily, than see innocent people/groups/corporations get rushed in/out of a courtroom and denied justice.
SCO is the plaintiff. They started this whole mess. Everyone else was just minding their own business. SCO can't be innocent -- they're the aggressor in this case.
The system is a bad system. It didn't start out that way. It was turned bad.
It can be fixed with a few simple reforms, all of which are bad for the plaintiff and less lucrative for the lawyers, except in slam-dunk cases.
Reforms:
Then we can all go back to work that helps people instead of sueing and trying to avoid getting sued.
There are two different "IP" laws that may apply to the case. One is trade secrets, which is what the coca-cola formula is covered by. This has no effect on anyone except the party privy to the code/formula. This party (in our case IBM) would be liable for any damage caused by the breach of contract. In this case IBM could be fined quite heavily.
The other law that may be applicable is copyright. This applies to the copying and distribution of copyrighted stuff. As is the case with trade secrets, probably the only party that can be faulted is the party that copied the copyrighted code. With copyright infringement the infringed-upon party has to inform what the infringement is and try help mitigating the damages. If the infringing party acted in good faith and do their best to mitigate damage, there is a very small chance there will be any damage penalty. So, yes, in this case where SCO has done nothing to inform what the infringements are and if IBM are shown to not have blatantly copied code knowingly, even if SCO (against all probability) win the case, the result will probably be removal of infringing code and not much else.
As to your assertion that nobody can work on the kernel after having seen the code, this is just ludicrous. It is just plain untrue. If what you say is the case, does that mean that anybody who ever hear any copyrighted rock music can never write music? And anybody who has read a crime novel cannot write books?
-TN
We chiefly looked at Sun and SCO as solutions. Sun hardware was just prohibitively expensive. So we went with SCO. In about a year, we migrated to NetBSD. By 1995 most things were moved over to Linux.
I'd had a personal copy of SCO Xenix for a 286 for a while.
So I have used, purchased and managed SCO systems.
I also went to school with some of the founders or SCO (back when it was in Santa Cruz). I'd foolishly passed up the opportunity to invest back then (1984).
Anyway, as you can imagine, as someone who had some (minimal) connection to SCO twenty years ago, I am not at all please by the litigious bastards they are now.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
This is actually why I'm suprised that they're supposedly going after DiamlerChrysler next.
DiamlerChrysler could file a nasty countersuit in Germany. Somewhere where the courts have already started giving SCO a hard time.
I always thought that punitive damages, as they are now, make no sense. I mean, I think it's really important to dole out meaningful punishment to super-rich corporations when they've done somethng illegal -- so punitive limits don't seem like a good idea. But then it makes little sense to award someone more money based on how rich the perpetrator was.
I guess I think that the award should be limited, but the damages to the perpetrator don't need to be. The money collected should go into some court fund... perhaps to pay for DA's and stuff. Or maybe to an agency that works to prevent the crime at hand? I don't know. But I'd sure rather have the punitive damages go to someone other than some lucky plaintiff and their greedy lawyer, assuming they've already been fairly compensated.
Cheers.
Someone else brought this up elsewhere, I think it was the Yahoo! SCOX boards. Personally, I don't think McBride will have grounds to sue SCO/Canopy.
* McBride sued IKON
* IKON is based out of Pennsylvania
* Pennsylvania is not a "right-to-work" state.
* SCOG is based out of Utah
* Utah is a right to work state.
According to all I've read, McBride sued IKON for unfair compensation packages. Now,I may be wrong, but I'd bet that such things are affected by the "at-will" employment status in these states. In other words, you can't sue an employer for wrongful termination in these states; I'd almost bet that similar things apply to compensation packages and the like.
In other words - McBride may have gotten away with suing IKON, but I don't know that he'd be so successful with this strategy in a RTWS.
Clarification by others who are more knowledgeable regarding these matters would be appreciated.
Once you get the recording (I had lots of hash errors) the call is quite hilarious in some parts. For better or worse, here's my transcription of the exchange mentioned in the partent article, as well as the first question and answer from the next analyst just because I thought the reaction was funny.
I want to note that the questions were a breze to transcribe, as were the replies from who I think is Robert Bench, the CFO (only Darl and Robert are identified as participants at the start of the call). The replies from Darl are a nightmare. The man speaks like he has no grasp of what to say or how to say it.
This transcription was created by me from the publically available audio recording. I've done my best (without straining anything) to capture things correctly. There's only one section I know I didn't understand and it's noted. Any other stupidity, double-speak orun-intelligent use of language is soley the responsibility of the speaker.
Timecode: 55:29 in the recording:
Paula Rooney (with CRN): Yes, Darl, um, I'm trying just to narrow down the, the case against AutoZone.
Darl: right.
Paula: okay, so the copyright claim has nothing to do with the Linux kernel per-se... correct?
Darl: Um, no, this, this does have to do with the Linux kernel.
Paula: But you said that the case is not specified to SCO shared libraries... that it's a very general to anyone using the operating system.
Darl: but, waahahat I'm saying anybody using Linux. Uh, eh, Yea, I guess what I'm trying to say here is, uh, a lot of people, eh, we're trying to say, because, uh, there's, uh, there is, uh, uh, a fact that Autozone has been a SCO Unix, uh, user in the past, uh, Open Server user until a couple years ago and that in their migration to Linux there, there could have been some problems with the SCO shared libraries uh, that would have been unique to, a, a customer using SCO moving in to Linux. The case that was filed today was much broader than that, and basically, uh, impacts anywhere the Linux kernel would be showing up, uh, in, uh an end user environment.
Paula: But you said it has to do with structural components that I took pieces inside Linux.
Darl: Eh, ah, a and those would be kernel related.
Paula: But the components are... are those developed by Autozone's customers.
Darl: No, this is... a... again... I guess the simple way to think of it, Paula, is to if you took the case we filed against Autozone yesterday and... and did a search and replace on, uh, name of an end user we had never had a relationship with, that is running Linux, um that, that suit would, um, pretty much hold up. Um, I mean it's gonna be a little bit different obviously, but the general claims we are making there are pervasive throughout the end use Linux community.
Paula: Your saying it's not the shared libraries, so what is the code in question here?
Darl: Yea... it, it's all spelled out in the complaint... and... uh... you know, it's all pretty detailed to go through right now, but there are a lot of... a number of structural components, uh, you know, the, uh, as you read through the complaint you'll be able to see where those are.
Bench: And, and , let me just interject for one moment, I mean this is the precise type of information that was, uh, specifically requested by the, the court to not go in to, so it's really just something that I just want to caution Darl on; that we just really don't want to be getting in to that kind of detail.
Paula: If it's the heart of the case, I think it's fair to ask the question on what the code is.
Darl: Well... it... again, it, it's in the filing.
Paula: And you mentioned that specific... there were specific programmers that , who, who acknowledged violations, um, who are these programmers?
(5 seconds of silence)
Bench: Again, we're, we're not getting in to the witnesses in the case; the, the underlying information in the case; ya know, it's not where we're going.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
There's more to say on this "loser pays" question.
Situation: I own a patent. SomeCorp is suspected of violating my patent. I sue. Thanks to their VASTLY SUPERIOR legal resources, I lose. Suddenly, I'm not only screwed out of patent protection, I'm bankrupt to boot.
The government awarded you the patent. Then the government setup a court system for you to use to get paid for your patent. Is it too much for the government to ask you in return to be certain your position is correct before you sue?
Patent protection is something that's "awarded" to you. It's a bargain to give you an incentive to invent and commercialize your invention as quickly as possible. You can't be "screwed out" of something you're not morally entitled to in the first place.
And, in a loser pays situation, how can someone have "VASTLY SUPERIOR legal resources"? If SomeCorp can spend $5 million on their lawyers, you can spend $5 million on your lawyers. You're going to win. They're going to pay your legal bills.
You are going to win, aren't you? You must be certain, because you brought the lawsuit. If you're not certain, then settle or don't sue at all.
In fact, if 'Loser Pays' was the norm, wouldn't that just influence every corp to take on an oversized legal team for every tort filed against them?
Not every tort. Only the ones where they think the facts are on their side. Only the ones they think they're going to win. The ones they think they're going to lose, they'll settle to minimize their costs.
That's as opposed to the current system, where the defendant tends to settle even when they're 100% right, just to avoid the legal bills.
And no, there's no incentive to take on an oversized legal team. Even if you win, there's no big payoff for having a big legal team, your expenses simply get paid.
I'm currently in the process of starting a company with former SCO people. They all pronounce it "SKOH". I, along with them, reside in Santa Cruz, California.
We collectively groaned in agony when Daryl announced the "re-branded Caldera".
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Loser pays
Unfortunately, this ignores the practical fact that the side with the most expensive legal team has a substantial advantage in a trial. So suppose you're an individual or small company, and some Giant Fnarking Corporation has cost you $100k, but you can't assemble absolutely incontrovertible evidence. Are you going to:
A) Field an expensive lawyer of your own and hope that the jury is convinced by your evidence and isn't swayed by the defendant's dream team, or...
B) Suck it up and go home, knowing that if you lose, there's no way you'll ever be able to pay the other side's six- or seven-digit legal fees?
Most small players are going to choose "B", which is in fact what most of them do today already. You want to make that worse?
Punitive damages limits
This is also stupid. The point of punitive damages is to disincentivize bad behavior even when its effects are not costly in terms of money. Suppose Giant Fnarking Corporation makes a defective product that kills your kid. How much are you out? Just your insurance co-pay on the ambulance ride and a couple thousand dollars for the funeral. If, on the other hand, you can sock it to them for a few million dollars, they'll certainly care about that even if they don't give a hoot about human lives.
If it bothers you that the plaintiff in this hypothetical case is the recipient of the punitive damages, consider either developing some compassion, and/or lobbying for punitive damages to be awarded to the state as a form of revenue.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
What happens if in 45 days SCO produces proof that their copyrighted code IS in IBM's code? What will that mean for IBM, for the Linux community?
I don't think it will matter much. I'll be too busy writting the cold fusion HOWTO and slashdot will be too interested in the alien landings.
It's not going to happen.
It was a con to pump the share price and throw mud at linux. SCO mangement made a -LOT- of money from the pump and dump. If they didn't pull this the company would have gone bust sometime last year.
...say now, you own a fire insurance on your house - you pay a small amount of money, to avoid the small, but extremely costly chance that your house will burn to the ground. If you were willing to take that risk, you wouldn't need insurance.
Now, let's say your house does burn, but the insurance company disputes the claim for some dubious reason and want to take you to court with their huge legal team. You may be fairly sure you're right, but there's a small but extremely costly risk you're wrong. Ups, you just got exactly the risk you were unwilling to take in the first place, and the insurance compnay knows it.
I much prefer the Norwegian system - by default, each pay their own bills. But the courts may *choose* to make the losing side pay - in part or in full. So if you bring an army of lawyers, they may compensate you for "normal" representation, but the excess is coming out of your own wallet. Seems to work rather well against frivolous lawsuits as well as for individuals vs corporations.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
> If this is real.....some heads will roll
You'd think, but what in Microsoft/SCO's shady unethical borderline illegal histories would make you think they will be adversly affected by it? None of this stuff ever makes the main stream press, so most will never see it. MS has the government so pussy whipped it isn't even funny, and this Bush administration is even more pussy whipped. Let's face it, big business can get away with whatever they want these days. Who's going to stop them? Government officials certainly have no insterest in losing millions of dollars in campain funds to oust them. Mainstream press just pretends like it's not going on.
Don't get me wrong, I read the letter. It's probably true and if this isn't an anti-competitive monopoly I don't know what is. But America has become a shitty country to live in. If you don't pull in 500k a year, good luck having your minority rights enforced. Just look at the Enron case. How many people have actually been convicted so far?
For a while, rather than using "www", I called it "six you". Never caught on.
I don't know how likely this is to be real, but it would certainly explain alot.
If Microsoft truly were funding this fiasco with the proported $100 Million (so far), then the strategy is not that of a pathetic dying company trying to hang on to some form of life.
Everyone asks what Darl and crew could possibly be looking for with this pathetic business strategy. Everyone wonders what SCO could possibly have up its sleeve that might pay off in the end.
Assuming this memo is real, SCO's strategy isn't to win at all... Tin foil hat on, the strategy would be pretty obvious:
No wonder SCO would be talking to Microsoft marketing as their next cash cow. All in all, a pretty clever Microsoft strategy, if true. You can also bet that if SCO can hold out for what Microsoft deems 'long enough,' that it'll be a strategy to be repeated, as long as US courts are willing to play along.
Pretty smart.
Outside the tech and financial worlds most people haven't even heard of SCO.
Those other companies make the front page instead of just the business or tech sections because of billions of dollars going down the toilet, including lots of employees whose years accumulations of 401k's.
I don't know what kind of employee pension plan exists at SCO, but anyone outside the company with a self-directed IRA deliberately investing in SCOX is going to be getting "experienced" real quick.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Punitive damages should generally be limited to some fraction of a defendant's wealth or based off of the value of the actual damage. So there is a limit on punitive damages, whether that exceeds a defendant's wealth or not.
Juries, near as I recall, decide guilt or innocence, and then, separately, decide on damages, including punitive damages. So it's not a "you're guilty, here's the $500M you asked for". There are cases where there are multi-million dollar lawsuits for and the plaintiff wins, but get's awarded $0.01!
The cesspool just got a check and balance.