MS Word File Reveals Changes to SCO's Plans

jfruhlinger writes "Ah, the joys of 'track changes' in MS Word: metadata in a document obtained by Cnet reveals some earlier plans by SCO's legal team. Among them: to sue in February (their original target date), to sue Bank of America, to 'impound ... all Linux software products in the custody or control of Defendant through the pendency of these proceedings', and to accuse in court 'Linus Torvalds and/or others' of 'inclusion into one or more distributions of Linux with the copyright management information intentionally removed.' Good stuff." Also, SCO has announced a few new licensees including Computer Associates.

Comments

lawyers

[panxerox]

If all Sco's operating officers are put in jail whos going to write all the checks for the lawsuits? Also at what point does the Bar association of Utah step in and say if you sco lawyers do this anymore kiss your licenses goodby?

Re:lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly the point.

I *am* one and I *am* from Utah.

The business climate here is corrupt and out of control. Probably because of the overwhelming one-type of demographic here.

Good grief, just read the local newspapers and you won't wonder why the people at Caldera think they can get away with it.

It's really insane actually. Alot of Mormons are just "Mormons" for the business relations.

A little-bity place inhabited by nuts. Sad really.

Re:lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

CA Says It Didn't Pay SCO No Stinking Linux Tax...details at http://blogs.cocoondev.org/dims/

Re:lawyers

[thefinite]

What is sad is that an AC gets modded "Interesting" for calling all Utah Mormon business people "nuts", even if he claims to be one. Is bigotry really all that interesting? Why don't you guys throw me some mod points for this one: "All Slashdot moderators are freakin' morons."

The point is that I know a lot of Utah Mormon business people that are just *normal* business people, faults and all.

Re:lawyers

[xs650]

You may know a lot of Morman business people who are just "normal" business people, but that isn't relevant. Most Mormans I know are ethical hard working people, but that isn't relevant either. What is relevant is that Utah is well known for the various scams and con artists that operate from Utah. It doesn't take "most" of a group to make conditions where they live unsavory, just a few percent more than normal amount of con artists. Conditions in Utah are right for nurturing the development of con artists. http://www.watchman.org/lds/scamlds.htm

Re:lawyers

[Reziac]

I'll probably have to call the fire dept. for saying this, but:

I haven't lived in Utah, but I have lived and travelled in other "Mormon country" parts of the western U.S. -- and the original poster is, sadly, correct. Among the Idaho and Montana Mormon communities, there is an unspoken but active philosophy that it's *okay* to exploit "gentiles" (non-Mormons) in any way they can. "Gentiles" soon learn to spot the attitude, and commonly experience snubs from Mormon businesses. Yeah, there are plenty of "normal" Mormon business folks, but the "us only" skew is definitely there, sortof like an extended Old Boy network.

Conversely, I've not noticed these issues in SoCal, where Mormons blend in and don't act significantly different from anyone else.

I think the original point was that when you get a Mormon businessman who IS a bad one, *and* is in an area where church and community support are as one, they tend to behave as if any gentile they're screwing over is somehow subhuman, therefore not worth playing fair with, to a degree you don't normally see even in ordinary cutthroat business.

Move the LDS origins forward a century for purposes of comparison, and consider what other cul^H^H^H^H church they much resemble, and much may become clear ;)

Re:lawyers

[thefinite]

You know its interesting that Utah Mormons may be more gullible than the general population (a point your linked website makes). It would probably be a good idea for Mormon leaders to try to prevent this. This doesn't prove the grandparent's post, though. For example, did proportion of Mormon scam artists mirror the proportion of Mormons in the general population? Basically I agree that gullible people attract dishonest people. I don't think that the grandparent's post was making that point, though.

By the way, what's with that website? Do they really consider Mormons a cult?

EV1

[daperdan]

I'm sure that EV1 is very happy now about their investment and partnership with SCO. Maybe next time they'll partner with a more popular group like the KKK.

Re:EV1

[Megaslow]

I dont think the KKK wants anything to do with them!

Re:EV1

[LWATCDR]

I feel EV1 is getting to much heat. I mean if a thug leans on some little guy and extorts money from him do you blame the little fellow or the thug?
No CA paying is another matter. They are not some litte ISP.

Re:EV1

[Rorgg]

>I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons.

Well, of course.

1. You're Darl.
2. You make no sense.

But I'm being redundant....

Re:EV1

[the_mad_poster]

Except, this is more like a 90 year old man with a walker and oxygen claiming he has a shotgun in his pocket and demanding that you owe him money.... little guy or not.. I'm not afraid of a half-dead 90 year old man with no pockets.

Re:EV1

[HaloZero]

Definately not. http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=kkk.com

Almost all of their machines are *nix, and in violation of SCOs 'intellectual property'.

Re:EV1

[hackstraw]

Thugs doing extortion on a "little guy" does not make the news. The EV1 deal is only the tip of the iceburg, and we know little about it. Did Microsoft back EV1? Dunno. Did SCO make the whole thing up for more pump and dump? Dunno.

I believe that people are starting to catch on. Look at this 3month trend. And look at what the people in the know are doing with their stock.

Re:EV1

[nathanh]

The EV1 deal is interesting.

SCO is claiming the deal with EV1 was worth more than a million dollars. EV1 is disputing the 7 figures and the confusion seems to be the weasel word "worth".

In other words, SCO is claiming that $1million+ "worth" of licenses were sold. So that's $1mill/$699 = 1400+ licenses, or $1mill/$1399 = 700+ licenses. SCO's own quarterly says only $20k income from licensing this quarter. It's possible the EV1 payments are in stages, or won't appear on SCO's financials until next quarter, but it's also possible that EV1 only paid $20k for their licenses.

But SCO is spinning this to sound much more impressive. EV1 was the patsy here; they thought they were getting a great deal, but they were just another pawn in SCO's (Microsoft's?) smear campaign against Linux.

Re:EV1

[scottj]

In the legal system, one who has $60 million set aside for lawsuits is not anywhere near equivalent to a 90 year old man. More like a 25 year old hotshot with something to prove.

Re:EV1

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were a Linux developer and made a comment like:
/* This is a horrible kludge for backwards compatibility */

Would I be sued by Microsoft for copyright infringment? :o)

SCO lawyers

[Sassan Sanei]

Here in Canada, it's so cold outside that I swear I saw a SCO lawyer with his hand in his own pocket. Sassan

University of California at Berkeley

[andy666]

Ironically, UC Berkeley is also going to be a licensee!!

Re:University of California at Berkeley

[frenetic3]

When quoted for comment, the Berkeley representative cryptically responded "She bang! She bang!" and proceeded to gyrate hysterically, adding "I gave my best and I have no regrets at all."

-fren

Re:University of California at Berkeley

[k_head]

RH does not offer indemnifaction. They offer to defend you if you get sued.

A what now?

[NicolaiBSD]

Also, SCO has A HREF

What's a href and why are you yelling?

Fill in the blank?

[kwandar]

If there was a question as to whether this is just an SCO fishing expedition, I think the question has now been answered

I'm surprised SCRO don't just take the list of Fortune 100 companys they sent the notificiation to, and using mailmerge.

MS Word

[sport_160]

Not often you see 'joy' and 'MS Word' in the same sentence.

Freeware document metadata remover

[frenetic3]

FYI... here's a free app that removes MS Word metadata (useful for sensitive docs for distribution)

http://www.docscrubber.com/download.html

-fren

Re:Freeware document metadata remover

[Anonymous Coward]

"FYI... here's a free app that removes MS Word metadata (useful for sensitive docs for distribution)"

Here's another:

#!/bin/sh
mv $1 /dev/null

Re:Freeware document metadata remover

[tomhudson]

OpenOffice also removes it. That's why borked word docs opened in oo and resaved are so much smaller :-)

Re:Freeware document metadata remover

[KoopaTroopa]

Eh, it's good enough for government work ;)

Re: Freeware document metadata remover

[Black Parrot]

> FYI... here's a free app that removes MS Word metadata

Yeah, but what we wanted was an app that removes crooked corporate executives.

Way to proofread, editors!

[TrollBridge]

"Also, SCO has A HREF="http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/04/HN cascolicensee_1.html">announced a few new licensees including Computer Associates."

Are they even trying anymore?

Re:Way to proofread, editors!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they even trying anymore?

they'd have to start first

Using MS Word

[davidmcn]

With SCO being all about their Unix IP, you would think they would prefer to use their own product when writing legal proceedings, instead they use Microsofts....

Re:Using MS Word

[DreadSpoon]

SCO has a product?

Re:someone forgot to preview

[tcopeland]

This link's for you.

Thanks MS :)

[grendel_x86]

Thats funny, SCO screwed by their biggest contrib.

I know this feature of word has let me find out some interesting things before. You would not believe some of the things people write in their resumes.

Re:Thanks MS :)

[bmwm3nut]

another often overlooked "feature" is good old ^Z (undo). back many years ago (i think before track changes even existed) i was a t.a. for a professor who wanted all assignments turned in with word. if you got two similar assignments all you needed to do was bang on ^Z for a while and you'd see where they changed the name from the origial author to the current one. kinda fun.

Warning Letters

[crass751]

I'd be interested to know how many companies got the warning letter from SCO and tossed it in the circular file instead of replying to it.

If I'm not mistaken, SCO filed suit against DC because they never received a response to their letter. I wonder how many more they'll file based on lack of replies.

Re:Warning Letters

[Jaywalk]

If I'm not mistaken, SCO filed suit against DC because they never received a response to their letter.

It wasn't the warning letter that they're getting sued for. SCO wrote another letter to people who are using both SCO UNIX and Linux requiring them to certify that they're not using any Linux that impinges on SCO's IP. The letter was worded like the old joke, "Do you still beat your wife?" There was no way to answer the question without incriminating yourself. Half the people who got the letter never answered it.

Note the targets of SCO's lawsuits so far and the reason why they're being sued:

• IBM because they bought a UNIX license from SCO.
• Daimler Chrysler because they use both Linux and SCO UNIX.
• Autozone because they used to use SCO UNIX and changed to Linux.
• Novell because they have a contract with SCO to collect UNIX licensing fees.

Note that in every case the problem has never been that the target used Linux. It's always because they did business with SCO. In no case has SCO tried to prove in court that they have IP in Linux; they reserve those claims for their press releases. The court cases are all about contractual disputes with SCO customers and former customers.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The lesson is clear; it's dangerous to even talk to these nut jobs.

Slashdot story source code leaked

[Anonymous Coward]

This is scandalous. There's no official confirmation yet, but apparently CmdrTaco of Slashodt.org fame leaked the source code to the story. The file contained a href and then something.

Will this be the end of Slashdot?

Insane or bought? Or is there another option?

[bfree]

From infoworld article:

"What were they thinking?" said Bruce Perens, one of the founders of the Open Source Initiative. "I think this sends a very strange message and I'd like to hear a real explanation out of CA."

And I'd love to hear the real reasons from everyone else aswell! Are they setting up for a counter-suit, dumb or in SCO/MS pockets?

Re:someone forgot to preview

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn moderators.. Even they don't read articles anymore..

Coming to a Business Law Textbook

[Anonymous Coward]

"Next week we'll be covering one of the more amusing cases in IP. Make sure to read the case study on SCO before coming to class. It's Chapter 11, which isn't altogether lacking in irony."

Re: Ironic

[SirSlud]

More that its ironic that MS is bankrolling SCO to try and torpedo Linux, but their own technology is making it easier for the other side to obtain shreds of information we probably shouldnt be privy to.

I'm confused now

[Goody]

Is bloated, closed source, evil empire produced Word a good or bad thing ?

Oh snap.

[Mr. Darl McBride]

This is the last time I let Bill pay his license fees in Office CDs.

~Darl

Admissible evidence in court???

[Vexler]

IANAL. But suppose a case is brought to court that includes, as part of its collection of evidence, a Word document that tracks changes in much the same way that the Word document in the article apparently did. Could a prosecutor who, for example, sees among the "invisible ink" Neo-Nazi writings by the accused, be able to use that as evidence against him? Could he furthermore deduce "motive" and "intent" from that evidence? On one hand, he is able to glean the evidence simply because something *WAS* there. But that's just the problem: It was in the past, but it has been editted out and substituted by the weekly grocery list of the accused. Would he then be able to point to the "change log", so to speak, and build his case on that?

idiots!

[nxs212]

This is getting beyond utter stupidity! The only thing Bank of America would have to do is remove any offending code or recompile their apps without using offending libraries. It's not that hard.
So far we haven't seen a single line of proprietary code from SCO - anything and everything they have shown us was and still is available in public domain. Just because they copied it from public domain and put it in their shitty product doesn't make it their invention.
As far as BoA is concerned, I think Darl remembered he had an account with them where he stashed his millions. Talk about sticky situation:
Darl: All your Linux are belong to us!
BoA: OK, *click*, all your assets have been frozen until further notice...

and yet somehow

[focitrixilous P]

somehow this happened.
* SCO Group Inc (The) SCOX 11.66 +0.07 (0.60%)

How? What idiot would buy stock now? Microsoft, in a last ditch attempt to give them a shread of crediability? People willing to take a million to one odds that they win any of these lawsuits?

Re:and yet somehow

[DaveAtFraud]

Actually the $2 loss yesterday is probably why there was a minor uptick today. There are a lot of "mechanical" traders who assume a big, one day downturn overstates how much a company's stock should be punished for a given news item. They pick up the stock the next day on the assumption the cooler heads will prevail and the stock will regain some of its dramatic loss.

A lot of trading is done simply in response to a stock's momentum, average value, deviation from average, etc. It has very little to do with the long term prospects of the company.

SCO case coming into focus finally

[Anonymous Coward]

While many may see this latest round as another spasm in the twitching SCo corpse. I see it finally making some sense.

these latest cases in SCO is suing their former clients make sense and bring clarity to SCOs assertions.

Imagine it from SCOs point of view. They see a flood of customers running from Unixware to the free linux. They want to stop that. They think, Linux came up to speed so quickly to an enterprise level something smells fishy. There would be tonnes and tonnes of kernel, network and library issues to have ironed out. Yet people are making seemless conversions.

Ergo they realize people are copyying the code to speed the results. Now who to sue. You could sue your clients who are copying the libraries for comaptibility. or you could sue linux because they are not your customer.

So you decide to sue linux, assuming linux copied stuff just like your clients did. Your corporate culture despises Open Source so its not hard to get the blinders on, make rash accusations.

You find some smoking guns and start down that road. Then you decide to draw in IBM since they were selling the migration as a bussiness model and they just stiffed you on your last best hope for a collborative bussniess.

but then suddenly you realize you made some mistakes, maybe there was not as much copying as you thought. And what ther eis will vanish the moment its revealed. So if there is a case here its against IBM for assiting the copies and porting for clients to linux. And since linux is a disperse target, go for the end users without licences indemnities.

Finally you bite the bullet and realize your after the wrong smelly fish. Its not linux or IBM since they have the manpower to and skill to make honest clean versions. its your clients who would not have had the manpower to do the conversions without cheating. Some lazy programmer copied code to speed the library conversions. Sue the clients!!!

While I'm doubtful of copying in the kernel, since its a hotly scrutinzed area, I would not be surpise to find copying in underfunded corporate backwaters such as migration libraries, in which core, boring compatibility issues in uixware had to be translated to Linux and some programmer got lazy or pressed for time.

Maybe SCo is finally going to create a winable case.

Re:Bank of America?

[LMCBoy]

Headline: "Computers Purported To Be Used For Something Besides Serving Webpages"!

Film at 11.

Re:Bank of America?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Sorry for the anonymous post... none of this is confidential but I'd still like to keep my name separate from it...)

1. We use AIX. Heavily. Like most banks do.
2. We're rolling out Linux right now. I'm personally involved in this deployment, and we have made a big deal out of it, going as far as making a presentation at the last LWE about our Linux plans.

NO, DO NOT DO THAT

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in a company that uses a mix of code as well as we write our own. Some of it is under BSD, others LGPL, and of course, GPL. I myself encourage this, but I always push that we need to obey the licenses. What I have found funny is that 2 people here are weak coders and basically like to steal GPL based code and say that putting it in a product we will give us a leg up. I have been fighting a huge battle on it and have finally won. But it was a close battle. In fact, the management wanted to go with the others, but it was myself and a lawyer who convince them to simply change the model.

I suspect that This goes on more than most realize. I would suspect that a number of small companies are "getting a leg up" in this fashion. So no, do not mod down.

Great publicity for Linux

[IceAgeComing]

I've been a linux user for years, and I had no idea that Autozone, Daimler-Chrysler, and BofA all used linux on a widespread basis.

I'll just bet PHB's are thinking more about Linux, thanks to all the SCO press.

I love irony.

Halloween X confirmed real.

[eddy]

"Blake Stowell, SCO's director of communications, acknowledged that the leaked memo is real." -- eweek

Microsoft HAS worked with EV1

[michael path]

Since you brought up Microsoft and EV1...

There is a Case Study on Microsoft's web site here. This discusses the addition of several Windows-based servers to their Linux environment.

So, are they bed buddies? You bet.

-m.

Statue of Joseph Smith in SLC

[spun]

The big statue of Joseph Smith in the center of Salt Lake City has his back to the Temple and his arms outstretched towards the Bank across the street. This observation isn't meant as a slight against Mormons in general, but it is strangely symbolic of the attitude of some Mormons.

Re:Statue of Joseph Smith in SLC

[spun]

Might be. Whatever statue is right in front of the temple, it does have it's back to the Temple and hands out to the bank. Not that that's an unusual pose for a statue. Pretty much any statue in front of a building has its back to the building. Just a fun fact to throw into discussions of Mormon business practices. ;-)

thugs

[drxyzzy]

Man in suit: Hey kid, nice software you have there. What's it called?

Kid: Um, Linux, why?

Man: Because I'm from SCO/Microsoft and I think it looks like my
software now.

Kid: No way, in fact I wrote some of it myself

Man [pushing attorneys in front of him]: Moose! Lefty! Help the kid
find his wallet.

Computer Associates claim is bogus

[Anonymous Coward]

The word within CA is that the SCO claim is a lie. The following article is doing the rounds internally - it claims to have been published but I can't find it on the web, if I did I would provide a link instead...

CA Says It Didn't Pay SCO No Stinking Linux Tax

The Linux faithful have been hammering Computer Associates as a heretic since the British publication Computer Weekly quoting the SCO Group's CFO Bob Bench identified CA Thursday as one of SCO's rare Linux licensees.

CA senior VP of product development Mark Barrenechea says that Bench's claim is nonsense. CA has not paid SCO any Linux taxes, he said.

Drawing up short of calling SCO a liar, Barrenechea claims that SCO has twisted a $40 million breach-of-contract settlement that CA paid last summer to the Canopy Group, SCO's biggest stockholder, and Center 7, another Canopy company, and has turned it into a purported Linux license.

As a 'small part' of that settlement, Barrenechea said, CA got a bunch of UnixWare licenses that it needed to support its UnixWare customers. SCO, he said, had just attached a transparent Linux indemnification to all UnixWare licenses and that is how SCO comes off calling CA a Linux licensee.

But when CA agreed to that settlement, Barrenechea said, 'It was not CA's intention to become a Linux licensee. It has nothing to do with CA's product direction or strategic direction,' he said.

CA has absolutely no sympathy for what SCO is doing, Barrenechea said, and in fact, he said, reading from a formal statement, it stands in 'stark disagreement with SCO's tactics and threats.'

Barrenechea and CA's Linux chief Sam Greenblatt are worried that CA will be tarred with the SCO brush and that CA's considerable Linux ambitions will be damaged by a disaffected, if not hostile, open source community when in reality CA has 'nothing to do with SCO's strategy and tactics,' they said.

CA was the mystery company SCO was thinking of when it announced last August that an unidentified Fortune 500 company had supposedly become a Linux license. SCO privately described the deal as 'significant.'

CA couldn't disassociate itself from the rumors that identified it as that licensee because of an NDA that the Canopy side had insisted on hedging in the $40 million settlement with, Barrenechea and Greenblatt said.

Barrenechea said that SCO now regards that NDA as being off because of the legal discovery that's been going on in SCO's $5 billion suit against IBM.

See, SCO lawyer Mark Heisse in a letter dated February 4 to IBM lawyer David Marriott at Cravath Swain identified CA, Questar and Leggett & Platt as Linux taxpayers.

According to that letter, which is up on the Groklaw site, Heisse owed IBM a copy of the CA agreement on CD.

Barrenechea said that SCO was dropping CA's name to associate itself with the 'third-largest software company in the world' and build support for its 'lost cause.'

But according to Barrenechea, not only are SCO's IP ambitions doomed, but its Unix interests are a 'trailing negative' on the road to dropping from 10% of the market to 3%-5% in a few years and then 'SCO will be irrelevant,' he said.

By the way, CA doesn't have enough UnixWare licenses to cover all its Linux servers, Greenblatt said.

In answer to CA's contentions, SCO said its lawyers think that CA has a Linux license.

Meanwhile, Bench also told Computer Weekly, whose story was picked up by sister paper InfoWorld and maybe other properties in the IDG stable, that SCO had signed between 10 and 50 Linux licenses.