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FSF Subpoenaed by SCO
An anonymous reader writes "Bradley M. Kuhn on the FSF website: Late last year, we were subpoenaed by SCO as part of the ongoing dispute
between SCO and IBM. Today, we made that
subpoena available on our website. This is a broad subpoena that
effectively asks for every single document about the GPL and enforcement
of the GPL since 1999. They also demand every document and email that we
have exchanged with Linus Torvalds, IBM, and other players in the
community. In many cases, they are asking for information that is
confidential communication between us and our lawyers, or between us and
our contributors."
> In many cases, they are asking for information that is confidential communication
> between us and our lawyers, or between us and our contributors."
See JYA at Cryptome for how to deal with this sort of thing.
So lawyers are petitioning for confidential information from other lawyers, knowing it is confidential?
Why, preytell, have there been no petitions to have SCOs lawyers disbarred yet?
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
IANAL, but that's my take from reading the subpoena. It looks to me like Darl & company may be trying to assert that the GPL is void because it's not being enforced. And, its use against SCO is a special case.
Why would communication between FSF and its contributors be confidential?
Evan Prodromou | evan@prodromou.name | http://evan.prodromou.name/
I understand from my attorney friends that giving people a zillion documents is known as `papering them over'. A prosecutor of my acquantance tells me that well-designed subpoenas try to avoid the situation where you end up with 23 pallet loads of paper.
What that says to me is that SCO's lawyers have specifically asked to be papered over, so as to have lots more billable hours for the time spent reading all the irrelevant paperwork.
It's possible, in fact, that they'll bill for 500 hours of reading these papers when they don't bother to read any of it at all; how would SCO prove that they didn't do it?
Given their delaying tactics they might love to be given too much data.
Aside from the question of who eventually will get that data ie invisible backers, they seem to be abusing the trial as a way to get press not justice.
Whatever intelligence they can collect for their backers is probably gravy, and if they can gain a delay based on its volume that must suit them fine.
Besides when you know there won't be proof you can use its easy to disregard stacks of paper.
Perhaps they could hire the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution to make grand pronouncements without the burden of the facts.
My favorite part of the FSF letter:
In addition to answering and/or disputing the subpoena, we must also educate the community about why it is that Linux was attacked and GNU was not. For more than a decade, FSF has urged projects to build a process whereby the legal assembly of the software is as sound as the software development itself. Many Free Software developers saw the copyright assignment process used for most GNU components as a nuisance, but we arduously designed and redesigned the process to remove the onerousness. Now the SCO fiasco has shown the community the resilience and complete certainty that a good legal assembly process can create. (SCO, after all, eventually dropped their claims against GNU as a whole and focused on the Linux project which, for all its wonderful technical achievements, has a rather loose legal assembly process.)
SCO has finally gone fishing nuts.
... time ... time ... will the FSF Foundation ever get reimbursed for all the time spent from a company that will just file bankruptcy when needed.
... over months and years. That guy at SCO he ain't smart enough for such tactical/strategic thought ... I wonder who the real software boss is?
....
... $30 for everything copied and shipped ... sounds like they may want to know exactly which trash-dump FSF's trash was tossed in for the past decade. Then, maybe, next year SCO will ask FSF and RMS to deliver the trash dump to SCO.
Just me, from when I started my archives in 1987, for email and personal/work files (with some whoops redundancy).... I have a little over 10G [lots of pictures, some text, a few corrupt files, and I know there must be a couple ancient MS-DOS and/or CP/M viruses entombed for posterity].
If they want everything from FSF/GNU/RMS/EmployeeA-z/ContactA-Z/.... They could be fishing for years, and catch a few interesting zip-null files for all their efforts. Those folks at SCO must be getting sustenance from a deep-pockets source for these fishing expeditions, because they are wasting everyone's time
Maybe that is it, they are trying to bankrupt the FSF foundation by having everyone working at the FSF for nothing and costing time and money
I will continue to make ($20-$200) donations to FSF and others, but I will continue to keep it all hand2hand without receipts or tax benefits. I don't got time or money for SCO to get me or maybe the US software Gestapo that went after that nice Georgia Cracker lady that protects the USA Constitution, Democracy, and voting
I may be paranoid, but I can see it coming
"Reality is a self-induced hallucination." [Anyone know who owns this line?]
OldHawk777
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Here in Greece it is illegal for the IRS (the Greek version obviously) to even *touch* your computer, let alone take it.
They alway tell someone "show us this" and "Show us that".
this is because you can claim that they tampered it, in an effort to harm/collect more/frame you/whatever.
I know this because both my sisters are acocuntants and they've been taught this at the University.
I do not know what the situation is with the police, however, but i assume that similar reasoning would apply.
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