IBM tells SCO to Put Up or Shut Up

Jeffrey Johnson writes "The whole SCO and IBM case is coming to a head with new filings from IBM accusing SCO of being 'grandiose' and saying it has 'effectively conceded' that it has no evidence of infringement. It asks for evidence to be produced or the whole case thrown out. According to experts this makes it make-or-break: either SCO has to outline exactly what the issues are with Linux or the whole sorry affair is over."

Comments

What I'm trying to work out

[mcc]

If I'm reading all these reports right, the summary judgement just concerns the copyrights / "stolen code in linux" claims that SCO had as part of their case, but dropped when the judge ordered them to produce evidence.

What the summary judgement means is IBM is pointing at the big swath of things that SCO claimed then dropped from the case, and asking the judge, "could you *pretend* SCO never dropped those parts, and give us the ruling you would have given if those parts of the case were still in effect, so that we can declare the matter closed and SCO can't make those allegations again later?"

So if the summary judgement's granted, IBM's case will still go on, since it has no bearing on the contract claims that SCO's lawsuit against IBM comprises at this point.

HOWEVER, if the summary judgement is granted, RedHat's case will suddenly start up, since (1) the copyright allegations and slander that the summary judgement concerns is *exactly* what RedHat's case is about and (2) when RedHat's case hit court, it was ruled that that case should be delayed until the IBM case is decided, so (3) since the part of the IBM case that RedHat was waiting on has been summary judgemented, they're free to persue the lanham act thingy against SCO.

Is the above the case?

Re:Yeah!

[einTier]

I've worked for IBM in the recent past, and I'll say they are about as benign as a big company can get. It was really a pleasure to work for them, and there was always cool stuff going on.

One thing I really respected about them is that they throw tons of money into research and development, even if that R&D doesn't seem to have a real financial payoff in the future. They basically just pay people to come up with and develop cool technological toys. Some are successful and make IBM tons of money. Others aren't and are just cool to have around. Still, it's not often you see a large company that dedicates a large portion of time and money to things that don't contribute to the bottom line.

However, woe be unto you if you cross them. As benign as they are, those fuckers hold a serious grudge. And for a very, very long time. They are still pissed about the whole OS/2 Warp debacle and won't use Microsoft products if they can get away with it. That's also a very large reason why they are pumping so much money into Linux. They'd rather the whole OS market be open and free than have Microsoft controlling it.

They are going to literally grind SCO's bones to make their bread. There will be no SCO by the time IBM is done.

Re:About damn time

[mkoenecke]

A brief tip: if you haven't actually paid attention to the progress of the case and know nothing about the litigation process, you'll save yourself considerable embarassment by refraining from commenting on it.

IAAL, and I'm dumbfounded that the judge has not *already* bounced SCO's entire lawsuit for refusing to comply with two consecutive discovery orders. "20 business days?" It's already been over a year.