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SCO Spreads Rumors About IBM Lawsuit

Posted by michael on from the your-chocolate-ration-has-been-increased dept.

yeremein writes "SCO says it has found a new smoking gun in its battle with IBM. This 'bombshell' was not found in a court document; instead it came from a reporter's interview at SCOforum. The scoop? 'SCO alleges that since 2001, AIX has contained code for which IBM does not have a license. Moreover SCO claims to have found internal IBM e-mails in which IBMers acknowledge this shortcoming.' With the announcement comes a hefty boost in SCO's stock price." SCO is also going to bundle its worthless linux licenses with its Unix operating systems.

4 of 440 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So Many Things wrong with this Picture by kfhickel · · Score: 5, Informative

    >SCO claims to have found internal IBM e-mails
    >
    >This is a form of espionage which is illegal >without a court order.

    Umm, RTFA, dude:
    SCO says it discovered the e-mails in a mountain of documents IBM produced in discovery related to SCO's lawsuit against IBM over the Linux operating system.

  2. Can you say estoppel by BootSpooge · · Score: 5, Informative

    Great article at Groklaw about this very thing. Note it's from a year ago.

  3. This may not matter by BrianWCarver · · Score: 5, Informative

    This may not matter if the Novell-SCO litigation goes in Novell's favor. But here's the points:

    1. Contrary to some above misinformed posters, SCO didn't have to commit espionage to get internal IBM e-mails. The discovery process in a lawsuit like this involves both sides turning over mountains of documents and e-mails. I'm sure this is where SCO found this information.

    2. Novell claims they still own UNIX. Novell says that SCO only has a (revokable) license to license UNIX to others. Novell has already exercised their right to revoke SCO's UNIX-licensing powers as regards IBM, back when SCO claimed to be revoking IBM's license. Novell effectively said, "We run the show here, SCO, and IBM is legitimately licensed in our book."

    The point then is that if Novell wins their SCO case, then this "smoking gun" is actually a wilted flower. Novell can provide IBM with a license for AIX, if they actually need one, and any damages IBM might owe could be paid to their buddy Novell, not SCO. (This part I'm less certain about, and depends on the extent to which Novell wins their case.)

    Anyway, as others have pointed out, this doesn't affect Linux at all, and as I'm pointing out, it may not even affect IBM's use of UNIX. Nothing to see here... Move along...

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  4. Being groklaw'd already by g00set · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is in the process of being groklaw'd already.

    --
    ... and furthermore ... I don't like your trousers.