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SCO's Finances, Legal Case Take Hits
geomon writes "This afternoon, SCO will host a conference call where they will present '04 third quarter financial data. The news isn't expected to be comforting to SCO investors as they are coming up a bit short; earnings and dividends will take a substantial hit. The only bright spot for the company is the settlement with BayStar, a deal that will leave most of the cash they received from the investment house in the hands of SCO management, if only for a short time." Reader ak_hepcat writes "Groklaw has posted the text for the latest IBM memorandum in its case against SCO. In a nutshell, IBM accuses SCO of not only wrangling the legal process to keep delaying the eventual resolution of this case, but they go so far as to pull the curtain away and show that this table never had any legs to begin with. I'm no marksman, but I can tell when something is full of holes."
and that doesn't inspire confidence either. It probably isn't reaching too far to say that SCO ain't long for this world.
Their lawyers can also be sanctioned for submitting arguments they knew had no chance at all* of winning. Rule 11, anyone?
*N.B.: Before you get worried about closing the courthouse doors to legitimate complaints, that rule is used even less than it probably should be, and only in cases where the lawyer submits a claim (s)he knows or should have known is either misleading, false, or ridiculously frivolous (fails the laugh test).
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
... all that time ago when SCO started this:
1. Did they really think they had something?
2. Was it a hope for IBM et al to buy them out and save a failing Company?
3. Did M$ really engineer all this anyway?
Whatever, but the last point is can a court, on whatever decision is reached now, actually stem the tide against this sort of action by large $$$$/££££ in the bank Companies deliberately trying to destroy a free (and perhaps better system), against an otherwise 'couldn't care less to who uses my code' attitude open source movement in the courts?
IBM has money to oppose. What if they didn't and couldn't fight back for OSS? Who could fight the monopolies then?
The next fight is these silly patents. I think that will be BIG trouble for all free people, let allow coders.
Well the deal here is that IBM has SCO between a rock and a hard place. If SCO tries to show code at this point, IBM asks why haven't they shown the code earlier, after numerous court ordered discovery attempts? If they show code now, they will be demonstrating that they haven't complied with the court's orders.
IBM is also foreclosing on their defense of saying that the case isn't about copyright, and therefore IBM shouldn't be allowed to bring this "alien" motion. IBM is doing this by pointing out how SCO has done nothing but characterize their complaint as copyright infringement outside of the courtroom.
IBM has efffectively and devastatingly weakened the overall case while utterly destroying SCO's SCOsource program. And they've made it look easy.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
SCO's situation is worse than that when it comes to the GPL. Either they say the GPL is invalid, at which point they lose any and all right to distribute the code in the Linux kernel (and other Linux software), or the GPL is valid and they have knowingly and willingly contributed their code to a GPL project (by releasing SCOSource and Caldera... and whatever other Linux-based projects they have). I don't even have an opinion on this case and I can see SCO is fucked.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
It gets better. The other expert IBM has is Prof. Randall Davis. He goes over the methodology SCO used to determine copied code and tears apart SCO's claims that they need more code from IBM. When I read it I felt like I was witnessing a clusterbomb being dropped on SCO's entire case. It really is a beautiful piece of work and by the end leaves no doubt that the man is worth every penny of the $550/hour fee he charged IBM.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Alright, here are some brief summaries of conversations during the conference call. (I have too much free time but it's interesting to witness a train wreck).
Caller asks SCO what they can do to protect their shareholders from what may be bad legal advice.
Response is SCO obtained the best firm available for the best legal advice available.
Caller asks would you seek a second opinion from a new firm like you would seek a second opinion from a medical doctor?
Response is anyone with these questions likely has not read all material in front of the courts and they would be unable to generate a conclusion because the paperwork is confidential.
Caller asks what would it take to buy SCO with the poison pill?
The board would need to set a fair price.
Caller asks how many people are employed by SCO.
At the end of the quarter, SCO has 230 people.
Caller asks since beginning on this legal crusade, how much has been paid for legal representation?
Just over $15 million for all law firms for the prior 5 quarters.
SCO currently has $43M in cash. Plans on paying $31M in fees - not sure if this is some baystar thing or legal fee.
Can you summarize the responses from the court that have been positive?
March 6th, Judge said SCO has shown good faith in its discovery process. Ordered IBM to deliver executives emails.
April 19th, SCO received good information from IBM and has been working through that.
Despite judge orders, IBM has not completely fulfilled the order to deliver the information request on March 6th.
Novell case, motion filed to dismiss, motion was denied. A new motion to dismiss was issued and SCO looking forward to dealing with that.
Autozone case, case was stayed but you get 90 days of discovery. SCO is currently going through that process.
Character case that IBM is trying to do of SCO's legacy AT&T contracts is misguided.
Additional hearing will be held on September 14th and 15th.
Caller asks is SCO replacing cash payments to lawyers with sliding scale contingency payments?
Yes. In a certain sense, the long term obligation depends on judgment and settlement amounts.
>>Gupta quoted tiny bits out of context and rearranged them to deceptively make linux and sysv look similar, when the sections quoted aren't similar at all.
Would that be falsifying evidence? Isn't that a very serious crime?