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SCO Files for Stay of Execution
An anonymous reader writes "SCO has filed for another delay in the case against IBM. The article reports that 'According to filings in the case, SCO is looking to buy time until the court can hear its arguments compelling IBM to release more information. SCO lawyers argue the information -- namely source code they claim was lifted from AIX and Dynix to bolster the open source Linux kernel -- is necessary in getting a successful ruling.'"
And again, it's another journalist who repeat like a parrot SCO' press release without digging a little bit... annoying.
"Tell us what we want to know, but we need more time to find what we've been claiming for months."
Truth is stranger than fiction.
--Coming up with something clever... please wait...
if they are doing this, are they like chickening out from suing IBM?? cool! (doubt it, but its woth a thought.)
So they're asking IBM to open the source that was stolen to SCO so they can investigate it?
I thought the thing they were investigating in the first place was source that was already opened that SCO found.
Am I missing something?
SCO is just digging, I wish they would either strike, or leave us the hell alone. Slander is what it's boiling down to. They need to get more sales and money and all they can do is talk shit about linux until someone figures out they have no case..... but the lose of sales from their bullshit will hurt other companies and they deserve to be sued back.... Anyone care to join in with Big Blue?
Sometimes the majority just means all the morons are on the same side.
The real reason for the delay is that the lawyers have their next scheduled stock sale next week!
January 12, 2004 SCO hands infringing code to IBM
Did I miss something?
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
By necessity, Judges are very patient creatures. Don't be surprised if the judge waits until SCO is done hanging themselves before he slams the case shut. If he doesn't give them enough rope, they could start all over in an appeals court.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
actually, doesn't this play into big blue's hands? after all, they have deeper pockets, we know that SCO is having some problems w/ paying their legal bills (story from last week).
ed
I know you stole my ring. If you let me in your house, to look around, I am sure I will find my ring. Stop hiding my ring, I know you have it.
It is my precious......
This is insane. SCO wants to go on a fishing trip, looking for something they claim IBM stole, yet have no proof of. If they don't have proof, what are they doing suing IBM other than to be annoying. Are we (collective) just supposed to believe that they (SCO) are telling us the truth, BLINDLY?
What a crock. The judge should simply dismiss the case at this point, with prejudice. I can think of at least 15 different reasons to do so. Namely every time SCO gets themselves in a pickle (technical term), they change the subject. At this point, they are suing for infringement that they don't have ANY knowledge of.
Incredible. Insane. ENOUGH already.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So, lemme get this straight, SCO takes money from MS to throw some dirt on linux so stupid corporate businesses think linux is made up of stolen ideas (now there's something that's fucked up), and when the judges say "where's the evidence?" they say "we need more time to find dirt"...
Sounds like to me they're trying to keep "sco loses case, linux legit" headline from hitting the news...
Candy-Coated Knowledge
"-That's not gonna be good for business.
-That's not gonna be good for anybody."
IBM's motion depended on the claim that "AT&T didn't mean what SCO says they meant in their derivative works clause". In support of that, IBM presented two witnesses from AT&T who said that AT&T had intended for the clause to be narrowly interpreted. Unfortunately for IBM, SCO had access to the original BSD depositions, where these same two officials testified to exactly the opposite "fact".
Oops. There goes that argument -- and, very probably, any chance for a summary judgement. The net effect of the contradictory depositions will be to establish beyond doubt or cavil that there is a clear uncertainty about the meaning of the contract, which allows SCO to say "If the clause is relevant to the case, then we must determine what the clause meant. People who signed the document don't even know what it meant, and thought one thing once, and another thing later. Summary judgement is not possible."
This shows again how royally screwed up our legal system is. We need tort reform because in the end we'll all wind up paying for this stupidity by the courts. SCO has gone after multiple parties in multiple districts, wasting countless hours in our courts and a ton of money on the accused. This ultimately costs us all.
Whether it's medical malpractice cases, bogus lawsuits or SCO, this will all cost us more in everything we buy. It does now, and it will only get worse unless we put a stop to this legal self feeding excercise.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I am reminded of a quote from Londo Mollari of Babylon 5:
"Only a fool fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the kingdom of fools fights a war on twelve fronts!"
My rights don't need management.
The article mentioned that SCO claims that AutoZone moved SCO OpenServer code into Linux during their migration. If they were migrating from OpenServer to Linux, doesn't that imply that they had a valid license for OpenServer? So they bought the code they used. What's the problem?
You realize, of course, that Darl was paid millions for his role in this charade. Look at "executive compensation" in any of the stock sites. He played his role as the microsoft shill well, and was well compensated for it.
I don't see him in McDonalds anytime soon.
With a really weak hand with SCO's Vapor-IP he spread FUD for many years. I see MSFT instilling him as next CEO of Sun so he can make people question Linux for the next 4 years with stronger IP claims to play with.
Judge Wells initially set a deadline of next February for the discovery phase of the suit to be complete. Until and unless that deadline would need to move, I think he'll let SCO continue to litigate anything and everything they want.
The motions for summary judgement now concern only that (1) There is no SCO copywrited code in the Linux kernel, and (2) that the contract IBM signed with AT&T years ago doesn't preclude IBM from contributing their own software to Linux.
Were IBM to score summary judgement on both points, they would have SCO on the ropes. The cace would then shift to being about the conduct that SCO engaged in before filing the suit, and whether that constitued trade libel and tortious interference with IBM's business.
"...as well as IBM's failure to produce information that back up SCO's breach of contract and copyright infringement claims."
Uh...wait a sec... when did it become the defendant's job to prove the plaintiff's case?
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
Perhaps rope-feeding is the wrong analogy. What I see is judges dotting every i and crossing every t because they don't need this back in their courtroom. It is very obvious that SCO will try to keep this in court until the money runs out. These judges want the least possible amount of that time in their courts. Basically, Judges hate getting appealed cases back.
Behind the scenes it can be either RCS or SCCS storing the deltatext.
IIRC, the change log comments are stored in an SQL database of your choice, along with all the other metadata for bug/feature tracking and release management.
So, sure, they could just do something like:
(It's been 5 years since I worked with CMVC, I've forgotten the real column and view names.)
But the point is, why should they have do? And does SCO also want that correlated with bug or feature numbers, descriptions, design plans, test plans, and so on? That's all in CMVC as well. Except, of course, for the design and planning that takes place outside of CMVC.
Generally, development change log entries are useful when you're looking at the file and wanting to know how it got that way.
Now, IBM could always just do:
Except, of course, this is no longer about code from UNIX getting into Linux. It's about code IBM (and that other company IBM bought a while back) wrote, that they included with AIX and Dynix, and then later contributed to Linux. So the code was never present in AT&T UNIX. It was written by IBM itself.All that matters is that boilerplate contract that SCO says means anything IBM wrote reverts back to AT&T (and therefore its successors).
And anyone who believes that IBM would accept a contract like that has never dealt with them or their legal contract. Which is what the business about that amendment is about.
BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men!
At the risk of my karma...
You do know that booth babes typically do not use the products they hawk, don't you? I mean, honestly, how many of the booth babes at, oh... say... GenCon think it would be just awesome if some guy would ask them to go play D&D?
Aforementioned BSD mascot probably runs Windows XP at home.
SCO's position is that according to the original AT&T contract, any derived code becomes part of the SysV and thus is owned by SCO not IBM. Because IBM used "methods and concepts" of Unix when developing AIX, there is no such thing as "homegrown" code for IBM. They base this on THEIR intrepretation of copyright law. This is according to their SCO's Memo in Support of its Expedited Motion to Enforce the Scheduling Order
IBM has already answered this argument. If a contract is being questioned, the court can ask the original parties what they meant. If there is a dispute, the court has to decide between both sides. They have affidavits from everyone involved with the original contract negotiations at AT&T (some of them still work for AT&T). There is now questions from IBM, Sequent, and AT&T all that AT&T does not claim ownership of derivative or "homegrown" code and disagrees with SCO's interpretation.
SCO responds by challenging only two of IBM's many witnesses (Wilson and Frasure). Back in the USL vs BSD case, two of IBM's witnesses argued the opposite. They said the AT&T should own all derivative code. Two things that SCO forgot to mention to the court. The USL vs BSD is sealed and testimony from the case is highly inadmissable AND the court was in favor of ruling against USL on their notion of copyright law and derivatives. Since then the witnesses may have changed their opinions.
IBM also argues SCO's notion is ridiculous. It would mean SCO owns any code written by MS, Sun, Compaq, HP, Irix, IBM, etc simply because they at one time put that code anywhere near SysV code.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
We know this, but more importantly, they know this too. This has always been the expected outcome.
I don't think this is true.
In my opinion, here's how it went down:
In the beginning, it was just a ploy to get bought out by IBM. When IBM didn't bite, SCO tried to turn up the heat by saying some outrageous things and by threatening to cancel IBM's UNIX license. When IBM still didn't bite, SCO decided to turn up the heat some more by filing a lawsuit. IBM is a very risk-averse and PR-sensitive company and it was somewhat reasonable for SCO to assume that IBM would try hard to stay out of court. IBM, however, learned long ago that if you cave to every threat, the leeches will suck you dry, so IBM hunkered down and prepared for battle.
Now, if SCO's management were really smart, they would have realized somewhere along the line that it wasn't going to work and backed off. But some other things happened during this series of SCO-initiated escalations. First, SCO's stock price took a massive jump. In fact, Darl and company quickly realized that the more outrageous the claims they made the bigger the spike they could provoke. Now they knew, and had planned on, the stock price going up and had already set up their timed, periodic sell orders, but I think they got a much bigger boost than they had ever dreamed, and I think it made them a little (more) nuts and (more) stupid.
Another thing that happened was the cash from Sun and Microsoft, which made SCO realize that perhaps there was another way to squeeze money out of this furor they were stirring up. The Baystar and RBC investments cemented it. They also found that threatening to charge for Linux licenses gave their stock price a nice bump and they wondered if, just maybe, people would really pay. They knew that given the herd mentality of big business, if they could scare a few into paying, lots would. And LOTS of big companies use Linux. They almost made a severe mistake here, BTW, when they began talking about sending out invoices. Whether it was the response from the community or their own attorneys that did it, they managed to figure out that sending invoices might constitute mail fraud, and that's a Bad Thing.
I think that was the point of no return. In order to create the frightened stampede of Linux licensees that they hoped for, they had to threaten so hard and so loud that they essentially made backing off impossible.
But that's not all. I think that fairly early on, they did some cursory examination of Unix System V and Linux and found some snippets of duplicate code. "Aha!", they said, "This smoke that we've been blowing actually has some fire underneath!" Of course, some of the code was BSD, some was Unix System III, and the rest was trivial errors made by SGI, quickly corrected. But I don't think they realized any of that until the community pointed it out to them. Even after that, I think they really believed that there *had* to be infringement in there. These guys are not programmers and they didn't understand that it is, in fact, much easier to replicate existing functionality than to build something new, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that Linus et al were able to bring Linux from nothing to a powerful kernel in a little over a decade. They also didn't understand just how much of a leg up the GNU tools gave the Linux developers.
On top of the suspicion that there actually was copied code, if they could just find it, I think they they had read too much of the secret USL vs BSDi documents and understood too little of them. In that court case, AT&T was arguing the same sorts of expansive theories that SCO has been arguing, claiming that anyone who brushed up against Unix was mentally "contaminated" for life. What they missed were two fundamental points: First, that USL was arguing trade secret, copyright, trademark and copyright all together, unlike SCO, who has tried to argue everything, but has gotten whittled down to purely contractual arguments and second
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"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Instead of tort reform, how about penalties for meritless lawsuits. Fine the plaintifs into bankruptcy and dis-bar the lawyers. We would end up with fewer stupidity lawsuits and fewer lawyers.
Damn, thats a win - win if I ever heard one.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
This is a fundamentally a contract case. The law of torts deals ONLY with liability outside the realm of contracts.
Instead of repeating a term that politicians bandy about with no idea what it means, why don't you list some concrete changes you would make in the law?
Yes, this comment is a dupe, but so is the ignorance.
As yet another regular Groklaw reader, I can tell you that PJ had no such plans last I knew, simply because she commented over here a few times, only to be ignored in favor of highly-moderated (but incorrect) legal advice someone gave out. Thus, she's no fan of moderation.
That said, there are generally only a few threads worth reading--some of the new information under OT and corrections (which are generally started by someone right at the top of each new story), and comments by some of the more knowledgeable legal types on Groklaw. AllParadox & Marbux come to mind--you can search for their comments via the Groklaw search page. Quartermass is another who provides interesting legal insight, but he always posts anonymously, merely signing his messages, to encourage people not to filter the anonymous posts out over there. Sadly, that makes his insights harder to find, with them being somewhat burried.
Because the original poster may be not telling he truth?
If somebody comes bragging here one is entitled to ask more to see if the bragging is justified or just a childish attempt to make others feel stupid.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Not pointing fingers, when some of the tinfoil crowd comes ups with wild theories, we all sit and agree, partly because we WANT to agree. Slashdot comments are known for sometiems being low on facts, and high on heresay. Face it!
the Grandparent post comes up with a story, whcih may be true or false. However, face it, I am sure MOST of the geeks wish we would have done something similar, and are probably kicking ourselves in the pants for missing the train. After all we all had the information that SCO was full of "shit", why dont we put out money on it, and make a tidy sum whilst at it?
I think the parent poster, more than thinking the parent is full of crap, somewhat wishes he was the one who did that
Come on, us geeks get used every day for many reasons, by the stockmarkets, etc. Its harder to find jobs now because of silly runaway things in the past, like the Dot Bomb fiasco. Its time to turn the tables somewhat, and make some money on the very stupid investors that have played with our lives int he past.
Have a nice day!
I know for a fact that there had to be quite a few people that were shorting SCO stock. I tried to do it myself, but was disallowed because the percentage of SCO stock that was already being shorted was too high. The original poster's story might've been lacking in details, but it's a pretty safe bet that if this guy didn't make a lot of money off of shorting SCO stock, somebody did.
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