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Report Claims SCO Intends to Charge IBM with Fraud
An anonymous reader writes "Now it gets interesting. According to this report, it looks as if SCO is preparing to accuse IBM of fraud, and has even opened up a web site to counter the runaway success of Groklaw. SCO's expensive attorneys Boies and Silver are apparently going to file a motion asking the court to unseal most of the documents that are currently under seal, in the hope that certain of IBM's e-mails will be seen by the outside world to tell a story about AIX, Dynix, and Project Monterey that implicates IBM in, well to be blunt, fraud. Groklaw is certain to have its own distinct view about this latest development of course."
They've got nothing, everything they do is getting thrown out of court, so they're going to try and blame IBM for that too. It will be nice to tell our grandchildren about this company named SCO that tried to profit off of others work.
So, SCO insults the entire world of Free Software, and they think some stupid web site will generate some sympathy? Sheesh.
Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
Yeah, the least they could do is put some pr0n on it, or something.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
Where is SCO getting all this money to pay lawyers? Nobody's paying the licensing fees.
The page says "Roll mouse over timeline icons to see summary of each document". So I did and nothing. Hmmmm. Well, let's see how it validates.
OH well.
Free XBox, PS2
I think SCO just likes to believe that if it could just advocate enough false statements then perhaps just by chance one of them will turn out to be true. I figure the chance of that is equivelent to one hundred monkeys tapping randomly on keyboards reconstructing all of linux source code with a covering letter to Darl telling him to politely drink a cup of Ricin. Simon.
The only one commiting fraud here is SCO. They are creating fraudulent lawsuits for no reason but to annoy IBM. Pretty soon SCO is gonna sue for wrongful death because IBM killed their company. I mean seriously, doesn't this kind of suit start to border on defamation? Shouldn't IBM have the ability to sue SCO for damages or at least to force them to stop all lawsuits?
...to see a summary of each document.
Doesn't work with either browser I have installed right now. For a company whose motto is The Power of Unix, apparently you need to run IE6 on Windows to actually use their website.
The SCOX crackheads are frustrated. They've been instructed not to embellish their case in the media. That's frustrating for someone like Darl, whose wet dream it is to mouth off at every opportunity.
So SCOX do what they always do, they blame everyone else of doing the things they are in fact doing themselves. For instance, they'll claim that IBM (via Groklaw) is misrepresenting the case. Of course, the only people continuously misrepresenting the case(s) are SCOX insiders and their paided shills (the Endrools and Didiots of the world).
I mean, how many times have we read Darl and Blake talking about the eV1L lUnix in the press? Then in the filings they'll say "this isn't about linux". Or the other way around. It depends on whichever would look the best for them at that particular point.
There'll be a reckoning for you when this is over, Darl.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Just a minor correction. Their website, actually very well done for a law firm, can be found at www.boies-schiller.com.
As a side note, I'm a law student and Boies Schiller is an interesting firm. They are one of the three highest paying firms in the country, with a first year starting salary of 140,000 per year as opposed to 125,000 for the majority of large law firms. They are headquartered in Armonk, NY as opposed to New York, NY.
David Boies is the premier partner. He left another high powered firm, Cravath, to start his own firm (Cravath is strangely enough representing IBM in this case). Since then, some say that Boies Schiller has become the cult of David Boies (hyperbole). I think that both his sister and brother have high management positions in the firm.
Regardless, from what I hear, Boies is one of the best litigators in the country. Cravath has good litigators too. This case will be well argued - and that is a good thing.
Thanks at least in part to the failure of Monterey (and the fact that Caldera helped IBM have a contingency plan that worked) Caldera was able to pick up the Santa Cruz Operation's Unix business at a discount.
Because they got it at a discount, they're going to sue IBM for conspiring with themselves to save them acquisition costs?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The summary links to the main page, whose "Read story" link doesn't work. Here's the link to the printer-friendly page that *does* work:
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/46384_p.htm
With rumours of the SCO donation coming from Microsoft, I would not be surprised in the least to discover that MS is giving the orders on this one.
The goal of all this is to scare users away from open source software, as they might end up in an expensive court battle. However in the end, when IBM do eventually flatten this out, it's only going to create the legal president to make short work of future challenges to related software projects.
The ibmlawsuit page on SCO's website is not new, but prior to this it hadn't been updated in a while. It didn't take more than five minutes for this story to Slashdot their server. Let's wait for SCO to cry "sco.com hacked by linux users AGAIN".
I'm sure this is quite cut and dry to users of Linux but to laymen like myself and the judge in this case SCO has enough to go forward. That doesn't mean they'll win but I'd personally like to hear more. In every history of Linux I've read including The Cathedral and the Bazaar it's been explained to me that Linux came out of Unix. That alone leads me to believe that there is some Unix source in the Linux kernel. Please do not mod me down; I'm simply trying to answer the parent's question by explaining it from an outsider's view.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Yeah, I was going to call fraud on SCO's new website too; I looked at the source and it seems like they're expecting the ALT tag text to pop up when you mouseover (there's no javascript or anything)... which doesn't seem to be happening for me, in Firefox.
Fraud! Fraud!
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
> why dont the judges demand real shit by now, and why dont they hurry up the whole situation? why is this taking ages and not going anywhere soon? fuck, i dont understand this at all... the judges should be really embarrassed and blushing by now.... no matter if its the one or the other way....
U.S. judges often give a seen-by-them-to-be-losing side LOTS of room to maneuver to avoid giving valid grounds for an appeal. A successful appeal is a professional 'you screwed up' opinion, and judges don't like that on their resume'.
Anyone else notice that they offer a link on their site to request a sales call. Where do we start? Have them try and sell licenses to known spammers? Request a sales call of the judges working on the SCO cases? Maybe just get a sales person to call each of us so we can inquire about linux licenses.
What may be perfectly obvious to you and me may not necessarily be perfectly obvious to a judge who doesn't spend their days reading technical documents.
And, as has been pointed out elsewhere, the more deliberation and time that is allowed the plaintiff in the case, the less likely an appeals court will even hear the case if judgement is declared against the plaintiff.
Having said that: the US is in desperate need of tort reform, specifically in the area of class-action lawsuits, as well as some kind of deterrent to filing frivolous lawsuits/claims.
A paid shill for SCO with zero credibility writes and article full of lies, half-truths, and innuendo, Slashdot posts about it, thus generating enormous amounts of traffic to the site that posts such slop.
Well done. I'll sure they'll keep giving voice to such trash as long as they make money on it.
Dismissal is when the suit is structurally flawed to begin with (e.g.: SCOX sued Novell for "Slander of Title" but didn't even allege one of the requisite elements for SoT.)
What you're talking about would be summary judgment: there's not even enough evidence that a jury would be needed to weigh it. Since it can take a while to develop evidence through discovery, motions for summary judgment generally wait until the case is well-developed.
IBM now is proceeding to file motions for summary judgment, based in large part on the fact that SCOX hasn't even tried to identify specific facts that would support a charge of either copyright infringement or contract violation.
Slow, frustrating, but like Juggernaught's Carriage it gets there eventually and regardless.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Really. So IBM develops a product and promptly decides to kill it in favor of a new product they would rather persue. Apparently, SCO believes IBM was supposed to have had a brain wipe before moving onto their next project. Didn't SCO wind up with a copy of AIX-on-Itanium that they could have run with? This is fraud? I'm thinking that SCO was looking forward to merely riding along while IBM did all the difficult work of developing Monterey into a usable product. When the cache of IBM's name was no longer associated with Monterey, SCO finds they don't have the ability to make the new OS a standard. And then Darl comes along years later to cry foul.
And, so would it be fraud, I guess, to use the fairly common practice of Company A buying competitor B's software product and then raising the license fees to levels that effectively kill it off in favor of Company A's product. Or lifting the guts of B's (now A's) software and incorporating it into Company A's product. Then leaving Company B's former customers with a product that they are unable to use on newer releases of operating systems (as Company A has no intention of keeping it up to date) and leaving them no alternative but to use Company A's product (which they never wanted in the first place).
This happens all the time. The only difference is that most of the time it's the end-users of the software that get the short end of the stick. In Monterey's case, there weren't any users to get screwed. Only a corporation. But corporations have lawyers, end-users don't.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Since MS can't seem to get Longhorn out the door in a reasonable timeframe, they need to do whatever they can to stop corporations from adopting Linux on the desktop.
Everyone keeps asking how SCO thinks they can win. I don't think they ever planned on winning. As long as they can create enough FUD until Longhorn gets out the door, Microsoft's investment paid off. Not to mention Darl's pockets are probably getting pretty full. I don't care if they don't make $1 in SCO Source licenses....SCO can keep paying Darl's salary until the company is bankrupt.
Mod points are pointless when you browse at -1.
The OSI position paper has a good summary of the various meanings of "Unix" and why when people say that Linux comes from Unix they don't mean it in the legal, code-copying sense.
They're going down in flames in every court they're fighting a legal battle, and they somehow think public opinion is either:
- going to change in their favor
- going to matter at all after Lindon Utah is reduced to a smoking crater, salted, and plowed under
just because people get to read some emails from IBM that (in SCO's opinion) kinda look bad.Actually, the way SCO's research has been going, they've totally misunderstood the meaning of the emails and as soon as they're made public SCO will have made complete and utter fools of themselves, once again...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
The documents they want unsealed will not show what SCO purports them to show. But SCO knows the court won't unseal the documents. But it's a nice propaganda ploy. Present impossible demands for discovery or evidence and then claim that it's someone else's fault you can't prove your case.
IANAL, but I don't think this would have any effect on the outcome of the legal proceeding at all. Evidence is evidence, whether it's under seal or not.
It seems to me that this is just another example of SCO's lack of real interest in the lawsuit as a legal proceeding. Their real interest seems to be flogging their story through their paid shills and credulous members of the press. The only consistent thread in their legal filings seems to be a desire to drag the case out as long as possible.
Can you say "pump and dump"?
The system may be slow but it's also expensive.
That is the real problem - if SCO had attacked a smaller company that couldn't afford to defend itself they might have won by default years ago.
There is no justice when the difference between winning and losing is the amount of money you can spend on lawyers.
You can read the latest over at Groklaw. IBM's MIT computer scientist actually exists as opposed to $CO's mystery team.
Well... Judging by main stream press which is the press most people read, not LinuxWorld, AND taking into consideration that for the most part, in the main stream press SCO FUD has worked reasonably well, yes, I think some stupid web site will generate some sympathy.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Because the legal system occupies a different mind-space.
Go to a bookshop, and pick-up a book on running a small business, and read the chapter on going to court...
There is a reason why public faith in the legal system is at an all time low.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
You are implying that Linux was somehow built on the Unix source code, back in the really old days. This was simply not the case, and even SCO seems to stay away from saying otherwise. Linux has always been an independent development, merely inspired by Unix/POSIX. SCO has been saying that Unix sourcecode was introduced into the Linux kernel between version 2.4 and 2.6 (to improve multiprocessor scalability). This is very recent history and has nothing at all to do with the origins of Linux, more than 10 years ago.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
The story
at linuxworld
was very
difficult
to read
all the
way
through.
What
were
they
thinking?
bork bork bork!
Ok so I go to http://www.caldera.com/ibmlawsuit/ and see the two rows of icons titled "2003" and "2004", with a comment: "Roll mouse over timeline icons to see summary of each document. Click on icon to view document."
I hover the mouse over the icons, but wtf? Nothing happens? I take a peek at HTML source (made easy by Firefox's excellent "view selection source" feature) and what do I see?
These idiots think that if "alt=" pops up a description in Internet Explorer, then so it does in other browsers. (No it does not, HTML standards says you need title= for that)
Now this is the website of the company who thinks it owns Unix.
This case will be well argued - and that is a good thing.
Not so far -- it's turning into a textbook case in "1001 ways to ruin a case." BSF has contradicted itself not only in its filings in different courts, but even in its filings before the Utah court. It's misrepresented the orders and findings of the Magistrate Judge to the District Judge, with the Magistrate's assistants present.
When Judge Kimball asked Mr. Frei (SCOX Counsel) to explain the contradictions between their filings in Delaware and their filings in Utah, he tried to change the subject. The Judge then pointedly demanded a responsive reply, whereupon Mr. Frei deferred to Mr. Silver as the expert on the Delaware case.
At this point Mr. Silver woke up, tried to change the subject, and finally simply declared that there was no contradiction -- not, as you may imagine, a response calculated to reassure a United States District Judge who'd already commented on those very contradictions himself.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
And I think I speak for all slashdot users when I say that when I heard about this supposed counter-site, the first thing I felt was a deep urge somethin' powerful to go over there, troll and /. their website into oblivion. That's a nice illustration of their ideal business model: SCO pontificates to the community, and the community can't respond. Captive audience, or vendor lock-in, whatever.
(with apologies to Samuel Beckett)
Because it will have to be malpractice against boies. Given the material on groklaw it looks like they will have alot of evidence
On almost every topic that's discussed on Slashdot, the comments will generally reflect opposing points of view. Even Microsoft, Real, Spammers, and the anti-Apple crowd get a hearing, notwithstanding that opinions are skewed against them 99:1.
Except in the case of SCO. Here, the comments are 100:0. There is no discussion, only exhortations to the faithful, followed by a large chorus of 'Amen', all modded +5. Visiting the site that's supposed to provide serious legal background, Groklaw, is like visiting a very learned religious site inquiring about the existense of God: long, incomprehensible, philosophical discussions invariably concluding that God indeed exists based on incontrovertible evidence, that all doubters' motives are suspect, and that they'll probably all burn in Hell anyway.
I'm writing this comment from frustration. Not because I want SCO to win (my homebrew server is running Linux, after all), but because I want to be informed. I want to get a somewhat balanced view generated from opposing opinions. I don't really know what to suggest. Maybe mods shouldn't be so quick to tag any vaguely pro-SCO comments as trolls? Are there even any pro-SCO comments to begin with?! Maybe a Slashdot Interview with a SCO rep?
If SCO wins in any of its legal claims, I don't want to sit there blaming the stupidy of the US justice system and impugning the motives of the presiding judge. I want to know where such a SCO victory could come from. I can't be the only one who believes that there are at least two sides to every issue, even if they're not equally reasonable.
OK. Enough of this 'I want' 'I don't want' 'I want' post. Let the flames begin, if this even gets noticed!
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
This is why the judge gets discretion to cap costs, and to refuse to award costs; if I sued IBM, and lost on a technicality, IBM would probably still pay costs here in the UK.
I appear to have a blog. Odd.
"Before that he did poorly in the Microsoft federal monopoly case."
Actually, Boies enjoyed a slam-dunk victory against Microsoft in Microsoft's antitrust case. He won nearly every single argument he made. It was the judge hearing the case, who found Microsoft guilty on most counts, that bungled the case and turned the Boies victory into a resounding loss.
Microsoft lost every legal battle, but won the war on a technicality.
That issue was already settled in the early 1990s, when the previous owners of Unix tried to block the University of California, Berkeley from releasing BSD as open source. The BSD developers had access to the Unix source code throughout its development; Linus Torvalds did not. So that should have been a much stronger case.
However, the case was settled, with BSD remaining as free software (after the elimination and replacement of a couple of disputed source files).
I'm afraid you're much mistaken. It's only the US system of easy-to-file lawsuits and 'everyone-pays' legal fees that make the US legal system what it is today: an efficient, unbiased forum equally available to all, both rich and poor. If we adopted the foreign 'loser-pays' system, we would immediately see the little people locked out of the courthouse and mercilessly persecuted by huge corporations. Such things never happen in the US now.
... hmm ... I guess there aren't any. Well, all those other countries are sure missing a good thing.
Under 'loser-pays', the RIAA could hound innocent file-sharers into submission just by imposing legal expenses that could never be reimbursed! Oops, I got confused: that's what happens under the US system now. Never mind, the US system is still the greatest thing on Earth.
To see just how valuable and attractive the US 'easy to sue' and 'everyone pays' system is, just consider all the other countries that have adopted it:
I read 'Nurse' and was reaching to click on your profile when I saw the 'man'. How could you raise my hopes like this ?
SCO has lost the current case, but is still hoping to recoup it's losses from Monterey and a decade of bad business decisions. All this discovery has produced is a possible fraud charge. IANAL but I don't think there is much of a case there. Even if IBMers did discuss getting Sys 5 code by entering into an agreement over Monterey, the agreement/contract is the scope of it.
IBM and SCO agreed to share and develop. If the agreement said either side could pull out at any time (what appears to be the case) then IBM did not commit fraud. If SCO's lawyers approved a contract that didn't lay out that all Sys5 had to be returned if IBM pulled out early, then that is just another bad business decision by SCO. You never share IP without having rock-solid guarantees that you will control that IP. It sounds like IBM entered into Monterey thinking win-win. We either develop a 64 bit Itanium UNIX with SCO, or we pull out and have an upgrade from Sys3 to Sys5.
Of course, if IBM has emails out there that state they NEVER intended to finish Monterey and that the sole purpose of Monterey was to rip off SCO for Sys5, then a court will have to decide if intent overrides the contract as fraud.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
FAQ Dated january 22, 2003 Lawsuits lauched march 22, 2003 And they wonder why they don't have any credibility
Isn't this going to anger the open source community?
It shouldn't. We haven't formulated all of our plans for SCOsource yet, but it's important for people to know that SCO is not interested in chasing individual open source developers to collect $149. We want vendors and large commercial users to comply with our IP licenses. The individual open source developer performs a great service to all Linux vendors and customers. We appreciate that and we want them to continue unabated.
It's important to remember that the UNIX shared libraries, owned by SCO, are not Linux products. They are not open source software and they are not covered by the GPL. The shared libraries are UNIX intellectual property, which SCO has owned for years. They are proprietary, licensable intellectual property that we sell. Many Linux environments have been using SCO's UNIX shared libraries because they are a superior product and they make these environments more productive. But until today, there were two ways for users to get the shared libraries:
1. Buy a SCO UNIX or Linux product that included the shared libraries as part of the bundled offering. This is legal.
2. Copy the shared libraries from a disk or through the Internet. In this case someone has unbundled the shared libraries from the SCO offering and opened them up for copying. This is illegal. It is this behavior that we will stop through the creation of SCOsource and today's announcement.
SCO's UNIX shared libraries are not open source code available for free use.
Is SCO going to sue Linux vendors?
SCO is a Linux vendor and a member of United Linux. We have no interest in suing Linux vendors. While we haven't formulated the details of our new SCOsource effort, we're confident that we can work together with other vendors to clear up IP issues in a fair and amicable way.
Two weeks ago an industry publication headlined a story saying SCO was threatening to sue Linux vendors.
The story was wrong. SCOsource is now one day old. We haven't made any plans to sue Linux vendors, and we certainly haven't threatened any vendors. This story was damaging to the Linux community and made assumptions that were incorrect.
But isn't hiring Boies, Schiller and Flexner a clear signal that SCO is getting ready to sue people?
Not at all. SCO is working with BSF for their expertise at dealing with complex legal problems. Resolving intellectual property issues does not automatically mean litigation.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Juries aren't reserved for criminal trials; all SCO need to get one from where they are now is some "facts in dispute." SCO's goal for a long time seems to have been just that--muddy the waters enough that they can demand a jury, and hope to win by snowing them.
The problem is, they don't seem to have anything that raises a question of fact, just wild unsubstantiated claims and bizare legal theories (which, as I understand it won't get you a jury, since the judge decides questions of law). They've produced no code of questionable ancestry, no expert testimony, no body, no smoking gun, nada, zip, zilch. They can't seem to find even one single thing to point to a say: "Look! We have a case!"
-- MarkusQ
That's pretty clear. Judge Kimball is clearly telling SCO's attorneys that they need to present unambiguous evidence of copying, and soon. He's hinting to SCO that unless they come up with something good, he's going to grant IBM's summary judgement motions. He's giving them one last chance to do so.
This is a U.S. District Court judge. He has many other cases, most of them criminal. Here's his court schedule for the week. Sentencing hearings, plea bargains, and a few civil cases. He's not there to listen to SCO's lawyers stall forever. Federal civil procedure doesn't allow that.
Isn't fraud a criminal act? Doesn't a District Attorney, Attorney General, or some other jurisdictional attorney have to press such charges? If SCO is indeed planning such a charge, don't they have to first convince someone in the *criminal* justice, and wouldn't that be a completely separate process?
Sure it might be a tactic in the current contract dispute to claim fraudulent behavior, but isn't that far from *charging* IBM with fraud?
Anybody want a peanut?
Hmm , now given 2 companies , IBM and SCO ... and given the evidence - who do we think the dictionary definition of fraudulant bastards best describes ?
The Bush Administration?
Sorry, couldn't resist. Go ahead and mod me to oblivion.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
These guys are either taking their marching orders directly from Redmond or they're the biggest bunch of idiots to ever ride into the technology circus tent. Wait, now that I think about it that's the same thing.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
They then go to the appeals court and try to claim that they were prevented from carrying out essential discovery and see if they can tie the case up in discovery for the next five years.