Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
I believe that the law firm has capped what they'll charge SCO until they win.
So we'll see two bankruptcies in Utah one day.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
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 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".
> 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'.
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,
>Where is SCO getting all this money to pay lawyers?
By defrauding investors into believing SCOX had a solid case, when in fact they didn't. Lying through their teeth about "owning UNIX", lying about the pedigree of Linux, lying about everything.
Behind closed doors they pitched this as an "investment opportunity". They probably showed the investors the Berkley Packet Filter code, maybe some standard headers (elf.h, etc). "Look! This is a slam dunk! And there are millions of lines more of that in linux!"
Oh, they really sold this "Linux Lottery" good.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
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?
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"?
You can read the latest over at Groklaw. IBM's MIT computer scientist actually exists as opposed to $CO's mystery team.
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!
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 by "mainstream press", I take it that you don't mean the Wall Street Journal, which I remember reading a SCO article in. It was entitled something like "David versus Goliath", and pointed out that Linux was a huge juggernaut and SCO a very small contender with a very weak legal case. The article ended saying "this is one battle where you'll want Goliath to win."
May we never see th
That's not through any bias on the part of ./ or Groklaw.
./ has managed to do this is simply evidence that such a thing is so hard to find.
First of all Groklaw mainly just reports on the court documents, you can read them and draw your conclusions just as PJ does and draws hers.
Secondly if you can find anything, anything at all which leads you to believe SCO may have a genuine case and might win it then please post here and we can discuss it, the fact that as yet no one on
You'll notice that most reports in the media now are simply reporting what SCO said and no positive comments on SCO except for journalists like Maureen who write opinions based on a seriously flawed analysis of what ever it is that has happened they are reporting on.
It seems like you are not classing Maureen O Gara's comments as a sensibly balanced opposite point of view yet she and her ilk are the only people painting SCO's chances in a positive light which is in itself an interesting comment on the case.
Further, SCO has not helped itself by issuing numerous public statements that contradict their representations in court.
As far as Groklaw goes, as a lawyer I cannot emphasize enough how innovative and unique that website is. Sure, Pamela Jones has a distinct bias, but at least you know up front where she stands so you can evaluate her opinions accordingly. The real value of that site is the sheer comprehensiveness of the public statements and filings organized in its database. A resource like that would cost someone tens (or possibly hundreds) of thousands of dollars to compile privately, and yet here it is offered to the public for free. It's like open source litigation, and I hope that Groklaw or sites like it continue in the future for other legal/political/social issues (software patents anyone?).
I think that these stories on SCO are so one-sided because after more than a year on this story, it has been thoroughly exposed to the point of ridicule. It's sort of the way that the public responds to other types of lawsuits that seem frivolous at first glance; it's possible that a seemingly frivolous lawsuit may have have merit, but that doesn't stop the public from being highly sceptical.
SCO's problem is that they decided (highly unwisely from a litigation viewpoint) to spin their action in the press. This is completely contrary to standard practice when it comes to lawsuits ("No comment, the matter is before the courts"). All of their ill-informed, contradictory and bombastic press quotes are coming back to haunt them, as you can be sure that IBM will use any prior inconsistent statement to cross-examine and impeach their evidence now.
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.