IBM Tells SCO Court It Can't Find AIX-on-Power Code

Ghostx13 writes "A story over at Linuxworld states that IBM has been less than forthcoming with its bits and pieces of source code SCO is demanding. SCO is alleging in its 3rd Amended Complaint that 'IBM put SCO-owned SVR4 code in System 3-based AIX for its proprietary Power chip architecture.' The problem? IBM 'can't find' that source code. Does IBM have something to hide?"

Comments

LinuxWorld

[LightningTH]

For a site with linux in it's url, it seems very negative against linux and has taken SCO's side in the past. Is such a story really news worthy coming from LinuxWorld?

Of course I am not even going into all the legal disputes, including the two orders by the judge for sco to comply and point to the lines they claim infringe (which they claim publicly to have, and they should have before bringing a lawsuit if they wish to get anywhere).

I believe IBM - here's why

[aflat362]

IBM can't find the source code for one of their products? They must be lying! . . . or are they?

I have been working with IBM Content Management products for about 3 years now as a Sys-Admin / Programmer.

On occasion I'm in Awe of IBM. The abilities they have to produce huge enterprise applications in a short amount of time is amazing.

But usually I'm in Awe of IBM in a negative light

There have been several times that IBM couldn't come up with the binaries for some of their fixpack levels of some of their products., let alone the source code. The developers were like . . . uh . . . we don't have that code any more.

Oh yeah? Where did it go?

The fact that they can't come up with the source code for some parts of their AIX OS does seem suspicious but comes as no shock to me.

Probably in sealed documents...

[Xenographic]

It's funny, but the transcript of that court hearing is sealed. Why? SCO read a priviledged email out loud in open court, strangely enough, concerning this very architecture (and that's all we'll know unless SCO & co. leak information, or the court releases a redacted transcript). As you may or may not realize, that's bad. As in the kind of thing that gets the lawyers in trouble.

So that makes it hard to comment on what this all means, but it does make me suspicious here. What better way to spread FUD than to get the court transcript sealed and blather whatever you like to the media in the mean time? Whether by accident or design, that's exactly what SCO has been doing.

And, as for this code, I sincerely doubt it contains anything helpful to SCO. By all accounts, they've filed an utterly baseless lawsuit that has forever been in search of any wrongdoing by IBM, and they haven't exactly come up with a lot.

Every single piece of "evidence" they have ever put forth that we can actually see and analyze has been shown not to support SCO's position. Rather, they pounce on anything the least bit out of place and use innuendo to imply that there "must" be something more to it, because we cannot assume they would be so stupid as to do something like this without some proof...

Given that that's how they've been operating, I conclude that this is nothing more than an unscripted bluff. That's right--they have no master plan, they're just making up crap as they go along, using whatever story is most convenient at the time. That's why the story keeps changing--they're bluffing and they have been the whole time. It was never anything but a shakedown premised on the theory that a company the size of IBM must have something to hide.

So, to anyone who says "there must be something to this, or SCO wouldn't have done that," I say: SCO really is that dumb.

Now, as for the other story, we're getting legal threats, etc. from that fellow who tried to buy Linux for $50,000 over on Groklaw, all due to some old court documents where people called him delusional. He did say something about a secret, personal mission to "save" Linux (or something--I don't claim to have his story straight any more than someone can claim to understand what SCO's current claims are).

I wonder when this will be turned into a geek soap opera? "As the SCO Burns" or something? :]

Re:Probably in sealed documents...

[killjoe]

This Merkey guy is a hoot. Here is a quick rundown on some of the stuff he has done just catch people up.

He used to work at novell, he took their technology after he left and tried to sell it as a product to MS. Novell sued and the judge said some hilarious things about him including that he lives in his own reality. He in turn called the judge "a novell stooge".

He has offered FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS MUHAHAHAHA for the linux kernel. That's right if the writers of the code would give him the code so he can release it under a BSD license he will give them FIFTH THOUSAND DOLLARS.

He claims to have talked to Darl and Blake (stowell) at SCO and has gotten immunity for linux but they have remove JFS, RCU, SMP, NUMA and of course all software written by IBM from the linux kernel. See how simple that was? Just revert back to kernel 1.0 and SCO will certify that linux does not infringe and we can thank Merkey for that!.

He claims to be a member of a native american religion or a native american (he is kind of vague) and therefore will sue Pamela for hate crimes for saying bad things about native americans and inciting hate speech against native americans. All pamela did was to post the text of a ruling by the judge (public information).

He claims to have cured (that's right CURED) arthiritis by genetically modifying peyote.

He claims to take a lot of peyote.

He claims to have taken part in an effort to ship peyote to NY after 9/11 in order to heal people of NY.

He has sued novell for sexual harrasment (he has a femal boss).

HE claims Novell has released him from all restrictions about their IP. He is working on something really big but can't tell us about it.

He has claimed in the past to be working on an open source implementation of novell netware, NTFS support for linux and a few other big ticket items. Nothing seems to have come out of any of them though.

He claims to have seen the code for SYSV, Linux, Unixware, and windows and claims there is substantial infringement by the linux kernel on the SCO owned IP (Daryl showed him the code!).

He claims that Pamela Jones came into his room naked one day in monterrey and they went partying afterwards. He claims she is a scorned women out to get him.

He sounds like he is half tripped out or drunk most of the time. If you look at the yahoo boards you see postings in his style under different names although he signs his name to the kernel list.

I would be interested in knowing anything else about him. He is truly one of the most bizaare characters in this whole surreal saga. Apparently he works in a canopy owned building which is populated with other canopy owned companies but he claims the company he works for is not owned by canopy.