SCO Gives up on Linux Website

Richard Mathias writes "Following on from the posting a month ago, where SCO said it was going to launch a new website to counteract Groklaw and give its side of things - well, now the company looks like it's given up on the whole plan. It was originally supposed to be at Prosco.net, then SCOinfo.com, but both have holding pages and a spokeswoman has said it may never happen at all because of "legal and management concerns"." Update: 11/03 01:10 GMT by T : editingwhiz writes "Despite earlier published reports, SCO Group is indeed still planning to post a lawsuit-information Web site under a new name, SCOinfo.com, company spokesman Blake Stowell told IT Manager's Journal today. So SCO is not throwing in the proverbial towel after all. But does it really make any difference? (IT Manager's Journal is part of OSTG.)"

Comments

Perhaps occasional lying is better than constant?

[garcia]

Fernandes cited "legal and management concerns about the content of the website" as precipitating the review but declined to comment on specifics.

I have a feeling that they knew they would have very few supporters on that site. They would probably spend more time astroturfing and fighting off the "bad" posts than they would "spreading the truth".

They have enough lies coming out in press releases do they really want to have a site that lies constantly? Wouldn't that just be more fodder for those on the pro-Linux side?

They Had Nothing

[brandonp]

In order for their idea to work, they'd actually need to have real and factual material to put on their Groklaw 'archrival'. Otherwise the new site would've been ripped appart.

So in summary, They Had Nothing.

Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox!

"legal and management concerns"

[MarkEst1973]

Means they didn't have the money to put towards it. That website would not be the profit center that the lawsuit will be. All resources must go to the lawsuit, while there are still resources to be found.

Sco lawsuit is media driven not truth driven

[nattt]

Again this proves that the SCO suits are all media driven to spread FUD about Linux, to help their "friends", Microsoft, and to manipulate their stock price.

Once Groklaw started to show people the facts of the case through legal filings and great research, SCO started coming undone, because we know they are Caldera, they contributed to Linux, released Unix code, helped IBM with project Monterrey and didn't object at the time to PPC AIX, indeed advertised the fact! We see their lies in their own words where they repeatedly contradict themselves.

Re:Perhaps occasional lying is better than constan

[I confirm I'm not a]

I have a feeling that they knew they would have very few supporters on that site

IIRC, SCO weren't going to permit posting. My suspicion is that SCO realised that it'd be deadly dull with no posting. (It's a tribute to Groklaw volunteers that Groklaw manage to make a very dry topic quite interesting - without volunteers I doubt SCO could have given "watching paint dry" a run for its money).

No posts

[wowbagger]

They were not going to allow posts from the public, as does Groklaw - their site was to be nothing but their voice, with no comments from the peanut gallery. As such, the concern for trolling/astroturfing/conflicting opinions was non-existant.

The more likely explaination was that, in the absense of such posts, the only thing their site could have would be either court documents a la Groklaw (which would do them no good), or statements from SCO, which would find their way into the courts, and as such would have to be true or they would expose SCO to (more) problems in court. When SCO legal informed them of this, SCO probably realised that there was no benefit in doing this.

Re:No posts

[Anonymous Coward]

statements from SCO, which would find their way into the courts, and as such would have to be true or they would expose SCO to (more) problems in court

Exactly. SCO's various adversaries have already been having a blast showing their various judges the inconsistencies between what SCO has claimed in different courts. In Red Hat's case, in fact, the whole point of the litigation is the lies that SCO's management had been spreading in public statements. I suspect that "legal and management concerns" is shorthand for "legal was concerned that management was full of idiots".

Re:No posts

[shotfeel]

And legal isn't?

Let me answer that with a question. How much money have the lawyers pocketed?

gotta be a budget thing.

[twitter]

I have a feeling that they knew they would have very few supporters on that site. They would probably spend more time astroturfing and fighting off the "bad" posts than they would "spreading the truth".

How many sites can they afford to astroturf and DoS? There's Slashdot, Kuroshin, Google, Grocklaw itself. All of those efforts cost money but have failed to one extent or another. I doubt they have the money to keep it up.

No one was going to read their goofey fanboy site anyway. It's hard to make a community out of brand loyalty to a product no one is buying. You can fool some all the time and everyone some of the time but you can't fool all the people all the time, not even the press.

Did the lawyers have a say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall several several times that if you are involved in a court case, you should keep your mouth shut. Maybe the lawyers are telling SCO execs that this is a dumb idea.

By the way, I am not a lawyer, and taking this as legal advice without asking a real lawyer is like drinking poision to see what it tastes like.

Pronunciation

[subStance]

"legal and management concerns" is pronounced "fear of being sued for libel".

Re:Perhaps occasional lying is better than constan

[Lt Cmdr Tuvok]

There is a substantial flaw in your argument.

Firstly, I must object to your subject, "Perhaps occasional lying is better than constant?". It assumes that the managers of the company under discussion, SCO, are deliberately spreading falsehoods. This is not an objective fact. You risk sounding like a zealot by using such strong language in this regard.

Also, if SCO is already, as you claim, partaking in regular 'lying' by means of press releases, what is the principal difference between this behavior and setting up a website that also regularily 'lies'? In no way do you explain why that would be as great a leap as you claim. I am puzzled as to your logic here. Perhaps you would care to elaborate on this issue?

Re:Perhaps occasional lying is better than constan

[swillden]

They would probably spend more time astroturfing and fighting off the "bad" posts than they would "spreading the truth".

Well, they said in their initial announcement that they wouldn't allow comments, so that wouldn't have been a problem.

do they really want to have a site that lies constantly? Wouldn't that just be more fodder for those on the pro-Linux side?

This, I think, is the crux of the matter. Assuming they ever really planned to do this (it may have just been a PR stunt designed to help their stock out for a short while), I think they probably realized they had a problem when they started trying to decide exactly what to put up, and where they were going to get it from.

Some of their options were:

• Misleading information that wasn't actually wrong, just carefully selected or out of date. Older court filings and press releases, for example. The problem with that, of course, is that the Groklawyers would have been all over it, dissecting it minutely to both de-FUD it -- PJ would probably have set up a page specifically to fill in the gaps -- and to analyze SCO's thinking, motivation and legal and PR strategies by what they chose to put up. That plan would likely make SCO look bad.
• Baseless claims, probably with a few complete whoppers mixed in, but with no actual evidence, since they don't seem to have any that they can go public with (or any at all, more likely). Again, the Groklawyers would have trashed this soundly, making SCO look very bad.
• Up-to-date and accurate information, like the court filings, depositions, etc. There really wouldn't be anything to criticize about this approach, but it's very doubtful that they could do it without coming off as a poor imitation of Groklaw's excellent archives. If they just pulled the content from Groklaw, they'd look really dumb and if they didn't they'd have a lot of work to do just to provide scanned versions of all of the documents, much less nicely-formatted text/html! They don't have Groklaw's army of volunteer court-runners, document scanners and transcribers. Not to mention the fact that the truth as reflected in all of the court filings is not very flattering to SCO's position.

I think (still assuming they ever intended to do this) that they started trying to figure out what they could put up that would be legally safe (no libel, etc.), helpful to their image and not make them look like a poor Groklaw imitation, and they came up empty.

Oh, two other potential problems with pulling the material from Groklaw just occurred to me: First it might open them up to charges of copyright infringement. Although the court documents are public domain, any formatting is copyrighted. PJ licenses everything under a creative commons license that does not permit commercial use, so using Groklaw's stuff could land them in yet another court case. Second, it would definitely open them up to more criticism; they're accusing others of "stealing" their IP and talking a great deal about the sanctity of IP and the importance of honoring it, so it would look really bad for them to be accused of "stealing" from Groklaw.

Oh, one more problem: It's a bad idea to speak in public about ongoing court cases. Thanks to SCO's regular violation of this bit of wisdom, Red Hat, Novell and IBM have been able to construct their recent filings with large doses of SCO words, mixed with a bit of explanatory text. SCO has said so much to screw themselves that the attorneys on the other side were probably more excited about this new source of material than anyone. I'm sure the lawyers told Darl and co. yet again that they should really keep their mouths shut. SCO obviously isn't inclined to listen to such advice, but maybe they caved this time, based on all of the other problems.

Re:Perhaps occasional lying is better than constan

[LWATCDR]

"Fernandes cited "legal and management concerns about the content of the website"
The lawyers must have finally beat some sense into the management at SCO. What would this gain them? Nothing. What would it do? provide more material for Slashdot to bash SCO over the head with. More material for IBMs lawyers to bash SCO over the head with. And more bills for SCO to pay to have there lawyers review everything they post to make sure it didn't do more harm than good.
What probably happened is they showed some of the first information that they wanted to post to the lawyers. And after the lawyers edited it all was left was the SCO logo and pictures of the SCO Christmas party.

Die Sco Die

[phoning]

Die Sco Die

Has anybody read the article?

[Herschel Cohen]

The content is essentially: the web site may never be activated due to management and legal issues. The spokesperson refused to supply either the specific reasons or flatly state the site will never open.

So much speculation and comments on so little substance. Indeed, you need a different headline on this story.

SCO inadvertently promotes Groklaw

[StLawrence]

It's hard to believe that anyone bothered to carry SCO's story
about their alternative website, but it certainly had the effect
of promoting Groklaw, which is probably not what SCO had
in mind. Another SCO backfire, with Maureen's help. What
a bunch of idiots...