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SCO Gives up on Linux Website

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the but-i-want-to-hear-their-side dept.

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.)"

21 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Looks to me... by leonmergen · · Score: 5, Funny

    Looks to me that website was to Groklaw what Elgoog is to Google - a fun but twisted way to look at reality... :-)

    --
    - Leon Mergen
    http://www.solatis.com
  2. Just goes to show... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You can only throw shit for so long before your arm gets tired.

  3. Perhaps occasional lying is better than constant? by garcia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  4. slashdotted? by Tanktalus · · Score: 5, Funny

    First time I ever saw a site slashdotted before it went live...

  5. They Had Nothing by brandonp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  6. "legal and management concerns" by MarkEst1973 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Speaking of SCO... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Interesting


    For those who haven't checked lately, SCOX has been trading at around 3.0 lately.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  8. Sco lawsuit is media driven not truth driven by nattt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    -- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
  9. Legal concerns? by dnaboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    SCO? Who'd have thunk it.

  10. Re:Perhaps occasional lying is better than constan by I+confirm+I'm+not+a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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).

    --
    This is where the serious fun begins.
  11. SCO be a happy place to work by lottameez · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can't even imagine how depressing it must be to work at that place. Can't even manage to put up a website with their version of the truth.

    --
    Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
  12. No posts by wowbagger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    www.eFax.com are spammers
    1. Re:No posts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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".

  13. To prevent karma whoring. . . . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    SCO dumps Linux crusade website

    Having second thoughts thanks to 'legal concerns'.

    By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

    The SCO Group is reconsidering its plans to launch an alternative to the Groklaw.net website that was due to go live yesterday.

    Nearly one month after promising to launch the site that would provide information on SCO's various legal disputes, the company is having second thoughts on the project, said Janielle Fernandes, a spokeswoman for the software vendor. "It's still up for debate whether the website will ever go up," she said.

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

    After having its every legal move dissected on the Groklaw.net website for more than a year, SCO executives decided to launch a website of their own, devoted to giving their side of the argument. It should have gone live on 1 November - yesterday.

    SCO originally said the site would use the domain name Prosco.net. That name has now been dropped in favor of SCOinfo.com, although both now resolve to a blank screen with the message: "SCO is anticipating that it will use this site as the future home for all information relating to SCO's pending lawsuits and related issues. For current information about SCO's suit against IBM, please visit www.sco.com/ibmlawsuit, and about SCO's suit against Novell, please visit www.sco.com/novell."

    "The name was changed to support the purpose of the website," she said. "The purpose is to provide factual information regarding SCO's litigation, thus the name SCOinfo.com." Whether and when SCOinfo.com will ever contain this information is still up for debate within the company, Fernandes said.

    SCO is presently involved in a number of legal disputes with IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Autozone and DaimlerChrysler - all stemming from its insistence that it owns the copyright on part of the open source Linux kernel.

    Started shortly after the 2003 launch of SCO's multi-billion dollar lawsuit against IBM, Groklaw began as a Web log for Linux enthusiast Pamela Jones, a paralegal working for a law firm at the time. It has evolved into an open-source project itself, where legal filings are meticulously dissected by an army of volunteers.

  14. Sorry, but I have to say it.... by cyberkahn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Netcraft hasn't confirmed it yet. :-)

  15. Re:Wow! by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Funny

    They died years ago. Now they're just shambling around like a zombie, causing damage and panic, and looking for brains. So far they haven't found any.

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  16. The real reason? by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 5, Funny

    and a spokeswoman has said it may never happen at all because of "legal and management concerns"."

    Maybe they looked at their own argument and realized it even looked stupid to them.

    --
    You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
  17. They found prior art by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Funny

    when they researched the term sock-puppet. (Mainly the Usenet usage where a kook creates dozens of alternate identities to agree with himself; but usage of a cheap puppet with a hand up its bum works too.)

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  18. Pronunciation by subStance · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    Servlet v2.4 container in a single 161KB jar file ? Try Winstone
  19. Re:Perhaps occasional lying is better than constan by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  20. Not too surprising for me. by Robotron2084 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was actually emailed by a sco representative who wanted to link to one of my animations on their website. Here's most of it:
    -----------------
    We are putting a site together that will go live on November 1 and have a link on the site called "Just for Fun."

    We would like to link to your site to give people access to "Steve the Linux Super Villian." It's absolutely hilarious and we would love to profile that on this section of the site, just to show people that we have a sense of humor.

    May we have your permission to link to your site from our site?
    -----------------
    To which I replied:

    ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT A DOUBT, NO.

    Obviously they didn't notice my Penguin Blood Ninja FiaSCO animation.

    I'm not too surprised by today's news!