IBM Ordered to Show More Code to SCO

editingwhiz writes "Bob Mims of the Salt Lake Tribune has the scoop straight from the courthouse steps: 'A federal magistrate has handed a partial victory to Utah's SCO Group, ordering computer giant IBM to turn over more of its Linux operating system-related program codes. U.S. Magistrate Brooke Wells' ruling, released just minutes after Salt Lake City's federal courthouse closed Wednesday, came in the Lindon software company's contractual suit stemming from Big Blue's alleged distribution of Linux applications purportedly tainted with SCO's proprietary Unix code.' If at all possible, SCO's going to be even more insufferable now -- it has a glimmer of hope."

Comments

Nothing to see here really

[Psionicist]

To quote Groklaw:

Finally, it has arrived, Judge Brooke Wells' Order on SCO's Motion Re Discovery. It's annoying because she enables more delay, but other than that it is a pretty normal discovery order. SCO doesn't get access to CMVC, they do get more code and they get not all programmers' notes but some. She postpones any decision on production of documents from top managment. Keep in mind, she isn't the trier of fact. That is Judge Kimball. She is the Magistrate, so it's not her job to decide who is right or wrong. Her job is simply to make sure everybody's cards are on the table.

It's not about linux kernel

[Baramin]

from TFA :

Wells refused to grant SCO complete review of all of the IBM programs it listed, but threatened to grant "unfettered access" in the future if IBM fails to provide all data - including approximately 2 billion lines of code - from its AIX and Dynix systems

Re:On the bright side...

[TubeSteak]

I kinda agree with the AC, SCO is just getting a little more time before they will have to pony up some information.

btw- Magistrate != Judge
I'm not sure Judge Kimball would have agreed to SCO's motion, but I'll give the Magistrate credit for this zinger:

To the extent possible the parties are to agree upon the 3000 designated individuals. However, based on the record before the court it appears that IBM has better access to information regarding who made the most changes or significant contributions to AIX and Dynix. Therefore, IBM is to file an affidavit detailing the process by which the 3000 were chosen. Once again by requiring this, the court seeks to circumvent the rote objection by SCO alleging that they did not get enough information.

Re:Even more code?

[DjReagan]

SCO are alleging that IBM contributed code from AIX and Dynix into Linux, and that this contravened the licensing agreement that IBM had for using Unix System V code, which is the basis for AIX and Dynix.

The code they are alleging was copied however, was written by IBM, but incoporated into AIX and Dynix before being put over to Linux. So what it comes down to, and what is being tested in court is whether the Sys-V contracts that mention control of code can be extended to other code that is later incorporated into IBM's derived product.

Re:Plain english

[Chris Burke]

SCO succeeded in delaying even more by requesting more code. The judge granted some, but not all, of what SCO wanted -- e.g. they wanted every revision from IBM's AIX and Dynix source revision control system along with all programmers notes, but instead just got more code and some notes. While this is in part a "victory" for SCO as their request was partially granted, the judge noted that she was doing this so as to prevent any further complaints that IBM has not supplied enough code. In other words, this is the end of the line as far as code discovery goes.

Groklaw of course has more.

Re:As far as I can tell...

[andycat]

SCO's argument is far more bizarre than that. They claim that since AIX and Dynix might have touched UNIX code once upon a time, all code ever written for AIX and Dynix since then must be covered by the contract terms of IBM's license for UNIX. Those terms talk about "methods and concepts" as protected entities. IBM used some of those allegedly protected methods and concepts when, say, they moved JFS over to OS/2, then implemented the Linux version of JFS using that as a reference. It's not about AIX. They're trying to argue that Linux inherited from OS/2 inherited from AIX touched UNIX, so (of course) they own the things in Linux.

Their theory of derived works is totally at right angles to reality. That isn't the way it works. However, Judge Wells is not permitted to smack them down. That falls to Judge Kimball (the trial judge) and, perhaps, a jury.

This is an annoying delay but really isn't going to change the outcome of the case.

Re:The Chinaman is not the issue, Darl!

[arkanes]

The argument is something like this: SCO has inherited certain control rights over UNIX code. AIX and Dynix are based on UNIX. We think that IBM donated parts of AIX and Dynix to Linux that they shouldn't have. But because we don't know whats in AIX and Dynix, we need to get the source for all of those to compare to Linux and see what matches. Furthermore, because we already did this and nothing matched, we need to get all the intermediate versions of AIX/Dynix, because some programmer might have written something that never actually was released, and THAT then got copied into Linux.

Yes, it sounds ridiculous. And note that for it to make even the semblance of sense you have to totally ignore all the public claims SCO has made about knowing that there's copied code.

Re:Even more code?

[jeffasselin]

No, quite wrong.

If you yourself wrote product A and B, you can relicence your code for product C any way you want.

OTOH, if *I* take code from your product A to make product D, then yes product D has to be GPL.