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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."
How can you turn over "even more" of something that's already open sourced?
Doesn't SCO know about kernel.org?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is just another meaningless delay of the case. Such things are actually a victory for IBM. IBM can afford to have this drag on forever. SCO's days are numbered.
I'm a big tall mofo.
SCO's stock price is going up
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
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.
IANAL, far from, actually, but shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't SCO be releasing code to an independent party to determine if its copyright has been breeched? Or will they keep requesting more code and fish around for something they can 'try to claim' is a copyright violation?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Has SCO been ordered to show any code of theirs that they claim has been infringed upon?
So IBM turns over some code, and SCO says "yep, all of that is an infringement, pay up!" How do we know otherwise?
-kidlinux.
Uhh Darl, you're fifteen minutes are up.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Paying them off would admit that SCO's got a case. By fighting them (which they definitely have the resources to do), they're sticking up for the entire community. Way to go IBM!
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
MyBlog
I'd pipe the code into a *.doc file and make the font about 48ish tahoma script.
Then print it on standard paper.
Hey, SCO, you might wanna bring a truck.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
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:
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This starts to look very suspicious to me. I think I will wait few months at most and demand my money back if SCO don't prove their case. I'm glad that I bought and sold SCOX on exactly optimal time, or otherwise I would feel kind of stupid for buying all of those licenses to run 140 Debian boxen in my lab, and 60 Red Hat desktops in the library. Has anyone tried to return the license yet?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
SCO has already failed to produce any real evidence of Copyright code in Linux. Nothing produced by SCO from any of this evidence can change that. Everyone using Linux is safe.
This request is to support SCO's weird derivative tale that despite AT&T contracts saying IBM was free to develop code, Novell waiving the rights, and testimony from various people that IBM is bound by contract such that any code that touches SCO code is still controlled by SCO.
Why would SCO need to analyse IBM's code, if the reason for the lawsuit is in the first place because SCO knows IBM infringed on SCO's code?
I mean, in order to know there is infringement, you'd have to have already figured out what part of the code was "stolen", right?
The magistrate (who is presiding over pre-trial discovery, not the trial, where a judge will be in charge) noted that the contract between SCO and IBM may well give SCO more rights to the code than copyright law does. Thus IBM might be liable to SCO for putting code in Linux that doesn't violate any copyright SCO may have. IOW, Linux would be OK, IBM would not.
Another theory advanced by SCO that the magistrate did not dismiss out of hand is the possibility that internal IBM AIX and Dynix code changes may show a path between SCO code and Linux. IBM has been contending that if a bare comparison between Linux and SCO code shows no obvious copying, anything IBM did internally is irrelevant.
The bizarre bit is a footnote paying tribute to New York Giants football player Mel Hein that (to mix sports metaphors) comes from way out in left field. It's also ungrammatical ("He played 15 seasons going 60 minutes a game without nearly any rest"), which I'm definitely not accustomed to seeing in Federal court orders.
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.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
The contract isn't between SCO and IBM. It's between AT+T and IBM, and everyone at AT+T gave a deposition that says IBM gets to keep it's own code. That's in addition to the side letter AT+T sent to IBM that says IBM keeps it's own code, and the @echo newsletter that says the exact same thing.
As for SCO's theory of copyright, well, SCO would have to own the copyright first (it doesn't, Novell does). Then, they'd have to find their so-called path, which doesn't exist. If it did, they'd have found it in the 272 versions of AIX that IBM already handed over, and would have to have disclosed it by now. Should they manage to conjure one up with their illegal fishing expedition, they'd still have to slip that completely unsupported by case law copyright theory of theirs past Judge Kimball, which isn't likely.
If I were IBM, I'd file a motion to kick Darl in the nuts. Chances are this judge would grant it just to avoid the inevitable "I didn't get to kick Darl in the nuts, therefore the trial is invalid" appeal. Honestly, how much anal probing does SCO get to do before the judge can decide that their case is composed completely of crap?
... it is a victory for SCO, because it's
A) irrelevant to the case
B) something they asked for
C) onerous for IBM to produce, and
D) something IBM didn't want to give them (because it's irrelevant to the case, as well as onerous to produce.)
Yes, we all know that SCO is going to use this as a delay. First, it will take IBM a long time to produce it, and as soon as IBM hands it over, SCO's gonna request *more* time, because it's too much for them go through in the remaining discovery period.