IBM Subpoenas Intel Into SCO Fray

whovian writes "Since IBM was ordered by the courts to show more code, they are now reported by Groklaw to have subpoenaed Intel to show 'all communications between Intel and SCO or Canopy about IBM, Unix or Linux, all meetings with either concerning IBM, Unix or Linux, and all contracts or other business relations, past, present, or future, between Intel and SCO.' The text is available at the website."

Comments

IBM running scared?

[Dancin_Santa]

If IBM really had this "in the bag", why would they need to do such a huge step as issuing a subpoena to Intel for all that information?

No company wants to give up that much information, especially when much of it is not useful for the case and possibly damaging to Intel's business.

So far, Intel has been a relative outsider in all of this, and it is hard to understand what IBM is trying to get by bringing in a hardware manufacturer into this software matter. This may be a motion to subpoena, but even IBM's army of lawyers seems to be grasping at any straw now.

I personally don't think SCO has a very strong case, but watching IBM's actions, it seems that IBM is the one with the lack of firm ground.

Re:IBM running scared?

[forkazoo]

how is subpeonaing Intel a huge step for IBM. Rather than be bothered by the order to show more code, they basically said, "Oh, hey, we totally already showed you a bunch, but I think those guys over there may have some interesting stuff. I dunno check them out. Leave me alone."

IOW, it's a chewbacca defense. Flood the court with lots of information which may or may not be entirely relevant. IBM can afford to keep the dog and pony show going longer than SCO can, so they will keep looking for truckloads of information that doesn't specifically incriminate them. Eventually, the court stops caring, and SCO goes bankrupt, and everybody goes home.

(Somebody please post the text of the Chewbacca defense, in case some of the other readers aren't familiar with it. I don't have time to track it down at the moment.)

Re:IBM running scared?

[Eric S Raymond]

Duh. To get valuable information from Intel, their future competitor.

Re:IBM running scared?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is so much that the typical slashbot "knows" about this case, and it basically boils down to SCO not having a leg to stand on. However, if that were really the case, IBM would not have need of (as someone above described this) a fishing expedition.

So what is IBM up to? And why are they taking such a drastic step?

Re:IBM running scared?

[den_erpel]

I personally don't think SCO has a very strong case, but watching IBM's actions, it seems that IBM is the one with the lack of firm ground.

I just had a presentation on patent law and practices (not that I pretend to be an expert, I think I just got a bit less clue-less). There seem to be a number of striking similarities here.

It is surprising to see that a very little number of patent cases are won on the grounds of the cases, most of them on technical details.

It seemed to me that this started out as an extortion racket, hoping that IBM would just cough up and pay. They didn't, and now IBM is striking back by bleeding them: they have far more resources to continue this than SCO has. I don't think that IBM will stop by simply winning, they will continue this until SCO is dead and in this respect, this approach makes sense:

When going to the ground of the matter, they might have a remote chance (how minute ever) that they might loose. In that case, they have made their opponent stronger. By first bleeding them, and hopefully killing them, they are just playing out all their cards, without risking anything at the moment.

Go IBM!

Re:IBM running scared?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a more probable explaination is something along the lines of the following:

Intel writes a lot of code in support of their hardware. A lot of which is esoteric and somewhat portable across the various *nixes. Intel more or less gives it away. Or might sell it to a company to SCO, but return it to linux at large for free, because people who roll their own, or just download iso buy hardware some of which is high margin. Some of the code ended up having a lot of *nix in common. And thus SCO turned it up in the code comparisons, and claimed they owned it. Yet it is, or at least appears to be, almost certainly written by Intel. If SCO owns it, and Intel wrote it, there must be a document stating this. A document Intel has no interest in either forging, or feeding to a dog. In fact there must be many such documents. If IBM's latest effort fails to uncover such a document, or even more likely, uncovers a document which mearly allows SCO use of the code, and allows Intel to retain their rights.... Well in the immortal words of Theo, "Oh my god! And the quarterback is toast!"

"Duh, of course there is other code common to the SCO products, IBM products, and Wild Linui, Intel wrote it to sell hardware. So what exactly do you make over there in the company offices?"

Given how little success SCO has had, it would lead me to believe that if this speculation is the case (big if), it would torpedo almost all of the evidence they've put forth that was any shade of convincing, and furthermore, they should have known better if Intel produces such hypothetical documents.

Re:IBM running scared?

[geomon]

So what is IBM up to? And why are they taking such a drastic step?

This may be the only avenue available to IBM in complying with the court order.

If there is documentation that they need to satisfy the discovery order, they have no choice but to subpeona Intel.

They could have done this long ago. They may have been holding on until they felt compelled by the courts to act.

my professional, legal and technical opinion..

[che.kai-jei]

..is wow.

dont be so quick to dismiss it.
hwo is really intels competitor amd or ibm?
amd for now. but i bm may displace both once x86 completely dies.

Re:my professional, legal and technical opinion..

[Coryoth]

For all the speculation about IBM vs. Intel, it seems to me that this post had the most sensible explanation of what's going on here. The SCO case is about Project Monteray now, which was an AIX on Itanium endeavour. It makes perfect sense to drag Intel in to discuss what SCO was told by Intel about Itanium, and its various delays.

All this jumping to conclusions about IBM and PPC slugging it out with Intel is unbelievably silly given this other explanation that fits the facts (and the case) far better. Can we cut the stupid conspiracy theories?

Jedidiah.

Re:*sigh*

[Technician]

When will it end?

It will end when either the defense or the offense runs out of money. They will chase anybody and anything that had any contact with Linux in any way do drag out the proceedings until the money runs out.

From what I see, this was never intended to be a quick case. I just wonder who the heck is funding this new round of SCO legal action and how long can they keep it up.

Follow the money if you can.

Intel UniX

[DAldredge]

In the before time, from the long long ago Intel ported and sold a Unix of its own.

Perhaps info regarding thost contracts is what IBM is after.

the only thing that scares me...

[pavera]

Is that SCO/Caldera is Canopy group, and Canopy group has made almost all of its money by suing huge and successful companies. I'm not sure on their exact record, but I know they've done this sort of thing at least 2 or 3 times already. They are pretty good at doing this, so I don't like to see anything "going their way" at all... hopefully IBM can keep it on course, and kill them dead soon.

Who should be following this is ...

[WindBourne]

the SEC. and yet, they are doing nothing.

I suspect that following the money is next to impossible.

Re:*sigh*

[Gogo Dodo]

It will end when either the defense or the offense runs out of money.

Well, IBM made $3.04 billion last quarter so I can't see the defense running out of money anytime soon. SCO loss $6.5 million last quarter and apparently has less than $30 million in cash left. Of course, if you believe the conspiracy theory, then Microsoft made $4.75 billion last quarter. We could be here for awhile...

Just a technicality?

[Tord]

Isn't anybody here considering that this subpoena might just be a technicality?

Like Intel, having some proof which might help IBM, but is under NDA and can't release it without being in breach unless the court specificaly orders them to?...

Sadly yes.

[Polarism]

Not that I like SCO of course, but instead this just displays how meaningless our judicial system has become.

Our laws are meaningless today, because we've been disenfranchised by corporations.

Re:A buyout would be a bad thing for IBM.

[WarwickRyan]

The thing is, Microsoft might suddenly find out that they have to licence a lot more code from SCO, which would bankroll SCO's legal case..

Re:Not called "Wintel" for nothing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not have very much faith in the USA's system of justice these days, particularly since the DoJ let MSFT off the monopoly hook so readily (after regime change).

Philosophical arguments aside and actual facts in the various cases, evidence suggests that the US Legal system is favouring the big corporations at the moment. There aren't many companies bigger than IBM. Certainly not SCO.

Re:Jun U Nakajima, SCO and Trillian project

[Anonymous Coward]

To be profitable, top end hardware needs to be on time, and perform, and scale better. Intel, IBM and Fujitsu already know what features need to trickle down, rationing it out. What is very old, SCO thinks is new. Reasonable to predict that Intel comes out shining, with brilliant patches and contributions, and IBM can come out and say, Intel made it possible. Now if Intel tipped off SCO about important releases.. gosh , what material announcements were not made?. The real point, is that under GPL, maybe the compromise code got 'fixed and effective' way too fast. Is there an agreement that say thou will not release the good stuff too early?.

Re:The processors were provided by Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Itanium silicon did not exist in early March/April of 1999. Incomplete reference: http://www.intel.com/technology/itj/q41999/pdf/por ting.pdf but you should be able to figure it out.

This is how lawyers make their money.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's in the lawyer genes.
If either client still has money, make more work for them to spend it on.

This is how SCO will lose. They just don't have enough $ to fight IBM. The side benefit to the lawyers is that they have work to the bitter end.

SCO was recently granted a look see at a huge load of IBM stuff and IBM told that failure to comply would result in SCO being given a look see at everything IBM has. This is designed to make IBM's lawyers read through tons of paperwork at IBM and then the same stuff gets read through by the SCO lawyers.

While IBM is reading through all this crap, they want SCO to be burning bux so they introduce yet another $hitload of paperwork into the mix.

If you've ever had dealings with a lawyer, you know what I'm talking about.

The lesson is similar to that one learns after dealing with a 'payday' or 'title' loan company.
When confronted by someone elses lawyer, before you hire your own, bury them in paperwork. The person who is after you may well run out of money/interest in spending money, long before you ever have to hire your own lawyer.

Re:Intel should subpoena AMD!

[greed]

My Commodore 64 and my first Amiga both came with big fat manuals that included schematics.

Unfortunately, for the basement cloner, both systems used custom ICs built by Commodore's MOS Technologies division.

Fortunately, the machines were cheap enough that there wasn't much call for clones. And the custom chips gave the Amiga a performance edge over everything else for a couple of years. The custom ICs in the 64 weren't so much about performance as cost--replacing 74-series TTL chips with a pair of PLAs, the SID and VIC-II chips, and the fairly-sophisticated-for-the-time CIA chips.

Which doesn't explain why serial I/O on both machines was handled in such a boneheaded way. Async serial on the 64 was run of the non-maskable interrupt line on the CPU; entirely timed in software. No use of hardware shifters; there wasn't a UART anywhere on the machine. (There was a synchronous serial port, which was noticably NOT used for the floppy/printer port--that was also all done in software.)

The Amiga at least had UARTs, so the hardware handled start/data/parity/stop in async serial I/O... but the hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) was done in software!

Ooops, that's not the point....

Anyway, even though there wasn't much point in building a Commodore machine from parts, you could sure have a lot of fun with a soldering iron, some TTL chips, and one of those schematics.