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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."
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.
Wake me up when it is over.
I'm sure IBM would be happy if linux on ppc hardware got REAL popular
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But even then, the counter suits, and residual suits for damages, etc. This may be going on for a looooooooooooong time. When will it end is, indeed, a good question.
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Bumblebee Man from the Simpsons gets involved?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
What they most likely want to establish is that SCO new Itanium was delayed and Intel notified them about the changing strategy of the processor.
SCO is claiming that the Monteray project was cancelled by IBM "out of the blue (Pun somewhat intended)" and due to the advent of Linux. IBM canceled the Monteray project as they were allowed to do since the business reason for continuing was no longer there. They need to have Intel confirm this, information which Intel obviously is reluctant to provide
Help fight continental drift.
Spelling and grammer helps when attempting to disseminate a professional opinion.
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.
The truth shall set you free!
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.
With very few exceptions, no one who will post in this thread has any authoritative knowledge of business analysis or high-level computing industry politics. I can also predict that not a single soul who posts in this thread will have a good understanding of the legal nuances of IBM's most recent actions in the SCO case.
So please, don't waste our time with useless conjecture, predictions, and "what-if" scenarios. Because really, what's going on here is just mental masturbation. Move along.
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You know if enough companies subpoena each other maybe we'll end up with "open source" hardware (not necessarily GPL) but force all the companies to give up their trade secrets and consumers reap all the benefits! MWUahahahaha!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
the SEC. and yet, they are doing nothing.
I suspect that following the money is next to impossible.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No, it's all about Monterey, a joint project between Intel, IBM, Sequent, and the Santa Cruz Operation to port UNIX to the itanium
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...
The folks at Canopy are now suing each other (see the Register for details). That is justice.
> No, you usually don't have to depose your best friends.
How did this get +4 Insightful? Obviously you've never dealt with a court case more complicated than a traffic ticket.
When two companies discuss business it is done under Non-disclosure Agreements. Now I'm sure SCO and Intel had meetings about ia64 (since SCO was working on an OS for it and all) If IBM just went to Intel and said "hey tell us what SCO said back then" and Intel complied then SCO could sue Intel for NDA breach. Unlike their current suits they'd actually win that one, too.
In a previous job we were in a similar position -- one of our customers was being (quite justifiably) sued and the other party needed information relevant to the case from us.
We compiled the information but we couldn't just give it directly to them because that would breach our agreements with our (now former) customer. Instead we made a list of everything we had and had OUR LAWYERS write up a subpoena based on that.
Then we handed it to them and said "please have this served on us". As soon as it had a judge's signature on it we faxed them the stuff they wanted within minutes.
Basically in civil litegation ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING that you find out from third-party corporations goes through the subpoena process whether they're friend or foe. Don't assume just because Intel got one from IBM that they must be on SCO's side or anything.
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?...
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.
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So far the consensus here was that it is Microsoft behind the whole SCO debacle -- but what if IBM knows better (and I guess I'd bet my $10 on THEM knowing better ;-) ). ... What do they know that I do not?
IBM knows that Intel knows all about Itanium, its roadmaps, schedules, and delays. IBM knows that Intel has a good idea of what they told SCO about Itanium schedules and delays. Given that SCO is now down to claiming that any funny business about purloining code went on during Project Monteray, on which IBM and SCO cooperated, and that that was largely about AIX on Itanium, details about Itanium and what SCO knew about it are important.
There are perfectly straightforward, perfectly innocent explanations for why IBM would want information from Intel, and oddly enough they fit the current major issues of the case far better than any wild and extravagant theories about Intel conspiring to bring IBM down.
So what does IBM know that you don't? IBM know what they're talking about.
Jedidiah.
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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.
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So, how did Linux become so capable of scaling beyond the heights of the old UNIXs. More importantly, who helped put what where?
As with the marketing of cars and TVs, it is the vendor's high end leading edge models which sells the standard models, from which most of the sales and profit is made. For the enterprise server market today, that high end is multi-headed 64-bit SMP systems, never mind the fact that single 32-bit processors provide more than enough power to do most jobs. For all intents and purposes, it is the ability of the core OS to scale on 64-bit SMP systems that defines "enterprise scalability". Other enterprise feature are effectively just add-ons, which in the case of Linux, have been freely contributed from many vendors and developers.
Since version 2.0, Linux was more than just a 32-bit x86 operating system. With the insistence and assistance of Jon "Maddog" Hall, Linux was already ported to the 64-bit Alpha processor, which delivered great performance and stability. Just like the traditional AT&T UNIX source base, the ownership of the Alpha chipset passed though many hands, suffering the same fate of a thousand cutbacks. Even Alpha's "native" OS, VMS, has been ported to Itanium by HP/Compaq.
Since 1997, Intel has been promoting the Itanium line as the inevitable successor for every other server processor on the market. Despite the early vaporware status, Intel has been very successful, at least in terms of marketing. With the exception of its mainframe systems, even IBM ships Itanium systems that directly compete with their own Power processors.
For what The SCO Group has to offer with SCO Unixware 7,the Itanium line is the only 64-bit option. The problem for The SCO Group is that modern Linux can compete so well in that same market that the value of Unixware is rapid deteriorating to a historical curiosity. I suspect that The SCO Group (at that time called Caldera) executives were well aware of this before they acquired the server part of Old SCO in August 2000, or they would have known, if they spoken to the right executives and technical staff.
So how did Linux get scale on Itanium? The SCO Group would have you believe it was all IBM's doing, which isn't as interesting as the real story. The web of history weaves to encircle and entangle a much more diverse group of conspirators, including many of The SCO Group, Caldera, and old SCO's own former executives and other employees.
In October 1998, IBM, Old SCO and Sequent teamed up to collectively develop parts of Unixware and AIX into scalable 64-bit-ready ports for IBM's Power processors and Intel's AI64, or Itanium, under the banner of Project Monterey. But by then, it was already too late.
In February 1998, well before even the first prototype IA-64 chips were available, a skunkworks team at HP, with some assistance from Intel, began the work toward porting Linux to IA-64. By October 1998, around the same time that IBM, Old SCO and Sequent had finished negotiations, HP had completed the build toolchain. By January 1999, the Linux kernel was booting on an IA-64 processor simulator, months before the actual Itanium processor was available. In March 1999, at Intel, Linux was booting on the actual Intel Itanium processor. In April 1999, CERN joined the project for the port of the GNU C library and VA Linux Systems joined the project and rapidly improved the stability and performance.
In May 1999, the Trillian Project was founded and HP, VA Linux and Intel collectively provided their source patches to the Linux kernel for the Itanium port under the GNU general public license.
A bootable kernel alone however does not make an OS make. HP supplied the patches for the toolchain (initial GCC C/C++ compiler, gas assembler, ld linker). Intel supplied the test platforms, apache, EFI, FPSWA, SCSI, SMP, libm (the old Linux C libraries). VA Linux ported E, E-Term, XFree86, utilities
Then every failing company with a past contract with IBM would file a lawsuit and hope to be bought out.
In the long run, it's better for IBM to crush SCO, publicly, slowly and legally.
so you can bet that both Intel and Microsoft
would like to see SCO Group succeed in court.
Sun is pushing Sparc and AMD processors, IBM
is pushing (hard) with PPC processors, and even
HP is courting AMD processors -- all three
with their UNIX and GNU/linux.
Microsoft courted, and then dumped support
for microcomputers based upon the Alpha, MIPS,
and PPC processor. Intel's many mis-steps
with the Itanium (ia64) processor may well be
an issue that IBM would like to raise with
the court, especially as regards IBM's short
lived alliance with SCO.
IANAL, but no matter how much code IBM reveals
in court against SCO Group, SCO's main attacks
center on (1) ownership of derivative works,
and (2) legality of the GPL. Either could
seriously damage F/OSS if the case goes to SCO.
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).
IBM filed this motion on Jan 19. The actual subpoena was signed by IBM's attorney on Jan 13. SCO's motion for more discovery was granted Jan 18.
The blurb for this story is a little misleading. IBM planned to do this and may have even already had the subpoena executed by the time SCO's motion was granted. The timing was coincidental not causal.