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Judge in SCO Case Notes Lack of Evidence
In a follow-up to yesterday's story, Allen Zadr writes "Computer Business Online has an article up today entitled 'Judge astonished by SCO's lack of evidence against IBM'. From the article: "Viewed against the backdrop of SCO's plethora of public statements... it is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent evidence..." This is exactly what Groklaw has been saying all along, and they have commentary on the news as well."
Judge astonished by SCO's lack of evidence against IBM
in other news, i'm astonished by the delay in reaction! didn't we all know this, hmm, i don't know, the day of $699?
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
The real surprise is that their shares are not going down faster. It annoys me.
This is totally insecure, but very convenient.
That my Linux license is worthless?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Ha-ha!
Sweet informative mod.
Everyone's reaction sounds like Louis in Casablanca... "I'm shocked... shocked to find no evidence to support SCO's case!"
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
that the whole thing is going to disappear. But not before it drags on for a while yet and we'll probably NOT get to see McBride and others charged with any crimes (which I would *love* to see, deserved or not).
... I can dream.
Maybe he'll get caught beating his wife or something
Implications/Postmortem report at Groklaw
Attorney Reactions to the Kimball Order
People made money on what is clearly a pump and dump scam. Go to Yahoo finance, and put SCO in and look at the 2 year graph. People were fooled, there was no case, no evidence, no nothing. This was just Darl being instructed to attack through indirect VC funding, and my guess is he made out quite nicely. The next step is for the IRS and the SEC along with the Justice department to jointly open an investigation regarding this conspiracy. This is no different than organized crime running boiler room pump and dump, it just pretended to be legit.
I have a question for any legal geeks out there. Why are civil suits allowed to proceed at all without any evidence from the prosecutor? This case hasn't even begun and yet the judge has cooperated with SCO in forcing IBM to spend thousands (if not millions) of dollars, requiring huge amounts of man labor which has drug on for almost two years, and at no point did SCO provide any evidence what so ever of there charges. I understand the need for all the evidence to be brought out during the fact-finding stage, before the actual trial, but why does the fact-finding stage even proceed if the prosecutor does not have any valid evidence to provide. Burden of proof is on them, so it seems to me that they should be required to have significant evidence for their accusations from day one.
Why is it that civil cases take so much longer than criminal ones? Even the OJ Simpson criminal case finished 16 months after arrest, and people were all up in arms about how long it was dragging on, and yet this case has been going on for two years and it hasn't even go to the court room yet!
<rant>
This is the sort of tort reform that we need, reducing the burden of frivolous law suits. Not some bullshit capping of damages. By definition those are not frivolous lawsuits because the people were actually found guilty! That isn't even tort reform at all - it is just changing the penalty on some particular offences, and passing off as a tort reform bill rather than a limited-liability asbestos bill.
</rant>
But this is a serious question. There may be consequences that I have not thought of, and I am really interested in hearing why we choose to give the prosecutor so much benefit of doubt.
This is exactly what Groklaw has been saying all along, and they have commentary on the news as well."
It's called due process, and it's something I find vastly amusing.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Betcha SCO is overjoyed. For real! Here's what'll happen next.
Upon hearing the bad news, SCO's stock will begin to tank. Again. And once it gets low enough, SCO-friendly folks will buy a pile of it.
And then Darl will release some outlandish press release, saying that they own the rights to American Cheese or the number 6, and the stock will rise again. After all, they just can't make these claims without something up their sleeve, can they? Three days later, everybody sells. And then waits for the next bit of tangy pseudo-bad-news-for-SCO goodness.
What I want to know is when some judge will finally step in and put and end to this fraud.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'm not sure. Could this be it?
How fucking stupid does one have to be as an editor to dupe the same story albeit different articles in a 24 hr period....
About as stupid as you are for duping a comment made 10 minutes earlier in this same thread.
Can't you be bothered to read the comments before posting?
"Slashdot Online has an article up today entitled 'Readers astonished by Slashdot's repost of SCO's lack of evidence against IBM'. From the article:
Apparently, you didn't get the memo.
Looks like it is having a minimal effect however.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
The company I work for used to do a lot of business with SCO, and we still get holiday cards and whatnot from them from time to time. This past Christmas, we get a nice generic corporate Happy Holidays!-type thing from them. Except get this -
It came postage due.
I kid you not. It's hanging on the wall.
I was just thinking that I feel pretty old now. Anybody else been geeky long enough to remember when IBM was the big bad bully?
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
Is it even remotely possible for SCO to stop these shenanigans and drop this case at this point and still survive as a company for any period?
Any speculations on what would happen if SCO were to actually say "Oopsey!" at this point and try to just drop the whole thing?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Is it even remotely possible for SCO to stop these shenanigans and drop this case at this point and still survive as a company for any period?
They can drop their case, but IBM already did a full retaliatory patent based counter strike. If they drop, they have nothing to negotiate with later... Not that they stand much of a chance anyhow. (and not that it matters, the SCOX execs have already done a huge pump and dump and it looks like they got away with it)
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Despite their public pronouncements, SCO's case against IBM seems to have evaporated down to a claim that IBM continued to distribute AIX after SCO revoked their Unix license. To which IBM is replying "You had no right to revoke our Unix license, you morons!" Did SCO actually have legitimate grounds for revoking the license, or is SCO going to get bitchslapped by the judge for revoking a license they had no right to revoke? It's beginning to look like SCO's legal strategy was concocted by an 8 year old kid! Doesn't making claims in press releases that cannot be substantiated in court invoke the ire of the SEC? SCO executives appear to be on the express train to federal prison. They made ridiculous unsubstatiated claims, and now they can't back down from those claims, because doing so would only be used as evidence that the whole thing was an ill-conceived "pump-and-dump" scheme in the first place! McBride's best case scenario now is that he drags the whole thing out long enough so that he dies before he gets sent to prison...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You ever see any action movies? Usually the movies will have some scene where the chief good guy/bad guy/bad guy's Top Thug will get challenged by some stupid thug/underling/rent-a-cop, usually spurned on by alcohol/his friends/basic stupidity. We then get treated to a scene where the principal character goes above and beyond what is necessary to deal with the situation. They go further than they need, to demonstrate to other minor characters and to the audience: This person is a badass.
IBM is betting the farm on Linux. This is a new business model if you're younger than about 40 years old; to IBM, free software that sells the service and equipment is how they got big in the first place.
SCO unwittingly played right into IBM's hands. IBM waited for a good six months until SCO had made a ton of public statements (and Groklaw had started really building up a database -- "open-source legal" if you will -- that helped them in this regard). Then, IBM brought forth the counterclaims.
The counterclaims are not geared towards destroying SCO, but they will have that effect. The counterclaims are designed so that IBM can use this opportunity to create a substantive legal precedent for the new license that represents the old business model.
(Editorial comment: It's worth noting that the GPL and FSF are essentially reactionary; Stallman's not so much trying to create a New World Order as to restore the way things were back in the good old days. That's why I say that this new license represents IBM's old business model.)
What's happened with Wednesday's ruling is that IBM is more than they dreamed to get from this case: Not only is the judge clearly siding with IBM, but the judge is so pissed off with SCO that he will now guide the case towards a substantive legal precedent that not only rescues Linux developers and users from this current legal threat, but will stand the test of appeals and time.
Much as fair-use advocates go back to the Sony vs. MPAA suit, Linux businessmen in the future will go back to this lawsuit to show why it's perfectly sound and justifiable to use Linux without any worry. This is our Betamax suit.
SCO (and if you follow the money, Microsoft) really, really shot themselves in the ass with this lawsuit. In attempting to extort money from IBM and give them trouble, they ended up giving IBM the opportunity to get exactly what they wanted. The more that lawyers like Groklaw's marbux and others in the media look at the ruling, the more they realize that not only is SCO about to be destroyed, but Linux and the GPL will soon be ironclad.
When this court case is done, Linux and the GPL will be bulletproof.
That's why this particular frivolous lawsuit is taking so long: Once IBM made those counterclaims, it no longer became frivolous. And the price for the frivolity will be dire not just to SCO, but to every company that supported them.
Over the past year every company remotely connected with SCO has done what they can to distance themselves from them. EV1 apologized for buying Linux licenses. Another company that won Linux licenses as part of a settlement deal had to go on the public record denying that they paid for those licenses. Baystar, the company that put money into SCO on Microsoft's recommendation, backed out and asked for its money back.
Doesn't sound very frivolous any more, does it?
Even though there is ample evidence of this story being a Dupe, SCO's lawyers will claim it is their original story and claim Slashdot is violating their copyrights to the story.
No, SCO, as a legitimate company, is already dead. My current project is a SCO OpenUnix -> Linux migration for, perhaps, the last major customer of SCO.
Real life is overrated.
Well of COURSE your vote was counted. You're not from Ohio
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
"So why the hell is this case STILL dragging on?"
SCO have rights, IBM have rights, and the People have rights, and all those rights must be meticulously preserved, especially the right to due process of law. You know SCO have no case. I know SCO have no case. IBM know it. Judge Kimball knows it. But if he rules with prejudice, the case will have simple grounds for appeal, because rights to due process of law will have been abridged. IBM do not want this, and neither does Judge Kimball. Do you want the current case to run its course and be the last word on the subject, or do you want it to drag on for years and years in appeals because Judge Kimball was careless?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"I sure hope IBM sues SCO for Libel, slander, and defamation of character."
If Judge Kimball would go a bit further, he could already hold SCO liable, on behalf of the People, for damages to IBM's reputation, in addition to requesting that the attorneys for SCO be disbarred and their witnesses charged with perjury.
They have made false representations regarding evidence, under oath, in a Federal court, intentionally to the detriment of the reputation of a party to their lawsuit.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.