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SCO On the Rocks
Netromancer wrote in to alert us to a Businessweek Online article discussing the downward spiral in SCO's fortunes and luck. From the article: "The mouse that roared is barely squeaking these days. A string of recent setbacks raises grave questions about SCO's finances, its court case, and its management."
Darl sued his last employer, so why not?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It's a bash quote in case you didn't already know.
But considering the length of time this has dragged on, the 900 million lines of code provided to them, and the fact that there has not been a single shred of evidence to date, why is this even still in court? How much money do you suppose this has cost IBM and tax payers so far?
Why is this still in court? Well, in part because the US legal system works at this speed. The average copyright case from filing to verdict is 2 years. And this is a larger-than average case.
It looks like this one will be resolved in 3-3.5 years.
SCO has a big pile of claims. IBM has a big pile of counterclaims. It's not just a question of the copyrights. SCO has contract claims too, IBM has licensing, trademark-infringement and patent counterclaims. And then there's the fact there's is a lot of code involved, with a lot of history behind it.
Add to that the fact that SCO has indeed been dragging their feet, and consistently been requesting more discovery.
Doesn't the court have some basic responsibility to IBM to end this case now that SCO has come up short?
That would be true if SCO had come up short. But in reality, the court hasn't determined that SCO has come up short. Yet. IBM filed for summary judgement and it was not granted. The case is still in discovery, and the court obviously felt it was more important to give SCO a long leash to produce anything it can during discovery, than it was to give IBM a quick trial.
Now, normally you would think SCO would put everything they had on the table in order to defeat the motion for summary judgement. They probably did, too, but the court decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and told IBM they could re-file their motion after the discovery phase is over. (When the court is certain it has all evidence in front of it)