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SCO Missing 16,209 Files?
FileSortingZombie writes "After all the allegations by SCO that IBM is abusing or dragging out the discovery process, over in this story on Groklaw you can read about IBM's objections to what SCO is producing in discovery, not the least of which is that there are suddenly 16,209 fewer files in the privilege log, and IBM wants to know what's become of them. Are they unprivileged, lost, destroyed, already produced, or quite simply gone? As of yet, no one seems to know. All told, IBM found fault with some 76% of their claims, especially one case where IBM says that SCO appears to be trying to claim that a conversation it had with an IBM employee should be considered confidential. One helpful Groklaw reader went so far as to put up this analysis of the complaint on his Web site for those interested in just how objectionable IBM found SCO's filing."
With many of their lawsuits being thrown out of court, It is just makings IBMs counter Suit so much easier. IBM at least early on in the process asked many of its larger customers to report to them any Time loss due to this lawsuit, including meeting on changing strategy away from Linux or talking about purchasing the Linux License. IBM seems to have a big counter suit coming that will probably cripple SCO. But they will wait untill SCO empties its funds before IBM fights back.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The thought occurred to me is that if SCOX, seems to have removed 16209 files from their privilege logs without reason, most likely clerical errors ect.; how is anyone ever going to trust them to maintain anything as complicated as a source tree?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Why? IBM is paying the lawyers... you know, the guys who wrote the material. Feldegast transcribed it. iBiblio is paying for the hosting. Why in hell should I be giving money to PJ?
Consider giving money to people who write free software (ie, GNOME), or people who maintain free software (ie, Debian), or people who defend the legality of free software (ie, FSF), but not to people who merely commentate on what other people are doing (ie, CmdrTaco, ESR, PJ). There are enough people out there who will talk endlessly for free. You don't have to pay for it.
This doesn't seem like a stunning development in the case; more of a minor "whoops" with a variety of possible explanations. The documents now seemingly not covered by privilege may or may not be informative, the "whoops" may or may not have been strategic and/or intentional, those documents still claimed as privileged may or may not be disputed based upon lack of information demonstrating the privilege. But it's still inside baseball: there's nothing so new here as to warrant a major news flash.
/. and other sources, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of individuals have read actual court documents, debated the meaning of standing, venue, attorney-client privilege, chain of evidence, discovery, and god knows what else.
What is interesting, at least to me, is the possibility that The SCO Group has unwittingly created an entire generation of technically literate individuals who have also closely followed the inside working of a major lawsuit. Through PJ and Groklaw, and secondarily through
This must be resulting in some sort of predisposition in young technogeeks for law school, or at least for thinking about legal issues. I don't want to say that it's a substitute for sitting through a contract law course, or even a legal textbook, but reading a year of comments on Groklaw must be preparing generations of youngish technology people for pursuing law as a career. It's like a real-time moot court on technology issues. The technically-minded can be drawn to the law as just another complex system, one with its own terminology, protocols, communications systems, manuals. Possibly, through following the inside baseball of this case, they might develop enough of an interest in law to choose to hack that system.
We'll call them the "SCO generation".
It's over now. That, or it's go time. One of the two. acts of gord
Surely *some* of those 16,000 and change documents are going to be covered by Sarbanes Oxley's data retention requirements. Do Darl McBride and Ralph Yarro have some kind of sado-masochistic desire to be investigated by the SEC or something, because this sure sounds like a hunting license to me.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
My understanding, from reading Groklaw, is that this is a list of documents that SCO claim they cannot be compelled to reveal for one reason and another (attorney-client priviledge, for example). IBM will have submitted a similar list. The list was initially submitted without court oversight by agreement of both IBM and SCO. However, the list has been re-submitted because (IIRC) SCO are challenging some items on IBM's list. SCO's list is a LOT shorter, this time around.
Why is it shorter? Could be a genuine mistake by SCO. One suggestion, again from a Groklaw poster, is that it's a tactical ploy by IBM. They agree to an initial unsupervised submission, knowing that SCO will declare (nearly) every paper they possess to be priviledged. They also know that SCO are going to challenge something on IBM's list. As soon as they do so, IBM and SCO have to re-submit their lists, with justifications for each document this time. IBM can do this easily. SCO can't because they don't have justification for much of it. IBM can then stand up and say "look at the lying little bastards, Judge" (however you say that in legalese). Just a theory (I think), but an entertaining one.
I
Well, I am still not fully sure what a privilege log is but it seems to be a list of documents which were compiled between SCO and its lawyers and are to be protected from court enquiry.
I guess IBM can be happy that these documents are missing from the list now, since it means they can try to subpoena them.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
It makes you wonder. They sent out mail asking for money to make Linux 'legal', and yet they can't keep track of simple files. Hate to think where my money would have gone had I been dumb enough to actually pay up.
Why oh why? Maybe democracy is more of a long-term thing than you think. Maybe a bloody war is more of a short-term thing than you think.
And please trade in your illusions for a copy of the constitutional treaty if you get to vote on it, and read it. As EU citizen I am far, far more concerned about the Brussels bohemeth then whether Bush and Cheney make more money on the Iraq war than the UN did on the food-for-oil scandal. At least the former group removed a dictator.
You're right about one thing though: poverty in the western world is virtually non-existant. It's a statistical joke defined as earning less than half the average income, so every generation nearly doubling its wealth is completely left out of the equation.
How you turn that into a sad thing, I do not know.
So relax people, the 21st century is yet another one where life is better than in the one before. Bit off-topic for a SCO discussion but seriously, some people get so pessimistic over nonsense it's frustrating.
That and more sinister explanantions regarding the desires of the parent corp, The Canopy Group. Check out this report. While much is BS, it is interesting in what it says about Canopy. There is something to be said for your explanation as Yarro was fired. Though some deals were made between SCO and Microsoft.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Been there, done that. There were a fair amount of homeless people in NYC, Buffalo, (Toronto), Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Washington, Houston, San Francisco and San Jose when I visited (1997, 2001, 2002). Not significantly more than here in Rotterdam (pop: 600k, metro: ~2-3M) though.
Small anecdote on personal responsibility: some poor chap asked me for a drink at the local Subway the other day. I told him "they sell drinks at the counter". He inhaled once more and told me he didn't have money and was homeless. I told him "that's why I pay for rent and groceries first and pot later".
I'm not saying there is no poverty at all in the west, but it beats eastern Europe (which also seemed to do better last summer than in 1998) and it definitely beats any time in the past. You don't even have to be middle class in 2005 to be able to purchase wines and beers that would have been luxury even for monarchs just a couple of centuries ago.
If you truly care about the big picture the billions of SCO, Microsoft, ClearChannel, AOL, et cetera don't really matter. Eventually rich brats like Paris Hilton will trickle down such money rapidly while providing some softcore for us geeks at the same time. Is corporate capitalism flawless? Neh. But do free markets work better than anything else we tried? Save for some excesses, yes, they do.
They got to drop the "E" as of 21 April. They were never delisted, the "E" indicated potential deslisting.
They finally filed their paperwork, and NASDAQ said, "fine, you can drop the E".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Actually they treated us pretty good [good customer service story deleted]
I have no complaints with their customer service. It's their software that burned me... over and over and over again.
xenix wouldn't allow both IDE and SCSI busses on the same system
Yeh, that kind of thing. And the driver configuration. And the horrible things they did to System V system configuration. And the driver configuration again, because they kept changing it. And doing the same config in 3 places with 3 different tools because the file formats were undocumented. And Secureware. And... oh, god, I can't do this. I WILL stop now.