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."
Gotta hope they didnt empty their trashbins!
... seems to be the nature of SCO's whole case...
(the link produced errors when first posted.)
This is a great example of the corporate corruption plaguing the courts and, ultimately, the globe. Why were these files not seized by court officials if they are so important? In any case, IMHO there should be some form of penalty applied to SCO if these documents really could have had significant sway in terms of the court case. This is a criminal offence? (IANAL)
" there are suddenly 16,209 fewer files in the privilege log"
That's awfully close to 16,384 missing files. I wonder if SCO is using MS Excel to keep track of their privilege log.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
The marketing firm known as SCO has of course deep pokets due to their financing and elimination of any productive branches of their business.
Not only have they marketed their Linux FUD, but appearantly they are good at marketing themselves as valuable as well. Else why would any sane company continue to fun this obvious lawyers party?
We are lucky to have something Marshall Berman has enlightened us about and it's called modern progress -- companies can learn and evolve. They don't have to stay the same! They can change!
This is a great example of the corporate corruption plaguing the courts and, ultimately, the globe.
Just because people set up a corporation for the purpose of defrauding an industry -- don't blame all corporations. If we held every single corporation to blame for incorrect practices of employees and management, the economy would collapse. What many businesses are missing today are change mechanisms. Every company is doing something wrong right now. It's the duty of those who work there that see the impropriety to blow the whistle on bad practices, internally and if that fails, externally. If the company in question has the correct business systems in place to enable internal practice auditing to occur, then the company will survive.
Certain people are responsible for SCO's incorrect business philosophy. Let the focus be on them, and what they did wrong, and how they manipulated little old lady stockholders into shelling out big bucks for no reason whatsoever.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Who says they haven't? Right now it's IBM and others pressing the issue forth in what seems like an attempt to bury this case forever.
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
for SCO's customers. Ok - the management should be put in front of the firing squad, but the bulk of their employees and their customer base will turn out to be the real victims here. An ideal solution to this fiasco would be the incarceration of McBride/Stowell, and some reputable outfit picking up Unixware and OpenServer for a song, and continuing with their support.
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!
There was a time every single news item on the case used to boost the value of SCO scocks. Not anymore; the hype has died down.
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.
I always wondered what happened to him... looks like he's been very busy at the shredders again...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
"Linux was based on Minix. A UnixLite OS designed to run on PCs. However, it was really only a teaching tool. Andrew Tanenbaum repeatedly refused to add the new (legitimate) features the users and even developers asked for. Linus Torvalds set out simply to add functionality to his own version of Minix (the copyright allows use to do so for your own personal use, but you cannot sell or distibute it).
Over time, in adding functionality to Minix, Linus Torvalds found that he had created an entirely new kernel. I was very similar to Minix but used none of the Minix source code..."
(Who modded the preceeding garbage "Informative!?)
Linux began as a development that was hosted on a pc running Minix. Linus set out, from the start, to create a posix compatible kernel of his very own. The idea that he created the kernel by accident is as laughable as it is insulting.
See here for a a rather more factual account of the development of the Linux kernel.
T&K.
Political language
Good lord people, these documents aren't somehow gone. Go RTFA.
1. A while back they claimed a whole bunch of documents as privileged.
2. Now they don't.
What's "missing" is an explanation of why, not the documents themselved. Since they're not privleged, it would go to reason that IBM can now compell them to turn all of those over, only when they do this will we learn if the documents are missing.
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.