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SCO Says Email Is Inaccurate
daria42 writes "The SCO Group has slammed as 'inaccurate' suggestions that an e-mail from one of its own engineers showed Linux did not contain copyright Unix code, and even forwarded its own historical memo to journalists in an attempt to discredit the e-mail published on Groklaw." From the article: "This memo shows that Mr. Davidson's e-mail is referring to an investigation limited to literal copying, which is not the standard for copyright violations, and which can be avoided by deliberate obfuscation, as the memo itself points out..." We reported on the email yesterday.
Well of course they would say that. I mean, given their history, is there any other choice they would have for how to respond to this.
Corporate America feels like a childish game of "You go home.... no you go home..... No you go home.... No"
Well of course they're going to say that. Did anyone expect them to say "Ah, yea you got us. We were bullshitting this whole time."?
The SCO spin machine used to be slick, now it just makes me laugh. The quote from the original email was quite explicit.
I can't wait to see groklaws response.
Does anyone know who Mr. Davidson is? Has anyone tried contacting him re: this email?
I think the point now is that no one really views the case as any more than a sick joke. It probably had a venemous effect early on, but the fact is that SCO has kept changing the case, and that no concrete evidence for the claim has ever been provided. Outside of certain circles, SCO's crap doesn't even make into the legal and business sections of major media players any more. SCO long ago lost the PR battle, nobody believes them, and even less care about it. Decisions on going to Linux aren't being based on whether SCO IP might be lurking in the source, but on factors of affordability, cost of ownership, ease of administration, etc.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Bernie Ebbers orchestrated an $11 billion fraud. While McBride has bumfucked some people over, that is for sure, it is nowhere near the scale of what Ebbers had done. What makes you think that McBride will receive a punishment that will make what Ebbers got "look like a slap on the wrist"?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
It just stinks of 1984. Tell blatant lies enough and people just believe it even though they know its not true.
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
We're not in 5th grade anymore. CEOs don't decide to commit fraud based on what the president is doing. They decide to commit fraud because of some or all of the following reasons: they have no morals, they don't think they'll get caught, they see an easy opportunity for huge profits, their victim might not fight back. I don't think any CEO waits to see what Bush is going to do before deciding whether to start a stock scam. Although I'm no fan of Bush, it is worth pointing out that the feds are prosecuting white collar crime more aggressively now than a few years ago.
If you had been following (I know, you're bored), SCO has not, to date, provided *any* evidence of code infringment in court. None. Dec 22 is the deadline for any evidence of code infringment to be shown. SCOs public statements as to the nature of the case vary hugely from what actually happens in the court room - they spin it as copyright about Linux in the media, but as a contract dispute about AIX in court. The impression that "they must have a case because it's lasted this long" is exactly one of the things they rely one - TV court drama to the contrary, judges very rarely toss cases early on. Especially technical ones like this, where even though the lack of merit may be obvious, it takes signifigant technical analysis to prove it.
For what it's worth, the judge has been seeming rather fed up with it too - when he issued his ruling on deadlines for discovery, he specifically pointed out SCOs misrepresentation in the media as compared to the total lack of evidence they've presented in court.
They must have at least some sort of case for the trial to have got this far.
Actually, it may be hard to believe after all this time, but they are still in the preliminary stages of this trial. Think of this as the fishing for evidence phase. The standard for continuing the trial at the point requires very little evidence or any signs of a credible case.
In complex trials like this it is expected that the case will coalesce from the weight of evidence collected from the other side. Consequently, I wouldn't give SCO too much credit for having a semblance of a case just yet. Once discovery finishes we'll soon know how much of an actual case they have.
Unfortunately the "sorry bunch of wankers" is having a negative effect on Linux's reputation. Founded or not, their claims just add to the FUD that Microsoft puts out to combat Linux's spread, and it's having a significant effect.
To be honest, the scale of the deception shouldn't always be the guide, but the nature of the deception. From what I gather, internal bookkeeping was almost an accepted practice by many of these companies, but bring a lawsuite against not one, not two but three companies in an attempt to extort buyout cash is not only a breach of their responsibility to the share holders, but an outright misuse of the judicial system. That, IMHO, is the biggest thing they did and for that they should be slapped from here to the far side of the moon (and forced to pay for the trip).
Actually, with respect WMD, the Bush administration was more like SCO "We have secret evidence that you have IP/WMD that you shouldn't have." while the Iraqi information minister was more like Groklaw "No, in fact, we don't."
Once the USA invaded Iraq then the Iraqi information minister's job was to hinder the US military by feeding them false information. He was amazingly good at his job. He made the Bush administration think that Iraq's strategy was a direct fight to the death rather than a prolonged insurgency - sort of like how Gandalf distracted Sauron from the real threat toward the end of LOTR "Our army will fight and utterly destroy the armies of Sauron/Bush!"
If people worried about every lying thieving politician and corporate officer, the world would stop dead in its tracks because nothing would ever get done.
Not to serve up a flip answer, but perhaps that's what needs to happen. For example, we need to have the selection "NONE OF THE ABOVE" for each ballot choice in any election, to have the option to force the political system to endure starvation instead of a mandatory minimum feeding.
The system of corruption generally takes steps to make the environment safe for corruption. This tends to expand corruption. And such expansion crashes the system eventually. Knowing this, we should understand and prefer to have the harsh measure of medicine over the comfortable safety of increasing numbness (until the gangrene sets in and the limb falls off).
Corrupt systems have to be fixed one way or another. Either they get fixed by eternal vigilance, or they are fixed by extinction. People have to understand that even by making no choice whatsoever, they've still made a choice, hence they've still selected or supported an outcome.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
You never know. There must be about 10000 people who have sent patches over 15 years. It is possible that one of them is an IBM/SGI/BSDI/whatever insider and just copied unixware and sent a patch. We cannot exclude this possibility.
/playing the devil's advocate to karma whore anonymously.
The thing is, SCO must tell which files this is about, so we can detect the person who did this (and is probably a person who lied in her resume as well), and have her both fired from her company and blocked out of the linux kernel development forever.
Fair is fair.
Unfortunately the "sorry bunch of wankers" is having a negative effect on Linux's reputation. Founded or not, their claims just add to the FUD that Microsoft puts out to combat Linux's spread, and it's having a significant effect.
It did for the first 6 months of the case. But recent studies have shown that pretty much nobody cares about it any more; if anything, it's accelerated adoption, because the continuing lack of evidence from SCO is making Linux look more stable, not less.