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IBM Motion to Limit SCO Claims Granted
Kalak writes "IBM's motion to limit SCO's claims to those that have specific version, file and line numbers has been granted, in part. At the end of last year, SCO made 294 allegations. IBM asked for dismissal of 198 of them due to lack of this information, 1 SCO withdrew, 1 IBM withdrew from the request, and 185 of them have been dismissed from the case. This leaves 107 of the charges are left to be addressed by means other than lack of specificity (such as public domain, BSD code, who owns it, etc.) As usual, Groklaw, has discussion, as well as the Order and an excellent chart of the history of alleged violations has been created as well."
I hope that people appreciate the fact that IBM didn't just lay down on this suit and settle by dumping some money. They could have, and they can afford to do so. But rather, they are playing this out in a manner where there will be a ruling- a ruling where I predict Linux code will be vindicated.
I'll be an IBM customer for a long time due to this. And Whether IBM means it as some grand "do good gesture" or not is meaningless.
The resolution of this will mean that the US will not fall behind in Linux Development. Which they could- assuming the legality of Linux changed here- but not elsewhere.
Go IBM!
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
It's got to be sooner rather than later. The whole travesty look like a dam beginning to leak now. Let's hope it resolves cleanly, with a lot of positive press for Linux.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
SCO are finished.
Move to call the trial "The SCO Monkey Trial".
Anyone want to second?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
IBM saw the entire affair for what it is -- extortion. They also knows that if they cave into one, they'll be defending themselves till cow comes home.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Judge Wells supports her decisions in a manner that effectively prevents them from being appealed.
She uses Sandeep Gupta's (he testified for SCO) testimony to support the requirement for specificity.
She uses the fact that SCO didn't complain when it was ordered to produce specific lines of code. She also notes that SCO never asked for clarification on that point.
She is firing SCO's own testimony and actions (or lack thereof) right back in their faces.
Some posters on Groklaw and the Yahoo SCOX message board have speculated that this decision means that a couple of the counterclaims are a slam dunk. In particular, it now appears that Linux is completely clear of copyright violations wrt anything that SCO owns or says it does.
coral cache
Finally, some good news.
Looking at this ruling, and the other exceptionally clear rulings which have been handed down in this case so far, I really am glad that the SCO case was assigned to judges who really understand what it is they are doing. This has been an exceptionally slow case, but at least when progress in the case finally does occur, the progress is meaningful.
In December 2003, near the beginning of this case, the court ordered SCO to,
"identify and state with specificity the source code(s) that SCO is claiming
form the basis of their action against IBM." Even if SCO lacked the code behind
methods and concepts at this early stage, SCO could have and should have, at
least articulated which methods and concetps formed "the basis of their action
against IBM." At a minimum, SCO should have identified the code behind their
methods and conceptws in the final submission pursuant to this original order
entered in December 2003 ane Judge Kimball's order entered in July 2005.
Well, here's the big question...
There's two possible reasons behind this particular lawsuit. One is because the SCO execs want to go after IBM for extortion. The other reason is because Microsoft is trying to go after Linux.
If the second is true, any actions from here may be oriented towards preventing Microsoft from being revealed as the Man Behind The Curtain, rather than winning.
Gentoo Sucks
Know what's funny? I just figured out that prosco.net is now a parked domain. I guess they didn't have the heart to keep pretending anyone wanted to read it.
Viper is the preferred editor of the Emacs operating system.
I'm sort of worried here. Someone allay this fear:
To a non-legal mind, this could be portrayed as "losing on a technicality". So my worry is that anti-Linux FUDders can point at this and say "Well, Linux dodged a bullet based on shoddy lawyering/poor rulings, so it's still risky". Granted, we know (and have known for a while) that SCO has a very weak cases, but PHBs don't, and Joe Average doesn't.
My worry is that SCO dies quietly when it suddenly announces bankruptcy, screws it shareholders, and abruptly the lawsuits all vanish.
It's worth reading the entire order from Judge Wells. However, for the benefit of those who don't enjoy reading legal documents, here's are the highlights. These are the Judge's words:
Essentially, the claims of copyright infringment in Linux based on UNIX source code just got thrown out of court. There are a few minor claims remaining, but they're minor and mostly related to old contractual issues that can only involve IBM, not third parties using Linux.
This is all still pretrial manuvering, during which the case becomes better defined. In the next phase, we have "dispositive motions", which will probably include a motion by IBM for summary judgement against SCO. Some more SCO claims will probably be thrown out at that phase.
21 actually
SCO made 294 claims.
IBM objected to 198 of the claims.
Judge Wells allowed 17 of IBM's 198 disputed claims and barred the rest.
That leaves 117 of SCO's 294 claims standing. ~66% gone.
1 really damn good read. Judge Wells's order was fantastically fun.
The Statue of Liberty is America's lawn jockey.
Apparently, you aren't familiar with IBM's legal reputation. Their legal department has been nicknamed the Nazgul . 'Nuff said.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I know that SCO had no evidence. I know that the remaining claims are totally gonna flop.
But Linux's great disadvantage is that it has no single voice speaking for it. So MS or whoever will be spinning the saga in a year or two as "hey, they were still looking, that's a lot of code", and make it out as a travesty of justice.
GAH! I corrected you and screwed up the numbers myself.
Judge Wells allowed *11* of IBM's 198 disputed claims (23, 43, 90, 94, 186-192) and barred the rest.
The Statue of Liberty is America's lawn jockey.
Of course they didn't because their whole game is to stall stall stall.
Not by a long shot. It's a bit more than a technicality when a federal judge writes in a decision that you:
- Ignored court orders for specificity
- Implied you tried to game the system and bs the judges
- The judge takes time to point out how you lied to your stockholders in the press
- The court stops speaking legalesse and says something like, "The court finds SCO's arguments unpersuasive."
- The court says you didn't meet the standard of proof you requested of the defense (the burden of proof is on you)
- And that your failures were willful
That's a long way from a technicality. That's SCO getting gut shot and left to wander around in extreme pain while they bleed out and die.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
They're afraid of water?
But Linux's great disadvantage is that it has no single voice speaking for it. So MS or whoever will be spinning the saga in a year or two as "hey, they were still looking, that's a lot of code", and make it out as a travesty of justice.
But in this particular case IBM will speak up as they are the injured party and if the "talking head" goes too far slander and libel cases will appear.
It may be a mountain of code but they can quote The SCO Groups claims of having "a mountain of evidence" and not needing discovery because they were ready to go directly to trial. Then of course the SCO Group demanded ever higher mountains of code to search through for the evidence they claimed to already have but which even given 3 years they haven't yet presented it to the judge.
'Those are the nazgul. Once they were human, now they are IBM's lawyers.'
* kitten is on the prowl
<cicada> Bzzz!
<kitten> *jumps* wtf?
<cicada> Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
* kitten walks toward cicada
<cicada> BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
<kitten> CHOMP! -chomp- -chomp- *gulp*
* cicada has left channel #meatspace (Ouch!)
<SIGBUS> Hey, that was a Quality Kill! Good kitty!
* kitten purrs
* kitten is on the prowl
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
Three of the claims IBM objected to were "negative know how". SCO argued that these were cases where IBM figured out how to contribute something to Linux because they saw how UNIX got it wrong. In other words, that IBM infringed SCO's intellectual property by not using SCO's source code. Wells expressed doubt about the argument -- calling it a "tenuous position" -- but accepted that there was good reason for not providing the source code.
The rest of the claims she allowed really weren't about coding at all. They were claims that IBM employees who worked on Dynix were contractually prohibited from working on Linux. Again, she wasn't ruling on the merits but agreed that this was a case where source code wouldn't be expected.
Finally, there are the items IBM didn't object to; the ones where SCO actually provided source code references. IBM has already said that it's planning to deal with these with a request for summary judgement.
Also on the chopping block, there's another motion on the table by IBM to scrap most of SCO's expert witnesses. It seems SCO was trying to use those witnesses to add a bunch more code to their "final" list of allegedly infringing material. It remains to be seen how much of that survives.
In a nutshell, it doesn't look like enough of SCO's case will survive long enough to make it to trial.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
At a minimum, IBM's sixth counterclaim is for breach of the GPL, which is based on copyright law.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
There are still over 100 claims from SCO that have to be dealt with before Red Hat can proceed. We don't know whether they involve copyrights or not. Remember, IBM DID NOT try to limit all of SCO's claims, because some were specified correctly. IBM has made it clear that they will deal with those claims by Summary Judgement, which hasn't happened yet. SCO, at this point in time, still has over 100 claims in play (I'm not saying anything about the validity of those claims, just saying that they are still going to trial).
No part of the Novell case relies on this, plain and simple. The Novell case is (maybe) being stayed based on arbitration ongoing between SUSE and SCO, and the arbitration is ongoing irregardless of what happens between SCO and IBM. The rest of the SCO v. Novell is based on a contract dispute regarding the terms of the APA, which has absolutely nothing to do with this.
The fact that the Judge sanctioned SCO for "willful disobedience" rather than "bad faith" is analogous to Scooter Libby being charged with obstruction of justice rather than treason or some other more serious crime. In both cases the judge/procecutor/investigator knows the party is guilty as hell but life is easier by going with the easier to prove charge.
The judge is simply trying to avoid wasting appellate judges time by not giving SCO anything they can reasonably dispute (i.e. "it wasn't bad faith because she can't read our mind").
Suppose, when all is said and done, and IBM wins, they are awarded a chunk of change sufficient to bankrupt SCO. Wouldn't that mean that IBM would in fact end up owning SCO? And wouldn't they then have access to all SCO internal papers, such as Darl's personal email archives, memos, etc? In fact, unless Darl quit, he would then be working for IBM, and all his papers would become IBM property.
Wouldn't that be fun!
Infuriate left and right
They're only still in business because they've had several rounds of additional funding since the beginning of the trial, most of which looks as though it can be traced to a certain company whose name begins with "M" and which complains about Linux a lot. As of their last financial statement, they're hemorraging money at a rate that will bankrupt them shortly before opening statements in the IBM trial. Even if Bill Gates manages to send SCO some more money, they are going to lose at trial and IBM is going to be awarded damages that substantially exceed the net worth of the company. SCO's defeat won't be a quick one, but it's going to be most painful when it finally arrives.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.