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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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think Linux "dodged a bullet" at all. but there are three groups of people with three levels of knowledge on the subject (I'm fast-forwarding 2 years here):
1) you, me, and everyone here know that SCO was totally baseless, IBM couldn't lose this case.
2) there are people who know what SCO, IBM, and Linux are, and that Linux and IBM won against SCO. They are the semi-literate tech bosses.
3) There are the PHBs of the world (and the sheeple), who don't know the Internet from IE, and don't know Windows from Word. They haven't heard of Linux or SCO.
MS rep comes around, does his "buy more licenses/longer contract" spiel. If the company has any interest in going to Linux, he'll work to dissuade them, via TCO, transition costs, and FUD.
Group 1 will respond with "SCO was total BS, and you know it".
Group 2 will be like "But IBM/RedHat/Novell won", and MS says "They got off b/c of a judge's ruling dismissing half the case"
Group 3 will only hear "IP issues, licensing dispute, still in appeal, very messy" and re-sign with MS.
The truth isn't as important as perception, unfortunately.
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. =====
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").