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Judge Calls SCO On Lack of Evidence
Rob writes to mention a CBR article on Judge Wells' assessment that SCO just hasn't made its case against IBM in the well-known and long-lasting legal battle. The magistrate called the lack of evidence inexcusable. She further likened their claims to a shoplifter being handed a catalog for a store after being stopped, and being told 'what you took is in there somewhere, figure it out.' From the article: "In the view of the court it is almost like SCO sought to hide its case until the ninth inning in hopes of gaining an unfair advantage despite being repeatedly told to put 'all the evidence... on the table' ... given SCO's own public statements... it would appear that SCO had more than enough evidence to comply with the court's orders." Groklaw has coverage of the decision, and the complete text from the judge. Update: 06/30 15:14 GMT by Z : This story bears more than a passing resemblance to this one from Wednesday. Sorry about that.
Fuck off, troll.
Since nobody outside SCO except perhaps the MoGTroll, Didiot, and a few people who were paid to look at it, have seen it, I call bullshit - or should I say backinfullforce-shit.
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Both SCO and Linux can legally take anything they want from the BSD code base - so they would have the exact same comments, etc.
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The LKP module that SCO had to yank is a good indication that copying went from Linux to SCO Unix, and not vice versa;
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Header files? Sure, for things like POSIX, they WOULD be the exact same. No copyright infringement.
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Those "millions of lines of code" in Blepp's suitcase seem to have disappeared.
Stock scam. That's all it ever was, after the extortion attempt failed.It depends on your perspective.
This case dealt a near fatal blow to end-user linux in business. Over the last two years Microsoft made previoulsy unimaginable gains in server market share, and they are using it to increase their desktop lock. The vast majority of IT managers, CIOs, CFOs, and corporate legal departments are scared to death of the GPL. The FUD is made even worse by lawyers cashing in on those fears by telling people they need to pay for costly audits and license reviews.
So who lost again?
Anybody here think that this resembles some guy dealing with his girlfriend/wife who is mad at him..
Him: What did I do?
Her: You know what you did, and if you don't know, I'm not telling you.
The shoplifting analogy isn't quite there.
Actually, it's as if you walked out of Neiman Marcus, a security guard accused you of shoplifting, and then refused to tell you what you shoplifted.
Then, the guard pulls over his buddy, respected Yankee Group Laura Didio. She looks in your bag, then looks at the Neiman Marcus catalog, and announces on national media that you have stolen something from Neimann Marcus but she won't say what it is.
Three years later, during trial, the guard is still unable to explain what you stole from the store.
Laura is such a two-faced windbag! She spends months berating Linux and IBM -- hell, she's seen the supposed evidence, and now she's doing an about-face so she can proclaim that as an industry analyst, her forcasts are "spot on".
The Yankee Group (and especially Laura) wouldn't know their own asses from a hole in the ground.
I'm a student in high energy physics and the sysadmin for our machines. Our entire research group at my university uses Linux exclusively for our servers and our desktops, aside from my advisor who's in love with Apple. When Linux newbies join our group, within a few months they've decided to install it on their laptops because for what we do, it's clearly superior.
Linux is no longer simply the domain of CS students and hobbyists. Anyone who suggests otherwise is avoiding the truth. It may not be ready for "mainstream" desktop use, but for specialists in many fields, it's the best choice. I can't imagine trying to do my work on a Windows box; we use Linux because it's free, it's powerful, and it works. There's also usually a hobbyist in groups like ours who can admin the machines, and in my experience, a Linux cluster takes a lot less work to keep running than a bunch of Windows machines.
Fermilab even hosts its own distribution called Fermi Linux. It's Red Hat Enterprise with some changes, essentially.
In my opinion, Linux doesn't have to overtake MS or Apple to accomplish something in the world. Market share is silly to talk about with free software because the word "market" means something completely different. I don't care if Joe User runs Linux; I just care that I can. Joe User can't contribute anything back, so he's really almost irrelevant from a point of view that ignores marketspeak. If I can run Linux myself, then so can others, and there are enough like-minded people in the world who will help me write software for it and give it away for free. Therefore, if Linux so much as exists, it has accomplished quite a bit.
Legalize it.