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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.
I thought that US law requires the defendant to provide reasonable amount of evidence in order to get a court case started in the first place.
No, it's more like a store manager stopping someone who owns a competing business leaving the store, accusing them of shoplifting with no proof of anything being stolen, and then giving them the catalog to sort it out simply to harass them and take up their time.
Ah, yes, the court of public opinion. I'm shocked the judge hasn't just deferred to that and sentenced Darl to be hanged by the neck til he be dead, dead, dead. Stupid rule of law.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I wonder what the board room meetings of SCO are like with the lawyers that have undoubtedly drained SCO's coffers of every red cent...
"Na guys, we're feelin good about this thing. The judge keeps giving me a vibe - I'm so gonna hit that. But back to the case, na, we're doing well. I'm feeling judgement for us, no problem. IMB is (what's that? oh, IBM) IBM is SO gonna pay through the teeth. Leanux is going down!
"Oh, um, here's your bill. Pay that whenever. No rush."
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
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> While you're dreaming, why don't you go for Darl's head on a trophy plaque?
Except that you misspelled "pike".
I want to live just long enough to see them cut off Darl's head and stick it on a pike as a reminder to the next ten generations that some things come at too high a price. I would look up into his beady eyes and wave, like this... (*wave*!). Can your associates arrange that for me, Mr. McBride?
- Vir "Flounder" Kotto, Sr. VP, IBM Empire.
And I agree it's sad that a co. can game the system this much for this long, without providing detail about the alleged wrongdoing. It's basically a Gitmo approach to suing.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
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.
So if even the court believes that SCO has abused the legal system for unfair gains - will there be any punishment for that? Can the judge declare such punishment or does it have to go through a seperate case? Does the court system even have a way to send the message that it doesn't like being abused?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Better yet, How about we get in line and call in McBrige's offer to take our best shot! You do remember is famous words:
"We're either right or we're not. If we're wrong, we deserve people throwing rocks at us."
Okay big-mouth Darl McBride. I'm ready! I'm waiting! It's time!I want to live just long enough to see them cut off Darl's head and stick it on a pike...
Why would you put Darl's head on a fish?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
In quick summary, SCO did not provide line number, VERSION and FILE information for many of it's claims. Some of their claims they did not even find source code for (roughly 2/3rds of claims). IBM warned them very early on that if they didn't receive these specifics, they would seek court intervention.
SCO also claimed that "methods and concepts" do not need source code to back them up. However, the Judge decided that this was incorrect and that methods and concepts could, in the most basic of terms, be boiled down to source code. Even the SCO technical witnesses attested to this, and furthermore SCO repeatedly requested the SAME LEVEL of specificity from IBM when requestiong source codef regarding AIX, LINUX and other products throughout the trial.
Basically the Judge finds it unacceptable that even though SCO has had since 2003 to substantiate it's claim with LINE, FILE and VERSION numbers for each claim, it has failed to do so.
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.
Normally you'd be right. However, I still think the parent has a point. Several things SCO has done make it appear that the whole purpose of the lawsuit was to slow the uptake of Linux. In other words, a trial in the court of public opinion. It's a though there's someone pulling SCO's strings. Someone with deep pockets; someone who would greatly benefit by Linux's demise. However, I can't imagine who that might be.
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
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.
Hey. Whatchout for that flying chair....
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.
SCO's financial reports show no such income.
Umm, yeah, except for that $16,000,000 cheque that MS wrote them for something MS had already paid for, and the $50,000,000 "gift" from the PIPE fairy, which was brokered by MS.
<sarcasm>
No, no such income at all.
</sarcasm>