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IBM Denies Destroying Evidence in SCO Case
Rob writes "IBM Corp has denied claims made by SCO Group that it destroyed evidence relevant to
their ongoing breach-of-contract and copyright case, maintaining that SCO has had the
evidence in question in its possession since March 2005. SCO, which believes IBM breached
a contract by contributing Unix code to the Linux operating system, accused IBM of
destroying evidence in a July 2006 court filing, claiming that "IBM directed 'dozens'
of its Linux developers within its LTC [Linux Technology Center] and at least 10 of its
Linux developers outside... to
delete the AIX and/or Dynix source code from their computers.""
What's really funny about this particular SCO accusation is that they're basically accusing IBM of being careful not to accidentally put SCO's (alleged) IP in Linux, and trying to spin it as a bad thing. IBM didn't want its developers to inadvertently use AIX or Dynix code in their Linux development work, because IBM didn't want to risk revealing AT&T's trade secrets and violating their contract. So, IBM prudently directed developers who were going to work on Linux to get rid of the AIX and Dynix source on their machines prior to beginning Linux development work. Now SCO wants the court to interpret this attitude of respect for AT&T/Novell/SCO/TSG IP as bad-faith destruction of evidence.
I guess I have to admire their chutzpah.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Companies have their employees delete copies of source code all the time, particularly when they change projects or switch departments. It isn't in a company's best interest to have proprietary software in too many places at once, which was probably why IBM instructed these employees to delete it. This isn't destruction of evidence at all, since IBM almost certainly did not delete EVERY copy of AIX.
... who would ever delete source code for products clients are still using? I'm sure even Microsoft would never delete all source copies of Windows 3.1 ...
Now if these were the last copies of AIX source, then IBM is by far the dumbest company in existence
Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
Seems SCO are still trying to grasp at straws.
Can't wait for this nonsense to be over and for them to finally file for bankrupcy.
Hope all the SCO executives spend a long time in prison for this.
I simply cannot believe how long this has gone on. What a staggering waste of time and resources. This is probably as good an example as any of why the West is probably going to fall. While China is ramping up production and making huge economic strides, we here in the US are arguing over lines of code as our manufacturing base continues to crumble. Changing over to a "service economy?" Please.
How many hours have been wasted on this type of crap? What useful item has been produced out of this or any of the other spurious "copyright" or "intellectual property" cases?
Trial lawyers giving money to politician lawyers, who make laws so trial lawyers can argue cases against rival trial lawyers in front of judge lawyers. So, what's the common denominator and who benefits? Follow the money.
This was reported a week ago on Groklaw (in much greater detail).
This is old news.
IBM instructed developers to purge their sandboxes. This, of course, has nothing to do with the source code in IBM's source control systems. It's just working copies on developers' machines.
Garry Williams
It's funny, there used to be a fair amount of posts in SCO Threads from people ( usually using words likes Slashbots, Groupthink, Worship OSS etc ) who believed that IBM might certainly be in the wrong and SCO could well have a case.
It's funny they don't seem to crop up anymore, just like all those people telling us our governments could never be so wrong about WMD and how they'd certainly find loads of evidence once the invasion was completed.
I really hate the use of "deny" in headlines as it seems to imply that something is true and it is being denied for some nefarious reason.
If something is simply not true, guess what? I'm going to deny it.
The headline should be "SCO accuses IBM of destroying evidence"
(eg: the party making the accusation should be the subject of the sentence)
TDz.
This is the suit that never ends, Yes, it goes on and on, my friend Some people started it not knowing what it was, And they'll continue litigating forever just because--
SCO's claims here a bit funny, why complain when IBM does the thing you most desperately want them to? Or perhaps the problem here is that SCO wants the Linux source pollution, then they might have an actual case...
Anyway, I'm thoroughly bored with this story now. I can't spare any more time griping about those bad people at SCO. They have become irrelevant.
www.jmagar.com
-
SCO's response: "Of course they're denying it! Denying it means they have something to hide!"
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
All of those things would infringe on SCO's intelectual property.
SCO made this accusation some time ago, this is IBM's response to those claims. IANAL (except on slashdot where everyone is a lawyer), but I believe admitting or denying claims is part of the whole legal process. If both parties admit to something it's not in dispute and probably saves a lot of time.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
end up being the mess we all see it as, but others will too, and then decide that the patent, IP, and copyright laws in the USA are not exactly working and need to be fixed.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
SCO: there is line by line copying of SCO code in Linux.
IBM: what source code.
SCO: we aren't saying and besides which you deleted the evidence.
davecb5620@gmail.com
SCO is making claims that cannot be proven either way. If there had been such file deletion, the files are gone so there is no proof they were ever there. If there had never been such files, the drives are in the same state as if they had existed and been deleted.
Time to stop playing word games.
Hang the SCO team or line them up in front of a firing squad. This witchhunt has gone on too long. They've used the courts to try to extort customer license fees, they've used the courts to impose heavy expenses on their targets, and they've used the courts to dig for evidence of vague claims without performing the due diligence of searching the public OSS archives first.
Fraud at the least, but I expect SCO is guilty of much worse. Stock manipulation. Extortion. Anything else?
Scrap the firing squad. Hang them and let the bodies rot in public so every other IP leech out there knows what their fate will be.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I consider it even more bone-headed than intentionally deleting the source code of products which your company is still officially supporting, but IBM has actually lost the source code for products before (and I'm talking about products for which they were still charging customers for support contracts).
Your source code repository's database can be accidentally corrupted, backup tapes don't always work, etc.
Assuming a limited universe of discourse, and thus a severely restricted model, one can prove negated statements quite simply via inspection.
SCO: there is line by line copying of SCO code in Linux.
IBM: what source code.
SCO: we aren't saying and besides which you deleted the evidence.
You forgot one step:
Dear Mr. "Bates":
Please send next payment.
Regards,
SCO
That's not technically true. While I agree with your general sentiment (this trial really needs to end), and while SCO's spin on this makes me dizzy, there are still ways to find evidence that has been deleted off a hard drive. (As long as the drive still exists, you can pull things off of it. The earlier after a deletion, the better chance you have to find things, but unless the developers were used to writing over the entire drive -- and had done so after the deletion of code -- there is most likely some of it left on the drive.)
Just so you know.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Picture the scene in the courtroom.
SCO Lawyer: "They destroyed evidence that the stole our code!".
Judge: "You have anything to back that up? That they destroyed evidence, I mean."
SCO Lawyer": "Er.... no. So better make that TWO counts of destroying evidence!".
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
I'm glad they chose IBM to go after. IBM has the resources to defend against this shite.
They could have knocked out half a dozen distros just filing the complaint. Thanks, IBM.
SCO are not irrelevant, not yet. They need to be stamped into the ground with a boot heel, every ounce of life ground out of them, every molecule disassociated. Next, their principals need to be sued into oblivion, and their demonic attorneys censured for their unbelievably atrocious behavior. A message needs to be sent to IP trolls and their minions everywhere.
Even though we've centered the SCO trolls in the gun sights, there's still plenty of time to enjoy watching them try to slither away before their component atoms are blasted back to the alternate universe they came from. The longer and more painful this process is for them, the better. Where's the popcorn? Bring on the show.
They love Linux. They sponsor Linus and friends. They pay bills for most Open source developers. They release all their software under GPL the most open friendly license.
That's why we support them.
Does this case have any relevance anymore? I would hope we're nearing the end of the judge's patience on this whole case.
Isn't the real issue whether there is AIX/UNIX code in Linux? So who cares if there ever was AIX code on a developer's machine, just as long as it is not in the Linux code base. So given that we know SCO has access to their own UNIX source code in question, and access to the Linux source code... and has so far still failed to prove their case (at least so it seems), we can say this sounds like a red herring.
The judge should order a statement of WTF has this got to do with anything to SCO. Obviously IANAL ;-)
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
As long as we're talking about IBM denies destroying evidence, we're talking about a question like "when you stopped beating your wife." Even if it has nothing to do with reality, it instills into the subconscious "knowledge" that will be hard to ignore.
Well OK, so maybe only a retarded person would try to make (or buy) that argument. We already know that the SCO legal team isn't retarded -- they're getting paid buckets of cash to drag their feet. The SCO upper mangement isn't retarded -- I'm sure they made a killing on options in the few days when SCO was trading at $20 a share after the lawsuit was announced. Then I guess the retarded people would be... the other people who invested in SCO expecting this lawsuit to go anywhere. Poor retarded people, always being taken advantage of by SCO...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg: Oh, Father, you're so wrong. Let me explain.
[closes office door, places an empty glass on desk]
Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg: Life, which you so nobly serve, comes from destruction, disorder and chaos. Take this empty glass. Here it is, peaceful, serene and boring. But if it is...
[pushes glass off table]
Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg: destroyed...
Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg: [robot cleaners move to clean broken glass] Look at all these little things. So busy now. Notice how each one is useful. What a lovely ballet ensues so full of form and color. Now, think about all those people that created them. Technicians, engineers, hundreds of people who'll be able to feed their children tonight so those children can grow up big and strong and have little teeny weeny children of their own, and so on and so forth. Thus, adding to the great chain... of life.
Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg: [Desk prepares a glass of water and a bowl of fruit] You see, Father, by creating a little destruction, I'm actually encouraging life. In reality, you and I are in the same business. Cheers.
[drinks water with cherry, only to choke on cherry stuck in throat. Zorg frantically presses all buttons on his desk in an attempt to get something to clear his throat]
SCO can't find any infringing code in teh "OPEN SOURCE" of GNU/Linux.
So there is nothing for GNU/Linux to have to remove and work around.
Or was this already obvious?
Even if there was SCO source code in Linux, SCO DISTRIBUTED THAT VERY SOURCE CODE UNDER THE GPL LICENSE.
End of story.
SCO would have lost the exclusive rights to that code the minute they distributed it.
And SCO did distribute linux under the GPL.
Case closed.
I don't think that they really can; they're just delaying the case while the executives and lawyers at SCO make money. I don't think they have any hope of winning anymore, it's just a stock-pumping scheme and a way to slowly liquidate SCO and feed it to its lawyers, so when they finally lose the case, IBM can't turn around and go after them for court fees. It's like Bleak House; at the end, there won't be anything left but a bunch of executives with big retirement funds and a lot of lawyers packing up and moving on to other projects.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It appears to me that this SCO v's IBM is a type of "Concorde Effect" (aka sunk-cost)
SCO have NO other business plan, and will (more likely than not) be destroyed if they pull out. They have NO other choice but to carry on this fight to the very end. There is, basically, nowhere to retreat to.
My guess is that, in 5 years time, there will be an economic thery known as "The SCO Effect" which will basically be summerised as:
There comes a point when a company has invested so much money in one course of action, which is now apparent to all parties (inside and external to the company) to be futile; however they have no other choice but to carry on, with a full knowledge, and with clarity of thought (albeit fatally flawed) that this is the ONLY course of action left to them.
The company have to have faith in the outcome as failure will lead to the total destruction of the firm.
The company has no choice BUT to drive on - no matter how ludicous their actions. This is, in summary, The SCO Effect. These are the slow, painful death-throws of a weaken and fatally wounded company trying to do anything to survive.
Lets face it - it happens frequently in the software industry.
Jaj
As the judge said:
"Specify the SCO owned code in Linux by file name and line number."
No?
SCO has now delayed past the end of discovery, no further weasel words can be accepted.
If there is any code in Linux, owned by SCO, they did not show; it is SCO's fault for not providing it to the court.
They cannot blame IBM for there own failure to provide evidence as ordered (twice) by the federal judge.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Even if there was SCO source code in Linux, SCO DISTRIBUTED THAT VERY SOURCE CODE UNDER THE GPL LICENSE.
If that argument prevais - or even achieves wide distribution - it would be VERY BAD for getting Open Source adopted by software vendors.
SCO claims that their IP had been included in open source products that they then adopted and distributed before noticing that their IP was included. After they discovered this (alleged) inclusion, they continued to distribute the code because:
- they were obligated to do so under the GPL
- the cat was out of the bag, so stopping their distribution wouldn't mitigate the (alleged) harm to them, but
- stopping distribution and support WOULD cause them FURTHER harm by driving customers away to other vendors of what was (allegedly) their own stolen IP.
So instead they attempted to recover damages from the people who (allegedly) stole and released their IP. If they proved their point they would be reimbursed by IBM and could chose between taking actions to get thieir IP removed from distributions (and replaced with other, potentially less effective, code) or accept IBM's payment as the sale price to release the IP.
IMHO If such an IP misuse ACTUALLY OCCURRED, that's EXACTLY what the wronged owner SHOULD be able to do.
If your argument were to stand, a company with software IP would be foolish to distribute or contribute to any open source distribution, for fear of compromising any of its own IP that it did NOT want to open. (At a minimum, it would have to reverse-engineer the entirety of every distribution it redistributed, and every update to it, to look for its own IP, BEFORE distributing. This would be a prohibitively large expense AND would delay its own releases.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Not quite. They're claiming IBM put the code in, and are now removing it to try to hide their infringement.
If they put it in and didn't publish it, then they didn't infringe, since they have a license.
If they put it in and did publish it, then directing a limited set of developers won't help with destroying evidence, since the code will be on thousands of web sites and on CD ROMs.
The last few years in court have basically been nothing but trying to convince everyone they're not Caldera - they're the Santa Cruz Operation. Of course, SCO changed their name to Tarantella after selling their money-losing Unix operations to Caldera, and have since been acquired by Sun...
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
There is no way that SCO believes that still, if it ever has. But to admit that now would mean losing their collective face, _and_ facing charges on bringing a frivolous lawsuit.
My wife had a patient who threw a conniption because my wife documented that the patient "denied recreational drug use". The woman took that to mean that my wife thought she really did use drugs but wasn't admitting it. However, in medical jargon, "denies" means roughly "said 'no' when asked about". There's no connotation of trickery or deceit, just the simple fact that someone answered "no" to a question. I suspect that it has a similar meaning for legal types.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?