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.""

Comments

Not a logical argument

[Josh Lindenmuth]

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.

Now if these were the last copies of AIX source, then IBM is by far the dumbest company in existence ... 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 ...

What a mess!

[udderly]

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.

Re:What a mess!

[hey!]

Ah, but you miss the point. When the Exxon Valdez spilled its oil over the coast of Alaska, the money spent to clean it up counted towards the GDP.

Likewise, lawsuits, dollar for dollar, count just as much towards economic growth as manufactured goods.

Edward Abbbey once said, "Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell." In a country where monthly economic figures are cited in election debates, is it any wonder that our system favors fast growing tumors?

Re:What a mess!

[ZachPruckowski]

That's the Broken Window Fallacy. Money not wasted on lawsuits could be spend on something else, specifically something else that provides the economy (and the involved company) with more utility. If IBM didn't have to spend millions defending itself, it could go spend that money on hurrying up 65 nm production of the Cell processor, or building a bigger super-computer, or making improvements to AIX or Linux.

I deny all sorts of things also...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

IBM does the right thing, and gets it wrong

[jmagar.com]

Of course they sent an email like that. You need to ensure none of the developers are cutting corners when SCO is breathing down your necks. So what do you do? Well, you remove the ability to access the source code in question. Any code out in the wild must be destroyed, and access to the code in the archive needs to be restricted. Simple.

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.

Re:What cojones!

[swillden]

Not quite. They're claiming IBM put the code in, and are now removing it to try to hide their infringement.

While I agree that I simplified the claim, perhaps excessively, you've done the same thing.

To be very precise, they're claiming that IBM's developers copied "methods and concepts" from AIX/Dynix via the process of:

1. Creating and testing new or altered functionality in AIX and/or Dynix.
2. Implementing said functionality in Linux.
3. Deleting the AIX/Dynix code showing the functionality to hide the evidence of the "infringement".

Note, though, that the above doesn't contradict my statement that they're trying to twist IBM's cautious and respectful behavior into a bad-faith destruction of evidence. Basically, SCO concocted this weird "your code becomes mine if it rubs against mine" infringement argument because they couldn't find any copied SVR4 code. Then they were unable to find enough evidence of that sort of "transitive infringement", and when they noticed that IBM had asked developers to delete code, they saw an opportunity to argue that IBM did that *because* it wanted to destroy evidence of such "transitive infringement".

I stand by my original characterization. SCO is trying to twist IBM's cautious avoidance of IP contamination into evidence of malfeasance.

Re:What cojones!

[orkysoft]

Basically, SCO concocted this weird "your code becomes mine if it rubs against mine" infringement argument because they couldn't find any copied SVR4 code.

Wow, talk about your viral licences!