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SCO Having a Hard Time In Court
jamienk writes "The beginning of the end is in sight. SCO has been reprimanded for the second day in a row by a second judge in their campaign against Linux. Basically, Judge Wells ruled that SCO's vague claims of IP infringement will not be allowed to be heard in court, since it was all clearly a poor attempt at avoiding showing any evidence. Next, SCO will face compelling counterclaims against it by IBM." From the article: "At issue was whether SCO would be allowed to sneak in new allegations and evidence in its experts' reports that it failed to put on the table openly in its Final Disclosures, in effect, as IBM described it, reinventing its case at the eleventh hour. The answer today was no, it won't be allowed to do that. IBM had asked for this relief: 'Insofar as SCO's proposed expert reports exceed the Final Disclosures, they should be stricken.' More details will be arriving in a while, but assuming the early reports are accurate, we may assume that this is what the Judge has ordered." This is a follow-up to a story we discussed yesterday.
To paraphrase the ruling "Insofar as this proposed item exceeds anyone's tolerance for blatant dupes , it should be stricken."
Sure glad I don't have any SCO stock.
The end is in sight and will probably mean the dissolution of SCO assets as the company folds up and dies, since this was a last gasp ploy to hit a litigation jackpot of billions of $ from IBM, et al.
Sad to see, as SCO was once a respectable company in Santa Cruz, CA.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What do you mean, vindictive?
As SCO's share price seems to be plummeting a bit today, I decided to download a stock ticker for my desktop to watch the price fall in all its glory. The one I went for, CoolTick, is limited to two symbols in the trial version. Fine by me, I only want to watch SCOX. I now have scrolling across the top of my screen "SCOX v 1.25 -0.75 N/A Purchase License".
Well, it made me chuckle anyway.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
...thanks...I'm going to need to stop and buy more beer on the way home tonight to wash that visual out of my head.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
No, no dupe. First story was about Judge Kimball affirming an order Judge Wells maid (the striking a lot of evidence) and this story is about a hearing that Judge Wells held today.
Not a dupe. There really have been two distinct SCO stories in the last 24 hours or so.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
I hope SCO doen't come after me next! I tried to install Linux on a pile of dog shit a few weeks ago and am now wondering if I didn't somehow infringed on SCO's intellectual property.
"Basically, Judge Wells ruled that SCO's vague claims of IP infringement will not be allowed to be heard in court".
This is completely wrong!
The CLAIMS will be heard in court. However, most of the EVIDENCE (or lack of) to back those claims has been ruled inadmissable because SCO did not comply with the court's order regarding specificity (show us the code!).
1:06 EST SCOX 1.21 Down 39.50%
SCO's stock went into a screaming dive today. It's down 40% today on heavy trading, about 20x the normal volume. The mainstream business press has picked up the story, and, this time, there's no ambiguity.
Forbes seems to have really had it with SCO. Much of SCO's early FUD appeared in Forbes articles, which now makes Forbes look bad.
I just hope hope hope that the people involved in this legal scam of SCOs didn't dump their stock today.
Many posters recently pointed out that they thought this was a stock pumping scam designed to get the stock up on the possibility of getting a large settlement from IBM. Now that the chances of that happening are slimmer and slimmer, what would you bet that before these announcements, important execs at SCO dumped their stock?
I hope not. They should burn like the Enron execs should have burned.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Compare that article to this one from when the whole SCO fiasco was getting started. Same author, you'll note - very different attitude. I love the hilarity of juxtaposing the titles of the two articles. Back then Lyons was calling Linux advocates and users "crunchies" - now he just calls them "fans" and says things like "companies... have built booming businesses around Linux."
Not that he'll get called on the hypocrisy or anything.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
There will probably be a lot more than just one sentence handed out, when all this is over. Somebody might want to seize Darl's passport, because the SEC will be wanting a Very Meaningful Chat with him about the Lanham Act, not to mention running a pump-and-dump scheme from his own board room.
This is not my sandwich.
Now those not in the know are thinking "so what the hell does SCO have to do with MS or Novell ?" or even worse
"Those Slashdotters are just biased MS haters".
And the answer to these thoughts my young padawan learner (or MBA) are the following facts:
Which now leads us to the ultimate reason for why I believe these incidents are indeed related and not an accident
a motive !!
Both the SCO lawsuit and the MS-Novell agreement are designed to cast (at least to most tech-unsavy MBA types) a huge legal cloud over Linux specifically, and FOSS in general, of which Microsoft would be the only benefactor.
Case Closed
Now that MS has its shiny new cross-licensing patent contract with Novell, it now has a new opening in its war on Linux. They are probably pulling back all resources from the SCO front, getting ready to exploit this new angle for a few years.
Software Wars
They could explain it, it's just that neither side wants to. If you add up the money exchanged, the net result was that MS paid Novell some $300 million, which means MS was buying something. MS thought it was worth $300 million to create the speculation of legal trouble with Linux (as you said), but they don't benefit if they make a big deal out of the fact that they had to pay for Novell's cooperation, so they pretended to be buying protection from Novell. Novell thought $300 million was a nice chunk of cash, but they look sleezy if they admit that they were that easily bought out and cooperating with a FUD attack, so they took the money and then put a backspin on the story.
Um. Boies prosecuted Microsoft in the anti-trust trial. He didn't get reprimanded in that trial, but there are other trials where he ran afoul of ethics and was called on it.
There is NO "new material".
What SCO tried to sneak in after the close of the discovery phase was "expert" witness reports that broadened the scope of the original claims, to which IBM objected and Judge Kimball ruled on (in IBM's favor) yesterday.
What Judge Kimball correctly recognized was that trying to nail down SCO's claims was like trying to hit a moving target. The evidence that Judge Wells disallowed was ingeneously called "claims" by SCO in order to get past the fact (ie., evidence) discovery deadline.
If SCO has any new real evidence, they will have to ask for a new trial, not an appeal. Judge Kimball is working his hardest (de novo review) to make sure that there can be no appeal.
Even if SCO lasts that long.
Not that he'll get called on the hypocrisy or anything.
What makes you think he's being hypocritical?
The previous article was written over three years ago. At the time WE may have known (or suspected) that SCO was talking through its hat, but The Suits, and the reporters that served them, had little such knowlege.
SCO talked a good line, while Open Source was a newcomer to business, of questionable utility, promoted by people who looked like "a bunch of socialist hippies" who didn't respect "intellectual property" and the related legal framework. Sure the OSS people SAID there was no proprietary Unix IP in Linux - deliberately or accidentally. But SCO (then repuatble) said otherwise.
Now we've had the SCO v. IBM trial (where it's clear that the issues are VERY important for business). That has given three plus years of education (so far) to those who are following it. (This is the JOB of news article authors such as Lions, who write these pieces to convey such information to executives, who need to get it RIGHT for their own multi-billion-dollar decision-making.) And so far SCO has shown itself to be blowing smoke, while IBM has shown Linux to be on solid IP ground.
So of COURSE the article NOW will be much different from the article THEN.
It would have been hypocracy if Lions had written the two articles back-to-back, with the same knowlege and mindset while writing both. But the Lions of today is a more educated man on this issue than the Lions of three plus years ago. So the contrast in the articles reflects his intelligence, integrity, and honesty - not hypocracy.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way