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SCO Files To Amend Claims To IBM Case, Again
UnknowingFool writes "SCO filed a motion to allow it to change its claims against IBM. Again. A brief recap: In December 2005, SCO was supposed to finally list all claims against IBM. This was the Final Disclosure. In May 2006, SCO filed its experts reports to the court which discussed subjects beyond those in the Final Disclosure. Naturally, IBM objected and wanted to remove certain allegations. Judge Wells ruled from the bench and granted IBM's motion: SCO's experts cannot discuss subjects that were not in the Final Disclosure. Now, SCO wants to amend the December 2005 Final Disclosure to include other allegations."
"oh, your Honor, we are but mere idiots drooling on our papers, we just want money. grant us our relief and give us lots of everybody else's money. also, your wallet and watch, hand 'em over."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
That may be what Sco wants...to be so aggravating that you give them money....
Besides who would want to buy a sinking ship with a huge hole in the bottom?
No.
The SCO Group (NOT the Santa Cruz Operation, by the way, they're now called Tarantella) must be crushed into an unrecognizable mess of lies and hopelessness. There is no other way. Their attorneys should be disbarred, their officers should all spend a few decades in Federal prison, and anyone who bought stock in them because they saw the hope of a payout from this extortion scheme should rot in hell.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Maybe we're just seeing what kind of lawyers you get when all you can pay them with is stock in a company whose assets consist solely of a huge scam lawsuit against IBM.
One of the precedents that IBM should produce by seeing this travesty trial to its just conclusion is penalties for the SCO lawyers who have been wasting court time with this obviously frivolous lawsuit. Why should taxpayers subsidize those lawyers with free access to the courts for their stockmarket scam? The SEC should look at their brokers, too, to see whether they are in on the deal - almost certainly they are.
This case shouldn't end with only strong precedents clearing Linux developers and distributors from the FUD SCO has pumped into the market for years now. It should end with disbarred lawyers and delicensed brokers, and probably punitive damages (paid to the court, compensating taxpayers) exceeding the profit those professional crooks have made from the stock transactions their work has been the smoke and mirrors to produce.
--
make install -not war
The hero keeps firing his gun at the oncoming zombie, shouting "Why... wont... you... DIE!"
Jesus. Which part of "Final" are these clowns having trouble understanding?
They're using Square's definition of "Final" arn't they...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
I don't have detailed knowledge of the US legal system, but isn't SCO stretching it beyond it's limits in a way rarely seen before. And certainly with such high profile cases with companies of these sizes?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
"I don't know why some company doesn't just put up a few Million dollars (or 10s of millions) to buy SCO and put all these stupid legal battles behind us."
Why would they do that?
What benefit would they get?
SCO hasn't stopped Linux so Linux companies would gain very little. IBM would gain nothing since it is getting all the good will it would ever want by standing up to SCO.
The one really big possible PR left in all this is one for Novell.
IF Novell gets to foreclose on SCO for none payment and gets back all the rights for Unix they could turn the Unix code base over too the FOSS community.
Of course if they did that then they would miss some of the nice checks from Sun and IBM.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This has been one big nuisance suit by SCOX *HOPING* IBM would pay them off or buy them out to silence them. IBM's attitude has been "millions for defense, not one cent for tribute". They know paying SCOX off would prompt a flood of copycat suits from other busted vendors.
At this point it's pretty well proven (a) there's no infringing UNIX code in Linux (b) SCOX likely doesn't hold the copyrights, Novell does (c) SCOX' reading of the contract they inherited from AT&T & Novell is in conflict with their predecessors', and both have said so in depositions and (d) this has been a last-ditch attempt to keep their company afloat.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
Their legal liability thanks to their idiocy is enormous.
Whoever bought them could never survive the judgements that'll come down against SCO.
I think what's more interesting than SCO is what'll happen to SCO's backers that put them up to this (like microsoft who raised $86 million for SCO's lawsuit)
I agree, but good luck getting the US government to.
I love the following quote from Syriana:
"Some trust fund prosecutor, got off-message at Yale, thinks he's gonna run this up the flagpole, make a name for himself, maybe get elected some two-bit, congressman from nowhere, with the result that Russia or China can suddenly start having, at our expense, all the advantages we enjoy here. No, I tell you. No, sir. Corruption charges! Corruption? Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win."
I dont read
on what grounds?
on the grounds that it's disasterous to my case.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
SCO paid cold hard cash for their lawyers. Cash from Microsoft and Sun that Novell is claiming should have been forwarded to Novell. But it was cash. There was an early move to make BS&F get paid in shares and a percentage of an SCO buyout. BS&F dropped that very quickly, either because they got a good look at SCO's case or because it would put them in co-conspirator type position with respect to Lanham act and racketering charges for being a direct benefit from the false valuation.
SCO paid a "fixed fee" to BS&F to manage all cases through appeals, I believe it was $29M. There is also a refillable misc-costs bucket of $5M that has already been topped up twice. The misc-cost bucket sort of puts a lie to the "fixed fee" handling of the lawsuit.
In any case SCO is now facing Novell asking for a lot of cash that SCO no longer has.
I read a quote from Darl somewhere a good while ago saying that in all honesty, when they started their legal endeavours, they fully expected IBM to just buy them out. Guess IBM decided that it'd be more fun to bury them. Big time. And in the long-run of course, the case has actually done a good deal to strengthen the GNU/Linux community.
Even without a buyout, those involved in this nonsense have actually made a good deal of money - the lawyers, Darl and the other execs (who are on hefty salaries) who have done rather well from all this, thank you very much. The people I feel sorry for the actual engineers at SCO, as there can be no doubt the company won't come out the other end of this in any fit state to carry on. It used to be a damn good little company, providing a good product at sensible prices. Now look at them. They're just a bad joke.
... then I realised I was just flogging a dead horse
I wonder. if a quick buy out of the company would enable the buyer to see all paper work? It may be useful for IBM and Novell to have the goods on MS and Sun for damages as well as perhaps put those at the top who perpertraited this crime in prison. I wonder how Gates (or Balmer) and McNealy would do in a federal prison?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
From Infoworld 2004-08-31: Source:http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/08/31/
SCO is essentially saying the following:
Your honor, since the trial date has been postponed to after Novell (September 2007), let us amend our "final" disclosure. IBM has lots of time to respond to this, so it causes no harm.
SCO obviously doesn't understand the word final. They also say (this is a quote):
The public interest is in having this matter resolved in a reasonable time frame. SCO had 3.8 years (from when they filed in March of 2003 until when final disclosure happened in December of 2006) to assemble their evidence. The longer this charade goes on, and that Linux is under SCO's cloud of FUD, the more damage SCO is doing.
SCO has tried to delay at every turn during this trial, so this comes as no surprise. It now seems obvious that this whole lawsuit was an attempt to delay Linux adoption by destroying Linux credibility in the marketplace. This whole thing was about delay.
1. Draw out court case as long as possible to make SCO waste more cash.
2. Crush SCO completely in court to the point even the Judge laughers at SCO.
3. Buy SCO out after they are about to declare they are bankrupt for 1$.
4. Have a big camp fire using the SCO buildings and transfer all SCO remaining staff to the "Whipping Boy" Department.
and just for kicks and giggles
5 . Profit
Don't forget the bit about "the lamentation of their women", that really needs to be worked in there somewhere.
At least IBM has big pants with deep pockets. I mean, how long has this farce been going on? ...And what, pray tell, will IBM see (in terms of monetary relief) when it's over?
I mean, SCO is floundering like a stuck pig on the end of a deep-sea fishing line. They're bleeding all over the friggin' ocean and their lawyers are sucking up the blood as fast as it's pouring out.
How soon before McBride and the boys finally run dry and succumb to their fate? Will there be any money to pay Novell for the licensing fees they are due? Will there be any money to pay IBM's legal team for this long, drawn-out court case?
Something doesn't sit right in my mind when a company can use its dying breath to unfairly inconvenience other companies. If SCO doesn't have any money left to pay its debts when the "curtain is coming down" on this case, can the judge haul off and McGwire the money from the SCO gang like candy from a pinata?
I hope so.
coding is life
I'm from Europe and have witnessed this case being mentioned every once in a while. It seems like some kind of virus; the thing which you cannot kill and it just pops up every once in a while.
/change/ those laws or is this something people weren't hired to do or set in motion, resulting in nothing ever changing?
What I fail to understand is that the American justice department is allowing all this to continue. To which I'd like to immediatly add that this whole ordeal is more damaging than people might realize. For me its also portraying the whole justice system as something which you really can't take too seriously. Jury courts? Sure, try to work on their emotion. Trials with no end because no evidence is being produced what so ever? Sure; only in America so it seems.
What makes me look upon this with a little disdain for this, arrogant if you will, IMO display of incompetence is the sheer fact that SCO has also tried this in Europe just once. The only thing they ended up with was a threat for some major fines (due to plain out slander) if they pulled a stunt like that again.
What is it with these people? If they need to apply the law and it allows for grand mockeries like this wouldn't it make sense to get something in motion to actually
Guys, this isn't only hurting business. Its hurting your credibility too!
The consensus from those following this circus is that the reason the judges have let this run on as long as it has it exactly to scuttle attempts at appeal; they've given the SCOundrels every opportunity to come up with some credible evidence, IBM has produced their entire source repository for them to look for infringing code in, and still the judge's comment at the end of discovery was "is this all you've got?". At this point they're trying hard to get any sort of disputable points into the record to keep this thing going. When the IBM counterclaims kick in there's going to be a glowing greasespot in Lindon where once stood Caldera, er, SCOX.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
Someone with big buckets and a lot of arms?
Of Code And Men
I do not think that word means what you think it means...
--Inigo Montoya
Always value the individual over the system. --Bruce Lee "I don't need a Sig - I have a custom 191" - me
All of the money made by the insiders is public knowledge. I quickly looked through the records last week (you can just do a google search for "insider trades SCO" and you will find a service that will list them all). From what I can tell, Baystar dumped about a million shares or so at between $3.50 and $4.00 at the end of 2004 (They were making 5 or 6 sell trades a day for months). I'm not sure if this ended up being a profit or a loss though (I forget the details... and the whole Bank of Montreal involvement made everything kind of complicated anyway).
The executives exercised stock options all the way up until the end of 2004. It seems they were mostly granted at between $1 and $2 and excercised for between $10 and $20, but there are some exceptions. I didn't add up all the money, but it was definitely in the multi-millions of dollars.
There are huge stock grants to a law firm (about 10 million shares), which I think is the law firm representing them (I assume for services rendered). So the absolute big winners seem to be the lawers, but the executives and Baystar seem to have made millions as well. The losers are the people who invested at anything over $4 (or the morons who sold short, not understanding that it takes *time* for a stock to fall).
As a disclaimer, I only quickly reviewed this material, so there may be errors in my summary. If you care about this stuff, I suggest you compile it properly yourself.
OJ Simpson is hot on IBM's trail, won't be long till they find the smoking gun.
SCO is paying him in stock
Technically, there was a time when the payment was to be some large block of stock, complete with anouncements form Blake Stowell that now BSF were partners in the company and lawsuit. Then the stock tanked and BSF decided that cash was better. The so-called "contingency" payments were not the usual kind of contingency payments in a lawsuit, I.E. the lawyer gets paid a part of WHAT you win IF you win. They were, BSF gets 20% of any money that TSG got from certain transaction types that were related to the scam. Some listeners at the conference call thought that it was funny that some of the "contingency" payments had already been made and the case had just been filed, for instance.
Just for what it's worth old SCO did become Tarantella, but they are not called that any more. Sun bought them about a year and a half ago. So Tarantella, aka old SCO does not exist anymore. They were completely assimilated into Sun.
--- Tolerance is the axiomatic "virtue" of those without convictions ---
They're using Square's definition of "Final" arn't they...
Appropriate since their entire case is "Fantasy".
Don't forget the bit about "the lamentation of their women", that really needs to be worked in there somewhere.
But that can't come until after IBM sees SCO driven before them, which has to happen after the aforementioned crushing. You gotta keep to the schedule that was given, y'know.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
We're a fledgling corporate oligarchy. Lobbyists and corporate interests have seen to that.
Most of the laws being passed these days concern business interests. I won't get too heavily into it but a good example is to study our DMCA and see how our original ideas of freedom of speech and expression have been "curtailed" to benefit a few businesses. Or how eminent domain was recently expanded to cover business interests, not just civic ones. Plenty of examples, and this is Slashdot so I shouldn't have to get too heavy into it.
So as things are, business controls the legal system, or at least has a gigantic influence upon it. At this point in our history it isn't so much about right and wrong, so much as it's about influence and money. Given enough influence and/or money, you can pretty much get away with anything. There are exceptions - notably the Enron guys, but give us some time. We're new at being a oligarchy. Check back in 100 years or so.
And since most of the legal machinery these days involves business interests, it's disastrous when businesses conflict. A no-brainer like this SCO case can drag on for 5 years, easily. You'd be hard pressed to find a murder trial in the USA that takes that long. Why? No corporate interest. No money is at stake, or oil drilling rights, or lucrative patents. Nothing "important" is at stake, so why waste time with it?
We used to be a government by the people and for the people, but now we're a government by the elite and for the corporations.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
There's no rule, nor should there be, that attorneys should be punished for representing jerks. Chances are, SCO engaged their services without telling them everything they needed to know, things like "we don't actually own Unix." Now the lawyers are stuck riding this out, because if they walk away, or even slack off, that could get them disbarred, censured, or on the wrong end of a malpractice suit.
These big-dog lawyers are no fools. Undoubtedly they have a pretty good idea of where their case is going. But if they don't go down swinging, they'll never get another client.
This is not my sandwich.
This suit is backwards. SCO brought this suit, yet they want to stall. Usually, the plaintiff wants to push the case forward, and the defense wants to stall. The system is set up so that the plaintiff pushes the case forward, which is why this is dragging on.
Bear in mind that SCO's stalling isn't a problem for IBM. Is IBM losing customers over this? No. Is it costing IBM significant amounts of money? No. (IBM total revenue for 1995: $91 billion. Gross profit: $37 billion). Can SCO afford to keep this up much longer? No. Is SCO likely to win in the end? No. Not a problem.
What's actually happening is that the summary judgment motions by IBM are about to be decided. SCO is desperately trying to distract attention from that, but that's where the real action is.
Heh heh... Thanks. But in retrospect calling people who were short selling "morons" is kinda flamebait... I'll accept 20% flaimbait for that ;-) In reality it was an unconscious dig at people who try to "play" the stock market and end up losing their shirts. But as unconscious as it was, it was uncalled for...
Actually there is a law. Or rather, a rule of the legal profession and the courts: lawyers are officers of the court first, advocates for their client second. When BSF realized SCO had no basis for their case, if SCO wouldn't listen to reason they should have asked the court to permission to withdraw. Failure to do so is a violation of professional ethics, and I believe a gross violation of both Bar Association and judicial rules. The defendant in a criminal case has a right to representation, the plaintiff in a civil lawsuit does not.