Judge Rules That IBM Did Not Destroy Evidence

UnknowingFool writes "From the latest in the SCO saga, Judge Wells ruled today that IBM did not destroy evidence as SCO claims. During discovery, SCO claims it found an IBM executive memo that ordered its programmers to delete source code, and so it filed a motion to prevent IBM from destroying more evidence. The actuality of the memo was less nefarious. An IBM executive wanted to ensure that the Linux developers were sandboxed from AIX/Dynix. So he ordered them to remove local copies of any AIX code from their workstations so that there would not be a hint of taint. The source code still existed in CVMC and was not touched. Since the source code was still in CMVC, Judge Wells ruled IBM did not destroy it. Incredulously, SCO's Mark James requested that IBM tell SCO how to obtain the information. IBM's Todd Shaughnessy responded that all during discovery (when IBM gave SCO a server with their CMVC database) SCO never once said that they were unable to find that information from CMVC. Judge Wells asked IBM to help SCO out in any way he could."

Comments

Re:When will it End?!?

[rewt66]

Define "wrap up".

It will begin to wrap up in March, with the hearings on the partial summary judgment motions. Those will be ruled on eventually (maybe somewhere between May and August, but I could be optimistic).

Final wrap up is when the Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal. Realistically (if SCO appeals it that far, which, according to current pattern they will), that will be in three to five years. It may not go that far, because of the near certainty that SCO goes bankrupt before then, and the probability that the trustee decides to stop throwing money down the legal rathole.

Disclaimer: IANAL.

incredulous != incredible.

[smellsofbikes]

Mark James was certainly not incredulous. Judge Wells probably was. Anyone who reads about it, probably is.
Incredible: hard to believe. Incredulous: a person who finds something hard to believe.

I know I shouldn't be harping on about these kinds of things, but it's a common error and maybe someone will learn something.

Re:No room for appeals.

[stevesliva]

I think Judge Wells sees what is going on and is giving SCO pretty much whatever they want, just to make sure they've got no grounds to appeal when he slaps them down (hopefully soon)

I agree. Except she's a not a he.

Re:When will it End?!?

[stevesliva]

True. Today they asked how to use CMVC. 3 months later, they will say that IBM did not tell them how to open the file, or did not provide a text editor to read the files.

In disclosure, like 87 years ago, IBM provided them with a physical server with CMVC installed so that they could browse the code in all its versioned glory to their hearts content without even having to install CMVC. And that's good, because installing CMVC is probably as easy as playing wiffleball in a hurricane. But the point is that SCO has had access to this information for years-- they just didn't care to go looking for it.

Re:When will it End?!?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Not only did they provide a server, they also provided documentation, and even some simple scripts.

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