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Judge Rules That IBM Did Not Destroy Evidence

Posted by Zonk on from the good-for-them dept.

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."

3 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Don't worry about an appeal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    SCO will soon be bankrupt. That moves out Darl and co. and moves in the bankruptcy trustee. The trustee will not spend a penny more on litigation. The trustee and the creditors (Novell and IBM) will agree on terms and all the issues will be settled pretty much to IBM/Novell's satisfaction.

    The issues probably can't raise their head ever again, no matter who is found to own the Unix copyrights. In particular, Novell is forestalled from raising them because it has argued against them in court and there's a rule about not saying contradictory things in two different courts. So, when it's over, it's over.

  2. Re:When will it End?!? by EvanED · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Exxon-Valdez oil spill trial is still ongoing, and that happened in 1989.

  3. Re:Question for lawyers by terwilliger+jones · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In 35 years before the bar, I never met a "typical judge". Each judge has his or her own limit of BS they'll tolerate. On a wider scale, though, it's plain from the SCO dodge-and-weave that they got nut n' honey. The judge is clearly no fool, but does not want to wallow this pig twice. IMHO, at this point you're seeing her accommodate SCO's pride, allowing them to vent the last of their spleen before granting Summary Judgment. The case appears to be over. The judge is now doing damage control.