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SCO Vs. IBM Leaks Exposed
Xenographic writes "Remember all the fuss about SCO subpoenaing PJ of Groklaw, where they allege that she's funded by IBM because she once got a publicly available document from a volunteer at the courthouse a little before it hit the Court's website? That's nothing. Groklaw has evidence that other materials have been leaked in this case — but they weren't leaked to Groklaw, and they weren't leaked by IBM. Information about the sealed materials in question made its way to Maureen O'Gara, who wrote a story based on inside information, displaying a positively uncanny insight into what SCO was planning, including far more than just the sealed document a SCO lawyer read out loud in open court. Interestingly, several witnesses report that Maureen O'Gara did not even attend that hearing, leaving us to speculate about her source."
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200704072 21422994
OK not really but you can make a case that SCO relies on ibiblio servers donated by IBM. Therefore SCO is supported by IBM just as much as Groklaw is. LOL
Anybody knows what [Laura] position is on this SCO vs IBM issue? I know she had strong views at the beginning.
SCO wants to punish PJ because Groklaw has spoiled their FUD. They can't find her because she's very shy. They try to depose her because then they'll be able to get all her details. The problem is that they need some way to actually connect her to the court cases. So they concoct this story that PJ is a schill for IBM, IBM supports her and IBM feeds her information that should be secret.
SCO's action is an obvious attempt to shut up PJ. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP It isn't precisely a SLAPP, but it's the same idea. The trouble for SCO is that, as the article shows, they have actually done that which they accuse IBM of doing. Talk about dirty hands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unclean_hands
Since it was a sealed document that O'Gara spoke of, then it must have been either SCO or IBM which revealed it to her...
But IBM isn't that dumb and has much more to lose than SCO by not following procedure. Oh, and did I mention that SCO was the one which attempted to read a sealed e-mail in open court? So I think SCO, in addition to all their FUD, is now on the breaking-rules path.
"All you need is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." -- Mark Twain
With SCO's reputation being sh*t, pursuing bogus claims about Unix rights it doesn't even have, facing financial ruin, its officers potentially facing civil litigation for pissing away millions upon millions of shareholder's dollars on this crap, and a handful of other problems, I doubt they really care if they are labeled as hypocrites at this point. It's kind of like a murderer worrying about committing perjury - it can't get much worse once it's gone that far.
A short lived UK web site had early details of the case back in February 2006. http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/ Stocks_S/threadview?m=tm&bn=2942&tid=342492&mid=41 7017&tof=-1&rt=2&frt=2&off=1
It made no difference to the case. GL and all the debate around it is just that, debate.
Still it whiles away a Sunday.
My faith is expressed through Nihilism. Do you understand?
Maybe IBM should depose Maureen O'Gara? Find out where all that information came from...
She has. She has repeatedly, and now recently, denied any connection to IBM. She recently explained (again) how she could get court material in the way she did. She has answered the allegations. What more did you want her to do other than completely respond?
To depose PJ, SCO has to show that her evidence will have some effect on the outcome of the case. The best they can do is allege unclean hands on the part of IBM. Like the rest of SCO's case, this is very very shaky. The best they can show is one case where PJ 'might' (but probably not) have improperly received a document. On the other hand, SCO's actions were blatant. It's like a murderer accusing the cop that arrested him of jaywalking.
How about both PJ and O'Gara are both journalists and can't under normal circumstances be forced to reveal their sources?
In addition to Groklaw PJ is published in at least 1 Linux Magazine which would make her a journalist even if Groklaw didn't qualify her (as it should).
O'Gara may be a paid hack but she still qualifies as a (hack) journalist.
Which part of 'Publically', 'Available' don't you understand?
It's no mystery why pj has the time for this.....shes writing a book about this entire debacle. It's her job.
Much the same way that Ken Brown of AdTI had problems believing that Linux wasn't based on the Minix codebase. In fact he had so much trouble that he went ahead and published even after Andrew Tannenbaum (no great friend on Linus' in the past) uncategorically told him that this was not the case.
The thing is though, if you accept the notion of computer programmers (Linus, rms, and all the rest of them) devoting all their spare time to creating a Free Software operating system, who do you find it so strange that someone whose expertise lies in the legal sphere should devote her time to defending the same?
There are people who can't program but who write documentation to support their favourite free software projects. Must we assume they too are secretly funded by IBM?
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
However, PJ DID address the original suspicion in her first response.
She first stated simply and clearly "NO" "Wrong" "I Didn't"
Then she went into a lot of detail justifying the simple direct "addressing of the original suspicion" with what seems a very complete discussion of all the allegations. Such as IBM funding because of donating to Ibiblio and how a document might get to her hands before the official court website and so on.
So I think that the original suspicions have been very well addressed in a quick and complete way.
And then she did say "Nyeh-Nyeh". It is a little childish, but I wold probably say the same thing given the circumstances.
Dear god, please, please stop using the word "incredulous" as though it were a synonym to "incredible." A person who has a hard time believing something is "incredulous"; the thing they have a hard time believing is "incredible."
The 'shy' bit, in my opinion, covers a multitude of feelings regarding having your online identity too-precisely connected to your meatspace identity. PJ doesn't have to be socially reluctant in order to not want everyone reading her web site to know real-life details about her, but if she is shy then that just makes these feelings more acute. For example, I am not shy, but I did once have a web site that became very popular for a time. It didn't feature a message board, per se, but I received massive amounts of email from readers, some of which I posted back to the site, etc. So there was a pretty large 'community,' and a certain fraction of that community wanted to know personal details about me. I always deflected these requests. As far as I am aware, none of the several hundred people trying to figure out who I was or what I was like in real life were successful.
Did I have a reason for keeping things 'secret' like that? Maybe not, but there is something unsettling about that kind of scrutiny, something you feel like you want to avoid. I don't blame PJ at all for keeping her real-life details mysterious. It makes a lot of sense to me.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Look at sourceforge.net's 140,000 plus projects, all of which are maintained under some sort of open source license. Very few of them get funding of any sort to exist. Clearly there are lots of people out there who *do* spend much of their free time voluntarily putting stuff out into the community. Some do it to scratch an itch and others for fun. But just because *you* wouldn't be able to find the time to do this as a volunteer doesn't mean that it's impossible for others to do so.
The whole unclean hands bit actually holds up in court. If you had RTFA you'd see the rebuttal is that PJ has not reported on sealed documents or closed transcript hearings. Obvious SCO shills have.
It's hard to claim that the documents that are given out by IBM PR and the court (with court stamps, and volunteer's picking the crap up) is privileged. If you actually read Groklaw, that's nearly all that's reported (albeit, with a heavy dose of op-ed.)
PJ didn't admit to doing any such thing from what I read, it was more like "nyeh-nyeh you are doing what you wrongly accused me of doing".
If you take a good look around the Free and OSS world you will find numerous people devoting extreme amounts of time to things in it they care a lot about. Take Linus, RSS and Bruce Perens for example, heck for all we know PJ could be one of them in drag and drop, which definately would explain the "shy" factor, even though no one would think of any of them as being shy, not normally at least. Most likely though PJ is just what she says she is, a trained paralegal who likes and respects GNU/Linux and in this case found a way they could contribute back to the community and doesn't seek any fame from it and wishes no problems for herself or her family.
PJ has ruffled lots of feathers.
Firstly, she's not a lawyer but a paralegal and this offends some people who seem to believe that only those who've passed the bar have the necessary mental acuity required to effectively navigate the morass of legalese found in the courtroom.
Secondly, lot's of people don't believe that PJ would devote so much time to supposed 'hobby' unless she is getting some kind of compensation. Well, I believe it. If someone is enjoying whatever they do, then that is often the reward in itself. How many hours do people spend on their cars, or building model ships-in-a-bottle? Why is it so hard to believe that someone may spend a couple hours a day on a subject they obviously enjoy?
Don't forget that after an analysis by a professional that Ken Brown hired told him there was ZERO evidence to support his claim that Linus stole code from Minix that he refused to believe her ( http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/codecomparison/ ).
warning: The above content tests positive for sarcasm and/or is a failed attempt at humor and should be taken with a pound of alt.
No, pretty much not. The problem with the moderation on slashdot is that it depends on the same fucking morons who read and post to do the moderation. They don't bother thinking about/reading the articles before commenting, why bother with either when judging comments?
And TSG has alleged that nobody can write an OS kernel by his lonesome. TSG has alleged many, MANY things. They have even alleged that I, BMO, personally owe them $699 per CPU to run Linux. To date, none of their allegations were shown to have any weight. None, zero, nada, nil.
PJ didn't need to fake an illness to duck a subpoena. This is the internet, isn't it?. She could be anywhere in the world and still run Groklaw. She could be sitting right next to me.
Nevermind the stories by Lyin' Lyons et alia came out saying that PJ was being subpoenaed _after_ PJ said she needed to take a health break.
--
BMO
Probably have her show up in person, so that McBribe et al. could hire a gang of thugs to make a drive-by on her house when she's back from the court. Remember that she caused them to lose millions, if not billions, of dollars that were rightfully theirs. At least in their eyes. :)
As if anyone is ever going to take her as a serious journalist ever again.
Great move, Didiot. You trashed your credibility completely, just to whore for Darl McBride. But he bent you over and fucked you up the ass with an old telephone pole with lots of splinters from lineman's spikes.
First, thank you for your well thought out reply. I couldn't have said it better myself.
I would like to add that I wish that IBM would somehow subpoena the IPs and records from the SCOX Yahoo board, to expose the SCO Group corporate executives that were caught red-handed posting on their own company message board, pumping their own stock, and, in several cases, bragging about their "1300% return" on their initial investment. When quizzed about it by SLC Tribune writer Bob Mims, they flatly denied it, but further research proved that at least 3 Yahoo nyms that conversed to each other, were all created out of the same parent account - anmcbride; Darl's wife is Andrea McBride. This alone means nothing, until you find that a Google search of the nym with a Yahoo.com address showed the same address used as the primary contact for Darl and Andrea, for Darl's son on a local youth baseball team. (The page, and subsequent Google cache have been removed, but many copies were made at the time of the discovery.)
Furthermore, one of the lawyers that was said to have assisted with a mock trial at the initial stages of this stock scam, was also furiously pumping this stock on the Yahoo board - his nym was ledite, which is Italian for "injured party"; he, or someone who works for/with him, is quoted quite often in early SCO Group news items, as a primary partner in a well-known Silicon Valley IP law firm. If the SEC found out who HE was, there would be hell to pay, and his firm would be disbarred.
I would bet they wouldn't want that to happen.
Also, one should never forget that people who are experts in a field have their own resources. I don't know about legal issues (IANAL, etc), but have taken a look at Ken Brown's diatribes and he seems to know nothing at all about operating systems.
Everything that Linus would have needed to create Linux from scratch is contained in a 150 pages book, "Fundamentals of Operating Systems", by A.M.Lister. I wrote a "toy" kernel myself in Basic for a simulated virtual machine, in the early 1980s, when I read that book. Unfortunately, the Tandy CoCo that I had at the time was too limited to run a real OS, although there were people running OS/9 on it.
All this is to say that I find Ken Brown's incredulity much more surprising than the fact that Linus wrote his kernel in spare time. Writing 10000 lines in a year? Heck, I once wrote 2000 lines in a week, tested, debugged and documented. Any programmer knows that for every "algorithm" line that you must ponder and twist and turn this and that way to make it work there are a hundred lines of "boiler plate" that you type automatically after a few years experience.
Therefore, I find it quite natural that someone who is as much interested in legal matters as I am interested in computers would be able to produce an amount of work in that field that would amaze me. Perhaps reading and analyzing a ten thousand pages legal brief would be as easy as writing a ten thousand lines program is for me, if I had the necessary interest, talent, and experience.
Some of us spend all our free time playing WoW. Some of us have other hobbies like playing music, sports (maybe not on /. but generally :P), etc. Groklaw is PJ's hobby. Why is that so hard to believe?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
How long has this been going on? How many times has SCO amended or changed their claims completely? Even the judge commented at one point that they don't have any proof. And yet this continues. Is it normal in the US legal system to hold the parties in court indefinitely?
Oh SCO, how did you sink soo low....
When I was a child I use to hope the Circus would never end, but now I've grown tired of the clowns!
I lost my sig...
You drastically overestimate the number of people who care
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
SCO is accusing PJ of receiving legal docs filed in the case from IBM. Weeeell, aside from the serious doubtfulness that this actually happened (GrokLaw has several volunteers who visit the courthouse and pick up hardcopies, which sometimes can even lack the usual court-clerk stamp - clerks being fallible humans too) the documents SCO mentions are not sealed, hence are PUBLIC RECORDS. Thus, there's no misconduct whatever involved in a party to the case giving non-sealed filings to a journalist, blogger, or passerby on the street. (Incidentally, journalists DO try to get early copies of such filings from the parties so they can be the first to report the news; this is completely legitimate for nonpriveleged material, as it becomes public record anyway.)
Now, when it comes to a party (SCO) allegedly giving SEALED material to a nonparty (Maureen O'Gara), that's another, entirely smellier, kettle of fish. That WOULD be improper.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Grammar time, /. editors!
"Remember all the fuss about SCO subpoenaing PJ of Groklaw, where they allege that she's funded"
Your tense is all off here and that first sentence should have been easier to read, anyways.
in an IT kind of way
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_(novel)
"... It appears in many forms, and takes the shape of It's prey's worst fear (e.g., vampire, werewolf, leeches, or mummy, and in one case the creature from the black lagoon), but most often appears as a sadistic, malevolent, balloon-wielding clown by the name of Bob Gray, or Pennywise the Dancing Clown. The children find It's lair and battle It, wounding the monster badly but not killing it. They make a pact to reunite and fight the creature again if it returns..."
The issue of shy could easily be addressed by legal council.
Of course then there is a cost factor and all but PJ could effectively put all this to rest buy a competent legal council. First any and all question could be limited to the case they have made in courts to exclude any fishing expeditions. Second, any steps could be made to exclude anything that would identify her outside her on line life. Third, the judge could limit the submission of anything not already on record.
I was called in a wrongful death suit once were I had done somethings that were technically illegal but weren't a direct cause or connected to the death in any ways. I had the very same that I suggested done for me and I was confident that I was protected. And BTW, I didn't know that I was "technically" breaking the law until after this happened. It was only after it was suggested that I was, i got scared and received legal council who took relatively good care of my imposition. And my actions were limited to viewing records I shouldn't have been so I was removed completely from any aspect or responsibility of the death entirely.
I imagine the rules change from state to state so maybe we should start a legal fund to help PJ through this.
Easy to fix.
Require potential moderators to take a pop quiz on TFA before they are allowed to moderate on it.
The quiz would determine if they had really read TFA or not. Fail the quiz, no moderation powers, pass the quiz and you can moderate. Sure would cut down on a lot of stupid shit.
She has been in league with MS for a number of years. No doubt that she will continue to get inside scoops from them for years to come because she did this for them. Keep in mind, that it is VERY doubtful that any of the pro-SCO journalists believe what they are writing. It is just that they are making LOADS of money by doing so, AND earning MS's gratitude.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, not precisely, but in the majority of courts there is no penalty for breaking the rules so frequently there is one party which takes advantage of this. Happens a lot in divorce cases. Now, in this case, BSF has nailed Kimball spot-on and determined he will *never* sanction an attorney, no matter how eggregious their behavior. So on and on it goes, and I predict it will get even more out-there as BSF and SCOX get even more desperate. It becomes unfair to the other party, but in this case IBM doesn't much care as they are big enough to just take the punches and shrug them off. It is a war of attrition at this point and SCOX doesn't have a chance in hell. And that's before you even consider their non-case of a lawsuit.
Who to hell still cares what is going on in this stupid "company"? Who is using their products if they still have any?
Require potential moderators to take a pop quiz on TFA before they are allowed to moderate on it.
That would require the "editors" to read TFA so they can write the quiz. That'll never happen.
But then again, I could be wrong.
well, the truth is, she isn't faking anything.
I don't think this case will ever end. Just when things start to move along, SCO comes up with something to stall the progress. I think that the legal action will end when SCO goes bankrupt. Period.
/// FutureDomain
Novell, IBM, or somebody else will buy the UNIX IP rights (if Novell doesn't already have them) from the smoldering mass that was once the SCO Group and it'll be the end of it. If you currently have SCO stock, it'll be best to dump it right now before the impending impact. Unless the investors get smart and fire McBride and most of the top management, the company will go out with a bang.
The only question I have is whether the whole "UNIX code is in the Linux kernel" will even be settled once and for all after the SCO meltdown. My fear is that it won't be settled and Microsoft will continue to use it as FUD. It would also be nice to have the GPL be declared as constitutional, since that issue has come up. Oh well, the only thing to do is to sit back and watch SCO's stock price, assets, and cash dwindle away.
Hydraulic pizza oven!! Guided missile! Herring sandwich! Styrofoam! Jayne Mansfield! Aluminum siding! Borax!
And that should have been moderated up to +5 funny. Sigh.
I believe she's also mentioned her shyness in posts about attending conferences, etc.. It may be that this simply stems from not wanting to be identified as PJ, but does sound like she really is shy.
Everything about the SCO trial is fair game: the players, the testimony, the lawyers, the stock, the facts, the words, the data, the information--everything--and yet I never quite understood how PJ could possibly--after all this time--keep up such an unfailing, accurate, and precise commentary going. I mean I know how some people are willing to donate time and effort, but honestly, PJ's donation of time and effort is bordering on the herculean.
Since we have held source funding up to scutiny before, I would be interested to learn whether PJ has had any funding of her own. Donating herculean effort is one thing, but being paid for it is quite another. Her (his?) anonymity has always puzzled me. There doesn't seem to be a true need for anonymity here. What, is someone afraid SCO's going to hunt her down and beat up her dogs?
Because OSDL, under an IBM Chairman, gave $50,000 of IBM-donated cash to "Groklaw" (i.e. PJ). That's their allegation, one which PJ has declined to deny or even comment on until, quote, she gets "lawyered up".
You may now commence troll rating me for wanting to discuss SCO's actual core allegation rather than a silly strawman adjunct.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Mod parent down or grandparent up. Parent is nonsensical without context.