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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
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
I was thinking "Jesus Christ! You put in a wikpeida link for anything http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anything and you get modded up." Only after visiting the link on a lark did I realise it was actually law related. Those who might be similarly disposed, take a look at the wikipedia links before judging ;)
It goes much deeper than that. SCO wants PJ's deposition to be taken in the Novell case and be used in the IBM case AFTER the time for depositions in the IBM case has expired. This is another attempt to get claims into the IBM case and waste more time there forcing IBM to answer yet another silly SCO memo. It is an end run around the IBM schedule as well as what you posted.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
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.
It's no mystery why pj has the time for this.....shes writing a book about this entire debacle. It's her job.
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."
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/ ).
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.
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BMO
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."
No, for the same reason that a subpoena for PJ's testamony would be quashed. Her testamony is not relivant to the case.
If information under seal has been leaked illegally, it is the judges responsibility to deal with the transgression (and he has the horsepower to deal with it), not IBM or some third party.
Leaked information is not IBM's direct concern, if IBM does not like it then they complain to the court and the court deals with it.
Tom
Short answer: The court system is always slow, but this case is taking at least twice as long as it normally would, for various reasons that all boil down to SCO not wanting to get to trial.
Long answer: It's not unusual for one of the parties in a court case to try to drag it out, so obviously it's the responsibility of the legal system to make sure that doesn't happen -- too much -- and the system is reasonably good at that. However, it's always the defendant who wants a long, drawn-out trial, in the hopes that by the time the court gets around to ruling the issue will have become moot. So, the legal system is designed to allow the plaintiff to drive the process forward, since the plaintiff is generally interested in getting a judgment ASAP.
In this case, however, it's the plaintiff who has been dragging his heels since the first day, because SCO never really wanted to be in court anyway, because they know they can't win. IBM's ability to drive the case forward is somewhat limited because of their position as the defendant, and anyway they seem more interested in making sure that SCO is crushed into molecule-thin paste than rushing things. The judges appear to have recognized quite some time ago what's going on, and their actions have been mixed. On the one hand, they don't want this thing on their dockets any longer than necessary, so they've been trying to define and follow strict schedules. On the other hand, they definitely don't want this thing coming back to them, and SCO is obviously going to appeal if they lose, so they also have a motivation to take their time and make the case appeal-proof. The best way to do that is to allow SCO lots of latitude, and SCO is quite happy to use every opportunity to slow things down.
Even worse, there are other cases involved here as well, including the Novell v SCO case, which is being heard by the same judges as SCO v IBM. Based on the various scheduling orders and when the judges finally decided to dig in their heels and refuse any more delays, SCO v IBM would be moving fast right now, probably just about ready to go in front of a jury, but the Novell v SCO case was filed last year. Since Novell v SCO will resolve many issues that apply to SCO v IBM, it makes sense to resolve them first. Not only that, but Novell's pushing hard for an early resolution (typical plaintiff behavior) because their claim is that SCO owes them lots of money and the more of it SCO spends fighting IBM, the less will be available to pay Novell. So, Judge Kimball made a decision that Novell v SCO should go first. Very sensible, except that Novell v SCO was just filed last year (or maybe late 2005?) and is still in heavy discovery. The discovery phase will be much shorter than SCO v IBM's was, largely because Novell is driving it hard, but it'll still take a year or so. In the meantime, SCO v IBM just has to wait.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
OSDL never gave $50,000 (or any other amount of money) to Groklaw.
OSRM (Open Source Risk Management), a completly different entity researching the need for imdemnification of Open Source projects, had briefly employed PJ.
Matt