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A Discussion of SCO's Fate With Groklaw's Pamela Jones
An anonymous reader writes "The SCO Group's current fate can be neatly summarized by the title of Pamela Jones' very first article on the case, back in May 2003 — 'SCO Falls Downstairs, Hitting its Head on Every Step.' In the intervening years PJ and Groklaw can be credited with unearthing and exposing many of the flaws in SCO's case, most notably, obtaining and publishing the 1994 settlement in the USL vs BSDi case. An article at the ITPro site interviews PJ about SCO, the impact of Groklaw and future of free software and the law."
The world's only surviving livewriter.
Pamela Jones deserves a lot of credit. She challenged big corporations with deep pockets, which was personally risky to her. SCO did try to get her involved in the lawsuit.
Interesting also in the article: she mentions she saw what's underneath the corporate media and analysts. Yes, there is a lot of corruption there: you can "buy" favorable reviews with quid pro quo. And no one seems to object, that's just the way business is done. It's not so easy to fight: when you are young, you don't have the power to be different, and if you object, you are out on the street. As you get older (and more senior), you finally can object, except by then you have been doing it for years. So that makes you either an hypocrit, or at a minimum people will be able to come after you for past actions. Any solutions?
So just say thanks to Pamela for what she did.
That's cool and all, but the essay is four years old and the interview barely brushes the surface of the SCO case. This is hardly a story to be billed as a discussion of SCO's fate. This is trying to hard to create an anti-SCO bash fest (which is cool and all, but it's hardly news).
On the other hand the majority of the interview about Groklaw and Jones' feelings about it was quite interesting, especially the part discussing democracy and the nature of Groklaw.
I got a catholic block.
is SCO still alive? What it is up to? I'm going to check in netcraft to see if the rumor has been confirmed....
The SCO cases could drag on for years, or they could end next month. It's hard to say. Groklaw just covering SCO is enough for now.
As SCO management is discovering, they have far less control in bankruptcy than they could before. They were able to control the pace of the pre-bankruptcy cases because they were the plaintiff in most of them. It's different in bankruptcy. The bankruptcy judge, the U.S. Trustee, and the creditors are in charge. The bankruptcy judge keeps shooting down SCO management's wierd legal ideas.
Yahoo Finance says it all: "SCOX is deficient and bankrupt."
This is an excellent example of the power of an educated public. Groklaw would try to educated the public, not just grab a headline. As more people notice this, and it becomes popular / profitable, perhaps media can start to have more depth than a puddle. I think it is awfully nice to get more then a biased cursory glimpse at a story once and a while...
The rise of the Internet in the late 90s was promised by pundits to be a grand revolution of ideas and information. Frankly, it has turned into Eternal September more than naught. :P With Groklaw, it has shown what the promise of what the Internet could be. One person with an opinion and information could share with the rest of the world. With grass roots aid and collaboration, a personal blog has become THE resource of one case and, in some cases, a source of information about Intellectual Property law. Vivà la revolución!
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I've got boxes of old SCO licenses and manuals. ODT 3.0 and later. If anyone wants them let me know.
Sorry to do this, but when you put educated in the subject line: Groklaw would try to educated the public
Just watch your back!
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
PJ - also known as the person who IBM loves since they don't have to pay to give them a big helping hand...
Although she does deserve a nice bonus from all the companies that were aided by her efforts.
She made a place where people could discuss and analyze the case, thus enabling many different minds to come together and put their different strengths to greater benefit. You give people access to the info and let them think for themselves, and you give them power. You also get people lining up to try and help.
Both her and Ray (for the RIAA cases) deserve a lot of credit for putting together a compendium of info that would be way too time consuming for people to get for themselves. They see what is going on in different cases, and can connect the dots. While we were in a sense helping out corporations, we were also helping out ourselves, and without the place to go to get the info and a safe place to discuss it, it wouldn't have happened.
So Thanks PJ, you helped open the window to what SCO was trying to do, and showed what they were hiding. And this is why people are afraid of the open source and info movements - they don't want people able to see what they are up to (such as borrowing code, not disclosing hard to find info, etc).
Dogged determination. Referential integrity in the face of astounding, if typical, high-priced FUD.
Three Cheers to a friend of the open source community, diligent, tenacious, and gleeful in that determination.
Integrity counts. Pamela Jones is a champion of the OSS community and the values it stands for.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
You know, now that I think about it, SCO's case does seem like that classic Simpsons episode where Homer winds up on a skateboard in an attempt to jump Springfield Gorge. He's in midair declaring that he's going to make it, but then hits every single rock and tree on the way down. Then, after the ambulance loads him up, the ambulance crashes into a tree, his gurney rolls out, and he plummets down the gorge once again. SCO's case is about as tattered as Homer's body must have been after that second plummet. Only, unlike Homer Simpson, SCO won't have a fantastically impossible recovery in time for next week's episode.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
when will people realize, "Pamela Jones" is a pen name for some unknown person(s) who have an axe to grind with SCO. whether it's a team of IBM lawyers, as some have suggested, I don't know. but NOBODY has ever actually met her, and no picture exists of her. every single contact with her has been through email.
every time an occasion comes up when she might HAVE to make an appearance she suddenly "gets sick" and disappears (like when SCO threatened to subpoeana her, and even when she won the Knowledge Masters Award for Innovation and had to accept it in absentia because she "got royally ill").
even the authors of her wikipedia page are debating whether she should be treated as a real person.
She is too kind. I think the matter is that "sco" JUMPED up at the top of the stairs, aiming on PURPOSED for the bottom. But, they jumped so hard, it broke mandibles, fractured the nose, shattered the eye socket, and snagged balls along the baluster and then had not enough breath to say, "Help, I've fallen (after JUMPING) down the stairs, and my legs are twisted. But, that's OK, because I think I have shagged myself. OK, I can feel my anus dripping, but maybe that's my teeth just passing through... Oh, wait, Why didn't we file in Texas, where we could WIN for sure... Damn, we should have reincorporated there BEFORE suing..."
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Circumstantial evidence suggests, though, that she's just obsessive about her privacy, in a way that puts even the tin-foil hat crowd at Slashdot to shame. Certainly Maureen O'Gara went far enough to publish her address, after which the Pamela Jones living there moved suddenly... so there is a real privacy-obsessed Pamela Jones, who may or may not be the same as the one on Groklaw.
Mostly, though, I'm surprised to see SCO employees posting on Slashdot- you'd think they'd be too busy looking for new jobs to troll here. Of course, if they are still 'working' for SCO, they might as well be browsing Slashdot during the day...
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
And you should feel bad.
So, what's this all about? The SCOX page in Yahoo! Finance is the only Google result for that phrase. Is this a prankster at Yahoo!, or something more entertaining?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Darl Mcbride not only managed to drive a somewhat successful company totally into the ground in the space of 3 or 4 years but also managed to totally alienate them from the entire industry and turn the company name into a pariah. Nevertheless he has been personally rewarded in salary and performance benefits in millions of dollars in that time.
We badly need to fix the system where incompetent shysters like him can't even get into that position, let alone be personally rewarded for catastrophic failure.
I mean, what on earth were the SCO board thinking when they agreed his last performance bonus?
There's nothing particularly wrong about using a Pseudonym- everyone on slashdot does it. Even you, Mr. Anonymous Coward, aren't posting as "Darl McBride". Even if you were, we still wouldn't believe it was you.
Honestly, though, if 'Pamela Jones' is really a Pseudonym for Patricia Johnson, a agoraphobic paralegal who used to work for Microsoft, would that really matter? I confess I'm curious, but for the most part it doesn't matter to me who PJ is- I don't read her articles to find out about her personal life, I read it to find out relevant legal information. As long as the information is good it doesn't matter who she is.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
It won't last for years, at least with current SCO management in charge.
The reason they tried to push through a super-duper must have it now sale of every asset to that troll company was to avoid having anything left for the creditor's committee to object to. You see, once that committee is established, everyone will have to agree or object to any attempt that SCO tries to keep its plaintiff litigation cases alive (Autozone) alive and take all the guaranteed-liability counterclaims (Novell, IBM) with the SCO shell. And then certain creditors (MS) will have to show their hands in a vote.
SCO wants to end this ASAP, while keeping the FUD alive through another party. But the trustee, Novell and IBM will fight tooth and nail any outrageous attempt and it will soon be forced into Chapter 7 because it is dissipating its remaining assets so quickly. Now, the Chapter 7, THAT will go on for YEARS if the appointed BK Trustee (not US Trustee) decides to follow the money back to BSF, MS and Sun.
Scox was as good as dead before the scam - look at their financials, it's a verifiable fact. If not for the scam, scox would have been gone three years ago.
Darl is making $34K a month, which is not bad for a small-time Utah scammer.
Msft got 4.5 years of premium Linux FUD, for about $50 million - hardly pocket change for msft.
BSF pocketed, at least, $50 million.
Riamondi sold his shares in the high teens.
None of the guilty have been punished in any way, and they are not likely to ever be punished.
IBM has probably spent about between 50 and 100 million defending itself against the bogus lawsuit.
Msft has sent this stern warning: "if you want to contribute to Linux, you better be ready to spend tens of millions in lawyer fees, and spend the next five years in court." Can you say "chilling effect?"
People like PJ feel that they need to cheerlead. But, if you objectively examine the facts, I think you will find that in most respects, scox has already won.
- actual knowledge of what she is writing about (legal proceedings) and the self-restraint to stay inside her area of expertise (Groklaw is something that professional lawyers read to obtain information. Can you imagine *any* lawyer reading Slashdot for information? I cannot.)
- a willingness to actually do research, read source material instead of press releases, and to piece various tidbits of information together in an open and documented way (compare that to the mainstream press who can't seem to do anything but print press-releases)
- a deep commitment to and interest in discovering the truth
- a refusal to be intimidated by legal bluster
- old-fashioned correctness in speech and demeanor
For displaying these qualities in public, over a period of years, I feel she deserves a medal.
The bankruptcy judge in New Jersey has lifted the stay on SCOX's suit in Utah.
:-)
Remember how that went down:
1. Utah judge agrees with Novell in Summary Judgements that SCOX did not get the copyrights, that they owe Novell money, and are guilty of conversion.
2. Novell tells the judge that SCOX is about to go bankrupt and that he should put the money in constructive trust.
3. SCOX successfully convinces the judge that they are NOT about to go bankrupt, and the judge says there is no need before the trial.
4. On the Friday before the trial was to start Monday, 17 September, 2007, SCOX declares bankruptcy in New Jersey, causing an automatic stay in Utah.
5. Novell asks the BK judge to lift the stay.
6. Today, the BK judge agreed.
7. Now the SCOX v. Novell case in Utah will go before that judge, who may not be happy with the way he was very publicly suckered and made to look foolish by SCOX's bankruptcy ploy.
It will be interesting to watch... on Groklaw.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Groklaw is something that professional lawyers read to obtain information. Can you imagine *any* lawyer reading Slashdot for information? I cannot.
I can. Easily. B-)
Seriously, though. I can also imagine a GOOD lawyer reading Slashdot - for leads, ideas, arguments, legal theories, and inspiration (just for starters). But then he'd CHECK them - with dependable source and reference documents, credible witnesses, traceable, certified experts, etc.
Slashdot is a rumor mill. Sometimes it's mostly mist and mirrors. But often where there's smoke there's fire.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Circumstantial evidence suggests, though, that she's just obsessive about her privacy, in a way that puts even the tin-foil hat crowd at Slashdot to shame.
Given that she was sticking pins in a corporation full of lawyers that felt competent to take on IBM and would love to have killed the message by discrediting or ruining the messenger, being obsessive about her privacy seems rational to me. No tinfoil required.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Does it matter?
Even if that is a pseudonym for a real person or not it really doesn't matter because the result is what counts.
I don't care who or what she is. PJ passes the Turing Test.
(On the internet nobody can tell you're a 'bot. B-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
- Slashdot if far too diffuse: it doesn't focus on any single topic and covers that really well. In the words of Cmdr Taco it tries to present an appealing mix of stories. There you go ... you cannot ever *count* on Slashdot covering anything well. It does however focus on IT-oriented stories.
- Slashdot itself possesses zero editorial expertise. The expertise (if any) is all with the people who post here. Posts vary from garbage to insightful and you can't tell which is which without actually reading them all (despite the moderation system).
- Slashdot posts usually carry a substantial bias and are almost always strongly opinionated. No lawyer can afford getting caught up in that for any professional research. He might use it to get a quick sample of opinions though.
- Because Slashdot's valuable insights are so diffuse, trying to get at them is like mining gold from seawater. There's an awful lot of gold in the oceans but it really isn't worth your time to try and extract that. The gold content in IT-related topics might just be high enough to take a look at, as opposed to any business related or legal topics.
- A lawyer might just let a paralegal sift out the more obvious rubbish before taking a look at it, but then only when he already knows that Slashdot actually has something on the subject he wants to know about. And he generally wouldn't know that from visiting Slashdot, but from a search engine like Google.
I went to sco.com, and couldn't help but notice the huge banner advertising a "FREE daylight saving time patch."
1. Why wouldn't it be free? Oh yeah...
2. A DST patch is the best they've got for a prominent front page advertisement?
3. When you click to the page itself, it contains a link to Wikipedia. By linking to Wikipedia, I believe they are infringing on Wiki's intellectual property rights. Furthermore, I do not see a notice that the Wikipedia moniker is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia foundation. A user could clearly be unaware that he/she is visiting an external site, which could be construed as a derivative work not licensed by SCO.
"7. Now the SCOX v. Novell case in Utah will go before that judge, who may not be happy with the way he was very publicly suckered and made to look foolish by SCOX's bankruptcy ploy." Suckered? Try "blatantly committed perjury" and you'll be more on. I'm am so SICK SICK SICK of big fatcat companies like the RIAA, and now SCO, thinking they can bluff their way through a lawsuit. Pinnochio got off easy, methinks. In the *real world*, a "little white lie" can ruin things faster than anything. If even little kids can't get away with fibbing, then why should big companies, who are made of ADULTS and who should definitely know better? Yeah, go groklaw! Seeing a new slashdot headline "SCO lawyer gets 20 years for lying in court" would make my day quite nicely.
I don't really care if it is a pen name, or even if she has some past event that would lead her to grind an axe against SCO. Nothing she has posted is made up or a forgery, and her predictions as to how things would go have been spot-on. Yeah, sometimes her editorial comments are a bit much, but she does know how to explain the law to mere mortals.
OTOH, Rob Enderele has an obvious axe to grind against IBM, (he worked for Rolm during a botched acquisition by IBM), and he has been shown to be full of a steaming pile of dung and consistently wrong about SCO's case, except at the end after the disasterous court rulings, where he said essentially "SCO never had that strong of a case". Yeah, too bad that is the opposite of what he said earlier, when he talked about "Open Source and the Fools Who Use It" at SCOForum.
Or maybe we could look to the collected works of Maureen O'Gara for opinions on the SCO case. Whoops! She has been flat-out wrong with her facts, stating things that were demonstrably not true. In addition, she decided to go stalking after PJ. Legal? Yes. Relevant to the correctness of her information, no.
Laura DiDio? She was easily taken in when SCO showed her that some code happened to be the same in UNIX and Linux. Too bad it was likely public-domain code, and part of the POSIX standard. Google could have answered that question.
That clown at Forbes? You could fairly accurately predict how the SCO case was going to go by assuming that the judge would rule the opposite of whatever he said.
Who am I going to believe? The person who gets the facts right and interprets them correctly, or those other Tools?
Lastly, PJ, if she exists (and I think she does) is almost certainly Agoraphobic. This is not a secret. She vividly described an oncoming panic attack at LinuxWorld near the start of this whole mess, when Groklaw was just getting started.
In any case, I really don't care if "PJ" is actually some secret cabal of IBM lawyers in a basement somewhere in New York. PJ has been right, the Main Stream Media largely hasn't. Period. (I don't think IBM is colossally stupid enough to pull off such a stunt. The truth is bound to come out eventually, and it would be a PR disaster for PJ to be an IBM plant.)
SirWired