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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.
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.
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.
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?
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
- 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.