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Grokking SCO's Demise
An anonymous reader writes "You have already heard the news that the SCO Group's US$5 billion threat against Linux is effectively finished. It was the Web site Groklaw.net that broke the news and posted the complete 102-page ruling; after that, it was picked up by mainstream media and trade press.
In fact, it's Groklaw that has covered every aspect of SCO's legal fights with Linux vendors IBM , Novell and Red Hat and Linux users Daimler Chrysler and AutoZone ever since paralegal Pamela Jones started the site as a hobby in 2003. This feature does a great job of chronicling Groklaws' hand in the demise of SCO's case."
If, after looking at everything carefully, you conclude that the GNU/Linux people were right, how can you call what they say, "partisan crowd noise" ? Perhaps you need to remove that M$ beam from your eye. GNU/Linux people correctly identified the motives, facts and outcome of this trial in days. Then they meticulously documented every bluff, bluster and lie from the SCO/M$ PR people threw out over years in their criminal abuse of the judical system. How can anyone possibly hold the same level of credibility for M$/SCO and GNU/Linux advocates after all of that? This is only something you can do if you are a dedicated MicroSoftologist. It is completely irrational.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
SCO is dead!? I just bought a new SCO Source license yesterday for $699! Why wasn't I told about this sooner? Thanks a lot, guys.
Anyway, I'm still glad I have the peace of mind of fully licensing all of SCO's Unix intellectual property within my installation of Ubuntu. If you'd like this peace of mind, buy today at:
http://www.caldera.com/scosource/
Now does anyone know where I can purchase a rock that wards off tigers?
I'm a big tall mofo.
Perhaps instead of expending all that time, effort, money, and resources on suing the whole world (and causing the whole world to expend a similar amount of time, effort, money, and resources to defend itself), SCO should have concentrated on making technically superior products, marketing them effectively, and earning the rewards that come from making good business decisions. But no, they had to go play the lawsuit lottery. Well, playing that lottery is gambling and is no different than going to a casino and throwing millions on a Poker table. Maybe you'll win, but probably you won't.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
Groklaw is the best thing to come out of SCO's mess. Thanks PJ.
The way TFA starts about the August 10th ruling, you could think it was a recent event. The author refers to the summary judgment decision of 8/10/2007.
Since then there was a trial, and currently the bankrupt SCO is waiting for the final judgment to be entered to appeal - mainly that year old decision.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
Some folks are still willing to see SCO as the 'comeback kids' (Found from a Groklaw link from today
And, of course, McBride is still harping about how misguided all the 'naysayers' are. Ah, corporate message control - so consistent, no matter the insanity of what is said.
I guess that's the point of freedom - for every choice that can be used to help build something greater, there is also choice to harm others. It's too bad that so much freedom ends up being used to crush the freedom of others for minimal short-term benefit, like those of SCO (which in turn was at least partly on behalf of Microsoft's FUD campaign).
Ryan Fenton
Ryan Fenton
Umm, has anyone else noticed TFA is claiming the judge's ruling from over a year ago was made last week?
From the article:
Did Groklaw really have an impact on those court cases? Naaah.
I love Groklaw as much as the next guy, but this article is truly worthless; it just reads as worthless praise for groklaw without even so much as a particular.
And SCO is a nice pelt to hang on the fence for anyone getting similar ideas. The SCO case was a stereotype of every piece of misinformation MS had ever put out about Linux and they got crushed. It's also a good example for companies thinking about getting in bed with Microsoft, which financed this whole charade. I wonder if Sun will ever live it down that they were part of the clown posse?
IBM showed a lot of foresight and got to dish out a little payback to MS over the OS2 incident. You can't buy that kind of advertising and then using it to tweak Redmond was priceless.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Groklaw was certainly informative, and it is nice to see major media give a nod of thanks to an internet site that had done their research. What I wonder is where is Groklaw to grok next?
I'd vote for Groking RIAA, big time.
Grok IP law and squelch that mess once and for all.
And since it the season, groking certain political parties (or all of them) would be nice.
Pamela has taught us (well, at least myself) quite a few things about tech and the law:
* Legal matters may be messy, disgusting things, but in a perverse way, being a lawyer or judge often requires as much (if not more) logical and mental discipline than programming ever did.
* This crap takes time. Five years... five years! Just to throw out what folks who knew better (read: those of us who lived/worked/breathed Linux) saw instantly as an obvious cock-and-bull scam by a dying dot-bust corporation.
* There's a lot going on behind the curtain. Without Groklaw, Microsoft could have credibly denied being any part of the proceedings, and would've been almost perfectly insulated from the whole SCO mess. Now, they're painted with 98 shades of evil, and the tech community at large** has even more reason to reject them unless absolutely necessary.
* Most folks think that IT/Tech is pretty insulated and isolated from the usual crap that infects most businesses. Groklaw proves otherwise. As much as we'd like to be otherwise, we're just as mired and smothered in politics and legal crap as any other commercial endeavor.
I highly recommend Groklaw as a solid starting point for any CS student, perhaps as a semester or two of curricula... just to get the students to realize just what the hell kind of crazy world they're signing on to.
** I mean real techs who use multiple platforms, not "Em-See-Ess-Aaay's" who happily swallow Redmond's Kool-Aid (among other fluids) on a near daily basis.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Exactly how is this the power of open source? Looks to me more like the power of high priced corporate attorneys.
What is this article doing that is great? At best it is a 100,000 foot view of the past 5 years...but there is no "chronicling" going on.
The information in this article is barely worthwhile to someone who knows nothing about the SCO case (and that type of person wouldn't care about Groklaw anyways), and has ZERO information in it for everyone else.
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
Like donating to the site. It's a massive amount of work that PJ has put into the site. So if you got a few bucks, donate. Sorry, but it has to be said and PJ won't say it.
It is kinda like how people say "we won" when their favorite sports teams win.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Thing is, I believe that SCO knew it was doomed from the start, but did it anyway.
McBride still made millions of bucks off of the deal, as did most of SCO's principals. Unless/Until there's criminal proceedings for SEC violations, they probably don't care, and are only making noises for long enough to provide plausible deniability. In short - they got their dough, and they probably don't care what happens to SCO from this point on.
SCO lasted five years longer than it probably would have if it had simply died quietly as Yet Another Dot-Bust Carcass.
Finally, most corps know nowadays that getting into bed with MSFT is a sure recipe for disaster. PlaysForSure, HD-DVD, Windows Defender, OS/2, and numerous other smaller examples are proof-positive of just how badly you get burned in any partnership with MSFT... unless of course you're Microsoft. I think only NBC has managed to not get raped in a MSFT partnership (and even then, only because of NBC's vastly different market segments).
As for Sun? I think they simply got caught in the crossfire. They were looking to license SVR permanently so that they could protect (and eventually open-source) Solaris. Otherwise, they were (and are) hating life anyway, as market dynamics dictate that buying pricey Sparc-based servers is kinda stupid for most applications.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
In fairness to Sun, Sun actually got something from their SCO agreement. They paid SCO for the right to essentially open source Solaris as some parts of Solaris were covered by their Unix agreements. The problem was SCO didn't have the right to grant Sun this ability. Only Novell has this right. MS on the other hand, paid tens of millions of dollars for things they haven't used yet. Maybe future versions of Windows will use parts of legacy Unix and the newer Unixware, but I doubt it.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It isn't the "spite-driven, FSF worshiping Zealots" who sound bitter, my anonymous friend.
I don't care why you're posting AC
The real turning point in the case was when IBM decided to fight SCO's claims and put Cravath, Swaine, and Moore LLP on the job. Cravath is very good; they say of themselves "Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP is known as the premier American law firm.", and nobody laughs. They're very organized and thorough. Cravath was the first firm to use litigation support systems (developed by IBM for an IBM case). They can't be snowed with documents; they'll put enough people and hardware on the job to deal with truckloads of materials when necessary. At times, the staff for a single case has filled a sizable office building. This is expensive, but it works.
It works especially well when the other side has voluminous but bogus claims. That's what happened with SCO. All SCO's claims were analyzed by that huge staff, checked, and countered. In the end, SCO had nothing left.
Groklaw reported on all this, but Cravath really did the work.
There was an AC who was bitter
That frosty piss belonged to twitter.
For twitter is boring
When he's karma-whoring
Ain't he a loathsome critter?
Ignore this signature. By order.
Darl, is that you doing AC posts to Slashdot again?
Well actually Microsoft used to be 98 shades of evil. Then they tried to make evil pretty for the MillEnnium. After that they grew to 2000 shades of evil. Eventually they became eXPerienced at being evil. Finally nowadays they've moved to a much broader form of evil. A VISTA if you will.
What is most incredible to me is that Darl McBride and company will be able to walk away from this... humbled and humiliated publicly, but nonetheless able to walk away and try to do the same all over again. Everyone knows what they did was socially and economically unethical, and yet the corporate Old Boys' Network simply views what they did with a knowing wink and a nod. In the back social rooms, McBride will laugh and joke and reminisce with other CEOs about his stunt, and perhaps even be offered a few sage tips how he can improve his chances the next time. For people like this, there's always a next time because they never pay the full consequences of their actions.
If, after looking at everything carefully, you conclude that the GNU/Linux people were right, how can you call what they say, "partisan crowd noise" ?
Ain't nothing sacred about being right. People become partisan because we believe that there's something 'right' about that partisan attitude. Sometimes we're right. Sometimes we're wrong.
PJ is, in this case, both clearly pro-Linux and clearly right. She claims and I believe) that if things were coming out tha would have been clearly bad for the linux side, she would have documented it just as clearly (unhappily but clearly).
As somebody else intimated, pretending to be unbiased is one of the prime inauthenticities. Journalists (unfortunately) get taught to write like they're dispassionate (no matter how biased they are -- or are told to be -- about what's going on). It really messes up the people who buy that line.
That's part of the reason why I like (pseudo) amateur rags.... they'll actually say things like "We hate so and so. we think you should to, and here's why (no matter how sucky the reasons why may be). That way, you at least know their bias, and can read around it.
PJ is about the best I think we can hope for: She's open about her bias and attempting to produce the most clean record possible inside of that bias. Sge states her bias and her opinions, and then gathers together as much of the documentation a spossible so that you can check her opinions against reality.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Then the court system is rotten to the core. :) :)
Luckily it isn't
How do you think a paralegal site should (and could) influence a court case significantly?
The courts must (and i bet they would) have decided the same way without Groklaw.
Of course Groklaw was sorely needed to dispel the fud and to keep concerned people informed.
It balanced SCO quite well, even with its 'partisan noise'
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Let the names of the "expert testimony" scumbags that aided and abetted the SCO scam; selling themselves for a few dollars at the expense of their good names. Two come to the top of the list: Marc Rochkind and Thomas Cargill.
May their names be soiled with SCO for all time.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
The ".PK" means that they are "pink sheet" - penny stock, less than one dollar a share. The "Q" means that they are in bankruptcy. So the stock was originally called SCOX, then they declared bankruptcy and fell below $1 (I forget the order), and now they're SCOXQ.PK.