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SCO vs. IBM Trial Back On Again

Posted by Soulskill on from the it-just-goes-on-and-on-my-friends dept.

D___Breath writes "The lawsuit SCO started years ago against IBM (but really against Linux) is back on again. SCO first filed this clue-challenged lawsuit in March 2003. SCO claimed Linux was contaminated with code IBM stole from UNIX and that it was impossible to remove the infringement. Therefore, said SCO, all Linux users owe SCO a license fee of $1399 per cpu — but since SCO are such great guys, for a limited time, you can pay only $699 per CPU for your dirty, infringing copy of Linux. Of course, Novell claimed and later proved in court that SCO doesn't even own the copyrights on UNIX that it is suing over. IBM claims there is no infringing code in Linux. SCO never provided evidence of the massive infringement it claimed existed. The court ordered SCO three times to produce its evidence, twice extending the deadline, until it set a 'final' deadline of Dec 22, 2005 — which came and went — with SCO producing nothing but a lot of hand waving. In the meantime, SCO filed for bankruptcy protection in September 2007 because it was being beaten up in court so badly with the court going against SCO."

5 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Who's paying SCO's lawyers? by denis-The-menace · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the article, it says SCO is broke:
    "total assets as $0 (yes, that's "zero"), down from $1,326,293 on petition date, and total liabilities of $1,119,238, up from $418,965 on petition date."

    So who the F@#K would represent them for free?
    Is money coming from "the cloud"?

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    Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
    1. Re:Who's paying SCO's lawyers? by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If it's the same as the last round, I'd say that we'd find the answer we were looking for in Redmond, WA.

      And that's not just basic MS bashing - we have the memo.

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      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  2. Re:Statute of limitations by doconnor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It would be cheaper for IBM just to buy SCO. Since they are in bankruptcy protection they can't turn down a responsible offer.

  3. Re:Statute of limitations by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes but this was SCO's plan all along. At this point IBM is pissed enough that they want to grind SCO to dust rather than purchase them. Also buying SCO also means buying SCO's liabilities which include numerous lawsuits. (This was the one aspect SCO forgot in that when they bought Santa Cruz's business they also bought Santa Cruz's liabilities to Novell). Really SCO has no assets IBM wants.

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    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  4. Re:$1,515,129 by dkleinsc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    IBM has 3 reasonable purposes here:
    1. They want SCO to have to get up in court and admit that they never had a leg to stand on, or a ruling from the bench to the same effect. This is in part to prevent any successor to SCO from pulling the same stunt.
    2. To deter anyone else who's tempted to make similar claims from even trying it.
    3. Buying them out would be a mercy killing. IBM has no reason to be merciful.

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    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/