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Not Quite Dead: SCO Linux Suit Against IBM Stirs In Utah
An anonymous reader points to a story in the Salt Lake Tribune which says that
The nearly defunct Utah company SCO Group Inc. and IBM filed a joint report to the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City saying that legal issues remain in the case, which was initiated in 2003 with SCO claiming damages of $5 billion against the technology giant, based in Armonk, N.Y.
That likely means that U.S. District Judge David Nuffer, who now presides over the dispute, will start moving the lawsuit — largely dormant for about four years while a related suit against Novell Inc. was adjudicated — ahead. What kind of issues? In addition to its claims of IBM misappropriation of code, SCO alleges that IBM executives and lawyers directed the company's Linux programmers to destroy source code on their computers after SCO made its allegations.
The company's other remaining claims are that IBM's actions amounted to unfair competition and interference with its contracts and business relations with other companies.
IBM has remaining claims against SCO that allege the Utah company violated contracts, copied and distributed IBM code that had been placed in Linux and that SCO created a campaign of "fear, uncertainty and doubt" about IBM's products and services because of the dispute over Unix code.
Is this "Throwback Tuesday"? I had to re-read it a few times to make sure I wasn't reading a VERY old article...
It's the only way to be sure.
OK, that was easy, but, seriously? SCO is still... acting up? Moving? I thought that thing (and the other... er... thing) and the one before that were settled?
Like, drive a wooden stake through its heart? Bury the head and body separately? What is wrong with the world when fsck SCO is still at large?
Come on, IBM, do everyone a favor: crush them like a bug. Please. I don't know, open a Kickstarter or something, I'll send you money and you a send me a Big Blue T-Shirt with little penguins on it. Please, make it stop. Please, I beg you. Pleeeeeeaaaaaaseeeee, I can't take it anymore! It's not the suspense, it's just the sheer idiocy of it all.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
That would be the only GOOD thing that would come out of this action by SCO and IBM. :)
Why should they reward SCO with any money?
This was obviously what SCOXQ.BK wanted to begin with, a nice payout to STFU and go away. Problem is, given IBMs deep pockets, it would encourage all the other trolls to come out of the woodwork looking for a similar deal. IBM is making them the latest Horrible Warning about frivolous lawsuits against them. The other issue, that I honestly think the SCOundrels didn't take into account, was that charging IBM with stealing code, when their consulting arm works with any number of Fortune 100 companies, was a charge they couldn't let stand. Buying them off gives that charge credibility, where reducing them to a greasestain on the Utah sands proves the baseless nature of the case (the millions-for-defense-not-one-cent-in-tribute argument). SCO's lawyers took a flat fee for handling the case through all appeals; at this point they're running up time they can't bill for. IBM can post a couple of interns on the case and wait until what little cash SCOX has left is burned out, then graciously propose a settlement involving the public flogging of all current and former SCOX execs and a full-page ad in the SLC Tribune calling SCOX out as a malicious copyright troll. [ Disclaimer: 12 years at ATT; seeing these vermin trying to troll based on the legacy UNIX source code has pissed me off to no end, and wrapping them in bacon and trolling them through a school of great whites would be less than they deserve. ]
The SCO that is currently trolling IBM is not the SCO that you remember as "such a good company". There are two SCO's:
* The Santa Cruz Operation (1979-2001). This is the SCO that you remember. They brought us Xenix (bought from M$), SCO Unix and Unixware. This SCO sold their rights to UNIX to Caldera Systems (then primarily known for Caldera/Open Linux and OpenDOS (bought from Novell, which had in turn bought it from Digital Research earlier). In those years they were mostly famous for filing an antitrust campaign against Microsoft). After selling their UNIX servers and services division to Caldera they renamed themselves as Tarantella Inc., after the product line they retained. Tarantella was subsequently bought by Sun Microsystems in 2005, which in turn was bought by Oracle in 2010.
* The SCO Group (2005-), formerly known as Caldera Systems / Caldera International. As Caldera they bought above SCO's UNIX servers and services division and subsequently renamed themselves to "The SCO Group". Like an evil David they tried to topple Goliath IBM by (falsely) claiming in court that programmers from IBM illegally copied code from SCO's OpenServer sources (supposedly their intellectual property was so secret that their allegations of verbatim copying code by IBM was "proven" by presentational slides which had the SCO code shown in Greek alphabet). Around the same time they started selling subscription based Linux licenses to large IT companies (which were led to believe that The SCO Group owned the rights to Linux). This ridiculous scheme went on for several years, until a judge decided, once and for all, that enough was enough and told them to bugger off, as in the meantime, it had become clear in a separate lawsuit that Novell was in fact the owner of the UNIX copyrights, not the SCO Group.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.