SirFozzie: "[Jeff Merkey is] nuttier then a fruitcake"
Nyet: "According to the WP:Cabal, only anti-Merkey SPAs feel this way:)"
SirFozzie: "Oh, a lot of people feel the same way."
Whatever you want to call the collection of forces that determines
Wikipedia content (the "WP:Cabal", the "wisdom of crowds", cosmic
background radiation, whatever), the bottom line is that the Wikipedia
article on Jeff Merkey, despite being over 1,000 words long, fails to
inform the reader of the one fact about Merkey that is most important
to know, which is that you shouldn't believe a word he says.
Here's what I wrote about that failure last year on the Talk page for the
Merkey article:
Will Beback wrote on WP:ANI that "the subject is clearly litigious and
we should note that fact in the article". I agree. I would say that
the subject is, just as clearly, someone who makes a prodigious amount
of extraordinary and false statements, and that any article about him
should note that fact too. There's a good reliable source for that
fact: Judge Anthony Schofield's finding that Merkey "deliberately
describes his own separate reality." (Novell v. Timpanogas Research
Group, 46 USPQ.2d 1197, 1204 (Utah 1998)). Some people seem to think
that that ruling is a primary source, but it is clearly a secondary
source: it was written by a neutral party (the judge) after
considering extensive writings, evidence, and argument from all sides
(which he enumerates at the start of the ruling) and analyzing the
credibility of those various sources. Does anyone seriously think that
judges are not at least as competent, neutral, and careful in their
evaluations as are journalists, who are routinely relied on by
Wikipedia as secondary sources?
... Al Petrofsky 21:36, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
These were the three responses:
Al Petrofsky, this biography will definitely not characterize its
living subject as "someone who makes a prodigious amount of
extraordinary and false statements." Proabivouac 22:01, 18 July 2007
(UTC)
Will's comment is fair while Proabivouac is correct that we have to
take great care of living people who are subject to a bio here, see
WP:BLP. This is simple respect for people's privacy, SqueakBox 22:05,
18 July 2007 (UTC)
I was asked to comment here. Just glancing at the suggestions posted
above, they seem to include violations of BLP, NOR, COI, and UNDUE
(and the shorter version currently on the page may also be a
violation, depending on how it's sourced). Specifically (1) it would
be best if people involved in the case didn't edit the article, per
COI; (2) we shouldn't use self-published material as a source, per
BLP; (3) we shouldn't use primary-source material, including trial
documents, that secondary sources haven't commented on, per BLP and
NOR; (4) we shouldn't highlight the case more than reliable,
mainstream, secondary sources have highlighted it, per
UNDUE. SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 00:36, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Bruce Perens wrote in Slashdot comment #22722890: "Jeff Merkey
filed suit against me, and against PJ, some years ago. His family
eventually convinced him to withdraw the suit against me, I don't know
how his suit against PJ was resolved."
I (Al Petrofsky) was also a defendant in that case, Merkey v. Perense, et al., No. 2:05-cv-521-DAK, D. Utah, filed June 21, 2005. You can find full details here: http://scofacts.org/merkey
Merkey voluntarily dismissed his case against Pamela Jones. In the
written dismissal
notice he filed with the Court, he said that he was dropping it in
favor of "pursuing criminal prosecution in the various states these
offenses occurred". Needless to say, I am not aware of any such
criminal prosecutions ever taking place.
The above comment, that Merkey's "family eventually convinced him
to wihdraw the suit against" Perens, is the first I've heard of there
being any involvement by Merkey's family in Merkey's decision-making
in the case. At the time, Merkey wrote an entry on his website, which
he later filed with the court, stating that he was dropping the action
against Perens in exchange for Perens having allegedly made a written
statement about "a large number of written attacks with violent
connotations made against [Merkey]":
... 11. Bruce Perens approached Plaintiff and negotiated
setttlement of his claims in exchange for withdrawing his false and
libelous comments, and adminishing Linux and OSS members for posting
death threats on the public Internet, and was dismissed from the
complaint without prejudice. (Exhibit 4)
... DATED this __20___ day of July, 2005.
... Exhibit 4
Bruce Perens Dismissed without Prejudice from Federal Action 2:05-CV-521-DAK
Wednesday, July 06 2005 @ 06:30 PM MDT
Contributed by: Admin
We are pleased to announce settlement has been reached between
Mr. Bruce Perens and Mr. Merkey relative all claims and
causes of action arising from Federal Lawsuit 2:05-cv-521-DAK filed
in US District Court in Utah. All claims and causes
of action have been dismissed relative to Mr. Perens as of this
date.
On a personal note, Mr. Merkey applauds Mr. Perens courage, candor,
and demonstrated leadership in addressing these
issues.
Mr. Perens has issued the following public statement regarding the litigation and this statmeent is posted here
pursuant to an agreement between the parties.
STATEMENT OF BRUCE PERENS
"You may have noticed that Mr. Jeff Merkey has filed suit against a number of net entities and I. Mr. Merkey
subsequently offered to withdraw his claims against me if I would issue a short statement. Of course I was concerned
that his request could be an attempt to suppress my right to free speech on the net, but it turns out that the
statement that Mr. Merkey asked for contains nothing I would not want to say.
Several people who have my sympathy are still being sued. I feel that my removal from the case will only hasten its
demise, and I need to spend my time on important fights rather than this silly one.
I have made some statements regarding Mr. Merkey's relationship to SCO and Canopy Group that he would like me to
clarify. He sold certain assets of his company to Canopy Group some time ago, but did not go to work for Canopy or SCO.
Mr. Merkey has expressed a very strong disdain for both companies.
I subsequently suggested in public statements that Mr. Merkey work to cultivate his people skills in engaging and
interacting with others, which is something he himself has admitted needs improvement. Subsequent to making these
public comments, I oberserved
Judge Kimball followed up that Monday SCO v. Novell ruling with a SCO
v. IBM ruling today. Here are text and pdf versions.
He granted SCO a four-hour deposition of Sam Palmisano, IBM's CEO
and former VP of all things Linux. He denied SCO's motion to
belatedly amend its complaint to include a claim for Project
Monterey-related copyright infringement.
The new schedule roughly matches IBM's proposal (as
amended at the hearing; see pages 90-91 of the transcript
where IBM says to add two months to everything in the proposal), but
with another two months added for most pre-trial dates, pushing the
end of discovery to July 10, 2006. He added another couple months for
deciding dispositive motions before the trial, making for a trial date
of February 26, 2007. He included the interim deadlines IBM wanted
for parties to "Identify with Specificity All Allegedly Misused
Material", setting December 22, 2005 as the final date for all source
code at issue to be identified by version, file, and line of code.
Per Kimball's order
back in February there will be no summary judgment motions before the
end of discovery, and the new schedule calls for the last brief on
post-discovery summary judgment motions not to be due until September
26, 2006, so I think November 2006 is the earliest we could see a
summary judgment motion heard and decided.
Regarding your questions, I can only refer to my previous posting.
On Thursday, after four of the questions were repeated, he wrote:
I can give you two of those.
There are currently 6 directors on the
board and Ralph Yarro's term began on January 5, 2000
Thank you. Because you say you are giving me two of the facts I
requested, and because the only beginning date I requested was for
Yarro's current term, I understand you to mean that his
current term began on that date, and that the duration of that term
therefore exceeds five years, and that Trolltech's owners have not
re-elected Yarro to the board since May 2003 when SCO proclaimed that
Linux was "an unauthorized derivative of UNIX".
Now, if you excuse me, I will no longer monitor this
discusion. I need to concentrate on running Trolltech and making sure
that Qt gets even better.
Thank you for providing some information.
I am disappointed that you were not more forthcoming, and that you
didn't use your time more efficiently by simply answering the
questions the first time they were asked, rather than making bogus
statements that you were unable to do so, and then only answering
half of them.
Such agreements also normally have an NDA clause saying that the
parties agree to keep the details of the agreement secret. This is standard VC practise.
Although I appreciate that Trolltech may have entered into such
agreements, I am surprised that you seem to be implying that you are
legally forbidden from revealing:
the number of directors on Trolltech's board
the date that Ralph Yarro's current term as a director began
the date that Ralph Yarro's current term as a director ends
the percentage of the owners' vote that elected Yarro to his
current term
Are you legally able to release any of that information?
I have trouble imagining that you are forbidden from disclosing
every one of those four pieces of information, but I would have an
easier time imagining it if you could point me to any example of a VC
agreement that forbade a corporation from revealing any of this basic
information about its board.
We have asked Canopy to divest since SCO turned against Linux....
Canopy/SCO owns a very small share of Trolltech and has no control
or influence whatsoever on the strategy and operations of Trolltech.
Trolltech is controlled by it's employees.
Thank you for publicly stating this.
It is good to know, as is disclosed on
your website, that SCO and Canopy control less than 6% of
Trolltech's stock.
It would be nice to also have the information I requested last
July about SCO's ongoing retention of SCO Chairman Ralph Yarro as
a director:
what percentage of the board of directors is controlled by Ralph
Yarro;
when the owners last elected him to that position and what
percentage of the owners' vote he received;
when his current term expires;
what percentage of the owners would be required to dismiss Yarro
from the board before the expiration of his term;
and why, despite the owners' apparent powerlessness to make this
change, we should still have confidence in the owners' power to
steer the corporation in a direction other than the one taken by
Caldera (which, not that long ago, was every bit as
Linux-friendly as Trolltech).
"THIS ORDER ... CLOSES THIS CASE."
on
SCO Targets UK Firms
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Almost closed.
I'm not a lawyer, but Judge Chabot is, and she's the one who signed
her name below the sentence "THIS ORDER DISPOSES OF THE LAST PENDING
CLAIM AND CLOSES THIS CASE", so I think we can take her word for it
that the case is "closed".
The judge dismissed the case, but without prejudice,
meaning that SCO does have the option to try again on the same matter.
She only dismissed the last remaining claim in the case without
prejudice. The bulk of SCO's complaint was dismissed with
prejudice back in August.
However, the judge ordered that if they DO try to file
another suit over the matter they will have to pay all of DC's legal
costs for the previous litigation.
That provision only pertains to legal costs incurred after August
9, and only to costs pertaining to the last remaining claim (the
"timeliness" issue). It does not apply to the next likely step in the
litigation, which is an appeal by SCO of the August order that
dismissed the other issues.
SCO v. DaimlerChrysler case is closed
on
SCO Targets UK Firms
·
· Score: 5, Informative
As others have pointed out, the Peter Williams article linked to in
the article was actually
written in January and it's just a vnunet.com fuckup that it's now
showing with a December date.
If you want some fresh SCO info, here's the December 21 order
that dismissed the remaining claim in SCO's complaint against
DaimlerChrysler and thereby closed the case. Here's a write-up
that includes information about some rules of Michigan's appeals
court.
He admits on the front page that he has several thousand shares and
that he hopes to mitigate the low value
perception of SCOs business.
I am the registered owner of one hundred shares of The SCO
Group's common stock (SCOX), and enjoy all the rights and privileges thereto
pertaining (here's
the certificate). I am not the direct or beneficial owner of any
other shares of SCOX.
I also owe 14,400 shares of SCOX to various broker/dealers. My
total interest in SCOX is a net shortage of 14,300 shares: when the
share price increases by $1/share, the net value of my portfolio
(assets minus liabilities) decreases by $14,300. Vice-versa for a
decrease in the share price.
Thus, I benefit from any exarcerbation, not
mitigation, of any "low value perception" of SCO.
As it says right at the top of scofacts.org:
Disclosure: I have a net short position in
SCO's common stock (14,300 shares as of 2004-11-15). Thus, I have a
direct financial interest in decreasing the public perception of SCO's
value, and the prudent reader will scrutinize any information I
provide that is unflattering to SCO. To facilitate this, I attempt to
provide, wherever possible, convenient links to more persuasive
documents, e.g., links to images of signed court filings, or to SEC
filings directly from sec.gov.
Requesting attorneys fees and costs from your opponent on a motion is
pretty much standard practice.
Of the three contested motions in this case (and the 17 in the IBM
case, the 5 in the Red Hat case, the 3 in the Novell case, and the 3
in the AutoZone case), this is the first one for which the opposing
party has sought reimbursement for the cost of opposing it.
In all five cases, no one has yet been ordered to pay a dime to
anyone else for anything (although SCO was ordered to pay a fine of 100,000
eurodimes by a german court in August 2003).
The internetnews article says "Originally scheduled for Tuesday, the
hearing was pushed back to Oct. 19", but that was just the discovery
hearing before the Magistrate Judge.
The important hearing, on IBM's motion for summary judgment on its
tenth counterclaim, is still on for tomorrow, which you can verify at
the court's website, both Judge Kimball's schedule and
the case
history (item 268).
If IBM's motion is granted, Judge Kimball will issue a declaratory
judgment that IBM's copying of Linux does not infringe any SCO
copyright. That would imply that anyone else copying any of the Linux
versions IBM uses is not infringing any SCO copyrights, either.
The SCO-IBM disputes over contracts would remain, but the rest of the
world needn't concern itself about those.
You can find the briefing papers on the motion here
I know the first URL won't survive much of a slashdotting, not sure
about the second. Please mirror it somewhere better if you're so
inclined. (No, this is not a bootleg recording. I obtained it from
the clerk on Tuesday.)
Below are the notes I wrote on Monday after attending the hearing.
One correction: at the hearing, the judge did not actually make any
order on either motion, but my understanding was that in the aftermath
of the hearing he would issue orders denying the motion to transfer
venue and granting the motion to stay (with, as an exception to the
stay, an opportunity for SCO to move for a preliminary injunction, and
to conduct one round of discovery to attempt to support such an
injuction).
No orders have yet been issued, so it's impossible to say *exactly*
what they will be. The official minutes of the hearing were written
on Wednesday, and are not yet available either, but the heavily
abbreviated caption to the minutes is now showing on the court's
(subscription-only) docket access site and reads like so:
dtd 7/12/04: CT Recorder: Lilia Abarca De Carter: Re: Hrg on mtn for
stay (#10) & mtn to transfer (#9), ORD case is stayed for 90 dys, Ptys
will be allowed disc as to issue of prelim injunct. Cnsl directed to
prepare ord for CT sign. cpys dist
It appears that the court may be neither officially granting nor
denying the venue change at this time. It appears that all the
activity contemplated at the hearing (the preliminary injunction
process and the submitting of letters every 90 days) will occur in the
Nevada district, so my understanding is that the venue change has in
effect been denied for now, but the court may revisit it when the stay
is lifted, without the motion having to be made again.
AutoZone's motion for a change of venue (to Tennessee) was
denied. The case will stay in Nevada.
Judge Jones said he will follow Judge Robinson's lead and
stay the case indefinitely, like the Red Hat case was, with
the parties to send him updates on all the other actions
every 90 days.
However, he will give SCO a chance to file a motion for a
preliminary injunction to be in effect during the stay, and
he will allow one round of discovery to facilitate such a
motion.
That is, if SCO believes that it will be irreparably harmed
during the stay, it may ask for an order that, during the
stay, AutoZone is not to engage in whatever the harmful
activity is. SCO will have thirty days to propound any
discovery requests (interrogatories, document requests, or
depositions) that are necessary for its preliminary
injunction motion, and AutoZone will have thirty days to
respond to them.
The case will be stayed indefinitely, pending other cases,
regardless of the outcome of SCO's request (should it decide
to make one) for a preliminary injunction, which would just
describe what things (if any) AutoZone needs to refrain from
doing until the stay is ended.
AutoZone asked the judge to reconsider the part about the
preliminary injunction, pointing out that SCO has never
sought a preliminary injunction (which has quite stringent
requirements) against anyone, and that it's very difficult
to imagine that SCO could show sufficient grounds for a
preliminary injunction, because the only thing SCO wants
with respect to the infringing conduct i
Okay, so apparently slashdot displays times using a timezone that depends on whether or not you are logged in, causing great confusion among pinheads. Samoa, I apologize.
If it was approximately 2:30 Sunday where the original poster was when he posted at 6:10 Sunday Slashdot Time (-0700), then he's probably a bloody Samoan. This just proves those fat bastards assume the world revolves around them.
I think "is beginning to invoice Linux users" in the first sentence of the article was intended merely as a pithy paraphrase of "has announced prices that it says all linux users must pay".
The other possibility is that the article broke a major story in the first sentence and then neglected to provide any facts about it.
Slashdot Mirror
SirFozzie: "[Jeff Merkey is] nuttier then a fruitcake"
Nyet: "According to the WP:Cabal, only anti-Merkey SPAs feel this way :)"
SirFozzie: "Oh, a lot of people feel the same way."
Whatever you want to call the collection of forces that determines Wikipedia content (the "WP:Cabal", the "wisdom of crowds", cosmic background radiation, whatever), the bottom line is that the Wikipedia article on Jeff Merkey, despite being over 1,000 words long, fails to inform the reader of the one fact about Merkey that is most important to know, which is that you shouldn't believe a word he says.
Here's what I wrote about that failure last year on the Talk page for the Merkey article:
These were the three responses:
Bruce Perens wrote in Slashdot comment #22722890: "Jeff Merkey filed suit against me, and against PJ, some years ago. His family eventually convinced him to withdraw the suit against me, I don't know how his suit against PJ was resolved."
I (Al Petrofsky) was also a defendant in that case, Merkey v. Perense, et al., No. 2:05-cv-521-DAK, D. Utah, filed June 21, 2005. You can find full details here: http://scofacts.org/merkey
Merkey voluntarily dismissed his case against Pamela Jones. In the written dismissal notice he filed with the Court, he said that he was dropping it in favor of "pursuing criminal prosecution in the various states these offenses occurred". Needless to say, I am not aware of any such criminal prosecutions ever taking place.
The above comment, that Merkey's "family eventually convinced him to wihdraw the suit against" Perens, is the first I've heard of there being any involvement by Merkey's family in Merkey's decision-making in the case. At the time, Merkey wrote an entry on his website, which he later filed with the court, stating that he was dropping the action against Perens in exchange for Perens having allegedly made a written statement about "a large number of written attacks with violent connotations made against [Merkey]":
Judge Kimball followed up that Monday SCO v. Novell ruling with a SCO v. IBM ruling today. Here are text and pdf versions.
He granted SCO a four-hour deposition of Sam Palmisano, IBM's CEO and former VP of all things Linux. He denied SCO's motion to belatedly amend its complaint to include a claim for Project Monterey-related copyright infringement.
The order includes a new schedule. The old one had been tossed out in January.
The new schedule roughly matches IBM's proposal (as amended at the hearing; see pages 90-91 of the transcript where IBM says to add two months to everything in the proposal), but with another two months added for most pre-trial dates, pushing the end of discovery to July 10, 2006. He added another couple months for deciding dispositive motions before the trial, making for a trial date of February 26, 2007. He included the interim deadlines IBM wanted for parties to "Identify with Specificity All Allegedly Misused Material", setting December 22, 2005 as the final date for all source code at issue to be identified by version, file, and line of code.
Per Kimball's order back in February there will be no summary judgment motions before the end of discovery, and the new schedule calls for the last brief on post-discovery summary judgment motions not to be due until September 26, 2006, so I think November 2006 is the earliest we could see a summary judgment motion heard and decided.
On Wednesday, Eirik Chambe-Eng wrote:
On Thursday, after four of the questions were repeated, he wrote:
Thank you. Because you say you are giving me two of the facts I requested, and because the only beginning date I requested was for Yarro's current term, I understand you to mean that his current term began on that date, and that the duration of that term therefore exceeds five years, and that Trolltech's owners have not re-elected Yarro to the board since May 2003 when SCO proclaimed that Linux was "an unauthorized derivative of UNIX".
Thank you for providing some information.
I am disappointed that you were not more forthcoming, and that you didn't use your time more efficiently by simply answering the questions the first time they were asked, rather than making bogus statements that you were unable to do so, and then only answering half of them.
Thank you very much for the reply.
Eirik Chambe-Eng:
Although I appreciate that Trolltech may have entered into such agreements, I am surprised that you seem to be implying that you are legally forbidden from revealing:
- the number of directors on Trolltech's board
- the date that Ralph Yarro's current term as a director began
- the date that Ralph Yarro's current term as a director ends
- the percentage of the owners' vote that elected Yarro to his
current term
Are you legally able to release any of that information?I have trouble imagining that you are forbidden from disclosing every one of those four pieces of information, but I would have an easier time imagining it if you could point me to any example of a VC agreement that forbade a corporation from revealing any of this basic information about its board.
I wrote:
Oops. I meant Trolltech's ongoing retention of SCO Chairman Ralph Yarro as a Trolltech director.
Eirik Chambe-Eng:
Thank you for publicly stating this.
It is good to know, as is disclosed on your website, that SCO and Canopy control less than 6% of Trolltech's stock.
It would be nice to also have the information I requested last July about SCO's ongoing retention of SCO Chairman Ralph Yarro as a director:
I'm not a lawyer, but Judge Chabot is, and she's the one who signed her name below the sentence "THIS ORDER DISPOSES OF THE LAST PENDING CLAIM AND CLOSES THIS CASE", so I think we can take her word for it that the case is "closed".
She only dismissed the last remaining claim in the case without prejudice. The bulk of SCO's complaint was dismissed with prejudice back in August.
That provision only pertains to legal costs incurred after August 9, and only to costs pertaining to the last remaining claim (the "timeliness" issue). It does not apply to the next likely step in the litigation, which is an appeal by SCO of the August order that dismissed the other issues.
This is all covered on the page I linked to.
As others have pointed out, the Peter Williams article linked to in the article was actually written in January and it's just a vnunet.com fuckup that it's now showing with a December date.
If you want some fresh SCO info, here's the December 21 order that dismissed the remaining claim in SCO's complaint against DaimlerChrysler and thereby closed the case. Here's a write-up that includes information about some rules of Michigan's appeals court.
I am the registered owner of one hundred shares of The SCO Group's common stock (SCOX), and enjoy all the rights and privileges thereto pertaining (here's the certificate). I am not the direct or beneficial owner of any other shares of SCOX.
I also owe 14,400 shares of SCOX to various broker/dealers. My total interest in SCOX is a net shortage of 14,300 shares: when the share price increases by $1/share, the net value of my portfolio (assets minus liabilities) decreases by $14,300. Vice-versa for a decrease in the share price.
Thus, I benefit from any exarcerbation, not mitigation, of any "low value perception" of SCO.
As it says right at the top of scofacts.org:
eldapo:
Of the three contested motions in this case (and the 17 in the IBM case, the 5 in the Red Hat case, the 3 in the Novell case, and the 3 in the AutoZone case), this is the first one for which the opposing party has sought reimbursement for the cost of opposing it.
In all five cases, no one has yet been ordered to pay a dime to anyone else for anything (although SCO was ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 eurodimes by a german court in August 2003).
According to this ip-wars.net story, this 13-page pdf of images is the motion to intervene. A comment at ip-wars contains a text transcription.
The internetnews article says "Originally scheduled for Tuesday, the hearing was pushed back to Oct. 19", but that was just the discovery hearing before the Magistrate Judge.
The important hearing, on IBM's motion for summary judgment on its tenth counterclaim, is still on for tomorrow, which you can verify at the court's website, both Judge Kimball's schedule and the case history (item 268).
If IBM's motion is granted, Judge Kimball will issue a declaratory judgment that IBM's copying of Linux does not infringe any SCO copyright. That would imply that anyone else copying any of the Linux versions IBM uses is not infringing any SCO copyrights, either.
The SCO-IBM disputes over contracts would remain, but the rest of the world needn't concern itself about those.
You can find the briefing papers on the motion here
A recording of the hearing (30 minutes, 29 MB) is at sco.petrofsky.org/autozone-2004-07-12.mp3 and www.users.cloud9.net/~terrapn/Courtroom%207D%20-%2 012-07-2004.mp3
I know the first URL won't survive much of a slashdotting, not sure about the second. Please mirror it somewhere better if you're so inclined. (No, this is not a bootleg recording. I obtained it from the clerk on Tuesday.)
Below are the notes I wrote on Monday after attending the hearing. One correction: at the hearing, the judge did not actually make any order on either motion, but my understanding was that in the aftermath of the hearing he would issue orders denying the motion to transfer venue and granting the motion to stay (with, as an exception to the stay, an opportunity for SCO to move for a preliminary injunction, and to conduct one round of discovery to attempt to support such an injuction).
No orders have yet been issued, so it's impossible to say *exactly* what they will be. The official minutes of the hearing were written on Wednesday, and are not yet available either, but the heavily abbreviated caption to the minutes is now showing on the court's (subscription-only) docket access site and reads like so:
dtd 7/12/04: CT Recorder: Lilia Abarca De Carter: Re: Hrg on mtn for stay (#10) & mtn to transfer (#9), ORD case is stayed for 90 dys, Ptys will be allowed disc as to issue of prelim injunct. Cnsl directed to prepare ord for CT sign. cpys dist
It appears that the court may be neither officially granting nor denying the venue change at this time. It appears that all the activity contemplated at the hearing (the preliminary injunction process and the submitting of letters every 90 days) will occur in the Nevada district, so my understanding is that the venue change has in effect been denied for now, but the court may revisit it when the stay is lifted, without the motion having to be made again.
Here are my initial notes, posted Monday at finance.messages.yahoo.com
Subject: Venue change denied, stay mostly granted
AutoZone's motion for a change of venue (to Tennessee) was denied. The case will stay in Nevada.
Judge Jones said he will follow Judge Robinson's lead and stay the case indefinitely, like the Red Hat case was, with the parties to send him updates on all the other actions every 90 days.
However, he will give SCO a chance to file a motion for a preliminary injunction to be in effect during the stay, and he will allow one round of discovery to facilitate such a motion.
That is, if SCO believes that it will be irreparably harmed during the stay, it may ask for an order that, during the stay, AutoZone is not to engage in whatever the harmful activity is. SCO will have thirty days to propound any discovery requests (interrogatories, document requests, or depositions) that are necessary for its preliminary injunction motion, and AutoZone will have thirty days to respond to them.
The case will be stayed indefinitely, pending other cases, regardless of the outcome of SCO's request (should it decide to make one) for a preliminary injunction, which would just describe what things (if any) AutoZone needs to refrain from doing until the stay is ended.
AutoZone asked the judge to reconsider the part about the preliminary injunction, pointing out that SCO has never sought a preliminary injunction (which has quite stringent requirements) against anyone, and that it's very difficult to imagine that SCO could show sufficient grounds for a preliminary injunction, because the only thing SCO wants with respect to the infringing conduct i
Okay, so apparently slashdot displays times using a timezone that depends on whether or not you are logged in, causing great confusion among pinheads. Samoa, I apologize.
If it was approximately 2:30 Sunday where the original poster was when he posted at 6:10 Sunday Slashdot Time (-0700), then he's probably a bloody Samoan. This just proves those fat bastards assume the world revolves around them.
I think "is beginning to invoice Linux users" in the first sentence of the article was intended merely as a pithy paraphrase of "has announced prices that it says all linux users must pay".
The other possibility is that the article broke a major story in the first sentence and then neglected to provide any facts about it.
Either way, the author should be shot.