Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

IBM Denies Destroying Evidence in SCO Case

Posted by Hemos on Mon Nov 27, 2006 10:00 AM
from the i-sincerely-doubt-it dept.
Government The Courts IBM Caldera News IT
Rob writes "IBM Corp has denied claims made by SCO Group that it destroyed evidence relevant to their ongoing breach-of-contract and copyright case, maintaining that SCO has had the evidence in question in its possession since March 2005. SCO, which believes IBM breached a contract by contributing Unix code to the Linux operating system, accused IBM of destroying evidence in a July 2006 court filing, claiming that "IBM directed 'dozens' of its Linux developers within its LTC [Linux Technology Center] and at least 10 of its Linux developers outside... to delete the AIX and/or Dynix source code from their computers.""
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

IBM Denies Destroying Evidence in SCO Case 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • What cojones! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by swillden (191260) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Monday November 27 2006, @10:02AM (#17001380) Homepage Journal

    What's really funny about this particular SCO accusation is that they're basically accusing IBM of being careful not to accidentally put SCO's (alleged) IP in Linux, and trying to spin it as a bad thing. IBM didn't want its developers to inadvertently use AIX or Dynix code in their Linux development work, because IBM didn't want to risk revealing AT&T's trade secrets and violating their contract. So, IBM prudently directed developers who were going to work on Linux to get rid of the AIX and Dynix source on their machines prior to beginning Linux development work. Now SCO wants the court to interpret this attitude of respect for AT&T/Novell/SCO/TSG IP as bad-faith destruction of evidence.

    I guess I have to admire their chutzpah.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by aussie_a (778472)

      What's really funny about this particular SCO accusation is that they're basically accusing IBM of being careful not to accidentally put SCO's (alleged) IP in Linux, and trying to spin it as a bad thing.

      Not quite. They're claiming IBM put the code in, and are now removing it to try to hide their infringement.

      SCO's claims are so ridiculous it is possible to refute them without misrepresenting them. Although I will admit it might not be possible to do that while trying to get a first post.

      • Re:What cojones! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by swillden (191260) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Monday November 27 2006, @10:26AM (#17001734) Homepage Journal
        Not quite. They're claiming IBM put the code in, and are now removing it to try to hide their infringement.

        While I agree that I simplified the claim, perhaps excessively, you've done the same thing.

        To be very precise, they're claiming that IBM's developers copied "methods and concepts" from AIX/Dynix via the process of:

        1. Creating and testing new or altered functionality in AIX and/or Dynix.
        2. Implementing said functionality in Linux.
        3. Deleting the AIX/Dynix code showing the functionality to hide the evidence of the "infringement".

        Note, though, that the above doesn't contradict my statement that they're trying to twist IBM's cautious and respectful behavior into a bad-faith destruction of evidence. Basically, SCO concocted this weird "your code becomes mine if it rubs against mine" infringement argument because they couldn't find any copied SVR4 code. Then they were unable to find enough evidence of that sort of "transitive infringement", and when they noticed that IBM had asked developers to delete code, they saw an opportunity to argue that IBM did that *because* it wanted to destroy evidence of such "transitive infringement".

        I stand by my original characterization. SCO is trying to twist IBM's cautious avoidance of IP contamination into evidence of malfeasance.

    • Re:What cojones! (Score:5, Informative)

      by TubeSteak (669689) on Monday November 27 2006, @10:16AM (#17001588) Journal
      So, IBM prudently directed developers who were going to work on Linux to get rid of the AIX and Dynix source on their machines prior to beginning Linux development work. Now SCO wants the court to interpret this attitude of respect for AT&T/Novell/SCO/TSG IP as bad-faith destruction of evidence.
      Except that isn't what constitutes bad-faith destruction of evidence.

      The two really key parts of TFA are:
      1. "Despite SCO's dogged efforts, it can identify nothing that has been destroyed."
      2. "IBM also maintained that SCO did not show that IBM acted in bad faith or that SCO suffered any prejudice, and that SCO agreed in March 2006 that there were no disputes between the two parties over discovery evidence."

      Basically, SCO can't prove shiat and even if they could, it's too late; since SCO already said that there were no evidentiary problems.

      As others have said, Groklaw goes more indepth, but those two facts are all you really need to understand the issue.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by swillden (191260) *
        Except that isn't what constitutes bad-faith destruction of evidence.

        Exactly. In fact, it constitutes good-faith, conscientious care with licensed code. Which is why it's so amazing that SCO thinks they can twist it 180 degrees and turn it into evidence of bad faith.

      • It's impossible to prove a negative (Score:5, Informative)

        by msobkow (48369) on Monday November 27 2006, @10:58AM (#17002216) Journal

        SCO is making claims that cannot be proven either way. If there had been such file deletion, the files are gone so there is no proof they were ever there. If there had never been such files, the drives are in the same state as if they had existed and been deleted.

        Time to stop playing word games.

        Hang the SCO team or line them up in front of a firing squad. This witchhunt has gone on too long. They've used the courts to try to extort customer license fees, they've used the courts to impose heavy expenses on their targets, and they've used the courts to dig for evidence of vague claims without performing the due diligence of searching the public OSS archives first.

        Fraud at the least, but I expect SCO is guilty of much worse. Stock manipulation. Extortion. Anything else?

        Scrap the firing squad. Hang them and let the bodies rot in public so every other IP leech out there knows what their fate will be.

        • If there had never been such files, the drives are in the same state as if they had existed and been deleted.

          That's not technically true. While I agree with your general sentiment (this trial really needs to end), and while SCO's spin on this makes me dizzy, there are still ways to find evidence that has been deleted off a hard drive. (As long as the drive still exists, you can pull things off of it. The earlier after a deletion, the better chance you have to find things, but unless the developers were u

  • Not a logical argument (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Josh Lindenmuth (1029922) <joshlindenmuth.gmail@com> on Monday November 27 2006, @10:02AM (#17001394) Journal
    Companies have their employees delete copies of source code all the time, particularly when they change projects or switch departments. It isn't in a company's best interest to have proprietary software in too many places at once, which was probably why IBM instructed these employees to delete it. This isn't destruction of evidence at all, since IBM almost certainly did not delete EVERY copy of AIX.

    Now if these were the last copies of AIX source, then IBM is by far the dumbest company in existence ... who would ever delete source code for products clients are still using? I'm sure even Microsoft would never delete all source copies of Windows 3.1 ...

    • Re:Not a logical argument (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mstone (8523) on Monday November 27 2006, @10:09PM (#17011280)
      The memo SCO complains about was written by a project lead from the Linux effort, and was distributed to a whopping total of eight programmers coming to the Linux project after having worked on AIX some time in the past. The whole gist of the memo was "given the litigation, it would be a good idea to have these people remove any sandboxes with AIX code in them before they start working work on Linux."

      Only files on the programmers's personal machines were deleted. Anything that actually got submitted to AIX was in the central repository, which IBM produced to SCO five months previously.

      Of the eight people who got copies of the message, four didn't delete anything, and the other four don't remember of they deleted anything or not.

      The real kicker, as IBM points out, is that none of the eight people in question are listed in any of SCO's complaints about alleged IP infringement. If SCO thought these people had misappropriated methods or concepts from AIX and ported them into Linux, it was required to say so, specifically, before filing this motion as 'proof' that IBM was destroying evidence.

      SCO's brief really boils down to, "We haven't actually accused these people of doing anything wrong. But if you adjust your tinfoil hat just right, you can see how their getting a memo to delete AIX files looks like evidence of a conspiracy by IBM management to destroy evidence related to this case." In practical terms, it's about half a step up from the Chewbacca Defense, and IBM's reply memo shows the Nazgul giving it the reaming it so richly deserves.

  • What a mess! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by udderly (890305) * on Monday November 27 2006, @10:04AM (#17001418)

    I simply cannot believe how long this has gone on. What a staggering waste of time and resources. This is probably as good an example as any of why the West is probably going to fall. While China is ramping up production and making huge economic strides, [wikipedia.org] we here in the US are arguing over lines of code as our manufacturing base continues to crumble [indystar.com]. Changing over to a "service economy?" Please.

    How many hours have been wasted on this type of crap? What useful item has been produced out of this or any of the other spurious "copyright" or "intellectual property" cases?

    Trial lawyers giving money to politician lawyers [opensecrets.org], who make laws so trial lawyers can argue cases against rival trial lawyers in front of judge lawyers. So, what's the common denominator and who benefits? Follow the money.


    • Re:What a mess! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! (33014) on Monday November 27 2006, @10:13AM (#17001540) Homepage Journal
      Ah, but you miss the point. When the Exxon Valdez spilled its oil over the coast of Alaska, the money spent to clean it up counted towards the GDP.

      Likewise, lawsuits, dollar for dollar, count just as much towards economic growth as manufactured goods.

      Edward Abbbey once said, "Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell." In a country where monthly economic figures are cited in election debates, is it any wonder that our system favors fast growing tumors?

      • Re:What a mess! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ZachPruckowski (918562) <zachary.pruckowski@gmail.com> on Monday November 27 2006, @10:29AM (#17001772)
        That's the Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. Money not wasted on lawsuits could be spend on something else, specifically something else that provides the economy (and the involved company) with more utility. If IBM didn't have to spend millions defending itself, it could go spend that money on hurrying up 65 nm production of the Cell processor, or building a bigger super-computer, or making improvements to AIX or Linux.

        • The problem is (Score:5, Funny)

          by BenSchuarmer (922752) on Monday November 27 2006, @10:35AM (#17001840)
          All of those things would infringe on SCO's intelectual property.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Colin Smith (2679)
          That's the Broken Window Fallacy. Money not wasted on lawsuits could be spend on something else, specifically something else that provides the economy (and the involved company) with more utility
          I think that was the parent poster's point.
           

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by advocate_one (662832)
          ah, but the money spent on lawsuits is still in the economy enabling the lawyers to purchase yachts and houses and thus paying the salaries of the house and yacht builders and then going on whatever they decide to spend it on. It's only "lost" money as far as IBM and their shareholders are concerned. The money is still going around the money-go-round being taxed at every opportunity...
          • Yes, the money still moves around the money-go-round (love the term, BTW), but the fact is that traded something productive for a bunch of lawyers talking. If we had that productive thing, then the money spent later would be even more effective. You're not just moving money around, you're experiencing an opportunity cost.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by afidel (530433)
            Except luxury items are probably the least efficient items for accelerating internal velocity of money in the US economy since they are among the things most likely to be foreign produced, so taking that wealth and using it to purchase foreign made luxury goods probably slows down the internal velocity of money AND contributes to trade imbalance =)
        • ... it could go spend that money on hurrying up 65 nm production of the Cell processor, ...


          AHA! Now it all makes sense.

          SCO is the reason that the PS3 is shipping in such small units and costs so much ... because it can run Linux ... right? ;)

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by udderly (890305) *

        IANAE (economist) so, for all I know, if SCO won this lawsuit and IBM had to pay up, it might be counted towards the GDP too. Juking the stats to create a perception of growth is meaningless except if you're running for reelection.

        At least in the case of the Exxon Valdez cleanup, something constructive was done. What would happen with this SCO thing? A big chunk of cash moves from one party to another, with a hefty percentage for the lawyers, of course. But when all is said and done, what benefit wil

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ch-chuck (9622)
      Those economic strides have their costs [clb.org.hk]. Do you think USians would put up with 6000 coal miner deaths per year? It's not even proportional counting population and production amount. And that's just one sector. The old adage is that growth entails risk, and we just aren't willing to put up with the amount of risk it would take to grow at a competitive rate.

      • Agreed. I just read in my most recent issue of Bicycling, that the death rate (% of population) for traffic accidents in China is an incredible 200 times higher than in the US. 250,000 per year.

        And maybe those risks are too much for a us in a developed nation but I just think that we should stop wasting all of this effort and hours doing totally unproductive things.

    • This is probably as good an example as any of why the West is probably going to fall. While China is ramping up production and making huge economic strides, we here in the US are arguing over lines of code as our manufacturing base continues to crumble.

      If you are implying that China will be the one to cause "The West" to fall, I believe you are mistaken. Many companies in China blatantly ignore western IP laws, in some cases getting their rip-off products to market before the originals. This is frequentl

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by udderly (890305) *
        At some point, China will have to crack down on this problem, or risk very damaging WTO sanctions. The only question is in how long western nations will wait before coming to a consensus about how to deal with the problem.

        True enough. One thing is certain though, when the West does come to a consensus, the little dictator in North Korea will suddenly burst back on the world stage with his missile-rattling. He's China's pawn, whom they use as a bargaining chip when we object to their crap.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kimvette (919543)
      we here in the US are arguing over lines of code as our manufacturing base continues to crumble [indystar.com].


      Our manufacturing base isn't crumbling on its own, executives of domestic companies are, for all intents and purposes, intentionally smashing them with BFHs and selling the American public at large out in the name of short-term gains (quarterly bonuses for "cost saving measures").

  • Ever heard of Groklaw? (Score:5, Informative)

    by nadamsieee (708934) on Monday November 27 2006, @10:04AM (#17001424)
    This was reported [groklaw.net] a week ago on Groklaw (in much greater detail).
    • The Groklaw story is better because it has my name in print! My declaration is exhibit F.

      Unfortunately, because it has my name in print I cannot comment on this story at all. :-(

      Cheers,
      Matt

      • Re:Ever heard of Groklaw? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by nadamsieee (708934) on Monday November 27 2006, @11:36AM (#17002752)
        I never submitted the Groklaw story to Slashdot; you're missing the point. The point is that the editors of Slashdot should know by now that any story submission involving SCO is (or shall be) covered in great detail on Groklaw. Adding a link to better coverage of the story at hand is trivial and makes the discussion better (since the Slashdotters are better informed). The Slashdot editors should try it sometime...

  • Deleting a Sandbox -- Not the Repository (Score:5, Informative)

    by gtwilliams (738565) on Monday November 27 2006, @10:10AM (#17001490)
    This is old news. [groklaw.net]

    IBM instructed developers to purge their sandboxes. This, of course, has nothing to do with the source code in IBM's source control systems. It's just working copies on developers' machines.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by hey! (33014)

      IBM instructed developers to purge their sandboxes.


      Hmm. And they say that managing developers is like herding cats...
  • It's funny, there used to be a fair amount of posts in SCO Threads from people ( usually using words likes Slashbots, Groupthink, Worship OSS etc ) who believed that IBM might certainly be in the wrong and SCO could well have a case.

    It's funny they don't seem to crop up anymore, just like all those people telling us our governments could never be so wrong about WMD and how they'd certainly find loads of evidence once the invasion was completed.

  • I deny all sorts of things also... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2006, @10:15AM (#17001556)
    I really hate the use of "deny" in headlines as it seems to imply that something is true and it is being denied for some nefarious reason.
    If something is simply not true, guess what? I'm going to deny it.
    The headline should be "SCO accuses IBM of destroying evidence"
    (eg: the party making the accusation should be the subject of the sentence)

    TDz.

  • Lawsuit that never ends (Score:4, Funny)

    by pete.com (741064) on Monday November 27 2006, @10:15AM (#17001560)
    This is the suit that never ends, Yes, it goes on and on, my friend Some people started it not knowing what it was, And they'll continue litigating forever just because--

  • IBM does the right thing, and gets it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jmagar.com (67146) on Monday November 27 2006, @10:24AM (#17001706) Homepage
    Of course they sent an email like that. You need to ensure none of the developers are cutting corners when SCO is breathing down your necks. So what do you do? Well, you remove the ability to access the source code in question. Any code out in the wild must be destroyed, and access to the code in the archive needs to be restricted. Simple.

    SCO's claims here a bit funny, why complain when IBM does the thing you most desperately want them to? Or perhaps the problem here is that SCO wants the Linux source pollution, then they might have an actual case...

    Anyway, I'm thoroughly bored with this story now. I can't spare any more time griping about those bad people at SCO. They have become irrelevant.

    • Don't be bored (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Bozdune (68800) on Monday November 27 2006, @12:27PM (#17003458)
      SCO are not irrelevant, not yet. They need to be stamped into the ground with a boot heel, every ounce of life ground out of them, every molecule disassociated. Next, their principals need to be sued into oblivion, and their demonic attorneys censured for their unbelievably atrocious behavior. A message needs to be sent to IP trolls and their minions everywhere.

      Even though we've centered the SCO trolls in the gun sights, there's still plenty of time to enjoy watching them try to slither away before their component atoms are blasted back to the alternate universe they came from. The longer and more painful this process is for them, the better. Where's the popcorn? Bring on the show.

  • SCO's response (Score:3, Funny)

    by oahazmatt (868057) on Monday November 27 2006, @10:32AM (#17001808) Journal
    SCO's response: "Of course they're denying it! Denying it means they have something to hide!"
  • end up being the mess we all see it as, but others will too, and then decide that the patent, IP, and copyright laws in the USA are not exactly working and need to be fixed.

  • SCO strategy .. (Score:3, Funny)

    by rs232 (849320) on Monday November 27 2006, @10:48AM (#17001996)
    SCO: there is line by line copying of SCO code in Linux.
    IBM: what source code.
    SCO: we aren't saying and besides which you deleted the evidence.

  • Re: when did you stop beating your wife (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sillybilly (668960) on Monday November 27 2006, @01:07PM (#17004108)
    As long as we're talking about IBM denies destroying evidence, we're talking about a question like "when you stopped beating your wife." Even if it has nothing to do with reality, it instills into the subconscious "knowledge" that will be hard to ignore.

  • Keep Looking! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Greyfox (87712) on Monday November 27 2006, @01:17PM (#17004324) Homepage Journal
    They can't find any copied code, so the copied code must have been deleted! The absence of evedence is not the evidence of absence after all! You have your known knowns and your known unknowns, but you also have your unknown unknowns! Stuff we don't know that we don't know. The lack of copied source code is an unknown unknown! No one could have foreseen it! Perhaps the copied source code was moved to Syria prior to the lawsuit! We should sue Syria next...

    Well OK, so maybe only a retarded person would try to make (or buy) that argument. We already know that the SCO legal team isn't retarded -- they're getting paid buckets of cash to drag their feet. The SCO upper mangement isn't retarded -- I'm sure they made a killing on options in the few days when SCO was trading at $20 a share after the lawsuit was announced. Then I guess the retarded people would be... the other people who invested in SCO expecting this lawsuit to go anywhere. Poor retarded people, always being taken advantage of by SCO...

  • What this really means is... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 3seas (184403) on Monday November 27 2006, @01:50PM (#17004918) Homepage Journal
    SCO can't find any infringing code in teh "OPEN SOURCE" of GNU/Linux.

    So there is nothing for GNU/Linux to have to remove and work around.

    Or was this already obvious?

  • The SCO Effect (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JaJ_D (652372) on Monday November 27 2006, @02:34PM (#17005550)
    It appears to me that this SCO v's IBM is a type of "Concorde Effect" (aka sunk-cost [wikipedia.org])

    SCO have NO other business plan, and will (more likely than not) be destroyed if they pull out. They have NO other choice but to carry on this fight to the very end. There is, basically, nowhere to retreat to.

    My guess is that, in 5 years time, there will be an economic thery known as "The SCO Effect" which will basically be summerised as:

    There comes a point when a company has invested so much money in one course of action, which is now apparent to all parties (inside and external to the company) to be futile; however they have no other choice but to carry on, with a full knowledge, and with clarity of thought (albeit fatally flawed) that this is the ONLY course of action left to them.

    The company have to have faith in the outcome as failure will lead to the total destruction of the firm.

    The company has no choice BUT to drive on - no matter how ludicous their actions. This is, in summary, The SCO Effect. These are the slow, painful death-throws of a weaken and fatally wounded company trying to do anything to survive.

    Lets face it - it happens frequently in the software industry.

    Jaj
    • No no no, the real fun will begin when they are investigated for what looks like an elusive pump'n'dump scheme.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Orange Crush (934731)

      Doubtful. They'd have to be guilty of criminal misconduct. The only thing that comes to mind that'll do that is if the SEC goes after them on suspicion of running a pump-and-dump scheme.

      SCO's toast no matter what, but SCO execs are probably safe. It takes a lot to "pierce the corporate veil" and go after execs directly.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.