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SCO Wanted To Gag Torvalds, Moglen
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue May 01, 2007 01:14 AM
from the can't-say-that dept.
from the can't-say-that dept.
An anonymous reader passes on word of court documents filed by IBM on Friday. The documents contain a copy of a letter, dated 2004, from SCO to IBM's lawyers stating that they tried to keep Linus Torvalds from making disparaging public statements about SCO, speculating erroneously that IBM was the principal funder of OSDL, where Torvalds worked at the time. Quoting: "The company also tried to silence Eben Moglen, the Columbia University professor who, until this month, was a director of the Free Software Foundation, and Eric Raymond, a controversial open-source advocate, saying they claimed to be IBM consultants."
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Coincidence? (Score:5, Funny)
Just goes to prove that nobody is 100% evil.
Re:Coincidence? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Coincidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
A pity SCO can't manage to gag themselves. That would keep just about everyone happy!
Parent
Re:Coincidence? (Score:4, Funny)
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Exactly - I'd pay $699 for that. (Score:2, Insightful)
The SCO drama continues... (Score:2, Insightful)
As if (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:As if (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Some deprecated pop3 retriever and a book.
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http://www.python.org/about/success/esr/ [python.org]
Of course since ESR is such a crappy coder compared to you, UNDOUBTEDLY you understand the code at first glance.
Oh, and by the way, RMS has borrowed a few things for the GNU project. That's one of the reasons why Linus doesn't cooperate with the FSF.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for admitting it. So you really don't have a clue about Eric's mad skilz as a developer, do you? The previous time I saw him was at FISL in '05, in Porto Alegre Brazil. He was all happy because he was south of the equator, and could finally test (in person) some code in gpsd related to negative latitudes. He's at a conference and ... he's coding. So, yeah, the people who diss Eric's coding say more about their ignorance than they do about Eric's coding.
As for
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they're good friends [catb.org]
Maybe you shouldn't pay so much attention to the show they put on for the geeks.
Alternate link to the same story (Score:5, Informative)
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No mention of PJ??? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070428
Re:No mention of PJ??? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:No mention of PJ??? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Only 2 days late (Score:3, Interesting)
SCO wanted to gag Groklaw too (Score:5, Interesting)
Beating a Dead Horse (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Beating a Dead Horse (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of us have thought SCO was dead before - they aren't just Evil, they're The Undead. Regardless of what their losses are, and how many times they are rebuffed by the courts, Microsoft could still dump another couple hundred thousand on them to keep them walking - that's pocket change for Microsoft, and they may well do it just on the outside chance that they will cost someone one or two more Linux jobs.
For my part, I won't be satisfied until the story says that the papers dissolving the corporation have been filed. Fwiw.
Parent
Re:Beating a Dead Horse (Score:5, Funny)
Presumably there is a headline somewhere along the lines of "SCO attemps to silence Buffy Summers"...
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I can only imagine how that will go...
Ash: Ok you Primitive SCOheads, listen up! You see this? This... is my boomstick! The 12-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart's top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about $109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that?
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Does that make them some sort of vampire or zombie or something?
Perhaps we should destroy Darl's brain then bury him at a crossroads with a stake through his heart. Maybe toss a bit of garlic in there as well.
Scombies, in your neighborhood. (Score:2)
So that's why they went after the big brains? Seems like DiDio was - afterall - a victim.
Re:Beating a Dead Horse (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be new here.
Ok, more seriously... IMHO, the real reason why SCO stories are covered so often here on
(As of May 1, 2007) They aren't dead yet. Although, the dead collector will be around on Thursday...
Parent
for a GNU dawn! for freedom! (Score:5, Funny)
Wait.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wait.. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Torvalds reaction (Score:2)
Texas Law in Utah? (Score:4, Funny)
Gag away (Score:3, Funny)
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
Also, it just kicked your dog, got your teenage daughter pregnant, and dumped its leaves in your yard.
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I mean, they can't get anything to stand up in court, what makes you think they can get anything to stand up anywhere else?
Wrong IP Claims, All Along... (Score:3, Funny)
SCO should be suing for the IP rights to the tinfoil hat.
Everyone is just copying from Groklaw (Score:4, Informative)
Since then all these "anonymous sources" just cite from PJ, without properly giving credit. The second paragraph in the groklaw article reads:
It also wanted Linus Torvalds, Eben Moglen, and Eric Raymond to be prevented from commenting publicly about the litigation.
Linus should be suing SCO (Score:3, Insightful)
Linus should be suing SCO for defamation of character because with they're lawsuits they're saying that's he's not competent to write a kernel, and accusing him plagiarizing of their code.
Consistent with everything else (Score:3, Interesting)
It's clear that they didn't bother to find the facts before filing these gag requests. That's entirely consistent with everything we've come to expect from SCO from the very earliest days of the IBM suit. There is no reasoning behind the things that SCO says and does, only gut reaction, and it's amazing how many pundits and lawyers they duped into helping them tilt at their windmills. They were losing market share, and therefore money, to a free OS, and 'felt' cheated, 'felt' that Linux was an illegal derivative of UNIX. So they assumed their 'feelings' would eventually hold up in court. They haven't, and they won't. They 'felt' people were conspiring against them - Groklaw, Linus, the FSF - but this was all a paranoid delusion, just like the delusions upon which the original lawsuit was based. There has been no reason, no research, and no reality to anything that they've alleged. They show woeful ignorance of how copyright licensing works, about how their opponents operate, and even about the contents of their own contracts (like the Novell asset purchase agreement that could blow up in their faces any day now).
I remember when the original suit was filed and first made news, knowing nothing about how SCO operated and guessing that IBM was in big trouble, and Linux users (myself included) would end up having to fork from a pre-tainted version of the kernel, or do some other such drastic thing. I wanted details - the whole OS, or just the kernel? Or another part? Which code was stolen? Then the interviews came, and Darl showed that he didn't even understand the difference between Linux (the kernel) and 'Linux' (the GNU-based OS). This is a company that has a keen sense of smell for money, but not much sense for anything else.
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Oh, come on. Eben Moglen's stepping down from the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation [slashdot.org]. That's nothing near "gagging himself". He's still a professor of law and history of law at Columbia University. He's still the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. He's still allowed, able, capable, and free to make as much comments on SCO as he wants.
He specifically stated in his blog post announcing his stepping down from the FSF [columbia.edu] t
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Re:In case ol' boy doesn't show up (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, if you wait long enough you may get the entire company as an added bonus after purchasing one license.
Parent
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of course then we have the problem that there are a few different PSJs that will cause massive damage to the cases if they go the not TSCOG way.