SCO's Finances, Legal Case Take Hits 333
geomon writes "This afternoon, SCO will host a conference call where they will present '04 third quarter financial data. The news isn't expected to be comforting to SCO investors as they are coming up a bit short; earnings and dividends will take a substantial hit. The only bright spot for the company is the settlement with BayStar, a deal that will leave most of the cash they received from the investment house in the hands of SCO management, if only for a short time." Reader ak_hepcat writes "Groklaw has posted the text for the latest IBM memorandum in its case against SCO. In a nutshell, IBM accuses SCO of not only wrangling the legal process to keep delaying the eventual resolution of this case, but they go so far as to pull the curtain away and show that this table never had any legs to begin with. I'm no marksman, but I can tell when something is full of holes."
There's a better Groklaw article. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm just guessing here, but if I'm right his is very bad for SCO. It would mean that Novell keeps the UNIX copyrights, the IBM case is limited to the Monterey contract and the Red Hat case can proceed with a finding on record that SCO has been blowing smoke about its UNIX IP.
Want to listen ? (Score:5, Informative)
here you go [yahoo.com]
ahh the beauty of the Internet
and the stock is currently trading at $3.80, 6mo performance is definatly a sell [yahoo.com]
Re:It's still intriguing... (Score:3, Informative)
Analysis at LamLaw (Score:5, Informative)
The take is that IBM's request for Summary Judgement that no SCO copyrighted code exist in Linux will be granted.
Novel is invited so as to protect their interest in the Copyrighted material. Most likely Novel is the owner of any copyrighted material not SCO (OldSCO rather ie Caldera)since it was nver transfered in writing, as required.
Re:Home Simpson? (Score:3, Informative)
its the Bart the Daredevil episode.
Yes, I have no life.
Re:No Legs? Full of Holes? (Score:5, Informative)
He also got caught out in something in activity that borders on perjury. Consider this quote:
I'm not sure that this stuff hits the non-technical eye as hard as it does an old geek like myself, but to me the critcism is damning. If the judge looks at the exhibits and comes to the same conclusion IBM did, SCO is in serious trouble.results are in and it's not good (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I wonder what Gene Amdahl thinks? (Score:3, Informative)
IBM Invented FUD in the 1980's. Gene Amdahl, would of course be the guy behind Amdahl computers, which made hardware compatible with IBM's mainframes, and was one the receiving end of a lot of FUD.
You can't even count FUD as a Microsoft innovation.
Earnings report has been released (Score:5, Informative)
Summary: Revenue is $11,025,000 which is way down from 3Q03 revenues of $20,055,000. The SCOsource revenues are $667,000 vs. $7,280,000 in 3Q03. But, the SCOsource revenue was only $11,000 in 2Q04.
Strangely enough, the stock is up 6 cents in after hours trading.
Re:Home Simpson? (Score:3, Informative)
no no no... it is the April Fools Day one where Bart takes a Duff can to the local hardware store to shake it up in the paint mixer. When Homer opens it, it almost kills him. As Homer lies in the hospital bed, he remembers a long string of "D'oh"s clipped from previous episodes, which get him to snap out of the coma and start to strangle Bart.
Re:No Legs? Full of Holes? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, I'm just going to ask. That is Dr. Kernighan as in "Kernighan and Ritchie"? That is IBM's expert?
To me it is not a very smart investor who bet against IBM in this matter.
Re:Stock near the 52 week low....... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Looney Tunes (Score:3, Informative)
That right there says to me that no one in the business world is taking this seriously. So I suspect that it will shrivel up and blow away.
Yes. THAT Dr. Kernighan. (n/t) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I wonder what Gene Amdahl thinks? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No Legs? Full of Holes? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lawyer fees (Score:2, Informative)
From the conference call: And SCO is now allocating $31M for the future of their lawsuit. That means they're investing $31M + the $15M already spent. The attorneys have agreed to accept this $31M amount, plus 33% of any settlement (up from 25%), and that's the max that SCO will have to play for their legal counsel. Supposedly the law firms will then by motivated by the final settlement. That leaves $12 for operations.
SCO also say that the lawsuits are progressing as expected, and they look forward to a jury trial in ~14 months.
They were happy to talk about their better Unix revenue, but people only want to ask questions about the lawsuit.
Re:You're Kidding, Right? (Score:1, Informative)
That's exactly what IBM is arguing, that there are no facts in dispute for a jury to debate, that SCO hasn't put forth any supposed facts on copyright infringement. SCO's response to the motion is mostly fluff, they still fail to point to any salient facts. Since judges decide law and no facts regarding copyright seem to be in dispute, this case is ripe for a summary judgment.
Re:You're Kidding, Right? (Score:5, Informative)
While there is a lot of chest thumping in many motions, IBM presents some convincing legal arguments. For example the Gupta Declaration. To use an expert witness, you have to establish an expert's credentials. SCO did not do that. Also it must be presented in a timely fashion. SCO did not produce Gupta's Declaration until after IBM asked for Summary Judgement. It's a matter of procedure. Not following procedure alone is sometimes enough to get it thrown out.
Even if it that could be overcome, IBM points out that Gupta did not use the abstraction-comparison-filtration test that the Tenth Circuit has adopted in software copyright cases. This is sort of saying that to get a DNA match in a case, you didn't use one of the standard DNA testing methods but invented your own. That again is enough for it be thrown out.
Barring all that, IBM attacks the Gupta Declaration point by point with a properly certified expert. IBM didn't need to do this last step, but they're being very thorough. On a few examples, IBM points that certain pieces of code that Gupta says are similar are not remotely similiar even to someone who knows nothing about programming.
Re:You're Kidding, Right? (Score:3, Informative)
Well I haven't seen all the originals, maybe they are printed on nice colorful paper and written in beautiful colours, but the motions I have read of SCO have been largely nonsensical and it has been very hard to see what point - if any - they are trying to make.
IANAL but IBM's motions appear to make some very clear points which are then exhaustively backed up throughout the document which is a striking counterpoint to SCO's ramblings.
Some favorite lines (Score:5, Informative)
While this just a motion, IBM seems confident and is calling it like it sees it. Most of /. would agree.
Re:No Legs? Full of Holes? (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the (very long) IBM memo, SCO tried this (Sandeep Gupta deposition), and IBM said that and much, much more. Here's basically what IBM said:
If even some of these are true, this last-minute "evidence" doesn't seem like it'll do SCO any good. Then again, we'll know for sure in a couple weeks.
Re:Yet Again (Score:3, Informative)
IBM there are no notes or emails relevant to the case from a couple high level executives who were supposedly involved in IBM's linux stratagies.
IBM doesn't want to disclose every tiny unreleased revision to every file in AIX and Dynix over the last 20 years
IBM doesn't have contact info for a bunch of people who aren't IBM employees anymore (including some SCO folks).
Comparing source code is too difficult
Too many third parties contributed to linux and IBM won't tell SCO who they were (they'll only point SCO to the changelogs).
IBM's source control software has just gotta have an easy way to extract everything SCO wants.
and tell us what we are not seeing, give us ONE SHREAD of proof that IBM has done anything wrong
Oh, I'm sorry. You asked for a fact. Well, those are in sort supply these days. But some will probably turn up eventually, if the court orders IBM to let SCO have billions more lines of IBM's code, every email every IBM programmer ever wrote or read, and photocopies of everything every one of their people has ever applied to paper using a pencil or pen. After all that, and 25000 or so man-years to go through it all, we can speculate that maybe, just maybe a fact will turn up.
Re:The ironing is delicious... (Score:3, Informative)
And, iirc, SCO did nearly that. They quoted the headnote and got the caselaw wrong. AllParadox put it better than I ever could. This was definitely a "Stupid newbie stunt"
Re:Hah! So much for the famewhore (Score:3, Informative)
That's been grinding along. Ben Glisan (former Enron treasurer) is in prison. (Inmate #20293-179, Bastrop Federal Correctional Institution). He gave up the Fastows. Lea Fastow is in prison. (Inmate # 20290-179, Houston Federal Detention Center). Andrew Fastow (former Enron CFO) pled guilty and is going to jail soon. He gave up Skilling and Lay (former Enron CEOs). They've been indicted and are out on bail.
It's just like taking down an organized crime operation. Which Enron was. One step at a time, until the guy at the top goes down.
SCOX Conference Call Audio (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~terrapn/
Here's a link to the conference call audio... (Score:3, Informative)
For those who want to listen to the conference call recording, here it is...
RealPlayer:d emand/040831cald.ra&proto=rtsp [rbn.com]
http://play.rbn.com/?url=shareholder/shareholder/
Windows Media Player:e holder/wmdemand/040831cald.asf&proto=mms?mswmext=. asx [rbn.com]
http://play.rbn.com/play.asx?url=shareholder/shar
Re:No Legs? Full of Holes? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:No Legs? Full of Holes? (Score:5, Informative)
In one corner, SCO has Sontag and Gupta, two of their employees. One of them is unknown in his credentials.
In the other corner, IBM has Dr. Brian Kernighan (Princeton) who with Dennis Ritchie wrote the first C programming book. Kernighan has also written seminal books in many other programming guides and languages.
IBM also has Dr. Randall Davis (MIT) whose expert testimony was used in not one but two of the benchmarks that are cited as case law in all software copyright infringement cases (CAI v. Altai and Gates Rubber v. Bando).
I wouldn't say it looks bad for SCO but I would bet a blind money could hammer away at a typewriter and finish writing Hamlet before I would bet SCO would win.
Re:Remember, they're not trying to make a legal ca (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)