SCO Wanted To Gag Torvalds, Moglen 168
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."
As if (Score:4, Interesting)
No mention of PJ??? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070428
Only 2 days late (Score:3, Interesting)
SCO wanted to gag Groklaw too (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:As if (Score:3, Interesting)
Some deprecated pop3 retriever and a book.
Hypocritical (Score:1, Interesting)
"We are also concerned about the many litigation-related statements made by Eric Raymond, who claims to be a paid IBM consultant, and by Columbia law professor Eben Moglen, who also claims to be an IBM consultant. Mr Raymond and Professor Moglen have been highly critical of SCO's litigation claims. If paid by IBM it is only fair that they, along with Mr Torvalds, be included in the scope of any stipulation or order regarding litigation-related public statements," wrote McBride.
Well, of course! There is absolutely no way that these people would have anything bad to say about SCO's case unless they were being paid to do it!
Just as there is no way that SCO would be pursuing this case unless they were being paid to do it by Microsoft! C'mon; what's good for the goose is good for the gander. In the interest of full disclosure, 'fess up, SCO; tell us all about who's funding your actions!
Re:ESR work (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:ESR work (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
As for his self-promotion, he has a goal to promote freedom. In order to get press attention, you need to promote yourself. Bruce Perens acknowledges being his own best friend, for the same reason. If you want to achieve a goal that includes people paying attention to you, you end up making more noise than you "deserve". Primates don't like this, so they criticize the people do this, but