SCO Postpones Lawsuit, Now Threatening Two

zzxc writes "In a surprise turn of events, SCO says that they need more time to prepare an announcement of who they are going to sue. According to SCO, the lawsuits will be announced tomorrow morning shortly before a phone-in conference in which will be outlining their financial report. You can call 1-800-818-5264 code 141144 Wednesday at 9:00am MST to join in with your questions, or listen to the webcast. They also have said that these first two lawsuits will be against companies that hold SCO Unix licenses. (EV1.net servers or Lindows?)"

Oh my God

What a surpise! Sheesh, this is never going to go anywhere.

No Surprise

Who really expected them to follow through? There continual refusals to provide proof of Linux infringing on SCO patents is ample evidence that their lawsuit has no basis. They (SCO executives) would be wise to not further expand their lawsuits, as each company they sue can countersue for defamation. Overall this seems like a big scam - intimidate businesses into giving SCO money for linux licenses,causing SCOX to rise, and enriching McBride & co at the expense of the clueless investors who continue to buy worthless stock.

Re:No Surprise

each company they sue can countersue for defamation

And so? What exactly do they have to loose in the process?

Re:No Surprise

So what, a company that is broke that gets counter sued is still broke.
SCO has nothing to lose, that's the main reason they are doing this.
They just found a loophole in our legal system and are abusing it. They didn't get that 50M infusion to piss it away trying to sell a product. They already proved they couldn't make money doing that.
But they can can take that 50M into court and cause a lot of problems and increase the FUD.

Re:No Surprise

Not necessarily.

For example, let's that about the time SCO announced this whole fiasco, I had gone out and bought some SCO stock (I didn't, ain't go no money, but let's say for the sake of argument that I had).

First, I have not invested in SCO per se. I have invested in stock, but SCO didn't get my money, the person I bought the stock from got it. Whatever money SCO got from that stock came the first time they sold it. They got nothing from any sale after that. Now, if my buy was part of a general pattern of buying, then that pushes the price up and Darl can sell some of his stock and make money, or SCO could issue some new stock (AFAIK the didn't), although that would tend to push the share price down (supply and demand).

So, here I sit with some SCO stock that I bought, but I have not really invested any money in SCO. The money is invested in the stock, but SCO doesn't get any of that money.

Now, am I crooked? Or do I just think that whatever SCO's chances, some fool is going to come a long later and be willing to pay a lot more per share for this stock than I did, allowing me to sell it at a profit before the trial is over and walk away. SCO later goes down in flames and the stock is worthless. I made my profit, and SCO benefited not at all from my ownership of their stock.

Is anything about that crooked, or even supportive of SCO? No, not at all. Is it a gamble? Yes. Perhaps less of one than sitting down at a table in Las Vegas, but a gamble nevertheless. I suspect that most of the holders of SCO stock are not particularly supporters of SCO, except to the extent that their hope of having the stock go up makes them hope that SCO prevails; most of them are probably simply people who believe (or at least hope) that the stock will go up and they will therefore profit.

Oh, and in the meanwhile, my owning stock would give me voting power in shareholders' meetings; a hostile takeover of SCO could have stopped this suit dead in its tracks. Imagine if Linux supporters had bought all available SCO shares :-) Of course, that's what an IBM buyout of SCO would have achieved, and what they may well have been privately hoping would happen.

Now, of course, it would be a bad time to buy. However, anyone who could and did buy SCO stock back when this first started to brew up made a shrewd move, and if they have since sold, a tidy profit. There's nothing wrong with that, and certainly no support of SCO in it. It's just buying a thing and later selling it for more than the purchase price. SCO gets nothing of either.

Re:No Surprise

The action of you buying the stock supports the price or even raises it.

SCO and their employees own the same stock.

Thus : you buying the stock helps SCO and can even make them money if you are one of many such buyers who push the price upwards by generating demand.

Re:No Surprise

SCO doesn't get any of that money.

Oh yes they do. Companies with an inflated market price can use issue new stock as payment for real assets. Witness AOL buying Time Warner.

SCO can use its new found wealth to buy next-to-worthless Canopy group assets theyreby rewarding Canopy in a method which passes muster at the SEC.

Re:No Surprise

Who really expected them to follow through?

I did, because SCO has a history of doing the dumbest thing possible, and suing another huge company is even dumber than not suing after they said they would.

Re:No Surprise

each company they sue can countersue for defamation

Unfortunately the worst enemy is one who has nothing to lose. SCO knows all their bases belong to IBM and if they lose (which they will) there will be nothing else left.

This example should have people questioning the protection that a corporation provides. When it comes to reckless and slanderous behavior the liability needs to extend to the perpetrators personally and the officers of the corporation.

If the board felt that their own fortunes could be threatened by Darl and crew's actions you would see some a very different course of events.

Re:No Surprise

Quoth the poster:

Unfortunately the worst enemy is one who has nothing to lose. SCO knows all their bases belong to IBM and if they lose (which they will) there will be nothing else left.

Excuse me, sir, but I must ask you for your geek card.

All their base are belong to IBM.

IBM to SCO: "You have no chance to survive make your time."

IP Confusion

someone accidentally said "patent" instead of "copyright..."

Given the way that SCO keeps changing its story

It's about trade secrets.

No, it's about copyrights.
There are millions and millions of lines.
Well, there's <errno.h>
We won't sue end users.
Yes we will.

I can't fault anyone for confabulating patents and copyrights in decribing what their contention du jour (de l'heure?) is.

Re:Confabulation

Well... Dictionary.com has the following for confabulate:

#1 To talk casually; chat.

#2 Psychology. To fill in gaps in one's memory with fabrications that one believes to be facts.

I'd say number 2 is without a doubt the correct use for the word. Also Sco can be realistically refered to by the euphemism number two

Re:Oh my God

When SCO does finally sue someone, it will not be for using a Linux distribution like they want you to think. When the court filings are examined, it will probably be a breach of contract suit for some silly violation, which means they will have to sue a current SCO Unix customer. But they will do their best to spin it to the press as a Linux IP infringement suit, and lots of dumbasses will eat it all up and buy more SCO stock.

We can only hope

That somehow it backfires such that when the press spins it, it comes out with headlines like "SCO begins suing own customers".

All this would take is the press paying any attention to anything not directly from SCO's mouth. But maybe that's wishful thinking.

Sounds exactly right

That sounds right. They might actually be able to make a semi-legitimate contract claim against a customer who was an SCO licensee. No way are they going to win against a Linux user on copyright grounds alone.

Since they scheduled the announcement for their earnings call, the numbers must be truly awful this quarter. If they had good numbers to report, they wouldn't need a distraction like this.

SCO won't Sue Lindows

Because originally SCO architected and did the preliminary work as a Service deal. Part of the contract that SCO delivered to Lindows stated that SCO would 'take care' of the GPL aspects of the code and would not provide anything that might get Lindows into trouble such as tainted source code etc etc etc.....

Lindows later went their own way and pursued a more debian focused route, however the contract still stands, though is ulimately open to interpretation

Re:Oh my God

Right. SCO lawyers use this formula:

S=(1+X)i

where

S= number of Lawsuits they're going to file
X= number of days following the original announcement
i= no explanation needed

Thus, S is always going to be an imaginary number.

I hope they sue those 2 Quiznoes monsters....

They freak me out.

Re:I hope they sue those 2 Quiznoes monsters....

These guys? [rathergood.com]

Re:I hope they sue those 2 Quiznoes monsters....

Wow... the first web cartoon to ever cause me to spontaneously grow three new limbs.

My parents were mystified as to where those guys came from when they saw the Quizno's commerials... me being the regular FARK guy I am these days of course I had the explanation for them in full.

"Yeah the guy who did those animals really is a weird guy."

End of story. :)

I'm scared hold me

I wonder if my SCO spoof [scumgroup.com] will be the target

Re:Ummm....

That's only in Germany and other smarter countries.

And im an American =\

Re:Ummm....

Google, which uses thousands of Linux servers to power its search engine, is not the target of the initial suits, Stowell added.

Nope. Not google. Then again they said they'd sue someone today, and they lied about that as well.

Re:Ummm....

Google is probably on the list.

Ahh the magic of the linked article:

Google, which uses thousands of Linux servers to power its search engine, is not the target of the initial suits, Stowell added.

Besides, I don't know what legal principle they can use to sue any Linux user. Copyright violation? No. Contract violation? No, most don't have any contracts with SCO. Patents? They've never said anything about those. Trade secrets? Nope.

So, what are they mumbling? Anyone they can sue has to have a contract with them, i.e. be a licensee, so they can allege a contract violation (like IBM). Maybe SGI? Novell? Sun? Who knows. They have exactly nothing to go after Linux users in general.

Re:Ummm.... SGI

Sgi is the only party that I can think of that Sco has any real beef with, if they're smart that's who they'll go after.

Then again when you assume you make an ass out of u and me, and assuming that Sco is smart is risky.

Re:Ummm....

Does anyone in the justice system have any common sense?

The whole thing that SCO is trying to "sell" is a binary runtime license(WTF-TM). Yet SCO will not distribute the binary to you, nor will it supply any support for the "product". Notwithstanding that there is no legal grounds to support SCO's ownership of said intellectual property (yet).

Is this a new business model or a non existant one?

Re:Ummm....

Is this a new business model or a non existant one?

It's a brilliant business model. They don't have to actually claim ownership of anyone else's product because they aren't distributing or granting anything related to that product. They don't have to follow the terms of the GPL, because they aren't actually using the GPL. They don't have to cease distributing GPLed products, because they aren't actually violating the GPL, just loudly and constantly threatening they will violate it.

They are selling you a license from SCO to use someone else's product. Can they do this? Well, yes, they aren't actually licensing you anything. It's just a piece of paper that says "SCO says it's okay for you to use Linux". And they can certainly give you a piece of paper that says SCO says you can use something. The trick is that they're then trying to create the impression you're required to have an SCO license to use linux but never actually *DIRECTLY* saying those words-- and seem to be pulling it off.

It is like McDonalds was selling licenses to eat Subway sandwiches and strongly implying it was illegal to eat at Subway without one of these licenses and doing absolutely everything possible to convey this impression without actually saying the exact words "it is illegal to eat at subway without one of these licenses" (which would open them up to a preliminary injunction).

Re:Ummm....

It is like McDonalds was selling licenses to eat Subway sandwiches and strongly implying it was illegal to eat at Subway without one of these licenses

I can see it now...

"McDonald's has proof that Subway sandwiches incorporate trade secret and copyrighted elements of the Secret Sauce(TM). Because it is a trade secret, we cannot divulge this proof. Consider this notice that consumption of Subway sandwiches is tantamount to theft of McDonald's intellectual property. By the way, because of Subway's use of the 'lose weight' advertising gimmick, all of their sandwiches are now public domain."

"McDonald's is now prepared to release information that will demonstrate incontrovertibly that Subway is in violation of our Secret Sauce(TM) copyright. We can demonstrate that Subway uses this particular pickle recipe in their sandwiches, which is clearly the same used in the Secret Sauce(TM)."

- Followed by announcement from Heinz Corp. that those pickles are their product, have always been their product, and predate the birth of Ray Kroc.

Wha?

They also have said that these first two lawsuits will be against companies that hold SCO Unix licenses. (EV1.net servers or Lindows?)"

Huh? That can't be right. How could they be suing EV1 when they've already paid their extort^K^K^K^Klicense money.

Re:Wha?

EV1 holds a linux license. Unix licensees are people who pay to use Unix, i.e. AIX, Solaris, etc.

Re:Wha?

The also said:

"We'll have at least one suit that's filed today before the end of the day," Stowell said Tuesday, with two suits more likely. "There is a high possibility we will be announcing two."

Now, where I learned to count (and you can correct me if I am wrong here) that would be three suits (?). But it does follow SCO logic... Look at the wookie....

Oblig Info Minister Comment

"We will sue TWO of them against the gates of the courtroom...IN ONE HOUR!"

Knunov

Re:Oblig Info Minister Comment

The open source zealots are committing suicide by the thousands in front of the borders of Utah!! No infidel penguinistas will ever devaluate our stock! Never!

Re:.. the aftermath..

Probably the same thing we did before SCO came onto the scene.

Masturbate furiously.

Huzzah!

Re:.. the aftermath..

Before??

Why do you think so many Slashdotters are aware of the one-handed Dvorak keyboard layout?

irresponsible

Somebody get on the call and ask them "If you have such a strong company and case, why do you feel the need to couple lawsuit announcements with your financial call?"

Re:irresponsible

Somebody get on the call and ask them "If you have such a strong company and case, why do you feel the need to couple lawsuit announcements with your financial call?"

I would LOVE to see the Slashdot effect at work on this conference call. I don't suppose we're so lucky as for SCO to have set this up on a system where they pay per user connected, are we? :-)

That and it would be great having 10,000 slashdotters heckling them :-)


Mechanik

Won't work

I can't find the Groklaw article now, but a summary from a Groklaw reader who "attended" one of their conference calls said that it was pretty obvious that SCO wasn't letting anybody ask questions that they didn't know (and therefore couldn't predict or spin to their advantage).

No sense in upsetting the investors with those questions they don't want to answer...

Jay (=

Re:Won't work

SCO pretty much has to do this. The last time I listened to a conference call my company's top brass gave, they had about a half-dozen callers basically ruin the party. Management stuck to their BS story, tried to brush off the queries, but it was obvious they were in a major bind because they simply couldn't handle having to answer those questions in such an environment.

SCO's conference call

Disclaimer: IANAL. I am, however, a teleconference operator.

Do you want to ask Darl McBride an embarrasing question or two in front of most of the financial world? Sure, we all do!

The problem, however, is this: In a financial results call, not just anyone is allowed to ask a question. The people presenting the call get to pick and choose who gets to speak. Usually, private investors, media, and anyone from a company that has generated bad press do not get called on. So what can we do to weasel our way to the front of the question queue?

Well, if SCO has set up their call intelligently, nothing. The access code, 141144, might be the public access code, with a different code (or even a different phone number) given to people who can be trusted to ask "good" questions. But if everyone is coming in on the same number, then we have a chance.

You'll know you have a shot at a question if, instead of being joined to the call immediately after entering your access code, you instead talk to an operator. The operator will most likely ask you your name, your company's name, and maybe your phone number. If this happens, lie to them. Make up a name and phone number, and tell them that you are with an investment firm. Just pick something: CIBC World Markets, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, anything like that will do. Bonus points if you pick a company that has invested in SCO. Write down your information so that you can remember it! The trick is to make yourself look like you'll ask a safe question, so that they'll look at you in the queue and say, "Hey, let's take that Eddie Smith from CSFB next..."

If you do get called on for a question, remember:
1) Be polite. "OMG Darl SUXXORZ!!!" will just generate a "There are no further questions at this time" from the operator.
2) Ask a difficult question that Darl hasn't answered before. Let him hang himself, it'll sink in better with the investors that way.
3) Keep going until they cut you off. They're not likely to let many more unfamiliar names ask questions after this.
4) If anyone asks, you didn't get any of these ideas from Slashdot.

Here's hoping for a great conference tomorrow!

My bet.

EV1.net servers or Lindows?

Since SCO seems to be acting as SCO's catspaw and EV1.net seems to be in league with them both, I'm betting on Lindows. Another chance for SCO to do Microsoft's dirty work for them.

Re:My bet.

That seems unlikely.

Lindows is a technology company, and isn't in the Fortune 1000, which doesn't seem to match the profile of the targets announced yesterday.

Of course, SCO has said one thing and done another many, many times. If they did attack Lindows.com, then that would certainly dismiss any notion that they aren't shilling for Redmond. Given the potential multi-year delay in the MS trademark litigation, there are probably more than a few experienced IP lawyers on retainer by Lindows.com that are looking for someone else's leg to chew on. And certainly Robertson would love to squeeze more than a little PR out of such a suit.

I know I need to suspend logic with SCO...

Obviously logic hasn't played a big part in any of their actions, but why in the hell would they sue EV1, one of the few companies that bothered to buy an SCO license, not to mention the fact that they admitted it!

It's not exactly case of biting the hand that feeds you, but it certainly be a case of alienating an ally that probably doesn't need to be alienated.

Suing SCO licensees?

They also have said that these first two lawsuits will be against companies that hold SCO Unix licenses.

When a company or organisation starts suing its own customers, then it's a sure sign that its business model is completely fucked. Look at the RIAA: suing Joe Teenager, to try and offset the fact that their profits are dropping like a lead balloon.

Re:Suing SCO licensees?

You mis-quoted the article...

...it has targeted for lawsuits, but it has said the first two will be aimed at companies that hold Unix licenses.

There is no SCO before Unix in that sentance.

Further up the article you will see

SCO, which owns a disputed amount of Unix intellectual property, inherited the agreements by which inventor AT&T and its successors licensed the operating system to IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics, numerous universities and others.

It's a safe bet that who ever they are going after is in that list.

Re:Suing SCO licensees?

>> It's a safe bet that who ever they are going
>> after is in that list.

I'm not sure about that. Does the Vatican run Linux? That's about as close as we can get to: "SCO sues God" which seems to be the logical conclusion to all of this. ;-)

Re:Suing SCO licensees?

Well..

It appears, Yes..
Lets see what SCO does with this one...

sh-2.05a$ telnet www.vatican.va 80
Trying 212.77.1.243...
Connected to www.vatican.va.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2004 04:11:56 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.8.9 OpenSSL/0.9.6g PHP/4.2.2
Last-Modified: Tue, 03 Sep 2002 15:30:18 GMT

Re:Suing SCO licensees?

Connected to www.vatican.va.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2004 04:11:56 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.8.9 OpenSSL/0.9.6g PHP/4.2.2

Well, there it is, folks, final proof: God runs UNIX. You Windows folks had better repent, and right soon.

Re:Suing SCO licensees?

I was wondering when someone was going to catch that. I think the first 50 guesses on this thread could be modded off-topic.

My personal guess is SGI and HP. Sun already bought a license and SCO is already suing Novell and IBM. I doubt they would go after a university, they want a quick settlement to fuel their pump and dump scheme and a university might fight longer.

Anyone got odds?

Please, Let It Be McDonald's....

Could they, would they, please be incredibly stupid enough to sue McDonald's, whose German operations are moving to SuSE. Talk about being crushed....

Re:your sig...

Slashdot: where racism against Indians is OK...

I think this is an unfair generalization. Geronimo, Cochise, and Sitting Bull are some of my favorite figures in history.

It's as bad as saying we're totally US centric. Sheesh.

News?

All this play by play of SCO is really tiring. It's like a bunch of fleas issuing flyers every time the dog takes a walk. Yes, something's happening. No, it's not that important.

Re:News?

Actually, slashdot blew a perfect opportunity to post a dupe that wasn't a dupe (for once). "SCO says they'll sue an end user tomorrow" was a headline yesterday and could have been an equally valid headline today. :)

In any case, I'd explain how you can set your preferences so you don't have to waste your time on SCOldera stories if you don't find them interesting, but since you're "ObviousGuy", I don't have to point out something so obvious to you, do I? :p ;)

Hello, my name is George

And I'm addicted to SCO news stories.