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Caldera Government The Courts News

Report Claims SCO Intends to Charge IBM with Fraud 377

Posted by CowboyNeal from the case-building dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Now it gets interesting. According to this report, it looks as if SCO is preparing to accuse IBM of fraud, and has even opened up a web site to counter the runaway success of Groklaw. SCO's expensive attorneys Boies and Silver are apparently going to file a motion asking the court to unseal most of the documents that are currently under seal, in the hope that certain of IBM's e-mails will be seen by the outside world to tell a story about AIX, Dynix, and Project Monterey that implicates IBM in, well to be blunt, fraud. Groklaw is certain to have its own distinct view about this latest development of course."
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Report Claims SCO Intends to Charge IBM with Fraud More

Report Claims SCO Intends to Charge IBM with Fraud

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  • Can't treally blame them... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nos. ( 179609 ) <`ac.srrekeht' `ta' `werdna'> on Saturday September 18, 2004 @09:48AM (#10284646) Homepage
    They've got nothing, everything they do is getting thrown out of court, so they're going to try and blame IBM for that too. It will be nice to tell our grandchildren about this company named SCO that tried to profit off of others work.
    • The way things are going now, our grandkids will just say, "But isn't that thing still going on?"
      • i can imagine it, Darl will still be ranting on about IBM in his old-folks home, while shaking his walking stick.

        btw, does he have any children to carry on his evil legacy? wouldn't want it to be a family tradition. :/
        • Shaking his walking stick? more like crapping his pants, but he'll blame it on Linus.

        • Re:Can't treally blame them... (Score:5, Funny)

          by Zorilla ( 791636 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:12AM (#10284752)
          btw, does he have any children to carry on his evil legacy? wouldn't want it to be a family tradition. :/

          Well, seeing that this guy is from Utah.....crap. It's going to be one biiiiiig family tradition.

          • Well, seeing that this guy is from Utah.....crap. It's going to be one biiiiiig family tradition.

            And sadly, their minivan gets lodged in a winter snowbank. The resulting horror replaces the Donner Party in popular memory with the McBride Party...

        • Re:Can't treally blame them... (Score:4, Funny)

          by Curtman ( 556920 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:02AM (#10284979)
          By then it will be:

          Five hundred beeeeeeeeliiiooon dollars

          Darl totally needs a minime too, if he does have children please let one of them be a midget.

        • btw, does he have any children to carry on his evil legacy? wouldn't want it to be a family tradition. :/

          Yes, Darl has a wife and children, which proves two things: Females can also be afflicted by bad judgement, and it doesn't take intelligence to procreate.

      • Is there anything surprising about that? Capitalism *depends* on profiting off of other's work -- do you think any employer would stay in business long if s/he didn't pay the employees less weath than they generated for the business? Generating more wealth from an employee than what you pay them is pretty much the *definition* of profit. SCO is not the exception, it is a natural result of this mentality.

        • Re:Can't treally blame them... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Feztaa ( 633745 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @02:33PM (#10286203) Homepage
          It's a totally different situation than you describe, though.

          yes, profitting off other people's work is the nature of capitalism. BUT, in a healthy capitalistic society, people are paid for their work. SCO is not trying to profit off the work of it's employees, it's trying to profit off the work of others, without paying them. Even that is ok sometimes (eg, redhat is allowed to make money selling the work of the linux kernel team), but SCO is trying to invalidate the GPL, steal ownership of the work from the people they haven't paid, and then make a profit off of it.

    • Re:Can't treally blame them... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      company named SCO that tried to profit off of others work.

      That's capitalism for you.
    • Typo Correction:

      It will be nice to tell our grandchildren about this company named SCO that tried to profit off of others work.

      Should Read:

      It will be sad to tell our grandchildren about one of the companies, named SCO, that profited off of others work and further catalyzed the explosive growth of IP lawyerism in the late 1900's and early 2000's.

      The pump and dump worked. The SCO executives took a 2 dollar stock and sold many thousands of shares at over 10 dollars.

  • Insult + Injury (Score:5, Funny)

    by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @09:48AM (#10284647)
    So, SCO insults the entire world of Free Software, and they think some stupid web site will generate some sympathy? Sheesh.

  • Fraud? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by datadriven ( 699893 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @09:52AM (#10284661) Homepage
    Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?

    • Re:Fraud? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Curtman ( 556920 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:49AM (#10284897)
      No kidding. My favourite part of the article was this:
      • IBM's premise started with asking the court to declare Linux free of any SCO copyright claims. ... asked Judge Kimball to rule that the widgetry IBM contributed to Linux didn't infringe on any claimed SCO copyrights. ... but darned if we can remember SCO ever charging IBM with that.


      Thats about the funniest thing I've read in a while. I had a heated discussion about this [slashdot.org] exactly a month ago. SCO spews drivel about copyrights to any news media that will listen to them anymore, then they have the gall to get up there in court and claim [groklaw.net] this has nothing to do with copyrights. Mcbride, the death bell tolls for thee.

      • Re:Fraud? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Wavicle ( 181176 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:41AM (#10285177)
        Indeed. In fact, from SCO's own mouthpiece: [caldera.com]

        4. As set forth in more detail below, IBM has breached its own obligations to SCO, induced and encouraged others to breach their obligations to SCO, interfered with SCO's business, and engaged in unfair competition with SCO, including by

        a) misusing and misappropriating SCO's proprietary software;

        b) inducing, encouraging, and enabling others to misuse and misappropriate SCO's proprietary software; and

        c) incorporating (and inducing, encouraging, and enabling others to incorporate) SCO's proprietary software into open source software offerings.
        Sounds like IBM's partial summary judgement would go a long way towards dispelling this favorite crank of SCO's.

  • Money (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Where is SCO getting all this money to pay lawyers? Nobody's paying the licensing fees.

    • Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OS24Ever ( 245667 ) * <trekkie@nomorestars.com> on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:01AM (#10284703) Homepage Journal
      I believe that the law firm has capped what they'll charge SCO until they win.

      So we'll see two bankruptcies in Utah one day.

    • Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)

      by eddy ( 18759 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:11AM (#10284750) Homepage Journal

      >Where is SCO getting all this money to pay lawyers?

      By defrauding investors into believing SCOX had a solid case, when in fact they didn't. Lying through their teeth about "owning UNIX", lying about the pedigree of Linux, lying about everything.

      Behind closed doors they pitched this as an "investment opportunity". They probably showed the investors the Berkley Packet Filter code, maybe some standard headers (elf.h, etc). "Look! This is a slam dunk! And there are millions of lines more of that in linux!"

      Oh, they really sold this "Linux Lottery" good.

    • Re:Money (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bhima ( 46039 )
      Microsoft

  • Validate (Score:5, Funny)

    by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @09:56AM (#10284680)
    The page says "Roll mouse over timeline icons to see summary of each document". So I did and nothing. Hmmmm. Well, let's see how it validates [w3.org].

    OH well.

  • Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18, 2004 @09:56AM (#10284681)
    I think SCO just likes to believe that if it could just advocate enough false statements then perhaps just by chance one of them will turn out to be true. I figure the chance of that is equivelent to one hundred monkeys tapping randomly on keyboards reconstructing all of linux source code with a covering letter to Darl telling him to politely drink a cup of Ricin. Simon.

  • SCO is commiting Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Omega037 ( 712939 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @09:56AM (#10284685)
    The only one commiting fraud here is SCO. They are creating fraudulent lawsuits for no reason but to annoy IBM. Pretty soon SCO is gonna sue for wrongful death because IBM killed their company. I mean seriously, doesn't this kind of suit start to border on defamation? Shouldn't IBM have the ability to sue SCO for damages or at least to force them to stop all lawsuits?

    • Re:SCO is commiting Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)

      by marcello_dl ( 667940 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:13AM (#10284755) Homepage Journal
      Shouldn't IBM have the ability to sue SCO for damages or at least to force them to stop all lawsuits?

      It would be ideal to have a karma system for companies who want to sue. You get some accusation points, but if the outcome of the trials determines accusations to be false, the company wouldn't get more points for a long time.
      So the damage a "bad" company can do is limited.

      I've seen a similar system used in a web site, wish I recalled the url...

    • Re:SCO is commiting Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PhotoGuy ( 189467 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:55AM (#10284934) Homepage
      I believe that here in Canada, there's a lot fewer frivolous lawsuits, since it's far easier to get losing sides to pay defendant's costs. I think it's a great system; you go around suing people frivolously, trying to be a bully, you primarily end up paying their court costs in battles you lose. The US should really consider moving towards this approach.

      • Re:SCO is commiting Fraud (Score:4, Informative)

        by debrain ( 29228 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @02:55PM (#10286336) Journal

        I believe that here in Canada, there's a lot fewer frivolous lawsuits, since it's far easier to get losing sides to pay defendant's costs.

        "The most common scale of costs is called partial indemnity, which means the successful party will receive approximately 40-50% of its legal costs from the unsuccessful party. Where one party's behaviour has been particularly egregious, the court may award a higher scale of costs, called substantial indemnity, which is in the range of approximately 70-80% of the actual costs incurred."

        The courts also have the discretion to NOT award costs, particularly if they feel that the losing claim was legitimate but failed on technicalities, or if there is substantial economic disparity. In the case of SCO, I'm fairly sure that IBM would ask for substantial indemnity.

        For more details, check this [blakes.com].

    • US legal system is #1 (Score:4, Funny)

      by jjo ( 62046 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @12:01PM (#10285284) Homepage
      I'm afraid you're much mistaken. It's only the US system of easy-to-file lawsuits and 'everyone-pays' legal fees that make the US legal system what it is today: an efficient, unbiased forum equally available to all, both rich and poor. If we adopted the foreign 'loser-pays' system, we would immediately see the little people locked out of the courthouse and mercilessly persecuted by huge corporations. Such things never happen in the US now.

      Under 'loser-pays', the RIAA could hound innocent file-sharers into submission just by imposing legal expenses that could never be reimbursed! Oops, I got confused: that's what happens under the US system now. Never mind, the US system is still the greatest thing on Earth.

      To see just how valuable and attractive the US 'easy to sue' and 'everyone pays' system is, just consider all the other countries that have adopted it: ... hmm ... I guess there aren't any. Well, all those other countries are sure missing a good thing.

  • Roll mouse over timeline icons... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @09:59AM (#10284696) Homepage
    ...to see a summary of each document.

    Doesn't work with either browser I have installed right now. For a company whose motto is The Power of Unix, apparently you need to run IE6 on Windows to actually use their website.

  • It's simple. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eddy ( 18759 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @09:59AM (#10284697) Homepage Journal

    The SCOX crackheads are frustrated. They've been instructed not to embellish their case in the media. That's frustrating for someone like Darl, whose wet dream it is to mouth off at every opportunity.

    So SCOX do what they always do, they blame everyone else of doing the things they are in fact doing themselves. For instance, they'll claim that IBM (via Groklaw) is misrepresenting the case. Of course, the only people continuously misrepresenting the case(s) are SCOX insiders and their paided shills (the Endrools and Didiots of the world).

    I mean, how many times have we read Darl and Blake talking about the eV1L lUnix in the press? Then in the filings they'll say "this isn't about linux". Or the other way around. It depends on whichever would look the best for them at that particular point.

    There'll be a reckoning for you when this is over, Darl.

  • when will SCO finally make the laughable mistake of suing SCO? I can't wait till that day :P

  • It's Boies Schiller (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:02AM (#10284707)
    Just a minor correction. Their website, actually very well done for a law firm, can be found at www.boies-schiller.com [boies-schiller.com].

    As a side note, I'm a law student and Boies Schiller is an interesting firm. They are one of the three highest paying firms in the country, with a first year starting salary of 140,000 per year as opposed to 125,000 for the majority of large law firms. They are headquartered in Armonk, NY as opposed to New York, NY.

    David Boies is the premier partner. He left another high powered firm, Cravath, to start his own firm (Cravath is strangely enough representing IBM in this case). Since then, some say that Boies Schiller has become the cult of David Boies (hyperbole). I think that both his sister and brother have high management positions in the firm.

    Regardless, from what I hear, Boies is one of the best litigators in the country. Cravath has good litigators too. This case will be well argued - and that is a good thing.
    • "This case will be well argued - and that is a good thing"

      By everyone but SCO at any rate.

    • Re:It's Boies Schiller (Score:4, Informative)

      by dmaxwell ( 43234 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:48AM (#10284895)
      Except for some press conferences at the beginning, there hasn't been hide nor hair of Boies in the courtroom. At the last hearing, one of SCO's attorneys made a garbled presentation to the judge and then fell asleep at the plaintiff's table. Since you are a law student, try perusing some of SCO and IBM's court filings. From what I understand, what SCO is doing is legal high comedy.

    • No, it's Mr. Silver (Score:5, Informative)

      by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:57AM (#10284948)
      Silver was the BSF attorney at this week's hearing. He's supposed to be one of BSF's top guns, but his main contribution to the hearing was snores -- he visibly slept through the proceedings.

      This case will be well argued - and that is a good thing.

      Not so far -- it's turning into a textbook case in "1001 ways to ruin a case." BSF has contradicted itself not only in its filings in different courts, but even in its filings before the Utah court. It's misrepresented the orders and findings of the Magistrate Judge to the District Judge, with the Magistrate's assistants present.

      When Judge Kimball asked Mr. Frei (SCOX Counsel) to explain the contradictions between their filings in Delaware and their filings in Utah, he tried to change the subject. The Judge then pointedly demanded a responsive reply, whereupon Mr. Frei deferred to Mr. Silver as the expert on the Delaware case.

      At this point Mr. Silver woke up, tried to change the subject, and finally simply declared that there was no contradiction -- not, as you may imagine, a response calculated to reassure a United States District Judge who'd already commented on those very contradictions himself.

  • Help me understand this (Score:5, Funny)

    by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:02AM (#10284712)
    Caldera (now called "the SCO Group") is going to sue IBM because they worked with Caldera on Linux, so that when Monterey stalled IBM and Caldera were able to move on.

    Thanks at least in part to the failure of Monterey (and the fact that Caldera helped IBM have a contingency plan that worked) Caldera was able to pick up the Santa Cruz Operation's Unix business at a discount.

    Because they got it at a discount, they're going to sue IBM for conspiring with themselves to save them acquisition costs?

    • Caldera (now called "the SCO Group") is going to sue IBM because they worked with Caldera on Linux, so that when Monterey stalled IBM and Caldera were able to move on.

      This seemed fairly obvious to me also, even as a non-tech, slighly geeked out nurse. How could a journalist actually print something this absurd, and ever be considered credible again ?

      • Excited Me (Score:3, Funny)

        by CmdrGravy ( 645153 )
        I read 'Nurse' and was reaching to click on your profile when I saw the 'man'. How could you raise my hopes like this ?

  • Working link (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:02AM (#10284714)
    The summary links to the main page, whose "Read story" link doesn't work. Here's the link to the printer-friendly page that *does* work:

    http://www.linuxworld.com/story/46384_p.htm

  • Not hard to fig. out the origin of theSCO donation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by catwh0re ( 540371 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:03AM (#10284720)
    Another step in the art of legal red tape.

    With rumours of the SCO donation coming from Microsoft, I would not be surprised in the least to discover that MS is giving the orders on this one.
    The goal of all this is to scare users away from open source software, as they might end up in an expensive court battle. However in the end, when IBM do eventually flatten this out, it's only going to create the legal president to make short work of future challenges to related software projects.

    • Since MS can't seem to get Longhorn out the door in a reasonable timeframe, they need to do whatever they can to stop corporations from adopting Linux on the desktop.

      Everyone keeps asking how SCO thinks they can win. I don't think they ever planned on winning. As long as they can create enough FUD until Longhorn gets out the door, Microsoft's investment paid off. Not to mention Darl's pockets are probably getting pretty full. I don't care if they don't make $1 in SCO Source licenses....SCO can keep pay

  • SCO's IBM lawsuit page is not new (Score:5, Funny)

    by brumle ( 814578 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:03AM (#10284721)
    The ibmlawsuit page on SCO's website is not new, but prior to this it hadn't been updated in a while. It didn't take more than five minutes for this story to Slashdot their server. Let's wait for SCO to cry "sco.com hacked by linux users AGAIN".

  • Sales Call! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Natchswing ( 588534 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:07AM (#10284733)
    Anyone else notice that they offer a link on their site to request a sales call [caldera.com]. Where do we start? Have them try and sell licenses to known spammers? Request a sales call of the judges working on the SCO cases? Maybe just get a sales person to call each of us so we can inquire about linux licenses.

  • So this is news? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by melevitt ( 31652 ) <melevittfl AT yahoo DOT com> on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:09AM (#10284742)
    A paid shill for SCO with zero credibility writes and article full of lies, half-truths, and innuendo, Slashdot posts about it, thus generating enormous amounts of traffic to the site that posts such slop.

    Well done. I'll sure they'll keep giving voice to such trash as long as they make money on it.

  • If SCO had accused IBM of fraud way back when, maybe somebody might have given a rat's ass. But now, honestly, who really cares if IBM committed "fraud" according to SCO.

    Hello, SCO, this is the little boy calling...I would like my crying wolf back.

  • Fraud? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:15AM (#10284760)

    Really. So IBM develops a product and promptly decides to kill it in favor of a new product they would rather persue. Apparently, SCO believes IBM was supposed to have had a brain wipe before moving onto their next project. Didn't SCO wind up with a copy of AIX-on-Itanium that they could have run with? This is fraud? I'm thinking that SCO was looking forward to merely riding along while IBM did all the difficult work of developing Monterey into a usable product. When the cache of IBM's name was no longer associated with Monterey, SCO finds they don't have the ability to make the new OS a standard. And then Darl comes along years later to cry foul.

    And, so would it be fraud, I guess, to use the fairly common practice of Company A buying competitor B's software product and then raising the license fees to levels that effectively kill it off in favor of Company A's product. Or lifting the guts of B's (now A's) software and incorporating it into Company A's product. Then leaving Company B's former customers with a product that they are unable to use on newer releases of operating systems (as Company A has no intention of keeping it up to date) and leaving them no alternative but to use Company A's product (which they never wanted in the first place).

    This happens all the time. The only difference is that most of the time it's the end-users of the software that get the short end of the stick. In Monterey's case, there weren't any users to get screwed. Only a corporation. But corporations have lawyers, end-users don't.

  • SCO continues to fail... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by talks_to_birds ( 2488 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:23AM (#10284791) Homepage Journal
    ...to realize they're not trying this in any court of public opinion.

    They're going down in flames in every court they're fighting a legal battle, and they somehow think public opinion is either:

    • going to change in their favor
    • going to matter at all after Lindon Utah is reduced to a smoking crater, salted, and plowed under
    just because people get to read some emails from IBM that (in SCO's opinion) kinda look bad.

    Actually, the way SCO's research has been going, they've totally misunderstood the meaning of the emails and as soon as they're made public SCO will have made complete and utter fools of themselves, once again...

    t_t_b

  • More bluster from SCO (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xyote ( 598794 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:32AM (#10284819)
    The documents they want unsealed will not show what SCO purports them to show. But SCO knows the court won't unseal the documents. But it's a nice propaganda ploy. Present impossible demands for discovery or evidence and then claim that it's someone else's fault you can't prove your case.

  • What legal difference does it make ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by richg74 ( 650636 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:33AM (#10284823) Homepage
    So the story is that SCO is going to ask the court to unseal some of the evidence to show that IBM has been naughty and committed fraud.

    IANAL, but I don't think this would have any effect on the outcome of the legal proceeding at all. Evidence is evidence, whether it's under seal or not.

    It seems to me that this is just another example of SCO's lack of real interest in the lawsuit as a legal proceeding. Their real interest seems to be flogging their story through their paid shills and credulous members of the press. The only consistent thread in their legal filings seems to be a desire to drag the case out as long as possible.

    Can you say "pump and dump"?

  • I think that the Attorney Generals of each state should ban together and sue SCO for wasting tax payer dollars by coming up with all these horseshit lawsuits.

  • 1. Was the Monterey contract between IBM and Caldera?
    2. Did it include a Change of Control clause?
    3. Did control change from Caldera to The SCO Group?
    4. Case closed.

  • Fraud (n) [reference.com]

    1) A deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.

    Hmm , now given 2 companies , IBM and SCO ... and given the evidence - who do we think the dictionary definition of fraudulant bastards [caldera.com] best describes ?

  • 1. SCO makes unsubstantiated accusations about fraud.

    2. SCO asks court to unseal record.

    3. Court quite properly refuses.

    4. SCO bleats to press about this vast blue-wing conspiracy which, alas, they can't offer any evidence for because the nasty tricksy court won't let them.

    5. SCO stock blips up a bit the way it always does on SCO publicity, no matter how bad.

    6. Profit! Or, perhaps more accurately, slightly mitigated loss for a day or two.

    Film at 11.

  • The story at linuxworld (Score:5, Funny)

    by michrech ( 468134 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:53AM (#10284921)
    The story
    at linuxworld
    was very
    difficult
    to read
    all the
    way
    through.

    What
    were
    they
    thinking?

  • SCO'S next lawsuit will have a pretty good chance (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:22AM (#10285071)
    Because it will have to be malpractice against boies. Given the material on groklaw it looks like they will have alot of evidence

  • Cheerleading Against SCO (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tabdelgawad ( 590061 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:24AM (#10285091)
    On almost every topic that's discussed on Slashdot, the comments will generally reflect opposing points of view. Even Microsoft, Real, Spammers, and the anti-Apple crowd get a hearing, notwithstanding that opinions are skewed against them 99:1.

    Except in the case of SCO. Here, the comments are 100:0. There is no discussion, only exhortations to the faithful, followed by a large chorus of 'Amen', all modded +5. Visiting the site that's supposed to provide serious legal background, Groklaw, is like visiting a very learned religious site inquiring about the existense of God: long, incomprehensible, philosophical discussions invariably concluding that God indeed exists based on incontrovertible evidence, that all doubters' motives are suspect, and that they'll probably all burn in Hell anyway.

    I'm writing this comment from frustration. Not because I want SCO to win (my homebrew server is running Linux, after all), but because I want to be informed. I want to get a somewhat balanced view generated from opposing opinions. I don't really know what to suggest. Maybe mods shouldn't be so quick to tag any vaguely pro-SCO comments as trolls? Are there even any pro-SCO comments to begin with?! Maybe a Slashdot Interview with a SCO rep?

    If SCO wins in any of its legal claims, I don't want to sit there blaming the stupidy of the US justice system and impugning the motives of the presiding judge. I want to know where such a SCO victory could come from. I can't be the only one who believes that there are at least two sides to every issue, even if they're not equally reasonable.

    OK. Enough of this 'I want' 'I don't want' 'I want' post. Let the flames begin, if this even gets noticed!

    • Re:Cheerleading Against SCO (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ljavelin ( 41345 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:35AM (#10285145)
      If SCO wins in any of its legal claims, I don't want to sit there blaming the stupidy of the US justice system and impugning the motives of the presiding judge. I want to know where such a SCO victory could come from. I can't be the only one who believes that there are at least two sides to every issue, even if they're not equally reasonable.

      However, if SCO does win a legal claim, I'm sure it'll be documented and discussed.

      However, as of right now, no one seems to have enough information to conclude that any of SCO's claims are on solid ground. That's likely why the public's opinion is about 98 to 2 against SCO. If SCO had produced and released some solid evidence, then I'm sure opinion here would change significantly.

      The courts are where cases are decided, not on slashdot. If you want to read the pro-SCO comments, feel free to look at the "0" and "-1" posts, and moderate them up if you think they're fair. I will too. but not here, cause I already posted and am ineligable to moderate here and now.

    • Re:Cheerleading Against SCO (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CmdrGravy ( 645153 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:59AM (#10285268) Homepage
      That's not through any bias on the part of ./ or Groklaw.

      First of all Groklaw mainly just reports on the court documents, you can read them and draw your conclusions just as PJ does and draws hers.

      Secondly if you can find anything, anything at all which leads you to believe SCO may have a genuine case and might win it then please post here and we can discuss it, the fact that as yet no one on ./ has managed to do this is simply evidence that such a thing is so hard to find.

      You'll notice that most reports in the media now are simply reporting what SCO said and no positive comments on SCO except for journalists like Maureen who write opinions based on a seriously flawed analysis of what ever it is that has happened they are reporting on.

      It seems like you are not classing Maureen O Gara's comments as a sensibly balanced opposite point of view yet she and her ilk are the only people painting SCO's chances in a positive light which is in itself an interesting comment on the case.
    • Evidence isn't weighed by quantity, but if you want the counter-balance SCO's site provides plenty. Are you sure you're not asking for the equivalence of more balance about 'the faked moon landing' and abrading NASA for "long, incomprehensible, philosophical discussions"?

    • Re:Cheerleading Against SCO (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wrecked ( 681366 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @12:21PM (#10285442)
      SCO has a falsifiable hypothesis: IBM copied code from its AIX operating system to Linux. However, the evidence [slashdot.org] disproves [perens.com] this hypothesis.

      Further, SCO has not helped itself by issuing numerous public statements [groklaw.net] that contradict their representations in court [groklaw.net].

      As far as Groklaw goes, as a lawyer I cannot emphasize enough how innovative and unique that website is. Sure, Pamela Jones has a distinct bias, but at least you know up front where she stands so you can evaluate her opinions accordingly. The real value of that site is the sheer comprehensiveness of the public statements and filings organized in its database. A resource like that would cost someone tens (or possibly hundreds) of thousands of dollars to compile privately, and yet here it is offered to the public for free. It's like open source litigation, and I hope that Groklaw or sites like it continue in the future for other legal/political/social issues (software patents anyone?).

      I think that these stories on SCO are so one-sided because after more than a year on this story, it has been thoroughly exposed to the point of ridicule. It's sort of the way that the public responds to other types of lawsuits that seem frivolous [power-of-attorneys.com] at first glance; it's possible that a seemingly frivolous lawsuit may have have merit, but that doesn't stop the public from being highly sceptical.

      SCO's problem is that they decided (highly unwisely from a litigation viewpoint) to spin their action in the press. This is completely contrary to standard practice when it comes to lawsuits ("No comment, the matter is before the courts"). All of their ill-informed, contradictory and bombastic press quotes are coming back to haunt them, as you can be sure that IBM will use any prior inconsistent statement to cross-examine and impeach their evidence now.

    • Visiting the site that's supposed to provide serious legal background, Groklaw, is like visiting a very learned religious site inquiring about the existense of God: long, incomprehensible, philosophical discussions invariably concluding that God indeed exists based on incontrovertible evidence, that all doubters' motives are suspect, and that they'll probably all burn in Hell anyway.

      But...Groklaw doesn't just provide slanted analysis. The legal documents--filings, affidavits, memos, motions, as many as t

  • Sco Source FAQ (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bill, Shooter of Bul ( 629286 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @12:15PM (#10285403) Journal
    FAQ Dated january 22, 2003 Lawsuits lauched march 22, 2003 And they wonder why they don't have any credibility

    Isn't this going to anger the open source community?

    It shouldn't. We haven't formulated all of our plans for SCOsource yet, but it's important for people to know that SCO is not interested in chasing individual open source developers to collect $149. We want vendors and large commercial users to comply with our IP licenses. The individual open source developer performs a great service to all Linux vendors and customers. We appreciate that and we want them to continue unabated.

    It's important to remember that the UNIX shared libraries, owned by SCO, are not Linux products. They are not open source software and they are not covered by the GPL. The shared libraries are UNIX intellectual property, which SCO has owned for years. They are proprietary, licensable intellectual property that we sell. Many Linux environments have been using SCO's UNIX shared libraries because they are a superior product and they make these environments more productive. But until today, there were two ways for users to get the shared libraries:
    1. Buy a SCO UNIX or Linux product that included the shared libraries as part of the bundled offering. This is legal.
    2. Copy the shared libraries from a disk or through the Internet. In this case someone has unbundled the shared libraries from the SCO offering and opened them up for copying. This is illegal. It is this behavior that we will stop through the creation of SCOsource and today's announcement.

    SCO's UNIX shared libraries are not open source code available for free use.



    Is SCO going to sue Linux vendors?

    SCO is a Linux vendor and a member of United Linux. We have no interest in suing Linux vendors. While we haven't formulated the details of our new SCOsource effort, we're confident that we can work together with other vendors to clear up IP issues in a fair and amicable way.



    Two weeks ago an industry publication headlined a story saying SCO was threatening to sue Linux vendors.

    The story was wrong. SCOsource is now one day old. We haven't made any plans to sue Linux vendors, and we certainly haven't threatened any vendors. This story was damaging to the Linux community and made assumptions that were incorrect.



    But isn't hiring Boies, Schiller and Flexner a clear signal that SCO is getting ready to sue people?

    Not at all. SCO is working with BSF for their expertise at dealing with complex legal problems. Resolving intellectual property issues does not automatically mean litigation.

  • Judge Kimball is starting to get impatient (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @12:47PM (#10285579) Homepage
    From this week's hearing:
    • Regarding SCO's Motion to Dismiss or Stay, Judge Kimball said, "You're not likely to get that."
    • SCO asks for more time to compare UNIX and Linux: Judge Kimball replies "One might assume that a comparison of UNIX to Linux might have been done before filing a lawsuit."
    • SCO asks for more discovery. Judge Kimball asks "Unix is yours and Linux everybody can get hold of it, right? What is it you think you need?".

    That's pretty clear. Judge Kimball is clearly telling SCO's attorneys that they need to present unambiguous evidence of copying, and soon. He's hinting to SCO that unless they come up with something good, he's going to grant IBM's summary judgement motions. He's giving them one last chance to do so.

    This is a U.S. District Court judge. He has many other cases, most of them criminal. Here's his court schedule for the week. [uscourts.gov] Sentencing hearings, plea bargains, and a few civil cases. He's not there to listen to SCO's lawyers stall forever. Federal civil procedure doesn't allow that.

  • Any Lawyers Out There? (Score:3, Informative)

    by FrankDrebin ( 238464 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @01:56PM (#10285959) Homepage

    Isn't fraud a criminal act? Doesn't a District Attorney, Attorney General, or some other jurisdictional attorney have to press such charges? If SCO is indeed planning such a charge, don't they have to first convince someone in the *criminal* justice, and wouldn't that be a completely separate process?

    Sure it might be a tactic in the current contract dispute to claim fraudulent behavior, but isn't that far from *charging* IBM with fraud?

  • Just when you think it can't get any dummer (Score:3, Funny)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @04:22PM (#10286825) Homepage
    SCO reaches in the magic bag of idiocy and pulls out another gem.

    These guys are either taking their marching orders directly from Redmond or they're the biggest bunch of idiots to ever ride into the technology circus tent. Wait, now that I think about it that's the same thing.

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