




SCO Missing 16,209 Files? 273
FileSortingZombie writes "After all the allegations by SCO that IBM is abusing or dragging out the discovery process, over in this story on Groklaw you can read about IBM's objections to what SCO is producing in discovery, not the least of which is that there are suddenly 16,209 fewer files in the privilege log, and IBM wants to know what's become of them. Are they unprivileged, lost, destroyed, already produced, or quite simply gone? As of yet, no one seems to know. All told, IBM found fault with some 76% of their claims, especially one case where IBM says that SCO appears to be trying to claim that a conversation it had with an IBM employee should be considered confidential. One helpful Groklaw reader went so far as to put up this analysis of the complaint on his Web site for those interested in just how objectionable IBM found SCO's filing."
Haha! (Score:5, Funny)
analysis link contains no data (Score:5, Insightful)
(the link produced errors when first posted.)
Re:analysis link contains no data (Score:3, Funny)
Coincidental (Score:5, Insightful)
Take Your Anti-Corporate Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a great example of the corporate corruption plaguing the courts and, ultimately, the globe.
Just because people set up a corporation for the purpose of defrauding an industry -- don't blame all corporations. If we held every single corporation to blame for incorrect practices of employees and management, the economy would collapse. What many businesses are missing today are change mechanisms. Every company is doing something wrong right now. It's the duty of those who work there that see the impropriety to blow the whistle on bad practices, internally and if that fails, externally. If the company in question has the correct business systems in place to enable internal practice auditing to occur, then the company will survive.
Certain people are responsible for SCO's incorrect business philosophy. Let the focus be on them, and what they did wrong, and how they manipulated little old lady stockholders into shelling out big bucks for no reason whatsoever.
Re:Take Your Anti-Corporate Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Certain people are responsible for SCO's incorrect business philosophy. Let the focus be on them, and what they did wrong,...
That's one of the main criticisms of corporations. All the privileges of citizens*, none of the responsibility.
* although these days they seem to have more privilege than citizens
Re:Not all privileges--they can't get married! (Score:2)
So a corporate merger is just casual sex?
Re:Not all privileges--they can't get married! (Score:2)
(Too many mergers undervalue or simply ignore the difficulties of culture; merging the businesses is something any competent business person could do given a favorable cultural environment, creating said favorable cultural environment seems beyond most mergers.)
This message posted only because I found the thought/metaphor interesting myself, not because it really "ought" to be posted.
Re:Take Your Anti-Corporate Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:2)
Now that I think about it, my retirement is looking a bit like a trip to the glue factory.
Re:Take Your Corporate Apoglism Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:4, Interesting)
And please trade in your illusions for a copy of the constitutional treaty if you get to vote on it, and read it. As EU citizen I am far, far more concerned about the Brussels bohemeth then whether Bush and Cheney make more money on the Iraq war than the UN did on the food-for-oil scandal. At least the former group removed a dictator.
You're right about one thing though: poverty in the western world is virtually non-existant. It's a statistical joke defined as earning less than half the average income, so every generation nearly doubling its wealth is completely left out of the equation.
How you turn that into a sad thing, I do not know.
So relax people, the 21st century is yet another one where life is better than in the one before. Bit off-topic for a SCO discussion but seriously, some people get so pessimistic over nonsense it's frustrating.
Easy for you to say (Score:2)
As an EU citizen, you aren't going to have to clean up Bush/Cheney's mess.
Re:Take Your Corporate Apoglism Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:2)
Re:Take Your Corporate Apoglism Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you live in a small town or something? I welcome you to visit practically any major US city and see the multitude of homeless for yourself.
To be fair, homelessness isn't a poverty issue so much as it is a mental health issue. The vast majority of the homeless aren't there simply because they can't find work. It's a shameful situation, to be sure, particularly when such a large portion of the homeless are veterans; but it's not about poverty. Pove
Re:Take Your Corporate Apoglism Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:2, Interesting)
Small anecdote on personal responsibility: some poor chap asked me for a drink at the local Subway the other day. I told him "they sell drinks at the counter". He inhaled once more and told me he didn't have money and was h
Re:Take Your Corporate Apoglism Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:2)
I dont consider oppresive poverty to mean you have food, a roof, and emergency medial care...
However, I can tell you that I see homeless people every day here in Chicago and they generally don't seem very happy.
How many do you see, guestimate for me, than tell me how many you do not see. As a percentage the homeless rate far below the lowest minority in America. In addition to the fact their numbers are small they can go many places for foo
Re:Take Your Corporate Apoglism Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:2)
Re:Take Your Corporate Apoglism Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:2, Troll)
bwhahahahah This coming from the nations that sold planes to the Chinese; who thraten Taiwan, and increasingly Japan. These planes made by a Europian Corporation whic receives rich protection and welfare from the EU can be converted to militarty use fairly easily. Yea you guys sure do take the high road dont you..
Re:Take Your Corporate Apoglism Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:2)
Nope
There was this guy a couple of thousand years ago who warned people about pointing out motes in their brothers' eyes.
Which was the point I was making to the OP, guess in a couple of thousand years youll get it right?
Re:Take Your Anti-Corporate Nonsense Elsewhere (Score:2)
This didn't happen sometime in the middle ages, it was fairly standard practice all the way through to the 1970
Re:Coincidental (Score:5, Interesting)
My understanding, from reading Groklaw, is that this is a list of documents that SCO claim they cannot be compelled to reveal for one reason and another (attorney-client priviledge, for example). IBM will have submitted a similar list. The list was initially submitted without court oversight by agreement of both IBM and SCO. However, the list has been re-submitted because (IIRC) SCO are challenging some items on IBM's list. SCO's list is a LOT shorter, this time around.
Why is it shorter? Could be a genuine mistake by SCO. One suggestion, again from a Groklaw poster, is that it's a tactical ploy by IBM. They agree to an initial unsupervised submission, knowing that SCO will declare (nearly) every paper they possess to be priviledged. They also know that SCO are going to challenge something on IBM's list. As soon as they do so, IBM and SCO have to re-submit their lists, with justifications for each document this time. IBM can do this easily. SCO can't because they don't have justification for much of it. IBM can then stand up and say "look at the lying little bastards, Judge" (however you say that in legalese). Just a theory (I think), but an entertaining one.
I
It only helps IBMs case all the more (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Contempt (Score:2, Insightful)
If the abuse of the courts is so obvious why wait for an IBM counter suit.
Re:Coincidental (Score:4, Insightful)
You are confusing this with a criminal case where the police seize evidence. This is a civil case, so there is a discovery process.
SCO (the party that filed the complaint in the first place) can do whatever they like with their documents, but every time they pull a stunt like this, their chances of winning this case (which were pretty much limited to litigation risk from the start) drop by an order of magnitude, and the chances that the judge will simply throw the case out of court go up to compensate. Ultimately, they could even be charged with a criminal offense, depending on how blatant it is that they did this to obscure the facts, as opposed to simple incompetence.
To look at it the other way around, imagine how awful it would be if, every time someone sued your company, your books were seized. I can just see the denial-of-service type attacks now. Want to cripple IBM? Sue them just before they file their taxes!
Missing? (Score:5, Funny)
That's awfully close to 16,384 missing files. I wonder if SCO is using MS Excel to keep track of their privilege log.
Re:Missing? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Missing? (Score:4, Funny)
>That's awfully close to 16,384 missing files. I wonder if SCO is
>using MS Excel to keep track of their privilege log.
More probably they are using old intel processors.
Re:Missing? (Score:2)
I don't get it. It's not like the number of missing files is 16,208.99999999999999...
Have they checked behind the copy machines? (Score:4, Funny)
Works every time!
I KNOW this goes without saying.... (Score:3, Informative)
You know folks the cure for FUD is an informed populace. God Bless you PJ. There is a place in heaven for you.
Re:Hey! I cheerfully accept donations, too (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I KNOW this goes without saying.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The real cost involved with the docs is hosting them all and providing the bandwidth for the world (or at leas
I Dont want to be SCO. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I Dont want to be SCO. (Score:2)
What purpose would it serve to wait? When (if?) SCO goes bankrupt, IBM won't be able to collect anything. Unless that's a false assumption, why continue spending money on attornies when it's coming out of your own budget?
My question is...assuming that SCO loses, and goes bankrupt, don't they get to rise back from the ashes? Unless Darl & others are convicted of fraud, what's the downside for them?
Re:I Dont want to be SCO. (Score:5, Informative)
SCO will not have the resources to adequately defend itself. IBM will be able to pound away and, at the very least, force SCO to a settlement on IBM's terms, the very opposite of what SCO had intended by this whole legal schmegegy; and at most leave a smoking crater whose bones it can pick at its leisure.
SCO goes bankrupt, IBM won't be able to collect anything. Unless that's a false assumption. . .
Assets man, assets! They claim one rather valuable one in particular.
. .
The simplest reason is that they are the defendant. The plaintif is in the driver's seat. IBMs only choices are to see out the case or settle. Countersuits are offense as defense; and if someone's been pounding you in the courts you might feel inclined to pound back a little longer and harder than is strictly necessary when you get the upper hand. Especially if you know the suit was only filed in the first place out of some scum sucking corporate business tactic that has no real merit on its own.
But I believe the more pressing issue is what I wrote in my very first post on the whole SCO "thing."
Millions for defense. Not one damned cent for tribute.
IBM does not seem inclined to settle. Go figure. It is simply in IBMs, indeed the entire industry's, best interests to leave a smoking crater where SCO used to stand to serve as a practical example of what happens to people who file a lawsuit in an attempt to force a buyout.
No matter what it costs. Otherwise you might just as well paint a huge target around your asshole, put sand in the Vaseline, and bend over.
No. There are two kinds of bankruptcy. The first kind is for those businesses that if it weren't for the debt load would still be viable businesses. Somehow, somewhere along the line, they acquired debt that is crushing the company, but business is good. So the courts absolve them of enough of their debt and/or restructure some of it to make them a going concern again. It's a cashflow issue and a win/win for everybody, because a going concern turning a profit is better able to pay debt monies. And taxes.
This is the sort of bankruptcy that saved Man(Gag!Choke!Vomit!)diva. In the Rolls-Royce case the court was perspicacious enough to realize that the debt of only one division was dragging the whole company down, which was otherwise profitable, and allowed the car division to live on as a seperate entity unencumbered by the debts of the aero engine division, which it liquidated.
There are also laws to protect viable companies from being bankrupted by court judgments, since a bankrupt company cannot pay the judgment. .
Then there's the other kind of bankruptcy. Liquidation. The kind applied to the aero engine division of Rolls-Royce. If you're so far down the hole that you not only can't pay your debts, but have no means of producing income either, then you are not allowed to rise from the ashes. From ashes you came, to ashes you shall return.
In this case the courts absolve you of debts, but sieze the assets of the company to be used in defraying them. Assests may be distributed directly or, as is more often the case, auctioned off to raise money. There's nothing left of a company after this but a piece of paper. They have no debts, but no income, no assets, and very likely a bunch of pissed
Re:I Dont want to be SCO. (Score:3, Insightful)
My thinking is that Novell might just decide to buy out ("buy back" might be more appropriate) what's left when IBM is done with SCO. It won't be much -- it wasn't much before the suits -- but
Re:I Dont want to be SCO. (Score:2)
What do you mean, "coming"? They've already filed at least 10 counterclaims (i.e. countersuit). Including patent violations and GPL violation(!).
Re:I Dont want to be SCO. (Score:2)
Missing documents (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Missing documents (Score:2, Funny)
I feel sorry - (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I feel sorry - (Score:4, Funny)
Me too, but I've always felt sorry for SCO's customers. I've been one. And, well, even when SCO was real SCO it wasn't very nice being a SCO customer.
I don't know if I want to go into details. I'd be hear all day, and I need to be watching my blood pressure.
Re:I feel sorry - (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I feel sorry - (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no complaints with their customer service. It's their software that burned me... over and over and over again.
xenix wouldn't allow both IDE and SCSI busses on the same system
Yeh, that kind of thing. And the driver configuration. And the horrible things they did to System V system configuration. And the driver configuration again, because they kept changing it. And doing the same config in 3 places with 3 different tools because the file formats were undocumented. And Secureware. And... oh, god, I can't do this. I WILL stop now.
Re:I feel sorry - (Score:3, Funny)
Ah-HAH!
Now if we can just find the other one
hawk
Re:I feel sorry - (Score:2)
How about IBM?
Just imagine, for a moment, that IBM win and SCO end up owing IBM loads of money (whether because they are ordered to pay IBM's costs and/or IBM win one of their counterclaims against SCO) but don't have the cash to pay up (last I heard, they only had $20m in cash left), so they may well have to reach a
Re:I feel sorry - (Score:2)
hawk
Re:I feel sorry - (Score:2)
Re:I feel sorry - (Score:2)
Re:I feel sorry - (Score:2)
But if SCO dies IBM owns Caldera code and can just release this.
Inside Baseball Leading /.ers to Law School? (Score:5, Interesting)
What is interesting, at least to me, is the possibility that The SCO Group has unwittingly created an entire generation of technically literate individuals who have also closely followed the inside working of a major lawsuit. Through PJ and Groklaw, and secondarily through
This must be resulting in some sort of predisposition in young technogeeks for law school, or at least for thinking about legal issues. I don't want to say that it's a substitute for sitting through a contract law course, or even a legal textbook, but reading a year of comments on Groklaw must be preparing generations of youngish technology people for pursuing law as a career. It's like a real-time moot court on technology issues. The technically-minded can be drawn to the law as just another complex system, one with its own terminology, protocols, communications systems, manuals. Possibly, through following the inside baseball of this case, they might develop enough of an interest in law to choose to hack that system.
We'll call them the "SCO generation".
Re:Inside Baseball Leading /.ers to Law School? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Inside Baseball Leading /.ers to Law School? (Score:4, Funny)
You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means...
Possibly this is a secret trigger code. Some terrorist cell is waiting for a posting by 'stupidnickname' on the 26th of April. If it uses the word 'Baseball', then the attack should be by land - if 'basketball', then by sea...
Or, maybe you have a rare psychiatric condition which causes you to substitute the words 'inside baseball' whenever you mean 'legal arguments'...
Whatever, the bizarre use of language almost caused me to completely overlook the wild generalisation and crazed extrapolation of the rest of the post. Well done!
Re:Inside Baseball Leading /.ers to Law School? (Score:2, Informative)
"Inside Baseball" is a phrase meant to describe insider knowledge about a topic; applied to politics and political campaigns as much to baseball itself. Often used to describe a journalist who covers a topic, be it baseball or whatever, from a privileged position. Political bloggers have been using the phrase recently to criticize journalists who gain access to an organization or topic, and then
Watergate, Alger Hiss (Score:2)
Only one thing for it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Surely *some* of those 16,000 and change documents are going to be covered by Sarbanes Oxley's data retention requirements. Do Darl McBride and Ralph Yarro have some kind of sado-masochistic desire to be investigated by the SEC or something, because this sure sounds like a hunting license to me.
What would they know? (Score:3, Informative)
That would mean that one hour from now, the number of electronic records created has doubled, in two hours it's 4 times, in 3 hours its 8 times, and so on, for the next 10 years.
2 to the power of 87600 (number of hours in 10 years) is a decimal number with 26,371 digits. Contrast this to one es
No, that's right (Score:2)
hawk
No effect on SCO stocks anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No effect on SCO stocks anymore (Score:2)
You also have to take into consideration that most of the news items are not very favorable to SCO.
Just like any company, if that company receives favorable news, their stock will go up... unfavorable news, stock goes down.
Re:No effect on SCO stocks anymore (Score:2)
SCOX 5day graph [yahoo.com]
SCO understands this game. We feed it.
Dropping the "E" (Score:3, Interesting)
They finally filed their paperwork, and NASDAQ said, "fine, you can drop the E".
What is a "privilege log"? (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess IBM can be happy that these documents are missing from the list now, since it means they can try to subpoena them.
Re:What is a "privilege log"? (Score:2)
A privilege log is simply a listing of documents that are protected by attorney-client privilege whether the document is part of attorney work-product or contains legal advice, etc with the client. Normally outsiders like IBM cannot get access to them. However, there are exceptions to privilege. IBM's complaint is not tr
Re:What is a "privilege log"? (Score:3, Informative)
So SCO sends a list over: "Here are all the documents pertaining to this matter we have ever produced." Call that list List A. Then they send a list that says "here are all the documents on List A that we won't hand over, because they are covered
Re:What is a "privilege log"? (Score:2)
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, see an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
P.S. If you have a document pertaining to a lawsuit, but you don't declare it, you go to jail for obstruction of justice.
Perhaps in some really exotic circumstances, but civil litigation would rarely, if ever, fit the requirements for obstruction of justice.
In civil litigation, there *might* be a contempt citation, but more likely it would stop with sanctions--which could be monetary, o
Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Funny)
I guess by now everyone agrees... (Score:2)
Frankly, I'm not even interested in SCO bulletins anymore.
Re:I guess by now everyone agrees... (Score:2)
Was it? How many people close to the company got rich off this "stupid" move? Daryl and his pack of frothing lawyers have made money hand-over-fist off the people they've suckered into investing in this sham. Basically, investors threw money into a major gamble with an incredible payoff. It's like playing the lottery; you know you're wasting your money, but you keep hoping at the chance at big bucks. This is a classic pump-and-dump stock scheme, and I tend to t
So that's where Ollie North went... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So that's where Ollie North went... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So that's where Ollie North went... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd claim Haig McNamee to be confidential too (Score:3, Funny)
Just a guess.
Re:I'd claim Haig McNamee to be confidential too (Score:3, Informative)
Not Missing! (Score:5, Insightful)
1. A while back they claimed a whole bunch of documents as privileged.
2. Now they don't.
What's "missing" is an explanation of why, not the documents themselved. Since they're not privleged, it would go to reason that IBM can now compell them to turn all of those over, only when they do this will we learn if the documents are missing.
Re:Not Missing! (Score:2)
Re:Not Missing! (Score:2)
For those of you, like me, who were like what!? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Your Sig (Score:2)
2007 (Score:2)
SCO was obviously full of it and as the slow wheels of justice turn and grind exceedingly fine the world is finding out just how baseless were their claims.
Are those claims not so baseless and trumped up, and have not various stock price fluctuations occurred as a result that have enriched various individuals?
I'm wondering if the machinations behind the SCO move are not so flagrant that they could constitute a reason for ultimately piercing the corporate veil of protection. At the least, I would expect a
Something similar happened 30 years ago... (Score:2)
Simple answer (Score:2)
Re:DAmn (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only have they marketed their Linux FUD, but appearantly they are good at marketing themselves as valuable as well. Else why would any sane company continue to fun this obvious lawyers party?
Get a grip... (Score:2)
Re:Get a grip... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:DAmn (Score:2)
Re:DAmn (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DAmn (Score:3, Funny)
And to prevent invasion, (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Doh... Just make it disappear... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doh... Just make it disappear... (Score:2, Funny)
A large pale emaciated crowd of around 5000 linux zealots arrived on the premesis at 0915. There were angry confrontations where apon said crowd did force entry to the building. The tattered corpse of Mr McBride was found hanging. Police are attempting to track down a Mr GNU, leader of this mob, as part of their enquiries.
Re:Is this the same SCO ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Santa Cruz Operation was, by somewhere in the late '90s or so, not doing so well. Strangely, people seemed interested in this newfangled "Linux" thing. So SCO got borged by Caldera. I forget whether Caldera was already part of the Canopy group at that point, or became a part of it later, but bits of Caldera went into what's now called The SCO Group and what's now called... Tarantella, if I recall.
Genealogy wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Caldera bought OldSCO's Operating system division, and merged it into Caldera. What remained of OldSCO became Tarantella. Just before the fiaSCO, Caldera renamed itself "The SCO Group", allegedly for goodwill purposes, but now we see it was to confuse OldSCO and NewSCO.
I'm not sure when Caldera/newSCO became part of Canopy. And with the settlement of the Yarro case, I'm not sure Canopy owns any of newSCO anyways. I think part of the settlement was that Yarro got a
Utterly wrong on so many levels... (Score:5, Informative)
"Linux was based on Minix. A UnixLite OS designed to run on PCs. However, it was really only a teaching tool. Andrew Tanenbaum repeatedly refused to add the new (legitimate) features the users and even developers asked for. Linus Torvalds set out simply to add functionality to his own version of Minix (the copyright allows use to do so for your own personal use, but you cannot sell or distibute it).
Over time, in adding functionality to Minix, Linus Torvalds found that he had created an entirely new kernel. I was very similar to Minix but used none of the Minix source code..."
(Who modded the preceeding garbage "Informative!?)
Linux began as a development that was hosted on a pc running Minix. Linus set out, from the start, to create a posix compatible kernel of his very own. The idea that he created the kernel by accident is as laughable as it is insulting.
See here [uiuc.edu] for a a rather more factual account of the development of the Linux kernel.
T&K.
Re:financial nuke (Score:2)
Re:financial nuke (Score:2)
No one will buy them, because whoever buys them is liable to IBM in the counter suit. They will crumble and die a slow death.
Re:financial nuke (Score:2)
Re:financial nuke (Score:2)
That just isn't true.
Whoever bought them would almost certainly hold the stock, rather than fold SCO into itself. That still leaves SCO as a distinct entity from its parent. The Gotterdammerung scenario just leaves the new owner with worthless stock.
hawk
Re:financial nuke (Score:2)
That would be bad business (Score:2)
Which is really why IBM doesn't do it. If you cave in to one bloodsucker with a frivolous claim, either by paying up or buying them out, you've suddenly got every single wannabe in the country doing that.