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SCO Denied Motion To Change IBM Case Again 174

Posted by Zonk from the get-it-over-with dept.
Rob writes "SCO Group Inc's attempt to change its legal case against IBM Corp for the third time has been denied by the judge, who has also set the two companies a deadline to present their respective evidence with specificity. Despite repeated public declarations that it has evidence Linux contains Unix code that infringes its copyright, SCO has yet to present any evidence to the court." Bad news for them all around, lately.
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SCO Denied Motion To Change IBM Case Again More

SCO Denied Motion To Change IBM Case Again

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  • What!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ShaniaTwain ( 197446 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:01PM (#12989623) Homepage
    Since when can you not change your case multiple times over the years? And since when do they have to show evidence? Isn't SCO's word good enough? This is a travesty! There is no justice!

  • Bad news? Why? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Weaselmancer ( 533834 )

    SCO Group Inc's attempt to change its legal case against IBM Corp for the third time has been denied by the judge, who has also set the two companies a deadline to present their respective evidence with specificity. **snip** Bad news all around, lately.

    Ok, why exactly is this bad news? Sounds like what we've all been screaming for. The judge finally says "put up or shut up - no more delays!"

    Unless I'm reading it wrong. Am I?

    • Re:Bad news? Why? (Score:3, Informative)

      by TheTiGuR ( 115921 )
      I believe either the tags were left out, or the bad news is in referral to bad news for SCO, not bad news for Linux.

    • Re:Bad news? Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Little Pink Bunny ( 881651 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:07PM (#12989662)
      The sarcastic implication being that it's bad news for SCO. Kind of like when an obnoxious player on the opposite team sprains an ankle: "aww, tough luck, buddy."

      • Re:Bad news? Why? (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        give up while you can.. americans can not detect sarcasm at all for some reason ;)

        • Re:Bad news? Why? (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          That sadly is true. There's an American on my MSc course in the UK who doesn't seem to understand sarcasm at all, we have to keep telling him we're not being serious, and then he usually says "oh you were being ironic". I gave up explaining the difference between the two after a few attempts.

      • Then please explain. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by gumpish ( 682245 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @08:30PM (#12990158) Journal
        But the other "bad news" that is linked is GOOD for SCO. (Novels motion for dismissal in SCO's slander suit against them is denied.)
        • Yeah. This is odd. We seem to see the judge refusing to allow SCO to strengthen their case, but still insisting that it has enough strength to go forward (which seems doubtful).

          Is this being decided by this same judge, or will it be heard by a panel of judges and/or jury in the end?

      • You forgot the Evil Laugh. The Evil Laugh is very important in this sort of situation.
    • It's bad for SCO. :) It's probably bad for anyone getting paid for time spent on the case. :) Other than that, I can't think of anyone it is actually bad for. Except maybe dentists, as there won't be so much gnashing of teeth at the delays.

    • Re:Bad news? Why? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No idea what it said before, but right now the "Bad news" links to the slashdot article where Novell's judge declined to kill the SCO vs. Novell lawsuit. So "Bad news all around" means that everyone's got their share of bad news no matter whose side you're on.

    • Re:Bad news? Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JerryBruckheimer ( 896257 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:21PM (#12989764) Homepage
      I'd say it's bad news all around because the case won't go to trial until 2007. 2007! How SCO has been able to stretch this case out until 2007 is beyond me.
    • I read the summary the same way at first, and was puzzled.

      a beer or two later, and it made sense:
      bad news [for them] all around, lately.
    • Bad news to the SCO group in court.

      For the rest of us, in that the court refused to put the dying beast out of its, and our misery.
    • Ok, why exactly is this bad news?
      Because I spent my lunch money today on a thousand shares of SCO! If the case has to proceed as planned instead of dragging on further, I can kiss that $8.51 goodbye. I shoulda had the burrito plate instead. What was I thinking?!
      • I shoulda had the burrito plate instead. What was I thinking?!
        Apparently, you subconsciously established their equivalence: Either choice results in an irritating asshole. Unfortuntely, the one you've chosen won't go away until 2007.

        Well, we've established that relationship. What I want to know is when are they going to find the burrito in the SCO case?
    • I read this as:
      Bad news for SCO group all around. Which I feel it is.

      All depends on context.

    • read again (Score:3, Informative)

      by KZigurs ( 638781 )
      "Bad news __for them__".

      nuff said.
  • When has vaporware is ever been proven to exist? The case needs to stick to the facts.
    • It's a kind of weird inverse vaporware: the code exists, and runs, but you can't know where it is. Ordinary vaporware you know where it is (inside the offices at Duke Nukem Forever) but you have no idea what it looks like.

      • Re:Inverse vaporware (Score:5, Funny)

        by ThisIsFred ( 705426 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @11:16PM (#12991053) Journal
        Welcome to the strange world of Quantum Intellectual Property Infringment. Consider yourself introduced to the McBride Uncertainty Principle, whereby you may know the exact speed at which SCO's claims are changing, or you may know the exact location of the (currently) infringing property, but you cannot determine both with any precision. The harder the courts look, the more difficult they are making it to find. The courts cannot decide without both a claim and its matching proof, so this is not the path to resolution. The court's only hope is to measure the validity of a quanta of infringement claims, and make a single decision that acts on all of them.

    • Bah. Why stick to the facts when they can use the Fleischer Method [google.com]?
      "I think the burden is on those people who think [IBM] didn't have [57000 lines of infringing code] to tell the world where they are."
      If illogic was good enough for Jebus, it's good enough for me.

  • Why is their stock nonzero? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Little Pink Bunny ( 881651 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:04PM (#12989642)
    I don't really invest beyond my 401K and a few other small things, so I don't really understand what's going on with their share price. Why is it not much lower than it is? I understand the "unlimited upside, negligible downside" idea, but it seems like that upside is rapidly vanishing with no good news likely on the horizon.

    Don't investors typically eventually say "ain't gonna happen" and walk away? Is there an obvious reason why this hasn't happened yet?

    • Re:Why is their stock nonzero? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Chmarr ( 18662 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:14PM (#12989710)
      SCOX is no longer a standard, retail-invested stock. The stock is EXCEEDINGLY lightly traded, likely only being held my insiders and investment houses, both scared what will happen to the stock if they unloaded.

      Or... perhaps, they're saying. 'If I try to sell this, it'll plumment to near-zero solely on my measly holdings. I might as well just hang onto it just in case something interesting happens with the case'.

      In short... this is NOT a normal stock anymore. I've given up keeping an eye on it and praying for its collapse. I'm neither long, nor short, but I simply don't want the insiders to make money on this. It'll probably hover around the $3.50-$4 mark right up until the company is liquidated.

      I take heart in the fact that NOONE can offload any significant portion of this stock without it crashing.

      • Re:Why is their stock nonzero? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:37PM (#12989865) Journal
        I still say IBM wait for SCOs stock to totally crash, buy up all the assets and then open source (id prefer bsd license) the whole of Unix. its the only proper way to add insult to injury.

        • Re:Why is their stock nonzero? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:46PM (#12989914)
          I still say IBM wait for SCOs stock to totally crash, buy up all the assets and then open source (id prefer bsd license) the whole of Unix. its the only proper way to add insult to injury.

          That assumes that SCO owns the copyrights to UNIX. It may not, as there is a court case going on with Novell over that very issue.

        • Re:Why is their stock nonzero? (Score:3, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Where is the "+2 Evil" mod when you need it?
        • An open source version of Unix would be sort of moot, wouldn't it? I mean, OpenSolaris.org is a full System V Unix available under a more or less acceptable license, and if you really need the Unix pedigree there's four, count 'em four, source-available BSDs out there.
      • In addition, there's a gambler's chance that SCO will win the case. It's enough for SCO to go to investors and lie, much like a lot of dotcom business plans. And they've clearly had a lot of practice lying to investors, because they're hiding as much as possible the amount of their business that remains because Microsoft is propping them up.

        Microsoft is not taking over SCO or themselves directly providing the business because it would show Microsoft sponsorship of the lawsuit. But investing the money throu
    • Because you'll still see longshot speculators who have cash to burn buying up stock in the tiny miniscule chance that a miracle will occur. To that kind of investor, it's like playing the lotto, if they lose... oh well, pick different numbers next week.

    • Re:Why is their stock nonzero? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dav3K ( 618318 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:18PM (#12989746)
      Problem is, if you are caught holding the stock today, you are going to be hard pressed to find anyone who will buy it. Also, much of the stock is held by people like Ransom Love, who have other reasons for hanging on to it. Being principle shareholder in a dead company can be handy if you have plans on re-forming.

      • Re:Why is their stock nonzero? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by evilquaker ( 35963 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @08:22PM (#12990112)
        Problem is, if you are caught holding the stock today, you are going to be hard pressed to find anyone who will buy it.

        A third of the float is sold short [yahoo.com] (Note "Short % of Float" under Share Statistics). Those shorts will have to buy eventually. So I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of traders are holding hoping for a quick double. Once the shorts start covering, it might shoot up quite quickly as they all try to lock in their profits.

        • The short sellers dont have to buy to cover if SCO goes under and their stock stops trading. Your broker will not require you to cover, if the stock no longer exists.

          I am currently short on this stock and planning to stay short as long as it takes. Most of the shorts I know are planning to stay short until the very end. And the end is near for SCO as they are running out of money fast.
      • Problem is, if you are caught holding the stock today, you are going to be hard pressed to find anyone who will buy it.

        Actually, there are people who will buy it. Otherwise SCOX's stock wouldn't be at $3.70/share. It would be at zero.

      • Ransom Love doesn't own _any_ SCOX (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Error27 ( 100234 ) <error27.gmail@com> on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @08:24PM (#12990124) Homepage Journal
        Ransom Love sold all his stock when the lawsuit started. link [eweek.com]

    • Well, if you take a look at it's performance over the last couple of years, you'll see that it started a fall near the end of 2003 and has never recovered from that. It has traded below $5 a share for pretty much the last calendar year.

      The reason investors don't walk away is because at this point, there probably aren't any more. It's people who are stuck with the stock and can't find anyone to sell it to, or people who are hoping for the litigation version of Powerball to kick in.

      Kierthos
    • A stock does not just represent a share of future earnings - it represents a share of ownership in the company.

      Companies have cash in the bank, real estate holdings, computers, etc - all assets that can be liquidated for real cash. The reason this stock still has value is because the company still has value - albeit not much.

      There is little "growth" value left for lack of a better term. However, SCO's real measurable assets have a value >0, which is why the stock is not 0.
      • However, SCO's real measurable assets have a value >0, which is why the stock is not 0.

        If you read the recent SCO filings, you realize this may no longer be the case very soon.
      • A stock does not just represent a share of future earnings - it represents a share of ownership in the company.

        Yes, but the valuation of the company depends upon its future earnings potential and the value of the stock relates to a fraction of that.

        A company may have lots of assets, but if it is losing money such that its assets will soon be worthless and the management are not going to shut it down before bankruptsy, then the value of the assets matters little. All that matters is what cash shareho


    • There are two views on SCOX's value being at $4.00 or so.

      The first says look at the treasury - divide cash on hand by number of shares and that is what its worth. This strikes me as foolish.

      The second says look at the value of the Unix revenue streams. Laugh at OpenServer all you want, but there are lots and lots of IVR apps out there that work just fine. This also apparently produces a value of about $4/share.

      I hear there are M&A brokerages taking positions in the company - these are the vu

  • Where it all ends (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:07PM (#12989665)
    There's a lot of discussion on Groklaw about what happens when tSCOg goes bankrupt.

    The minute tSCOg loses the first of the many cases it has going, it goes bankrupt. Its fate is then in the hands of the bankrupcy trustee and the creditors. My guess is that all the cases then get settled out of court on terms agreeable to the creditors. In the case of IBM this means a declaration that Linux is totally unemcumbered by anyone's Unix IP.

    • Re:Where it all ends (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:14PM (#12989713)
      In the case of IBM this means a declaration that Linux is totally unemcumbered by anyone's Unix IP.

      You mean unencumbered by IP that can be licensed by SCO.
    • That the only comment so far moded as +5 Interesting is the one that points at a Groklaw discussion.

      Oh, man, both comments and moderators on /. are more relevant today than they will ever be, and this is not a joke!

    • I bet Sun buys SCO (Score:5, Interesting)

      by team99parody ( 880782 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:22PM (#12989771) Homepage
      My guess is that the creditors auction off SCO's assets (which include any remaining contested IP) to the highest bidder.

      I furthermore guess that this bidder will be Sun, because it's a major licensee of SCO IP and would ABSOLUTELY NOT want to be in a position of having it's Solaris based on the IP of any other potential acquiror.

      Then we'll have some peace for a while, as whomever ends up owning this IP will not have the stomach to continue the lawsuit; but it'll stay in some uncontested limbo forever.

      Other reasons why I think it'll be Sun: Some of sun's management like to see themselves as an operating-systems-IP company. They want to own the part of SCO that IBM licensed to be better positioned in their "IP sharing partnership" with Microsoft. etc.

      • Most likely, the IP will wind up with Novell, due to SCO's successor not wanting to get into a copyright battle with Novell based on SCO's insane legal theories and implausible interpretations of contracts. The evidence in SCO v. Novell on SCO's side is sufficiently good for SCO to try to make a case out of it, because they have nothing to lose, but it's nowhere near good enough for anyone with assets vulnerable to a countersuit. If Sun wants the UNIX copyrights, they'd do better to wait until SCO goes away
      • I thought that Sun had bought out the rights a long time ago, something even more ironclad than what IBM had (and SCO subsequently tried to revoke).

        Any help here?

  • Bad news all around (Score:4, Funny)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:08PM (#12989671)
    Bad news all around

    Not sure what planet Rob and Zonk are from, but to most of us this is good news.

    • Bad news all around

      Not sure what planet Rob and Zonk are from, but to most of us this is good news.

      Nice try, but it reads Bad news for them all around

    • Soon we will no longer be able to be amused by Darl's monkey-like antics and will have to turn elsewhere for our good laughs. Ballmer seems to have learned to keep his fucking mouth shut, so there's not much amusing chatter coming out of Microsoft these days, and Gartner's only good for a chuckle if you ever read the shit they write and no one in the IT world really does anymore. That means that in the very near future we won't have anyone to laugh at anymore.

      While some might see this as a new era of harm

  • 2007??? (Score:1, Informative)

    by NaCh0 ( 6124 )
    The cbronline.com article says the SCO/IBM case will drag out at least through February 2007! Does that sound excessive to anyone besides me?

    I guess /. will have plenty of future front page material.

    • So that means SCO will be dead by 2007 or so. I hope they hold a public selling of the furnishings. It would be fun to put together some money to buy Daryl's chair and donate it to Linus, for example.

  • Why they couldn't amend their complaint (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lheal ( 86013 ) <lheal1999NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:15PM (#12989715) Journal
    Judge Kimball is on to them.

    We non-lawyers think of judges as impartial watchers of the courtroom. Sometimes they are. Most of the time, though, they pick a winner and spend the rest of the case guiding the decision the way they think it should go and covering themselves for appeal.

    That's how it's been with SCO v IBM. After months and months without any credible evidence, after seeing the SCO group twist his words and the words of Magistrate Judge Wells (who's handling much of the pre-trial bickering), he began to take on a more aggressive tone. He hasn't been on IBM's side, but it looks like he has seen the inevitable result and is trying to make sure his decision doesn't get turned over on appeal.

    So when The SCO Group tried to amend their complaint based on an out-of-context reading of IBM's Ninth Counterclaim (a request for a ruling that IBM didn't infringe SCO's copyrights), he said no, that the counterclaim must be read in context. He said they were just delaying. if he thought they had a snowball's chance in July, he might have allowed the change.

    • Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. (Score:5, Informative)

      by rjh ( 40933 ) <rjh@sixdemonbag.org> on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @11:40PM (#12991153)

      We non-lawyers think of judges as impartial watchers of the courtroom. Sometimes they are. Most of the time, though, they pick a winner and spend the rest of the case guiding the decision the way they think it should go and covering themselves for appeal.

      Dad is a Federal circuit court judge (former Chief Judge of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals) and my cousin is on the Michigan state bench. That's the Honorable David R. Hansen and the Honorable Katherine L. Hansen, respectively. Dad was appointed to the state bench in 1976 by the (Republican) Governor Robert Ray; he was appointed to the Federal bench for the District of Northern Iowa in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan; he was appointed to the appellate bench by President George H.W. Bush. Officially, Dad has no political party--he's not allowed to, as part of the Federal code of judicial ethics--but I think you can probably figure out from his appointment history that Teddy Kennedy doesn't send him Christmas cards.

      My cousin Katherine, on the other hand, was appointed to the Michigan state bench by Governor Jennifer M. Granholm. Governor Granholm, as you are no doubt aware, is so far in the left wing of the Democratic Party that she was honored with floor time at the last National Convention. I'm not sure whether her judicial ethics allow her to have a party affiliation or not, but... you can draw your own conclusions.

      Why does this matter? Because whether I look at a Federal judge repeatedly appointed by Republicans, or whether I look at a State judge appointed by a dyed-in-the-wool lefty Democrat, I see the same thing: namely, brother, you are wrong, and have no idea just how wrong you are.

      Judges try very hard to be impartial in all hearings... impartial to the point of rudeness. If you step into court and claim that the sky is blue, both Dad and Katherine will interrupt you to ask whether you're going to introduce meterologic testimony into the record attesting to that fact. (Well, Katherine would probably have the good grace to wait until you were finished. Dad's approach is the kinder of the two, though; when Katherine quietly pulls the rug out from under your feet, thoroughly confounding the last ten minutes of your argument, you long for the rough kindness of an interruption.)

      It makes it hell trying to have normal conversations with them, by the by; they have a very hard time disengaging from judicial-think. When I say that I think I did well on an exam, Dad wants to know precisely what evidence leads me to that conclusion. When I talk to Katherine and mention that I have a paper submitted to Black Hat 2005, Katherine doesn't say "that's nice"; she insists that I sit her down and teach her enough computational theory so that she can decide for herself my odds of getting published.

      Both of them live and die by a mantra: neither one of them gives half a damn what you know, they only care what you can prove.

      Nor are they "watchers" of the court in any sense. They are the administrators of the court. They're the ones who decide the ground rules of the court hearing. They decide these ground rules based on pleadings; attorneys for one side say that under one Supreme Court ruling, the standard for evidence should be this, while attorneys for the other side say that decision didn't foresee this particular eventuality and it should be discarded. Only a fool would claim they are "watchers". They are not combatants in the courtroom, in the sense of trial lawyers, no, but they are both the arbiters of fairness and the executors of decisions. If you're able to convince the judge of a fact, then brother, your job is done. At that point the other attorney isn't fighting you anymore, he's fighting the judge, and that's a fight the other lawyer is--with greater than 90% certainty--going to lose.

      Impartiality is difficult to attain. The best solution judges have found, either on the Left or on the Right, is ruthless, r

      • Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by lheal ( 86013 )
        That was great, but how does it contradict what I said?

        Now, quit laughing. I know that judges are impartial (or "apartial", which is a distinction without a difference). But once the trial starts, they know who's got it and who doesn't. They intentionally keep their minds open - judicial think, you called it.

        A mind isn't open if it isn't processing what it's being given. They don't give a ruling before all the evidence is in, but much of the time the ruling would be no different if they did.

        • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)

          by rjh ( 40933 ) <rjh@sixdemonbag.org> on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @12:43AM (#12991389)
          Here's what it refutes:
          We non-lawyers think of judges as impartial watchers of the courtroom. Sometimes they are.


          It's not a "sometimes they're impartial".

          And they're not "watchers".

          And if you think either is true, then you don't understand the judiciary at all. Those are two glaring, egregious errors to make.
      • Spot on - at the moment we begin arguing about the political background of a judge being relevant we have lost.

        Being a facist, communist, or a feudalist shouldn't make you guilty or not guilty - or change what was meant by the constitution. Sure, there may be borderline cases where that reflects your leanings but, while they may be interesting cases, they shouldn't be *that* far reaching.

        I think the issue that causes is that in some circles, and some judges, this becomes less true. Some low, some high. So
      • -1: Dispells cherished Slashdot myths

        Thanks for the interesting explanation. I'm not saying I believe it completely (in the spirit of dogged skepticism), but I hope that it was mostly accurate because it's the most hopeful thing I've read in some time.

      • Many thanks for a fascinating insight into the judicial set-up. Every time I get fed up with the masses of content-free posts on Slashdot, someone like you pops up and makes it all worthwhile!

        In view of which, it seems churlish to criticise your maths, but your conclusions seem overstated:

        The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals is almost evenly split between Republican appointees and Democratic appointees. This means that on their three-judge appellate panels, the odds are only one in eight that three Rep

        • You're right; my statistics were in error. I foolishly considered only one possibility (all Republican appointees) and not all possibilities.

          I made another goof. Generally speaking, Dad's colleagues don't wear their appointments on their sleeve. New judges come on and old judges retire, and the dynamic changes from year to year. Since the last time I bothered to learn the political makeup of the court, President Bush has appointed a few new judges. It's now significantly skewed towards Republican appo

  • SCO what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:16PM (#12989733)
    SCO's new motto:

    No evidence, no customers, no future.

    (And the only way you can convince me that Daryl McBride isn't a worthless cunt is by providing a signed statement from a gynacologist)
  • Obviously, but in addition to denying SCO's motion to Amend, Judge Kimball also set a date this Fall by which SCO must declare with specifity the items on which it will be relying to make its case.

    And that friends, is where the nuts hit the grinder.

  • Press Release (Score:3, Funny)

    by pjrc ( 134994 ) <paul@pjrc.com> on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:24PM (#12989787) Homepage Journal
    SCO Group, The True Owners of all Unix Intellectual Property, announced today that they were pleased with Judge Kimball's ruling. CEO Darl McBride apeared upbeat, commenting "This new ruling will allow us to focus on IBM's illegal misconduct and hasten the resolution of our intellectual property claims".

    Company spokesperson Blake Stonewell took a more conservative posture. "Of course we would have prefered to present recently discovered new evidence of IBM's further misappropriation of our intellectual property to the Power architecture". Stonewell further added "this ruling is actually a major victory for us. IBM has consistently resisted any depositions of upper management, who orchestrated the wholesale theft of our code and trade secrets for inclusion in the derivitive linux kernel".

    Bert Young, Chief Financial Officer of the SCO Group said "we are pleased by the now definitive revised schedule", and added "because legal fees have been capped for the duration of this trail and any appeals, we believe now concentrating on this already well establish course of action will best serve SCO's shareholders. We look forward to the final resolution of this suit, and the opportunity to expand our SCOsource licensing revenue."

    About SCO

    The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX) helps millions of customers to grow their businesses everyday. Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide network of thousands of resellers and developers. SCO Global Services provides reliable localized support and services to partners and customers. For more information on SCO products and services, visit www.sco.com.

    SCO, and the associated SCO logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of The SCO Group, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. All other brand or product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used to identify products or services of, their respective owners.

    This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may vary materially from the expectations contained herein. The forward-looking statements contained herein include statements about the consummation of the transaction with SCO and benefits of the pending transaction with SCO. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described herein include the inability to obtain regulatory approvals and the inability to successfully integrate the SCO business. GNAA is under no obligation to (and expressly disclaims any such obligation to) update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

    • Sorry, but I got about 2/3 of the way through this before I realised this is not a parody. Funny and disturbing.

      • It is not real. I had to soil my harddrive by checking, but the last press release from SCO was:

        Jun 22, 2005 SCO Releases Major Upgrade With SCO OpenServer 6

        Found here. [sco.com]

        The scary thing is that most anyone can spin bad news just like SCO would. If you read enough BS coming out of Utah, eventually you know the pattern.

      • Opps, sorry. It was a parody. Shoulda made that clear at the end, I suppose. Guess I made it too "realistic"?

        I copied-n-pasted the "about sco" and forward looking statements from some real press releases.... so at least those parts were real.

  • SCO: Sorry Judge, we have the proof, but see it's on a WinFS computer right now, and see we kinda need more time. Cuz well, the computer is really far away see, and I tried to put it on this usb stick, but the computers here, close by, can't read WinFS yet. See? So we are going to kinda have to postpone this thingy until Longhorn....errr, I mean MS releases the WinFS updates. But in the meantime, can we kinda change our arguments, then we can come back to this later?

  • In other news: (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A woman astrologer in former Soviet Russia is suing SCO for giving the lawsuit game a bad image.

  • Sorry, Tears for Fears (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dark Coder ( 66759 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:45PM (#12989907)
    Short!
    Short!
    Let it ride out
    These are the things you can do without
    Come on
    I'm shorting on you
    Come on

    In crapping times
    You shouldn't have to pump up your stocks
    In up and downs
    We really ought to know
    Those one track minds
    That took you for a sucker boy
    Kiss your ass goodbye

    We shouldn't have to jump for joy
    but we will defintely will short your joy

    (Chorus)

    Unix gave you life
    And in return you gave them hell
    As cold as ice
    I hope you live to tell the tale
    I hope you live to tell the tale

    (Chorus)

    And when you've think you've got it locked
    IBM could wear you down
    We really love to break your heart
    We really love to break your heart

    (Chorus)
    • I'm not up to writing it, but that song gave me an idea for another song, about the tragedy of SCO stock never getting high enough to be shorted. It's been fluttering around $4 for a long time now, but it has to get over $5 before before it can be shorted.

      From SCO's perspective, it probably would have been just as well to have been delisted. I'm still not sure if getting delisted wasn't their real plan for this year, but they chickened out for some reason.

  • from the bench in this one. no evidence + inability to make the same argument twice + inability to do anything with the discovery evidence from the other party = goons without a case.

    SCO has no assets, no case, no future.

    so, I suppose, some pinhead dude from Wail Streak will start pumping SCO stock hard any day now. that is a sure sign, folks...

  • Compare and contrast (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:56PM (#12989970)
    The coverage that SCO got in the media when they claimed that Linux had stolen code in it was enormous. Not only did they get tons of coverage with a resulting boost to their stock price, but dozens of professional opinion expressers signed their NDA and gave statements to the effect that SCO's case was a slam dunk and that Linux was full of stolen code. Years later after yet another clear sign that SCO in fact has NO evidence, the press is almost entirely silent on the issue.

    So either noone cares that SCO basically used the press to execute a brilliant pump and dump scheme against the entire industry (which would be a notable story by itself), or the press has a definite anti-Linux bias. Either way, the press has a lot to answer for in this case.

    • Re:Compare and contrast (Score:2, Interesting)

      by OohAhh ( 745216 )
      There is another possibility. The press know they have been duped and don't dare admit it publically.
    • Maybe the so-called IT "press" was in on it. Most of the alleged IT "press" seems to be nothing more than MS sock puppets, ad-servers, lapdogs, and "yes men" and no more. Care to bet your mortgage payment they're not getting payola?
    • The press as a whole does not have it in for Linux. What they have is a desire to sell advertizing. To that end many "news stories" are written and published simply to generate traffic. The news that they printed something wrong is not traffic generating, so you never see that story (or, you see it like the old time newspapers used to report -- Monday's headline, page A1: GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL INVESTIGATED FOR CORRUPTION......Thursday followup, page G34, Government official cleared by panel.)

      Many (most?)

  • Brief synopsis (Score:5, Interesting)

    by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @07:59PM (#12989988)
    Groklaw [groklaw.net] has more indepth analysis on what was reported.

    Basically when Santa Cruz and IBM worked on the project known as Monterey in the late 90s, it was understood that both companies would use code developed from the joint venture in their products. SCO claims that IBM used the jointly developed code on Power based machines when the original agreement only specified that IBM could use it on Intel machines. They filed in October 2004 to change the claim to add this to the current suit. They wanted more discovery and time to pursue this new claim.

    In the current lawsuit, the deadline for changing the claim was February 2004. Under certain circumstances, a party can go beyond deadlines but only for "compelling reasons." SCO's compelling reason was (1) they "just discovered" this fact and (2) IBM filed a counterclaim (9th) that requires them to research it.

    IBM's answer to the court was convincing and many fold. They produce documents, emails, presentations, public announcements from Santa Cruz as far back as 1998 that describe how IBM was to use code from the joint project in Power. They also produce IBM public presentations, software documentation, and public announcements about the same thing. Finally they presented industry reports and discussions from tech magazines both online and offline from 2000 that discusses IBM's use of the code. IBM ironically points out that SCO provided some of this source material to IBM in the lawsuit filings.

    IBM's message is simple: (1) Santa Cruz knew. If SCO is the legal and corporate successor to Santa Cruz, then it is SCO's duty to know everything that Santa Cruz did. (2) Since SCO provided some of the material, SCO had to know since 2003 when they filed the lawsuit. (3) Even if SCO was totally clueless about Santa Cruz's materials and it's own filings, a simple search online up to 4 years ago would have uncovered the fact that IBM was going to use the code in Power.

    As far IBM's 9th Counterclaim, IBM chose to reduce/clarify the scope so that it was not as broad and SCO's new claim would have no relevance.

    On a side note, one of IBM's statements is interesting:

    Tellingly, in support of its contention that the addition of this new copyright infringement claim would not require extensive additional discovery, SCO purports in its current motion (and in its proposed complaint) to have already analyzed its own UnixWare/SVR4 code and IBM's AIX code and identified 245,026 specific lines of "copied and derived code" from UnixWare/SVR4 in IBM's AIX for Power Version 5.1.0 and 260,785 specific lines of "copied and derived code" from UnixWare/SVR4 in IBM's AIX for Power Version 5.2.0. At the same time, of course, SCO continues to maintain -- both in opposition to IBM's pending motion for summary judgment on IBM's Tenth Counterclaim and in support of SCO's discovery motions pending before Magistrate Judge Wells -- that SCO is unable, without significant additional discovery from IBM and potentially thousands of additional man-years of expert work, to identify the specific lines of "copied and derived code" from UNIX that it claims is present in Linux. Indeed, SCO argued before this Court and Judge Wells that it could not capably perform any code comparisons between UNIX and Linux in a reasonable time frame without access to more discovery from IBM (concerning AIX no less).

    SCO wanted to convince the judge that no more discovery would be necessary to add this new claim saying that they had already done a lot of work. But IBM asks the question: If they have compared our closed source AIX with their Unix, why do they claim they couldn't compare open source Linux with their Unix without our AIX source code?

    • Re:Brief synopsis (Score:2, Informative)

      by rm69990 ( 885744 )

      IBM didn't choose to limit their 9th counterclaim as you say, SCO took the counterclaim out of context.

      When the lawsuit first started, SCO attempted to terminate IBM's Unix license which allowed IBM to distribute AIX. Novell stepped in and gave IBM the go-ahead to continue to distribute AIX, which they were specifically allowed to do, regardless of whether or not they own the copyrights, by the Asset Purchase Agreement between Novell and Santa Cruz Operation (not the same as The SCO Group, 2 different com

  • I will be soooo glad when this is over.
  • When people bring up some "new" SCO "development".
  • Knowing they're going under, SCO has launched an effort to gather capital from people willing to bet on a long shot by starting this ridiculous action. They had good reason to suspect it'd work. Not that they'd win; chances were always slim for that. But the slim chances attracts the long shot bettors/investors. And with the influx of cash, the price goes up. And when the shit comes down, they'll be able to sell out at a higher price. Even the loser takes home a purse.

    I bet they're real nervous now. They p

  • Chinese solution: change group name (Score:3, Funny)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @06:58AM (#12992725)
    It's clear that the name of the holding group (Can o' pee) is unlucky and affecting the court case. To change the bad luck they need to change it to something with better resonances. The Can o' worms Group?

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