SCO Code to be Protected in Closed Court 493
An anonymous reader writes "SCO public relations director Blake Stowell today said that the company had secured permission to present the code alleged to have found its way into Linux to a closed court. Once again SCO is refusing to tell Linux users just what code they claim is infringing on their IP rights, while still threatening to sue corporations running Linux."
Scepticism is still called for (Score:5, Informative)
The question, of course, is whether the claim is true or not -- it is coming from SCO, after all. There's a good chance it could be true, though, because a big part of SCO's claim is for trade secret violations -- which require the alleged secret to, well, remain secret (disclosure does not effect copyright, but it does trade secrets). It only makes sense for them to seek a protective order, and it does not really effect the case from the judge's and lawyers' standpoint. But that doesn't make it suck any less for the rest of us who want to see the code for ourselves.
Re:fine by me (Score:2, Informative)
They're going to show it to IBM as well. Not to worry, IBM's army of blue-suited LawDrones will tear it apart line by line.
Re:Bad for Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This protects the court (Score:5, Informative)
Need that constant SCO fix?? (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, um, I think IBM's got it covered. (Score:2, Informative)
SCO FUDizing the pro-IBM protective order (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, this is typical SCO FUD and misrepresentation of the facts, and in this case, facts that are already old and well known to those following the case. SCO has not won any victory here; quite the contrary. The alleged code (if it exists at all) will almost certainly be available after some very standard legal procedures.
There is truly nothing to see here; zdnet got suckered by a SCO press release. Regrettable, as they should have known better by now, but aside from allowing Darl et. al. to defraud some day traders and invenstors for another few days, it really doesn't amount to anything at all.
These are the people behind the actions. (Score:5, Informative)
Darl C. McBride
Chris Sontag
Robert K. Bench
Reg Broughton
Sean Wilson
Larry Gasparro
Jeff Hunsaker
Ralph J. Yarro III
Steve Cakebread
Edward E. Iacobucci
R. Duff Thompson
Darcy Mott
K. Fred Skousen
Thomas P. Raimondi, Jr
If you see any of these people in years following the implosion of SCO, do not give them a job. Do not enter into contracts with them. Do not loan them your car. They have proven themselves incapable of planning for the future of a company and incapable of behaving like mature partners in the sphere of business. At a time when SCO desperately needs to be investing in research and development, these people are plunging the company into bankruptcy. They're taking a tremendous gamble with their shareholders money, a gamble which even if successful would only mean residuals on existing Linux implementations in the US, and a painful migration for everyone else to OpenBSD. They're betting everyone else's money on a long shot, and should be held accountable for their irresponsible actions.
Once again, those names are
Darl C. McBride
Chris Sontag
Robert K. Bench
Reg Broughton
Sean Wilson
Larry Gasparro
Jeff Hunsaker
Ralph J. Yarro III
Steve Cakebread
Edward E. Iacobucci
R. Duff Thompson
Darcy Mott
K. Fred Skousen
Thomas P. Raimondi, Jr
Re:Except that (Score:2, Informative)
Japan police arrest two P2P users [cnet.com]
There are around a quarter of a million users of the supposedly anonymous file-trading network, called Winny, which rides on the more well-known Freenet network.
Big Deal. (Score:3, Informative)
Taken directly from the SCO Linux IP License FAQ [sco.com].
15. Is SCO willing to show any examples of source-code violations to Linux users?
SCO has been showing examples of direct line-by-line copying of UNIX code into Linux to hundreds of industry analysts, reporters, customers, partners, and industry influencers since June of this year. To view this code, interested parties have had to sign a non-disclosure agreement verifying that they would keep this code in confidence. SCO continues to identify and show this code to parties willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
There you go, talk with SCO, sign the NDA and start grep'ing the source tree, then lets really see if SCO has anything.
Re:Rules of discovery... (Score:4, Informative)
All of the above is bad for SCO, good for IBM. As FreeUser insightfully observed above [slashdot.org], this is an attempt by SCO to spin a FUD web since they desperately wish for some good news.
steveha
You've bought SCO's bait-and-switch (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, another victim of SCO's dishonesty.
Look back over the case that SCO filed against IBM. SCO is not claiming that IBM ripped off code SCO wrote or already owned.
I want to say that again because it's the crux of SCO's lies: SCO is not claiming that IBM ripped off code that SCO wrote or already owned.
What SCO is claiming is that code that IBM wrote for SCO was also included in Linux, allegedly contrary to IBM's license.
Essentially, SCO is claiming IBM had a "no compete" clause somewhere in that license. I don't know if they did or not. Even if they did, I don't know if they contributed code to Linux in contravention of the clause.
But please let's not let SCO distort the question of fact: they have never claimed that pre-existing code owned by SCO was added to Linux. They have claimed that code was simultaneously added to Linux and (I think; somebody correct me here) AIX in violation of IBM's license with SCO.
Re:I was under the impression we could confront (Score:3, Informative)
The insiders are dumping their shares (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, there is some good reading over on Yahoo's finance pages. Several insiders have been selling off their stock continuously since SCO sued. [yahoo.com] While that isn't evidence of a pump-and-dump scam in itself, it is information that no serious investor can ignore. The insiders don't have any confidence that they can keep the share price this high. Let's review the numbers, shall we? (I've eliminated "Planned Sales" from my totals because they are generally reflected in the actual sales the same day, or a couple of days later.)
The grand totals are: 34,140 shares purchased through the exercise of options for $42,690.00. No purchases other than through options were reported. 184,440 shares were sold for a total of $2,468,103.00. That's sixe insiders who have been selling off their shares throughout the past few months. And according to the record of insider holdings [yahoo.com], these guys between them only owned about 380,000 shares as of the dates of their most recent transactions. They are getting their money out. To me, this smells very bad.
David Lyons @ forbes.com today (Score:2, Informative)
Daniel Lyons, 12.16.03, 12:30 PM ET
NEW YORK - In the real world, Brenda Banks is a 54-year-old grandmother in Greer, S.C., a former warehouse supervisor who teaches rubber-stamping arts and crafts classes. But online she transforms into "br3n," a passionate user of Linux software who cruises Web sites posting smash-mouth messages about SCO Group. So far Banks has posted more than 1,500 messages on SCO's Yahoo! message board alone--including five on Thanksgiving.
"I feel very strongly about it," says Banks, who runs Linux on a six-year-old Acer home computer. "They want to come and stab Linux. It's just not right."
Banks has joined thousands of others in a rag-tag Linux army dedicated to the destruction of SCO (nasdaq: SCOX - news - people ), the Lindon, Utah, company that last March sued IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ), claiming IBM put code from Unix, for which SCO holds some copyrights, into Linux, which is distributed for free. SCO also aims to collect license fees from companies that use Linux. IBM denies SCO's charges and has countersued. SCO also has been sued by Red Hat (nasdaq: RHAT - news - people ), a Linux distributor.
Linux crusaders insist SCO's claims have no merit and that SCO's evil managers will all end up in jail. They write to government agencies complaining about SCO, and some have even threatened to boycott the Royal Bank of Canada (nyse: RY - news - people ), one of SCO's investors. SCO's management has hired bodyguards after receiving death threats. Robert Enderle, an analyst who believes SCO's claims might be legitimate, says he and others also have been threatened, and says this "techno-insanity" verges on terrorism.
How do people get so emotionally involved with a piece of office equipment? "People are seeing something going on that they really consider evil," says Bruce Perens, a well-known Linux developer and independent consultant. "These people are just showing moral outrage."
Linux was developed collaboratively by thousands of people around the world, all working for free. Now some of those folks are becoming amateur legal researchers and financial sleuths too. Banks says she has complained about SCO to the Securities and Exchange Commission. "There's after-hours trading going on," she says. Isn't this common? "Not that I'm aware of." Moreover, sometimes SCO shares drop during the day, then rise in after-hours trading. "That raises alarm bells," she says. "Maybe there are some preference trades going on." And what are preference trades? "I don't know," she says.
Much of the rhetoric is ordinary cheerleading: "we will WIN. sco is TOAST," Banks wrote recently on Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ). But sometimes it gets ugly, as when Banks and others refer to Laura DiDio, a market research analyst who is unpopular among Linux fans, as "Dildio." Says Banks: "I don't associate 'Dildio' with anything bad, and I think someone's mind has to be in the gutter to associate it with that. No offense."
Says DiDio of her tormentors, who swamp her with hateful email and "report" her to her supervisors at Boston-based Yankee Group: "Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux. These people are living in an alternative reality."
One poster, "korbomite," on SCO's Yahoo! message board has posted more than 3,100 messages to the board and says he is "single-mindedly working to destroy this company," though he won't give his real name. Another frequent poster, who requested anonymity, says he has stored evidence against SCO on CDs and stashed them in safe-deposit boxes scattered around his state "just in case." He says he has shared his evidence with the SEC and other government agencies.
Some in this camp are so angry that in December, when SCO said hackers had attacked its Web site, Linux zealots suggested SCO was staging the attacks itself. "If there is an attack, where is the proof? Did SCO...attack itself?" wrote Pamela Jones, a White Plains, N.Y. paralegal who runs a Web site called Groklaw which is d
Re:Except that (Score:5, Informative)
"The creator of Freenet, Ian Clarke, has cast doubt on whether Winny uses Freenet's full identity-cloaking features or its cryptography, according to a report in New Scientist."
Evidence? (Score:3, Informative)
The supreme court of the US has not ruled on EULA's specifially to my knowledge, I'd love to see evidence to the contrary.
Here's [bitlaw.com] a decision where a particular EULA was upheld, and also ruled that EULAs can, in general, be legal (generally) so long as the buyer has recourse to refuse the additional terms.
Again, EULA's can be legal, though it doesn't mean that every EULA is legal.
Not by the court (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You've bought SCO's bait-and-switch (Score:2, Informative)