Posted on 09/18/2004 9:52:30 AM PDT by ShadowAce
"SCO is chafing badly under the propaganda war it's losing to Groklaw," writes Maureen O'Gara, who describes Groklaw as "the pro-IBM Web site that's following its $5 billion case against IBM."
Her controversial report continues:
SCO and its legal A-Team of Boies and Silver want the world to start seeing the case the way they see it and are going to file a motion asking the court to unseal most of the documents that are currently under seal.
What it wants aired are IBM's e-mails, which they think tell a killer story about AIX, Dynix and Project Monterey.
SCO says that by the end of the month it is also going to amend its contract suit against IBM - SCO's suit last time we looked was a contract case although that fact sometimes gets lost - and include the Monterey Project based on evidence that turned up in the discovery that IBM has provided so far.
Near as we can piece together, SCO intends to charge IBM with fraud.
Supposedly sometime in the first half of 2000 IBM made a course correction to Linux and way from Monterey, which was the IBM-SCO-Intel initiative to move AIX to the Itanium, a project that Sequent and Dynix ultimately got bolted on to too. It was, as we recall, supposed to be the (as in THE) mainstream operating system.
However, after IBM decided to back Linux, it supposedly concocted a scheme to put out an Itanium product, then kill it immediately, thinking that if it did that it would trigger some licensing rights - that were allegedly non-existent, according to SCO - to use Monterey code for Power and thereby have a product they could use against Sun.
See, IBM was on Unix System 3 and Sun was on System V and IBM needed to catch up, but, according to SCO, didn't want to pay SCO for it, hence the new charges. Supposedly SCO never knew any of this before it stumbled over it in IBM's discovery.
SCO has also finally decided to set up a site of its own to house all the myriad legal documents the suit has created so people won't have to go to Groklaw and read its anti-SCO philippics.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday District Court Judge Dale Kimball sat through three-and-a-half hours worth of oral arguments on four motions in the SCO-IBM case the most substantive of which - as near as we can figure out - was IBM's eye-crossing cross-motion for partial summary judgment on its claim for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement.
At the risk of practicing law without a license - and with due reverence for Cravath, Swaine's abilities to move the ball even you're look plum at it - this motion and its little friends look like one of those red herrings that may fetch IBM a lot of PR yardage, but may not ultimately score a touchdown.
IBM's premise started with asking the court to declare Linux free of any SCO copyright claims. Again near as we can figure out given all the easily misleading legal talk, Cravath, Swaine's boys, IBM's lawyers, modified their position at the hearing the other day and simply asked Judge Kimball to rule that the widgetry IBM contributed to Linux didn't infringe on any claimed SCO copyrights.
Well, now, Cravath, Swaine accomplished that maneuver quite nicely - with help from some stylistic faux pas by SCO's side - and will probably win that round for all we know - but darned if we can remember SCO ever charging IBM with that.
The only copyright charge we remember SCO making has to do with IBM continuing to distribute AIX after SCO claims it pulled its AIX license.
However, if IBM does win its motion, then it - or its factotums - will be able to claim victory and seek to reassure users to keep on buying Linux.
Anyway, Judge Kimball decided to give this and the other three motions he heard a think and postponed his decision. Then he took a stab at ending the discovery deadlock between IBM and SCO - having previously refused to discuss SCO's myriad complaints about IBM's refusing to turn over discovery - and told IBM to turn in its reply to SCO's latest motions trying to shake the CVMC source tree out of IBM by Wednesday, September 22 and told SCO to file its reply to whatever IBM has to say two days later on September 24. After that, the ball will be in the judge's court.
SCO/IBM case ping
All you have to know about this story is that the SCO/M$ legal team trying to ill Linux is led by Boies.
At the rate that SCO is hemmoraging money, they are going to need another quarter billion from M$ to keep the phony suits alive.
> Maureen's at it again
No kidding. If you compare her take on the hearing to:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2004091519471739
you have to wonder what courtroom she's talking about.
Thanks for that link.
Above link came from the comments section of Groklaw.
I dont understand what all the fuss is about. I design high end electronics, use DOS 5.0, and haven't turned off or rebooted my computer in over ten years. What gives? ;)
10 years???
Now that is amazing.
I have parts in and out of my machine about every other day.
Hwell yes, no newfangled Pentiums for me, strickly a 8086 man. Who needs more than 16 bits anyways?
;0)
OK, guess you won't be trying the new AMD64 processors...but that's OK>
ROFL!
Got me a water cooled machine overclocked to 8 MHz. baby.
Now you're talking.
Thanks for the ping, much appreciated.
SCO and its legal A-Team... are going to file a motion asking the court to unseal most of the documents that are currently under seal.
Uh, yeah, that'll fly. See the Protective Order.
SCO says that by the end of the month it is also going to amend its contract suit against IBM...
... since the current suit ain't working out very well...
... after IBM decided to back Linux, it supposedly concocted a scheme to put out an Itanium product, then kill it immediately, thinking that if it did that it would trigger some licensing rights - that were allegedly non-existent, according to SCO - to use Monterey code for Power and thereby have a product they could use against Sun.
See, IBM was on Unix System 3 and Sun was on System V and IBM needed to catch up, but, according to SCO, didn't want to pay SCO for it, hence the new charges. Supposedly SCO never knew any of this before it stumbled over it in IBM's discovery.
Yeah, I visited this issue before. It didn't get any traction in Forbes, and now Darl is dredging it up again. Anything to stretch out the case.
IBM's premise started with asking the court to declare Linux free of any SCO copyright claims. Again near as we can figure out given all the easily misleading legal talk, Cravath, Swaine's boys, IBM's lawyers, modified their position at the hearing the other day and simply asked Judge Kimball to rule that the widgetry IBM contributed to Linux didn't infringe on any claimed SCO copyrights.
Uh, try 18 May 2004... that's the date on the cross-motion... and it hasn't been amended.
Maureen is still lapping up whatever Darl and Brent are pouring into the bowl. SCO is terrified that IBM will win the PSJ, and is trying to spin.
" SCO and its legal A-Team... are going to file a motion asking the court to unseal most of the documents that are currently under seal."
IIRC wasn't it SCO that asked for this stuff to be under seal to begin with??
I would expect IBM to oppose any SCO motions to unseal IBM's exhibits or any confidential material under the Protective Order. SCO would also have to convince the judge to go along with it.
They're not supposed to be trying this case in the press.
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