This is a case I have been following and this ruling is one that I have awaited and hoped the judge would rule this way. (Case is followed on
Groklaw)
Summary of the case to date:
The SCO Group begins public claims that Linux contains stolen SCO code. The SCO Group begins to blame IBM and takes IBM to court (claiming
billions in damages). Three years of discovery passes and The SCO Group is
finally compelled to specifically say what IBM (allegedly) did. The details are in a sealed document. IBM asks for roughly 200 of nearly 300 accusations to be dropped as they are not specific enough and it is too late to become specific (this was the 3rd and final time The SCO Group was ordered by the judge to provide this info - they didn't the first 2 times).
This is about things in the Linux source code which anyone can download an examine freely why does it need to be sealed?
Link to full articleLink to PDF of judges rulingVery limited quote below:
A willful failure has been defined as "any intentional failure as distinquished from involuntary noncompliance. No wrongful intent need be shown." In contrast, "The courts that have concluded that the failure to comply with a discovery order was not willful have emphasized the inability of the eparty to comply with the order."
There is no evidence before the court to indicate that SCO lacked the ability to comply with the court's orders. In fact, given SCO's own public statements outlilned in part supra, it would appear that SCO had more than enough evidence to comply with the court's orders.
In December 2003, near the beginning of this case, the court ordered SCO to, "identify and state with specificity the source code(s) that SCO is claiming form the basis of their action against IBM." Even if SCO lacked the code behind methods and concepts at this early stage, SCO could have and should have, at least articulated which methods and concetps formed "the basis of their action against IBM." At a minimum, SCO should have identified the code behind their methods and conceptws in the final submission pursuant to this original order entered in December 2003 ane Judge Kimball's order entered in July 2005.
In essence much of the case is gutted and The SCO Group has been whacked on the knuckles and given warning that they must follow the rules.
Early quotes from the judges in the case "not a single shred of evidence has been presented" (not an exact quote but made about 2 years into the case and was about The SCO Groups claims of copyright infringement). "Is that all you've got" when finally presented with The SCO Groups actual complaints against IBM (almost 300 but little in the way of detail to them).
Here is a very good quote from the current ruling:
The court finds SCO's arguments unpersuasive. SCO's arguments are akin to SCO telling IBM sorry we are not going to tell you what you did wrong because you already know. ... Given the amount of code that SCO has received in discovery, the court finds it inexcusable that SCO is in essence still not placing all the details on the table. Ceritainly if an individual was stopped and accused of shoplifting after walking out of Neiman Marcus they would expect to be eventually told what they allegedly stole.
This is a good description of much of the case where The SCO Group has been claiming they don't need to tell IBM what they are accused of as IBM (being guilty) knows what they did. Innocent until proven guilty does not seem to be part of The SCO Groups legal principles (if any). The SCO Group is following the same "we won't tell you tactic" in another case VS Novel where they won't tell Novell what law they have supposedly broken.
SCO's Public Statements
As repeatedly noted by IBM, concurrent with SCO's court filed allegations has been SCO's siren song sounding the strength of its case to the public. At a trade show in 2003 SCO shared with the public a presentation outlining SCO's claims against IBM.9 SCO identified four categories of alleged isappropriation:
(1) literal copying ("line-for-line code copied from System V into Linux kernels 2.4+");
(2) derivative works which arose from "modifications of System V created by vendors contributed to Linux kernels 2.4+ in violation of contracts";
(3) obfuscation ("copying, pasting, removing legal notices, reorganizing the order of the programming structures");
(4) non-literal transfers ("methods, structures and sequence from System V contributed to Linux kernels 2.4+").
Finally, in the presentation SCO also gave "one example of many" of line by line copying between the System V Code and Linux kernel code.
The line by line copying shown was (If I recall correctly) copied by an audience member and retyped into a PC where it was then converted from a wingdings font to a normal font (that was how The SCO Group encrypted it by changing the font). At which point it was demonstrated to be from BSD and legally copied to Linux.
The SCO Groups theory of derivitive works is "If anything like it ever touches UNIX we control it". So when IBM migrated things into their Unix from OS2 then to Linux according to the theory IBM lost control over it as the moment it touched Unix it became a derivitive of Unix. The law does not agree with The SCO group definition.
Topic: The SCO Group vs IBM - judge takes weed whacker to SCO claims. (Read 13837 times)