SCO Having a Hard Time In Court

jamienk writes "The beginning of the end is in sight. SCO has been reprimanded for the second day in a row by a second judge in their campaign against Linux. Basically, Judge Wells ruled that SCO's vague claims of IP infringement will not be allowed to be heard in court, since it was all clearly a poor attempt at avoiding showing any evidence. Next, SCO will face compelling counterclaims against it by IBM." From the article: "At issue was whether SCO would be allowed to sneak in new allegations and evidence in its experts' reports that it failed to put on the table openly in its Final Disclosures, in effect, as IBM described it, reinventing its case at the eleventh hour. The answer today was no, it won't be allowed to do that. IBM had asked for this relief: 'Insofar as SCO's proposed expert reports exceed the Final Disclosures, they should be stricken.' More details will be arriving in a while, but assuming the early reports are accurate, we may assume that this is what the Judge has ordered." This is a follow-up to a story we discussed yesterday.

Re:Who has a clear timeline?

[venicebeach]

Part of this week's ruling was that the IBM-SCO case will not be heard until Novell vs SCO is taken care of. So the trial date for IBM/SCO has not been set yet:

It appears that judicial economy and the interests of all the parties will be best served by trying the Novell case-set to begin on September 17, 2007-prior to the instant action. After deciding the pending dispositive motions in this case, and after deciding the dispositive motions in Novell, which should be fully briefed in May 2007, the court will set a trial date for any remaining claims in this action. The pending dispositive motions will be heard on the following dates: Thursday, March 1, 2007 (3:00pm-5:00pm); Monday, March 5, 2007 (2:30pm-5:00pm); and Wednesday, March 7, 2007 (2:30pm-5:00pm). The parties are directed to submit a proposal by no later than January 12, 2007, setting forth the most efficient sequence for hearing the motions, with both parties having equal time on each motion.

Re:Sure glad

[kimvette]

Sad to see, as SCO was once a respectable company in Santa Cruz, CA.

The current SCO is a different company than the the old SCO (Santa Cruz Organization) to which you refer.

http://www.answers.com/topic/tarantella-inc-1 [answers.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantella%2C_Inc [wikipedia.org].

The new SCO is pure evil and I would not be surprised to learn that Darl McBride is a pedophile and baby eater, and that he kicks newborn puppies for fun.

Re:Three's the charm!

[mean pun]

This is a great story! Let's see it posted three times to slashdot! Everybody submit the story from a different angle!

By a strange coincidence, you're the third one to say this, and your angle is indeed different from the other ones. Unfortunately, all of you have overlooked the juicy bit of this news item, buried deeply in the /. text:

SCO has been reprimanded for the second day in a row by a second judge in their campaign against Linux.

If one SCO disaster is newsworthy, two disasters in as many days surely is also newsworthy.

Re:Er, dupe?

[KokorHekkus]

No, no dupe. First story was about Judge Kimball affirming an order Judge Wells maid (the striking a lot of evidence) and this story is about a hearing that Judge Wells held today.

SCOX: Down, Down, Down it goes....

[Picass0]

1:06 EST SCOX 1.21 Down 39.50%

SCOX down 40% today

[Animats]

SCO's stock went into a screaming dive [yahoo.com] today. It's down 40% today on heavy trading, about 20x the normal volume. The mainstream business press has picked up the story, and, this time, there's no ambiguity.

• "SCO Losing Case Over Linux Code" - Associated Press [yahoo.com] "Kimball gave Wells' reasoning his full support Thursday, finding that SCO had deliberately failed to show any proof of its claims."
• "SCO Gets TKO'ed" - Forbes [forbes.com] "The judges seem to be growing frustrated with SCO. For years, the company has gone around making outlandish claims--including many to Forbes--about IBM stealing huge amounts of code from Unix. Yet SCO has never shown any evidence to back up its claims."
• "Investors Abandon SCO" [forbes.com] "Investors fled SCO Group's stock on Friday, voting with their feet after a federal judge gutted its lawsuit against IBM. "

Forbes seems to have really had it with SCO. Much of SCO's early FUD appeared in Forbes articles, which now makes Forbes look bad.

Re:Sure glad

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a Caldera employee up until the acquisition of SCO. After the acquisition, SCO was used to remove most of the redundant departments at Caldera. I jumped ship when I realized SCO was taken over. Along with Ransom Love and many of my former coworkers, we saw what was happening. SCO was struggling with declining revenue and it led to an easy acquisition by Caldera. Once that happened, the old Caldera was mostly gutted and replaced by the newly acquired SCO employees. The few Caldera employees left were of the quality that you see now. With the declining revenue of the new Unix kernel and the slow decline in popularity of OpenLinux (eDesktop, eServer, etc.), it appears that those left chose to try litigation as a business model.

Posted A/C for the obvious reason...

It was still bad

[Anonymous Coward]

While the old SCO certainly wasn't as bad as the current one, they were still bad. The Michels boys were just as crooked as they could be. For years, they didn't issue stock, until they had products and cash coming in. Instead, they just issued promises that they'd "take care of you". That they did, by issuing significantly less stock to the original employees than is normal for a startup. But they didn't care. Once they had product, they didn't need the orginal employees as much, and so they gave the original crew the shaft.

This is also the second time that SCO has worked with Microsoft to shut down *NIX competition. Here's a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microport#Application s [wikipedia.org]

Fortunately they failed, as Microport later helped the FSF put gcc on the 386 by giving them a free copy of UNIX.

Then there was the sexual harassment which went one (resulting in two lawsuits, as reported in the Press), and the guy they drove out of business who was dumb enough to give them an exclusive - after which they deliberately refrained from selling the software or letting him out of their contract. And the CEO saying that they'd steal as much as they wanted from Linux. And more and more.

The point is that crooked business practices has been the norm for SCO throughout its history, with few exceptions.

It's far more honest to say that the original SCO was rotten too; just not as rotten as the current version.

Re:SCOX down 40% today

[Soko]

Wonder if Rob Enderle has, too.

From http://www.technewsworld.com/story/opinion/33529.h tml [technewsworld.com]:

SCO has just over US$60 million in resources to sustain it while it fights IBM (NYSE: IBM) Latest News about IBM in what clearly is one of the most volatile wars in the history of technology. What has been very interesting is that SCO publicly has been given almost no chance of winning, while privately the company has convinced several folks, including me, that it has a strong chance.

Enjoy your crow dinner, Rob. For desert is Humble Pie.

Soko

Compare Lyons from 2003 and 2006

[Dr. Manhattan]

"SCO Gets TKO'ed" [forbes.com] - Forbes "The judges seem to be growing frustrated with SCO. For years, the company has gone around making outlandish claims--including many to Forbes--about IBM stealing huge amounts of code from Unix. Yet SCO has never shown any evidence to back up its claims."

Compare that article to this one from when the whole SCO fiasco was getting started [forbes.com]. Same author, you'll note - very different attitude. I love the hilarity of juxtaposing the titles of the two articles. Back then Lyons was calling Linux advocates and users "crunchies" - now he just calls them "fans" and says things like "companies... have built booming businesses around Linux."

Not that he'll get called on the hypocrisy or anything.

Re:Right after the MS-Novel deal .. coincidence ?

[DannyO152]

Um. Boies prosecuted Microsoft in the anti-trust trial. He didn't get reprimanded in that trial, but there are other trials where he ran afoul of ethics and was called on it.

Re:So can someone answer something for me?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is NO "new material".

What SCO tried to sneak in after the close of the discovery phase was "expert" witness reports that broadened the scope of the original claims, to which IBM objected and Judge Kimball ruled on (in IBM's favor) yesterday.

What Judge Kimball correctly recognized was that trying to nail down SCO's claims was like trying to hit a moving target. The evidence that Judge Wells disallowed was ingeneously called "claims" by SCO in order to get past the fact (ie., evidence) discovery deadline.

If SCO has any new real evidence, they will have to ask for a new trial, not an appeal. Judge Kimball is working his hardest (de novo review) to make sure that there can be no appeal.

Even if SCO lasts that long.

Re:One cloud on this silver lining

[wrook]

They don't need to dump their stock at this point in time. They never paid for it in the first place, so there isn't any loss.

Remember that the principles involved are mostly trading "stock options". They are granted the right to buy stock at a certain price, and can then sell it for whatever the market will bear. They don't, however, *have* to pay for it at all if the stock isn't "in the money" (i.e., selling for more than the option strike price).

No, the time to dump the stock was at 14 or 15 dollars (and there was *plenty* of dumping going on). At $2, it's hang on until the inevitable crash.