SCO Having a Hard Time In Court 120
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.
Sure glad (Score:2, Insightful)
The end is in sight and will probably mean the dissolution of SCO assets as the company folds up and dies, since this was a last gasp ploy to hit a litigation jackpot of billions of $ from IBM, et al.
Sad to see, as SCO was once a respectable company in Santa Cruz, CA.
Re:Er, dupe? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is completely wrong!
The CLAIMS will be heard in court. However, most of the EVIDENCE (or lack of) to back those claims has been ruled inadmissable because SCO did not comply with the court's order regarding specificity (show us the code!).
One cloud on this silver lining (Score:4, Insightful)
Many posters recently pointed out that they thought this was a stock pumping scam designed to get the stock up on the possibility of getting a large settlement from IBM. Now that the chances of that happening are slimmer and slimmer, what would you bet that before these announcements, important execs at SCO dumped their stock?
I hope not. They should burn like the Enron execs should have burned.
Re:the ruling should have been . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
To all those who are scoffing at (and downmodding) our cries of "Dupe!", please PAY ATTENTION:
Re:Right after the MS-Novel deal .. coincidence ? (Score:3, Insightful)
They could explain it, it's just that neither side wants to. If you add up the money exchanged, the net result was that MS paid Novell some $300 million, which means MS was buying something. MS thought it was worth $300 million to create the speculation of legal trouble with Linux (as you said), but they don't benefit if they make a big deal out of the fact that they had to pay for Novell's cooperation, so they pretended to be buying protection from Novell. Novell thought $300 million was a nice chunk of cash, but they look sleezy if they admit that they were that easily bought out and cooperating with a FUD attack, so they took the money and then put a backspin on the story.
What makes you think he's being hypocritical? (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes you think he's being hypocritical?
The previous article was written over three years ago. At the time WE may have known (or suspected) that SCO was talking through its hat, but The Suits, and the reporters that served them, had little such knowlege.
SCO talked a good line, while Open Source was a newcomer to business, of questionable utility, promoted by people who looked like "a bunch of socialist hippies" who didn't respect "intellectual property" and the related legal framework. Sure the OSS people SAID there was no proprietary Unix IP in Linux - deliberately or accidentally. But SCO (then repuatble) said otherwise.
Now we've had the SCO v. IBM trial (where it's clear that the issues are VERY important for business). That has given three plus years of education (so far) to those who are following it. (This is the JOB of news article authors such as Lions, who write these pieces to convey such information to executives, who need to get it RIGHT for their own multi-billion-dollar decision-making.) And so far SCO has shown itself to be blowing smoke, while IBM has shown Linux to be on solid IP ground.
So of COURSE the article NOW will be much different from the article THEN.
It would have been hypocracy if Lions had written the two articles back-to-back, with the same knowlege and mindset while writing both. But the Lions of today is a more educated man on this issue than the Lions of three plus years ago. So the contrast in the articles reflects his intelligence, integrity, and honesty - not hypocracy.
Re:What makes you think he's being hypocritical? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that now Lyons specifically states that SCO never produced any evidence. And even then the "noisy fanatics" (his words) were producing evidence that SCO was flat wrong.
Now he just sort of mumbles, "Gee, SCO was just flapping gums" without actually acknowledging that he was a prominent FUD disseminator himself, and they didn't - even then - back up their claims, to him or anyone else. I'd think at least a small apology would be in order.