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shawnmmcc
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Urban Ranger, it's why technically based people often loathe lawyers, and accountants. My father, a control systems engineer and later on executive at Foster Wheeler Corp (since retired) came home after one series of meetings in a foul mood. He had to explain, taking up an entire day, to the accountants the a two sensor tell-me twice safety system (the normal is three sensor) made the safety system LESS RELIABLE than even one sensor. I don't even want to consider the salaries that were sitting around that table, it concerned a full-fledged industrial complex. By the way, impressed by Ned or the fact I'm planning to be a gadfly on the local school board  ?
That's why I suspected Ned had not done any coding, because his statements reflect a legal versus programmer paradigm. Though interestly enough, just getting a degree in IT at the Bachelors level doesn not gurantee real world coding, or anything outside of course work. After you right and debug your first few thousand lines of code on a deadline, you attitude changes. My last coding was on an IBM 360, or writing 4000 lines of code in Apple Basic for a commercial application (now I can't flirt with Alinistra either ) . I've done some database work since then, but no genuine coding.
I've enjoyed reading this, and will save this forum along with the excellent exchange on PRC vs. Taiwan. Ned distills the legal profession/SCO attitude very succinctly, and you, Wraith, and Q-Cubed have saved me a bunch of research!
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:32
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--"As long as this keeps up, and keeps mid-sized businesses from adopting Linux, MS is smiling all the way to the bank."
This may backfire on them, if this is the case. If this case drags out too much longer, the GPL may get upheld in court. This is a particularly good scenario for a GPL test, as the opponent is a small, noisy, and fairly slimy looking company attacking one of the biggest companies around. It hardly looks like a fair fight (IBM probably has more IP lawyers on retainer than SCO has employees).
--"This requires that SCO actually record the assignment of copyright from Novell and to register the copyright in the UNIX code."
There is a time limit on how long you can wait to file copyright and then try to enforce it. Considering that some of the code SCO has published as "stolen" before was over thirty years old public-domain code, I still have very large doubts about any potential claims they could bring.
--"The SCO site is now down, http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5119434.html, because of a hacker attack. "
They've made this claim before. The odd part is that, in all but one of the cases, their upstream provider hasn't had any knowledge of such an attack.
It will be amusing to see just what level of all the above makes it into their court case. This has been their main credibility problem so far; they make amazing claims in the press, and refuse to back any of it up in court (most of it they haven't even brought up in court). This kind of "believe what I say, not what I do" behavior certainly does nothing to establish credibility.
The bottom line is they've been claiming, for months now, to have proof of IBM's wrongdoings. They've been in discovery in court for a few months, and have yet to bring any evidence forward; on the contrary, in fact, they've been doing everything they can possibly do to stall things (including filling documents just past the deadline). How can anyone take them seriously at this point?
Esecially when you notice that the MS licensing deal has put them into profit for the first time in ages, and Darl gets a huge bonus if he can keep it up for one more quarter...
Wraith
"Cooper, you remind me today of a small Mexican Chihuahua."
-- Cole ("Twin Peaks")
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shawnmmcc
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Okay, Ned, I sit corrected (by the way, I was wondering if the programming and aerospace would be tied in - was trolling).
So you can still flirt with Alinestra. 
I agree, from having watched the IT cases unfold reference MS, that this is the typical dance. However, usually it's the big company using the legal system to tie-up and stymie the smaller companies business and/or patents/copyrights. That's why so many people are puzzled by SCO. They initiated this attack on the local HUMONGOUS frog, have made the Serbs look like PR experts, and don't fit the profile of either aggreived little company (all the secondary suits/threats getting other IT companies/people pissed) or big nasty legal system abuser. Since they don't fit the profile, and they are stalling, it is guaranteed to produce all of this speculation.
Plus, they actually are instigating it. The number of businesses and IT professionals affected by SCO's claims are staggering. Since a critical part of any conflict is knowing your opponents strategy, and even better yet his underlying motivation, it actual requires this speculation. Hey, if nothing else it's made something besides computer games and Microsoft ongoing (in the computer industry) news. My bets are on IBM and the Linux community.
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:32
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--"Wraith, It is very typical in IP suits"
But SCO keeps saying this is a contract suit, not an IP suit. There's been no copyright or patent claims made so far, at least not outside of press releases. SCO has continually (generally, whenever the stock prices started to dip; you can pretty much chart their press releases by looking at a graph of the stock price and predicting one every dip) made loud and extreme statements about all this proof they have, but they won't show it to IBM. Notice that they've already been showing some kind of "proof" to people in the press, they just won't give it to the court.
--"Anything they say can and will be used against them during trial. "
Which is why it was so surprising to see Darl's brother represent them in the discovery motions hearing. He made a couple of off-the-cuff remarks that are going to haunt Boies later (including, IIRC, one about there being no trade secrets in SYSV).
--"apparently the cause of the attack is a well-known vulnerability"
You can look at their netcraft chart as well. That's not what a DDoS would look like from the outside. It looks more like someone pulled the wrong cable out of the wall, or SCO set their firewall to block the web server's IP.
Sadly, the best way this can be interpreted for SCO is simple and utter incompetence (not a good thing for an OS vendor, although it never seems to hurt Microsoft), but it looks more like a smear campaign. Hopefully Red Hat will subpoena their server logs and hammer them with more libel claims if they're faking it.
--"sco actually has very few people comparatively running on its software"
He probably meant all of SCO's anti-linux claims.
Wraith
Strip mining prevents forest fires.
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:32
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--"Yes, the netscraft chart puzzles me as well..."
They were incredibly quick on the draw with their press releases, as well. I haven't double-checked this, but it looks like their first press releases must have made it into media hands before the "attack" started.
It actually looks like a regular planned maintenance. Their site has gone from "linux/apache" on Netcraft to "unkown/apache". In addition, the content of their site has changed; most of the material related to the IBM case has dissapeared.
Some of the recent speculation is that SCO is laying the groundwork for a "hackers ate my homework" excuse for delaying discovery. IBM should be taking note of this. Since SCO claimed, in the press, that they were working with their ISP and law enforcement on this, IBM can go ask "did SCO talk to you about this?" (their ISP's reaction was basicaly "what DDoS?")
--"It is clear that the reason they did not bring pure copyright infringement counts heretofore is related to the fact that it did not own the copyrights;"
Hehe. This doesn't seem odd to you at all? "We don't own these copyrights, but lets sue someone over infringing on them anyway?" What kind of lawyer would actually take a case like that?
--"I got a message that they had been DDos by the slash dot crowd."
Slashdot is a very popular news site for computer geeks. It has also generated something called "the Slashdot effect" thanks to this viewership. When a story is posted on Slashdot with a link to a site, that site is suddenly hit with a huge amount of requests (note: legit ones). Very few sites are prepared for this, and many go down under the sudden load.
Think of it like running a small corner store, and one day it suddenly catches attention for some reason and you suddenly get 100 times the usual customers.
Wraith
"Anyone who hates dogs and kids can't be all bad."
-- W. C. Fields
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10-12-2003 20:11
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