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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 07:57 PM EDT

This is a sorry tale for those of you who think the First Amendment to the US Constitution and freedom of the press actually mean something important. It's a story that I've just learned about myself. But it's a true story. SCO tried to gag Groklaw back in 2004.

It wanted Groklaw placed under a gag order, so it couldn't cover the SCO litigation any more. It also wanted Linus Torvalds, Eben Moglen, and Eric Raymond to be prevented from commenting publicly about the litigation.

I just found out because IBM has just filed its opposition [PDF] to SCO's motion to intimidate Groklaw or whatever that motion is literally called, about SCO wanting discovery in the IBM litigation opened up again to include my deposition taken in the Novell case despite discovery being over for more than a year in IBM. Oh, and there has been no subpoena delivered and no deposition. And IBM now clearly tells the court this about Groklaw and the proposed deposition:

More than a year after the close of fact discovery, SCO seeks to take the deposition of a third-party, Pamela Jones, whose proposed testimony SCO has not shown (and cannot show) to be relevant to this case. SCO does so despite the fact (nowhere mentioned by SCO) that the Court already ruled that it would not entertain a motion to re-open deposition discovery....

In support of its motion, SCO insinuates that there is an untoward connection between Ms. Jones and IBM.... This is false. SCO offers no support for its accusations, and there is none.

None. Get it? None means none. False means false. Then it mentions a letter, attached to IBM's memo, a most remarkable letter [PDF] from Darl McBride's lawyer brother, Kevin McBride, to an IBM attorney, Todd Shaughnessy, dated February 11, 2004.

IBM talks about the letter, when making the point that SCO could have deposed me back when discovery was still open and it never tried, despite Groklaw covering the litigation among other issues since the spring of 2003. IBM writes:

SCO has been falsely accusing IBM of being behind Groklaw from essentially Groklaw's beginning. (See, e.g., SCO Letter dated February 11, 2004 (accusing IBM of providing funding to Groklaw)(Addendum C hereto).)

The context for the letter was that apparently the Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells had expressed that she was concerned about all the PR being fed to the media. Pop quiz: which litigant might she have meant:

a) "We have a mountain of evidence" SCO?

- or -

b) "We have no comment" IBM?

So SCO sent a letter about the possibility of a stipulated gag order. As you may have observed, when SCO is criticized, its response very often is, "You're another." And the letter seriously suggests that Groklaw should be gagged. And Linus and Eric and Eben also. Why should we all be gagged? Because in SCO's mysterious mind, IBM must be funding all of us in some ways it couldn't quite figure out, but to them we were all IBM puppets, so if SCO had to stop talking, then so did we. Linus Torvalds, folks. An IBM puppet? Puh-lease.

In the case of Groklaw, SCO's story goes, someone told SCO that Groklaw was "conceived and launched by" ibiblio:

Of principal concern is the Groklaw website. It appears that Groklaw was conceived and launched by ibiblio.org in response to SCO's original filing against IBM.... We have been told that IBM is a sponsor of Groklaw and/or its parent organization ibiblio.org. If so, the Court has a right to know this in considering the scope of any order regarding litigation-related public statements in this case.

So there you have it. The devil made me do it. Or was it the Easter Bunny? I forget. As for Linus, SCO said he should stop commenting on the litigation because he was:

... employed by the Open Source Development Labs ("OSDL"), which is funded principally by IBM. Because of Mr. Torvalds' position in the technology world, his comments about SCO's evidence in this case are given particular weight in industry and popular press.

Well, we certainly can't have someone who actually knows who wrote Linux and what is in it and who has been directly attacked by SCO repeatedly in the media talking about this litigation or defending himself!

That is what the letter says. I know. Obviously, nothing happened, and we're all still kicking and still talking. What is the why of all this? I think it's simply this: SCO couldn't accuse IBM of talking to the media, because they were very restrained, so SCO cooked up these allegations against us passersby. For sure that is all I am. If SCO had to stop commenting, its plan was that everyone who knows anything about the facts be gagged. Of course, IBM tells the court, in footnote 6, ibiblio is "a research project, which has hosted many websites." Including SCO documentation, actually, as I earlier pointed out. As for OSDL, IBM tells the court:

During this lawsuit, the OSDL has been comprised of more than 75 members, including SCO.

So, here's a headline for any gullible journos out there:

PJ secretly funded by SCO

No? Too silly? But IBM said it. Will you now write articles about IBM secretly funding Linus? [ Update: Unbelievably, someone actually did.] Don't you have to report without bias what parties to litigation tell you? I pointed out the flaw in so-called "unbiased" reporting back when SCO was falsely accusing the Linux community of MyDoom:

Some in the press covered it straight-faced, as they always do when Darl says anything.

If they were covering Jesus Christ's trial, it'd be:

A spokesman for Pontius Pilate informed the Jerusalem News that the accused threatened to overthrow the government and replace it with his own kingdom. "We took a strong stand, because the threat was both broad and deep," said Marcus Spartacus, from Pilate's office. "The sedition laws are clear and will be enforced vigorously."
A lot of the story gets missed, you see, when you only quote spokespeople for one side. Even if you get quotes from both sides, it's still not the complete story. Reporting is where you find out, when possible, who is telling the truth by digging for facts, not just scribbling down quotes. Otherwise, you could just miss the story of the century.

Just kidding, but do extrapolate the next time SCO tells you nonsense. (You, too, Wikipedia.) Or gets a friendly journalist to write nonsense so you can pick up the story and run with it. As you may remember, it was Dan Lyons of Forbes who first wrote about Groklaw and ibiblio. That is where the insinuation began. So much for his research skills, as I'll demonstrate in a minute, not to mention the topic of bias. I hope some of you out there will be thinking deep thoughts. Like the Bible says, the heart can get better by deeply reflecting on how far we might have strayed from true north.

So SCO tried to gag Groklaw beginning in 2004. It moved on to false insinuations to journalists, ugly innuendo during a conference call about me and Groklaw, having friendly journalists with PIs try to dig up dirt on me, a massive vilification astroturf campaign all over the Internet, and then to intimidation with their recent motion. Well, I'm gagging, all right, but not in a good way. And certainly not in the way SCO hoped.

I will respond like this, seriously for a moment. This is America. I am an American citizen. I was born here, born to certain rights as my birthright. I'm allowed to cover this litigation without being harassed and intimidated or threatened or gagged. I'm allowed to present facts that disprove SCO's public allegations. I am allowed to write what I believe is the truth, and I'm allowed to present research about the allegations. I was born with these rights, and they are precious to me. I also have rights as a journalist. This isn't Malaysia or Russia, where journalists are muzzled or end up suddenly dead execution-style in a gutter somewhere. Is it? What is wrong with these people? Didn't they study about America and freedom of speech and of the press in civics class? There is a long tradition of freedom of speech here, and SCO would like to deprive me of it. At the least. Are these foundational American values not precious to SCO?

You smile. Well, I digress. Of course, nothing like what SCO wanted happened. I never even knew of this attempt to shut Groklaw up, other than I do recall some threats posted on SCOX Yahoo! by SCO supporters and some comments here too, IIRC, predicting that Groklaw would be muzzled. I wonder if they knew, what they knew, how they knew or was it just an uncanny guess?

Where to begin to refute these lies? SCO's allegations are so silly, one is tempted to say nothing. But let's do anyway, to set the record straight, particularly for ibiblio's sake. As I've written earlier, SCO uses ibiblio too. Let me provide some additional facts to put some meat on the bones of why what SCO claims is false.

Groklaw Began on Radio UserLand, Not on Ibiblio

Groklaw didn't start out on ibiblio. It started on Radio UserLand in May of 2003. I had been trying out a few kinds of blogging software for a few months, because I was trying to learn how. A lawyer interviewed me for an assignment doing his website and he used Radio UserLand software, so eventually I settled on just Radio UserLand and let the others go. Radio UserLand is commercial blogging software that isn't funded by IBM and has no connection to ibiblio. Groklaw's still there, the early days of Groklaw, still on Radio UserLand, thanks to the Internet, which never forgets, so you can prove to yourself that this is the truth.

Just go to Google and type in Groklaw, and then look on the list for radio.weblogs.com/0120124/ or search for it that way, by the url. That's Groklaw, the Teenage Years. Joking. You'll see, though, that it is true -- that is where we started and Groklaw got famous on Radio UserLand, not ibiblio. So I guess Dave Winer is to blame for Groklaw. Kidding. I've never met him, so don't send him a subpoena either. He just designed the software that made it possible for me to do Groklaw.

Here's the first interview I did, in July of 2003 for Linux Online, so as you can see, Groklaw was popular already, before we went to ibiblio. In the interview, I mention Radio UserLand and the fact that the day before Groklaw had more hits than any other blog on Radio. And you can look at this mention of Groklaw on Slashdot in early September of 2003, and if you mouse over the GROKLAW link, you'll notice that it links to Radio UserLand, not to ibiblio, to http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/, specifically to this article.

Slashdot and the blogosphere made Groklaw popular long before we moved to ibiblio. After Slashdot highlighted that article, we really grew fast. Unless IBM owns Slashdot, they had nothing to do with our success. Joke. Joke. IBM doesn't own Slashdot. I want to head off any new subpoenas to stunned journalists by the humor-impaired in Lindon.

I used to think SCO was just paranoid. Or not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Now I'm thinking they are more cunning, in a small town kind of way. Let me tell you the rest of the story, and then you can decide.

Here's a page, the final entry on Radio UserLand in November of 2003. See where it says, "Groklaw has morphed into a website" at the top? And the link on the left marked, New site? That's a cluebat that we didn't start on ibiblio. And if you look at the dates by looking at the archives, you'll see that we started in May of 2003, not March, when SCO filed its lawsuit and the first article wasn't even about SCO. That you can only see on our archives here, the part about the first article, because on the old site, everything was done by me by hand, pre-Mathfox. And I didn't think of doing archives at first. You can see that by the date of the archives page there, June 24, 2003. And I just noticed that I forgot to close the tag on the url telling people where to find the new site on the last day on Radio UserLand. Oof. I know. So professional, so IBM.

: )

There probably is a way to do archives inside the Radio UserLand software, but I didn't know how to do lots of things back then. I notice I stopped trying to do the archives there in August. My readers taught me HTML, by the way, little by little, what little I know. But here's the very first article on Radio UserLand, May 16, 2003, about David Boies and Grokster. Sigh. There were other articles not about SCO also. The idea was to explain legal news. But let's face it: SCO is entertaining, the topic is riveting, and I thought it would be fun to write about, and you seemed to enjoy it, so I did it. Eventually I saw that we could actually innovate in doing research online, applying Open Source principles to distributed legal research. That is the conspiracy. To try something new and put all our brains together and see what happens. My idea was that by covering a lawsuit from more or less beginning to end, you'd be able to understand how the law works, so you could contribute meaningfully. I had no idea how long this one would take or I would have picked something else, maybe. I also had no idea what I was getting into, obviously. In that first interview, I said this:

The IBM case depends so much on what the contracts actually say, and apparently there are thousands of them, that I don't think anyone, except maybe IBM, knows at this point what will happen for sure.

We don't know yet exactly what it is that SCO registered a copyright for. We also don't know yet if the registered copyright is valid. Just registering a copyright doesn't prove it is valid. A court decides that. I did send an email to SCO's people asking them about the copyright, but they haven't answered me yet.

I also asked them about their contributing Unixware code to IBM's AIX 5L, the successor to Project Monterey, which I wrote about on Groklaw. I asked what code they had contributed to IBM and how they could know for sure it wouldn't explain any identical code. They didn't answer that question yet either. When they do, I'll be better able to evaluate. But I don't think anyone knows for sure how this will turn out. We don't yet have all the facts.

There are two fronts to this battle. The IBM side, which is so far strictly a contract and tort war. Contracts trump IP laws, generally speaking. The second side is the copyright-license fight against users. It's two separate analyses.

I just don't know about the IBM side. I have confidence that they intend to deal with the SCO issue successfully, one way or another. SCO is like a mosquito in their bedroom. You just have to get it before you can go back to sleep. I notice they don't act scared.

My personal opinion is that the GPL is vital and determinative on the second front and helpful on the first. But I'm not a lawyer. It's just my opinion, kind of like if we were sitting around after dinner and you asked me what I think. I have yet to see anything on SCO's side that would make me believe they are going to prevail, but there is a lot we have not seen. I know Boies would never, ever plant a flag in the ground unless he had something to go on. It may be a stretch, but it'd be something. The thing is, because he isn't a geek, he could be mistaken. I don't believe, either, that he'd knowingly assist anything like a pump and dump. If he were not involved, I'd be snorting. I guess that's probably why they hired him.

I started out thinking that SCO might have some legitimate contract concerns, as you see. Go figure. So much for bias. You will notice that I tried to get SCO to comment and answer my questions, but they ignored me and never even replied. So much for bias on my part. And by the way, for many long months, every single article on Groklaw had a comment section set aside for SCO folks to use to comment and say whatever they wished. They never did. I also in an interview publicly invited SCO to write an article for Groklaw if they wished. They never did that either, not that I was expecting them to. Instead they falsely accused Groklaw of bias. Frankly, if I didn't have an opinion by now, after more than 3,000 articles reflecting all our research, something would be very off. But I started out with an open mind. And I have always tried to be fair to SCO. I don't think they can say the same.

I am very, very proud of the work we have done here on Groklaw. It broke new ground in research and in covering legal news, and I believe it was and is a worthwhile project. It's part of what I see as vital in an Internet age -- that the tech community gets involved so it can help the lawyers get it right in cases that involve tech.

While you are there on the old archives page on Radio, look up at the top. See a notice about morphing into a website? Nope. How about on the left. See a link to the new site? Nope. That's because we were not on ibiblio then. Duh. After we moved, then Mathfox wrote some code that archives for me automatically just the way I wanted it to be. Whatever would we have done without Mathfox? I shudder to think. And how hilarious it is to look back at my amateurish beginnings. Actually, it brings back a lot of happy memories. But I do think it's more proof positive that IBM couldn't have been involved. Nothing they do is amateurish. That is *my* contribution. IBM didn't have a thing to do with starting Groklaw, and neither did ibiblio. I just felt like doing it. So I did it. That's it. A scoop for ya.

SCO could have done that research itself, don't you think, check its facts before making wildly false accusations? A simple Google search would do it. Is it that they don't know how? Or is there a cunning side to this? Let's continue.

We actually began to plan to move over to ibiblio late in September or early October, I believe, but for some weeks I kept it up on both, putting the articles in both places, but asking everyone to comment only on the new site. I did both like that at first, partly so we didn't lose our readers, partly because it took time to move everything over, but also because we didn't know how to do RSS feeds in Geeklog at the time, and it's built in to Radio UserLand, and from the beginning a lot of our readers used RSS to keep up with Groklaw. They still do. So I went to that extra trouble for them. I loved that Radio UserLand experience, by the way, and only Groklaw's growth forced us to leave, because after we started getting over a hundred comments per article, the software got slow and we even lost comments. Sometimes articles. Man, was *that* exciting! Some sleepless nights there. They've probably fixed that by now, or maybe it was all me, but at the time, I didn't know what to do, so someone eventually suggested ibiblio, and he asked if we could move there, and ibiblio said yes. At the time, I'm embarrassed to tell you, I didn't know what ibiblio was, that it is the public's digital public library, but happily a reader knew, and he arranged it. I never approached ibiblio myself. I didn't know who contributed to it. And no, he's not an IBM person either. It was all done in public. Google is your friend.

Here's our letter to Darl which we as a group wrote on Radio UserLand in public which you can see if you read the comments there. We wrote it together in the comments section. The date is September 21, 2003. Everyone presented what they thought should go in the letter, and then I'd write up drafts incorporating the research and the points.

It was doing that letter that convinced me that we had to move, because of all the comments helping to draft that letter, and how hard it was to work as a group in that software, and so first we decided to accept an offer from a reader to move to his server. But we about melted his servers, and so we had to find another place around the time we sent the letter to SCO in September of 2003. I remember that we were in transition, because The Inquirer posted the document for weeks, specifically so we wouldn't be swamped with traffic we couldn't handle, and they linked to www.groklaw.com, which is the old site on Radio UserLand. Go to Google and type in www.groklaw.com, and you'll see that you find a final draft of the letter near or at the top. See in the string the date, September 20, 2003?

On that same page, you will see why we were worried about traffic. When we first left Radio UserLand, we moved to a server a member offered. Just his own server. But we had so much traffic, his server couldn't handle it, so we were looking for another place. You can see that in the entry at the bottom of the page, where I thank him for hosting us a while and announce the new site.

When we moved to ibibio, we had to change the address to www.groklaw.net, because they only accept noncommercial sites, and they asked me to change it to reflect that. I didn't even know .com meant commercial. That's how much I didn't know. Groklaw.com became just a redirect at that time. That's why the letter to Darl is now on ibiblio, on a permanent page, dated September 20. But you can see that on the Inquirer, it actually was published the day before, as a scoop for The Inquirer for helping us. The press release we sent out with the letter didn't go out until the next day. Notice it says www.groklaw.com, which is an address we never used on ibiblio.

Isn't it crazy to have to document all this, because of SCO's accusations? My, they are annoying. But I'm doing it so you can see that it is easy to prove that Groklaw certainly wasn't conceived or launched by ibiblio. It means that when Forbes published Lyons' attack on Groklaw, alleging the ibiblio-IBM innuendo, Groklaw had literally just arrived on ibiblio's servers. That article was published December 16, 2003. We finally arrived on ibiblio on November 22, 2003, so that's less than a month. So skip any ibiblio subpoenas, boys. The information is readily available to you, and it always was. I told the world there was no IBM connection back in March of 2004, when SCO's then PR head Blake Stowell channeled Dan Lyons' meme about me living, he thought, in White Plains (near IBM, wink wink) meaning there was a connection. Nope. And I also pointed out that ibiblio hosts a lot of people, because by then I knew. So SCO had a good reason to know better than what they were saying. Anyway, no secret contributions to ibiblio by IBM, even if that were true, which is isn't, had anything to do with Groklaw's birth or anything to do with Groklaw, period. Neither IBM nor ibiblio were involved in starting Groklaw, conceiving it or launching it.

The discerning reader will perhaps note that the interview with Blake Stowell was published on February 27, 2004, the same month Kevin McBride sent that phony February 11, 2004 letter to IBM about its "concerns" about the media. What might that tell us? Maybe that SCO was gaming IBM? You think? How about deliberately defaming me?

[ Update 2: Groklaw member Boundless reminds me that IBM answered [PDF] this Kevin McBride letter on February 12, 2004, the very next day. In part, the letter said:

This responds to Kevin McBride's letter to me dated February 11, 2004.

As I have advised Kevin, IBM is generally agreeable to an order limiting the parties' public statements regarding the litigation, as suggested by Judge Wells. Based upon SCO's statements in chambers on February 6, 2004, and Kevin's statements to me, however, it appears that SCO is not agreeable to the entry of such an order. If that is in fact SCO's position, then we would appreciate your just saying so without invoking misplaced concerns of conspiracy between IBM and third parties. Contrary to Kevin's sugggestion, which is entirely unsupported, IBM is not causing any third parties (including those listed in Kevin's letter), through "funding" or otherwise, to make statements on its behalf about the litigation.

We understand that SCO is concerned about the public's criticism of its case. But there is nothing we can do about that, especially since, as you know, we believe SCO's allegations are meritless and public criticism deserved. Unless SCO is prepared to withdraw its claims, the best way, in our judgment, for SCO to avoid public criticism is to cease making public statements about its case. The criticism SCO seeks to avoid directly derives, after all, from its own public relations efforts.

Yet, within days of learning that I was not connected to or funded by or being used by IBM, SCO's Blake Stowell was insinuating again to the media that I was what IBM had just clearly told SCO I was not.]

I paid a yearly fee myself for the privilege of blogging there on Radio UserLand, a modest fee, but still, it was I who paid it, and if Groklaw hadn't grown so huge, I'd still be there, for $40 or $50 something a year for bandwidth. Really. Groklaw didn't need financial help then in any way from anyone. I just did it in my spare moments, like most bloggers, when I began.

[ Update: I just found my first receipt from Radio UserLand. I bought it on February 20, 2003. $39.95 for a year. And all the bandwidth you could eat. That is prior to SCO launching its litigation against IBM, I'd like to point out, so it's one more bit of evidence that I didn't start Groklaw in response to SCO's lawsuit or with the purpose of "attacking" SCO.]

There are more stupid details to respond to in that awful SCO letter trying to gag Groklaw, but I'm tuckered out. I'll swing back by in time, I expect. But this is the answer to the ibiblio accusation. Again.

But stop and think about this for a second. SCO actually wanted to shut Groklaw down or at least to prevent it from covering the SCO litigation. And they were willing to try to reach that goal based on false accusations a child could use Google to disprove. What does that tell you about SCO? And that letter wasn't written by SCO's CEO. It was written by one of SCO's *lawyers*.

One final point, though. They also allege that Groklaw had someone at a hearing in February of 2004 sending us commentary from the courtroom. Here's what Groklaw published the day of that hearing, and as you will see SCO is simply wrong:

Cody Hilton sends us this first quick word:
I just got out of the hearing. The outcome is Judge Wells will be issuing an order within the next week. She wanted to take her decision under advisement.

Some quick observations. Mr. Marriott argued for the side of IBM again and Mr. Weiss argued for SCO. Counsel were in chambers for 28-30 minutes. IBM stated that SCO had not complied with the Judge's order for discovery. SCO has said they have and now want their motions granted. Darl was not in attendance.

Notice our eyewitness said that he had just come "out of the hearing" and that it was over? I wrote that it was our first word from the hearing. You may judge for yourselves, then, the level of SCO's accuracy.

IBM ends the memorandum in opposition like this:

Finally, it is difficult to see SCO's motion as anything more than an effort to intimidate an individual with whose opinions SCO disagrees and to support SCO's continued efforts to reopen discovery.

That's legalese for Groklaw is a wookie.

That is what Groklaw is. But *I* am a human being. When you say untrue things about me, it hurts me. Just so you know.


  


SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004 | 621 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Off topic thread here
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 08:16 PM EDT
Please make links "clicky" ...

Greetings from China.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: Mark Nelson on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 08:18 PM EDT
They failed in 2004 and they will fail now. Think though PJ if you have to
appear before judges kimball and wells about demanding in cash all costs for
things like mileage, plane fare, stress and emotional damage and security for
the rest of your life all paid for by SCO or SCO can jump in a lake.

---
http://www.getfirefox.com

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCOG in a nutshell
Authored by: DebianUser on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 08:30 PM EDT
PJ's phrase:

"false accusations a child could use Google to disprove"

That about describes SCOG's various cases to a "T".

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 08:34 PM EDT
I need a new keyboard.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Good golly miss molly...
Authored by: Nick_UK on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 08:38 PM EDT
What on earth...

Well, I think that letter sums it all up.

Nick

[ Reply to This | # ]

Corrections Thread
Authored by: TheBlueSkyRanger on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 08:39 PM EDT
Just trying to get it in before it gets too far down.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 09:01 PM EDT
Its pretty clear all SCO has is chutzpah.

I wonder what happened in response to the letter. Clearly not much. I wonder if
it was ever raised with Wells. I wonder if IBM even answered it. I wonder if
McBride got a call from someone on his side asking about his sanity.

SCO clearly has not been seeking this discovery since February 11, 2004. They
clearly could have done it then, but didn't bother. In fact it looks a lot like
they haven't tried very hard this time.

I can't figure out why they actually bothered to submit this motion, except
possibly as cover to keep discovery open in Novell. It doesn't even seem very
good for that. The motions seems to be more in order if SCO had actually done
the deposition and discovered something of relevance.

What happens Monday night when discovery is over in Novell?

This whole episode is just plain bizarre. I hope someday PJ can look back on it
and see the farcical aspects of it, without the anxiety.

---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.

"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk

[ Reply to This | # ]

The Arrogance Of SCO Is Nothing Less Than Appalling
Authored by: TheBlueSkyRanger on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 09:06 PM EDT
Hey, SCO!

I'm amazed. You continually express surprise that no one believes you, that
everyone is making fun of you, and that everyone wants you to pay for the next,
oh, ten lifetimes for what you are doing.

You had all the media snowed, covering your side of the story and allegations.
And this lone dot in the vast Seurat painting of the Internet, that no one you
were talking to was even listen to, had to be rubbed out.

You repeatedly attempt to violate privacy rights, while hypocritically clinging
to yours.

Novell tells you your ownership is dubious. So you launch a campaign against
them.

You have attempted to subvert Freedom Of Speech and Freedom Of The Press. I've
always said, "You can insult me, you can insult my politics, you can insult
my religion, but don't you DARE insult the living, breathing document that makes
me what I am." I feel attempting to circumvent the Constitution is
treason, but there's no way you'd be charged with that.

And you have refused to show one shred of evidence that anything you say, from
ownership to contract disputes to mountains of verbatim code in Linux, is true.

There are one of two things going on here.

1) You are like the phony psychics who have convinced themselves that their
amateur psychology, cold readings, and so on are not the result of situational
conditioning but an actual indicator of talent. But that seems unlikely, given
your tone and actions.

2) You have seen so many news reports (I see them, too) about people who win
court cases, start movements, and so, just by shouting loud and clinging to the
spurious facts, that you believed that, instead of things simply working out
that way, it could be a strategy from the start. With all the world now solidly
against you, even allies you had in your pocket either by employer pressure or
simply seeing the light, you continue to play your games.

Some will suggest that you do this because you are trying to delay the
inevitable, that this is desperation. This behavior isn't desperate. It's just
mean.

You wanted fame and notoriety, you got it. As the old Chinese proverb says,
"Be careful what you wish for, you may get it." Your plan to use
these odd results like bluffing through a lawsuit has backfired. IBM let you
shoot your mouth off and get your frivolous motions because, when it came time
to put the rubber to the road, your reputation became poison and made IBM's job
of convincing the judge (based on your past behavior) that much easier. You're
a slow motion train wreck. And it's not that we can't look away. We want to
watch everything that happens to you. We disagree on what you deserve to get,
but we all agree you deserve a lot.

Dobre utka,
The Blue Sky Ranger

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO's Lawyers Lack Ethics
Authored by: Jeff on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 09:13 PM EDT
Their behavior is simply despicable. I can't believe that they haven't been
sanctioned yet.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Armonk NY
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 09:23 PM EDT
<irony>

IBM Headquarters
1 New Orchard Road
Armonk, NY 10504


Boies Schiller and Flexnar
333 Main Street
Armonk, NY 10504

Distance: 1 mile Time: 2 minutes

White Plains New York is about 6.5 miles (11 minutes) from IBM headquarters.
</irony>

---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.

"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk

[ Reply to This | # ]

Accusations a child could use Google to disprove
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 09:39 PM EDT
More than anything, what makes me sad about this sordid affair is the poor legal
work on SCO's behalf. Even if they had no claim it would have been nice to see
good work on both sides knowing that the issues I cared about withstood a strong
challenge in the light of day. The level of legal negligence is just amazing.
The total lack of due diligence demonstrates a total lack of care on the part of
the lawyers for SCO. If anyone of them had undertaken just 30 min a day to do
research then a lot of this could have been avoided. The legal plan of action
always seems to be “if we don’t know about it: it can’t hurt us”. This strategy,
if you can call it that, assumes that know one else wants to know either.

Bringing legal action upon others to get cash in a settlement or to cause a
buyout is not a business plan. It never has been, no matter what the attorneys
say. The reason why? If you don’t have a case the other side may choose not to
pay.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linus' comments about SCO's evidence in this case
Authored by: Ed L. on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 09:40 PM EDT
"Talk is cheap. Show me the code." - L. Torvalds (25 Aug 2000)
Yeah, so "Google is your friend." But is the man precient, or what?

:-)

---
"Just what part of 'Final Disclosures' do you not understand?" ~ The Hon. Brooke C. Wells in a Nutshell

[ Reply to This | # ]

I was reading then...
Authored by: mcstacy on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 09:49 PM EDT
I started following Groklaw in 2003 because I felt that if SCO had any validity
in their claims, it would seriously affect our cost of doing research, since we
were shifting from expensive Unix storage servers from SGI and Sun to commodity
boxes running Linux, based on my recommendation. I remember some of those early
posts, and found that PJs work was usually clean and to the point. I remain
impressed with the quality of the work, and even though I have been retired for
2-1/2 years, I continue to read Groklaw as an inspiration, a demonstration that
the law does work (eventually), and I just can't wait to see how the story turns
out. Keep up the good work, PJ.

[ Reply to This | # ]

We know the truth!
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 10:08 PM EDT
Actually you're an alien from outer space. You were captured and sent to area
51 during the roswell crash. The sacred IP scox talks about was technology from
the crashed saucer. You have gone to utah to try and retrieve it from scox.
Unfortunately it is under heavy guard and you cant get to it becease a certain
ceo is constantly sitting on it. He is using it for chair stuffing for the seat
of his executive chair. You secretly went to IBM to try to get them to retrieve
it, but they failed so they gave you a site on ibiblio. Since they failed you
went to AMD and asked them to get the IP, but to their and your dismay they
failed so they offered you new servers instead.


See making up stories isn't that hard is it? I am afraid the courts wont see
this fabrication for what it is. They (scox) just want to reopen discovery to
delay even more than they allready have. The longer they delay the greater the
chance of settlement from someone, anyone (I think they are really desperate at
this moment). They (scox) have caused to much ill will in the community to be
accepted by anyone. Even the money people (msft) are trying different tactics
and distancing themselves from scox. It becomes very sad when people delve this
low to try to get anything to exist another day. To pass with honor and dignity
I fear is a thing of the past. Very disgraceful.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 10:14 PM EDT
I'm so dumbfounded the words just can't bust through.

Richard

[ Reply to This | # ]

Just an attack on credibility
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 10:26 PM EDT
That is all. They can spew to the press so they file something, the judge says
"no", the press laps it up. It might be more costly than a press
release, but what choice do they have.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: jsusanka on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 10:43 PM EDT
quick all of you stop thinking/talking/ or doing anything
that references this case - you are hurting sco chances
and eventually they will call you into court for thinking.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Why SCO wanted to gag Groklaw
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 10:58 PM EDT
PJ wrote that SCOs motivation for gagging Groklaw and others was just to accuse
IBM of leaking information or somehow get even because they were criticized
themselves. But i think the main reason lies outside the courtroom: They wanted
to sell the press their own spin of what's going on in the courtroom without
anyone telling the nasty truth about how bad their case really is.

A big part of the story was playing the stock market: drive the shares to the
sky and have a license for printing money by issuing more shares. That worked
well as long as SCO could spin the spin, especially in the financial papers
(many of which do their "analysis" by simply reprining what the PR
outlets give them).

With IBMs "No comment" and the usual noninterested public that doesn't
look into details but buy's the PR of who is loudest that would've worked quite
well.

I remember some statement from SCO that they didn't expect this level of public
interest. Well, what do they expect of the OS community which built up on some
kind of idealism when SCO tried to steal their work and sell it for their own.
While most in the OS community probably hate SCOs guts Groklaw gave that some
focus:

"Hurt SCO and their lies in the worst possible way: by digging out the
truth and making it public."

From SCOs reaction to Groklaw i'd figure it worked very well.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: iraskygazer on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 11:31 PM EDT
PJ,

There is no doubt that SCO's attempt to gag would have failed because those
of us devoted to the case have the knowledge to keep the information flowing.
Any attempt to stop public discussion of this very public case would have been
unconstitutional and I'm willing to bet that the EFF would be fully willing to
protect your rights to freedom of speech.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Petition for sanctions
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 11:46 PM EDT
Is there some way we could start a petition of people who want sanctions to be
made against SCO's law firm, and send it to the judge?

I really, really want to sign such a petition.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thank you SCO
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 11:54 PM EDT
I would just like to thank SCO here.

If not for this lawsuit (and Groklaw) I would not have the understanding of the
Law now that I have now. Watching how SCO runs their case, and how IBM runs
theirs, I now know how to pick the Lawyers I want to represent me. I.E., how to
spot a scheisster.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Feb 6 Hearing
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2007 @ 11:54 PM EDT

That letter is slightly amusing. It seems the Feb. 6 hearing struck a particularly stinging cord.

I wonder if that was either the hearing that Mr. Silver fell asleep in or the hearing that Mr. McBride was told by the Judge to "pay attention".

RAS

[ Reply to This | # ]

Astonishing
Authored by: kurtwall on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 12:02 AM EDT

I shouldn't be surprised that SCO tried to gag Groklaw, but I am. All of SCO's chest-thumping about how the GPL is unconstitutional and SCO's deep respect for free enterprise and the Constitution is just that, empty rhetoric and posturing. Remember this from their letter to various Congress-critters?

First, Linux and Open Source software are developed and distributed (often at no cost) under a scheme called the GNU General Public License (GPL) which, some believe, is in direct contradiction to U.S. Copyright law, to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and to the recent Supreme Court decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft.

That's the thing about having principles — you have to stick to them when they don't serve your purposes, not just when they do. Like I said, though, I shouldn't be surprised because I think we've all seen that SCO knows nothing about character, integrity, ethics, or principles.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I see it differently
Authored by: om1er on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 12:05 AM EDT
IBM states about SCO's motion:

Finally, it is difficult to see SCO’s motion as anything more than an effort to intimidate an individual with whose opinions SCO disagrees and to support SCO’s continued efforts to re-open discovery....

I see this as SCO's "scorched earth" withdrawal, because defeat is imminent, and obvious. Much like Iraq withdrawing from Kuwait, and setting everything on fire on the way out, SCO is doing as much harm to its "enemies" as it can, before the final dismal failure comes to a conclusion.

But, IBM cannot really put into their objection that "SCO is a bunch of dangerous sociopaths, and we want to use our black helicopters REAL SOON NOW," can it?

---
Are we there yet?

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 12:07 AM EDT
Perhaps a carrot cake should be delivered to the courtroom for all to enjoy.
Compliments from PJ to show there is no bias.

Tufty

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 12:33 AM EDT
All i have to say is that logic pure logic could have seen the end of this and
years later after this site began , my final conclusion is still the same linux
linux linux.
And i will add that i remember the SCO trolls and I am sure perhaps my more
nuttery way might have lost it and flmaed em right back into the sillyrock from
whence they came.
And SCO did get Dos'd but it was not somehting affiliated here in fact i would
say that i had it stopped even though i would loved ot have seem them blown
right off the net forever, i said to whomever that they would do it all
themselves, just never figured it take this long.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Whatsamatta U Law School?
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 01:10 AM EDT
Where on earth did Kevin McBride get his law degree? Wherever it was, they
apparently don't cover the basics there, like the Constitution and Bill of
Rights.
Or maybe he was off skiiing in the Alps during that first year of law school and

missed those crucial lectures. I wouldn't hire him to represent me in traffic
court.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Hole in the ground
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 01:50 AM EDT
BSF: Judge there's my clients mountain of I.P., can you see it ?

Judge: Sorry council that is a hole in the ground.

BSF : If you are a mole it looks like a mountain

Judge: Don't you know the difference between your I.P. & a hole in the
ground? Now go act like a ostrich.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Those rascals
Authored by: GLJason on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 03:00 AM EDT
First, they fund Linux SMP development, now they fund OSDL to hide contributing to Groklaw...
Alan Cox (a key Linux developer generally considered Linus Torvalds's chief lieutenant) led the early work on symmetric multiprocessing in 1995. A web page[45], confirmed by a public newsgroup posting from an employee of Caldera[46] establishes that the dual-processor motherboard on which he performed the development was provided by none other than Caldera itself!

[45] http://www.linux.org.uk/SMP/title.html

[46] http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=44qe0m%24gno%40caldera.com,
T he [45] link doesn't work anymore, but the [46] link points to a posting from Ron Holt at Caldera confirming the donation of hardware for the project.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Comic book baddies
Authored by: stomfi on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 03:05 AM EDT
Reading about this case and other Linux things that have been promulgated by
companies with a base in Utah, USA, I keep wondering if there is something in
the water table that causes this strange alien ethics thinking to take place in
the minds of executives and their lackies.

One is reminded of all the bad executives in comic strips and subsequent films
who become corrupted and even insane in their desire to implement their vision
of what should be done, no matter what the laws of the land say about it or how
many of the people get hurt or destroyed in the process.

I say insane as there is a certain amount of it involved in
behavior showing a high level of absorption with
expecting one's own thoughts and ideas to prevail with disregard for external
realities and feedback, and in not being able to stop or modify a course of
action when it is obvious with a high degree of certainty, failure or even
punishment will be the result.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Comic book baddies - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 04:54 AM EDT
  • Bill who? - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 11:53 AM EDT
Yes, or no, PJ
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 03:14 AM EDT
Did you receive tens of thousands of dollars from OSDL? Yes, or no?

Did this happen while an IBM employee was OSDL's Chairman? Yes, or no?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Could they actually have done it?
Authored by: argee on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 03:52 AM EDT
SCO is claiming that IBM funded Groklaw and Ibiblio.

Now, assuming that there were no connection, could a judge
issue a gag order to a specific journalist like Groklaw? I
am not sure his authority is binding because Groklaw is not
a party in this action.

It would be like asking the judge to say the LA Times cannot
comment on the case, but other newspapers can. Sounds thin.

However, in fact, IBM did contribute to ibiblio, so there is a possibility that
the judge could have said something
like: "Groklaw cannot be silenced, but ibiblio can be
compelled to obey the gag order, and if Groklaw wont
submit, then they have to shut down their hosting of GL."
In that case, it would have been either shut up or move to
another hosting service. One without IBM funding.

Apparently, the desire to depose PJ has to do with this
connection ... something that I think will continue to vex
her in the future.


---
--
argee

[ Reply to This | # ]

Amarcord
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 04:13 AM EDT
I remember the early Groklaw and I am ready to say so in any court. When the
whole silly thing started, I started to look for information on the validity of
SCO threat to Linux. I have to say I was worried at first. Groklaw was the best
source of information I found. Not propaganda. Not spin. Simply information. And
practically everything I read in PJ articles about the complicated history of
Unix and Linux and all the ancient contact between parties that sometimes no
longer existed turned out to be true. I say "practically" but I cannot
remember one thing that turned out to be wrong.

Thank you Groklaw. Thank you PJ. You brought a great service to the Linux
community. You taught us more law then we could ever expect we could digest. And
there's no denying the knowledge is useful. You showed us the history of our
operating systems an why SCO is wrong in more way that would seem possible. It's
a pity they did not do 1/100 of the research you did before starting the
chutzpa. But maybe they simply did not want to. Now, it's their problem.

And the subject? It's the title of a 1973 movie by Fellini. The meaning, in his
local Italian dialect is: "I remember".

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO == Lies
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 04:21 AM EDT
A cool project, if someone want to take on would be to put a long list of provable lies uttered or filed by SCO and/or its lawyers or media supporters. I'm continuously amazed by how much can they lie about something in litigation and get away with it for so long. Just to start the list:
  • There are "millions" of lines in Linux infinging on our IP (lie: only 326 lines with enough specificity remain, and it is obvious that they are trivial and not copyrightable because of interoperability/conformance to standards, Gates Rubber, abstraction, filtration, etc. etc.)
  • MIT rocket scientists and spectral analysis (Lie: MIT denied knowing anything about it)
  • We own C++ too (Lie: ask Bjarne Stroustrup about it, CFront is copyright Stroustrup, C++ itself is a standard with many non SCO implementations)
  • "Correcting" Eric Levenez famous Unix chart (to "prove" Linux is derived from SYSV)
  • SCO "the owner of the Unix operating system" in numerous press releases and SEC filings (Lie: there's no one "The Unix operating system". Unix is a trademark. The Unix trademark is owned by the Open Group. There are Industry standards, like POSIX, Spec-1170, etc. and there are many implementations that are "Unix certified" by the Open Group. These days Unix is no longer worth much since both Linux and the Free BSD variants have totally eclipsed it)
  • Trying to ignore and then reinvent the USL vs Berkeley case where USL actually had to settle or lose much more than it intended since it stole much more code from Berkeley (and removed the copyrights) than the other way round.
  • Presenting part of the settlement money from CA as "another SCOSource IP License"
  • Trying to get around the 95% royalties owed to Novell by inventing a new name "SCOSource"
  • We are profitable! (no you're not, Microsoft, Sun and the PIPE fairies just kept you alive for 4 more years)
  • Claiming that atalloc (public domain) and the Berkeley Packet Filter (BSD code) were misappropriated from SCO.
  • The big dump of the stock by insiders as it went above 10 and the Skiba "$45 target" (pump and dump scheme anyone?)
  • Trying to confuse the world with Caldera to SCO name change.
  • Contributing code to Linux (to make it enterprise ready) and then blaming others for doing so.
  • Darl: "We showed them the code and they just ignored it" (Lie: all code was proven within minutes to be public domain, BSD, and irrelevant to the case)
  • We own the copyrights (no, they were explicitly excluded in the APA)
  • The GPL is unconstitutional (when it fits them, but then it doesn't so they are using it to protect themselves for distributing others copyrighted code... Ouch!)
  • We stopped distributing Linux the moment we became aware of our IP in it (Lie: no you didn't, and it is still on your site)
  • We like our stock at these prices (and it keeps on dropping)
  • Boies is on contingency (so why the retainer account?)
  • Long lists of 'vanity" customers on the SCO web site (Most of them have long bailed out and switched to Linux)
  • We transferred the Unix trademark to the Open-Group. (Lie: it was transferred by Novell, before the sale to The Santa Cruz Operation)
  • Leaking "scoop" (innuendo and lies) stuff to "journalists" like Lyons and O'Gara and accusing others for doing so.
  • Buying vultus for nearly 3M to enrich insiders then writing it off totally as worthless (after less than 1 year)
  • Reviving Vultus as (SCOMe) after it was written of totally as worthless
  • pj is an IBM plant. (Hello wookie!)
And on and on and on. This list can go seemingly forever... Can these liars get one fact right?

[ Reply to This | # ]

A serious question
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 05:03 AM EDT

One of PJ's links gi ves a convenient summary of the facts as they were known in 2003.

My question is, how is it that a man like Darl McBride, who has accomplished nothing, who has demonstrated his inability to comprehend clear explanations of law and technology, who has destroyed millions of dollars' worth of value by launching pointless litigation, who has also demonstrated his complete lack of ethics - how is it that this man can be paid so much by American business? McBride has received millions of dollars in various forms of compensation over the last several years. What do people think they are paying him for?

  1. Smooth talk. His published writings are literate and well-presented.
  2. "Entrepreneurial zeal". (That's how one of his admirers,Glenn Boschetto, put it.) Of course, there's a crucial difference between zeal - eagerness to get things done - and the actual ability to get things done.
  3. Negotiation skills. McBride clearly has the skills required to negotiate a sweet compensation deal for himself. But there's more to business negotiation than that. A truly competent negotiator always seeks the "win-win" deal - the deal by which all parties to the deal benefit. There is no evidence in his published career to suggest that McBride even understands this basic criterion for successful business negotiation. And it's the only kind of negotiation skill that is worth paying for.
  4. Apparent intelligence. In conversation, McBride comes across as a smart person and a quick thinker. Of course, if you are assessing a person's ability, you take that into account. But it's just one factor, and surely a relatively minor one at that. When you're interviewing a job candidate, you also note whether he/she looks you straight in the eye and has a firm handshake on first meeting. All these count, but they are little things.

So the question remains: why are people like McBride paid so lavishly? Why don't competence, track record of accomplishment, and personal ethics count in the selection of vice-presidents, general managers, and CEOs in this country?

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: DeepBlue on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 05:25 AM EDT
They also allege that Groklaw had someone at a hearing in February of 2004 sending us commentary from the courtroom. Here's what Groklaw published the day of that hearing, and as you will see SCO is simply wrong

Didn´t someone do live commentary on an IRC channel called groklaw at one hearing - IIRC PJ promptly set them straight and was not at all happy about the use of the groklaw name without her permission.

---
All that matters is whether they can show ownership, they haven't and they can't, or whether they can show substantial similarity, they haven't and they can't.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 05:42 AM EDT
From IBM's opposition : SCO appears not to have served Ms. Jones in its litigation with Novell, though discovery in that case closes on April 30, 2007

From PJ above :there has been no subpoena delivered and no deposition.

So unless the subpoena turns up tomorrow calling PJ to a deposition this motion was a waste of SCO's, IBM's and the Court's time. Isn't that something that qualifies for at least a slight slap on the wrist from the Court ?

Aren't BSF supposed to either make a valid effort to issue the sub-poena(which I'm assuming they haven't done) or notify the Court that they aren't going to bother and therefore withdraw their motion ?

Cheers,

Jeremyg (not logged in)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Rant
Authored by: Ian Al on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 05:46 AM EDT
OK, I have calmed down enough to comment on this. I dare not type my rant into
the computer because the drive to submit the comment would be too great.

However, you know my methods. Pour scorn and derision on SCOG, their legal team,
Kevin McBride and all their court writings. Point out the obvious, gaping chasms
in their arguments. Add all the words you want to use but won't in respect for
PJ. That's pretty close. It's nice to think you know me that well.

I still don't feel any better. I think I will walk up and down the hall, raving
like a lunatic for a while until the hurt dies down.

---
Regards
Ian Al

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Rant - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 12:47 PM EDT
    • Rant - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 03 2007 @ 05:07 AM EDT
We believe you
Authored by: jplatt39 on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 06:18 AM EDT
To play the Devil's Advocate for a moment regarding matters I know hurt people,
a cynical person such as myself can believe that information could turn up here
which did on its way out of litigation pass through IBM's lawyers and/or PR.
This particular site, though, the most effective way for this to happen, would
be through public filings and open court. I see no incentive for them to use
any other method to pass things to this site. I could possibly see incentives
for them to pass such information to other, better financed sites, but of course
I see strong disincentives as well.

As far as you are concerned, I do see strong incentives to be truthful. I don't
necessarily see the financing to vet every single document without error,
however the other side of that is that while some documents are more important
than others, your claim to credibility is you are making the public record
accessible.

That's why I wish you'd take a page from the Kernel Developers' book. They
said, "Show us the infringing code so we can remove it." It seems to
me, saying "Show us the documents so we can discuss the case without
them" would be more to the point than "I haven't been in contact with
IBM's lawyers." Or perhaps the more explicit, "Without the documents
we can't take you seriously." I'm willing to entertain the possibility
something might be traif here. Something is traif in most archives. I'm not
willing to entertain, given who you are, the idea that you are responsible for
what is traif.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Trip down Memory Lane
Authored by: Wesley_Parish on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 06:23 AM EDT

Thanks for that. I enjoyed it as well. I remember those days wondering what on earth The SCO Group was rabbiting on about, digging through my own Linux and Unix books to work things out for myself, and commenting on whatever website and blog would allow me.

What's happened was of course no surprise - you should only start such a case if you've actually got proof of something, and The SCO Group didn't have a snowball's chance in hell's of getting anywhere, because they had no proof. And so they dived into this without due diligence, much like blithely diving into a vat of undiluted hydrofluoric acid.

In the meantime, I've also become involved in attempting to roll back DePaul U.'s attempt to deny Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein tenure on account of his dispute with the Harvard U. Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz. The First Amendment, as I understand US constitutional law, permits university professors to disagree, sometimes extremely nastily, with each other. But to attempt to stifle their free speech by denying them employment appropriate to their skills and knowledge, as is alleged Dershowitz has done in relation to Finkelstein, is really low.

Abuse of power seems to endemic these days, much as it was in days gone by. Keep up the good fight, PJ! You're vitally necessary.

---
finagement: The Vampire's veins and Pacific torturers stretching back through his own season. Well, cutting like a child on one of these states of view, I duck

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO's fascination with Groklaw
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 06:40 AM EDT
Google Trends shows how Groklaw preys on SCO's mind.

[ Reply to This | # ]

pilate has been villified, but read the account in John
Authored by: jo_dan_zukiger on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 07:38 AM EDT

If you read the account in John, Pilate was more like Judge Kimball or Wells than SCO or their management. SCO was more like the Sanhedrin, I believe it was, pretending to have authority from Moses. But McBride is no Caiaphas. Nowhere near getting the prophecies right.

I guess Linux is no Jesus, either, for all that it is something of a liberating OS. Perhaps more like a John the Baptist, although not in a religious way.

Anyway, see John 18 and 19 to see Pilate trying to do the best he could figure out. At least, that's how I read John's account.

[ Reply to This | # ]

fresh student at law school
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 07:43 AM EDT
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: GROKLAW.COM
Created on: 26-Sep-02

I can imagine Pamela telling here girlfriend:
'I just registered groklaw.com',
GROK is from the movie with R2D2,
and .COM has something to do with communication.

'If in the future..... i will blog about it'

/Arthur

[ Reply to This | # ]

The devil or the Easter Bunny
Authored by: troll on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 08:23 AM EDT
No PJ.
It wasn't Devil. It wasn't Easter Bunny either.
It was most definitely the Tooth Fairy.
She was just trying to cover her tracks.

I am pretty sure you remember that Linus officialy stated that the kernel was
written by Santa Claus and Tooth fairy.
It is even documented on Groklad
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060108115157662

Yours truly ...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Outrageous, but....
Authored by: tiger99 on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 08:28 AM EDT
SCO's behaviour is confirmed yet again as being truly vile and outrageous. But the early history of Groklaw is good reading, and is truly fascinating. I missed at least the first few months, so I am delighted that PJ has filled in the gaps.

But notice the level of trolling these last few days. They only get so agitated when they are afraid of losing. Something very bad for SCO must be imminent.....

Results of the shareholders meeting, perhaps?

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: GafLinux on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 09:04 AM EDT

The commenter deleted his comment

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: GafLinux on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 09:14 AM EDT
Well, PJ, the truth is out. You really live in Armonk, NY. Your real name is not
Pamela Jones, but really
Thomas Watson IV and you are a major stockholder of
IBM :-)

---
Jerry Feldman
Treasurer, Boston Linux and Unix
http://www.blu.org

[ Reply to This | # ]

Defies logic and belief
Authored by: MacUser on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 09:23 AM EDT

As a graphic artist working for a number of small to medium sized businesses, I have always found SCO's allegations that IBM spawned Groklaw farcical. The companies I work for will typically subject the most innocuous graphic or the blandest cartoon to 3 or more levels of managerial approval, making up to a dozen generations of changes to the artwork before publication.

I cannot imagine the Public Affairs or Legal department in any public corporation, much less IBM, signing off on the thousands of words that appear on Groklaw, not to mention the often incendiary comments!

Nor can I envisage any corporate manager sanctioning a covert funding operation. Too dangerous, and too much to lose.

It's such a crazy, unsupported, illogical accusation that it can only damage whatever credibility they have left with the court. So why? Are they banking on local connections, is it spite pure and simple, or is there a level of cunning here that we underestimate?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Spot The Bad Guy[s]
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 10:11 AM EDT
For the last 4 years we've watched [with growing disbelief] as the farce that is
SCOvIBM has played out before us. There have been many postings to this site
that have derided the actions of Darl McBride, his brother Kevin, Ralph Yarro,
Sandeep Gupta et al.

Yet in a way, even this is misdirection.

We would not be here now were it not for the fact that the lawyers of BSF have
continued to prosecute this case in the style that we have all witnessed.

We have seen potential witnesses have to ask irrelevant questions about
ex-partners.

We have seen a consistent refusal to set out the clear terms of the complaint.

We have seen the case morph from patents to copyrights to contracts, covering
all points between, as each previous claim has been debunked along the way.


Now, there is no doubt in my mind that The SCO Group's case against IBM was
conceived, designed and executed as part of what is probably best described as a
get-rich-quick scheme. We're unlikely to ever know the really tiny details of
it's genesis, unless of course Darl decides to write an autobiography and spill
the beans.

But what about the legal team? Setting aside Kevin McBride for a moment [since
he hasn't been in the picture for a while now] we have BSF to consider.

As PJ has been so carefully, thoroughly and diligently explaining, the first
duties of a lawyer are :-

1. To the Court. Lawyers are officers of the court and, though acting as
advocates for their clients, are expected to act and behave as officers of the
court at all times.

2. To the Client. Lawyers, skilled and versed in the Law, are supposed to help
clients make sensible legal decisions, and to always act in the best interest of
those clients.


If we sit back and think about this case for a moment [and if possible, please
set aside any theories about this being driven by Microsoft for a moment], then
can we honestly say that BSF have acted in accordance with the above two
guidelines?

Have they respected the orders and wishes of the Court?

Have they treated other officers of the Court with respect [i.e. IBMs lawyers?].
Have they treated the legal system itself with respect [i.e. given consistent,
complete and truthful testimony in all the cases that they have running?]

Have they undertaken appropriate due diligence to guide their client on the
merits of their case and their claims?



I'm really not sure that they have.


What has become clear has been the fact that, at the outset, when David Boies
took on this case, The SCO Group must have had very little in the way of
genuine, material evidence of wrong-doing. I'll concede that they could have
found a selection of files in both Unix and Linux that were, if not exactly the
same, then very similar, but do we believe that a law firm would not perform a
sanity check to find out if there were legitimate reasons for that?

What is also clear is that BSF signed a deal which guaranteed them a significant
fee, regardless of outcome, plus a greater bonus in the event of success. Is it
possible that all those zeroes left BSF star-struck? Was it the David-v-Goliath
nature of the case that appealed? Again, we may never know.


But at the same time we cannot escape from the realisation that there have been
perhaps tens or scores of occasions in this case where assertions from Darl
McBride have been publicly debunked. For example, the moment that Novell claimed
to own the copyrights to Unix, one would have expected BSF to immediately see
the SCO Group's contracts and supporting documentation and to exchange
pleasantries with Novell's lawyers to understand what they believed to be the
merits of that case. Yes, these are technically, IT-related things. But they are
also legal points, and BSF should have [IMHO] performed much, much more thorough
examination of the facts than we've seen evidenced so far.


The more I look at the history of this, the more I wouldn't be surprised if, at
the end of the day [i.e. when The SCO Group file for bankruptcy, either before
or after losing these cases], Darl is likely to make some public statement along
the lines of "Our lawyers assured us we had a strong case". At the
same time, of course, Boies will either be spinning a different story or
unavailable for comment.


This entire affair has been silly from the start. We've struggled to make sense
of things because many important facts have been [redacted]. [Sorry, couldn't
resist that!]

But even without the inside story, it's plain to see that a whole catalogue of
errors have been and continue to be made here.

There is never a shortage of horror stories about less than repuable lawyers or
legal companies who may be willing to go along with some less than
"straight up" activities in order to make a fast buck. But surely
that's not the case here?

Much as I look forward to the end of the case to see IBM prevail and Linux
vindicated, I'm intrigued to see what, if anything, will happen with respect to
the conduct of counsel. I have no ill-will towards BSF, but I really don't see
how they can possibly hold their heads up high after this...

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Depends how much control - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 02:06 PM EDT
    • Almost - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 04:42 PM EDT
      • Almost - Authored by: PJ on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 07:36 AM EDT
        • Time Wounds All Heels... - Authored by: Jamis on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 08:50 AM EDT
        • Yep - Authored by: DebianUser on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 08:53 AM EDT
          • Yep - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 11:50 AM EDT
            • Big Mistake - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 12:32 PM EDT
            • Yep - Authored by: DebianUser on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 01:02 PM EDT
        • Almost - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 08:55 AM EDT
SCO Tried to Do Something Pointless
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 10:14 AM EDT
Had they even succeeded, a dozen other sites just like this one would have
popped up in its place.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Keaboard alert from the letter
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 10:42 AM EDT
I like the part in the letter that TSG send to IBM where they say
We are also concerned about the statements about SCO's litigation claims made by Linus Torvalds, who is employed by the Open Source Development Labs ("OSDL"), which is funded principally by IBM. Because of Mr. Torvalds' position in the technology world, his comments about SCO's evidence in this case are given particular weight in industry and popular press. [emphasis added]
His poisition in the technology world gives his comments particular weight? I presume they are refering to his position as the original author and principal maintainer of Linux?

Yeah, that might give his statements some weight regarding the issues at the heart of this case.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • I Object - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 02:10 PM EDT
Groklaw commentators
Authored by: The Mad Hatter r on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 10:44 AM EDT


From IBM1038:

Ms. Jones views and the views of other Groklaw commentators are their own.

TSCOG really needs to depose EVERYONE who ever posted here. At least if you
accept their view of the world <GRIN>. After all it wasn't PJ who got the
BSD settlement released, it wasn't PJ who dropped by the court to pick up the
filings, it wasn't PJ who OCR'd all the filings, it wasn't PJ who reported after
the court sessions what was said, PJ wasn't the only person digging around the
net looking for information, and of course PJ didn't write all the comments.

At least that's what they'd have to do if they were serious about Groklaw being
and IBM funded front, after all every commentator that ever agreed with PJ must
also be funded by IBM...

And let's face it - they aren't that stupid. At least I'd hope they aren't that
stupid - if they are I'd be really concerned about the gene pool!

No. This is about one thing, and one thing only. Intimidation. TSCOG and their
lawyers would really like to have those with negative views shut up. Groklaw of
course is the main target, as PJ has done such a wonderful job of commenting on
the filings, on stitching together all the research, on ORGANIZING the
tremendous amount of information that has been uncovered, but there are others
who have made comments on the case - Andrew Grygus's "Death without
Dignity" article was great. There's been many negative comments from Steven
J. Vaughan-Nichols, the reporters at the Inquirer, and other sources.

Interestingly enough there has been a concerted effort on Wikipedia to
"edit" the pages for those who have been in opposition to TSCOG, and I
have been wondering for a while if this is coincidental, or deliberate. I was
thinking of doing some research into this at one point, however due to various
things that have been happening in my personal and business lives I do not have
the free time, so I invite anyone who can spare the time to jump in.

I have to admit that the War Gamer in my would love to be deposed - while the
rest of me hates the idea.



---
Wayne

http://urbanterrorist.blogspot.com/

[ Reply to This | # ]

Lyons, Didio were at it before PJ became well known
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 12:00 PM EDT

Looking back at the first few months of Groklaw, the first thing that struck me
was the lack of user comments. I guess that function wasn't turned on for a
while, but it was still several months before user comments started to show up.

The other thing that struck me was that Lyons and Didio, with far wider
audiences at the time than PJ had, were already at it.

But, apparently, once the word about Groklaw got out, it mushroomed from about
July or August 2003, up to the point in early 2004 when Kevin asked the court to
gag Groklaw.

My point, though, is that SCO began its publicity offensive way before Groklaw
became well known. What has happened since then? Groklaw (and other message
boards) have grown hugely, while SCO's shills have faded to insignificance.



[ Reply to This | # ]

No Surprise Here!!
Authored by: grayhawk on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 01:26 PM EDT
First off thumbs up and 3 cheers for Groklaw and PJ.

Thumbs down for SCO and its legal team of ........!!!

You may fill in the blank.

This site is worthy of the kind of work to go into a Doctorate. It will become
I'm sure a case study at every University's law program.

As a Canadian it is nice to see that free speach in the U.S. is still alive and
well.

---
It is said when the power of love overcomes the love of power, that it is then
and only then that we shall truly have peace!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Don't play their game -- set your own rules
Authored by: pem on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 01:38 PM EDT
I think you're reading way too much into this, PJ, and playing directly into
SCO's hands in the process. You see, I recognize SCO at a very visceral level
-- they play the exact same mind games my brother did when I was 11.

Sure, SCO would have loved to see you gagged. Sure, they could have done some
research which would have showed them that you weren't affiliated with IBM. (On
the surface, anyway. Conspiracy buffs that they are, they probably wouldn't
believe the answer.)

But they already knew this is America and they can't really gag you, otherwise
there would have been a lot more action on this front than this letter.

Remember, at the point in time this letter was sent, SCO was still operating
under the delusion that IBM would cough up some money.

So, they send a letter which takes Darl's other brother 15 minutes to write up.
Double-checking all the facts and making sure they were in the clear on all this
probably cost IBM 30 or 40 hours of billable time. There are probably hundreds
of other similar letters on different topics that we will never see (unless they
come out in the damages phase), all with the sole goal of proving to IBM that
they were making a huge mistake by ignoring SCO, and it was going to cost them
dearly in legal fees.

A second possible benefit of this letter (although it came 3 years later) is
that it gets you all in a tizzy. When you get into your "indignant
mode" (which most assuredly you have a right to do), you write in a less
nuanced fashion than you normally do.

Long-time readers of groklaw will feel your pain and understand your
indignation. But a new reader who stumbles onto this as his first groklaw
article will see a very indignant, almost even strident, rant about a letter
which was sent 3 years ago. If he clicks on the link for the letter, he will
see a relatively mildly-worded letter which even has mealy-mouthed weasel words
like "We would like you to confirm if this is true."

The new reader doesn't have all the context and history to fall back on (and
frankly this article is rather long, so he doesn't make it very far into the
article), so he doesn't bother visiting groklaw again, and tells all his friends
that you're obviously a paranoid conspiracist, because SCO asked IBM to confirm
if they were supporting you, and you went completely off your rocker.

Because IBM declined to make this letter public 3 years ago, SCO had to resort
to using journalists to smear you to get you into "indignant mode."
For them, you in "indignant mode" is a wonderful thing. It is their
only hope of reducing your readership and getting you to write something which
might be useful to them (taken out of context, of course).

Groklaw is a wonderful thing, and you have every right to be mad at SCO and to
let off steam, but if you could go throw rocks in the woods for a couple of
hours whenever you see something like this from SCO before you write the
article, groklaw would be even better.

Keep up the good work, but remember that most of your best articles happen when
you're in the mood to laugh at their silly antics, and that you're more likely
to need another health break if you stay angry.

Regards,
pem

[ Reply to This | # ]

so, um, when does ibiblio clean house?
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 03:13 PM EDT
it certainly seem to me that if someone wants to attack ibiblio, that ibiblio is
no longer obligated to host those files. sure, they're a great source of
embarrassment for those liars in SCOville, but wouldn't it be a good idea to
stop helping someone that has made great efforts to make you his enemy?

it's already documented that there is so much stuff there and ibiblio just needs
to document it again before it's wiped (for their own records), but it seems
there isn't much sense helping a defunct business attack those that have helped
it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 04:57 PM EDT
I know this is easy for me to say since I am not in your shoes, but don't let
these thugs get to you PJ. You have given the community a priceless resource
and speaking personally, I would have pulled my hair out and had a nervous
breakdown by now if I wouldn't have had your level headed and un-biased reports
to help me figure out what was going on.

Thanks!

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: aha on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 06:40 PM EDT
Like the Bible says, the heart can get better by deeply reflecting on how far we might have strayed from true north.
Could you provide a reference for this? I would like to read it in context.

---
You get what you focus on.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 29 2007 @ 08:44 PM EDT
Wouldn't you have to _find_ PJ first to serve the order?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Which side would you rather be on
Authored by: AH1 on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 04:51 AM EDT
After reading this letter all I can say is "you are in good company."
TSG wanted to silence Eric Raymond, Eban Moglen, Linus Torvalds, and you. On
the other side we have Laura Dido, Dan Lyons, Maureen O'Gara and Daryl McBride.
TSG has no problems letting these individuals speak. Personally, I would rather
be associated with the people that TSG wants to silence.

[ Reply to This | # ]

ordre public/public policy/pactum turpe
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 06:59 AM EDT
I don't know anything about american law but...

Can't the court reject SCO:s motion on it's face, instead of IBM having to argue
it?
Should the motion be allowed into the case when the court specifically has
ordered not to entertain any such motions?

Also, can the Judge, ex officio (without parties or intervenors motion), order
SCO not to depose/bother the independent journalist??

[ Reply to This | # ]

Shouldn't SCO be gagged a bit?
Authored by: jmc on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 07:02 AM EDT

They're still publishing here their allegations against Daimler-Chrysler which case they lost (apart from some stupid allegation about timing of a reply when they'd sent it to the wrong company at the wrong address) and the appeal was dismissed over 2 years ago.

As this is no longer an active case, don't the allegations amount to libel whatever happens in the other cases? Or at least the heading should say that the case was dismissed?

[ Reply to This | # ]

The wikipedia problem
Authored by: archonix on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 07:19 AM EDT
The opening paragraphs of this article reminded me of a problem that quite often
affects wikipedia. Whilst the motivations are different, the assumption is that
people with specific involvement in a field are more likely to be biased in some
way simply by virtue of that involvement. In general knowledge this problem
doesn't become apparent, but in highly specialised fields it can be very
apparent. Articles that have been corrected by people with in-depth knowledge of
certain fields are reverted back to their incorrect state simply because the
editor in question has a personal involvement in a field. Sometimes this idea of
NPOV becomes less a guide and more a religious dictat, or something.

SCO are, it seems, working on a similar principle though, a I said, their
motivations are vastly different - though that may not be the case with some
wikipedia editors... Linus and co know about (and indeed wrote) Linux, so
they're obviously biased and unable to produce a neutral perspective on the
issue, therefore SCO wants to prevent them from putting in their bit so that the
story can be 'balanced'.

---
Graham's Diets:
This week I 'ave been mostly eatin' mashed badger.
--
http://unoriginalmuse.imdanet.com/
Delayed due to copper-eating spiders on the line.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 09:05 AM EDT
Found a Google reference from an essay on power by poet Sri Chinmoy.
Click y
Read the last few lines at the bottom. Dunno how it relates temporally to the lyrics.

[ Reply to This | # ]

"You smile."
Authored by: DaveJakeman on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 10:57 AM EDT
When you are reading Groklaw, do you ever get that strange feeling PJ is
watching over your shoulder?

:D

---
Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity – and I'm not
sure about the former. -- Einstein

[ Reply to This | # ]

information war
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 11:47 AM EDT

this whole case has been about public perception right?

SCO hit it hard at the beginning with Darl's letter to congress, presentation at
MIT, presentations at trade shows, etc etc.

Groklaw became the forum for public response to that. If Groklaw hadn't done it
(and done it so well) then Slashdot or someplace else would have come up to fill
that purpose.

IBM didn't have to go that route, not just because Groklaw was getting the job
done but because IBM's interests were representable in closed court sessions.
Groklaw doesn't directly represent IBM, it is a forum for Open Source advocates
and participants. It is a third-wheel. SCO tries to represent Groklaw as
"one of the enemy". SCO doesn't seem to understand how many enemies
they really have.

[ Reply to This | # ]

US Supreme Court in 2 decisions today Clears way for more patent Changles
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 11:56 AM EDT
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHigP6BkC8pE&refer=h
ome

[ Reply to This | # ]

Honestly
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 02:08 PM EDT
Honestly I doubt SCO lawyers early on were seriously trying to gag groklaw.*
The early stuff seems more like a tactic to avoid a gag order. By maintaining
that certain 3rd parties were acting as IBM's mouth pieces. They were trying to
spin it so SCOs PR machine was something both parties were doing.

On the other hand it does reveal some of their frustration. They likely hoped
that IBM would continue it's course of "no comment", and leave them
free to spout whatever they wished to the press. Thus forcing IBM to pay them
off to avoid the bad PR. They had not planned on the response of 3rd parties
from the linux community.


*Sure SCO would have loved to shutdown Linus, Groklaw, and the like, but the law
really doesn't allow for that. Also while a judge will slap a gag on the
parties involved. A 3rd party would have to be doing something really really
out of line. SCO's only recourse would have been to start slapping people with
slander lawsuits. They likely rejected this as these suit would have proceeded
through the courts relatively quickly, and SCO would have lost. (Not to mention
counter suits...)

[ Reply to This | # ]

First Crack in Software Patents?
Authored by: goz on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 02:31 PM EDT
"I agree with the Court that a component of a machine, whether a shrimp
deveiner or a personal computer, must be something physical."

-- from Justice Alito's separate opinion.

[ Reply to This | # ]

First Amendment Rights
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2007 @ 03:47 PM EDT
It seems to me that the First Amendment worked very well here. Darl said,
"Who will rid me of this meddling blogger?", and the courts said,
"Not us, bucko." PJ didn't have to go to court to prove she was
worthy to make public comments. She didn't even know about it until now.

It is nice to see some legal protections in action, especially when they worked
so smoothly that it took years to learn about them.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Greetings from Malaysia and Russia
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 01 2007 @ 02:14 AM EDT
Hi PJ,

I love how in the middle of climbing a high horse, you pause to take shots at
other countries (namely Malaysia and Russia). I'm glad that you, like many
Americans, are helping spread anti-American sentiment globally. My sincere
congratulations.

Take care.

[ Reply to This | # ]

PJ off hook now?
Authored by: jmc on Tuesday, May 01 2007 @ 06:51 AM EDT
If the Novell discovery ended yesterday apparently without any PJ deposition (or
"proof that she evaded service") is it perhaps "moot"
whether SCO succeed with this or not because they're trying to incorporate a
non-existent deposition?

In which case won't SCO look a bit silly? Not that that bothers them of course.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • PJ off hook now? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 01 2007 @ 07:44 AM EDT
Respect
Authored by: papabear on Tuesday, May 01 2007 @ 01:07 PM EDT

My hat is off to you PJ, much love and respect for your work in this case. Anything I can do to help (web wise) let me know, more then willing to contribute what I can.

Also, this should be the slogan for Groklaw from now on:

That's legalese for Groklaw is a wookie.
That had me laughing to tears :)

---
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." -Denis Diderot

[ Reply to This | # ]

launched by ibiblio -- SCO Tried to Gag Groklaw in 2004
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 02 2007 @ 10:28 AM EDT
So PJ,

How was it that you got started with a blog on ibiblio? Were you aware
ibiblio hosted web sites, and you felt the SCO suit needed comment and Mathfox
helped you set it up?

Did you propose a collectioln to ibiblio, and they approved it?

A little history into how groklaw got started would be nice, as groklaw has
developed into a project requiring multiple servers. You have created history
itself, and as you were looking to the original Unix programmers to provide
history on Unix, what better person to give us the history on groklaw than you?
Of course, I don't ask you to provide information that would put people at
risk.

Someone watching a pivotal point in history.

[ Reply to This | # ]

ZDNet biased?
Authored by: anesq on Wednesday, May 02 2007 @ 11:26 AM EDT
It is possible that the linked story has been updated since the link was put in
place, but assuming it was not, I think the accusation of (pro-SCO) bias in the
ZDNet article is unfair. It's pretty clear from reading the story that the
author thinks SCO was/is completely off its rocker. It's slightly understated,
but the use of "quotes" in the first paragraph telegraphs a message to
the reader pretty clearly.

Feel free to take credit where it is due, PJ: you've convinced the great
majority of the industry press (and the industry) of your integrity and the
correctness of your cause. Good job.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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