| Smoke, mirrors, SCO |
Apr. 11, 2006
OK, so we all knew that the chances of SCO winning its case against IBM, concerning Unix code being placed in Linux, were somewhere between zero and none.
SCO has never been able to publicly show any evidence for it, and some of their recent attempts to find it through 11th-hour subpoenas of Oracle Corp., Intel Corp., and The Open Group Inc. (an open-standards group that holds the Unix trademark) have come to nothing.
Still, I always thought that SCO would have something to show the court with its claims that IBM, or its subsidiary Sequent, violated its Unix licensing contracts in 217 separate areas.
I didn't think any of these claims would amount to anything.
After all, SCO's earlier attempts to prove that there was Unix code in Linux were quickly shown to be examples of code that had long been available under the BSD license.
And, if there was any Unix code in Linux, SCO, under its former name Caldera, may have placed it there itself. To quote from a March 8th, 2001 Caldera white paper, which is no longer available on the Web, "Linux and UNIX are coming together. Caldera has begun the task of uniting the strengths of UNIX technology, which include stability, scalability, security, and performance with the strengths of Linux, which include Internet-readiness, networking, new application support, and new hardware support. Caldera's solution is to unite in the UNIX kernel a Linux Kernel Personality (LKP), and then provide the additional APIs needed for high-end scalability. The result is an application 'deploy on' platform with the performance, scalability, and confidence of UNIX and the industry momentum of Linux."
I won't go into how Novell, not SCO, may actually own the rights to Unix's intellectual property, in any case. Or how, on August 13, 2002, SCO developer Michael Davidson reported that an SCO-sponsored study had found that "at the end, we had found absolutely *nothing*. i.e. no evidence of any copyright infringement whatsoever."
Nevertheless, I thought they'd have something, anything, to show the court in those 217 areas. I'm not saying it would be any good. It would just be something.
I was wrong.
In 198 areas in contention, according to Randall Davis, IBM's expert, in IBM's Reply Memorandum in Further Support of Motion to Limit SCO's Claims Relating to Allegedly Misused Material "SCO does not provide a complete set of reference points (version, file and line) for any of the 198 Items. Astonishingly, SCO fails specifically to identify a single line of System V, AIX or Dynix, and Linux code for any of the 198 Items. SCO does not identify specific System V, AIX, or Dynix version(s) or file(s) with respect to more than a few of the Items. Even specific versions and files of Linux are omitted with respect to many of the Items."
Pamela Jones, editor of the Groklaw website, speculated that SCO "appears to have filed ... just a list of Linux files." So, "In short, well into our third year of this litigation, SCO still won't tell us what the case is about."
I'd say that sums it up nicely.
Oh, and the other claims? IBM appears to be planning to ask the court for summary judgment on the grounds that they have no validity.
The 198? IBM is asking the court, since SCO won't tell them what it is Big Blue has done wrong, to simply throw out these bogus claims in their entirely.
So, here we are years into this Linux legal dispute, and it looks more and more like SCO's magic act is almost over. Beyond the smoke and mirrors of claims and counter-claims, SCO's case seems to be nothing. Nothing at all.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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