Text 6538, 88 rader
Skriven 2006-07-04 18:43:00 av Paul Rogers (1:105/360.0)
Ärende: Emperor has no clothes
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Judge Deals Blow to SCO in $5 Billion Linux Lawsuit

Walaika K. Haskins, newsfactor.com
/Mon Jul 3, 4:30 PM ET/

The holidays came early for devotees of the Linux operating system when
a judge last week threw out the majority of claims brought against IBM
by the SCO Group in its $5 billion intellectual property rights case.

The lawsuit, filed by the Utah-based firm in 2003 and scheduled to go to
trial next year, alleges that IBM "misappropriated confidential and
proprietary information" and used pilfered Unix code to help build Linux.

Magistrate Brooke C. Wells of U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City on
Wednesday dismissed 182 of SCO's 294 claims in a 39-page ruling that
criticized the company for failing to comply with repeated requests to
provide IBM and the court with specific details about which lines of
code were stolen.

"SCO's arguments are akin to SCO telling IBM, 'Sorry we are not going to
tell you what you did wrong because you already know,'" Wells wrote.
"Given the amount of code that SCO has received in discovery, the court
finds it inexcusable that SCO is, in essence, still not placing all the
details on the table."

SCO has said that it could not provide the requested information because
the company dealt with "methods and concepts" as opposed to specific
lines of code. "Our legal team is reviewing the judge's ruling and will
determine our next steps in the near future," said SCO spokesperson
Blake Stowell.

* On the Ropes *

According to most industry observers, the ruling is a blow against SCO
and an affirmation for Linux followers who felt the case lacked merit
and was simply a desperate attempt by a company on its last legs to
profit from IBM's success with Linux.

"It's put up or shut up time for SCO," said Laura Didio, a Yankee Group
analyst. "The judge said, in effect, 'If this is a legal tactic to
spring a last-minute surprise, I'm not buying it.'"

According to Didio, in the event that SCO "really doesn't have the
goods," then the company's case and a "good deal of what was left of
their credibility also just got tossed out along with the claims."

SCO and David Boies, the company's attorney, need to step up to the
plate and deliver some solid evidence, or fold, she said.

* Ripple Effects *

If SCO is successful in its lawsuit against IBM, the outcome could
reverberate throughout the tech industry. Shortly after filing the
lawsuit, SCO sent letters to companies known to use Linux, warning them
of just such an eventuality.

However, it remains unclear whether a ruling against SCO will help ease
the worries of companies considering the open-source platform.

Michael Goulde, an analyst with Forrester Research, said the case has
created an "energy-wasting cycle" for companies concerned about using
open-source software without indemnification.

"If there had never been a SCO suit, then the issues around this
probably would never have come up the way they do fairly consistently,"
Goulde explained. "The concern about any risk can be traced back to this
suit."

Goulde added that even if the suit were dismissed completely,
enterprises would not be so quick to forget about the case because the
specter of the possibility of being sued will still exist.

"The reality of the risk does not always matter to people. SCO brought
up this 'what if' kind of scenario," Goulde said. "The really strongly
risk-averse companies will still point to the fact that [a lawsuit]
could happen."



Paul Rogers, paulgrogers@yahoo.com                       -o)
http://www.angelfire.com/or/paulrogers                   /\\
Rogers' Second Law: Everything you do communicates.     _\_V

... If ye dinae know what it meant, you wo'nae be embarrased.
___ MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.35

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