Joshua

The SCO Group revealed this week that a Utah District Court judge
ruled in favor of IBM in SCO's trade-secret-violation lawsuit against
the computing giant. Earlier this year, SCO sued IBM for $1 billion,
alleging that the Linux OS that IBM now supports contains software
code stolen from UNIX, the rights to which SCO largely owns. SCO also
revoked IBM's UNIX license. However, late last week, the court handed
IBM a stunning legal victory that resulted in an interesting reversal
of fortunes. SCO had been pressuring the courts to force IBM to reveal
its Linux and UNIX source code so that SCO could prove that IBM was
using stolen code. But the judge ruled that SCO would have to first
present its UNIX source code and identify which software code had been
stolen for Linux.
"IBM has said all along that SCO has failed to show evidence to
back its claims," an IBM spokesperson said. "We are very pleased that
the court has indicated it will compel SCO to finally back up its
claims instead of relying on marketplace FUD [fear, uncertainty, and
doubt]." SCO's claims, although serious, have always seemed a bit
spurious. The company has never publicly provided any meaningful proof
that its claims about Linux are true, and as IBM complained in court,
SCO attempted to shift the burden of proof to the accused.
Now SCO has just 30 days to give IBM the information and source
code that proves its allegations. Specifically, SCO must give IBM "all
source code and other material in Linux ... to which [SCO] has rights,
and the nature of plaintiff's rights." SCO must also provide a
detailed description of how IBM allegedly infringed on SCO's rights
and whether SCO previously distributed the source code in question. If
SCO had previously distributed that code, IBM argues, SCO has agreed
to the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) through which
Linux distributions are licensed and can't sue IBM for doing the same.
The judge will revisit the case on January 23, 2004, to ensure that
SCO has followed through on its obligations. On that date, SCO can
also request additional materials from IBM, including the source code
to AIX, IBM's UNIX version.
But don't worry about SCO; the company has another legal bomb to
drop on IBM. SCO said this week that it will add a
copyright-infringement lawsuit to the earlier charges. "[SCO] decided
to notify the court they will be adding [copyright infringement] as
part of the claims," an SCO spokesperson said yesterday. "There will
be a new filing on that coming out in the near future." SCO says it
would have filed copyright-infringement claims in its original lawsuit
against IBM but was thwarted when Novell claimed it still owned the
UNIX copyright. However, legal documents unearthed in June proved that
SCO owns the UNIX copyright, the company says.

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The Apexer formerly known as SnotRocket.

"Like I ****ing said, "Ok, so I hear it may be a repost. Blah But I had never seen it, so..." **** you Canta." -Jenny 12/4/2003