SCO: the end gets closer

Actually, the above paragraph is a bunch of hot air; LWN is more fun without the SCO Group on the front page. But a certain morbid interest suggests that the SCO end game should occasionally be chronicled as important milestones unfold. One of those milestones was passed on June 28, when Judge Wells issued an order in SCO v. IBM. For those of us who have been patiently (or, perhaps, not so patiently) waiting for SCO to feel the consequences of its lack of discretion in public and its lack of any actual evidence of wrongdoing, the time has finally come.

The SCO Group, remember, has been under court order for some time to disclose "with specificity" exactly what it thinks IBM did wrong. SCO's final answer took the form of 294 "specifics," described in a sealed filing. IBM responded with a motion saying that most of SCO's claims lacked the required level of specificity and should simply be thrown out, regardless of whether they might have any merit or not. Judge Wells's order was the court's response to this motion.

After reviewing (at length) SCO's history in the case, Judge Wells concluded that SCO's claims were, indeed, not specific enough. Not enough for the court, but also not up to the level that SCO expected from IBM. Thus:

Failure to meet the specificity requirement is not enough to throw the claims out, however; a couple of other criteria must be met. One is that the failure was willful - that SCO deliberately failed to disclose that information. According to Judge Wells, that is, indeed, the case:

One might well argue that this is a charitable view of SCO's behavior. But it makes one thing clear: the court has noticed the discrepancy between SCO's public bluster and the evidence it has actually put forward in the trial.

Finally, IBM had to show that it was being hurt by SCO's failure. The court had no trouble buying IBM's argument that it would be hard put to defend a case where it is unaware of what it has done wrong. The troubles go beyond that, though:

The end result is that IBM won big: 182 of SCO's claims have been summarily tossed out - just ten short of what IBM had asked for. On the order of 100 claims remain. This ruling is clearly a major blow to SCO's case, but just how major is hard to say: since SCO's claims remain under seal, we cannot know which ones have survived. But it is clearly a much shorter list, with much of the "methods and concepts" vapor removed. And, just as importantly, the court appears to have concluded that SCO has been given plenty of rope at this point; with luck, this whole episode might just reach a conclusion sometime soon.