Other happenings on the SCO front

[Posted August 25, 2004 by corbet]

The hearing date for IBM's motion for a partial summary judgment on its tenth counterclaim (seeking a declaration that none of its Linux activities infringe upon SCO's copyrights) and SCO's attempt to dismiss that counterclaim is coming. So the memos to the court are flying in all directions.

SCO has filed its reply memorandum (PDF format) in support of its motion to dismiss or stay count ten. Therein, SCO claims that IBM's counterclaim is not "compulsory," that, instead, it is unrelated to the main case and could be considered separately. SCO says that IBM's counterclaim adds "undue complication and complexity" to the case, and thus should be dismissed. SCO wants the issue to simply go away.

IBM has also filed a reply memorandum (PDF); this one is in support of its motion for a partial summary judgment on the tenth counterclaim. It makes for interesting reading; IBM is putting its full strength into ripping apart SCO's claims. IBM's reasoning is, essentially:

SCO has made repeated public claims that the Linux kernel contains code copied directly from Unix, so the issue is relevant.
SCO has never shown any evidence that this copying has occurred, and has no such evidence to show.
The only thing that was even close to evidence was a declaration by Sandeep Gupta. IBM says it should be ignored because it was filed too late, because Mr. Gupta has no personal knowledge that would make him an expert witness, and the approach he used to compare Unix and Linux code is flawed.
In support of its position, IBM has submitted a declaration from one Brian Kernighan on the flaws in the code comparison methodology and stating that Mr. Gupta's results are incorrect. When it comes to Unix code, one might assume that Mr. Kernighan has a bit of expertise to draw on.
SCO's claims that it needs more time for discovery are bogus because SCO has been saying for over a year that it has tons of evidence already.
SCO did not even bother to try to answer most of IBM's "undisputed facts," and its filing was not organized properly.
SCO can't even put up convincing evidence that it owns the copyrights on Unix.

The memo goes on for 56 pages; it is an interesting read. It has long been clear that SCO management's public statements would come back to haunt the company; IBM is now doing its best to make that happen.

IBM has also been busy trying to strike the declarations SCO has been filing in support of its positions. IBM's reasoning is usually that the person making the declaration is in no position to know what he is talking about. For some amusement, see this version of John Harrop's declaration posted on Groklaw; all of the portions which IBM wishes to strike have been indicated there. If IBM is successful, little of the declaration will remain.

SCO is due to report its third quarter results. That announcement will, according to this press release, happen on August 31. SCO should be able to show more SCOsource income this time around, since the money from EV1Servers.Net should finally appear in its accounting. It is hard to imagine the numbers as a whole being good, however.

SCO has announced, again, that it has made peace with BayStar. It might have actually happened this time.

Other happenings on the SCO front

Posted Aug 26, 2004 15:41 UTC (Thu) by bjn (guest, #2179) [Link] (1 responses)

It's "Dr. Kernighan" actually.

Other happenings on the SCO front

Posted Aug 27, 2004 18:13 UTC (Fri) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link]

(This is barely on-topic, but since it arises from the article, I'll address it.)

In the U.S., the use of "Dr." is only really mandatory for medical doctors (including M.D.s, Dentists, etc.). Its use for Ph.D.s (and Doctors of Divinity) is always acceptable, but can be considered pretentious, depending on the setting, context and regional custom. Fortunately, in this case, the whole mess can be sidestepped by referring to him as "Prof. Kernighan," which is what I would have done. Oh well. :)