Judge Rules That IBM Did Not Destroy Evidence 163
UnknowingFool writes "From the latest in the SCO saga, Judge Wells ruled today that IBM did not destroy evidence as SCO claims. During discovery, SCO claims it found an IBM executive memo that ordered its programmers to delete source code, and so it filed a motion to prevent IBM from destroying more evidence. The actuality of the memo was less nefarious. An IBM executive wanted to ensure that the Linux developers were sandboxed from AIX/Dynix. So he ordered them to remove local copies of any AIX code from their workstations so that there would not be a hint of taint. The source code still existed in CVMC and was not touched. Since the source code was still in CMVC, Judge Wells ruled IBM did not destroy it. Incredulously, SCO's Mark James requested that IBM tell SCO how to obtain the information. IBM's Todd Shaughnessy responded that all during discovery (when IBM gave SCO a server with their CMVC database) SCO never once said that they were unable to find that information from CMVC. Judge Wells asked IBM to help SCO out in any way he could."
When will it End?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, the lack of observation. (Score:5, Insightful)
No room for appeals. (Score:5, Insightful)
sooo... (Score:4, Insightful)
So when can we expect the SEC investigation of SCO misconduct? I mean, they're all over Apple over some minor options backdating, the least they could do is deal with the huge pump-and-dump fraud going on in plain sight.
Re:sooo... (Score:4, Insightful)
So when can we expect the SEC investigation of SCO misconduct? I mean, they're all over Apple over some minor options backdating, the least they could do is deal with the huge pump-and-dump fraud going on in plain sight.
There's no such thing as "minor" options backdating, it's illegal. SCO's crap, while it's obvious to us that it's a shakedown-gone-wrong turned pump-n-dump sceme, proving that is another matter. Put another way - what would the SEC hit them *for*, and what would the proof be? And could they prove fraud as opposed to incompetence?
Re:OK SCO, I'll help you out (Score:2, Insightful)
Longest Deathwatch in Tech. (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be far better for everyone if the judge just gave a summary judgement to IBM and told SCO to just commit suicide and be done with it.
Re:When will it End?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not all SCOs money. SCO has an agreement with the attorneys that they not be paid by the hour. They will get a majority of the settlement against IBM instead.
So far they have gotten nothing for years of work. They are probably fairly desperate, and willing to do anything.
There's this big reel of rope ... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's the BIG reel of rope, hung from a pipe. Judge Wells is holding up one end of the pipe and IBM's legal team is holding up the other.
The trial isn't over yet solely because there's still some rope left on the reel. The judge and IBM want SCO to unreel it all. That way, when SCO goes to the appeal judge(s) and claims they didn't let SCO unreel it all and see if it was all the same color, they can hold up the empty reel. Then the appeals judge(s) can laugh them out of the courtroom, rather than winding all the rope back on the reel and sending them back to Judge Wells' court to do it over. B-)
That's the second shoe. (Score:4, Insightful)
SCO's crap, while it's obvious to us that it's a shakedown-gone-wrong turned pump-n-dump scheme, proving that is another matter. Put another way - what would the SEC hit them *for*, and what would the proof be? And could they prove fraud as opposed to incompetence?
While SCO has plausible deniability for the claims in court, SCO executives mad a lot of public statements (such as about finding numbers of lines of infringing code) that would tend to inflate their stock price, were demonstrably false, that that the SCO executives in question either knew were false, or should have known, had they done their due diligence before uttering them. There ought to be plenty of meat there.
I'd expect that the SEC and the shareholders are holding off pending the resolution of the suit. After that, if there's anything worth going after and/or anyone left standing on the SCO side, you might see some action.
Some SCO executives ended up with money in their pockets. Some shareholders ended up losing bundles. Don't be surprised if, once SCO v. IBM is over there's another one, leveling anything left of SCO and turning the execs into imprisoned paupers.
Meanwhile, if the banking regulators are on the ball, they'll be watching the assets of the people in question, to see if they start moving into out-of-country money-cleaning-and-storage operations. B-)
Re:When will it End?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No room for appeals. (Score:4, Insightful)
And they should not do any different because they are good lawyers.
It's only sad they have an evil client.
Re:When will it End?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely even the lawyers representing SCO, despite their apparently exiguous technical knowledge, are at least smart enough to be familiar with the concept of a sunk cost [wikipedia.org].
I suppose you can argue that caring whether it's a sunk cost requires rationality, and representing SCO calls into question whether they are acting rationally. Regardless, I think that would easily be outweighed by lawyers' usual tendency to be very rational when it comes to looking out for their own self-interest.
Re:D'Oh! (Score:2, Insightful)
Finally, the four-step-to-fortune question is raised.
So here it is:
1. Sue IBM
2. Buy large amounts of stock in IBM, (or better, futures), and buy large amount of stock in the lawyer firm that IBM uses
3. Make sure proceedings take ages and ages.
4. Sell futures, just after losing the case in court: profit!