Some good news on the SCO v IBM front. The magistrate judge has ruled on a motion from IBM limiting SCO to the evidence that has been shown thus far. Meaining nothing substantial. Here's the linky: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?stor ... 8175203644
Some tidbits from the ruling follow. I encourage you to read it yourself, as it's pretty funny for judge-speak.
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The court agrees with mr. Rochkind, SCO's expert, that methods and concepts can be discussed without disclosing source code. But it is possible, and even preferable in many instances, to provide the code behind methods and concepts. In fact, Mr. Rochkind's own publication Advance Unix Programming (2d ed. 2004), provides many examples of code when discussing "fundamental concepts."
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Most important to the court however, is the fact that SCO itself sought this level of specificity by asking for "identification of the specific lines and portions of code" for all alleged "trade secrets or confidential or proprietary information, whether computer code, methods or otherwise." Given SCXO's track record in this case, the court is certain that if IBM had simply provided line information without version and file information for "methods," SCO would have filed motions to compel complaining about IBM's lack of specificity. The court cannot find any reason why SCO should not be held to the same level of accountability that SCO held IBM to.
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In further support of this court's finding that version, file, and lilne information was the required level of specificity the court points to the testimony of SCO's own Chief Technology Officer, Sandeep Gupta. Sandeep Gupta testified about the importance of having version, file and line information in respect to methods and concepts.
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Certainly if an individual was stopped and accused of shoplifting after walking out of Neiman Marcus, they would expect to be eventually told what they allegedly stole. It would be absurd for an officer to tell the accused that 'you know what you stole I'm not telling.' Or, to simply hand the accused individual a catalog of Neiman Marcus' entire inventory and say 'its in there somewhere, you figure it out.'
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There is no evidence before the court to indicate that SCO lacked the ability to comply with the court's orders. In fact, given SCO's own public statements outlilned in part supra, it would appear that SCO had more than enough evidence to comply with the court's orders.
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PJ adds:
What's left in the case from the items in dispute? Only item numbers 23 (about "negative know how" regarding EES, an "error event subsystem" in Dynix/PTX), 43 ("learning from TCP failures to help networking and storage for Linux", if you can believe anything so ridiculous), 90 ("avoiding a logging event that caused problems in PTX), 94 and 186-192 (about Dynix again). That's it.
Major SCO smackdown!
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