Leave poor SCO alone... the poor little lambs

WHY ARE people stupid sheep? No, don't answer that, it is quite obvious, but rather dismaying that no one bothers to think through the barest minimum of surface allegations when it comes to the SCO/IBM tiff. The latest bit of verbal diarrhea to dribble forth from the SCO legal team involves alleging IBM is involved in some sort of copyright infringement against poor old SCO. Why can't people leave them alone and let them semi-randomly sue people in peace?

A little history here. SCO sued IBM for allegedly taking their precious code and putting it in Linux, and tried to convince every Linux user out there to pay them lots of money for the alleged theft. Curiously enough, they won't tell anyone what was 'stolen', they won't even tell IBM. They claim in the press that SCO people have identified enough code to choke a horse, specifically, copied line for line into Linux. With that strong evidence, they won't really tell you what you are getting for your money, or give you a refund if they are wrong.

Whenever pressed, they won't show anything to anyone without a crippling NDA that disallows the person viewing the code to so much as comment on it. The few pieces of code that have been shown semi-publicly have been proven to be 1) not copied from SCO source code 2) done so authoritatively by the community in hours 3) raised more questions about SCO's claims than they answered.

Add in the fact that Novell has at the very least, raised some rather serious questions regarding whether SCO actually has any claim to 'their' copyrights at all, and you have a wonderful little case(s). They would probably take years and years to run through the courts, but I seriously doubt SCO will be around that long.

One thing that characterizes this suit, or set of suits as the case may be is the PR offensive SCO goes on. Every time it has bad news coming, or more importantly gets hit with something negative, it comes out with a new allegation. When it gets bitch-slapped by the judge for something as trivial as not showing evidence it claims to have and said it would produce, it comes out and throws a party.. err… press conference.

In such press conferences, it details a new slight against the poor embattled protectors of freedom, capitalism and endangered species. Cue dramatic music and hurt looking spokesman. Then it goes on to say how it will, at some point in the future, most likely launch a huge series of lawsuits against someone, the Fortune 1000, Linus, Linux users, or some European nation. It senda threatening letters here and there, usually by the thousands, telling people if they don't pay up, they may be sued into the ground, and be liable for yet more money later. These letters are not threats, just statements, ask SCO, it will tell you that. Read the letters before you make up your mind here though.

Somehow, the collective sheep in the financial press seem to be able to analyze no deeper than 'threatened lawsuit = money in the door'. Stock goes up, or at least doesn't go down from the crushingly bad news. What a blinding coincidence! So, why does no one notice that none of these lawsuits have been filed? Why hasn't any analyst questioned the timing of these?

Well, these threats have brought about a huge increase in revenue right? No, not really. Other than the questionable 'contributions' to the cause by MS and Sun, SCO has at times claimed to have gotten at least one large company to have signed up for its 'licensing'. In a curious twist of fate, it refuses to name that company. I wonder why not.

If you look at the financials for the last year or so, the SCOSource licensing initiative that was supposed to bring in large amount of money real soon now, has had expectations steadily back to just about zero. Cheesing off everyone and threatening the Fortune 1000, your main client base, doesn't do much for your revenue stream. Don't take my word for it, look at the numbers.

So, we have a company that may be spiralling downwards, and deflecting some rather devastating defeats with threats. I would suggest that it is showing the maturity of a 3rd grade child, a rather petulant one at that, but I will wait for it to reach those lofty goals first. The sadder bit is that the line is perpetuated again and again in the press. It goes to show that a press release speaks louder than any action.

This brings us back to the current situation. For the longest time, IBM has been asking SCO to show it the evidence, or at least some of it. At the very best, SCO has responded with roughly 'there are files in Linux that contain our code, but we won't tell you what code it is with anything nearing specificity'.

IBM pressed the issue, and in what appears to be a rather crushing defeat for SCO, in December, the judge overseeing the case ordered SCO to give IBM the evidence it asked for. It also gave it 30 days to do so. SCO hailed this as a victory for its cause. I still don't really understand the logic there. SCO also said it would comply.

Without going into the sordid details, mainly because they are a bit murky, the revelations that were due two weeks ago were delayed to today. Smart money says that SCO will walk out of the courtroom today clutching their backsides, unable to sit down for weeks because of the chewing out they get. Emergency rooms around the world will be filled with people if SCO produces what it claims to have, and people will be so stunned they fall over and hit their heads. Personally, I expect nothing, or at least nothing said, in volumes of obfuscation.

With that background, imagine the odds of SCO taking today to launch what appears to be a very lucrative set of claims against IBM. Golly. I would say it is without precedent, but it isn't.

It gets funnier when you look at what SCO actually said. While the various headlines simply scream that SCO is adding copyright claims, a closer examination says that SCO is asking the judge permission to add the claims. Nothing has been added yet. Those claims may be added if IBM turns over some discovery, something that has been put on hold until SCO coughs up its stuff, and SCO finds something in it that infringes.

Why does the collective press, technical and financial, seem oblivious to anything other than paraphrasing the verbals coming from SCO? Even if you do drink the cool-aid and believe SCO's version, why can't anyone see the patterns emerging?

If you want the only decent coverage of the story on the net, read Groklaw. They should have people at the courthouse today to report on what actually happens. If you want an understanding of the history, read the coverage for the last year. Either way, don't take anything from either side as stated, think about . Don't be a sheep or you might end up with a six-figure analyst job, and how would you face your family then? Looking at the track record of these people, puppy-strangler might be an easier job to explain to Grandma over Christmas dinner.