back to article SCO vs. IBM looks like it's over for good

The long-running SCO vs. IBM case looks like it might just be over. A new filing (PDF) scooped up by the good folks at Groklaw sees both SCO and IBM agree to sign off on two recent decisions in which SCO's arguments advancing its claims to own parts of Unix were slapped down by the US District Court. As The Register reads the …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Pint

    I'll drink to that

    But somebody put a watch on the grave.

    If anything moves, nuke it.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: I'll drink to that

      Not so fast.

      Let's wait and confirm that SCO is not getting an injection from a wealthy sailing fan. It took quite a few "charitable donations" to repair the decrepit rigging and outfit the old lady for so many races, it may just get another one you know. After all - anything for the love of sailing.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. RIBrsiq
      Mushroom

      Re: I'll drink to that

      Why not nuke it pre-emptively, on general principle...?

      Also, here's an obscure vampire-related reference for no particular reason:

      "Vampire steaks are good for the heart".

      1. Chewi
        Mushroom

        Re: I'll drink to that

        Why not nuke it pre-emptively, on general principle...?

        It's the only way to be sure.

        1. Evilgoat_2

          Re: I'll drink to that

          From orbit

        2. Oengus
          Pirate

          Re: I'll drink to that

          Don't forget the Mortein (bug spray) because cockroaches are supposed to be able to survive the fallout of a nuke and lawyers are a close relation to cockroaches.

    3. WalterAlter
      Pirate

      Darl McBride - 7 Headed Beast of the Apocalypse

      McBride exemplifies monopolist capitalism and should be borken on the wheel then drawn and quartered in a public square on a balmy Summer's day, certainly, but who wound him up and pointed him at Unix right when the Penguin was getting some serious head turning by IT departments because Windows was chronically buggy and hackable? Whatever happened to the purloined smoking gun letter that pretty much pointed at Redmond as the instigator of this hideous attempt at stomping out the competition? Maybe the CIA and NSA were unhappy that they couldn't engineer a back door into open source warez.

    4. Schultz

      Don't Nuke It!

      Or we'll have SCOzilla coming for us next.

    5. Tom 13

      Re: If anything moves, nuke it.

      Not so fast.

      We've all learned from Dr. Who that nuking truly evil things sometimes revives them instead of destroying them.

      In this case I think we want the firetruck filled with holy water, the guys with the repeating crossbows firing wooden stakes, and somebody on the machine gun with the belt fed silver bullets all on standby. And keep the Doc's phone number handy in case this is a truly hard case and requires the serious use of the timey-whimey.

    6. martinusher Silver badge

      Re: I'll drink to that

      I think that's what will happen to the counter suit by IBM. Its the equivalent of the stake permanently poised of the heart of the zombie -- at the first sign of a twitch it gets pounded in, hard,

    7. Graham Marsden
      Alert

      Re: I'll drink to that

      That is not dead...

      ... which can eternal lie...

  2. Ole Juul

    Put on your red dress baby

    'cause we're going out tonight,

    1. Tony Pott

      Re: Put on your red dress baby

      I'd forgotten PJ promised that. I do miss Groklaw.

      1. Ole Juul

        Re: Put on your red dress baby

        Pamela Jones deserves to party now. I started reading Groklaw near the beginning and I learnt a lot there. PJ worked very hard for all of us.

        PS: I wonder if my lone downvote is from someone who doesn't know about PJ's famous red dress, or if it was from the last (surely there couldn't be two) SCO supporter. Actually, I can imagine it was Darl McBride.

        PPS: For those that weren't there, here is that great cartoon with the dress and the Titanic which nailed it like nothing else could.

  3. James 51

    It's the end of an error.

    How many books are going to be written about this? Here's hoping the IT industry finds better ways to sort things out and bleak housesque law suits.

    1. Tom 13

      Re: It's the end of an error.

      Yep, specifically

      Out of bounds in Line 1

      Which is what makes it all the more amazing it took so long to resolve this case.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    does this mean everybody gets to punch Darl McBride in the face?

    He does deserve it, after all.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    unless .....

    "On the off-chance IBM wants to return to court to sue Zombie SCO, that is"

    it would be kinda fun to watch IBM try, naming the SCO lawyers as co-defendents?

    Get costs from the main cases, but then also go for punitive damages against the lawyers who made it possible for it to go for for so long when any rational human would have given up ages ago ...

    1. Paul Shirley

      Re: unless .....

      Unfortunately they 'bought' their way out of owning any part of the winnings early in the case, leaving no cause to go after them directly. That deal committed the lawyers to continue till the case was won or lost, even after the money ran out. BS&F got up to a lot of abusive and harassing behaviour but it's probably too late to deal with that and the courts allowed it to happen without acting, though it must have badly influenced both the judges and juries.

      The good news is BS&F almost certainly lost a lot of money even though the individual lawyers got paid, burnt badly and it damaged the companies reputation. Darl's brother made money but arguably might as well have been working for IBM!

      I would have liked to see harassment and libel/slander charges but pj isn't likely to bother and time has probably run out anyway. Maybe now the case is ending someone will leak what they found about funding and Microsoft involvement...

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: unless .....

      IBM could just ask for SCO as payment for the hassle.

      And then tear it into tiny little pieces in front of Darl.

      1. Captain DaFt

        Re: unless .....

        "IBM could just ask for SCO as payment for the hassle.

        And then tear it into tiny little pieces in front of Darl."

        Aw, they could do better than that.

        SCO toilet paper, each square printed as a replica SCO Stock certificate.

        If they make it two ply, I'd buy it!

  6. Christoph
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: High Barratry

      Posterity shall ne'er survey

      a nobler grave than this,

      Here lie the bones of Caldera,

      stop traveller, and piss.

      1. TDog

        Re: High Barratry

        Al least give Byron an ack. Substituting Caldera for Castlereagh is hardly high literature.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: High Barratry

        Caldera did much good: http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe IBM should continue its claim

    And if the only asset they are able to recover is SCO's fake "claim" on unix, that would be a good outcome and no other scumbag would be able to pick it up and argue the same shite from another angle.

    1. Tom 13

      Re: Maybe IBM should continue its claim

      No, best to leave it where it's at. If IBM were to own it, some future head of IBM could resurrect it against the rest of the Linux community. (Yeah I know that doesn't make any sense now, but neither did the SCO case.) As is, it's a worthless asset in a worthless company. Since it has zero other assets, you can't ever make a case for buying it which passes the fiduciary requirement of any publicly traded company.

  8. CAPS LOCK

    You have to wonder about the mental fitness of people with a poor legal position going up against...

    .. IBM. It's not for no reason that their lawyers are referred to as the Nazgul.

    1. Vic

      Re: You have to wonder about the mental fitness of people...

      It's not for no reason that their lawyers are referred to as the Nazgul.

      I think it's been clear since early on that the entire SCO case was an annoyance case - they merely wanted to be bought out by IBM because they had no ongoing business to speak of[1].

      That was a huge miscalculation - for IBM not to have fought the case would be an admission that it had illegally appropriated someone else's technology. For a company that earns its cash by looking after other people's stuff, that would have been commercial suicide. So it fought.

      Disclosure: I did attempt to buy some of the debris from SCO from the bankruptcy[2].

      Vic.

      [1] All they had left was the Unix onselling business - which was supposed to net them 5% of total sales. You can see that didn't pay enough as they ended up just keeping all of that money for some time - and it is to the bankruptcy judge's eternal shame that he made no attempt whatsoever to get them to return the 95% they'd simply stolen.

      [2] Unsuccessfully, in the end. Which is probably for the best. When the bankruptcy was initially filed, the HipCheck business was valued at $5m. Towards the end, there was suddenly an announcement that the business was to be sold to Darl for a mere $35k - less than 1% of its previous valuation. As there were already agents for various mobile platforms available, I intended to glue those on top of Nagios to provide something of value. The administrator told me that I would have to pay dramatically more for the business than Darl was getting it for, as they'd already spent more than that sum on the paperwork to sell the business...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Noooo....

    I was hoping that my children could inherit my long running interest in this case. I started watching this in 2003 (?) (disclaimer I used to work for Big Blue), our first was born in 2006 and I was hoping she could pick up monitoring this when I popped my clogs.

    It certainly looked like I was going to leave this mortal coil before the conclusion of the case.

    Bugger, now all I have is the Prenda law case and one of the defendants has died in that one.

    Oh well, back to reading Bleak House.

  10. jake Silver badge

    I'll believe it when ...

    I can take a dump on SCO's gravestone, and then piss on the grave.

    Some lawyers just don't know when to quit. One wonders if there is a list of "top 10 most money burned in a single lawsuit" ...

    1. hplasm
      Happy

      Re: I'll believe it when ...

      I can take a dump on SCO's gravestone, and then piss on the grave."

      Are you ready to queue?

    2. Vic

      Re: I'll believe it when ...

      Some lawyers just don't know when to quit

      Oh, BSF knew when to quit. Rather early on, they'd repositioned themselves to act for the entire case - including appeals - for a prepaid, fixed sum. This turned out to be an error...

      Vic.

      1. Paul Shirley

        Re: I'll believe it when ...

        That's a lesser error than the initial deal, where they intended to take part payment in SCO shares. The fixed fee arrangement was what it took to cancel that and SCO were the winner despite contingency fee clauses on winnings and sale of SCO.

        It was an incredibly stupid arrangement to make that makes it clear the lawyers believed SCO have a good case at the start. Problem was, SCO lied to everyone including their lawyers. It also became obvious the whole suit was as much a stock scam as about the IP.

        Taking a shareholding in such an obvious scam would have exposed them to serious legal risk. Just losing vast amounts of money is the lesser evil.

        1. Vic

          Re: I'll believe it when ...

          That's a lesser error than the initial deal, where they intended to take part payment in SCO shares.

          I think you're comparing the lesser of two infinites :-)

          Vic.

  11. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Holmes

    Drinking to Groklaw, whoever they are!

    The time-tested argument "I own everything of value ever, it's written on this little piece of paper" has resulted in SCO shareholders and employees getting rogered good.

    I remember some of those employees actually drinking the kool-aid and staging a pro-SCO protest back when people thought Iraq would be over "soon". Where is their job now?

  12. Jon 37

    Completely wrong

    I think the author has the wrong understanding of the document.

    SCO isn't accepting the judgement at all. It wants to appeal, and that's why it's filing this.

    SCO is just asking the court to certify that the court is finished ruling on SCO's claims. This is pretty much a formality. But SCO needs that before it's allowed to appeal to a higher court. And SCO has already paid its lawyers for the appeals, so there *will* be appeals.

    You're generally not allowed to appeal part-way through the case, except in a few exceptional circumstances. You have to wait for the court to completely resolve the case, so the court can dot it's I's and cross it's T's, and *then* appeal. This prevents you wasting the appeal court's time with loads of tiny appeals, instead you have to wait and do one big appeal at the end.

    IBM is agreeing with SCO, so it can get the appeal over with. IBM still has counterclaims against SCO, so it *could* try to make SCO wait until those have been decided. But IBM knows that it's not going to get any money from SCO now, since SCO is bankrupt, so there's no point litigating IBM's counterclaims yet - there's nothing for IBM to win and it would cost IBM for its lawyer's fees. If SCO manages to win on appeal, *then* IBM will start to push it's counterclaims.

    1. Lyndon Hills 1

      Re: Completely wrong

      Not a lawyer, but reading the pdf, I think you're bang on.

    2. Vic

      Re: Completely wrong

      I think the author has the wrong understanding of the document.

      I wonder if the author has read the document...

      The second paragraph starts :-

      There is no just reason for delaying SCO’s appeal from such Orders

      It is very clear that SCO wants to get on with its appeal. As this is a joint motion, it might get its way. That'll be fun...

      Vic.

    3. Mark 85

      Re: Completely wrong

      Tis a pity to say the least. Here I was hoping that this might sound the death knell of patent trolls. They are tough little bastards to kill.

      1. Jonathan Richards 1

        Re: Completely wrong

        @Mark 85

        Amen to the sentiment, brother, but SCO v. IBM was in re. literally dozens of things, none of which were patents. As they say in these parts, "What happened, was, -->" [groklaw.net]

  13. The Eee 701 Paddock

    Calling all makers...

    ...of wooden stakes infused with essence of pure garlic, with a nice fat core of unadulterated Kryptonite:

    We have a great job for you, and will make it worth your while :-)

    But seriously: won't this stay dead? SCO has such a remarkable ability to reach groaning from the grave, I'd be surprised if they're not a by-product of HYDRA research (read your Captain America comic-books)...

    1. Captain DaFt

      Re: Calling all makers...

      "wooden stakes infused with essence of pure garlic, with a nice fat core of unadulterated Kryptonite:"

      I think this might call for the ancient troll remedy of cold iron, possibly with the pragmatic addition of hot lead. :)

  14. Michael Souris

    For 13 years...

    I have been embarrassed to own a piece of perspex with "SCO Ace" emblazoned through it. But like Slartibartfast, if I threw it away I would be careful to make sure it landed somewhere soft.

  15. Cynical Observer
    Terminator

    I'll believe it...

    when the name SCO is no longer there on any register of companies and that has been achieved without transfer of the rights (wrongs) in this case being transferred to any other entity along the way.

    Until then -

    Zombie Alert Active - Threat Level TBA*

    *That Bugger's Active

  16. Lars Silver badge
    Unhappy

    And the winner is

    I think Swift in Gulliver's Travels wrote about some old lady who had five cows, crooks stole three and her lawyer took the two remaining. Yes, I know I am a bit sarcastic and so was Swift, but is it not a bit like if a dentist tried to keep your tooth sic as long as possible, see you next week, and next week, and next week.

  17. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Atomic wedgie?

    http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/05aug/uf008214.gif

  18. G2
    WTF?

    Groklaw... updated ?!

    wait a bit....... Groklaw... is still being updated ?!

    that should be a news article on its own.

    i thought PJ & the rest of the team pulled the plug and froze the site to read-only mode years ago...

    hxttxp://www.groklaw.net/pdf4/IBM-1162.pdf

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK

    Server: Apache

    Last-Modified: Sat, 27 Feb 2016 01:47:09 GMT

    1. Shane Lusby

      Re: Groklaw... updated ?!

      Groklaw is still up to read but hasn't had an update in about two and a half years. It shut down in an 'oh my god, they are reading our emails' panic rather than going the "encrypt 'em if you've got 'em" route.

  19. kain preacher

    There as been some dark and ancient magic keeping SCO alive. Look for some evil wizard to resurrect SCO.

  20. Shadow Systems

    "SCO is dead!" Uh huh, we've heard THAT before.

    Please forgive me for not putting any faith in such proclamations, they've been made repeatedly before & always turn out to be false.

    Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go make up another bunch of popcorn as this glacier-slow FusterCluck continues to play out.

    It'll probably still be going long after I've died & started wearing pants.

  21. cd

    Tis but a scratch

    It's just a flesh wound.

  22. the spectacularly refined chap

    13 years

    I remember when news of this originally broke and their claims looked like they may have some credence. I was discussing it with a friend in the pub.

    Since then: Been barred from that pub. Pub has closed. Pub has been demolished. Something else has been built in its place. The friend I was talking to has died.

    When you connect it to your own life like that, man, that's a long time.

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