Rupert Goodwins' Diary
Thursday 06/08/2004
Meanwhile over in Vegas, SCO is hosting its SCO Forum annual shindig. The news, in case you missed it, was that now that SCO has 'obviously overachieved' in its objective of defending its intellectual property in the courts it's time for everyone to stop worrying about litigation and start looking at SCO's marvellous product line. Why, if it wasn't for those nasty journalists and that wicked, wicked IBM running-dog Groklaw being so negative, the company would have done great things.... golly, I know we can be an irresponsible lot, but who knew we were irresponsible for so much?
Unfortunately, SCO's new 'ignore the lawsuit' approach is somewhat sullied by a gleeful addendum, in which the company says that it has proof of IBM's evil actions in creating a version of its AIX Unix without SCO's permission. The details need not detain us: suffice it to note that SCO's 'obvious overachieving' hasn't as yet included the production of much by way of evidence to back up its claims, let alone something as substantial as a court decision in its favour. But this is the real deal, says SCO. Internal emails from within IBM (not shown) that prove the company knew what it was doing was wrong.
It takes IBM's running dog (by which I assume SCO means 'completely unconnected with IBM' -- in the absence of anything more coherent) Groklaw just under a day to take SCO's exciting new revelation, dig down into the archives of everything SCO's said and done, and what everyone else connected with this has said and done. It has produced chapter and verse that -- to this legal layman at least -- looks as if it comprehensively spikes the guns of the new attack before they've even swivelled into position. You can see why this might prove annoying, and why Groklaw was so loudly denounced from the stage at SCO Forum. At one point, anyone who contributed to Groklaw was asked to stand up, which to my eternal regret didn't seem to provoke an "I'm Spartacus" scene.
You have to admire a company that can put on a keynote called "Free Software and the Fools Who Use It", and then complains about FUD. The SCO management disconnect from reality must be close to complete: perhaps Groklaw's continued doggedness in demonstrating this might be the final push into complete psychosis.