SCO/IBM Battle Heats As Subpoenas Fly

by , 12:00 PM EST, November 13th, 2003

The SCO/IBM battle continues to rage, though it doesn't capture as much headline space as it once did. Both sides are still sticking to their stories: SCO claims IBM and others have unlawfully included SCO proprietary code in Linux, while IBM and others say that SCO's claim is full of cow manure and have repeatedly asked SCO to produce the offending code, which SCO has claims it has, and IBM and others say it has not. Got it?

There's more to the story, but that's it in a nutshell. Legal maneuvering has thus far gotten no satisfaction for anyone but the lawyers, and possibly Microsoft, who stands to gain big if SCO wins, and gain some as long as SCO keeps the Linux market off balance.

C|Net News is reporting that both sides have escalated the conflict recently by launching salvos of subpoenas in a quest to gain a legal upper hand. SCO sent out subpoenas to Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, Stuart Cohen of the Open Source Development Labs, and other key industry notables. IBM launched a subpoena action of its own, sending them out to people like Brian Skiba of Deutsche Bank, who claims to have seen a comparison of the Linux 2.4 kernel and SCO's System V kernel.

Here's a bit from the C|Net News article, SCO, IBM battle heats up:

SCO said Wednesday that it has filed subpoenas with the U.S. District Court in Utah, targeting six different individuals or organizations. Those include Novell; Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel; Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation; Stuart Cohen, chief executive of the Open Source Development Labs; and John Horsley, general counsel of Transmeta.

SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said he did not know what the subpoenas asked for, but "I know that some of them have been served."

IBM has also broadened its efforts to respond to the Linux-related lawsuit by asking a federal judge to order SCO to identify illegal source code and serving four other companies with subpoenas of its own.

SCO filed the suit in March, claiming that IBM "contaminated" Linux by illegally incorporating trade secrets inherited from Unix. So far, SCO has listed the names of 591 files in the Linux 2.4 and 2.5 kernels that allegedly contain illicit code but has not been more specific.

IBM's subpoenas were sent Oct. 30 to BayStar Capital, Deutsche Bank Group, Renaissance Ventures and The Yankee Group, which have indicated they have reason to believe that SCO's claims are legitimate. IBM has cited an Oct. 16 article in The Salt Lake Tribune that reported that Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Skiba visited SCO's headquarters and saw a "near exact duplicate of source code between the Linux 2.4 kernel and (SCO's) Unix System V kernel." In October, BayStar Capital invested US$50 million in SCO.

There's more information included in the full article, so stop by C|Net News to get the full story.

The Mac Observer Spin:

The reason the SCO/IBM battle is not making headlines anymore is because many people have already made up their minds about which side they are on. Having done so and made whatever adjustments they've felt necessary to minimize the effect of this tussle, they've started looking at more pressing issues. News of this wrangling is still important since a win on either side could have far reaching affects.

SCO, IBM battle heats up