SCO News Roundup

• Ars Technica takes a dim view of the latest proceedings.
  
  
• A short piece at The Register, with a similar take on things.
  
  
• An InformationWeek story by Paul McDougall. This is the same guy who recently, out of the blue, wrote an "IBM funds Groklaw" piece, and the earlier piece apparently shows up as one of SCO's exhibits. This is probably part of what PJ talks about when she mentions SCO planting stories in the media. He's got the right to protect his sources and all that, of course, but it sure would be interesting to know exactly what, or who, prompted him to write the previous story. I mean, if SCO really is planting stories in the media, and then turning around and using the resulting articles in court filings, that would be kind of newsworthy, dontcha think?
  
  
• So far, Lyons is the only media type openly sympathizing with SCO in this matter. He doesn't appear to see anything wrong with bashing someone for wanting to stay anonymous, while relying almost exclusively on his own anonymous sources. Panglozz speculates a bit about Lyons' sources here.
  
  For my part, I suspect his sources didn't actually say quite what he says they said. That's Lyons' usual M.O.: Go into the interview with a trite, hackneyed storyline already in mind, repeatedly ask the interviewee leading/trick questions, and twist everything the person says to make it fit the script.
  
  
• Mr. Mettler has a great rant about it up on Lamlaw. I'm not sure "jerkheads" is the word I would've chosen, but hey.
  
  
• Slashdot's got the story now, titling it "SCO Legally Assaults PJ of Groklaw">. Yikes! I don't see anything new there, but it does get the story in front of a wide audience.
  
  I really don't understand what SCO was thinking with the latest PJ business. At best, in the absolute optimum case, it achieves nothing in the courtroom, except maybe more delay. And with headlines like the one on Slashdot, it's an absolute PR disaster. What a bunch of maroons.
  
  All I can figure is that SCO thinks it would've won if it hadn't been for GL. Possibly they want gazillion-dollar damages awarded based on what they think they might've won if GL hadn't exposed their con game. Yeah, good luck with that.
  
  
• In blogospace, a piece at tdaxp.com titled "SCO SLAPPs Groklaw". Here's the WP article about SLAPPs, if you're unfamiliar with the term. As the article notes, many states have laws on the books to protect people hit with SLAPP suits. I'm not sure how the provisions relate to PJ's situation, since SCO's trying to silence her without actually naming her as a defendant. But I imagine she's talked to a good lawyer about this already. She sounded pretty upbeat about the latest business in her post about it, so she must've liked whatever the lawyer told her.
  
  
• A similarly outraged post, over at Lone Wolves.
  
  

• If you're like me, you haven't really been following the Amaranth Advisors scandal too closely. They were a hedge fund that went belly up last year after finding a way to lose $6.5 billion in a single week. So now the inevitable litigation's started. The San Diego County pension fund filed suit the other day. And who do you suppose has leaped to the defense of the shady hedge fund? Why, our old chum David Boies, of course.
  
  More on the case here.
  
  
• Meanwhile, BS&F's bankruptcy work for Northwest Airlines appears to have now morphed into criminal defense. Although I'd argue that their work for many of their high profile clients appears to be a form of criminal defense, in fact if not in name.
  
  
• A entertaining argument over whether GPL'd driver source is getting swiped for use in OpenBSD. Theo's his usual cheerful warm-n-fuzzy self, I see...
  
  
• A BusinessWeek piece on the Apple-EMI music deal, including an amusing run-in with an ignorant Windows bigot. I didn't realize people like that still existed, but hey. the interesting point which hasn't been covered much is that what they're selling are not mp3s, but non-drm AAC files.
  
  
• An update on a current GPL case in Israel.
  
  
• In what may be a new candidate for most esoteric vulnerability ever, Kaspersky Labs is talking up the so-called Podloso virus, which is sort of an iPod virus. Ok, your iPod has to be running Linux (what, yours isn't?), and you have to manually install the virus onto the iPod. But once it's there and you try to play a song, it says ""You are infected with Oslo, the first iPodLinux Virus." on your screen. Wooooo, scary.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

By brx0 @ 1:08 AM