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Strong Sell
Re: Taking on water, why we're beyond bailing, at this point...The term, in the shipping salvage industry is: "open and tidal", meaning that the water comes and goes as it pleases without restriction.... Inspired by the "Taking on Water" post, I decided I wanted to do a quick review, for everyone playing along at home, of why I believe the SCOundrels don't get to walk away from this litigation scot free.... (Of course you needn't read any further than these five letters: IANAL, and if you do, well, it's your own damn fault, and I can't be held responsible.) 1) Darl, personally, claimed IBM and Red Hat's products were defective and exposed their customers to legal liability that demonstrably *does not exist*. ( http://news.com.com/2100-1001-5060134.html ) That's enough, but on top of that Darl knew, or should have known, that no such liability existed. The "indeminfication" that Caldera granted to its officers is, in the face of pending bankruptcy, worthless. In the category of things that should keep Darl from sleeping well at night, IBM continues to harp on the damage that they have suffered from this trade libel. (At first I viewed the notion that Darl was to be the fall guy as a bit over-drawn, but now, four years on, I see that Ralphie - I never said a word, and I don't own anything for IBM to take away, anyway - Yarro has indeed, set Darl up as the fall guy. Almost the slander and fraud claims can be laid solely at the feet of Caldera's President and CEO, Darl McBride.) 2) The SCOundrels lawyers were partners in attempting to perpetrate a fraud on the public; David Boies who knew, or should have known, that end users can not be held liable for IBM's putative contract violations, threatened, publicly, during a Conference Call to sue users of Linux. (Publicity for that event: http://ir.sco.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=114097 and http://www.linuxelectrons.com/News/General/20031118095122449 ) (The transcript of the call: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20040615030206675 ) 3) Tibbits, a licensed lawyer, claimed publicly, in a letter that he signed that the Linux using public was liable for violating a contract, (the BSD/AT&T Settlement), which he later claimed, in a sworn statement to a Federal Court not to possess a copy of. (Example of the letter: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040218025410814) (See: Caldera's answers to IBM's Interrogatories; at this time I can not find the reference.) Further, the files that Caldera claims was copied improperly, by persons unknown from UNIX Sys V into Linux were files that Caldera, possessing both UNIX Sys V and Linux source code, must have known were not identical, and the provenance of the identically named files from Linux is a matter of public record. 4) Caldera's lawyers have repeatedly, and with obvious malice, quoted out of context, and outright _mis-quoted_ the wording of the IBM/AT&T contract. (See, for example: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050205074705104 wherein Caldera "helpfully" inserted the text "[AIX]" into the wording of Amendment X, when in fact, no such text exists in the original contract.) 5) Tibbits signed a fraudulant contract with EV1 granting EV1 rights that Caldera did not have any power to grant or deny, having convinced EV1 that Red Hat had put EV1 and EV1's customers at risk for being sued. (See: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061015203855256 on the EV1 deal.) 6) Darl, on several separate occasions, claimed to own property rights in code that he knew, or should have known, someone else wrote. When confronted with contrary and irrefutable evidence, Darl merely repeated his claim. (See: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/sco/sco-without-fear.html for a discussion of Darl's ill-fated BPF claim. and Darl's Q&A session at Harvard: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20040215014000600 ) 7) Sontag claimed that the BSD releases were also violating Caldera's property rights saying that BSD was out of compliance with the then sealed agreement. We've since read the agreement and learned that BSD's *sole* obligation* was to not sue AT&T. (See the Byte Interview: http://www.byte.com/documents/s=7801/byt1055784622054/0616_marshall.html , and the BSD Agreement: www.groklaw.net/pdf/USLsettlement.pdf ) KWL Please, feel free to contribute your favorites, or to correct any errors I may have made. |
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Msg # | Subject | Author | Recs | Date Posted |
21397 | Re: Taking on water, why we're beyond bailing, at this point... | paulshirley2006 | 12 | 2/19/2007 8:13:26 PM |
21416 | Re: Taking on water, why we're beyond bailing, at this point... | codswallet | 5 | 2/20/2007 4:21:58 AM |
21462 | Re: Taking on water, why we're beyond bailing, at this point... | Jaywalk | 5 | 2/20/2007 2:15:44 PM |