Industry analysts were left scratching their heads as
they tried to understand the reasoning behind 10 subpoenas sent out
by IBM and The SCO Group as part of their legal
dispute.
The subpoenas were sent to a variety of individuals and
companies including Linux creator Linus Torvalds, SCO investor
BayStar Capital, and Novell.
IBM's subpoenas were sent out 30 October to investment companies
BayStar Capital, Renaissance Ventures and Deutsche Bank. The
company also subpoenaed industry analyst company Yankee Group,
whose senior analyst Laura DiDio had earlier examined the Unix
System V source code which, SCO claims, was illegally copied into
Linux.
SCO has sent out subpoenas to Linus Torvalds, Open Source
Development Labs chief executive officer Stuart Cohen, Transmeta
vice president, general counsel and secretary John Horsley and GNU
founder Richard Stallman, as well as Novell and Digeo.
But analysts and observers said it was unclear how those
subpoenaed could advance the two claims that form the crux of the
SCO-IBM lawsuit, in which SCO alleges that IBM sought to destroy
the market for Unix on Intel by inappropriately contributing code
to Linux.
"Linus [Torvalds] is the only one who seems worth subpoenaing,"
said Bill Claybrook, a research director with Aberdeen Group, who
has also examined SCO's source code. "The rest of them don't have
any information that would lead a judge to determine whether code
had been copied."
"The list that I read seemed nonsensical to me," said IDC
analyst Dan Kusnetzky, speaking of SCO's list of subpoena targets.
"The SCO Group has been playing this as a media event."
If SCO or IBM wanted to determine whether or not code had been
copied, they would do better to subpoena Linux kernel developers
who would be in a position to comment on contributions to the Linux
source.
"If I were a judge and IBM and SCO came to me with that list of
people, I'd probably throw the whole thing out, because this whole
list is nonsense," Claybrook said.
IBM had no comment on the motivation behind its subpoenas,
offering only a prepared statement, which read, "It is time for SCO
to produce something meaningful. They have been dragging their
feet and it is not clear there is any incentive for SCO to try this
in court."
SCO spokesman Blake Stowell suggested that IBM's subpoenas were
served to intimidate analysts from speaking in favour of SCO.
BayStar Capital was targeted because the company recently invested
$50m in SCO, and DiDio was targeted for public comments that
"leaned more toward SCO", Stowell suggested.
Stowell denied SCO's subpoenas were issued in response to IBM's,
saying all the subpoenas were served at the same time. They were
issued to people who had dealings with Torvalds and who would be in
a position to comment on the creation of Linux, he said.
Open Source Initiative president Eric Raymond disagreed. SCO's
subpoenas were issued to distract the court and reduce the
possibility that SCO's case will be thrown out of court during a
hearing taking place on 5 December on an IBM motion asking the
court to compel SCO to present evidence.
"They're just stirring up mud," Raymond said. "There's a
substantial possibility that the judge might quash this case
because SCO has failed to respond to IBM's discovery request."
Robert McMillan writes for IDG News
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