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DannyB [soylentnews.org] writes:

Back in March 2003, some of you may remember the (in)famous SCO vs IBM lawsuit claiming that Linux had code which was stolen from Unix. And that Unix was owned by SCO. (neither of those two claims were true, and the falsity of the latter was proven in court first by a bench trial, then after an appeal, by a jury, then after another appeal, just because, by another judge)

The story is very long, and I can't tell it here. SCO claimed for years to have mountains of evidence. Never showed any. After protestations from IBM, the court ordered SCO three times to produce its evidence, the third and final order was Dec 22, 2005. Eventually the court began knocking out the legs from SCO's purported "case". Eventually trial was finally set to begin Monday, September 17, 2007. After boasting loudly for years that SCO wanted its day in court, on the Friday afternoon preceding trial on Monday, SCO declared bankruptcy. How can a company remain in bankruptcy for so many years, until this very day!? Good question. It's stuck at an appeals court that hasn't touched it in years. The docket alone is hundreds(!) of boxes. I'm sure no court unfamiliar with this long and complex case is very eager to first have to read through the docket. This case is firmly in Jarndyce and Jarndyce [wikipedia.org] territory here.

At some point in bankruptcy, because it stinks to high heaven, the court separated the assets from the litigation. The assets went in one direction (Xinuos [wikipedia.org]), and the lawsuit went in the other direction -- thus keeping the assets now out of reach of any possible counter claim damages from IBM.

Yesterday (March 31, 2021) Xinuos filed a new lawsuit [courtlistener.com] against IBM and Red Hat.^{[1] [2] [3] (below)}

When I saw this a few hours ago this morning, I was skeptical it was an April fools joke. But it appears to be real. Unlike several recent lawsuits related to voting machines and the recent election, I have not read this complaint yet. I don't know if I have the stomach for it after watching SCO for so many years. (This "ongoing" case had its 18th anniversary last month, and now in its 19th year)

I am confident that both IBM and Red Hat (the latter recently acquired by the former) can defend themselves. Especially since IBM has all of the materials from the ongoing case.

The entire Groklaw [groklaw.net] is still available for research into the nauseating history.^{[4] [wikipedia.org]} It is also archived in the Library of Congress. ^{[5] [loc.gov]}

^{[1] [lwn.net]
[2] [zdnet.com]
[3] [prnewswire.com]
[4] [wikipedia.org]
[5] [loc.gov]}

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