14 DAY TRIAL // The story so far: in 2003, SCO saw itself as nothing more than a dying company with a room full of lawyers and management incredulous that the current state of affairs was their own fault. Their conclusion, supported by vast amounts of convincing nothing, was that Linux could not have advanced as far and as fast as it did without IBM having illegally contributed code from SCO's coffer. So, they sued. It's almost as if they planned to annoy everyone.
Enter groklaw.net's Pamela Jones.
In May 2003, two months after SCO sued IBM, groklaw.net is launched and Miss Pamela Jones, who claims a paralegal background (which she proves sufficiently), proceeds to analyze the case. In the process, she trashes pretty much every argument SCO's lawyers come up with and generally follows the notions common among interested parties - SCO are bullies, have not a single bit of legal standing. Mind you, she is not unique in this attitude, just more successful than others.
On February 10th, Ms Jones posted a message on Groklaw, announcing an upcoming vacation. Nothing unusual, except that nowadays, SCO's lawyers are actively looking for the blogger. According to Forbes, they tried to serve a subpoena at a house in Darien, Connecticut, but the attempt was unsuccessful.
SCO's motives remain undisclosed. Kenneth Brakebill, an attorney who represents Novell, confirmed that SCO notified his client that it intends to take a deposition from Jones.
Whatever the reasons, even if they somehow manage to conclusively prove that Pam Jones is actually a front for an entire department of lawyers working for IBM, SCO will still fail. Even if Groklaw is nothing more than an exercise in public relations on the part of Big Blue, it will not change anything. SCO is still wrong, their actions are still immoral and will not bring their case any merit.
Dear SCO, unless you can prove that Miss Jones actually willfully and purposely stolen valuable algorithms for bubblesort from your sources and inserted them into the Linux kernel in order to create mistrust (and then kicked a puppy), your actions will harm you. Stop it and go away already!