SCO subpoenas sally forth

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 13 Nov 2003 at 10:31

Following IBM's subpoenas on the financial friends of SCO, SCO has served subpoenas to five companies and one individual: Linus Torvalds.

The subpoenas are being served to Linus Torvalds, Novell, the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Development Lab and Transmeta, the company for which Linus Torvalds was working until recently.

There is also one other organisation on which we are still awaiting a name.

The move follows IBM serving subpoenas on investors and analysts that have been supportive of SCO. IBM's counterclaim alleges that SCO misled Deutsche Bank analysts and 'falsely stated that IBM transferred the NUMA code from Sequent to Linux without any legal basis to do so and that IBM's actions were giving rise to about $1 billion in damages per week. In an interview in June 2003 with Client Server News, SCO misrepresented to analysts that IBM has improperly released "truckloads" of code into the open-source community'.

Speculation also suggests that IBM may be looking for a side door to get its hands on the code that SCO is holding out on, as some of the investors that have given SCO the nod have seen the code in question.