SCO's Verbal Argument
(a judge takes his seat)
Judge: Good Morning.
SCO Lawyer: Good Morning, your honor!
Judge: Ah, thank you.
SCO Lawyer: What can I do for you, sir?
Judge: Well, I called this hearing to hear your reasons why you are suing IBM. More specifically, to hear what kind of evidence you have against IBM.
SCO Lawyer: Ah, evidence!
Judge: In a nutshell, yes. So I thought to myself "a bit of verbal argument from SCO might do this case good and shed some light on what this is all about."
SCO Lawyer: Come again?
Judge: I want to know about the code.
SCO Lawyer: Oh, I thought you were complaining about Mr. McBride's open letters!
Judge: Oh, heaven forbid - I find those laced with humorous snippets of verbose prose!
SCO Lawyer: Sorry?
Judge: The letters are funny.
SCO Lawyer: So he can go on typing then, can he?
Judge: Most certainly! Now then, some evidence please, my good man.
SCO Lawyer: Certainly, sir. What would you like?
Judge: Well, eh, how about some SMP code violations?
SCO Lawyer: I'm afraid we couldn't actually find any, sir.
Judge: Oh, never mind, how about JFS?
SCO Lawyer: I'm afraid we won't have that till after discovery from IBM.
Judge: Tish tish. No matter. Well, stout lawyer, let's see what you have about NUMA.
SCO Lawyer: Ah! It's still waiting on someone to put it on a cd, we were expecting it this morning.
Judge: It's not my lucky day, is it? Aah, RCU then?
SCO Lawyer: Sorry, sir.
Judge: Memory Allocation?
SCO Lawyer: Normally, sir, yes. Today the courier's van broke down.
Judge: Ah. USB?
SCO Lawyer: Sorry.
Judge: LPT ports drivers? Serial ports?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: Any evidence about IDE drivers?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: SCSI?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: SATA?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: Floating point emulation?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: Video drivers?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: Keyboard drivers? Vi, emacs, sendmail, x-windows, man pages, bash shell?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: "Tux Racer", perhaps?
SCO Lawyer: Ah! We have evidence for that, yessir.
Judge: (suprised) You do! Excellent.
SCO Lawyer: Yes sir. The media it's on tho, it's ...ah...it's a bit smudged up...
Judge: Oh, I don't mind a bit of a reading challenge.
SCO Lawyer: Well...It's very smudged, actually, sir.
Judge: No matter. Fetch hither the evidence of IBM's wrong doing!
SCO Lawyer: I ... think it's a bit more smudged than you'd like, sir.
Judge: I don't care how ****ing smudged it is. Hand it over will all speed.
SCO Lawyer: Ooooooooooohhhh...!
Judge: What now?
SCO Lawyer: The paralegal's eaten it.
Judge: Has he?
SCO Lawyer: She, sir.
(Pause)
Judge: Grep?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: Gzip?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: You... do have some evidence, don't you?
SCO Lawyer: (brightly) Of course, sir. It's a lawsuit, sir. We've got...
Judge: No no... don't tell me. I'm keen to guess.
SCO Lawyer: Fair enough.
Judge: Uuuuuh, Gimp?
SCO Lawyer: Yes?
Judge: Ah, well, let's see the evidence on Gimp!
SCO Lawyer: Oh! I thought you were talking to me, sir. Mr. Gimp, that's my name.
(Pause)
Judge: KDE?
SCO Lawyer: Uh, not as such.
Judge: Uuh, GNOME?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: Ximian?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: OpenOffice?
SCO Lawyer: Not today, sir, no.
(Pause)
Judge: Aah, how about how you found your evidence then?
SCO Lawyer: Well, we weren't expecting to have to answer that.
Judge: Weren't expecting?... It's one of the single most important pieces of discovery!
SCO Lawyer: Not according to SCO, sir.
Judge: And just what is the most important piece, "according to SCO"?
SCO Lawyer: Our MIT analysts.
Judge: Is it?
SCO Lawyer: It's our number one piece of evidence, sir!
Judge: All right. Okay. 'Are they here today?' he asked, expecting the answer "no".
SCO Lawyer: I'll have a look, sir ... nnnnnnnnnnnnnnno.
Judge: It's not much of a lawsuit, is it?
SCO Lawyer: Finest money can buy!
Judge: (annoyed) Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.
SCO Lawyer: Well, it's so full of legal jardon, sir!
Judge: It's certainly uncontaminated by the burden of evidence...
SCO Lawyer: (brightly) You haven't asked me about Pine, sir.
Judge: Would it be worth it?
SCO Lawyer: Could be....
Judge: Have you - (to McBride)SHUT THAT DAMN WORD PROCESSOR OFF!
SCO Lawyer: Told you sir....
Judge: (slowly) Have you any evidence that IBM misappropriated SCO UNIX code into the PINE e-mail program?
SCO Lawyer: No.
Judge: Figures. Predictable, really I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place. Tell me:
SCO Lawyer: Yes sir? Judge: (Deliberately) Have you in fact got any evidence against IBM at all?
SCO Lawyer: Yes, sir.
Judge: Really?
(Pause)
SCO Lawyer: No. Not really, sir.
Judge: You haven't.
SCO Lawyer: No sir. Not a scrap. I was deliberately wasting your time, sir.
Judge: Well I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to sentence you to death.
SCO Lawyer: Right-Oh, sir.
(The Baliff takes the SCO Lawyer out of the courtroom . A few minutes later, a distant scream can be heard while the lights in the courtroom dim momentarily)
Judge: What a senseless waste of human life.
(submitted as a post to Groklaw. Derived as a parody from Monty Python's 'Cheese Shop' sketch)
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