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SCO Twist: Does the Nevada District Court Run Linux?

9th US Circuit Court of Appeals says not, reports LinuxWorld's Turner
By James Turner
Article Rating:
March 4, 2004 12:00 AM EST
Reads:
 21,173
"One order of truth, hold the irony." Sometimes a story is so good, you almost don't want to know if it's true or not. Such is the case with the widely reported discovery by UK firm Netcraft that the Nevada District Court, which will hear one of the two SCO lawsuits, itself runs Linux on their Web servers.

Netcraft based this report on the analysis that they perform on Web page requests to sites. Unfortunately, as their own FAQ indicates, these results are not 100% foolproof, due to firewalls and proxy servers that may lie between the actualy Web server and the outside world.

Unfortunately, in this case, that is exactly what has happened. Phone calls to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which provides hosting for the Nevada District Court, reveal that the site is in fact running on Lotus Notes technology on top of Windows servers. Technical staff in the administrative office of the court strongly refuted any claim that Linux is being used at all on the site.

Because each district hosts their own Web sites and makes their own technical decisions, it is likely that some districts may be hosting on Linux. LinuxWorld Magazine is also attempting to verify whether or not the document management systems used by the court (known as CM/ECF) is hosted on Linux.

Stay tuned for more developments on this issue as they unfold.

Published March 4, 2004 – Reads 21,173
Copyright © 2004 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By James Turner

James Turner is president of Black Bear Software. James was formerly senior editor of Linux.SYS-CON.com and has also written for Wired, Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. He is currently working on his third book on open source development.

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Most Recent Comments
fly 03/05/04 06:17:50 PM EST

I should hope that the judge is aware of the consequences in so far as she understands the underlying subject matter. However, I should hope that her decision will be based on the law and legal precedent. If the law and legal precendent is found to support SCO (what we all think notwithstanding) then it is what it is -- and the chips should fall where they fall.
Feccl Extrusion 03/05/04 10:53:25 AM EST

Yes probably, but what does it matter?
The Legal System is certainly MORE than capable
of shooting itself in the foot!

One (yet to be proven) ignorant uneducated (about the
REALITY) judge is all it takes to screw it up for the US.

ONE judges decision (if she sides with SCO) can completely
cause problems for the government, all branches of the
military, the legal industry itself, and corporate America.

I hope she is completely aware of the consequences of her
decision. (If not, she should NOT be presiding over this
case)
B. Bowman 03/05/04 08:42:56 AM EST

This is not surprising. The Federal District and Bankruptcy Courts here in Maine run their CM/ECF system (and only that system) on Debian Linux. It is my understanding that each District Court is responsible for maintaining its own ECF website, and that Maine's court independantly developed much of the suoftware it is using to handle its case management. I believe that several other federal courts that have moved entirely to electronic filing are using Linux as well, but I will leave it to someone else to do the research...