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)