Groklaw has been known to criticize media coverage of the SCO saga. So it seemed appropriate to highlight coverage that is really good. Take a look at this account of the court hearing in Australia's The Age. They are really on target overall. Of course, they can't resist beginning with the damages increase, but they add that the trade secrets claim has been dropped. And in fairness, any journalist would have to mention the damages claim. What is so rare in this coverage is that they include IBM's statements in court, not just SCO's. How refreshing.
Take a look:
"On Friday, IBM told the court, in its response to SCO's compliance with this order, that: 'contrary to its representations to the court on January 12, 2004, SCO now admits that it has in fact not produced numerous categories of non-privileged responsive documents.'
"IBM said it had identified for SCO numerous documents that it believed SCO had yet to produce. 'SCO responded to IBM by letter late last night conceding that it had indeed failed to produce numerous responsive documents, and committing to doing so at an unspecified time in the future.'
"The IBM statement to the court also said: '...SCO abandons any claim that IBM misappropriated its trade secrets, concedes that SCO has no evidence that IBM improperly disclosed UNIX System V code, and acknowledges that SCO's contract case is grounded solely on the proposition that IBM improperly disclosed portions of IBM's own AIX or Dynix products, which SCO claims to be derivatives of UNIX System V.'
"SCO issued a one-paragraph statement after the hearing in which it said: 'On February 6, 2004 the court followed up on its prior hearing, and heard motions to compel discovery from both SCO and IBM. The court took the matter under advisement and indicated that a written ruling would be forthcoming within the period of about a week.'"
One paragraph? From SCO? Something is different in SCOville. And to The Age: Well done. (For a repulsive contrast, take a look at the Star's coverage of the same story, where they mention SCO adding copyright claims and upping the damages, and they mention that SCO had filed a trade secret claim a year ago, without once mentioning that the trade secrets claim was just dropped.)
If the Age's balanced article is not enough to stun you, how's this for a headline? "MS server products will reach industry security standards by 2005: Gartner" By 2005, they will reach security standards? Did somebody dust the earth with truth serum particles or something?
"Tech research company Gartner is predicting that by 2005, Microsoft's server software products will be at, or above, the industry security average. . . .
"'Progress is further away on the desktop, but the market likely has driven Microsoft to take desktop security more seriously. To validate this assumption, Microsoft should provide a Windows 2000 security upgrade that incorporates the improvements it is developing for Windows XP Service Pack 2,' Pescatore said."
I don't know. What next? Laura DiDio tells us GNU/Linux is more secure already?
Nope. That's a stretch. But here's something heartening: corrections acknowledged and incorporated into a story on I.T. Vibe, with a note saying: "We'd like to thank Robert Taylor for supplying corrections to this article."
I'm getting email from several others who wrote to various media outlets with very good results. Politeness plus accurate facts with urls for proof does seem to work.