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Feature: Legal
Another lawsuit in Linux land
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CommentsWe spoke with Dennis Powell by telephone this past week after learning of the lawsuit during the the popular Internet streaming broadcast of The Linux Show, where Powell was appearing as a guest.
Powell told us that he was never asked for a retraction for any of the articles. Powell said that the first contact he had with Draeker and his lawyers came in April, a month before the suit was filed. It was a notice that a lawsuit would be filed if a settlement was not agreed to.
Powell rejected the settlement and the lawsuit was filed. When asked the possibility of a settlement now, he said "No, I haven't done anything wrong. Absolutely not." He added, "If someone can demonstrate to us that something we have printed is in error we will retract what we printed that was in error and publish a correction, prominently."
Powell still stands by his stories. He told us, "I am not certain that we printed anything that was not in fact, in the record of proceedings in California judicial bodies, sworn to under oath in connection with Loki. And much of it to which he objects was sworn to by him under oath. So I think that he is suing us because it is stuff that is embarrassing that he didn't want to have made public."
Powell says his attorney in California is working to have the case thrown out as being frivolous. If the case does go to trial, Powell expects that it will be late this year. He also expects that it will cost him tens of thousands of dollars to defend himself. But evidently it's not just lawyers which are expensive in California. The $19 million dollar suit filed by Draeker includes $1 million for medical costs resulting from the publication of the stories.
We also spoke to Scott Draeker by telephone. He told us he could not comment because of the pending litigation, and referred us to his attorney, Francis Drelling.
Before speaking with Draeker, we had asked his attorney by email if the case was still active and if he was still representing Draeker. He replied: "Yes, the case remains active and our firm is still legal counsel in it. The Defendants have filed a demurrer and a motion to strike portions of the complaint. We will be filing our oppositions later this month."
Powell blames the American legal system for the situation. He says, "We live in a government of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers. Or as James Herriot put it in one of his books, 'You and I can always lose, lawyers never do.'"
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on Another lawsuit in Linux landNote: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
I'll also state that Mr. Draeker may have bankrolled a number of ports (at the expense of the developers, the partners the source was licensed from, the stores which carried the ports, and the failure to pay his own employees), but that doesn't give him the moral high ground.
Contact me if you can.
Clearly I agree that the ends do not justify the means, and that many people were run over in the process. Much of what Scott did was reprehensible, yet his poorly-executed vision produced tangible benefits for the Linux community, unlike the articles of Dennis Powell. Indeed, I firmly believe that the specific articles mentioned have actually had a negative effect on the Linux gaming community, despite being factually correct.
Thus I find the obvious bias of this article to be one-dimensional and in need of qualification.
And, yes, this news article is definitely biased (someone must belong to the El Reg school of writing), but at least an effort was made to get a comment from Mr. Draeker.
Excuse me? Exercising "Freedom of the Press" does not bring "tangible benefits" to the Linux community? You would do well to rethink that.
True and accurate reporting of the facts brings far more value to the community than providing a few amusing games. Now, if someone were claiming that Dennis Powell had sacrificed the truth to increase readership, then I would agree that a some entertaining software is more valuable than a nest of lies. But if the facts are correct, the criticism should not be on Mr. Powell for reporting them.
If people do ugly things, don't blame the press for telling an ugly tale.
Give me truth over trinkets any day.
For the record: I have no relationship either with Dennis Powell or Loki.
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Line noise to defeat compression filter follows: *&!NA(^(!@^$!@(*^)(*^!)(
>community, despite being factually correct.
Are you on crack?
If the articles were "factually correct", Powell had EVERY right to publish them under the freedom of the press. It is HIS JOB to inform the masses about "factually correct" issues that they might want to know about.
Did it had a "negative effect"? Maybe it did. But this is completely besides the point. Powell's first DUTY is to inform the masses, not to babysit and hide important information from the "Linux gaming community" (if there's such thing).
Bottomline: before you take your ex-CEO's side at Loki just because you know him personally and might have being your collegue, I suggest you become a bit objective over here and see that this lawsuit is just ludicrous, no matter how you look at it.
Re:Good reminder - Vision is good, but not fraud!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on January 14, 2004 05:41 PMLinux (or anything else for that matter) does not need companies involved that were run like this.
As for the reports, if they factually accurate, I cannot see a lawsuit making any difference, only highlighting how bad the company was managed again!
It seems to me from the articles that the failure was due to mismanagement rather than a lack of demand for Linux games. If that's the message you take away from the articles, which I did, then how can they possibly be bad for Linux gaming? If anything they would be the opposite because it might just convince someone that with the right management, a new Linux game company could succeed.
In addition, SDL was developed at Loki. It's a superb porting tool, and a linux game company starting tomorrow would be crazy not to pick it up, saving significant development costs.
Oh, and to you who say you are ex-Loki employees: Thanks for SDL!
(and the cool games, but I didn't get to buy any of them)
<A HREF="http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/" TITLE="linuxgamepublishing.com">Linux Game Publishing</a linuxgamepublishing.com> is using <A HREF="http://www.libsdl.org/" TITLE="libsdl.org">SDL</a libsdl.org> and the <A HREF="http://icculus.org/loki_setup/" TITLE="icculus.org">Loki setup tools</a icculus.org> for in-house ports, and encouraging publishing deals (like the one with Epic Interactive) to use them as well.
First - There is no indication that there is a significant gain in Linux desktop users. Perhaps the best indicator is Google Zeitgeist which still shows Linux at around 1% as it did almost 2 years ago. There is also nothing that says that those users who are on Linux as a desktop play games.
Second - Considering that Linux users are used to not paying for their software I am not sure how you can support the idea that they would be more willing to pay for a game. Your statement that piracy is not as pervasive may be the "duh" of the year. You can't pirate what is free.
I would like to be as optimistic as you are but I'm afraid that the numbers just aren't showing it. I personally am ready to admit defeat on the desktop in exchange for dominating the server market (which is going to be a challenge all its own).
Also, the collapse of the distributions and thus bundling deals like the ones with Stormix and Corel Linux hurt on the income side, and, frankly, the Linux community's willingness to purchase commercial games (as opposed to demanding them) is distressingly low. Don't believe me? Go publish a game for Linux users!
Die you pukes
I'm sure Powell has pretty close to that amount stashed away somewheres.
guess this is what he gets for shooting his mouth off
dep is highly regarded in intelligent Linux circles, both as a Open Source geek/advocate and journalist. He was so heralded on the Caldera list as he is on the Linux-SXS list and elsewhere. Perhaps you chose anonymity because your name might betray the lack of substance to your opinion?
Good reminder
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on January 14, 2004 01:08 AM#