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Did SCO Actually Buy What it Thought?
Int27h quotes The Age saying "Just before Christmas last year, Novell announced publicly that SCO had known for some time that it did not receive all rights and ownership to UNIX technologies, despite public statements to the contrary. Novell has made public correspondence between lawyers representing both Novell and SCO." Lots of links and commentary on what continues to be one of the strangest stories in the history of Linux.
I mean, other than the dolts that may actually be paying the licensing fees. But, I don't see any steep declines in RedHat, Suse, or Mandrake sales. People don't believe these guys and it will be a matter of time no before the press quits attending Darl and Co.'s press/phone conferences
Where this story was posted yesterday, of course.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
And of course Groklaw has had the full analysis for a while now, including the fact that SCOs filings missed mentioning this dispute, even going so far as to deny there was any ongoing dispute with third parties over Copyright...some pants combusting rather brightly over in Salt Lake City.
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
But SCO must know that they bought the farm. On this we can agree.
So if they knew, or should have known, that their rights were not as expansive as they represented, and they knowingly misrepresented the scale of those rights to the persons they offered licenses, and those persons bought those licenses based on those misrepresentations.....sounds like a big fat old prima facie fraud case to me.
SCO Group (NASDAQ SC:SCOX)
17.05 -0.95 / -5.28%
Casual Games/Downloads
SCO has gone to far now to simply back off, or admit they were wrong. They have invested their whole business in this, and have no option but to go forward and proceed with litigation. If they back of now they loose face and the business will probably crash. If they loose in court, they have the same situation, except they lost alot of money on lawyers instead.
:S
HOWEVER, if they win in the quirky US legal system, who knows. They might make alot of money, and keep on putting out super duper products
Novell's sudden assertion of their ownership of UNIX copyrights seemed to derail the SCO case in its early stages; it's nice to see that their explanation of this provides yet another nail in SCO's coffin. Way to go, Novell.
Let's just hope that they remain Linux-friendly.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
I don't think they thought they would be buying the World of Pain they are walking into...
Legal writing though very explicit and written typically in cover-all-bases fashion, is way too complicated to be understood by us mere mortals. (lawyers are not mortals, they are the undead). And SCO's boat was already sinking when they supposedly bought these rights, So the competency of their legal department is highly questionable. I bet they had some pro-bono lawyer working on this.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
I'd like to believe that SCO didn't exactly know what they were buying.
This would still leave me with some faith in major software corporations, whereas the view of SCO knowing what they were buying and subsequently stirring up all this crap makes me want to wince.
Then again, on second thought, why would I want to have faith in a company that can't read the fine writing? They try to get my to sign my life away each EULA I click by hiding things in the fine writing.
It's like trying to barrack for a winner between Carrot Top and Rosanne Barr. Oh the humanity!
Effectively, SCO is maintaining it's stance that it is on firm ground, with assets well in hand, for the alternative is disaster. Deny reality as long as possible, hope stock price rises as gullible investers throw away money and sell (which SCO execs did) before reality asserts itself. Nice ploy, when you got nothing else.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"Thank you sir, can I have another?"
I don't really see how an acquisiton or merger would make any difference. Care to elaborate?
120chars for a sig is teh suck
I just can't help but picture Darl, locked in his office, giggling his ass off while watching the stock ticker on SCO go up everytime he released some FUD.
This may end in a way that only happens in Disney movies... Before we know it, Novell will send SCO a mandate to Cease and Desist all further activities including sales and marketing of Unixware, because it infringes on Novell's ownership. BROOOHAAAHAAAA!!!
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Naw, diversity is good. I don't really want a Linux, Inc. composed of all folks involved with Linux. Linux is too big for that.
May we never see th
I'm going to have to go with "NO!" on this one. Not just no but "HELL NO!".
..... What deems you willing to say, not just no, but "HELL NO?" Your distaste for SCO? ..... I don't like them much either, but that certainly doesn't mean that I know that SCO didn't actually purchase the copyrights to unix.
So what is your interpretation of Amendment #2?
(Said in Cartman's voice), Oh, I'm sorry.. you don't have an interpretation of Amendment #2.....
I know, I don't know that.
http://use.perl.org
Has anyone given thought that perhaps this M$/SCO/SUN campaign is doing more harm that it appears. This is probably around the 100th article I've read about this. Reading 100 articles == not writing 100s of lines of open source software code. Darl knows that everytime he craps a turd, it distracts thousands of linux programmers from their job. Let's stop paying attention to this crap. Reminds me of the simpsons episode where the giant marketing characters come to life.
It's also certain that Novell doesn't quite understand what they sold to SCO either. Perhaps Novell would like to take a shot at selling SCO the same thing twice!
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
That loud whistling sound you heard, followed by the tremendous explosion and screeching of twisted metal... Yeah, well, that was SCOs stock price falling through the floor.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
...I heard that Arizona is trying to sell SCO London Bridge.
Today's Lesson: It's better to deny the truth as long as you can, putting off going down in a spectacular and brilliant fireball until it's inevitable than face reality, appolgise and make the best of it.
Small wonder the rest of the world thinks americans are wackos. It's not just the way we do business, it's a way of life.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What ever happened with the Utah judge that ordered SCO to come up with the portion of the linux kernel that supposedly contained their copywrited code? I thought he gave them 30 days about 35 days ago?
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer
Isn't tomorrow "put up or shut up" day for SCO?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The current SCO group is just a renamed Caldera, which bought the Unix group from the old SCO, so it is wrong to say that "SCO didn't know what they bought", as the current SCO isn't the company which bought anything in the first place.
Actually, the current SCO is probably just the 5th owner of the very diluted "Unix licencing rights" - AT&T first sold it to USL (Unix System Labs), which was bought by Novell, which resold the licencing rights to the old SCO, which sold off parts of the company to Caldera, which rebranded itself "The SCO Group".
Of course, the current SCO management tries to confuse this issue, probably as they would rather have everyone forget all their contractual obligations with the previous owners.
Y0uR s1gN4tUR3 h4S aN eRR0r : y()u sUr3ly w4Nt t0 sA`/ "@|\| Ub3r 3l33t", no7 "Ub5r".
G33z, th0s3 y0uNG b0yZ r3alLy dO|\|'7 |<n0W ho\^/ t0 sP3LL...
Xenu brings order!
Sweet! More detail on Linux Developer Gets Laid!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
"So what is your interpretation of Amendment #2?"
That the individual DOES have a right to keep and bear arms?
What?
They can't drop it. If they drop it, their business will most certainly implode from the bad-will generated, false advertising, and probably a shareholder lawsuit. If they keep going, they might wear down somebody enough to make for a settlement or a partial court victory or something other than imploding.
Gentoo Sucks
until it's revealed that Darl McBride was molested by Michael Jackson and this past abuse caused him to marry Britney Spears in a quickie Las Vegas wedding.
You can only hope...
Woah!
If what is being said here is true, then that must mean that the people at SCO are not liars, they're just embarassingly stupid!!
You know? This is beginning to make a little more sense... but can the SCO people be put in jail for being ridiculously stupid and making people suffer needlessly from it?
of course, SCO has yet to show that the whole copyright claim isn't just a big bucket of warm spit in the first place.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I agree with BlackParrot but I think it's deeper than just the Canopy Group. I think it's an all out war between the current Bush Administration and control of the Internet and OSS.
:) ?
Time to try and dig up a link between the principals at Canopy Group and the thugs over at PNAC
For what it's worth, here's my standard rant. The conjecture is pure conjecture, the facts are _facts_.
Cheers!
Americans are no longer living in a Democratic Republic. They're now living in a oligarchy controlled by super-right wing neoconservatives and big oil, and fueled by scaring the living daylights out of the populace. The constitution has all but been thrown out.
In yesterday's SCO discussion I speculated that, to my mind anyhow, it's more likely that Darl and friends are being funded and directed by Cheney and friends rather than Microsoft.
Have you noticed some of the phrasing of SCO's letters? "the GPL is unconstitutional" (they use the constitution when it fits their needs), "have you shipped to Syria, Iran, North Korea" (read: any axis-of-evil countries)?
Within the next couple of months expect them to start making noises about Linux and OSS being a security threat. I certainly have noticed an undercurrent, a sub-text if you will, of this administration to gain more effective control of the Internet and OSS. What was up with the clandestine use of RFID tags at the Internet Summit?
Ask yourself, who is pulling Darl McBride's strings? Is it Bill? Is it Scott? Or is it, just maybe, Cheney? Kellogg, Brown & Root have been up to far more nefarious activities than this. It's a cakewalk for them.
I'll tell you a little secret. Oil is, and always has been the _top_ national security concern of the United States of America.
This little spaceship Earth of ours is rapidly heading for a major crisis. The United States consumes 20 billion barrels of oil a year. The world consumes 76 billion barrels (2001 numbers).
In 2001 only 8 billion barrels of new oil was discovered, and that was spread out over 300 relatively small and economicaly challenging fields.
Did you catch that? We burned 80 billion barrels of oil this year but discovered less than 10 billion. This has been going on for many years now. A few years ago the rule of thumb was we burned 4 barrels for every barrel discovered. Now it's 8:1. And China and India or only just getting started.
It's January 7th, and you're putting 4 logs a day on the fire, you look out the window and you see only 120 pieces of wood left in your wood pile. Oh well! We'll figure something out before March!
At any rate, the point is, Bush and all is oil patch buddies are painfully aware of this little dilemma and they know just what to do about it. Secure the oil, and batten down the hatches on the populace.
Go to the CIA World Factbook and look up the country you live in, say Norway for example, scroll down to the "Economy" section and check out the "oil produced" and "oil consumed" figures. Interesting, eh? Norway is one of the few exceptions, a country that actually produces more oil than it consumes. In fact, Norway is the _only_ country that produces more than 10 times the amount of oil than it consumes. Anyway, that's not the point. Now click on the little graph icon next to "oil produced". Examine the top 20 oil producing countries. Ask yourself, which of these countries does the US control through one of these means: trade agreement, corruption, bullying, family ties
Which ones does the US not yet fully control? Now you know who's next on the hit list.
Do you think things are bad now? You ain't seen nothin' yet. How are you going to live when a barrel of oil costs $60? When a gallon of gas costs 4 bucks? 5 bucks? How about propane to heat your house at $3/gal? $4/gal? When the price of food doubles
I've been reading a lot about SCO's stock, following a lot of interesting links on Groklaw.
From what I can see the vast bulk of SCO's stock appears to be owned by either SCO or people and business from the Canopy group so the small amount of dealing going on from people not in those groups is pretty small compared to the dealing going on by people in the groups.
This means that it's quite easy for Canopy and SCO to keep the stock price pretty high by simply trading it amongst themselves, specifically a lot of people have noticed that the stock begins to dive in the mornings but then before the close a number of trades will be made at very high prices leaving the stock with a high closing price.
Anyone interested should look for the links and commentary on Groklaw since my memory and understanding isn't perfect.
This has specific implications for anyone thinking of shorting the SCO stock because basically SCO and Canopy have pretty good control over what the stock does and that's bad news for people hoping that it will act as though it was largely owned by members of the public.
Further, copyrights are contained in the list of excluded assets, and that list is not modified in any way by Amendment 2.
Further, that copyrights can only be transferred, under title 17, in writing, and that a vauge assertion that there is an agreement to transfer certain copyrights in the event they are required does not constitute a transfer in writing.
What is your interpretation?
Back in 3003? Is that you Marty?
Obviously not - they better hope they kept the receipts. Will Novell give them store credit if they return their purchase unopened?
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Really, is anyone satisfied that the legal future of Linux rests in the hands of SCO, IBM, Novell and the US legal system? We've all been waxing rhapsodic over IBM, and it looks like this news is going to make us do the same for Novell. But really, hasn't IBM wielded the big stick of IP enough to at least make us a little nervous? What about Novell, they signed an agreement which opened the door to this particular nightmare, not a glowing review of their due diligence, after all, one should at least contingency plan for this kind of suit when making such deals...
Nor are their motives quite the same as the grass roots. I wouldn't even try to defend the thesis that IBM and Novell are not in it for their own best interests. I also don't see any reason to believe that their best interests are necesarilly Linux's.
It's nice to see these guys in the white (or maybe just real light gray) hats, but it is trivial to change your hat. The enemy of my enemy != my friend, ally - perhaps, confederate - okay, but friend, I don't think so.
The problem is none of the players have a mandated interest in promoting and protecting Linux, both are in it for financial motivations, when the wind starts blowing profits another way, both will jump ship as quick as they are able.
What to do? I confess I don't know. It'd be nice for Linux/FOSS to maybe have an associated legal entity tasked with promoting Linux/FOSS in the market and protecting Linux/FOSS in the law. Ideally, a not-for profit organization. (A honest to goodness charity would be better, at least your legal defense contributions would be a tax deduction...)
Ultimately, the nature of Linux/FOSS to not be beholden to anything/one has been one of the greatest strengths. It is part and parcel of the success we have seen since Linus released our obsession on the world. However, this lack has now come full circle as we are essentially forced to watch the legal fate of Linux/FOSS be placed in the hands of one company who wishes to smash it, two which seek to exploit it, and the US legal system.
Joseph Stalin once said, "How many divisions does the pope have?" I can easily see Darl Mcbride saying, "How many lawyers does Linus have?" way back before this mess all started.
Okay, I admit it, I've just been waiting for a reason to compare Joseph Stalin and Darl McBride.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
I'm well regulated! I eat my bran flakes.
Everyone is a member of the militia. But to be well regulated you have to practice with your weapon, that part requires you to bear arms....
We should have all bought SCO stock at 1 dollar, then sold when it hit 16. We would all be rich, and SCO stock would crash. We'd all be rich, Linux would be one enemy less, everybody wins!
"Oh well, it's only Karma..."
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Under this definition, today's militia are overwhemingly the children of the poor, black, hispanic and working class. Dude, if you're posting on slashdot, the probability you're the militia is about 2.34%
b.
ON!!
:)
Even if you're right, d00d, no one will listen. It's just too wacky sounding.
Also, a few points:
-To say that we are 'no longer living in a Democratic Republic' is nonsense. Am I worried about Ashcroft et al infringing on our Constitutional freedoms? Yes. Do I think that corporations have way too much influence in our society overall? Yes. But our court system and system of laws still works, more or less.
-"How are you going to live...When a gallon of gas costs 4 bucks? 5 bucks?" It already does in most of Europe, if not more. They seem to be living ok.
-"We burned 80 billion barrels of oil this year but discovered less than 10 billion." When we run out of oil, we'll find an alternative. We, as humans, are very clever and creative. It may be a (very) troublesome and painful transition, but we'll make it.
-"I certainly have noticed an undercurrent, a sub-text if you will, of this administration to gain more effective control of the Internet and OSS." While the Internet began here in the US, and a large percentage of it still is controlled here, it is truly a worldwide system now. If the US starts over-stepping their bounds with regards to control of the Internet, the rest of the world will route around us. That's the way it was designed in the first place. Again, the US can cause a great deal of difficulty and pain, but they can't control the internet.
And to say that the US is going to gain 'control' of OSS in general is absolutely ludicrous. If the US were to pass some nefarious legislation 'outlawing' OSS (which would never, ever happen, it's legally impossible and IBM, HP, etc. have too many lobbyists to allow it to happen), the rest of the world would, again, 'route around us'.
Just a little kidding here, d00d, but did you go off your meds?
/.: why the hell am I here?
Why did CNN, Fox News and the other big "news" outlets fail to report the purchase of SCO last spring by Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems of New Jersey? See anything unusual in this list of SCO senior corporate officers, not to mention the fact that "SCO" itself stands for "Senior Corporate Officers?"
Darl McBride, President and CEO
Darl Bench, CFO
Darl Mott, Director
Darl Yarro III, Chairman of the Board
Darl Bawa, CTO
Darl Sontag, Sr VP, OS Group
Darl Broughton, Sr VP
Darl OConnor, Sr VP
Darl Bigbooty, Sr VP
Darl Parrot, Sr VP
Darl SmallBerries, Sr VP
Their social security numbers are consecutive, and were all issued on the same day. Coincidence?
Yeah, someone as stupid as that should not be allowed to advance any farther than US President.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
I spent a few years drafting exactly these kinds of agreements, and having read the SCO/Novell Asset Purchase Agreement, including the dreaded Amendment Number 2, I have to confess, I don't know what SCO's lawyers were thinking.
When you buy technology, you buy 2 classes of assets: (1) the tangible (which includes stored electrons) real-world implementations of the stuff, like copies of the software, units of hardware, copies of manuals, and so on; and (2) the intellectual property rights, including copyright and patent, embodied in the tangible stuff.
The way I'm reading the contract (which could be wrong -- I took a pretty quick pass through it) Novell sold SCO the "stuff" without any of the rights associated with the stuff. In other words, because the stuff was software, Novell sold them pretty much nothing.
When I've done these deals in the past, the purchaser either gets the associated IP rights as part of the deal, or a REALLY broad license to them. From the looks of things, SCO didn't even have the right to make copies of the stuff it bought. That's completely incoherent from a transactional point of view.
That argues for 2 things: (1) SCO's lawyers really pooched it in this deal, which is certainly possible -- I've seen some really dumb language come out of high-end firms, and/or (2) SCO is right, and the agreement couldn't possibly mean what Novell thinks it means, because that makes no sense. SCO might not be able to get that enforced without a court action to do what's called "reformation" of the contract, where the court goes in and rewrites the contract to make it coherent. This is a really rare remedy, BTW, for obvious reasons.
Please, someone who's read this document more closely, feel free to correct me.
-------
Point and Counterpoint: The Tick - "Spoon!" Neo - "There is no spoon."
Not to take anything away from your very interesting points on the connection between the Bush Administration and oil, but I think you forgot that your whole post was supposed to provide a link between the Bush Administration and the Internet/OSS. Not a single fact that you bring up even alludes to this. Try to make your opening statements a little more accurate next time.
10 minutes working on a sig. What a waste.
As much as I'd like Novell to be right, it really isn't clear-cut at all who owns the Unix copyrights.
The original Asset purchase agreement does not give SCO any copyrights, but amendment 2 to the deal raises questions. SCO says this gives them copyrights, Novell disagrees.
What does the amendment say?
The section on assets excluded from the deal is:
All copyrights and trademarks, except for the copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the Agreement required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies.
So, skipping the double-negation and some of the blaha, the deal includes:
[Novell] copyrights and trademarks [..] required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX
So it really hinges on what is meant by "required with respect to the acquisition".
SCO says this means everything.
Novells interpretation is that SCO must demonstrate a requirement of these copyrights for them to be transferred. Patent rights, which SCO have made claims to (in court documents!) were definetly not transferred. That is explicit in the deal (and the amendments don't change that)
Given, reading the documents, the intent of the deal does not to appear to be to give SCO all rights to UNIX. But it's difficult to say.
Since this is a matter of interpretation, and SCOs whole case against IBM is built on this ownership, it's unlikely that they'll ever accept Novells ownership of copyright. It's also unlikely that they'll sue Novell, they're busy enough litigating as it is. (even if they seem to want more)
I think we all know Novell will have to bring suit to resolve this. The question is if they will, seing that it's not a clear-cut win, and they really don't have much to win on it either. (If Unix had had value as a product, we wouldn't have had this mess to begin with)
They knew this data existed (hello, the linux kernel and all of the CVS logs are open source, they can be read by anyone)
They have the same copies of the contracts as everyone else (Novel, Sun, ect)
They had to know that a judge was going to make them produce evidence and this "We can't show the conflicting code" thing wouldn't fly with a judge.
I worked for a dot-com that provided a service to Corporate Law Firms and I know that they go through a lot of trouble to do their homework. Some of these things would have not slipped their radar.
So is all if this (including us tearing up SCO's claims) just part of their plan? Are we missing the real target of McBride and SCO? I find it hard to belive that SCO and their legal team are, or have ever gone "Oh Shit" since this all started. More like they are saying "This is going exactly to plan".
Someone please shed some light
Taking into account SCO's *cough* strong points *cough*, all we need to re-write is the MOTD functions.
Open Letter to SCO
Dear Sirs:
It has come to my attention that you claim certain intellectual properties involved in the UNIX operating system and that you intend to prosecute those who violate those claims.
To be more specific you claim that Gnu/Linux is a derivative of your Unix IP and as such is your IP. After extensive research on my own part and reviewing the considered opinions of those in the field of IP litigation I have concluded to my own satisfaction that your position consists of bullpuckey.
As such I feel I should bring my company to your attention. My name is James Burgett and I am the executive director of a not for profit organization called Computer and Technology Resource Center (CATRC). We recycle unwanted equipment and give it to underprivileged people throughout the world.
What I feel should come to your attentions is this: We install Gnu/Linux on over 1200 machines a year and we fully intend to continue. We send said computers to schools, not for profits and underprivileged people throughout the world. We have been doing so for over 3 years and I can safely say that all of them could be classed as "servers". On the basis of your pricing (assuming that our inevitable litigation extends past your discount deadline), my organization owes you at least $ 5,036,400 (5+ million).
We also advocate the further distribution of your alleged IP by other agencies and governments at home and abroad and could quite possibly be held liable for a lot more. (I'm sure you can come up with a price for this.) We have also assembled many multi processor systems (By the way, what is your price for multiprocessor systems?)
So based on an assessment of our operations and your claims. I have concluded the following:
Your ownership of the IP is dubious at best (Novell copyrights, Unix system labs vs. UC Berkeley, distribution of all contested IP by you under the GPL while Caldera,.... etc.)
Your ability to enforce your claims is laughable at best (you would have to deal with Novell's copyrights before you can sue anybody, then demonstrate that you did not release said IP as your Linux distribution and last that you have the right to those copyrights at all as they seem to violate some of IBM's patents. This combined with the fact that your lead attorney seems to be under investigation in Florida that may lead to his disbarment leads me to the conclusion that you are not a credible threat.
Your only redeeming feature is your histrionic and ill-conceived rants, which admittedly have an enviable ability to generate press.
As you represent no threat and can only bring us press, I humbly request that you use us in your act of corporate self-destruction.
If you choose not to sue us I should inform you that I have been consulting with my attorneys about options for initiating lawsuits against you based on some of the fallacious claims made by you about operations such as ours that use Gnu/Linux. You have made direct accusations about Gnu/Linux and its users that could only be construed as accusations of theft.
As I am not a thief and find your accusations harmful from both a personal and corporate standpoint I demand that you immediately cease and desist from your unsubstantiated statements or face litigation.
In conclusion let me thank you for this wonderful opportunity to promote our message on your dime and fully expect to be giving away what you claim is your IP long after your company is dead and gone.
Yours sincerely:
James Burgett
Executive Director
Computer and Technology Resource Center
Primary website: www.accrc.org
email james@accrc.org
In fact inevitable.
However to really complete the picture Boies and company will probably file a counter-suit (and they may even have a point) claiming they were misled on extent of SCO ownership of the Unix IP.
. . . is already taken
No. Here's why. If the reason ceases to exist, then the right goes away. The first amendment provides an absolute right of freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and right to petition congress.
The Second amendment can be read (and I believe, should be read) to provide a conditional right to keep and bear arms. That condition is, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state." If that condition ceases to exist, then the right is no longer relevant.
It can be argued that a "well regulated militia," far from being "necessary to the security of a free state" is at best irrelevant - no militia is going to have much to say in a real global throw down in this day and age. At worst, a militia is a threat to national security - as in militia members blowing up federal buildings, like Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City.
Given this limited right, why would SCO need ownership of the SVRx copyrights in order to exercise their rights under the agreement.
Hence SCO did not get the SVRx copyrights. What SCO bought was really the UnixWare business. Not UNIX!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Novell didn't have *that* much to sell, in terms of Unix. (They had other stuff
besides Unix, of course.) Most of the Unix copyrights that really mattered,
AT&T had already lost in court to UC Berkeley. I'm sure Novell had some rights
to some improvements that they (and maybe even AT&T before them) had made
since, plus some additional bits and pieces, but most of the core Unix
copyrights belong to BSD. What Novell had (and we're discussing whether SCO
has all of it as well) is if anything actually less than Sun or the other Unix
vendors have, since by the time of the BSD split they'd already made a number
of improvements, and they protected them better than AT&T did and did not lose
them in the court case. AT&T/Novell/SCO only have what they've done since
that time, and what is more they haven't done as much with it since that
time as Sun, IBM, HP, and so on have done.
I'm all for respecting copyright, but SCO doesn't have jack, with or without
the stuff Novell may or may not have sold them.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
What crap! First, there is a blatant typo in the most crucial provision of the asset agreement (saying "Section 1.1(a)" where they meant "Schedule 1.1(a)"). Then, in Schedule 1.1(b) (where the exceptions are listed), they flatly EXCLUDE ALL COPYRIGHTS from the asset transfer! Wow! SCO was represented by Brobeck, it seems - what were THEY thinking? And the schedules themselves are unbelievably vague, listing things like "some APIs" (honest to God!).
Then they did an amendment to fix this all up, supposedly. What did SCO get then? Not much, arguably. Basically it seems to be a circular grant - all copyrights SCO needed in order for SCO to exercise the rights it acquired. But WTF did they acquire in the first place?
Sheer incompetence on someone's part, it would seem.
Since some court is going to have to give SOME meaning to this pile of turd, I would venture to say that what SCO got was in effect an agreement that Novell wouldn't assert against them any copyright (or trademark) that would prevent them from exercising commercial rights in UNIX. Maybe some judge will cut them a break and read this more generously, but I just don't see in this obfuscated verbiage an omnibus written transfer of all copyrights. I've got to believe this is (still) a HUGE cloud on SCO's title.
This has to do with physcology.
Mcbride would live the dream and have the "ring which binds them all", if you could own all OS's besides windows and make billions! We all would like to be moral and help Linux but many of us would go crazy at the thought of owning all this money and power. Mcbride himself feels he does not want to destroy Linux. He just wants a cut if its used in business.
I am poor right now and I would admitedly be tempted. I might even make a compromise like what Mcbride did and allow linux free for non commercial users. Yes, I would be a jerk and might not go through with it, but a fast talking salesmen/laywer might make a difference.
Remember the lawyers get paid only if this goes through. They do not give a shit about Unixware, Linux or SCO. They care about green dollars.
People tend to believe what they want to believe.
My guess is Bois sold Mcbride like a salesman and Mcbride thought something on the line of "shit! If Bios is right, I have a lottery ticket!". The thought would be tempted. When the 70 lines of BSD code were found, he went hysterical saying "AHA, I win!".
Part of his makeup could of been influenced from the MS case of licensing doublespace disk compression for DOS. Caldera, now SCO group won 40 billion! After a win like that, it probably went to his head.
http://saveie6.com/
So, in the light of these Linux lawsuits, where does this leave the rest of us? Probably a little safer than we thought we were.
Does anyone remember that cocky photo on sco.com's webpage with Darl McBride saying "Just as there's no free lunch, there's no free Linux"? It was there a few days ago.
It ain't there anymore.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Funny. I was doing some research on SCO/Caldera and it's previous commitment to Open Source/Free Software. What I found was this guys making some weird announcements. This one seems very strange to me.. Please, look closely to the "unenforceability of the GNU general public license and other open source licenses" phrase. It is from 2001. ....
Also, O'Reilly has a very interesting article about Caldera/SCO releasing old Unix source code under a BSD license
See also the discussion in the Unix Heritage Society.