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Novell Releases SCO Letters
cyxs writes "Here is Novell's page with letters that have been sent back and forth between Novell and SCO. Very interesting read."
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SCO Purchases Specific Novell Assets
Wish they were so quick with pointing out what contract/copyright/trade secrets, if any, are actually violated by anybody they accuse of doing so...
When are the Red Hat and IBM cases scheduled for resolution anyway? This whole thing is going on for far to long. Why does it take so long to resolve these issues through the courts...
As is usually the case with SCO related news, Groklaw is picking the information apart. For now most of it is transcriptions of the pdf's, but also some first blush analysis.
(b) Buyer shall not, and shall not have the authority to, amend, modify or waive any right under or assign any SVRX License without the prior written consent of Seller. In addition, at Seller's sole discretion and direction, Buyer shall amend, supplement, modify or waive any rights under, or shall assign any rights to, any SVRX License to the extent so directed in any manner or respect by Seller. In the event that Buyer shall fail to take any such action concerning the SVRX Licenses as required herein, Seller shall be authorized, and hereby is granted, the rights to take any action on Buyer's own behalf. Buyer shall not, and shall have no right to, enter into future licenses or amendments of the SVRX Licenses, except as may be incidentally involved through its rights to sell and license the Assets or the Merged Product (as such term is defined in the proposed Operating Agreement, attached hereto as Exhibit 5.1(c)) or future versions thereof of the Merged Product.
(from section 4.16 of the Asset Purchase Agreement). Novell was doing a license audit in 2Q 2003.
C|N>K
Or maybe they actually gave the evidence - you don't normally see the huge (or otherwise) dossiers of collected for a trial in media until maybe after the trial as ended. Just because somebody is interested doesn't mean it will change. In fact, it would probably do SCO better to keep it closed so that we can't go grepping through the source tree to find these alleged infringements.
We can Slashdot them instead... :-)
Mike
It would be useful to have a copy of the asset purchase agreement in front of you, since these letters mostly refer to it in their arguments. Luckily, it looks like it's been OCRed and put up on Groklaw at here. The letters in isolation don't really make much sense, hard to figure out who's blowing smoke and who's not.
When I started downloading (before it was posted) it was slowish - 19.7KB/s. It's currently downloading at 17.3KB/s, so not that much difference...
Type 1: We now do Linux. This is one I like, since it's something I've hoped for some time: take Novell's kick ass administration tools (granted, last time was Netware 4.1-5, so maybe the new Java/web interface sucks, but I loved the old NWadmin tool and plugins), and mix it with Linux (powerful, free as in freedom, and has more configuration text files than most junior admins know what to do with).
I also like how they aren't going to "change" SuSE (at least, not yet). Their best bet would be to use SuSE as a development crew - moving things ahead, keeping a separate product (rather than wrecking it the way WordPerfect pretty much was), and incorporating it's advances into Netware [insert whatever number here] as an "added value Enterprise product" - much like Fedora versus Red Hat Enterprise.
Type 2: We will indemnify you. This doesn't bother me too much - after all, SCO is playing "Big Bad" to Linux out there: "Use Linux, and we will sue you." Novell is providing some legal peace of mind. Granted, you have to buy their "new" product, but my feelings are horribly hurt by that - after all, they have to pay for the scum sucking evil hearted - I mean, laywers after all.
Type 3: We actually own the UNIX copyright. This ties into Type 2 in a certain respect, only without lawyers. This is to give current SuSE and other Linux customers less fear. Basically, it boils down to this:
"We know that SCO says they own the UNIX copyright and because of that they think they can get money from you for anything Linux.
"Bullshit. The fact is, Novell still owns the important copyrights, and we won't sue you. See? We're nice.
"Please buy our products."
Type 3 doesn't bother me that much either, since it at least appears to be "We're nice people - honest!" Granted, they are still an amoral corporation which pretty much means they're not doing it out of the charity of their hearts but because they want to make a buck - but you have to admit *right now* they're at least showing more class than SCO.
Either way, I'm not concerned. I figure about 12-24 months from now, this will all go away when the lawsuits finally fail and SCO and such run out of money to pay the heartless gutter snipes - I mean lawyers, President Richard Simmons will be in office with the War on Fat, iTunes Music Store will enjoy brief market domination before being the aliens arrive from Zardon VI and eradicate the earth when they learn we've evolved lawyers.
Or - something like that. Just my opinion.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
July 17, 2003, Novell: We don't like you. You tell people lies. You thought you couldn't do that, so we didn't pay. Luckily for you we determined you could do that, so we will pay. Also, regarding the audit; we're busy, please come back later.
That doesn't make sense until you replace Novell with SCO.
it's in my head
*Then* we might now.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
This is equivalent to saying "you don't need the source, the binary is all you'll ever need." Presumably Novell did this so that if there was something in the letter which wasn't accurately represented by a text-only rendering of the letter, they couldn't be accused of having knowingly stripped that off.
Besides, some karma-whoring AC[1] will post the text conversion by the time I get this response posted anyway.
[1] I know, no such beast.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
The real news is that SCO had a deadline to disclose to IBM, "with specificity", exactly what the claimed infringements are. That was yesterday. Neither IBM nor SCO has announced anything.
On January 23rd, there will be a hearing on whether IBM is satisfied with what SCO disclosed. Then we'll know quite a bit more.
Unfortunately, the agreement will probably never see the light of day, for reasons of corporate confidentiality.
I correct myself! SCO has just published the Asset Purchase Agreement. Thanks to Carl for pointing this out in another post.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
IBM is assessing the information, and will present to the court on January 23 their opinion on whether SCO has fully complied with the discovery request. If IBM says SCO has not complied, SCO gets to explain why they have complied, and so on and so forth.
IT managers and and other executive decision makers who have been nervous about all the warning shots fired between the battleships in this war of words can finally feast their eyes on tangible evidence demonstrating the untennable position of Darl McBride.
In particular I point to the letter dated 12 Jun 2003 from Novell to SCO regarding the Asset Purchase Agreement between the Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. and Novell, Inc., September 19, 1995.
In this letter, Jack Messman pretty clearly identifies the absurdity of Darl's claims be referring to very specific portions of the Asset Purchase Agreement, which give IBM "irrevocable" rights, and states that Novell also retains certain rights, over which SCO has no say.
Now, I ask you, does this not sound like a man who is sure of his position and the position of his company? It seems to me that Linux users (corporate, individual, or those who've ascended to the next plane of existence) should be well in the clear from the majority of any claims SCO might possibly level. This evidence combined with the confidence exhibited by multi-million dollar legal defense funds set up to help those who might be the target of SCO legal action will go a long way to reassuring executives.
Now, if only the judges in this case would hurry up and slap SCO back into the last century, where they should have stayed...
------- "One of the joys of travel is visiting new towns and meeting new people." -- G. KHAN
Or convert them to text and gzip them...
PDF is WAY over used and should be band from text-only use. Leave PDFs for flyers/presentations/manuals
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
sPh
Actually, that isn't quite complete, and it varies by state. Most states that have this refer to it as a Homestead act. Every state that has a Homestead act has a dollar limit on the value of the home that may be protected from lawsuit forfeiture.
I know Colorado has no such act, so you can lose your house in a lawsuit, no matter how small. I believe Arizona has a limit of about $100K on the value of the home protected by their Homestead act, but that is from memory.
More data, damnit!
D-day was 12th, and as SCO said they are gonna keep with the deadline, not sooner not later. But then again they already published what they want from IBM two days early
IBM must evaluate their response up to 23rd, which is the next court date. And if this isn't saisfactory SCO might get it's case thrown out.
Possibility of SCO case to get thrown out is not possible in my opinion. At least it wouldn't be a smart move from IBM if they would succed to get this far. This would lead to other possible complaints from SCO side, and state would be far from peace. It would be better for IBM to bleed SCO dry and take over them as the result.
One response that would throw SCO case out is a list of people entitled to see SCO IP. If they don't name my name (I was entitled too see their kernel which I have freely downloaded from their site), they haven't fully complied with IBM's request as in FULL LIST OF PEOPLE ENTITLED TO SEE SCO IP.
Second possible case of throwing case out lies in SCO complaints (if they stay at last complaints about header files). As they say in brute: without SCO knowleddge there would be no *X, but then again complaining about defines and constants??? Hell IBM could produce a 5year old child that could write header file, thus where is the IP value if 5year old child can do it?
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
kudos to all the karma whores leaching off interesting comments from groklaw. everything posted here is pretty much -1 redundant and available on groklaw when it comes to SCO news these days.
...and here is the exact text of Section 4.16(b), taken from the relevant part of the Asset Purchase Agreement:
(b)Buyer shall not, and shall not have the authority to, amend, modify or waive any right under or assign any SVRX License without the prior written consent of Seller. In addition, at Seller's sole discreation, Buyer shall amend, supplement, modify or waive any rights under, or shall assign any rights to, any SVRX License to the extent so directed in any manner or respect by Seller. In the event that Buyer shall fail to take any such action concerning the SVRX Licesnes as required herein, Seller shall be authorized, and hereby is granted, the rights to take any action on Buyer's own behalf. Buyer shall not, and shall have no right to, enter into future licenses or amendments of the SVRX Licenses, except as may be incidently involved through its rights to sell and license the Assets or the Merged Product (as such term is defined in the proposed Operating Agreement, attached hereto as Ehibit 5.1(c)) or future versions thereof of the Merged Produc.
Whew, a bit long winded. Obviously, Novell is Seller and SCO (or was it Caldera back then?) is Buyer. Anyhow, I've emphasised the important paragraphs, which from my reading certainly do say that:
IANAL, but it looks like SCO has no contractural basis for terminating IBM's SVRX license without Novell's say-so; and since this say-so hasn't been given, it appears that IBM's SVRX license is still valid.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
In general, I agree with you. (The problem is made even worse by the fact that Acrobat Reader takes two or three minutes just to load.)
/. reader may not care at all, and it would be nice to have a text-only repository (check Groklaw within a day or so; they posted the story earlier and were downloading them for review and evaluation) but for legal purposes, it's important to show the original document and not just the text.
However, these are not just the text. They are scans of the original documents. The average
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Homesteads are currently protected to an unlimited amount in Florida, but the courts have started to crack down on individuals that move to locations and file bankruptcy to take advantage of bankruptcy laws. The trustee/judge can also force the sale if need be. Length of time in a location, as well as job ties, family, etc come into account. If someone just bought a million dollar home and filed for bankruptcy, the courts would scrutinize over it.
Here is the groklaw story.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
Yes, it's past the discovery deadline the judge imposed at the last hearing. SCO's motions will be ruled on next, assuming IBM is satisfied with whatever SCO has done to meet their obligations under the court order.
However, since IBM does not comment about pending litigation (unlike SCO...) we probably won't here much more about this until the next court hearing (in a week or two? I forget--check groklaw).
Now I have both the "Novell's UNIX copyright registrations" and "Novell's correspondence with the SCO Group" pdf's and zip's online.
Happy reading!
The second to last referenced letter contains the phone number of the SCO lawyer. 8-).
Groklaw's been translating them from PDF and posting them.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Instead, SCO acted in what an Ayn Rand-ite would've called its own "rational self-interest"...
If you're going to use a concept from a philosophy from which you disagree, you should at least define your terms correctly.
Rational? By what standard?
There's nothing wrong with self-interest. Selfishness is a virtue after all. The problem is with your horrid abuse of the term rational. Is it rational to make claims that are not based on fact, which if validated by the courts will invalidate the legal system, thus leaving your company open to the whims of whatever lawsuit du jour someone happens to come up with?
SCO will lose, and it will lose because its claims are not rational. And because its claims are not rational, they are not in its self-interest...because when a corporation loses on this scale, it goes "pop!".
There is a degree of compatability in Netware. Versions 6+ will speak CIFS, NFS, and Appletalk in addition to Novells NCP. A MS, Unix or Apple box (server or desktop) can talk natively to a NW server. You can even make a NW box a member of a MS domain.
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
Actually, based on my own experience (having co-authored a couple of books and contributed to a few others, and having worked as a technical reviewer), the publisher holds the copyright until the work is declared out of print, then the rights revert to the author. The author receives royalties because they wrote the content, and that's how they get paid.
Payment frequently comes in the form of royalties, or as a flat fee, but if an advance is given, that advance is issued against the royalties (it's more of an interest-free loan than anything, because it has to be paid back).
The reason most publishers do this is so the author can't use the material somewhere else, allowing the publisher to make money off the work as well without having to worry about the author republishing the work with another publisher or through a different medium.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
Very useful information from the documents posted, lets harrass the hell out of them. Mr. Darl McBride President and CEO The SCO Group 355 South 520 West Suite 100 Lindon, UT 84042 Phone: (801) 765-4999 Fax: (801) 765-1313
... and in the DRM, bind them.