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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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sPh
Wow. That's just, wow. Publishing the correspondence like that is tantamount to saying, "Screw you. We have nothing more to say outside of court."
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Actually, Novell underperformed NASDAQ and S&P indicies for the first half of '03 and outperformed the last half. It's as hard to know what the real reason for the increase over the last six months is as it is to know what business Novell is really in. They're Netware, no, NDS, no, consulting (the Cambridge acquisition), no, Linux, umm, what are they again?
I'd wager their increase has more to do with general stock market speculation of an overall economic recovery and increased business spending on IT infrastructure rather than enthusiasm for Novell's somewhat confusing business strategy.
This is really interesting.
1. A newbie comes from nowhere, posts an SCO press release and gets a +2 moderation.
2. Somebody points out that it's the 1st post ever by EZEZ and gets moderated down right away.
3. My prediction is that this one will also be moderated down.
I was going to mod you up, but I decided to respond instead. Notice how everything in this SCO press release refers to previous SCO and Novell press releases. They don't mention a single contract, or anything else that would hold water in court. SCO knows press releases do _NOT_ mean anything in court. Hurray for everyone's favorite pump & dump scheme.
It would be wiser for McBride to perpetuate the release of Open Source operating system vis-a-vis in order to accentuate the capability contained within them.
Heh. Business lingo aside, it very much wouldn't have been wiser for the owners of SCO's OpenServer UNIX to have done so. Linux has completely eaten SCO's lunch with the exception of fields where necessary products for the operation of a business are available only (or cheapest) on SCO's OS line. Real, cheap(er) *NIX for mass market hardware instead of highly marked-up "big iron" was SCO's market before Linux came along and did everything SCO did better for free. SCO's OS line is dying, and there's pretty much nothing that they could've done to save it as a sellable products.
Instead, SCO acted in what an Ayn Rand-ite would've called its own "rational self-interest." SCO knows that its major source of revenue is going to be useless soon, so it's attempting to get another one. Building essentially a completely new software product line in a new market niche is far too high-risk and too low of a payoff compared to attempting to exploit the IP that they think they own. The current spate of lawsuits is a high-risk gamble too, but it's one with a much, much larger potential payoff.
Also, there's the whole principal-agent problem caused by the fact that the future of the executives of the board is not strongly yoked to the company going down in flames. Together, you have a recipe for callous, self-interested behavior by people who are committed to the idea that money is the best measure of success.
Instead we have been deploying Solaris and Mac OS X for the satellite locations.
Congratulations, you have played into SCO's hands. You have not adopted the platform that has killed theirs, and you have given money to Sun, a company that has decided to pay SCO a license for the product you purchased. This is exactly what SCO was hoping for.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
How can they claim complete ownership of something that they are paying another company royalties on??? I'm no lawyer, but that implies Novell owns the copyrights.
I'm no lawyer, but I am an author and my publishers have to pay me royalties BECAUSE I OWN THE COPYRIGHTS TO MY WORKS. The same would apply here. So SCO doesn't even hold the copyrights, what a twisted web Dark weaves.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
But, having seen the first file, I really do wonder if McFraud believes CEOs of companies such as Novell really need to be told, in words of one syllable, what Linux is and why its development model differs from proprietary software. It seems to me that he is the one who fails to grasp the situation. He really seems to be unable to grasp that huge teams of programmers are not the way to develop good software (as the Convicted Monopolist has proved time and again...) he does not seem to comprehend that anyone with a brain, a PC and a compiler is able to develop good code, if they want to. Many of course would not bother with the learning curve, they would rather do other things, which is OK of course, but they probably could, if they wanted to. The clever people will certainly create bigger programs of better quality quicker, as we all know. But none of this involves the race of supermen, with super facilities, which McFraud seems to suggest are necessary. Mere mortals, with slowish PCs, simply take a bit longer, but because there are lots of them, each doing their own little bit, and putting the bits together occasionally, it still happens at a respectable pace.
I think that like another nasty piece of work we like to revile on /. (the one who missed the Internet for several years, despite prodding from his employees, who now calls himself the Chief Software Architect), he simply is too stupid to understands what it is all really about.
Unix as a money-spinner has had its day (and thanks to stupid commercial and legal issues it never did spin as much money as it could have), in fact the OS as such has had its day. Wise companies like IBM, Sun, Oracle, Novell realise that now, and know that the future for them is in building hardware (if they are in that business) and/or providing middleware and support. McFraud is simply living in the past. BTW, the next thing to expire as a money-spinner will be the "Office" suite, they are almost two-a-penny now (strictly, two for zero pennies for the pedantic), a far cry from the $400 spreadsheet or WP originally. The fact is that like commodity hardware, commodity software is starting to get very much cheaper. In fact hardware costs are the driving force. It once may have seemed reasonable to put a $400 Lotus 1-2-3 on a $4000 PC/AT (guessing at prices, from the vague recesses of my fading memory, they might not be quite right), but to put a $400 Office suite on a $300 PC is sheer folly. The economies of scale apply to software far more than to hardware, likely marginal cost of an Office suite about $1 for the box and CD, but the Monopolist, the Fraudster and such like have tried to conceal that fact from the gullible public.
I look forward to reading more of McFrauds rantings when the load on the servers subsides.
Not posting AC, so this may actually get read:
People, please realize that EZEZ is just shilling for SCO.
This is really interesting.
1. A newbie, EZEZ, comes from nowhere, posts an SCO press release and gets a +2 moderation.
2. Somebody points out that it's the 1st post ever by EZEZ and gets moderated down for pointing out the suspiciousness of EZEZ's posting history (none) and posting content (an SCO press release).
I am glad to see SCO being struck down, but I am not happy to see Unix copyrights and contracts being used to do it. Remember this it does NOT MATTER who owns Unix, because SCO's claim that Linux is an unauthorized derivative work of Unix is B.S.
Novell may be the friend of the GNU/Linux community now, but remember, SCO was a friend of Linux once too, before they changed hands and fell under the control of scumbags. What will Novel be like 10 years from now? What will IBM be like 10 years from now? Remember that Unix ownership is NOT Linux ownership.
Just go read the documents. It clearly says: All rights _with_the_exceptions_listed_. Uh, oh, small omission, right? go to the exceptions list and you will see that nearly ALL Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents are excepted.
Apparently all the Intellectual Property that was transferred in the original Purchase Agreement were the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare. The open group now owns the UNIX trademark so all the Intellectual property left is the trademark to UnixWare. Now you know why you haven't seen a lawsuit for "intellectual property" from SCOX.
Amendment 2 indicates that additional rights may be transferred. Correspondence indicates that this transfer has not taken place (even A2 validity seems to be still "unverified")