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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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Wasn't SCO supposed to reveal their cards a couple days ago? Haven't seen a lick of news about that... maybe they missed the deadline cuz all the executives have fled to tropical islands without extradition treaties.
Groklaw already has been translating the PDF's into text as well as providing some good commentary.
From the looks of it, it appears that Novell is about to hit SCOX with a breach of contract suit. Additionally, the letters point out that the MS and SUN contracts should pay 95% of the amount to Novell.
With that in mind, it appears that SCO has lied on their latest earnings statement (fraud) as well as withheld information from Bay Star, etc...
SCO is in a lot of touble.
I don't drink because I have to, I drink to stop the voices in my head!
Grin. The following summary from groklaw seems to sum it up nicely.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2004011 30 20257821
May 12, 2003, SCO: We own UNIX. Those Linux thieves stole it. Now we are going to make them pay!
May 28, 2003, Novell: Your letter annoyed us. You don't own UNIX, we do.
June 6, 2003, Novell: Stick to the facts and stop threathening us.
June 6, 2003, SCO: We do own UNIX, stop telling everybody you own it. You did that on purpose on the same day as our earning annoucement. We also want to know what IBM told you and what you told IBM.
June 9, 2003, Novell: You can't just terminate IBM's license, so stop claiming you will. We do have the right to tell you what to do, you know.
June 11, 2003, SCO: We do own UNIX and we can do what we want. Stop telling everybody we can't, or else...
June 12, 2003, Novell: Come on, you can't be serious. When we signed the contracts we promised IBM you could not terminate the license. We at Novell keep our promises.
June 12, 2003, SCO: Okay, now you've done it. You didn't listen, so now we are giving IBM permission to keep using AIX. You may not like it, but it the way it is. The license will not be terminated!
June 18, 2003, Novell: Our press release about the copyrights coinciding with your earnings annouchment was purely coincidental. We do not want to hurt you, we are just protecting our interests.
June 24, 2003, Novell : You signed contracts with Microsoft and somebody else. You can't just do that without telling us first. What's up with that? So, we demand to get copies and demand that you do not do this again. Once we have the copies we will determine if you have to give their money to us instead.
June 26, 2003, Novell: You keep telling you own the patents and copyrights of UNIX. We do acknowledge you had the right to acquire 'some' of the copyrights and we are still looking into it how much exactly you are entitled to. In any case, you do NOT own the patents.
July 8, 2003, Novell: Please stop bothering our former executives.
July 11, 2003, Novell: You haven't paid us in 6 months, cough up the money! Also, we are definitely going to audit your ass.
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.
August 4, 2003, Novell: We noticed you registered the UNIX copyrights. We do not agree with that. You had to demonstrate you needed the copyrights and you didn't do that. Tough luck, the copyrights are still ours!
August 7, 2003, Novell: You withheld our money! No mather what your reasons are, you can't do that. We want assurances that this will never happen again. Compy!
August 20, 2003, Novell: You know what, we have a technology license agreement. We want copies of the source and binary code for all versions of UNIX and UnixWare. We tried to call, but you never called back. We want the code and we want to know when we can have it.
September 10, 2003, SCO: We don't agree with your interpretation of our contracts. You are conspiring with IBM to destroy us. SCO is not going to let this happen.
October 7, 2003, Novell: You seem to think that AIX modifications made by IBM are subject to restrictions. Sorry, but that is simply not true. IBM owns their own code and can do with it what they like. Stop bothering IBM.
October 7, 2003, Novell: You seem to think that IRIX modifications made by SGI are subject to restrictions. Sorry, but that is simply not true. SGI owns their own code and can do with it what they like. Even if SGI did contribute UNIX code to Linux, it was very small amount of code and it was removed very quickly. This simply does not warrant terminating SGI's license, so stop threathening that you will.
October 7, 2003, Novell: We heard you are going to send invoices to Linux u
Basically, Novell says that it's owed 95% of the revenue from the Microsoft and Sun licensees (hmm, SCO already gave a good chunk to the lawyers, oops), and that SCO has failed to make expected payments on revenue from other Unix source licensees (double oops). They want their money, which basically would cut SCO off at the balls.
SCO says that they have the right to enter into new kinds of agreements and that the Microsoft and Sun licenses are not revised versions of the previous unix source licensing arrangements, so Novell can go pound salt.
Novell asks SCO to stop harassing Novell's customers (all existing Unix source licensees) and trying to ammend contracts they have no rights to ammend, threatening to terminate liceneses for IBM and SGI that only Novell has the right to do so, being a general pain in the a**, and that generally SCO are a bunch of lying cheats (yes, it's all in there, fun reading).
SCO doesnt say anything about being lying cheats, but claims Novell's Unix source licensees are their licensees, even though Novell has a 95% revenue interest, and SCO receives 5% "commission".
In short, this correspondence provides a foundation for Novell to say SCO is in violation of the original Unix purchase agreement, and could form the basis for Novell to have SCO's rights to Unix terminated. Since SCO knowingly failed to list money potentially owed to Novell on either their earning statements and their official SEC filings, or the potential risk to loosing most of their recent income, SCO is probably in deep sh*t SEC-wise, which probably explains the mysterious exit of that SCO employee in charge of doing the SEC filings right before their last earning report was do. Naturally he would not wish to be the one to sign a false earnings statements.
I guess looking at this, Bubba will soon have a new "Mc"-bride at club fed.
From the letter dated 12 June 2003, from Novell and IBM:
Accordingly, pursuant to Section 4.16(b) of the Asset Purchace Agreement, Novell, on behalf of The SCO Group, hereby waives any purported right SCO may claim to terminate IBM's SVRX Licenses enumerated in Amendment X or to revoke any rights thereunder, including any purported rights to terminate asserted in SCO's letter of March 6, 2003 to IBM.
This, in a nutshell, is Novell withdrawning SCO's right to terminate IBM's license, which was reported last year on Slashdot. What I really want to see, however, is the ubiquitous Asset Purchase Agreement, which appears in both this letter and most of the other ones; the whole dispute (at least, between SCO and IBM) appears to hinge on this agreement. Unfortunately, the agreement will probably never see the light of day, for reasons of corporate confidentiality.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
"Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing voilation of our intellectual property or other rights."
And in response to the specific piece Jack Messman says in his response:
"In your letter, you analogize SCO's campaign against the Linux community to that of the record industry against major corporations whose servers contained downloaded music files. There are crucial differences between the two campaigns. The record industry has provided specific information to back up its allegation, while SCO steadfastly refuses to do so. In its allegation letter, the record industry provides evidence of allegedly infringing activity that is specific to the targeted company. This offers the company real notice of the activity, sufficient information to evaluate the allegation, and an opportunity to stop the activity if it determines the allegation is true. If SCO wants to compare its actions to that of the record industry, it should follow the example set by that industry and present specific evidence of the alleged infringement."
At the very least, read this entire response from Novell to SCO regarding it's letter to Linux customers. Jack has pretty much voiced *all* the concerns that the Slashdot community has come up with in a direct letter to Daryll.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Some might not argee with me, but I think this lawsuit by SCO was inevitable for the Linux community. I have believed that Linux couldn't be considered a completely viable choice for many companies until something like this happened. Why? Because it hadn't been tested.
Linux is based on a new concept that many people don't understand. The right to freely use and change and redistribute doesn't make the Cooperate heads comfortable. Add that to the fact that most, if not all, distributions claimed not to take legal responsibility for their products. I believe that after SCO loses their lawsuit that companies will start providing legal immunity to their customers. In fact this is already starting to happen. Novell with their move into the Linux world has started to do this, IBM I believe is starting in some form or another and there could be others that I am not aware of.
Linux is going through its growing pains and afterwards it will be better for it. Once Linux moves through this, it will be well into it's young adult life. There will still be a lot of growth and "pain" involved but it will move on. While I know many will say, "But Linux has been around for many, many years," I say to them that yes, but it hasn't been tested legally. This will give it the legal ground to move forward and grow.
I remember several years ago during my early years in college one of my professors saying some time soon somebody would try to profit off of Linux's growth, they would take legal action and try to undermine the base that Linux is founded on. He also said that Linux wouldn't, and in reality, couldn't be a heavy weight contender in the marketplace until something like this has happened.
I believe that when all is said and done with the lawsuit Linux will be a better off and will show to all the skeptical CEO's and anybody else that is listening that Linux is a great foundation to build their network on and more.
Art by Mindy Herman, my wife.
The movement to link litigious bastards to http://www.sco.com/ would be more interesting if we all let SCO know exactly how you feel. Make sure your link says http://www.sco.com/?sco=litigious%20bastards. (The query parameter will naturally appear in their server logs.)
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