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SCO Files Suit Against Novell Over System V Ownership
nadamsieee writes "Yahoo! Finance is carrying a press release from SCO that details a new lawsuit against Novell for "Slander of Title". It looks like SCO has finally ditched their failing product line in favor of 24/7 litigation and PR work." To recap: Novell and SCO have a lengthy correspondence over the meaning of the contract between the two companies, Novell registers a claim with the U.S. copyright office over the code in dispute, SCO files this suit in response. Update: 01/20 23:04 GMT by M : SCO has placed their complaint (pdf) online.
Oh yeah. Novell had to be the last company I thought SCO would sue. How can anyone really feel good about working for these guys? Granted, jobs in IT are harder to come by as of late, but I would be absolutely embarrassed to say "I work for SCO"....... They are less and less a tech company every day and more and more a front for litigious action that appears to pump up their stock and dump shares as quickly as possible given the SEC filings over the past little while. Come on now, these guys split off from Novell via Noorda who almost ran Novell into the ground after fightin' it out with Microsoft and tried under the guise of Caldera to sell (rather unsuccessfully) a Linux distro, almost killing another company yet again. Darl McBride then thought "I know what let's do, let's build a business model based upon legal action. Hell, we don't need no stinkin' IT product. We've got lawyers .
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Could this be a last ditch effort to bump their stock so they can sell the last few shares...
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
I don't know how SCO possibly hopes to sustain another lawsuit, with the IBM one and all the counter-suits against them still pending. They have basically no cash flow (and their SEC filings confirm) that they probably won't see any additional revenue this quarter.
Looks like another publicity ploy to divert attention from the amended S3 filings they made last week that announced all the risks they "forgot about" in the original filing.
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. -George Carlin
How long until the BSA starts conducting raids on businesses without SCO "liceneses"? By the BSA's standards, unlicensed software will get you audited, and they like to bring in their pet cops to do these raids. Novell lawsuit is probably good though as it will help force closure on the great IP landgrab on the century.
The FSF and the kernel hackers could have a field day with SCO right now. This, along with the aborted attempt to sell binary run-time licences that restrict rights in a similar fashion, may be exactly the mistakes the GNU/Linux copyright owners have been waiting for. I'm pretty sure SCO's public statements about the invalidity of the GPL, combined with the GPL's own statements that any disagreement over the terms of GPL-code distribution kicks the whole package back to standard copyright and thus makes SCO's own continued distribution illegal as hell, will make this case a laugher. For all of SCO's claims that the GPL is anti-copyright and unconstitutional, the licence itself makes clear that if the conditions can't be fulfilled or the licence is found to be unenforceable, standard copyright law applies--which means, unfortunately for SCO, the code they're trying to distribute is not automatically public domain, and thus they have no right to distribute any code they can't claim direct ownership for. It just means the authors would have to come up with another way to licence their code, either collectively or individually--and SCO would be in no position to make demands. Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I think SCO is in this for a long time, and they won't go away. Judging by 2003 and the last month's efforts, they will stick about and sue anyone and everything vaguely related to them.
And when their stock finally takes a plummet back under a dollar... they'll sue their investors and anyone who ever traded on them!
I guess it's a smart move by them to get in first before Novell acted. If Novell had acted in suing SCO for claiming to own Novell's UNIX when they didn't, it would give the worldwide impression that SCO is using IP illegally. As SCO has taken the first step of taking legal action against Novell, it now looks all the more (even if only to the clown troup of DiDio and Deutschebank) like SCO is the one working to protect THEIR ip.
By suing they have effectively lost it IMO. If you read the Asset Purchase Agreement over at Groklaw, it's fairly clear that Novell is correct. Also Novell has claimed in the past that SCO has asked them to transfer the copyrights, but they (Novell) refused. If they can bring hard evidence of this out (and I would bet they can) then that proves SCO knew Novell retained the copyrights. Also look out for the Novell counter-suit about SCO's actions in claiming the Novell acquisition of SuSE violated the non-competition portions of the (old) SCO-Novell contract. Novell have played a vital role over the past few months in hastening SCO's demise. If SCO hadn't sued Novell they would still not get the UNIX copyrights. SCO can't win this one either way, much as they can't win the IBM suit. Ha ha.
http://ichart.yimg.com/y?s=NOVL&z=b&t=1d&c=SCO X
A couple of minutes later, however, prices were back at the level as they were before.
At SCO Countdown, I have a countdown to SCO's self imposed deadline for suing a Linux end user (I doubt that a Novell lawsuit can be counted as a end user suit), so remember, SCO has to file another lawsuit in 28 days or it misses it's deadline. In addition, after that litigious bastards campaign that was started on /. a few days ago, I acquired that domain and threw up a quick page.
Remember, link link link!
Let's see Friday is court day on IBM's case. I smell a pretty bad debacle for SCO there.
Novell's been doing a pretty good job harrying SCO's flanks to the point where SCO is probably getting nowhere selling "licenses". They HAD to sue Novell to keep the pretense up.
I've noticed that their PR releases don't list a PR agency anymore. I used to work for a PR firm and usually they'll handle or coordinate media queries. Being done in house now. Hmmmm.... Maybe they can't find a flack who'll touch them.
My guess is that it's all about the stock price now but... The PR machine is losing steam. Like a junkie they need more drugs/PR to keep going.
Don't worry about the stock price, that's trailing news. There's so little stock being traded relative to amount outstanding that it doesn't take much to support it and the press releases are getting less effective. It'll crash rather spectacularly when there's a completely adverse opinion in one of the cases.
Friday will be fun to watch!
Pssst, Darl.. Some 17 year old punk named Mike Rowe is running his website on Linux! You better file suit against him, too!
Don't get him started. There's probably some kid out there S. C. Oh with a website...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
In viewing SCO Group's actions, a quote from Babylon 5 comes to mind.
In the words of Londo Mollari: "only an idiot fights a war on two fronts; only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts."
I think that we have found the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots. I have lost track on how many entities they are really going after and how many they are threatening to go after.
Hi everybody,
I just figured I'd give a heads up to SCO's job opportunities page. If you'll notice the very first opening is for a Senior Software Engineer in India with the following job description:
Design and develop systems-level software for Linux and provide systems support by performing the following duties:...
I'm not making it up. Doesn't this sound really fishy/stupid?
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
said Mark Heise, partner, Boies, Schiller and Flexner, LLP. "We encourage the public and commercial Linux users to read the Asset Purchase Agreement from 1995 (including Attachment E found at www.sco.com/novell) and Amendment 2 so they can see for themselves that SCO owns the copyrights to UNIX and UnixWare."
...Besides the fact that Novell just bought into the Linux sector with it's purchase of SuSE. This debate apparently stems from something well before Novells involvement with Linux.
What does a copyright violation case between Novell and SCO have to do with Linux?
Save it for the judge pall, I know we slashdotten have uber legal skills, but thank your lucky stars that it won't be up to us.
Seriously though, why point out Linux users specifically? Why not just leave it at "public" instead of "public and... "
SCO and lawyerfriends are now just perpetuating a flame war.
I detest offshoring as much as the next rabid Slashdotter, but that's one job the Indians are welcome to!
Has anyone else noticed that SCOX are also looking for a "Director of Financial Reporting and SEC/GAAP Compliance", among whose responsibilities are "Financial reporting of quarterly and annual results in accordance with SEC rules and regulations." This has been listed since 8 December 2003, or over six weeks. I wonder why the last one quit? Could it be because there are some things even accountants won't do?
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...