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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.
Pssst, Darl.. Some 17 year old punk named Mike Rowe is running his website on Linux! You better file suit against him, too!
Trolling is a art,
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.
I think we are at a point where it is easier to list the companies that SCO has _not_ sued. I'm waiting on them to bite the hand that feeds them by taking a shot at Microsoft and Sun. Hell, they may even end up suing themselves!
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
This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding SCO's lawsuit against Novell.. . . These forward- looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, the risk that SCO may not be successful in its claims against Novell and that the pursuit of protections for SCO's copyrights will require the expenditure of resources and may result in further litigation.
They have my nomination for understatement of the year (& it's only January). Second, anyone?
It's a bad sign when you start putting disclaimers in your press releases.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
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
Now, finally, a good test case for the Lie Detector Glasses for sceptical Slashdot readers!
Now, that's the pot calling the kettle "black".
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
Figures.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
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.
SCO to IBM: "Hold on a sec while I go and steal something from this guy so I can say you stole it from me."
I bet that will fly.
..."a leading provider of UNIX-based solutions"
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. Funny one PR... funny..
"where words meet intent, lies rhetoric's lament"
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.
Can a company sue another company for being plain stupid? I mean, SCO thought they were getting all of System V because they failed to grasp all of the ramifications of the contract they had with Novell. The only argument that they might have is the claim that Novell tricked them into a contract that they thought was more inclusive. From reading the correspondence, I don't think this is the case. It was just a matter of shear stupidity on SCO's part to agree to a contract under their assumption that it was more inclusive than it is.
Now, can't Novell simply ask SCO to stop annoying them, and if they don't stop, just proclaim on behalf of SCO that this one lawsuit is over?
Question
What do you have the best chances of seeing this year?
A) - The Easter Bunny
B) - Cupid
C) - SCO's compelling evidence against Linux.
D) - Another John Woo movie, including his signature cinematic touches such as; crossed guns, the boot, the villain's outer garment whipping in the wind, and, oh yeah.....those fucking birds !!!
Answer D - BECAUSE THE REST ARE FUCKING FIGMANTS OF YOUR IMAGINATION.
Novell's false and misleading representations that it owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights has caused SCO irreparable harm to its copyrights, its business, and its reputation.
aaahahhahahahahaha. *breath* aahehehehahahehe
yeah sure, Novell was the cause of the irreparable harm! ahahahhahahahe!
I think this explains why they didn't have time to correctly respond to the Judge's request that the produce evidence in the IBM case. The were apparently already working on their next frivolous lawsuit.
Finkployd
Round and round they go... being sucked inexorably to the bottom of the funnel, at which point they die.
SCO's updated SEC documents found it necessary to state that they can't afford to pay their lawyers in cash, so they're using stock instead. So it makes a lot of sense to take on a new lawsuit... Oh, except they have to, to defend their other lawsuits.... And they don't seem to be noticing anything *wrong* here. Either they or us are missing something.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
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.
I am the only one that found it hilarious that this story came in on the front page right after the story about the "Lie Detector Glasses"?
Since this goes to the heart of SCO's claims against IBM and also of Redhat's suit against SCO, I predict that both sides in both lawsuits (SCO vs IBM and Redhat vs SCO) will ask for the respective lawsuits to be suspended (on-hold) until this is resolved. Bottom line: several more years of drawn out FUD with no resolution in sight.
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.
Looking at the correspondence Novell's put up, and given that SCO has acknowledged paying Novell royalties for SysV recently, it's hard to see how they can be serious. We can only hope that the judge here doesn't allow McBride & Co. to drag out the disclosure process as they have in the IBM case.
SCO delenda est!
No doubt Novell will file a countersuit. In fact, from Novell's correspondence it looks like Novell was preparing to file a suit over non-compliance with the purchase agreement. Maybe SCO saw it coming, and decided it would be better publicity to file first. Not that such a tactic will do SCO any good in the long run.
No, Darl. It's all of the false statements that YOU have made that is causing customers and potential customers to not do business with SCO.
The word SCO is in danger of becoming a synonym for sue. Some thing like "Oh yeah, well I am going to SCO your ass off, buddy" Sorta like google became a standardized verb.
From the Press Release...
/. bandwidth providers.
"About SCO
The SCO Group (Nasdaq: SCOX - News) helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses everyday"
And of course it must be true, many (but not sure if it is millions) of lawyers grow their business with help from SCO. Not to mention news services and
Pay a wire service $3500. If it's properly formatted, anybody can do it.
The title of the page will display whatever you put in the path name
Jesus Christ! Is there anyone SCO won't sue? I can just imagine the next ./ article
SCO's next lawsuit target CmdrTaco's Aunt Tilly for her recipe for Scones since the first three letters in it are SCO. Aunt Tilly gives SCO the finger and states "Come near me and my recipe book and I'll let you have it with a rolling pin you bastards"
Phoenix
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
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!
They have my nomination for understatement of the year (& it's only January). Second, anyone? It's a bad sign when you start putting disclaimers in your press releases.
I realize you may be joking but in the interest of being sufficiently pedantic, SCO actually is legally required to put disclaimers like this in. Whenever a company releases information about the managament's expectations for future events they have to identify "forward looking" information with a disclaimer like this. If they do not put this sort of disclaimer in the press release, the could be subject to discipline by the SEC or shareholder lawsuits. (I know, I know, that would be a good thing here...) SCO is just following the law and giving investors a disclosure of risks.
In other words nothing to see here. Move along...
The asset purchase agreement in a much more readable form than the scrambled PDF on SCO's site:at Groklaw
I don't think I've seen attachment E before, but it appears to be a list of documentation, not software. I wonder if SCO thinks that owning the documentation for the ABI gives them ownership of the ABI itself?
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Lie detector glasses that work on press releases, coming soon from Nemesys-co!
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
I'm coming to the conclusion that against all common sense and reason, SCO's stock is indestructable.
Future generations will consder it the bar that all other stocks are compared to. I'm actually considering buying some, on the premise that either
a) I will make money from SCO's FUD efforts.
b) My luck will cause it to tank, and I will be able to sacrifice my savings so that that SCO will die.
Caldera as a company was founded with the sole purpose of suing Microsoft over DR-DOS, which they had acquired. Litigation is nothing new, it's been their business model from day one.
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.
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.
Maybe I'm confused, but shouldn't SCO have sued Novell first? If they go to trial with IBM before the Novell suit is worked out, then the Big Blue Bulldozer can ride right over them with the ol' "SCO is tied up in court to prove they own the rights to the code that they say they own, but Novell says differently, and it's still up in the air, so they can't touch us" argument. Therefore, SCO better pray that Novell loses (yeah, that'll happen) quickly (Oh wow I can't stop laughing) before IBM gets in front of a judge to have SCO's claims dismissed while Big Blue can continue with its counterclaims. Put simply, SCO just found out, or realized, that they put the cart in front of the horse...not that they own any such horse, cart, or are even on a road anybody recognizes...
Everybody who thinks IBM's lawyer's bust out a Big Blue Grin when this came out, raise your hand.
"Life's funny sometimes." "And sometimes it isn't." --Cat's Cradle
This is all a little strange. It seems to me that the IBM case would have to be set on hold until after the Novell case is settled. I mean how can you finish suing IBM for misuse/misappropration of IP until you've settled who the actual owner of the copyrighted material is? (That of course assumes any of said copyrighted material can be proven to belong to anyone in particular or that it has actually been misappropriated into other software ;-)
Agent: This is a simple lie detector. I'll ask you a few yes or no questions and you just answer truthfully. Do you understand?
McBride: Yes.
(The polygraph explodes.)
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
.. on SCO before now. From my reading of the asset purchase agreement(s), Novell retained certain rights over SCO, including the right to "undo" certain things that SCO might do to their licensees, e.g. SCO revokes IBM's license, Novell un-revokes it. I find it surprising that they have not been able to just pull the plug on SCO for all of their recent behaviour. It's a shame, but I'm sure that if they could have done, they would have.
like SCO has a reputation to uphold at this point...
SCO (SCOX) has recently announced a change in the mission of the company. Citing failures to produce revenue growth chairman Darl McBride has decided to initiate a corporate injury law firm. "We already have several important clients (SCO v. IBM,SCO v. Novell, Redhat v. Novell) and this is proof that we can draw out lawsuits for many years, producing extraordinary increases in stock value." In other news the recently bankrupt Redback Networks has filed with SCO to sue Cisco for alleged patent infringement. When the Redback CEO was asked about the details of this infringement he replied "due to the potential damage to Redback such details cannot be provided. However we recognize that the corporations who purchased infringing hardware from Cisco did so without prior knowledge, so we are introducing a new licensing fee of $500 per unit until the end of the summer, at which time the said fee will be raised to $1000".
Here's what it means, courtesy of yogi61bear's findings:
Slander of Title
To recover in an action for slander of title, a party must allege and prove: (i) the utterings and publishing of disparaging words; (ii) that they were false; (iii) that they were malicious; (iv) that special damages were sustained thereby; (v) that the plaintiff possessed an estate or interest in the property disparaged; and (vi) the loss of a specific sale. Malice is a basis for recovery of actual damages in a slander of title case means merely that the acts must have been deliberate conduct without reasonable cause. A patent may well be the subject of a slander of title action as Prosser and Keeton state that intangible interest such as "trademarks, copyrights [and] patents" may be the subject of the tort.
As compared to other "injurious falsehood" causes of action, slander of title or property differs in that there is no presumption of damages. The plaintiff must show that he or she sustains special damage proximately, naturally and reasonably resulting from the alleged slander. Attorneys' fees are not recoverable in slander of title actions, and neither damages to reputation nor consequential mental damages are recoverable in action for slander of title. The plaintiff must prove the loss of a specific sale, i.e., that a pending sale was defeated by the slander. However, the reasonable expense of litigation necessary to remove the doubt, or cloud, from the property or title thereto has been held to be recoverable. Additionally, punitive damages are also recoverable in an action for slander of title. Thus, as was the case with a defamation cause of action, a plaintiff should allege that defendant's actions were both intentional and with malice.
-- By Paul C. Van Slyke
Belief is the currency of delusion.
These guys at SCO are deceptive idiots!
Reading Amendment E and you will see that only the copyrights to the various manuals of Sys V are transferred to old SCO (not current Caldera/SCO Group).
However to a casual observer it might look like SCO got the copyrights to Sys V itself, which is not the case.
Thus Novell is correct and this new Fog and Mirror attack from SCOG is completely bogus.
--
Andre
Wheeee!!! Another SCO lawsuit!
Darl and Co. really missed the boat on another revenue tie-in: Reality Programming. Can you *imagine* what a great comedy this would make? Just prop up the cameras, then let Darl, Chris Sontag, Blake Stowell, Jeff Hunsaker, Mark Heise, David Boies, Kevin McBride, and etc., rip.
They'd make a *fortune*!!!
And then they could sue Court TV for "IP infringement". More Money!
Po' li'l set upon Darl. All the big corporate boys are conspiring against him. And all the li'l Linux boys are piling on.
Seriously, though, I think Litigious Bastards 'R' Us, Inc. have finally signed their death warrant.
projection (pr&-JEK-sh&n): The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Nonsense.
Redhat's claims have nothing to do with who owns the property rights to UNIX, and IBM's case is nearly at a close, and doesn't really hinge on whether or not SCO owns UNIX - they've gotten this far, they're surely not going to suspend the case until the Novell/SCO case builds up for a matter of months, etc.
As soon as one case concludes against SCO, SCO is pretty much done for. It doesn't really matter which one, and IBM's is the one that is closest to closure at the moment. Why not let it finish, instead of shutting it down?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
There are no shares available to short. That means that at least 25% of the float is held short, possibly more. Some people on Wall St. apparently don't believe that SCO has the goods, and are shorting this pig massively.
You're so vain, I'll bet you think that OS is about you
Don't you? Don't You? Don't You?
SCO had some dreams they were flushed down the toilet, flushed down the toilet, and...
If IBM is an 800lb gorilla, and their lawsuit was their weapon, then they essentially are asking the gorilla for a stick to hit them with.
If Novell is the 400lb cousin of the 800lb gorilla, then SCO just shot it with a BB gun and is expecting it to drop.
If you locked John Grisham in a room blaring Rage Against the Machine and hooked him up to an IV drip with LSD filled in the bag and gave him some Nicotine gum to chew and no sleep for 10 days, he wouldn't come up with this mess in a million years.
Believe me - I hate SCO as much as the next guy, but Novell is partly to blame for this mess because they have so poorly managed the ownership of UNIX and its related intellectual property so that this situation could happen in the first place. I bet even they do not know what the hell they sold SCO or what they own at this point. Novell just got copyright assignment for the Sys V code a few months ago. For the record, what did they sell to SCO, anyway? And how much did SCO pay for whatever it is they bought?
Where is SCO getting all this cash for legal expenses from? Certainly not from Linux "IP" licenses. Have they got a money tree, or hoping that they can win a few cases early enough to finance the other pending cases? Lets hope they sue so many more SIMULTANEOUSLY, that they run out of money before any of the cases conclude.
It kinda reminds me of playing Monopoly. If you spend all your remaining cash buying hotels on Park Avenue, etc, and you land on someone elses hotel before they land on yours, you're screwed. Hopefully "SCO is Bankrupt" will be the next SCO headline we read.
SCO should still have to show IBM what, exactly, IBM illegally included in Linux.
Then, the legal agreements regarding that material can be judged. It might be that SCO doesn't even have a case against IBM, even if SCO did have the patents.
SCO should get a hold on the IBM case only after SCO has shown what was "stolen" and the contracts have been found to support SCO's case and the "stolen" material is part of the Novell case.
IANAL so feel free to ignore me.
I may be completly wrong about this, anyhow...
It just crossed my mind that in a destructive scenario piling lawsuit on lawsuit may be just a way to "produce" law costs in order to get money/stocks out of the company.
Some weeks ago we had a lot of details on the huge sums that already went to law firms and that it wasn't just Boies but a surprising number of law firms, including McBrides brother. They were paid in cash and stocks.
Now, a law firm receiving it's payment in stocks can sell them without danger of violating any "insider" rules?
Say, their rationale is to liquidate the company in the most lucrative way. They fix a row of dates when insiders will sell stocks and they make sure they have the backing of some unknown interested party by aiming their campaign on Linux. Then carefully select the lawyers (choosing the CEOs brother is a bit to obvious, though). Boom IBM, boing RedHat, boom Novell. Everyone shaking heads, the costs will kill them - but this is not a problem if you intend to use the costs to get money out of the company while the stock prices are still high.
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
I would submit to you that there are at least two other options:
3) Change the rules. Don't like the hand your dealt in the game? Change the rules so you have a winning hand. (See one James T Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru Scenario)
4) Don't play. Some games don't have a winning solution. (See Global Thermonuclear War: "This is a strange game. The only way to win is not to play.")
SCO's attitude about litigation, copyright and GPL seems to be some evidence that they've also chosen option 3.
They've shown themselves to be:
Copyright violators suing for copyright violation.
Contract violators suing for breach of contract.
Royalty stiffs (withheld payments from Novell) sending fraudulent invoices for royalties.
And now they're slanderers suing for slander. Though technically it's libel.
Schedule 1.1(b) Excluded Assets (Page 2 of 2)
V. Intellectual Property:
A. 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. However, in no event shall Novell be liable to SCO for any claim brought by any third party pertaining to said copyrights and trademarks.
B. All Patents
So unless SCO can show that they need these copyrights to exercise it's rights to UNIX (not likely since they just admin the licenses), and UnixWare (they might have a case here) rights, and that they have asked Novell to give them up, they are totally talking out their ass.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
From internetnews.com.
In other words, SCO is issuing press releases within hours (maybe minutes) of filling lawsuits. Certainly before even discussing these matters with Novell. Surely that's not normal behaviour.
There's a running joke on Groklaw that SCO is using press releases and lawsuits as a foul form of free advertising. Unfortunately I'm not finding the joke very funny anymore.
* Novell's false and misleading representations that it owns the UNIX
and UnixWare copyrights has caused SCO irreparable harm to its
copyrights, its business, and its reputation.
I thought they were doing a fine job of ruining it all by themselves.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Yes, posting as AC wouldn't be a sign that you were embarassed, would it? I have seldom seen an attorney embarassed about anything he/she did in any case, they are used to slime (quite literally in the case of SCO attorney Hatch, who recently teamed up with the polluters and his Senator Father to make Utah safe for toxic waste dumping and defeat a popular referendum all in the name of the public good).
And I think all this bad press about this lawsuit is unfair: IBM did never own Unix but they stated goal was to kill Unix by pushing Linux.
Talk to Daryl if you want no more press. SCO is playing (well) to all the ignorants with completely false statements at every opportunity. Perhaps you have not seen the web sites archiving all the lies and contradictions he has made (hint, he does not link to them on your internal web site). It seldom is followed by the ridicule it merits in the popular press, so I agree that aspect is unfair. Tell him to shut up if you don't like it.
I don't have negative feelings against the Linux community but we can't let IBM get away with this. Indeed Darl is just doing his job and definding SCO against this unfair method to put us out of business.
Yes, I am sure it is nothing personal, violating the intellectual property of the community and slandering them. I am sorry, what does this have to do with suing Novell and other Linux users, who unlike SCO, stick up for the rights of the community? What does SCO have to offer anyone but lawsuits for everyone using their own intellectual property? SCO Unix was never worth anything, which the people selling it in a fire sale knew, which is why the suits are never about anything SCO ever owned or produced, but about what IBM and other community members produced for the community.
I have heard many attorneys make this sort of claim that destroying innocents is nothing personal. Either you are an attorney or have listened far too long to particularly twisted ones to make any judgements about fair and unfair.
I doubt there is a friend of Linux anywhere who doesn't see your evil intent despite such lawyerish disclaimers for the thing you are doing which is morally wrong, for which Daryl should be denied his Mormon Temple recommend -- open fraud does notqualify him. Every version of Linux Caldera distributed represents a lie by your company.
SCO sues Novell, but won't disclose its copyrights in Linux, even though it has to defy a court order.
In its press releases and letters to its customers, SCO claims that violations of its copyrights are in the Linux kernel. On December 5,SCO's lawyer, Keven McBride, said in court that SCO would be filing copyright claims against IBM. He also objected to the requirement to specify copyrights, but, after the judge insisted, said that SCO would comply. SCO was compelled by court order to answer ALL IBM questions with specificity by January 12. One of those questions was:
INTERROGATORY NO. 12: Please identify, with specificity (by file and line of code), (a) all source code and other material in Linux (including but not limited to the Linux kernel, any Linux operating system and any Linux distribution) to which plaintiff has rights; and (b) the nature of plaintiff's rights, including but not limited to whether and how the code or other material derives from UNIX.
On 1/12/04, SCO responded with an affidavit, a 60 page supplemental response, and some documents. Like everyone else, except IBM, I am still waiting to see the 60 page supplemental response, but I have additional information from public statements by SCO.
On 1/13/04, in the interview "SCO shows IBM the code", SCO spokesman Bruce Stowell said: "Monday's response included no examples of copyright violations. We've not introduced copyright infringement as part of our case with IBM. We've tried to make it clear that it's a contract issue."
SCO could have made arguments like this before it was ordered to respond to IBM's questions without further discussion. Now it's too late.
The order said to identify all rights that SCO claimed. It was not limited to rights that SCO was currently claiming as part of its suit against IBM, and, in my opinion, even includes the code contributed by SCO to Linux.
If, as Stowell said, SCO did not specify any copyrights that it owns in Linux, then either it is not claiming to own any such copyrights, or it has not complied with the court order.
If SCO now officially declines to claim ownership of any such copyrights, then it is hard to see how they could claim them in any later suit against a Linux user or distributor.
If SCO does claim ownership of any copyrights in Linux, it has blatantly defied the court order, and the judge can order sanctions. My guess is that part of the sanctions would be to bar SCO from suing anyone on any claims that it failed to specify in its 1/12 response to the compel order. The judge might also order SCO to show cause why it should not be held in contempt, and why it should not suffer sanctions for failing to comply with the order.
I wonder if SCO will now claim that it does not own any code in Linux, but it owns the copyrights that Novell claims. It would be typical of the way SCO has been making and revising claims.
Yeah, it sucks. The really scary thing is that this "system" works better than anything else that has been tried. Live with it.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Dude, that article rocks.
There have been lots of changes at SCO since your arrival. Last month, the company announced a major shift in its business to return to its Unix roots. What's happening, and what's the future of SCO?
Darl: The opportunity for this company is to really tap into the heritage that it has with the Unix operating system on the Intel platform. Some people are saying we're rushing back to the 1980s with our strategy. I like to think we're going back to the future. The interesting thing when I got here is we started looking at the history of this whole thing.
Where do you see SCO in five years?
Darl: I see SCO five years from now being as significant a technology brand as it was five to 10 years ago. We're going to embrace the great things of our past and our roots in Unix and move forward with a strong set of Unix and Linux offerings. On top of the operating systems business, we see a number of solutions-based opportunities, including in retail point-of-sale software. We're not only going to be getting back to where we were, but going beyond that.
I think the wording of the original agreement, even as changed by amendment 2, makes a strong case that SCO did not acquire the SysV copyright, but there's some wiggle room. In the "excluded assets" (i.e., what SCO didn't get), they list:
"A. 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. However, in no event shall Novell be liable to SCO for any claim brought by any third party pertaining to said copyrights and trademarks."
Two things stand out here. First, the fact that Novell retains "All copyrights and trademarks, except..." stronly implies that they retained most of the copyrights involved (otherwise why would this section be in "excluded assets", rather than putting "All copyrights and trademarks, except..." in the "included assets" section?).
Second, what does the word "acquisition" mean in this context? I would interpret it as saying that SCO required certain copyrights and trademarks in order to be able to legally sell SysV UNIX (since the amendment was a generalization of the phrase "except for the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare"). According to this reading, source code would definitely not be included, and transfer of copyright would take place only as part of the acquisition (i.e., SCO can't come back and claim copyright over other things now). This seems to be Novell's interpretation as well as mine. However, it could be argued that "required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition" is an ongoing thing, and that SCO is now claiming that they need the copyrights in order to continue exercising their rights.
Looking at the section as a whole, and at the history of the document, I'm inclined to lean toward Novell's interpretation, but I have to admit that there's enough ambiguity that SCO might have a case, albeit a weak one.
BTW, FWIW, IANAL. IJLTRLD (I just like to read legal documents).
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
No wonder scox was up another $0.50 today.
Slashdoters who think scox is stupid don't know what they're posting about. This is a great scam. When Darl first took over as ceo, the share price dropped to $0.60! Now the share price is 25X that. Is that your idea of stupid?
Scox-scam going strong for just under a year, so far.
or else
I really think Linus should file a similar suit. He has been slandered and the proof is in the public domain. If SCO fails to deliver the goods on the 23rd - case closed. If nothing else he could donate the judgement to some worthy cause like groklaw, OSDL or FSF.