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Novell Quotes AT&T on Derivative Works

grendelkhan writes "Novell has released their latest correspondance with the litigous bastards ordering them to stop the lawsuit by noon tomorrow, and clarify what the SVRX licensing agreements with AT&T meant regarding derivative works. The letter quotes AT&T from the April '85 issue of $echo as stating that they 'claim no ownership interest in any portion of such a modification or derivative work.' So much for the ladder rung analogy." And reader highwaytohell links to today's CRN article in which Eben Moglen suggests that the SCO/Linux lawsuit cannot move ahead "until SCO resolves its dispute with Novell. And regardless of which company prevails in court, he said, customers won't have to pay any company for a license fee since both claimants--SCO and Novell--have distributed the Linux code under the GPL. Once again, SCO have no comment."

8 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. litigous bastards? by MooKore+2004 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know that everyone and their dog here at Slashdot hates SCO, but is it really necesscary to call them names? It just makes us look like Mad Zealots. Youd think after the what the BBC published you would try and take this case more calmly?

    1. Re:litigous bastards? by LearnToSpell · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Or sco.com is down, and Google doesn't link to downed sites. Not much of a conspiracy here, I'm afraid.

  2. How soon we forget. by NanoGator · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Novell has released their latest correspondance with the litigous bastards..."

    And some of you accused the BBC of making an unfounded claim when they said this:

    "If anyone's anger has no measure, it is the wrath of internet zealots who believe that code should be free to all (open source). So, it seems likely that the perpetrators of the MyDoom virus and its variants are internet vandals with a specific grudge."

    If you guys don't like having the finger pointed at you, then don't say things like that to attract attention to yourselves.

    --
    "Derp de derp."
    1. Re:How soon we forget. by roman_mir · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I disagree. Linux zealots or not, Sco are litigous bastards. BBC linking Linux users and coders to MyDoom trojan without looking at any other points of view, now that is some 'fair' news delivery.

  3. Re:Meanwhile, back on the western front... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the only copyrights SCO claims are to sysV unix (and some older unices that don't matter). They also have contractual rights to *derivative works* made from sysV. IBM's AIX is such a derivative work, and IBM cannot release it without SCO approval - for sure they can't turn AIX into GPL code.

    BUT, IBM has independently produced a lot of software that is part of AIX but is not sysV code. This material from NOVELL makes it even clearer (if anything can be clearer than perfectly transparent) that IBM owns this independently developed code and can do whatever it wants with it -- notably, they can contribute it to linux under the GPL. SCO is toast.

  4. Re:Meanwhile, back on the western front... by Tewara · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your statement "First and foremost, IBM is a hardware and services company; they don't *really* care about software beyond the fact that it helps them shift hardware and services. If they can get revenue from the software, great, but it's a drop in the ocean as far as their turnover is concerned" is somewhat off the mark. You might wish to check the IBM quarterly report about their revenue distribution, and a few web pages about their future "direction". A Tewaran of Tewar

  5. Please don't Googlebomb by Quantum+Jim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sigh. Am I the only person who thinks that Googlebombing is childish? It's basically the same technique spammers use to pervert their popularity on the search engine. Worse, it prevents surfers from getting undisturpted, unbaised information about a topic. For instance, how can Bush be both a miserable failure and a great president! These PageRanks make no logical sence when taken together, but googlebombing disrupted the normal weights for Bush on these topics. I don't care what the intentions are, purposely trying to change Google's PageRank is wrong.

    --
    It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
    - Jerome Klapka Jerome
  6. Bullshit. by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You are calling for the law of the jungle, everybody able to be judge, jury, executor and even accusing part.

    I don't want part of such world, even evil people have a right to be protected and respected. Those gurantees for the worst in our societies will ensure that we live with freedom and without fear of unfair prosecutions and retribution.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.