Computer Associates Pays Off SCO

jford235 writes "Forbes reports that CA has paid the fee to SCO for their license. The deal went down in August but today CA has says that they have taken steps to "distance itself from SCO"."

Comments

Misleading Headline

[Thorofin]

Articles say that the liscenses were thrown in as part of a seperate breach of contract settlement. They were not "purchased".

Re:Misleading Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Groklaw as ever. There is more in later stories too).

Re:Misleading Headline

[Jeffrey Baker]

Specifically, Charles Forelle spake thusly in the Wall Street Journal:

The Islandia, N.Y., company, one of the biggest makers of corporate software, said that although it signed the licenses, it didn't pay for them -- and never would. It said it agreed to sign the licenses only to settle a lawsuit with the Canopy Group, one of SCO's major investors.

Isn't this a repeat?

[mbenzi]

Wasn't it already said that CA was buying a UNIX licenses and they added linux into the contract just for completeness?

What a lame headline...

[Filter]

To run this story under that headline makes this site seem as desperate as Forbes. The real story is easy for anyone to see about 5p down

>>"(SCO) is grasping at straws to purport CA as a SCO supporter,"
>>"CA stands in stark disagreement with SCO's tactics, which are intended to intimidate and threaten customers."

CA sees it a little different

[mtthws]

Here is the funny thing. CA is saying they did not pay off SCO. They were just buying unix liscense they were forced to by as the result of losing a lawsuit about unix liscenes. SCO threw they indemdification for one linux manchine for every unix liscense in there so they could claim CA was a linux liscense. CA keeps saying they want nothing to do with the linux liscense.

Yes, CA did NOT pay for these licenses

[_bug_]

As you can see here CA was GIVEN these licenses as part of a settlement with Canopy Group, one of SCO's major investors. Canopy was looking to lighten the financial burden, and so they threw in the licenses like they were water.

Update the Article!

[kuwan]

Yes, this article is both misleading and old news. You can find this from CA on Newsforge:

CA senior VP of product development Mark Barrenechea says that Bench's claim is nonsense. CA has not paid SCO any Linux taxes, he said.

Drawing up short of calling SCO a liar, Barrenechea claims that SCO has twisted a $40 million breach-of-contract settlement that CA paid last summer to the Canopy Group, SCO's biggest stockholder, and Center 7, another Canopy company, and has turned it into a purported Linux license.

As a "small part" of that settlement, Barrenechea said, CA got a bunch of UnixWare licenses that it needed to support its UnixWare customers. SCO, he said, had just attached a transparent Linux indemnification to all UnixWare licenses and that is how SCO comes off calling CA a Linux licensee.

You'll also find this on news.com.com.com.com:

Computer Associates, which has begun making its management software available on Linux, acknowledged it had the license, but took pains to distance itself from SCO's methods.

"CA disagrees with SCO's tactics, which are intended to intimidate and threaten customers. CA's license for Linux technology is part of a larger settlement with the Canopy Group. It has nothing to do with SCO's strategy of intimidation," said a statement from Sam Greenblatt, senior vice president and chief architect of CA's Linux Technology Group.

Greenblatt has been an outspoken Linux fan. "The whole world is going to unite around a single operating system, and it's going to be Linux," he said in a keynote address at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in January.

Basically Canopy threw in the licenses as part of a settlement with Canopy's Center7 company. I wonder if SCO broke any confidentiality agreements regarding the settlement by announcing that CA was a Linux IP Licensee. ;)

who knew shit could be worth so much

[hetairoi]

I was just waiting for the daily SCO story after reading this new BOFH.

Thanks for pushing SCO's FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't the /. moderators even bother to RTFA at all?

The headline effectively states CA bought a SCO Linux license, when nothing of the sort happened.

Canopy put a SCO Linux "license" in with other stuff in the settlement of a breach of contract lawsuit.

And now SCO (and /., apparently) start spouting off hou that means CA bought a Linux "license".

Anyone now doubt that Canopy and SCO are intertwined? Or that they both have Bill Gates hand shoved up their asses like the ragged sock puppets they are?

Re:WRONG WRONG WRONG

[prgrmr]

The sad part is when you consider how many article submissions were rejected in favor of posting this misleading repeat.

Re:Piercing the corporate viel

[Krow10]

Repost.

They only needed to pierce the veil as long as Canopy stayed behind the scenes. The limitation of liability afforded a corporation's shareholders only covers the shareholder from responsibility for the actions of the corporation; it does not in any way protect a shareholder from liability for his or her own actions.

With this deal, Canopy commited an overt act in furtherance of SCOX's campaign to mislead the public in SCOX's anti-linux campaign when they made the UnixWare license (with the linux indeminification attached) part of the CA lawsuit settlement. SCOX then used this deal to misleadingly imply that CA had entered into a voluntary deal to license linux. I'd say this falls under IBM's Lanham Act claims[See this, start at 84.) IBM doesn't need to pierce the veil, Canopy pulled is aside themselves.

Cheers,
Craig

Wrong

[sjvn]

We've known for five days now that CA only got the license because they were forced to in a settlement.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1543091,00. as p

"Sam Greenblatt, chief architect of the Linux technology group for CA, in Islandia. N.Y., told eWEEK that while CA "disagrees with SCO's tactics, which are intended to intimidate and threaten customers, CA's license for Linux technology is part of a larger settlement with the Canopy Group [Inc.]. It has nothing to do with SCO's strategy of intimidation."

With licensees like this, who needs enemies?

Steven

Re:Forgive them

[Jaywalk]

Forgive them

I don't think so.

many companies will unfortunately make a business decision - pay a little money now, rather then possibly a lot later in lawyer's fees. So I can't entirely blame them.

Its required for companies to honor their contracts. One of those contracts is the GNU license which they agreed to when they got Linux. One of the conditions of that license was that nobody is allowed to tack new conditions onto the GNU license. These companies expect to get free use of Linux both now and in the future and to have it supported by the Linux community. Fair enough, but part of the deal is to stick to the agreements which they've made with that community. It's not to their advantage or anyone elses to cave in on this. So far this seems to have been understood by pretty much everyone and only EV1 has given in.

Been here, done this

[whisper_jeff]

Haven't we already discussed the CA issue already?

Here and here.

Not that I'm against ragging on SCO and their stupidity, but isn't this horse dead?

SCOX reaches lowest price in 6 months

[KrunZ]

A least the investors got it right this time:

1 year SCOX chart
5 days SCOX chars

Yeah...

[Overly Critical Guy]

Slashdot already reported this last week. How SCO was spinning the breach of contract money as a Linux license.