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NRF Calls SCO's Claims 'Meritless'
Xenographic writes "The National Retail Federation has just put out a press release in which their CIO concludes that SCO's IP claims are "meritless," and that Novell is the last company which can show a clear title to the code in question. That SCO's claims are meritless is hardly news to anyone who has been following this, but what is interesting is that the NRF was prompted to release this because of legal threats to their membership, specifically SCO's threats to sue "major retailers." So the businesses being menaced by SCO are banding together, making it that much less likely that SCO will be able to generate easy money from mere threats of litigation. SCO's stock, meanwhile, appears to have taken a small dive from this news. Also, you can find further details and analysis on Groklaw."
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Wouldn't it be funny if when it's found that Novell indeed unquestionably owns the rights to the code, they turn around and pull a SCO on us?
hehe he
he
he?
gulp.
-m
#
# Modus Ponens
#
What code would this be, exactly?
I don't get these guys. How soulless do you have to be to outright lie about what you own, when you bought it, and the terms of an otherwise perfectly clear license?
Ooops, now SCO will sue me, too.
P.S. If you thought GPL was "viral," listen to SCO sometime: anyone who has ever seen the SysV source code can never work on an OS again, because that makes it a "non-literal derivative." Jeez.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
Ok how many people have to tell SCO to shove it before a judge does? Lemme see:
National Retail Federation
IBM
Linus
Autozone
There are more I am sure, but I mean come on. Noone agrees with SCO (at least I have not heard of anyone). When is a judge just going to toss this crap out of court?
Gorkman
Thinks they're worth a penny a share
(look at the bottom of the 'bid orders' section)
(from their Mission Statement)
Yikes. One in five American workers and $3.8 trillion in Sales can't be wrong!
Or can they?
No.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
Almost as if?!? I realize that lawyers include modifiers like that to lessen the chance of successfully actionable lawsuits, but come on. SCO is suing former clients, it's going through money like it's still dot.com days. For the corporation, the ONLY revenue stream is through litigation.
Of course, for the principals, the primary revenue stream is through stock manipulation, shifting assets between Canopy elements and taking everything not explicitly nailed down. But that's personal, not business.
In related news the SCO group lays off 275 to "re-allign" their organization.
With a market cap of around 90 million now, this one has been a real dog for the investors. And this is a company with $65 million in cash in the bank, supposedly - that means the price-to-book ratio is getting mighty low. And their P/E is pushing down towards 20.
For those not familiar with this stuff, that means the premium people were putting on this stock reflecting the possibility of a big (i.e. 5 billion dollar) win against IBM has basically dropped to near-zero. I wouldn't be surprised to see the whole executive team get rotated out soon or something else drastic happen to SCO. The legal battle may drag out for ages, but the market has spoken.
Why isn't it zero? I don't get it.
Even if they go bankrupt, the stock will still trade for a while at a very low price like $0.00001/share. I had stock in a company that went bankrupt two years ago. At the end of last year, I sold it so I could take the loss on my taxes. The final insult in that one was paying a $65 trade fee to sell 1000 shares that were worth less than 1 cent total. I had no choice. If I wanted to claim it on my taxes I had to sell them.
Google's results are based on a democratically perceived relavence. In other words, the reason why GrokLaw is #5 doesn't mean they have the 5th largest source of SCO stuff, it means they are the 5th most linked to site from other sites that have the word SCO on them. In otherwords, if that many people felt Groklaw was reliable enough to put links to it from their page, then Google can be fairly sure that their site holds relavence to your search.
So yes, in theory, if a particular site could get every page on the internet to have a hyperlink to it, then it would appear #1 on every search that contained a word that was on that page, even if the page held no gramatical structure or information.
So, no, Groklaw is not the top Anti-Sco site on the net, nor is it the 5th ranked one. It just happens to contain the 5th most relavent source of info on SCO as perceived by other webmasters regardless of whether the content if pro, anti, or just a neutral view.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
Since Novell bought SuSe they are now a Linux distributor and bound by the terms of the GPL. If Novell owns the Unix copyrights (looks like they do from what I read on Groklaw), we're all VERY safe from them attempting to pull an SCO.
Personally, I'd worry more about "submarine" software patents that someone will suddenly complain are being infringed ala PanIP, RAMBUS, et al. You will note how easily IBM was able to find four patents for their counter-suit against SCO.
(You can go back to worrying now)
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
No, no. Not the NRF part. Sure that's significant and interesting and all..
Look at the Groklaw link. It seems to be saying that SCO has dropped all claims that IBM did anything illegal with Linux kernel code. They're only pusrsuing the claim that IBM shouldn't be selling AIX and Dynix anymore (which is a pretty laughable claim, anyway).
Has SCO backed off of all Linux claims?!?
For those of you who think it's kind of odd that a CIO is offering what's a legal opinion - yes it it. The NRF is the largest retail lobbying association. But it's all just a small office in DC. (Used to have a larger office in NYC but the biggest retailers didn't like that some of their dues where going to the NY office's mainly educational mission, which was of most worth to small retail members who didn't have their own in-house educational arm. So they staged a coup in the early nineties and moved the focus just to the lobbying branch in DC.)
Anyway, the NRF has a handful of people given the same titles as typical top retail executives, including CIO and VP of this and that. Each of these has about one person reporting to them - the title is more so that when they organize conferences in their areas they'll have equivalent rank to the top attendees. Most of the have actual backgrounds elsewhere in the departments they're posing as head of, but they're all basically retired from that and in a second career with the trade association.
So this is not a lawyer saying this, and not even a real, current CIO. The NRF has on retainer some of the biggest names in American law. Might make you wonder why they didn't have one of them make the statement (although it's a sure bet one of them put these words in the CIO's mouth). All a bit odd....
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Yeah, but if you check, they're not even at the level of their 52-week low. (Closer to it then their 52-week high, however.) What would break them would be a dismissal of their suit against IBM, because if that one goes, then the ones against AutoZone, etc. might as well be dismissed as well.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Verisign, Inc.
Kmart Corporation
GO Software
Hewlett-Packard Company
LexisNexis - PeopleWise
South Dakota State University
Washington State University
Southern New Hampshire University
for more see here
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The significance of the National Retail Federation speaking out against SCOX may be deeper than some realize. One of SCO Unix's core markets (if not the only one) was/is retail point of sale systems. In the 1980s and early 90s, SCO Unix (and its Xenix predecessor) was one of the few choices available to run a POS system on affordable PC hardware. If SCO Unix has any market left, it is the members of the NRF, many of whom have large deployments of SCO Unix throughout their store chains. Who even runs SCO Unix anymore? The answer is these people. The companies in the NRF comprise the SCO Unix core market, and if SCOX plans on continuing to sell software to businesses, it needs them.
But now, these companies, the last customers SCOX has, have turned against them. With their previously existing relationship, SCOX could have been in a good position to sell them Linux, but they have ruined that opportunity now. What tiny market SCO Unix had is gone, and any hope SCOX had of continuing to be a software company just went with it.
On the other hand, their litigation isn't going well either. Better say goodbye, folks, because SCOX is not long for this world.
--Mythos
Amazing that a website made by a paralegal can be taken as gospel.
It isn't the paralegal's words that are taken as gospel. Those words are just opinion.
The credibility of that opinion, and the opinion of people commenting in the discussion rests on the mountains of information that Groklaw compiles in one convenient place.
SCO press releases. All manner of court filings. All relevant press coverage. Transcripts of court hearings. (And there is an important one comming up on May 11.) SEC filings.
All of that information is verifiable. Just follow the collected links back to their original sources. Download scanned PDF's of court documents. Or better go to the courthouse and get your own copies of originals from the court clerk.
Groklaw is credible because the collected facts of what SCO says in court, says to the SEC, and then says in the press paints a picture that any reasonable person can see. Too bad it is embarrasing for poor SCO to have all this information conveniently collected and available for comparison in one place.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Nevertheless, looking at your article history, you don't seem to be a troll. So, one tip: Go to your preferences, and exclude Caldera from the homepage. Voila, you won't see those articles any more. Others, who want to see them because they don't have the time to read Groklaw, can leave that flag on.
See, best of both worlds for all of us.
Joachim
People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]
"meritless". In a later announcement, they announced that today is Wednesday.