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Novell Sued Microsoft Through Caldera?
cheesedog writes "The intrigue increases: According to this article in the Salt Lake Tribune, the secret terms of the sale of DR-DOS to Caldera included the provision that Caldera would have to sue Microsoft (for Novell by proxy) over the OS and that they would have to do so without revealing Novell's hand in it. Did Novell indirectly create a monster? Caldera's 300 million winnings against Microsoft are now being used to fund lawsuits against Linux (and Novell)."
it has to be said, innocent until proven guilty.
And the baby is Caldera's! And Steve Ballmer and Steve Jobs are stuck in the well while their evil twins go about their daily lives!
Find out the exciting conclusion on the next episode of As the Slash Dots!
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
The US funds Saddam Hussein against war with Iran. Saddam and the US later go to war. (Twice.)
The US funds the Afghans against the Russian army. The Afghans later turn all kooky and "kinda" go to war with the US.
I think that this corporate thing just reaches to the roots of the problems in American society -- one person "helping" another by fuelling their hatred against a third party, only to have it backfire on them.
dying!
Novell sues Caldera for revealing Novell's hand in it.
What the viewers at home really want to know is... how is CowboyNeal involved in this conspiracy?
I would laugh my ass off if this wasn't so sad. Can you believe that justice, through litigation, has become just another corporate weapon? Oh wait, we knew that already.
Nevertheless, the irony would be enough to kill a medium-sized vulcan town.
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
it has to be said, innocent until proven guilty
It's nice that you want to keep an open mind, but paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 of Judge Jackson's findings, Novell did indeed arrange secretly for Caldera to sue Microsoft, essentially on Novell's behalf. I think that qualifies as "proven guilty."
Linux Weekly News had an article about this several days ago, and it's been talked about on Groklaw. Basically Caldera claims that there was an unwritten, oral contract between Novell and Canopy that said they would sue MS on behalf of Novell, and not reveal Novell's hand in it.
Of course Novell responds in the negative. Canopy is using a rather interesting attack here though. Many of the people working with Canopy now worked for Novell back when this suppossed oral contract took place. They claim no one at Novell knows about it because all those people who once worked for Novell have moved on. This of course puts them in the spot of saying "We know everything because we were there and you people running Novell now have no idea what you're talking about. Our guys worked for Novell back then, and they know what was said."
Novell's defense is simple. Show me a written contract.
Slackware, what else when it must be secure, stable, and easy?
..... I'm and Open Source Developer using the GPL and contributing my work to Linux.... ... and teh rationality for being sue-able is because so and so unrelated companies are doing some circus act and majic tricks that have nothing to do with me and my work...
FreeSoftware will only become genuinely free when it becomes easy enough to create that most anyone, regardless of their limited resources (time, knowledge, etc.) can do it for themselves. And this is based upon the primary objective of programming, which is:
Programming is the act of automating complexity so as to make it easy to use and reuse that complexity by the user, regardless of who that user is. This act is a recursive act as shown in programming in any language above machine language, in that such language above machine language is itself an automation of complexity for creating further automations of complexity.
So.... does this mean teh world is going to be sued for reaching the ultimate programming objective and putting those with lessor intents out of business?
Your enemy's enemy is potentially someone who will sneak up behind you when you least expect it and stab you in the back.
Seems quite a few people need to learn that lesson.
Dan.
Novell is a extremely ironic situation.
They had the rights to AT&T Unix stuff.
BSD Unix was a free OS that was used to create stuff like TCP/IP and other things that directly related to the early commercial success of Unix.
As a show of gratitude companies led by Novell helped sue to stop the free distribution of the BSD operating system. They claimed they just wanted to protect their IP.
Eventually when it turned out that the court case would end up being painfull they settled out of court.
It finally made it so that BSD had to remove every bit of code that was related to Unix. This turned into a near fatal blow to BSD, one that they never recovered from.
Now Novell owns a Linux Distro. A Unix compatable operating system dedicated to being free.
The owners of the Unix IP are suing them to stop the distribution of Linux and pay royalties to a company that they helped create.
A company (Caldera, original SCO change it's name and sold its company off to Caldera) whose early success came directly from using Linux!
Live buy the sword, die by the sword.
Hopefully this will be a lesson to the industry don't bite the hand that feeds you (free software).
We will soon discover that it was truly Microsoft funding Novell in a behind-closed-doors manner to create the deal with Canopy in order to hype up the media attention around unix/linux/bsd all in order to drive SCO/Canopy/Caldera into the ground. Novell's merger with Suse then becomes an easy way for Microsoft and Novell to take a larger chunk of the open source OS market away from the big players (read: Novell then scrapping Suse or giving it away to MS to play with in their sandbox) and become their own litle megalopoly.
Just spewing out semi-humorous consipracy theories, as all the twists and turns in these shenanigans are quite amusing.
Novell was to be awarded around 17% of the Microsoft settlement money, but of course, as the money lovers they are, Canopy wanted more and sued Novell over their share of the pie.
Also, while Caldera initiated the suit against Microsoft, Caldera later split in two and the DRDOS operations went to the embedded division, called Caldera Thin Clients, then later Lineo. Lineo never got much of the settlement money, Canopy and Caldera Inc (the original company, who had nothing to do with DOS anymore for years when the suit ended) got most of it. And their lawyers.
Oh, and also, you might be interested to know that Ray Noorda, the man behind the suit against Microsoft, was the former CEO of Novell, and everybody close to the suit knew Caldera was Novell's tool.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
At the time, it was clear that the sale of DR-DOS to Caldera/Canopy was to allow the lawsuit to commence without tying Novell to it too closely. The details of the arrangement are interesting nevertheless. It wasn't a case of the Novell board refusing to go along with a vendetta by Ray Noorda against Microsoft. Instead,the arrangement was specifically designed to allow Novell to realize some of the monetary value the (iron-clad, caught-you-in-the-act) antitrust claims contained.
The connection to the SCO/IBM suit is also obvious, if you ignore any good guy/bad guy spin. It's the same business model playing out in the new case, but hopefully with different results.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Novell is in no way owned by Canopy. Canopy does involve Ray Noorda, who was (I think) CEO of Novell, but that's not the same thing, especially now.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
They are both owned by the Canopy Group
No, the Canopy Group and Novell were both founded by Ray Noorda, the Canopy Group being the company he started after being booted out of Novell.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
This falls under the catagory of "who cares". I mean,the SCO group coming out and saying there was an "unwritten agreement"...geez, they make up stuff about the written ones...let alone the unwritten ones.
Who did? Me? You? Who's this "we" you talk about?
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I'm not sure how much bandwith the Salt Lake Tribune place has, so I put up a brief mirror here
Alternatively (incase my server also goes under) you can read the article text bellow:
The Utah Court of Appeals has backed Novell's breach-of-contract victory over the Canopy Group, but in so doing unveiled a once-secret pact under which Novell sought to sue Microsoft by proxy.
That 1996 antitrust lawsuit by Canopy and its subsidiary Caldera (now SCO Group) brought a reported $250 million settlement from Microsoft in 2000. The litigation, the three-judge appellate panel found, came as an oral quid-pro-quo for the sale of source code for DR DOS, a computer operating system targeted by Microsoft's alleged anti-competitive practices in the early 1990s.
"Novell's board of directors worried that, if they brought suit against Microsoft in a private antitrust action, Microsoft would retaliate with further unfair practices that could neutralize the value of any antitrust recovery," Utah Appellate Judge Norman Jackson wrote.
The court further stated that Novell used DR DOS as the lure, verbally reaching an agreement that Canopy -- in return for a $1 million deal for the OS source code -- would then sue Microsoft. Novell also was to receive a cut of any lawsuit awards in the form of so-called "royalties."
"Novell insisted that its role be completely undetectable to avoid retaliation from Microsoft," the appeals court stated.
When Canopy prevailed against Microsoft and received the settlement, it tried to first deduct its attorney fees, court costs and other expenses, the judges found. Novell, believing its still-undisclosed cut of the award should have come on the gross amount, sued for breach of contract.
Written documents, Novell argued, made no provision for the deductions Canopy had made. Canopy countered that it was in the oral, side agreement that established its right to reclaim expenses before calculating Novell's share.
Provo's 4th District Judge Anthony Schofield agreed with Novell, and granted summary judgment. Canopy appealed. The appellate panel, consisting of Judges Gregory Orme and William Thorne Jr. in addition to Jackson, upheld Schofield in a decision published late Thursday.
On Friday, Canopy attorney Robert Jeffs said he was considering a further appeal to the Utah Supreme Court, but no final decision had been made.
"Canopy is obviously very disappointed with the decision," he said. "We felt we should have had the opportunity [in the lower court] to present our evidence to a jury."
Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake would not comment.
Novell spokesman Bruce Lowery also declined to discuss his company's role in Canopy-Caldera's antitrust suit against Microsoft, saying only that Novell was pleased with the appellate ruling.
Note to Mods: When I post mirrors, it's a best guess. I don't know for certain whether or not the site will go down!
Suing a company that damages yours, when you have evidence, is good for everyone (except the damager). The SCO monster was created by its executives and directors, who sue without evidence. Of the financial enablers of this monster, greater than those parties to the suit vs. Microsoft are those in the investment community who enable investors to pump money into SCO shareholder hands, while SCO groundlessly sues IBM etc. Those benefitting shareholders are primarily SCO executives and directors, and their lawyers. In light of the conflicts of interest of 1990s tech investment "analysts", I would also not be surprised to find the analysts, their brokerages, and their accountants all with some (literally) vested interest in the SCO lawsuit stock bubble.
--
make install -not war
How long can all this irony go on? The humor of it all just seems to keep increasing. I have to wonder if someone isn't behind all this, writing the plot and handing out scripts.
You're safe for now because I believe most people can't figure out what it is that you're saying.
... creating further automations of complexity...
>Programming is the act of automating complexity
You've been fairly successful in encoding the ultimate compexity in your posting, therefore you're King of Complexity and Hero of Open Source!
Check your code for looping bugs, though!
As ye sow, such shall ye reap.
Let he who is without guilt, cast the first stone.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, Etc.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Novell was at the time headed by Ray Noorda, who was instrumental in the Canopy Group which was funding Caldera. It just that in addition to providing the litigation funding, it seems that they have also provided the litigation-friendly-managers which SCO and Canopy now are using to launch their campaign.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Novel sought to hide it's involvement from Microsoft, fearing retaliation. It would be easy enough for Microsoft to have done that, as the DRDOS case itself proved. At the time, Microsoft making your code look bad was deadly. Novel sought to protect itself from Microsoft and recover a little of the damage already done.
Microsoft sought to hide it's involvement with SCO from the public and watching anti-trust regulators. Microsoft learned that their public smear campaign against free software had backfired and sought proxies to say the same things. Microsoft seeks to further injure it's competitors but does not dare level such factually unsubstantiated charges themselves. The rapidly disintegrating SCO case is proving that there was never any merit to the accusations and the whole thing was designed simply to slander a competitor they can't break by any other means.
Both cases show what happens to people who deal with Microsoft.
Actually, no. A portion (and I suspect a very significant portion) of Caldera's $300 million winnings against Microsoft went to Novell. That is the entire point of Novell's current lawsuit against Caldera. From the linked Salt Lake Tribune article, "Novell wins breach-of-contract dispute with Canopy Group":
As stated in paragraph 5 of the opinion of the Utah Court of Appeals in Novell, Inc. v. The Canopy Group, Inc. (see also here):
Novell may have created a monster, but not a $300 million monster. Indeed, Novell received some undisclosed portion of Caldera's recovery against Microsoft, which Novell can now use to battle... Caldera.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
because even though caldera might have litigation power from all this, all it did was make their credibility get worse, in the end, they're still a fucked company, a pawn for the big guys.
also, this was CALDERA that was funded, not sco.
but in the end, it still doesnt matter.
Oral contracts are worth the paper they're written on.
Sure, an agreement with someone you've known for years is one thing, if the stakes are relatively low. But, otherwise, get it in writing.
It's hard to believe that people in charge of a corporation would be that stupid, but there it is.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
...why else would anyone by a DOS in 1996 except to use it to sue? I think the world had moved on by that point.
"Did Novell indirectly create a monster?"
If Caldera hires a bunch of lawyers to sue MS, and these lawyers then sue IBM, that's direct cause.
Nice try, but it would probably work better if you said it was a cache of the linked article.
Will the lack of working compasses affect those who fly planes and drive large boats across the ocean?
Physics makes the world go 'round.
It's nice that you want to keep an open mind, but paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 of Judge Jackson's findings, Novell did indeed arrange secretly for Caldera to sue Microsoft, essentially on Novell's behalf. I think that qualifies as "proven guilty."
And we all know how impartial Judge Jackson was. Jackson's improper conduct tainted the anti-trust trial, resulting in a situation that was neither fair to Microsoft or to the consumer. if Jackson had been professional, perhaps tougher punishments would have befallen MS.
Any rational person will take anything Jackson says as suspect. Once a judge shows complete disregard for impartiality, how can he ever be trusted to be impartial again?
Sigh. Oral contract = Heresy. Canopy is just upset that SCO is losing stock value.
...
... win31/95/98/ME/2K/XP are not so lucky
Since Caldera bought SCO and MS had settled with DR-DOS when Caldera bought them.
More Unix "political disunity" to the advantage of MS and possibly at its behest.
===
NB: political disunity != technical disunity - almost all unix software is emminently portable to other Unix/Unixlike platforms
Thompson and Ritchie wrote Unix to play a game on. To make it portable they wrote C and a compiler. This was done at Bell Labs on their dime. They let Berkley, and some others, have copies to evaluate and improve, thus causing BSD, and other variants. AT&T allows this and causes the forking of Unix. Then through mirad stupidity and laywer speak we end up with todays chinese fire drill. All because AT&T did not think to guard their original IP by copyrighting it. Then allowed several groups to modify it without central control.
At least all Linux kernal mods have to be approved by Linus. It's more control than AT&T ever exerted when it mattered.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Aw, how cute. A troll trying to trick people into modding up his Goat.cx link!
Does the troll want to make people mad at him? Yes he does! Yes he does! *Makes baby noises*
Is it the end though? I doubt...
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
The decision of the Utah Court of Appeals, which was also reported on Groklaw, says that there was a secret agreement that Canopy would sue Microsoft. Novell and Canopy were simply fighting over which of them should pay the cost of Canopy's suit against Microsoft.
Well, duh. What kind of self-respecting programmer listens to what legal or marketing departments want/think? And don't try and say the ones at microsoft; they pretend to live on, but they're dead inside.
You're wrong in almost every detail.
Thompson, Ritchie, Plauger, Kernighan, Pike, and so on used the PDP-7 and later PDP-11 for a number of purposes. UNIX started as a platform to experiment with file systems, the game (space war) was not related. AT&T Copyrighted and Trademarked UNIX, but as a regulated monopoly were legally constrained from selling UNIX commercially.
At no time were they in a position where they lost control because they were "stupid" or "didn't copyright it".
Is awsome to see how Novell, that made money from selling WINDOWS based products (which till today are big time crap), is now suing its previous PARTNER, this is SURVIVOR gone geek, is all part of a staged trap? who knows?.
Is Novell acting this way to make beleive the rest of the community tribe they are against Microsoft when they are maybe acting on their behalf.
Will Novell destroy what Simbian did?
Wait for SURVIVOR Silicon Valley in 2008.
Your signature says it all...coward. Don't tell me what I know or don't know. I have been employed by Novell in the past and continue to have close ties to the company. The point of my coment which you missed, prob like most things in your life, is that the truth of what was agreed to is pointless to agrue. You'll never know...again like most things in your life.
Score:5, Flamebait
The monster was created by the idiots that let software patents come in the first place. So next time you look in the mirror remind yourself how important it is to make yourself heard to your elected officials.
Now due to software patents were seeing a decrease in innovation and a increase in companies that do nothing but sue over patents without contriubting to jobs or taxes in any appreciable manner and are tieing up our legal system with their money grubbing tactics.
The only thing interesting here is that even when Novell kicked out Norda, he was willing to work with them in going after Microsoft. And even that's not too interesting considering Norda, at the time he was CEO of Novell, was pointing the gun at Microsoft with a Novell based Linux desktop project.
So, is this really THAT interesting and new? Not if you've been in/around the industry for about 10 years. IMO.
There's nothing here. Move along, move along.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
That would be pretty funny.
Is there someone who *just* figured this out? Obviously this company was founded in order to sue other companies. It was Noorda's company for Crissake!
Not only that, but the CIA dumped lost of Cocaine into, you guess it, south central L.A. Of course, they themselves denied everything.
--red0x
Here in Provo this has been common knowledge since the lawsuit against Microsoft started (way back in the day). It was pretty obvious what Ray Norda was up to when Caldera was formed. Now if he could just figure out what he's up to now...
To say it is THE human problem is not too far off, but you missed ignorance and lazyness. (they are big too)
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Cool... Novell sues microsoft through caldera. Now Microsoft sues Novell through caldera (SCO). Looks like its a win-win situation for caldera/SCO. And its a loose-loose situation for Novell and Microsoft. Goes by the good ol adage: "When two fight, the third wins."
Hardly secret, as the Utah courts have already noted. Novell sued them and WON for their share of the proceeds. SCO tried the usual tricks of getting greedy and trying to rewrite the contract unilaterally, trying to bring in oral agreements, then as usual, got shafted by their own evidence.
Groklaw has already covered it.
best quote: The district court perspicuously noted that the Canopy position "requires the court to reach the anomalous conclusion that by taking the attorney fee provision out of the agreement it really was writing the provision into the agreement."
Ohio. West Virginia. Indiana. Iowa. Kentucky. Alabama. Mississippi. But especially Ohio. Especially Ohio. *shudder* /lives in Ohio
"The purpose of the law is to uphold morality and, if not uprightness, at least rightness"
I don't think that's right. (what follows mostly speculation on my part)
Law was originally created as a tool to hold society together. In social contract theory, people band together and exchange some of their freedoms for rights (ex: 'freedom to kill' for 'right to life'). Law is [supposed to be] one of the implements to preserve those rights.
Morality on the other hand is not about rights and freedoms, it is about right and wrong (Do *not* confuse 'rights'--inviolable guarantees created by society -- with 'right' -- moral correctness). Morality is something each individual decides for themself.
Just because law and morality coincide in places does not mean that they are, or even should be the same.
(as previously posed) Law exists to protect people's rights in society. Therefore a truly illegal act is one that infringes on someone's rights. (There is some debate over whether you should have the freedom to infringe on your own rights or not so I won't go into that here).
When people want to decide a matter of law, they should ask themself "Is losing the freedom to ___ worth the right to ___?" -- Not "Is ___ a moral act?". IMHO the only time you should ask "Is ___ a moral act?" is when you, personally, are deciding to do something (which makes sense b/c morality is a personal thing).
So let's apply this test to some common legal dilemmas:
Gay Marriage: Is losing (okay...restricting) the freedom to Marry Whomever I Choose worth the right to Not Have to Deal With Married Gay People?
Drugs: Is losing the freedom to Take Drugs worth the right to Not Have to Deal With The Consequences of Others Using Drugs (consequences being those not covered by other laws..)
Abortion: Is losing the freedom to Control (assuming 'I' is a girl) My Body worth the right to Undisturbed Fetal Development (I did say "Be Born" here, but that's not always the case...).
If you try to turn morality into law, then you'll end up forcing people into an ever-narrowing category of "ideal". But forcing people to fit in a category puts stress on both the people and the category. Eventually one of the two will break -- and either way, it isn't going to be pretty.
So I refuse your suggestion to vote for people who share my morality (because my morality tells me that forcing others to act according to my beliefs is wrong). Instead I will vote for those who share my beliefs in law. Because law allows for freedoms and differences (a whole pasture of grey that doesn't fit in with the B/W world of morality).
So with Law, all society need to is determine which rights we want to be protected by law.
_______
Quick summary (as my rant/post is not entirely sensible):
Morals- Guide personal Actions
Law- Protects Rights granted by society by restricting freedoms
=P
Well, all I have to say is, what goes around, comes around.
Law of Unintended Consequences
also SCO stock has an analyst rate of 5.0, strong sell
I thought 5 meant short sell.
Oh, I might add this too:
...etc. the dissidents become more extreme.
Two of the regimes that the US supported were Egypt and Saudi Arabia, often against the will of the people there.
Both of these regimes were an indirect cause for terrorism today.
These regimes are dictatorial to varying degrees, and they do not tolerate dissent or legitimate political opposition.
By choking the oppostion, using emergency marital law, stripping citizenship, jailing,
Bin Laden is now #1 in Al Qaeda. He was stripped of citizenship in his native Saudi Arabia when he opposed some actions of the King Fahad (mainly getting US forces on Saudi soil to protect against Saddam). Had there been a peaceful form of political protest, he may have not been transformed from a hero to an outlaw.
Ayman Al Zawahri is now #2 in Al Qaeda. He was jailed in Egypt after the assassination of President Sadat, and during the reign of Mubarak. His ideal was to establish an Islamic state. Since there was no peaceful mean of doing so in the political process, he became an extremist and a militant.
Now both these people are not only a problem in their home country, nor for Arab countries, but an international problem for all of us.
Had their countries been not dictatorial, and had the US not supported the dictatorial rule in these countries, I very much doubt that these people would have existed, nor would have gone as far as they did.
Well, we will never know what may have happened otherwise.
remember when you "leased" proprietary software for 99 years?
Apparently, a life-of-the-copyright lease seems to be coming back into vogue so that publishers of computer programs can work around the consumer protections codified in sections 109 and 117 of the U.S. copyright law, which apply only to the owner of a copy rather than to a lessee.
What's more, this 'oral agreement' argument seems to have been Darl's plan for the Novell suit as well - the idea being to put forward witnesses that were with Novell when they sold whatever they sold to SCO/Tarantella (he said something on the lines of "the current Novell management was not there when the contracts were drafted - I was") so that he can argue that the intent of the contract was to sell the IP rights, even though its letter does not show it.
Looks like this might prove a blow to the plan, since it sets a nice precedent for Novell (oral agreements are void if not reflected by the written contract).
that some of these companies would figure out that, 'if you throw enough shit' your going to get splattered.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I thought it was always pretty well understood that Caldera bought DR-DOS from Novell specifically so that they could sue Microsoft, and the Novell was fully aware of this fact. Even if there wasn't an actual contract, it was a wink-wink nudge-nudge type of affair.
Are you sure it's SCO acting here? SCO used to be Caldera, but later changed its name (the original IBM lawsuit was Caldera vs. IBM, IIRC) and somehow I thought there was another Caldera now. Or maybe I'm thinking of newSCO/oldSCO ...
There are just too damn many Canopy companies which have all continually changed names. Hell! Even the SCO execs don't seem to know which company they are, as some rather schizophrenic web pages and legal filings illustrate (see Groklaw for more info, I know that PJ has spent a loooong time puzzling out which company was which... certainly not an easy task).
News articles at the time said that the agreement with Novell allowed Novell to get a cut of the settlement. So this was not completely secret.
News articles at the time said that Caldera paid $400,000 for DR-DOS, not $1,000,000 as this recent article says.
News articles at the time said that Microsoft's settlement was $150,000,000, or, at least $150,000,000. That much was listed in Microsoft's books, for the settlement. But some said this was just the first installment, and that the final amount might have been $600,000,000. This recent article said $250,000,000.
IIRC the original founders of Caldera were former Novell executives, and proteges of Ray Noorda.
One of the articles pointed out that Bill Gates stepped down from being President of Microsoft within days of the settlement. That article speculated that the suit was not really about money. That article suggested it was a grudge match between two billionaires, where the older one wanted to teach the younger one some manners, and that Gates resigning was one of the conditions of the settlement.
I don't like seeing this suit conflated with SCO's legal actions against linux users and firms that use of develop for linux. Caldera had an irrefutable case against Microsoft. Microsoft was guilty as sin.
I'd like to think that if the settlement hadn't suppressed Caldera's evidence against Microsoft that Microsoft would have ended up being taken apart by now.
From the general gist of the article it seems like Novell was actually a bit greedy in refusing to pay attorney fees etc - well, that's the price of a lawsuit - too bad. Actually the real victim here is Jim kendal, who was ripped off beyond belief by Senor Bill and I don't detect any remorse for it. The second example of Microsoft's standard operating procedure for running their unimaginative, cuthroat, non-innovative businness that has sadly somehow come to dominate so much of the computing world. It's really too bad that the bully prevails so often.
u s.htm
A few years back, a computer nerd developped a revolutionary OS: PC/M Jim Kendal was the first to think about a BIOS. That little thing woul allow computer makers (IBM at that time) to build new hardware that'd go on already-finished computers. What a great idea. People could hard a hard disk or change floppy disk drives... That guy also developped PC/M, the ancestor of good ol' DOS. Bad Bill bought it for almost nothing (Jim Kendal was into computers, not business, unlike some others...) and, with the help of IBM, made it a standard. At this point, IBM/Microsoft had already won the market. Microsoft improved PC/M to make MS DOS, while some other companies made some other DOS (DOS means Disk Operating System. It has nothing to do with Microsoft) Norton made Norton DOS. 4 DOS, Dr DOS, Novell DOS, and some others were out, rapidely swallowed by monster MS. So MS DOS is the standard. The first part of the Empire built on the corpse of Jim Kendal....
cited from an admitted MS-bashing site, but nonetheless entirely accurate. Thieves.
http://www.chez.com/johnt/antims/antims
"Look, Smithers! I'm Davy Crockett!"
The 6th paragraph reads:
That leaves option (3). And the problem with option (3)
That should read option (4).
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The Golden Rule :
:
He who has the Gold, makes the rules.
The Corollary to the Golden Rule
He who has the Guns has some say-so in the rule-making process, but generally he who has the Gold also has the Guns.
This is more true than you can possibly imagine.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer