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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)."
dying!
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.
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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.
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As a show of gratitude companies led by Novell helped sue to stop the free distribution of the BSD operating system
No. Novell acquired the AT&T IP after the lawsuite was already in progress.
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
Hardly. Most files from AT&T UNIX were licensed under the terms of the BSD license; only a very few files had to be removed, and they were very easily replaced.
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> ...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.
IBM is still selling PC-DOS for $67.
This is not the same Judge Jackson, not the same court, not the same state, and not the same finding. It is, however, the same nation, so by all means let us distrust judge Norman Jackson because judge Thomas Penfield Jackson talked to the press too much.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Is it the end though? I doubt...
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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.
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".
It is likely that every day, you receive the benefit of work done by a DOS machine.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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."
I think that to blame Americans for inventing this kind of short term tactical alliances is incorrect. The Americans did not invent this kind of world politics.
We can blame the Americans for not learning the lesson from the mistakes of others though.
Let me help you there with other examples from history:
In retrospect, there are differences between these scenarios, and Britian's, and the current American ones.
The current American scenario suffers from "enemy of my enemy is my friend" and from severe short sightedness. At best they are tactical, and they create long term enemies.
Foreign policy has been erratic at best, and extremely short term.
Examples of mistakes in supporting the wrong people abound:
In some cases, they are long lived, and endure various administrations: examples are the policy towards Cuba (no effect except on people and economy), Iran (more or less the same), and the long standing "Israel can do wrong" attitude.
None of these policies were productive.
As another poster pointed out, the same short term high gain, long term no gain policy is rampant in the corporate world too. Outsourcing internet dot com bubble bursting, and accounting scandals is the direct result of such penny wise dollar foolish policies.
So, will the Americans learn and adjust? Or are they doomed to repeat the mistakes of history?
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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.