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)."

Comments

headline

[Anonymous Coward]

it has to be said, innocent until proven guilty.

Re:headline

[dourk]

Of course Novell did it. The way I read the article, Novell is suing because they didn't get a big enough of the cut.

How could they sue without admitting to being the masterminds behind the deal?

Novell sued Microsoft through SCO

[AEton]

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!

Kinda like the U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forget it was the CIA who trained Osama Bin Laden, too.

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[davidsyes]

AWESOME!

Very well put. Karma can be a "bitch", and a LOT of these stupid-assed corporate and corporate-bought state-level labor code lawyers need to remember the words of Redd Foxx, as Fred Sanford, when the character said, "I don't believe in doing unto others before they do unto me, 'cuzz I might get **done in** DO 'IN IT."

My variation on "live and let live" is "Let Live, then Live". Corporate hegemenony/imperialism, regardless of its nation of spawning, is ultimately going to cast upon itself a molten, heaping slag the might just undue them. But, the question, is "How long will it take?"

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that this corporate thing just reaches to the roots of the problems in American society

Oh come on. As if the entire concept of expedience was invented by Americans!?!? As if this sort of thing hadn't happened over and over and over again since the dawn of recorded human history? As if it isn't happening right now in the European Union? In the Arab world? All over Africa? At the local PTA?

If you want to indulge in self-flagellation for human flaws, at least have the decency to do it in the name of the human race, instead of blaming it on America.

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

You Sir are a genius: you manage to tie a totally offtopic US-Iraq-Al-Qaeda post to an article about Novell and SCO, and get modded "+5, Interesting".

A true Slashdot hero, yessiree...

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[Alucard454]

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.
and i think that this post reaches the roots of the problem of widespread anti-american sentiment across pockets of the globe -- one person "projecting" the problems of the administration onto the "society" as a whole. mass generalizations are massively ignorant.

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[Maudib]

I will just add a couple of examples. Lets start with the British East India company in India. They touinely hired Various Indian Princes to attack and eliminate rival princes, again and again. Each time pilfering the target, then attacking the attacker with another proxy and plundering him.

All the major european countries issued letters of mark to independent vessels, licensing them to pirate other nations, while keeping their hands clean.

Lets see, to keep things fair a good non-european example would probably be... shit. Ah got it. Shit, you know the Chinese and Japanese did this sort of shit all the time. Just cant think of any good non-european examples.

DAMN YOU EURO CENTRIC HISTORY EDUCATION!

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

"And don't forget it was the CIA who trained Osama Bin Laden, too."

The point being?
Hey America and Britain formed an alliance with the very evil Stalin against a greater threat to mankind at the time, Hitler.
Was the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan evil? You bet.
Was it a good thing that America helped the Afghans and their foregin fighters, fight off Soviet Occupation of their country? Oh yes.
Hey , there was bound to be at least a few crazies amongst the Afghans that America backed to chase out the Soviets.

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[Maudib]

Wait, just came up with a good Asian example for this. The Chinese have historically used Pakistan as a proxy and counter balance to India, even fanning the flames to cause wars like I think they did in 73. Arming them, etc. I guess they also sort of did the same thing against us for a while with North Korea.

OH WAIT!!!! ANOTHER AWESOME EXAMPLE! hehe. Syria, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia with the Palestinians against Israel. These guys constantly encourage non palestinians to encourage hostilities with Israel. I mean Hamas is just an offshoot of Islamic Jihad which was started by the Egyptians.

Oh of course, I forgot. The Saudis and Iranians (Iran especially) do it with terrorists against U.S. civilians. They have been doing it since the Iranian revolution in the 80s.

So yeah, proxy war aint exactly an american thing or even a european thing. Im pretty sure even the Iroquis Nation had a couple of smaller tribes they used for proxy war against other tribes.

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[Distinguished Hero]

The US funds Saddam Hussein against war with Iran. Saddam and the US later go to war. (Twice.)

Yeah... sort of how the Allies funded Stalin and the Soviets in the war against Germany. Should have let Hitler have the whole damn continent, eh?

Look, life isn't perfect, but by trying to pretend that it is, you are only making things far worse. I wonder how all the peace mongers would react if Hitler (the original, not some barely literate moron with a Texan accent) was alive today. You'd probably just let him be (unless he was American or Israeli.)

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[Tiro]

I think your argument could have legs. U.S. foreign policy and economic policy share the same problem--no long-term focus, only short-term bandage fixes.

This is why our industrial output fell behind Germany and Japan in 1970, and this is why we keep making a show of attacking small countries that pose no direct risk [Vietnam, Iraq]. Emmanuel Todd makes a more complete argument of this American failing in After the Empire

[unfortunately he doesn't quite explicate all the social mechanisms completely, but many insightful points].

In terms of the software sector, if these companies would spend more time innovating [like Apple or GNU] rather than forcing out the competition [Microsoft] or litigating [Novell & Caldera] then the long-term outlook for U.S. industry, including software exports would be more robust.

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[Alucard454]

er... try re-reading my original statement. it seems you somehow got "pockets of resistance" ...

Actually, it also reaches the roots of american sentiment to speak of "pockets of resistance" when in fact, it's masses upon masses of resistance against the U.S. foreign policy

...from "pockets of the globe" ...

widespread anti-american sentiment across pockets of the globe

come now. it's pretty obvious from my statement that i'm fully aware of the "masses upon masses" of "resistance" to which i was not even referring. never was i talking about positions counter to US policy, and never was i talking about iraq. i'm talking about the anti-american sentiment that has been building up in places around the world, (especially areas of europe who were once the globes premiere imperial powers... these are the aforementioned "pockets of the globe") since around the end of World War I. this type of thing has obviously escalated at various times, and this war with iraq is just another example, and certainly not the best or most significant one... merely the most recent.

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[William Tanksley]

I wonder how all the peace mongers would react if Hitler (the original, not some barely literate moron with a Texan accent) was alive today. You'd probably just let him be (unless he was American or Israeli.)

Don't spend too much energy wondering -- just read history to find a confirmation of your suspicions. The overwhelming sentiment in America before Pearl Harbor was antiwar; Americans saw Hitler as just another cruel, powerhungry dictator on a landmass full of cruel, powerhungry dictators. They weren't interested in entering yet another expensive war to help a group of nations that were still engaged in avoiding repayment for WWI debts. Charles Lindbergh wrote in this vein; his work is interesting.

He changed after Pearl Harbor, though. Almost the entire nation did.

-Billy

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[kbahey]

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:

• At the height of Muslim rule in Spain, the Umayyad Caliphs, and then Al Mansour Ibn Abi Aamir (Almanzor), allied with various Christian kingdoms against others (Leon, Castille, Navarra, ... etc). This policy increased resentment from the Christian Spaniards, and eventually contributed to the downfall of the Muslim empire in Spain.
• Then the tide turned and the Muslims were split into weak Taifa kingdoms. The Spanish kings then played the game of "divide and conquer", allying with one to topple the other, then devouring the first when the chance came. Eventually, the policy worked out and the Spanish Christian ousted the Muslims. However, the Inquisition that followed, and the expulsion of the Moriscoes are not something to be proud of as a legacy.

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:

• Bin Laden and the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Not only were they supported, but when the USSR left, the country was left to duke it out on its own. The Mujahedeen turned against one another, and a civil war ensued. In Kabul alone, 50,000 people died over 5 years. The emergence of the Taliban was a direct reaction to the frustration that was there at the time (insecurity, killing, ..etc.) These same Mujahedeen are the Northern Allaince who are in control today in Afghanistan.
• The Manuel Noriega example is well known. From ally to foe.
• Saddam's example is well known too. The fact that he oppressed his own people was overlooked.
• The same goes for other regimes in the area (can you say "The spice must flow"?

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?

Re:Kinda like the U.S.

[Too Much Noise]

I think you overestimate the peace mongers of the past - vanity was as much a human trait then as it is now. Also, apathy and lack of desire to sacrifice for an unproven cause are as good reasons now as they were then. Actually, the WW2 situation was somehow clearer, as before Pearl Harbour both Europe and Asia were already deep into war and the US was sitting (geographically) in the middle.

A moot point now that SCO is...

[rokzy]

dying!

Re:A moot point now that SCO is...

[daniel_mcl]

They are very much *not* dying -- if you look at the year's chart, you can see an enormous peak beginning around June, and they're just now settling back into their old stock price; they're still about 20% above where their stock price was this time last year. The sad thing is, being evil pays nowadays.

In related news...

[gid13]

Novell sues Caldera for revealing Novell's hand in it.

It's sad. Laugh.

[AceJohnny]

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.

Novell found guilty

[YouHaveSnail]

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."

Re:Novell found guilty

[Squareball]

Open mind, yes, but "innocent until proven guilty" is missing one word in front of it and that word is "presumed". If you kill some one you aren't 'innocent' at all, you are just presumed innocent by the law. This is one of the things that bugs me is that when some one like O.J. is being hounded by the press and people are calling him a killer, people get outraged about it and say "He is innocent until proven guilty!", but really he is presumed innocent by the government and this whole thing ONLY applys to the government. I can presume that some one is guilty all I want.

Re:Novell found guilty

[sp0rk173]

I know this wasn't the intention, but the implications behind what you said is extremely funny..

"It's nice that you want to keep an open mind, but here's why you shouldn't."

Fuck idealism, right? I mean...we're talking about MICROSOFT here! Idealism only belongs in linux.

That being said, microsoft is poopy.

Re:Novell found guilty

[CaptainFrito]

"innocent until proven guilty" is missing one word in front of it and that word is "presumed".

The overwhelming majority are innocent. Thus the presumption is based, not on some act of misplaced kindness that permits wealthy and influential to escape justice, but a simple acknowledgment of the true fact. Such injustice happens by other means. The presumption of innocence allows people to exist without be harrassed in the absence of reasonable evidence to the contrary.

And you are flat wrong about the government, anyway. The government prosecutes as a direct result of their presumption of guilt based on its unproven evidence. The Law, and not the government, presumes innocence. It is always a scary thing when people confuse government with law, even scarier when they equate the two.

But perhaps most frightening of all is when poeple confuse law with morality and uprightness. These are independent concepts, and as with intergalactic comets, only rarely do they meet each other.

Re:Novell found guilty

[yintercept]

I can presume that some one is guilty all I want.

There are some restrictions on published media, which is why the word alleged is awkwardly inserted into media reports.

In some places the word alleged works quite well. For example "the alleged software development firm SCO..."

Re:Novell found guilty

[cyberchondriac]

The overwhelming majority are innocent
I hope that you're talking about the population in general here, and not crime suspects in general. The majority of criminal suspects are not innocent, and they are in fact, suspects, because the evidence indicates such. Usually, where there's smoke, there's fire. Note that I did not say always, but usually. That's majority.

The Law, and not the government, presumes innocence. It is always a scary thing when people confuse government with law, even scarier when they equate the two
True, but in this context, I think you're splitting hairs. Laws are executed and enforced by whatever Government is current at the time, so, for the posters intents and purposes, the same.
It all boils down to common sense. If a strange guy comes running out of an old woman's house with a bloody knife in his hand, blood all over his shirt and face, wads of jewelry and cash hanging out of his back pocket, and hops into a car and takes off leaving behind a stabbed-to-death, burglared woman in the house, chances are pretty good he's guilty. There's always a chance he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and didn't do it, which is why our system presumes innocent until proven guilty, but it doesn't take rocket science or advanced statistical analysis to figure out he's more than likely the murderer.

Re:Novell found guilty

[drinkypoo]

The purpose of the law is to uphold morality and, if not uprightness, at least rightness. If that's even a word, anyway. Morality is different and so the law is meant to steer a course that takes it through the average. As a result of our bunglings along these lines, both those who believe in the sanctity of all life and those who believe in none of it are frustrated, but that's life in the big city.

The politicians dream up the laws, the lawyers write them, more politicians decide if we should live by them, and we can gradually swing the system around by firing or hiring the occasional politician. You should be voting for people who share your morality as best you can, or else you're going to end up living by someone else's.

Re:Novell found guilty

[Short Circuit]

Who's morality? Who's "rightness"?

Everyone has their own values, usually more or less derived from their parents and their religion/church. That's one of the important things about Democracy: Majority rule helps uphold the views of as many people as possible.

Certainly, most people will feel themselves limited in one form or another by the law. (Take speed limits, for example.) However, for any given specific matter, under ideal conditions, democracy helps gaurantee that most people will agree with the Law's view.

I won't go so far to say that we live under ideal conditions.

He said she said.

[Alan Hicks]

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.

Re:He said she said.

[Monkelectric]

I really actually like Novell more after this. MS fucked them and they knew it, and they also knew that to retaliate against MS would mean their end. This is not an "Novell is evil" story, this is a "Microsot is so evil that even when we KNOW they are in the wrong we can't do anything because they can destroy us" story. Look how they wiggled out of monoply stuff as strong as ever, and don't seem to be acting any differently.

So I can be sued because.....

[3seas]

..... 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...

[actiondan]

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.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword.

[cperciva]

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.

Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword.

[Alan Hicks]

only a very few files had to be removed, and they were very easily replaced

I can't comment on how easy they were to replace (I obviously didn't work on them), but it does seem true that the stir and contraversy over BSD allowed the growth of another free operating system without a lot of open source competition, namely linux. I don't think anyone would argue that *BSD's install base would be much larger had the law suit never taken place and created so much FUD. The various BSD's would likely hold the same niche that many linux boxen now hold.

Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword.

[Anonymous Coward]

the stir and contraversy over BSD allowed the growth of another free operating system

The growth of Linux is more due to the license than due to any doubts about the legitimacy of BSD. The unfortunate truth about the BSD license is that the majority of changes to BSD code do not return to the community, but are incorporated into propietary applications and operating systems. This is what makes the BSD license "more free" than the GPL, because it does allow for appropriation iof code, but does not ensure continued development of a free version as the GPL does.

Hmmm.... And what if:

[Lukano]

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.

For those not familiar

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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.

It's Not Like This Wasn't Obvious

[hbo]

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.

Re:It's Not Like This Wasn't Obvious

[hbo]

Ray Noorda left Novell at the same time DR-DOS was sold to Caldera. The lawsuit was filed shortly after. It seemed then as though Novell had objected to Noorda filing the lawsuit, and Ray had left to pursue his well-know vendetta against Microsoft, using the IP from Digital Research, who had been famously aced out of the IBM contract for a PC operating system by Bill Gates, and later crushed out of existence like so many others who tried to stand in Microsoft's way.

That Novell didn't want to be associated with a lawsuit against the notoriously vindictive and ruthless Microsoft was obvious at the time. If it wasn't so to you, (assuming you were out of grammer school in 1996) there's not much I can help you with there.

Re:Caldera and Novell are the same company..

[grendelkhan]

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.

Why would anyone believe anything SCO said?

[AbitNutz]

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.

No, you're safe

[Donny Smith]

You're safe for now because I believe most people can't figure out what it is that you're saying.

>Programming is the act of automating complexity ... creating further automations of 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!

Re:No, you're safe

[3seas]

Good example of an analogy for the arguement against the hindu-arabic decimal system in an effort to keep the roman numeral elite in business.

Like saying "how can nothing have value?" in suppression of the value of "zero".

there is no compound complexity as you suggest.

There is only defining a complexity so as to have an easier to use interface to its use.

Where the recursion is simply that of further creating complexity using the easier to use interfaces to parts you are including in the complexity you are now creating and automating to have its own easier to use interface....

But you know that the recursion of the concept is simple...but how many were fooled into thinking the value of "zero" couldn't be, simple because someone made it out to appear valueless, using abstractions called "words", to mislead?

Still, the point is: The ultimate goal of programming is that of making things easier to use..... but being sued for reaching that goal iss a contridiction to the goal.

For court does not make using automations easier at all but only injects FUD...

Novell and Noorda

[einhverfr]

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.

How this is different from SCO shilling for M$

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a big difference between Novel and Microsoft's use of SCO. Motives, party deceived and factual basis and merit are all different. Microsoft, of course, is the root of both evils.

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.

Not a $300 million monster.

[David Hume]

Did Novell indirectly create a monster? Caldera's 300 million winnings against Microsoft are now being used to fund lawsuits against Linux (and Novell).

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":

Novell also was to receive a cut of any lawsuit awards in the form of so-called "royalties."

* * *

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.

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):

To accomplish this, Novell and Canopy executed two separate documents: the first was a contract of sale, obligating Canopy to pay $400,000 for rights to the source code; the second was a temporary license obligating Canopy to pay $600,000 in license fees and "royalties." The royalties included provisions for payment to Novell of a percentage of any recoveries from lawsuits.

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.

The Lesson Here Is ...

[zangdesign]

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.

Re:I mean c'mon...

[mst76]

> ...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.

Re:Actually, this still works well

[AndroidCat]

Caldera became the SCO Group. This soap opera is complicated.

Lets see here, History lesson.

[BCW2]

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.

Re:Lets see here, History lesson.

[zenyu]

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&T did not think to copyright UNIX for a number of reasons. One was the legality of a copyright on software was still very questionable; remember when you "leased" proprietary software for 99 years? Another, was that AT&T was not allowed to sell hardware or software because of the settlement that had split off the hardware division, creating General Electric. A company that still today is somewhere in the list of the top five largest in the world.

Besides, UNIX would never have been a success if they hadn't decided not keep centralized control. No one uses CP/M or VAX OS today by choice. Even Microsoft works hard to keep developers interested in their platform, they just keep expanding the core too quickly because they are too paranoid for their own good.

Re:Jackson not exactly a bastian of impartiality

[stevesliva]

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.

Good point...

[acariquara]

From fool.com

Knowledgeable IP litigators have told me they think SCO has less than a 10% chance of prevailing in its cases, and even then, the courts' remedies would likely be a rewrite of the offending Linux code, not a cash windfall for SCO. BayStar Capital can afford to bet against the odds and lose. SCO cannot.

also SCO stock has an analyst rate of 5.0, strong sell. Actually it cannot be bigger than 5.0, so that can be loosely translated as jump ship.

Is it the end though? I doubt...

The court decided "He said"

[Len]

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.

Correction...

[argent]

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".

Re:Correction...

[argent]

The role of "Space Travel" (beg pardon, not "Space War") in the development of UNIX has taken on mythic proportions, but it was more of a 'test load' than the reason for its existence and the jump from the PDP-7 to the PDP-11 was to develop a word processing program (what became troff). Basically, they were looking for a general computing facility to replace Multics after AT&T dropped out of the Multics project. They had to scale things way back to fit: even the PDP-11 was far less powerful than the Honeywell hardware: they were originally pushing for a DECSystem 10.

By the way... "Space Travel" was originally running on the Honeywell system, in Fortran. It had to be rewritten for the PDP-7.

I got the story from a talk by Dennis Ritchie at Usenix, and I checked it on his web page.

Re:I mean c'mon...

[drinkypoo]

DOS is still used today in many automation control and assorted embedded systems. You would be amazed and dismayed to learn just how many devices out there have a fully functional PC of some description in them. Remember, if you can write assembly code for the Z-80, you can write code for the 80xx and 80x86 processors and vice versa, and the most expandable and inexpensive examples of the 80xx and x86 lines are PCs, though not so much 80xx any more. However, there are a multitude of tiny 80286 through 80486 systems which are extremely inexpensive and frequently low power. Everything from the control systems in food production facilities, to the control systems of CNC lathes and mills, the operation of the smog check machine, and damn near anything else you can think of has been done using software running on a PC under some kind of DOS. The OS doesn't get in your way in the least unless you make BIOS calls, so if you do direct video writes (either to video memory, or by making video BIOS calls) you have control of the entire machine, letting you write fine-grained timing loops in which you count processor cycles and pick your operations accordingly so that you can track events which occur at very infrequent intervals, even by bit-banging.

It is likely that every day, you receive the benefit of work done by a DOS machine.

Norda( of Caldera ) was CEO of Novell

[Locutus]

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

Re:I mean c'mon...

[Rick Zeman]

OS is still used today in many automation control and assorted embedded systems.

Wow...I said something incorrect and I got a pair of reasonable replies and no flamage.

Slashdot never ceases to surprise me. :-)

Novell concealed ... not really

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

The contract between Nov ell and Canopy provided that Novell would get a portion of any revenues from lawsuits

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."

Old saying?

[rice_burners_suck]

Did Novell indirectly create a monster? Caldera's 300 million winnings against Microsoft are now being used to fund lawsuits against Linux (and Novell).

Well, all I have to say is, what goes around, comes around.

Software rental

[tepples]

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.

New info

[geoswan]

I followed this case.

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.