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Novell Poised To Strike On Slander Of Title Claim
Xenographic writes "As seen in this Groklaw article, Novell is moving to dismiss SCO's slander of title claim with prejudice. They key to it is that SCO needs Novell's claims to be "knowingly false" to establish malice. Since the judge's own order on the motion to remand (see also part 2) questions whether there really was ever actually a copyright transfer, Novell's assertion that there was no transfer cannot be knowingly false, so SCO's case falls apart. Unfortunately, as Novell points out, the judge would be doing this without actually deciding the underlying issue of who owns what copyrights, and SCO could file a completely different suit for breach of contract or something, even though SCO would be unable to refile this slander of title suit. As an aside, I should mention that this isn't the first or only controversy over defamation we've seen in this fiasco by any means."
Because that is exactly what they want. They want to walk out of this with golden parachutes, completely in the right. Darl: "Look, Novell bought us because it knew that our IP claims were legitimate!". No, I don't think that Novell either should or will buy out SCO.
I think they'll crush them into the ground. Then spit on them.
Ads? What ads?
Why can't IBM ... just buy these clowns?
"Pour encourager les autres". It would send a clear message to every Self-serving Cynical Organisation that playing fast-and-loose with the law against legitimate businesses is an acceptable and profitable activity.
Best result here is for SCO to die horribly - and publically[1].
([1] OK, my best result is Darl et al serving time, but I'll settle for Joe Q WallStreet knowing that SCO's business model was suicide)
This is where the serious fun begins.
That's because the risks most definitely do not outweigh the rewards. For example, the Ken Lay's, Bernie Ebbers', John Rigas', and Darl McBride's of this world aren't going to go broke anytime soon, even if they destroy the bank accounts and viability of all the employees of the companies they mis-managed. Instead, they might have to spend some minimal amount of time at a country club prison, followed by having to spend the rest of their lives in comfortable luxury, while the employees whose careers and retirement accounts they've destroyed will struggle to make ends meet for the rest of their lives.
The only acceptable punishment for these people is the complete destruction of their lives and their families lives. It's no less damaging than what they did to their employees. Pure Hammurabi code here.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
And for the record, Enderle is a prize asshat.
I just read that for the first time today. He does a great job in making himself seem 100% objective and a great person, and making the other side seem hateful and blind. Then he goes on to talk about things completly unrelated (like shareware software and how small companys are much nicer to work at then big companys) and his personal beefs with people. He then attempts to turn baystar into a villian for trying to steal away SCO. Then he gets to his point.
This is a classic troll. If you can't win with facts, change the subject. Also appear like you dont care either way, but you want your opinion out there. Durring my years working at some comapny, my boss was shot in the face, this is why sco has a good solid case.
All I got from the sections that applied to the subject was that he has a very clear misunderstanding of how open source works. He attempts to get the reader to belive that if you write software for linux, you must make it open source (kinda like saying if you write software for MS windows, it must be closed source, and MS owns the software).
The only truth I read was when he pointed out that companys only give things away for free when they know they will make money on it. WELL DUH! Why does IBM want to sell linux? Hardware and support contacts. But that is not proof positive that linux costs money. It does not cost money. Linux is not hardware, it is not training, it is not support. Those are things you may need to run linux, but you will need all those thngs to run any other OS out there. And I would be happy to burn you off a CD of any linux distro you like, FREE of charge.
Oh well, its all crashing down around them anyways. I'll just sit back and drink my coffee.
You are right--he is a troll, effectively. You see, for a long time he's worked to be someone the media quotes (they still do, all too much, even though he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about half the time--he even mentions some of the trouble he got in in that speech).
In fact, his Enderle Group sells his quotability as a service--pay us, and we'll tell the press good things about you. That, plus as he admitted in his speech, he supports Microsoft for unrelated personal reasons.
Now then, people have started attacking his credibility en mass due to the SCO debacle. Some have even (gasp!) insulted him online. He hates this, because the more reasoned of us (e.g. me) are working to make it known that we believe that he is as paid shill and does not know whereof he speaks. Obviously, this message is getting out.
Thus, he works to portray all those who attack him as unintelligent, angry zealots. You said it well when you said he had a "very clear misunderstanding" of how this all works and what we mean by free. But that's not quite all: he knows what we mean and is deliberately twisting the facts to act as a troll.
Elsewhere, he's gone with a "BSD is better" line. The point of this is that he's trying to stir up or exacerbate whatever divisions exist among us--e.g. to sow strife and dischord. So far, I don't get the sense that he's doing it very well, but he's conciously trying to start flame wars.
Why? The controversy suits him--if he can get people mad enough, he can discredit them with their own angry rants (and there's always someone to supply these even if the rest of us hold our tongues). Moreover, he can use the controversy to put himself in the spotlight (get quoted even more in the media, etc.).
Thus, the best counter-strategy for us is to supply as many calm, rational and even-toned responses to his nonsense as is possible, and to simply ignore the flamebait portions of his talks.
The more reasonable people we can get who present sensible, articulated responses to his utter nonsense, the more we can discredit him in spite of the supply of angry hatemail he has to wave around.
I'm not some angry nitwit who is going around threatening anyone, and I refuse to have him defame us all by painting with one broad stroke.
To that end, I'm open for suggestions on how to help the media get a clue that he's not a credible source, and should not be trusted or used for quick & easy quotes.