Slashdot Mirror
Novell Pulls Out Their Ace Against SCO
mattOzan writes "Groklaw is reporting that Novell has just filed a reply with an exhibit in support of their motion to dismiss SCO's complaint. The exhibit consists of "1995 minutes from the corporate kit of a meeting of the Board of Directors, which clearly and unequivocably say that Novell was to retain the UNIX copyrights in the sale to Santa Cruz that year."
Why didn't Novell bring this up a long time ago? Could have saved everybody a lot of time and money, as well as spared bad PR for Linux.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
This will put an end to the malice claim in the copyright dispute, which should unravel the IBM case as well...
So after SCO has been throwing rocks at the linux crowd for awhile its time someone finally slaps them on the wrists a bit.
This filing seems to be a little over-hyped here on Slashdot. It most clearly says what Novell's board of directors thought they were agreeing to... but is that what they actually got themselves into? Seeing that statement in a contract signed by both sides would hold a whole lot more value if that can be found.
Now actually why do we care so much about Novell ? Have they done anything spectacular to us that deserves so much hype around them ? Sure they might kick SCO into the butt and might have done the one or other thing that would chill people but thats all.
What I want to say is we should not see Novell as our friends, our buddies or whatsoever these are clear minded people who run all for the big cash. Cash is what matters and not the entire open source movement or whatsoever.
I know a few people from Novell who work for them and they told me that Novell doesn't really give a damn slight fuck for open source, the community or the entire movement. What matters for them is cash and outsourcing. As long as it gets them money in their pockets they do everything it's simply a new marketing segment they invest in.
So before overhyping Novell we should calm down and reconsider again. What ough to be our friend today can be our worst nightmare tomorrow.
From the Groklaw discussion, the real importance of this document is not necessarily that it proves that Novell has the copyrights (that's actually more difficult to prove), but that it does prove that Novell firmly believed that it has them. This is a direct defense against the specific slander charge against them.
Actually, intent is very important in this case, since SCO is alleging that Novell acted with malice in claiming it still owned the copyrights. If Novell's board of directors understood the agreement as leaving the copyrights with Novell, it is much more difficult for SCO to claim malice.
* They've made decent-quality products in the past
* They currently own SUSE, which is a very nice Linux distribution, and they've been doing interesting things with it since taking over. Meanwhile they've actively been doing good things for the open source community. So whoever's side they were on before, they're certainly on our side now.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Scary to think it might not be a coincidence that Novell didn't pound SCO until they settled with Microsoft. /me wonders what was in that settlement aside from half a billion dollars and Novell's not supporting the European antitrust issue. Or what wasn't in that settlement that Novell wanted in there.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Is that people can have a variety of motivations and still contribute positively on something common.
Novell, IBM et al are part of the community. Like all communities the aims and motivations of individual members do not line up 100%. We should celebrate, support and encourage our commonality, not make a big deal out of or fear our potential differences.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
1995 minutes from the corporate kit of a meeting of the Board of Directors
But what they meant was:
Minutes from the corporate kit of a 1995 meeting of the Board of Directors
Or even:
Minutes from the corporate kit of a meeting of the Board of Directors held in 1995
There's no reason for the editors to leave such ambiguity in the summary when they could easily have avoided it. I've spoken English as my primarily language my whole life and seeing it as 1,995 minutes opposed to minutes from a meeting in 1995 was how I parsed it first as well. Also reference all the jokes high up in the list about a 33 hour meeting.
If not now, when?
You are aware that SCO is suing Novell and it's different than the SCO vs. IBM deal, YES?
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
you have to be crazy...linux has now made it to the cover of almost every business and managerial magazine out there. There's no such things as bad pr. Now novell kills the case...front cover again...linux gets massive mainstream cred.
It has been explained in many other posts above yours. Mainly, it's not meant to be legally binding, it's meant to demonstrate that Novell execs believed that they owned SysV.
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.
The problem is that Novell isn't sure they actually own all the copyrights to UNIX, they just know that SCO doesn't. Novell is most likely trying to avoid having to touch the ATT vs BSDi case and settlement if at all possible since that could potentially let a lot of the UNIX source out into the public domain or at the very least take away some of the copyrights from Novell.
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
I think you may be mixing up your lawsuits. IBM has been parading witness after witness (in depositions) while SCO has only found one or two that kind of buy their story. This article is about the Novell case.
The Novell case (Slander of Title) hasn't seen too much movement in the last while, so this is an important step. Especially since the outcome of this case can have a huge domino effect on the rest of the cases. ie if Novell can get a judgement that SCO doesn't own the copyrights, then the IBM lawsuit will most likely just go away...
Except that transfer of copyrights has to follow certain rules and that the Judge has already ruled that the current contracts do not qualify as such a transfer.
So SCO still has to prove how they acquired these Copyrights. These minutes prove that at the time of sale to oldSCO now Tarantella the sale of copyrights was not in order. So newSCO, which got the business from SCO-Tarantella, has to prove these did transfer anyway, to oldSCO-Tarantella and then to them. So far they have done a poor job in the way of any evidence.
More info on Groklaw.
Hans
So you call a probability of 0.01% likely? :-)
(IANAL - I just read groklaw)
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
But was that going to be pronounced 'free-ax' or 'freaks'?
AT&ROFLMAO
Who cares what the Board Meeting minutes say.... It is what is in the contract that matters... If the Novell executives and business development team were not smart enough to put it in the contract, it doesn't matter what their intent was. Novell did retain rights to the Unix patent library, but may not have properly covered their bases with respect to the copyrights to the source code.
Daryl McBride and company may not be on your Christmas Card list, but they have shown that the Open Source movement doesn't have very strong legs to stand on when it comes to proof that donated source code does not contain tainted IP. This is true whether or not it is ultimately shown that the linux kernel contains elements of the Unix source code.
As I don my asbestos suit in saying this, please note that I have contributed thousands of hours to open source development for the Macintosh, AIX, HP, and Sun platforms, but I have been careful to make sure that the code I contribute is done without violating agreements with my employers, and that I have not developed source code in areas which contain IP where it could be construed that I was relying upon trade secrets learned in the course of my employment.
However, there is no formal documentation mechanism in place for most Open Source projects (including mine) which creates a paper trail where contributors warrant that the IP is theirs to contribute (and is thus unencumbered). Besides which, for the assertion to have any legs to stand on, each developer contributing to the project would have to indemnify users (and subsequent developers) so that those using or expanding the source code would be protected against lawsuits from people like SCO, who are attempting to prove a claim of IP theft. (This fails because most of us don't have enough personal wealth to make any sort of meaningful warranty of indemnification.)
Unless the laws are changed, SCO or some future claimant will forever doom Open Source to the legal quagmire of lawsuits against individual developers, and thus force people out of the open source world.
Thoughts?