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Novell Pulls Out Their Ace Against SCO

Posted by samzenpus on from the maybe-the-end dept.

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."

18 of 433 comments (clear)

  1. Dumb question... by wrinkledshirt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:Dumb question... by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It got Linux into the heads of PHBs didn't it?

      Bad publicity is still publicity.

      In the words of GWB - Mission accomplished!

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      liqbase :: faster than paper
    2. Re:Dumb question... by FyRE666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd venture they wanted to give SCO "enough rope" first. This is a good thing; SCO are haemoraging cash in fashion that would put the most ridiculous dot.coms to shame. They've alienated virtually everyone - customers and partners, rid themselves of staff and are now largely owned a law firm. A year ago they might have backed out of this hole, but now the reverse gear has gone - they can only move forward and deeper into the mess.

      Novell has decided to start shoveling the dirt in on top of them...

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      Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
    3. Re:Dumb question... by oliverthered · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Have you ever tried to find some paperwork from 1995, maybe it turned up again when you moved house. I'm sure Novell has a lot more paperwork in a far bigger attic than you have.

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      thank God the internet isn't a human right.
    4. Re:Dumb question... by utlemming · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If they had coughed it up earlier, then SCO might have still had a chance. But since SCO spent all the earlier time jerking around, they just waited for the right moment. You know, when hunters spot a deer, they don't go blasting away -- the hunter will wait until the right moment. The hunter may know that he can hit the deer through the brush, but waiting until he can get a clear shot in the meadow is better. Novell warned them, and then waited for the moment. I see nothing wrong with it. Now Novell has taken aim, fired and is waiting for the finality of the bullet. My hat goes off to Novell -- not all Utah software companies are idiots.

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      The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
    5. Re:Dumb question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Public companies (or their lawfirms) are required to keep this stuff readily accessable. Novell has a buttload of paperwork, to be sure. But they know exactly what they have and exactly where it is.

      Have you ever worked for a large bureaucracy? The company rarely has everything in the same system for anything - source control, document management, personnel databases, whatever you can imagine, they aren't doing it consistently. Legacy systems, competing systems in different departments, etc. can all cause things to be not where you expect them to be.

      They brought this out now for a very good reason (see the "'nough rope" cousin post).

      I don't buy that argument. If Novell could have killed this thing long ago, they would have. It's not in their interest to have the trial drag out any longer than it has to. They have legal bills to pay, too.

    6. Re:Dumb question... by iocat · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Are you kidding me? Have you ever tried to find a document from something old at your company? Even with the best retrevial policies in the world, stuff just goes missing. And even if it isn't missing, the people who know where it is leave. Heck, we just lost some source from a project that finished only two months ago. (wtf -- I know, no one followed the correct archive procedures, but luckily a packrat kept it).

      More than that, you have to first REMEMBER the minutes from 10 years ago contained this awesome point, and then track it down. More likely, they've had some poor 1st year lawyer or paralegal searching through EVERYTHING in the hopes of finding something, and this just turned up.

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    7. Re:Dumb question... by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are correct, sir. Novell has brought out these minutes from a meeting of the board in answer to SCO's attempting to use Chatham's declaration as proof of malice.

      The minutes do NOT conclusively prove that Novell owns Unix, only that they believed they did, and were acting WITHOUT malice, but in good faith.

      Novell does not need to prove that they own Unix at this point. The burden is upon SCO, and so far, SCO is failing miserably.

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      It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
  2. Are we sure this is an ace? by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Are we sure this is an ace? by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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
      ... and in a slander of title suit (which is what SCO vs Novell is), intent is important. You have to intentionally make a false claim as to title. In this case, the minutes show that, regardless of who actually holds the copyrights, Novell is on the record that they were under the impression they still held them. In this case, intentions DO count.
  3. Novell our best friends. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Novell our best friends. by Coryoth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Now what did they open source that wasn't open sourced before under a different company ?

      Hmm, how about the two major closed source items (and hence revenue generating products) from the closed source companies they bought: Yast from SuSE, and Ximian Connector from Ximian. Both were kept closed source as a proprietary "this is the good stuff that you're paying for" part of each compnies offering. Both are now GPL and out in the wild in source form. I'd say that's significant.

      Jedidiah.

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      Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
  4. Proves Novell *believed* it had copyrights by Flexagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:The beginning of the end... by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This will put an end to the malice claim in the copyright dispute, which should unravel the IBM case as well...

    I'm sorry ... insightful?

    SCO's case is for slander of title. There is some chance that the judge might decide that SCO does not own the SysV copyrights, but this filing won't be the document that pursuades him so to do.

    This document clearly spells out a lack of malice, since it shows that Novell's execs had a reason to believe that Novell still owns the SysV copyrights.

    Furthermore, lack of SysV copyrights won't actually unravel SCO's mostly contract case, but it will advance IBM's counter claims.

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  6. Well by mcc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    * 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.

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    Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
  7. Re:They didn't have the money... by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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  8. Re:What movie is this? by dead+sun · · Score: 5, Insightful
    No, it shows that the submitter's and editor's English isn't as good as they'd like to think it is. What they said was:

    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.

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    If not now, when?
  9. Re:Interesting but irrelevant by bhima · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You are aware that SCO is suing Novell and it's different than the SCO vs. IBM deal, YES?

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