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SCO Versus Novell Going All the Way
Robert writes "Computer Business Review reports that ownership of the Unix System V code copyrights is set to be decided in court after a US District Judge rejected Novell Inc's second request that SCO
Group Inc's slander of title case be dismissed." From the article: "Novell's second motion to dismiss SCO's slander of title claim was prompted by an apparently positive response from Judge Dale Kimball to its first request to throw out the case, although he rejected it having concluded that the arguments about the agreements at the heart of the case would be more properly heard on potential later motions for summary judgment or trial."
No matter which side comes out on top, the lawyers still get paid. (Unless the accept payment only with a favorable verdict, but they might be company lawyers.)
Like it said in the article, this means that rather than throw out the case based on the definition of malice, they will settle once and for all who owns the Unix copywrite and rights to licence its source code. I think this is a good thing, like when AT&T and Berkeley finally sorted out that BSD was entirely free of any of the AT&T code and could go on with life free of dumb lawsuits like this.
Novell can still file for summary judgement. They asked to amend their motion for dismissal to a motion for summary judgement.
The motion for dismissal and the amendment were denied. However, Novell can still file for summary judgement.
There are (at least) two separate issues: (a) were the copyrights transferred to SCO; and (b) did Novell claim not with malice.
The most recent dismissal motion speaks only to (b).
It seems to me that (a) is a matter of law rather than fact, and might well be decided by summary judgement.
1.) SCO sues people for infringing their copyrights
2.) Novell publicly claims SCO doesn't actually own the copyrights.
3.) SCO sues Novell for, erm... "slander of copyright"
4.) Novell files a motion to get the case dismissed. Judge denies but drops hints that it could work...
5.) Novell files another motion to dismiss.
6.) (You are here) The judge says quit trying for a dismissal, it all must to go to trial, presumably to resolve who actually owns the copywrites.
7.) circa 2009, trial begins.
8.) The sun expands and engulfs the Earth in plasma. Utah slagged into a molten puddle.
9.) UT&T, corporate descendent of AT&T, publicly claims Novell does not actually own the copyrights.
10.) An Ixian investment group buys majority shares of GBM, UT&T, Novell and enslaves the entire population inhabiting the artificial planets orbiting Betelgeuse, where the descendents of Darl McBride are rumored to have migrated after Earth was no longer tolerable.
11.) Zarthon declares war on Ix, pointing out that Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy were all genetic plants sent to humanity to promulgate rational computation throughout the universe.
12.) Heat Death overcomes the universe as the Zath-Ix war consumes all Baryonic matter 18.3E21 Earth years early.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
I used to work with several ex-SCO people in Santa Cruz. Great people to work with. They were all hardcore Linux/and/or/BSD people who were disgusted with the direction/erection that Darl McBride and his sad, Lindon, Utah ward members had taken the company they helped build.
This suit is a joke, and I hope that Caldera gets theirs in the end.
I also will firmly place my tinfoil hat on and assume that M$ has something to do with this...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Those guys are way passed embarassing.
My other car is a Popemobile
Judge Kimball followed up that Monday SCO v. Novell ruling with a SCO v. IBM ruling today. Here are text and pdf versions.
He granted SCO a four-hour deposition of Sam Palmisano, IBM's CEO and former VP of all things Linux. He denied SCO's motion to belatedly amend its complaint to include a claim for Project Monterey-related copyright infringement.
The order includes a new schedule. The old one had been tossed out in January.
The new schedule roughly matches IBM's proposal (as amended at the hearing; see pages 90-91 of the transcript where IBM says to add two months to everything in the proposal), but with another two months added for most pre-trial dates, pushing the end of discovery to July 10, 2006. He added another couple months for deciding dispositive motions before the trial, making for a trial date of February 26, 2007. He included the interim deadlines IBM wanted for parties to "Identify with Specificity All Allegedly Misused Material", setting December 22, 2005 as the final date for all source code at issue to be identified by version, file, and line of code.
Per Kimball's order back in February there will be no summary judgment motions before the end of discovery, and the new schedule calls for the last brief on post-discovery summary judgment motions not to be due until September 26, 2006, so I think November 2006 is the earliest we could see a summary judgment motion heard and decided.
If you look at their product offerings they do have new releases of SCO OpenServer and SCO Unixware. Take a gander at some of their features:
Optional KDE desktop for modern look and feel
OpenSSH and OpenSSL
Includes Mozilla 1.7
Includes MySQL database (Community version)
Includes Postgresql database
CUPS has been added as an alternative to System V LP
Gimp-print 4.2.5, foomatic 3.0.0-01, and ghostscript 7.05.6
Now if your a BSD or linux user you may be thinking "hmm, those look familiar" and you would be correct.
It seems that many of the new features in SCOs software offerings are actually open source software from those same people the SCO CEO says are dope smoking, thieving, pinko communists.
burnin
Read this closely: Novell is the defendant. Novell doesn't have a choice but to continue to move forward, SCO sued them.
Once Novell has clear title, though, speculation is that they can then claim their legal expenses as special damages and sue SCO for the exact same thing that SCO is attempting to sue Novell for.