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SCO Amends Novell Complaint
rm69990 writes "According to Groklaw, SCO now seeks to amend their complaint against Novell. SCO says it 'seeks leave to file a Second Amended Complaint in significant part in consideration of the counterclaims that Novell asserted in its Answer and Counterclaims.' SCO now accuses Novell of infringing SCO's copyrights by distributing SUSE Linux, of breaching a non-compete clause between the two companies, and SCO is also asking for specific performance forcing Novell to turn over the Unix copyrights to SCO. So SCO is essentially admitting that Novell owns the copyrights at this point, but is saying that Novell breached the contract (that specifically excluded copyrights) by failing to transfer them to Santa Cruz."
The... both... sell... and... support... operating... systems. How can they NOT compete?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
It is amazing to me that SCO can continue this long without totally running out of lawyer money. I really wonder if some third parties are funding them under the table.
Tell me this -> How are they making a profit today?
No. I really want to know.
Isn't this over by now? The last time I saw a SCO article here, it seemed that even the judge was sick of their nonsense. Is there anyone still taken in by this charade?
SCO's back in the news. I've missed my SCO fix lately. This manouver looks pretty much as dumb as the ones in the past. I give them 3 weeks before they backpedal on the new, new ammended claims.
What's that ?
...YAWN.
v.m
I have a "Zero Policy" tolerance.
*/
Watch out, they have finally gone completely nuts and are going to start shooting!
Auron may be different, Cally, but on Earth it is considered ill-mannered to kill your friends while committing suicide.
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
That's pretty off base, even for SCO.
I can't help it - I'm a 19D.
A Second Amendment complaint? Now they want to take my unix AND my guns!
From the complaint (via Groklaw): V. PRAYER FOR RELIEF
Wherefore, Plaintiff SCO prays this Court enter judgment for SCO and against Novell:
Although I doubt God will be listening, as he's upgrading his SUSE Linux...
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
In Corporate America, criminals/conmen sue you .... oh wait!
bugger!
I remember having read something about a ceiling agreement they have with their legal company.
Namely that there was a maximum price they would have to pay for legal support, above that amount of money the costs were for the legal company.
Couldn't find a link to it on Google though.
This looked the most meaty and techy from TFA:
EXHIBIT B
Novell's unauthorized copying in its use and distribution of SuSE
Linux includes but is not limited to the appropriateion of the
following data structures and algorithms contained in or derived
from SCO's copyrighted material:
1. SuSE's implementation of the "Read/Copy/Update" algorithm
2. SuSE's implementation of NUMA Aware Locks
3. SuSE's implementation of the distributed lock manager
4. SuSE's implementation of reference counters
5. SuSE's implementation of asynchronous I/O
6. SuSE's implementation of the kmalloc data structure
7. SuSE's implementation of the console subsystem
8. SuSE's implementation of IRQs
9. SuSE's implementation of shared memory locking
10. SuSE's implementation of semaphores
11. SuSE's implementation of virtual memory
12. SuSE's implementation of IPC's
13. SuSE's implementation of load balancing
14. SuSE's implementation of PIDs
15. SuSE's implementation of numerous kernel internals and APIs
16. SuSE's implementation of ELF
17. SuSE's implementation of STREAMS
18. SuSE's implementation of dynamic linking
19. SuSE's implementation of kernel pre-emption
20. SuSE's implementation of memory mapping
21. SuSE's implementation of ESR
22. SuSE's implementation of buffer structures
23. SuSE's implementation of process blocking
24. SuSE's implementation of numerous header files
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
"So SCO is essentially admitting that Novell owns the copyrights at this point, but is saying that Novell breached the contract (that specifically excluded copyrights) by failing to transfer them to Santa Cruz."
I can see there collectively being a large amount of heads exploding after trying to make sense of that one. I'm thinking SCO has nothing to do with Santa Cruz and more to do with SChizOphrenia because they've seem to have lost touch with reality.
If big boobed women work at Hooters do one legged women work at IHOP?
The fact that this hasn't been laughed out of court yet makes me sad.
SCOX is arguing that Novell has infringed on their copyrights with SuSe Linux. They've also argued that Novell has failed to properly transfer the copyrights to them. Two lines of argument, each in opposition to each other, are perfectly fine the the court system. I forget the name for this, but basically SCOX is offering judge Kimball two different ways to give them 'relief' for Novell's supposed wrongdoing.
SCOX has admitted nothing. The meaning of 'admit', to a court, is that one of the parties involved is giving up information to the court that the other side can't prove. If SCOX were 'to admit' a lack of copyrights in lawyerspeak their case would instantly disintegrate and the door would open to Lanham Act claims and all sorts of other nastiness. SCOX never, ever 'admits' to anything.
There are plenty of people with knowledge of this case - see groklaw.net for mind numbing detail, or go to the Yahoo SCOX board if you'd like rowdy commentary and a sad, funny little troll named backinfullforce.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Cases like this show the wisdom of the "Looser pays" philosophy of British common law.
In essence if you are in a lawsuit and the court rules against you then the other goy can ask the court to make you pay his lawyer. The courts usually accept those requests.
In the case of the fiasco sco has been carrying on, those rules would immediately double the cost to them. It also reduces the likelihood of someone settling a frivolous lawsuit.
SCO has also filed suite in contries that require you to support your original claim. Those casses are over. In Ostralia they are under warning to not try it again. (Public mischife is a crime)
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I know Debian has "Virtual RMS", but I think SuSE is really going weird if they implement stuff like this. Weird syslog messages from SuSE boxes:
Jan 4 06:47:45 localhost esr: gunning some processesDoes SCO even know what they're suing for?
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
The problem arises when Joe Shmo tries to sue Microsoft for stealing his idea and driving his company out of business and gets buried under a 100,000 dollar a day legal team, which he then has to pay for.
I think we definitely should have more protections in place against frivolous and groundless lawsuits, but I don't think that dumping all the legal costs on the loser is the way to go about it.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
If the Brits really had "looser pays" then the Spice Girls would have to pay for every case in Britain. I think you mean "loser pays."
According to this article, SCO got another ten million from a private placement of stock with existing institutional investors. Since every rational assessment of the stock suggests that the ten million is not going to pay off on the stock market, it's reasonable to assume that these "investors" have some motive other than profiting from the stock directly.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
"Oh man, they must be crazy! The lawsuits make no sense at all!" Right? Wrong, scox is being crazy like a fox. What scox is doing makes perfect sense.
At this point, the entire point of the scam is keep delaying. Msft's army of shills are screaming the message: "People are being sued for using Linux - don't use Linux." Of course the msft influenced tech-pop-media is leaving out the details, but most of the public isn't interested in the details.
There is also a very powerful object lesson being sent to other companies: "if you contribute to Linux, you better be ready to spend $100MM to fight a msft backed nuisance lawsuit. And you better be squeaky clean, because the discovery will never stop." How many companies want to bother with that? "Screw it. I was going to donate this code to Linux, but it just isn't worth the trouble."
McBride rakes in an easy $1MM a year. Scox market cap goes from $6MM to $70MM. Life is good for the scox scammers. Scox execs can lie, cheat, and steal, all they want. The USA bogo-justice system isn't going to do anything about it.
How about "loser pays", but the amount is limited to the amount the loser spent. If you lose, it will cost only as much as you spent. There would have to be some ground rules for things like self-representation and lawyers who work on contingency. There would also have to be an on-going public record of actual costs.
It would sorta act as a resource balance in proceedings. If "big company" is sued by "Joe Schmoe" working with a single lawyer, they have every right to use a team of 30 lawyers, but should only expect to be reimbursed for the first one.
- Tony
SuSE begins with "S" just like SCO. Obviously Novell should be sued for taking it from SCO.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
ELF again. Sheesh. How many times do we have to explain that to them?
They must not be into Dungeons & Dragons I guess.
Listen up..Elves come in a large variety of races, and each has its own nuances. They are here described in alphabetical order: Dargonesti, Dimernesti, Drow, Gray Elves, High Elves, Kagonesti, Qualinesti, Silvanesti, Valley Elves, Wild Elves, and Wood Elves.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
If IBM or Novell (or some trust composed of several heavy hitters) completely bought SCO out, all of this legal crap would go away. It's not too far-fetched, either. We could even see SCO's copyrighted UNIX code released under the GPL ... in the event that we actually wanted it ;-)
Maybe my suggestion is a year or two early; at the rate SCO is shrinking, its value will soon drop below the cost of defending its claims in court.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
That's not the problem really, the problem is expensive lawyers in general and their stranglehold on the entire system. Even with two law teams in an adversarial position it is still them against you when you look at it hard enough.
The US should just admit that the "law" is supposed to be for the people and be reasonable and just and understandable for the most part for anyone with any sort of normal English language comprehension. This "law" situation has gotten to be too complex and ill suited for "the people" because they are essentially locked out of the system and must needs hire (most of the time) an EXTREMELY expensive translator. That's all lawyers are, glorified translators who turn human speak into confusing and overly verbose law speak, then enjoy a "vendor lockin". Even "your" lawyer has a clear cut case of belonging to this conflict of interest scenario of maintaining the translator monopoly, along with the judge and the rest of the "legal system". Then you notice that there is no incentive whatsoever for them to make laws simpler or fairer or easier, or just "less" of them,nope, the opposite is true, and they rule in congress.
We have no over all "law" that would limit the growth industry of "more laws" and more complex laws on the books. We are already at the "millions of laws" state now, with no end in sight. This is obviously insane to anyone who isn't a lawyer, but they hold the cards now.
It's just a carved in stone racket now. Would we put up with plumbers who consciously and universally always add an extra quarter mile of plumbing to a house just because they could?
Would we put up with carpenters who used tens times the amount of wood needed for a project all the time, just so they could always charge more? Would we put up with auto mechanics who insisted on replacing your engine and transmission every time you needed an oil change? No we wouldn't, but we as a society put up with that crap from the politician/lawyers/lobbyist/judges law racket cartel.
Oh ya, they have an added bonus! They have armed mercenaries who do whatever they are told, usually involving you when you run afoul of one of their bosses rackets. Too bad the plumbers and carpenters and mechanics can't enjoy this level of the threat of violence to increase their profits and social standings in the "equal" society we are supposed to have.
I certainly would love to know if this ten million dollars started, one way or another, at Microsoft. I can't think of any other people with lots of money (with the possible exception of Sun) who would remotely benefit from continuous legal challenges to Linux.
At first I thought that ESR was a conspiracy nut. Then you realize that, no, Microsoft actually *is* as nasty as he claims.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Now I don't think Trump has to give you a billion dollars... at least you will have to sue him for it. But then I wouldn't aim that low myself... up to now SCO has only showed us that they can make preposterous claims in court, but the day they get away with it (though it will not happen in this universe) is the day I will sue the United States for the territory known as the State of California. I want it back.
That was the theory three years ago, when IBM could have bought scox for $20MM. IBM wanted no part of it then, and after three years, and about $100MM spent by IBM, you can be absolutely certain that IBM wants no part of that scam company now.
When you buy scox, you buy lawsuits, lots of lawsuits. Scox has violated many companies, and many laws. Do you think IBM wants that? Do you think IBM wants all the ill will that comes with buying scox?
IBM's linux business is in the billions, the msft/scox nuisance lawsuit is hardly worth jeopordizing that.
Man in suit of armor walks in and hits SCO over the head with a dead chicken.
Dear Sir,
I would like to protest in the strongest possibe terms about your SCO sketch. I have been a village idiot all my life and your Darl Mc Bride character is giving village idiots everywhere a bad name.
Sincerely,
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
The two headquarters are within 10 miles of each other (Sco in Lindon, Utah and Novell in Provo, Utah)...why don't they just meet in the middle and duel it out man to man?
Not only that IBM didn't want every IP crooked company on the planet trying to sue it just so IBM would buy them out. One of the stranger twists of fate is that IBM really does own patents on just about everything having to do with computers. One of that patents it is claiming SCO infringed on is for a menu structure! There is an old story that Microsoft found out that IBM was infringing on like ten of it's patents. When they meet IBM brought in a list of 5,000 patents that Microsoft was infringing on. True or not the moral is you don't start an IP fight with IBM. IBM wants to make sure EVERYONE know that so they are going to slap SCO as hard as they can. Novell wants Unix back. Why? So it can make Linux an official Unix and gain mind-share in the Linux world.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I could see that. I'm completely in favor of giving the judge discretion on forcing one side to pay some legal costs, within rational limits, and not exceeding what they spent on the case...I think, especially in this case, SCO should be liable, not for Novell's legal costs, but for our legal costs.
As taxpayers, we're paying for their damn circus and I think they owe us for all the public money they've wasted on their stupid pump and dump scheme.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Caldera was started by Ray Noorda after he left Novell, to flog Linux-for-business (he's long since disconnected from it). They acquired the UNIX business of Santa Cruz (mainly for the reseller channel?), and renamed themselves SCO Group. What was left of Santa Cruz became Tarantella, and has been bought up by Sun.
SCOG's run their business into the ground (their clients are fleeing in droves), and decided to misread the AT&T -> Novell -> Santa Cruz agreements to believe they own UNIX in toto, and that any code that touched the SysV codebase (as in IBM's RCU, NUMA, etc.) is theirs, despite lawyers from the preceding firms telling them they're full of it. They went after IBM, apparently expecting a quiet payoff/buyout, and got a countersuit instead. Now that they're facing the unblinking horde that is IBM's legal department, and the techies deconstructing their PR within minutes, their strategy seems to be reduced to delaying the inevitable.
Novell, meanwhile, decided that Linux was a Good Thing, also, and bought another Linux vendor, and seem to be making a reasonably successful go of it.
But if 'big company' (RIAA anyone) sues 'Joe Schmoe' (or 4000 John Doe's as they have) and the people can't reclaim the money then to be honest it would be cheaper to actually give them the 3 grand they ask for. Out of principle I would fight the bastards. Of course 'loser pays up to what THEY paid' would probably work that way as the companies would spend more.
There are problems with all the things mentioned - perhaps it should be a rule about if it is a person getting sued by a company and they win they are completely entitled to reclaim ANY expenditure (well within reason) from that company. That should stop companies suing all these people because they can. Perhaps if the court case is frivolous, and happens more then once the person / company sueing can be taken to court to reclaim the Police and Court times. I'm not sure how to solve if one person sues another... most of it depends on the circumstances. I think almost all laws should be flexible as almost every law I could think of a reason to break it. Speeding? Well your honour I was being chased down by this guy and was afraid for my life so tried to speed away. Murder? Well this guy came into my house, I caught him with a knife walking towards my son's room so I shot him. Of course there are times they are obviously guilty and should get the full extent of the law!
I had a friend who used to work in Halfords in the UK (they sell bikes and accessories basically), and he was the store manager. A guy tried to shoplift so my mate grabbed the guy and held him down until police arrived. The guy then sued my mate for assault (I think the exact wording in UK law is 'unwanted touches' are assault). In court the Magistrate (think that is a Justice of the Peace in the US) asked the shoplifter why he was sueing for assault, and the guy replied 'he shouldn't have fucking touched me'. The magistrate then replied 'No, you should have fucking stole from his shop' and did the guy for wasting court time, police time as well as anything else he could think of!
Wow.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
SCO is hoping to use this vague wording to override the clear wording of the original contract. They're claiming that the conditional clause has been met and that all the copyrights should be transferred. Novell is going to argue that SCO doesn't need the copyright to exercise their rights "with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies". No doubt they're going to ask what technologies SCO is seeking to acquire and why they'd need the copyrights to do so. It's going to be up to the courts to decide this one.
I don't see how this can be read the way SCO wants to read it. SCO doesn't want the copyrights to acquire UNIX technology (which they did a decade ago); they want the copyrights to sue Linux users. This clause was put in so SCO could co-develop Monterey with IBM, so the historical context doesn't help SCO out either.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
1) Linux is a POSIX compliant operating system, that does not mean it is UNIX. Example Just because something has 4 wheels and an engine(s) does not mean it is a car. Unix in this sence refers to AT&T System V Based operating systems which the Linux kernel shares no code with. 2)Windows can also be made POSIX compliant, does that mean that Windows is UNIX? Should SCO then be able to say that Novell also owes them for when it sold Windows? (A few years ago :-))
3)Stallman did not create Linux, he created the GNU utilities it uses, however Linux refers to the Kernel developed and written by Linus Torvalds.
4)SCO has stated their problem is with the Linux Kernel, not other software included in the Linux Distributions.
Kosh: "Understanding is a 3 edged sword, your side, their side, the Truth."
getting back the copyrights to the historic unix source would not make linux an official unix. to do that linux would have to be passed by the open group like all other official unicies are.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Novell contracted with SCO to manage the UNIX licensing, but did not transfer the ownership of the Copyrights.
The part of the agreement that said Novell kept the copyrights and other IP said something to the effect that the IP rights were not transferred EXCEPT as necessary for SCO/Caldera/whatever to enforce their rights under the contract. (The actual text was posted on (or linked from) groklaw a while back but I can't find it just now. If anybody knows a URL for it, or has the paragraph in question, please followup with it.)
As I read it, SCO counted on that exception to give them the Unix copyrights, or enough of them to back their anti-linux suits. Novell thought they still owned the copyrights, and said so. So now SCO is suing Novell for failing to perform on their contract by transfering enough copyrights to support their suits.
It's easy to see how the SCO execs could think they're in the right - especially back when they started. Now they have a tiger by the tail. At this point they HAVE to continue trying to enforce their interpretation, because the company (and their careers) will collapse if they give up. They'll be better off even if they lose.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Spelling:
Looser -> Loser (Unless you actually mean that the person who is less tight pays. I'm not sure how you would determine that.)
goy -> guy (I am assuming you don't actually mean goy, because sometimes Jewish people go to court too)
Ostralia -> Australia (While we may pronounce it "Ostralia", we actually spell it Australia)
mischife -> mischief (I love Olde Englishe too, but we do have a dictionary now)
meh
Law is like programming. It requires nailing down all sorts of intricate little details, getting the syntax just right, and tweaking the niggly bits until everyone is satisfied.
As long as anything has two interpretations, you can bet that two sides on a dispute will argue about which interpretation is correct.
The main difference between programming and law is that programmers argue with a machine that can't change it's mind about the rules. There is no such predictable arbitrator for law.
Programmers remove bad code -- the law just keeps adding to the mudball without ever actually deleting the cruft. Imagine "debugging" a system when someone can bring up a (fixed) bug (case) from 10-15 years ago and actually have the courts/system accept the old bug as relevent to the current implementation...
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.