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."

Comments

Wha?!?

[TheRealMindChild]

The... both... sell... and... support... operating... systems. How can they NOT compete?

Re:Wha?!?

[archevis]

What, you accusing SCO of not making any sense...?!?!?

You watch your mouth, young man!

---
"I think not!", Descartes said, and promptly dissappeared.

Re:Wha?!?

[Too many errors, bai]

A non-competition contract is a trust with a different name.

Re:Wha?!?

['nother poster]

Here is the short version. Novell contracted with SCO to manage the UNIX licensing, but did not transfer the ownership of the Copyrights. This is disputed by SCO. Part of that agreement, according to SCO, was that Novell would continue to sell it's existing line of OS products. This is not competing since they are handled by the license agreement and SCO would get a pittance for each copy sold by Novell. SCO says that Linux violates this because they don't get any money from Novell selling Linux because it's not part of the license agreement, therefore competing.

They also claim that parts of UNIX were misappropriated into Linux, therefore they should get ownership of those parts also, but that is a seperate part of the complaint

Re:Wha?!?

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

"shall not compete in UNIX bussiness"

Linux IS NOT Unix, so it doesn't compete.

Re:Wha?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be clear.

Here is the short version. Novell contracted with Santa Crus Operations to manage the UNIX licensing, but did not transfer the ownership of the Copyrights. Santa Cruz Operations sold its UNIX licensing operation to Caldera. Caldera changed their name to The SCO Group. This (the non-transfer of copyright) is now disputed by The SCO Group .

I wanted to clarify the difference between 'SCO' and 'SCO'.

Re:Wha?!?

[rm69990]

Never mind that the non-compete clause was rendered inneffective when Santa Cruz sold their assets to Caldera. (The TLA offered Novell a full license back of Unix and SCO's modifications, but with some restrictions. The contract stated that those restrictions caese to exist in the event of a change of control of SCO.)

Read these linked PDFs.

http://www.novell.com/licensing/indemnity/pdf/8_20 _03_n-sco.pdf
http://www.novell.com/licensing/indemnity/pdf/10_7 _03_n-sco_tla.pdf
http://www.novell.com/licensing/indemnity/pdf/10_9 _03_sco-n.pdf
http://www.novell.com/licensing/indemnity/pdf/11_1 9_03_n-sco.pdf

As you can see, SCO brought up the non-compete clause in the press back when Novell first announced the aquisition, but never addressed the issue with Novell. Novell said that claim was baseless.

Also notice the difference in wording from the two lawyers corresponding back and forth. Lasala (Novell) always mentions specific clauses in the agreement that support his position, and lays it out very clearly, whereas Tibbits (SCO) simply says "We don't agree, fuck off" (paraphrased of course).

Also, in the SCO complaint you will notice SCO says "Why would Novell need a license if they retained the copyrights?"

The TLA specifies the licensed technology as "any code not owned by Novell as of the date of this agreement". This means that Novell retained the copyrights over Unix (due to copyrights being excluded elsewhere in the agreement), and also a license to any SCO modification or derivative. In the first linked letter, Novell demands all versions of Unixware and Unix under SCO's control. This includes the latest versions containing copyrighted SCO code.

So, if the copyrights didn't pass to SCO (very likely) Novell is allowed to distribute their own code, and has a license to redistribute SCO's code, without any restrictions (due to the change of control of SCO). If the copyrights did or do transfer, Novell still has a license to all of Unix with no restrictions.

Novell has killed any hope SCO had of ever holding any Linux users or vendors liable for copyright infringement.

Re:Wha?!?

[SquadBoy]

In what why is this disingenuous?

Legally Linux is *not* Unix. This is a fact.

It's also, and this gets into opnion here, not really competing with Unix. Most of the growth in Linux is against Windows and other OSes. Most Unix installs are, and of course there are exceptions here, running on platforms and/or running apps that are closely tied to the Unix that they are running on and are, by and large, being sold to folks who would never *dream* of replacing those things with Linux. Think in terms of transaction processing for banks and such.

So really it's nothing more or less than the truth. No matter how much some folks want to tell themselves that Linux competes with Unix, at this point, it simply doesn't. This is not to say that it couldn't. But it just ain't there on many fronts. Many if not most of them not techinical really. Although, and this is the snarky bit, as a BSD guy I kind of laugh at Linux anyway. But that's neither here nor there.

How can they keep doing this?

[IntelliAdmin]

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.

Re:How can they keep doing this?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Tell me this -> How are they making a profit today?"

They have a secret ad-revenue sharing agreement with /.

Re:How can they keep doing this?

[OwlWhacker]

It is amazing to me that SCO can continue this long without totally running out of lawyer money.

It's amazing that SCO would even consider throwing away money on such a lost cause in the first place.

How are they making a profit today?

I'm sure everybody knows that they're not making a profit; their goal is to own Linux and Unix, take over the world, and make mountains of cash. Of course, it seems that they're the only ones who believe that this is likely... oh, and Rob Enderle.

Re:How can they keep doing this?

[confusion]

The answer is that they're not doing well financially at all. They continue to get infusions of cash from private investors to cover ongoing legal costs: http://www.forbes.com/2005/12/22/jetblue-applied-s ignal-cx_dn_1222eyeonstocks.html

I suspect they can keep it up for another year or so before they start running out of investors to screw.

Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/

Re:How can they keep doing this?

[Craig Maloney]

Well, remember those zombie films where a hapless victim unloads a clip of ammunition into a walking corpse, and the corpse stumbles a bit and falls down, only to rise back up and continue pursuing said hapless victim?

Reload.

Re:How can they keep doing this?

[jenkin sear]

They won't run out of investor buddies any time soon- the investors here are pretty clearly conduits for M$ money. SCO is Microsoft's shill, not an independent corporation.

SCO still exists?

[thparker]

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?

Ready... Set...

[Volatile_Memory]

...YAWN.

v.m

Second Amendment Complaint?

[Roj Blake]

Watch out, they have finally gone completely nuts and are going to start shooting!

Second Amendment

[two_socks]

"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.

Not my guns!

[rharder]

A Second Amendment complaint? Now they want to take my unix AND my guns!

SCO Needs to do more of this...

[Billosaur]

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...

In Corporate America...

[thej1nx]

In Corporate America, criminals/conmen sue you .... oh wait! bugger!

Didn't SCO have a ceiling agreement

[LinuxDon]

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.

From The Article

[putko]

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

Re:From The Article

[meringuoid]

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:

Pretty much everything that makes SuSE remotely like UNIX, basically. This seems to be derived from SCO's amusing claim that all our UNIX are belong to them; they must have sat down, asked themselves 'what makes a UNIX system so UNIXey?', written out a list and handed it to the lawyers...

Re:From The Article

[killjoe]

You know what amazes me? What amazes me is that the Judge in this case has never even once asked "can you show me any evidence that you actually own any of this intellectual property". You would think that would be the first thing to get settled no?

The American legal system is a joke.

Re:From The Article

[hey!]

Well, that's pretty much what the whole proceeding is about isn't it?

It'd be one thing if Novell stole SCO's bicycle. But we're not talking about property and stealing, we're talking about property rights and agreements made about future behavior with respect to the use and non-use of those rights. Since what we're talking about is abstract, it's not as simple as looking in SCO's garage and seeing the bicycle is gone, then going to Novell's and seeing it is there.

What SCO is arguing now is more like this: "Novell sold me the exclusive rights on the use its bicycle to court Mary. Then he rode over on his bike to Mary's house."

Then Novell says, "True, I sold you exclusive rights to use that bicycle to court Mary, but I bought a different bicycle and used it."

Then SCO says, "Well, you gave me exclusive rights to the design of the bike in courting Mary. Look see, the derailleur on the bike you rode works just like the one you gave me exclusive rights to."

Then Novell says, "No, I sold you exclusive courting rights to use the components specific to the bike in question. The derailleur design is not specific to that bike."

And so on. It's all about promises not to engage in broadly defined classes of activities centering around vaguely defined abstract entities. It's always going to be possible argue that an activity does or doesn't fall into the relevant class, or that the entity in question is or is not identical to the one covered in the agreement. On top of this, the judge is supposed to render if possible an airtight and irreproachable decision, otherwise he risks being overturned and losing judge-karma.

Err, uh .. what?

[thaerin]

"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.

Bah

[lunenburg]

The fact that this hasn't been laughed out of court yet makes me sad.

/. editors up to their usual form

[puzzled]

  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.

Re:/. editors up to their usual form

[mkoenecke]

Just to clarify a bit, as an attorney: it's termed "pleading in the alternative," and in this case SCO's claim is better described as "We maintain that we own the copyrights; but even *if* that were not the case, we would win anyway because Defendant was contractually obligated to transfer them to us." It is not the same thing as admitting, even conditionally, that they might not own the copyrights.

(Note: just pointing out how "pleading further and in the alternative" works, not - Heaven forbid - supporting those clowns at SCO.)

Luser Pays. Support your original claim. Re:Wha?!?

[Forge]

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)

ESR?

[WWWWolf]

21. SuSE's implementation of ESR

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 processes

Gotta love that circular reasoning.

[Jaywalk]

The amendment is hysterically funny if you keep in mind that the original charge was for Slander of Title. In other words, SCO sued Novell because Novell claimed title to copyrights owned by SCO. Now we have SCO asking the court for this:

(a) requiring Novell to assign to SCO any and all copyrights Novell improperly registerd in UNIX and UnixWare following the Asset Purchase Agreement: (b) preventing Novell from representing in any forum that it has any ownership interest whatsoever in those copyrights; and (c) requiring Novell to retract or withdraw all representations it has made regarding its purported ownership of the copyrights;

So, having sued Novell because Novell said it owned the copyright, SCO asks the court to transfer those same copyrights from Novell to SCO and -- having transferred those rights -- to admit that Novell no longer has them.

Does SCO even know what they're suing for?

Re:Luser Pays. Support your original claim. Re:Wha

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

Re:Luser Pays. Support your original claim. Re:Wha

[Anonymous Coward]

Cases like this show the wisdom of the "Looser pays" philosophy of British common law.

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."

Well, another $10,000,000 helps.

[Jaywalk]

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.

It's all about delay, and msft scare tactics

[walterbyrd]

"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.

Re:Luser Pays. Support your original claim. Re:Wha

[tdemark]

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

ELF again. Sheesh.

[digitaldc]

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.

"who else is going to pay?"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:"who else is going to pay?"

[SatanicPuppy]

This guy's kinda crazy, but he's right. The only one's who get rich off this system are the lawyers. They've set it up for their benefit, and they're reaping the rewards, like an arms dealer supplying both sides in a conflict.

More MSFT funding?

[typical]

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.

Re:IBM or Novell will *NOT* just buy SCO out

[walterbyrd]

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.

Where are the Monty Python when you need them ?

[Fred_A]

Is there anyone still taken in by this charade?

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,

Duel it out

[Thyme3333]

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?

Re:IBM or Novell will *NOT* just buy SCO out

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:Luser Pays. Support your original claim. Re:Wha

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

Your history's wrong

[rkhalloran]

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.

Not exactly, contract is confusing.

[Jaywalk]

SCO is suing about the copyrights, which they admit are owned by Novell, and weren't even part of the deal?

It gets kind of complicated in here. The original Asset Purchase Agreement explicitly excludes copyrights, but Amendment 2 says that copyrights are excluded, "except for the copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the Agreement required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies."

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.

Re:Okay, so just to be sure

[kimvette]

FYI strictly speaking Linux is not Unix because it is a clean-room clone of UNIX - it is not derived from the original code.

From functionality/feature set, performance, and user experience Linux may as well be considered Unix but the semantical distinction is very important for precisely this kind of issue (e.g., SCO trying to get all Linux users to fork $600/processor over to them)

ALSO as an aside:

SCO is guilty of not paying the 90%+ of licensing fees that they owe to Novell. I believe the suit against Novell was launched because the shit was about to hit the fan with Novell's demanding that they receive the royalties for the use of their copyrighted works, since SCO was under contract to handle UNIX license brokering.

Now, for the conspiracy theories of Microsoft's being the puppeteer behind SCO's actions since 2000 - well, that's open for debate and I don't know whether or not to believe them, but I do know that projects like Linux, BSD, and OOo are striking fear deep into the hearts of Microsoft execs, because they know vendor lock-in is a dying business practice in modern computing. Think of it as the third PC revolution:

PC revolution 1. PCs entered homes and small businesses in the late '70s, early '80s. There was no standardization, and file sharing/networking was largely limited to sneaker net, and god help you if you didn't buy all your computers from the same vendor because one computer won't read another computer's disks/tapes/etc.

PC revolution 2. The IBM PC came in with semi-standardized hardware and Microsoft came in with an OS which later introduced some networking capability, and shortly thereafter a usable GUI and an suite of office apps which were (relatively) easy to use, and was relatively inexpensive (at the time) due to competing standards. Microsoft did not dominate the market by far then, so DOS, Windows, and Office became downright cheap to buy, and Microsoft actually took market share from then-king-of-mainframe-word processing WordPerfect.

PC revolution 3. 15 years later, Microsoft owns the market. Whether you like it or not you own and run Windows - on at least one computer in your office. That computer has the latest version of Microsoft Office on it so you can exchange files with other companies. Competitors have been killed off (SmartSuite) or effectively killed off (Corel Office/WordPerfect) or unnoticed (StarOffice). Windows and Office skyrocketed in price - quadrupling over the course of a few years, far ahead of inflation and not following the trend of the rest of the software and hardware world (coming down in price) Frustrated vendor lock blocking ANY opportunity to compete against the monopoly, Sun Microsystems gave away Star Office and even opened up the source, targeting a rewrite and eventually an opportunity to level the playing ground to make their platform attractive to customers once again. The availability of OpenOffice with its improved M$ format filters make Linux and Solaris attractive alternatives to home and business users alike, and improved security is a nice benefit in the deal. SCO has a monkey on their back because they haven't paid the 85%-90% of the UNIX licensing fees they have collected to Novell. Microsoft, knowing their days of vendor lock are at risk, and knowing SCO's position, buys a pile of UNIX licenses and whispers in Darl McBride's ear that perhaps SCO can convince courts that they own the copyrights to UNIX (not merely holders of the licensing brokerage rights) and that Linux violates those copyrights. This tactic is designed to scare companies which are considering open source or other alternatives right back to Microsoft.

Possible? Definitely.
Is it actually true? only Darl McBride and Microsoft insiders know for sure.

Law == Programming

[msobkow]

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...