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SUSE Requests Arbitration with SCO
rm69990 writes "In response to SCO's amended complaint against Novell alleging copyright infringement, Novell subsidiary SUSE has requested from the International Chamber of Commerce that SCO be barred from asserting copyright over SUSE Linux due to the UnitedLinux agreement between Caldera, SUSE, Connectiva and Turbolinux. This agreement requires that SCO arbitrate with SUSE instead of filing claims, removes the copyright from any work SCO produced while in UnitedLinux, gives SUSE sublicensing rights to SCO's copyrights, and constitutes an SCO commitment that any code released under an OSS license in UnitedLinux remain Open Source. Novell has filed a motion to stay SCO's claims against Novell until the outcome of this arbitration. So now it looks like Linux users are protected both through the APA between Novell and SCO, but the UnitedLinux agreement as well."
cool SCO logo that used to grace these stories? How you people expect me to find 'em without that nifty logo?
Is it fascism yet?
From TFA:Methinks this gives the Novell lawyers a bit too much credit...after all, all they're doing is patiently assertiing that the sky is in fact blue and that water is, and has always been, wet.
The real geniuses here are the SCO lawyers, for keeping this ridiculous dog & pony show going for as long as they have, although I admit that the admiration I experience witnessing their work is generously laced with nausea and trepidation. When SCO's house of cards finally falls, it will be with a deafening crash amid roars of appreciation from the OSS crowd, but in the meantime, hats off to the talented lawyers that have managed to keep it standing this long. They deserve respect, grudging though it my be.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"Novell has filed a motion to stay SCO's claims against Novell until the outcome of this arbitration. So now it looks like Linux users are protected both through the APA between Novell and SCO, but the UnitedLinux agreement as well."
No, it looks like Linux users are protected through both the APA and UnitedLinix depending on the outsome of this motion. You can file motions all you'd like. That doesn't mean they'll be carried out.
Novell has claimed the UNIX copyrights never went to SCOX/Caldera because they didn't go to Santa Cruz that Caldera acquired. And with this they can claim whatever copyrights SCOX *does* have are subject to the terms of the UnitedLinux agreement with SuSE that Novell now owns.
Rock, hard place, SCOX.
I knew that some good would come out of UnitedLinux some day. *dodges flames*
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
McBride! The rootinest tootinest outlaw ever to rustle *nix code!
Disclaimer: Yahoo! is a registered trademark of Yahoo!
Contracts aren't really what make businesses work, it's the relationships.
If you have to fall back to pointing at the contract and saying "but you agreed," it means the business relationship is fuxxored... and not only are you going to have to win a contract lawsuit, you're going to have to reasses the relationship between the companies.
Obviously, SCO is an anomaly, but the effect is the same. Relationships were broken and contracts aren't going to stop the damage, merely mitigate it.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Frauds deserve nothing more than jail.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060405
IBM says to the Judge
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Then there's the SEC disclosure requirements -- the fact that SCOX' stock runup happened while the Management sat on a contract that gutted the basis of the whole lawsuit lottery makes them personally liable. Even the SEC might wake up for that one, but the NYAG's office must be smelling blood in the water.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Why does SCO even bother to continue this charade?
Becuase they have been, and are being, paid for it. Microsoft donated very generously to SCO's cause in order to create an anticompetitive slander generator, and SCO is just delivering on what has been paid for.
And, of course, as long as SCO keeps up the charade, not only does SCO continue to get manna from heaven in the form of random mystery investment, but SCO also gets to sustain their business by constantly pumping their stock up and down-- whereas as soon as the lawsuit ends, SCO pretty much has to go insolvent, since SCO has no viable products but does have a number of pending and scary-looking counterclaims as a result of their PR antics...
Primary reason is that it's a ploy by Microsoft to discredit open source (Google for "Baystar" to learn more). Even though the case has no merit, they want to plant a bug in the ear of every PHB out there. "Doesn't Linux have some kinda legal trouble?" In that light, they have been successful somewhat.
Secondary reason, it's a stock scam. The longer they keep the company going, the longer they can bilk the shareholders for more cash. It's probably one of the most blatant examples of insider trading ever, but since it's small potatoes it has somehow flown under the radar. Here's hoping that changes soon.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The article is about SCO vs Novell, not IBM.
I can't wait to see SCO get handed its head in any case [sic], but these are two separate complaints from SCO.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Gynormous Profit for Lawyers
Infuriate left and right
I mean, the idiotors. The article linked is the wrong one. This is the correct article for the story.
More and more frequently, I'm thinking that slashdot is becoming a mad magazine parody of itself.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Did Clippy touch you in the naughty place? It's okay, you're among friends here.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They haven't gotten anywhere so far, so what makes them thing they'll achieve something now?
When Darl took over as CEO it was estimated that the company would be bankrupt within 7 months. Since then they have received $60 million in PIPE funding. They did have to pay back $13 million to Baystar, but that's still a pretty good payday for making a bunch of claims that so far haven't been substantiated.
PJ, with a spot-on comment (my bold):
If you were given a choice between having a GPL-related case heard in Europe in a fast-track arbitration based on clear contracts or let it drag out for year after painful year in Utah, what would you choose? Anyway, someone on Novell's team at some point noticed that the UnitedLinux agreements, which Caldera signed, require such arbitration of certain types of claims, likely even designating the jurisdiction, and once SCO filed its 2nd Amended Complaint alleging that distribution of SUSE Linux was copyright infringement, it opened up the door to this request for arbitration in France.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
"...Furthermore, since software wants to be completely free and unfettered, it should not be subject to the legal process. Any disputes concerning software licensed under this agreeement shall be decided by a CodeWars competition. Best 2 of 3. And it must be a GPL'd implementation of CodeWars..."
It'll be cool to watch Farooq and Bradshaw kick SCO's butts!
The "new" contract revelation doesn't actually change the details of the suit any. What it does change is the venue. As a result of the "new" contract clauses being brought into play, a small part of the entire SCO-Novell-IBM-Redhat rigamarole, specifically an old contract between Caldera and SUSE, now gets kicked entirely out of the court system and dumped into arbitration. This is important because the rules of arbitration and the rules of a court of law are quite different. Specifically, arbitration is speedy, and hard to delay. Considering the complexity of this situation, and SCO's determination to delay things as much as possible, speed is very important. Remember that the IBM vs SCO court case is still tied up just with IBM trying to get SCO to specify exactly what exactly it was that SCO thinks IBM stole.
Basically, before Novell played the arbitration card, this contract was still important, but it was waiting in line behind a long, LONG list of other issues, and thus ran the risk of nobody seriously looking at it for years or, if SCO self-destructed before anybody could complete discovery issues, not at all. Now, suddenly, this contract is cutting to the front of the line. And that means that certain issues that might otherwise have been decided in another place or in another way are going to be decided here, now, because of this contract.
Most significantly. From Groklaw:Note that these contracts would have been signed after Caldera had already purchased their UNIX properties.
So, if SUSE gets their way, then-- possibly even before IBM gets the chance to complete summary judgements in their case-- this arbitration will rule that SCO has by contract forfeited their right to assert intellectual property claims against the Linux kernel, and the nature of the situation could make that rule apply not just to Novell, but to everyone. Courts can consider arbitration rulings to be binding. So this absolutely can have effect on the IBM case.
And if SCO's long-standing claims against Linux are short-circuited by a legally binding declaration that SCO had forfeited the right to bring claims against the Linux kernel by contracts signed before the allegations even started, that is definitely, as the top level post puts it, a "knew or should have known" kind of situation.
You've seized the gist of the matter. It's not that Novell's lawyers are playing "nice"; I suspect that they're as hard-nosed as any other lawyer representing a client. The difference between the half-assed tactical antics of the "bottom feeding scumbags" and masterful strategy of the Novell legal team is night and day.
If PJ can ever rein in here over the top partisan P.O.V., I'd love for her to interview all the participants and then write the definitive history. As I don't think she'll ever lose that P.O.V., maybe Bob Mims would be a better candidate to write such a history.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Depends; did the "smart" hacker get caught flagrantly violating federal law? Perhaps doing something mindbogglingly stupid, like trying to social engineer his way into the FBI's systems? Then I'll take the nice one, because the "smart" one is nowhere near as smart as he thinks, and probably not as smart as he claims. Personally, when I need to dig through dirt, I find a shovel is more effective than a worm, and additionally lets you keep the crap at arms length.
Wretched analogy aside, I'd prefer a lawyer who routinely wins without having to resort to slimy tactics, just like I'd prefer a security expert who doesn't rely on security by obscurity; the tactic is usually still available as a last resort, but relying on it too often makes for sloppy work habits.//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.