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Novell Files for Summary Judgment Against SCO

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the barristers-and-barring dept.

rm69990 writes "Novell filed a motion with Judge Dale Kimball asking him to grant summary judgment or a preliminary injunction on Novell's claims that SCO wrongfully retained the money it received from Microsoft and Sun for their SVRX licensing and sublicensing agreements. Novell indicated over a year ago, when they initially filed their counterclaims against SCO, that they were planning on asking Judge Kimball to force SCO to turn over these monies. However, Novell only recently received the actual licensing agreements between SCO, Sun and Microsoft through discovery, despite demanding copies of them as early as 2003, and thus was unable to determine that SCO had breached the APA until now, which is why this motion is being filed so late in the case. This motion will likely bankrupt SCO if granted."

2 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Initially, there is no impact. by khasim · · Score: 4, Insightful
    So if (when) SCO goes bankrupt, what are the implications for those companies that use their OS?

    Their systems will be running the same software on Judgement +1 as they were on Judgement -1. So their immediate situation shouldn't be any different.

    Also, if their management has any clue what-so-ever, they've already explored the costs/options involved in migrating.

    The best case scenario for them would be for IBM to win EVERYTHING including sufficient cash awards that SCO would be unable to pay them (this is looking very possible if Novell gets their judgement). Then IBM could take the SCO business as partial payment (under the same terms with Novell as SCO had) and I'm sure that IBM would offer very inexpensive migration services to get everyone to Linux or AIX or something else.

    This would be great PR for IBM's Linux drive. SCO attacked IBM/Linux and SCO was completely destroyed as a company and then IBM still took care of SCO's old customers (far better than SCO did with their lawsuits).

    You cannot buy PR like that.
  2. Re:Don't be sorry. by schon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This was an attempt to spread fear about Linux ... and when that wasn't working, it became a pump-and-dump scam so SCO executives could sell off their stock options at a profit

    No. If you look at the timeline, it began as an attempt to extort money from IBM. Caldera was dead (apparently they never figured out that nobody would buy a Linux distro that used per-seat licensing) so they hired Darl McBride to sue IBM for "something", in an attempt to get a buyout.

    When IBM called their bluff, Caldera (now SCOX) began their media slams against them. This was when the stock pumping began (presumably, the stock pumping was done in an effort to encourage IBM to buy them sooner, rather than later.) At this time, they were publically stating that Linux was "clean", and it was just IBM who was at fault.

    Around April 2003, MS threw $60M at them (this is the money that they owe Novell) for "licenses" that MS already had, and wasn't even using. It was at this point that SCOX changed their tune and started the whole "millions of lines of code was dumped into Linux", their threats to sue Linux end-users, and their $699 "license". (The inference is that MS saw an opportunity to spread FUD, and that's what the money was for. The timing is just too good .)