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Novell Files New Summary Judgement Motion
rm69990 writes "In yet another piece of SCO news this week, Novell has filed a new motion for partial summary judgment, asking the court to declare that Novell is entitled to direct SCO to waive its claims against IBM, that Novell has the right to take these actions on SCO's behalf if SCO refuses to comply and that SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver. Since SCO's case against IBM is primarily a contract case, this issue affects the IBM case far more than the ongoing copyright issue between Novell and SCO. This bad week for SCO just got even worse."
Unfounded conspiracy theory: SCO v IBM goes to trial, SCO loses terribly, and the court rules that IBM and Linux do not in any way infringe upon SCO's property by copyright, contract, or any other method. Microsoft, seeing that the FUD engine that is SCO is losing steam fast and when fully dead will actually make IBM and Linux stronger, gets Novel to call back the attack dog, making it look like a friendly gesture but actually preventing the stronger precedent from being set.
More likely case, though similarly unfounded: Novel has their own case with SCO regarding their UNIX contracts, and much like IBM had to go through a lengthy process before they felt their case was strong enough to order summary dismissal of many of SCO's claims, so too Novel had to build a case so that when they present this motion before the judge, they feel it is likely to be accepted. If they do in fact have the contractual right to order SCO to stop litigating IBM, then they probably want to assert their authority and use it, rather than appear as though they are allowing SCO to continue.
But you're right, it isn't obvious to me (IASNAFL*) that this is what IBM wants. If they wanted a quick end to the case, they could have settled (with an obviously bad precedent). They seem very intent to crush SCO in their steely grasp and let the sand-like remains run between their fingers to be blown away by the wind.
* S = So, F = Fornicating
The enemies of Democracy are
IBM doesn't go to trial in a few months. Judge Kimball has just postponed the trial date. Hearings on the summary judgment motions will be in March. Rulings on them probably a few months after that. Actual trial, if ever needed, maybe 2008. Part of the reason for that schedule is because Judge Kimball ruled that the Novell trial should proceed first. It's worth noting that when he asked the lawyers for IBM and SCO, IBM's lawyers argued that Novell should go first.
So that's one reason for 'why now' - because it's recently been held that the Novell case proceeds ahead of the IBM case.
Another reason? Because of the recent rulings limiting SCO's list of infringing materials in the IBM case to that which they disclosed by the deadline. So that's 300 odd lines of code potentially subject to copyright infringement. When there were still wild claims of millions of lines SCO might have had better luck arguing that the contract terms just COULDN'T have been meant to allow Novell to waive such a massive breach. Now that argument just looks silly.
Last reason I can think of off hand, as noted IBM's motions for PSJ have their hearings scheduled for March. Ideally, Judge Kimball will rule at that point that there is no copyright infringement, and not just because of the Novell waiver but because there was no breach needing to be waived. If he doesn't feel that he can rule that then all the arguments from all parties are on the table to rule on the waiver instead as a second best option (from the viewpoint of Linux supporters).
There are a lot of pieces falling into place right now.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=SCOX
Ever wonder if this was MS's plan all along? Not to win?
.... so why not toss some serious FUD into the market as long as possible until they could get their new platform to market? Vista comes out, SCO goes down the tubes. It's win-win for MS.
By funding this charade via SCO, they bought themselves time.
Linux had been gaining server market share, and they knew their new product was going to be severely delayed
I'm not usually in the tinfoil fedora (pun somewhat intended)camp but this thought came to mind this morning.
- Roach
They'll be in court for a while yet anyway. The sooner the SCO-vs-IBM case is over, the IBM-vs-SCO case can get underway. That's the one I want to watch.
Novell's waiver was over 3 years ago and has been public knowledge for most of that time. All that's happening now is that Novell are asking for a judgment declaring that their waiver is valid. IBM's motions for partial summary judgment on the copyright issue are all ready on the table. Chance are the judge will find that the 300 odd non-contiguous lines of allegedly infringing code don't amount to infringement of a protectable element anyway even IF they turn out to have been copied verbatim from SysV (very unlikely) and even if SCO is eventually ruled to own SysV (very unlikely). This is at most a back up motion in case the judge isn't convinced by everything else.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
No need for a conspiracy theory at all. This is just an extension Novell asking the court to enforce their direction to SCO to waive dropping IBM's Unix license back in June 2003. It's long, LONG overdue IMO.
Consider this.
M$ is now getting Vista out to businesses and to the public in a couple of months.
M$ now has a deal with Novell, and with Novell now showing strength in this ongoing matter with SCO, it is only helping M$.
Novell now will fight with SCO in court while M$ works on its next OS which will work with Linux.
My thought is maybe M$ wants to find a way to get Linux software to run natively in the windows environment allowing M$ to say, 'Look, we can run Window and Linux software at the same time with just one OS. Why get a Linux OS that can only run Linux software when you can get Windows OS and run both Windows and Linux software?'.
Where are their opinions on this matter now? Mr. Enderle was a very vocal person on this subject at one time for example. There were others of course but he stood out being one of the most vocal with how malicious OSS community is and how IBM has its days numbered if for no other reason than previous evils it has committed along with Groklaw being devoid of any substance or meaningful insight on this subject. Credibility is inversely proportional to actually being correct it would appear in this light, so why aren't these people talking now?
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
I think SCO is gonna get a nice visit from Robot Santa this year. They've been naughty.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.