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Novell Bombards SCO with Summary Judgment Motions
rm69990 writes "Novell has filed 4 motions for Summary Judgment against SCO, which essentially ask the court to toss the remainder of SCO's case that isn't already being arbitrated between SUSE and SCO. One seeks a ruling from the court that Novell transfered none of the copyrights in Unix to SCO, which is backed up by many exhibits and declarations from people who negotiated the deal. Another, along the same lines, asks the court to toss the portions of SCO's Unfair Competition and Breach of Contract claims pertaining to the Unix copyrights. The third asks the court to rule that Novell did not violate the Technology License Agreement between SCO and Novell, and last and also least, the fourth seeks to toss the Slander of Title for the additional reason that SCO has failed to prove any special damages. These motions follow 2 motions for summary judgment filed by Novell late last year on 2 of their counterclaims."
I remember the time when software was just software and no politics...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
normally this news would make me happy, but since novel is in bed with other big corporates i'm not so pleased.
Why UNIX?
It's sort of what they do, if nothing else then to say "We think our case is so clear, the other party can't possibly win". I wouldn't be surprised if SCO has put in motions of summary judgement against IBM too. Just tell us when some of those motions are actually granted, mmkey?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
IIRC, every single litigant involved in cases with SCO has filed motions for summary judgement.
I think they're filing them more in hope than in expectation - in the hope that it will close the case fast and minimise legal fees. Novell, IBM et al are a lot of things, but I can't imagine they want to hand over any more money than they have to to their lawyers.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I've been waiting a long time to see who makes the first move!!! Man, I hope someone makes a movie out of this, or a book...maybe Groklaw or something, eh?
This is fantastic entertainment!!!!:-)))))
The declarations that Novell just filed would gut SCO's case all by themselves. SCO's case is so feeble that there are many things that would independently destroy it. All SCO has to do is lose on any of about ten different things and they lose the whole shooting match.
Consider the declarations of Braham and Amandia. These are both people who were directly responsible for negotiating and writing the contracts with Santa Cruz. They clearly remember the events that took place and have original documents to back them up. They say there was no intent by Novell to transfer the copyrights and they made darn sure the contract and the ammendment did not transfer the copyrights. Santa Cruz asked that the copyrights be transferred and Novell agreed only that Santa Cruz could use the copyrights to develop and sell the product they were developing.
These declarations directly contradict SCO's theories and the half remembered garbage of their witnesses who weren't actually involved in writing the contracts.
So, Novell could very well get their PSJ. In fact, Novell could get the psj even without these declarations because the wording of the contract and ammendment is clear and there is no written conveyance of the copyrights. The latter is required by law and the judge can decide the case as a matter of law (which is necessary for a psj). So you could be right. The new filings might not be necessary to decide the case.
and OP has no life. I'm glad I don't manage their servers. Please mod to -1.
You just broke rules 1 and 2!
There's a clause in their agreement with Redmond to support the party line on this, isn't there? :-)
Assuming Novell wins the majority of judgments, I wonder what would happen if Novell some day decides that Linux is no longer viable as SCO did...
It's interesting though, because now Microsoft is actually on both sides of this fight.
They just recently partnered with Novell, and were funding SCO through Baystar.
Wouldn't it be great to just have 1% of the money that Microsoft has wasted on this? I'd retire.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The Microsoft + Novell deal is just SCO + EV1 servers all over again. The schemers are running out of creativity. Both deals are more smoke than fire. Neither is meaningful because their secret nature precludes people from making rational decisions about them. How do you put a value on the products of either SCO or Novell, when they've entered agreements that prohibit them from disclosing who owns what? Is the point of this to allow both of them to sell you the same thing, twice? When your marketing approach is "Sign this contract or we'll sue you out of business whether our claims have merit or not," people have to start wondering what makes you morally superior to a mugger and whether being in an enduring relationship with you is preferable to going directly to court or cheaper than settling you with a different kind of "contract.". Eventually these people are going to try this with the entirely wrong victim and it won't take the courts to sort the matter out.
The declaration of Novell's outside attorney that did the deal, Tor Braham reads like death to SCO's claims. Basically he was there, wrote the draft that got signed. He signed it himself. He kept drafts of what the Old SCO asked for and the edits where they were struck, and explains why very clearly: SCO just didn't have the cash, Novell wasn't interested in selling the Unix copyrights, Novell needed to protect its interests in case of an OldSCO bankruptcy.
It's interesting that just 1/2 hr before the close of market two days ago somebody unloaded 466,000 shares of SCOX, just over 2% of the company. As of December 31, 2006 yahoo lists only seven companies and two insiders with that much of a stake. I wonder who....
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This seems to be going on forever, but it's not. The end is in sight. SCO can stall, but the process does move onward. Discovery is over; everything significant that's going to come out has come out. Now we're in the stage where bogus claims get thrown out via summary judgment motions. That phase is well along; summary judgment motions have been made and briefed in both the Novell and IBM cases. Soon the judge will decide them.
The Novell-SCO contract says that Novell retains "all copyrights". If the judge rules that the contract means what it says, that ends the copyright issue.
Then, based on that, the summary judgment motions by IBM against SCO mostly get decided in favor of IBM.
Remember, for IBM, this is no longer a problem. Is it hurting Linux server sales? No. Are customers bothered by it? No. Can IBM afford the legal costs? IBM revenue was $91,000,000,000 in 2006. I doubt this issue gets much management attention in Armonk any more.
Tor Braham doesn't just explain. He provides drafts to show what was proposed and the copyright transfer was proposed by Old SCO, rejected by Novell and explicitly excluded... SCO's witnesses "recall" what may have been intended. This guy knows and provides documents to prove it.
Today's The Inquirer MOTD is nice:
The show isn't over until it's over, but it seems like it's getting close.
Subsequent events show how wise Novell was to protect their interest in this way. The trail of successors-in-interest has grown long.
I believe Novell will be found to own the corpse of Unix, which in no way diminishes the fact that Unix is still dead.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Novell to court: We sold a "bill of goods" to SCO and we can prove it!
While LGPL allows application developers to release closed source apps, if they change any of the LGPL libraries (say, to embrace an extend a protocol or API), they have to release source to the modified library. With public domain, vendors are free to subtly modify the protocol to their own ends without releasing the changes.
Now, if you don't care about that, then public domain or a BSD type license is fine.
-- Alastair
There is no such thing as corporate greed. There is greed. Humans have greed corporations do not. One of the worst episodes in the history of the US was when the US Supreme Court decided corporations, a fiction created by government, were tantamount to people. And continuing to anthropomorphize them only perpetuates the real problem. Corporations don't have soul, emotions, etc.. People do.
So why do socialists and "anti-capitalists" and so on continue to refer to them as if they were human? Because it belies the problem to socialism. The actions taken are done by humans. Humans can be greedy. Sometimes greed can be good, often it is bad. Pretending that corporations have greed, feelings, emotions, desires, etc. lets people feel good about humans while feeling bad about corporations.
The problem with governments and corporations are the same, and for the same reason. The more humanity is separated from itself via fictions such as corporations and government, the more they people can justify things they would not do themselves in a more personal situation.
So whine all you want, but put the blame squarely where it belongs - on the people, not the fictions called corporations.
This particular problem is exacerbated by the fiction of "intellectual property". Here we have two fictions being combined to control others. For all the frailties of humans, it gets worse when we exclude humans. At least humans have qualities that limit or hinder the damage of our frailties when we are involved
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
but some of their higher-ups made some good bucks selling the inflated stocks at the right time. that was the main reason SCO went ahead suing Novell, IBM and whatever. But the whole thing is just smoke and mirrors. So - when SCO looses the battle, don't rejoice.
You don't count it like that. SCO was about keeping linux from gaining too much share before Vista was released. It worked.
Novell is about keeping linux from taking the fore until Vista is replaced with something that works. It's working so far - some large customers are taking the bait. Probably in a year they'll set the hook. Sooner maybe if the mainstream press picks up on the "Vista is Windows ME 2.0" meme, which seems to be gaining buzz. Hopefully a few more OEMs will join the "XP available for all" train in fear of losing share to Dell. It's just one short step from there to "Vista? What vista?" That will accelerate their schedule with Novell and hopefully limit their catch to outfits where they have highly placed insiders. Right about then the people on Software Assurance should be joining a class.
Yes, it would be nice to have that much money personally, but you can't say it's wasted. They're getting their money's worth, and Baystar's too. They usually do because they leverage their power, and for this sort of thing power is better than money.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I have been reading this farce for years now and I am taken a back by the idea that you can litigate an issue for so long and waste so many resources with no real evidence. If this whole doesn't show the need for real copyright and patent law changes then nothing does. Our legal system is a joke! A seriously bad joke!
The idea behind a patent is simple: an inventor invents something, and shares it with everybody in return for a short term monoply. The inventor makes (lots) of cash, and society gets a new technology that is owned by all in the long term.
I say sure, lets have some software patents. You produce the source code that will be shared with the world, and I'll grant you a patent. The code gets dumped on the net, and in a couple years, anyone can use it for whatever they want.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Since when you have got a choice not the get a viral infection?
The allegory is idiotic, it is enough to know who enunciated it first to understand it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... let me introduce you to the Right Hand Sock Puppet.
I'll play know patent wars! What can we destroy? What about that cuddly stuffed penguin?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.