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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."
Is the first post automatically scored -1 now or something? This is on topic and I'm sure a TON of us feel the same way. I am extremely sick of all the BS lawsuits, patents, and all the other non-programming crap.
I used to -hate- the GPL. Now, I like the LGPL and I'm starting to think the GPL is the right way to go after all. Could RMS actually be a visionary and not just a zealot? It's already undeniable that he's done the entire software industry a world of good by sticking to his beliefs.
And all because the world of corporate greed has managed to get a toe-hold on the world of programming.
I personally think they should make patents only good for 5 years, give everyone that currently has a patent 5 years remaining, and be done. In 5 years time, we'd see such a monumental growth in the software industry that it will be amazing. The simple stuff that was costing tons of money would come out as open source projects, and commercial products would in turn work on stuff that's truly innovative.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
> I used to -hate- the GPL. Now, I like the LGPL and I'm starting to think the GPL is the right way to go after all.
I think that for libraries and other software that can be used in various different applications, "public domain" is the way to go. Just like SQLite has done. Even it can be used in closed source, it still helps the human kind in general, because the less is needed to invent the wheel again. Of course there are other licenses which are equally good for this purpose.
For games and applications which codebase can't be used much for anything else except for forks of the application itself. GPL sounds like a good way to go.
The downside to putting your software in the public domain is that it gives you no way to disclaim liability for any damages that your software might inadvertently cause. If you want to give your software away without any strings at all, it's still better to retain copyright and distribute it under a permissive license like X11 or BSD that gives you the opportunity to attach a liability disclaimer.
For games and applications which codebase can't be used much for anything else except for forks of the application itself. GPL sounds like a good way to go.I don't think the deciding factor is as much the purpose of the code as it is the goal of the author. If your goal is just to give a one-time gift to all of humanity, then X11 or BSD is a good choice. If you'd like to structure your gift to encourage others to give, then LGPL or even GPL are appropriate.
It's like the difference between giving cash to everyone who wants some, homeless and corporate CEO alike, or setting up a trust to give your money away in a controlled fashion. Both are good things, it's just a question of what your goals are. The analogy is imperfect, of course, because however wealthy you are your money is finite, so each dollar you give to a CEO is a dollar you can't give to a homeless guy, a constraint that doesn't apply to software, but you get the idea. Maybe a better analogy is giving all of your money to the homeless now, or setting up a trust that invests your money and uses the return to feed the homeless forever.
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Thats because they didn't goto bed with them willingly. Novel was raped in essence.
Novel only made the deal with microsoft to make developing stuff that can interact easier. If balmer hadn't started this proof of IP violations thing, No one would have thought different. Mozilla is in bed with MS, they ever jointly agree the browser wars are over and that they need to focus on security more then anything else. Yet no one complains and I think it is because there hasn't been any accusations of IP problems yet.
The thing with novel is how microsoft reacted with it. Not how novel went into business deals or anything. I'm a little surprised the novel is still willing to help the free software community out after all this. And there had been quite a bit of FUD being passed by the free software community concerning stuff in the GPL that didn't exist and mudding Novel's name and intentions and such. This must be a fondness of IBM more then OpenSource or anything. But I'm not sure.
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.
Where did you get the idea that you cannot disclaim liability from public domain software? That seems to go entirely against the idea of public domain. If public domain software causes problems, who do you sue when nobody owns it? Please do answer this. I have downloaded several pieces of public domain software with disclaimers of liability attached. I'm sure the authors would like to know if those disclaimers are illegal.
Has there ever been a case, anywhere, where someone was sued because of some defect found in freely available software. Such a case would make headlines (and maybe even make SCO look like a slightly lighter shade of complete black).
It seems to me to be a bit paranoid.
If Novell some day decides that Linux is no longer viable, it will stop distributing Linux, as SCO did. Novell would be a bit different situation because they have Suse Linux which, unlike SCO's Linux, they could probably sell to someone. It would be interesting if they sold Suse to MS.
You write like the judgments have already been ruled for, but this is unlikely. The Microsoft Whore Novell will win the case in the end, but with patent law as it now stands, Linux will lose as more and more Patent Kings come out of the woodwork for their slice of the pie. Unless there is patent reform, in the years to come, for businesses Linux will be no freer than Windows.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
What you're saying is very weird:
> I used to -hate- the GPL
Uh? How can one hate a software license?? You can choose not to use it and to avoid software licensed under the GPL, but *hating* it?
> Now, I like the LGPL
Strange, because that's a bad license: the no-static linking restriction is quite stupid IMHO..
And I'm not the only one to think this: there's dozen of LGPL-derived license which keep the intent of the license but without the static-linking restriction, the number of these LGPL-derived license show that there is really something wrong with the LGPL..
From a lawyer. As a friendly recommendation, mind you, not legal advice. Still, I take what he says seriously.
If public domain software causes problems, who do you sue when nobody owns it?If a piece of software causes harm, it's certainly not beyond imagination in our litigious society that the author may be sued, even if he has disavowed copyright on it.
I have downloaded several pieces of public domain software with disclaimers of liability attached. I'm sure the authors would like to know if those disclaimers are illegal.I don't think the disclaimers are illegal, it's just that users of public domain software have no mechanism to try to require users/distributors of the software to honor, or even read, the disclaimer. With copyrighted software it's reasonable to expect that people who are relying on your license to have read the license in question, which includes the disclaimer. That may still not provide any protection against pure users who don't need to rely on the license (because they're not doing anything which copyright would otherwise prohibit), and all disclaimers are subject to the limitations of relevant law, but the idea is to get as much protection as you can.
The other point here is that while the advantage to retaining copyright and using a permissive license may be small as compared to releasing the software into the public domain, there is *no* disadvantage, either to the author or to anyone else.
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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!