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SCO Loses
An anonymous reader writes "The one summary judgement that puts a stick into SCO's spokes has just come down. The judge in the epic SCO case has ruled that SCO doesn't own the Unix copyrights. With that one decision, a whole bunch of other decisions will fall like dominoes. As PJ says, 'That's Aaaaall, Folks! ... All right, all you Doubting Thomases. I double dog dare you to complain about the US court system now. I told you if you would just be patient, I had confidence in the system's ability to sort this out in the end. But we must say thank you to Novell and especially to its legal team for the incredible work they have done. I know it's not technically over and there will be more to slog through, but they won what matters most, and it's been a plum pleasin' pleasure watching you work. The entire FOSS community thanks you for your skill and all the hard work and thanks go to Novell for being willing to see this through."
All right, all you Doubting Thomases. I double dog dare you to complain about the US court system now. I told you if you would just be patient, I had confidence in the system's ability to sort this out in the end.
Uhm, the reason they lost is because they picked a fight with players who had billions of dollars, and a very well-established team of expensive lawyers, ready to fight.
They were Germany picking a fight with Russia.
Most people who get sued unfairly don't have that luxury.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I told you if you would just be patient, I had confidence in the system's ability to sort this out in the end.
How many BILLIONS of dollars in lawyers fees, thousands of hours of (taxpayer-funded) court costs, and millions of manpower hours has this farce wasted all to come up with the "right" outcome, that SCO has absolutely no basis for this fiaSCO?
Sorry, I can't call this "sort[ed] out in the end" unless Glen gets to personally pull the trigger with Darl standing against the wall. And every stockholder in SCO, IBM, Novell, Redhat, and every open source developer, and several others, get to piss on the corpse.
Can we finally get the criminal case against Darl McBride and the rest of the execs rolling?
Otherwise, they'll just move on to another company, to do mostly the same.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Since this was backed by MS and SUN (who has since sold the stocks that they got for their 20 million investment; the 1 million dollar investment was for the USB work; and now, SUN disavows this), it was never really intended to be won. I think that it was meant to slow down linux and to see what paths were possible for MS. Now MS has a path and they are on it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Sorry, I can't call this "sort[ed] out in the end" unless Glen gets to personally pull the trigger with Darl standing against the wall. And every stockholder in SCO, IBM, Novell, Redhat, and every open source developer, and several others, get to piss on the corpse."
Dude have some perspective please. Darl didn't rape or murder anyone. Heck he might have actually believed that Linux was ripping off SCO's IP. I am glad they lost maybe even overjoyed. Wishing that level of physical harm over what is just a business deal is just wrong.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Heck [Darl] might have actually believed that Linux was ripping off SCO's IP.
I figure he probably did believe that.
And by the time the discovery rammed home to him that his yes-men should have said no and he didn't have a leg to stand on, it was too late for him to back out. To say "oops" and throw in the towel would have collapsed what was left of SCO - and brought the investors down on him for "breach of fiduciary duty".
This way he can say "I tried!".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"What more be said?"
/. when all this started that went on and on how SCO was so right? Seth, were are you now? Got anything to say?
Um, I don't owe $699 and I get to throw stones at McBride like he said we could if SCO was wrong?
And does anybody remember Seth? A poster here on
While Novell owns the copyrights they are still in that pesky exclusive contract for SCO to administer the licensing
IANAL, and I don't know all the gory details of the contract, but here's a thought: Since this finding now affirms that SCO owes Novell the license fees for the SVRX licenses sold to Microsoft and Sun (whatever that percentage is) I believe it brings SCO very close to bankruptcy. If SCO is unable to come up with these fees then Novell could use that as grounds for termination of the whole contract. Heck, the contract may have an escape clause for Novell if SCO fails to stand up to its side of the agreement, and this decision could be enough for Novell to terminate immediately.
All right, all you Doubting Thomases. I double dog dare you to complain about the US court system now.
Easy: How many years has this taken? What ever happened to our Constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial?
If it just comes down to who owns the copyrights, why the hell wasn't that discovered during the preliminaries? Why did this case ever come to trial? Why wasn't it dismissed out of hand right at the start?
In fact, one can argue that, as has happened before, Microsoft/SCO won in a very real sense: They demonstrated that they can take you to court on bogus claims, never present any evidence against you, and make you pay millions of dollars over several years. The main reason they "lost" was that they took on a group that included IBM, who has very deep pockets. If it had been most of us fighting them alone, we would have been bankrupt long ago, and thus unable to continue the court battle.
This was a successful demonstration of how people with money can use the court system to drag their opponents down and impose huge expenses on them. Many managers in many companies understand this, and have learned the intended lesson: If you want to avoid such court proceedings that drag on for years, you should just buy the stuff sold by the big guys. Stay away from the stuff sold by the little guys, and you'll be safe from the flocks of lawyers.
It's a lesson that needs reinforcing every few years.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Just imagine how long this case would have taken if SCO actually had a leg to stand on.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
In my experience working at big law firms as a summer associate for two summers now (I am a law student), big litigation only truly ends when the parties settle. Shy of that, it has a half life; the amount of activity asymptotically approaches zero but never quite seems to get there. There always seems to be another series of issues that spring out of every issue that is decided.
Of course, nearly all parties will settle when it gets to that point. Eventually, fighting what's left is no longer worth the cost of the lawyers.
The SCO case would have been under everyone's radar if not for the amazing work of PJ and contributors to groklaw, who no doubt also encouraged the defense team. The outcome was obvious from the beginning, though. SCO knew that, and that's what's worrisome. The end result of this pitiful case is that a lot of anti-FOSS attorneys have learned how to assess "the cost of doing business," a la Microsoft and its antitrust skirmishes, so the victory is not what it seems. The really serious minds like PJ and the fab folks at groklaw know that already, too, so this victory counts more as a call to action--an example of how action works--than a legal victory.
The SCO case launched in 2003. In Moore's-law-years, that's three generations of CPUs. It's a Google IPO, an Apple shift to Intel, assorted consolidations of telcos and other big-board-game inscrutability. What's happened with Open Source? Firefox numbers increasing. Software patents getting a re-examination. (Cory Doctorow announcing a switch to Ubuntu? Uhsowhat.) But what's really changed?
br? I hope that the programmers who write code know that they are doing all the work. They're the heroes. With the attention going to big-name brouhahas and guys with easy money, it's gotta be said that the lonesome hacker is the real world-changer.
If recent history is proof of anything, Darl will end being CEO of some other company, probably a larger one.
Bob Nardelli ran Home Depot into the ground, got more than $260 million dollars for walking out and now runs Chrysler
You see, now he is an experienced CEO
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
The intentions of rank-and-file Microsoft employees are mostly irrelevant, because Microsoft's course is determined by executives.
Employees need to evaluate how the company they serve wields the power they generate; if it's less than ethical, they should find a more ethical employer. Talented software developers have the luxury of taking the high road with negligible material risk. Those who just take the money and ignore what they are supporting are, in fact, evil.
(Hey, Google's hiring!)