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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."
SCOX is up 6 cents at the end of the trading day. I t boggles the mind how their stock has performed during all this bad news..
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
A million Redmond developers cried out in pain!
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.
...furniture stores report chair shortages all over Washington State.
blow your mind already
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.
From the article summary is sounds like the software equivalent of winning world war one.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Turns out that SCO owns the copyright on the "Duke Nukem Forever" code.
The case is expected to be settled just before the universe dies a heat-death.
Not heck of lot.
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
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.
Who do I make this check for $699 out to now?
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
You forgot the billions of hours slashdot posters used to create countless amout of SCO rants and flames.
Since SCO doesn't own UNIX there is still some fun to come as IBM tears them to pieces. What would be really interesting is if IBM could somehow drag MS into this mess but we all know that isn't likely.
Still, a good day!
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
I think we need to mass mail to them and let them know this page of theirs is a lie.
SCO owns the core UNIX operating system, originally developed by AT&T/Bell Labs and is the exclusive licensor to Unix-based system software providers.
Now the entire house of cards will come down like a stack of dominoes! Checkmate...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"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.
I paid $699 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
Badass Resumes
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
Don't F*** with the PENGUIN!
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
SCO sued IBM in Mar 2003. It hoped to win $5 Billion and then charge Linux users $699 per cpu.
What this decision in this SCO vs. Novell case does is show that SCO does not own Unix copyrights. Therefore, SCO does not have standing to sue.
Standing?
Example: Jane cannot sue Bill for sealing John's tires. Jane does not have standing. (although John has standing to sue Bill for stealing his tires.)
Likewise, SCO does not have standing to sue IBM re: Linux. Novell may have standing. But in any event, Novell waived SCO's right for this suit against IBM.
I'm sure IBM wants to win on the merits. Not just a technicality that SCO does not have standing to sue. But the standing issue is enough to dismiss the SCO vs. IBM (and the world) suit.
On the other hand, IBM has counterclaims against SCO. Including Lanham Act claims. These have teeth. I hope to see SCO get their asses handed to them soon.
Once this fiaSCO is over, I don't know what I'll do. I now read Groklaw as much as I once used to read Slashdot. I hope it is over soon.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
You can send them feedback from here.
I wrote this:
Subject: You have an error on your website...
Message: It says, "SCO owns the core UNIX operating system, originally developed by AT&T/Bell Labs and is the exclusive licensor to Unix-based system software providers."
NO, YOU DON'T! HA! HA!
Now get those lies off your website.
Cheers!
And then I got the message: Thank you for your feedback.
And in smaller print: You will be hearing from us soon.
Do you think that was a threat?
Ignore this signature. By order.
"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
What more be said?
"needs to"?
Time to pick up some really cheap SCO stock!
"To our utter destruction," remember that one? That was how far dear Ralphie Yarro was ready to go, to "take on" Linux. So nice to see his plan working out just right.
I still remember the morning I looked on slashdot and saw the original announcement that SCO was filing copyright claims against Linux. It's amazing how long how this has been going on, and how much has changed since then (and not just what's changed in SCO's ever-shifting claims!-- that first morning I seem to remember most of the discussion was speculation on what exactly it was that SCO claimed was stolen from them. Years later and I still don't think we ever really found out). The start of this case was so long ago it was like an entirely different world. This case has been going on longer than the Iraq war. This started so long ago that at the time Slashdot was still known for hating Microsoft rather than salivating over the XBox.
This in mind, while it's wonderful that the system showed SCO wrong in the end, I have trouble seeing this really as a loss for SCO. They managed to continue their claims for a good five years-- a significant fraction of the lifetime of Linux itself-- without ever showing a whit of substance to those claims. SCO will die now that their case is lost, but they might have died years sooner and possibly poorer if not for this lawsuit gambit keeping them on life support. Microsoft managed to fund this through weird proxies without one single bit of consequences for themselves, and unlike SCO they will live on.
Linux has now weathered its first major court challenge, but the media coverage of Linux's successes in this case has never quite matched up in amount to the withering and credulous coverage of the baseless PR accusations of Darl McBride's heyday-- though we won in the end, the case may well be a net PR loss. Meanwhile, I don't think Linux is as viable as a movement as it was at the beginning of this case. This for all I know has nothing to do with the SCO case itself, but it seems like five years ago people still thought Linux on the desktop had a future, now I don't hear anyone talking about that anymore. Five years ago linux seemed to be going places, whereas now Linux's situation seems largely static, little progressed from where it was five years ago. Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I don't really feel good right now thinking about how this entire debacle has gone.
I guess my main response is kudos to PJ of Groklaw for her amazing and tireless journalism throughout this case. I'd be curious to ask PJ what her plans are as to what she's going to do next. In the short term maybe she should write a book about this entire thing.
Judge Kimball writes...
So, when Microsoft and Sun gave SCO millions of dollars for a "unix license" back in 2003, according to SCO's APA agreement with Novell, SCO was supposed to pass 100% of that money to Novell, who would then pass back 5% of it as SCO's administrative fee. SCO kept it all. Just as Microsoft and Sun intended. After all, that money was intended to finance SCO's litigation. SCO now owes Novell more than SCO is worth.
Aside: Sun did not need a Unix license from SCO. It already had a license from AT&T. Microsoft surely did not need a Unix license from SCO back in 2003. For what? Oh, yeah, to help finance a baseless lawsuit against a potential competitor (IBM and Linux).
I love the smell of SCO bankruptcy on a Monday morning.
The judge used the word "conversion". Does this mean that it may become a criminal matter?
Still reading the 102 page decision by Judge Kimball.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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.
Or can we?
Do we FOSS people still hate Novell because of their deal with Microsoft or love them for standing up for this?
I have this mental picture of a bleak rocky plain. Darl McBride lies sprawled on his back, dead eyes frozen in unspeakable horror. In his chest is a smoking hole. Looming over him, coiled in black mist, the terrible shadowy black robed figure of a Nazgul. In one skeletal hand the Nazgul holds Darl's still-beating heart and in the other a black Valextra briefcase.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
And in smaller print: You will be hearing from us soon.
Do you think that was a threat?
The way things are going, it looks like just another lie.
Blank until
You can invest in derivatives and futures to cover losses on anything. For instance, many companies whos profits might be affected by bad weather take out weather derivatives so that if their profits are hit by weather, they claw back some of the losses through the weather derivatives. Used to be a big favourite of Enron.
Perhaps DMB has money on SCO stocks delisting and dying. Who the hell knows what was going through their brains.
It's called short selling, but it's incredibly hard to find ANY shares of SCOX stock to trade (their daily volume in dollars is about what a busy drugstore pulls in), and downright impossible to find anyone lending shares for shorts.
However, the short sellers certainly got in on SCO when they could -- it has the highest short ratio of any stock on the exchange.
Wikipedia does a pretty good job of explaining shorts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_selling
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I'm gettin' a pro bono just thinkin' about it!!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
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.
Yin and Yang. In all good there is some evil, in all evil there is some good. Now come to me without disturbing the rice paper.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
You can also buy a "put" (the "right to sell") at a specific price (say $20). They are more volatile though.
I've been following this one since groklaw started. I'm still reading the ruling and it's like four years of groklaw and Novell debunking SCO. This is a potent ruling and he just set up IBM to write the PSJ ruling he intends to issue in that case, too.
I was interested in his use of the term "subject to conversion" with respect to the MS and Sun deals. There are two remedies for conversion: return of the property or damages. Novell claimed damages, but I wonder if Judge K opened the door for Novell to demand return of the property (the SVRX licenses Sun and MS got) as a method of opening the documents behind those deals up to discovery in suits by Novell against Sun and MS.
Whatever, this judge was disgusted by what he saw and ruled about as forcefully as possible.
> Heck he might have actually believed that Linux was ripping off SCO's IP. No, really he didn't. Don't fall into that trap: having an open mind does NOT mean you never hold people accountable. Not everybody in the world is good, and in this case it is clear that Darl (and others) were trying to game the system for their own benefit. That said, shooting Darl is clearly not right. But he definitely needs to pay a significant personal penalty for this.
I wouldn't worry.
Assassins cost money.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Could those companies not argue that SCO engaged in fraud by claiming copyright and selling licenses for something they did not technically own? If I claimed that I owned the copyright to Windows and told people they had to give me $100 per copy of windows they used or I would sue them, and people complied, I can't imagine them NOT getting their money back. Now the SCO Unix situation is probably not nearly as clearcut as that, but if indeed the ruling is that SCO does not own the copyright on materials they sold licenses for then it seems pretty open and shut to me.
The laws of probability forbid 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!)
It's basically the tort equivalent of "theft" in criminal law (but it has a slightly broader definition than theft -- conversion is an offense against someone's right of possession, not necessarily ownership).
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
Judge sums it up as follows:
On January 4, 2003, McBride received an email from Michael Anderer, a consultant for SCO retained to examine its intellectual property. Supp. Brakebill Decl. Ex. 12. Anderer stated that the APA "transferred substantially less" of Novell's intellectual property than Novell owned. Anderer noted that Santa Cruz's "asset purchase" from Novell "excludes all patents, copyrights, and just about everything else." Id. Anderer cautioned that "[w]e really need to be clear on what we can license. It may be a lot less than we think."
On February 4, 2003, McBride contacted Christopher Stone, Vice Chairman of Novell, and stated that he wanted Novell to "amend" the APA to give SCO "the copyrights to UNIX." Supp. Brakebill Decl. Ex. 17; id. Ex. 18 ("Stone Dep." at 108-09). Then, on February 25, 2003, McBride twice called a Novell employee in business development, David Wright, and said, "SCO needs the copyrights." Wright passed on McBride's request to Novell's in-house legal department. Supp. Brakebill Decl. Ex. 13. McBride's request was memorialized in an email written that day by a Novell in-house attorney, Greg Jones. Id.
Also early in 2003, McBride and Chris Sontag of SCO contacted Greg Jones regarding the UNIX copyrights. Id. Ex. 8 ("Decl. Greg Jones") at 13, 14; Decl. Christopher S. Sontag 6. McBride stated that "the asset purchase agreement excluded copyrights from being transferred" and that it was a "clerical error." Jones Dep. at 182. On February 20, 2003, Chris Sontag also sent a draft letter to Novell that sought to clarify the parties' rights under the APA. Decl. Christopher S. Sontag Ex.
Again in March 2003, McBride called Stone to ask him if Novell would "give him some changes so he could have the copyrights." Christopher Stone Dep. at 248-49. Ralph Yarro, Chairman of SCO, requested an in-person meeting with Stone. In that meeting, on May 14, 2003, Yarro told Stone that he wanted Novell to amend the APA to give SCO the copyrights. Supp. Brakebill Decl. Ex. 17 at 4; Stone Dep. at 137-8. Stone refused. Id. On May 19, 2003, McBride called Stone and Joe LaSala, Novell's General Counsel, and again requested that Novell convey the copyrights to SCO. McBride said, "we only need you to amend the contract so that we can have the copyrights." Stone Dep. 249-250. Stone made notes in June 2003 memorializing both conversations. Supp. Brakebill Decl. Ex. 17. E. SCOsource Initiative
In approximately this same time frame, in January 2003, SCO launched its SCOsource initiative, which was an effort to obtain license fees from Linux users based on claims to Unix System V intellectual property. McBride commented that "SCO owns much of the core UNIX intellectual property, and has full rights to license this technology and enforce the associated patents and copyrights."
Circumcision is child abuse.
Thats part of what options are ... but not all of it.
Options contracts are traded daily on most stocks that are currently listed. The most commonly traded types are Call Options which grant you the right to buy a stock at a given price any time prior to the expiration of the contract this is what you described above. The opposite bet is the Put Option which grants you the right to sell a stock at a given price prior to the expiration of the contract. Put's are what you buy if you think a stock's price is going to fall.
Put Options are generally less risky than short sales because your maximum loss is limited to the purchase price of the contract. Short sales theoretically expose you to infinite risk as the stock price may keep going up.
I'm not sure that options in a non-existant stock exist as you describe - the contract normally must involve an underlying security of some type - Even if its frozen concentrated orange juice.
SCO stopped being able to pay its lawyers around Halloween 2004.
More accurately, SCO made an agreement with Boies Schiller to cap the fees for this case at $31M, with some additional stock and 'cut of the winnings' language thrown in. Boies Schiller agreed to represent SCO all the way through appeals, but the general assumption is that they won't start any new cases for SCO unless SCO dumps some cash on the barrel-head.
So right now, Boies Schiller is looking at a family of cases where they're basically screwed.. they've lost the Novell slander-of-title case outright, and the best they can hope to do there is prove that the $30M technology license Microsoft bought wasn't entirely based on code Novell now officially owns. To the extent that Novell owns the code, Novell also owns 95% of the money, and money Novell owns won't pay SCO's legal fees. In the IBM case, they've been forced to limit their complaint to literal infringement of code that SCO owns -- and there's pathetically little of that which the judge will allow to be used as the basis of a complaint -- and now SCO doesn't even seem to own the code that IBM has allegedly infringed. To make matters worse, Novell has the explicit right to grant IBM permission to do anything it wants with the code, and Novell did exactly that at the outset of this whole long farce.
The whole family of cases as they stand right now are a train wreck for SCO and Boies Schiller, and the only way they could hope to win would be to go back and reformulate their bitch against IBM in a completely new way. But that's exactly what Boise Schiller isn't likely to do without getting a fresh mound of cash from SCO, and SCO doesn't have any cash to throw around right now. Right now, they're shitting bricks trying to find a way to keep Novell from taking away the $30M that's been propping them up since this whole thing started.
Meanwhile, SCO is still in the crosshairs of all the counterclaims Novell and IBM have filed, most of which Novell and IBM are likely to win, and win big. The damages from those will cost far more than SCO has ever been worth. The end result of that game will basically guarantee that any potential 'successor in interest' to SCO would rather strip naked, stick his feet in a hill of fire ants, and shove his arms into a tree-chipper than even think about trying to pick up the case where SCO left off.
Then we'll have to see whether Darl MacBride and the rest of the SCO management team can escape criminal charges, based on what they actually knew or should have known, what they said to the press and government agencies like the SEC, and whether this whole thing can be written off as the longest and most obnoxious pump-and-dump scheme in history.
So basically, this will all end when SCO's crops have been burned, their fields have been tilled with salt, and their flayed carcasses have been poisoned so thoroughly that even the buzzards won't dare to eat what's left.
Of course, that's only what I can come up with. They don't call IBM's lawyers The Nazgul for nothing.
Two words: avoid appeal.
Kimball knew he was up against BSF, masters at gaming the system. Those statements were in his denial of IBM's initial PSJ motions, which he declined only because discovery was not finished. That discovery was not finished was due to BSF's masterful motion practice.
One ruling in February 2005 does not a case make. While it seems apparent he had a decision in mind at that time, he followed procedure to assure his ruling would be safe from appeal.
Don't blame the judge, blame the lawyers (BSF).
With ketchup.
More than just satisfaction: RedHat protected their own business, and faced a fraudulent litigator head-on. That kind of nerve to protect yourself and your customers is something software purchasers, like me, treasure in a vendor. They told the truth up front, they documented it, and held their own against the worst sort of lying weasel in court. It was very expensive: such lawyers are not cheap. Now they can focus their resources on more useful tasks.
Novell's success in the lawsuit against SCO buys them some credit in the open source community and respect from potential clients, such as me, that they badly need in the wake of their ill-managed decision to broker the weird patent protectons with Microsoft. They lost a huge, huge amount of support and credibility in the open source world. This will help them recoer some of it.
it's even more confusing because microsoft payed off SCO and Baystar... but also paid off Novell. So did Novell use Microsoft money to win the SCO case Microsoft paid to start???
head exploded!!
There was good in Sauron?
Read the Silmarillion.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Some smartass here discovered my real identity, so I decided that posting under an alias shouldn't be necessary anymore...
the new term for delayed litigation!
For that matter just read The Lord of the Rings itself. At the council in Rivendell Elrond states: "And that is another reason why the Ring should be destroyed: as long as it is in the world if will be a danger even to the Wise. For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so." (FotR 2nd ed. pg. 281.)
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat