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Novell to SCO - Pay Up
gosherm writes with word that, now that the dust is beginning to settle on the long-running SCO case, Novell wants to get paid. Now. They're requesting that the customary stay on SCO's finances (as a result of their bankruptcy) be lifted so that Novell can begin recouping some of its losses from the protracted legal battle. "'We need to adjudicate if this is money owed to Novell or if it is Novell's property,' said Bruce Lowry, spokesman for Novell. That could determine how quickly Novell can recover those funds. And time is of the essence since there's a possibility SCO 'may run low or even completely out of cash during the process of trying to reorganize,' Novell said in court documents filed Thursday. Novell is also trying to protect royalties SCO collects from Unix and Unixware software licensees and remits annually to the software developer. SCO is required to continue to remit between $500,000 and $800,000 annually to Novell -- the next payment is due Nov. 14. SCO remitted $696,413 to Novell between the third quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of this year."
First thing that comes to mind...
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Haven't heard from you in a while McBride, cat got your tounge?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Novell should just become the owner of SCO, or be given a majority stock position and full corporate control. What future does SCO have anyway?
Excuse me if I haven't RTFA assiduously, but I see that SCO market value is now at $0.17 or so. Last time I checked, it had dropped $1.50 to less than $0.50 because SCO had lost a significant something at the law court. Is there a timeline somewhere? I want to gloat.... BWHHAHA!
SCO collects fees for Novell. There is no disagreement about that. What Novell is asking for is that those fees be paid through to Novell. This has nothing to do with the major claim, tens of millions, about the Microsoft and Sun licenses. This is just about the routine license fees that continue to roll in.
AllParadox described it best. He likened SCO to a store clerk. The money the clerk collects belongs to the store owner. The clerk has no claim to it at all. If the clerk goes bankrupt, the trustee can't claim that it is part of the bankruptcy estate.
The reason that SCO jumped (or tried to jump, it hasn't been granted yet.) into chapter 11 was that the Utah court was about to apportion the amount of money it had to pay Novell for the Microsoft and Sun licenses. Because of that, Novell has warned that it is going to file something claiming that SCO acted in bad faith. My WAG is that the bankruptcy judge will allow the Utah case to go forward so as to determine the amount of money SCO owes Novell. Since SCO has little chance of being a successful business, I am also guessing that they will be put in chapter 7. In other words, they won't be re-organizing, they will be liquidating.
Okay, perhaps that's not a fair generalization, but after reading story after story about people who do business with Microsoft and later getting shafted.
It's generally accepted that Microsoft put SCO on their path. And no sooner does it become generally accepted that SCO's death is imminent than Novell and Microsoft shack up. The jury's still out on whether or not this will end badly for Novell, but no one expects anything "good" to come of it.
But, given that even Microsoft is recognizing that it has seriously lost the trust of consumer and industry alike, I suspect there will also be a growing reluctance to "partner" with Microsoft any longer.
Emporer Ballmertine to Novell: "Good! Use your aggressive feelings, boy! Let the hate flow through you"
I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this scenario. SCO's total market cap is now under $4 million. If that roughly represents the total value of the company, then where are they supposed to get the money to pay Novell? My understanding is that they owe Novell quite a bit more than that.
Anyway, the good part of this fiasco seems to be that it shows that IP blackmail is a lot riskier SCO thought it would be. I'm expecting IBM to pile on soon, just to make sure that SCO goes away and stops bothering them. Either that, or the guy with the wooden stake.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Am I the only one a bit concerned about Novel taking on the self-assumed role of being the new "corporate stewards" of Linux? Especially since the slashdot community seems to accept them and IBM in that role...
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Not to mention the ratio of appealed to non-appealed cases might have some bearing on the soundness of his judgments. Sometimes it helps to know just how many of these summary judgments have people "banged to rights" before we start looking at the appeal successes.
But best of British to you, old son. You really are quite, quite funny. Erm, is that a tank in the background?
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
Settle for 2 cents if they agree not to appeal.
At Microsoft, they're really good though. You gotta give them that. They're really, REALLY good.
Play everyone on the market like pawns. I wish I met the well spoken, kind gentlemen show explained both the people in SCO and Novell, why they had to do what did, so they accepted their scenario as inevitable and Microsoft was looking for their best interest.
Imagine what it will be to have that one guy in your company, pulling the strings around and making magic happen.
Oh, man.
Now, go away or I will taunt you a second time.
I've already expressed my meta-moderation opinion about the anonymous and elitist moderation system: It sucks.
Do you really read at -1, then? I've tried. I tried the first couple of times that I moderated, to make sure I wasn't missing any hidden gems. And basically it made the comments unreadable. If you do this too, I don't wonder that you leave on a regular basis.
On the contrary, I find the moderation system to be rather genius. It made a system of open posting readable. I too well remember the days of having each of my favorite Usenet groups made unreadable through spam, and I was glad to find a system that prevented that.
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Somebody went through Judge Kimball's entire summary judgement appeal record and posted it. No, he doesn't get reversed two-thirds of the time.
They're far and away the biggest creditor, at least until IBM's counterclaims are adjudicated. They should be able to get the court to appoint a receiver to liquidate SCO, shouldn't they?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Do I know you, sir? You're handle is certainly familiar enough... Actually, if I do know you, then I retract the "sir".
/.'s sake.)
And no, I do not read at -1 when I moderate because I do NOT play the game of moderation. "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art." (Not sure I got the quote right, but not feeling motivated to check for
As regards the newsgroups, I sadly agree with you, whoever you are.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Thats funny, cause with my customized mod options, your post ended up at -8. Gratz, your a douche.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
Oh the image, eww, that is nasty, Darl in an industrial food processor. Be nice if Novell had similar plans for Microsoft.
Novell can ask for anything they want, what the judge says is what counts.
SCO CANNOT win in the long term, but boy are they good at playing the legal system. If this Bankrupcy judge remains as nieve as he appears... the money will be gone by the time he wakes up. We will see.
How SCO's law firm (BSF) avoids being on the hook for millions, and how the SCO executive tries to stay out of jail will be as interesting as this whole saga... Groklaw has many years of material left just with SCO alone.
Well, literally. Or more correctly, SCOX got sucked down the drain.
Not yet. The Sun and Microsoft "license" royalties are worth $25 million on face value and $37 million with interest. But first the trial in Utah must be unstayed so Judge Kimball can decide exactly how much of that money is actually Novell's. Before the bankruptcy, if that was a substantial sum then it would have been game over for SCO. But now with the bankruptcy, after Judge Kimball decides the amount in Utah, the action swings back to Delaware where it will be up to Judge Gross to decide whether to give Novell the constructive trust or not.
Novell has already asked Judge Gross for a constructive trust but he refused (which was very reasonable IMO) saying that there might be other creditors on the same footing as Novell that he has not heard from yet. In other words, if it is discovered that SCO stole money from other people in addition to Novell then the victims of those thefts get to join Novell at the front of the line of creditors.
The first thing that has to happen though is the November 6th hearing in Delaware where Judge Gross gets to decide whether to lift the stay or not.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
So why did you [Aranykai (1053846)] want to expose your stupidity? I'm not going to waste a foe ranking on you, but please feel free. In other words, a 7-digit user wants to criticize newbies in his sig (though you also meant "you're" for "your" in your inane body). That's almost as funny as Dubya trying to explain why blocking health insurance is somehow helpful to the affected children. (I included the quote just in case someone tells you how to make yourself look less stupid post facto.)
Frankly, based on your previous post, I'm quite honored to be in disagreement with you. I thought it was just a spineless third-rate lawyer on the theory that there are probably some lawyers on /. and that law-related threads might attract them. However, if you actually are a lawyer, then please add "stupid" to the list after "spineless". If you are actually a lawyer working for SCO, then I'd have to think up some new negative adjectives to include. So far only "witless" has come to mind...
If I thought the moderation system were curable by the current staff of /., I'd add a suggestion about using additional dimensions to make the ratings more meaningful. In this case, the hypergraph should be peaking in the flame dimension.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You must have missed the very public SCO v. IBM lawsuit. This is where SCO demanded (and got) all the source code for all the versions of IBM's AIX and Dynix operating systems in their search for a link connecting the ancient SysV code with code in Linux. They came up with zilch, nada, zero.
SCO repeatedly claimed that there were millions of infringing lines in Linux. But unfortunately for SCO in addition to the delusion that they owned the SysV copyrights, they also suffered from the delusion that they somehow had control over IBM's own home-grown code.
Linux is clean regardless of who owns the SysV copyrights.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Tell me, when RMS does what he believes is right in the face of opposition, what is he?
Can't you idiots be a little more creative in your roll reversal lie? The same old shit gets boring.
You can compare RMS to SCO when RMS tells you he owns your software and you owe him $700 a year to run it. Generally, it's the other way around. RMS tell you that you own your computer and that you should help yourself to run it so that others can't fuck you over.
There was nothing but offense in what SCO did and it's hard to imagine any of them believed what they were doing was right. Not even a troll like you can see this any other way than M$ sending SCO to attack the GNU/Linux community.
None of them won. It made some of them money for a while, but the risk for such fraud is jail time. In the end M$ will betray their little would be assassins. The company, which they hated from the get go, was destroyed and used as a weapon against other foes. Sooner or later even M$ will repudiate them to save their own face. That is the fate of all evil tools, but we should remember who wielded that tool when it's time to punish them. In the mean time, GNU/Linux is the only growth market in town. Vista is a failure and so is this silly FUD attack.
(IANAL)
The whole fucking corrupt company.
Why not just seize SCO's assets, and then go for any personal assets held by top management to pay the rest of the bill?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Darl, why did you net get the point that your Linux-FUDding would bite you in the wallet?
Why?
Still, you deserve to get your wallet pwned
... and Devil has to pay.
It will be pretty soon conquered and divided by the allies.
death by litigation. It's glorious, isn't it?
:)
Take down the seaside-view with the little palm tree. Put up the big "N" and we'll call it even.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Anyone else think that Novell and IBM are going to get through the corporate veil and start going after the corporate officers personally?
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
One issue of the SCO/Novell suit is whether SCO owns the Unix System V code (by owning its copyrights), or whether Novell still does instead. Novell didn't seem to be doing any business depending on owning the Unix copyright, so even if this suit is settled (probably by the judge, in a binding decision) specifying that Unix belongs to Novell either because SCO never owned it, or that SCO did own it but must surrendered it to Novell as compensation for damages, Novell will probably own it. But what will they do with it?
Will they sell it "again", this time retaining their rights to use it that will prevent any attempt at the kind of extortion SCO attempted (whether or not it was legitimately based)? Will they keep it and use it themselves, other than to protect their right to include it in Linux? Will they kill it so it doesn't cause any problems in the new market Novell is in (maybe because Microsoft wants it out of the way once and for all)? Or will they perhaps kill just the copyright, and put it all into the public domain, or under GPL - perhaps just including it in a revised Linux kernel?
Will Novell perhaps release a Linux compatible layer made of Unix that interoperates with only the Novell distro, and with Vista?
The SCO/Novell suit could turn out to be just a preliminary battle. The next chapter of Unix's history could turn out to be the really interesting one. Which, with that kind of relativity, could be extremely interesting.
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make install -not war
"My WAG is that..."
/. accounts to use if your normal one could be a problem at work, home, etc.
/,!)
/. thrives and gives to it's users: different, informed, thoughtful, creative ideas, and viewpoints on many subjects.
I would class this as a 'SWAG' (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) instead of just a WAG just due to the fact that you backed up your claims to somewhat in your delivery. Not actually scientific in the true, but basically equates to an 'educated guess', which you fulfilled.
In spite of your AC posting, I'm glad the current Moderators are giving you some love.
Usually I never see (thus reply) to AC posts, but you bring up some interesting points that I'm appreciative of reading and now am able to think about.
I'm sure you have your reasons for posting AC, but you could set up several
If your 'insight' only applies to this topic...that's cool, it was some good thinking and you asked good questions. (don't ask me for the right answers!-I don't have the brains or the time to be on top of everything that shows up on
If this is more typical of your insight in general, then set up an account so you can be seen by more people- that's the beauty of how a diverse online community like
Yeah, there's some noise too, but that's humans for you!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Isn't Microsoft the biggest troll already doing this?
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
I think a lifetime of indentured servitude as a pool boy at a Holiday Inn would probably be justice for Daryl McBride.
That's not good enough for Darl. Instead Holiday Inn should pimp his ass with them getting all the income. Then again maybe not, he might enjoy being fucked in the ass.
FalconShould there be a Law?
N/T
IBM is investing a lot more then their getting back (i may be wrong here, as we(i) don't know whats in their agenda for the years to come - this could be one of those investments where you loose money for 10 years, and start making money in 20
For the past few years at least IBM has been shifting it's business focus on providing services, and software, instead of hardware, this could explain it's sale of the PC division to Lenovo. Commodity hardware venders operate on razor thin margins.
FalconShould there be a Law?
AllParadox is actively posting at www.investorvillage.com on the scox message board. A bunch of people got disgusted at the Yahoo board and went over to iv. The signal to noise ratio seems pretty good there imho.
;-)
Marbux also seems to have disappeared. If anyone knows where he is, I would be grateful to know.
The fact that PJ occasionally does something profoundly clueless contradicts SCO's theory that she is a committee of IBM lawyers.
No idea how you got modded flamebait for that. It's the truth.
Darl did not do "what he believes is right in the face of opposition." That is just the PR spin, i.e. brazen lie. Darl is just a small-time redneck scammer. The entire scox thing is just another msft mis-information stunt.
Scox was doomed before the scam - that was 5 years ago. Since then, scox execs have pocketed millions of the msft arranged financing.
Will someone who understands bankruptcies explain to me how SCO's bankruptcy can continue when the financials they submitted are so clearly wrong?
A court on the East Coast has declared that SCO has been holding assets belonging to Novell.
SCO apparently is including those assets in its balance sheet, and only referring to the matter in the way an accountant would treat a minor unknown, like "Estimated Office Inventory Shrinkage, Current Quarter". However the theft involved is not minor; it probably exceeds the sum of SCO's reported profits over the last few years.
How can the Utah bankruptcy court accept the financial statements that SCO has submitted as valid? How can SCO get protected status if its application failed to meet the requirements?
This case strikes me as being like a pawn shop that has declared bankruptcy after being found guilty of fencing stolen property. The bankruptcy cannot go forward until an investigation to determine how much of its current inventory is stolen property is completed.
It seems to me that this is one of those instances where the bankruptcy cannot proceed until the amount of the theft has been determined. I would think that SCO's bankruptcy request should be denied or nullified, and SCO should be told it cannot submit one until it can accurately produce the required financial statements.
Is it any wonder that most of SCO's accounting staff have left? Being associated with the financials SCO provided the bankruptcy court would be a career stopper for an accountant.
In all seriousness, we have a 'new user modifier,' which helps counter the September effect slightly.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
So basically it's "M$ sucking M$" dry. Like "jesus fucking christ".
Hard to say which I hate more, SCO or NOVELL. Rot in hell M$ bitches!
Furthermore, IBM is still entitled to a ruling on their Lantham Act (corporate libel) claims. It's not just about the money. If SCO goes chapter 7, IBM is unlikely to see a dime on any judgements they may win, but they can still win a ruling that it was libel. And that is, as you point out, really the point.
And finally, beyond that, there's still the possibility of piercing the corporate veil. So many of SCO's problems (like the Lantham Act claims) stem from the public posturing of individual executives that IBM may well have an excuse to pursue some of these individuals separately. We'll just have to see how it all plays out.
Not to troll or be a grammar Nazi or anything, but, is your shift key broken?
I mean, your post is insightful, well thought out, is mostly spelled correctly, and makes mostly decent use of punctuation (except for occasional missing apostrophes). Yet, the only thing you've capitalized is IBM.
Normally I'd not say anything, but the stark contrast in that the *only* thing wrong is the missing capital letters, well, I just had to point it out. It's like a mistake on the Mona Lisa; because the rest of it is so good the little imperfection just jumps out.
Caldera was formed by Ray Norda, founder and one-time CEO of Novell, and for many years, the public face of Novell, just as Billy is/was the public face of Microsoft and Larry Ellison is the public face of Oracle. However, Caldera was never directly connected to Novell. Norda had, IIRC, already retired from Novell at the time he founded Caldera, and the startup money came, IIRC, came from an umbrella foundation set up by Norda directly.
"a court on the east Coast".....that would actually be the Utah court, with Judge Kimball.
.....the bankruptcy court is in Delaware, which I beleive is on the east coast of the USA.
"Utah bankruptcy court"
For your other questions, I suggest taking some time out to read the posts at Groklaw, where pretty well all possibilities, good or bad, will be discussed in depth.
As matters stand, SCO is trying to put together a debtor's committee which does not include Novell. The debtor's committee is supposed to be composed of SCO's biggest creditors, but -- since Kimball's court hasn't set an amount yet -- SCO has been claiming that Novell isn't on that list. Keep in mind that the top dollar amount on SCO's list is around half a million. Novell claims that SCO converted (a.k.a. "stole") about $25 million of Novell's money. By excluding Novell from the list, PJ over at Groklaw has been complaining that SCO's list looks more like a "list of perps" for SCO's Linux shakedown. SCO's lawyers make the list, as do both Microsoft and Sun. And the Canopy Group. Conspicuously absent are IBM and Novell, either one of which would become the lead creditor if it wasn't for the automatic stay. And, in bankruptcy, the person who is owed the most has the most to say about what happens with the debtor.
If SCO gets their way, SCO's bankruptcy will be resolved without reference to the companies which SCO owes the most money.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
I think a moderation hater is moderating today, and trying to prove that moderation can be unfair. Which it can be. But it's still a damn sight better than reading at -1, or -2 even.
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Do I know you, sir? You're handle is certainly familiar enough
I don't believe so. My handle comes from a Gibson story, which was made into a pretty poorly regarded Keanu Reeves movie. I have other ties to the handle, naturally, but like most they're pretty boring to anyone but me. Send me an email if you want to compare job histories.
And no, I do not read at -1 when I moderate because I do NOT play the game of moderation
While that's what I tried to do, and failed, I meant: do you read at -1 all the time, then? Every article? If you don't, you're just a hypocrite. You're taking advantage of the moderation done by others, but decrying it's usefulness and refuse to participate in it yourself. Wouldn't you be afraid that some "elitist snob" has unfairly modded an article down below your threshold, and so you're missing out on it? The only way to prevent that kind of abuse is to read at -1 or -2.
If you do read at -1, or even -2, you're a braver man than me. I've tried. I think that if one were to read slashdot at -1 unprepared, you might not even be able to determine that it was a technology news site at all--the random bits of coherent posts would be simply washed away in the torrent of puerile and sophomoric postings. Rather, I'm thankful for it, and I find it a pretty effective system. I can and have been unfairly moderated, I think--witness my previous response to you, which is now at +1 flamebait. And it's not. But it is "off-topic", and it's really no skin off my nose. I haven't read many insightful or informative posts that are less than 3, and whenever I read at even less than 5 I'm almost always sorry I wasted my time with posts still at 3 or 4.
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Actually, I still don't know how to send email via this system, but I'm pretty sure you would recognize me if you were the other jm, and your writing style doesn't match that closely (unless it's changed over the years).
As regards "taking advantage of the moderation", I only regard it as a slightly less random form of sampling. I don't have the time to read all of it, and my interest is in humor, so I sometimes scan for "funny" on the theory that a few of the actually funny posts may have been evaluated appropriately. Based on the mods my own posts have received, the probability is not very high.
I did meta-moderate for a while. As far as I could see, it was a total waste of my time, except as a different form of random sampling. The good point was that it would take me to comments on some topics that otherwise I'd never even look at. However, though I can't recall actually getting any useful data that way... I tried 'playing the meta-mod game' both ways. If I played it honestly, only about 1/3 of the mods were reasonable to the point where I could endorse them--but I never received the promised mod points. (Well, actually one time.) I also experimented with the theory that mod points were self-reinforcing, which meant that they go to agreeable meta-moderators. I eventually concluded meta-moderation was a total waste of time, and moderation is about 2/3 meaningless.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Darl's brother, Kevin, is one of the SCO lawyers so has been slating away SCO cash for a long time. No doubt family ties are strong.
Engineering is the art of compromise.