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SCO Owes Novell $2.5 Million
CrkHead writes "Groklaw has posted Judge Kimball's ruling on SCO v Novell. For those that have been following this saga, we finally get to watch the house of cards start to fall. For those new to this story, it started with SCO suing Novell and having all its motions decided in summary judgement and went to trial only on Novell's counter claims. Cheers to PJ for keeping us informed!"
The judge said something like "Pay the 2.5 million dollar fee you c*** ....."
The question is: Will Novell be able to collect?
Aren't they already bankrupt? So this money will come from where? Damn limited liability.Is there any way they can they go after the shareholders in any meaningful way once the company folds?
that they can't pay in SCO stock :) (or whatever moniker they go by now, pink slips or something to that effect).
MP3 Search Engine
So Novell get $2.5m instead of $20m, does this mean SCO may survive this?
"Importantly, the court ruled that Novell has no right to any royalties from UnixWare or OpenServer sales by SCO, which is where the bulk of SCO's revenue is earned," SCO said in the statement. "This is also an important step forward in the capitalization and reorganization plan for SCO that will allow us to emerge from Chapter 11. We continue to disagree with the premise of this trial and believe that Novell is not owed anything, but that they have interfered with SCO's UNIX rights."
From their statement they seem relatively upbeat on what must of been a bad day for them.
It hints that Novell owns the SVRX code that SCO sold to MS - does this mean that MS will now sue?
Interesting times...
that 17 year old girl on Maury Povich's horrible show that goes through 20 different men trying to find the father of her kid. Give it up already!
<Nelson>Ha-Ha!</Nelson>
we finally get to watch the house of cards start to fall
Sadly, I think not. More likely, SCO will just find another deck of cards and carry on playing for some time.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
The whole thing has been a farse from start to end. That SCO has been allowed to continue this long without any evidence to back their claims up are insane. At the very least they should have been compelled to show some tangible evidence before the whole fishing expedition begun. The real stink begun when they could go on even after the extremely deep discoveries couldnt show any evidence at all that any code whatsoever came from SCO, not even "their own" code.
Something is just fishy about how the court system has handled all this.
HTTP/1.1 400
does this judgment break through the bankruptcy protections?
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Greater proof of God's existence hath no man ever before presented!
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Had they any sense, they would've stopped their compulsive litigation when it became apparent they were no good at it. Obviously they are just incapable of seeing how stupid they appear.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
now, let's cross our fingers against the RIAA.
They will obviously pay in Linux CPU licenses. I hear they're worth $699.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
In a perfect world, someone, oh lets call them Angry Alien Productions would produce "SCO vs Everyone, in 30 seconds By Bunnies"
For those new to this story
Welcome to slashdot! I advise you to leave now while you still can.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I remember reading the latest SCO headlines when I was in the college computer labs back in 2003. I thought, "It's amazing that this has gone on so long... surely it will end soon." Five years later, it seems like lifetimes ago. Now, I doubt that this will ever end.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The first series of lawsuits by SCO are the ones that are to answer the question of whether linux, BSD or contain code from the real UNIX code (i.e. code originally created by AT&T)
The second set of lawsuits (mostly being fought between SCO and Novell) is to answer the question of who owns the UNIX copyrights, who has what rights to them and which of the deals done over the code are valid and which aren't as well as who owes who how much money
... and Ron Hovsepian gets his lawn mowed twice a week.
Nothing says says cheers to PJ like donating to help her keep the site running! Left side, your choice, Paypal or Amazon. Just sayin.....
What the judgment does is to set the amount of money SCO owes to Novell. That information goes into the bankruptcy.
An important detail is that the money SCO owes Novell was never SCO's. SCO was handling the money as an agent. It was always Novell's money. Judge Kimball ruled that SCO had breached its fiduciary duty and had unjustly enriched itself. If I understand correctly, that means Novell gets its money and then the other creditors get to fight over what's left.
The other thing that many have pointed out is that Novell will probably be awarded their lawyer fees. That amount will far eclipse the money Kimball has ruled on so far.
Tell her to start warming up. We're almost ready, but it's going to take a bit longer.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I like to think of the SCO/Novell debacle like this classic Monty Python sketch - with Michael Palin being SCO & John Cleese being Novell...
Fish Slapping Dance
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The ruling that sent the SCOundrels into bankruptcy court last year confirmed that the deal Caldera inherited from Santa Cruz Operation did *NOT* transfer copyrights from Novell, just gave rights to develop new code from it (i.e. Unixware) and act as Novell's collection agent on existing licenses. The current management (using the term *VERY* loosely), seeing their x86-UNIX business sinking, sued their former development partner, IBM, assuming they'd get a quick payoff to shut up and go away. Big surprise when IBM unleashed their lawyers right back at them. The present fiaSCO has ensued, only getting better when they tried to sue Novell for actually claiming the copyrights SCO was trying to use, which led to today's ruling.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
This is independent of any legal action that the SEC or the local AG may decide to take.
This is like out of Austin Power. Was the judge cryogentically frozen for the last 30 years?
2.5 million dollars sounds awfully low.
I think the judge may have been saysing well the rights belong to Novell and to make this contractually clear I'm going to charge you a deminimus fine.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Maybe SCO can just give them 3,576 licenses for the Linux kernel.
SCO got off easy... this time. But the next shoe to drop will be if Novell sues Sun over OpenSolaris and Sun invokes the indemnity clause in its agreement with SCO. Then SCO will be on the hook.
The current judgment of $2.5M is practically nominal in the big picture. A large investor could cover that and SCO would escape a death sentence. SCO, or some version of it, is likely to survive for another day.
This is likely bad news for OpenSolaris and Sun. Novell now has Sun over a barrel. Sun was able to open source Solaris because it thought it bought a license from SCO to have free-and-clear rights to the SysV parts in Solaris. According to the decision, in 1994 Novell & Sun agreed for a 20-year non-disclosure on release of UNIX source code. That runs out in 2014. SUN then amended this with SCO to remove the non-disclosure. The last sentence on page 20 of the decisions says, "Absent the removal of the 1994 Sun Agreement's Confidentiality restrictions, Sun would not have been licensed to publically release the OpenSolaris source code". And on page 36k "In the 2003 Sun Agreement, SCO renegotiated a contract and expanded Sun's rights to technology still owned by Novell". Later on the same page "The court thus concludes and declares that SCO was without authority to enter into the 2003 Sun Agreement....".
Novell now has a HUGE stick to beat over Sun's head. OpenSolaris has basically been declared illegal.
If I remember correctly, Novell has declared that they are done suing over UNIX. So Sun might be off the hook. However, if Novell is not so gracious and sues Sun over OpenSolaris. Sun will loose and will seek for SCO to indemnify it. SCO won't have the money. Then SCO will finally die.
For those that have been following this saga, we finally get to watch the house of cards start to fall.
Start? I thought the house of cards fell in early 2003. That's when the lawsuit dropped, and at that same moment most of the employees of SCO and about 75% of the world's clueless tech pundits mistook conjecture and cognitive dissonance for business wisdom and impending legal victory. The rest of us started laughing at this charade almost immediately. But then, we read the facts.
What I really want to know at this point is what the oh-so-knowledgeable and unbiased expert analyst Laura DiDio has to say about this. After all, she had seen code snippets that made her come away thinking SCO really had a strong case. Later she said that "you'd have to be really crazy to try and sue IBM if you didn't have something."
Since she has also claimed "these people" (people involved with Linux) are "living in an alternative reality," I'm curious about Ms. DiDio's views on reality today.
Of course, I have to admit that Ms. DiDio, renowned IT expert with no IT or computer science training, does know something about "living in an alternative reality" (Ms. DiDio's part comes at the top of the 2nd page).
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
" Cheers to PJ for keeping us informed!"
IMHO he is less biased. I can form my own opinion, I do not need one provided for me.
I believe they are required to deposit an appeal bond in the amount of the judgment before they are allowed to appeal. They may still be able to manage that, but it's most likely going to be a matter for the bankruptcy judge...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
As an aside, I'm surprised that Novell didn't ask Sun to testify in court about what they thought they paid for. I guess this may be due to potential conflict-of-interest (since Sun open-sourced Solaris based on a license SCO didn't have the authority to give them, they are now in trouble with Novell over this).
HA-HA!
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Even if you knew the whole thing was bullshit ... given the 'mericun legal system track record for microwaved microwaved cats and hot McDonald's coffee ... who the hell knows what could have happened ...
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
(nod to George Carlin)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Earlier this year, there was news that someone was putting $100m into SCO: see http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2209808/sco-back-business Quote: "(SNCP) and unnamed Middle Eastern investors. The money will take the company out of bankruptcy protection and turn it into a private concern. "We saw a tremendous investment opportunity in SCO and its vast range of products and services, including many innovations ready, or soon to be ready, to be released into the marketplace," said Stephen Norris, managing partner at SNCP." Here's a pretty good summary if you haven't followed the story (but it doesn't mention the Bad News): http://www.heise-online.co.uk/features/SCO-vs-Linux-mixed-reactions-to-Novell-Unix-copyright-verdict--/110819
Does anybody remember Microsoft's role in this? Perhaps they should pony up the $2.5M
Best regards.
Novell should be in front of the line and get their money before the others split up the remaining. Delaware jurisdiction makes this less likely, though.
With any luck that should mean the books will stay in the red. With a debt hanging over the company that should chase off any future "investors". The money should simply bounce right out of SCO's account and go straight to Novell.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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There's your skulking, bloodsucking animated carcass, and then there's vampires.
These bottom-feeders should have been sent to their corporate grave years ago, but keep coming back for One More Try. Hopefully this latest ruling really is the stake-in-the-heart they've had coming.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
Well, it still makes me wonder what were they thinking.
"seeing their x86-UNIX business sinking, sued their former development partner, IBM, assuming they'd get a quick payoff to shut up and go away. Big surprise when IBM unleashed their lawyers right back at them." is _weird_ plan, considering that IBM actually prided itself on not giving in to such claims. IBM's lawyers have been at various times compared to the Nazgul, or it was claimed that IBM could darken the skies with them. And it's shown before that it's not affraid to use it. In fact, that it makes a point to use them to maximum devastation effect, to discourage other parasites from trying to extort them. It's not even a matter of conjecture or correlation, it's IBM's policy.
So hoping that IBM would just fold down is... surrealistic. It's a bit like me taking my scrawny nerd ass to the heavyweight boxing champion and going, "hey, pretty boy, hand over the wallet or I'm punching you in the nose." And hanging around to insist on it, instead of scramming while he's laughing his ass off.
And if it were just Darl, I'd probably reach for good ol' Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity." But his legal council also seemed to have no problem with it, and at least two different investor groups paid good money to fund this farce. Even if it were just PHBs who got wooed by being shown "#include " lines as infringing code in Linux, they have legal departs they can go and ask first. It just doesn't add up.
Were those contracts _that_ ambiguously written, that _nobody_ knew who really owns Unix until a judge scratched his/her head and decided it? I doubt it.
So I'm wondering what was the _real_ game there. The whole legal farce was probably just means to the real end, or maybe just a diversion. So what was it? Who made a buck out of it, and/or who paid for this expensive distraction?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Does /. have a Icon for beating a dead horse because right now the SCO horse has been beaten to death to the point even the flies that are around the carcus are also beating the dead horse too.
There's no Freedom like UFP-dom
The rulings did not discourage them from offering Linux licenses at $699 a pop. Go to their website, click Legal, click Software Licensing Information on the right, click SCO IP Protection Program on the right, and you will end up here: http://sco.com/scosource/license_program.html
> Aren't they already bankrupt? So this money will come from where? Damn limited liability.Is there any way they can they go after the shareholders in any meaningful way once the company folds?
The bankruptcy court ordered the case to continue to decide how much SCO owes. This debt will then get sorted out with all the others in bankruptcy court.
But you're right--they're doing everything they can to squander their remaining cash before they pay anyone. They probably won't have a dime left by the end of this, though that hasn't stopped them from trying to split the company in two: one with all the assets, the other with all the debts, so that they can continue their crazy lawsuits against IBM.
It seemed that the judge made it quite clear that he was tilting the ruling in SCO's favor. He explained precisely why he was legally compelled to determine the dollar amount in a way that was favorable to Novell (agency, burden of proof, blah blah blah). But then he turned around and pulled out a dollar value that was generous to SCO. It was practically a roadmap to Novell showing how they could get millions more if they appealed (not that they are likely to receive a penny anyway). I read it that he was sending a message to SCO that if they appealed they would be most likely to lose significantly more money.
If there is no statute of limitations on murder, and possibly none on attempted murder, then SCO and microsoft should be found guilty of attempted corporate and non-corporate business murder. They colluded and attempted to not only run out of business but attempted to destroy/murder off Open Source.
So, microsoft and its board and its then-sitting execs should pony up.
Hopefully, Open Source will live long and continue to be disruptive, drag down hegemonic corporations, and free up a lot of people, institutions, companies, and educational facilities needing to save money. But, it'll ONLY get better for Open Source if Open Source gets professional image cleaning on user interfaces and purges lame-ass apps/product names.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Well, as the usual excuse goes: free will. Humans are allowed to decide for themselves what they want to do, even something evil or bloody stupid, so Lucas too can decide to unflict Jar Jar upon millions of innocents ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Novell unambiguously owns the copyright to SVRX Unix as a whole. They just as clearly do not own copyright to each line of code individually. Some undetermined amount of it is covered under copyrights that expired or were not registered properly or whatever. If Novell wanted to beat Sun up over opening solaris, they would have to start doing intense historical investigations of every single line of code to determine whether is covered under a valid copyright or whether it had entered the public domain or was not copyrightable expression in the first place.
Neither Novell or Sun would win anything in this sort of warfare. They might argue terms, like more money or even not allowing Sun to update opensolaris, but an extended lawsuit would not be in anyone's interests.
Other than that, Novell didn't want this to drag on. Should they have spent months of time and millions of dollars on lawyers dragging Sun into this? At most they would have been awarded a few million more dollars, which they probably will never get anyway.
Remember that Novell dropped a bunch of claims they could have won easily just to make the trial simpler and shorter. I am not a judge (duh), but I would say the ruling was engineered to make sure that SCO would be sure to lose more money if they appeal. Stopping SCO from appealing is worth more than a few million to Novell.
Given the money funneled in from Baystar on the recommendations of someone at MS, given the barely-disguised FUD money paid by Sun, who at the time were in one of their Linux-is-TEH-3V1L! phases, the idea of claiming Linux was encumbered and Not Suitable for Business was pretty obvious. Recall this was also the time of the attempt to show Linux was a ripoff of Minix by the opinion-for-hire deTocqueville Institute, whose funding also came in large part from MS. The money they threw SCOX to make Linux look bad was chump change. This provided them material to point their potential defectors-to-Linux at with arms-length deniability.
What they apparently didn't plan on was the strength of the grassroots response from the developer community to undo the PR spin. If anything, the result has been to strongly validate the Linux ecosystem as a safe bet.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
SCOsource also open sourced "Ancient Unix". This supposedly unencumbered the orginal classic vi, which is widely used (according to the oracle of true that is wikipedia). Now it might be encumbered again. Time to check the CVS repositories and see which version you are shipping.
Fourtunately, there are lots of libre free alternates (like nvi and vim).
This case should have been shutdown five years ago. SCOX has *NEVER* shown any infringing code, has been shown *NOT* to own the copyrights they're claiming were infringed, has dragged out all of the countersuits, and then ran to the BK court when the rulings all started falling against them. MS and Sun have kept the corpse propped up and twitching in an attempt to keep folks from jumping to Linux on commodity x86 hardware and detracting from their market.
At this point the flies have joined in beating the dead horse for wasting their time along with everyone else's.
SCOX(Q) DELENDA EST!!
Noted flackalyst Rob Enderle needs to weigh in on this ruling too. He's often quoted and always wrong.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/couldof.html
Whether or not Sun was legally allowed to release the code they did in the format they did, the fact is that they did release it (and were acting in good faith, which will count for a lot even if this does go to court). Now that it's been released, no matter the circumstances, it means that other SYSV licensees are no longer required to keep SYSV code confidential.
From the standard SYSV licensing agreement, section 7.06(a):
"if information relating to a SOFTWARE PRODUCT subject to this Agreement at any time becomes available without restriction to the general public by acts not attributable to LICENSEE or its employees, LICENSEE'S obligations [to keep the code confidential] shall not apply to such information after such time."
So even if Sun ends up in legal hot water, the genie's out of the bottle at this point, and pretty much any SYSV licensee (e.g. IBM) should be able to make as much of the code public as they want at this point.
Don't forget to pay your $2,547,817 licensing fee you cock smoking teabaggers!
By the way has anyone seen SCO$699FeeTroll? It did become funny
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Sounds like good news, but what I don't get is why SCO's stock value doubled today. It closed at 0.29, up from 0.15 yesterday. WTF?
You're referring to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastination
Of which a display can be viewed here http://www.marcsteinmetz.com/pages/plastination/eplastination01.html
Warning the 2nd link is disturbing.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I don't think SCO has $2.5 million. I don't even think SCO has $2.50.
As many people have pointed out, the main instigators of this nonsense seem to have done quite well by cashing shares at the right time...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If Novell wants to keep selling their wares, they better behave.
We still remember the MS deal, it is not forgotten, but people are giving Novell the benefit of the doubt.
But then there is Mono, MS's patent trojan horse into the heart of Linux.
And prominent Novell employees (you know who) defending MS pushed pseudo "standards".
If Novell even tries to touch Solaris they would have very few friends in places that matter.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.