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SCO v. Novell Goes To the Jury
Excelcia writes "Closing arguments in the six and a bit year old slander of title case between SCO and Novell occurred today and the case is finally in the hands of the jury. It's been an interesting case, with SCO alternately claiming that the copyrights to UNIX did get transferred to them, and that the copyrights should have been transferred to them. 'Judge Ted Stewart said, after the jury left to begin to deliberate, that in all his years on the bench, he's never seen such fine lawyering as in this case.' We're not going to find out the results until at least Tuesday, however, as one juror is taking a long weekend. Great lawyering notwithstanding, we can all hope next week that the Energizer bunny of all spurious lawsuits will finally go away."
Die! Die! Die! Why won't you just fuckin die?!?!
The jury portion of the trial started on March 8 (link is to a PDF).
I don't know about Linux, but BSD definitely contained Unix code from USL, and vice-versa. They settled out of court. Should ever SCO decided to go after BSD, it would open a big can of worms. More details can be found in The Unix Heritage Society and Bitsavers Archives.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
The language of the courtroom is a mix of legal jargon and programmer jargon, glued together with the English of people who went to graduate school. To the jury it's a bunch of babble.
Once you ignore all that, you're left with a sob story. The little guy is hurt. Obviously, money is required. People don't sue unless somebody else did something bad, and the trial only requires a likelyhood for a win, so there you go. SCO wins.
There is a reason SCO demanded a jury.
sounds frightening doesn't it? hence the reason SCO didn't even think about attacking BSD, and instead went after linux users like IBM, because IBM was soft in comparision even though i believe there is a quote from IBM somewhere that states they will "turn the skies over utha black with lawyers" before they let SCO win.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
1. Since settlement was not disclosed at the time, BSD development continued with 4.4-Lite, that was specifically created to exclude everything that was disputed with USL.
2. This can of worms WAS opened during SCO saga, and resulted in the whole thing being disclosed to the publuc. Basically, USL secretly agreed to stop being a bunch of assholes.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Since this lawsuit started...
I got an undergraduate degree in math.
I got a master's degree in physics.
I got a doctoral degree in physics.
I got a dog and a cat.
I meet a wonderful woman.
I married her.