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Novell Wins vs. SCO
Aim Here writes "According to Novell's website, and the Salt Lake Tribune, the jury in the SCO v. Novell trial has returned a verdict: Novell owns the Unix copyrights. This also means that SCO's case against IBM must surely collapse too, and likely the now bankrupt SCO group itself. It's taken 7 years, but the US court system has eventually done the right thing ..." No doubt this is the last we will ever hear of any of this.
Unless someone finds a way to remove Darl's vocal cords we'll have not heard the last of this by any stretch of the imagination...
We're doomed to hear SCO's moanings until DNF is released.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
There are several important ruling that need to occur. There is still at issue a decision of "Specific Performance", where SCO has made an argument that if the Jury says the APA + admendments did not constitute an official transfer of copyrights, that Novell should be required to create such a document to transfer the copyrights since they are "needed".
Unfortunately for SCO's theory on this, old SCO didn't need the copyrights for their business, which is what was sold to new SCO, and Darl himself testified that the business can be run without the copyrights (statements he made after the FIRST time Novell was told they owned the copyrights by the previous Judge in this case). The wording is also to the effect of "copyrights needed at the time of this APA", which is BEFORE the SCOSource business was conceived to sue Linux users. And then you also have to deal with the fact that "Specific Performance" is only enforced when the party requesting "Specific Performance" has itself performed to the letter of the contract, which there is already case law and verdict on file that SCO has not done so, by not remitting the portion of the license buy-out from Sun and the SCOSource license to Microsoft which were both found to be SYSV Unix licenses, not solely UnixWare licenses (as SCO would change their story afterwards when realizing they were contractually required to remit 95% of the funding SYSV licenses to Novell and not keep it for themselves, and after they have filed to the SCC that they were Unix licenses not UnixWare... one of the stumbling blocks they hit when trying to claim otherwise later).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Reasonable people understand that PJ works for IBM. Reasonable people understand that there is no "PJ", that IBM spun up a screen name and went to town.
Reasonable people understand that evidence is necessary to back up their spurious claims.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
' The former federal judge overseeing The SCO Group's bankruptcy said a jury decision today that Novell Inc., and not SCO, owns the copyrights to the Unix computer operating system does not end the company's litigation against others.
Former U.S. District Judge Edward Cahn, the trustee for SCO's bankruptcy filed in Delaware, said the company is "deeply disappointed" in the jury's verdict in the dispute over which company owned the copyrights to Unix, which is widely used in business computing.
But Cahn said SCO intends to continue its lawsuit against IBM, in which the computer giant is accused of using Unix code to make the Linux operating system a viable competitor, causing a decline in SCO's revenues.
"The copyright claims are gone, but we have other claims based on contracts," Cahn said. '
So, a victory, but not quite the end. Still, my money's on IBM...
"Cahn said SCO intends to continue its lawsuit against IBM"
Keep in mind that USL vs BSDI settlement (secret and first published on GROKLAW), did not give the IP or copyrights for all of Unix to USL (USL was owned by Novell at the time of the settlement). The settlement when made public showed us that indeed much of Unix was not proprietary at all. So, it is no wonder that Novell didn't transfer to Santa Cruz Operations, as they didn't have all the marbles to transfer, so they didn't want everyone to know this, so they didn't transfer any (otherwise, then they would have to let the world know about the USL vs BSDI settlement (and everyone then would stop paying any money to Novell or any UNIX tax collector)... when BSD was free !
So - saying that Novell has all the IP marbles in the Unix world, and that Novell OWNS the Unix copyrights (all of them), is not exactly correct.
Reasonable people understand that PJ works for IBM. Reasonable people understand that there is no "PJ", that IBM spun up a screen name and went to town.
Yes, but intelligent people at least look stuff up before spouting unsubstantiated claims.
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7673520174.html
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/IBM-621-E19.pdf
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
In addition to the Baystar involvement, Microsoft paid SCO $6M (USD) in May 2003 for a license to "Unix and Unix-related patents", despite the lack of Unix-related patents owned by SCO
Now, go away you Microsoft apologist.
Qxe4
Follow The Money Mike Anderer March 2004
An e-mail from consultant Mike Anderer to SCO's Chris Sontag revealing Microsoft's channeling of US$ 86 million to SCO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Halloween_documents_leak
On Monday, court documents from the ongoing court case between IBM and SCO claimed Microsoft had encouraged financial firm BayStar to invest in SCO. The claim was made by BayStar founder Larry Goldfarb, who said Microsoft's vice president of corporate development and strategy, Richard Emerson, had offered to underwrite BayStar's own investment in SCO.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/more-microsoft-sco-links-emerge-339271604.htm
Has Microsoft's money been a significant resource for the financially ailing SCO?
Without a doubt. In early 2003, Microsoft started paying SCO what eventually grew to $16.6 million for a Unix license, according to regulatory filings. Only longtime Unix fan Sun Microsystems previously paid close to that, with a $9.3 million license deal.
Microsoft provided a second, though indirect, boost in August or September of 2003, when it referred SCO to BayStar Capital, a fund that arranged a $50 million investment.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-139743.html
There is a lot more evidence, but I will leave further research up to you.
Judge Kimball split that bit off from the rest of the case since by the contract the matter is subject to arbitration. The arbitration was stayed by the Bankruptcy Court (it had been scheduled to run in parallel with the jury trial in Utah), but can now go forward.
In fact, the stuff of most interest to Linux users is still to come! The bulk of Novell was about copyrights and SCO-as-fiduciary. Without evidence of infringement, these are directly of interest to Linux users. But the GPL is about to get a hearing. That is of considerable interest!
You can't take the sky from me!