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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.
Hurray! Just in time for Novell to be bought out by Microsoft.
...is like declaring victory because you're the last person to hit the ground in the plane crash. How much has this cost Novell and IBM in real $$'s? With SCO bankrupt how can either expect to recoup any of the 7 years of court costs?
Error:
It died alright: http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=SCOXQ
How many times have we pronounced the SCO lawsuits dead? I think its more times than Freddy Krugger has been brought back to life. I think Freddy said it best to Jason: "Why won't you die?"
There's actual volume. Who the hell is *buying* it? Some badly programmed robot?
Wonder who will do their bidding next?
NOVELL
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
What about when Novell starts abusing their position? Maybe not now, maybe not in a few years, but you never know what happens or who buys what company..
I realize you were making a joke (and a funny one at that) but, let's be serious - the people behind thing (Darl first and foremost among them) made TONS of money off of this. To imply that he (and his ilk) are stupid is missing the point. Just because he ran his business into the ground doesn't mean that he's run his own finances into the ground. Who cares about the success or failure of a company when you're sipping champagne on your yacht?
Which is exactly why the AC called Frosty Piss on his bullshit, and why I was backing him up. Get it? You just argued against Frosty's original argument. He called PJ a shill.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
position? Maybe not now, maybe not in a few years, but you never know what happens or who buys what company..
Hopefully by then software patents will be invalidated.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You will, when the former employees and stockholders of the company you ran into the ground forcibly board your yacht and perform an impromptu keel-hauling.
What does it matter in the least if PJ is simply a cover for a team of IBM lawyers. The fact remains that SCO's claims were bullcrap. Attacking PJ hardly makes SCO's claims better. It's just a way pathetic SCO and MS shills like you, doubtless paid to come here and mouth this kind of shit, to attack the messenger.
What makes me laugh is you've probably got a pile of SCO stock which is rapidly approaching the same value per unit as a piece of two-ply toilet paper.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The interesting part about that is that Darl himself stated that they didn't need the copyrights. It's quoted in the Groklaw report on his testimony. Basically, they got all the same rights as HP (HP-UX), IBM (AIX), and others who rolled their own Unix. They didn't need the copyrights and proving that should be trivial at this point.
Who the heck would let someone short SCO? I mean, for there to be a short, someone has to be holding them. At 50c a share, SCO was probably still wildly overvalued. Really, the only way that SCO was going to recover was with a court victory, and while the probability of that wasn't 0, it was as damn near to it as possible for practical applications.
The ______ Agenda
The interesting part about that is that Darl himself stated that they didn't need the copyrights. It's quoted in the Groklaw report on his testimony. Basically, they got all the same rights as HP (HP-UX), IBM (AIX), and others who rolled their own Unix. They didn't need the copyrights and proving that should be trivial at this point.
The problem with this is that if SCO can roll up their own Unix, so can everyone else. If SCO can so can IBM so SCO loses.
I agree it's not over though, SCO will be around for some tyme to come.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
He's ruined the credibility of a geek lawyer firm, he's possibly bankrupted the financiers of both sides, he's crippled the firms that ponied up the Linux license fee, he's turned many IT managers insane and/or paranoid delusional, and he's ruined the credibility of some sectors of the IT press.
Doesn't matter that he lost the case, the collateral damage is stupendous. If you assume he had demonic intent, rather than merely evil intent, this is the perfect outcome.
Winning might actually have been less demonic, as it would have meant he could pay people back. As it stands, there's not a chance in hell he'll even be able to pay the court costs, never mind anyone else. Thus, enormous sums of money have simply vanished, to all intents and purposes.
This means those companies involved in the case have suffered Seven years of famine. Literally, a disaster of Biblical proportions.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Some idiot had to be the last man to buy the shares. Whyever they did it, they still held them. On top of that, any broker will let you borrow any shares any of their clients have, so long as there's enough of them in the brokerage to avoid naked shorting rules.
Also, in some rarely traded stocks they'll help you find someone who will let you borrow them for a fee. That was likely the best way to make money holding SCO in the past few years.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Well, no. Not all programs on a SUSE disk ares GPLed and not all GPLed code is on SUSE disks.
Further more, there is absolutely nothing indicating that Novel has inspected any code in the kernel or any other part of the SUSE disk pretending to be GPLed but was actually Unix code improperly included. The fact that they distributed something is not enough to take their copyrights away. The GPL does not, let me repeat that, _the_GPL_does_not_steal or trick someone out of their copyrights.
Now, if Novel was fully away that the code was there and it was their by proxy of being Unix code and then consented to distributing it under the GPL, then yes, the GPL would propagate. But the point is that Novel would have to be aware that A: it was their code and not code belonging to the person who included it and licensed it under the GPL, and B: that their distribution was actually distributing their code under the GPL and not relaying code with the rights given to them.
In short, unless Novell knows the code it there and consents to it being under the GPL, then it's not under the GPL legally and their unknowing distribution of it doesn't place it there. The only way it can be placed under the GPL is if Novell adds it or consciously makes it so. The GPL does not trick anyone out of their property.
This issue has been brought up in courts by SCO for many years. Novell is fully aware of what's going on. There is no way they could claim ignorance.
This is especially true since the extent of any alleged infringement has never been extended past some numeric constants in "errno.h". There is no question that parties on all sides of this dispute have pored over that file at length.
I'm sure that Novell is fully aware of the claims of Unix IP in Linux made by SCO and most likely know what those are too. However, the way they could claim ignorance is if I added Unix code tomorrow or if something wasn't noticed, disclosed or talked about before now or it simply wasn't in the packages they distributed. That's why I initially started with "Not necessarily true" instead of "you are wrong".
The point is that there has to be a knowing consent component in order for their distribution to be a granting of a license per the GPL. Otherwise, it would be them passing on the license they received.
And yes, I do know that SCO's claim of Unix IP in Linux was not only shoddy but lacking severely. I'm not questioning that at all. I'm just stating that something could still pop up and bite us because of Unix IP in Linux if it is ever there. Novell's participation in GPL'ed products doesn't automatically imply their consent so each and every time there is a claim, it needs to be looked at carefully.
There are people who believe things out of spite. Remember when the SCO case got started? There were plenty of folks -- chiefly in the "open-source haters" end of the trade press, but I met a few in industry, too -- who dearly wanted to see the "upstart" Linux smacked down hard.
It may be hard to believe it now that Linux is everywhere in the industry -- from the datacenter to the cell phone, from the Oracle database server to the displays on the backs of airplane seats -- but just a few years ago, plenty of people would have called you an "open-source zealot" if you said that it was worth using anywhere at all in business. And lots of traditional business people really wanted to see Linux dry up and blow away. Plenty of those people would have put hope, and a few bucks, behind the SCO suit.