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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.
But at least that part is over. There's still a little cleaning up to do but this one could be over and done with finally this summer. If you like Groklaw, head over and give PJ a pat on the back for her long perseverence.
Congrats to Novell's legal team.
/SCO die,die,die!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
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:
Aaaaand we shouldn't forget the other interested parties. Who knows why Microsoft would fund a litigious shell of a company, but those who forget it are likely to suffer if they start trusting Microsoft too much.
Qxe4
"It's taken 7 years, but the US court system has eventually done the right thing..."
This. Is a contradiction. Justice delayed is justice denied. Always.
yes, the brains should be quite valuable, never having been used
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"
No doubt this is the last we will ever hear of any of this.
What are you doing? Trying out lines for cheesy movie dialog?
[Novell stands over the fallen body of SCO]
Novell: No doubt this is the last we will ever hear of any of this. Come on everybody, let's go home
[As Novell turns and walks off, the hand of SCO twitches slightly and we hear a sinister laugh.]
[Cut to credits]
Summation 2
This has been a Microsoft smear campaign again Linux all along, and it's not over. Why do you think that MS has been funding the entire thing?
' 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.
You forgot Slashdot dupes!
http://www.linux.org/news/2004/03/12/0006.html
I've only been waiting six years to post this.
Fuck PJ. She's a publicity whore no better than Darl. Shameless publicity whore. She profited in a grand way from this too-doo. Point. Of. Fact.
And "who is PJ"? Just some Small Town Paralegal *that just happened to be interested in Linux*? - YEAH RIGHT. I got a bridge.
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.
Even if your claims about PJ were true (and I do say if) what difference would it make? Why do you care? Why are you so angry?
Can you point out anything that PJ posted that is not true, or not fair?
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?
In addition to the Baystar involvement, Microsoft paid SCO $6M (USD) in May 2003 for a license to "Unix and Unix-related patents", despite the lack of Unix-related patents owned by SCO
Now, go away you Microsoft apologist.
Qxe4
Ah, shaddap and be happy for once. You can go back to playing prophet-of-doom tomorrow :D
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
While it may hold true for quick-change artists, it won't stop true sociopaths like Darl McBride.
Scammers like McBride believe that everyone is as evil as they are, and that if someone else failed, that they just weren't smart enough. Their rationale goes something like "I can see what they did wrong, so therefore I'm smarter than they are, so *my* scam will succeed!"
Just like career criminals - fines, prison sentences etc. don't act as a deterrent - they do it because they don't believe they'll be caught.
To this day, Darl believes that IBM is guilty of *something* - and that he only failed because IBM played dirty (see this troll for the "dirty tricks" that IBM used.) The dirty tricks that Darl himself used? (Lies, threats, the entire lawsuit) He believes they were justified because he needed something to fight IBM with.
There is nothing that will stop a sociopath from being a sociopath. If there was, they wouldn't be sociopaths.
...that even a lay-person jury could see that SCO's case was worthless. I'm a lawyer, and I'm here to state the obvious: juries take longer than 8 hours to decide many petty theft cases. Trustee Cahn, who is effectively running SCO, needs to wake up and smell SCO's dead feet. SCO is dead, dead, dead I say!
Follow The Money Mike Anderer March 2004
An e-mail from consultant Mike Anderer to SCO's Chris Sontag revealing Microsoft's channeling of US$ 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.
"No doubt this is the last we will ever hear of any of this."
You fool! You've doomed us all!
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!