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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.
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.
"finds a way to remove Darl's vocal cords"?
There are several ways to do that which are quite well known. It's a testament to our community that no-one has implemented any.
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?
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?
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
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!