Yahoo Sues Mozilla For Breach of Contract -- So Mozilla Counter Sues Yahoo (betanews.com)

Mark Wilson writes: Mozilla and Yahoo have started a legal spat about the deal that existed between the two companies regarding the use of the Yahoo search engine in the Firefox browser. On December 1, Yahoo fired the first shot filing a complaint that alleges Mozilla breached a contract that existed between the two companies by terminating the arrangement early. In a counter complaint, Mozilla says that it was not only justified in terminating the contract early, but that Yahoo Holdings and Oath still have a bill that needs to be settled.

Comments

Termination under the contract

[jbmartin6]

A lot is redacted, and IANAL, but it seems like Yahoo et al don't believe Mozilla had the right to terminate the contract and Mozilla does. i.e. the contract itself included the option to terminate under certain conditions.

Re: Pissing War

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the CEO of Yahoo or the CEO of Mozilla trolling Slashdot?

The ghost of Marissa Mayer strikes again. When Mozilla signed their contract with Yahoo, she put in a clause that gives Mozilla the right to walk away from the deal at any time if they don't like whoever aquires Yahoo -- AND -- Yahoo would still have to pay Mozilla $375 Million a year till 2019.

I'm guessing that Yahoo's new corporate overlords at Verizon aren't happy about this.

Re: SCO lawyers

[DickBreath]

Point by point.

SCO was wrong. In too many ways to count. The court ruled in September 2007 that the copyright on "SCO's" code actually belonged to Novell. Novell had already released SCO's copyright claims earlier against IBM. The "code that is in Linux" is actually IBM's own home grown code. IBM wrote a filesystem called JFS for AIX, an implementation of Unix. Later IBM ported the JFS filesystem to OS/2. Later, IBM ported the OS/2 version of JFS to Linux. SCO claims that the JFS for AIX becomes AT&T copyrighted code because AT&T owned Unix. AT&T publicly claimed this was not the case, that if IBM or others wrote their own code and linked with licensed Unix, that they continued to own their own copyright on their own code. Therefore SCO claim against IBM is barred by promisary estoppel. (eg, you can't claim something publicly, as AT&T did, let others take business actions based on that promise, and then go back on it -- as SCO which claims to be AT&T's successor in the copyright interest in Unix.) The court ruled that SCO is NOT the successor in interest to the Unix copyright but Novell is. So SCO simply doesn't have standing to even bring the 2003 lawsuit. It took a separate trial (by Judge Alsup!) to positively confirm the ruling in Judge Kimball's court that ownership of the Unix copyrights belong to Novell, not SCO.

It is SCO that kept moving the goalposts, not open source community. SCO ammended it's complaint. Then again. And again. It tried to morph it's case into "methods and concepts" instead of copyright. It was SCO claiming that "code doesn't count" but rather "methods and concepts". The "methods and concepts" was a huge laughingstock on Y! SCOX stock boards for several years.

It was not IBM that kept dragging the case out, it was SCO. Clear back in 2003, IBM demanded SCO to produce the evidence of what SCO was claiming. If copyrighted code was in Linux, then produce exactly what Files, Versions and Lines of code that identify exactly what code SCO is suing over. SCO wouldn't IBM kept moving the court about this, and the court had to ORDER, THREE TIMES for SCO to produce some actual evidence. The third and final order was for SCO to disclose all allegedly misused materials by the FINAL deadline of Dec 22, 2005. SCO reluctantly produced a huge pile of hand waving and obfuscation. The magistrate threw 2/3 of this out without the primary trial judge even seeing it. The magistrate judge commented about the remaining 1/3 along the lines of: well, technically this is allowed but really? Is this trivial nonsense what you are claiming? (parphrased)

IBM tried to speed up the case by dropping IBM's four patent counterclaims. I forget which year that was in, maybe about 2005. But it was clearly SCO that kept dragging this out. Meanwhile SCO kept claiming very loudly and publicly that SCO was anxious for it's day in court. Finally, after several devastating rulings from the court, SCO was due to get it's day in court on a Monday. In 2007. I think it was Sept 17. On the Friday afternoon before the court date, SCO abruptly declared bankruptcy. Even though SCO was not actually insolvent. (what? bankruptcy fraud?) Then by gaming the bankruptcy court, SCO kept this farce alive for over ten years to this very day. The zombie corpse of this farcical fraud is still alive to this very day, stuck in appeals. But it looks like the end is near. SCO trolls are obviously still haunting various online forums.

SCO has done nothing but abuse the legal system with this farce.

I am only pointing out the highlights above. The tip of the iceberg. There is much, MUCH more beneath the surface for anyone who spent years following this outrageous nonsense.