you can write a contract which makes it legal (include a clause that if SCO is found not to have IP rights, they will refund the licence money).
I don't think there will be any refunds (assuming they get anyone to pay). I expect they will say something like
"This purchase is for UnixWare license, but also covers any SCO IP that may be found by a court to be present in Linux".
This way, they'll say you aren't entitled to a refund as you bought a Unixware license - and it's your problem if you're not using it.
P.S. My guess for the price of the license, $1500. I think they have to set the price high as 2 million X $1500 = $3bn. If they set it low, this might undermine their damages claim against IBM.
Later timing (after SCO/Caldera got Unix IP), and it looks like SCO/Caldera helping Linux goes at least well into 2002, hurts SCO/Caldera more - as the contribution looks more intentional - they had plenty of time to discover their mistake and do something about it - but instead continued on repeating and increasing the scope of the mistake.
In the 1st scenario, I gave, this part "Linux distributors would almost certainly not be liable to SCO/Caldera, as the infringement was a result of the actions of SCO/Caldera themselves", is I think the key part.
I think most courts are unlikely to like the alternative pro-SCO/Caldera argument, which is in short: "We messed up, so therefore we're entitled to damages from somebody else."
In longer form, that entire line of argument is equivalent to "we sold a bad product, we had the capability to make it better, we didn't, therefore our customers are liable to us"
And I think it far more likely a court would rule in the opposite direction (a vendor of a bad product is liable to their customers)
This is why the whole thing about SCO/Caldera promising not to sue their own customers for Linux seems such a joke. I mean, did they really consider going infront of a judge and say something like: "Your honor, we used to sell our Linux product. Company X bought it. We didn't realize what our Linux product, that we sold, contained. Yes it contained some of our stuff legally, but it also contained some of our stuff that was there for the last few years, but we didn't realize was in there, and which we didn't intend should be there. Therefore, company X should pay us damages for buying this Linux product from us!!!"
So personally, I think if SCO knowingly sold a bad product, they probably going to have a few problems...
Caldera purchased (most of) SCO not vice-versa. Caldera then renamed themselves The SCO Group.
IANAL, but I think timelines are irrelevant.
Assume for the sake of argument that all the "infringing" stuff came from SCO/Caldera. (this is not what SCO/Caldera claim, but just a what-if discussion to answer your post)
1. If SCO/Caldera contributed some kind of Unix IP to Linux, *before* SCO/Caldera acquired these rights, in this case: - for the period until SCO/Caldera owned the IP, Caldera might be liable to the then IP holder (presumably Novell) - for the period since SCO/Caldera owned the IP, SCO/Caldera would be liable to the current IP holder, er, that's SCO/Caldera Unix-type stuff to Linux infringing some Unix IP - Linux distributors might be liable to the prior IP holder (presumably Novell) - Linux distributors would almost certainly not be liable to SCO/Caldera, as the infringement was a result of the actions of SCO/Caldera themselves
2. If SCO/Caldera contributed some kind of Unix IP to Linux, *after* SCO/Caldera acquired these rights, in this case: - Linux distributors would almost certainly not be liable to SCO/Caldera, as the infringement was a result of the actions of SCO/Caldera themselves. In this case, if SCO/Caldera willingly contributed it, it would be hard to argue it was an infringement at all!
If he's not doing it for Caldera/SCO, why is he posting from a caldera.de email address and identifying himself as a Caldera employee?
Why does his job title basically describe him as a Caldera employee working on Linux?
Even if Caldera were to say he were doing it freelance:
(1) why do they allow him to use company resource (like email) to do it?
(2) doesn't the fact he is using caldera.de etc., make him a representative of the company?
and (3) even if you think the answer to 2 is no, isn't it completely reasonable for others (like Linus, IBM, etc) to assume he is doing with authorization of his employer given his email address, job title, etc.
While I agree with your interpretation being more likely if it was just mozillaquest and Blake Stowell, I think you also need to read McBride's comments in the context of the entire paragraph which he gives.
The most relevant part is "And C++ programming languages, we own those, have licensed them out multiple times, obviously. We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++. It was interesting to see the depth of Caldera's intellectual capital.".
Now that is ambiguous too, but it isn't clear to me that he isn't claiming C++
I'm no expert on these types of documents, so could be wrong in understanding it, but:
I'm pretty sure that is a stock option - he has not bought any yet.
Instead he has been granted the right to buy 45000 shares at $10.25 on 6/24/2004. As he is a brand new director, this is presumably part of his compensation package.
If SCO stock is worth more than $10.25 when the option vests, he makes money
If SCO stock is worth less than $10.25, the option is basically useless
I think the same general rules would apply if SCO is bought out.
I am not sure whether he retains the option if he leaves the company before the June 2004 date.
Personally, I don't think he got a great deal. If I were Skousen, I would have asked for 0.001 options vesting immediately (or in months not a year).
According to http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2003/city_2003-0 7-03.cfm [slweekly.com], Caldera bought DR-DOS $400K, but got from law suit $155,000,000.
As far as I know (I guess somebody could check) they didn't purchase the UNIX source, or value it in their SEC reports, for anything like $1bn, or $3bn, let alone $50bn... so how can they claim billions of damages, if they bought it for a few millions, and valued it of the same order?
2. I keep seeing patents in lots of news articles about the case. My understanding is the case is about alleged contractual violations, alleged trade secret issues and alleged unfair competition etc.,
So the obvious questions are:
- Is the press getting it wrong?
- If the press is indeed getting it wrong, why are they (and not just one news source) getting it wrong?
Darl McBride is flying over to Japan to try and put his case to the CE Linux Forum (CELF). This story also has some further comments by analysts, which give additional interesting hints about the allegedly infringing code.
How many million lines of code does an ordinary linux distribution have now? Claiming it was open is like expecting each and every customer to read every page of a 70 page EULA
As far as SCO is concerned - let's consider history of the company:
Let's assume for a moment there is SysV stuff wrongly added to Linux - purely for the purposes of debate:
1. Caldera were a public company company trading in Linux products, not even as an incidental part of the busines, but as the founding reason for the entire business. The offered consultancy on Linux. They made contributions to improving Linux. They sold their own Linux distro. They were supposed to be experts. They therefore should have known what they were doing!
I don't think that they told anybody (customers, investors, press) anything like "sorry we don't really understand this Linux thing, and haven't read the sources which we distribute".
No, for years, they gave the opposite impression - namely they understood Linux. If McBridge says it is "no-brainer" about code copying now - why was it not a no-brainer back in 2000???
2. I read somewhere they had 15 programmers working just on UnitedLinux. I can't verify this to be fact, but I don't doubt they had employees working on Linux. Did none of them notice for years? Did none of them raise it with managers for years?
If something is amiss in Linux source, why wouldn't SCO/Caldera have known a long time ago?
3. They are one of only a relative handful who could have known if anything was wrong. While other companies may have been involved in Linux and/or SysV - Caldera/SCO positioned themselves as a Linux/UNIX software company - and owned the sources for the latter. Additionally as owner of SysV codes, wouldn't they have a special responsibility?
4. Ransom Love gave a lot of interviews etc., back in 2000, about bringing Unix features to Linux, or even might be interpreted as gradually converging the two (I don't see he ever said merge). Did nobody working on this dream at SCO/Caldera - not look at the code bases - they've got both - and suddenly say - back in 2000 - "Hey Linux's already got this from Unix!"? If they didn't, they shouldn't they have? If they did, and SCO/Caldera didn't care until a couple of years later, doesn't that sound like acceptance?
I've read in various places: it's hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands.
The articles that I've seen by people who signed the NDA, suggest all they saw is about 80 lines. Of course, that doesn't mean there couldn't be more than 80 lines in dispute.
I guess how many lines you count, might depend on:
(a) what you're referring to (disputed code or common code)
and (b) whether you count the things which SCO didn't (as far as I know) claim to have developed, but which IBM contributed to Linux, and SCO seems to claim derivative rights on based on the claim they were in AIX before being in Linux.
This, of course, means that they don't understand the GPL. Nobody can redistribute GPL'ed software unless it is free and clear of non-GPL'ed intellectual property. The purpose of that clause is exactly to stop this kind of situation, where a company like SCO "latches onto" a successful open source project.
And while that may be the intent of the GPL, who is going to stop them?
If what I've read is true - I believe that SCO are still distributing Linux from their web site (although not selling it) - and this has been the situation for a while now. While apparently one kernel developer sent them a warning type e-mail about this according to a story at www.theinquirer.net, I'm not currently aware of anybody trying to enforce contract or copyright rights (that they might have on GPL software) against SCO.
I don't know what SCO's position on the GPL is now, but according to an article today, it does sound like they want to be paid licenses by companies using GPL software (Linux), even if they didn't get it from SCO:
And there's me thinking patents (and the patent system itself) are bad.
On Slashdot, they're only bad when used against any company except Microsoft.
I keep reading on Slashdot things like: Copyright and patent infringement are civil matters, not theft, the patent system is broken anyway, etc
But whenever Stacker is mentioned (and it does seem to be a very popular stick to beat MS's record with), patent infringement apparently is thought to be theft, and the patent system ain't so bad after all.
Oh come on, while I don't know the specifics of the Stac vs MS case... I still think, as a general opinion: Patenting sofware = Bad always, no matter who is the target.
Great publicity for the event, but apart from that, who cares?
I don't know about NZ, but where I live there (and it ain't silicon valley) there must be a dozen or more businesses in very easy distance which do CD mass duplication. So here's a tip: just ask somebody else.
"You go back to SCO's brand in the 1990s and it was Unix on Intel. SCO was primed to seize the multibillion-dollar server market of Unix on Intel that hit in the early 2000s that has in fact shifted over to Red Hat."
I think this seems to stand in stark contrast to SCO Group's (when trading as Caldera's) own words in 2001: Linux to surpass Unix 'within five years' - Caldera - which includes this quote '"In two to five years Linux will surpass where Unix is now," reckon Caldera.'
Read the article. After they got their Unix, they themselves seem to have thought and publicly said (a) Linux would soon overtake Unix. Even more interestingly, before they got their Unix, they seem to have thought and publicly said that (b) SCO's Unix product could easily be replaced by Linux: "When Caldera launched in the UK four years ago, it aimed both barrels at SCO's Open Server, telling us that it represented the low hanging fruit for its own OpenLinux distro"
What's especially interesting about that case, is when Caldera acquired DR-DOS it was already effectively destroyed and devalued, and presumably Caldera paid much less for it when they acquired it (like buying a car that's already wrecked from a scrapyard, and then suing whoever wrecked it, in my view).
The people who would have suffered any real damages from MS's conduct would have been primarily DR, and possibly Novell. But Caldera was the one who sued and ended up getting the settlement.
Actually MS would not claim this. Their whole strategy is to support ISVs develop for their platform, and they've been very successful at it. Bill Gates dreams about network efforts and VHS vs betamax (VHS wins cos more "applications" - i.e. rentals) for it, every night. Read any MS strategy paper, and they're all about this idea to sell it to upper management. This is why virtually all MS apps are both apps and development platforms (yes you can write an application in PowerPoint!).
When a horizontal app (something everybody uses) gets popular, MS pursue as a platform. However MS never mess with vertically apps, except by accident.
Some other company (say SCO) might however try this arguement. They see an app vendor making money "because of their platform", and want a slice. This might make money in the short-term, but in the long-term it is a DOOMED strategy, as every platform which is hostile to app-developers in this way, dies quickly.
Microsoft is on the target list, SCO said it in Byte. SCO have already shaken down MS once before, and MS would probably just settle.
If SCO was truly clever they would have gone after Microsoft first. Maybe they could build a case on BSD code in Windows. Lots of OSS people would cheer them on, and help SCO find material and arguments to support their claims. At the end of the case MS pays up, and SCO would have a precedent for controlling BSD-stuff which they could then sue against Linux, IBM, etc.
If I was MS I would be checking and double checking all my contracts with SCO. The Xenix stuff, the original license, and anything else, just to make sure there isn't some clause in there that SCO will later turn against MS.
Yahoo and MSN are *both* missing lots of info, there are many inside trades (not necessarily the illegal ones), see my 2 posts above with the sec.gov links.
Slashdot Mirror
you can write a contract which makes it legal (include a clause that if SCO is found not to have IP rights, they will refund the licence money).
I don't think there will be any refunds (assuming they get anyone to pay). I expect they will say something like "This purchase is for UnixWare license, but also covers any SCO IP that may be found by a court to be present in Linux".
This way, they'll say you aren't entitled to a refund as you bought a Unixware license - and it's your problem if you're not using it.
P.S. My guess for the price of the license, $1500. I think they have to set the price high as 2 million X $1500 = $3bn. If they set it low, this might undermine their damages claim against IBM.
Later timing (after SCO/Caldera got Unix IP), and it looks like SCO/Caldera helping Linux goes at least well into 2002, hurts SCO/Caldera more - as the contribution looks more intentional - they had plenty of time to discover their mistake and do something about it - but instead continued on repeating and increasing the scope of the mistake.
In the 1st scenario, I gave, this part "Linux distributors would almost certainly not be liable to SCO/Caldera, as the infringement was a result of the actions of SCO/Caldera themselves", is I think the key part.
I think most courts are unlikely to like the alternative pro-SCO/Caldera argument, which is in short: "We messed up, so therefore we're entitled to damages from somebody else."
In longer form, that entire line of argument is equivalent to "we sold a bad product, we had the capability to make it better, we didn't, therefore our customers are liable to us"
And I think it far more likely a court would rule in the opposite direction (a vendor of a bad product is liable to their customers)
This is why the whole thing about SCO/Caldera promising not to sue their own customers for Linux seems such a joke. I mean, did they really consider going infront of a judge and say something like: "Your honor, we used to sell our Linux product. Company X bought it. We didn't realize what our Linux product, that we sold, contained. Yes it contained some of our stuff legally, but it also contained some of our stuff that was there for the last few years, but we didn't realize was in there, and which we didn't intend should be there. Therefore, company X should pay us damages for buying this Linux product from us!!!"
So personally, I think if SCO knowingly sold a bad product, they probably going to have a few problems...
Caldera purchased (most of) SCO not vice-versa. Caldera then renamed themselves The SCO Group.
IANAL, but I think timelines are irrelevant.
Assume for the sake of argument that all the "infringing" stuff came from SCO/Caldera. (this is not what SCO/Caldera claim, but just a what-if discussion to answer your post)
1. If SCO/Caldera contributed some kind of Unix IP to Linux, *before* SCO/Caldera acquired these rights, in this case:
- for the period until SCO/Caldera owned the IP, Caldera might be liable to the then IP holder (presumably Novell)
- for the period since SCO/Caldera owned the IP, SCO/Caldera would be liable to the current IP holder, er, that's SCO/Caldera
Unix-type stuff to Linux infringing some Unix IP
- Linux distributors might be liable to the prior IP holder (presumably Novell)
- Linux distributors would almost certainly not be liable to SCO/Caldera, as the infringement was a result of the actions of SCO/Caldera themselves
2. If SCO/Caldera contributed some kind of Unix IP to Linux, *after* SCO/Caldera acquired these rights, in this case:
- Linux distributors would almost certainly not be liable to SCO/Caldera, as the infringement was a result of the actions of SCO/Caldera themselves. In this case, if SCO/Caldera willingly contributed it, it would be hard to argue it was an infringement at all!
If he's not doing it for Caldera/SCO, why is he posting from a caldera.de email address and identifying himself as a Caldera employee?
Why does his job title basically describe him as a Caldera employee working on Linux?
Even if Caldera were to say he were doing it freelance:
(1) why do they allow him to use company resource (like email) to do it?
(2) doesn't the fact he is using caldera.de etc., make him a representative of the company?
and (3) even if you think the answer to 2 is no, isn't it completely reasonable for others (like Linus, IBM, etc) to assume he is doing with authorization of his employer given his email address, job title, etc.
Mod parent up. This is pretty interesting and worth discussing too!
While I agree with your interpretation being more likely if it was just mozillaquest and Blake Stowell, I think you also need to read McBride's comments in the context of the entire paragraph which he gives.
The most relevant part is "And C++ programming languages, we own those, have licensed them out multiple times, obviously. We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++. It was interesting to see the depth of Caldera's intellectual capital.".
Now that is ambiguous too, but it isn't clear to me that he isn't claiming C++
I'm no expert on these types of documents, so could be wrong in understanding it, but:
I'm pretty sure that is a stock option - he has not bought any yet.
Instead he has been granted the right to buy 45000 shares at $10.25 on 6/24/2004. As he is a brand new director, this is presumably part of his compensation package.
If SCO stock is worth more than $10.25 when the option vests, he makes money
If SCO stock is worth less than $10.25, the option is basically useless
I think the same general rules would apply if SCO is bought out.
I am not sure whether he retains the option if he leaves the company before the June 2004 date.
Personally, I don't think he got a great deal. If I were Skousen, I would have asked for 0.001 options vesting immediately (or in months not a year).
I think, maybe SCO don't care what happened with BSD.
Perhaps I am totally misunderstanding their comments but I get the impression SCO seems to think they own C++ programming languages anyway.
As to this case, SCO now allege that IBM's support for Linux is killing Unix, but not too long ago, SCO discussed Unix's feature in their SEC filings.
Meanwhile, definitely worth checking out, there's a new S-3 filing by SCO
According to http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2003/city_2003-0 7-03.cfm [slweekly.com], Caldera bought DR-DOS $400K, but got from law suit $155,000,000.
http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle .jhtml?articleID=10818216
0 .html also has a SCO spokesman refering to patents
"McBride, who is fluent in Japanese, will visit with several founding members to show them code samples in which the Linux open-source operating system allegedly violates SCO's Unix patents, said an SCO spokesman"
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59551,0
Two things
0 7-03.cfm, Caldera bought DR-DOS $400K, but got from law suit $155,000,000.
e .jhtml?articleID=10818216
0 .html also has a SCO spokesman refering to patents
1. According to http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2003/city_2003-
As far as I know (I guess somebody could check) they didn't purchase the UNIX source, or value it in their SEC reports, for anything like $1bn, or $3bn, let alone $50bn... so how can they claim billions of damages, if they bought it for a few millions, and valued it of the same order?
2. I keep seeing patents in lots of news articles about the case. My understanding is the case is about alleged contractual violations, alleged trade secret issues and alleged unfair competition etc.,
http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticl
"McBride, who is fluent in Japanese, will visit with several founding members to show them code samples in which the Linux open-source operating system allegedly violates SCO's Unix patents, said an SCO spokesman"
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59551,0
So the obvious questions are:
- Is the press getting it wrong?
- If the press is indeed getting it wrong, why are they (and not just one news source) getting it wrong?
Slight off topic, but we haven't had a SCO story for a couple of days:
... "expected to hold a news conference 9 July": "It's unclear what SCO Group has in mind, but compensation and prevention of future code misuse are possibilities"
Next month, SCO will tell companies that use or distribute Linux, such as Red Hat Inc., that they need to buy a license, says McBride
"SCO Group will publicly discuss potential solutions"
Darl McBride is flying over to Japan to try and put his case to the CE Linux Forum (CELF). This story also has some further comments by analysts, which give additional interesting hints about the allegedly infringing code.
How many million lines of code does an ordinary linux distribution have now? Claiming it was open is like expecting each and every customer to read every page of a 70 page EULA
As far as SCO is concerned - let's consider history of the company:
Let's assume for a moment there is SysV stuff wrongly added to Linux - purely for the purposes of debate:
1. Caldera were a public company company trading in Linux products, not even as an incidental part of the busines, but as the founding reason for the entire business. The offered consultancy on Linux. They made contributions to improving Linux. They sold their own Linux distro. They were supposed to be experts. They therefore should have known what they were doing!
I don't think that they told anybody (customers, investors, press) anything like "sorry we don't really understand this Linux thing, and haven't read the sources which we distribute".
No, for years, they gave the opposite impression - namely they understood Linux. If McBridge says it is "no-brainer" about code copying now - why was it not a no-brainer back in 2000???
2. I read somewhere they had 15 programmers working just on UnitedLinux. I can't verify this to be fact, but I don't doubt they had employees working on Linux. Did none of them notice for years? Did none of them raise it with managers for years?
If something is amiss in Linux source, why wouldn't SCO/Caldera have known a long time ago?
3. They are one of only a relative handful who could have known if anything was wrong. While other companies may have been involved in Linux and/or SysV - Caldera/SCO positioned themselves as a Linux/UNIX software company - and owned the sources for the latter. Additionally as owner of SysV codes, wouldn't they have a special responsibility?
4. Ransom Love gave a lot of interviews etc., back in 2000, about bringing Unix features to Linux, or even might be interpreted as gradually converging the two (I don't see he ever said merge). Did nobody working on this dream at SCO/Caldera - not look at the code bases - they've got both - and suddenly say - back in 2000 - "Hey Linux's already got this from Unix!"? If they didn't, they shouldn't they have? If they did, and SCO/Caldera didn't care until a couple of years later, doesn't that sound like acceptance?
I've read in various places: it's hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands.
The articles that I've seen by people who signed the NDA, suggest all they saw is about 80 lines. Of course, that doesn't mean there couldn't be more than 80 lines in dispute.
I guess how many lines you count, might depend on:
(a) what you're referring to (disputed code or common code)
and (b) whether you count the things which SCO didn't (as far as I know) claim to have developed, but which IBM contributed to Linux, and SCO seems to claim derivative rights on based on the claim they were in AIX before being in Linux.
This, of course, means that they don't understand the GPL. Nobody can redistribute GPL'ed software unless it is free and clear of non-GPL'ed intellectual property. The purpose of that clause is exactly to stop this kind of situation, where a company like SCO "latches onto" a successful open source project.
And while that may be the intent of the GPL, who is going to stop them?
If what I've read is true - I believe that SCO are still distributing Linux from their web site (although not selling it) - and this has been the situation for a while now. While apparently one kernel developer sent them a warning type e-mail about this according to a story at www.theinquirer.net, I'm not currently aware of anybody trying to enforce contract or copyright rights (that they might have on GPL software) against SCO.
I don't know what SCO's position on the GPL is now, but according to an article today, it does sound like they want to be paid licenses by companies using GPL software (Linux), even if they didn't get it from SCO:
7 /b3840089.htm - Next month, SCO will tell companies that use or distribute Linux, such as Red Hat Inc., that they need to buy a license, says McBride.
From: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_2
And there's me thinking patents (and the patent system itself) are bad.
On Slashdot, they're only bad when used against any company except Microsoft.
I keep reading on Slashdot things like: Copyright and patent infringement are civil matters, not theft, the patent system is broken anyway, etc
But whenever Stacker is mentioned (and it does seem to be a very popular stick to beat MS's record with), patent infringement apparently is thought to be theft, and the patent system ain't so bad after all.
Oh come on, while I don't know the specifics of the Stac vs MS case... I still think, as a general opinion: Patenting sofware = Bad always, no matter who is the target.
Great publicity for the event, but apart from that, who cares?
I don't know about NZ, but where I live there (and it ain't silicon valley) there must be a dozen or more businesses in very easy distance which do CD mass duplication. So here's a tip: just ask somebody else.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5406
. html
. html
9 06PSCDHE"
1 2003.htm
h tm
, 00.asp
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2093314,00
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2093314,00
http://linuxtoday.com/high_performance/2001020800
http://www.practical-tech.com/infrastructure/i033
http://www.practical-tech.com/business/b06122003.
http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,3668,a=43186
"You go back to SCO's brand in the 1990s and it was Unix on Intel. SCO was primed to seize the multibillion-dollar server market of Unix on Intel that hit in the early 2000s that has in fact shifted over to Red Hat."
I think this seems to stand in stark contrast to SCO Group's (when trading as Caldera's) own words in 2001: Linux to surpass Unix 'within five years' - Caldera - which includes this quote '"In two to five years Linux will surpass where Unix is now," reckon Caldera.'
Read the article. After they got their Unix, they themselves seem to have thought and publicly said (a) Linux would soon overtake Unix. Even more interestingly, before they got their Unix, they seem to have thought and publicly said that (b) SCO's Unix product could easily be replaced by Linux: "When Caldera launched in the UK four years ago, it aimed both barrels at SCO's Open Server, telling us that it represented the low hanging fruit for its own OpenLinux distro"
SEC's complete listing of SCOX filings
I think there are a few missing from MSN
They didn't win, MS settled.
What's especially interesting about that case, is when Caldera acquired DR-DOS it was already effectively destroyed and devalued, and presumably Caldera paid much less for it when they acquired it (like buying a car that's already wrecked from a scrapyard, and then suing whoever wrecked it, in my view).
The people who would have suffered any real damages from MS's conduct would have been primarily DR, and possibly Novell. But Caldera was the one who sued and ended up getting the settlement.
Actually MS would not claim this. Their whole strategy is to support ISVs develop for their platform, and they've been very successful at it. Bill Gates dreams about network efforts and VHS vs betamax (VHS wins cos more "applications" - i.e. rentals) for it, every night. Read any MS strategy paper, and they're all about this idea to sell it to upper management. This is why virtually all MS apps are both apps and development platforms (yes you can write an application in PowerPoint!).
When a horizontal app (something everybody uses) gets popular, MS pursue as a platform. However MS never mess with vertically apps, except by accident.
Some other company (say SCO) might however try this arguement. They see an app vendor making money "because of their platform", and want a slice. This might make money in the short-term, but in the long-term it is a DOOMED strategy, as every platform which is hostile to app-developers in this way, dies quickly.
Microsoft is on the target list, SCO said it in Byte. SCO have already shaken down MS once before, and MS would probably just settle.
If SCO was truly clever they would have gone after Microsoft first. Maybe they could build a case on BSD code in Windows. Lots of OSS people would cheer them on, and help SCO find material and arguments to support their claims. At the end of the case MS pays up, and SCO would have a precedent for controlling BSD-stuff which they could then sue against Linux, IBM, etc.
If I was MS I would be checking and double checking all my contracts with SCO. The Xenix stuff, the original license, and anything else, just to make sure there isn't some clause in there that SCO will later turn against MS.
Yahoo and MSN are *both* missing lots of info, there are many inside trades (not necessarily the illegal ones), see my 2 posts above with the sec.gov links.