Novell Releases SCO Letters 424
cyxs writes "Here is Novell's page with letters that have been sent back and forth between Novell and SCO. Very interesting read."
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Novell Releases SCO Letters
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An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.
And SCO plays copycat again (Score:5, Informative)
SCO Purchases Specific Novell Assets [sco.com]
Wish they were so quick with pointing out what contract/copyright/trade secrets, if any, are actually violated by anybody they accuse of doing so...
When are the Red Hat and IBM cases scheduled for resolution anyway? This whole thing is going on for far to long. Why does it take so long to resolve these issues through the courts...
Obligatory Groklaw link (Score:5, Informative)
site was "groklawed" earlier (Score:5, Informative)
(b) Buyer shall not, and shall not have the authority to, amend, modify or waive any right under or assign any SVRX License without the prior written consent of Seller. In addition, at Seller's sole discretion and direction, Buyer shall amend, supplement, modify or waive any rights under, or shall assign any rights to, any SVRX License to the extent so directed in any manner or respect by Seller. In the event that Buyer shall fail to take any such action concerning the SVRX Licenses as required herein, Seller shall be authorized, and hereby is granted, the rights to take any action on Buyer's own behalf. Buyer shall not, and shall have no right to, enter into future licenses or amendments of the SVRX Licenses, except as may be incidentally involved through its rights to sell and license the Assets or the Merged Product (as such term is defined in the proposed Operating Agreement, attached hereto as Exhibit 5.1(c)) or future versions thereof of the Merged Product.
(from section 4.16 of the Asset Purchase Agreement). Novell was doing a license audit in 2Q 2003.
Re:Why aren't we done with this? (Score:5, Informative)
Text files on Groklaw (Score:5, Informative)
We can Slashdot them instead... :-)
Mike
Hard to discern much.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sluggish already, and the files are PDF (Score:3, Informative)
Novell's current marketing model (Score:5, Informative)
I also like how they aren't going to "change" SuSE (at least, not yet). Their best bet would be to use SuSE as a development crew - moving things ahead, keeping a separate product (rather than wrecking it the way WordPerfect pretty much was), and incorporating it's advances into Netware [insert whatever number here] as an "added value Enterprise product" - much like Fedora versus Red Hat Enterprise.
Type 2: We will indemnify you. This doesn't bother me too much - after all, SCO is playing "Big Bad" to Linux out there: "Use Linux, and we will sue you." Novell is providing some legal peace of mind. Granted, you have to buy their "new" product, but my feelings are horribly hurt by that - after all, they have to pay for the scum sucking evil hearted - I mean, laywers after all.
Type 3: We actually own the UNIX copyright. This ties into Type 2 in a certain respect, only without lawyers. This is to give current SuSE and other Linux customers less fear. Basically, it boils down to this:
"We know that SCO says they own the UNIX copyright and because of that they think they can get money from you for anything Linux.
"Bullshit. The fact is, Novell still owns the important copyrights, and we won't sue you. See? We're nice.
"Please buy our products."
Type 3 doesn't bother me that much either, since it at least appears to be "We're nice people - honest!" Granted, they are still an amoral corporation which pretty much means they're not doing it out of the charity of their hearts but because they want to make a buck - but you have to admit *right now* they're at least showing more class than SCO.
Either way, I'm not concerned. I figure about 12-24 months from now, this will all go away when the lawsuits finally fail and SCO and such run out of money to pay the heartless gutter snipes - I mean lawyers, President Richard Simmons will be in office with the War on Fat, iTunes Music Store will enjoy brief market domination before being the aliens arrive from Zardon VI and eradicate the earth when they learn we've evolved lawyers.
Or - something like that. Just my opinion.
Re:Summary from Groklaw (Score:5, Informative)
That doesn't make sense until you replace Novell with SCO.
Re:Why aren't we done with this? (Score:5, Informative)
*Then* we might now.
Re:mirror mirror (Score:3, Informative)
This is equivalent to saying "you don't need the source, the binary is all you'll ever need." Presumably Novell did this so that if there was something in the letter which wasn't accurately represented by a text-only rendering of the letter, they couldn't be accused of having knowingly stripped that off.
Besides, some karma-whoring AC[1] will post the text conversion by the time I get this response posted anyway.
[1] I know, no such beast.
We know. But that's the wrong story. (Score:5, Informative)
The real news is that SCO had a deadline to disclose to IBM, "with specificity", exactly what the claimed infringements are. That was yesterday. Neither IBM nor SCO has announced anything.
On January 23rd, there will be a hearing on whether IBM is satisfied with what SCO disclosed. Then we'll know quite a bit more.
Re:Asset Purchase Agreement (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, the agreement will probably never see the light of day, for reasons of corporate confidentiality.
I correct myself! SCO has just published the Asset Purchase Agreement [sco.com]. Thanks to Carl [slashdot.org] for pointing this out in another post.
Re:SCO court date? (Score:2, Informative)
This should calm the fears of many (Score:5, Informative)
IT managers and and other executive decision makers who have been nervous about all the warning shots fired between the battleships in this war of words can finally feast their eyes on tangible evidence demonstrating the untennable position of Darl McBride.
In particular I point to the letter dated 12 Jun 2003 from Novell to SCO regarding the Asset Purchase Agreement between the Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. and Novell, Inc., September 19, 1995.
In this letter, Jack Messman pretty clearly identifies the absurdity of Darl's claims be referring to very specific portions of the Asset Purchase Agreement, which give IBM "irrevocable" rights, and states that Novell also retains certain rights, over which SCO has no say.
Now, I ask you, does this not sound like a man who is sure of his position and the position of his company? It seems to me that Linux users (corporate, individual, or those who've ascended to the next plane of existence) should be well in the clear from the majority of any claims SCO might possibly level. This evidence combined with the confidence exhibited by multi-million dollar legal defense funds set up to help those who might be the target of SCO legal action will go a long way to reassuring executives.
Now, if only the judges in this case would hurry up and slap SCO back into the last century, where they should have stayed...
Re:Egad (Score:4, Informative)
PDF is WAY over used and should be band from text-only use. Leave PDFs for flyers/presentations/manuals
Re:Why aren't we done with this? (Score:5, Informative)
sPh
Re:Why aren't we done with this? (Score:3, Informative)
I know Colorado has no such act, so you can lose your house in a lawsuit, no matter how small. I believe Arizona has a limit of about $100K on the value of the home protected by their Homestead act, but that is from memory.
Re:Why aren't we done with this? (Score:5, Informative)
IBM must evaluate their response up to 23rd, which is the next court date. And if this isn't saisfactory SCO might get it's case thrown out.
Possibility of SCO case to get thrown out is not possible in my opinion. At least it wouldn't be a smart move from IBM if they would succed to get this far. This would lead to other possible complaints from SCO side, and state would be far from peace. It would be better for IBM to bleed SCO dry and take over them as the result.
One response that would throw SCO case out is a list of people entitled to see SCO IP. If they don't name my name (I was entitled too see their kernel which I have freely downloaded from their site), they haven't fully complied with IBM's request as in FULL LIST OF PEOPLE ENTITLED TO SEE SCO IP.
Second possible case of throwing case out lies in SCO complaints (if they stay at last complaints about header files). As they say in brute: without SCO knowleddge there would be no *X, but then again complaining about defines and constants??? Hell IBM could produce a 5year old child that could write header file, thus where is the IP value if 5year old child can do it?
karma police (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Asset Purchase Agreement (Score:4, Informative)
...and here is the exact text of Section 4.16(b), taken from the relevant part [sco.com] of the Asset Purchase Agreement:
(b)Buyer shall not, and shall not have the authority to, amend, modify or waive any right under or assign any SVRX License without the prior written consent of Seller. In addition, at Seller's sole discreation, Buyer shall amend, supplement, modify or waive any rights under, or shall assign any rights to, any SVRX License to the extent so directed in any manner or respect by Seller. In the event that Buyer shall fail to take any such action concerning the SVRX Licesnes as required herein, Seller shall be authorized, and hereby is granted, the rights to take any action on Buyer's own behalf. Buyer shall not, and shall have no right to, enter into future licenses or amendments of the SVRX Licenses, except as may be incidently involved through its rights to sell and license the Assets or the Merged Product (as such term is defined in the proposed Operating Agreement, attached hereto as Ehibit 5.1(c)) or future versions thereof of the Merged Produc.
Whew, a bit long winded. Obviously, Novell is Seller and SCO (or was it Caldera back then?) is Buyer. Anyhow, I've emphasised the important paragraphs, which from my reading certainly do say that:
IANAL, but it looks like SCO has no contractural basis for terminating IBM's SVRX license without Novell's say-so; and since this say-so hasn't been given, it appears that IBM's SVRX license is still valid.
Re:Egad (Score:4, Informative)
However, these are not just the text. They are scans of the original documents. The average
Re:And SCO plays copycat again (Score:5, Informative)
SCO is basing its claim to copyright on Amendment 2, but it is a tenuous claim at best.
thad
Re:Why aren't we done with this? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why aren't we done with this? (Score:4, Informative)
Here [groklaw.net] is the groklaw story.
Re:Why aren't we done with this? (Score:1, Informative)
However, since IBM does not comment about pending litigation (unlike SCO...) we probably won't here much more about this until the next court hearing (in a week or two? I forget--check groklaw).
Re:Mirror in Sweden (Score:2, Informative)
Happy reading! [fredan.org]
Re:Text files on Groklaw (Score:3, Informative)
Well, groklaw is hosted at ibiblio, which in its turn is hosted on ncren. I believe all of slashdot is a tiny spike in their overall traffic, which includes students of many major universities sharing music from their dorms. :)
The second to last referenced letter... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:mirror mirror (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The impact of the lawsuits in our enterprise (Score:1, Informative)
If you're going to use a concept from a philosophy from which you disagree, you should at least define your terms correctly.
Rational? By what standard?
There's nothing wrong with self-interest. Selfishness is a virtue after all. The problem is with your horrid abuse of the term rational. Is it rational to make claims that are not based on fact, which if validated by the courts will invalidate the legal system, thus leaving your company open to the whims of whatever lawsuit du jour someone happens to come up with?
SCO will lose, and it will lose because its claims are not rational. And because its claims are not rational, they are not in its self-interest...because when a corporation loses on this scale, it goes "pop!".
Re:Egad (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Interesting SCO is Paying Novell???? (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, based on my own experience (having co-authored a couple of books and contributed to a few others, and having worked as a technical reviewer), the publisher holds the copyright until the work is declared out of print, then the rights revert to the author. The author receives royalties because they wrote the content, and that's how they get paid.
Payment frequently comes in the form of royalties, or as a flat fee, but if an advance is given, that advance is issued against the royalties (it's more of an interest-free loan than anything, because it has to be paid back).
The reason most publishers do this is so the author can't use the material somewhere else, allowing the publisher to make money off the work as well without having to worry about the author republishing the work with another publisher or through a different medium.
DARL MCBRIDE'S ADDRESS AND SCO PHONE AND FAX (Score:2, Informative)