Novell Releases SCO Letters

cyxs writes "Here is Novell's page with letters that have been sent back and forth between Novell and SCO. Very interesting read."

Re:Why aren't we done with this?

[lynx_user_abroad]

maybe they missed the deadline cuz all the executives have fled to tropical islands without extradition treaties.

That's not how it's done anymore. These days an executive will just buy an overly large and overly expensive house in Florida, declare bankruptcy (the house is shielded), sell the house and live off the proceeds.

Re:"obligatory *"

[Farmer Jimbo]

Why don't editors put in the groklaw links to keep these useless karma whores down?

Beats me. I think every SCO related article here should also link to Groklaw's analysis of the story. As for karma or mods, whatever.

Re:And SCO plays copycat again

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does it take so long to resolve these issues through the courts...

Because there more outstanding cases than people in the US.

YOU FAILED IT.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if you would've just done your research [yahoo.com] you'd see that Novell's stock has been steadily climbing for practically the past year anyway. It's not like they were fishing for bogus inflated prices. Nice try though.

Dumbass.

November 21st Document, Second Page

[AtariDatacenter]

Of course, I'm not reading this in the full context, but here's an interesting tidbit:

2.1 Section J of Ammendment No 1 prohibits SCO from entering "into new SVRX Licneses" except "as may be incidentally involved through [SCO's] rights to sell and license UnixWare software or the Merged Product."

2.2 With this prohibition in mind, Novell has noted SCO's recent introduction of its "SCO Intellectual Propety License for Linux," in which SCO attempst to enter into new SVRX Licenses with Linux end users.

Re:Egad

[sphealey]

Novell may be on the right side in this particular fight, but since NetWare is the scourge of the Earth, I don't know that we should go nuts here and say we "like" them.

Out of curosity, have you ever worked with a well-designed, well-engineered, and competently operated Netware network (as opposed to something a guy with 16 hours of CNA training threw together out of the box, although those tend to work fairly well also)? I personally found a lot of capabilities and concepts in Netware that were very useful, flexible, and managable, and are not duplicated in any system on the market today. Just my 0.02.

sPh

Wow

[Spazmania]

Wow. That's just, wow. Publishing the correspondence like that is tantamount to saying, "Screw you. We have nothing more to say outside of court."

Re:YOU FAILED IT.

[swb]

Actually, Novell underperformed NASDAQ and S&P indicies for the first half of '03 and outperformed the last half. It's as hard to know what the real reason for the increase over the last six months is as it is to know what business Novell is really in. They're Netware, no, NDS, no, consulting (the Cambridge acquisition), no, Linux, umm, what are they again?

I'd wager their increase has more to do with general stock market speculation of an overall economic recovery and increased business spending on IT infrastructure rather than enthusiasm for Novell's somewhat confusing business strategy.

Re:karma police

[Just Some Guy]

You're right; this stuff is on Groklaw. However, this is Slashdot, and I for one like the fact that people with more time than me have crossposted interesting and relevant snippets of information where appropriate.

This isn't even a real news site - Slashdot doesn't generate stories of their own. Why do you expect all of the comments to be new, original, and unique to this site?

Astroturfing?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really interesting.

1. A newbie comes from nowhere, posts an SCO press release and gets a +2 moderation.
2. Somebody points out that it's the 1st post ever by EZEZ and gets moderated down right away.
3. My prediction is that this one will also be moderated down.

Re:SCO Reiterates Ownership of Unix Intellectual

[(startx)]

I was going to mod you up, but I decided to respond instead. Notice how everything in this SCO press release refers to previous SCO and Novell press releases. They don't mention a single contract, or anything else that would hold water in court. SCO knows press releases do _NOT_ mean anything in court. Hurray for everyone's favorite pump & dump scheme.

Re:The impact of the lawsuits in our enterprise

[Valdrax]

It would be wiser for McBride to perpetuate the release of Open Source operating system vis-a-vis in order to accentuate the capability contained within them.

Heh. Business lingo aside, it very much wouldn't have been wiser for the owners of SCO's OpenServer UNIX to have done so. Linux has completely eaten SCO's lunch with the exception of fields where necessary products for the operation of a business are available only (or cheapest) on SCO's OS line. Real, cheap(er) *NIX for mass market hardware instead of highly marked-up "big iron" was SCO's market before Linux came along and did everything SCO did better for free. SCO's OS line is dying, and there's pretty much nothing that they could've done to save it as a sellable products.

Instead, SCO acted in what an Ayn Rand-ite would've called its own "rational self-interest." SCO knows that its major source of revenue is going to be useless soon, so it's attempting to get another one. Building essentially a completely new software product line in a new market niche is far too high-risk and too low of a payoff compared to attempting to exploit the IP that they think they own. The current spate of lawsuits is a high-risk gamble too, but it's one with a much, much larger potential payoff.

Also, there's the whole principal-agent problem caused by the fact that the future of the executives of the board is not strongly yoked to the company going down in flames. Together, you have a recipe for callous, self-interested behavior by people who are committed to the idea that money is the best measure of success.

Instead we have been deploying Solaris and Mac OS X for the satellite locations.

Congratulations, you have played into SCO's hands. You have not adopted the platform that has killed theirs, and you have given money to Sun, a company that has decided to pay SCO a license for the product you purchased. This is exactly what SCO was hoping for.

Re:Egad

[shrubya]

You want humor? How about this [google.com]:

The University of North Carolina recently had trouble locating a Netware server at one of its academic departments.

The school's IT staffers followed cables until hitting on one they thought would lead to the elusive server. Sure enough, say UNC officials, they found it, still operating, alone in a small enclosure. The officials say it had been mistakenly walled in by drywall built by maintenance workers.
Curious IT workers dug into records and it appears the server had been in solitary for at least three years.

Try that with a Windows (or SCO) server...

Interesting SCO is Paying Novell????

[big-giant-head]

How can they claim complete ownership of something that they are paying another company royalties on??? I'm no lawyer, but that implies Novell owns the copyrights.

I'm no lawyer, but I am an author and my publishers have to pay me royalties BECAUSE I OWN THE COPYRIGHTS TO MY WORKS. The same would apply here. So SCO doesn't even hold the copyrights, what a twisted web Dark weaves.

Re:Lawsuit Necissary

[Anonymous Coward]

>Linux is based on a new concept that many people don't understand.

Your comment, overall, was very interesting. I would not say, though, that cooperation is a "new concept", even though many people don't understand it. More like a "forgotton technique".

I am sure it is all very interesting, but...

[tiger99]

... the servers are so overloaded that I have not been able to read much of it. I wonder why?

But, having seen the first file, I really do wonder if McFraud believes CEOs of companies such as Novell really need to be told, in words of one syllable, what Linux is and why its development model differs from proprietary software. It seems to me that he is the one who fails to grasp the situation. He really seems to be unable to grasp that huge teams of programmers are not the way to develop good software (as the Convicted Monopolist has proved time and again...) he does not seem to comprehend that anyone with a brain, a PC and a compiler is able to develop good code, if they want to. Many of course would not bother with the learning curve, they would rather do other things, which is OK of course, but they probably could, if they wanted to. The clever people will certainly create bigger programs of better quality quicker, as we all know. But none of this involves the race of supermen, with super facilities, which McFraud seems to suggest are necessary. Mere mortals, with slowish PCs, simply take a bit longer, but because there are lots of them, each doing their own little bit, and putting the bits together occasionally, it still happens at a respectable pace.

I think that like another nasty piece of work we like to revile on /. (the one who missed the Internet for several years, despite prodding from his employees, who now calls himself the Chief Software Architect), he simply is too stupid to understands what it is all really about.

Unix as a money-spinner has had its day (and thanks to stupid commercial and legal issues it never did spin as much money as it could have), in fact the OS as such has had its day. Wise companies like IBM, Sun, Oracle, Novell realise that now, and know that the future for them is in building hardware (if they are in that business) and/or providing middleware and support. McFraud is simply living in the past. BTW, the next thing to expire as a money-spinner will be the "Office" suite, they are almost two-a-penny now (strictly, two for zero pennies for the pedantic), a far cry from the $400 spreadsheet or WP originally. The fact is that like commodity hardware, commodity software is starting to get very much cheaper. In fact hardware costs are the driving force. It once may have seemed reasonable to put a $400 Lotus 1-2-3 on a $4000 PC/AT (guessing at prices, from the vague recesses of my fading memory, they might not be quite right), but to put a $400 Office suite on a $300 PC is sheer folly. The economies of scale apply to software far more than to hardware, likely marginal cost of an Office suite about $1 for the box and CD, but the Monopolist, the Fraudster and such like have tried to conceal that fact from the gullible public.

I look forward to reading more of McFrauds rantings when the load on the servers subsides.

EZEZ is an SCO shill

[Raffaello]

Not posting AC, so this may actually get read:

People, please realize that EZEZ is just shilling for SCO.

This is really interesting.

1. A newbie, EZEZ, comes from nowhere, posts an SCO press release and gets a +2 moderation.
2. Somebody points out that it's the 1st post ever by EZEZ and gets moderated down for pointing out the suspiciousness of EZEZ's posting history (none) and posting content (an SCO press release).

enemy of my enemy

[Bob the Hamster]

Novell, the enemy of the enemy of my enemy who is the enemy of my greater enemy, is my friend, I think.

I am glad to see SCO being struck down, but I am not happy to see Unix copyrights and contracts being used to do it. Remember this it does NOT MATTER who owns Unix, because SCO's claim that Linux is an unauthorized derivative work of Unix is B.S.

Novell may be the friend of the GNU/Linux community now, but remember, SCO was a friend of Linux once too, before they changed hands and fell under the control of scumbags. What will Novel be like 10 years from now? What will IBM be like 10 years from now? Remember that Unix ownership is NOT Linux ownership.

Thank you for the chance...

[worldcitizen]

..to point out that reading SCOX press releases _and_believing_ them at face value is dangerous stupidity.

Just go read the documents. It clearly says: All rights _with_the_exceptions_listed_. Uh, oh, small omission, right? go to the exceptions list and you will see that nearly ALL Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents are excepted.

Apparently all the Intellectual Property that was transferred in the original Purchase Agreement were the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare. The open group now owns the UNIX trademark so all the Intellectual property left is the trademark to UnixWare. Now you know why you haven't seen a lawsuit for "intellectual property" from SCOX.

Amendment 2 indicates that additional rights may be transferred. Correspondence indicates that this transfer has not taken place (even A2 validity seems to be still "unverified")

Does SCO have any legal standing whatsoever?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the letter of 28 May 2003 from Novell:

SCO continues to say that it owns the UNIX System V patents, yet it must know that it does not. A simple review of the U.S. Patent Office records reveals that Novell owns those patents. Importantly, and contrary to SCO's assertions, SCO is not the owner of the UNIX copyrights. Not only would a quick check of the U.S. Copyright Office records reveal this fact, but a review of the asset transfer agreement between Novell and SCO confirms it. ... Apparently, you share this view, since over the last few months you have repeatedly asked Novell to transfer the copyrights to SCO, requests that Novell has rejected."

Doesn't this imply that SCO's case is DOA? (I.e. wouldn't a judge simply dismiss any lawsuit due to a lack of standing on SCO's part?) To my untrained eye, this appears to be an open-and-shut case. Could a lawyer explain why these facts don't just put an end to this mess?

Re:Why aren't we done with this?

[danb35]

Possibility of SCO case to get thrown out is not possible in my opinion.

Possible, but not very likely. Dismissal is certainly an option for the court as a discovery sanction, but it's a pretty extreme one, and it would need to be done (or at least approved) by the District Judge, not the magistrate who's currently handling the hearings.

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.

Disagree, for a couple of reasons. First, dismissing SCO's case would still leave IBM's counterclaims standing (and, in fact, strengthened considerably, since a large part of the basis for those counterclaims is that SCO filed suit without a good reason). By the time IBM's countersuit is over, SCO is likely to be nothing more than a smoking hole in the ground. Second, a dismissal at this stage of the proceedings would almost certainly be with prejudice, which means SCO can't turn around and re-file the same complaint against IBM. A dismissal with prejudice operates as a decision on the merits of the case, which would bar SCO from suing anybody else on these grounds.

Standard disclaimer: IAAL,BIANYL.

isn't that more than a little noteworthy?

[rbird76]

SCO hires PR people to scream from the top of the highest mountain (or from the top of SCO's stack of lawyer-related documents, which is probably the same thing) whenever someone actually responds to its vacuous public statements, whenever it needs a boost in stock price, or whenever it has some more "facts" to reveal to its audience of bad stock analysts and PR people.

Now, they've supplied whatever they know about the nature of IBM's contract violations and the resultant "IP" violations, and SCO requests that the information be kept secret? If they had some significant claims, wouldn't they be screaming from the highest mountain; while some companies (IBM, MS) can best act rather than talk, SCO has predicated its ability to make money in the future on forcing Linux users to pay licensing fees or on suing people it has purchased "IP" from/ sold "IP" to, rather than actually selling a product that someone wants to buy. Being silent doesn't intimidate potential customers into giving SCO money or scare potential Linux adopters into going elsewhere on behalf of its pimp^H^H^Hartner MS. There doesn't seem to be a benefit to them in keeping silent unless their claims aren't strong or are easily refutable. Neither option seems to hold much hope for SCO's continued survival or the ability of its executives to avoid unwanted "friendships" with large men in orange jumpsuits. Or is there something I'm missing here?