Did SCO Get Linux-mob Justice? 320
An anonymous reader writes "According to Fortune's legal blogger Roger Parloff, "once in awhile a judicial ruling comes down that's so wrong at such a basic level that you're just left scratching your head". He claims that Judge Kimball's "102-page ruling (about SCO) was greeted with widespread rejoicing and I-told-you-so's", but "the problem is not that Judge Kimball's view of the facts is wrong". Was the ruling unfair?"
This is almost 2 months old!!! (Score:2, Informative)
Since when is 2-month-old news that we already read about (cf: "widespread rejoicing") news?
Since when?... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Since when?... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just amazed at how many supposedly-knowledgeable people continue to fall for what is utter BS. Anyone reading the comments posted to the article within hours of its' first appearance would have seen the whole thing torn apart - in particular, the legal requirement for a transfer of copywrite to include a written transfer, and that, withut that, judge Kimball could NOT rule in favour of SCO even if he wanted to.
This is the same level of "journalism" as pretendrle and mogtroll. Uninformed. Ditto with all those "analysts" who also came out with buy recommendations, talking through their goatse.cx orifices.
The one thing this experience has taught is that many and "analyst", "journalist", "expert" or "lawyer" is just another opinionated asshole, too lazy to do any fact-checking.
While the average slashdotter may not be a lawyer, we seem to have a better grasp of legal fundamentals than many of the "experts". Why? Because we write code, and we know the consequences of overlooking a missed semicolon, a typo, or starting from wrong assumptions. Lawyers, on the other hand, don't have a financial incentive to give good advice or dig too deeply when it means generating less revenue.
Shakespeare had it right. "First, we kill all the lawyers."
Re:Since when?... (Score:5, Insightful)
Take Boies: He's a lawyer, and lawyers represent guilty people all the time. Most lawyers are essentially mercenaries. The same thing can be said for so-called "analysts", most of whom are fare from "independent". The same goes for "journalists", who, contrary to what they would like you to think, are far from analytically unbiased.
My point is that you suggest all these talking heads are "too lazy to do any fact-checking" and in general ignorant of the facts. I think you are wrong, I think the facts are obvious, and we must look to other, self-serving reasons for their various proclamations.
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Jurisprudence has settled that wilfull ignorance is not a defense. Besides, Boies et al should have asked for the decumentation that would allow them to legally prove SCO's case. When you go to see a lawyer, you bring your paperwork with you. Its like going to the shit-house - "The job ain't complete until the paperwork is done."
Boies was lazy and/or incompetent. This isn't the first time, btw.
Re:Since when?...You have got it wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Since when?... (Score:5, Informative)
Three points:
- Copyright law REQUIRES that all transfers be in writing. The parties can't agree to do a work-around.
- The APA specifically excluded copyrights, since Santa Cruz didn't have enough $$$ to buy everything.
- SCO obviously didn't believe that the copyrights had transferred, because before they filed their suit against IBM, they repeatedly asked Novell to transfer them.
The whole thing was a stock scam.Re:Since when?... (Score:5, Informative)
I have only looked at the excerpts of the contract included in TFA, but I don't see where people are getting the obvious conclusion that the copyright was not transferred in writing.
And that's the problem. The article utterly mischaracterizes the language in the APA.
If you interpret the language from the contract that says Novell is transferring "all rights and ownership of UNIX ... including source code . . ., such assets to include without limitation" as including the copyright...
But you can't interpret the language that way because that very sentence is followed by...
And Schedule 1.1 (b) specifically lists the following...
A. All copyrights and trademarks, except for the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare.
B. All Patents
There's no ambiguity. The contract basically says, "I give you everything in set A, excluding those things that are in set B." You're arguing that set A is really big, but that doesn't matter at all. The thing that they want is specifically enumerated in set B, so it's excluded.
Then there's some frantic spinning to try to suggest that because pretty much everything in items I through IV of the Excluded Assets specifically refers to NetWare, obviously "All copyrights" must mean only NetWare copyrights, too. Of course, that's nonsense: the fact that "NetWare" is repeated in every item that refers specifically to NetWare suggests that this item most certainly does not refer to NetWare. Moreover, "the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare" clearly do not refer to NetWare, so why would "All copyrights"? And a final kicker, SCO does not claim (and has never claimed) to have received any patents from the APA, while patents are excluded in precisely the same manner as copyrights.
The arguments presented in the article are bogus: they were already offered to the court, and were resoundingly rejected.
Re:Since when?... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, the author of TFA is a known SCOtroll, like the mogtroll, lyin' lyons, and pretenderle, and chose not to include in his citation the list of rights specificially excluded; that list excludes the copyright transfers.
Originally, Santa Cruz (not Caldera (later to change their name to SCO), who only bought a part of Santa Cruz - the rest became Tarantella) was supposed to buy everything, but they didn't have the money. So, they paid a lesser amount to became Novell's agent in the handling of the Unix licenses, passing on 100% of the revenue, and Novell then remitting them a 5% fee.
This is why Ransom Love (head of Caldera, before the name change) stated that Caldera couldn't open source Unix - others held the copyrights.
SCO, as supposedly Caldera's "successor in interest", (but not Santa Cruz's successor in interest, as they did NOT buy out all of Santa Cruz, contrary to the FUD they have been spreading - just some of the assets) should have known this; the lawsuits were predictably as DOA as the rebadged Maxtor drives from the China factory currently being sold by Seagate.
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While I agree there are passionate interests on both sides, the fact remains that SCO threatened legal action to practically everyone and his sister in the PR press. If they wanted to wage a smear campaign against
unfair? (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmm, I can't think of a more appropriate place to ask that question...
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Happiness is inversely proportional to one's expectation of fairness from the universe.
Conversely, one should export fairness in all directions.
Nope (Score:5, Funny)
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You sir, while I admire your bravado, are completely wrong. We do *not* sell anything. We license it. Having said that, we also license based on an arbitrary limit set by ourselves. In this case, the OPU (Ocular Processing Unit; a.k.a. eye). Now, being that Darl has 2 OPUs, we will need to license accordingly.
To sum up; we will license the goggles to Darl based on the extremely affordable and justifiable flat
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Bring Roger Parloff too.
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Arrr
Ye average mob will mostly just stone you or lynch you with things at hand. Thar be too much planning involved in keelhauling as it involves a boat, plenty of rope and fewer landlubbers. =)
Cheers
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Link to said ruling (Score:5, Informative)
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
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His hyperventilation amounts to ignoring SCO's inflated claims of ownership to everything, failure to prove they owned what they claimed -- which, by the way, they were never able to show in court what it was that they claimed they owned! This is legal wankery at its lowest, folks. Nothing to see here. Move on.
To be fair, he was criticizing an apparent failure to follow proper legal process in ruling against a trial jury for SCO, he never claimed they were or weren't guilty, just that from the evidence it probably should have gone to trial.
Of course as far as I'm concerned, we should just go find a nice tree and a bit of rope. I'd classify SCO as either terminally stupid, or patent/copyright trolls, either way we're better off without them.
Re:No. (Score:4, Interesting)
And that is just a flat-out stupid thing for him to say. There was no evidence! SCO invented this absurd "methods and concepts" legal theory out of whole cloth, but that's not evidence.
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And that is just a flat-out stupid thing for him to say. There was no evidence! SCO invented this absurd "methods and concepts" legal theory out of whole cloth, but that's not evidence.
According to TFA the issue had to do with the ambiguity in the contract between SCO and Novell and that the legal process requires viewing of the plaintiff's claims in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Essentially his argument was that the judge was falsely taking on the role of jury in finding against SCOs contract dispute with Novell, and that it should have proceeded to a jury trial even if SCO was ultimately found to have no case.
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
The right to a jury trial is not universal. A jury is only needed if there are questions of fact to be decided - juries decide facts, judges decide the application of laws.
In this case, the law was quite clear - without a written transfer of copyright, there were no facts in question for a jury to decide, just the application of the law, which is for a judge.
SCO's theory of an "implied transfer of copyright", without citing a single legal statute, or a judgement or precedent that was not later reversed on appeal, left no legal basis for a jury trial.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Santa Cruz, not (new)SCO (Score:3, Informative)
Caldera later bought the Unix business line (still sans copyrights) from Santa Cruz, and renamed itself SCO.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Did SCO get a black eye from the fight? Yes
Might SCO have got away clean if it was a smaller company? Yes
Is it right that this same dance in a courtroom could have defeated a smaller company? No
Should you expect to get hurt when you wage war with large amounts of people and companies? Yes
Was SCO Treated unfairly? No! If you present no evidence, and base most of your case on false assumptions the law is quite clear that you should loose. And when you base all your financials on something you should loose, you go bust.
Re:No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, TFA is a troll who doesn't know what he's talking about. Copyright law is very, very, VERY clear on this -- there is no such thing as a transfer of copyright unless there is a written, explicit transfer of copyright. And even then, there are situations where explicit transfers can be made null and void, and situations where transfers can be undone years after the fact.
Basically the writer is claiming that the judge is somehow obligated to entertain a novel new legal theory with no basis in law, and that it is "unfair" for the judge to rule on the law as it is clearly written.
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A nice choice quote by the judge from early in the proceedings when SCOX put their evidence of IBM wrongdoing (actually, SCOX's dick) on the table: Is that a
Re:No. (Score:4, Informative)
The law is clear-cut. Juries are only there to determine the facts of a case. If there are no facts in dispute, there is no option for a jury trial.
In this case, SCO could not show a dispute around the facts. It could not show that there was a law or statute, or even a precedent, that allowed for "implied" transfers of copyright, which would have then led to the "question of fact to be decided by the jury" of whether, in fact, there had been an implied transfer of copyright.
Juries don't decide on points of law. Just the facts of a case. (and yes, I've served on a jury).
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then that is a matter for appeal. The trial judge ruled on a matter of law. If one of the parties thinks the ruling was in error, take it up to the next level. That's how it is done. The Court of Appeal can:
All of which is always subject to further appeal. All it takes is lawyers and money; guns optional.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
good point (Score:5, Funny)
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I'll be charitable with this guy and say he's a moron, a scammed idiot.
Some bad reasoning behind a good call (maybe) (Score:3, Insightful)
TACO??? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:TACO??? (Score:4, Funny)
I am not understand you're question!
No A$$hole Rule (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No A$$hole Rule (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No A$$hole Rule (Score:4, Funny)
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Yodeling (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Yodeling (Score:4, Informative)
The judge gets to rule on what is admissable evidence. In fact, he has to, because part of the definition of "admissible evidence" is "evidence that the jury is allowed to see". So the jury can't be the one to determine what is admissible - they'd have to see the evidence to determine that. So it has to be the judge, nobody else can do it.
In the SCO case, the judge threw out a bunch of SCO's BS precisely because it was BS. Second-hand information, for instance, is hearsay, not admissible evidence. Kimball, rightly, threw out the stuff that wasn't actual evidence. Then he ruled against SCO, assuming the most positive (for SCO) interpretation of the admissible evidence.
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In the article, he addresses the appeal point. Kimball denied SCO's request to immediately appeal the decision. They can still appeal it, but only after the jury trial concludes and they'll be able to appeal everything. If the author's notes on c
He seems to have missed the point (Score:5, Informative)
Caldera knew this when they bought the unix business from the Santa Cruz Operation - They were asked if they planned to opensource unix at the conference call and said they'd like to but didn't have the necessary copyrights to do so.
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IANAL and I haven't been scrutinizing this case closely as it's happened, but my understanding is that the "UNIX source code and copyrights" being disputed were actually ne
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Article date: September 10, 2007, 6:14 am (Score:4, Insightful)
That blog article is just old FUD.
Judge Kimball praised (Score:2)
In particular, he was praised by Judge Gross, the Delaware judge handing the SCOX BK case.
Nyet (Score:3, Funny)
Hey anonymous reader, why don't you write down allllll your thoughts on this matter and mail them to five years ago when I might have cared.
Why Are People Angry At The Author? (Score:2, Insightful)
Heck, he even allows that the RESULT of the ruling is most likely correct, but the act of the ruling itself is the issue.
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Asking for a jury was one method of continuing these delay tactics. The judge saw right through the matter and made a summary judgment instead.
Rule #1: Do
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In the five years SCO has had access to just about every single line of code ever written by IBM they still couldnt find a shred of evidence of the "literal copying". Add to that the BSD vs AT&T agr
Re:Why Are People Angry At The Author? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he doesn't make a good point. Judges are under no obligation to entertain novel new legal theories for years on end in their courtroom. The case was based on copyright, which requires explicit written transfer. There was no explicit written transfer of copyright, therefore there was no reason for the trial to go forward.
"Mob justice" Good grief! (Score:4, Insightful)
It is about time that the slow turning wheels of justice move to end the long suffering of IBM, Novell, the linux community, and open source in general.
Some of the things that get glazed over... (Score:2, Informative)
The then-CEOs of both Santa Cruz and Novell (yes, of Novell too) each supported SCO's position in their testimony -- i.e., the position Judge Kimball rejected without even letting a jury hear it. Each former CEO said that it was his understanding that Novell had sold Santa Cruz the entire UNIX operating system business, including copyrights. Here's how Novell's then CEO Robert Frankenberg testified:
Q. Was your initial intent in the transaction that Novell would transfer copyrights t
Re:Some of the things that get glazed over... (Score:5, Informative)
1. Yes, Novell always wanted to sell the whole business including copyrights. Unfortunately, SCO's predecessor didn't have the money to afford paying for the copyrights, so the copyrights were excluded. So the question that the CEO was asked isn't the one that counts: He was asked "what was your intention to sell". He was not asked "and what _did_ you actually sell". 2. Novell and SCO signed a contract. And that contract is absolutely one hundred percent clear: Copyrights were not included. That's what the words of the contract say. Now the wording of the contract is undisputed. SCO can argue as much as they want what the contract _means_, but there is no disagreement about the text. As the text of the contract is undisputed, the judge can and must decide what the contract means as a matter of law. No jury required, no jury actually allowed because there are no disputed facts. With the written contract available, there is no need for any witnesses. Actually, the judge is required by law to _ignore_ all witnesses that contradict the clear text of the contract. TFA claims that "nobody remembers anymore what the contract means". That is nonsense. The text of the contract is available, so you just give it to the judge to read and the judge will tell exactly what it means. That's why you write down contracts, so that you don't rely on people's memories.
3. Even if a contract claims to sell the copyrights, copyrights need to be transferred by a separate transfer document. That is a legal requirement. As SCO cannot show such a transfer document, Novell still holds the copyrights. Now SCO could have tried to sue Novell to have the copyrights transferred, but they haven't. The copyrights are Novell's until Novell signs a transfer document, no matter what the contract says.
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(I am not a lawyer)
Of course the case isn't about what was intended, it was about what had actually taken place.
Did the CEOs intend to transfer the copyright? Sure.
Did they actually perform the transfer with a specific written document? Evidently not.
The Novel CEO could have intended to sell the copyright, but SCO couldn't cough up the cash.
The Novel CEO could have intended to sell the copyright, but the employees closer to the negotiation decided against it.
Who knows why the terms changed?
Evidently
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Corporate Juries (Score:4, Insightful)
That one flaw shows what a farce it is to treat corporations as "persons" with the same rights as humans. As if there were any shortage of reasons. Like this corporate flackery from _Fortune_'s Parloff, which is whining that a judge didn't waste even more years, time of people in juries and elsewhere in the legal system already overworked subsidizing corporate warfare like SCO's desperate, doomed extortion of IBM.
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Re:Corporate Juries (Score:4, Insightful)
You are committing a couple logical fallacies; most clearly, the fallacy of the excluded middle. Corporations are not people, but also are not totally legally un-person-like. They are in fact between those two things (legally).
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The factual basis of the post is wrong:
At most, the post is Interesting (bu
Fobes+Daniel Lyons=FUD (Score:3, Informative)
Somebody walk me through this... (Score:3, Insightful)
I stopped RTFA after first paragraph. (Score:3, Insightful)
Er, idiot, Redhat sued SCO, not visa-versa.
If he can't understand the difference between plaintiff and defendant, why should I consider any of his other opinions?
Fortune's headlines are even worse than /.'s (Score:3, Insightful)
The article is about the Novell vs SCO case, it advocate well that the issue of ownership is UNIX(TM) is far from clear cut, and leaps to the conclusion that it should have been decided by a jury rather than by a judge.
A jury is *closer* to to "mob-justice" than a judge, and Linux is rather irrelevant to the question of ownership of UNIX(TM), the headline makes no sense.
Was the headline selected by someone else than the author? Does Fortune get significant money from click hits? If so, maybe an editor chosed the headline to infuriate the Linux "mob".
hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
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Here is a clue "When you sign a contract READ IT and UNDERSTAND IT first." It was very clear the there was no contract or evidence of any kind the Unix copyright had been bought by SCO.
"Completely striking the testimony of one of the main negotiators because of a family member with vested interests..."
That's pretty normal in a court. I mean they did have a stake in the out come.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
There is an absolutely, one hundred percent clear contract between Novell and SCO: The contract says "Novell sells the business to SCO, excluding any copyrights". That's what the contract says. Sure, Novell _intended_ to sell the copyrights as well, but SCO didn't have the money for that. SCO's witnesses were excluded for a very good reason: The contract is absolutely clear. It means what it says. Any witness that says otherwise can and must be ignored. That's what the law actually says: Any witness contradicting the meaning of a written contract must be ignored.
SCO was never "told and led to believe they had ownership of Unix rights". They tried to buy these rights. Novell wanted to sell them. SCO didn't have the money.
Just yesterday I went to a shop selling 50 inch LCD TVs. I wanted to buy one. I said "would you sell that TV to me"? They said "Of course, absolutely yes". I said "How much is it?" They said "$3,000". I said "Umph. I've only got $200". I left the shop with a tiny 15" TV. But I have a dozen witnesses that I wanted to buy the 50" one, and they can all confirm that the shop wanted to sell me one. Even the shop assistant and his manager witnessed under oath that they wanted to sell me a 50" TV. So surely I have the right to get that TV for my $200?
Standard of fairness? (Score:2)
According to Fortune's legal blogger Roger Parloff
Who would be in a better position to determine the definition of "fair" as it applies to SCO? A seasoned federal judge who spent years listening to SCO's side of the case? Or paid blogger who pulls his legal opinions out of his wazzu?
What actually happened (Score:4, Informative)
This is old. It's from September.
What actually came out about the asset purchase agreement was straightforward. The written agreement says Novell didn't transfer the UNIX copyright to SCO. Earlier discussions between Novell and SCO had discussed transferring the copyright, and SCO wanted to do that. But Novell wanted all the money up front before irrevocably transferring the copyright. (In case SCO went bankrupt or didn't pay, of course.) SCO didn't have enough cash to pay in full. So the actual agreement as signed called for payments to be made over time, and no copyright transfer, just a license. Some people on both sides thought the copyright had been transferred, because that's what had been discussed in early meetings, but that's not what was actually in the signed documents.
Once all this came out in court, the Judge ruled for Novell.
Legally, He's Right (Score:3, Informative)
I'm posting this anonymously since I work in the legal field.
The article is right. This wasn't a trial. It was a motion for summary judgment, which has a very strict standard. In order to get to summary judgment, the side trying to get the case thrown out has to say that even if everything the other side alleges is true, they don't meet the elements of their claim. The language is that there is no "general issue of material fact" in their case. (It's Rule 56(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure [cornell.edu] for those of you playing at home.) Basically, there has to be absolutely no chance that a reasonable jury could ever apply the law correctly and still find for the other side. (That's Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, 477 U.S. 242 (1986), a case which is cited in damn near every summary judgment brief I've ever seen.)
The problem is that the judge can't say "I think that this witness isn't credible" in order to find for summary judgment -- that's a function of the jury which is the factfinder. All a judge can do on summary judgement is say that the case law doesn't give the other side a claim even if everything they say is true.
The SCO decision has a lot of parts of it where Judge Kimball makes credibility judgments. That's not his place at that phase in the case, and he shouldn't be deciding those issues -- the jury should. That's the problem.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter. SCO was wrong on the law anyway, and even if those goes up for appeal, it's probably not going to get overturned. (Even though an appellate court has to review summary judgment orders de novo -- they don't need to defer to the decision of the trial court.) As a matter of law, SCO doesn't have a case.
That still doesn't mean that Judge Kimball should have been inquiring into the credibility of witnesses. It may not matter in this case, but it's bad procedure, and in another case it could easily have been grounds for reversal on appeal.
I've rarely seen a bigger flamebait post here (Score:2)
This post had kerosene poured on it.
It makes you wish for less people running around with lit matches.
Article's author got his facts wrong (Score:2)
Rubbish. (Score:5, Insightful)
But the key issue is that none of that matters. The contract has specific language, called an "integration clause" saying that only what's in the contract matters. Anything outside the contract, like who remembers what, is irrelevant. The contract cannot possibly be read to say that SCO owns the copyrights because the contract explicitly says that copyrights are not to be transferred. Parloff actually touches on this near the bottom of his article, but then dismisses it based on SCO's argument that -- elsewhere in the contract -- it says "all rights and ownership". Now he's just being coy because the actual wording is something more like "all rights and ownership, except those included in section X". And copyright law is very explicit about the kind of language you have to use to transfer copyrights.
It's not always possible to tell a shill from an honest journalist, but SCO and their obvious shills (like Maureen O'Gara) started making claims that Kimball was legally incompetent and often overturned on appeal (not true) at about the same time Parloff came up with this bit of legal opinion. None of the regular press came to the same conclusion. Since he's playing the same riff, I'm guessing he's with the band.
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Well "mob justice" is rhetorically over the top (Score:4, Interesting)
TFA does raise a rather more interesting point: did the judge have legal authority to dismiss the case as he did in the ruling.
Novell asked Kimball to grant a summary judgment. A summary judgment is a ruling by the judge on the elements of the case where there is no legally relevant factual dispute. If I sue you for promising to fly me to the moon for $100, and you admit that you did, there is no factual dispute, only a legal one of whether such a promise is binding. However, if you deny making that promise, we have two different versions of the facts. The judge can't grant me victory because he finds you less credible than me; unless we both agree to let him do that, it's up to a jury. On the other hand, if there was something about the promise that made it non-binding in that (e.g., it was "opposite day") the judge could summarily rule for you, because none of the facts in dispute are relevant.
So the question is whether the judge simply ruled the factual disputes were not relevant to the claims, or whether he improperly took the role of jury and decided to favor one set of evidence as more credible than another. Or maybe he did a little of both, which would be par for this case.
Ultimately, SCO is going to lose because it won't have the money to appeal this decision. If the decision was a proper one that's all to the good. If it were an improper one, then that is a situation any of us might find ourselves in some day, fighting a richer opponent and at the mercy of a judge that favors that opponent.
It's good news when the bad guys get defeated fair and square. It's not entirely good news if they are defeated by biases in a system we depend upon to be fair.
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Judge Kimball says on page 52 of the ruling that all the witness testimony is irrelevant because the wording of the contract is clear and unambiguous. So even if he had an opinion on the credibility of the witnesses, he doesn't need to consider their credibility at all.
And a judge is allowed to rule on the evidence (matters of fact) in summary judgement. He's simply limited in how he can do so. A jury can weight the evidence and decide which is more credible. A judge can only rule if he can find that the e
Poor Legal Journalism (Score:4, Insightful)
The author apparently doesn't understand contract law. If the writing in the contract is unambiguous, then parole evidence (witness testimony) can not be taken into account. Even if everyone on both sides agrees that they meant something else, that is too bad because the contract is unambiguous. That is the case here. The assets transferred have their own schedule and specifically exclude anything in another schedule of excluded assets. Under "Intellecutal Property", only these assets are included:
Under "Excluded Assets" we have the following:
So the only "IP" included are certain trademarks. Copyrights, patents, and all trademarks except "UNIX" and "UnixWare" are specifically excluded. There is no way to read the contract that would transfer copyrights. It doesn't matter what anyone thought they were doing, they should have read the contract (let that be a lesson to you). However, the person that wrote the contract remembers exactly why they didn't transfer the copyrights and why they weren't needed to conduct the business. He discussed it with the board of directors (they run the company, not the CEO) and together decided that copyrights wouldn't transfer because they were worried about Santa Cruz's solvency. Even SCO admits it doesn't have the patents, but that never affected UnixWare licensing. Their own statements (that they bought "all" of UNIX) would logically mean they must own the patents too, but they don't even claim that.
The contract was amended later so that schedule 1.1(b) V. now says:
This was done after the sale, and copyright law doesn't allow copyrights to be transferred in this way. STILL no where in "included assets" even under "intellectual property" are copyrights included in the transfer, therefore they are excluded by default. This only modifies the exclusion so there is no way to read it that would legally transfer copyrights. The copyrights to transfer are not included, and are not "required for SCO to exercise its rights". Telling is the fact that Santa Cruz wanted much stronger wording and to have the copyrights transferred, but Novell only agreed to this wording for the amendment. Telling also is the fact that SCO wrote Novell multiple times in 2002 and 2003 to attempt to get them to actually transfer the copyrights and Novell declined.
Only SCO questions? (Score:4, Insightful)
Several declarations say this same thing. "I understood that the copyrights would be transferred. I don't remember anyone saying they wouldn't be transferred." The problem is though that no one remembers anyone ever saying that they would be transferred. It seems to have been an unspoken understanding that doesn't carry any weight in a courtroom. It seems that SCO cannot find a single person that remembers hearing or saying that copyrights would be transferred. That's pretty damning when the contract specifically excludes them and the only people that remember having any discussions on copyrights remember the reasons that they were NOT being transferred.
So it's like me
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Re:How? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, the point being, there already was an objective decision... and now what's to be decided are penalties. And penalties, my friend, are not decided objectively - they are decided based upon a s
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Justice will be served when the bankruptcy is complete. If SCO would have bothered to have evidence of the copying, they had a case. They never showed any evidence, just said they had it. They deserve everything they get.
I really really wish I could agree with you but I can't. For justice to be properly served this should move through the court system exactly according to the legal process and at every juncture SCO should be found to be presenting a case completely without merit. For them to essentially lose by default for going into bankruptcy isn't justice, it's the easy way out for them. They should have to stand before a judge and jury and try to prove their bull, preferably while being made to appear every bit as foo
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No, justice will NOT be served at all. McBride and his lawyers and the board of SCO will still be stinking filthy rich, and worse, richer than when this debacle started. Were justice to be served, Darl et al would have to spend time in prison.
There is no justice for the rich in the USSA. A rich, powerful man only goes to prison if a richer, more powerful man wants him there.
House arrest: In the USSA, prison goes to YOU!
-mcgrew
Re:Not quite yet (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Those were the days..."
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Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Funny)
trolls were trolls, and girls were men,
you know we could use a man like CleverNickName again
Everyone would moderate,
then take a break to masturbate
Gee, our old Slashcode ran great
THOSE...WERE...THE...DAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYSSS