Final Judgment — SCO Loses, Owes $3,506,526 265
Xenographic writes "SCO has finally lost to Novell, now that Judge Kimball has entered final judgment against SCO. Of course, this is SCO we're talking about. There's still the litigation in bankruptcy court, which allowed this case to resume so that they could figure out just how much SCO owes, which is $3,506,526, if I calculated the interest properly, $625,486.90 of which will go into a constructive trust. And then there's the possibility that SCO could seek to have the judgment overturned in the appeals courts, or even the Supreme Court when that fails. Of course, they need money to do that and they don't really have much of that any more. Remember how Enderle, O'Gara and company told us that SCO was sure to win? I wonder how many people have emailed them to say, 'I told you so.'"
You LOSE! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You LOSE! (Score:5, Funny)
Mod parent: +1, Willy Wonka
Re:You LOSE! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You LOSE! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You LOSE! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Willy Wonka is a mod in this place? That would explain a lot.
Re:You LOSE! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You LOSE! (Score:4, Funny)
Yes yes yes... it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye, or takes a chair in the face.
Speaking of losers... (Score:5, Interesting)
One might also ask, whither Microsoft, now that their $86 million investment in Baystar has turned out to be a complete waste. Shouldn't some executive's head roll for this? God, if someone can waste that much money at Microsoft and get away with it, they must be either Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates, either of whom is too powerful to reprimand.
I will say, SCO in its day was very intimidating, with Darl Bride as an eloquent and persuasive spokesman. His pronouncements sounded factual and reasonable, until people like Groklaw looked behind the curtain and showed us the truth. Well, it's just a testament to the power and resiliency of the open source community that Linux and friends will be around long after the world has forgotten what SCO was.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What about all those companies that paid those don't-sue-us fees to SCO back in 2002? Are they going to step forward and demand their money back, now that the entire basis for this shakedown has been invalidated?
Blood. Turnip.
Doesn't do a lot of good to go to the effort of suing someone who doesn't have a dime to give you for your efforts-- they'd be in line behind the people who SCO has already been ordered to pay, and SCO is already insolvent.
"a complete waste" (Score:5, Insightful)
whither Microsoft, now that their $86 million investment in Baystar has turned out to be a complete waste.
Ummmm, that $86 million was the best money MSFT spent since the $50,000 for QDOS. The chilling effect that the SCO suit produced for the Linux community was huge, and bought MSFT a lot of extra time. And you can't even begin to imagine the degree to which it has slowed innovation in IBM Software Group. IBM engineers can't post without 10 person-months of review from Legal.
Re:Speaking of losers... (Score:4, Interesting)
He came across as paranoid, self-obsessed and frivolous in my opinion. At a trade conference he made clients and potential clients sit through a vanity production of him as James Bond fighting the evil forces of Linux as one example. The whole fake death threat for publicity thing, bodygaurds and going about heavily armed thing really made him look dangerously mentally unbalanced. As for intimidating: to start with he had less staff and less budget than a typical high school principal, then he shed staff after that. He never was a big wheel. He was just a big noise.
Personally I think the whole thing really was a two man scam where Darl drove the company into the brick wall of IBM and funneled as much of the legal expenses as he could to his brother. Between them I think they have milked SCO fairly dry.
Re:Speaking of losers... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm pretty sure the contracts would have been vague enough that there are no refunds. Something along the lines of "we indemnify you against all IP issues that may or may not exist".
Re:Speaking of losers... (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO in its day was very intimidating, with Darl Bride as an eloquent and persuasive spokesman. His pronouncements sounded factual and reasonable, until people like Groklaw looked behind the curtain and showed us the truth.
Sorry, but I think you and I have very different recollections of what happened.
Darl may have been eloquent - right up until he had to answer questions. But once he did, it was quite obvious that it was a scam.
For example, when he said that every Linux user owed him $699, the immediate question was "why? Where is the code?" His response was always "I can't show it to you."
You don't have to be a genius to understand that was an outright lie. If he can't show it to you, then you don't have to pay him. The excuse that they had NDAs that prohibited it was laughable. Any attorney who signed a deal saying that said that the company wasn't allowed to identify their own code, even if someone else made it publically available would be disbarred. It's just absurd.
Darl came across as a sleazy con-man. Persuasive he was not.
Re:You LOSE! (Score:5, Interesting)
Not so sure
Is Novell a good guy today
or
a less bad guy
Re:3.5M? Oh noes... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sure it does sting, considering they have spent quite a bit of that money on lawyers, corporate executive benefits, etc.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"I am sure it does sting, considering they have spent quite a bit of that money on lawyers, corporate executive benefits, etc."
That's not the definition of "sting", if spending that money before the ship sank was one of the objectives in the first place. Companies aren't "people", they are an utterly expendable construct. Accomplish objectives, get paid, move on. A few million dollars seems like a lot to the peasantry, but for real players it's pocket money.
Re:3.5M? Oh noes... (Score:5, Funny)
Back then, 50M bucks was a lot of money.
Re:3.5M? Oh noes... (Score:5, Interesting)
McBride and his cronies my be at the moment... but SCO the organization is not. SCO has been bleeding worse than a freshly-amputated pig, with no signs of slowing down its losses. Nobody (especially in this economy) would want to buy such a toxic and radioactive property.
I also suspect that whoever is left holding the by-now worthless SCO stock would have little trouble in finding a contingency lawyer willing to sue McBride (and his buddies) personally for fiscal irresponsibility.
There is also the chance that the SEC may get in on the act as well.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not even Henry Paulson?
Judge Kimball (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
RIGHT :P (Score:5, Funny)
Re:RIGHT :P (Score:4, Funny)
what happens after try and catch then?
Re:RIGHT :P (Score:5, Funny)
I for one (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't wait to hear the last SCO story. Barring appeals, I really hope this is it.
Re:I for one (Score:5, Informative)
This ain't it.
Novell is done (modulo appeals and the arbitration -- see below).
Still pending
* Bankruptcy
* SuSE UnitedLinux arbitration (stayed pending resolution of BK)
* IBM's counterclaims (stayed pending resolution of BK)
* RedHat (stayed pending IBM)
* AutoZone (technically still alive, don't believe anyone's ever going to finish it. Stayed pending IBM, I believe).
Chapter 7? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if there will be a point that Novell can force SCO into an involuntary Chapter 7 (liquidation) bankruptcy? Especially in light of the ruling that this money isn't a "normal" debt but a "conversion" - does that take it outside of what the bankruptcy court can protect?
Re:Chapter 7? (Score:5, Informative)
This is close to being it...they're guilty of conversion. That transforms them into a priority creditor with a 3.5 million dollar claim to things before anything else.
I doubt SCOX could mount an appeal effort. If they could, it's going to have to be something where they had some tidbit of the law overlooked where they didn't get a fair trial, because there's nothing else for them to actually appeal otherwise.
Re:I for one (Score:4, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=sco [slashdot.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group [wikipedia.org]
http://www.groklaw.net/ [groklaw.net]
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=JfK&q=SCO+lawsuit&btnG=Search [google.com]
Re:I for one (Score:5, Informative)
In 2002, SCO had a new CEO, Darl McBride. SCO wasn't doing so well; their primary product was a version of Unix that ran on Intel machines, but they were competing with Linux for that same market. And Linux is free, and the new hotness in Unix-style operating systems.
Somehow Darl learned that SCO owned Unix, i.e. the copyrights to the source. And he was led to believe that the code in Unix had leaked into Linux. So he came up with a new money making plan:
This wouldn't work very well for most customers, since SCO's market was mostly small businesses.
But there was a big fish he could go after: IBM. You see, IBM was a licensee of the AT&T Unix that SCO owned. IBM derived its own versions of Unix from it. And as part of that, IBM enhanced its own Unix with new technologies. And IBM also contributed those same new technologies, which IBM had developed on its own, to Linux.
So Darl's theory was that SCO not only owned the rights to its own Unix, and to the AT&T Unix that it had acquired, but also to every version of Unix that was derived from them by a licensee. So, he could sue IBM for leaking SCO's property to Linux, and he could sue any company that used Linux (unless they paid SCO an extortion fee not to).
The SCO Group sued IBM for $1 billion dollars!
(A common theory is that SCO expected IBM to just buy SCO to make the problem go away, thus enabling Darl and the other SCO executives to cash in their SCOX shares at a profit.)
We'll skip all the counter lawsuits, ridiculous claims by SCO, Microsoft's part in it, the suits by SCO against other customers, and get to the best part:
Remember that it all started because the SCO Group's predecessor (The Santa Cruz Operation) had purchased the AT&T Unix copyrights from Novell. Well it turns out that they didn't. What they purchased was the right to market and license it. And to collect licensing fees, for which they had to pay Novell a portion. They did not actually own the copyrights or any substantial amount of intellectual property.
So Novell sued SCO, claiming that a) SCO didn't own anything, and b) SCO owed Novell money, because the SCO Group hadn't been paying Novell their share of the licensing fees.
Novell won, and SCO went bankrupt.
Is this truly the end? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is this truly the end? (Score:5, Funny)
It's like "LotR: The Return of the King". Just when you thought it was over, there's 24 more endings to get through.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's like "LotR: The Return of the King". Just when you thought it was over, there's 24 more endings to get through.
Including the hobbits bouncing on a bed one? Oh lord...
Re:Is this truly the end? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In this case we have a bit of burnt drum head and a couple wisps of pink Fur.
The Docket entry
"11/20/2008 565 - FINAL JUDGMENT in favor of Novell, Inc., SCO Group and also against Novell, Inc., SCO Group. Case Closed. Magistrate Judge Brooke C. Wells no longer assigned to case. See Judgment for details. Signed by Judge Dale A. Kimball on 11/20/08. (ce) (Entered: 11/20/2008) "
and as far as the other cases/rings in this circus
TSCOG V IBM : In front of Judge Kimball all IBM wants is the gavel (and the CxOs head
Bailout (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, they need money to do that and they don't really have much of that any more.
They could always apply for a government bailout package.
Re: (Score:2)
We are too entertaining to fail!
Re:Bailout (Score:4, Interesting)
You meant annoying, right? Like that fly that just doesn't get out of your face with it buzzing. Well, maybe entertaining to a third party, but not anyone affected by them.
Re: (Score:2)
Without us, Linux will fail!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bush is dumb enough to grant SCO money for a bailout.
Re:Bailout (Score:4, Funny)
Actually they fit the criteria of the other companies getting the bailouts:
#1 Can't balance a budget.
#2 Stupid or insane CEOs and upper management.
#3 Lobby Congresspeople to try and vote for certain bills to be passed so they owe them favors for a bailout.
#4 Annoying corporate culture that makes no sense.
#5 Pissed away most of their money on some stupid lawsuit.
#6 Blames someone or something else for their financial woes instead of their bad management and bad accounting books.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is great news (Score:5, Funny)
Now can we dismember the corpse, seal it in a hardwood box, put the box 12 feet under ground, cover it with at least a couple of tons of concrete, and then build a parking lot over the spot?
I don't want any chance of this zombie coming back again and demanding royalties.
Zombie? More like vampire.... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget the garlic you need to put in the coffin.
And make sure and kill any ghoul servants. They're always trying to resurrect their masters.
I suggest you start by a scheme of napalm applied liberally to the offices of their legal representation.
Re: (Score:2)
Many times when companies die (for legal reasons) the Management just creates a new company. I'm sure they could re-emerge as a patent Troll funded by Microsoft. BTW you can't kill the unDead.
Re:This is great news (Score:5, Informative)
Many times when companies die (for legal reasons) the Management just creates a new company.
You mean like when SCO setup a company in the far-east and tried to transfer their assets to it?
Or like when SCO proposed splitting its company in two, with one part taking all the assets, and the other part taking the legal claims?
Re:This is great news (Score:4, Insightful)
They're already trying. They're trying to switch to mobile phone apps, and unload the devastated and moribund server business. Darl seems to be trying to spin off the legal claims business into a separate patent troll or copyright troll company, to try and continue the FUD against Linux and open source that Microsoft kept them alive for.
Or did you think that $50 million from Microsoft that enabled them to continue the lawsuits was an investment in actual business?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"did you think that $50 million from Microsoft that enabled them to continue the lawsuits was an investment in actual business?"
It was not an investment; they *obviously were buying something extremely valuable from SCO.
It's a bit peculiar that *no *one *else seems to want to buy what SCO has, but MS works in mysterious ways, no?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is great news (Score:5, Funny)
And knowing my luck I would park on that lot and would have them send me a letter saying I owe them royalties for parking over there grave as its a privilege to do so.
Enderle matters? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone that would write an article extolling his Ferrari branded laptop and how the prancing horse logo adds raw ultimate power should never be taken seriously.
I guess some people do listen to that hack.
Well, perhaps a few less are listening to him now.
*shrug*
Re:Enderle matters? (Score:5, Funny)
Um, I beg to differ. That Ferrari logo adds at least 220hp to my internet connection.
Re:Enderle matters? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Enderle matters? (Score:5, Funny)
It stands for "hit points", though in some games like World of Warcraft this statistic is also called "health".
220 doesn't seem very good, though. In 3.x WoW that's not much of an improvement at all. Heck, I think his laptop would have better stats if it dropped Ferrari and took up mining for the Toughness bonus. Or perhaps it should take up blacksmithing, so it could add some gem sockets.
HP is horsepower or Hewlett-Packard (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know this "hp" metric you are referring to.
Horsepower.
Can you explain it in Library of Congresses (LOC)?
It depends on how many BD-Rs you can fit in a covered wagon.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Enderle should have just gone with the red paint job. I painted my laptop red - now it goes just as fast as his, but the difference is that I only look like a complete tool rather than a pretentious asshole.
Re:Enderle matters? (Score:4, Funny)
My favourite Enderle quote of late:
"Next Monday, the Intel Core I7 launches, and Iâ(TM)ve been using a system that Intel sent out which not only has the Core I7 and X58 chipset, but two 4870 X2 ATI graphics cards and two of the companyâ(TM)s new high-speed flash drives.
To say that this system, (which has 4 real cores, and 4 virtual cores through hyperthreading, for a total of 8) is fast would be vastly understating the experience. The word amazing comes to mind, and I can hardly wait to put Windows 7 on it (is there such a thing as blindingly fast, squared?)"
Hahahaha
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't this just Novell's suit against SCO? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Isn't this just Novell's suit against SCO? (Score:5, Informative)
Been living under a rock for the last year?
Novell was found to own the copyrights to Unix, not SCO [wikipedia.org]
Effectively, case dismissed.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Isn't this just Novell's suit against SCO? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Not necessarily. IBM will only pursue its claims against SCO if there is a financial reason to go after SCO. After bankruptcy, SCO may be judgment-proof for lack of assets.
Re:Isn't this just Novell's suit against SCO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Darl belongs in jail... in addition to being stripped of his power.
Re:Isn't this just Novell's suit against SCO? (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting. I see lots of comments (rightfully) condemning Darl, but no one ever seems to complain about Ralph Yarro any more. Which is a pity, because he was the one who picked Darl to carry this campaign out, is the biggest single SCO stockholder, and deserves even more come-back than Darl does.
(Heh. CAPTCHA was 'embezzle'.)
Christmas is early this year (Score:5, Funny)
SCO gets a final judgement and loses $3.5m. Someone (Missouri) finally files a RICO suit against the RIAA. Our do-nothing Congress actually gets the balls enough to stand up to the automotive industry.
At this point I'm halfway expecting to see a copy of Duke Nukem Forever in my stocking.
Re:Christmas is early this year (Score:5, Interesting)
SCO gets a final judgement and loses $3.5m
meanwhile Darl McBride is still disgustingly filthty rich. Too bad instead of stealing millions of dollars from innocent rubes, he wasn't dog fighting [chicagotribune.com] instead, like Michael Vick [chicagotribune.com].
I want to see Brainwol and McBride (while we're at it, my mortgage company's President and oil company presidents as well) in a cell with Vick.
These people are the anti-Robin Hoods, stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
Re:Christmas is early this year (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Christmas is early this year (Score:5, Funny)
The only holdup on Duke Nukem Forever is the manual. And Harlan Ellison will get around to that just as soon as he finishes The Last Dangerous Visions.
Will SCO do a clearance sale of Linux licenses? (Score:5, Funny)
I've been waiting such a long time to afford one of these to try that Linux thing legally.
What about the license fees? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder about those companies who paid the SCO license fees to use Linux? Are they free now to sue SCO for the license fees they have paid?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder about those companies who paid the SCO license fees to use Linux? Are they free now to sue SCO for the license fees they have paid?
Part of that question is who paid, how much they paid, and under what kind of agreement. Note that SCO Source wasn't exactly a cash cow. A SCO financial statement in 2005 claimed $32,000 from the program. That's not much (not that I'd pass up the opportunity to cash that kind of check for personal use).
Also take in to count dupes like EV1. Their "estimated over $1M" deal actually was $800k. And it included this little gem:
Re:What about the license fees? (Score:4, Informative)
wht a mess our legal system is (Score:4, Insightful)
How much did it cost to defeat SCO and stop their nonsense? I'd be shocked if the legal bills on just the Novell/IBM side were under $10M.
The system worked once, at least in rendering the right decision. But few can afford to spend the amount of money this took.
$x = "I told them so" (Score:2)
$x++;
gratification (Score:5, Funny)
How much do they have (Score:4, Informative)
So they now owe Novell $3.5 million or so. A look at their June '08 financials ( http://finance.google.com/finance?hl=en&fkt=917&fsdt=2133&q=SCOX&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=we [google.com] ) makes it look like SCO is currently worth $8.96 million. Of course, then they have $5.85 million in current liabilities. Add in this $3.5 million and SCO's wallet runs dry (and then some). Of course, this doesn't take into account liabilities that they don't need to pay back immediately. Things like that will come up in any bankruptcy hearing.
The end result is that the amount of the award is basically meaningless. Novell may not see that entire figure (if anything) due to SCO going bankrupt. It's the ruling itself that is important. All of SCO's claims were knocked down. Novell's claims were either upheld, made moot by further developments, or voluntarily dismissed. SCO got beat down hard and I don't think they'll be getting back up anytime soon.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How much do they have (Score:5, Informative)
Novell may not see that entire figure (if anything) due to SCO going bankrupt.
Actually, my understanding is that Novell gets paid before anyone else, since the judge ruled that SCO is actually holding Novell's money improperly (converting it?). It's not like a normal debt where the judge says "you owe them this much money", but where the judge says "that stack of money right there belongs to Novell - hand it over."
yay! (Score:2, Insightful)
YAY! :D
Great news on a sad end! (Score:3, Insightful)
Market Cap... (Score:4, Interesting)
The $3.5M exceeds their current market cap. which appears to be only $2.81M. (pretty far fall from the $2.54B they had in 2000.)
Don't quite know what that means but I'm hoping it means the judgment effectively wipes them off the map entirely.
It's (apparently) easy to forget facts are facts (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember how Enderle, O'Gara and company told us that SCO was sure to win? I wonder how many people have emailed them to say, 'I told you so.'"
Agreed - these tech pundits were complete tools. O'Gara was shallow enough to stalk Pamela Jones of Groklaw in 2005 and publish alleged photos of her apartment. Only Daniel Lyons (he of the Fake Steve) later admitted he was wrong [slashdot.org].
But this gets into a bigger pet peeve of mine: the tendency of people to disregard details in pursuit of what they wish were true. These pundits really wanted Linux to fail massively, either because their bread and butter was covering the developments of Microsoft and other proprietary OS vendors or because they equated Linux and free software with anti-capitalism. This led a lot of these shrills to cling to a very silly, unsubstantiated lawsuit long after it became clear that SCO had no concrete evidence to present in court and clearly hadn't thought through licensing considerations (BSD-licensed code in both Linux and System V, for example).
Many people really don't like delving into the details before forming an opinion and sticking to it. See also: religion, politics.
YAAAAAAY! (Score:5, Funny)
And that pretty much wraps it up. Now I need a new name...
Ding-a-ling (Score:3, Insightful)
Would that be jail time calling? Here's to hoping.
I want to know how much these pirates bilked Joe Investor for. Furthermore, I hope both IBM and Novell are interested in cooperating with bodies such as the SEC in holding SCO and Canopy management personally responsible for any and all wrongdoing, including both legal malpractice and stock manipulation, during the SCO race towards infamy.
Constructive Trust (Score:5, Informative)
A constructive trust is a trust (a legal duty to a beneficiary by the person in possession of something) that has been created by a court. There are many types of trust, but they all essentially mean the same: There is something (in trust) that you never had the authority over in the first place because it belonged to someone else (the beneficiary).
As an example, in many places a constructive trust in bankruptcy exists over employee wages such that employees have a superpriority over other creditors (i.e. employees get all their money before creditors get any), but further a the thing held in trust (wages) that was previously given away (to pay creditors) can actually be taken back from subsequent possessors ("restitution"). In other words, anyone given anything by an insolvent (that state of not being able to pay bills that typically precedes a declaration of bankruptcy) company may have to give it up so that employees can get their wages held in trust. Employment law varies wildly- many jurisdictions don't enact a trust- but it's a decent example, easy to relate to.
In the SCO case the trust is over funds, meaning the court has said (by declaring the construction of a trust) that the beneficiary (Novell) of the trust can "follow the money" from SCO to whomever may now hold it because SCO never had a right to the funds in the first place. That may include wages to directors, bank transfers, rent, etc. Further, if SCO is unable to pay the money, and it cannot be traced, anyone that encouraged SCO to spend money that SCO didn't have a right to may have committed a wrong (intentionally, having been complicit or willfully blind) related to the breach of trust.
These are just common law principles for the edification of anyone interested, and the law may very well be quite different in Utah (or most anywhere else). But it's also an oculus into why a constructive may be relevant- and it's not well explained in the article.
Now for a Linux user class action lawsuit vs SCO (Score:3, Informative)
For trying to sell us "Linux Licenses" in order to use Linux legally. Turns out they had no legal basis for those licenses, which is of course "fraud" via a civil court lawsuit.
Now how many Linux users are there? Let's get $1000 each.
SCO has finally lost to Novell... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, no, not finally. They've got more losing to do in the Suse arbitration. And they've got a lot of losing to do yet in the IBM case, as well as the Autozone and Red Hat cases.
It's too bad about the engineers (Score:4, Informative)
There remain a few dedicated and extraordinarily talented kernel engineers embedded within the parasitized husk that now goes by the name "SCO". Among them are people who started work at Bell Labs decades ago, and have thereafter worked continuously on the same evolving UNIX code base through numerous renamings and acquisitions. They have been ill-served by their management for years, and while some ignoramuses will consider them tainted by their association with SCO, they have my greatest respect.
I now return you to the usual hate-fest already in progress.
Re:It's NOT too bad about the engineers (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the engineers did find jobs elsewhere. Those who remained did so despite salary cuts and other hardships, including the knowledge that basement-dwellers everywhere scorned them for their association with the corporate raiders and lawsuit-happy lawyers who had taken over the company.
Perhaps after having spent decades of their life putting heart and soul into something they were proud of, they were hoping against hope that it could be kept alive, instead of walking away and watching their legacy, the direct descendent of the original Bell Labs UNIX, get flushed down the toilet.
All irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
None of this matters: Darl McBride et al were still personally enriched by all this shenanigans, and they are all still alive and able to run off somewhere else and pull yet more shenanigans.
The bad CORPORATION was slapped, but its ORGANS still won and will get "transplanted" somewhere else. Until we get rid of the ethical shield that corporate law provides, people like this will still rule the roost.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Errr... I should have been clearer: "... ethical shield that corporate law provides" should instead read "... ethical shield that corporate law and corporate hierarchy provides".
For the former, you might investigate Thom Hartmann's book "Unequal Protection". For the latter, consider the cliches about absolute power and corruption and the Peter Principle with a self-centric sinister twist: increasing ambition almost always leads to decreasing ethics. Those who get promoted or hired for the top ranks are us
Now is the time (Score:4, Interesting)
At long last Novell and Sun have the opportunity to kiss and make up over their little Open Solaris argument. Or not.
Will they? Sun paid millions for the right to open Solaris to a company that was suing Novell. That money was rightly Novell's, as the right was theirs to sell and not SCO's. That money prolonged the unjust suit for a long time, costing Novell more than just the lost revenue, but also legal fees for their own lawyers to defend against the very lawyers funded by Sun's investment.
This should be interesting, but we're not going to get the real story - just the announcement. How forgiving is Novell?
Not so fast (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you for wasting five years of the Linux community's time and casting a shadow over the legitimacy of the world's countless open-source projects.
I think that was the point. B-(
(Or what became the point after they got caught in their own legal machine and people whose business models were threatened by Open Source saw the opportunity to hurt the competition by funding the suit to keep it alive. IMHO it started as a rent-seeking extortion scheme by people who bought into a dying company and picked the
Re: (Score:3, Funny)