5 Mar
2017
5 Mar
'17
8:55 p.m.
And frankly, I don't care one way or the other if Novell's position was
credible or not. I care that the case was >>decided<< by the a court and
held up. The court made a ruling... its' over. stop arguing.. please...
That is why we have courts, no matter what country we live in. The basic
premise is the same.
We do not have to like a courts ruling, we do have the accept them. This
is not the first and will not the be last time that people may not agree
with the answer given, but we all have move on. For instance, I and many
other people (in fact polls have shown in the USA most Americans agree with
me), think that OJ was guilty of murder, but what played out, that is not
how the court ruled. But is does not matter that many us think he is
guilty of murder, the US courts do not; we have the accept it.
That was my point... we have moved on with OJ. The UNIX community has
moved on post IBM/SCO. Its over, case decided.
What SCO did or did not do has not bearing on Sun. So it does not matter in
any way about Novell relationship with SCO/credible or otherwise. Sun's
license was purely with Novell and the courts ruled that Novell owns that
IP -- the courts are clear. We as a community have to accept that (any of
us can chose to not like it that mind you, but we have to accept it).
And once you have accepted it, the question left is since *Microfocus has
the Unix rights from Novell, what are the formal state of the rights from
Sun.*
I frankly do not think anyone on this list really knows. I know of no
formal statement from them or court with a position that can be
referenced. What we have been asking is if we know if there is some one at
Microfocus we can approach to get such a statement one way or the other.
On Sun, Mar 5, 2017 at 2:25 PM, Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
On Sun, Mar 5, 2017 at 12:15 PM, Joerg Schilling
<schily(a)schily.net>
wrote:
who
work
Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
> Not be argumentative, but I do not think SCO matters at this point as
I'm
> under the impression that per IBM/SCO case
the US courts have ruled -
i.e.
>
>
>
> https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118678589019694632
>
> Court Ruling Gives Novell Copyright in Unix System
> By
> KEITH J. WINSTEIN and
>
> WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
> Updated Aug. 11, 2007 12:01 a.m. ET
>
> A federal court in Utah ruled that Novell Inc., not SCO Group Inc., is
the
rightful
owner of the copyright in the Unix operating system.
Novells claims are not very credible....
I mentioned that the USL laboratories from AT&T (including the people there) have been handed over from AT&T to
Novell and later to SCO.
It is most unlikely that these people did not terminate their contract
in case
the ownership of the code has not been transfered
to the respective new
owner
of the company.
The plain language of the contract that was on groklaw makes it clear
that SCO got the rights to sell Unix, but since they didn't offer
Novel enough money, the copyrights were specifically not included. SCO
could sell and sublicense, but then had to pay Novel royalties back as
the copyright holder instead of a larger up-front payment. The judge,
correctly in my view, ruled that this was the proper interpretation of
the contract. The testimony of the people that negotiated was needed
to clear up the issue raised by SCO about the interpretation of the
rather specific language in the contract and addenda. This body of
evidence was developed rather extensively through both testimony, as
well as evidence of payments by SCO to Novel that supported the view
that SCO could sell licenses, but had to pay royalties back to Novel.
They did this for several years before stopping and embarking on their
ill-fated legal battle.
So a judge disagrees with you, as a matter of law and fact, that
Novel's claims are not credible. They are the ones that won the day,
and won the day rather handily.
All the details can be found at
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20040319041857760
which includes a large number of exhibits from people that were
actually there, who had first-hand knowledge, etc. On the whole it
seems quite credible. I know who I believe, given the choice.
Warner