NRF Calls SCO's Claims 'Meritless' 326
Xenographic writes "The National Retail Federation has just put out a press release in which their CIO concludes that SCO's IP claims are "meritless," and that Novell is the last company which can show a clear title to the code in question. That SCO's claims are meritless is hardly news to anyone who has been following this, but what is interesting is that the NRF was prompted to release this because of legal threats to their membership, specifically SCO's threats to sue "major retailers." So the businesses being menaced by SCO are banding together, making it that much less likely that SCO will be able to generate easy money from mere threats of litigation. SCO's stock, meanwhile, appears to have taken a small dive from this news. Also, you can find further details and analysis on Groklaw."
Running out of time but not hot air (Score:5, Insightful)
Happy Trails!
Erick
Code in question? (Score:5, Insightful)
What code would this be, exactly?
Re:At the end... (Score:5, Insightful)
Next lawsuit ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get these guys. How soulless do you have to be to outright lie about what you own, when you bought it, and the terms of an otherwise perfectly clear license?
Ooops, now SCO will sue me, too.
P.S. If you thought GPL was "viral," listen to SCO sometime: anyone who has ever seen the SysV source code can never work on an OS again, because that makes it a "non-literal derivative." Jeez.
-paul
How many people of come out against this?? (Score:5, Insightful)
National Retail Federation
IBM
Linus
Autozone
There are more I am sure, but I mean come on. Noone agrees with SCO (at least I have not heard of anyone). When is a judge just going to toss this crap out of court?
Re:Old News (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, you mean GrokLaw [groklaw.net]?
The relevant part... (Score:5, Insightful)
With a market cap of around 90 million now, this one has been a real dog for the investors. And this is a company with $65 million in cash in the bank, supposedly - that means the price-to-book ratio is getting mighty low. And their P/E is pushing down towards 20.
For those not familiar with this stuff, that means the premium people were putting on this stock reflecting the possibility of a big (i.e. 5 billion dollar) win against IBM has basically dropped to near-zero. I wouldn't be surprised to see the whole executive team get rotated out soon or something else drastic happen to SCO. The legal battle may drag out for ages, but the market has spoken.
Re:SCO's stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Money already made... (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing is for sure, this whole fiasco made more good publicity to FOSS. More people know about linux and more importantly what open source is.
GPL to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I'd worry more about "submarine" software patents that someone will suddenly complain are being infringed ala PanIP, RAMBUS, et al. You will note how easily IBM was able to find four patents for their counter-suit against SCO.
(You can go back to worrying now)
Re:That should do it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
* Assuming this business still exists for them and that anyone would be foolish enough to buy one of their systems, of course.
Re:GPL to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
That never stopped SCO.
-m
Re:Oh really? (Score:1, Insightful)
I find it funny that every 1% drop is met with OMG!! ITS TEH BEGINING OF THE END FOR SCOX!! Fuck the stock market.
Re:How many people of come out against this?? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's up to the lawyer to push for a quick decision, and it isn't in the lawyer's self interest to encourage a decision in reasonable time. The longer the lawsuit, the more the lawyer can bleed the client.
Do you think any individual could get away with refusing to provide evidence demanded by the courts, and not end up in jail for contempt? The entire SCO management team should be seeing fraud charges and jail time when this debacle is finally ended, but instead we'll just see a few lawyers walk off with another porsche or two, Darl will whine about how they mislead him, and the only ones who'll really pay will be the people and businesses impacted by the fraud.
It's the New American Way to "manage" the law. Companies like Microsoft and SCO build their very existence on treating the fines and penalties as the cost of doing business. It's not going to change until the lawyers, CEOs, and other corpororate officers are held personally responsible for their fraud and mismanagement, and jailed accordingly.
Re:More evidence that... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:SCO's stock (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good ol Groklaw (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't the paralegal's words that are taken as gospel. Those words are just opinion.
The credibility of that opinion, and the opinion of people commenting in the discussion rests on the mountains of information that Groklaw compiles in one convenient place.
SCO press releases. All manner of court filings. All relevant press coverage. Transcripts of court hearings. (And there is an important one comming up on May 11.) SEC filings.
All of that information is verifiable. Just follow the collected links back to their original sources. Download scanned PDF's of court documents. Or better go to the courthouse and get your own copies of originals from the court clerk.
Groklaw is credible because the collected facts of what SCO says in court, says to the SEC, and then says in the press paints a picture that any reasonable person can see. Too bad it is embarrasing for poor SCO to have all this information conveniently collected and available for comparison in one place.
Re:At the end... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a good idea to keep an eye out for things like this - future owners of Novell may not be a sympathetic to FOSS as the current ones. But let's try and keep from muddying the water
Re:GPL to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
But Novell still has customers, intends to keep them, and even get more customers.
There are reasons that enterprise-class customers will pay good money for the same bits that hackers download for free, plus a scrap of paper that vaguely mentions something about support. If it breaks, the hackers expect to fix it themselves, whereas the enterprise-class customers expect someone else to fix it without being told to Read The Fine Manual.
Yes, that would be awfully funny (Score:5, Insightful)
The neat thing about the GPL is its seemingly foolproof method of making sure everyone plays fair: they make it in everyone's interests to play fair, by making everyone not just borrow from everyone else, but depend on everyone else.
For example, let's say a company releases a piece of software [nullsoft.com] under the GPL, then the next day decides to recant and announces that no, we changed our mind, it wasn't GPLed after all. If the company never sold anyone a copy, just put it up for download on a website, well then, who's to disagree with them? If someone had given them money for it that could be construed as having some sort of contractual validity, and the license that they included when they originally distributed the license irrevocable. But if it was just a free download, and the license included with the download as a written offer... well that's kind of fuzzier, isn't it? It would seem the company couldn't "go back" on their license offer, but the company could claim all kinds of things. They could claim the release was "unauthorized", or not intended for public release outside the company, or there were mitigating copyright and contractual cirucmstances the company was not aware of at the time doctrine of mutual mistake blah blah blah. And if this were the BSD license, that's where things would end.
But the GPL, among doing other things, adds an interesting wrinkle to things by legally intertwining to a certain extent everyone who cooperates using it. If someone releases some code they own under the GPL, they still own it and can do whatever they like with that code outside the context of the GPLed product However if someone is distributing or redistributing a product containing someone else's GPL code-- anyone's-- then they suddenly find themselves with a small and reasonable, but important, set of obligations.
So, here's another hypothetical example. Let's say Novell announces they own lines 5000-5435 of the linux kernel; that those lines were stolen from NetWare by a disgruntled employee who then submitted them to Linux as his own work at some point; that they have indisputable proof of this; and they further announce that anyone who wants to sell linux owes them $699 a copy for Novell's 435 lines of code there.
The problem here is that they can't do that; the instant Novell points out those 435 lines of code are unlicensed, distributing Linux becomes illegal, period. The reason for this is that the GPL says that in order to distribute under the GPL, you must be able to offer to anyone who you distribute it to an unlimited GPL license themselves, which includes the right to freely redistribute and modify. If you don't have the rights to distribute Linux under the GPL, you certainly don't have the right to distribute Linux by any other mechanism. And if you have to pay $699 to distribute the Linux kernel, then you don't have the right to distribute it under the GPL. The rest of Linux, everything except those 435 lines, is still GPLed and freely distributable; but the whole package, or any package that contains those 435 non-Free lines linked against GPL code, is something nobody-- including Novell-- has the right to distribute at all until those lines are removed or replaced.
So, Novell currently lacks the ability to attack Linux in this fashion without losing the right to sell Linux in the process-- which would be a major problem for them since they currently have a decent amount riding on their Linux-based products. And the really fun thing is, if Novell does as SCO did after raising their apparently fraudulent claims against Linux, and continues to distribute Linux even after they make the public claim that they own code in Linux that they never gave Linux a license to, then one of
Re:Old News (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevertheless, looking at your article history, you don't seem to be a troll. So, one tip: Go to your preferences, and exclude Caldera from the homepage. Voila, you won't see those articles any more. Others, who want to see them because they don't have the time to read Groklaw, can leave that flag on.
See, best of both worlds for all of us.
Re:Next lawsuit ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree that patented/proprietary code is far more viral than GPL code could possibly be, since your right to use it is generally tied to contracts which can be cancelled. Having worked in "the industry" for 10 years, I have no conscious idea how I solved problems back then 4 companies ago. However, I have no doubt that if presented with a similar problem now I'd solve it in a similar way. In theory, virtually everything I've written from my second company on might have vestiges of supposedly 'proprietary' code.
About the only defense to this is it's almost universal - anyone who's moved around a lot is likely to be in this position. The next software hurdle will be MS's sudden patent rush, and fighting the 'obvious' patents. Hopefully we can get the Patent Office/system overhauled or at least looked at before Longhorn comes out.
Right (Score:3, Insightful)
I was referring more to the kind of clout an organization like this has, than their truth-handling ability.
When this sluggish market-force monster rears its ugly head and blasts SCO with this strength, there is even less chance that any white knight will come to the rescue of SCO (the princess in the tower? nah, the warty witch).
SCO should have let this sleeping dragon lie.
The hidden agenda in all this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GPL to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
I fully expect this to be Microsoft's next volley. Some little company will start tossing patent infringement claims at the Linux and BSD kernels. These will be latched onto by the mainstream media. When it finally comes to trial, the patents will be found to be invalid and the sock puppet will be wiped out messily... An event that will largely be ignored by the media.
Unfortunately, there's little chance of getting a President next term who might push the Justice Dept to stop this scam...
Re:Oh really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The relevant part... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyhow, the more important part is that more people are taking note of this (outside of slashdot types) and so SCO is unlikely to get any more large cash infusions, barring someone with a vested interest in this funding them...
As another poster mentioned, SCO's POS[1] deployments are primarily in retailers[2], this also is likely to prevent people from doing business with SCO, even moreso than usual.
So it's nothing really that new to us, but it's new that other people who hadn't payed attention to this are hearing more about it.
[1] By which I mean "point of sale," though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise...
[2] I've heard McDonalds and Pizza Hut mentioned as using their systems... or was that Dominoes? I forget exactly; they could even have systems in both.
Re:Oh really? (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO cuts jobs to reach product profit [com.com]
Investors seem to always assume job cuts will lead to profitability.
Re:Running out of time but not hot air (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Running out of time but not hot air (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Money already made... (Score:3, Insightful)
The people who bought into this turkey and didn't get out after it started declining from $20 deserve to lose their money. Maybe they'll think twice the next time they hear about a dying company rolling the "IP Litigation" dice.
One thing is for sure, this whole fiasco made more good publicity to FOSS.
More importantly, if SCO doesn't implode before reaching trial, the case will result in the vindication of Linux, F/OSS, and the GPL.
NPV of future cash flows (Score:4, Insightful)
As to daily fluctuations, studies going back nearly half a century show that short-term movements can be explained as well by the Random Walk theory as anything else.
To see what "The Street" really thinks about SCOX, take a look at the 3-month, 6-month, and 1-year price history.
Re:The hidden agenda in all this (Score:3, Insightful)
More importantly in this regard, the case triggered off "The Groklaw Effect": The results of an online community working to debunk bogus legal claims. Will the next IP-fraudster think twice about attacking F/OSS?
Re:SCO's stock (Score:1, Insightful)
Perhaps in the extremely short term. It's obvious that sotck prices change minute-by-minute every day, and no one really has access to information about sales in that sort of resolution.
But long term, stock prices track earnings remarkably well.
Bubbles involving tulips or dot-coms are not only rare, but examples of short term "perceived" prices being corrected in the long term.