Darl McBride Takes the Stand In Novell v. SCO

UnknowingFool writes "Everyone's favorite CEO Darl McBride took the stand on Wednesday April 30 in Novell v. SCO. Chris Brown has posted his account on Groklaw of the 2nd day of trial. The first day's account can be found here. To refresh your memory in this ongoing case, Judge Kimball has already ruled that Novell owns the copyrights to Unix and has practically dismissed all of SCO's claims. This portion of the trial is about Novell's counterclaims that SCO never paid them the money from the Sun and MS deals. What is to be determined in this trial is how much of the money from the deals were for Unix licensing (SVRx) and how much were for SCO's server technology (Unixware)." (Read on for the rest, below.)

UnknowingFool continues:

"Reading the account, it seems that the SCO folks are currently trying to delicately separate Unixware and SVRx. However Novell's lawyers are quickly pointing out in the past where SCO made no distinction between SVRx and Unixware in their literature or press releases. In day 1's account, SCO's tree picture shows Unix as SCO IP (Unix).

Also SCO's position is that it owes Novell nothing because the deals to MS and Sun were Unixware deals and not SCOSource deals (the much despised Linux licensing program) or SVRx deals. Novell points out fatal flaws in SCO's arguments. Sun wanted the ability to open source some of their Solaris code (which became OpenSolaris). Solaris and Unixware both branched from SVR4 so they would need permission from the owner of SVRx copyrights, not the Unixware owner. That owner is Novell. The MS deal is a little different in that MS wanted Unixware rights AND rights to legacy Unix (SVRx).

The best part of the cross-examination was Darl refusing to admit that the MS and Sun deals were not SCOSource, but Novell showing SCO's financial statements (10Q) where both deals were listed under SCOSource and not Unixware revenue."

I'm Pretty Sure He Committed Perjury

[eldavojohn (898314)]

I have (via Ars Technica) some interesting comments from his testimony [arstechnica.com] yesterday. He stated (under oath):

... many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers ... We have evidence System V is in Linux ... When you go to the bookstore and look in the UNIX section, there's books on 'How to Program UNIX' but when you go to the Linux section and look for 'How to Program Linux' you're not gonna find it, because it doesn't exist. Linux is a copy of UNIX, there is no difference [between them].

This flies directly in the face of what SCO found in extensive investigations in 2002 and did not correspond with what SCO Senior Vice President Chrs Sontag just finished testifying earlier that day.

Also, as to his book remark, he didn't [amazon.com] look very hard [amazon.com]!

Mmmmmm, that's some good perjury!

Re:

[Uncle Focker (1277658)]

This flies directly in the face of what SCO found in extensive investigations in 2002 and did not correspond with what SCO Senior Vice President Chrs Sontag just finished testifying earlier that day.

Wait... you're going to claim that Darl McBride is a liar?!?!? I'm totally shocked!

Re:

[sm62704 (957197)]

Mmmmmm, that's some good perjury!

I'm sure most of us would love to see McBride behind bars (I know I would), but I'm afraid it probably won't happen. In our plutocracy no rich, powerful man goes to prison unless a richer, more powerful man wants him there.

Re:

[Uncle Focker (1277658)]

But is he really all that rich now? I'm assuming most of his money was probably tied into company stock that's worth less than toilet paper at this point.

Re:

[DaveInAustin (549058)]

Actually, Darl managed to sell [korgwal.com] quite a few shares between the time the lawsuit was announced and when the stock tanked. That is, during the time when he was telling the press about the "rocket scientists" who found the "millions of lines of code".

Re:

[garett_spencley (193892)]

In our plutocracy no rich, powerful man goes to prison unless a richer, more powerful man wants him there.

When all is said and done most male slashdotters will qualify as richer and more powerful than McBride.

Let's make this thing happen !

Re:

[Uncle Focker (1277658)]

Especially when you're stock is worth less than a roll of Charmin.

Re:

[Xenographic (557057)]

He was also grilled over statements in their 10-Q that were, shall we say, at odds with what he was trying to say on the stand.

Novell confronted him and he angrily accused them of calling him a liar. Their rejoinder was that he had just claimed that he told the truth on their 10-Q.

In other words, he was trapped by his own words :]

I'm surprised his pants didn't burst into flames.

Re:

[peragrin (659227)]

no but I bet there was a small oder as he got up.

Re:

[gstoddart (321705)]

Mmmmmm, that's some good perjury!

Ah, but it's not a lie if you believe it.

See, he can be misinformed, stupid, confused, or just plain wrong ... none of which gets you convicted for perjury. He just has to believe what he's saying.

You'd have to show that he deliberately lied -- I bet any half-way decent lawyer could convince a jury that Darl doesn't really understand half of what he says, and that he's merely operating on his understanding of legal and technical briefs provided to him. Hell, half of Slashd

Re:

[UnknowingFool (672806)]

You'd have to show that he deliberately lied -- I bet any half-way decent lawyer could convince a jury that Darl doesn't really understand half of what he says, and that he's merely operating on his understanding of legal and technical briefs provided to him. Hell, half of Slashdot has spent time pointing out how clueless he is.

True, but thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, as CEO he had to attest to the truthfulness of any financial statements. So as Novell pointed out, he was lying then or he's lying n

Re:I'm Pretty Sure He Committed Perjury

[ravenspear (756059)]

Mmmmmm, that's some good perjury!

Except, to prove perjury you would have to prove that he was knowingly making false statements, or in other worlds that he knew what he was talking about and just chose to say the opposite of what's true.

So basically you would have to prove that Darl is not an idiot. Good luck with that ;)

Re:

[berashith (222128)]

So now we understand the motives behind his actions for all this time. He wanted us to all scream about how stupid he is, and then submit the comments from /. as evidence that he didn't perjure himself.

My God, he is a genius.*

* this is the first step of destroying this evil plan

Her's hoping

[Hognoxious (631665)]

Here's hoping he performs better than Hans Reiser ... no, on second thoughts cancel that.

Re:

[Ethanol-fueled (1125189)]

Here's hoping that he receives the same sentence as Hans Reiser. Cheers!

please, Lord, make it stop!

[swschrad (312009)]

can't you just strike them down and put an end to our misery?

Editors ...

[garett_spencley (193892)]

The section logos beside the article text, in order, read as follows:

Caldera
the Courts
Unix
Novel
Tux

All together now ... CCUNT.

I guess you couldn't really leave this one out of "the courts". Either way, well done.

Re:

[Farmer Tim (530755)]

All together now ... CCUNT.

You should really get out more often. Have you considered dating?

With a stutter like that? The ladies would laugh.

they should call it..

[pak9rabid (1011935)]

..UnixWars Episode V..Novell Strikes Back.

Some sort of fact checking mechanism...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus (1223518)]

I'm not exactly sure how best to implement it; but it seems to me that more of our public social processes need a formal mechanism whereby blatantly factually incorrect statements can be challenged and amended. In situations like courtrooms, political debates, news shows, and whatnot, people can and do just say things that are trivially, demonstrably wrong all the time. Sometimes, their opponents call them on it; but that ends up degenerating into a game of "he said-she said". Surely it wouldn't be that har

Re:

[Chris Burke (6130)]

In situations like courtrooms, political debates, news shows, and whatnot, people can and do just say things that are trivially, demonstrably wrong all the time.

No they can't.

Re:Some sort of fact checking mechanism...

[AltGrendel (175092)]

We can issue everyone in the court one of those little suction cup guns and put color coded flags on the end of the cup. When you shoot the person on the stand with the gun, you have to present irrefutable proof that they are wrong in what they said. If that person gets too many hits, they are asked to stand down.

So...

[eno2001 (527078)]

...who's a cocksmoking teabagger now Darl?

Re:I Thought...

[Jason Levine (196982)]

The part where they determined whether or not (and how much) SCO owned Unix is over. Now that it has been determined that Novell owns the copyrights, the questions are:

1. Did SCO sell Unix licenses and keep money that should have gone to Novell?
2. If so, how much of this does SCO owe Novell?

The main sales in this trial are the Microsoft and Sun ones. There's something like $20 million that SCO might owe Novell. (Money that SCO doesn't have even if they sold every last chair in the office.)

SCO insists, however, that the licenses weren't SCOsource licenses and thus weren't ones that Novell would be owed money for. Darl testified to this on the stand. However, SCO's own SEC filing insists that the money was SCOsource. So either SCO lied in an SEC filing or Darl perjured himself. Either way, Darl and SCO have only the barest shreds of a case left. (Unfortunately for them, that "barest shred" relies on the past few years of case history vanishing magically.)

Re:

[Xtifr (1323)]

You're close, but you're overlooking one detail. The minute the judge in Utah uttered the word "conversion [law.com]", SCO went rushing off to the bankruptcy court as fast as they could scuttle in the hopes of more delay. Novell isn't going to get in line as a debtor. They are, basically, the victims of theft; the money in question was never SCO's to begin with. The resulting scenario will probably play out fairly close to the way you described, except that repaying Novell is going to be a much higher priority th