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."

Re:I'm Pretty Sure He Committed Perjury

[UnknowingFool]

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 now.

Re:I'm Pretty Sure He Committed Perjury

[DaveInAustin]

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:I Thought...

[Jason Levine]

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.)