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

[Anonymous Coward]

he angrily accused them of calling him a liar.

Wow. Just wow. "Are you calling me a liar!?!" is a common tactic used by bullies when caught lying. It works great when the bully is some sort of threat. It rarely works in court, where such tactics are well understood. No one is going to back down when Darl contradicts himself just because he puffs up his chest and looks threatening.

This guy is in way over his head.

Re:I'm Pretty Sure He Committed Perjury

[NotBornYesterday]

Sorry if I seem insensitive. I do not wish rape - prison or otherwise - on anyone. I am only wishing federal prison upon him for the (apparent) perjury and insider trading.

I'm not saying that I want him to *literally* get screwed. Metaphorically, sure. It's about time he and the other greedy, souless suits at SCO receive a taste of what they dished out in their vicious, deceitful battle against Linux and the software industry in general. "We can only hope" they see prison time, because I think these millionaire weasels will probably wriggle out of it one way or another. What happens after they get there ... well, that's not up to me.

Anyway, since I assume you didn't see the movie, the pound-you-in-the-ass bit is a quote from Office Space. I probably got it a little wrong. If I did, I'm sure a trivia nazi, er, I mean, helpful slashdotter, will show up and correct me.

Re:The endgame

[Xtifr]

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 that any mere debtor, and there's a good chance that liquidation will follow almost immediately. Criminal charges are not out of the question either.

If you go to Vegas and blow your life savings, then file bankruptcy, your mortgage company and credit card company will appear as debtors, and will try to get whatever they can. If you also took the contents of your employer's safe before heading out to the desert, though, your employer is not going to appear as a creditor--not even as the "lead creditor"--and things are going to be a whole lot more serious.