Jerry Feldman wrote:
On Tue, 14 Aug 2007 14:56:07 -0400 James Knott
wrote: Still, you'd have to accept SCO's bizarre definition of derivate works, one that apparently doesn't stick to stuff they develop from someone else's IP.
I don't see the definition being bizarre. It is essentially the language in the original AT&T license not the SCO license. IBM signed the license long before AT&T sold Unix to Novell.
Then there's the matter of copyrights. Since they don't own them, they can't sue over them, at least not without Novell's approval.
In the SCO vs. IBM case the copyright issues are moot, first because of Judge Wells' order because SCO was not specific enough, and secondly because Novell has already waived them. Actually, it was Novell's claim and waiver that caused SCO to add the "slander of title" against Novell in the first case.
Actually, I think that SCO actually thought they owned the copyrights, and either they were sold a bill of goods by the Santa Cruz Operation, or they made a very poor assumption when they acquired Santa Cruz's Unix division. In any case, we'll just need to wait until there are some additional rulings in the IBM case since there is an August 31st deadline in that case.
You might want to do some reading on Groklaw about this. One thing the court made clear, was that since the original SCO didn't have the money to buy Unix outright, Novell came up with a license deal, where they retained the copyrights among other things, until the new SCO forwarded enough license revenue to complete the deal. This means that had sufficient revenue come from SCO, all rights would have been transferred to them. So, they did not buy a "bill of goods". As for the derivative works, what SCO claims greatly exceeds what the original arrangement was with AT&T, which AT&T verified in a letter to IBM and elsewhere. SCO then tried to retroactively and unilaterally claim much more. T -- Use OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org