[TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix"

[TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix"

[Dave Horsfall]

Time for another hand-grenade in the duck pond :-)  Or as we call it 
down-under, "stirring the possum".

On this day in 2010, it was found unanimously that Novell, not SCO, owned 
"Unix".  SCO appealed later, and it was dismissed "with prejudice"; SCO 
shares plummeted as a result.

As an aside, this was the first and only time that I was on IBM's side, 
and I still wonder whether M$ was bankrolling SCO in an effort to wipe 
Linux off the map; what sort of an idiot would take on IBM?

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix"

[Paul Winalski]

On 3/29/18, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>
> On this day in 2010, it was found unanimously that Novell, not SCO, owned
> "Unix".  SCO appealed later, and it was dismissed "with prejudice"; SCO
> shares plummeted as a result.

A pox on both their houses, IMO.  And apparently the SCO vs. IBM
lawsuit is still alive.  The situation is almost farcical.

> what sort of an idiot would take on IBM?

Back in the 1960s IBM was facing two antitrust lawsuits over alleged
attempts to use its dominant market position to freeze the HPTC market
while they attempted to complete and ship the long-delayed System/360
model 90.  One lawsuit was brought by the Justice Department and
famously dragged on in court for a decade.  CDC also filed a civil
lawsuit.  CDC's lawyers built a computerized database of all the IBM
internal documents that they found during the discovery phase of suit.
IBM and CDC settled out of court.  IBM gave its Service Bureau
Corporation subsidiary to CDC and agreed to stay out of the service
bureau business for 10 years.  CDC agreed to destroy the database of
IBM internal documents.  The Justice Department tried but failed to
get access to the CDC database for their own lawsuit.

-Paul W.

[TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix"

[Clem Cole]

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On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 5:19 PM, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Back in the 1960s IBM was facing two antitrust lawsuits over alleged
> attempts to use its dominant market position to freeze the HPTC market
> while they attempted to complete and ship the long-delayed System/360
> model 90.  One lawsuit was brought by the Justice Department and
> famously dragged on in court for a decade.


​My favorite part of that story is that, IBM instead of sending exactly
what was required by the courts, *i.e*. the minimum possible, the IBM legal
team filled the basement of the justice department in Washing DC with many,
many tractor trailer loads of filling cabinets, mag tapes *etc*. 'Hey, here
you go, you asked for it...'

So IBM is being sued for anti-trust/monopoly position - what does IBM do
next?  They send a sales team to Justice and ask if the folks in Justice
wanted to buy computer equipment to examine what they now had in their
possession.

Furthermore, contemporary to the IBM suit, AT&T was also being sued by the
same Justice dept for belief that it was had failed to follow the 1956
consent decree and was using its legal monopoly position with prohibited
actions.   AT&T took a rather​ different approach of giving justice a
exactly the information that was required and no more.

Well, we all know what happened January 8, 1982 - the IBM suit was dropped
and AT&T was broken up.
ᐧ
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[TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix"

[Nemo]

On 29/03/2018, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> Time for another hand-grenade in the duck pond :-)  Or as we call it
> down-under, "stirring the possum".
>
> On this day in 2010, it was found unanimously that Novell, not SCO, owned
> "Unix".  SCO appealed later, and it was dismissed "with prejudice"; SCO
> shares plummeted as a result.
>
> As an aside, this was the first and only time that I was on IBM's side,
> and I still wonder whether M$ was bankrolling SCO in an effort to wipe
> Linux off the map; what sort of an idiot would take on IBM?

Methinks a mention of the wonderful record at Groklaw
(http://www.groklaw.net) is in order.

N.

>
> --
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
> suffer."
>

[TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix"

[Theodore Y. Ts'o]

On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 07:22:57PM -0400, Nemo wrote:
> > As an aside, this was the first and only time that I was on IBM's side,
> > and I still wonder whether M$ was bankrolling SCO in an effort to wipe
> > Linux off the map; what sort of an idiot would take on IBM?
> 
> Methinks a mention of the wonderful record at Groklaw
> (http://www.groklaw.net) is in order.

The idiots were at SCO.  In terms of Microsoft, if that theory is
true, it makes sense if you think in a fairly amoral way ("fiduciary
responsibility to shareholders excuses all business tactics" aka the
sociopathic theory of corporations) and consider it a fairly cheap PR
campaign to spread FUD about Linux.  So it you could actually consider
it a fairly cunning tactics; it was probably cheaper than, say, the
national TV advertising spots IBM had been running to support Linux.

Of course, whether SCO was actually colluding with Microsoft, or just
a "useful idiot" that was manipulated into taking on IBM, who knows?
And short of having a special prosecutor look into it, I doubt we'll
ever know for sure.

Speaking of PR exercises, there were rumors that Pamela at Groklaw was
secretly being funded by IBM as a counter PR campaign.  Even as an IBM
employee, I never saw any hard evidence of this, and everything Pamela
posted was backed by hard legal analysis and the actual court filings,
but I know people who were quite familiar with the players (including
those who knew, or at least claimed, that Pamela lived in Westchester
County in upstate NY) who were quite certain of this theory.
Certainly if it were not true, the person or people running Groklaw
must have donated huge amounts of their free time to keep the site
running and post the very rich amount of content available at Groklaw.

						- Ted

[TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix"

[Wesley Parish]

Also one of the bigger mistakes the anti-Linux groups made. Among
other things it brought a whole lot of Unix history into the light.
And that was a Good Thing (TM).

I doubt IBM ever did anything more than send an occasional hint
Pamela's way. She did not seem the sort to follow a boss's orders that
way. I did start to worry she'd bought into the Google "Do no evil"
hype at the end, but then she folded it up and stopped posting
articles, so that's moot.

(For what it's worth, I can give an example of her depth of experience
in the software development process: I found in a relatively ancient
MS Windows 3.1 CDROM archive a small Microsoft Windows text editor
project, with a README stating it was in the public domain. It had
obviously been released to help nervous software developers kickstart
their own projects by offering a free windowing framework and text
editing source code. I email her and told her about it, and she
replied it would not be a good idea to let Microsoft know about it or
they would lock it up again. She was a legal assistant, and understood
well tracking cases through the courts, not the software development
process.)

Wesley Parish

On 3/31/18, Theodore Y. Ts'o <tytso at mit.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 07:22:57PM -0400, Nemo wrote:
>> > As an aside, this was the first and only time that I was on IBM's side,
>> > and I still wonder whether M$ was bankrolling SCO in an effort to wipe
>> > Linux off the map; what sort of an idiot would take on IBM?
>>
>> Methinks a mention of the wonderful record at Groklaw
>> (http://www.groklaw.net) is in order.
>
> The idiots were at SCO.  In terms of Microsoft, if that theory is
> true, it makes sense if you think in a fairly amoral way ("fiduciary
> responsibility to shareholders excuses all business tactics" aka the
> sociopathic theory of corporations) and consider it a fairly cheap PR
> campaign to spread FUD about Linux.  So it you could actually consider
> it a fairly cunning tactics; it was probably cheaper than, say, the
> national TV advertising spots IBM had been running to support Linux.
>
> Of course, whether SCO was actually colluding with Microsoft, or just
> a "useful idiot" that was manipulated into taking on IBM, who knows?
> And short of having a special prosecutor look into it, I doubt we'll
> ever know for sure.
>
> Speaking of PR exercises, there were rumors that Pamela at Groklaw was
> secretly being funded by IBM as a counter PR campaign.  Even as an IBM
> employee, I never saw any hard evidence of this, and everything Pamela
> posted was backed by hard legal analysis and the actual court filings,
> but I know people who were quite familiar with the players (including
> those who knew, or at least claimed, that Pamela lived in Westchester
> County in upstate NY) who were quite certain of this theory.
> Certainly if it were not true, the person or people running Groklaw
> must have donated huge amounts of their free time to keep the site
> running and post the very rich amount of content available at Groklaw.
>
> 						- Ted
>

[TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix"

[Michael Parson]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2018, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> Time for another hand-grenade in the duck pond :-)  Or as we call it 
> down-under, "stirring the possum".
>
> On this day in 2010, it was found unanimously that Novell, not SCO, owned 
> "Unix".  SCO appealed later, and it was dismissed "with prejudice"; SCO 
> shares plummeted as a result.
>
> As an aside, this was the first and only time that I was on IBM's side, and I 
> still wonder whether M$ was bankrolling SCO in an effort to wipe Linux off 
> the map; what sort of an idiot would take on IBM?

My initial thought, when I saw that SCO had filed the $1B lawsuit, was
that maybe Darl McBride was hoping that the next headline people read
would be "IBM acquires SCO for $(some amount below $1B)."

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ

[TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix"

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sat, 31 Mar 2018, Michael Parson wrote:

> My initial thought, when I saw that SCO had filed the $1B lawsuit, was 
> that maybe Darl McBride was hoping that the next headline people read 
> would be "IBM acquires SCO for $(some amount below $1B)."

Yeah, that was going around too; remember that SCO was practically broke 
at the time, and couldn't possibly afford to lose (as if anyone could).

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."